Hi, I'm a professional game designer, colloquially known to most people in the space as a 'dev' (even though devs are just the guys who code). Even though I work for an android game studio of 300 people, I can draw several parallels to AAA game development and my own job. I can try and explain why modern AAA is why the way it is. 1. Videogames have become a product and a source for revenue: And even though they always were, capitalism does what it does and stubs diversity. Every game now is hyper analyzed, product managers are at the helm, not the designers and they are constantly thinking of how each aspect of the game can be monetized, or how each aspect of the game can be cost cut to maximize profits. They'll always look at other games, its metrics (retention, revenue etc) and will use it as a base. Which is why you're getting so many open world games with repetitive side quests, lackluster environments. It's because producers and product managers are asking designers to make things cost as low as possible which includes making low risk products. 2. So if the games are not good, why do people buy them? It's because a lot of budget is put into user acquisition; this encompasses branding, advertising, community management etc. Most of these games are all smokes and mirrors with flashy trailers and aggressive marketing campaigns and they've figured out that it's less about how good your game is and more about how often people hear about it. Ubisoft doesn't only have f you money, they also have fuck me money. They have all the money in the world to shove their 52nd assassins creed product in every corner of the net space. 3. Designers, devs etc are strong armed into decisions. As mentioned earlier, product design is at the helm and their job is to maximize profits. Decisions often come from above (board of directors, founders etc) and we are subjected to it. We know very well that what they're looking to do will be a bad experience for players, but they won't listen because as you said, they don't play videogames. They don't give a shit. And since we're kind of made to work on features that we just don't believe in, to a fair extent we don't give a shit either. Why would I care about my job when my voice isn't heard? What difference would it make even if I did care? I'm clearly being asked to make a money making machine, it's fundamentally wrong. I think bottomline is, it isn't the 'devs', the designers or even to a large extent even PMs who are responsible, it's the suits. As with every industry they're old, out of touch and don't care about the quality of what they're ordering people below them to make. The only way for this to change is to have the AAA industry burn from the ground up. I highly doubt that will happen though, I think what's likelier is that people like us will rely on a roster of trustworthy studios (for me it's Naughty Dog, Insomniac, FromSoftware, Platinum, Remedy) whilst studios like Ubisoft will continue to have mass appeal. Just ignore them, continue to vote with your own wallet and support the games you love.
You had me until you brought up Insomniac. The same clowns who push "the message" just the same as Ubisoft. Most major studios these days are all doing it because they think it will get them the most profit. Which as you say is what they're all about. Instead they're constantly eating from the shit buffet that's cost them collectively over a billion dollars. Which is what's triggering the massive layoff waves where people like you lose their job. In 90% of cases i don't blame the worker drones. It's the higher ups. But that other 10% is the fault of people in your position who push the garbage because they agree with it/love it. Those people don't have a passion for gaming they have a passion for being annoying "activists" for their shitty worldview. People are tired of that loud 10% that are constantly given a platform by the other 90%
The more "realistic" you try to make a game look. The more immersion breaking it is when the "gamey" elements appear. Where are there invisible walls everywhere, or you realize this beautiful forest you're moving through in god of war ragnarok is actually a straight hallway.
@CursedMoonCrusader It happens in all these modern remakes. At least the old god of wars didn't lie about their linearity. Even the original re4 was more upfront about how linear its levels were compared to the remake wirh all its bushes and barbed wires everywhere in the village. Linearity is fine. Just don't try and sell yourself as anything other than what you are. Open world games suffer from this, being vast empty expanses of nothing with nothing interesting to look at or discover. Where it feels the linear missions and story had the most effort put into them.
@@CursedMoonCrusaderThat wasn't his point. The problem wasn't the linear nature but rather that the game immersion broke due to how realistic it looked
I never stopped playing older games, I still revisit them regularly to this day. When we say the gaming industry is in shambles now, newer folks who got into gaming after 2010 tend to ignore what we say because, for them, gaming's always been like this, but just playing older titles is enough to prove how INSANE the gaming industry is nowadays!
They also have less risk for creativity because they need less budget than AAA games. Graphic become less and less important up to a certain point. And those money is better spend on other part of the game. Nowadays, many put too much importance in them. Just imagine if you have AAA budget and decided to make 2d game, all those excess money can be spend on polishing animation (movement & amount of frame) rather than clothes physics, doesn't mean it's not important in 3d, just illustrated that it's not a requirement. Or you can spend it on writer to make lore, story, Character development, items, quest, etc. Seriously, there's this one guy that say that 2d sprite is bad because they're cheap and unrealistic.
@@underblader9675 You are right about the passion, but sadly Indie games are also often under intense time constraints. Where big developers are under pressure due to working in a soulless corporate machine, indie developers are under pressure because we often have very few people and very small budgets. It's a brutal market out there. The last game I worked on, I worked my soul to shreds, it was incredibly stressful and in the end we'd made a game far beyond what you might expect from a team our size.. Sad reality is that despite getting good reviews, we didn't get a lot of attention and as a result we continue to struggle.
Yeah reject Elden Ring, Flight Simulator, Doom Eternal, Dark Souls, Astrobot, Sea of Thieves, Cocoon, Portal, Evil West, Dying Light 2, Hollow Knights, Hades, The Witcher 3, Skyrim, Warhammer Space Marine, Minecraft, Diablo IV(updated), Can berpuno 2077, Forza Horizon 5, GT ..and the many other AA, AAA and Indie games available. Also how modern games can vastly get fixed, updated, improved unlike retro games.
@@Greg7791 Actually there were issues on many games but we just lived with it. Now we have the internet - where we nit pick everything I remember playing Starfox - got rave reviews, but in honesty it didn't look good and you fly up into the top corner of the screen and get through every level.
I gave my 9 year old nephew an NES (well a clone) At first he thought it was ancient garbage, then he played SMB3, then Contra, then Life Force, then Bionic Commando, he's on FF1 right now, it's tough for him, but he's slugging through the first trip through the earth cave right now. He asked me why they stopped making games fun so long ago. He's currently imagining a PS5 version of contra.
@@SaanMigwell It brings me joy when i see someone from the younger generation appreciate games from the renascence era of gaming. Even more so when they can piece together how far gaming has fallen. Lucky there are indie devs out there that do make them like they used to. So not all hope is lost.
I love games. I remember when Sega CD came out and all the “press button when prompted to play next scene” FMV games came out. Episodes of Power Rangers that included prompts… so fun… yeesh.. But then, that became en vogue again. “Quick time events” a la RE4 are extremely common now in gaming. There seems to be a spectrum for this kind of gameplay. I’d almost consider it a genre or epoch in gaming. “Retro” refers to basically PS1 and prior, where the focus in general was gameplay and then story. Now it’s story (or graphics/story, more like it) and then gameplay, and then a distant third is shipping the game fully made. And don’t get me started on the utterly ridiculous file sizes in gaming. JUST COMPRESS THE FUCKING ASSETSSSSSSS
@@Terrible_Peril You can thank the original God of War for the QTE craze. Which can be done right or can be used as a lazy dev crutch. The games file sizes are why i laugh at them wanting to do all digital yet having such tiny storage spaces on their overpriced plastic boxes. $700 & the thing still has a 2TB SSD. rofl
I used to be an indie developer, but the market dynamics drained all my passion when the ultimate goal for my colleagues became purely about the money. Big companies can sap the passion out of even the most talented artists, turning game developers into mere cogs in a complex machine, unlike the days when games were created by teams of just 10 to 20 people.
Here's how I look at nostalgia; If you remember enjoying an old game and go back and play it and it's not as good as you remember, that's nostalgia. If you remember enjoying a good and go back and play it and it's still fun, that's just a good game. Also, the game called Nostalgia on DS is great if you like turn based RPGs, so give that a go if you have the means to.
Unless you own physical copies that are DRM free you dont have a back log if there is a collapse. One of the reasons why people are drifting away from modern gaming because you dont actually own the games your buying.
@@mr.snacks482 If a game is not as enjoyable as you remember, it just means you outgrew it. If an old game holds up in the present, it means what appealed to you back then hasn't left you. Nostalgia is the sentimental longing of the past even if the experience doesn't live up to your memories. Both games are equally good. You just grew as a person. I wonder what we'll be nostalgic about from now in a couple years time 😂
@@deadwejght5357 not even remotely true lol with people having backs ups of most of their games there will always be a way to access them the right or or the 7 seas ways. And trust that these companies will never want their fanbase to turn on them by making it impossible to grab what they people already own. Physical media doesnt last forever either but neither do we so we got plenty of time to enjoy them
@@Jack-nj9pi No its absolutely true, in fact there is a recent law that passed that now requires Steam to put a disclaimer on every purchase informing you that your not buying the game but a license to play that game that can be revoked. GOG offers DRM free games that you can backup but the selection is limited. As for pirating for the sake of the conversation i was referring to LEGAL ways to play. And for backing up your games that you've downloaded from Steam/Epic you will find that eventually they will require you to be online for verification and without it you wont be playing anything.
"when you read a book you need to pay attention a lot more because you need to use your imagination to fill the gaps" this. this is what I always thought about videogames. with limited hardware from the older generations of consoles, we had to use our imagination to expand what we saw on screen. for example, as a kid I always wondered what lies beyond the trees and the sea rocks in the pokemon games. it was, of course, to limit the area you could explore, but that limit made my brain think that there was more stuff to explore outside those boundaries
A similar thing I used to think of was the high ledges on the left and right-most edges in your Animal Crossing town on gamecube. I always wondered what was up there? Maybe another town?
This is why children need to be encouraged to read books and play pretend. We all know that one person whose entire childhood consisted of video games and there is something “missing” to their personality.
Personally, I used to daydream a lot, and would often imagine me directing, producing, and screenwriting my own video game films. Imagine how I would react to the characters in front of me, how would the characters in the fictional world react to my choices or actions in the movie? What would the ending be like? What would the visuals and aesthetics of the video game movie back in the 2000s look like???
The gameplay loops of the older games are way more rewarding than say "Overwatch" or "fortnite" garbage. They still work after 30 years too, even if the early DRM chips fail, the hacks around that can be done by a six a year old.
I was just telling my cousin last night that I feel way more immersed in older games where i can use my imagination, vs hyper realism where theres no room for imagination. Glad im not the only one
I also just don't have time for a bunch of gigantic open world exploration games. Why would I boot up an Ubi Soft game, trek across the map, loading screen, loading screen, loading screen, then start a quest to a do a street race . . . When I could just play a good racing game?
@@Bustermachine Exactly. What happened to simple ideas executed very well with creativity? I miss the diverse racing genre of the ps2, Burnout was a great series. I guess Space Marines 2 is a good modern example of a simple game done well.
Well, I do think you have to blame halo 2 20 years back for pushing games to be more like CGI/Animated Live-Action looking cinematic movies rather than the real purpose for those games being just quality, fun, and leaving things to your imagination. But it's this reason why I looked at video games, and would be cool if I directed my own version of the video game I wish to make back in the early 2000s (which never happened, but I still have that goal in my head to this very day).
No one has ever worded the way I have been feeling for ten years this well. Yes, even after ten years, I still got dozens of emulated games I want to try. And yes, I came from a background of reading books and I think that's partly why retro games appeal to me more than newer ones.
@Thirteen13551355 it's something that has been on my mind for a while. Your brain doesn't have to interpret a tree in real life because you've seen them a million times, but in a video game like chrono trigger, you have to look at a tree and then imagine what type of tree that is in real life. It's almost like reading words on paper. I'm glad I'm not crazy
@@Thirteen13551355 I've been very into PS1 games recently. If I only had PS1 games to play for the rest of my life I still don't think I could play them all. There's dozens of amazing RPGs alone
Ironic considering that movies and music, plus the idea of me creating my own video game movie of a video game property I would like to adapt (considering I used to not like reading books because it was basically text on a page and some would blend into each other for me to loose track of where I was; hence why I like writing fan-fiction in a similar style and look to the books themselves), not to mention I stopped being a fan of video games back in 2010 is the reason why I haven't bothered to game with new modern ones in a long time. With the exceptions of Palworld, many of the games I buy or play are video games that are one to three decades old (even four decades old and still enjoy playing them, with or without mods of course).
the main issue of current gaming is that many developers nowadays dont play and dont like videogames, and they think that they know better than the average gamer and refuse to hear criticism.
@@secondchance6603 People like you are what enable the suits. Good work. I rather side with the devs 30, 40 years ago that knew better and got us the classics. The people that see games as art are the only ones still making good games. But continue to mindlessly consume, of course. More Call of Duty slop to gobble up. Be a good boy. The suits love your ilk.
I hate how modern games are like movies. 5 minute cut scenes, downloading updates, by the time I can play I don’t want to anymore. This is why I like old games: pop it the cartridge and press start and go!
Cartridge? Now that's a technical oddity! From a PC perspective, a cartridge is an ISA card with some ROM chips on it that the BIOS jumps into when you boot the machine. It's really weird compared to the usual paradigm of floppy disks and hard drives.
Recently suped up an n64 to play the classics I missed (my first console was ps2). Mannnn sometimes nostalgia has nothing to do with a game's hype. OOT is suddenly my favorite zelda.
Don't forget to soup up the PS2 as well! If you have a fat PS2 you can install an internal hard drive up to 2TB and have more games on it than you will possibly ever need (including stuff you might have missed the first time around). The Slim can ALMOST do the same with a SMBSHARE via a cheap SBC, but some of the later games will have problems with cutscenes and stuff (ie: Star Ocean).
I’ve always wondered if someone who hadn’t played the classics went back and tried them, would they become their favorite ones with no nostalgia involved? Glad to see the answer is yes :)
@@MrKrashmoney hell yeah. i just played Banjo Kazooie “for real” on switch online and had a blast. i rented it as a kid but it was way too confusing for me back then so i never gave it another shot until last month. same goes with Sin and Punishment , Blast Corps.
For me most modern games just feel like I'm watching a movie and pressing forward to get from scene to scene. Older games had a freedom I just don't see anymore. I adored playing the old GTA games where I could play a mission any way I want to. If I knew a car chase was going to happen mid-way I could place a blockade to slow them down etc. Even GTA5 feels so damned restrictive and only lets you play the missions how they want you to. In Duke Nukem, Goldeneye, Turok, Quake etc I would spend hours just exploring the levels or finding different ways to approach them, but with any Call of Duty game or Battlefield game, you deviate even slightly from the path and it's mission over, you take to long and mission over, you try and go back to look at something you just ran past and it's mission over. It's bonkers to me that we seem to have stepped so far back from what made these games great. You got to be the character, make choices and see how things played out. Your experience could be different from your friends while still achieving the same goals.
I've completely eviscerated clueless casuals online talking crap about games like Golden Eye or Perfect Dark compared to there supposedly "superior" modern shooters.😂
I decide what makes me happy, and Nintendo doing what it is doing with copyright crackdowns, and the Palworld thing, they make me not want to do business with them anymore.
I'm literally the same where I cannot start a franchise in the middle. I gotta play ALL of them in order even if they're self-contained. That's how I know you're a real one who truly appreciates games rather than being one of those "which games do you recommend I play in the franchise and skip the bad ones" type of people.
i agree i played Kingdom Hearts out of order and i was completely confused with what was goin on in the series then i found out the actual order of the series and now i'm playing them in order i hate when People skip them and say they are terrible all People talk about nonstop is an overrated Kingdom Hearts 2 Game when there are other good ones it does not have to be Kingdom Hearts 2 Kingdom Hearts 2 nonstop all they do is tell People Kingdom Hearts 2 is what you should start with i played other series to it and my all time favorite was Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream drop distance i even loved the multiplayer on it never experienced it but i watched People on RUclips doin it no one else owned the Game so i missed out on multiplayer and same i'm tryin to do the Legend of Zelda series in order and follow the time line and same on Final Fantasy and Resident Evil i rather play them in order so that i do not get confused with the time line also i'm goin back playing old Games new Games are shit too much Wokeness and censorship in them i'm a 90's Gamer.
Been loving this schism among the young folks. You guys are right where we 35-45 year olds were 10-12 years ago at the end of the xbox 360's lifespan when the writing on the wall emerged regarding where gaming was headed. Join us on PC young ones, retro emulation is doing what the corpo's won't.
Theres a small amount of life still left in gaming. Where Nintendo for 3 or so generations made Pokemon a social phenomenon, Palworld did 4x the sales of Arceus in a month. Suvivor games originated in modern vernacular due to VS, but even within the subgenre ive been playing a lot of similar, yet fun reimaginations of it. Starsector and Terraria still being updated, Stardew sunsetting but still being a major sticking point of whats GOOD about small/indie devs. The real thing that needs to happen is regulations and doing anti-trust. We can't let this continue, theres so much good left to be shared. COD died for me after Blackops 2, but After Kill to WH Boltgun still stratch a different but familiar itch. Roboquest to Kenshin to Grim Dawn. Most of the major IP have competition, we're actually in a golden era for gaming . . . its all just soured by profiteering and horribly evil legalized mafia economy nonsense due to westernized nations being mostly hands off "aside from the EU, remember OW loot boxes went bye bye because a small continental grouping said no. " Theres still a bit of hope, not much.
@@WhatWillYouFind We could have been in a golden age of gaming if not for all of the profiteering and macro transactions. And the focus on majority open world, hyper realism graphics type games. We need artists back creating games. Art styles, not just trying to make everything look realistic which ends up making it all look the same.
@@VoltageNostalgia FACTS! We need artists to be running these games studios, not corporations like Microsoft and sure as hell not shareholders who wouldn't know their asses from a hole in the ground. We need artists back.
I stopped playing AAA games a decade ago and I feel like I barely missed anything. in my opinion the "gaming" community is too obsessed with complaining about games no one plays anyway and end in financial disasters when instead we should focus on the preservation, translation, decensoring and improvement of old titles. These companies are just parasites that carry around the name of a studio that was created by passionate people who have left it long ago. Great projects be it games or anything else will always be created by your peers not some suit and a brand and we should support their efforts when they decide to do indie games or fan games.
