Does anyone else hate "retro throwback" games?

[skykiii]

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

Translation: You're exactly the kind of person who needs to grind your axe at every opportunity and you're butthurt someone said "dude, we get it. Enough already." If we don't wet babby cwy then babby will be upset.

Seriously I had a topic about time travel once that someone tried to hijack and make about trannies. Why do you need to hijack literally every topic when 99% of this forum is already revolving around your pet issue? You sound like the SJWs who need to make every topic about "Nazis."

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?

It reminds me of a similar issue in literature: I've seen people try to write intentionally in Victorian Literature style, or else try to imitate the writing style of someone like Tolkien, but either way they don't get it right. Part of the problem is they have a poor vocabulary and so don't quite have the perspicacity to make it work. Like I literally met someone who thought a "sward" was just a mispelling of "sword," for instance, or thought "berm" was a mispelling of "beam."

So we get morons like Robert Jordan who think just going overboard with the descriptions is the same as "writing like Tolkien," which of course shows they have not actually read Tolkien as he didn't really stop to describe shit.

Oh, another over-used gameplay style I hate:.... Mega Man clones. I mean, I like Mega Man but the clones feel like they're just copying a formula they think is easier than it is.

I tried one on Switch, "Mega Gal" (which thankfully was on sale) and it lost me off the bat by having a painful attempt at "funny/quirky" dialogue.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Translation: You're exactly the kind of person who needs to grind your axe at every opportunity and you're butthurt someone said "dude, we get it. Enough already." If we don't wet babby cwy then babby will be upset.

You're always going to bat for trannies, girldick must be an acquired taste.

Seriously I had a topic about time travel once that someone tried to hijack and make about trannies. Why do you need to hijack literally every topic when 99% of this forum is already revolving around your pet issue? You sound like the SJWs who need to make every topic about "Nazis."

Nazis don't exist. Trannies do and they're worse than Nazis ever were. You sound like a retard making a false equivalence.

Mega Gal

I just thought Mega Gal was too easy, it didn't seem well balanced at all. The Trophies didn't even require beating the game... Similar situation to Legend of Dark Witch, except that was a little more difficult. Mega Man was always too hard anyway, but some of these are a little mindless.

The best Mega Man clone I've ever played was Gunman Clive, it's even better than some Mega Man games. The HD remasters added faggotry though (oops, better not mention LGBT in a bad light!).

 

[skykiii]

You're always going to bat for trannies

Hold on there, pardner! I'm wise to your game! You want me to come up with something you can stick in random.txt don't you?

......................

Anyway, back on topic....

Earlier we were discussing retro game design that gives a second shot to games that could've been great or just dead genres in general. A video I just watched reminded me there's not enough Myst-style games on modern systems. There's... Myst itself and that's it.

And I said this earlier but how about horror games or JRPGs with actual good stories? Horror especially has pretty much been "muh personal trauma" for years.

 

[Illuminati Order Official]

And I said this earlier but how about horror games or JRPGs with actual good stories? Horror especially has pretty much been "muh personal trauma" for years.

World of Horror is kinda both jRPG and horror.
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones is pure Lovecraft but unfortunately ends on a cliffhanger.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

Bing bing wahoo games are great examples of how fucking outdated some concepts are at their core.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

outdated

Just because thing's "outdated" doesn't mean it "needs to go" though.

 

[Fyrnite]

I can't say I hate them but I am burned out by them.

Indie developers love to go by what they think they remember as retro from what shallow of a childhood that they had. I feel like I own copies of some of the best indie retro shit that's offered, I don't really need five hundred more and I don't want five hundred more. In fact, I see it as a trend more than a genre of honest development. Also, it's not an exaggeration when someone points out how much resources these 'retro-inspired' games take for something that should be light as a feather compared to modern games. There are even well-established developers/publishers who compile their classics and that somehow takes up more system resources. You're asking me to play the original Contra and it'll require 4GB of ram and a 64-bit processor? When, just emulating it, takes significantly less resources? I've ran old NES games on Pentium III processors in the past and they went just fine.

Honestly though, I'm just tired of retro-inspired anything. Think of something new and do something new.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

This may be an odd post for me to make as I consider the 1990s the golden age of gaming. But here's the thing:

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.

I made a post on Unpopular Opinions that roughly goes over what you're saying.

