Thread: I'm going to permanently TIME-TRAVEL BACK to the "Old-Gen Gaming Catalogue" moving forward...(DonDonPachi, GET ITT!!!)

Miyazaki Loves Kojima

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After seeing a thread that showcased game developers from the 90's/2000's, I realized that perhaps the reason why the PS1/PS2/PS3 Gaming Catalogue was superior to today's mediocre library of gaymes was because:

1) The Energy of the Teams who develop the games was neutral/positive in terms of pure creative collaboration between themselves.

2) NO POLITICS attached to Old-Gen Gaming Catalogue, which means no negative energy attached to these games.

3) Developers still had a neutral/positive/optimistic outlook on life & humanity in general.

The 3rd point is crucial for this thread to be understood because I genuinely believe cynicism & sheer misanthropic energies have dominated gaming today (and the general psychosphere of most countries today 🌎).

This is why I decided tonight that I will no longer delve into any New-Gen gaming & will permanently stick to the 90's/2000's of gaming and perhaps 2010's for particular games 💅


See ya'll again in the next life, brotha❗
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This approach is what I've been doing with movies and television. It works out pretty well. Avoid new shit at all costs, most modern writers are just activists.

Same, though not intentionally. There are just so many fantastic movies or shows from the past to watch. In fact more than I will ever have time to see...why exactly do I need New content?

That question isnt an attack on New content, its a challenge. Be better than what I have already or be ignored.
 
Should I mention the excitement for the Paper Mario TTYD remake? I honestly believe that games were just better before the 'HD Twins' changed everything. Do you prefer Sticker Star, Color Splash or Origami King to PM64 or TTYD? Why? Do you prefer Final Fantasy 16 or Final Fantasy 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10?

Im more of a Final Fantasy 19 fan tbh

Wake me up in 20 years when youve finally played it
 
I'd recommend going through the 90s arcade stuff specifically. Quite a lot of those games still haven't been ported to modern systems. There's no story to preach at you. There's no downtime spent on tutorials and exposition. Jump in and play for a few minutes at a time, then jump back in to try again, over and over.
 
Modern retro style games are great, often have better gameplay than the old ones while still being fun oriented. Buuuuuuut unfortunately you always have to check the X bio for pronouns of the devs, they're everywhere.
 
Modern retro style games are great, often have better gameplay than the old ones while still being fun oriented. Buuuuuuut unfortunately you always have to check the X bio for pronouns of the devs, they're everywhere.

I just was playing some of my old 360 stuff and came across this:





Bizarre Creations and Sega.Good times. No pronouns, just fun.
 

The difference is, in the 90s, that'd nearly be the industry's entire output. And not a handpicked selection of the absolute very best among the piles of crap. The industry was still young and growing, and people were still actually trying to make good games. The approach was different, the philosophy was different - to say nothing of the culture and ideology.

Honestly, the AI revolution can't come soon enough when it comes to making games. Maybe it'll become simple and cheap enough to where enthusiasts will be able to make niche, deep, and exciting games again, without having to think of monetary consequences or ideological backlash.

Fun fact: new games become good when they get old.
In the sense that, the industry (and the world) keeps getting worse, so every time a decade passes we look on that time as "the good old days", yeah.
 
@Sean Mirrsen

Bullshit, there's tons of trash games from the 90s

Most of them have aged like mud, everyone cherry picks the classics, and even some of them feel long in the tooth when played today

There was trash, but the ratio of good to trash in the 90s blows away today. That's just objectively true, especially when you consider the sheer volume of content released in the 90s vs the trickle today.
 
@Sean Mirrsen

Bullshit, there's tons of trash games from the 90s

Most of them have aged like mud, everyone cherry picks the classics, and even some of them feel long in the tooth when played today

This is true.

But let's be fair: folks have different tolerances for certain flaws in games, and there are a lot of design differences between the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s (and onward). So, even though we still have RPGs today, there are plenty of folks who still love replaying old PS1 RPGs, as well as younger folks playing them for the very first time and falling in love. Personally, I don't enjoy most of the "classic" PS1-era RPGs. Most of those classic RPGs have aged like mud. BUT, aside from a few games like Octopath Traveller or bravely Default, there aren't very many devs making "PS1 era style" RPGs, so folks have every reason to go back and play 'em, because they simply aren't being made that way anymore.

