Does anyone else hate "retro throwback" games?

[Male Idiot]

Pixelslop is just artistic goyslop.

There are good retro games, but those are rare.

Cuphead looked great, it was sharp and fine, copying the feel of old games, but doing it great.

Space Marine 2 is good enough, and it is not a 60x60 pixel game with HD being 100gigas.

Graphics don't make or break a game. Veilguard's hair graphics failed, but soypixel 15 will fail too.

What matters is the game good? Is the gameplay good? Is it fun? Graphics are just a sideshow.

If your game is good, you don't need muh soy photorealism or muh retro pixshuls. Make it look good enough for what it does.

 

[IDontLikeLiberals]

At least with the old "boomer shooters" (I hate that term) they tend to stick to what made them work - fun level layouts, weird looking monsters and ultra violence.

 

[Scarthew]

No I like them, and nobody's forcing you to play them.

 

[Calandrino]

Speaking of retro, Strider. My dad made me play it when I was a kid. Are there similar games to the sega genesis version that can run on a shitty laptop?

Maaaybe Steel Assault? Depends on how shitty, did not check system requirements

No I like them, and nobody's forcing you to play them.

I would if I could

 

[SigueSigueSpergnik]

You plug in an actual SNES, you'll have a variety of experiences. Robocop vs the Terminator is a run n' gun but you'd have to be a fool to say its anything like Contra III or Sunset Riders, to use just one example.

But retro throwback games tend to fall into one of two camps:

Camp One: Blatant clone of a popular game.
...
Camp Two: Meme Game

The people writing these games seem to think that copying an 8- or 16-bit aesthetic is all they need to do in order to write a 'retro' game. It's as though gameplay doesn't matter to them as long as the looks are mostly correct. A superficial resemblance is all it takes in their minds.

It also doesn't help that a lot of the people writing these games weren't alive when the systems they're aping were current. Sure, they may have fired up <insert game here> in emulation to take a look, but not having grown up immersed in the games they have no real points of reference for them when developing their own software.

I do not like how "retro style" vidya made during Current Year can still have the system resource requirements of Current Year vidya.

It's because very, very few of these people could handle writing two lines of assembly. Without massive 'studio' IDEs designed to abstract as much of a game's development from the target hardware as possible, they're completely lost. Sure, that's just modern development practices, and I get that. But if they can't touch the hardware directly, their understanding of how the original idea can be reimplemented is going to be limited at best.

My personal opinion has been that people looking to create a 'retro' game should have to write the game first on an Atari 2600. Assembly-only, no framebuffer, 128 bytes (not kb, not Mb, not GB - just bytes) of RAM, and code has to be written in such a way that execution times don't destroy writing to the screen (aka 'Racing the Beam'). Once they have that done, port it to whatever other platform they care - at least by that time, they'll understand what it is that makes older games what and the way that they are. Not gonna happen, but nice to think about.

 

[xertruglia]

I'm always confused by people who's dream is to make a game that's just a mechanical upgrade of a game they liked as a kid. If I wanted to play Wario Land 4 I'd play Wario Land 4. You don't need an endless amount of it. Sit down and play Wario Land 4. It will take you all week, maybe more (if you have a job). I know people like pizza tower and if that's your first jump into a game like that that's cool, makes sense that you like it. Part of me sees that popularity and I think it's just kids who like the drawings. But to me it's like, just pointless junky crap. I dont need a new jet set radio. I dont need a new silent hill. I dont need a spiritual successor to final fantasy 6 chrono trigger breath of dildo. I dont need a quirky 3d platforming action game. And I CERTAINLY don't need another Zelda game.

If you bought a ps2 and a ds lite you would have enough good games to keep you busy until you died. We don't need any more video games. Stop fucking making them.

 

[Grub]

It's fucking ridiculous. You've got a slew of games out there that mimic the low-poly, low-res texture look of Playstation 1 games but chug on my laptop that has more horsepower than an entire data center from 1994.

