Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@ShonenJump121 N64 is a weird case because some aspects of game design just kept improving but they had to semi start from scratch in certain other ways with 3D. Take something like Mario 64. Excellent level design. The controller itself is weird but the controls are ..ok...not perfect by modern standards but not bad. The graphics in many ways have aged less well than snes graphics which bothers some people but not others. The camera? Simply awful. Like bad enough I would be hesitant to recommend the game to people only used to modern games even though it is a classic. Even for me, it makes the game much less fun even though the game is great in most other ways.

Agree on Zelda 1/2. I keep trying to play them on NSO, but they are hard to get into.

@FishyS I think when it came to 3D it was the wild west so everyone was trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. You had the N64 controller doing its thing, The Dualshock and its eventual usage of the two analog sticks.

But this also meant that games would be all over the place in terms of controls of feel. This is sort of why many people look at the 2D games of that era more fondly like Symphony of the Night, Suikoden II and Guardian Heroes since they weren't trying to figure things out like most 3D games were. We already had, during the SNES era.

@ShonenJump121 @FishyS
I feel like NES games, some but not all, are fine if you play them in the same way you would a GB game. Not really great on a huge TV, especially given your other options, and maybe even too "small" for playing on a screen as large as the Switch. But great for a smaller portable. On my 3DS I probably ended up playing more Balloon Fight than some of the retail releases

Mostly because the limitations of the NES just forced a very simple design of games. One that compresses fairly well to 2-3" screens. Obviously GameBoy games are explicitly designed for that and are also designed to be for portable play. So there's that. But NES does work in that space fairly well

The N64 is a bit harder to find an ideal space for IMO. Obviously there are classic N64 games. I'll still gladly replay Ocarina of Time or Paper Mario and I've lost count of the number of times I've given Mario Kart 64 a spin over the years. But I feel like with N64 the game is constantly fighting against the limitations of the N64. And that's kinda true of all of the early 3D stuff. I agree with @FishyS that Super Mario 64 is one that, to me, is on the wrong side of that equation a bit. But for me it's mostly because if I wanted to play a 3D Mario I'd just play Super Mario Galaxy...... which is just better in all the ways Super Mario 64 falls short

The NES is difficult if you "weren't there" because so much of the fundamental design language of games has changed. There was an expectation that games would be full of very obtuse secrets - not signposted things but very obtuse things like invisible blocks in arbitrary places that would give you essential powerups - and, of course, an expectation that games were still about high score chases (but often in a dissatisfying way).

I was there at the time and a lot of NES games still seem decidedly unremarkable, compared to what you could play on other consoles and computers at the time.

There's nothing particularly special about its hardware, even by 1983 standards, and the main thing going for it is the elements of great game design that Nintendo chanced upon by accident, but only truly codified by the SNES era.

We're all a bit blinkered by nostalgia for the systems that we grew up with, and the NES is no exception to that.

@Matt_Barber Honestly, I prefer the SMS (Sega Master System) over the NES. While I do understand & get that many of the NES games are popular & all, I just think the SMS games are superior imo. Or maybe i prefer to go for the underdogs. I dunno if that makes sense but I might as well count this as an unpopular opinion in itself. Plus I do find it interesting & funny that the SMS was a success in EU & Brazil.

@StuTwo
Honestly I feel like, if anything, modern games often suffer from designs that assume player knowledge more than older games do. The number of times in modern games where I find myself looking up a guide to get past a section only for the resolution to be something like "you know that mechanic you skipped past in the tutorial 10 hours ago? The one you've managed to get this far without using at all? Yeah, you need to equip that item and use it in that way on the thing to trigger some scripted event to progress". One of the reasons why BotW was so good, there was no "correct" solution and you could just cheese your way through puzzles

While with older games you usually just need to get better to progress further. And if there's some hidden thing you need to progress it's usually just a matter of getting more familiar with the game

@DanijoEX-the-Pierrot

I run a weekly RetroGaming poll on Reddit. For the Top 100 games of the 8-bit era (voted on for nearly 2 full years), there were

• 64 NES games
• 23 Arcade games
• 9 Master System games
• 4 Computer games

I was a Nintendo kid. My friend had a Master System. The only game he had that I was jealous of was Phantasy Star. But what a game! It made Dragon Warrior look like trash!

@skywake I know what you mean but I disagree - games from the NES era were often accidentally or deliberately obtuse. The idea that players would pool knowledge was part of the philosophy. Without access to that pool of knowledge you often aren't getting the whole game.

On top of which some of the difficulty was often unintentional, enemies respawning on top of you or just off the edge of screen in such a way that made avoiding them impossible etc.

Modern games are rarely deliberately designed to outright annoy you. Yes they might overwhelm to the point that underbaked systems are forgotten but they do typically offer hints and clues or other subtle nudges to keep you on a preferred path. I don't think NES games always did this.

I think the design philosophy was shifting during that era so you had a big mix, but I agree some games were definitely like that as part of the transition. Selling strategy guides was also a big thing back then and some game designers may have expected you had one. There was also the transition from arcade game design philosophy which were designed to kill you in unfair but addictive ways just to get more quarters — essentially the equivalent of modern day gacha games — and some nes games still had some of that even though it made no sense on consoles.

They should not have remade DKCR for a second time. It would have been way cooler to remake the original trilogy but that would have been too difficult for Nintendo and would have been too good of a deal to get all 3 for $60.

