Does anyone else hate "retro throwback" games?

[el bandito loco]

I don't hate all retro throwback games but most are super ugly and have a god awful art style that makes actually ugly old games look like high art. Most have shitty mismashes of retro pixel and smoothed out textures and look horrible and make me not want to play them.

 

[Anti Snigger]

Kind of, but were I to say that I don't play every boomer shooter inspired game I see, I'd be a fucking liar

 

[Bob's Fuckass Head]

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

Is that what passes for music in the trannyfur scene? It's just droning noise with no harmonic motion. It's the musical equivalent of Kid Cuisine. I bet that was somebody's first sketch in a program they lied about having experience with.

 

[Merton J. Dingle]

I think the main issues with retro throwback games are the loss of novelty and oversaturation. Though we had Cave Story as far back as 2004 and the odd game inspired by retro games after that, the current trend of retro throwback games was largely kicked off by Shovel Knight. That was over 10 years ago and combined with Valve opening up Steam to all sorts of slop, the retro throwback game has become completely normalized. Maybe in 2014 having a game that was a carbon copy of Zelda would have been fine just to give hardcore fans more of what they like, but nowadays these games need to be more innovative to stand out from the crowd.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

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 (which admittedly is supposedly what Arzette does). My recommendation is Friday the 13th on NES.

I don't mind blatant clones as long as they're either equally good or better than what they're copying, or at least bring their own twist on the formula.

Clones existed in the 90's too, the problem is when they're boring. A boring game is worse than a bad game. Bubsy may be a bad mascot platformer but was memorable. Nobody will remember Blossom Tales.

 

[SigueSigueSpergnik]

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.

Agreed, but this has also always been a factor in game development for dedicated consoles. Using the Atari 2600 as an example again, that's a machine that had a 15-year production life, and the hardware never really changed much over that time. But what people were (and still are) able to do with it is just amazing.

Note that I'm not knocking any other consoles by saying that - all of them have their relative strengths and weaknesses, right up to the current day.

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.

Don't forget arrogance. I've heard more than one 'indie developer' (read: coding in mom's basement) talk about how everything that came before the PS1 was just dogshit, and people writing games for those systems were (and are) idiots. I mean, how hard can it be, right?

Oh, OK. We'll go easy on you to start: here's a NES, 6502 assembler, and hardware documentation. Let me know when you have a single-colour block sprite moving around the screen. What? An IDE? It's right there and its name is Notepad. Have fun, hipster fuck.

 

[Pomniman]

I glanced over that but it seemed to be another circlejerk about how bad trannies are rather than actual discussion of actual games.

To be honest I'm almost as bored of KF's endless obsession with trannies as I am with retro games that are just clones of popular classics.

I kind of get it, because there is a certain class of poster that's only here to obsess over trannies 24/7 and they can get tedious, but on the other hand trannies—are—a disease regardless, and you can't talk about anything having to do with stereotypically male nerd shit like programming or game development and why it's all fucked up gay and retarded now without coming to find that trannies have in fact largely been the ones who have ruined these things because Comp Sci programs in universities across the US were basically ground zero for the tranny epidemic in the past two decades.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I've heard more than one 'indie developer' (read: coding in mom's basement) talk about how everything that came before the PS1 was just dogshit, and people writing games for those systems were (and are) idiots.

That's insane, 4th gen was amazing and is home to some of the best games of all time. Even a mediocre SNES game is better than 90% of indie games.

I kind of get it, because there is a certain class of poster that's only here to obsess over trannies 24/7 and they can get tedious, but on the other hand trannies—are—a disease regardless, and you can't talk about anything having to do with stereotypically male nerd shit like programming or game development and why it's all fucked up gay and retarded now without coming to find that trannies have in fact largely been the ones who have ruined these things because Comp Sci programs in universities across the US were basically ground zero for the tranny epidemic in the past two decades.

No, see, you have to pretend that's not the case; just ignore the elephant in the room, right as momentum is finally against trannies (largely because people bitched about them a lot, which is apparently bad).

 

[el bandito loco]

oh yeah I forgot my other problems.with most retro throwback games besides being ugly.

one another poster covered so ill repeat it, it's X game, except roguelike! go fuck yourself that's just lazy bullshit for hipster snobs. no disrespect to rougelikes as a genre, but most throwback games that are one aren't made that way for anything besides misdirection and corner cutting.

and #2 is they're FILLED with story. and the stories, are TERRIBLE. they always interrupt the gameplay with cheap static besides changing to shocked or serious poses visual novel scenes. man, excessive cutscenes about shit I didn't care about interrupting the gameplay is why I quit playing through the mega man x games 20 years ago. let me shoot some fuckin' robots and shut up. these are much worse because it's all queer furry or loli bait characters being faggots. At least mega man x3/4 whatever was just boring bullshit, these are self insert dyke characters some tranny guy thinks will save gaming by being "quirky" and cute in a cookie cutter plot that only facilitates the gameplay and doesn't need anything beyond an intro and ending scene in the first place.

or they're retarded shit like just a game where you walk and pick things up and do nothing but because it looks like a ps1 retarded people and children will tell you its scary and the pinnacle of horror gaming like they will have nightmares if they walk into your house and see a vcr. or they're shitty clunky platformers with jagged low poly graphics as if the graphics and not the gameplay were why people liked collectathons when I was a kid. let alone the fact that an old TV made games not look like that anyways. It's not a placebo effect, your average consumer crt's scanlines or grid or whatever alongside screen curvature did not make games have jaggy sharp pixels, it made shit look rounded and blended. I've been using the same giant Mitsubishi one for 20 something years none of these even look like a ps1 game actually does

 

[Illuminati Order Official]

I don't really hate them but if I want to play something that feels old, why wouldn't I just play some real classic instead of a modern rip-off that offers nothing but nostalgia bait?

