Topic: Statement : Older videogames are of better quality than the new ones.

I asked myself this question quite often; "Are videogames that were made back in the day better than the games that are made now?"
I came to the simple conclusion that videogames back in the golden age (the 80's and 90's) were better, simply because of the 'open market'. But, developers also didn't see themselves as businessmen, but rather as artists. Developers in the 90's dared! While developers now ask themselves if there is a market that they can exploit.

But also the fact that developers were limited made the games limited, and were therefore food for one's own imagination. The Map of Zelda for instance is a great example of potential imagination; a simple 8-bit game became a world of millions of people that had their own imagination of that world. Limitation seems therefore a must for creativity.

There are indeed (very minor) exceptions. I've played the new NBA Jam this year. It is an complement towards the original game; it is one of my favourite games at this moment, and so is Donkey Country Returns a big improvement over the original game in my opinion...

It is just my own opinion, so don't take 'my opinion' personal.

But feel free to discuss...

Kirby's epic yarn. Enough said

lol, devs were asking themselves that back in the day, too... especially in the post-crash era when they had to actually pay attention and put thought into what people would and would not be interested in. No more Purina dog-food games, y'know :3

Developers back then were cranking out lame cash-ins at least as frequently as they are now. (If they weren't, there'd be no Angry Video Game Nerd!) And it's a bit dismissive to say that innovation today always comes second to marketability. The balance, if anything, has tipped toward innovation with the rise of the indie movement and digital distribution services.

Of course you'll always have companies that just want to make money. (Bear in mind that this is what any successful company must do to stay in business.) But the market today allows for a handful of guys working in a basement on a laptop to create a game that no major publisher would take a chance on, and distribute it through one of several very popular download services. That's an opportunity nobody had in the 80s and 90s, and it's led to some truly innovative stuff finding its way into the marketplace.

i always talk about this to people myself

Response: Developers still dare nowadays. Do you think Grand Theft Auto would be to where it is today if Rockstar hadn't dared to revolve a game around crime? Do you think Nintendo would be at the top of the gaming industry if it hadn't dared to pull in all of the casual gamers with the Wii? etc... My point being; developers today are still as daring as they ever were.

Unlimited options and uses for games doesn't bring down the developer's creativity in any way, shape, or form, either. Developers still today work on making games as creative as possible, and throw as many ideas out into the market as they can. We have tons of new games being thrown out each year full of imagination and potential, but it's the repetitive games that the "hardcore gamers" trip over their own feet about that actually get recognition

In other words: developers are still daring, and creative games are still being made, yet it's typically the un-creative ones that rise to success.

It's kind of silly to say that all older videogames are of higher quality than all older videogames. There were cheap cash-ins then, and we have them now. There were incredible, innovative and artistic games then, and there are now (and now, really, is the prime time to be a "craft-first-money-second" developer with things like the App store and, you know, the internet allowing little known developers spread the word about their labors of love to the world).

No, older games aren't of higher quality. Both Mario Galaxies are of much higher quality than Super Mario Bros. The devlopment teams for the Wii games are much larger, and they have better tools at their disposal.

BUT, I don't think that the Mario Galaxies -- amazing games in their own right -- are more fun than the original SMB. In fact, I can think or more NES and SNES games that I would like to sit down with than the current gen games. While I belive they are of higher quality, my beef with current games is the extensive focus on story, rather than gameplay, their needless complexity, and extended load times. Give me Super Metroid over Other M, Castlevania 3 over Portrait of Ruin, FF3 over FF 8, and Kickmaster over Assassin's Creed any day!

Were they really better or do we just remember all the good stuff and none of the bad? I've been looking through some old '80s-90s video game magazines at retromag.com and there was alot of crap advertised in those magazines that I don't remember even existing.

Video games are about the same as they always were in terms of proportion of quality. Trash and cash-ins have existed since video arcades and home consoles became popular. It's only because we have 20-20 rose-tinted hindsighted goggles that we canchoose the game boys from the game men, so to speak.

Popular old games are the only ones that survived in the public psyche until today. The popular ones were either A) good or B) unusual. That's why we still talk about games like Space Invaders (good) and E.T. (unusual). Super Mario Bros. (good) and Battletoads (unusual). The unmentionable junk has dropped out of sight and, therefore, everyone thinks old games are better because only the good old games are the ones which remain, while the current unmentionable junk is still in our faces ruining the scenery. Besides, the fact that E.T. is trash and is still acknowledged is proof that there was some really low grade stuff even back then.

