Retro Games
Hello there!
Im a student from Staffordshire University in his final year of study. Im doing my final year project on retro games and how much they impact games of today. Id like to know what you guys think about retro games.
Feel free to talk about anything retro, like why you like retro to your favourite retro game. Talk about modern games as well if you want. It will all help!
Thanks in advance for the help!
Im a student from Staffordshire University in his final year of study. Im doing my final year project on retro games and how much they impact games of today. Id like to know what you guys think about retro games.
Feel free to talk about anything retro, like why you like retro to your favourite retro game. Talk about modern games as well if you want. It will all help!
Thanks in advance for the help!
Replies
Retro games is a pretty broad topic. Did you have something specific you wanted to look into?
Anyway I like to think that these old games were the reason I now pursue a career in the games industry and when I'm designing things I look to them for inspiration.
I also think age plays a part. As a kid I had more of an imagination and could make a simple game like Donkry Kong or Zelda last longer than normal. Nowadays I have the internet and the surprise of a new game is lost now that I can read a review or watch a trailer. Over time I feel as though a large majority of developers are trying to be the next Call of Duty and I don't care about that genre. I want games to revisit the adventures, the thrills of the classic SNES games.
Sometimes I think the jump to 3D has affected the quality of games today. It's all about how good they look.
One more thing, funny enough a studio called Retro Studios made a spiritual sequel to the original Donkey Kong games and they were very respectful of the original games so it's good to see at least one company looking at old roots.
Before the PS1, many of the more prominent higher end games were only playable in video game arcades. Those games were designed to take your quarters.
For many such games, the primary objectives was about attaining the most 'points'.
As many pointed out there were Amiga 64 games, with RPGs, and D&D pen and paper style levelling systems as well, but those were not nearly as accessible or popular as the arcades.
Those arcade games initially started with single player scenarios such as Galaga, Arkanoid, and Pong. But over the course of 20+ years they grew to evolve into MANY different genres such as side-scrollers, 6 player+ Co-op, Simulations (where you were actually in a cockpit/drivers seat), and competitive fighters.
Then about the time PS1/Dreamcast hit the market, a couple of VERY drastic things happened.
The home consoles were now able to match/surpass the power of arcade machines, and we were now given access to the 3D games that were only available on PC.
That drastically changed the core design focus of trying to take quarters, to being a game that intended to be finished.
When I was reading the article on Kotaku about the closure of the Demon's Souls servers. One commenter made a note, that NOBODY will ever get to experience that exact same thing ever again.
Nobody will ever get to know what it's like to have another random player enter your game, and you are forced to kill him or lose your humanity. No one will know world tendencies, or be able to leave warning messages to other players.
It also dawned on me that about every MMO or online game. Nobody will ever get to experience WoW on launch day, when all the noob areas were camping mob spawns, and there was no real set economy.
No one will ever get to experience the 1.09 patch of Diablo 2, where they had to trade with SOJs, and everyone was doing Cow Runs.
Nobody will experience the thrill of an EQ raid group, or buying a house in Ultima Online.
If you reduce your paper about the evolution of retro sub-genre, there is probably a LOT more to talk about.