I'm completely disconnected from the people who felt the now mostly competent video game adaptations were must watch just because they were based on IPs they like and weren't terrible. I mean I love me some Mario and Sonic, I've yet to touch those movies because I can't imagine they'll be anything more than an ok use of time.

And the Nintendo 1-900 number telephone tipline (I forget the name). I remember getting my dad's permission to call it once, sadly I cannot remember the game...

There was also the transition from arcade game design philosophy which were designed to kill you in unfair but addictive ways just to get more quarters — essentially the equivalent of modern day gacha games — and some nes games still had some of that even though it made no sense on consoles.

Yeah, "INSERT COIN TO CONTINUE" was the death of the concept of having to get good at an arcade game, to compete against others for a high score. I remember Rampage and Gauntlet being early examples, which like you said, don't make sense at all on consoles with infinite lives/continues.

I still haven't watched The Super Mario Bros. Movie, even though I have access to it. I think eventually I will see it? The critics put me off of it initially. And the Sonic movies just looked like they were for young kids.

I find I'm now too old for even the best animated family films. Inside Out and Toy Story 2 did nothing for me. That was pretty much the end of going to theatres for animated family films for me.

On the other hand, I loved both Spider-Verse animated flicks, finding them just as good as any live-action MCU film. Seeing actual Kirby Krackle up on the big screen was a delight!

Back to video games...The Last of Us was okay/pretty good, though I have never played the games. My reaction after season 1 was: ".........THAT'S IT?!? THAT is the best video game story ever told?" It was underwhelming from all the gushing praise the games receive. Maybe it's best when played.

What else. I'm not a children's anime fan so no Pokemon for me. Didn't like the new Mortal Kombat. Resident Evil is all garbage.

My non-gaming sister for some reason watched the Fallout TV show and recommended it to me. I hear the Castlevania and Cyberpunk animated shows are good. Heard The Witcher is ok, and has a following.

Generally I'm interested in well-received stuff that isn't geared directly to toddlers.

I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or not, but it's pretty funny that I walk into a boss room and see some insanely huge behemoth and think "Pfffft, I got this." But if that boss is the same size as me I'm like "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-"

You're right. But no one cared about scores for those games. Kind of like your score in Super Mario Bros. It was there, but it was irrelevant. You just want to get to the next stage.

A while ago I was curious about Gauntlet, because I remember you die pretty quickly (and often) in it. So I looked up the world record high-score video on Twin Galaxies' website. And...oof...the world record holder does a lot of sniping at the corner of the screen, and then running and hiding and trapping enemies around corners. It doesn't look like a fun way to play at all. Because it wasn't designed or intended to be played well. Going gung-ho for a couple of minutes was a lot more fun.

@MontyCircus I do like the Sonic movies cause of how fun they are, but yeah, two of the main audiences of the movies are Sonic fans and smaller kids (not that it’s an issue) and I will admit that they aren’t masterpieces or entirely perfect, cause I think there was this subplot in the second movie that I was not really a fan of because it didn’t seem “Sonic” to me. There is the third movie releasing this year that I am excited about and so are a ton of people and I do think there could be a chance it could be better than the previous films, but it does seem to be a bit overhyped to me and I’m not going to go into it expecting a masterpiece. I think people find the films more enjoyable and don’t see many flaws in them if they are either a Sonic fan or a child, since those two are the target audiences of the film.

I did like the Mario movie too, but it’s also not a masterpiece and I think there were issues with the pacing, it wasn’t really funny (though I am happy it wasn’t laden with unfunny fart and poop jokes) and, although a bit minor, the song choices…why did they play Take On Me during a silly driving scene instead of music that fit the scene? It is one of Illumination’s better movies, but it’s best to go into the film not expecting a masterpiece, because I think some people did that and it left them extremely disappointed with the film.

@Pastellioli you’re not actually wrong in your take on sonic 2. It feels like as if the sonic movie universe goes on, they keep infantilizing sonic and treat him more and more like a “child” and a “son”, in a possessive sense, like the human actors are scared they’re getting upstaged by a cartoon hedgehog so they have to keep insecurely reminding you “No no, he’s our son” as to not seem inferior. But that’s just my meta interpretation. Sonic is also generally more childishly written (which isn’t an opportunity, that’s literally his character and I hope he matures in the next movie. It’s getting obnoxious) unlike the adventure games where he felt more like a late teen or young adult.

@Yousef- I am hoping the third movie is better than the previous ones, cause while I did like them, they have flaws. Some people are expecting the next movie to be better (and possibly the best one) since I think they are supposed to be taking inspiration from the Adventure games in there, and given that those games are considered the best Sonic games with its narrative and story and how we’ve heard of a few of the characters that are going to be in the film, I do think him maturing would be very fitting for the movie, and some people have been imagining that and saying there is a possibility that could be what they will do for the third film. I hope they don’t mess it up though, since there is a lot of people hyped for it and expecting it to be amazing because of all the build-up that has been made for it over time.

I don’t mind the human characters and did like some of them, but I feel like the wedding subplot in the second movie wasn’t all that necessary and sorta not funny…My mother did like the subplot, but I didn’t really.

@Pastellioli I’m praying for an arc like tom holland’s spidey where he obnoxiously dumb (since I’m in this thread, I can say another hot take xD) in the first two movies but became really mature in the third and I was soooooo behind him.

I do understand your POV. I’m ok with the humans but they can be handled a little better.