Basically, any game that is clearly and openly "inspired" by another game, partly because they don't understand what made it good and interesting in the first place. Almost every modern platformer can trace back to Super Mario Bros. not because they thought that the idea of a guy with a hat and mustache was a great character but that it had mechanics that worked. When you tried to change a few things, base it on the most popular stuff around, and add in Original Character the results were less than stellar; with one of the oldest examples of this sort of thing being Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind.

Chrono Trigger in particular pushed the boundaries of what the SNES could do, and even now it's liked for the unique characters, plot, music, and setting. You can't really replicate that sort of thing and it will always come off as a cheap imitation. Even worse if they take the wrong lesson—EarthBound isn't "cool" or "good" because of its "modern" health items like hamburgers, in fact Nintendo of America learned that the hard way with their marketing campaign, yet that's what all the "EarthBound inspired" games pick up on anyway.

One of the reasons why people think so highly of the 1990-2005 timeframe of video games is that everything was an improvement. Bigger games, richer experiences, and better graphics. By "bigger games" it was actually a longer, deeper experience, not just file size. Of course people had wised up to that fact long before long, just because it came on three CD-ROMs instead of one didn't mean it was necessarily better (it usually wasn't), but every successful, memorable game from the 1990s was a noticeable improvement on a technological level.

Of all the "retro throwback" games, Stardew Valley kinda works because it did seek to make improvements to the Harvest Moon-style farming sim. Granted, it's tainted by gay Western shit (in more ways than one) but at least it sought to make an improvement. Likewise, Pizza Tower is more retro-inspired, but takes after a style of game that hasn't been seen in a while, nor has attracted a lot of similar games (Wario Land 4).

Ultimately, what people should take away from the "golden age" of games is that you make IMPROVEMENTS, not that certain genres are bad or certain games shouldn't emulated. If you were trying to make "another" Blast Corps it would suck if the graphics look like they came from 1997, but would ROCK if physics worked like real buildings and you could create your own experience with mods, whether re-enacting the Killdozer incident (but in your hometown) or doing some good old-fashioned urban renewal.

 

[William F. Clinton]

I will say, one indie retro throwback game that I did enjoy was Stay Out Of The House from a few years back, even if it being a throwback didn't add much to the experience. After two short prologues the game basically becomes an escape room with some light puzzles and exploration where you evade a roaming butcher type character. It's basic, but heavily gameplay focused and immersive and open enough to lead to a lot of naturally tense moments. I only ever played it in full once, so maybe its charm wears off quick, but it was the only horror game in a while that I actually felt on edge playing.

But like I said, its visual presentation aping the basic tenets of PS1 graphics (albeit more fatefully than a lot of other "retro" slop) doesn't elevate it at all. It doesn't play like classic survival horror beyond the basics of puzzle-solving and resource management, so it's not as if the presentation was needed to match the gameplay of an RE/Outbreak homage. Most of the developer's other games seem like one-off gimmicks, but they seemed to aim for something a bit more complex here. It turned out alright, just a shame it had to be linked to such a pozzed microgenre.

/blogpost over.

 

[X Prime]

And I said this earlier but how about horror games or JRPGs with actual good stories? Horror especially has pretty much been "muh personal trauma" for years.

Like I have said in other places, you can blame Thing A becoming popular and then everyone rushing to milk it. In this case, you can blame Silent Hill 2. That's the reason you get overhyped trash like Mouthwashing and SIGNALIS.

The reason Silent Hill 2 worked is that its pedigree included things other than videogames, such as Jacob's Ladder, essentially adapted into another medium. Fact is, most retro throwback games' pedigree starts and ends at other retro games.

You are not going to get good stories out of JRPGs anytime soon, because most writers of those have no inspirations except other videogames or anime. It is a variation of the issue you have with Robert Jordan.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

Just because thing's "outdated" doesn't mean it "needs to go" though.

Yooka-Laylee and Hat in Time should've defined the second coming of bing bing wahoo (love that term) yet were little more than niche indies among a sea of other niche indies. Look at games like Tomb Raider. They're "Le souls of retros" and something people would suffer through (and learn to love) for the archaic value of saying you beat them. There's a start and an end unlike platformers. You get 120 stars and all the coins, cool? You waded through mud and came out the other end. Platformers, unless redefined in future genre-defining games, are just like giving your kid a fiddling toy. They're remastering Croc (think it's already out on Epic but surely it'll come to Steam) and I can already imagine it getting 99 "very positive" reviews and dying of irrelevancy.

