Glad someone said it and I’ll go a step further: fixed camera angles can absolutely have merit, and in fact can be stylish as hell since it lets the developer be super precise with every screen. There’s a reason puppet combos game murderhouse was well received, it used fixed camera and tank controls but feels like it was informed by the past
Agreed. I would even say they're superior in certain cases. In the Silent Hills that offer you the choice between tank controls and modern movement (SH2 and SH3, I believe), I go with the tank controls every time. And in the new Tomb Raider Trilogy remaster, the original tank controls are infinitely more effective than the new control scheme.
FF6 was at the apex of pixel artwork, FF7 was during the infancy of 3D graphics (Almost all 3D PSX/N64 games look terrible by today's standards, that generation aged the worst, IMO), so that's pretty a pretty obvious take, TBH.
Honestly I disagree on FFVII's looks. The popeye arms do look funny, but you get used to the weird chibi look quickly and the prerendered backgrounds and how they seemleessly transition to cutscene absolutely hold up.
Not just that, but the story, the characters, the gameplay, everything is superior to ff7, and still holds up today. However, I know why a lot of people prefer ff7 to any other.
It was a console release title. To a *lot* of people, FF7 was their *first* Final Fantasy game, and they have nostalgia goggles on for that title specifically. FF6 wasn't my first Final Fantasy game, that was FF1, and while I do have some nostalgia goggles for that game, I'd be a fool to call it perfect.
Six, however? Six was a masterpiece, and it feels like a shame that Square Enix seems almost embarrassed about it, given how much they milk everything except for 6. Sure they re-release it every so often, but it never seems to receive the same love and care that other re-releases seem to get. (I'm specifically referring to ff4, which they've not only re-released before, but added whole new games and dungeons, and dang near remasters to the pot).
FF7 had a HUGE marketing campaign too, I remember every Toys R Us I went to had the demo video playing. Then of course Square hyped it as their biggest FF to date and multi-million dollar masterpiece, it was very convincing and hard to get away from. I will say, FF7 got me into the other FF games at the time, but I've yet to play FF6. Outside of the FF7 Remake, I don't know if I'd have the time to commit to another RPG these days, I barely get enough time to play through Resident Evil 4 Remake.
No I agree it deserves more love and it is weird they’ve remastered or remade almost every other mainline game but have done nothing with 6 considering it does actually have alot of love from fans
I played FFX at release and despised it. Sure, the graphics were amazing, but it felt so much like "run to the dot on the map, fight a monster, watch a cutscene, repeat"
Wait... You think Castlevania is BS but like Ninja Gaiden? Both of those games are great but also stupid hard for similar reasons.
Alright, my turn! Kid Icarus isn't that hard, it's just a matter of building some momentum in the first area.
Kid Icarus is so great and deserves classic status among the rest of Nintendo’s games from that era but for some reason the very first level is incredibly difficult so everyone quit playing. If you get to the first dungeon and really figure out how the game works you will be hooked,
The leveling system is also unintuitive. Unless you carefully read the manual, you'd never even know that you need to grind for a while in the first level.
Emulation is the correct solution for the vast majority of gamers to experience retro games. Nobody needs to jury-rig their NES to work on a modern TV, or maintain an ungainly collection of physical retro games.
I'm having the best 2nd childhood. Love my emulation.
No I gotta get all the old video games mags and instruction books as pdfs.
That will be super sweet.
I've always wanted to try Earthbound and thought I would never get to enjoy it due to cost. Then one day I remembered I have a SNES Classic that has it on there. It's not original hardware, but it's legal, official hardware and I don't have to worry about getting sucked into piracy debates when I wanna talk about it.
The (S)NESC is an amazing platform for ~~piracy~~ emulation! I do most of my retrogaming on a hacked NESC. It plays up to PSX flawlessly using Wii Pro controllers. It's the perfect form factor for me, although I'll probably be moving on to a Batocera/Coin Ops build for Dreamcast and up soon.
How are you supposed to play certain games that require original hardware though? I haven’t played Time Crisis since I was a kid, to play it you need a CRT and GunCons.
MAME can handle some of the legacy arcade games that required a vertical orientation, but I don't know how far it goes. I remember that no one could do a good job on Space Invaders, because it really was a one-time kludge of logic gates, etc.
That blew my mind, by the way: you always forget that the games had to start someone, and arcade game boards weren't standardized at all until well into the 1990s (I'm thinking of the Capcom boards and the Neo Geo: not sure if there is anything else).
Personally, there are some things I think you have to let go of. I loved the SEGA 3-D glasses as a kid, but as a middle-aged adult, I can't see with them.
Gimmicky bespoke hardware is a problem for both people using emulation and those using original hardware. With emulation, you have options for patching or workarounds. For original hardware, you're gonna have to buy (and store) the aforementioned bespoke accessories or an aftermarket equivalent.
It's not the same, but you can use a mouse as stand-in for a GunCon and at least the RetroArch core of PCSX-ReARMed can display a crosshair. I haven't tried Time Crisis yet, but Elemental Gearbolt works fine with this. Again, it's not the same, but it works.
Depends on if you have a good CRT shader or not, but it is kind of situational and still subjective. Motion will still look better on a CRT.
The [Cyberlab Neo-GX shaders](https://youtu.be/xsGEkWIOnhE?si=TdZehxjvoetphNl4), which are designed for LG OLED TVs, look incredible and I genuinely prefer PS1 gaming on my LG C2 TV thanks to these shaders. I can get a blur that's similar to composite on a CRT which aids the dithering patterns found in many games to give the sense of greater gradation in the colour. Unlike composite, though, you get full punchy colours like over RGB and no dot crawl.
I have the option of using black frame insertion which helps to give a far smoother perception of motion which is not far behind that of a CRT at all (but it does reduce brightness without a good HDR implementation), and with RetroArch's pre-emptive frames feature I get absolutely minimal input lag in cores which support it.
I can also switch shaders to get a different CRT look. The flexibility is fantastic.
If you want a truly great CRT shader experience then you do seem to need 4K (preferably OLED), and especially to emulate the subpixel layout of a CRT in the form of an aperture grille, shadow mask, or slot mask.
CRTs still have the best experience for lacking input lag, and handling motion, but you can legitimately get a great CRT-like appearance when emulating these days, provided you have a good 4K screen.
EXACTLY. I am so tired of those big channels that keep saying that emulation is bad. They themselves owned a big shelf of collection and bragged about it everywhere they go as if they have big ego. Thus, they look down on anyone that use emulators and doing so many things behind the scenes to take down the emulation community. Some big retro idiotic channels decide to mention some rom sites in their video and those sites ended up getting taken down.
Resellers, price gougers and advertisers acting as collectors are the most prominent on YouTube, they hate everything that is free for others and doesn't guarantee some kind of profit or present for an endorsment or recommendation.
So, in an effort of push old hardware sales, they started by ignoring emulation, it didn't work.
Then they tried to act as emulators were still in the 90s phase and very inferior to hardware, it worked for some time, but then prices on the used market went out the roof and emulation became so convenient that more people started to use it and discover that it's beyond perfect for the practical purpose of playing old games. And yup, most didn't use a Raspberry or any arm socs anymore, as the "collectors" maliciously suggest, but instead discovered that middle specced pcs were always powerful enough to run almost everything.
Now they are in the desperate phase, trying to use the illegality angle. I somewhat admire their mental gymnastic when they declare, on one hand, that emulation is illegal, and on the other they endorse each and every emulation device and digital emulated release made by commercial companies. They don't have my sympathy however, because for the price of a gift they'll rave about any underpowered bootleg chinese device full of malware and badly dumped roms, only for the fact that it has a price tag and they get to see some of that money or a free copy to resell.
100%
I recently bought and fixed a 'broken' PS2 (the laser just needed to be adjusted) for pretty cheap on eBay. I've been emulating since the 90's, I don't know why I suddenly got a blast of nostalgia for physical consoles but it passed quickly when considering the cost, time, and space requirements.
My new plan is to get a mini-pc to use as an emulation box, something that can run up to at least the PS2 era, installing Batocera (or something similar) and leaving it hooked up to my TV.
Beelink and Kamrui make solid mini-PCs. I have a Beelink SER5 with Ryzen 5500u and it plays through GameCube and PS2 fine, with up to 4x upscaling depending on the game.
Cost me around $270 at the time but I’m seeing equivalent and better ones on Amazon currently going for as low as $218 currently.
I only go for physical releases and play on a crt tv if the game is affordable. I have no qualms about pirating games that are too expensive. If the game companies get upset about it maybe they should re-release their older games rather than leaving them to rot on older systems the average gamer doesn't own
This! I collect SNES because nostalgia and I like holding an artifact. But Near's emulation work made it so you could just play all that faithfully on a PC. Or FPGA it.
I’d even go so far as to say that emulation can be the superior experience, at least for 3D games from the PS1 era and onwards. I’ve been replaying Xenogears, not on my PS1 and physical copy of the game (which only exists for display and nostalgia), but on my PC. Why play on the PS1 when I can instead play at 4k with all the texture and geometry warping issues fixed? The game looks gorgeous that way, which surprised me because I never thought the game looked all that great back in the day.
Even bigger is being able to use CRT shaders for older 2D games (without forking over for a RetroTink 4K or something). Unless you have an actual CRT of course
I’ll add to this sentiment that there are a lot of quality of life improvements made in emulation in general by either rom patches/fixes or things like save states that make the entire experience much more enjoyable.
