#oneaday Day 165: How It's Meant to be Played

One thing I often find myself contemplating when enjoying an older game is how it's "supposed" to be played. As a general rule, I avoid using save states in emulators for anything other than picking up where I left off in a game that allows infinite continues anyway (see: Castlevania) and I certainly won't use them to cheese my way past a difficult section of game.

What about games where there are systems in place seemingly designed to allow you to cheese your way past difficult bits, though? I'm thinking specifically about old shareware games like Wolfenstein 3-D, Commander Keen and the like here.

Back when I first played these games when they were "current", I took full advantage of the save systems. In the process, though, I made the score and lives systems of the game completely irrelevant, because I'd never see a "Game Over" — I'd simply reload when I died so I didn't lose anything.

Just recently, however, I've discovered the appeal of playing these games in a more "arcade" style. That means starting the game and playing until you run out of lives, purely to see how far you can get. No saving, no quicksaving, no cheesing, no cheat codes — just a pure test of your skill and endurance.

And you know what? I'm finding it really fun. Old first-person shooters like Wolfenstein 3-D and Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold (an underappreciated classic that I really, really like) really have a new level of enjoyment when there's that additional pressure to perform and attempt to get a high score, and in playing like this you make things like the secret rooms and the collectible treasure much more relevant than they would be in a run where you're spamming the Quicksave button every few seconds.

Ultimately, it's kind of nice that these games have the option to play in both ways. Save-scumming means that anyone can eventually get to the end of the game, while the presence of old-school mechanics like score and lives mean that those who want to enjoy the game in a different way still can, too.

Give it a try sometime, you might enjoy it!