Classic arcade ports: great games or just "short bursts of nostalgia" ?

[Recycled]

I get tired of reading many reviews of recent 1980's arcade ports or modern takes on the games that, to me, belittle the genre. For example, most recently I was reading a review of Pac-Man Championship Edition for the Switch where the reviewer states "Arcade ports tend to be games we play in short bursts--mostly for the nostalgia factor." https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/pac-man-championship-edition-2-review/1900-6416518/

 

I totally disagree with this, I believe classic games transcend the "nostalgia" factor. Although, I am back to playing more "modern games" in my rotation these days, I still purchase and play the old ports when they are released. For the most part, the addictive score-chasing nature of those games is absent from most modern gaming. I'm not saying one is better than the other: I like to play both for variety. I could never just play modern games. There's a certain element that just isn't there.

 

Thanks, just needed to vent.

 

 

[Flojomojo]

Pac-Man CE is a good mashup of a

 

- classic single-task score chaser

and a

- long checklist of "achievements" for performing the same repetitive task again and again

 

I agree with the modern reviewer, the little tasks of classic games are more like what we would call "mini-games" today. There's nothing tying them together or making them purposeful, except for chasing high scores and the occasional Activision patch.

 

One is not better than the other, just different. It's cool to have preferences. People who write about video games are far from infallible, they're just dorks who may or may not have been born later than us. I don't think Jason D'Aprile was trying to hurt our feelings. I think the full context of the review makes him sound more like a classic gamer than not.

 

It’s always a risky proposition to take a beloved classic franchise and move it forward with added twists. Change too much, and a reimagined retro game can lose its nostalgic charm. Don’t change enough, and players might not see the point at all. Bandai Namco has been toeing this razor-thin line with Pac-Man for quite a few years, but with good results. In 2007, Pac-Man: Championship Edition bolstered the series' simple maze template with different modes, challenges, map configurations, and eye-catching effects--and the result was one of the best arcade revamps ever made.

 

[BydoEmpire]

I totally agree. Classic arcade games are fun games. They're not trying to tell elaborate stories or be massive experiences, they're just trying to be games... and I like that. I can still play Pac Man and have fun, try to get better, etc. I do play in short bursts, but that's part of it. I'm not going to sit down for four hours and play Pac Man... but then, I'm not going to sit down and play a modern game for ten minutes. I wouldn't make it through the patch process, the login, and the tutorial by the time I had to finish. Where I'm at in my life right now I have very little time for games, so I really don't have interest in anything that takes hours.

 

I don't just play classic games for nostalgia though, as I enjoy lots of games I never played back in the day, and I like modern classic-style games. There is a nostalgia factor to the experience, though, regardless of the specific game. That's part of the fun.

[+save2600]

^ Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Eltigro]

Back in the day, I didn't have the money to play Pac Man for hours and hours... so why change anything? lol

[spacecadet]

I don't think anything sticks around for close to 40 years if it's existing solely based on nostalgia.

 

But I just kind of roll my eyes at reviews like that, because all it does is show the reviewer to be young and closed-minded. It really is no different than a music reviewer saying people only listen to The Beatles for nostalgia. It's idiotic. It's not a question of differing tastes; that would make for a different review. You can easily say in a review that the appeal of something is just lost on you, even if you understand that it's popular with others. But to dismiss something with such longevity as based in nostalgia just shows both inexperience and worse, a lack of curiosity.

 

When you look at games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds, I'll bet that if Pac-Man had first been released this year, it would still have been a huge hit.

[Recycled]

Here's another generalization, for what it's worth:

 

Gamers who play video games for long enough eventually live to see the classics of their youth become the relics of yesteryear. Too many old favorites falter in the face of the medium's technological advancements, becoming almost painful to experience a mere generation or two later. Perhaps the worst part of seeing that process unfold is knowing there once was something special there, but time has erased much of its value and the game can never again have the appeal it once possessed.

