
The Powerful Emotional Pull of Old Video Games (2014) - samsolomon
http://nautil.us/blog/the-powerful-emotional-pull-of-old-video-games
======
csense
Gaming site gog.com [1] [2] built a successful business around acquiring
rights to game companies' back catalogs and selling them online. (Originally
they were Good Old Games, but they've now rebranded to simply "gog.com" and
sell new games as well.) HN readers may be interested in the technology
(Dosbox) and gog.com's strong anti-DRM stance [3].

From a user's perspective, the work they've done getting games to work on
modern systems is alone worth the price of admission -- I must have spent
hours [4] tweaking Dosbox configs to try to get my copy of Master of Magic to
play music (the game directory that began with a 7-floppy installation in the
mid-90s has been copied to every system I've had since then). Buying (another)
copy of the game from GOG and getting a Dosbox config that Just Works, was
well worth the modest price.

From the publisher's perspective I'm sure it's a win as well -- I could easily
believe they gave up on ever realizing any more income from that IP a decade
before they were approached by GOG.

[1] [https://www.gog.com](https://www.gog.com)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com)

[3]
[https://www.gog.com/support/website_help/what_is_gog_com](https://www.gog.com/support/website_help/what_is_gog_com)

[4] The finickiness isn't unique to Dosbox, I remember having to fiddle with
the in-game settings for a while running bare-metal on at least one '90s era
PC as well.

~~~
AdeptusAquinas
Master of Magic has been on every PC I've owned as well. And gog.com's version
was the first thing I installed on my newest Win10 laptop a few months ago:
Runs with no problems :)

~~~
Razengan
There's a new Master of Orion game coming out too :)

[http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion](http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion)

~~~
eru
Alas, no resource sliders, and a tech tree instead of tech ladders with holes
in them. So more like a reboot of MoO2 than MoO.

------
carsongross
Two non-nostalgia aspects of old games stand out to me:

1) The gameplay is often much easier to pick up quickly without a crutch mode
because there were fewer degrees of freedom.

2) The artistry was at times amazing. Orson Wells said that "the enemy of art
is the absence of limitations" and I think the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, in
particular, demonstrated the truth of that maxim.

~~~
vlunkr
I also wanted to say that old video games can be appealing for reasons other
than nostalgia. Only recently I played through chrono trigger and symphony of
the night, both for the first time, and they are amazing even by today's
standards. People enjoy old books, movies, etc because they are still great,
why can't video games be the same way?

~~~
toyg
To be fair, loads of XIX century novels are considered boring for today's
standards mostly because they were born as _serials_ , paid by episode or even
by word, and published in newspapers first. After the media landscape evolved,
their appreciation diminished; similarly, old games suffer from the rapid
evolution of their platforms / media.

~~~
tarsinge
You found some books that don't age well, but what about the rest of the
litterature?

~~~
toyg
Well, we know about a lot of abandonware since the times of Gilgamesh and
Ulysses. Even what we managed to preserve is usually executed with emulated
languages, because original runtimes are lost or evolved beyond recognition.
Some are ports of pirated or censored copies, on completely different
architectures, completely reskinned and modded beyond recognition.

The result is, to be brutally honest, that reading Beowulf is a chore; most
Shakespeare works need a walkthrough; Dante's _Inferno_ is fun but we'll never
appreciate it in the same way as XIII-century political junkies did. And so on
and so forth for huge chunks of literature.

In short, most old literature is not as accessible or enjoyable as
contemporary pulp. You have to accept these limitations as you consume it;
which is why Plato does not sell as much as J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown.
Similarly with games, we cannot expect today's kids to appreciate what came
before them. Some will, some won't. That's just how it is.

~~~
tarsinge
>most old literature

Again, this generalization is not valid for me, there are lot of counter
examples like Marcus Aurelius. But apart from that, it's mostly a fashion
problem. Sure the fashionable item will sell more (it is usually designed
for). That tells nothing on the rest. You are right that we will never have
the same context, and that some artworks are starting to be beyond
enjoyability, but it's not always the case. For music for example there is
folk, not fashionable but enjoyable even for kids, and maybe one day people
will play an old Zelda as they could have listened to Stairway to heaven.

