Does anyone else hate "retro throwback" games?

[skykiii]

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.

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.

Camp Two: Meme Game

And like....

I remember when I was a kid, and I wanted to make games. I still have some of my old game ideas floating around in my head somewhere. But I never learned to program.

But one thing I do remember is I had ambition. I was the kind of kid who wanted to do things I didn't think had been done before.

So like... stuff like Arzette... I can understand maybe thinking that the Zelda CD-i games could have been good and wanting to prove it, but then it goes and leans into the meme by having cutscenes that actually look as bad as the Zelda CD-i games.

It would be like if I did a game that is clearly Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, maybe it played better, but then it still had the "what a horrible night to have a curse" unskippable text box. I just don't get it.

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.

 

[Dead Lion]

I’ve got an entire thread just for you.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

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

 

[Friendly Primarina]

DAE hate that thing everyone hates?

Actual reddit moment.

 

[skykiii]

I’ve got an entire thread just for you.

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.

DAE hate that thing everyone hates?

Actual reddit moment.

I mean hey, before now I had never heard anyone else rag on them.

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

Yeah, that's insane.

Actually I wann take that to another level: it feels odd to me that a game that looks like a retro console game and plays like a retro console game, can't actually be played on a retro console. It gives me more respect for the people who do find a way to get their games onto real hardware (even if all they do is release the rom and let other people make flash carts).

There is just always something weird about picking up my Nintendo Switch and then using it to play essentially an NES game.

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

And while I'm being an autist, here's other things that annoy me:

Things that "break the illusion." The idea of playing a retro throwback should ideally be "I get to make-believe that it's 1994 again!" But then the dev does something stupid that makes that impossible. For a minor example, there was a Sega Genesis homebrew game (I forget its name) which had a metric fuckton of f-bombs in the dialogue. I'm no prude about language, but I also know that in 1994 no video game would have said "Fuck" except in a well-hidden easter egg that you'd have to have a Gamepro subscription to discover.

Relatedly, Fangames/romhacks of a popular franchise that incorporate modern elements.

Hypothetical scenario: Imagine if someone actually made that Sonic SatAM game that Sega was actually planning and then cancelled. Okay, sounds awesome... but now imagine the dev had an attack of the 'tism and called the main villain Dr. Eggman, or the game incorporated characters that would not have existed during the Sega Genesis' life like Tangle and Wisp. Suddenly the fantasy of "finding a new classic Sonic game" is lost and you're harshly reminded its just some autistic fan game.

I can forgive things like "Shadow in Sonic 1" though since that's essentially just a meme game, not something I'm supposed to take seriously.

 

[IDontLikeLiberals]

I'm tired of Chrono Trigger clones.

 

[Rudy Coleman]

yeah for me its boomer shooter, throwback fps games.
all of them look the same and consist of nothing more than running in circles dodging slow moving projectiles.

 

[White Room]

They're soy

 

[User names must be unique]

The only one I've played is dread delusion, it was kinda fun.

 

[Cat tit bingo]

So like... stuff like Arzette... I can understand maybe thinking that the Zelda CD-i games could have been good and wanting to prove it, but then it goes and leans into the meme by having cutscenes that actually look as bad as the Zelda CD-i games

Well the thing is as bad those cdi nintendo cutscenes are there incredibly enjoyable, can argue about irony and shit for hours but at the end of the day i enjoy watching them. Still I think trying to remake a highly flawed game into something good is much more admirable than just taking something that worked and doing it again.
Id say the biggest problem that is there are so many genres just completely dead from retro games that could be revived but all people make are the tried and true platformers, metroid-vanias and square rpgs. My favorite throw back of the last few years was Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia because it's a fully committed classic megami tensei game, no ones making a 3d first person dungeon crawler unless is a plain smt remake. Do shit like that, make throw backs to weird genres make a fucking act raiser successor or something.

 

[Meth Dick]

I got that Evil Dead/Halloween retro game thing, thinking it was just a cool little fun thing then I played it. It was meh, but not terrible, but then I saw there's a power rangers retro game nearly exactly the same being made AND a Terrifier retro game being made, and other things are sure to follow. Granted the Terrifier one actually looks cooler than the Evil Dead/Halloween one. Should have waited for that.
It did not/will not take long at all for this "cool little fun thing" to get over saturated.