 

And:

 

It is fun to revisit even today, unlike far too many of its contemporaries,

 

http://www.honestgamers.com/13775/switch/arcade-archives-moon-patrol/review.html

 

 

(Insert Flojomojo oldmanyellsatcloud.gif RECYCLED HATES YOUNGER GAMERS REVIEWING SACRED GAMES)

Edited April 9, 2018 by Recycled

[Flojomojo]

Heheheh

I won't mock anyone for having grumpy opinions, except in the thread where I explicitly warned that I would. :-) and Keatah, of course.

 

I'm finally starting to understand the saying "youth is wasted on the young."

 

BTW that's a nice Moon Patrol review. That game resembles modern "auto runners" and I agree that it remains fun. That soundtrack is forever in my mind.

[VectorGamer]

Arcade ports tend to be games we play in short bursts

Well that's how the arcade was BITD. You put in a quarter, play and then move on to the next game. When you have an arcade with over 100 games most people didn't play the same game for 4 hours.

[Flojomojo]

or 4 years ....

 

annual releases of sports games and "Call of Duty" franchises notwithstanding, the new paradigm of playing one game forever was unheard of back in olden days. League of Legends, World of Warcraft, Fortnite, Hearthstone, Clash of Clans/Royale, Minecraft, Overwatch, PUBG, Heroes of Valor, Destiny .... we just didn't have these "lifestyle" games in the arcade days, and it was typical for games to get cycled out when they stopped bringing in quarters and players.

 

I wish I could remember who suggested the difference between The Game of Baseball (which goes on and on and has cycles and seasons but always remains a thing people like), and more like A Game of Baseball which only lasts for a few hours and has a winner and a loser. Arcade games are like a single game of baseball or hockey or tennis or whatever. Epic modern games are more like the grand sweep of Videogames, or a season or complete era of a sport.

 

I wonder if anyone else is like me, who just "plays MAME" more than any particular old game? It's like "going to the arcade," not just "playing Ms. Pac-Man," because I'm going to jump around and sample a whole bunch of things.

 

I'm sure there's a philosophical term of art for what I am trying to describe.

[Flojomojo]

When you look at games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds, I'll bet that if Pac-Man had first been released this year, it would still have been a huge hit.

 

Candy Crush is a lot deeper than you might think. There's no "kill screen" in Candy Crush, it's got hundreds of levels.

 

Angry Birds has download numbers in the billions. I believe it's likely bigger than Pac-Man ever was.

[BassGuitari]

Well, many of my favorite games--period--are arcade games that came out well before I was even born, and which I did not "discover" until a good 15-20 years after they came out. Nostalgia can't be a factor for me. Like, by definition. Except possibly to the extent that I picked up some of those already-golden-oldies as a kid and have fond memories of them from then (Meta-nostalgia? Ick.), but I never play them now to try to recapture some lost childhood moment or whatever nonsense. I play them because they're good games.

 

And as a more or less functional adult, the relatively brief nature of arcade games makes them a natural fit for my lifestyle.

 

I have a particular and unique resentment for nostalgia--just the word itself makes me throw up in my mouth a little--because people always try to use it to explain why others enjoy games they find inexplicable to enjoy. We all have that coworker or friend--"How can you play this? The graphics are so shitty! ROFLMAO" Like there's no logic or reason for liking games made before a certain period. Like you'd have to be either a sad, aging, relic of a person desperate to relive your glory days, or have a mental disorder to derive genuine enjoyment from Centipede. It's insulting. And as I alluded to above, using myself as an example--a lot of us don't even fit that categorization anyway.

 

Even members of the classic gaming community occasionally, and probably unwittingly, undercut the actual, objective gameplay value of the systems and games they profess to love so much when they cite "nostalgia" as a component of its/their greatness. They don't need any help. Certainly not from personal attachments that don't mean anything to anybody else.