>we cannot expect today's kids to appreciate what came before them

Anectodically I've had many opportunities to play old video games with kids
and they all appreciated them, in fact I'm not sure they could tell that it
was old games (Donkey Kong Country and Yoshi's Island (Snes) on the top my
head).

Edit: to continue the analogy with music, it would have been has there was a
race to write the symphony with the most instruments, with ads telling you to
always upgrade to the next symphony for your listening pleasure. Then one day
some people started to notice that some ancient guy/girl with only their
guitar or voice was as well enjoyable, and if not a better a different
emotional medium. It seems obvious but for video games every time you say that
some old games had something that we may be missing you get the usual "you are
a nostalgic old fart"

~~~
toyg
_> >most old literature

> Again, this generalization is not valid for me, there are lot of counter
> examples like Marcus Aurelius._

Great example: we don't have the original, we rely on translations of a single
XIV century copy written in a dead language (classic Greek). Depending on
translations, we may or may not enjoy it -- I'd argue you probably wouldn't
read it in XV century Catholic Latin. In other words, we love playing the
(excellent) 3D version of Sid Meier's "Pirates!" rather than the original
crappy-looking 2D version; in a few years, we'll probably be playing the VR
port. That's fine, but it requires some effort -- either by us tolerating the
crappy original, or by developers/translators constantly bridging the cultural
gap.

Similarly, folk music might require instruments that are expensive or hard to
find these days, like an accordion or concertina. Again, enjoying it requires
effort at some level.

 _> Anectodically I've had many opportunities to play old video games with
kids and they all appreciated them_

Sure, but would they go out looking for SNES emulators on their own, rather
than looking forward to XCOM2 or some shiny new MMORPG? Unlikely. Granted, the
"side-scroller platform" genre is a bit fossilized, so it's probably easier to
approach classic games in that category; but a lot of other genres have aged
really badly. No self-respecting teenager would take Double Dragon seriously
these days, nor any Atari 2600 game.

In short: like with literature, appreciating old games requires extra work at
some level.

~~~
CM30
I would heavily disagree that kids wouldn't go looking for SNES emulators on
their own or playing retro games or what not. I mean, look at the Virtual
Console on various Nintendo systems. It's pretty darn popular, even among
people who never grew up with most of the games on it. Same deal for Xbox Live
Arcade, PSN, Steam, GOG, etc. There's obviously a large number of kids and
teens who would prefer playing a NES or SNES game to one of the newer ones.

And hey, enough kids go looking for SNES emulators that the average user age
in a lot of ROM Hacking communities is between 13-18. The vast majority of
people at SMW Central are well under 18 years of age, and likely didn't grow
up with the SNES game:

[http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=23465](http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=23465)

------
aclimatt
For me, the nostalgia is very much attributed to the music. Music in general
can be very nostalgic, but a 30 second track that you listened to for hours a
day on repeat as a child can really become a part of you.

Much for that reason, Ocarina of Time has always been top of my list for
nostalgic games, and the score was arguably some of Koji Kondo's finest work.

~~~
J-dawg
Oh, this is so true! For me it's Frontier: Elite II. I can't hear the Blue
Danube Waltz without imagining I'm docking at a Coriolis station

[https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7PqehW2X7mHp3UW2Ix5Z85...](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7PqehW2X7mHp3UW2Ix5Z85sORkxIWss-)