No matter how bad modern gaming gets, we will always have the classics. I suppose there's a comfort to that, which is why retro gaming is so highly appealing these days.
Not always. Nintendo keeps taking down rom sites and eventually old carts and discs will stop working. There is an entirely possible scenario where old gaming dies and disappears.
@@billyj.causeyvideoguy7361 While Nintendo will definitely keep taking down ROM sites, there are ways to make backups of their games thanks to dumping tools (that's how they ended up online in the first place). As such, for those who kept their old games, they could dump their game to make a backup ahead of time and go from there. PS1 and PS2 games are EXTREMELY easy to make backups for since tools like ImgBurn work without major issues. As for the GameCube, Wii, and Wii U, you can mod your Wii (for the former two) and/or Wii U (for the latter two) to allow for a custom channel/program that then backs up your game(s). That being said, you gotta make the backups before the game goes bad, so it's important for those who bought their games to make backups ASAP (though having your games in proper storage conditions also help delay the eventual decay). For those who lack the ability to get their games due to scarcity and/or excessive reseller fees (Jack Bros.' USA copy is like $1k+, for example), then yeah, it totally sucks due to most old games becoming abandonware that you can't access unless if you know the right places to look. It would be nice to have more of the classic games appear on modern markets so people can easily access them (as piracy is generally a response to a services issue, and tons of old games are hard to access legally).
@@billyj.causeyvideoguy7361 Nope., Rom sites are hydra, Nintendo takes down 1, 2 more appear to replace it. Same with emulators, Nintendo is fighting a war they literally cannot win.
@megaman37456 Sure, but now a lot of people are going to be more scared to download roms, because they cant be confident in the reputation of a given site. I used to tell everyone to use Vimms Lair, because I had been using it for several years and never had an issue. But now thats gone, and internet archive will be soon too. Theres only going to be sketchy sites left to get roms from, and that will definitely deter a lot of people. Also, every big switch emulator that Im aware of has had its development canceled by reaching an agreement with the main dev, or by lawsuit. So now switch emulation is gonna be screwed for a while. I wanted to emulate mario party jamboree, cuz aint no way Im going to grind to unlock all the characters and maps in a party game. Id rather download a 100 percent savefile
I don't like modern photo realistic graphics because it feels like it trying too hard to look like real life instead of having a unique and artistic style. It also restrictive. You can't make it as expressive or unique without dipping in uncanny valley territory. It's same thing with live action adaption of 2d into live action 3d, it feels wrong, it looks wrong or just a plain downgrade when you seen original version.
I do not mind realism if it is needed, but when you have endless waves of DLC, and other cash grab, scams, and schemes, half-finished products, etc., then that will lead to an even WORSE video game crash than what had happened in 1982, and, this time, not only will it affect the video game industry, but also a wide array of other industries as well.
If you're not enjoying modern gaming, here's a list of retro video games that I think everyone should play through at least once (I consider any game before the HD era in the 7th generation as retro): 1. Resident Evil 4 (2005) 2. Super Metroid 3. Super Mario Bros 3 4. Ninja Gaiden Black 5. Metal Gear Solid 1-3 6. Chrono Trigger 7. Metroid Prime 8. Devil May Cry 1&3 9. A Link to the Past 10. Ocarina of Time 11. Rondo of Blood. 12. Resident Evil 1 (1996) & Remake (2002) 13. Half Life 2 14. Deus Ex 15. Doom (1993) 16. Final Fantasy VI & VII (1997) & X 17. Resident Evil 2 (1998) 18. Silent Hill 2 (2001) 19. GTA Vice City & San Andreas 20. Super Mario World 21. Super Mario 64 22. Donkey Kong Country 2 23. Yoshi's Island There are amazing games from the 7th generation as well (it's one of my favorite gens) but I don't really consider them retro. As someone who started gaming in the 3rd generation, I have to say, that run from the 4th generation to the 7th generation (1990 to 2011) is unmatched IMO. I honestly believe video games have already peaked during that run.
That's a pretty emulator-heavy list. I think the only ones I've actually played are HL1/2, Deus Ex, Doom, and GTA Vice City and San Andreas. Though, I'd swap San Andreas for GTA3, as I found GTA3 much more enjoyable than San Andreas.
Boys... Go back to the snes, ps1, n64, Gamecube and ps2.... No dlc... No updates... No infinte tasteless sandbox, no microtransactions... Just simple good games
Or, from the PC perspective, you'll be using DOSBox to run most of the greats these days. You can even get that "running Quake at single-digit framerates with the sound breaking up on a 486" experience if you set it up right.
This is why I love my retro handhelds. Having all of my childhood games in my pocket is still a crazy thing to have and my 2004 self would have never predicted it.
I know it's the best thing ever. I love it! I just ordered a miyoo a30 because it's just so damn cute and looks like nintendo controller. The fact that I can have Nes, Snes, Sega, gb, gbc, gba and even ds on one small handheld makes it worth it to me. I have a phone to play the higher end stuff, but man I just can't wait for it to come.
Buy a new game, start the game, game has open world, game has a crafting system that requires looting mechanic and a skull tree. Cant we just have a game that you can pick up and play or does everything require a significant time investment.
@godieinafirenow, et al, well, I hate to break it to you, but the really good video games WILL require a good bit of time investment, and not just modern video game titles, but classic video game titles as well. Something like, say a Disgaea video game, or its related series of La Pucelle and Phantom Brave, will have literally hundreds of hours of content, so if you all want to act like you all have ADHD, then maybe video games are not for you, or, at the very least, go play things like the World Series of Poker or something if you want to control how long that your game lasts.
I stopped buying new games since Dead Rising 4 That game really opened my eyes into seeing that you should absolutely not buy any new games before seeing gameplay. Honestly at this point there needs to be another game crash so publishers stop pushing censorship and dei
I'd say that sometimes even seeing gameplay isn't even enough. I can't remember what they are right now, but I've bought some games where the gameplay looks amazing, but then the controls were just so freaking terrible that it ruined it for me.
i absolutely can’t stand when ppl say an older game is sluggish or outdated cause it’s got different controls or 30fps. foh. tell me you didn’t grow up in 90s without telling me straight up.
If Nintendo acts like a criminal towards innocent people, then I will treat Nintendo like the criminal that it ironically pretends to not be in the end.
I totally agree with you. There's definitely something to be said about the power of imagination. It can make you feel totally immersed in a PS1 game, despite the outdated graphics and cumbersome controls. I think a lot of new games fail to reach full immersion for a couple of reasons. The first is because there is very little use of your imagination so you're kind of just there for the ride and not necessarily as engaged with the game. The second is because imagination helps hide all of the flaws in what is presented. In a very realistic game, it's easy to be snapped out of immersion if the game does something unexpected, or part of the experience isn't as polished as the rest of the game. I've been mainly playing 5th Gen and older games lately because modern games seem to be missing something. Some people might say it's just nostalgia, but I'm playing some PS1 games that I missed out on when I was a kid, and they're great. Thanks for the awesome video, subscribed!
I hate bad video game controls in ANY era of video games, and, in all honesty, the Resident Evil/Biohazard 2, 3, and 4 remakes were WAY overdue, and, in the cases of the first 2 video games, they literally make the original versions of those video games obsolete. Moreover, if I wanted to play a game with truck-like controls, then I would play mech, or mecha, video games, or actual truck video games like American/Euro Truck Simulator! Also, if I wanted to use my imagination, then I would do like SpongeBob and Patrick do with boxes. When I want to play video games, I not only care for the fun, but also if it looks, as well as plays, well as well. Why MUST it be a war between either a game plays good and has fun, and replay value, or it looks good and sounds good, and has uniqueness?
Hello! I'm a professional game designer and dev for an indie studio (though these days I seem to do more designing than dev work? regardless) and I agree that there is a steady increase in just a lack of what I would consider "games worth playing as opposed to watching". Many games, including some indies, focus a LOT on story and presentation of story, and often completely ignore the aspect that makes videogames what they are. The interactive challenge aspects. Often it's what sells, it's what people are familiar with, it's what people can do brain dead and feel like they got something out of it. So I'd say it's not just a suits thing, it's also a "mass of casual gamers" thing. As their preferences for games that within the "game" part: - Aren't challenging (the casual player doesn't want to have to struggle to get their story) - Aren't unique (if a casual gamer isn't familiar with a mechanic already, they don't bother learning it) - Aren't deep (the greater the depth, the more the casual gamer will often ignore them) - Aren't precise (there's tons of aim assists, giant player attack hitboxes, and input buffers casuals enjoy) So to do the mass appeal companies try to accomodate the mass appeal audience due to the money influence. It's easy to point the finger solely at those higher up, but don't think the same doesn't happen in indie studios as well for similar reasons. It can happen to anyone who's goal is to appeal to the masses. There's a market there so they'll tend to go for it. What I think old games got (aside from the money) is that videogames were not ONLY a form of getting money. They also viewed it as an art form. And art form of interactivity and human experience. This isn't something that's felt by the AAA industry, because it often feels like it's a blockbuster movie you can interact with, as opposed to be an interactive experience that happens to have blockbuster movie quality visuals and story. The few exceptions are the standouts. I also don't think a burning from the ground up of the AAA space is the only option. That seems extremely un-nuanced and likely only going to shove everyone into the indie space making it untennable for most even more than it already is. But rather I think if they returned to form and instead broke up their giant companies into "lots of smaller companies making smaller games", the suits wouldn't have a single thing to focus on, and resources would be split between them all, forcing the more creative individuals to flex their creative muscles more. They are talented individuals, but they don't get many opportunities to show that individuality. At least that's my two cents on what I view as a means of fixing the issues without creating bigger problems for everyone.
"as graphics improve, gameplay goes down" I was a teenager in high school when I first made that observation, and my peers thought I was stupid. I am not a man in my late 30s and the majority of games I play are either games that I played growing up, were around as I were growing up, or have a similar presentation to those games I grew up playing. some of the games I find myself coming back to in recent years are games like Terraria, Core Keeper, Hollow Knight, Cuphead, but also you mentioned a more modern game in terms of age and presentation that I come back to with quite some frequency, being Metal Gear Rising. one of those rare cases where a modern game didn't feel like it sacrificed gameplay just to look good, because it was able to do both. I don't want games that hold my hand and heavily tutorialize the heck out of the game. I wanna be able to jump in, play the game, and learn as I play because the mechanics allow for that, something that was a staple in classic games because we didn't have actual Tutorials. go play classic mega man to see what I mean, or even watch the classic Sequelitis video on Mega Man 2, even.
Even the most soulless corporate cash grab game is probably made by people who genuinely care about their work. Making games is not easy and is always a journey of compromises and tough choices. it is the overall structure of the AAA game industry that has no heart or soul, not the developers.
Not excited for new games and playing only old games has been a mood for me too lately... Been playing older games like Ninja Gaiden Black, old 3D and 2D Mario, the Metal Gear Solid series, Splinter Cell, LOTS of retro pixel and 3D games... Got sucked into the Tomb Raider trilogy even though it's a remaster, the games themselves are old and I love switching between modern and PS1 graphics... Been addicted to MGSV and even that game is already 9 years old, and to see how much gaming has gone down hill from even back then is just crazy...
after being involved in game dev as part of Beloved Rapture, a recent jrpg released a little more than a week ago, it’s very much misunderstood by the consumer who’s in charge of the decisions for modern games to to be what they are. Often they blame the developer, saying it’s their fault but that couldn’t be farther from the truth with your favorite companies today. redirect your eyes to the ones who aren’t the face of the game or company…the investors. Investors believe somehow that money and numbers can keep going up with no ceiling, and so they implement ridiculous choices that they believe would help generate never ending income. but that will never work in many scenarios and as a result, the developers get trampled and pushed aside, forced to change their vision for the sake of the investors who want more than just a return on their money. Indie devs are proof that developers care if they don’t have people on their backs changing their vision, like the team I worked with. Developers literally just want to make a fun game or great story, that’s it. but no, they get tossed under the bus for decisions that weren’t theirs to make, but under contract, they can’t speak of such things and are the scapegoat to save face for the company.
@@MaMastoast thank you for this. I'm not sure what happened to my original reply, it seems to have been deleted for some reason but I said the same thing here as an indie dev myself. For some reason, I still get notifications despite my comment being deleted. How do I make it stop lol?
I am going to have to say modern games are almost too floaty or "naturalistic" in terms in a negative way, like things just play automatic to the point I am not paying attention and loses that tactile feeling where old games tend to be more rigid in how they play and encourages some clearer mastery and focused engagement.
The pickup and play aspect of retro games is what makes them so much fun; you can basically finish them in a couple of hours and get to something else, there are just short bursts of fun
Let me know how long it takes you to finish NES Bionic Commando, without using the internet or modern action replay. (rewind button) Then try Lolo 1 and 2. Then go with SMB3, but no warps. Streetfighter 2010 is good for six months before you get gud. Dragon Warrior 2 is a monster without a guide as well, and even at max level there are party wipe encounters all the way to Hargon. We use to search every single level for every coin, chit, 1up, powerup etc... Most games back then had a way to grind out lives, but even then they would usually max out at 15 that is F lives. If the games had passwords we would experiment with those. We had a method that would eventually allow us to load all kinds of game states. Reggie taught me how to figure out which parts of which passwords set which bytes to load the game state. Modern games are essentially quick time event movies, and any challenge presented usually has an "easy" button to glide right through it. I mean GOW4 was beaten in a few hours. GOW did not have that problem, PS2 era still had good games.
Being able to finish in a couple of hours is especially important when you can't save your game! Take Zone 66, for instance (DOS, needs a 386 with 2MB of memory, and is very picky about your configuration). The full version has 8 episodes, but you can't save within one, and the game only saves your story progress when you finish them in order. You have to finish the whole episode in one sitting. Fortunately, that only takes an hour or so, but you do need to find an hour of uninterrupted time to actually play for.
5:15 they're also smaller in scope, environments as well as characters are memorable, everything is much easier to digest. Modern games and their massive scope requires more work to move around, to process things going on. You might get a message while playing, or see some ad.
I've been telling all my friends for years that older games reign supreme. Only now they've realized that it's true. SNES, Gamecube and PS2 will always be the pinnacle of gaming
I also have to play an entire series from the beginning. I bought like a dragon: infinite wealth and then started playing the entire Yakuza series from the beginning just so I could start up infinite wealth and now I am a hardcore Yakuza fan!
4:27 I AGREE WITH YOU. FULLY. I think the "realistic graphics" rabbithole is a STUPID TREND, brought about by Executives to appease stock investors who demanded the products LOOK, better and better, that, SOMEHOW, caught on with BRAINDEAD STREAMERS, in turn their audiences and the like, who just fed into the bullshit that is, "OOOH, PRETTY GRAPHICS MEAN GAME BETTER! So what I have to drop 3K every ten years just to be able play the newest games? THE GAME IS PRETTY!" "Oh but, if I'm paying 60 dollars for a game, I want it to look like the tech-demos they showed at the gaming convention, or just be high fidelity!" Well, then, if you were ACTUALLY putting your money where your mouth is, you wouldn't be buying console schlop. You'd be spending 3K on a PC that's only going to last a little longer than the consoles, and then paying for someone who knows how to make sure your game runs fine, to maintain it! It might not be EVERYONE you meet, but, you have atleast 1 friend, who will turn their nose up to a GREAT GAME, just because it isn't as grahpically impressive as Eldin Ring, Read Dead Redemption, any of the movie-games like "the Last of Us", God of War Ragnarok, MH World, etc.-
Funny, it seems "lasting as long as the consoles" means how long until the hardware dies. The last time I got a faster processor because I wanted an upgrade, I went from a Phenom II x4 to a Core i7 3930k. The subsequent replacement of that one was due to a hardware failure a bit over five years ago. All my graphics card replacements since going from a Geforce 6600 to a GTX285 have been due to hardware failures, too.
How is monster hunter world a movie game but not something like Stick it to the Man or like, i dunno, any RTS campaign? And why specifically monhun world and not the entire franchise? Capcom experimented with adding more story to world than previous games, but at the end of the day, it's like any other monhun game where you complete the same mission 14 times over (that does not have an ounce of story, mind you) to get the one rare drop you need, only to repeat the cycle for something slightly stronger. Anyways #NeverForgetLocLac
There aren’t many modern games that get me excited. I love stuff like Metroid Dread, the new Dooms, Space Marine 2, etc. Heck even the Tomb Raider remasters are pretty well done. But nothing quite appeals to me anymore like classic games or games that are made to match that spirit. I’ve started buying PS2 and PS1 games again at my local retro store and have been having a good time doing so. I’m even trying games I haven’t before just to keep things fresh for me. Side note, props to you for playing one of my favorite Metroids for this video. Love Zero Mission!
Pizza Tower's developer, McPig, made me realize how much better modern Indie is compared to our current AAA market. During the development process, he got feedback on how much better the game would be if it revolved primarily around Peppino's fast-paced movement, so he redesigned the levels to encourage exploration and speed. The result is a game that's extremely fun to move around in and takes full advantage of Peppino's moveset. Contrast that with Western developers like Ubisoft, Bethesda, and EA flat out spitting on fan feedback with games like Star Wars: Outlaws and Starfield, and it's pretty obvious how far we've fallen in gaming; (tg we have Japanese and Indie developers who are actually passionate about giving gamers what they want)
A good rule of thumb for whether the developer really cares about their game is whether they bother to make a native Linux version. Set your Steam store preferences to only show games with a Linux version, and the amount of crap that shows up drops dramatically. Of course, it does miss quite a few good Windows-only games, but you can directly search for those when you hear about them, and they'll probably work with Proton on Linux, anyway. Whether you can ditch Windows for gaming at this point depends on what you play. If it's mostly multiplayer with malware-like anti-cheat, you're stuck on Windows. If not, you can probably make the move.
@@Roxor128 There are ways around this. I used Wine configuration for Mac OS because some older PC games I tried to play on Macintosh didn't run. Linux has a big enough support base that will help you play many PC classics, especially titles like Heroes of Might & Magic 3.