 

EDIT: spelling

Edited April 9, 2018 by BassGuitari

[Flojomojo]

I think there's a distinct style of gameplay for early 1980s arcade games. Single screen, simple control, different objectives depending on game state.

 

For example, Forget-Me-Not is a "modern" game that would be at home on the ColecoVision.

http://nyarlu.net/Forget-Me-Not/

(don't bother with the iOS App Store link, it's dead)

 

You're pretty mean to Centipede, did someone make you play it with a joystick or something?

[BassGuitari]

You're pretty mean to Centipede, did someone make you play it with a joystick or something?

 

Me?

 

I wasn't mean to it at all. Re-read the post. People who use the word "nostalgia" to effectively say those things about people who like games like Centipede are mean to Centipede.

[Flojomojo]

Like you'd have to be either a sad, aging, relic of a person desperate to relive your glory days, or have a mental disorder to derive genuine enjoyment from Centipede. It's insulting.

 

 

 

Me?

 

I wasn't mean to it at all. Re-read the post. People who use the word "nostalgia" to effectively say those things about people who like games like Centipede are mean to Centipede.

 

 

Like, I don't read so good, man! NEVER MIND

[Tanooki]

The nostalgia argument would be accurate for a minority but we are at a point now that their kids or even their kids kids are going damn this (enter 80s arcade game) is damn fun realm of time now. Its a halfassed weak argument that's an insult to the quality design out of such tight limitations of the era. You really had so little space to sell a champion that couldn't be hidden behind an epic story, insane visuals, crazy good audio all sorts of dressing to confuse people from the turd under the surface so common now. Theyre not nostalgia sellers, theyre sold games made just that damn good they appear to so far be timeless among more than one generation now.

[Flojomojo]

I once lent my Xbox 360 disc of Oblivion to a friend who loooooved it and 100%ed it. I had trouble focusing on it and making any progress.

 

He compared his approach to "a dog with a bone," a single-minded obsession to grinding everything out of one game.

 

Me, in contrast? "A kid with a bag of Skittles," which is about right. Classic gaming, at least practiced by me, fits into that mindset.

[derFunkenstein]

You're pretty mean to Centipede, did someone make you play it with a joystick or something?

 

thats the only way I've played it. We had it on the 2600 when I was a kid. I've never seen a trackball machine.

 

To the broader topic, I guess it depends on the game.

 

I was never an arcade player. I lived out in the country and the only time I ever played an arcade game is if I spent the night with my grandma and we went to the laundromat, which had 5 or 6 games, including Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. Nowadays if I see one of those Namco multi-game machines at a restaurant or whatever I might throw down a quarter and play until I die, but that's it. So for me, they really were just quick bursts.

 

OTOH, I'll buy every Street Fighter collection that comes available because I did play the ever-loving crap out SF2SCE on the Genesis when I was in high school. But for the most part I'm not likely to buy remakes. They always strike me as quick cash-ins on my childhood, and I won't give into it these days. 10 years ago was another story, but now I'm jaded.

Edited July 21, 2018 by derFunkenstein

[mr_me]

I like classic arcade games but I don't like score chasing. I like to see at what difficulty level I can beat the game. Some of my favourite home video games didn't have a score at all.

 

Take Donkey Kong for example, get through four boards and you defeat donkey kong. I'd prefer if I could choose the difficulty level to start rather than going through level 1 every time. That's how tetris works. Defender doesn't matter because I can barely get through level one. I think Tempest let you choose the start level. I'd like to have that one hack with these games, because they are great games.

 

I don't play modern games much but when I do, they make me feel like a mouse being led through a maze with a prize at the end. They are not very challenging or satisfying.

[Flojomojo]

thats the only way I've played it. We had it on the 2600 when I was a kid. I've never seen a trackball machine.