~~~
tjl
When I was much younger, I used to play Dune 2 while listening to Smashing
Pumpkins. Now, whenever I hear Smashing Pumpkins, I'm taken back to playing
Dune 2 all over again.

~~~
over
Wow, I was listening to Siamese Dream last night and thought about Ultima VI!
But I'm sure I also played Dune 2 to that album.

------
jmduke
This article struck quite a chord with me. I spent most of my childhood
playing (but rarely finishing) a lot of RPGs and action-adventure games (chief
among them Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Link to the Past, Link's
Awakening, etc. etc.)

I've been going back over the past couple years and replaying them. For a
couple of reasons: there's the sense of closure of having finished something I
started a dozen years ago (shouts to Turtle Rock, which Elementary School
Justin did not have the fortitude to complete). More, though, I just wanted to
see if these games which I spent so much energy and imagination on a while
back were worth the investment.

I've been struck by how mature and powerful these games were in their own
right:

\- Earthbound is this dense, bizarre paean to Western culture also wrapped up
in this story about losing your innocence and the creepiest final boss fight
ever;

\- Link's Awakening forces players to answer the difficult question of why
you'd want to wake up from an amazing dream;

\- Even Final Fantasy has a narrative device that I've yet to see replicated
since, of having the main villain straight up _win_ , and then forcing you to
deal with the fallout and rebuild from the literal dust and ashes.

These things are for sure enhanced by nostalgia, and a common argument against
these games are that you're looking at them "through rose-tinted glasses" (the
implication being that their luster is gone without my memories of playing
them as a child). I'm not so sure that's true -- but, more importantly, I'm
not so sure that matters.

In a lot of ways, it feels like having gotten coffee with an old friend after
a long time apart, and remarking on how both you and they have matured so
much. If you have fond memories of video games, I recommend you blow the dust
off of the proverbial cartridge and treat yourself.

~~~
sogen
I remember flammie the dragon in Secret of Mana, that at some point in the
game grows up/matures, and I was like "Whoa!"

------
gaius
It's not about nostalgia. It's about in the days before powerful GPUs gameplay
and originality really mattered. The game was "rendered" in your own
imagination. It's the same reason in the days of 4k TVs many people still
prefer books to TV.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Not all games from the past hold up today, there was a lot of poor gameplay
and unoriginal games from back in the day too. For example, the 80s had tons
of shoot-em-ups, the early 90s had a deluge of 2D platformers, etc...

What was different back then was the costs involved in developing a commercial
game. As the appetite for high-end graphics has increased, so too has the cost
of producing games, which has led to fewer risks being taken by big game
publishers. Thankfully the indie game scene is stronger than ever, and has
proven to be a good outlet for game developers when experimenting with new
ideas.

------
iolothebard
Mame is fantastic for this reason. Although, I'm not sure how I played a lot
of those games, they're much more difficult than I remember. I guess when you
had only $5 in quarters you had to make them last. Getting a $20 for games at
the big arcade or Chuck E Cheese/Crystals as a kid was like winning the
lottery.

------
paulryanrogers
Not sure about the "past accomplishments" part. I usually feel more drawn to
old games I never finished.

------
xivzgrev
How timely. I recently visited parents, and while going thru super Nintendo
games remembers some of the music from final fantasy 3. Then I started
listening to it at work. Then I downloaded the game now I'm 17 hours in. Kefka
here I come...

~~~
jmduke
Kefka is the _worst_ , but he's also a great villain from a time where it felt
like most villains were sort of generic and one-dimensional.

------
erik_landerholm
This is apropo for me. I just purchased a wiiu for my children and was getting
a bit choked up looking through the virtual console list. I actually had a
conversation with my wife about it after the kids were in bed.

We all did a 6 hour tour of super metroid, it was great. There is something to
this for sure. Hearing original Zelda music transports me back to being a kid
instantly.

------
andrewclunn
It's all about the music. If a game was so so, but had an awesome soundtrack,
then I'm invariably going to remember it more fondly. Saga Frontier comes to
mind as an example.

~~~
rybosome
Great example. Overall it was a thoroughly mediocre game, but it had very,
very distinct and memorable music. I too feel fondness for that game.

------
stretchwithme
I got hooked on Subterrania on Sega Genesis for several months back in 94,
then didn't play for 15 years. Then I decided to look for it on eBay. Found a
system and the game for only $35 and now I play it several times a week.

~~~
lostgame
My partner gave me a Sega Saturn for my birthday a year ago...since then, our
band's little collective has used it as a little centre of some of our
gatherings...Street Fighter II, NiGHTS into Dreams, Daytona USA CC, oh, man...

~~~
DanBC
Sega Rally on Saturn is pretty amazing. 3 cars, 4 tracks - but it's really
nailed the feel.