The AAA has been openly showing contempt for players for a few years now. This is why all of my game purchases this year have been indie and small studios. I trust one or two games on their merits alone, and everything else gets ignored because I have a limited amount of money and a small list of people who deserve it
This is sort of what I did back when the PS5 launched. I slowly got a few consoles, large storage devices, modded them and filled them up with games/dlc. Currently have an Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS Vita. The Vita runs my PS1 and PSP games as well while the PS3 handles the PS2 exclusives I can't play on my original Xbox. 900 games across the 4 consoles and the best part is that it doesn't take physical space. Plus I still have my Steam/GOG libraries so I'm not going to run out anytime soon and I like replaying games with good gameplay loop like Burnout 3.
I have it pinned in the comments if you're still interested in seeing it. It's pretty big already, and I might have to update soon since I've played through even more this year!
Retro games feel like games. A lot of the newer stuff can feel like work. Having to spend the first few hours in "employee training" and still feeling like you dont have it down, all the extra filler for no reason, and again the ultra realism kinda kills the fun escape that games should bring.
One of my problems with modern games is the insistence on using EVERY BUTTON on a controller. Just because you have the buttons doesn't mean ever single one needs a function.
Games beaten/2024 Month of January 12 games #1 God of war - ghost of sparta #2 Spiderman: mysterio's menace #3 Megaman battle network #4 Golden sun #5 Super metroid #6 Mario kart ds #7 Mario kart 8 deluxe #8 Sonic colors ds #9 Super mario wonder #10 Metal slug double x #11 Metal slug #12 Super princess peach Month of February 14 #13 Donkey kong country: tropical freeze #14 Donkey kong country #15 Donkey kong country 2: diddy's kong quest #16 kirby and the forgotten land #17 Kirby squeek squad #18 God of war chains of Olympus #19 Grand theft auto liberty city stories #20 Metro last light #21 Shadow of the tomb raider #22 Links awakening #23 Mario and luigi super star saga #24 Ion fury #25 Doom 1993 #26 Hogwarts legacy Month of March #27 Prodeus #28 Need for speed underground #29 Stray #30 Marvels Spiderman remastered #31 Journey #32 Super lucky's tale #33 narita boy #34 dragons dogma #35 sonic generations #36 need for speed underground 2 #37 true crime streets of LA Month of April #38 True crime streets of new york #39 DragonBall z budokai #40 dragon ball z budokai 2 #41 dragon ball z budokai 3 #42 dragon ball z supersonic warriors #43 legacy of goku #44 dbz legendary super warriors #45 super mario land #46 super mario land 2: 6 golden coins #47 dragon ball: advanced adventure Month of may #48 pokemon: yellow version #49 Warioland (super marioland 3) #50 kirby's dreamland 2 #51 super mario bros (super mario all stars) #52 the legend of zelda: skyward sword hd #53 Luigi's mansion #54 new super mario bros. #55 Fire emblem #56 new super mario bros. 2 #57 kirby: Planet Robobot #58 Hades Month of june #59 megaman x #60 new super mario bros. U Deluxe #61 pokemon: Heart gold #62 tiny Terry's turbo trip #63 sleeping dogs #64 resident evil 4: remake #65 a short hike #66 Sonic advance #67 Sonic advance 2 #68 another crabs treasure #69 lost planet: extreme condition #70 sonic adventure #71 half life 2 #72 sonic advance 3 #73 kingdom hearts: final mix Month of july #74 alice: return to madness #75 firewatch #76 pokemon: White version #77 forza horizon 4 (played all content) #78 chrono trigger #79 ultimate Spiderman #80 squirrel with a gun #81 need for speed most wanted
@HighLogs_da_realist420 I originally wanted to beat 100 games in a single year. I wouldn't recommend this, though, because it becomes a part-time job instead of being fun. They all blur into one another, too, so I barely remember my experiences with them.
Just in case, i would highly recommend to you a videogame series called "Ganbare Goemon," a franchise created and developed by Konami that began in 1986 and it spawned a lot of sequels and spin-offs until 2005 when it's last game released. Despite being vastly unknown in the West, it was actually one of the most prolific Konami franchises during its era. It's kind of a combination of an adventure game with platformer, and the games are very quirky, fun, and unique experiences. I mostly recommend checking out the first 3 SNES games (especially the second one) and the two N64 games.
Emulation opens up so many games that we grew up and missed. I ended up doing wheel spin every month to dedicate to one console for that months and I’m just having blast and finally reawaken gamer in me. This month was 3DS months and not playing any modern online games for a month made me realize how time wasting those games are.
I remember when my more "snob gamer" friends used to look down on me for being a simple, retro-gaming and nintendo fanboy... years later I see them use their 1 Gorillion Dollarz PC-Masterrace equipment and/or modified expensive consoles just to play ports of my old GCN games 😅, because many of the new titles are just... kinda bland, good looking but bland.
Would love to see a fantasy RPG game with a whole melting pot of elements. Robots riding horse carriages, enormous metal tower flying on a propeller below and balloons above. People flying around balloons from flower dew, having undeads not as evil, but as daylight-loving immortals, with elves being incomprehensible creatures. With a frankenstein monster having a drink with a talking teapot robot and a vampire elephant. Unrestricted imagination.
Everything you said about modern games applies to modern comics for me. For the last several years I've been tearing through classic comics from when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s that I missed out on for various reasons. Even the bad stories have redeeming qualities because they were written with the intent to entertain, stories like Spider-Man's clone saga, Superman's blue arc, Marvel's Heroes Reborn, etc. I was maining Halo Reach on Master Chief Collection and Destiny 1, but then TMNT Shredder's Revenge dropped new DLC that added Mondo Gecko and Mona Lisa and I hopped back over to it. I deleted the save file on my Pokémon Leaf Green and started playing it again a couple of days ago and your point about the classic 2-D Pokémon games is spot on. I saw an original Game Boy Green version hack on cartridge for a great price, so I bought it and I'm waiting for it to arrive. Looking forward to doing the trainer glitch to encounter Mew on it. Greatly appreciate this video.
@MRF1983 I still remember playing pokemon ruby and seeing my reflection in the water. Nobody was doing pixel art like gamefreak back in the day. Absolute legends!
Ikr, bigger is not always better, big sandbox openworld games can be very boring do to much walking, no teleporting around the map, stupid must do filler sidequest, I prefer games with smaller world maps like Radiata stories, and Breath of fire 3 appose to huge world maps. Than you have the too many long cut scenes problem. I don't like twenty minute or longer cut scenes get to the damn game already.
Stan Lee explained the reason they started outselling DC Comics back in the day was because at Marvel, they started having fun and forgot about the audience, simply writing the stories they themselves wanted to read. DC Comics would instead be busy analyzing what Marvel was doing, saying things like: "Marvel uses lots of red in their covers" and then they would copy this, hoping it would lead to more sales. But Marvel saw this and made their covers more blue, still outselling DC. DC was never able to figure out what made the difference. It was soul, it was passion, it was a group of people having fun creating these imaginary worlds and characters. At DC, they were doing what modern gaming corporations are doing. A Gameboy and SNES game could be made by 6-12 people in 6-12 months. They were like a group of friends having fun and being creative. A small team is like a family. In a modern corporation, there are too many people, and those people are largely unhappy and quietly quit. They are not like families or groups of friends. There is no soul. The original developers were passionate about games and making them. They were nerds and games were easy enough to make that it was possible to do it this way.
Yellow paint just seems like a lazy way to avoid making the environment organically guide you. There are far less jarring ways to hint you forward, like Zelda games (Before BotW and TotK made the answer "everywhere") will have vines on climbable surfaces.
Yellow paint is super lazy, it's basically an arrow pointing you where to go. In other words, if you had to paint an arrow in the world, your map sucks. Most climbing and scaffolding sucks anyways, should be reserved for secret/optional routes.
Only 2 mins in, but I love it! I also made this year the year of defeating my backlog! I have played and finished so many games this year that I had just been sitting on for whatever reason. I had to just focus and commit and drop some of my live service multiplayer time sinks and go back to good old story/narrative driving single player or co-op experiences.
"it's the year of the backlog" man, this is so true, I'm playing way more older games lately and I'm having a blast, except a few exceptions here and there (Elden Ring, DOOM, BG3) I don't really play or care for "modern" gaming at all
That resonates with me a lot. You’re definitely not alone with that feeling (I actually made a somewhat close video to yours last week lol) I’ve been playing mostly snes and snes remakes on ps5 (I would highly recommend to look into the Tengo Project games) Anyway, great video, long live retro (and indie) gaming!
@williamhououin I just got done watching your video, too. Yeah, man, loading times were non-existent back in the day. I'm watching your annoying trends video right now.
@@Tenacityfromtheglass Ha! That’s nice thank you 😄 What was fun in the modern vs retro video was the insightful comments I got. Not everyone agreed with me, but they all had something interesting to say. Very happy about how it turned out
I feel so sorry about you 3DS loss, I have a hacked 3DS and it's the most fun I have with games, I play more often than not with my older 3DS both old and "new" games and with homebrew you can do so much and I use my Wii more than I use Steam, specially after finding out about the "not owning games" disclaimer That's why'll I'll stay with Nintendo always, their games are fun, don't have hyper realistic textures, no 30 minutes cutscenes, don't need online connection and are ready to play on the go
I think the only way that the industry will change at this point in time is if AAA studios crash, which we could very well see. I have to agree with this approach of "focusing on the backlog" as I don't want to support a bunch of games that are just meaningless slop.
@@Tenacityfromtheglass I got wrapped up in a lot of live service games, so I never got back to the backlog. I think that 2025 will be my year of the backlog. I mostly bought a bunch of games on steam, while on sale and I never got around to finishing them.
Thanks for making a video of what literally every gamer already knows but is not readily admitting 24/7 due to various reasons. Just like the internet and the gig economy, enshitification hit video games first and hit them hardest and then it hit other entertainment industries like Hollywood etc. Creativity in video games has been dead for well over a decade.
For someone who grew up in the 2000s with Gamecube (and NES, SNES from older family member), there is a feeling to those games that I somehow can’t get from the remastered/ported versions. The older games had a certain charm that I can’t quite find today.
I've been done with most modern games, and remas"turds" for quite some time. I grew up when gaming was at an ever exponential resonance, but now Modern game developers have either been focused on the absolute wrong aspect of gaming (as in not gameplay), or they're bent and determined on destroying existing IPs by shoving wokeness into it. I don't even complain about it anymore, I just enjoy the older games or the indie games that actually have heart. I'll also add rom hacks and fanmade games to the mix. There's simply... so many good games from our past, that are more worthy of our time. I got a new computer recently, and I can't wait to play OLDER games on it! And one of the best parts is? A lot of these games are ones that you can no longer buy first hand copies of anymore, which means NOBODY who worked on the game is losing any money if i chose to emulate it. There's no need to dispair of where the "modern audience" games are headed these days, just hop the fence where the greener pastures reside, it's a blast!
I appreciate your take here. I've been gaming since 1990 and it's been wild to watch the quality of games go down over the decades. I completely agree that high fidelity games are just not as memorable and lose their impact because of it. These days I've been trying out more indie games made by small teams and there's so many good ones that remind me of the better times.
My first game that I completed was Super Mario Bros 3 in 1990, so its safe to say you're a bit older than me. Your account is also old, made when RUclips was actually good.
Why Nintendo won’t just give us an affordable way to play their backlog, like so much of it compared to virtual console and NSO, it’s beyond me: it’s money sitting in pockets. I get that it won’t be easy or cheap, but it’s an untapped market. We don’t need a bunch of NES games, we need more
NSO makes more money for them, plain and simple. I dislike subscription services and will likely not subscribe to the NSO again (unless if I have friends that also wanna play online), but it's a no-brainer why Nintendo trickles down games on their NSO subscription service. They almost made $1bn alone on NSO subscriptions in 2021, so Nintendo is chasing what makes them money (even though their online infrastructure needs work in general). That being said, if VC becomes a thing again, I'll definitely buy that. I like how HAMSTER handled the ACA series of arcade titles, and I love how the arcade versions of Donkey Kong, DK Jr., DK3, Punch-Out!, and Super Punch-Out! have easily accessible ways to obtain them legally thanks to ACA. It would be cool if Nintendo allowed for individual purchases of retro games again as subscriptions are annoying.
@@theonewhowrotethis5681 I mean, honestly, we're in a Catch-22 situation here. Back when Virtual Console was a thing a lot of the games they put out just frankly didn't sell well at all. Nintendo fans always *say* they want to buy the old games, but back in the day they wouldn't actually buy all that many of them. The NSO service is making considerably more money for them than Virtual Console ever did. And don't get me wrong, I miss VC, but the writing was on the wall for years.
Well said! I lost interest in "modern" gaming a while ago. I too and working on my back log of games. My current gaming trio is my Steam Deck, my Switch OLED and my Analogue Pocket with a Sega Game Gear adapter. With those systems along I have hundreds of games to play and that is not including my other retro systems. Old is gold because the way forwards is backwards.
@malcolmar I don't think I heard that phrase before. I'm gonna have to steal that. I've always said that every branch that strays too far from its roots inevitably dies. Games like Space Marine 2 didn't sell well because it was 40k. It sold well because it was an Xbox 360 game that was released in 2024
@@Tenacityfromtheglass Agreed and definitely use that phase. I can't take the credit for coming up with it either but it applies to so many things. I actually missed the original Space Marine game and just bought it on sale for my Steam Deck when the second game was released. Another area of gaming that got me more excited than "modern" AAA releases are new physical releases for old systems like all the new games and hacks released for the Sega Genesis over the years like Xeno Crisis, and Paprium. There is even a new Doom ROM hack game called Doom CD32X that will play for the Sega Genesis, 32X, Sega CD tower of power. To simply call it a ROM hack undermines all the talent and skill that went into this port of Doom. I am hoping someone makes a physical release. Quality and passion are never an accident and these releases from fans turned game programmers show it. Keep up the great work!
Firstly, the GameCube controller being mirrored in the thumbnail hurts. I have been fascinated by 1985-2000 retro games past the point where they were obviously struggling and the player was aware they were up against hardware limits (retro games have always been pushing the limits of what their weak hardware can do, but players stopped feeling it). I've been trying to find out what makes them so special because I want to take direct inspiration and make a game that could fit in, some game developers claim to feel inspired by retro games but then they add in MTX, DLC, and super polished graphics; I've also been learning about GBA game development and would love to one day attempt a demake of the game I'm planning to make for modern hardware - so I do know that what I will do should work for a GBA (I chose GBA which is after the 2000s which I said above because it has the features I want and is accessible, full colour, really capable, still retro). However, I can't actually find a lot of concrete things to do to achieve it, I do have a list but it does seem a little wishy-washy. There's simplicity, you play to do this one job it trusts itself enough that the core game is good it isn't going to pad time with a variety of tasks, the core game needs to be so solid that's all people want. This also pairs with controls which like you mentioned I also hate it when there's loads of controls, for my game I only need movement and jump and some people have said that it seems like not enough, but it's all I need to accomplish the core gameplay. I have also chosen to remove variable jump height which is basically standard on platformers, but it opens up options for level designs, also the platformer I'm making I'd call a "physics platformer" and you can't just change the player's physics, but it makes the controls simpler. Then there's difficulty, because of their length they are notoriously difficult, and while I don't want to make something that's inaccessible and I do want to offer easier challenges to people, I've made some really difficult challenges which combined with the simple controls it means that it should be easier for players to master the controls and accomplish difficult things. I will be adding in modern assist features from the standard coyote time and jump buffering to more obscure assist features (I've got 8 assist features listed), it's going to be difficult but failure will come from grievious errors or not figuring out how to solve it, trying to balance difficulty without any of the frustration. Authentic 16 bit graphics and music. It upsets me when someone uses pixel art because it's easier, then they make games where pixels aren't aligned and they'll even rotate pixelated graphics, it looks awful; I would never settle on using pixel graphics if it wasn't true to form. I love the art form and I'm not picking it to be lazy, I'm picking it to stress over how any single pixel is far more important and has to be perfect. The music I'm composing is made in FamiStudio and uses accurate emulation and the same rules apply, you can't just have chiptunes and then have chords in it or use a regular intrument, that's cheating, you don't need to resort to that. Local multiplayer, split screen/being able to see everything on one screen - I have plans for 2, 3, and 4 player co-op. 2 player can be done sharing a keyboard (3 player could also share a keyboard wasd space, ijkl n, arrow keys right control but it would be very tight but doable, if people plug in a second keyboard then 3 and 4 players could play reasonably comfortable - 4th player could use numpad and 0 if 4 people are sharing 1 keyboard. With controls as simple as this we could fit in 2 more players tfgh v, and home del end page down enter, and if on an ISO keyboard could get a 7th in too [;'# right shift), past that controllers or LAN (I'm going to provide a demo, and demo can be used to connect to a host who has bought the game. Modern games require everyone to buy the same game just to get more sales, but that's the mark of being insecure about your game, I expect people will get the demo to play with a friend, and then afterwards play the demo and like the game enough to buy). My game isn't going to be for everyone and that's ok, stop wasting time on mass appeal and put that effort into what the target audience wants. My game doesn't even have enemies "but people expect to kill things when they play platformers" but adding enemies would ruin the physics based platforming puzzles that relies on timing and well crafted mechanics where you have hundreds of new things to discover into kill this monster again, wait, no, there's 2 of them now. I shouldn't have to care for doing the popular thing when it limits the options of the game I really want to make. The enemies thing is something that retro games do poorly IMO, watching Metroid in the video you killed the same enemy multiple times, boring. Score chasing, I thought of finding ways to add in a points mechanic, but I've settled on giving players a time, bonuses, and death count to chase for. I do think that just completing it faster to create more playtime is lazy, and so it's primarily the bonuses which challenge players with new techniques is the primary score chaser, it's just that speedrunning is popular and it would be stupid to ignore it as it doesn't hurt the goal of the game. Then there are some things that are not true to retro games but I feel don't take away. I hate DLC and I hate MTX, if I buy a game I want to know that I'm not going to be asked to pay more. I am expecting to release free updates which isn't a thing that retro games can do, but I'm a solo developer and I have enough ideas to fill 80+ hours of playtime (and I don't want to make a sequel, I have an idea for a sequel but it will only not be a part of this game because it has substantial changes) but I'm going to be targetting far less for the initial release (it will still be a full game, nobody will think "they *needed* to do more", I just have so many ideas), and then have free updates for years - it's mostly just the art that will be waiting after release, and if the game sells I can hire artists to take some of the burden. It's a lot more content than what retro games had. However, I don't want the ability to update lead to me being lazy, I need to treat the release and every update as putting the game in a state I'm very happy with as if I could never update the game and fix things afterwards. I rarely play games that I can't find bugs in, they're a lot of fun to find, and it comes across as extremely lazy. If I want people to pay me, they need the game to be as perfect as possible - retro games are known for their bugs, but, the bugs don't scream "lazy" it screams "wtf, how was that ever going to be found within the year of development time, it took 20 years to find that bug". I have access to AI libraries to make an AI play my game (the controls are simple it can learn, and I know exactly how the physics works to reimplement it in whatever the AI needs and can run as fast as possible - physics is in a fixed update), as an extra to human playtesters which will hopefully find issues that others can't find. I am thinking about leaderboards, internet connectivity isn't something retro games are known for, but leaderboards are. Internet connectivity will not be required, so many games require a stable internet connection which my Steam Deck outside of my house (where I play it) cannot provide; I am fairly confident I have a strategy to validate times so people can't just forge times and it doesn't require an internet connection and you will be able to submit scores when you go online. I don't actually like playing retro games, they're far too limited and they existed before we learnt how to make games. Super Maio Bros is a bad game, it's bottom 25% of all platformers I've played, it's really unenjoyable and a slog to get through. But I like the idea of them. I want my games to live up to the nostalgia of old games
Because of Retro Game Corps I bought my first Emulation Handheld the Anbernic RG35XX-H. I always loved handheld gaming because of my Switch and PSP but the 4:3 screen and the 6-8 hour battery life is just game changing and it's pocketable wich is great for my busy life. If I have a few minutes I play a few rounds of Street Fighter or a few minutes a puzzle game for the GameBoy and I can continue 2 or 3 hour later. It's just awesome man!