I still enjoy a ton of puzzle games from that same PS1 era that still hold up today. Plenty of puzzle games got 6/10s and 7/10s (and another example) that I consider to be far better than the 9/10 and 10/10 JRPGs. These old puzzle games hold up very well against modern puzzle games and often surpass modern puzzle games. Yet, they were all given "average" scores by the standards of their era.

Gaming has not been one long progressive improvement. Genres have taken steps backwards, and subgenres have died off entirely. The reason why a lot of modern indie games have found success is because they were attempting to bring back gameplay elements and themes and entire genres that the mainstream publishers abandoned. Everyone stopped making "Metroidvanias", but people (obviously) wanted to play them, and when indies tapped into that market, they got rich. The space sim was almost completely dead, but then No Man's Sky gave us a modernized Elite. Now space sims are everywhere.
 
Whats interesting about your point of view @DonDonDonPata is i actually feel the classic JRPGs have aged better than the other genres lol

Subjectivity is amazing

yeah, I know plenty of other JRPG fans who feel the same way.

Now multiply that across all the genres and you end up with a pretty substantial number of old games that people play because they genuinely don't "make em like that anymore". Sure, there are aspects of old games that are clunky and so it's a good thing we improved upon old designs. But similar to boardgames, there are classic designs that stand the test of time even while falling short in certain ways.

I dunno how many contemporary design choices are going to be fondly remembered and imitated in 10-20 years by future indie devs.
 
It's better to ease up and let things go sometimes, and just enjoy what's given. Is any one video game perfect, even to the fans who still play the same one decades later? Are we supposed to fixate our attention towards a tiny blemish in a work of art and refuse to see the greatness of the entire project? What about in every day life? Should I cry over a piece of floss laying around near a gutter of an incredible city and just continue to stand there, pointing and complaining about how a piece of floss ruined my entire vacation or am I going to look past it and explore everything great that the destination has to offer?
 
It's better to ease up and let things go sometimes, and just enjoy what's given. Is any one video game perfect, even to the fans who still play the same one decades later? Are we supposed to fixate our attention towards a tiny blemish in a work of art and refuse to see the greatness of the entire project? What about in every day life? Should I cry over a piece of floss laying around near a gutter of an incredible city and just continue to stand there, pointing and complaining about how a piece of floss ruined my entire vacation or am I going to look past it and explore everything great that the destination has to offer?

Well you can do something about a piece of floss.

The reason people complain about games being made a certain way to the detriment of others, is that people get invested in the games, emotionally or otherwise, but when it comes to tiny and not-so-tiny flaws, they almost always (especially nowadays) have no power to do anything about them. Other than complain, loudly, hoping that they and others like them are loud enough for the people who have that power to hear them.

Also gaming is by nature habit-forming, so if you "let go and enjoy what's given" once, you're liable to stay that way. Given the industry's ongoing slant towards exploitation of the end user, I'd peg that as a "not so good thing", so I try to make every possible effort to keep myself attached to the genres and game styles I originally knew.

Even if I'm objectively terrible at half of them now, heh.
 
Remember snagging Baroque pre owned on the Wii for like $2 back in the day

Shit kicked my ass so hard lmao

Is this a precursor to that version or?

Baroque on PS2/Wii is a "remake" of the Saturn/PS1 one by the same devs. Mostly the same plot but more "anime" art style and third person gameplay
 
Crazy how every single one of those except Like a Dragon is a sequel or spiritual successor to games from the 90s.

What about Elden Ring though? I suppose it's part of the Souls series that is kind of similar to King's Field though. I think it was called that, been a while lol.
 
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Fun fact: new games become good when they get old.
Dunno, mate..

I always feel like 2013 something happened that made most mainstream stuff just unfun. With exceptions of course.

Indie has some good games from time to time.
But even there, it's getting more and more difficult to filter through all that stuff coming out.
 
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Dunno, mate..

I always feel like 2013 something happened that made most mainstream stuff just unfun. With exceptions of course.

Indie has some good games from time to time.
But even there, it's getting more and more difficult to filter through all that stuff coming out.

AAA has alot of garbage sure, but I've had alot of fun these years getting into series I didn't know or care about when I was younger. And a lot of them are newer titles from post-2013, perhaps its you who needs to challenge yourself with new genres?
 
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