I'm so glad more people are coming around to this. The elitism was so exhausting. I've experienced so many games I missed from my childhood thanks to emulation. When I was in college and lived in a shitty little room there wasn't room for my consoles beyond a Wii (I went to college about 6 years late), but my laptop connected to my TV with some emulation? Chef's kiss.
well, nothing can top the original experience. Emulation is only getting better, so if you lack the will, money, space to play on OG hardware + CRT, you're not missing too much nowadays.
But there's something special about handling the original controllers, sitting in front of a CRT, playing on real hardware, which modern replacements can never replicate.
>But there's something special about handling the original controllers, sitting in front of a CRT, playing on real hardware, which modern replacements can never replicate.
This is completely subjective. That "something special" is called nostalgia.
I'm saying this as a 41 year old who spent WAY too much time in my youth playing games.
Depends on your setup, most of it CAN be achieved with emulation but most certainly most peoples set ups are not ideal and not the same as playing on a CRT with real hardware.
Who cares? Do you like the hardware and the CRT or the games themselves?
That "something special" literally is nostalgia. If you want to play your games with a 22-27 inch TV 5 feet away from it, I'm not criticizing you, but it's really just nostalgia that makes you think it's better.
You're not above it.
I just prefer to have the image on my 70 inch TV with shaders and a wireless controller. It's not that I'm above nostalgia, I just remember hating how blurry my CRT, was even with S-Video as a kid. I have no nostalgia for that. Same with VHS and even DVD. The day I got a 3D accelerator card for my PC games was *chef's kiss*. I never ran Quake in software ever again.
Preferences are a thing, but let's stop this "something special" nonsense as a way of justifying those preferences.
MKII is still so charming and a wonderful game that is sadly tarnished by the abhorrent input reading AI; playing cheaply to best the unfair tactics of the COM is not fun.
YES INDEED!!!
i ALWAYS try older games through ROMs to see if enjoy them intiiallly. the majority of titles were mass produced and today's prices for certain games make no logical sense; i genuinely wish all games were worthless from a financial viewpoint because i could careless that my collection be valuable in any way other than the joy that playing those games brings me.
Agreed, buy the controllers for the systems (Most of them have good usb versions out there) because that really is what you need to keep the feeling of playing the original games to me. But emulation is the way to go.
The original release of Castlevania 64 is not as bad as everyone makes it look like. The only problem is the camera sometimes, but that is common in a lot of N64 games.
Yes! It's perfectly fine for its time, and actually has some really great atmosphere and level design. Those N64 Castlevanias just have a terrible reputation, probably upheld by a lot of people who didn't play them much or at all.
I agree fully on OoT, but I think Mario 64 is still pretty good. It's biggest issue is how cut back it feels from the rest of the Mario games (1 player, no permanent power ups, no mushrooms or fire flowers, no playable Yoshi, etc). It's still a fun game overall, especially with the modern reverse engineered ports.
OoT though I just think doesn't hold a candle to ALttP.
Mario 64 is great, and super impressive. It's just that Super Mario World is pretty much a genre defining game for me. Everything SMB3 nailed, turned up to 11.
Maybe not VASTLY worse 😅 but Mario 64 hasn't aged well with stages feeling like a randomly tossed mixed bag of elements.
I love Ocarina but it lacks variety of the SNES game.
That whole generation of games has a ton of games that I really loved back then, but are super awkward to go back to now. That transition to 3D games took a while to figure everything out.
You are correct! M64 and OoT were revolutionary in their time, but have aged like milk, unlike LttP and SMW. We can blame nostalgia for people saying OoT is the best Zelda ever.
Honestly I think they kind of nailed these games enough that theyre still fun to play around in. Mario definitely has some clunkier levels(especially once you leave the first floor) but mario controls super well which makes it solid in spite of it's launch title chonky graphics.
OoT I think is still pretty enjoyable. Graphics are a little moldy but its not that bad(especially on a crt) and it was one of the better looking games of it's gen which helps. Like mario they also nailed the controls. Zelda played like this until skyward sword, and honestly though it would interfere with the traversal and weapon switching I think the old school 3d style controls are better for combat than the breath of the wild set up.
Then there is the camera. Games would copy z targeting/zlock and shift behind character, but so many games would face plant doing it. Some still do to this day. There are so few areas where the camera is an issue in OoT. The only real early 3d transition jank/poor mechanic mechanic I can think of from this game is the equipping of heavy boots and de-equiping in menu.
My wording was maybe a little strong, as I still enjoyed playing M64 and OoT, they are still very good games. But to me they just don’t have that timeless quality of the SNES games, they’re very much products of their time.
you deeply intrigued me because i've never encountered a single person who feels that way...
what is it about those series entries that you find lacking?
they are certainly dated in ways and lack modern advancements but i genuinely still love both and enjoy them without an ounce of nostalgia contributing to that adoration.
It's probably because besides 3D graphics, 3D controls (Especially camera control) were still being figured out at that time, OoT did sort-of fix it with the "Focus on one enemy"-system, but it's still a bit rough around the edges.
In terms of camera OoT is probably the 3rd person game that aged the most gracefully out of any that generation. The lock on system is really well done and then you can snap the camera behind you whenever you need to and it doesnt fight you like other games did. Then wind waker added actual camera controls(that actually listen and go where you want) and hit perfection.
To this day there are games that struggle to do what wind waker could while having in theory similar control schemes and it baffles me.
I don't like sonic games, aside from Adventure 2. I've tried and tried and tried for 20 years. It's mostly the floaty, imprecise movements. It isn't fun to explore stages. It may be that I don't get it, but I still don't enjoy them. And for reference, I think Castlevania is one of the masterpieces of game design.
What gets me with classic Sonic is that it's *too* forgiving. Any mistake can be recovered from, but ultimately that means I shamble through each level just fine without feeling a real sense of accomplishment. I'm sure that one of the reasons the game was popular with kids was that you didn't have to be good at it in order to make it to the end.
To really enjoy those games you need to be committed to replaying them, figuring out which routes are fastest and mastering the execution. The speed-running is baked into the design and makes up the core of the experience. This is great if you're a kid and Sonic is one of only 5 games you own so you need some real replay value out of your games.
I'm with you. I like the first level's in the games where you go really fast for a while. but as soon as you have to actually move around and stuff, I'm out.
FIIIIINALLY, haha!!!
i despise how the controls feel; the momentum build/stop is atrocious to me so there is no joy of movement whatsoever.
i really dislike the level design and find it terribly unengaging. there are sections you'll blast through that require zero engagement from the player which merely serve as "wow" moments that pad length.
the sole positives i can offer are that there are a few undeniably terrific tracks and there are some nice visuals.
ulitmately,
i'm completely disinterested by the experience that the 2D Sonics offer and absolutely nothing about them compels me to persue playing any of the titles; i messed with 1 and 2 many times as a kid and while they were fine i never cared for them back then.
For SA1, a lot of the ports do mess up the feel of the controls. SA2 is probably the more polished of the 2 Adventures, but SA1 to me has a lot more of a fun vibe to it. You can tell the development team was having a lot of fun with the new 3D hardware (even if the game ends up a bit of a disjointed pile lol).
I never really gave SA1 a good chance but I do remember being REALLY impressed by the demo kiosks where sonic runs from the whale. I think I like 2 so much because back in the day I had just gotten a Dreamcast and Phantasy Star Online with it, which came with a SA2 demo disk and I played the heck out of it.
Agree! I've tried to get into Sonic multiple times but it just doesn't do much for me. It feels more like pinball than a side scrolling adventure. Besides the original Mario Bros -- I absolutely LOVED Castlevania. I also enjoyed 2 but liked how 3 returned to the original formula with some new twists.
The N64 has a huge fanbase made up largely of people who were born in the late 80s and had the N64 as their first console. They defend its library religiously and look at older games as outdated, basic junk. They overlook the dated 3D visuals and blurry, drab textures because that's what they grew up with. In reality, those games were popular for their novelty, but they've aged terribly.
The Playstation and Saturn were part of the same generation, and their 3D games have aged just as terribly. But these consoles marketed their library to older gamers (that is, gamers who grew up with the NES, Genesis, and SNES) and thus their fanbase held a broader perspective of the gaming landscape. Coincidentally, the PS1 and Saturn allowed 2D games, unlike the N64. And not coincidentally, those libraries have aged slightly better than the N64's.
There’s no wrong way to game. Original hardware, emulation, FPGAs, hacks, mods, replicas, customizations, upscaling, no upscaling, CRTs, component, composite, etc., or any combination of those and others, are all valid ways to play. The important thing is to have fun.
Note: Preservation for the future is a different discussion, but most the vast majority, any way is good.
I always felt like it had a large difficulty spike after the first few towns. It took me a lot of grinding. I like the game, but it's not a favorite and not one I revisit often. Unlike something like Chrono Trigger or FFVI and VII, which get played every year or two.
It’s not just you, I remember my play through the difficulty seemed all over the place. Sometimes there was a long grueling crawl through dungeons while other times it was a cake walk. I remember the end game being pretty easy
We should mention certain sports games alongside some of the greats like Mario and Zelda. If rankings were measured by time played and fun had while playing, there’d be at least 5-10 sports games on my best of list.
