old games Archives - I'm Not Doctor Who

First up, here's a good piece that I read earlier today, and which my resharing a clip of on Bluesky did Numbers to such a degree that I had to mute the thread. I stand by my comment of "fucking preach" about it, however, particularly the paragraph about today's games having their roots in older titles — and how it pays to not be snobbish about stuff released some time ago.

vibrant retro arcade machine with joysticks and buttons — Photo by Dan Butler on Pexels.com

If you're reading this, you probably don't need me to tell you my feelings about old games, but I'm going to talk about them anyway — if only for the benefit of anyone who might be stumbling across this blog for the first time, or for anyone who, somehow, did not know the following about me.

I love old games! I always have done. For as long as I can remember, I have loved going back to earlier gaming systems and either rediscovering old favourites, or discovering brand new ones. I quite regularly boot up the MiSTer's Atari 8-bit, ST and Amiga cores to play the games of my childhood — and the games that I lusted after in my childhood. I also explore the libraries of consoles that I never had the opportunity to own, or which were prohibitively expensive, or which just passed me by for one reason or another. It's a constant delight, and I think, as the article linked states, it has done me a lot of good, too.

Probably the best thing that Being Into Old Games has taught me is not to give a rat's ass about performance, unless said performance is actively detrimental to the overall experience. I grew up gaming on systems that could barely manage simple flat-shaded 3D polygonal scenes at about 10 frames per second, and had a ton of fun on platforms like the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64, both of which have graphical capabilities it would be very easy to find laughable today if you're a snobbish dickhead.

There really are people out there who will declare games from this era (and earlier) "unplayable" because they run at an inconsistent frame rate, or a low resolution, or have blurry textures, or use a "weird" controller. (Fun fact: the Nintendo 64 controller is absolutely fine when playing games that were designed for it! That said, if you really don't get along with it, I recommend either this for modern USB devices, or this for original hardware.)

There are people out there who completely fail to grasp the absolute phenomenon that was GoldenEye and Perfect Dark split-screen multiplayer. None of us cared that the frame rate was, by today's standards, bobbins! The games were fun! That was literally all that mattered! And you can still live your life that way! I bet if I hooked up a MiSTer with four controllers and ran Perfect Dark on it at a party, people would be fighting over it by the end of the evening. (This makes the mistaken assumption that I would 1) throw a party and 2) have anyone to invite to a party, mind, but I am speaking purely hypothetically here.)

Don't get me wrong, it is undoubtedly nice to play a modern, high-resolution game that runs super smoothly and slickly. Certain genres particularly benefit from absolutely rock-solid performance — but that doesn't magically make games from years gone by that didn't run at a constant 60+ fps suddenly completely unplayable or not worth bothering with. Ridge Racer Type 4, one of the greatest video games ever created, only just about cracks 30 and runs at a resolution of 320×240 pixels (on NTSC displays, anyway) during races! And yet I go back to Ridge Racer Type 4 more than pretty much any other racing game released since then… except maybe the Project Gotham games.

One of the nicest things about older games that I'm coming to appreciate a whole lot more as I get older is that they just respect your time more. Even in RPGs, there's a lot less endless grinding, a lot less "content" designed for "player retention" — and I know some people like them, but the complete absence of Achievements and/or Trophies is absolute bliss, because it means you can play and enjoy each and every game exactly how you want to, without feeling obliged to tick things off a checklist — including boring, tedious things you don't actually want to do — lest you feel you haven't "Platinumed" it properly.

I am a strong, strong advocate for expanding your gaming horizons and exploring the incredibly vast, diverse and vibrant history of the medium. And I mean all of the history! There are Atari 2600 (River Raid! H.E.R.O.! Seaquest! Keystone Kapers!) and Intellivision (Night Stalker! Tower of Doom! Cloudy Mountain!) games that still play great today — and which I, personally, frequently return to, by choice, for a gaming session of an evening. There are myriad Super NES, PlayStation and Saturn RPGs just waiting for me to play them — and I'm looking forward to doing so. And even though I played a lot of N64 back in the day, there's still a lot of games from that relatively slim library that I've never tried — and really want to!

If you're concerned for the future of gaming — and given all the recent happenings, I absolutely do not blame you for that — then don't just give up and assume it's all over. Even if there were to be no more games released ever after tomorrow — and we all know that's not going to happen, regardless of whether or not we're actually in the process of seeing a new Crash happen — there are enough games that have already been released, across all platforms, to keep all of us busy for the rest of our lives.

Something doesn't stop being relevant, worthwhile or interesting because it's 20, 30, 40 years old or more. In many cases, these games are all the more remarkable for remaining relevant, worthwhile and interesting after so long — and it's not just nostalgia. There's something there; something of great value. And I implore you to spend some time exploring it, particularly if you've never done so.

