Great games that aged badly
Any thoughts of games that were great at the time, but are just not fun to play anymore.
eg. I loved manic miner at the time, and still enjoy playing it today - it runs smoothly, plays well etc.
but other games such as Fairlight - at the time I thought it was great - but now, I don't think it's fun to play in an emulator at all - the nostalgia of seeing it again is nice, but it's not fun to play - it's too slow, the jumping is poor, the combat is annoying etc.
For my tastes, frame-rate has a lot to do with it - in the 80's it didn't seem so bad to have a game like Driller running at a couple of frames per second, but now, I'd find it too frustating to still play it.
Generally I prefer a simpler game running smoothly, than a complicated game that runs irritating slowly.
[ This Message was edited by: Neil^P on 2006-03-02 03:10 ]
eg. I loved manic miner at the time, and still enjoy playing it today - it runs smoothly, plays well etc.
but other games such as Fairlight - at the time I thought it was great - but now, I don't think it's fun to play in an emulator at all - the nostalgia of seeing it again is nice, but it's not fun to play - it's too slow, the jumping is poor, the combat is annoying etc.
For my tastes, frame-rate has a lot to do with it - in the 80's it didn't seem so bad to have a game like Driller running at a couple of frames per second, but now, I'd find it too frustating to still play it.
Generally I prefer a simpler game running smoothly, than a complicated game that runs irritating slowly.
[ This Message was edited by: Neil^P on 2006-03-02 03:10 ]
Post edited by Neil^P on
Comments
I liked it a lot in the 80's but it was a bit poor these days.
Having said that, it was pretty decent(in my eyes)back in the 80's and i had a lot of fun with it(so i don't want to be too harsh on it).
Games like avalon, quazatron, heavy on the magick, manic miner, skool daze all seem as good as ever to me(all probably the last ones i played).
I haven't tried driller in the emulator but you could always turn up the speed in the emu so that it runs mega fast(i used to do that with the hobbit to speed up the pictures drawing up).
[ This Message was edited by: Technician-Ted on 2006-03-02 07:12 ]
you can make jumps, hear different sounds when crashed/bump into something (you can hear the sound of a wood if you bump into the road barrier).. abd even: EAX!!!! the sound of the engine is absorbed when driving through the tunnel... I think it?s still great game.
Classics back then such as Jet Set Willy and Elite i would say have aged, back then they were groundbreaking specially Elite which was incredible when it was released but those two games are two of the games i hardly ever play now. Jet Set Willy i might just go back to for a few mins to hear the music, see a few rooms as it whisks me back to the early 80's as soon as i hear it but out of all the games i may play those two are two i hardly.
Anyway, yes, Jet Set Willy has aged far worse than Manic Miner. The earlier game is still great fun with just about all the levels having their own challenges and interesting design quirks. However, too much of the latter game is about exploring the house and once you've done that it's just an irritating sequence of pixel perfect jumps to pick up the items.
Looking at the 3D games, there were loads that wowed me at the time with the programming techniques. Having written a few hilariously crap attempts at them myself, I was especially in awe of the likes of Gyron, Dark Star, Starion and above all Starstrike II for their graphical achievement. However, looking at them today, they're all seriously weak in the gameplay department becoming repetetive and/or dull very quickly. Still, there are exceptions: Elite, Tau Ceti, Academy, Psytron and maybe a few others have the depth of gameplay that still makes them a challenge for more than a quick five minute blast, despite their graphics being nothing special these days, and that's enough for me to keep rating them.
[ This Message was edited by: mile on 2006-03-02 12:45 ]
seems like the disappointment comes from your playing abilities, not the game itself... ;)
yes, the games 20 years ago were meant to be played for your life.. today is everything easy...
i dont want a game with brill graphics, just massive levels for go on for ages, and loads of gameplay. id be happy with graphics from a snes. But do they listen, do they bugger.
I finished the game (it "looped") in about 15-20 minutes. It's still a good game, but was much simpler to complete that I remembered.
Rex on the other hand (does anyone notice just how much I mention that game?) is still a fantastic platform shooter, which I feel hasn't aged at all. I guess this is partly due to the quality animations, but also the gameplay just seems to work.
i still play it today....
my trouble is that over the years i think i've sub-conciously filtered out all the ones that i thought aged badly.... as a result i cant remember them!
Maybe Nightshade... havent managed to get to grips with the controls on that one since 1987.
And another thing: Often the only reason older games were so difficult was because the programmers couldn't fit that much game into memories at the time so they had to make what they could fit last longer.
[ This Message was edited by: udgoverload on 2006-03-03 00:19 ]
I just wish there were more levels/screens to find.
And why did The LIght not produce anything else???
[ This Message was edited by: 48K on 2006-03-03 04:51 ]
Mith was pretty close in level design and production quality, and defenetly is still worthwile to play today.
Some games that were innovative or groundbracking at the time for fancy grafics or huge multiload levels(like Last Mission or Street Fisgter II) didn't really hold up very well.
Just so you know there is still a system that gets brand new 2d games with that kind of quality you seek, and that would be the GBA.
Honestly , this ( and the DS) is the equivalent to the Speccy(in terms of playing time) I used to play in the '80s.
And the latest generation of GBA SP has an incredible display that makes mi wish I had one of those when I was still in school!
And you can also play some Speccy games on it.....
Or maybe not.
do it, do it...!
/me wanking joystick impatientely... thinking of the REX level designer...
Fairlight caused me problems in that I never worked out what the hell I was supposed to do! I played it a fair bit and got nowhere. Batman was a different story, because it had simpler gameplay.
https://discordapp.com/invite/cZt59EQ
Not sure if the spacemen have preprogrammed routes for each screen, or make decisions based on the scenery and where you are (perhaps a bit of both).
New features like lifts or moving platforms (up AND down, and horizontal), and perhaps teleports, and a selectable weapons system (think: cybernoid) could really reinvigorate REX2. But obviously just new screens in the original format would still be ace. And I'm sure I'd play it to death.
By the way, last I looked the .png map on this site misses some screens from the RHS of the play area - where you get the "multiple" weapon for example.
Some games have still got that cute factor like Head Over Heels, Sweevos World or Batman, and Quazatron still turns me head as does Knight Lore. But the rest... best left with the dust on top eh?
I guess Im just a 3D isometric tosspot.
So you actually like Sweevos World??
Bloody hell :)
https://discordapp.com/invite/cZt59EQ
yeah your right there. have a GBA and enjoy it. but what i mean is a flipping huge game that will take you years to finish. like the zelda four player on the cube. (which i reckon has caused many families and freinds to fall out.)
and not something like animal crossing which was pants.
sorry i dont know what i want, maybe a lie down. :)
I prefer the gameplay in Sweevos World to Knight Lore. Possibly because I'm a bit simple.
Way of the Exploding Fist: When I was younger I could waste a whole night playing this, but now it's a few fights every now and then and then I get bored. plus I used to think the look on your opponants face showed genuine pain when you punched the in the gut. Now they look like the have a chromosome or 2 missing.
Spiky Harold: I loved this when I was younger now it seems virtually unplayable, it's so sluggish, and everytime you land from a jump the hedgehog looks like he's trying to pass kidney stones.