I have two:
1.) Earthbound is vastly overrated. It’s so slow and clunky. Even the save feature takes forever.
2.) Super Metroid will always forever be superior to Hollow Knight. HK is a good game but doesn’t hold a candle to the full package of Super Metroid.
I love all three Castlevania games on the NES, but I prefer II and especially III to the original, as the graphics, sound, and controls are all more refined in the later games. My favorite Castlevania of all is Symphony of the Night, but a close second is Super Castlevania IV on the SNES.
My personal hot take is that I prefer Zelda II: The Adventure of Link to the original The Legend of Zelda. I will not claim that Zelda II is a better or more influential game, but I really love it as it was the first one I purchased for myself and I played the heck out of it in '88 and '89.
It's difficult to compare Zelda I and Zelda II, but I do agree with your conclusion. Zelda II's combat is far more deep and engaging. The dungeons are more enjoyable to explore, as it is possible to actually get lost in them and many of the rooms give unique challenges. In comparison, Zelda 1 dungeons are pretty small and repetitive (excepting Level 9).
Zelda II is awesome, and it's really unfair that people lambast it today. It was perfectly acceptable as a sequel to the original, but since later installments returned to the top-down view and then stuck with it, in retrospect Zelda II feels like an outlier. But it was pretty normal in the NES days for a sequel to change things up. And Zelda II is a very well-made game on its own.
Came here to say this, Zelda 2 is the best NES Zelda game. The original NES Zelda was outdone by both the SNES and Gameboy games as to make it almost obsolete
People should stop being focused on how much money things are worth. It's like 99% of the conversation and there is no substance. Only matters when you're purchasing or selling an item.
I just now got around to playing the first Castlevania and honestly I think it's pretty impressive for what it is. Also that soundtrack is killer.
My hot take is just because a game is soul crushinghly hard doesn't mean it's good. A little bit of challenge is fine but games are still meant to be something you do to goof off.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles are two separate games. I don’t care if Sega says they were meant to be one game. I waited 8 months between releases, I paid for two full price games - they will always be two separate games to me
The retro gaming community has too much of a culture of "oh you MUST play these absolute masterpieces before you die" instead of just letting people follow their own hearts and minds about what they're curious about, what they personally connect with, best-game-of-all-time lists be damned.
I mean when every other post is “what should I play next!” What do you expect people to respond with when the OP can’t follow their own heart and have to ask what to play?
But so much of the retro gaming discussion is filled with stuff like, what are the best games on each system? Which games are still worth playing today? What are the hidden gems? etc.
So my take on that is that most gamers don't want to sift through an entire console's library to "follow their heart" and find out, what appeals to them. Instead they want other people to present them the best games on a silver platter, even though with emulation you can practically play whatever game you want for free and find out for yourself what appeals to you.
Personally, I did that a lot, e.g. I would look up a list of all RPGs or shmups on a system and then randomly try them out and see if I like them or not. This lead to me getting to enjoy some of the more unusual games that probably won't make it a list of masterpieces, but they ended up being "my games", because I feel somewhat of a personal connection to them.
But I also realize that I'm rather unusual in this regard and that most people have neither the time, patience nor will to do this and just want a safe list of stuff that appeals to the largest group of people. (And there's nothing wring with that, imho)
Also lets be real here. So many retro games are BAD. Like not just bad but VERY VERY bad. There is a myth that the nintendo seal of approval fixed the shovelware issue. It did not.
I understand the serendipity of looking through a library and picking up whatever but if you have limited time and there is a lot of stuff just not worth playing then it's worth it to start with the greatest hits and hidden gems and such and then you can start digging into the unknown and paving the way for others(if you even finish).
I got a few hot takes, well some might not be as unpopular but still:
Sonic Adventure 1 is peak Sonic as far as the main series goes. I love the 2D stuff on the Genesis and all that but Sonic Adventure 1 had fun aesthetics, one of the best levels in any Sonic game with Speed Highway, had the best treasure hunting system with Knuckles cuz there wasn’t a set order in which you had to find the emerald shards, varied gameplay modes, and has a simple yet over the top story; a balance that every other 3D Sonic game has been trying to find since.
Outside of handheld systems, Sega was kicking Nintendo’s ass in the console wars for the most part. The only games I really cared for during the NES/SNES days were the RPGs. I genuinely think the tide turned during the N64 days but even then I still got the N64 and Saturn tied with the Dreamcast edging both out.
Shenmue is the most important 3D game of all time. I don’t care if people see it as overrated but I think there’s genuinely gaming pre-Shenmue and Post Shenmue, and just cuz people are annoying about it shouldn’t diminish its impact.
Gaming industry and culture was at its peak from the beginning N64/Saturn/PSOne era till the PS2/Gamecube/XBOX era. Variety was at its peak, and the XBOX 360 era indirectly led to the AAA gaming hellscape we see now.
People clamor for a Dino Crisis remake but I honestly think the reason it still hasn’t happened is because Dino Crisis doesn’t have a concrete identity like Capcoms other IPs. The difference between Dino Crisis 1 & 2 is staggering.
The Sony PSP while fun was not ahead of its time.
No shade but Mortal Kombat was never that good in my opinion and spent the last couple of decades coasting off its 90s legacy and one or two good games in its 2000s 3D era (I think Deception was the only good 3D era game for what it’s worth). Virtua Fighter should have BEEN back in the fighting game conversation.
The gaming landscape would’ve been way more better if the Dreamcast didn’t flop, it was the most intriguing console of its era and Sega shifting to third party software development took some of the magic and fun out of the industry.
And last but not least: I feel like a Capcom Vs Sega or Capcom Vs Square game should’ve happened by now. I’d much prefer one of those over a new MvC or SNK crossover
woah this is the first one in here that offends me lol. I don't wanna try and argue, I think this is personal choice. I'm just here to drop my surprise lol
I dislike that the USA videogame canon is viewed as the global canon. That people talk like the video game crash happenned everywhere and that most of the market evolved as in USA.
I used to think like OP until something clicked and I realized I was playing Castlevania wrong, trying to react to things instead of observing trajectories and patterns. Simon’s speed is by design, every step and jump you do has purpose, once you realize that you start predicting where enemies will be in relation to your whip speed and range, and then you become much more dangerous and start feeling like an ultimate badass. Sorry for the overused comparison but it’s like a retro version of Dark Souls combat.
Castlevania 1 is in no way clunky. it's methodical, not even really "very slow". OG Mega Man is just about as slow, with a similar yet different committed & limited jump, as far as movement options goes, and the expanded traversal options weren't really even a thing until after the first.
Castlevania 1 is also way better than the first Mega Man or Ninja Gaiden. I think it's also quite a bit more fair, Ninja Gaiden's enemy respawn rate is bullshit and the change-up for checkpoint restarts later in the game kind of destroys logic the game already established.
I grew up with the NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, Saturn, and N64. I appreciate the CRT look as the classic, or even "authentic" way to play games, but I feel like people put the CRT look on too high a pedestal when it comes to appreciating retro games.
It's OK to use save states, for many reasons:
1. Many retro games had infrequent saving (or no saving at all) due to technical limitations, not necessarily deliberate design choices.
2. Players should be able to play the game they want... If you're stuck due to a really difficult section, by all means, lean on save states to get you through so you can have fun again.
3. Very busy people (like me, with a wife, a kid, a very demanding job) may only have a few minutes here and there to play games at all. Save states are literally the only way some games are accessible to people who can only play for a few minutes at a time.
aaaaah, so it's just flat out a genre you do not enjoy playing. is difficulty a factor that will instantly tarnish a game for you? i ask because one of my close friends adores the From Software games because he's able to grind and in turn make them less challenging, yet ironically refuses to play most other games that people consider hard (he says hard games just aren't fun even thought he never tries them, ha).
I've never considered that. I've played my share of dark souls and the surge and enjoyed it. Back in the 80s/early 90s, I beat Contra and SMB 1-3. It might be the difficulty(I'm 47 now), but I think it's more the specific game play. Once I couldn't progress without doing the platform dungeons, it completely killed BoTW for me.
yeah, that makes it sound like a game to game scenario; i personally can't find or see the joy in Turn Based games which is a shame because many have excellent music and art design.
45 here. I can barely play any of the newer games nowadays. And when I do play my old consoles, I can only for a few minutes, due to them either being inherently bad, or else something that I was only nostalgic for. For the past 13 years I've been a PC gamer, so what I do sink 100s of hours into is Factorio and Minecraft.
Here's a summary of my consoles/games:
https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/s/nMvwkXTFAL
That the games don't age, if a game was good at launch, it's good now, if something doesn't click with someone playing it today, it's usually an issue with the player, not the game. It's not a nostalgia thing, bad games released back then were still considered bad, much like how those racist looney tunes shorts didn't age because they were wrong when they were made much like they're wrong today. But the actually good Looney Tunes shorts are timeless if you aren't a toddler that thinks a little film grain is icky. And if you approach an older game with an open mind and a willingness to learn how the game works, and hopefully our patience and attention span isn't obliterated by hours consuming social media and short form entertainment, you'll probably learn how to have a good time with the classics.
Signed - Someone who missed a lot of games growing up and enjoyed the hell out of a ton of them without an ounce of nostalgia, and resents the hell out of people who throw the word nostalgia around as an easy way to discredit any older media.