There's absolutely zero point in buying an overpriced 50 series card to play lame AF modern AAA games that lack the mechanics of games 10 years prior. Not only are they woefully unoptimised, but they are actually hostile to the very people who pay for them. They're out of their tiny activist minds if they think I'm going to spend that much money to be insulted, both on a personal level and a financial one by serving me up a microwave meal when I'm paying sirloin steak prices. I, and pretty much everyone else, has enough in our back catalogue steam library to last us the next 5 years easily. These Western Devs claim slanderously that it's "hate" that's driving me. Classic projection on their part. I find them hilarious that people unwilling to get ripped off is down to hatred. I couldn't care less if they go under, on their own arrogant heads be it.
Its intentional ragebait to drive online discussions of else mediocre and forgettable games. Its always fed to the devs by higher ups. Pretty much almost every shitty decision in a game or its marketing always comes from executives or ceos, not devs. In most cases all devs do is just put plans by directors or producers into actual code. In the hierarchy devs are quite far at the bottom."Devs actually design, write and plan the game" is something that only ever was true for small studios developing pc games in the 80s and 90s. Same applies to writers. Your sole job is to polish whatever people higher up in the hierarchy put in front of you, even if its a steaming turd.
I was bought up on the c16, the c16+4, the c64, the Amiga, mega drive, SNES, ps 1,2,3,4 and 5. Xbox,360 and one as well as a few pc's. The thing I remember of back in the day is that the Devs were doing it for fun. Coded in their bedrooms then sent off to a publisher to see if they wanted it or not. The other flip side were in house Devs like ocean that threw money at licence's and churned out the same generic platform garbage. It was the later of the two that allowed the marketing departments into the development and the rest is history. The thing is, that people doing it for fun have no boundaries and will push for new mechanisms to build their ideas into reality.
People: Modern Gaming Is Bad Me: Rain Code God Of War Ragnarok Fire Emblem Engage Dragon Ball Sparking Zero Infinity Strash Dragon Quest Kirby And The Forgotten Land Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga No More Heroes 3 Super Mario Bros Wonder Super Mario Party Jamboree Sonic X Shadow Generations Princess Peach Showtime Modern Gaming Is Not Bad, It's Just People Being So Blinded By Nostalgia
Many of these are bland or straight up bad like Infinty Strash. I have zero nostalgia when I play most older games and even play ones that are older than me. It's a bit silly to just brush liking older games as nostalgia. I could just say you only these newer games due to recency bias.
Just based on your title and not the video’s content, I will say I generally prefer older games to modern games because it was easier to pick them up and play. I loved being able to drop in and learn how it works relatively quickly. They felt like actual games where the focus was to make them fun. When I play a modern game, such as The Last of Us or Red Dead 2, the focus seems to be making a cinematic experience rather than an actual fun game. Although I respect this and acknowledge the tremendous amount of work that goes into this, this is usually why I prefer the older stuff.
The Last of Us and Red Dead 2 were both made for mainstream modern audiences. They are not the crowd that played Metroid Prime, Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, or Crash Bandicoot back in the day.
There will be no games after 2030. There will be no video cards for games, most of the big game companies will collapse. There will be no retro consoles and other stuff. Completely disappear sites or torrents where you could download games.... I know a little more than most, and this is my warning to everyone. Stock up. Stock up on hardware and peripherals (mice, keyboards, gamepads, USB sticks, cables) for PCs. Buy phones, wireless gamepads, power banks, retro consoles. Buy while you have the opportunity to buy it. Then it won't be available. Not at all. Time is running out, you have 6-7 years left.
It kinda sucked too games were expensive as hell, no Steam, if you want to check out a game before you buy you had to get demo discs, no RUclips or Twitch. Games are like music, we remember the hits and bangers but we forgot about the warehouses filled with trash.
@@allisongross2946As someone that owned Hydlide for the NES back in the 80's, it was straight up garbage. Horrible repeating music. Garbage gameplay. Terrible game all and all.
Man I love playing games in release order and watching franchises grow and evolve, too. I wanted to get into Shin Megami Tensei at the end of last year, so I started up Megami Tensei for Famicom and ended up drawing my own maps and everything. Beat Shin Megami Tensei 2 and Nocturne while bedridden after a surgery, finished up SJ and 4 later, and I just recently cleared 4a. Been taking breaks in between games to keep the series fresh yeah, but my goal is to beat 5 before the year ends. Great stuff man. Even though the bad parts of the industry are dying a slow death we still have great games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring that seem to be content to just be complete packages out of the door. Games like that come out every now and then and I'm more than happy with just one or two releases like that a year while I play endless retros and indies.
Nah... Games have changed, yes. But I, as a player, have changed even more. For me, the generation that grew since its youth with consoles, now are old people saying that "my times were better". When I was young, my father said the music, movies, cartoons and anything else I did was worse than in his youth. My grandfather said the same to my dad. Games are not the way they used to be. And my taste was formed to like those games. I'm trained to like anything similar to things that reached me at my formational years. Games are not worse or better. They are different. And my generation is starting to feel that they are not the targer audience anymore. Our times are in the past. We are struggling to accept.
i partially agree. i dont think that i like games from my childhood more than modern releases. but there are simply fewer games releasing in general. and when they do release, theres a 50/50 chance that they are either horrendous or just pretty neat. but there ARE newer games like cyberpunk and elden ring that i absolutely adore. its just that most games that i feel like are filled with heart and soul, are games from 10-20 years prior. because games didnt cost as much to make back in the day as they do now, they had enough time to grow and release in a nearly perfect state.
I disagree...best eras of all other ones were beginning of 80s, entire 90s until mid 2000s. For music, cinema, games, stile, thoughts, etc. Sometimes I feel that the internet how it is nowadays have just f.....d up with all. Beside that, indie games are there fulfilled with gems.
@djsergiogarciaofficial You're right. That was the cultural and entertainment peak. Things WERE better back then. Our entire culture has gone downhill since then and everything else gets dragged down with it. We as a people are worse, the culture is worse, the entertainment and art is worse, our habits and daily lives are worse. This has been an ongoing trend for quite a while now.
You're so right about the value of games that aren't trying to be ultra-realistic. As someone who's been at least one console generation behind since the Xbox/GameCube era ended, I still experience amazing novelty with photorealism, and I can really enjoy wandering around a realistic natural environment. But it's really easy for every game to feel the same that way. With older games, or more stylised modern ones, I love that they have a distinctive art style - combined with the music, it becomes part of the game's unique atmosphere. It's also so tied in to my nostalgia for the games of my childhood, whereas I'm not so sure I'll feel that way about the visuals of today's photorealistic games. Fable is probably the youngest game from my past that I feel deep nostalgia for...
I feel very validated for a young gun to have experienced my chunk of video game history and become nostalgic for it. I grew up with NES, then Sega Genesis, N64, but even turning around and doing emulation on dial up Internet to relive the final fantasies, this video was pretty relatable. I spend devoted chunks on a select few games these days (dark souls series, Stardew)
Man alive, what excellent points you made Devin. I'm so happy to be able to get back into retro games too, and how I appreciate your video laying these details out. Plus, thank you for showing so much of Metroid: Zero Mission, such a good title from my favorite video game series of them all. :^) Take care.
I know how you feel. going back and beating things you only played a little of back in the day or not at all has been great. Ive been working on Custom Robo, Monster hunter freedom unite, Forza 1, and Shenmue. its been a blast
Practically speaking, whenever a game company has a board of directors-- whenever ANY company has a board of directors-- you can bet the quality of their products is going to be ass. You can bet they are going to skirt the law or even outright break it because they know the profits will be higher than the payout of any court case. They'll engage shamelessly in anti-consumer practices. By this point people should recognize it as a physical law of nature. Human nature, but still nature. There's not always a choice to break out. Cars. Computers. Phones..... You can't build them in your own basement. But the video game "industry" is a place where _art_ is created. Possibly the most influential form of art ever conceived to date. Art you can _interact_ with-- that you MUST interact with-- in order for it to be enjoyed. There is literally nothing else like it in human existence. And the beauty of it is, you CAN make it in your basement. There are nigh-countless passionate people working on these things, pouring their heart into it, that there is almost no reason at all to buy a triple-A title ever again. The argument itself is getting to be trite. "Hey look at this household name game company shoveling in all this crap gamers don't like!" Oh no kidding? Like I was ever planning to buy from that company in the first place. But fair enough, when my friends tell me I should play, I'll know in advance why I'm not going to. Friends are dumb anyway.
I remember one of total biscuits later reviews was doom 2016 and his happiness that you got a gun straight away and started playing without exposition was great. I just can't be bothered with all this. got ghost of Tsushima and instantly got bored of following the person and creeping around the village at the start. Only have 30-60 mins to game just let me fight people FFS. The thief games (originals) are my fav and the graphics look bad today but the atmosphere and level design is still unmatched imo. Just amazing.
I feel you bro, although i wasn't born in the 8 and 16 bit era, my family never has the money to spend in the new fancy modern console, so i discovered the emulation world in my tiny notebook and that blowed my mind, metroid, sonic, chrono trigger, pokemon, earthbound, demon crest, mario, megaman, i felt in love for pixels, that was my childhood, and now that i have the money to buy any game i want the new releases are just disappointing. Hope is in the indie industry, that's a fact. Nice video, greetings from Mexico.
I'm a bit older than you mate, grew up on the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64. Back then in 1996, there was nothing like the N64, and Super Mario 64 at the time was amazing. Really sad to see where the industry has gone, but the bigger problem is this has affected basically all entertainment media.
Thanks man I tought I did this because Im getting old. Putting away mario wonder the pokemon tcg for the gameboy (didnt play it for nostalgia) was my only real glue to a game expetrence in the last couple years
It does kind of feel like most youtubers run on some strict formula. In my opinion, I'm tired of the same Mr. Beast style editing and adhd levels of energy. Usually, it's the same people begging for likes and subscribes
I've been advocating for the merits of retro gaming for like 15 years. I remember back in like 2007 people were acting like games from 1998 were so old they were unplayable. A game being old doesn't make it good, but its stupid to get rid of a good game just because it's old. As far as realism in graphics go, I agree and disagree. Stylized graphics can be good, but a game like Super Metroid tried to have realistic graphics at the time and it looks amazing. I think what is missing is earnestness. When a 2D game these days is stylized it's almost done tongue-in-cheek. It's like it's done ironically. Like "Look how bad the graphics of our game is. Isn't this old school?" But no, old school games were trying their best. Making a game "pixel art" ironically instead of just putting 100% of your effort in earnestly making good game art is wrong. And yeah, I miss just being able to hop into a video game. I also miss video games not being long. So many games have enough content to play for weeks or months. This can be good but at some point it's quantity over quality. A good 5 hour playthrough is better than 5 weeks of mediocrity.
I just recently beat Final Fantasy 1 for the first time, and have several retro and indie games that I want to play through (in between repeatedly playing the randomizer combining two of my favorite Zelda games: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. That combo randomizer is like my comfort game at the moment). Graphics-wise, modern games can be absolutely gorgeous when done right, but there's just something about pixelated and early 3D environments that really catch my attention. Maybe it's the fact that the devs back in the day had to do more with less in some really creative ways. N64 and PS1 environments are some of my favorite aesthetics, and I'm glad that style seems to be in the indie spotlight at the moment.
Some games are just pretending to be a live game when they're actually unfinished especially adventure Gacha games. They just try to come up with events and gimmicks to acquire and retain players.
Hi, I'm a professional game designer, colloquially known to most people in the space as a 'dev' (even though devs are just the guys who code). Even though I work for an android game studio of 300 people, I can draw several parallels to AAA game development and my own job. I can try and explain why modern AAA is why the way it is.
1. Videogames have become a product and a source for revenue: And even though they always were, capitalism does what it does and stubs diversity. Every game now is hyper analyzed, product managers are at the helm, not the designers and they are constantly thinking of how each aspect of the game can be monetized, or how each aspect of the game can be cost cut to maximize profits. They'll always look at other games, its metrics (retention, revenue etc) and will use it as a base. Which is why you're getting so many open world games with repetitive side quests, lackluster environments. It's because producers and product managers are asking designers to make things cost as low as possible which includes making low risk products.
2. So if the games are not good, why do people buy them? It's because a lot of budget is put into user acquisition; this encompasses branding, advertising, community management etc. Most of these games are all smokes and mirrors with flashy trailers and aggressive marketing campaigns and they've figured out that it's less about how good your game is and more about how often people hear about it. Ubisoft doesn't only have f you money, they also have fuck me money. They have all the money in the world to shove their 52nd assassins creed product in every corner of the net space.
3. Designers, devs etc are strong armed into decisions. As mentioned earlier, product design is at the helm and their job is to maximize profits. Decisions often come from above (board of directors, founders etc) and we are subjected to it. We know very well that what they're looking to do will be a bad experience for players, but they won't listen because as you said, they don't play videogames. They don't give a shit. And since we're kind of made to work on features that we just don't believe in, to a fair extent we don't give a shit either. Why would I care about my job when my voice isn't heard? What difference would it make even if I did care? I'm clearly being asked to make a money making machine, it's fundamentally wrong.
I think bottomline is, it isn't the 'devs', the designers or even to a large extent even PMs who are responsible, it's the suits. As with every industry they're old, out of touch and don't care about the quality of what they're ordering people below them to make. The only way for this to change is to have the AAA industry burn from the ground up. I highly doubt that will happen though, I think what's likelier is that people like us will rely on a roster of trustworthy studios (for me it's Naughty Dog, Insomniac, FromSoftware, Platinum, Remedy) whilst studios like Ubisoft will continue to have mass appeal. Just ignore them, continue to vote with your own wallet and support the games you love.
capitalism will ruin everything!
yeah. i can agree with that.
You had me until you brought up Insomniac. The same clowns who push "the message" just the same as Ubisoft. Most major studios these days are all doing it because they think it will get them the most profit. Which as you say is what they're all about. Instead they're constantly eating from the shit buffet that's cost them collectively over a billion dollars. Which is what's triggering the massive layoff waves where people like you lose their job.
In 90% of cases i don't blame the worker drones. It's the higher ups. But that other 10% is the fault of people in your position who push the garbage because they agree with it/love it. Those people don't have a passion for gaming they have a passion for being annoying "activists" for their shitty worldview.
People are tired of that loud 10% that are constantly given a platform by the other 90%
You trust Naughty Dog?!
You say this, yet, Ubisoft is dying as we speak.
The more "realistic" you try to make a game look. The more immersion breaking it is when the "gamey" elements appear. Where are there invisible walls everywhere, or you realize this beautiful forest you're moving through in god of war ragnarok is actually a straight hallway.
You gotta pick a better example then GOW for your point cuz this franchise's linear as fuck.
@CursedMoonCrusader It happens in all these modern remakes. At least the old god of wars didn't lie about their linearity.
Even the original re4 was more upfront about how linear its levels were compared to the remake wirh all its bushes and barbed wires everywhere in the village. Linearity is fine. Just don't try and sell yourself as anything other than what you are.
Open world games suffer from this, being vast empty expanses of nothing with nothing interesting to look at or discover. Where it feels the linear missions and story had the most effort put into them.
@@CursedMoonCrusaderThat wasn't his point. The problem wasn't the linear nature but rather that the game immersion broke due to how realistic it looked
@@zero1zerolast393 Shut up, bot.
For me it’s always the hair. They try so hard to make those games look realistic and then I look at the hair and it immediately puts me off, always 😂
I never stopped playing older games, I still revisit them regularly to this day.
When we say the gaming industry is in shambles now, newer folks who got into gaming after 2010 tend to ignore what we say because, for them, gaming's always been like this, but just playing older titles is enough to prove how INSANE the gaming industry is nowadays!
I feel many indie games, if not most, have the spirit of older retro games with the creativity and fun
They do & that's what draws people in. They're giving gamers what they want where the AAA's would rather bite the hands that feed them.
Because they are made with passion and without heavy time constraints. Gaming, like Cinema, has become an industry, profit matters more than quality.
