Garple

Old Games That Hold Up...Or Don't

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Yeah, yeah they were. I don't know if it's old enough for you folks, but I started up a game of Paper Mario earlier this week. It's still as rad as ever, and dare I say, prettier than a lot of much newer games. I count N64 era as old, as that generation ended while I was in Jr High school. If that's not old enough, too bad.

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Just snagged Knights of the Old Republic from the Steam deal and loaded it up- Were the characters really this fat and blocky back then? :sad:

Does it have widescreen resolutions by default? I have a feeling it doesn't, which may account for their "fatness"?

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I bought Paper Mario for Wii after hearing about it for ages and couldn't bear it. Nothing there for me.

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The old 2D Lucasarts adventure games all hold up pretty well. I actually ended up playing the remastered version of Secret of Monkey Island with the original graphics because for me they look much better than the updated ones (Which, now that I think about it, was a waste of money since I already had the original). Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island didn't age as gracefully, though.

Another game that aged terribly was Under a Killing Moon. That was one of my absolute favorite games but when I reinstalled it early this year I was taken aback by how janky it feels nowdays...

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Started playing Thief and yeah, sure, it looks wank, but I'm enjoying the atmosphere and concept so far. (This is due to reading John Walker's retro-review of it, thanks to the link that BBX posted -- some great stuff in there that will get you itching to try out old games... like Thief :))

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Does it have widescreen resolutions by default? I have a feeling it doesn't, which may account for their "fatness"?

Yeah, that's definitely part of it. I've tried messing with the resolution options in the .ini file but I can't quite get it to look right, but that's ok. I think I'll get used to it.

Pushing back a little further, I was reading a Baldur's Gate thread on Something Awful and I got all nostalgic, so I loaded it up today, no tutu or mods, and it was like slipping on an old glove. The interface is ugly as sin, but the flow of the gameplay of the old infinity engine games isn't too different from the modern Bioware takes on semi-realtime RPGs. I think it would be much more feasible for a newcomer to still get into Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale than, say, Fallout.

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widescreengamingforum.com is a fantastic site. If you find yourself returning to old games, I'd definitely bookmark it.

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Yeah, I used that fix myself on my second playthrough. I can vouch for it.

The hacks on that site made the game unstable for me.... :hmph: Worth a shot, though. Just keep saving!

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I've been playing Rocky & Pocky for the SNES. It's vaguely like Gunstar Heroes but with a cute anime girl and a raccoon. I like the fact that the game doesn't let you off the hook. You can try to brute force your way through the level while just trying to ignore most of your foes and pay the penalty of taking tons of damage, but those enemies follow you and so you're really just creating a compounding problem for yourself. But here's the real kicker: if you're in the same spot for a millisecond too long, the enemies respawn and you have to clear the path in front of you all over again, meanwhile, you're being attacked on all sides. It's like a twin stick shooter without the twin sticks. Instead, you've got a d-pad. Good luck.

edit: in case I wasn't clear...it holds up, it's awesome.

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I went back and finally finished The Longest Journey, for the first time. I had finished Dreamfall in between starting and finishing TLJ, so I felt it was time to get on it.

I think it's held pretty well. I mean the mechanics of point and click adventure games are still solid, even if the genre isn't as rampant as it was when TLJ was released. To quote from the podcast, "honey on the cat hair makes a mustache." I never felt like I was constricted by my options or that they were limited in some way. So long as you have a brain, you can get through it without too much trouble. Even if you can't the story should still draw you and make you want to find out what's going to happen next. Graphically, the animations and characters look like... well they look like a game that's a decade old. The cutscenes hold up much better and the (mostly) static backgrounds still look quite good.

I guess the core mechanics of point and click don't ever get old or boring if the game is able to draw you in and make you care about whats going on around you (which is how Dreamfall allowed me to get past its horrid controls/camera and combat) and TLJ was able to do that despite its age and look. Odd, as I played Still Life after TLJ and enjoyed it less than TLJ even though at their core, the gameplay is the same. I think the settings in each game may have played a part in what I saw as logical/plausible solutions to puzzles. Complete fantasy allows for suspension of disbelieve over games set in the 'real world' and how I expect characters to behave/be allowed to behave in them. The gameplay in TLJ and Still Life had many of the same restrictions on what their respective pc's could do, but Still Life felt more rigid in their implementation.

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The mood /atmosphere set in adventure games plays an important role in how I like them. It can make or break the experience of an adventure game, even though the rest of the game is good (writing and puzzles). If the atmosphere doesn't capture me it's not going to work.

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Been playing Donkey Kong for the original Game Boy. It turns the original arcade game into a 100 level puzzle platformer, which holds up damn well to today's standards.

I absolutely love Mario's control and animations in this game. They actually made fall damage interesting by giving it multiple levels of damage. Fall a short distance, and Mario is unaffected. A slightly larger distance, and Mario rolls horizontally a bit to recover. Even further, and Mario is stunned for a brief instant, his legs twitching in pain. Too far, and Mario dies outright. Even though Mario is much harder to kill than in the original Donkey Kong, these animations retain that feeling of fragility. The various jumping schemes still felt fresh. In addition to the standard jump, Mario can backflip (jump while changing directions while running to jump higher) or do handplants (jump while ducking to flip onto your hands, which also lets you block projectiles with your feet. Jump again, and the handspring will take you higher). What's awesome is that many of the intricate moves and behaviors are demonstrated nonverbally between sets of four levels, in a brief Pac Man-esque cutscene.

