Kotaku weighs in on NES games - "gaming journalism"

WireSponge said:
I was noticing more people complaining about pixel art games getting full-price retail releases recently and wondering where this sudden attack on retro-style games came from. I probably should have expected game journalists had something to do with it.
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To be fair, too many modern pixel art games look shit even by 80's standards.

And my old comment in this thread was eaten by a grue, I'll try to write a short version of what I was thinking back then:

Tranhuviya said:
Unpopular opinion time: Their general thesis isn't at all wrong. Every era has had it's shovelware, and the NES was no exception. It's just that people tend to remember stuff like Super Mario Bros. and Zelda over trash like the glut of adaption games available.
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Except that the article shits not on the whole 700+ library, but on the 30 selected games. And those are mostly decent. They are harder, uglier and shorter than modern games, but they're not unplayable. You can have some fun with them.
They contain some things that are frowned upon today, like finite lives in most platformers, randomly hidden locations in Zelda, or totally broken magic system in FF1, and they wouldn't sell a single copy today without the nostalgia factor, but it's not like people don't play shittier games on their phones all the time.
 
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I was mostly joking, taking on the persona of an old man enraged. This article is quite exceptional, but I don't get sensitive over clickbait from Kotaku.

For what it's worth I do apologize if I came off that way.
 
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I don't understand why there's so much autism flying around here. From what I read, the guy was pretty clearly saying "these games have AGED poorly."

That doesn't mean they were bad at the time or something. It's a question of if they hold up to modern standards. He even goes on to say that there ARE games from the NES that hold up to modern standards, proving that it's not impossible for games on the NES to be fun for a modern audience.

The first game I played was on the PS2, so it's safe to say I don't have any NES nostalgia. That being said, Castlevania 1, Metroid, Ghosts and Goblins? Bad. On the other hand, Castlevania 3, Megaman 2, Zelda? All of those were legitimately fun. Whether or not the games that have aged badly are worth playing or not is a different question. Whether the games were good by 1980s standards is also a different question.

I don't like Kotaku but you'd have to be pretty fucking retarded to get offended over "this game that was good in the 80s isn't any good by modern standards, whereas some games from that period ARE."


Oh, and fuck everyone for making me defend Kotaku.

SaharaSafari said:
This isn't the first time Jason has caused a controversy though. He claimed the character designs in Dragon's Crown were made by a 14 year-old boy and pissed off a bunch of people.
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That whole thing was kinda funny. The character designer from Dragon's Crown got super pissed off and posted a bunch of pictures of nearly naked buff dudes saying "MAYBE THESE ARE MORE TO YOUR TASTE HUH?!"

I got into a brief Twitter argument with him about the designs which ended with me being declared a gender traitor and blocked. :feels:
 
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Manah said:
That being said, Castlevania 1, Metroid, Ghosts and Goblins? Bad.
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Castlevania is a fair challenge and still fun to play to this day if you enjoy the series at it's core game play. Metroid might have some issues but it's not bad nor does it fall under the category of "unplayable". The only game on that is "bad" as you put it is Ghosts and Goblins, and that goes without saying, it's a butchered port. You should really reconsider calling people in this thread "autistic" when you're so quick to project and call out people who have an opinion on a poorly written article by a senior writer and published author at Kotaku wrong, misinformed, and completely biased on his op-ed piece.

Manah said:
I got into a brief Twitter argument with him about the designs which ended with me being declared a gender traitor and blocked. :feels:
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You probably got blocked by Kamitani on Twitter because you came across as a complete sperg who has nothing better to do than harass someone creative on social media and made yourself look far more exceptional in the process. Here's your fucking sticker: :autism:
 
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RoboticRichardSimmons said:
Castlevania is a fair challenge and still fun to play to this day if you enjoy the series at it's core game play. Metroid might have some issues but it's not bad nor does it fall under the category of "unplayable". The only game on that is "bad" as you put it is Ghosts and Goblins, and that goes without saying, it's a butchered port. You should really reconsider calling people in this thread "autistic" when you're so quick to project and call out people who have an opinion on a poorly written article by a senior writer and published author at Kotaku wrong, misinformed, and completely biased on his op-ed piece.



You probably got blocked by Kamitani on Twitter because you came across as a complete sperg who has nothing better to do than harass someone creative on social media and made yourself look far more exceptional in the process. Here's your fucking sticker: :autism:
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I meant the Kotaku dude, I quite like dragon's crown!

That aside: Hm, nah.
 
I think I get what both you and the Kotaku guy mean: there's not much reason to pick a NES game over a newer game other than nostalgia or historical curiosity. The games on their own are average at best. But that+curiosity might be enough, especially if you sail the seven seas for free instead of paying scalpers for an emulation box.

I admit I haven't played much of any NES or SNES games (except for FF1 on my phone while on bus), so I don't feel like someone qualified to judge them on their own merits. All I can say is that the biggest flaw of many NES games is being hungry for nonexisting quarters (finite lives + high difficulty) due to being arcade conversions or heavily inspired by them, but since the NES Mini gives you unrestricted saves, it's not much of a problem there.

So maybe the question we should ask ourselves: which NES games (from the Mini's line-up) would we play today if we had no nostalgia about them, we used an emulator with savestates, and we had a choice of not playing them and playing something else instead?

Since I do not have any nostalgia for NES due to coming from a Computer Master Race family, I'd say I'd play SMB3, both Zeldas, Dr. Mario and Megaman 2, maybe also SMB1, SMB2, Excitebike, Metroid and FF1, but I'd definitely pass on Donkey Kong and the non-super Mario Bros.
The Japanese line-up has also Solomon's Key, which I would also play, but I'd rather play the Commodore 64 version for the nostalgia.

However, the SNES Mini line-up definitely feels stronger. If I had both those toys, I'd probably play the SNES more often.

But even then, I'd rather load up all the good non-action NES and SNES games on my phone (non-action because touch controls are bad) and play them in short sessions on the crapper. Much better than what the mobile app developers shit out these days.
 
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I play NES games all the time. I love the translations. It's part of the experience. That's just the way it was back then. You expected it.

You can't compare these games to newer ones. That's not fair. Yes they were usually harder. But kids got good because that was the only way to beat the game unless you had cheats. And even then you could still fail.

Me and my bother spent an afternoon beating Guerrilla War back in the NES days and it was a very satisfying experience.
 
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