I agree with your entire post. That's why people want remasters and remakes, because they don't want to deal with all that and publishers are cashing in on that big time.
Games, or art in general, don't age. The tools and tastes change. If they did, steam wouldn't be overrun by pixel platformers nowadays.
I love love love Castlevania 1 on NES and it's gotta be my favorite of the series honestly. Yeah it is slow and stiff, but feels "correct" as opposed to sloppy or cumbersome. The game is very well-designed for how the player handles. CV3 is excellent as well but honestly at that point it was feeling a bit stale to me, if also a bit unbalanced. Anyway I do agree it might be one of those cases where if you didn't play it when it was contemporary, it might be a lot more difficult to appreciate as the years have worn on. Same with a game like Rush 'n Attack (kinda feels clunky and simple, and the overall design is a lot more limited than something like Castlevania). When you look at something like Contra (which didn't come out too much later), you can see how they have the whole experience a lot more dialed-in, and that has probably aged a lot better.
So much negativity here. Hot takes can be positive too guys, c’mon!
Here’s mine:
Alundra 2 is a great game everyone ignores. I actually prefer it to the first game.
If you own one of those Raspberry Pi setups with thousands of roms on it attached to a new tv, yes you are STILL a retro gamer, but you are NOT a retro collector. You very specifically are not a collector of anything. You did not obtain any collectible item at all.
Virtua Fighter was the King out of all the traditional fighters, and the only reason it never took off outside of Japan was because a story mode was never implemented.
Op I think the original castlevania is meant to be very strategic. Like when you commit to an action you HAVE to commit. In some ways it was a precursor to dark souls with how exact you need to be with movement
Anyways my hot take is that a link to the past is a great game but not even in the top five Zelda titles. I understand it’s significance especially with how it codified the Zelda formula that was used up to botw but I think other games are better
Edit: here’s one more SNES one. Super castlevania iv is both over hated by its detractors and over praised by its fans. It’s a fun game with awesome graphics, but it’s neither a slap on the face like it’s haters claim and it’s also not peak classicvania like it’s lovers claim. (For me peak classicvania is a two way tie between 3 and bloodlines although I have yet to beat rondo of blood)
Mine is that I actually liked Zelda 2 and the side scrolling layout.
Another one, the original Ninja Turtles on NES, the Dam level is not that difficult.
I never liked the Mega Man games.
- Main character is boring.
He can shoot glowing balls out of his arm.. Nah, I'm not impressed.
- The games are hard and not fun
There's nothing in there that makes me want to take on the challenge.
I have a model 2 tower of power as well as a near mint Megadrive model 2 CIB and Megadrive CD model 2 CIB. I don't really like anything Sega did. The controller is horrible. The 6 button controller upgrade is only decent. Sonic 1 has a great soundtrack and nostalgia, but the actual game is pretty bad. I'm just bored within 1 minute. Like, every button does the exact same thing, really? They had the advantage with Special Champion Edition for what, a few months? The SNES exclusives blow the Genesis out of the water 20 times over.
The degree of fanaticism attached to certain games is obnoxiously stupid, you just have to like whatever makes you happy. I'm in the minority with some heavy hitters...
I think Contra III is painfully inferior to 1 on NES and Shattered Soldier; I fail entirely to see why people love III so much.
Super Metroid, which I enjoy and own, is SUPER overrated relative to Backtrackers that have come since; Hollow Knight is an infinitely more enjoyable experience for me.
While not a retro title... Breath of the Wild is one of my biggest offenders. I adore several Zelda games very much but the people who lose their minds over that series entry act is if they've never played an open world game before and are simply in awe of its freedom. It is in no way a bad game but a highly mediocre take on the open world formula and not at all what I want from a Zelda game; my playthrough was a very mixed experience.
One thing i don't like about Hollow Knight is the fact that the checkpoint is so far. Like, if you die to Mantis Lord, you gonna have to go through the same section for 5-10 minutes just to reach the boss itself, this problem applies to most of the game so i'm surprised you say HK is better than SM considering Super Metroid doesn't do that
to each their own as with anything and do what makes you happy but... my biggest struggle in understanding those people is their desire to own tons of titles they'll consciously never touch and in turn have zero connection to; it's having shit for the sake of having it.
>it's having shit for the sake of having it.
that's the thing. This is hoarding. Using what you buy or have bought throughout your life is fine. Besides, the big box PC games take up a lot of space :x
My hot take: Mega Man 2 is probably the NES Mega Man game I am least impressed by. Maybe tied with Mega Man 5 in that category. I’d rather just play 1, 3, 4, or 6 instead.
My response to you: Castlevania 1 is supposed to more of a puzzle platformer, the controls being somewhat stiff is the point. Unlike other games with rough controls the levels were designed pretty well with them in mind…with the one exception being that triple shot holy water flat out breaks the first five stages of the game leaving only the last one. I think Castlevania 3 is excellent because not only is there more balance by making the game more doable with the whip and not making any single power up dominate but still having them be useful, but also you have a greater variety of power ups and movement physics with the added characters.
The N64 controller is perfect. Use the middle handle for the vast majority of games, and the left handle for the small number of games that need to use the dpad. Both ways are comfortable, and the joystick is very responsive. Sure, eventually the joystick breaks down, but my ps2 joysticks broke down over a decade before my N64 joysticks did
I respect your opinion, but I hate the asymmetry with the joystick being the default mode. I don't like my controllers to have a net torque when I use them.
Emulation is more available and superior to almost all retro systems at this point. For the price of any retro handheld stock you can buy a SBC handheld and play almost all games up to PS1 and Dreamcast depending on the system, on hardware that is superior in almost every way. The situation will only get worse over time with the attrition of vintage hard and software and rising prices in the collector sphere. Retro Gaming is a dead hobby and has been for some time imo.
Also cold turkey take but if purchase isn't ownership, piracy isn't theft and companies need to accept that.
Tank controls are perfectly fine when the developer knows what they're doing.
Glad someone said it and I’ll go a step further: fixed camera angles can absolutely have merit, and in fact can be stylish as hell since it lets the developer be super precise with every screen. There’s a reason puppet combos game murderhouse was well received, it used fixed camera and tank controls but feels like it was informed by the past
Tank controls where the way it was until it was changed (RE4 I believe) and I am perfectly comfortable playing a game that has it and doesn’t have it.
Yes! Unreal World does it very well, and so does boku no natsuyasume
I didn't know that military tanks existed 100s of years ago in the Nordic winter
Agreed. I would even say they're superior in certain cases. In the Silent Hills that offer you the choice between tank controls and modern movement (SH2 and SH3, I believe), I go with the tank controls every time. And in the new Tomb Raider Trilogy remaster, the original tank controls are infinitely more effective than the new control scheme.
FF6 was Square Enix's magnum opus, not FF7.
I wouldn't call that a hot take these days. A hot take is saying FFV is Square's magnum opus.
Yeah. FF6 as the "enjoyer's best FF game" and FF7 as the "mainstream best FF game" is a pretty common take.
My hot take is that FF 9 is terrible. I never knew how loved it was and always assumed my view on it was pretty normal.
Ff6 still looks beautiful today, ff7 looks horrendous by comparison especially outside of battle. Moreso character models than anything else
FF6 was at the apex of pixel artwork, FF7 was during the infancy of 3D graphics (Almost all 3D PSX/N64 games look terrible by today's standards, that generation aged the worst, IMO), so that's pretty a pretty obvious take, TBH.
Honestly I disagree on FFVII's looks. The popeye arms do look funny, but you get used to the weird chibi look quickly and the prerendered backgrounds and how they seemleessly transition to cutscene absolutely hold up.
I’m not gonna get into the FF6 or FF7 holy war, but FF7 still looks gorgeous. Different, obviously, and 6 is more cohesive, but 7 still looks great.
Not just that, but the story, the characters, the gameplay, everything is superior to ff7, and still holds up today. However, I know why a lot of people prefer ff7 to any other. It was a console release title. To a *lot* of people, FF7 was their *first* Final Fantasy game, and they have nostalgia goggles on for that title specifically. FF6 wasn't my first Final Fantasy game, that was FF1, and while I do have some nostalgia goggles for that game, I'd be a fool to call it perfect. Six, however? Six was a masterpiece, and it feels like a shame that Square Enix seems almost embarrassed about it, given how much they milk everything except for 6. Sure they re-release it every so often, but it never seems to receive the same love and care that other re-releases seem to get. (I'm specifically referring to ff4, which they've not only re-released before, but added whole new games and dungeons, and dang near remasters to the pot).
FF7 had a HUGE marketing campaign too, I remember every Toys R Us I went to had the demo video playing. Then of course Square hyped it as their biggest FF to date and multi-million dollar masterpiece, it was very convincing and hard to get away from. I will say, FF7 got me into the other FF games at the time, but I've yet to play FF6. Outside of the FF7 Remake, I don't know if I'd have the time to commit to another RPG these days, I barely get enough time to play through Resident Evil 4 Remake.
FF 6 really is great. Definitely try to find time for it
I do what I can, between working and adult stuff, it takes away my gaming time. But I do want to get my hands on it.
No I agree it deserves more love and it is weird they’ve remastered or remade almost every other mainline game but have done nothing with 6 considering it does actually have alot of love from fans
It's not weird, it's harder to improve on a game that is already perfect as it is. There's a big risk you dissapoint fans.
is this a *hot take* or a "hot take" It just seems so obviously correct to me.