I'm shaking my head right now ... but it occurs to me that trackball games in arcades were only around for a few years in most places. The vast majority of the world is in the same position as you, and I cannot think of a single place within 50 miles of me that might have a working trackball arcade game (ANY one, including Atari Football, Centipede, Marble Madness, etc) you could try. MAYBE Dave and Busters will have an old Monkeyball ticket-spitter, but probably not.

 

These things were really ephemeral, in some ways even more so than digital games where the servers have gone down.

[mr_me]

I like playing Missile Command with a mouse. Never tried it with a computer trackball but it works great with a mouse. I can't imagine playing missile command with a modern game controller or joystick.

 

I remember playing the old Atari football with trackballs. It gave you a real workout.

 

Spinner games like Tempest are the problem for me.

Edited July 21, 2018 by mr_me

[derFunkenstein]

I'm shaking my head right now ... but it occurs to me that trackball games in arcades were only around for a few years in most places. The vast majority of the world is in the same position as you, and I cannot think of a single place within 50 miles of me that might have a working trackball arcade game (ANY one, including Atari Football, Centipede, Marble Madness, etc) you could try. MAYBE Dave and Busters will have an old Monkeyball ticket-spitter, but probably not.

 

These things were really ephemeral, in some ways even more so than digital games where the servers have gone down.

 

Living out in the middle of nowhere has its disadvantages. Cable TV wasn't even an option until like 1991 or 1992. So I don't remember any of those supposedly great Nickelodeon shows of the late 80s that my wife goes on and on about, and I have no idea what it's like to watch scrambled softcore porn on a locked analog cable box that couldn't get Cinemax. My childhood was bereft of life's finer pleasures, but I used to watch the crap out of reruns of Gilligan's Island and One Day at a Time. Valerie Bertinelli was fine, I will tell you that.

[Tanooki]

If you can find an icade60 in 1 they come with an optional trackball for the few titles it has using it and it supposedly is solid. I dont have one so centipede millipede and the others are a pain

[Azathoth]

A remastered Blu-Ray of "The Lost World" was released recently. A Cinephile would immediately comment on things inherit to this one specific transfer like title cards, film stock, score, in comparison to previously released versions. A film critic would examine the movie as a whole regarding the plot, scenery, acting, & direction; their comments would mostly apply to anything from the new Blu-Ray to a bargain bin public domain VHS. The average Netflixing movie-goer.... well you probably couldn't pay the average movie-goer to watch it. It's old, silent, black & white, 4:3, & filled with a cast they've never heard of. The only way you could make it more unappealing is if it was a foreign language film with English subtitles.

 

Video gaming has been around long enough and grown large enough so that the wonderful, force fed term of "gamer" isn't some all encompassing kumbaya-at-the-fireside label the press wishes it was. Granted the main point in the OP was about a comment about classic arcade games (rather than the review itself of a game sequel), but it stands to say that tastes have evolved where not all "gamers" are "gamers". I wouldn't expect a "music lover" to form honest, objective opinions in a bluegrass gospel CD, a gangsta rap single recorded in a makeshift home studio, and a NSBM demo done on a 4-track in a basement. That's just too extreme of a difference in genres no matter how much they say they "I like all music".

[derFunkenstein]

Video gaming has been around long enough and grown large enough so that the wonderful, force fed term of "gamer" isn't some all encompassing kumbaya-at-the-fireside label the press wishes it was. Granted the main point in the OP was about a comment about classic arcade games (rather than the review itself of a game sequel), but it stands to say that tastes have evolved where not all "gamers" are "gamers". I wouldn't expect a "music lover" to form honest, objective opinions in a bluegrass gospel CD, a gangsta rap single recorded in a makeshift home studio, and a NSBM demo done on a 4-track in a basement. That's just too extreme of a difference in genres no matter how much they say they "I like all music".

 

 

I can appreciate music in all genres, and I can appreciate games in all genres, but the truth of the matter is, I only *like* good music and good games. And as far as what that constitutes, well...I'll know it when I see it.