Ever replayed an old game and thought...

[BigDeadFreak]

Stuff that has aged horribly:

3) Saturn 3D Stuff

I dunno, Sega Rally, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, Virtua Cop and Virtua Fighter 2 still look good. I think most of the rest of the stuff never looked that good in the first place.

[JazzFunk]

I quite like playing old PS1 stuff on the PS3. I never thought the PS1 looked amazing, only when it looked smooth, I always preferred a smoother, more solid game and more ambitious titles did have a habit of looking crappy in certain ways, damn it Harry's tree trunk legs in Silent Hill 1 I'm looking at you!!!

[DaytimeDreamer]

I dunno, Sega Rally, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, Virtua Cop and Virtua Fighter 2 still look good. I think most of the rest of the stuff never looked that good in the first place.

Sega Rally: Dreamcast has a much better version.

Also, booted up Panzer Dragoon some months ago and the framerate is just terrible compared to today's standards. Don't know, looked really bad IMO.

But for 2D stuff the Saturn is king! I would however preferring playing the arcade version of VF2 through emulation for example these days. Looks and plays many times better.

[Asura]

Also, booted up Panzer Dragoon some months ago and the framerate is just terrible compared to today's standards. Don't know, looked really bad IMO.

The original, or Zwei? Remember that the original was a very early title.

I think Zwei still has some relevance - again, going back to what I said about MGS with its designs having their origins in the brush pen work of Yoji Shinkawa - Panzer Dragoon Zwei has its visual origins in the work of Mobius/Jean Giraud.

https://youtu.be/iVpU4fw-u1U?t=4m34s

Personally I think it has aged fantastically well.

I also wonder if Panzer Dragoon Zwei was the first example of texture artwork in 3D games approached like painting.

Bit of a clarification on that; sprite artwork in games is a pretty unique digital artform. Some games on the SNES etc. have a painterly feel but it's a highly specialised field, where artists have to maximise their gains with very severe constraints. When 3D games came along, they rarely had textures at first - but by the time we got to the PS1, it was evident that gouraud-shaded triangles with textures would define that generation's graphics.

Earlier 3D games approached texturing in one of two ways; either by using photo-source (basically like sticking photos of things to surfaces; if you want mud, you take a photo of mud and edit it), or like creating sprites. For instance...



It's obvious that everything in Wolfenstein 3D - the walls, the surfaces, everything was "textured" in a manner similar to sprites (ignoring for a moment that Wolfenstein and Doom are only pseudo-3D; they look 3D).

Now compare that to this:



In Street Fighter, Ryu has a very basic style that reflects the sprites of that era. By SFII, we were starting to see more videogames emerge where genuine artists were involved in their creation, people who could've just as easily worked in comic books or somewhere else, rather than being something of an enthusiastic amateur. By the time we got to Alpha, however, it was very clear that artists were taking visual cues from existing styles and incorporating them into videogames (I've heard the Alpha series was heavily influenced by the Street Fighter animated movie; not quite sure how true that is but the "anime influence" on SF Alpha is very plain).

So games like Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing existed, but these titles just used quite crude polygonal shapes to re-create real shapes; karate fighters, F-1 cars and the like.

Panzer Dragoon was probably the first 3D game I was aware of to really successfully do what SF Alpha did, i.e. draw its artistic influence from somewhere else, using a painterly style reminiscent of oil and ink painting. Given how videogame graphics have evolved since, this is a spectacularly important step, and represents what I said in my previous post - why Metal Gear Solid looks so much better than Syphon Filter.

[Dogg Thang]

Panzer Dragoon Zwei is still one of the best looking games I have ever played. Yes, it is very limited by its hardware but the design shines through and transcends those limits. That painter look, as you mention, is gorgeous. I also think it still plays brilliantly. Yeah it would be nice to have it at a better frame rate and higher textures but it doesn’t take me long before I adjust to the look and the old tech and just enjoy it all over again.

And that’s how I am with lots of old games. An initial shock of how old they look but, give it a while, and I adjust and enjoy them. Some games just don’t hold up and there has always been a huge gap between the great games and the poor games but this great games still remain great. I’ve hugely enjoyed some of the stuff on the SNES Mini, for example.

On the flip side, my wife got one of those Atari Flashback things and it’s hard to find anything remotely playable on it.

[BigDeadFreak]

Sega Rally: Dreamcast has a much better version.

I don't think Sega Rally was ever ported over to the Dreamcast. There was Sega Rally 2 but not the original.

[Zen Monkey]

Most old games disappoint me. Remasters too. But I don't believe we were more easily amused. It's just that when we enjoyed them, they were cutting edge, and now they aren't. In ten, twenty years time most of the games we play and enjoy today will seem dated too.