 

[Action Orange]

Zeroranger is NOT like any of the games you listed. It's made with ingenuity and love!

 

[skykiii]

Zeroranger is NOT like any of the games you listed. It's made with ingenuity and love!

Zeroranger?

 

[Anteater Alien]

My least favorite games at the moment at the hurr-durr le retro shitfucks that get thrown together. Especially on sites like itch (no surprise). It's a clusterfuck.

I've noticed things like the "PICO-8" engine, which is meant to be a fake console of sorts that looks le retro, is the worst victim of this. The concept of a fake game console you can make shit on is cool and all, but all of the games that people make are the exact same and just want to be retroslop.

 

[3deadniggers]

Like I have said in other places, you can blame Thing A becoming popular and then everyone rushing to milk it. In this case, you can blame Silent Hill 2. That's the reason you get overhyped trash like Mouthwashing and SIGNALIS.

The reason Silent Hill 2 worked is that its pedigree included things other than videogames, such as Jacob's Ladder, essentially adapted into another medium. Fact is, most retro throwback games' pedigree starts and ends at other retro games.

You are not going to get good stories out of JRPGs anytime soon, because most writers of those have no inspirations except other videogames or anime. It is a variation of the issue you have with Robert Jordan.

Part of the problem with indie remakes is they don't understand how the references were used. Jacob's ladder has very little impact on Silent Hill 2. The movie is mostly about a paranoid man being hunted and then it has a weird shift at the end. Many of the influences people talk about on youtube they haven't even watched and act like it was a major component of the game development cycle. The movies usually have 1 weird scene or a character acting in a way you can see mirrored in the game, but they're never a major impact. But modern gaming discourse is all trying to make it seem like high art because Jacob's ladder has a hospital scene and Silent Hill took the hospital scene and decided to do a hospital level because of it.

ere's a start and an end unlike platformers. You get 120 stars and all the coins, cool? You waded through mud and came out the other end. Platformers, unless redefined in future genre-defining games, are just like giving your kid a fiddling toy.

What's wrong with wanting to play a laid back game of bing bing wahoo? Some times you want a relaxing evening and collecting some stars is the way to go.

Indie games ripping off popular 2d games has been around since indie games existed. There are thousands of pac-man clones from indie devs. It's cheap and easy to copy things you know and with many devs having arrested development they continue to do that. If you tell everyone you're making Zelda you have skipped 80% of the design process. Everyone knows what you're making and then you just rearrange things. They have nothing to add to the genre but they know it and it's an easy path to take.

The retro console ports we see now is more interesting than the indie retro throw backs. There's game jams and solo devs porting and making new games for old machines. There's a new port of Final fight on the Mega drive that runs better than the Sega CD version. Always new stuff coming out for the commodore 64 and even MSX. The people working on real hardware are doing some great things because they don't need to put Zelda onto a console with Zelda already on it.

Small tangent. Fuck randomizers. They're even worse than the retro throwbacks. Once a game is done move on. You don't need to randomize every retro game to replay it with minor pathing differences. Move on, play something else.

 

[X Prime]

What weirds me out about retro throwbacks is how the kind of people who play these games can't decide if they want them to be properly difficult or baby easy.

 

[The Last Stand]

What weirds me out about retro throwbacks is how the kind of people who play these games can't decide if they want them to be properly difficult or baby easy.

I think they want a difficulty option for games like that. It's hard to tell since these kinds of games bank on nostalgia.

 

[X Prime]

But modern gaming discourse is all trying to make it seem like high art

I swear most of them do this because they want validation for liking video games.

 

[3deadniggers]

I swear most of them do this because they want validation for liking video games.

I'm not sure they're self aware enough to do that. They're already fanboys who consume weeks of essays on minor gaming topics. It's the style of youtube videos now so they make those same videos.

 

[Sugriva]

I never got the hate for them. There's plenty of games out there, if you don't like retro styled ones you don't have to play them. Sometimes they look nice, sometimes they look bad, but it doesn't really matter to me. I can look past shitty graphics if the game is good. I also think a lot of the times the "retro style" is used to create a lower barrier of entry to making games for a small team that might not have any talented artists. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Lower barrier of entry means more games to play.