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

The state of modern indie gaming is unoriginal slop that's either a 2D pixel art side-scroller with an allegory for muh mental, a retro 3D platformer, a retro boomer shooter, a cutesy minimalist walking simulator (also with an allegory for muh mental), a retro 3D horror ARG-like game with muh deep lore (ALSO with an allegory for muh mental), etc etc etc.


Indie gaming sucks today and I'm tired of pretending it doesn't and that it's going to "save gaming!!!"

 

[Benny]

I played UFO50 and enjoyed that game a lot, it is the only "good" wannabe retro game that comes to mind, it reminded me of my gameboys multi game cartridge. What really bothers me is when they take old games and try to modernize. The commander Keen resurrected game that went nowhere in 2019 and the newer Battletoads game are some examples.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

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 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.

The standard opinion is that AAA games are the problem and indie developers are the saviors of the industry, but for the most part it's all the same shit: uninspired and terminally-pozzed trash software with ludicrously poor performance - indie devs just do it on a smaller budget.

 

[skykiii]

then I saw there's a power rangers retro game

Rita's Rewind or something like that, right?

On that note I'm kinda tired of all the fucking beat-em-ups.

The genre is just over saturated and seems like the fucking go-to for a new game based on a retro property, and I'll be honest: even back in the day I didn't really like most of these types of games.

I was especially upset that the GI Joe game went that route. GI Joe is a property that practically begs to be a turn-based strategy game or a SWAT 4-style game... and they go with a fucking beat-em-up. Like, what's the next shitty idea they'll have? Make a Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors game but its a walking sim with no combat and where you never actually get to drive the damn cars (and thus never interact with the "wheeled warriors" part of the title)?

I'm tired of Chrono Trigger clones.

The whole JRPG genre just sucks. I've made the rant before so I'll give the TL;DR... depending on the game, every JRPG has one of two problems:

Either A) they fundamentally have not changed since the 1990s so you might as well just re-play the classics.

Or else B) they have changed but in the worst possible ways, usually by the gameplay becoming fuck obtuse to the point you practically need a FAQ to even understand basic mechanics.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

It's fucking ridiculous,

I recall seeing a soy or hipster looking article on how to make a vidya with binary monochrome -- which is just black or white pixels BTW -- and the author recommended using Photoshop or something to select odd muted colors. Instead of #000000 and #ffffff. Anyway, if I wanted to make a "retro-style" game, I think I'd just a "retro" tool to do so. Like QBasic, or some other BASIC software or system.

 

[Meth Dick]

Rita's Rewind or something like that, right?

On that note I'm kinda tired of all the fucking beat-em-ups.

The genre is just over saturated and seems like the fucking go-to for a new game based on a retro property, and I'll be honest: even back in the day I didn't really like most of these types of games.

Yeah Rita's Rewind is the name. I'd rather play the SNES MMPR game, it looks better and I still remember the code for the Megazord/Goldbar battle, back before save files were a normal thing.

I was especially upset that the GI Joe game went that route. GI Joe is a property that practically begs to be a turn-based strategy game or a SWAT 4-style game... and they go with a fucking beat-em-up. Like, what's the next shitty idea they'll have? Make a Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors game but its a walking sim with no combat and where you never actually get to drive the damn cars (and thus never interact with the "wheeled warriors" part of the title)?

>shoot em up
>drive cars
NARC, baby. I fucking loved that arcade cabinet at the laundromat growing up. They had a Simpsons one two, and I think Double Dragon, but I'd stay for hours playing NARC if I could. Then the PS2 NARC? Fuck I wish they'd remake/remaster that.

 

[WielkiWapiesz2137]

I hate them for how shit their code is. Somehow people making them always manage to write unoptimized janky garbage that uses 20x the resources than whatever they were copying.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

unoptimized janky garbage that uses 20x the resources than whatever they were copying.

A game that only uses 20x the resources of the game it's copying would probably be praised for its optimization. A retro SNES-throwback platformer that requires even remotely modern-ish hardware is on the order of thousands of times more computationally expensive than an SNES game.

 

[Liquid denim]

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?