Like, they are still nostalgic to play and all, but... I know everything there is to know about games like Mario 64, which I'll be using as my example here. I can play it now, but it just isn't the same anymore. There's no vast new world to explore, no mystery. It was so much more fun when I would have dreams about beating the game, unlocking new levels and of course the mystery of Luigi. Even though it was all fake, I always had fun being fooled by the "unlock Luigi" guides and trying to pull them off. Newer games like 3D World also don't feel the same even on the first playthrough. I think it might have to do with the "A to B" nature of it rather than just throwing you into a whole new world to explore.
Anyone have any similar realizations about games you enjoyed vastly more as a child?
Oh. Usually when I pick up a game from when I was a kid, it's actually gotten better somehow, because I've come to appreciate just how actually robust a game is, like Mario Bros. for the Atari 2600 (this and Freeway were the actual first videogames I played, wtf I am OLD)
Most of the "actual" SNES games I played as a kid...and I hate to say it, were consistently good and are surprisingly solid up through today (I'm even buying old games that I missed as a kid)
Thanks, Nintendo, for your extremely high licensing costs and quality control!!!
The only problem is that now I'm an old ass man with a life and job and apartment and whatnot and currently playing some other socially-obligated title (Overwatch or League of Legends for example) on top of some fun life-sim check-in-daily title and that same game that used to hold my attention for three hours on end now holds my attention for about...fifteen minutes. :/
That said I've gone around picking up games Cinemarella missed as a kid on the PS1 and uhhhhhhhh some of these games...one of them was this Muppets racing game. how did this thing even pass quality assurance lmfao
I'm highly led to believe Sony didn't have the kind of super-strict developer guidelines and quality assurance that Nintendo did, which is why there were like oodles of noodles of games for it and lots of them mediocre
I had a TON of PSX games as a kid, so a lot of my early gaming memories are related to those games. Looking back at it, a lot of PSX games are secretly not really very good at all, despite me playing them constantly over and over again because that's all little Shade wanted to do with his time. Most immediate ones that come to mind being:
Much to my dismay, surprise, dissatisfaction and overall sad face inflicting disbelief, Jet Moto 2 is way more terrible than I thought it was at the time. The graphics, while
fairly good for when the game was released, are just so friggin ugly now. The racing is clunky and it's incredibly hard to properly maneuver the bikes (although you could probably chalk this up as my skills being rusty, but I like to think it's not my fault). The soundtrack still kicks ass though and makes you feel like a cool biker dude, so that's good.
Rascal was super cool to me. So basically you're a kid. This kid has a bubble gum gun or something. You run around a house and look at stuff and open doors and whatnot. Super cool! A few years later I realized that what I treated as a 10 minute game actually had levels to play!!! Holy crap!!! A super excited me jumped into a fancy level portal I found, all Crash Bandicoot 3 style, and was sent on a time-traveling quest to beat a villain obsessed with hourglasses! Only problem: the game sucks. It's soul rippingly hard (at least to my memory), the movement is so weiiird, you never have enough health or ammo, and the camera...........dear god the camera was TERRIBLE. The actual game is just... not as fun as running through an empty house was.
The puzzles in Casper made no sense. That's why Casper is dumb. Pretty sure it was one of the first games I looked up a walkthrough for, because the puzzles in Casper make no sense.
Pretty much any RPG that's just a grindfest with minimal not grinding now. Like, Dragon Quest 1 or Final Fantasy 2. I think they're okay games still, but they're literally 80% grinding. Take out the grinding and you're left with not much game.
the game boy camera was simply amazing back then when i would play it almost everyday.
i'm sure if i picked it up after so long the nostalgia would punch me in the face, but with my matured "game design aware" self i'm unsure how i'd feel about it...
i used to play this one game, forget what it's called, where basically you put different shapes into different holes. so like, square peg goes in the square hole, but its tricky because it doesn't fit in the circle hole, only the square hole
now i play it and i'm just like, what's the point.
it's depressing
I like games better now because I can actually beat them. As a kid I was a greasy pleb who couldn't beat anything without game genie. Now I'm just a greasy pleb.
nostalgia is a double edged sowrd, as it can bloom your fond memories of a game (and pretty much anything) in tenfold. However when you actually play it again, you'll see that it's the same thing, nothing has really changed in the game - what changed was your point of view concerning the game.
Kids usually have a more forgiving point of view about things, so we can enjoy games that are objectively bad (sometimes even frustrating) and still have fond memories of it. But as you grow up, you get smarter and the challenges of before becomes very short hurdles that give you no challenge at all (either due to you actually getting better in reflexes, or the puzzle wasn't too difficult anyway to begin with)..
For example most people I know enjoyed pokemon since the original GB DMG era, but I can't even enjoy that shit due to being well,
shit
But the newer games manage to have the same feel and basic gameplay while being objectively better. Hardware and improvement on music and graphics do matter, after all.
I think it depends on the game. Racing games and RPGs (gameplay and mechanics wise) have gotten a lot better so going back is normally a kick in the teeth. Smaller Retro games like Super Mario Bros normally age pretty well because it's always been about you being more skilful.
Games like Mario 64 and Zelda OoT are never going to let you relive that 'wow' you had when you first played them, because you know the game. Zelda's mystery is gone and Mario being in 3D just isn't an impressive thing anymore.
They are still great great games. But like films, the first time is always going to be the most meaningful because you haven't seen it before.
A lot of my favorite games from my childhood aren't as fun now, mainly because I played and sucked all their fun dry as a kid(and as I grew up too; I never got rid of them)!
So what makes games less fun to me is that there's nothing new to experience. I can tolerate dated graphics and music if I know the game couldn't do much better.
I mean, I'd be hooked on age-old games like Mario 64 and Donkey Kong Country 2 again if there were new levels to play.
...which is why hacks are so special to me!
I would say that Dinonauts falls squarely in this category. It seemed like a fun and clever little story at the time, but trying (and failing, again and again) to record a playthrough of it for YouTube, I realized it wasn't really a game so much as an interactive storybook, and a not-too-interactive one at that; I could make better in the Quest engine.
Still, I like the characters and some of the silly jokes in there, so I wouldn't say it's totally ruined for me... just that it's not as special as I thought it was, deserving of it's own YouTube playthrough.
That depends how consistent you are at playing childhood games. I, however, never get bored when I play them. My best childhood games were Super Mario Sunshine, DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3, SSX Tricky, and Naruto Ultimate Ninja 3.
I still love my childhood games the same way I do now but finding the right time to play them is much harder.
When I was a kid, I had literally all the time in the world so booting up my SNES and playing some SMW was something I could do any day, any time.
Today I must first clear all the responsibilities of a given day to play, and even then I might find myself uneasy because I know there might be something else I should be doing
tl;dr: the games still are as great as they were, but I'm not
Some games age well. Some games fall apart with time. I'm currently playing through Final Fantasy 9, but if you tried to get me to play Forbidden Memories, I'd assume it was some strange form of psychological torture.
Donkey Kong 64 is pretty hard to play these days
Used to love it as a kid, now, I just kinda see a lot of clumsy design and bloated gameplay and it's just not very fun