I always loved retro-style games, long before I learned that they’re considered retro. I’m not sure what makes them so fun but they completely dominate my gaming nowadays.
Naturally, I became curious about the games that had inspired my favorite titles. I tried many of them, and eventually came to a conclusion: most of the time, retro games are nothing but a historical curiosity.
Ultima 4 has fairly unique concept but falls flat with its roleplaying feeling forced, its bland gameplay and its setting with no originality whatsoever.
Compare this to Moonring. Gameplay rivals many modern roguelikes (the classic definition, so Brogue, not Isaac), great setting that sucks you in immediately, and so so many mysteries.
Ambermoon pretends to be an open world RPG but is actually a linear RPG-lite with combat feeling more like a puzzle (and a wrong solution punishes you by 15 mins of you and your opponents missing each other every turn).
That’s not to say that retro games aren’t important - the modern indies are standing on the shoulders of giants. Yet I can’t say that retro games worth the trouble of getting into them, compared to the polished modern indie titles.
Agreed. It’s the best of both worlds: retro-inspired games can pick what the retro games did right, and still add modern improvements.
Things that were once revolutionary or novel for the time can only exist in that space for so long. The elements that worked can feel mundane and like a trope by our modern standards. The mistakes will also be only more highlighted over time as well.
Obviously that’s just a generality. Even if those games aren’t as good, it doesn’t mean they aren’t still good and enjoyable.
The sad part is, video games age so much quicker compared to other forms of media. It’s been only 20 years but Morrowind already so clunky that even those who like the game would rather play literally any other RPG over it. 2d games suffer less from this but the lack of accessibility options, unusual controls, technical limitations and their influence on mechanics (e.g. life system) are all still a big problem that gets only worse with time.
Retro games can be enjoyable but whether they are worth the struggle is questionable.
Modern quality of life upgrades make it so hard to go back. There was a harvest moon game i adored and i tried to replay it, but just changing tools was a pain.
The GBA one? I remember it being a better version of the PSX, with more content, but you only had 4 buttons to do stuff (AB, LR), which really limited the shortcuts.
I had a similar thought while playing through Skald: Against the Black Priory earlier this year. There is something of a best-of-both-worlds about retro feeling and looking games, but without all the retro clunk.
i don’t think so at all. i just played through Grandia for the first time in my life and really enjoyed it. i think your perspective is what makes the difference, but that’s also up to you. i try to enjoy things through the lens they were created usually, it helps ground my experience more. the crumbled building is not a ruin, it’s where real people lived their lives.
I think this a pretty accurate take. One place I’ll add that retro games shine is fast forward, but that’s not the games themselves as much as the platform. To me, that’s their killer feature. When it comes to animations, I’m definitely not a patient gamer. And modern design seems to get this wrong constantly.
Depends on the game. There are no indie games better than the original Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI on the SNES.
While Chrono Trigger and FFVI are among my all time favourites, they’re kind of like an prog rock superbands. They’re a pinnacle of the era, impossible to top in their own categories. But if you know where to look there are probably some guys doing stuff as impressive, if not more, out of their garages. Sea of Stars and Chained Echoes come to mind.
Of course. I am a big fan of the original Doom games (Heretic and Hexen included) myself. But still, I feel like these are exceptions, not the rule.
It still depends on the genre and what games you are exposed to. Super Mario Bros 3 is still the best 2D platformer of all time, I am not aware of any indie game even close to the polish of SMB3.
I’d say both DKC2 and Super Mario World easily best Mario Bros 3.
But not that you mention it, there is a lack of indie platformers that are good.
I guess most indie platformers focus too much on being metroidvanias, which makes classic platformers rare
I had a mini movie night with two colleagues, one is around middle age like me, and the other in their twenties. We were going through some DVDs and Blurays, and Die Hard came up. We two older folks said we liked it but the younger said that they’d never seen it. Well obviously we had to watch it right then.
Afterward, the young colleague said they found the movie boring and unoriginal. Talking it over, we came to the conclusion that while Die Hard had done so much in fresh and interesting ways at the time, it had been so thoroughly copied from by so many other films that it offered little to an uninitiated modern audience, looking back.
Although I haven’t played it myself, to read someone saying that Ultima 4 is derivative and lacking in originality feels a lot like that experience with Die Hard. Additionally, I think that the real old games usually expect a level of imagination and willingness to put up with discomfort that even I sometimes find a little offputting in 2025, despite the fact that I grew up with many of those games and had no issues with them at the time. If I don’t remind myself of it, it can be easy to forget that old hardware wasn’t limited only in audio-visual power, but also storage size and processing power.
I still search through old games, but I’m looking for ideas that maybe didn’t work well or hit the market right the first time, but still deserve further consideration, especially in light of technological advances that have happened in the intervening years.
I feel like I’ve also heard this discussion from a friend regarding neon genesis evangelion, which I still haven’t seen
I haven’t kept up with anime much for many years now, but I can easily imagine that this is the case. There had been mecha anime with angsty pilots and behind-the-scenes politics before, but Evangelion pushed it all to a whole new level by adding mysticism, massively flawed characters, and existential dread into the mix. I know that almost immediately following the initial release of Evangelion we got Gasaraki and RahXephon, both of which bear obvious influences from Evangelion.
Your point more or less comes up a lot in discussions around Lord of the Rings compared to modern fantasy novels. There are a lot of people who, while they can appreciate what it did for the genre, find the novels dated and feel like they have seen the ideas too many times and/or done better elsewhere.
Though on the flip side, I personally find sometimes it just takes a few hours to “see past the age”. For example, I was introduced to Fallout by 3. The show made me want to try the originals, and after a few hours of struggling through the ui and dated graphics, it started to “click”. Now the original only competes with NV in my list of favorite Fallout games. Have a friend who had basically the same experience with the original KOTOR.