[wakka]

Some old games are disappointing to return to. The Crash Bandicoot series hasn't stood up particularly well for me, for example. But the really good stuff is always worthwhile. Sometimes it just takes a little more work at the beginning to enjoy - much like how old novels and films can be a little bit more effort.

And anyone saying Metal Gear Solid isn't worth playing today is clearly mental - it still looks great! Really strong art direction and stayed very much within the confines of what was actually available on the PS1.

[replicashooter]

Time and time again however Nintendo titles generally really shine as the core gameplay is so great and there is still oodles of replayability. Except for the 64 that is where most things just looked like a mess and its hard to see past that naffness now as I couldn't back then.

Case in point, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.









A really simple and basic cut down 2D Mario game but oozes charm from every pixel and was a lot of fun to replay.

[dataDave]

MGS looked great when I played it through Retroarch at 55". Looking forward to getting it on my CRT this coming winter. It's a really cold game, and the starkness of the graphics lend to that atmosphere a great deal, I think. I really like the use of colour and texture dithering.

That muddy Youtube video was a poor example, like composite going into a cheap LCD.

[Zaki]

Any 2D Castlevania game looks stunning on a BVM.

[MartyG]

Conversely, Chaos: The Battle of Wizards on the ZX Spectrum still plays as brilliantly now as it did then.

But yes, games have increased massively in complexity and so have our expectations.

[Sketcz]

I tried replaying Goldeneye, but I thought I was getting cataracts it's so foggy.

I've actually been going through the N64 catalogue on a power-rig of a PC, with high end emulation (smoothed textures via emulator, but removing the inherent N64 blurriness of anti-aliasing, upped resolution, stabilised framerate, etc.), and I must say the level design, structure, mission objectives, and even AI of Goldeneye impress me more now.

However, I also tried Zelda: Ocarina of Time...

Back in the day, getting it as a Christmas present, I thought it was the best game ever. Subsequent online polls all list it as the best game of all time.

Having played it again after a hiatus of nearly 20 years (maybe it even is 20 years - my parents bought it for me on release), I think it's really awful.

The opening is godawful boring. Forcing me to trawl for 40 green rupies just to buy a stupid shield, and Mido's monologues can't be skipped, so I'm slamming the button for him to shut the **** up but it just crawls along like mollasses in January.

Then the first dungeon. Jesus this is lame. I have to go aaaaaallllll the way over there, to push a block, to climb up a level, to kill a bad guy, to push a switch, so that a flame torch aaaaaaalllllll the way on the other side catches light. Then I gotta go allllllll the way over there, with my little stick, and set that on fire. Then I have to goooooooo aaaaaallllll the waaaaaaay back to the other goddamned side of the dungeon, with my little burning stick, which I set on fire from the little burning lamp, which is only burning because I was allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy over theeeeeeeerrrrrreeeeeeee, pushing the block, and killing the enemy, and pushing some switch, and then I carry this burning stick and burn some spider webs, to push another another switch to shlep my pixie elf-boy arse alllllllll the way to the other ****ing side of the dungeon to repeat ad nauseaum.

Did this pass for gameplay back in the 1990s? Seriously, screw that.

Also THE CAMERA. I am spoiled with a right analogue stick controller the camera for me at all times.

Man, do you remember playing games without a camera stick?

I finished the first dungeon, sat through the 17 hour cut scene, and decided there were better things people could do with their life.

Yet... I recall it being amazingly excellent... How easilty I was amused as a teenager.

[Digfox]

This is going to ruffle some feathers but I felt this most strongly when looking back at the Amiga. With the exception of a very select few titles, I can't believe the Amiga entertained me as much as it did. I was definitely easy to please.

Bit late on this thread, but I do kind of agree with [MENTION=5941]Asura[/MENTION] on this. I feel that the Amiga (maybe even the ST) were machines of their time, much more in comparison to the consoles of the day. There are unique games like Projectyle, Flood, Moonstone etc. that are worth revisiting but obviously back in the day I didn't realise how bad some of the Arcade conversions were.

[JazzFunk]

Metal Gear Solid looks so much better than Syphon Filter.

That it may, it was always a "rich, artistic experience".

However, NOTHING compares to remote-tasering bad guys in Syphon Filter 1, you could literally fry the gits and keep them hanging in a constant stasis of deep fat fryer-level agony if you held the button down (iirc, it was nineteen years back).

No weapon in any game has ever felt as fun since. You could literally FRY people from about 250-500 metres away. Glorious, glorious burning agony, it smells like pork, yo!!!!!!!!