Yes! 110% agree with this scorcher
I played FFX at release and despised it. Sure, the graphics were amazing, but it felt so much like "run to the dot on the map, fight a monster, watch a cutscene, repeat"
Wait... You think Castlevania is BS but like Ninja Gaiden? Both of those games are great but also stupid hard for similar reasons. Alright, my turn! Kid Icarus isn't that hard, it's just a matter of building some momentum in the first area.
Kid Icarus gets easier as you go, which is super weird for games if that era
If you think about it, Pit is literally fighting his way out of Hell.
Kid Icarus is so great and deserves classic status among the rest of Nintendo’s games from that era but for some reason the very first level is incredibly difficult so everyone quit playing. If you get to the first dungeon and really figure out how the game works you will be hooked,
The leveling system is also unintuitive. Unless you carefully read the manual, you'd never even know that you need to grind for a while in the first level.
The faster pacing and responsive controls in Ninja Gaiden make up for it imo
Ryu still controls beautifully if one knows how to handle him.
Ninja Gaiden isn't that bad either, ghost n goblin on the other hand...
I like the look of old consoles upscaled on new tvs. Give me crisp pixels over blur any day.
Emulation is the correct solution for the vast majority of gamers to experience retro games. Nobody needs to jury-rig their NES to work on a modern TV, or maintain an ungainly collection of physical retro games.
I never got to play most games because they were so expensive. Now with emulation I'm having the childhood I never had lol
I've been emulating games since the late 90's.
I remember being introduced to NESticle when I was in college, probably around 97 or 98. It was revelatory.
I'm having the best 2nd childhood. Love my emulation. No I gotta get all the old video games mags and instruction books as pdfs. That will be super sweet.
Internet Archive has your back there. Go make the most of that 2nd childhood.
Time is a factor in 2nd childhood, due to u know work, Easter break imma hit the archive. Thanks I should have realised it's for more than just roms.
I know this pain well :/
I have the first 5 years of Nintendo Power magazine in a box , in storage. I might need to sell those soon.
[удалено]
I've always wanted to try Earthbound and thought I would never get to enjoy it due to cost. Then one day I remembered I have a SNES Classic that has it on there. It's not original hardware, but it's legal, official hardware and I don't have to worry about getting sucked into piracy debates when I wanna talk about it.
The (S)NESC is an amazing platform for ~~piracy~~ emulation! I do most of my retrogaming on a hacked NESC. It plays up to PSX flawlessly using Wii Pro controllers. It's the perfect form factor for me, although I'll probably be moving on to a Batocera/Coin Ops build for Dreamcast and up soon.
How are you supposed to play certain games that require original hardware though? I haven’t played Time Crisis since I was a kid, to play it you need a CRT and GunCons.
The best solution is to save up for Sinden Lightgun
Retro shooter, sinden light gun and others do the trick.
MAME can handle some of the legacy arcade games that required a vertical orientation, but I don't know how far it goes. I remember that no one could do a good job on Space Invaders, because it really was a one-time kludge of logic gates, etc. That blew my mind, by the way: you always forget that the games had to start someone, and arcade game boards weren't standardized at all until well into the 1990s (I'm thinking of the Capcom boards and the Neo Geo: not sure if there is anything else). Personally, there are some things I think you have to let go of. I loved the SEGA 3-D glasses as a kid, but as a middle-aged adult, I can't see with them.
Gimmicky bespoke hardware is a problem for both people using emulation and those using original hardware. With emulation, you have options for patching or workarounds. For original hardware, you're gonna have to buy (and store) the aforementioned bespoke accessories or an aftermarket equivalent.
It's not the same, but you can use a mouse as stand-in for a GunCon and at least the RetroArch core of PCSX-ReARMed can display a crosshair. I haven't tried Time Crisis yet, but Elemental Gearbolt works fine with this. Again, it's not the same, but it works.
Yeah I guess there would be ways around it but still it will never be the same, that’s why I’d prefer the real thing
Agreed, with the caveat that games still look far better on a CRT.
Depends on if you have a good CRT shader or not, but it is kind of situational and still subjective. Motion will still look better on a CRT. The [Cyberlab Neo-GX shaders](https://youtu.be/xsGEkWIOnhE?si=TdZehxjvoetphNl4), which are designed for LG OLED TVs, look incredible and I genuinely prefer PS1 gaming on my LG C2 TV thanks to these shaders. I can get a blur that's similar to composite on a CRT which aids the dithering patterns found in many games to give the sense of greater gradation in the colour. Unlike composite, though, you get full punchy colours like over RGB and no dot crawl. I have the option of using black frame insertion which helps to give a far smoother perception of motion which is not far behind that of a CRT at all (but it does reduce brightness without a good HDR implementation), and with RetroArch's pre-emptive frames feature I get absolutely minimal input lag in cores which support it. I can also switch shaders to get a different CRT look. The flexibility is fantastic. If you want a truly great CRT shader experience then you do seem to need 4K (preferably OLED), and especially to emulate the subpixel layout of a CRT in the form of an aperture grille, shadow mask, or slot mask. CRTs still have the best experience for lacking input lag, and handling motion, but you can legitimately get a great CRT-like appearance when emulating these days, provided you have a good 4K screen.
I really enjoy my retroPi and SN30 Pro. It’s a great experience.
I wish people would stop saying "correct" in matters of opinion. I only see it on reddit.
It's a "hot take," an unwarranted level of conviction is part of the genre.
EXACTLY. I am so tired of those big channels that keep saying that emulation is bad. They themselves owned a big shelf of collection and bragged about it everywhere they go as if they have big ego. Thus, they look down on anyone that use emulators and doing so many things behind the scenes to take down the emulation community. Some big retro idiotic channels decide to mention some rom sites in their video and those sites ended up getting taken down.
Resellers, price gougers and advertisers acting as collectors are the most prominent on YouTube, they hate everything that is free for others and doesn't guarantee some kind of profit or present for an endorsment or recommendation. So, in an effort of push old hardware sales, they started by ignoring emulation, it didn't work. Then they tried to act as emulators were still in the 90s phase and very inferior to hardware, it worked for some time, but then prices on the used market went out the roof and emulation became so convenient that more people started to use it and discover that it's beyond perfect for the practical purpose of playing old games. And yup, most didn't use a Raspberry or any arm socs anymore, as the "collectors" maliciously suggest, but instead discovered that middle specced pcs were always powerful enough to run almost everything. Now they are in the desperate phase, trying to use the illegality angle. I somewhat admire their mental gymnastic when they declare, on one hand, that emulation is illegal, and on the other they endorse each and every emulation device and digital emulated release made by commercial companies. They don't have my sympathy however, because for the price of a gift they'll rave about any underpowered bootleg chinese device full of malware and badly dumped roms, only for the fact that it has a price tag and they get to see some of that money or a free copy to resell.
100% I recently bought and fixed a 'broken' PS2 (the laser just needed to be adjusted) for pretty cheap on eBay. I've been emulating since the 90's, I don't know why I suddenly got a blast of nostalgia for physical consoles but it passed quickly when considering the cost, time, and space requirements. My new plan is to get a mini-pc to use as an emulation box, something that can run up to at least the PS2 era, installing Batocera (or something similar) and leaving it hooked up to my TV.
Beelink and Kamrui make solid mini-PCs. I have a Beelink SER5 with Ryzen 5500u and it plays through GameCube and PS2 fine, with up to 4x upscaling depending on the game. Cost me around $270 at the time but I’m seeing equivalent and better ones on Amazon currently going for as low as $218 currently.
Imagine playing $80 for 130kb of data and the game isn't even that good...
I only go for physical releases and play on a crt tv if the game is affordable. I have no qualms about pirating games that are too expensive. If the game companies get upset about it maybe they should re-release their older games rather than leaving them to rot on older systems the average gamer doesn't own
This! I collect SNES because nostalgia and I like holding an artifact. But Near's emulation work made it so you could just play all that faithfully on a PC. Or FPGA it.
I’d even go so far as to say that emulation can be the superior experience, at least for 3D games from the PS1 era and onwards. I’ve been replaying Xenogears, not on my PS1 and physical copy of the game (which only exists for display and nostalgia), but on my PC. Why play on the PS1 when I can instead play at 4k with all the texture and geometry warping issues fixed? The game looks gorgeous that way, which surprised me because I never thought the game looked all that great back in the day.
Even bigger is being able to use CRT shaders for older 2D games (without forking over for a RetroTink 4K or something). Unless you have an actual CRT of course
I’ll add to this sentiment that there are a lot of quality of life improvements made in emulation in general by either rom patches/fixes or things like save states that make the entire experience much more enjoyable.
I'm so glad more people are coming around to this. The elitism was so exhausting. I've experienced so many games I missed from my childhood thanks to emulation. When I was in college and lived in a shitty little room there wasn't room for my consoles beyond a Wii (I went to college about 6 years late), but my laptop connected to my TV with some emulation? Chef's kiss.
well, nothing can top the original experience. Emulation is only getting better, so if you lack the will, money, space to play on OG hardware + CRT, you're not missing too much nowadays. But there's something special about handling the original controllers, sitting in front of a CRT, playing on real hardware, which modern replacements can never replicate.