They also have less risk for creativity because they need less budget than AAA games.
Graphic become less and less important up to a certain point. And those money is better spend on other part of the game. Nowadays, many put too much importance in them.
Just imagine if you have AAA budget and decided to make 2d game, all those excess money can be spend on polishing animation (movement & amount of frame) rather than clothes physics, doesn't mean it's not important in 3d, just illustrated that it's not a requirement. Or you can spend it on writer to make lore, story, Character development, items, quest, etc.
Seriously, there's this one guy that say that 2d sprite is bad because they're cheap and unrealistic.
@@underblader9675 You are right about the passion, but sadly Indie games are also often under intense time constraints. Where big developers are under pressure due to working in a soulless corporate machine, indie developers are under pressure because we often have very few people and very small budgets. It's a brutal market out there.
The last game I worked on, I worked my soul to shreds, it was incredibly stressful and in the end we'd made a game far beyond what you might expect from a team our size.. Sad reality is that despite getting good reviews, we didn't get a lot of attention and as a result we continue to struggle.
Reject modernity, embrace Retro.
Yeah reject Elden Ring, Flight Simulator, Doom Eternal, Dark Souls, Astrobot, Sea of Thieves, Cocoon, Portal, Evil West, Dying Light 2, Hollow Knights, Hades, The Witcher 3, Skyrim, Warhammer Space Marine, Minecraft, Diablo IV(updated), Can berpuno 2077, Forza Horizon 5, GT ..and the many other AA, AAA and Indie games available. Also how modern games can vastly get fixed, updated, improved unlike retro games.
@@techknow9237 bro don't be desingenuous
@@techknow9237retro games don't need fixing or updating. Developers made sure the games worked BEFORE releasing them. Crazy concept, I know!
So much crap and old stuff combined with indie. Your comment is shooting its own argument in the leg.@@techknow9237
@@Greg7791
Actually there were issues on many games but we just lived with it. Now we have the internet - where we nit pick everything
I remember playing Starfox - got rave reviews, but in honesty it didn't look good and you fly up into the top corner of the screen and get through every level.
I love games.
I won't buy, play or waste my time discussing games made by people who hate games.
Simple as.
I gave my 9 year old nephew an NES (well a clone) At first he thought it was ancient garbage, then he played SMB3, then Contra, then Life Force, then Bionic Commando, he's on FF1 right now, it's tough for him, but he's slugging through the first trip through the earth cave right now. He asked me why they stopped making games fun so long ago. He's currently imagining a PS5 version of contra.
@@SaanMigwell It brings me joy when i see someone from the younger generation appreciate games from the renascence era of gaming. Even more so when they can piece together how far gaming has fallen. Lucky there are indie devs out there that do make them like they used to. So not all hope is lost.
I love games. I remember when Sega CD came out and all the “press button when prompted to play next scene” FMV games came out. Episodes of Power Rangers that included prompts… so fun… yeesh..
But then, that became en vogue again. “Quick time events” a la RE4 are extremely common now in gaming. There seems to be a spectrum for this kind of gameplay. I’d almost consider it a genre or epoch in gaming. “Retro” refers to basically PS1 and prior, where the focus in general was gameplay and then story. Now it’s story (or graphics/story, more like it) and then gameplay, and then a distant third is shipping the game fully made. And don’t get me started on the utterly ridiculous file sizes in gaming. JUST COMPRESS THE FUCKING ASSETSSSSSSS
@@Terrible_Peril You can thank the original God of War for the QTE craze. Which can be done right or can be used as a lazy dev crutch. The games file sizes are why i laugh at them wanting to do all digital yet having such tiny storage spaces on their overpriced plastic boxes. $700 & the thing still has a 2TB SSD. rofl
I used to be an indie developer, but the market dynamics drained all my passion when the ultimate goal for my colleagues became purely about the money. Big companies can sap the passion out of even the most talented artists, turning game developers into mere cogs in a complex machine, unlike the days when games were created by teams of just 10 to 20 people.
I have a backlog big enough to last until im dead. Bring on the industry collapse.
Here's how I look at nostalgia;
If you remember enjoying an old game and go back and play it and it's not as good as you remember, that's nostalgia.
If you remember enjoying a good and go back and play it and it's still fun, that's just a good game.
Also, the game called Nostalgia on DS is great if you like turn based RPGs, so give that a go if you have the means to.
Unless you own physical copies that are DRM free you dont have a back log if there is a collapse. One of the reasons why people are drifting away from modern gaming because you dont actually own the games your buying.
@@mr.snacks482 If a game is not as enjoyable as you remember, it just means you outgrew it. If an old game holds up in the present, it means what appealed to you back then hasn't left you. Nostalgia is the sentimental longing of the past even if the experience doesn't live up to your memories. Both games are equally good. You just grew as a person.
I wonder what we'll be nostalgic about from now in a couple years time 😂
@@deadwejght5357 not even remotely true lol with people having backs ups of most of their games there will always be a way to access them the right or or the 7 seas ways. And trust that these companies will never want their fanbase to turn on them by making it impossible to grab what they people already own. Physical media doesnt last forever either but neither do we so we got plenty of time to enjoy them
@@Jack-nj9pi No its absolutely true, in fact there is a recent law that passed that now requires Steam to put a disclaimer on every purchase informing you that your not buying the game but a license to play that game that can be revoked. GOG offers DRM free games that you can backup but the selection is limited.
As for pirating for the sake of the conversation i was referring to LEGAL ways to play. And for backing up your games that you've downloaded from Steam/Epic you will find that eventually they will require you to be online for verification and without it you wont be playing anything.
"when you read a book you need to pay attention a lot more because you need to use your imagination to fill the gaps"
this. this is what I always thought about videogames. with limited hardware from the older generations of consoles, we had to use our imagination to expand what we saw on screen.
for example, as a kid I always wondered what lies beyond the trees and the sea rocks in the pokemon games. it was, of course, to limit the area you could explore, but that limit made my brain think that there was more stuff to explore outside those boundaries
A similar thing I used to think of was the high ledges on the left and right-most edges in your Animal Crossing town on gamecube. I always wondered what was up there? Maybe another town?
This is why children need to be encouraged to read books and play pretend.
We all know that one person whose entire childhood consisted of video games and there is something “missing” to their personality.
Personally, I used to daydream a lot, and would often imagine me directing, producing, and screenwriting my own video game films. Imagine how I would react to the characters in front of me, how would the characters in the fictional world react to my choices or actions in the movie? What would the ending be like? What would the visuals and aesthetics of the video game movie back in the 2000s look like???
The gameplay loops of the older games are way more rewarding than say "Overwatch" or "fortnite" garbage. They still work after 30 years too, even if the early DRM chips fail, the hacks around that can be done by a six a year old.
I have aphantasia and never understood that people could basically dream while awake. I just can’t “imagine” things visually.
I was just telling my cousin last night that I feel way more immersed in older games where i can use my imagination, vs hyper realism where theres no room for imagination. Glad im not the only one
Pokemon is especially bad for this.
Notwithstanding the series' other issues.
you are not the only one. People were just so occupied with visuals they didn't notice the growing void in their heart.
I also just don't have time for a bunch of gigantic open world exploration games. Why would I boot up an Ubi Soft game, trek across the map, loading screen, loading screen, loading screen, then start a quest to a do a street race . . . When I could just play a good racing game?
@@Bustermachine Exactly. What happened to simple ideas executed very well with creativity? I miss the diverse racing genre of the ps2, Burnout was a great series.
I guess Space Marines 2 is a good modern example of a simple game done well.
Well, I do think you have to blame halo 2 20 years back for pushing games to be more like CGI/Animated Live-Action looking cinematic movies rather than the real purpose for those games being just quality, fun, and leaving things to your imagination. But it's this reason why I looked at video games, and would be cool if I directed my own version of the video game I wish to make back in the early 2000s (which never happened, but I still have that goal in my head to this very day).
Reject modern gaming, embrace retro gaming.
Indies work to. I just bought Flight of Nova and spent three days on the tutorial alone.
Dude . I played all.
@@LedoCool1 No.
@@oxfordeducatedhighschoolhe6989 your choice.
@@LedoCool1 iiiiiiiiiiii
No one has ever worded the way I have been feeling for ten years this well. Yes, even after ten years, I still got dozens of emulated games I want to try.
And yes, I came from a background of reading books and I think that's partly why retro games appeal to me more than newer ones.
@Thirteen13551355 it's something that has been on my mind for a while. Your brain doesn't have to interpret a tree in real life because you've seen them a million times, but in a video game like chrono trigger, you have to look at a tree and then imagine what type of tree that is in real life. It's almost like reading words on paper. I'm glad I'm not crazy
@@Tenacityfromtheglass u need to seek the indie scene, I tried Touhou Luna Nights and this is the best medroidvania I ever play, try it plz soo good
@@Thirteen13551355 I've been very into PS1 games recently. If I only had PS1 games to play for the rest of my life I still don't think I could play them all. There's dozens of amazing RPGs alone
Ironic considering that movies and music, plus the idea of me creating my own video game movie of a video game property I would like to adapt (considering I used to not like reading books because it was basically text on a page and some would blend into each other for me to loose track of where I was; hence why I like writing fan-fiction in a similar style and look to the books themselves), not to mention I stopped being a fan of video games back in 2010 is the reason why I haven't bothered to game with new modern ones in a long time. With the exceptions of Palworld, many of the games I buy or play are video games that are one to three decades old (even four decades old and still enjoy playing them, with or without mods of course).
@@SuperFlashDriver I dunno, I never really got into movies. They're often too straightforward. I always preferred reading books.
the main issue of current gaming is that many developers nowadays dont play and dont like videogames, and they think that they know better than the average gamer and refuse to hear criticism.
this is not true.
For me it was when they started calling games, 'Art' and not games.
@@secondchance6603 People like you are what enable the suits. Good work.
I rather side with the devs 30, 40 years ago that knew better and got us the classics. The people that see games as art are the only ones still making good games. But continue to mindlessly consume, of course. More Call of Duty slop to gobble up. Be a good boy. The suits love your ilk.
@@fy8798 Never played a COD game in my life and people like me were playing video games over 45 years ago kiddo, try harder.
To play devil's advocate. The gaming community isn't doing itself any favors.
I hate how modern games are like movies. 5 minute cut scenes, downloading updates, by the time I can play I don’t want to anymore. This is why I like old games: pop it the cartridge and press start and go!
Mario games are games that are to Play on the go, you just insert them and are ready to play
We reinvented FMV games.
The Classic Call of duty are immersive because it shows the real-time event in first person than Cinematic boring scene.
Cartridge? Now that's a technical oddity! From a PC perspective, a cartridge is an ISA card with some ROM chips on it that the BIOS jumps into when you boot the machine.
It's really weird compared to the usual paradigm of floppy disks and hard drives.
Maybe one day, they will sell USB Drive with permanent data like old times on it as if it's a cartridge
Recently suped up an n64 to play the classics I missed (my first console was ps2). Mannnn sometimes nostalgia has nothing to do with a game's hype. OOT is suddenly my favorite zelda.
man i gotta replay Majoras Mask. i was too young to figure out how to play it back then but i always loved the dark theme and music it had.
Don't forget to soup up the PS2 as well! If you have a fat PS2 you can install an internal hard drive up to 2TB and have more games on it than you will possibly ever need (including stuff you might have missed the first time around).
The Slim can ALMOST do the same with a SMBSHARE via a cheap SBC, but some of the later games will have problems with cutscenes and stuff (ie: Star Ocean).
@@Hypno_BPM Hella worth it, Majora's Mask is absolutely excellent and holds up
I’ve always wondered if someone who hadn’t played the classics went back and tried them, would they become their favorite ones with no nostalgia involved? Glad to see the answer is yes :)
@@MrKrashmoney hell yeah. i just played Banjo Kazooie “for real” on switch online and had a blast. i rented it as a kid but it was way too confusing for me back then so i never gave it another shot until last month. same goes with Sin and Punishment , Blast Corps.
For me most modern games just feel like I'm watching a movie and pressing forward to get from scene to scene. Older games had a freedom I just don't see anymore. I adored playing the old GTA games where I could play a mission any way I want to. If I knew a car chase was going to happen mid-way I could place a blockade to slow them down etc. Even GTA5 feels so damned restrictive and only lets you play the missions how they want you to. In Duke Nukem, Goldeneye, Turok, Quake etc I would spend hours just exploring the levels or finding different ways to approach them, but with any Call of Duty game or Battlefield game, you deviate even slightly from the path and it's mission over, you take to long and mission over, you try and go back to look at something you just ran past and it's mission over. It's bonkers to me that we seem to have stepped so far back from what made these games great. You got to be the character, make choices and see how things played out. Your experience could be different from your friends while still achieving the same goals.
Theres alot of modern indie games based on oldschool shooters
Ah, the good old GTA-racing missions. Pull out your bazooka and waste your opponents and then drive without stress to the finish line🤣🤣.
I've completely eviscerated clueless casuals online talking crap about games like Golden Eye or Perfect Dark compared to there supposedly "superior" modern shooters.😂
@@eightcoins4401 even Alex Jones made one
Indie games and Nintendo are the only ones that make me happy in modern gaming
I decide what makes me happy, and Nintendo doing what it is doing with copyright crackdowns, and the Palworld thing, they make me not want to do business with them anymore.
I'm literally the same where I cannot start a franchise in the middle. I gotta play ALL of them in order even if they're self-contained. That's how I know you're a real one who truly appreciates games rather than being one of those "which games do you recommend I play in the franchise and skip the bad ones" type of people.
i agree i played Kingdom Hearts out of order and i was completely confused with what was goin on in the series then i found out the actual order of the series and now i'm playing them in order i hate when People skip them and say they are terrible all People talk about nonstop is an overrated Kingdom Hearts 2 Game when there are other good ones it does not have to be Kingdom Hearts 2 Kingdom Hearts 2 nonstop all they do is tell People Kingdom Hearts 2 is what you should start with i played other series to it and my all time favorite was Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream drop distance i even loved the multiplayer on it never experienced it but i watched People on RUclips doin it no one else owned the Game so i missed out on multiplayer and same i'm tryin to do the Legend of Zelda series in order and follow the time line and same on Final Fantasy and Resident Evil i rather play them in order so that i do not get confused with the time line also i'm goin back playing old Games new Games are shit too much Wokeness and censorship in them i'm a 90's Gamer.
Lmaooo I’ve had the same mentality for the Ys series , but they just have wayyy too many games I decided to drop it and just play my favorites
Me too. I can't play the new tomb raider cos I ain't played all the old ones lol
Same for me
Yep, I can’t either. Start at the beginning and go through what we went through or don’t pick it up lol it’s that simple
Been loving this schism among the young folks. You guys are right where we 35-45 year olds were 10-12 years ago at the end of the xbox 360's lifespan when the writing on the wall emerged regarding where gaming was headed. Join us on PC young ones, retro emulation is doing what the corpo's won't.
Theres a small amount of life still left in gaming. Where Nintendo for 3 or so generations made Pokemon a social phenomenon, Palworld did 4x the sales of Arceus in a month. Suvivor games originated in modern vernacular due to VS, but even within the subgenre ive been playing a lot of similar, yet fun reimaginations of it. Starsector and Terraria still being updated, Stardew sunsetting but still being a major sticking point of whats GOOD about small/indie devs. The real thing that needs to happen is regulations and doing anti-trust. We can't let this continue, theres so much good left to be shared. COD died for me after Blackops 2, but After Kill to WH Boltgun still stratch a different but familiar itch. Roboquest to Kenshin to Grim Dawn.
Most of the major IP have competition, we're actually in a golden era for gaming . . . its all just soured by profiteering and horribly evil legalized mafia economy nonsense due to westernized nations being mostly hands off "aside from the EU, remember OW loot boxes went bye bye because a small continental grouping said no. " Theres still a bit of hope, not much.
@@WhatWillYouFind We could have been in a golden age of gaming if not for all of the profiteering and macro transactions. And the focus on majority open world, hyper realism graphics type games. We need artists back creating games. Art styles, not just trying to make everything look realistic which ends up making it all look the same.
@@VoltageNostalgia FACTS! We need artists to be running these games studios, not corporations like Microsoft and sure as hell not shareholders who wouldn't know their asses from a hole in the ground. We need artists back.
@@megaman37456Exactly, this is why indie games are better than AAA games.
Man I read your comment and my mind immediately went to "Horse Armor DLC."
I stopped playing AAA games a decade ago and I feel like I barely missed anything.
in my opinion the "gaming" community is too obsessed with complaining about games no one plays anyway and end in financial disasters when instead we should focus on the preservation, translation, decensoring and improvement of old titles.
These companies are just parasites that carry around the name of a studio that was created by passionate people who have left it long ago.
Great projects be it games or anything else will always be created by your peers not some suit and a brand and we should support their efforts when they decide to do indie games or fan games.
No matter how bad modern gaming gets, we will always have the classics. I suppose there's a comfort to that, which is why retro gaming is so highly appealing these days.
Not always. Nintendo keeps taking down rom sites and eventually old carts and discs will stop working.
There is an entirely possible scenario where old gaming dies and disappears.
@@billyj.causeyvideoguy7361 While Nintendo will definitely keep taking down ROM sites, there are ways to make backups of their games thanks to dumping tools (that's how they ended up online in the first place). As such, for those who kept their old games, they could dump their game to make a backup ahead of time and go from there. PS1 and PS2 games are EXTREMELY easy to make backups for since tools like ImgBurn work without major issues. As for the GameCube, Wii, and Wii U, you can mod your Wii (for the former two) and/or Wii U (for the latter two) to allow for a custom channel/program that then backs up your game(s). That being said, you gotta make the backups before the game goes bad, so it's important for those who bought their games to make backups ASAP (though having your games in proper storage conditions also help delay the eventual decay).
For those who lack the ability to get their games due to scarcity and/or excessive reseller fees (Jack Bros.' USA copy is like $1k+, for example), then yeah, it totally sucks due to most old games becoming abandonware that you can't access unless if you know the right places to look. It would be nice to have more of the classic games appear on modern markets so people can easily access them (as piracy is generally a response to a services issue, and tons of old games are hard to access legally).
