The "Good For Its Time" Defense

[Koh]

Something I want to address that's been bugging me for many years.  We've seen it all the time.  "Don't be so hard on X, it was good for its time!"

This particular defense for a game...it doesn't work, nor does it help the game's case at all.  As pre-emptive information, this is talking about defending a game as a whole, rather than certain aspects of it (i.e. graphics, sound and music), though those can also be under heavy scrutiny if there are better examples within their era.  

Why doesn't it work?  There's one counter example here that completely invalidates this defense:  Pong.

Yes.  The most basic thing you can even call a game, Pong.  It is considered a timeless masterpiece, and it's the bare minimum of everything that makes a game.  You only have two controls:  Up and Down.  There is no music.  The only two sounds are a beep for the ball hitting a paddle, and a blip for the ball hitting the edges of the screen or walls in other versions.  The only gameplay here is hitting that same ball back and forth for all of eternity.  Yet, this game is still considered one of the best games made, and is still used today in tournaments, mini games, and more.  

So with that information out there, what we have is a game that barely has any assets and the simplest of gameplay standing the test of time.  The test of time; if a game truly is good or a so called masterpiece, this is the most important test it needs to pass.  If it fails this test, then it devolves into what we'd call a fad, since those are only "good for their time."  There's no excuse for games that have much more resources available to them to have that problem, when Pong did not have that problem and barely had any resources.

What one could defend about a game is that some portions of it haven't stood the test of time, while others have, and that may be true.  But then it can't be a masterpiece, because a masterpiece wouldn't need any further polish.  Something like Zelda:  A Link to the past is considered a timeless masterpiece; it was great 20 years ago, and it will still be great 20 years from now; there are no design oddities that stand out as awkward and only fit for the 90s or anything like that.

What are your thoughts?  Contributions, additions, negations?  I'm sure I'm not the only one who is annoyed by people trying to use this as a defense when it just doesn't work given that Pong was and still is a thing.