#5. Games Were Simpler Back In The Day
Video games have
unquestionably become more ambitious and impressive in recent years.
When you look at the likes of The Last Of Us, it's impossible to
overstate just how far video games have come since people were playing
Pong forty-odd years ago. But for all the innovations within the medium,
and for all the new fangled ideas and increasingly elaborate control
schemes, there's something to be said for how much more straight forward
things were in the games we played as kids.
Gaming today can be
difficult for people without the muscle memory that comes from years of
dedicated gaming. Give your mum or dad a PS4 controller and if they're
anything like mine they'll spend half the time playing the game looking
down, attempting in vain to remember where all the buttons are. Use the
left analog stick to walk, hold X to jog, or tap X to sprint. L2 is aim
and R2 is shoot, but R1 becomes shoot if you're driving because in a car
R2 is the accelerator. R3 (that's when you click in the right analog
stick) let's you look behind you, and to open the menu you need to hold
down the touch pad. And that's just part of the control scheme for Grand
Theft Auto 5, one of the best selling games of all time.
Even for
seasoned veterans the increasing complexity of games can become a turn
off. Super Mario World is still as intuitive as it was back in 1990
because the inherently simple design and pick up and play nature of the
game made it timeless. You can give a kid who's never played a Mario
game the controller and within seconds they'll have worked out how to
play. This simplicity is an attractive concept, which is almost
certainly part of the reason that retro games like Shovel Knight and
Axiom Verge are so popular today. The simpler a game is to play, the
more inclusive and immediate the fun. Retro gaming has that in spades,
and that's the reason I'm still playing Super Mario World twenty-six
years after release.
#4. Retro Games Have Better Music
As
gaming production values have increased over the years, we've seen the
medium change in many ways. We made the jump to 3D, we now have voice
acting, and elaborate cut-scenes tell complicated stories that rival
those seen in television or on the big screen. Games today feature fully
orchestrated scores or soundtracks featuring popular music that are
every bit as impressive as what we'd see in other mediums, but it feels
like we've lost something along the way, too.
I can still hum the
theme music to Treasure Island Dizzy on the Commodore 64. I was playing
that game nearly thirty years ago and I haven't played it since then
(and I've still never beaten it, damn it) but I can still remember the
theme music that plays in the background in its entirety. I played games
last week and I couldn't even tell you if they had music at all.
Because
of the simplicity of early games, and without voice acting to tell a
story, the music had to be good. Other than a few crummy sound effects,
the music of the game was the only aural stimulation that the games
provided. There are still great game soundtracks today, but they seem
few and far between when compared to the games of my youth. Mega Man,
Castlevania, the early Final Fantasy games, and iconic titles like
Zelda, Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog - these all featured highly
memorable tunes that stick with us long after the last time we played
them. I still remember how the music for Commodore 64 classic Prince
Clumsy changes when you save the princess at the end of the game like I
was playing it yesterday. We can't really say that about Shadow of
Mordor, can we?
#3. Games Used to Work Right Out of the Box
One
thing that games from yesteryear unquestionably did better than the
games of today is that they, well, worked. You'd think that it should be
a pretty fundamental aspect of any product released to the market, but
it's truly staggering how many games in 2016 ship broken, requiring
either days or weeks of server tweaks to get the multiplayer working, or
enormous day one patches to fix all of the bugs that made it onto the
disc. Today, if you don't have a decent Internet connection in your
home, some games are genuinely unplayable, and many others severely
hampered.
Street Fighter V released earlier this year, with Capcom
promising that the single player Arcade Mode, a staple of the series,
would be available to download in July. What if you don't have an
Internet connection? Well, then you've got half a game. That's not a
problem we faced when Street Fighter II released on the SNES in 1991.
Back then, we had no Internet acting as a safety net for developers.
Games had to work right out of the box.
Going back and playing
Global Gladiators today is as simple as popping the cartridge into your
Genesis and turning on the power. It works now as it did then; exactly
as it should, and without any fuss. This is one of the many great things
about retro gaming; if you've got the game and the hardware you're
pretty much good to go. You don't need to download drivers, or updates,
or patches. You put in the game, and then you play. Just like you
should.
#2. Games Used to Be More of a Challenge
Today,
anybody who keeps up to date with the latest trends in gaming will
likely know of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and the reputation these games
have for punishing difficulty. Gamers flocked to the Souls series in
droves, excited to play a title that challenged them and refused to hold
their hands. There's no extended tutorial sections. There's little in
the way of help. You can't pause. And every enemy can make mincemeat out
of you unless you learn their attack patterns and act accordingly. It's
exciting for a game to provide us with an uphill struggle like this,
but then, I'm old enough to remember a time when every game was like
this. And worse.
Modern games have a tendency to spell things out
to the player, often to an almost insulting degree. Popping a disc into a
PS4 in 2016 means waiting for the install, then the day one patch, and
then when you finally get a controller in your hand you spend the next
two hours being walked through the early stages of the game like a kid
on his first day of school. Everybody likes a bit of help now and again,
but there's something to be said for just being thrown in at the deep
end and being told to sink or swim.
#1. Nostalgia
Nostalgia
might seem like a cop out answer; after all, looking back on the past
with rose tinted spectacles is often what fans of anything retro are
criticized with. It's easy to dismiss nostalgia as a way of justifying
the opinion that everything was just much better in your day, but the
truth is that nostalgia is an immensely powerful agent and it shouldn't
be ignored.
Today, we watch rubbish movies and bemoan the use of
obvious CGI, but we'll happily sit through Raiders of the Lost Ark and
not bother mentioning that the melting Nazi at the end looks like he's
made out of plasticine. We listen to the appalling pop music of our
youths with a reflective smile on our faces while turning our noses up
at Justin Bieber's latest video. And we'll talk about Final Fantasy VII
as though it were second coming of Christ, completely ignoring all of
the flaws in the game that we'd hang a modern game out to dry for.
Nostalgia is a strong enough influence to make us believe that Sonic the
Hedgehog was actually ever good. Now, that's serious.
The reason a
lot of us like playing old games is simply because of the feeling we
get playing them. I've played hundreds, if not thousands of games in my
time as a gamer. And I'm smart enough to know that in that time video
games have improved in almost every way. But that doesn't change the
fact that if I load up Street Fighter II I remember the days of playing
it during the school summer holidays with all my friends. I remember the
day I completed Toejam and Earl with my brother every time I hear the
first few bars of its ridiculously funky theme music. And I remember the
giddy thrills we got when we first got the fatalities working on Mortal
Kombat II.
Playing old games, just as with watching old movies or
listening to old albums, transports us to a time in the past that we
like to remember. Whether it's memories of old friends, loved ones,
people we may see every day or might have lost touch with, every old
game we load up is a window to the past and that's special. The latest
Call of Duty is never going to compete with that.