@@billyj.causeyvideoguy7361 Nope., Rom sites are hydra, Nintendo takes down 1, 2 more appear to replace it. Same with emulators, Nintendo is fighting a war they literally cannot win.
@megaman37456 Sure, but now a lot of people are going to be more scared to download roms, because they cant be confident in the reputation of a given site. I used to tell everyone to use Vimms Lair, because I had been using it for several years and never had an issue. But now thats gone, and internet archive will be soon too. Theres only going to be sketchy sites left to get roms from, and that will definitely deter a lot of people.
Also, every big switch emulator that Im aware of has had its development canceled by reaching an agreement with the main dev, or by lawsuit. So now switch emulation is gonna be screwed for a while. I wanted to emulate mario party jamboree, cuz aint no way Im going to grind to unlock all the characters and maps in a party game. Id rather download a 100 percent savefile
@@megaman37456 Agreed they're fighting the same war the music industry lost decades ago. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
I don't like modern photo realistic graphics because it feels like it trying too hard to look like real life instead of having a unique and artistic style. It also restrictive. You can't make it as expressive or unique without dipping in uncanny valley territory. It's same thing with live action adaption of 2d into live action 3d, it feels wrong, it looks wrong or just a plain downgrade when you seen original version.
I do not mind realism if it is needed, but when you have endless waves of DLC, and other cash grab, scams, and schemes, half-finished products, etc., then that will lead to an even WORSE video game crash than what had happened in 1982, and, this time, not only will it affect the video game industry, but also a wide array of other industries as well.
If you're not enjoying modern gaming, here's a list of retro video games that I think everyone should play through at least once (I consider any game before the HD era in the 7th generation as retro):
1. Resident Evil 4 (2005)
2. Super Metroid
3. Super Mario Bros 3
4. Ninja Gaiden Black
5. Metal Gear Solid 1-3
6. Chrono Trigger
7. Metroid Prime
8. Devil May Cry 1&3
9. A Link to the Past
10. Ocarina of Time
11. Rondo of Blood.
12. Resident Evil 1 (1996) & Remake (2002)
13. Half Life 2
14. Deus Ex
15. Doom (1993)
16. Final Fantasy VI & VII (1997) & X
17. Resident Evil 2 (1998)
18. Silent Hill 2 (2001)
19. GTA Vice City & San Andreas
20. Super Mario World
21. Super Mario 64
22. Donkey Kong Country 2
23. Yoshi's Island
There are amazing games from the 7th generation as well (it's one of my favorite gens) but I don't really consider them retro. As someone who started gaming in the 3rd generation, I have to say, that run from the 4th generation to the 7th generation (1990 to 2011) is unmatched IMO. I honestly believe video games have already peaked during that run.
This is an amazing list. There's only 2 I haven't played, deus ex and silent hill 2. I've been wanting to try out deus ex for a long time.
I played RE4 remake
No og Halo, are you high? Otherwise great list
I would add OG Halo and The Secret of Monkey Island. Otherwise great list 👍
That's a pretty emulator-heavy list. I think the only ones I've actually played are HL1/2, Deus Ex, Doom, and GTA Vice City and San Andreas. Though, I'd swap San Andreas for GTA3, as I found GTA3 much more enjoyable than San Andreas.
Boys... Go back to the snes, ps1, n64, Gamecube and ps2.... No dlc... No updates... No infinte tasteless sandbox, no microtransactions... Just simple good games
Or, from the PC perspective, you'll be using DOSBox to run most of the greats these days. You can even get that "running Quake at single-digit framerates with the sound breaking up on a 486" experience if you set it up right.
This is why I love my retro handhelds. Having all of my childhood games in my pocket is still a crazy thing to have and my 2004 self would have never predicted it.
I know it's the best thing ever. I love it! I just ordered a miyoo a30 because it's just so damn cute and looks like nintendo controller. The fact that I can have Nes, Snes, Sega, gb, gbc, gba and even ds on one small handheld makes it worth it to me. I have a phone to play the higher end stuff, but man I just can't wait for it to come.
@ that’s great to hear, I have the Anbernic SP, Anbernic RG Cube, PSP, PS Vita and Steam Deck for my retro needs lol I have a little collection
Buy a new game, start the game, game has open world, game has a crafting system that requires looting mechanic and a skull tree. Cant we just have a game that you can pick up and play or does everything require a significant time investment.
meanwhile multiplayer games:
>enters rocket league and then playing 3 matches takes 20 minutes with ton of fun
>then leaves, GIGACHAD
@@notwhitebeard4749nobody talks to eachother in most multiplayer games anymore though so it feels like youre playing against bots
It can get overwhelming for damn sure but some do good enough to make you not regret investing that time in ir
@godieinafirenow, et al, well, I hate to break it to you, but the really good video games WILL require a good bit of time investment, and not just modern video game titles, but classic video game titles as well. Something like, say a Disgaea video game, or its related series of La Pucelle and Phantom Brave, will have literally hundreds of hours of content, so if you all want to act like you all have ADHD, then maybe video games are not for you, or, at the very least, go play things like the World Series of Poker or something if you want to control how long that your game lasts.
I stopped buying new games since Dead Rising 4
That game really opened my eyes into seeing that you should absolutely not buy any new games before seeing gameplay.
Honestly at this point there needs to be another game crash so publishers stop pushing censorship and dei
I'd say that sometimes even seeing gameplay isn't even enough. I can't remember what they are right now, but I've bought some games where the gameplay looks amazing, but then the controls were just so freaking terrible that it ruined it for me.
i absolutely can’t stand when ppl say an older game is sluggish or outdated cause it’s got different controls or 30fps. foh. tell me you didn’t grow up in 90s without telling me straight up.
Gotta play Retro in 60fps
@@murderman8578 as long as it’s a solid 30fps i’m good. idk if crts made 30fps feel better too but i never cared about fps unless its choppy af
@@Hypno_BPM nah
I'm too used to 60-120fps ever since switching to PC
@@murderman8578 okay? we’re talking retro games/consoles not pc gaming
@@Hypno_BPM They are better emulated on a big monitor and 60 fps
Careful with the emulation footage, Nintendo's been on a crusade against emulation lately
I have like 300 videos of emulation on my channel to say otherwise 😂
@@zacziggarotThat's just the algorithm not favoring your videos, which also makes them fly under the ninjas' radar.
@@CaptainFalcon333Much like Digimon, I'll be able to avoid scrutiny simply by not being popular
If Nintendo acts like a criminal towards innocent people, then I will treat Nintendo like the criminal that it ironically pretends to not be in the end.
I totally agree with you. There's definitely something to be said about the power of imagination. It can make you feel totally immersed in a PS1 game, despite the outdated graphics and cumbersome controls. I think a lot of new games fail to reach full immersion for a couple of reasons. The first is because there is very little use of your imagination so you're kind of just there for the ride and not necessarily as engaged with the game. The second is because imagination helps hide all of the flaws in what is presented. In a very realistic game, it's easy to be snapped out of immersion if the game does something unexpected, or part of the experience isn't as polished as the rest of the game.
I've been mainly playing 5th Gen and older games lately because modern games seem to be missing something. Some people might say it's just nostalgia, but I'm playing some PS1 games that I missed out on when I was a kid, and they're great.
Thanks for the awesome video, subscribed!
I hate bad video game controls in ANY era of video games, and, in all honesty, the Resident Evil/Biohazard 2, 3, and 4 remakes were WAY overdue, and, in the cases of the first 2 video games, they literally make the original versions of those video games obsolete. Moreover, if I wanted to play a game with truck-like controls, then I would play mech, or mecha, video games, or actual truck video games like American/Euro Truck Simulator! Also, if I wanted to use my imagination, then I would do like SpongeBob and Patrick do with boxes. When I want to play video games, I not only care for the fun, but also if it looks, as well as plays, well as well. Why MUST it be a war between either a game plays good and has fun, and replay value, or it looks good and sounds good, and has uniqueness?
Hello! I'm a professional game designer and dev for an indie studio (though these days I seem to do more designing than dev work? regardless) and I agree that there is a steady increase in just a lack of what I would consider "games worth playing as opposed to watching".
Many games, including some indies, focus a LOT on story and presentation of story, and often completely ignore the aspect that makes videogames what they are. The interactive challenge aspects. Often it's what sells, it's what people are familiar with, it's what people can do brain dead and feel like they got something out of it. So I'd say it's not just a suits thing, it's also a "mass of casual gamers" thing. As their preferences for games that within the "game" part:
- Aren't challenging (the casual player doesn't want to have to struggle to get their story)
- Aren't unique (if a casual gamer isn't familiar with a mechanic already, they don't bother learning it)
- Aren't deep (the greater the depth, the more the casual gamer will often ignore them)
- Aren't precise (there's tons of aim assists, giant player attack hitboxes, and input buffers casuals enjoy)
So to do the mass appeal companies try to accomodate the mass appeal audience due to the money influence.
It's easy to point the finger solely at those higher up, but don't think the same doesn't happen in indie studios as well for similar reasons. It can happen to anyone who's goal is to appeal to the masses. There's a market there so they'll tend to go for it.
What I think old games got (aside from the money) is that videogames were not ONLY a form of getting money. They also viewed it as an art form. And art form of interactivity and human experience. This isn't something that's felt by the AAA industry, because it often feels like it's a blockbuster movie you can interact with, as opposed to be an interactive experience that happens to have blockbuster movie quality visuals and story. The few exceptions are the standouts.
I also don't think a burning from the ground up of the AAA space is the only option. That seems extremely un-nuanced and likely only going to shove everyone into the indie space making it untennable for most even more than it already is. But rather I think if they returned to form and instead broke up their giant companies into "lots of smaller companies making smaller games", the suits wouldn't have a single thing to focus on, and resources would be split between them all, forcing the more creative individuals to flex their creative muscles more. They are talented individuals, but they don't get many opportunities to show that individuality. At least that's my two cents on what I view as a means of fixing the issues without creating bigger problems for everyone.
"as graphics improve, gameplay goes down" I was a teenager in high school when I first made that observation, and my peers thought I was stupid. I am not a man in my late 30s and the majority of games I play are either games that I played growing up, were around as I were growing up, or have a similar presentation to those games I grew up playing. some of the games I find myself coming back to in recent years are games like Terraria, Core Keeper, Hollow Knight, Cuphead, but also you mentioned a more modern game in terms of age and presentation that I come back to with quite some frequency, being Metal Gear Rising. one of those rare cases where a modern game didn't feel like it sacrificed gameplay just to look good, because it was able to do both. I don't want games that hold my hand and heavily tutorialize the heck out of the game. I wanna be able to jump in, play the game, and learn as I play because the mechanics allow for that, something that was a staple in classic games because we didn't have actual Tutorials. go play classic mega man to see what I mean, or even watch the classic Sequelitis video on Mega Man 2, even.
That argument is b
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, and you all know it as well. The REAL problems are greed, politics, and agenda peddling, and NOT the graphics.
100%. Older games had so much heart and soul put into them. Today they are just very pretty empty husks.
There were plenty of sh*t ones too, and buggy games too.
@@techknow9237the best AAA game i played so far is The Surge. Really enjoyable.
Even the most soulless corporate cash grab game is probably made by people who genuinely care about their work. Making games is not easy and is always a journey of compromises and tough choices. it is the overall structure of the AAA game industry that has no heart or soul, not the developers.
Not excited for new games and playing only old games has been a mood for me too lately... Been playing older games like Ninja Gaiden Black, old 3D and 2D Mario, the Metal Gear Solid series, Splinter Cell, LOTS of retro pixel and 3D games... Got sucked into the Tomb Raider trilogy even though it's a remaster, the games themselves are old and I love switching between modern and PS1 graphics... Been addicted to MGSV and even that game is already 9 years old, and to see how much gaming has gone down hill from even back then is just crazy...
@jazzimel remember upgrading the Wooden Sword to the Unlabored Flawlessness in Ninja Gaiden Black. My God! Now days that would be DLC
@@Tenacityfromtheglass Exactly, sad but true 😭🤣
Exactly. Modern developers doesn't have any passion for games creating, they are just for the money with boring games.
after being involved in game dev as part of Beloved Rapture, a recent jrpg released a little more than a week ago, it’s very much misunderstood by the consumer who’s in charge of the decisions for modern games to to be what they are. Often they blame the developer, saying it’s their fault but that couldn’t be farther from the truth with your favorite companies today. redirect your eyes to the ones who aren’t the face of the game or company…the investors.
Investors believe somehow that money and numbers can keep going up with no ceiling, and so they implement ridiculous choices that they believe would help generate never ending income. but that will never work in many scenarios and as a result, the developers get trampled and pushed aside, forced to change their vision for the sake of the investors who want more than just a return on their money.
Indie devs are proof that developers care if they don’t have people on their backs changing their vision, like the team I worked with. Developers literally just want to make a fun game or great story, that’s it. but no, they get tossed under the bus for decisions that weren’t theirs to make, but under contract, they can’t speak of such things and are the scapegoat to save face for the company.
like shadow generations and shadow the hedgeghog which they are not edgy but boring.
As a modern developer, nothing could be further from the truth. Indie developers make games out of passion and are usually not rewarded for it at all.
@@MaMastoast thank you for this. I'm not sure what happened to my original reply, it seems to have been deleted for some reason but I said the same thing here as an indie dev myself. For some reason, I still get notifications despite my comment being deleted. How do I make it stop lol?
I am going to have to say modern games are almost too floaty or "naturalistic" in terms in a negative way, like things just play automatic to the point I am not paying attention and loses that tactile feeling where old games tend to be more rigid in how they play and encourages some clearer mastery and focused engagement.
The pickup and play aspect of retro games is what makes them so much fun; you can basically finish them in a couple of hours and get to something else, there are just short bursts of fun
Let me know how long it takes you to finish NES Bionic Commando, without using the internet or modern action replay. (rewind button) Then try Lolo 1 and 2. Then go with SMB3, but no warps. Streetfighter 2010 is good for six months before you get gud. Dragon Warrior 2 is a monster without a guide as well, and even at max level there are party wipe encounters all the way to Hargon.
We use to search every single level for every coin, chit, 1up, powerup etc... Most games back then had a way to grind out lives, but even then they would usually max out at 15 that is F lives.
If the games had passwords we would experiment with those. We had a method that would eventually allow us to load all kinds of game states. Reggie taught me how to figure out which parts of which passwords set which bytes to load the game state.
Modern games are essentially quick time event movies, and any challenge presented usually has an "easy" button to glide right through it. I mean GOW4 was beaten in a few hours. GOW did not have that problem, PS2 era still had good games.
Being able to finish in a couple of hours is especially important when you can't save your game!
Take Zone 66, for instance (DOS, needs a 386 with 2MB of memory, and is very picky about your configuration). The full version has 8 episodes, but you can't save within one, and the game only saves your story progress when you finish them in order. You have to finish the whole episode in one sitting. Fortunately, that only takes an hour or so, but you do need to find an hour of uninterrupted time to actually play for.
Totally agree. Old games are designed and complete vs half-assed money guzzling games of today.
5:15 they're also smaller in scope, environments as well as characters are memorable, everything is much easier to digest. Modern games and their massive scope requires more work to move around, to process things going on. You might get a message while playing, or see some ad.
I've been telling all my friends for years that older games reign supreme. Only now they've realized that it's true. SNES, Gamecube and PS2 will always be the pinnacle of gaming
PC gaming also had its best years between 1993 and 2003 imo. And PS1 was delivering good stuff too
I also have to play an entire series from the beginning. I bought like a dragon: infinite wealth and then started playing the entire Yakuza series from the beginning just so I could start up infinite wealth and now I am a hardcore Yakuza fan!
4:27 I AGREE WITH YOU. FULLY.
I think the "realistic graphics" rabbithole is a STUPID TREND, brought about by Executives to appease stock investors who demanded the products LOOK, better and better, that, SOMEHOW, caught on with BRAINDEAD STREAMERS, in turn their audiences and the like, who just fed into the bullshit that is, "OOOH, PRETTY GRAPHICS MEAN GAME BETTER! So what I have to drop 3K every ten years just to be able play the newest games? THE GAME IS PRETTY!"
"Oh but, if I'm paying 60 dollars for a game, I want it to look like the tech-demos they showed at the gaming convention, or just be high fidelity!"
Well, then, if you were ACTUALLY putting your money where your mouth is, you wouldn't be buying console schlop. You'd be spending 3K on a PC that's only going to last a little longer than the consoles, and then paying for someone who knows how to make sure your game runs fine, to maintain it!
It might not be EVERYONE you meet, but, you have atleast 1 friend, who will turn their nose up to a GREAT GAME, just because it isn't as grahpically impressive as Eldin Ring, Read Dead Redemption, any of the movie-games like "the Last of Us", God of War Ragnarok, MH World, etc.-
Funny, it seems "lasting as long as the consoles" means how long until the hardware dies. The last time I got a faster processor because I wanted an upgrade, I went from a Phenom II x4 to a Core i7 3930k. The subsequent replacement of that one was due to a hardware failure a bit over five years ago. All my graphics card replacements since going from a Geforce 6600 to a GTX285 have been due to hardware failures, too.
Agree. I have that friend that only look most graphically good game, while ignoring games that actually fun
How is monster hunter world a movie game but not something like Stick it to the Man or like, i dunno, any RTS campaign? And why specifically monhun world and not the entire franchise? Capcom experimented with adding more story to world than previous games, but at the end of the day, it's like any other monhun game where you complete the same mission 14 times over (that does not have an ounce of story, mind you) to get the one rare drop you need, only to repeat the cycle for something slightly stronger.
Anyways #NeverForgetLocLac
There aren’t many modern games that get me excited. I love stuff like Metroid Dread, the new Dooms, Space Marine 2, etc. Heck even the Tomb Raider remasters are pretty well done. But nothing quite appeals to me anymore like classic games or games that are made to match that spirit. I’ve started buying PS2 and PS1 games again at my local retro store and have been having a good time doing so. I’m even trying games I haven’t before just to keep things fresh for me.