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I don't really hate them but if I want to play something that feels old, why wouldn't I just play some real classic instead of a modern rip-off that offers nothing but nostalgia bait?

If you played a certain game to death and there's nothing else quite like it then indie copycats can be attractive. But they rarely deliver, I remember being very disappointed with Bug Fables, a Paper Mario ripoff, but I was desperate for a real PM experience which PM refuses to deliver on anymore (and now goes a step further and ruins their good ones with tranny shit).

 

[SigueSigueSpergnik]

I don't really hate them but if I want to play something that feels old, why wouldn't I just play some real classic instead of a modern rip-off that offers nothing but nostalgia bait?

Personal theory: developing assets for 'retro' games generally takes a lot less time and effort than if it's being done for something using 4K raytraced textured polygons. It also provides a fallback excuse for shitty gameplay along the lines of, 'well, that's how it was done back in the day!' To a developer handling all aspects of game design and production, that could be attractive.

If your goal is just to push the game out to whatever app store (and I'm including Steam in that), fine. That game can go sit, anonymously, in a sea of similar crap, and receive few purchases plus mediocre reviews.

I'm not saying that a 'retro' game can't be good - there are plenty out there that prove that they can be. But they've increasingly become the bandwagon for O HAY LOOK GUISE I MADE AN OLD-TIMEY GAEM HURRRRRRR.

 

[Illuminati Order Official]

I'm not saying that a 'retro' game can't be good - there are plenty out there that prove that they can be. But they've increasingly become the bandwagon for O HAY LOOK GUISE I MADE AN OLD-TIMEY GAEM HURRRRRRR.

It works decently with point and click adventures. They have very little replay value so you need fresh supply and modern ones like the Blackwell series manage to be good and avoid pretentiousness for most of the time.

 

[Pomniman]

No, see, you have to pretend that's not the case; just ignore the elephant in the room, right as momentum is finally against trannies (largely because people bitched about them a lot, which is apparently bad).

I don't know about OP, but while I don't think it's a "bad" thing per se, anyone who makes one pet issue their whole "thing" in life still gets to be a chore to be around no matter how right or wrong they are to do so. That and things like the broader social climate are never in stasis so the same approach that rallied people to one side a year ago can just as easily push them away a year later.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I don't know about OP, but while I don't think it's a "bad" thing per se, anyone who makes one pet issue their whole "thing" in life still gets to be a chore to be around no matter how right or wrong they are to do so. That and things like the broader social climate are never in stasis so the same approach that rallied people to one side a year ago can just as easily push them away a year later.

That is a good point, being abrasive is a good way to chase off the fickle retards who are unfortunately voters.

 

[William F. Clinton]

Don't forget arrogance. I've heard more than one 'indie developer' (read: coding in mom's basement) talk about how everything that came before the PS1 was just dogshit, and people writing games for those systems were (and are) idiots. I mean, how hard can it be, right?

Oh, OK. We'll go easy on you to start: here's a NES, 6502 assembler, and hardware documentation. Let me know when you have a single-colour block sprite moving around the screen. What? An IDE? It's right there and its name is Notepad. Have fun, hipster fuck.

Exactly. Modern indie developers are working with the most user-friendly, streamlined, just-add-water toolkits running on hyper-efficient 10K computers and still don't have the guts to try to make something higher in scope and complexity than what a team of six 22-year old guys working with 1MB RAM PCs in the early 90's could put out with 9 months of development time.

Others have said this, but if these throwback devs actually committed themselves to all the restrictions of old game development and attempted to push that outdated technology to its limits (like Tim Follin or the late Atari developers did) and produce something sophisticated enough to rival sleek, modern games, then this trend would be pretty cool. But this "retro" trend isn't about appreciating or giving an ode to the old classics; it's just about lowering the bar for quality.

 

[SigueSigueSpergnik]

Others have said this, but if these throwback devs actually committed themselves to all the restrictions of old game development and attempted to push that outdated technology to its limits (like Tim Follin or the late Atari developers did) and produce something sophisticated enough to rival sleek, modern games, then this trend would be pretty cool.

This is what I love about the various homebrew software and hardware development scenes out there: they're doing exactly this.

But this "retro" trend isn't about appreciating or giving an ode to the old classics; it's just about lowering the bar for quality.

Bingo.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

one another poster covered so ill repeat it, it's X game, except roguelike! go fuck yourself that's just lazy bullshit for hipster snobs. no disrespect to rougelikes as a genre, but most throwback games that are one aren't made that way for anything besides misdirection and corner cutting.

I have a lot of disrespect for roguelikes as a genre. It's basically a method of taking 2 hours of content and spreading it to 20, using fake difficulty and randomness to do so.

And the idea of retro style games existed since the fucking PSP. It's a meme longer than the time those games existed

 

[BetterFuckChuck]

just dont play them then. there hasnt been a big retro throwback game since like celeste they dont matter anymore

 

[LifeAlert]

I remember a time where shitty fucking slop that completely ripped off and copied other games was rightfully called a ripoff, knockoff, rehash, cash grab, wannabe, every term in the book. Now they get mindless praise from redditrash troons, cucksoomers, and buck broken gamers who are desperate for anything that isn't a hyperrealistic walking simulator