Now I'm off to play Soul Blazer for the rest of the evening.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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Hey all! Thanks for stopping by. I realise it's been a while since my last post, but these things happen. Sometimes real life takes over with a veritable shitstorm of stupid things happening, and this was one of those times. This is not the place, nor is it the time to talk about these things, but suffice to say that blogging hasn't been at the forefront of my mind just recently.

Still, I plan to change that now and get back into the habit, and what better way to get back into things than with a good old-fashioned retro games post? You're absolutely right, there is no better way!

Okay. So my old Xbox 360 semi-died on me recently, with the DVD drive pretty much giving up the ghost and on several occasions failing to register that there was even a disc in the drive. This, of course, is a problem for a fundamentally DVD-based system – and also, the Xbox was acting as our primary DVD player in the house, too, thanks to its fancy-pants upscaling shenanigans.

So eventually after a bit of umming and ahhing we (yes, we) decided to purchase a new one. I picked up the new Premium, or Pro, or whatever they're calling it now, with the 60GB hard drive, which will be nice. That 20GB drive on the old one filled up surprisingly quickly. However, I do wish Microsoft had had the decency to include a transfer cable in the box. You can get one for free by sending off a form to them (through the post… no online request option, how quaint… and inconvenient) but mine hasn't arrived yet, so I'm using my new 360 with my old hard drive at present. FAIL.

The point, though.

Game were doing a couple of bundles with the 60GB model. One was with Call of Duty 4, a game which I know is fabulously good and marvellous and the best thing ever but I really have very little interest in whatsoever. What did interest me, however, was the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection (or Sega Genesis Fuckfest as Tolkoto of the Exploding Barrel Podcast memorably dubbed it), which was the other game on offer. The irony of the fact I spent nearly £200 on a console only to get a bunch of Mega Drive games with it was not lost on me. You know what else plays Mega Drive games and costs approximately a tenth of an Xbox 360? A Mega Drive!

That's not entirely fair, of course, because the 360 version of the Mega Drive collection comes with a veritable plethora of 16-bit entertainment including all the expected things (Sonic 1, 2, 3, Sonic and Knuckles followed by various Sonic spinoffs as the blue spiny dude's credibility slowly began to wane, like a slow descent into alcoholism and drug abuse) plus some things that I personally am very glad to see in there but many others likely won't give a damn about (Phantasy Star 1, 2, 3, 4 and Shining Force, Shining Force II and Shining in the Darkness) and some other things besides. Purchasing (let alone locating) all these Mega Drive games would take time and money, whereas there's apparently over 40 titles to play with in this collection. I say "apparently" as they seem remarkably reluctant to list all the titles in too many places. Perhaps this means there's some pleasant surprises tucked away somewhere.

What struck me having played a few of these is that many of these games are still fundamentally excellent games. Sonic in particular still plays very well, although it's easy to forget with the rose-tinted spectacles quite how frustrating it was at times. It's also interesting to play a properly optimised version of these games finally. I've spent my whole life thinking that one of Sonic 2's great new features was the fact it ran at approximately twice the speed of the original Sonic. Not true. The PAL version of Sonic 2 ran at roughly twice the speed of the original PAL version of Sonic. In fact, this collection has taught me that Sonic 1 is actually quite fast and the original PAL port was one of the shoddiest 60-50Hz hack jobs of all time.

There's also some pleasant curios on the collection, too. I never knew the Mega Drive played host to a Roguelike, for example, but it did, in the form of Fatal Labyrinth (which is one of those examples of Japanese titling where two random, vaguely related words are thrown together) – an absolutely shameless remake of Rogue with 16-bit sprite graphics and smooth scrolling. It doesn't have much in the way of depth (as the original Rogue didn't – it wasn't until later titles like Moria and Angband that they became the behemoths they are today) but it includes a lot of the elements that make Rogue fun – the fact you don't know what anything does until you take a risk and use it being the main one. Chug back a potion and you might suddenly be stronger. Conversely, you might suddenly go blind. It's as brutal as Rogue and, despite its simplicity, it's actually fun and addictive.

There's a whole batch of unlockable extras too, with the usual video interviews that you get with this kind of package, but also a selection of Master System and arcade titles too. All in all, it's a great package that I will certainly enjoy delving into on a regular basis. Plenty of interesting Achievements to go for too – they're not just of the "Complete Sonic" variety, there's a little bit of creativity there, too. The Achievements are also used to unlock the additional content, too, so that actually gives you some incentive to go for them, too.

Anyway. More soon. I have plenty of things I want to talk about over the next few days, not least of which include Persona 4 along with City of Heroes and its new expansion, the Mission Architect.

See you soon.

Tag: old games

#oneaday Day 760: My own feelings on old games

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