That's because those low poly/2d pixel games aren't actually retro and usually use full modern 3d engines to make them. A lot of that shit's just made in unity or unreal. I've even seen 2d games made with criware. That's just immensely overkill and all the overhead of those engines ends up in those games.

Immediately I look at this and I'm like... "Why would I want to play this? This is literally just Zelda." Again compare to actual retro: Illusion of Gaia, Crusader of Centy, Landstalker etc. were all actually trying something different, and because of that are still worth playing. Blossom Tales is so desperate to skinwalk that even its music is riffing on the Link to the Past menu music.

I actually don't mind the blatant ripoffs. Sometimes i'm in the mood to play something exactly the same as an old game but not an old game. Blossom Tales just wasn't very good though.

Camp Two: Meme Game

I fucking hate these. The amount of times I've seen a game and thought this looks kind of cool only to read more and find out it's some lame joke meme shit. Why even bother wasting the effort making a game if you're just going to make it retarded?

 

[William F. Clinton]

It also doesn't help that a lot of the people writing these games weren't alive when the systems they're aping were current.

I think that's really the root of the problem. Even beyond the visual gimmick of scanlines and low poly character models or pseudo-16 bit pixel art, these games are completely removed from the style and sensibilities of Super Nintendo and PS1 artists. The overly cluttered character designs and porn-brained artsyles just read like generic Xitter troon art ran through a PS1 filter.

On the subject of gameplay, actual SNES or PS1 designers worked with extremely limited software and game engines, and those restrictions led to both the jank these games had and the innovation they brought. With these throwback pastiches, any dumbfuck millennial can just throw together whatever bullshit in RPG Maker or Unity because they don't have to work through the inventiveness that was needed to get old-school games out the door.

 

[Neodanthril]

I don't mind getting more of the same if the genre is underserved. Stardew valley definitely falls into the category of blatant clone, but I can't imagine calling it bad considering how it elevated and arguably repopularized the genre by introducing it to the PC where it did not exist before Stardew valley. It also has an amazing modding scene, shout out to the mods that get rid of the black people, which absolutely does not exist for the games that it's copying. All art is theft etc

The problem with arzette is the faggot tranny stuff not the cut scenes

 

[my penis is on fire]

The thing about both pixel art and the PS1 style is that they're faster, easier, and require less art experience to make them look passably good. That's the underlying reason indie devs lean toward it, if you're a solo dev or a 2-3 person team it's a lot faster to figure out those basic styles than learning all the ins and outs of real digital art or high-poly modeling. Retro shit is just what people make with it since examples already exist and "if I'm making it low poly I might as well make it look PS1-ish" seems logical, so there's more going on than just le millennial nostalgia.
It's a pipe dream, but I wish more devs would do their own thing with low-spec styles like how Psychopomp did.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Retro games are more about laziness and appealing to redditoids then being a genuine appreciation to the roots of gaming.
A lot of them truly lack the atmosphere and tone of those games so they don't ever feel like they belong with the NES, SNES, Genesis, or even PS1/N64 ones. A true NES throwback would fully embrace all the hardware limitations of the NES and painfully replicate all the bugs and quirks the system had. Same with the other consoles. I'm not saying there can't be or aren't good retro style games but the bulk of them are lazy insipid trash.