Side note, props to you for playing one of my favorite Metroids for this video. Love Zero Mission!
Pizza Tower's developer, McPig, made me realize how much better modern Indie is compared to our current AAA market.
During the development process, he got feedback on how much better the game would be if it revolved primarily around Peppino's fast-paced movement, so he redesigned the levels to encourage exploration and speed. The result is a game that's extremely fun to move around in and takes full advantage of Peppino's moveset.
Contrast that with Western developers like Ubisoft, Bethesda, and EA flat out spitting on fan feedback with games like Star Wars: Outlaws and Starfield, and it's pretty obvious how far we've fallen in gaming; (tg we have Japanese and Indie developers who are actually passionate about giving gamers what they want)
A good rule of thumb for whether the developer really cares about their game is whether they bother to make a native Linux version. Set your Steam store preferences to only show games with a Linux version, and the amount of crap that shows up drops dramatically. Of course, it does miss quite a few good Windows-only games, but you can directly search for those when you hear about them, and they'll probably work with Proton on Linux, anyway. Whether you can ditch Windows for gaming at this point depends on what you play. If it's mostly multiplayer with malware-like anti-cheat, you're stuck on Windows. If not, you can probably make the move.
@@Roxor128 There are ways around this. I used Wine configuration for Mac OS because some older PC games I tried to play on Macintosh didn't run.
Linux has a big enough support base that will help you play many PC classics, especially titles like Heroes of Might & Magic 3.
The AAA has been openly showing contempt for players for a few years now. This is why all of my game purchases this year have been indie and small studios. I trust one or two games on their merits alone, and everything else gets ignored because I have a limited amount of money and a small list of people who deserve it
This is sort of what I did back when the PS5 launched. I slowly got a few consoles, large storage devices, modded them and filled them up with games/dlc. Currently have an Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS Vita. The Vita runs my PS1 and PSP games as well while the PS3 handles the PS2 exclusives I can't play on my original Xbox. 900 games across the 4 consoles and the best part is that it doesn't take physical space.
Plus I still have my Steam/GOG libraries so I'm not going to run out anytime soon and I like replaying games with good gameplay loop like Burnout 3.
Can we get the list you mentioned at 2:10? Great video, BTW!
I have it pinned in the comments if you're still interested in seeing it. It's pretty big already, and I might have to update soon since I've played through even more this year!
Retro games feel like games. A lot of the newer stuff can feel like work. Having to spend the first few hours in "employee training" and still feeling like you dont have it down, all the extra filler for no reason, and again the ultra realism kinda kills the fun escape that games should bring.
One of my problems with modern games is the insistence on using EVERY BUTTON on a controller. Just because you have the buttons doesn't mean ever single one needs a function.
Games beaten/2024
Month of January 12 games
#1 God of war - ghost of sparta
#2 Spiderman: mysterio's menace
#3 Megaman battle network
#4 Golden sun
#5 Super metroid
#6 Mario kart ds
#7 Mario kart 8 deluxe
#8 Sonic colors ds
#9 Super mario wonder
#10 Metal slug double x
#11 Metal slug
#12 Super princess peach
Month of February 14
#13 Donkey kong country: tropical freeze
#14 Donkey kong country
#15 Donkey kong country 2: diddy's kong quest
#16 kirby and the forgotten land
#17 Kirby squeek squad
#18 God of war chains of Olympus
#19 Grand theft auto liberty city stories
#20 Metro last light
#21 Shadow of the tomb raider
#22 Links awakening
#23 Mario and luigi super star saga
#24 Ion fury
#25 Doom 1993
#26 Hogwarts legacy
Month of March
#27 Prodeus
#28 Need for speed underground
#29 Stray
#30 Marvels Spiderman remastered
#31 Journey
#32 Super lucky's tale
#33 narita boy
#34 dragons dogma
#35 sonic generations
#36 need for speed underground 2
#37 true crime streets of LA
Month of April
#38 True crime streets of new york
#39 DragonBall z budokai
#40 dragon ball z budokai 2
#41 dragon ball z budokai 3
#42 dragon ball z supersonic warriors
#43 legacy of goku
#44 dbz legendary super warriors
#45 super mario land
#46 super mario land 2: 6 golden coins
#47 dragon ball: advanced adventure
Month of may
#48 pokemon: yellow version
#49 Warioland (super marioland 3)
#50 kirby's dreamland 2
#51 super mario bros (super mario all stars)
#52 the legend of zelda: skyward sword hd
#53 Luigi's mansion
#54 new super mario bros.
#55 Fire emblem
#56 new super mario bros. 2
#57 kirby: Planet Robobot
#58 Hades
Month of june
#59 megaman x
#60 new super mario bros. U Deluxe
#61 pokemon: Heart gold
#62 tiny Terry's turbo trip
#63 sleeping dogs
#64 resident evil 4: remake
#65 a short hike
#66 Sonic advance
#67 Sonic advance 2
#68 another crabs treasure
#69 lost planet: extreme condition
#70 sonic adventure
#71 half life 2
#72 sonic advance 3
#73 kingdom hearts: final mix
Month of july
#74 alice: return to madness
#75 firewatch
#76 pokemon: White version
#77 forza horizon 4 (played all content)
#78 chrono trigger
#79 ultimate Spiderman
#80 squirrel with a gun
#81 need for speed most wanted
@@Tenacityfromtheglass HOLY SHIT THIS LIST IS LONG!! I'm astonished 😲 🗿🗿
@HighLogs_da_realist420 I originally wanted to beat 100 games in a single year. I wouldn't recommend this, though, because it becomes a part-time job instead of being fun. They all blur into one another, too, so I barely remember my experiences with them.
Dang I went through 27 games last year and thought I was doing something 😂
Just in case, i would highly recommend to you a videogame series called "Ganbare Goemon," a franchise created and developed by Konami that began in 1986 and it spawned a lot of sequels and spin-offs until 2005 when it's last game released. Despite being vastly unknown in the West, it was actually one of the most prolific Konami franchises during its era. It's kind of a combination of an adventure game with platformer, and the games are very quirky, fun, and unique experiences. I mostly recommend checking out the first 3 SNES games (especially the second one) and the two N64 games.
Damn you got BUSY
Emulation opens up so many games that we grew up and missed. I ended up doing wheel spin every month to dedicate to one console for that months and I’m just having blast and finally reawaken gamer in me. This month was 3DS months and not playing any modern online games for a month made me realize how time wasting those games are.
I remember when my more "snob gamer" friends used to look down on me for being a simple, retro-gaming and nintendo fanboy... years later I see them use their 1 Gorillion Dollarz PC-Masterrace equipment and/or modified expensive consoles just to play ports of my old GCN games 😅, because many of the new titles are just... kinda bland, good looking but bland.
Would love to see a fantasy RPG game with a whole melting pot of elements. Robots riding horse carriages, enormous metal tower flying on a propeller below and balloons above. People flying around balloons from flower dew, having undeads not as evil, but as daylight-loving immortals, with elves being incomprehensible creatures. With a frankenstein monster having a drink with a talking teapot robot and a vampire elephant. Unrestricted imagination.
i am playing ''Urban Reign'' for ps2, and still didn't get bored, it's just an awesome fighting
we need a sequel ! its sooo much fun when you got people joining your party as well !
@@MrQ12elve indeed :D
Everything you said about modern games applies to modern comics for me.
For the last several years I've been tearing through classic comics from when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s that I missed out on for various reasons.
Even the bad stories have redeeming qualities because they were written with the intent to entertain, stories like Spider-Man's clone saga, Superman's blue arc, Marvel's Heroes Reborn, etc.
I was maining Halo Reach on Master Chief Collection and Destiny 1, but then TMNT Shredder's Revenge dropped new DLC that added Mondo Gecko and Mona Lisa and I hopped back over to it.
I deleted the save file on my Pokémon Leaf Green and started playing it again a couple of days ago and your point about the classic 2-D Pokémon games is spot on.
I saw an original Game Boy Green version hack on cartridge for a great price, so I bought it and I'm waiting for it to arrive. Looking forward to doing the trainer glitch to encounter Mew on it.
Greatly appreciate this video.
@MRF1983 I still remember playing pokemon ruby and seeing my reflection in the water. Nobody was doing pixel art like gamefreak back in the day. Absolute legends!
Ikr, bigger is not always better, big sandbox openworld games can be very boring do to much walking, no teleporting around the map, stupid must do filler sidequest, I prefer games with smaller world maps like Radiata stories, and Breath of fire 3 appose to huge world maps. Than you have the too many long cut scenes problem. I don't like twenty minute or longer cut scenes get to the damn game already.
Stan Lee explained the reason they started outselling DC Comics back in the day was because at Marvel, they started having fun and forgot about the audience, simply writing the stories they themselves wanted to read. DC Comics would instead be busy analyzing what Marvel was doing, saying things like: "Marvel uses lots of red in their covers" and then they would copy this, hoping it would lead to more sales. But Marvel saw this and made their covers more blue, still outselling DC. DC was never able to figure out what made the difference. It was soul, it was passion, it was a group of people having fun creating these imaginary worlds and characters. At DC, they were doing what modern gaming corporations are doing. A Gameboy and SNES game could be made by 6-12 people in 6-12 months. They were like a group of friends having fun and being creative. A small team is like a family. In a modern corporation, there are too many people, and those people are largely unhappy and quietly quit. They are not like families or groups of friends. There is no soul. The original developers were passionate about games and making them. They were nerds and games were easy enough to make that it was possible to do it this way.
Yellow paint just seems like a lazy way to avoid making the environment organically guide you. There are far less jarring ways to hint you forward, like Zelda games (Before BotW and TotK made the answer "everywhere") will have vines on climbable surfaces.
Yellow paint is super lazy, it's basically an arrow pointing you where to go. In other words, if you had to paint an arrow in the world, your map sucks. Most climbing and scaffolding sucks anyways, should be reserved for secret/optional routes.
@@JohnDoe11VII
Yeah, I don't think people have a problem with clues in the environment but it has to not be so immersion breaking.
Only 2 mins in, but I love it! I also made this year the year of defeating my backlog! I have played and finished so many games this year that I had just been sitting on for whatever reason. I had to just focus and commit and drop some of my live service multiplayer time sinks and go back to good old story/narrative driving single player or co-op experiences.
I've had so many "why the hell didn't I play this" moments this year. It has been glorious
"it's the year of the backlog" man, this is so true, I'm playing way more older games lately and I'm having a blast, except a few exceptions here and there (Elden Ring, DOOM, BG3) I don't really play or care for "modern" gaming at all
That resonates with me a lot. You’re definitely not alone with that feeling (I actually made a somewhat close video to yours last week lol)
I’ve been playing mostly snes and snes remakes on ps5 (I would highly recommend to look into the Tengo Project games)
Anyway, great video, long live retro (and indie) gaming!
@williamhououin I just got done watching your video, too. Yeah, man, loading times were non-existent back in the day. I'm watching your annoying trends video right now.
@@Tenacityfromtheglass Ha! That’s nice thank you 😄
What was fun in the modern vs retro video was the insightful comments I got. Not everyone agreed with me, but they all had something interesting to say. Very happy about how it turned out
"Oh boy I can't wait to have time to play BMW!" *Proceeds to play metroid II on Anbernic RG405V for 3 hs*
I feel so sorry about you 3DS loss, I have a hacked 3DS and it's the most fun I have with games, I play more often than not with my older 3DS both old and "new" games and with homebrew you can do so much and I use my Wii more than I use Steam, specially after finding out about the "not owning games" disclaimer
That's why'll I'll stay with Nintendo always, their games are fun, don't have hyper realistic textures, no 30 minutes cutscenes, don't need online connection and are ready to play on the go
I think the only way that the industry will change at this point in time is if AAA studios crash, which we could very well see. I have to agree with this approach of "focusing on the backlog" as I don't want to support a bunch of games that are just meaningless slop.
@@matthewcrockett288 I used to dread the backlog. Now it's like the shelter from the shit storm that has become modern gaming.
@@Tenacityfromtheglass I got wrapped up in a lot of live service games, so I never got back to the backlog. I think that 2025 will be my year of the backlog. I mostly bought a bunch of games on steam, while on sale and I never got around to finishing them.
Thanks for making a video of what literally every gamer already knows but is not readily admitting 24/7 due to various reasons. Just like the internet and the gig economy, enshitification hit video games first and hit them hardest and then it hit other entertainment industries like Hollywood etc. Creativity in video games has been dead for well over a decade.
I've just been sticking to indie and retro games. I feel like AAA games have lost the plot.
For someone who grew up in the 2000s with Gamecube (and NES, SNES from older family member), there is a feeling to those games that I somehow can’t get from the remastered/ported versions. The older games had a certain charm that I can’t quite find today.
I've been done with most modern games, and remas"turds" for quite some time. I grew up when gaming was at an ever exponential resonance, but now Modern game developers have either been focused on the absolute wrong aspect of gaming (as in not gameplay), or they're bent and determined on destroying existing IPs by shoving wokeness into it.
I don't even complain about it anymore, I just enjoy the older games or the indie games that actually have heart. I'll also add rom hacks and fanmade games to the mix. There's simply... so many good games from our past, that are more worthy of our time. I got a new computer recently, and I can't wait to play OLDER games on it! And one of the best parts is? A lot of these games are ones that you can no longer buy first hand copies of anymore, which means NOBODY who worked on the game is losing any money if i chose to emulate it.
There's no need to dispair of where the "modern audience" games are headed these days, just hop the fence where the greener pastures reside, it's a blast!
Love your take, fully agree, you've got my vote so to say. Same reason why I'm passing on DQ3 'Demake'. Good luck with your backlog!
my dude this is the best commentary on modern gaming I've consumed lately!
I appreciate your take here. I've been gaming since 1990 and it's been wild to watch the quality of games go down over the decades. I completely agree that high fidelity games are just not as memorable and lose their impact because of it. These days I've been trying out more indie games made by small teams and there's so many good ones that remind me of the better times.
My first game that I completed was Super Mario Bros 3 in 1990, so its safe to say you're a bit older than me. Your account is also old, made when RUclips was actually good.
Why Nintendo won’t just give us an affordable way to play their backlog, like so much of it compared to virtual console and NSO, it’s beyond me: it’s money sitting in pockets.
I get that it won’t be easy or cheap, but it’s an untapped market. We don’t need a bunch of NES games, we need more
NSO makes more money for them, plain and simple. I dislike subscription services and will likely not subscribe to the NSO again (unless if I have friends that also wanna play online), but it's a no-brainer why Nintendo trickles down games on their NSO subscription service. They almost made $1bn alone on NSO subscriptions in 2021, so Nintendo is chasing what makes them money (even though their online infrastructure needs work in general).
That being said, if VC becomes a thing again, I'll definitely buy that. I like how HAMSTER handled the ACA series of arcade titles, and I love how the arcade versions of Donkey Kong, DK Jr., DK3, Punch-Out!, and Super Punch-Out! have easily accessible ways to obtain them legally thanks to ACA. It would be cool if Nintendo allowed for individual purchases of retro games again as subscriptions are annoying.
@@theonewhowrotethis5681 I mean, honestly, we're in a Catch-22 situation here. Back when Virtual Console was a thing a lot of the games they put out just frankly didn't sell well at all. Nintendo fans always *say* they want to buy the old games, but back in the day they wouldn't actually buy all that many of them. The NSO service is making considerably more money for them than Virtual Console ever did. And don't get me wrong, I miss VC, but the writing was on the wall for years.
Well said! I lost interest in "modern" gaming a while ago. I too and working on my back log of games. My current gaming trio is my Steam Deck, my Switch OLED and my Analogue Pocket with a Sega Game Gear adapter. With those systems along I have hundreds of games to play and that is not including my other retro systems. Old is gold because the way forwards is backwards.
@malcolmar I don't think I heard that phrase before. I'm gonna have to steal that. I've always said that every branch that strays too far from its roots inevitably dies. Games like Space Marine 2 didn't sell well because it was 40k. It sold well because it was an Xbox 360 game that was released in 2024
@@Tenacityfromtheglass Agreed and definitely use that phase. I can't take the credit for coming up with it either but it applies to so many things. I actually missed the original Space Marine game and just bought it on sale for my Steam Deck when the second game was released. Another area of gaming that got me more excited than "modern" AAA releases are new physical releases for old systems like all the new games and hacks released for the Sega Genesis over the years like Xeno Crisis, and Paprium. There is even a new Doom ROM hack game called Doom CD32X that will play for the Sega Genesis, 32X, Sega CD tower of power. To simply call it a ROM hack undermines all the talent and skill that went into this port of Doom. I am hoping someone makes a physical release. Quality and passion are never an accident and these releases from fans turned game programmers show it. Keep up the great work!
Firstly, the GameCube controller being mirrored in the thumbnail hurts.
I have been fascinated by 1985-2000 retro games past the point where they were obviously struggling and the player was aware they were up against hardware limits (retro games have always been pushing the limits of what their weak hardware can do, but players stopped feeling it). I've been trying to find out what makes them so special because I want to take direct inspiration and make a game that could fit in, some game developers claim to feel inspired by retro games but then they add in MTX, DLC, and super polished graphics; I've also been learning about GBA game development and would love to one day attempt a demake of the game I'm planning to make for modern hardware - so I do know that what I will do should work for a GBA (I chose GBA which is after the 2000s which I said above because it has the features I want and is accessible, full colour, really capable, still retro).
However, I can't actually find a lot of concrete things to do to achieve it, I do have a list but it does seem a little wishy-washy.
There's simplicity, you play to do this one job it trusts itself enough that the core game is good it isn't going to pad time with a variety of tasks, the core game needs to be so solid that's all people want. This also pairs with controls which like you mentioned I also hate it when there's loads of controls, for my game I only need movement and jump and some people have said that it seems like not enough, but it's all I need to accomplish the core gameplay. I have also chosen to remove variable jump height which is basically standard on platformers, but it opens up options for level designs, also the platformer I'm making I'd call a "physics platformer" and you can't just change the player's physics, but it makes the controls simpler.