------
zaroth
Every so often I find myself searching for a BBS to telnet into to play a few
hours of Galactic Empire or Trade Wars. Loved playing those games as a kid,
and definitely eeriely drawn back to them from time to time.

~~~
spdustin
I would lose days of productivity if I could play either of those games again.
And I want to. Badly. I've played a few 4X games since then, but those old
"Door Games" we're something special.

I wonder if anyone has the source for them still...

EDIT: oh, no. I'll see you guys later. telnet://twgs.classictw.com

------
LoSboccacc
it's not just nostalgia, some game principles are very hard to find in modern
games, especially regarding the exploration of interesting mechanics
irregardless of balance.

strategy games like master of magic or total annihilation, were faction had a
distinct feeling from each other, even if some were more powerful, are almost
impossible today where multiplayer is a large portion of the game and
necessarily need to be balanced, which causes many games' faction to feel
reskin of each other with just minor changes and not really unique mechanics.

------
qKTDxAy4KfcOjA9
I am 27, my sister is 29, and when we meet up (a couple of times a year, we
live far apart) we play our old Super Nintendo, as we used to do as kids.

Neither of us play the SNES at any other time.

------
Umn44
All old games have good things and bad things about them. The great things
about old games were the challenge. The bad thing about them was that the
industry was still learning and hence many games won't age well in terms of
some dimension because many lessons had yet to be learned.

~~~
Karunamon
This is going to make me sound like a ranting old curmudgeon, but I am having
a hard time thinking of much that's an improvement in modern games except for
art style/graphical limitations.

There's not much innovation anymore. Modern AAA titles are rife with
handholding, patronizing, unimaginative and focus-grouped-to-hell stories
(because those sell the best), DLC bait, and other such tiresome tropes.

I remember the 90's being a time when there was a lot of innovation and
experimentation because nobody had it down pat what would sell the best. You'd
never see a Mister Mosquito[1] or a Vangers[2] or an Urban Assault[3]
nowadays. You might see an indie homage or two, but that's totally different
from having a large studio throwing resources at the wall and seeing what
sticks.

It's a time I dearly miss. You want to know what the most memorable game in
recent memory was to me? Undertale[4] . A retro-styled indie RPG with graphics
that could probably have been pulled off 20 years ago on the SNES, but in
spite of that limitation, its story and sound design is absolutely top shelf
and is, in my mind, one of those games that everyone should play at least
once.

Commercialism ruins everything. Sure, the usual response to this is "but there
are more games than ever, and it's easier for anyone to jump in", which is
true, but it still feels like as if there's some magic that was long since
lost, only occasionally recaptured by a clever group of developers.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Mosquito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Mosquito)

[2]:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/264080/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/264080/)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Assault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Assault)

[4]: [http://undertale.com/about.htm](http://undertale.com/about.htm)

~~~
jjoonathan
If I wanted to give "old school" games a shot, which few should I try? I
haven't played many -- Sonic as a kid, I watched FF7 and Symphony of the Night
on youtube -- so I don't really have a good basis to judge from, but nothing
I've seen obviously meets (let alone exceeds) the bar set by my favorite
modern games, e.g.

Soma: Story, Atmosphere, Thought Provoking

Deus Ex HR: Story, Atmosphere, Thought Provoking

BioShock 1: Story, Thought Provoking

DragonAge 1,3 / MassEffect 1,2,3: Story, Characters

Witcher 3: Story, Characters

Portal 2: Story, Mechanics

Undertale: Story, Mechanics

Alien Isolation: Story, Atmosphere, Mechanics

Mirror's Edge: Mechanics

Braid: Mechanics

Dark Souls / Bloodborne: Mechanics? (Haven't played)

Blood Dragon: 1980s simulator

I can identify the "commercialization" trend that you're talking about if and
only if I focus my attention to a single franchise or a single aspect of a
single franchise. Example: Mass Effect lost its hard SF edge in 2, 3 but the
characters and mechanics got better. Starcraft lost its story and character
edge in 2, but the mechanics got better. Bioshock lost its philosophical depth
in Infinite but the story and characters got better.

Overlaid on top of this is a trend of increasing production value. Every
franchise gives you some facet to point at and say "devs don't care about X,
only production value, boo." This ignores the boring explanation that it's
hard to churn out sequels that exceed the original in each and every possible
point of comparison. Sequels need to be evaluated on their own merits and the
industry needs to be judged as a whole. Otherwise everything is guaranteed to
look like it's going downhill.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Let me know _your_ favorites and I'll promise to give at
least one a try.