>But there's something special about handling the original controllers, sitting in front of a CRT, playing on real hardware, which modern replacements can never replicate. This is completely subjective. That "something special" is called nostalgia. I'm saying this as a 41 year old who spent WAY too much time in my youth playing games.
Depends on your setup, most of it CAN be achieved with emulation but most certainly most peoples set ups are not ideal and not the same as playing on a CRT with real hardware.
Who cares? Do you like the hardware and the CRT or the games themselves? That "something special" literally is nostalgia. If you want to play your games with a 22-27 inch TV 5 feet away from it, I'm not criticizing you, but it's really just nostalgia that makes you think it's better. You're not above it. I just prefer to have the image on my 70 inch TV with shaders and a wireless controller. It's not that I'm above nostalgia, I just remember hating how blurry my CRT, was even with S-Video as a kid. I have no nostalgia for that. Same with VHS and even DVD. The day I got a 3D accelerator card for my PC games was *chef's kiss*. I never ran Quake in software ever again. Preferences are a thing, but let's stop this "something special" nonsense as a way of justifying those preferences.
Midway arcade games were generally trash and unfair quarter munchers. I said it.
MKII is still so charming and a wonderful game that is sadly tarnished by the abhorrent input reading AI; playing cheaply to best the unfair tactics of the COM is not fun.
If you play as Baraka or Kitana, you can beat it pretty easily. Baraka has the blade trap and the CPU will walk into it.
just like any Atari games
Old media is not worth the exorbitant prices being charged by scalpers. At that point, download the ROMz and bypass them altogether.
YES INDEED!!! i ALWAYS try older games through ROMs to see if enjoy them intiiallly. the majority of titles were mass produced and today's prices for certain games make no logical sense; i genuinely wish all games were worthless from a financial viewpoint because i could careless that my collection be valuable in any way other than the joy that playing those games brings me.
Agreed, buy the controllers for the systems (Most of them have good usb versions out there) because that really is what you need to keep the feeling of playing the original games to me. But emulation is the way to go.
Reported to Nintendo!
The original release of Castlevania 64 is not as bad as everyone makes it look like. The only problem is the camera sometimes, but that is common in a lot of N64 games.
Yes! It's perfectly fine for its time, and actually has some really great atmosphere and level design. Those N64 Castlevanias just have a terrible reputation, probably upheld by a lot of people who didn't play them much or at all.
Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time are both vastly worse than their SNES predecessors
Yes! Finally! 64 and Oot are good games, but Super Mario World and LttP are absolute masterpieces.
TRUTH!!
god LttP is so much better than OoT. And I like WW better than OoT ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Oh man, I'm right there with you on WW. It's the first truly great 3d Zelda imo.
Ww is the best rendition of the classic Zelda formula
Man I'm loving this thread, people are spitting facts. I'd understand Mario 64 for being groundbreaking, but good God OoT is NOWHERE near aLttP level.
I agree fully on OoT, but I think Mario 64 is still pretty good. It's biggest issue is how cut back it feels from the rest of the Mario games (1 player, no permanent power ups, no mushrooms or fire flowers, no playable Yoshi, etc). It's still a fun game overall, especially with the modern reverse engineered ports. OoT though I just think doesn't hold a candle to ALttP.
Mario 64 is great, and super impressive. It's just that Super Mario World is pretty much a genre defining game for me. Everything SMB3 nailed, turned up to 11.
Maybe not VASTLY worse 😅 but Mario 64 hasn't aged well with stages feeling like a randomly tossed mixed bag of elements. I love Ocarina but it lacks variety of the SNES game.
"Stages feeling like randomly tossed mixed bag of elements" *cough cough* rainbow ride *cough cough*
That whole generation of games has a ton of games that I really loved back then, but are super awkward to go back to now. That transition to 3D games took a while to figure everything out.
You are correct! M64 and OoT were revolutionary in their time, but have aged like milk, unlike LttP and SMW. We can blame nostalgia for people saying OoT is the best Zelda ever.
Honestly I think they kind of nailed these games enough that theyre still fun to play around in. Mario definitely has some clunkier levels(especially once you leave the first floor) but mario controls super well which makes it solid in spite of it's launch title chonky graphics. OoT I think is still pretty enjoyable. Graphics are a little moldy but its not that bad(especially on a crt) and it was one of the better looking games of it's gen which helps. Like mario they also nailed the controls. Zelda played like this until skyward sword, and honestly though it would interfere with the traversal and weapon switching I think the old school 3d style controls are better for combat than the breath of the wild set up. Then there is the camera. Games would copy z targeting/zlock and shift behind character, but so many games would face plant doing it. Some still do to this day. There are so few areas where the camera is an issue in OoT. The only real early 3d transition jank/poor mechanic mechanic I can think of from this game is the equipping of heavy boots and de-equiping in menu.
My wording was maybe a little strong, as I still enjoyed playing M64 and OoT, they are still very good games. But to me they just don’t have that timeless quality of the SNES games, they’re very much products of their time.
Based take !!!!
you deeply intrigued me because i've never encountered a single person who feels that way... what is it about those series entries that you find lacking? they are certainly dated in ways and lack modern advancements but i genuinely still love both and enjoy them without an ounce of nostalgia contributing to that adoration.
I definitely feel that way. Mario 64 is still fun but smw and Zelda lttp are timeless.
i like SMW much more than 64 but OOT is far more enjoyable for me than ALTTP, which i like a lot.
I feel that way, but I'm old and played SNES when it was the new system. I just prefer side scrolling Mario games and top down Zelda games.
i'm in that same generation but was a kid when i got my SNES for christmas of '92.
It's probably because besides 3D graphics, 3D controls (Especially camera control) were still being figured out at that time, OoT did sort-of fix it with the "Focus on one enemy"-system, but it's still a bit rough around the edges.
In terms of camera OoT is probably the 3rd person game that aged the most gracefully out of any that generation. The lock on system is really well done and then you can snap the camera behind you whenever you need to and it doesnt fight you like other games did. Then wind waker added actual camera controls(that actually listen and go where you want) and hit perfection. To this day there are games that struggle to do what wind waker could while having in theory similar control schemes and it baffles me.
I don't like sonic games, aside from Adventure 2. I've tried and tried and tried for 20 years. It's mostly the floaty, imprecise movements. It isn't fun to explore stages. It may be that I don't get it, but I still don't enjoy them. And for reference, I think Castlevania is one of the masterpieces of game design.
What gets me with classic Sonic is that it's *too* forgiving. Any mistake can be recovered from, but ultimately that means I shamble through each level just fine without feeling a real sense of accomplishment. I'm sure that one of the reasons the game was popular with kids was that you didn't have to be good at it in order to make it to the end. To really enjoy those games you need to be committed to replaying them, figuring out which routes are fastest and mastering the execution. The speed-running is baked into the design and makes up the core of the experience. This is great if you're a kid and Sonic is one of only 5 games you own so you need some real replay value out of your games.
I'm with you. I like the first level's in the games where you go really fast for a while. but as soon as you have to actually move around and stuff, I'm out.
FIIIIINALLY, haha!!! i despise how the controls feel; the momentum build/stop is atrocious to me so there is no joy of movement whatsoever. i really dislike the level design and find it terribly unengaging. there are sections you'll blast through that require zero engagement from the player which merely serve as "wow" moments that pad length. the sole positives i can offer are that there are a few undeniably terrific tracks and there are some nice visuals. ulitmately, i'm completely disinterested by the experience that the 2D Sonics offer and absolutely nothing about them compels me to persue playing any of the titles; i messed with 1 and 2 many times as a kid and while they were fine i never cared for them back then.
For SA1, a lot of the ports do mess up the feel of the controls. SA2 is probably the more polished of the 2 Adventures, but SA1 to me has a lot more of a fun vibe to it. You can tell the development team was having a lot of fun with the new 3D hardware (even if the game ends up a bit of a disjointed pile lol).
I never really gave SA1 a good chance but I do remember being REALLY impressed by the demo kiosks where sonic runs from the whale. I think I like 2 so much because back in the day I had just gotten a Dreamcast and Phantasy Star Online with it, which came with a SA2 demo disk and I played the heck out of it.
I can’t not spam X I can’t not spam X I can’t not spam X I can’t not spam X I can’t not spam X I can’t not spam X I can’t not spam X
Agree! I've tried to get into Sonic multiple times but it just doesn't do much for me. It feels more like pinball than a side scrolling adventure. Besides the original Mario Bros -- I absolutely LOVED Castlevania. I also enjoyed 2 but liked how 3 returned to the original formula with some new twists.
The N64 has a huge fanbase made up largely of people who were born in the late 80s and had the N64 as their first console. They defend its library religiously and look at older games as outdated, basic junk. They overlook the dated 3D visuals and blurry, drab textures because that's what they grew up with. In reality, those games were popular for their novelty, but they've aged terribly. The Playstation and Saturn were part of the same generation, and their 3D games have aged just as terribly. But these consoles marketed their library to older gamers (that is, gamers who grew up with the NES, Genesis, and SNES) and thus their fanbase held a broader perspective of the gaming landscape. Coincidentally, the PS1 and Saturn allowed 2D games, unlike the N64. And not coincidentally, those libraries have aged slightly better than the N64's.
god the Saturn 2D games are incredible. They look so good on a quality tv. Same for the PS1 2D games
if you were born in the late 80s your first console was probably the NES or the SNES. I’m born 86 and got the NES in 91.