DMA Design, actually. And a little after they were taken over by Take Two, the majority of its staff were literally left out on the street without jobs. Money money. I knew a couple of those guys. Horrible situation to be in.

So, er, response nullified I suppose.

are you kidding i mean youre joking right

In my opinion, no, not really.
I think things just SEEM better from the older generation of games, due to the nostalgic factors, and that ideas hadn't been done to death. You can only figure out so many ways to save the world from peril.
Things always seem a lot better when you're young.

For example, I LOVED Secret of Mana, and I still think it's great, but to play it today, it just doesn't have the same kick it once had when I was like, 11.

But playing it always brings back those fond memories, and makes me fall in love with it all over again, and that, to me, is what makes older games so much fun. Because quality certainly hasn't dropped on a lot of new hit titles. There will always be the over-flow of crap titles, just to make a quick buck, but the ones that are masterpieces, are clearly better quality than something released pre '95.

The same can definitely be said about movies, too.

I guess the best way to settle this ongoing debate would be to create a study that took people who never have played video games in their lives and give them an assortment of games from all of the different generations and let them decide. Those of us who grew up in the 80's and early 90's are going to have nostalgic biases towards games that remind us of being young and innocent. I'm sure when we're in our fifties, the kids growing up today are gonna have the same thoughts we do today. Video games today are kinda like movies today. They're taking what worked good in the past and making them state of the art, which isn't a bad thing in the video game world for me, but I see it as devs running with someone elses idea. Technology is always about pushing the limits, so as long as there is new stuff coming out, we're gonna buy it and there will always be things that work, and things that don't.

Edit: Twentys and I were writing up our pieces at the same time and we pretty much have the same opinion

Gah! Get out of my mind StuffyStuff! =)

modern mainstream gaming is mostly a bog of sequels, aftermarket pay to download content, and the current flavor of the month, military shooter. Or usually, a combination of the three. ( Wii, exempted, of course. )

Grand theft auto is the worst possible example. The only major improvement over the last thirteen years has been in the graphic design.

I don't know, maybe I'm mixing the deficit of creativity, with the original, quality argument.

Either/or, I don't know how anyone can take a look at the state of mainstream gaming today, and not walk away thinking the medium is spinning it's wheels.

As long as the only requirement put upon developers is in visuals, I wouldn't hold my breath for any real innovations, or quality experiences.

The retro parallels:

1. Sequels were still a plague back then. Just one example out of many: Final Fantasy had 6 instalments and several spinoffs before it went "modern" with FF7 on the PSX. Quality sequels they may have been, but also proof that branding was just as important back in the day. I could go on about the old game series that got worse with each successive sequel, but that would be beating a dead horse at this point.

2. There was no DLC, but game prices were far higher. If you account for inflation, the games you were buying back then cost over $100 of today's money. Also, expansion packs on the PC.

3. Flavour of the month existed back then too. In the 90s, the games industry was basically testing how many meritless mascot-based platformers people could handle before a mass riot broke out. Then depending on the year we have numerous worthless cash-in clones of side-scrolling beat 'em ups, 2D fighters (with or without fatalities) and scrolling shoot 'em ups.

The gaming medium has absolutely improved by leaps and bounds. I'd prefer seeing CoD sequels on the shelves than literally unplayable garbage.

Amen to that.

With that said, I'd say things really haven't changed much, rose-colored glasses and all that.

Nah. People tend to get overly nostalgic about the games from the 80's and 90's, but have you ever really dug through the NES library (for an example)? Sure, you'll find plenty of unique, quirky titles and gems but for each one of those you'll find 10 terrible, derivative junk titles. That seems to be the same ratio you'll find on the current systems, isn't it?

Hmm...I smell nostalgia...I wonder where it could be?

My first video game system was one of those four-variations-of-Pong things, and I played all the arcade classics when they first came out in the arcades. I still have my Atari 2600 cartridges. IMO, there were some classic games from that era, but few or none with the depth and replay value of today's top games. In that day, most games didn't offer anything new beyond the first few levels. It was just the same thing faster and/or more difficult. There were no games like Harvest Moon, for instance, where new stuff keeps unlocking and the game changes significantly even after hundreds of hours of play. Yes, having to use your imagination to fill in the gaps left by poor graphical capability and storage-size limitations was a plus in some ways, but knowing that you could play for hours without losing a life if you merely found the sweet spot or the correct pattern wasn't much of a challenge. I'd say there are a lot of classics from that era -- games that are among my favorites of all time -- but I'd rather be gaming in this era.