Tuesday, 27 May 2008
The Top Ten Reasons Gaming Was Better in the Early ‘90s
Andrew Sztein makes a lot of good points in his article The Top Ten Reasons Gaming Was Better in the Early ‘90s. I agree with just about everything he says, especially points #8, #3 and #1.
Games just seem so complicated and serious these days, while back then it was all much simpler and felt more like fun. I've often had to explain to my younger brother why playing the NES and Mega Drive back in the day was way better than playing Gears of War on his fancy Xbox 360. But he just doesn't get it.
Or maybe we all just end up enjoying whatever it is we do while we're kids, and we'll always like and be nostalgic for that. Either way, give me some old school Sonic and Mario over Halo any day.
Games just seem so complicated and serious these days, while back then it was all much simpler and felt more like fun. I've often had to explain to my younger brother why playing the NES and Mega Drive back in the day was way better than playing Gears of War on his fancy Xbox 360. But he just doesn't get it.
Or maybe we all just end up enjoying whatever it is we do while we're kids, and we'll always like and be nostalgic for that. Either way, give me some old school Sonic and Mario over Halo any day.
Labels: video games
posted by Jephso at 8:38 AM
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3 Comments:
I think the simplicity of the old games is the key - they're simple but that doesn't mean they're simplistic. There's an emergent complexity in the variety of level designs. Just think how varied a Marioworld game is - with just 2 buttons.
Modern games consoles have 20 buttons and yet can often feel monotonous.
Haha that's weird ... I got my Sega Mega Drive out yesterday and wondered if it worked on modern TVs, which I've tried before but always to no luck, but yesterday I realised that I was depending on it working like a modern console, but obviously it needed the channel tuning into the correct frequency or whatever, and I managed to pick up the Sega signal! I've just been playing some awesome old school games I haven't played for years. I just won the world cup for England in Italia '90!
I'm not a gaming person by any means, I couldn't care less for the latest GTA game for the PS3 or X-Bob 360 or whatever. In fact I remember playing on one of the original GTA games for PC where it was bird's-eye view and all you did was drive around in a car until you found a better one to hijack. It was great fun! I duno what all this gangsta stuff you have to do in the new ones is all about...
As I said, I'm not a gaming person at all, and don't get excited when new games come out, but I do enjoy playing them when I have a good one. I love playing Tony Hawk's (particularly THPS2), and I love strategy games like Theme Hospital (which I've also been playing this week) because you have to come up with a way of winning through strategy and it's all about thinking, planning and taking risks. It's no fun if it's too easy or too hard. No idea what's brought gaming out on me this week (I think it's probably something to do with the fact that I ought to be revising...)
Keep gaming, old school style!
Ben
Joe: Yeah, that's right, they're just complex in a different way.
Ben: That's awesome.
I've done that before - forgotten you have to tune old consoles in.
I remember that old GTA too. That was ages ago!
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