~~~
adwf
Try playing Pillars of Eternity. It's a modern take on some of the old RPGs,
by the guys who made the old classics.

Then there's Planescape Torment and Baldur's Gate 2. Between those you have
some of the best western RPGs ever made.

I find a lot of modern gaming to be incredibly shallow. Good for a single play
session, but I put the game down and never return.

It's a bit of a shame really; these companies spend a fortune on fancy
graphics and it just doesn't matter one bit to me. I'd rather play Dwarf
Fortress in all its ASCII glory than play Destiny or The Division.

~~~
jjoonathan
Baldur's Gate 2 is on my list of things to try, I'll add Pillars of Eternity.
That said, I've got reservations:

> I find a lot of modern gaming to be incredibly shallow.

Sturgeon's Law.

> Good for a single play session but I put the game down and never return.

You seem awfully quick to ascribe this to game quality even though there are
significant confounding factors: growing up and having more demands on your
time, the opportunity cost of abundant digitally downloadable games, youtube's
ability to let you explore alternative choices without spending many hours on
a replay, etc.

Just so we're on the same page, though, have you played modern BioWare or CD
Projekt Red titles? It's not uncommon for them to gate entire alternative
chunks of the game behind player choices. 10x so with low-production-value
assets. If someone can look at Witcher 3 and call it shallow and not
replayable then I'm pretty sure that we're never going to see eye to eye on
the subject of game quality.

> It's a bit of a shame really; these companies spend a fortune on fancy
> graphics and it just doesn't matter one bit to me.

That _is_ a shame. Are you sure you're actually trying to appreciate the
artwork, though? Being dismissive of graphics is certainly the "hip" position
in most nerd circles I've been in -- something I became keenly aware of back
when I was doing CG in academia and considering it as a career path. I can
still picture the sneers on my friends' faces and hear their dismissive snorts
when I would start to go on about the artistic accomplishments in this or that
title. It sucked, although it wasn't what drove me away (the shit wages and
working conditions did that on their own). There's nothing wrong with
appreciating other facets of a game more than graphics, but if someone gives
graphics 0 or negative weight then I tend to suspect they're primarily trying
to build "nerd cred" rather than trying to enjoy games. Like the kid after a
movie who can talk about nothing but loopholes.

> I'd rather play Dwarf Fortress in all its ASCII glory than play Destiny or
> The Division.

Are these unbiased samples or are you comparing your favorite from one era to
a mediocre pick from another? How many of the games on _my_ favorite list
(addendum: I forgot Spec Ops: The Line) have you played and found wanting
compared to your favorites from previous eras? In particular, would you apply
the word "shallow" to any (in the facets I marked as strengths)?

I'm genuinely curious as to whether our difference of opinion is due to
different tastes or having played different titles.

~~~
kbenson
> That is a shame. Are you sure you're actually trying to appreciate the
> artwork, though?

Well, it depends on your point of view. Some people don't play games to
appreciate the art at all. For some, the art is purely a functional part of
the puzzle that allows for immersion (such as in my case).

For example, I recently started playing Dark Souls (which I'm head-over-heels
for, by the way), and while the visuals could be described as "gorgeous", even
at the low-res and detail I'm playing at to keep it responsive. But when I see
amazing vistas in the game which include castles and bridges and turrets,
those are places I actually get to visit in the game, and not through some
weird warp, but by slowly working my way there, usually in a very circuitous
route.

Are there games which advance the state-of-the-art with regard to graphics and
art? Undoubtedly. Could I point them out to you? Not a chance. I don't have
the prerequisite knowledge or experience to even notice in most cases, much
less know where to begin in a task such as that. But I do appreciate that
there _is_ good art in the games, to the degree that it helps my immersion in
the game. Sometimes that means lovingly crafted pixel art, sometimes it means
detailed models and textures. It really depends on how it's integrated.