There's a great overarching puzzle design where each level has a "simple" solution that just involves you bringing a key to the exit, and a "challenging" solution where you can solve extra puzzles to collect three items for a chance at extra lives. The puzzles themselves range from simple Mario action levels, to using pickups in the level to place platforms and ladders to navigate around, to using enemy behaviors. One great puzzle involved opening and closing solid doors in order to funnel around harmless critters that walk around platforms (like those early enemies in Metroid 1) to use them as moving platforms in order to reach a high exit.

The only annoying part about the game is that death takes you back to the level select screen, and replaying the level involves watching Donkey Kong leave through the exit, and Mario enter through the entrance. It's great design to communicate where these elements are on the first play, but tedious to sit through after each death.

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This isn't really a "holds up or doesn't" comment, just a small old game anecdote. I downloaded the original metal gear to the PS3 and it's a riot and very cool, but there's one point early in the game where you come across a butt-naked guy with his ass sticking in the air, and I accidentally hit the crawl button next to the guy and got a screen filled with his huge BUTT. Aaaa! Yes, it's Revolver Ocelot, Psycho-Mantis and Questionably-Posed-Ass-Guy!! Snake!! Look out! Snaaake!!!

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This isn't really a "holds up or doesn't" comment, just a small old game anecdote. I downloaded the original metal gear to the PS3 and it's a riot and very cool, but there's one point early in the game where you come across a butt-naked guy with his ass sticking in the air, and I accidentally hit the crawl button next to the guy and got a screen filled with his huge BUTT. Aaaa! Yes, it's Revolver Ocelot, Psycho-Mantis and Questionably-Posed-Ass-Guy!! Snake!! Look out! Snaaake!!!

Do they still pixelate his already pixelated ass?

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widescreengamingforum.com is a fantastic site. If you find yourself returning to old games, I'd definitely bookmark it.

Cool, I have to go and check these guys out. My netbook can run KOTOR, but things get truly weird with the resolution. It's unplayable at the moment.

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If you are looking for a good ps1 title to go back and play I would heartily recommend

.

I picked it up a few years ago and loved it, it's the only* square enix game I've ever felt like finishing, and I did!

Cool combat system, decent story, and 'amazing' end of gen ps1 graphics!

*with the exception of the Tactics games, which I have beaten a couple of times.

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So a friend of mine recently discovered an Atari 2600 in her parents' attic, and I spent a good hour yesterday playing things like Combat and Chopper Command and Asteroids... Man, I forgot how mind-numbingly simple Atari games were. I mean, I still really love old arcade games like Pac-Man and Galaga, but those Atari games don't even hold up even on that basic level of pure, mindless fun. The games I tried, anyway. Very disappointing.

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So a friend of mine recently discovered an Atari 2600 in her parents' attic, and I spent a good hour yesterday playing things like Combat and Chopper Command and Asteroids... Man, I forgot how mind-numbingly simple Atari games were. I mean, I still really love old arcade games like Pac-Man and Galaga, but those Atari games don't even hold up even on that basic level of pure, mindless fun. The games I tried, anyway. Very disappointing.

I read that ET for the 2600 is still widely considered to be the worst game ever. A friend and I bought one of those self-contained "25 games in one" things of Atari games. Most of them were sadly uninteresting, but we played a shameful amount of that game where you shoot the little dude out of a cannon. That game was wildly entertaining. Beer helped a great deal, as well.

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Beer helped a great deal, as well.

I always think beer will help me enjoy certain games, but then I just can't concentrate on them.

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I often have the same experience. Fortunately, concentration isn't that big of a concern when all you're doing is repeatedly launching a tiny stick-man head first into the ground :clap:

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Great thread topic, and so very timely too, as I just booted up Call Of Duty Classic last night and was overcome with utter dismay.

Here's the thing: I played a lot of hours of Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault multiplayer - there was an extra school-issued computer in my dorm room, so we had that thing running as a dedicated clan server 24/7, so when I say a lot, I mean a LOT – and man ... the fact that MoH:AA came out before COD1 is starting to make me uneasy.

I don't remember MOH:AA looking bad in the least – it was very satisfying, strategic multiplayer game – at least that's what my memory is telling me – but COD1 is a mess. The character models look all out-of-whack, with helmets that are way too big and animations that look as loopy as Silly Symphony. The color palette is almost cartoonish. The voice-acting is borderline silly. The aiming is horrific (although that may just be the fault of a sloppy console port).

So, yeah. I have avoided MobyGamesing either game's footage/screens to find out if COD Classic is just a fluke, or if my rose-colored glasses are a chronic condition. I can't handle the truth.

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So a friend of mine recently discovered an Atari 2600 in her parents' attic, and I spent a good hour yesterday playing things like Combat and Chopper Command and Asteroids... Man, I forgot how mind-numbingly simple Atari games were. I mean, I still really love old arcade games like Pac-Man and Galaga, but those Atari games don't even hold up even on that basic level of pure, mindless fun. The games I tried, anyway. Very disappointing.

Ooh, no! There's some great games. I remember enjoying River Raid with my ex when we discovered her old one. That was surprisingly good fun.

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