Then there's difficulty, because of their length they are notoriously difficult, and while I don't want to make something that's inaccessible and I do want to offer easier challenges to people, I've made some really difficult challenges which combined with the simple controls it means that it should be easier for players to master the controls and accomplish difficult things. I will be adding in modern assist features from the standard coyote time and jump buffering to more obscure assist features (I've got 8 assist features listed), it's going to be difficult but failure will come from grievious errors or not figuring out how to solve it, trying to balance difficulty without any of the frustration.
Authentic 16 bit graphics and music. It upsets me when someone uses pixel art because it's easier, then they make games where pixels aren't aligned and they'll even rotate pixelated graphics, it looks awful; I would never settle on using pixel graphics if it wasn't true to form. I love the art form and I'm not picking it to be lazy, I'm picking it to stress over how any single pixel is far more important and has to be perfect. The music I'm composing is made in FamiStudio and uses accurate emulation and the same rules apply, you can't just have chiptunes and then have chords in it or use a regular intrument, that's cheating, you don't need to resort to that.
Local multiplayer, split screen/being able to see everything on one screen - I have plans for 2, 3, and 4 player co-op. 2 player can be done sharing a keyboard (3 player could also share a keyboard wasd space, ijkl n, arrow keys right control but it would be very tight but doable, if people plug in a second keyboard then 3 and 4 players could play reasonably comfortable - 4th player could use numpad and 0 if 4 people are sharing 1 keyboard. With controls as simple as this we could fit in 2 more players tfgh v, and home del end page down enter, and if on an ISO keyboard could get a 7th in too [;'# right shift), past that controllers or LAN (I'm going to provide a demo, and demo can be used to connect to a host who has bought the game. Modern games require everyone to buy the same game just to get more sales, but that's the mark of being insecure about your game, I expect people will get the demo to play with a friend, and then afterwards play the demo and like the game enough to buy).
My game isn't going to be for everyone and that's ok, stop wasting time on mass appeal and put that effort into what the target audience wants. My game doesn't even have enemies "but people expect to kill things when they play platformers" but adding enemies would ruin the physics based platforming puzzles that relies on timing and well crafted mechanics where you have hundreds of new things to discover into kill this monster again, wait, no, there's 2 of them now. I shouldn't have to care for doing the popular thing when it limits the options of the game I really want to make. The enemies thing is something that retro games do poorly IMO, watching Metroid in the video you killed the same enemy multiple times, boring.
Score chasing, I thought of finding ways to add in a points mechanic, but I've settled on giving players a time, bonuses, and death count to chase for. I do think that just completing it faster to create more playtime is lazy, and so it's primarily the bonuses which challenge players with new techniques is the primary score chaser, it's just that speedrunning is popular and it would be stupid to ignore it as it doesn't hurt the goal of the game.
Then there are some things that are not true to retro games but I feel don't take away.
I hate DLC and I hate MTX, if I buy a game I want to know that I'm not going to be asked to pay more. I am expecting to release free updates which isn't a thing that retro games can do, but I'm a solo developer and I have enough ideas to fill 80+ hours of playtime (and I don't want to make a sequel, I have an idea for a sequel but it will only not be a part of this game because it has substantial changes) but I'm going to be targetting far less for the initial release (it will still be a full game, nobody will think "they *needed* to do more", I just have so many ideas), and then have free updates for years - it's mostly just the art that will be waiting after release, and if the game sells I can hire artists to take some of the burden. It's a lot more content than what retro games had.
However, I don't want the ability to update lead to me being lazy, I need to treat the release and every update as putting the game in a state I'm very happy with as if I could never update the game and fix things afterwards. I rarely play games that I can't find bugs in, they're a lot of fun to find, and it comes across as extremely lazy. If I want people to pay me, they need the game to be as perfect as possible - retro games are known for their bugs, but, the bugs don't scream "lazy" it screams "wtf, how was that ever going to be found within the year of development time, it took 20 years to find that bug". I have access to AI libraries to make an AI play my game (the controls are simple it can learn, and I know exactly how the physics works to reimplement it in whatever the AI needs and can run as fast as possible - physics is in a fixed update), as an extra to human playtesters which will hopefully find issues that others can't find.
I am thinking about leaderboards, internet connectivity isn't something retro games are known for, but leaderboards are. Internet connectivity will not be required, so many games require a stable internet connection which my Steam Deck outside of my house (where I play it) cannot provide; I am fairly confident I have a strategy to validate times so people can't just forge times and it doesn't require an internet connection and you will be able to submit scores when you go online.
I don't actually like playing retro games, they're far too limited and they existed before we learnt how to make games. Super Maio Bros is a bad game, it's bottom 25% of all platformers I've played, it's really unenjoyable and a slog to get through. But I like the idea of them. I want my games to live up to the nostalgia of old games
Because of Retro Game Corps I bought my first Emulation Handheld the Anbernic RG35XX-H. I always loved handheld gaming because of my Switch and PSP but the 4:3 screen and the 6-8 hour battery life is just game changing and it's pocketable wich is great for my busy life. If I have a few minutes I play a few rounds of Street Fighter or a few minutes a puzzle game for the GameBoy and I can continue 2 or 3 hour later. It's just awesome man!
There's absolutely zero point in buying an overpriced 50 series card to play lame AF modern AAA games that lack the mechanics of games 10 years prior. Not only are they woefully unoptimised, but they are actually hostile to the very people who pay for them.
They're out of their tiny activist minds if they think I'm going to spend that much money to be insulted, both on a personal level and a financial one by serving me up a microwave meal when I'm paying sirloin steak prices.
I, and pretty much everyone else, has enough in our back catalogue steam library to last us the next 5 years easily.
These Western Devs claim slanderously that it's "hate" that's driving me. Classic projection on their part. I find them hilarious that people unwilling to get ripped off is down to hatred.
I couldn't care less if they go under, on their own arrogant heads be it.
Its intentional ragebait to drive online discussions of else mediocre and forgettable games. Its always fed to the devs by higher ups.
Pretty much almost every shitty decision in a game or its marketing always comes from executives or ceos, not devs. In most cases all devs do is just put plans by directors or producers into actual code. In the hierarchy devs are quite far at the bottom."Devs actually design, write and plan the game" is something that only ever was true for small studios developing pc games in the 80s and 90s. Same applies to writers.
Your sole job is to polish whatever people higher up in the hierarchy put in front of you, even if its a steaming turd.
I was bought up on the c16, the c16+4, the c64, the Amiga, mega drive, SNES, ps 1,2,3,4 and 5. Xbox,360 and one as well as a few pc's.
The thing I remember of back in the day is that the Devs were doing it for fun. Coded in their bedrooms then sent off to a publisher to see if they wanted it or not.
The other flip side were in house Devs like ocean that threw money at licence's and churned out the same generic platform garbage.
It was the later of the two that allowed the marketing departments into the development and the rest is history.
The thing is, that people doing it for fun have no boundaries and will push for new mechanisms to build their ideas into reality.
People: Modern Gaming Is Bad
Me:
Rain Code
God Of War Ragnarok
Fire Emblem Engage
Dragon Ball Sparking Zero
Infinity Strash Dragon Quest
Kirby And The Forgotten Land
Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes
Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga
No More Heroes 3
Super Mario Bros Wonder
Super Mario Party Jamboree
Sonic X Shadow Generations
Princess Peach Showtime
Modern Gaming Is Not Bad, It's Just People Being So Blinded By Nostalgia
Yeah but they aren't No Mercy.
@@Curlyheart 🤨?
@@tbxnintendo531 WWF No Mercy
@@Curlyheart Based No Mercy.
Many of these are bland or straight up bad like Infinty Strash. I have zero nostalgia when I play most older games and even play ones that are older than me. It's a bit silly to just brush liking older games as nostalgia. I could just say you only these newer games due to recency bias.
Just based on your title and not the video’s content, I will say I generally prefer older games to modern games because it was easier to pick them up and play. I loved being able to drop in and learn how it works relatively quickly. They felt like actual games where the focus was to make them fun. When I play a modern game, such as The Last of Us or Red Dead 2, the focus seems to be making a cinematic experience rather than an actual fun game. Although I respect this and acknowledge the tremendous amount of work that goes into this, this is usually why I prefer the older stuff.
The Last of Us and Red Dead 2 were both made for mainstream modern audiences. They are not the crowd that played Metroid Prime, Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, or Crash Bandicoot back in the day.
There will be no games after 2030. There will be no video cards for games, most of the big game companies will collapse. There will be no retro consoles and other stuff. Completely disappear sites or torrents where you could download games.... I know a little more than most, and this is my warning to everyone. Stock up. Stock up on hardware and peripherals (mice, keyboards, gamepads, USB sticks, cables) for PCs. Buy phones, wireless gamepads, power banks, retro consoles. Buy while you have the opportunity to buy it. Then it won't be available. Not at all. Time is running out, you have 6-7 years left.
Sure buddy.
There won't be power to run this shit in 10 years.
I'm pretty sure if that's what you're saying is true, gaming is going to not be a primary problem.
Fearmongering. Let me make a guess: you consider youself a conservative.
If you are sane, answer this: Why would anyone believe you?
I get so much nostalgia when playing older games. I think it's the smell. They just smell different.
A big chunk of games already was bad back then.
Just no one is gonna remember a mediocre game from 20 years ago.
Bad games 20 years ago are better than most games released today.
It kinda sucked too games were expensive as hell, no Steam, if you want to check out a game before you buy you had to get demo discs, no RUclips or Twitch.
Games are like music, we remember the hits and bangers but we forgot about the warehouses filled with trash.
@@allisongross2946 Go play Hydlide for the NES and then tell me it's better than any modern AAA game =P
@@FortWhenTeaThyme Its unique, made by passionate developers. It isnt homogenized garbage sold on buzzwords!
@@allisongross2946As someone that owned Hydlide for the NES back in the 80's, it was straight up garbage. Horrible repeating music. Garbage gameplay. Terrible game all and all.
Man I love playing games in release order and watching franchises grow and evolve, too. I wanted to get into Shin Megami Tensei at the end of last year, so I started up Megami Tensei for Famicom and ended up drawing my own maps and everything. Beat Shin Megami Tensei 2 and Nocturne while bedridden after a surgery, finished up SJ and 4 later, and I just recently cleared 4a. Been taking breaks in between games to keep the series fresh yeah, but my goal is to beat 5 before the year ends.
Great stuff man. Even though the bad parts of the industry are dying a slow death we still have great games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring that seem to be content to just be complete packages out of the door. Games like that come out every now and then and I'm more than happy with just one or two releases like that a year while I play endless retros and indies.
Nah... Games have changed, yes. But I, as a player, have changed even more. For me, the generation that grew since its youth with consoles, now are old people saying that "my times were better". When I was young, my father said the music, movies, cartoons and anything else I did was worse than in his youth. My grandfather said the same to my dad. Games are not the way they used to be. And my taste was formed to like those games. I'm trained to like anything similar to things that reached me at my formational years.
Games are not worse or better. They are different. And my generation is starting to feel that they are not the targer audience anymore. Our times are in the past. We are struggling to accept.
i partially agree. i dont think that i like games from my childhood more than modern releases. but there are simply fewer games releasing in general. and when they do release, theres a 50/50 chance that they are either horrendous or just pretty neat. but there ARE newer games like cyberpunk and elden ring that i absolutely adore. its just that most games that i feel like are filled with heart and soul, are games from 10-20 years prior. because games didnt cost as much to make back in the day as they do now, they had enough time to grow and release in a nearly perfect state.
I disagree...best eras of all other ones were beginning of 80s, entire 90s until mid 2000s.
For music, cinema, games, stile, thoughts, etc.
Sometimes I feel that the internet how it is nowadays have just f.....d up with all.
Beside that, indie games are there fulfilled with gems.
music and movies has consistently gotten worse over the last decades too and no i am not grandpa.
@@djsergiogarciaofficialok Boomer
@djsergiogarciaofficial
You're right. That was the cultural and entertainment peak. Things WERE better back then. Our entire culture has gone downhill since then and everything else gets dragged down with it. We as a people are worse, the culture is worse, the entertainment and art is worse, our habits and daily lives are worse. This has been an ongoing trend for quite a while now.
Nothing beats the struggle during my childhood to beat Megaman on the NES, that was so much fun.
Gamergate tried to save us.
Awful take lmao
You're so right about the value of games that aren't trying to be ultra-realistic. As someone who's been at least one console generation behind since the Xbox/GameCube era ended, I still experience amazing novelty with photorealism, and I can really enjoy wandering around a realistic natural environment. But it's really easy for every game to feel the same that way. With older games, or more stylised modern ones, I love that they have a distinctive art style - combined with the music, it becomes part of the game's unique atmosphere. It's also so tied in to my nostalgia for the games of my childhood, whereas I'm not so sure I'll feel that way about the visuals of today's photorealistic games. Fable is probably the youngest game from my past that I feel deep nostalgia for...
dreamcast era also ended but discontinued in 2009 however ps2 era ended permanently.
I feel very validated for a young gun to have experienced my chunk of video game history and become nostalgic for it. I grew up with NES, then Sega Genesis, N64, but even turning around and doing emulation on dial up Internet to relive the final fantasies, this video was pretty relatable. I spend devoted chunks on a select few games these days (dark souls series, Stardew)
Man alive, what excellent points you made Devin. I'm so happy to be able to get back into retro games too, and how I appreciate your video laying these details out. Plus, thank you for showing so much of Metroid: Zero Mission, such a good title from my favorite video game series of them all. :^) Take care.
I know how you feel. going back and beating things you only played a little of back in the day or not at all has been great. Ive been working on Custom Robo, Monster hunter freedom unite, Forza 1, and Shenmue. its been a blast
Practically speaking, whenever a game company has a board of directors-- whenever ANY company has a board of directors-- you can bet the quality of their products is going to be ass. You can bet they are going to skirt the law or even outright break it because they know the profits will be higher than the payout of any court case. They'll engage shamelessly in anti-consumer practices. By this point people should recognize it as a physical law of nature. Human nature, but still nature. There's not always a choice to break out. Cars. Computers. Phones..... You can't build them in your own basement. But the video game "industry" is a place where _art_ is created. Possibly the most influential form of art ever conceived to date. Art you can _interact_ with-- that you MUST interact with-- in order for it to be enjoyed. There is literally nothing else like it in human existence. And the beauty of it is, you CAN make it in your basement. There are nigh-countless passionate people working on these things, pouring their heart into it, that there is almost no reason at all to buy a triple-A title ever again. The argument itself is getting to be trite. "Hey look at this household name game company shoveling in all this crap gamers don't like!" Oh no kidding? Like I was ever planning to buy from that company in the first place. But fair enough, when my friends tell me I should play, I'll know in advance why I'm not going to. Friends are dumb anyway.
I remember one of total biscuits later reviews was doom 2016 and his happiness that you got a gun straight away and started playing without exposition was great.
I just can't be bothered with all this. got ghost of Tsushima and instantly got bored of following the person and creeping around the village at the start. Only have 30-60 mins to game just let me fight people FFS.
The thief games (originals) are my fav and the graphics look bad today but the atmosphere and level design is still unmatched imo. Just amazing.
Great video!
What game is on screen? Is it a super Metroid rom hack or a handheld metroid (I haven’t played any of them)?
Its Metroid Zero Mission for GBA
@@austinkonkol2472 thanks!
I feel you bro, although i wasn't born in the 8 and 16 bit era, my family never has the money to spend in the new fancy modern console, so i discovered the emulation world in my tiny notebook and that blowed my mind, metroid, sonic, chrono trigger, pokemon, earthbound, demon crest, mario, megaman, i felt in love for pixels, that was my childhood, and now that i have the money to buy any game i want the new releases are just disappointing. Hope is in the indie industry, that's a fact. Nice video, greetings from Mexico.
I'm a bit older than you mate, grew up on the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64. Back then in 1996, there was nothing like the N64, and Super Mario 64 at the time was amazing.
Really sad to see where the industry has gone, but the bigger problem is this has affected basically all entertainment media.
Thanks man I tought I did this because Im getting old. Putting away mario wonder the pokemon tcg for the gameboy (didnt play it for nostalgia) was my only real glue to a game expetrence in the last couple years
I like that you're speaking slower than most youtubers. I finally don't feel like I'm surrounded by people with overclocked mouths
It does kind of feel like most youtubers run on some strict formula. In my opinion, I'm tired of the same Mr. Beast style editing and adhd levels of energy. Usually, it's the same people begging for likes and subscribes
I've been advocating for the merits of retro gaming for like 15 years. I remember back in like 2007 people were acting like games from 1998 were so old they were unplayable. A game being old doesn't make it good, but its stupid to get rid of a good game just because it's old.
As far as realism in graphics go, I agree and disagree. Stylized graphics can be good, but a game like Super Metroid tried to have realistic graphics at the time and it looks amazing. I think what is missing is earnestness. When a 2D game these days is stylized it's almost done tongue-in-cheek. It's like it's done ironically. Like "Look how bad the graphics of our game is. Isn't this old school?" But no, old school games were trying their best. Making a game "pixel art" ironically instead of just putting 100% of your effort in earnestly making good game art is wrong.
And yeah, I miss just being able to hop into a video game. I also miss video games not being long. So many games have enough content to play for weeks or months. This can be good but at some point it's quantity over quality. A good 5 hour playthrough is better than 5 weeks of mediocrity.
DAMN CENSORS! I hate censorship.
I just recently beat Final Fantasy 1 for the first time, and have several retro and indie games that I want to play through (in between repeatedly playing the randomizer combining two of my favorite Zelda games: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. That combo randomizer is like my comfort game at the moment).
Graphics-wise, modern games can be absolutely gorgeous when done right, but there's just something about pixelated and early 3D environments that really catch my attention. Maybe it's the fact that the devs back in the day had to do more with less in some really creative ways. N64 and PS1 environments are some of my favorite aesthetics, and I'm glad that style seems to be in the indie spotlight at the moment.
Some games are just pretending to be a live game when they're actually unfinished especially adventure Gacha games. They just try to come up with events and gimmicks to acquire and retain players.