 

[valerian]

I think what makes these games feel boring and like shit is that theyre trying to recreate something that was only born out of limitation. Theres a difference between old games having worse graphics because they made up for the limitations with style and creativity, they pushed their engines to the limit to make the best possible product. But now people are purposely downgrading themselves, and for that they have to look at older games so they can copy their style 1:1.
In the midst of that copying the entire design philosophy gets lost, because if the people back then couldve made their game look better then they wouldve, they didnt try desperately chasing after an already existing style.
So I think the failure lies in these new game devs chasing after something that wasnt even intentional, but theyre also not passionate enough to come up with their own style or graphics system.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

I think what makes these games feel boring and like shit is that theyre trying to recreate something that was only born out of limitation. Theres a difference between old games having worse graphics because they made up for the limitations with style and creativity, they pushed their engines to the limit to make the best possible product. But now people are purposely downgrading themselves, and for that they have to look at older games so they can copy their style 1:1.
In the midst of that copying the entire design philosophy gets lost, because if the people back then couldve made their game look better then they wouldve, they didnt try desperately chasing after an already existing style.
So I think the failure lies in these new game devs chasing after something that wasnt even intentional, but theyre also not passionate enough to come up with their own style or graphics system.

I'm going to go one step further and say that these types of retro "homages" actively harm the reputation of the games they copy from. By being insipid and boring, younger people who's first impression of older games through these will think actual old games are like this as well which couldn't be further from the truth.

 

[valerian]

I'm going to go one step further and say that these types of retro "homages" actively harm the reputation of the games they copy from. By being insipid and boring younger people who's first impression of older games through these will think actual old games are like this as well which couldn't be further from the truth.

I can agree with this, ever since more and more of these fake retro games have been coming out ive seen a lot of people deflect criticism of unnecessary remakes by saying anyone who prefers the original games is just too in love with the retro label. Which makes me think people actually see genuinely old games as being on the same level as games that try to replicate the same feeling.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

They always copy the same stuff, it's never something underrated like Adventure Island, Kickle Cubicle or Rock N' Roll Racing.

 

[Pepe Cortisona]

Speaking of retro, Strider. My dad made me play it when I was a kid. Are there similar games to the sega genesis version that can run on a shitty laptop?

How shitty is your laptop? There was a modern Strider game from 2014 that I'm sure any bottom of the line, mid range laptop released in the past 5 years can run it without problems. You can find it on steam if you're interested.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

I'm going to go one step further and say that these types of retro "homages" actively harm the reputation of the games they copy from. By being insipid and boring, younger people who's first impression of older games through these will think actual old games are like this as well which couldn't be further from the truth.

Which makes me think people actually see genuinely old games as being on the same level as games that try to replicate the same feeling.

One trend that I find heavily contributes to this is making everything a rogue-like. Symphony of the Night, but rogue-like. Megaman, but rogue-like. Doom, but rogue-like.

This isn't some incredible modern innovation - they're just hiding the fact that they have a fraction as many assets as the originals and no intentional gameplay progression by randomizing what little they actually have. Those old games they're aping were a curated experience designed by human beings and the difference in quality is beyond obvious.

 

[Dysnomia]

If you're gonna do a retro throwback, here's an idea: find a game that had serious potential, and make a "good version" of it

Deadly Towers. A game I both love and hate because of the lost potential.

My recommendation is Friday the 13th on NES.

It's a very underrated game. If the problems could be ironed out I think it could be great. There's also some cut areas like the graveyard that I'd like to see added to a remake.

 

[NoReturn]

Here's something the younger generation might not know. Retro games didn't look like that. Viewing them on CRT changes how things look, so the effect was that things didn't look as pixely and jagged as they do in "retro games". Skilled artists knew how to use the CRT to their advantage, so they could do things like soften edges and create the illusion of depth and detail.


This leads to a weird phenomenon where if you play a "modern retro" on a CRT, it doesn't look right, because the pixel art is designed to look good on modern screens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGehxWRF7jc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_2XGOKd2nA

Interestingly enough, this also applies to animated films. I remember seeing a clip from Cinderella recently and between the shitty AI-"restoration" of the film and the monitor itself, it looked ugly.

Spoiler: Apparently the 2023 restoration is better, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CovWrfDlgWA

 

[Randy Facalding]

I dunno man, you're kinda sounding like a bigoted chudcel here
Like, who wouldn't love a wholesome soulslike anthro game like ATLYSS?