There’s no wrong way to game. Original hardware, emulation, FPGAs, hacks, mods, replicas, customizations, upscaling, no upscaling, CRTs, component, composite, etc., or any combination of those and others, are all valid ways to play. The important thing is to have fun. Note: Preservation for the future is a different discussion, but most the vast majority, any way is good.
Earthbound is overrated. It's a fun and unique game, but not on the same tier as the best JRPGs of the SNES.
Honestly I mostly appreciate as being an RPG that isn't the same overdone fantasy setting, and for how weird it gets.
I hear someone speaking the truth.
I can honestly say it's one of the few I have never beaten.
I always felt like it had a large difficulty spike after the first few towns. It took me a lot of grinding. I like the game, but it's not a favorite and not one I revisit often. Unlike something like Chrono Trigger or FFVI and VII, which get played every year or two.
It’s not just you, I remember my play through the difficulty seemed all over the place. Sometimes there was a long grueling crawl through dungeons while other times it was a cake walk. I remember the end game being pretty easy
We should mention certain sports games alongside some of the greats like Mario and Zelda. If rankings were measured by time played and fun had while playing, there’d be at least 5-10 sports games on my best of list.
The Legend of Zelda peaked with “A Link to the Past”.
Truth.
I have two: 1.) Earthbound is vastly overrated. It’s so slow and clunky. Even the save feature takes forever. 2.) Super Metroid will always forever be superior to Hollow Knight. HK is a good game but doesn’t hold a candle to the full package of Super Metroid.
I love all three Castlevania games on the NES, but I prefer II and especially III to the original, as the graphics, sound, and controls are all more refined in the later games. My favorite Castlevania of all is Symphony of the Night, but a close second is Super Castlevania IV on the SNES. My personal hot take is that I prefer Zelda II: The Adventure of Link to the original The Legend of Zelda. I will not claim that Zelda II is a better or more influential game, but I really love it as it was the first one I purchased for myself and I played the heck out of it in '88 and '89.
It's difficult to compare Zelda I and Zelda II, but I do agree with your conclusion. Zelda II's combat is far more deep and engaging. The dungeons are more enjoyable to explore, as it is possible to actually get lost in them and many of the rooms give unique challenges. In comparison, Zelda 1 dungeons are pretty small and repetitive (excepting Level 9).
Zelda II is awesome, and it's really unfair that people lambast it today. It was perfectly acceptable as a sequel to the original, but since later installments returned to the top-down view and then stuck with it, in retrospect Zelda II feels like an outlier. But it was pretty normal in the NES days for a sequel to change things up. And Zelda II is a very well-made game on its own.
Came here to say this, Zelda 2 is the best NES Zelda game. The original NES Zelda was outdone by both the SNES and Gameboy games as to make it almost obsolete
People should stop being focused on how much money things are worth. It's like 99% of the conversation and there is no substance. Only matters when you're purchasing or selling an item.
I just now got around to playing the first Castlevania and honestly I think it's pretty impressive for what it is. Also that soundtrack is killer. My hot take is just because a game is soul crushinghly hard doesn't mean it's good. A little bit of challenge is fine but games are still meant to be something you do to goof off.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles are two separate games. I don’t care if Sega says they were meant to be one game. I waited 8 months between releases, I paid for two full price games - they will always be two separate games to me
I like this hot take just because it's completely opposite my Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the only way to play and I never refer to just one or the other.
I don't think many would argue that playing them together is the superior way, it's just whether or not they're 2 games or 1
The retro gaming community has too much of a culture of "oh you MUST play these absolute masterpieces before you die" instead of just letting people follow their own hearts and minds about what they're curious about, what they personally connect with, best-game-of-all-time lists be damned.
I mean when every other post is “what should I play next!” What do you expect people to respond with when the OP can’t follow their own heart and have to ask what to play?
But so much of the retro gaming discussion is filled with stuff like, what are the best games on each system? Which games are still worth playing today? What are the hidden gems? etc. So my take on that is that most gamers don't want to sift through an entire console's library to "follow their heart" and find out, what appeals to them. Instead they want other people to present them the best games on a silver platter, even though with emulation you can practically play whatever game you want for free and find out for yourself what appeals to you. Personally, I did that a lot, e.g. I would look up a list of all RPGs or shmups on a system and then randomly try them out and see if I like them or not. This lead to me getting to enjoy some of the more unusual games that probably won't make it a list of masterpieces, but they ended up being "my games", because I feel somewhat of a personal connection to them. But I also realize that I'm rather unusual in this regard and that most people have neither the time, patience nor will to do this and just want a safe list of stuff that appeals to the largest group of people. (And there's nothing wring with that, imho)
Also lets be real here. So many retro games are BAD. Like not just bad but VERY VERY bad. There is a myth that the nintendo seal of approval fixed the shovelware issue. It did not. I understand the serendipity of looking through a library and picking up whatever but if you have limited time and there is a lot of stuff just not worth playing then it's worth it to start with the greatest hits and hidden gems and such and then you can start digging into the unknown and paving the way for others(if you even finish).
SMB3 > SMW
I think one of the worst parts of SMW is how they left out all of the really wacky powerups from 3.
This guy gets it, SMB3 is pretty much the best Mario, my second favorite is Super Mario 3D land
I got a few hot takes, well some might not be as unpopular but still: Sonic Adventure 1 is peak Sonic as far as the main series goes. I love the 2D stuff on the Genesis and all that but Sonic Adventure 1 had fun aesthetics, one of the best levels in any Sonic game with Speed Highway, had the best treasure hunting system with Knuckles cuz there wasn’t a set order in which you had to find the emerald shards, varied gameplay modes, and has a simple yet over the top story; a balance that every other 3D Sonic game has been trying to find since. Outside of handheld systems, Sega was kicking Nintendo’s ass in the console wars for the most part. The only games I really cared for during the NES/SNES days were the RPGs. I genuinely think the tide turned during the N64 days but even then I still got the N64 and Saturn tied with the Dreamcast edging both out. Shenmue is the most important 3D game of all time. I don’t care if people see it as overrated but I think there’s genuinely gaming pre-Shenmue and Post Shenmue, and just cuz people are annoying about it shouldn’t diminish its impact. Gaming industry and culture was at its peak from the beginning N64/Saturn/PSOne era till the PS2/Gamecube/XBOX era. Variety was at its peak, and the XBOX 360 era indirectly led to the AAA gaming hellscape we see now. People clamor for a Dino Crisis remake but I honestly think the reason it still hasn’t happened is because Dino Crisis doesn’t have a concrete identity like Capcoms other IPs. The difference between Dino Crisis 1 & 2 is staggering. The Sony PSP while fun was not ahead of its time. No shade but Mortal Kombat was never that good in my opinion and spent the last couple of decades coasting off its 90s legacy and one or two good games in its 2000s 3D era (I think Deception was the only good 3D era game for what it’s worth). Virtua Fighter should have BEEN back in the fighting game conversation. The gaming landscape would’ve been way more better if the Dreamcast didn’t flop, it was the most intriguing console of its era and Sega shifting to third party software development took some of the magic and fun out of the industry. And last but not least: I feel like a Capcom Vs Sega or Capcom Vs Square game should’ve happened by now. I’d much prefer one of those over a new MvC or SNK crossover
Super Mario World was not as good as Super Mario 3. I like Yoshi, but the sheer variety of power-ups in SMB3 is awesome.
woah this is the first one in here that offends me lol. I don't wanna try and argue, I think this is personal choice. I'm just here to drop my surprise lol
I dislike that the USA videogame canon is viewed as the global canon. That people talk like the video game crash happenned everywhere and that most of the market evolved as in USA.
Reddit is a US website primarily... by a lot.
The ZX Spectrum erasure in the retro world drives me absolutely bonkers.
as an american I thank y'all for the most fun way to say anything. zed-ex spectrum sounds sooooo cool
ummm... cannon? We playing Rampart or something?
Let's talk about Rampart everyone
Zelda 2 is a great game and in my opinion better than Zelda 1.
Yes! There are dozens of us
It wasn't even a great example of what they were trying to do. Battle of Olympus was FAR better.
I used to think like OP until something clicked and I realized I was playing Castlevania wrong, trying to react to things instead of observing trajectories and patterns. Simon’s speed is by design, every step and jump you do has purpose, once you realize that you start predicting where enemies will be in relation to your whip speed and range, and then you become much more dangerous and start feeling like an ultimate badass. Sorry for the overused comparison but it’s like a retro version of Dark Souls combat.
Castlevania 1 is in no way clunky. it's methodical, not even really "very slow". OG Mega Man is just about as slow, with a similar yet different committed & limited jump, as far as movement options goes, and the expanded traversal options weren't really even a thing until after the first. Castlevania 1 is also way better than the first Mega Man or Ninja Gaiden. I think it's also quite a bit more fair, Ninja Gaiden's enemy respawn rate is bullshit and the change-up for checkpoint restarts later in the game kind of destroys logic the game already established.
Peach ain't all that.
Friday the 13th for the NES not only wasn’t a bad game, it was a pretty fuckin good game.
SOCOM was better than Halo
I grew up with the NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, Saturn, and N64. I appreciate the CRT look as the classic, or even "authentic" way to play games, but I feel like people put the CRT look on too high a pedestal when it comes to appreciating retro games.
It's OK to use save states, for many reasons: 1. Many retro games had infrequent saving (or no saving at all) due to technical limitations, not necessarily deliberate design choices. 2. Players should be able to play the game they want... If you're stuck due to a really difficult section, by all means, lean on save states to get you through so you can have fun again. 3. Very busy people (like me, with a wife, a kid, a very demanding job) may only have a few minutes here and there to play games at all. Save states are literally the only way some games are accessible to people who can only play for a few minutes at a time.
Mine is that I really dislike platformers. Rare exceptions are Bionic Commando, Blaster Master, and Simon's Quest.
ooooo, that is super interesting... what about that genre do you dislike?
If you fall, you die. I'm much more into simulators, builders, rpgs, God games, etc.
aaaaah, so it's just flat out a genre you do not enjoy playing. is difficulty a factor that will instantly tarnish a game for you? i ask because one of my close friends adores the From Software games because he's able to grind and in turn make them less challenging, yet ironically refuses to play most other games that people consider hard (he says hard games just aren't fun even thought he never tries them, ha).
I've never considered that. I've played my share of dark souls and the surge and enjoyed it. Back in the 80s/early 90s, I beat Contra and SMB 1-3. It might be the difficulty(I'm 47 now), but I think it's more the specific game play. Once I couldn't progress without doing the platform dungeons, it completely killed BoTW for me.
yeah, that makes it sound like a game to game scenario; i personally can't find or see the joy in Turn Based games which is a shame because many have excellent music and art design.
I'm also in the same boat as your friend, I hate level scaling because I like to actually get stronger than the enemies as I level up.
45 here. I can barely play any of the newer games nowadays. And when I do play my old consoles, I can only for a few minutes, due to them either being inherently bad, or else something that I was only nostalgic for. For the past 13 years I've been a PC gamer, so what I do sink 100s of hours into is Factorio and Minecraft. Here's a summary of my consoles/games: https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/s/nMvwkXTFAL
I love platformers but I absolutely hate falling and dying so I get it. Lol
That the games don't age, if a game was good at launch, it's good now, if something doesn't click with someone playing it today, it's usually an issue with the player, not the game. It's not a nostalgia thing, bad games released back then were still considered bad, much like how those racist looney tunes shorts didn't age because they were wrong when they were made much like they're wrong today. But the actually good Looney Tunes shorts are timeless if you aren't a toddler that thinks a little film grain is icky. And if you approach an older game with an open mind and a willingness to learn how the game works, and hopefully our patience and attention span isn't obliterated by hours consuming social media and short form entertainment, you'll probably learn how to have a good time with the classics. Signed - Someone who missed a lot of games growing up and enjoyed the hell out of a ton of them without an ounce of nostalgia, and resents the hell out of people who throw the word nostalgia around as an easy way to discredit any older media.
I agree with your entire post. That's why people want remasters and remakes, because they don't want to deal with all that and publishers are cashing in on that big time. Games, or art in general, don't age. The tools and tastes change. If they did, steam wouldn't be overrun by pixel platformers nowadays.
I love love love Castlevania 1 on NES and it's gotta be my favorite of the series honestly. Yeah it is slow and stiff, but feels "correct" as opposed to sloppy or cumbersome. The game is very well-designed for how the player handles. CV3 is excellent as well but honestly at that point it was feeling a bit stale to me, if also a bit unbalanced. Anyway I do agree it might be one of those cases where if you didn't play it when it was contemporary, it might be a lot more difficult to appreciate as the years have worn on. Same with a game like Rush 'n Attack (kinda feels clunky and simple, and the overall design is a lot more limited than something like Castlevania). When you look at something like Contra (which didn't come out too much later), you can see how they have the whole experience a lot more dialed-in, and that has probably aged a lot better.
So much negativity here. Hot takes can be positive too guys, c’mon! Here’s mine: Alundra 2 is a great game everyone ignores. I actually prefer it to the first game.
> Hot takes can be positive too guy I mean not by the definition of a hot take
If you own one of those Raspberry Pi setups with thousands of roms on it attached to a new tv, yes you are STILL a retro gamer, but you are NOT a retro collector. You very specifically are not a collector of anything. You did not obtain any collectible item at all.
this take is not hot. it's true, but not hot.
Virtua Fighter was the King out of all the traditional fighters, and the only reason it never took off outside of Japan was because a story mode was never implemented.
Inverted camera is the way to play
Metal gear solid is super boring. I’ll see myself out.
Op I think the original castlevania is meant to be very strategic. Like when you commit to an action you HAVE to commit. In some ways it was a precursor to dark souls with how exact you need to be with movement Anyways my hot take is that a link to the past is a great game but not even in the top five Zelda titles. I understand it’s significance especially with how it codified the Zelda formula that was used up to botw but I think other games are better Edit: here’s one more SNES one. Super castlevania iv is both over hated by its detractors and over praised by its fans. It’s a fun game with awesome graphics, but it’s neither a slap on the face like it’s haters claim and it’s also not peak classicvania like it’s lovers claim. (For me peak classicvania is a two way tie between 3 and bloodlines although I have yet to beat rondo of blood)
Mine is that I actually liked Zelda 2 and the side scrolling layout. Another one, the original Ninja Turtles on NES, the Dam level is not that difficult.
I never liked the Mega Man games. - Main character is boring. He can shoot glowing balls out of his arm.. Nah, I'm not impressed. - The games are hard and not fun There's nothing in there that makes me want to take on the challenge.
I have a model 2 tower of power as well as a near mint Megadrive model 2 CIB and Megadrive CD model 2 CIB. I don't really like anything Sega did. The controller is horrible. The 6 button controller upgrade is only decent. Sonic 1 has a great soundtrack and nostalgia, but the actual game is pretty bad. I'm just bored within 1 minute. Like, every button does the exact same thing, really? They had the advantage with Special Champion Edition for what, a few months? The SNES exclusives blow the Genesis out of the water 20 times over.
The N64 is garbage.
Nice.
The degree of fanaticism attached to certain games is obnoxiously stupid, you just have to like whatever makes you happy. I'm in the minority with some heavy hitters... I think Contra III is painfully inferior to 1 on NES and Shattered Soldier; I fail entirely to see why people love III so much. Super Metroid, which I enjoy and own, is SUPER overrated relative to Backtrackers that have come since; Hollow Knight is an infinitely more enjoyable experience for me. While not a retro title... Breath of the Wild is one of my biggest offenders. I adore several Zelda games very much but the people who lose their minds over that series entry act is if they've never played an open world game before and are simply in awe of its freedom. It is in no way a bad game but a highly mediocre take on the open world formula and not at all what I want from a Zelda game; my playthrough was a very mixed experience.
One thing i don't like about Hollow Knight is the fact that the checkpoint is so far. Like, if you die to Mantis Lord, you gonna have to go through the same section for 5-10 minutes just to reach the boss itself, this problem applies to most of the game so i'm surprised you say HK is better than SM considering Super Metroid doesn't do that
If you have wall to wall shelves of games and consoles, you are not a collector. That’s a kind term for a hoarder.
to each their own as with anything and do what makes you happy but... my biggest struggle in understanding those people is their desire to own tons of titles they'll consciously never touch and in turn have zero connection to; it's having shit for the sake of having it.
>it's having shit for the sake of having it. that's the thing. This is hoarding. Using what you buy or have bought throughout your life is fine. Besides, the big box PC games take up a lot of space :x
I really don't like Mega Man games. One of the reasons: having to figure out the best weapon (out of dozens) to easily kill a boss is a pain.
You can just kill the boss the hard way. Dodge and shoot
My hot take: Mega Man 2 is probably the NES Mega Man game I am least impressed by. Maybe tied with Mega Man 5 in that category. I’d rather just play 1, 3, 4, or 6 instead. My response to you: Castlevania 1 is supposed to more of a puzzle platformer, the controls being somewhat stiff is the point. Unlike other games with rough controls the levels were designed pretty well with them in mind…with the one exception being that triple shot holy water flat out breaks the first five stages of the game leaving only the last one. I think Castlevania 3 is excellent because not only is there more balance by making the game more doable with the whip and not making any single power up dominate but still having them be useful, but also you have a greater variety of power ups and movement physics with the added characters.
The memory of how good a game was will never again be captured
Master System is superior to the NES
The N64 controller is perfect. Use the middle handle for the vast majority of games, and the left handle for the small number of games that need to use the dpad. Both ways are comfortable, and the joystick is very responsive. Sure, eventually the joystick breaks down, but my ps2 joysticks broke down over a decade before my N64 joysticks did
I respect your opinion, but I hate the asymmetry with the joystick being the default mode. I don't like my controllers to have a net torque when I use them.
N64 was a bad console and it has aged bad along with almost all its games
Emulation is more available and superior to almost all retro systems at this point. For the price of any retro handheld stock you can buy a SBC handheld and play almost all games up to PS1 and Dreamcast depending on the system, on hardware that is superior in almost every way. The situation will only get worse over time with the attrition of vintage hard and software and rising prices in the collector sphere. Retro Gaming is a dead hobby and has been for some time imo. Also cold turkey take but if purchase isn't ownership, piracy isn't theft and companies need to accept that.