Could somebody explain this to me?

[rhindlethereddragon]

OK, I grew up in the Atari / Intellivision era. Was heavily into these systems as a kid.

 

My wife grew up in the Playstation / Nintendo 64 era.

 

She loves video games and can absolutely kick butt at Super Mario 64 - in fact, I've seen her beat the entire game both on console and the DS..

 

She's no stranger to some older systems, either: she's excellent at ALL of the Super Mario games on the SNES and the NES - she can beat them all from the first Super Mario Brothers all the way through Super Mario World.

 

Here's the thing: I try to get her to play classic games like BURGERTIME on the Intellivision, or PITFALL or MARIO BROTHERS on the Atari 2600.... or even Donkey Kong on the NES, and she loses lives quickly, gets frustrated, FREEZES UP and says "I don't like this game... it's too HARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!" - Yep, she thinks classic games are way, way too hard. Even Pac Man. Even Space Invaders or Asteroids. She says they're all way too hard, even though she thinks they look cool.

 

Any explanation for this??

[Chickybaby]

Could be a number of things imo. A few - Little patience, used to playing a different kind of game, it's complex for her in their simplicity, mental block? I dunno. She also obviously doesn't want to keep trying so she won't get better. I wouldn't push her or worry about it. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Enjoy what you guys do share and congrats for snagging a younger wife. Good luck (you'll need it to keep up, lmao).

[Robert M]

Your wife is in the thumb controller generation. Are you using joysticks with your Atari? If you pick up an NES control pad modded for the Atari I bet she will do better.

[Crazy Climber]

It's just a fact that video games are much easier now. You basically just get to keep playing until you win in new games, continue, continue, alright! I won! Now I never want to play this NEW game again so I will go buy another, it's all marketing

[+Ransom]

My wife is the same. She came to gaming in the NES era, and finds most of the older games frustrating. Even when using a controller that is perfectly to her liking on other systems (a Genesis pro stick -- she prefers the lap-based sticks like the Advantage to most thumbpad controllers, and really dislikes the classic Atari-style sticks). Give her any Super Mario or even ESP Ra De and she kicks ass. But Asteroids? Forget it. Most interestingly to me, she enjoys Galaga '90, but not Space Invaders.

 

So we play cooperative mode games for the NES through the PS2, plus the occasional game from earlier eras that she likes (Lode Runner and Star Raiders are both ones she enjoys; I'm hoping she'll try Adventure 2 some day).

Edited May 2, 2009 by Ransom

[jahfish]

also have to admit that - although i have a huge atari collection with many many consoles and games - i prefer playing neogeo games on my mame table 'cause i love those screens filled with hundreds of explosions

[IHATETHEBEARS]

Practice, practice, practice.

 

She didn't beat Super Mario 64 the first time she played it. She obviously has video game skills. So she could beat the old school games if she applied herself.

 

Maybe she just doesn't want to. Maybe they're just not as interesting to her.

[sandmountainslim]

NOOOOOO!

Now we have TWO Rhindle's and TWO Stan's floating around this joint!

Only one Slim Sandy

 

My GF grew up in the NES and SNES times but I have done a good job getting her into Atari both old and new games.

She does have problems with any game that involves shooting though and is better at the puzzle type games.

Wp

[Atari6660]

I grew up around every possible video game from Atari 7800 and Lynx to NES all the way up to N64. I could play any classic game regardless of how good I did, so unfortunately I don't much in the way of explanation.

 

But if I had to factor a guess, I'd say maybe she's not used to the gameplay or something since the Atari and Intellevision games are from a different generation than N64 and PSX.

[donssword]

A lot of her trouble is with classic games punishing her for failure -- that is the arcade coin-op play model most of the older games were built on.

 

With the advent of the PS1 gen of games, failure did not always spell the end of the game, especially as the adventure game and shooter games merged into contemporary action games, first person shooter, and survival horror.

 

A lot has been written recently about the success of the Lego games from the past 2 gens (PS3/X360 and PS2/Gamecube/Xbox), and how the player was not punished for dying -- if u have these games, and you have kids, u can watch this pricipal in action. U put ur kids in front of a Lego game, and they have lots of fun, the only point of tension is around co-operation. Then, place them in front of a game built on the older play model, this even includes many Nintendo 1st party games from the Gamecube generation, and watch your child's frustration and anger sky rocket. The older model of game design really causes a lot of frustration, by forcing the player to repeat, over and over, the parts of the game that are the most difficult for them. More modern models of player interaction allow for a wider range of failure -- this is especially true of the sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto where anything can happen.

 

If I can dig up some of the recent articles on this, I will post them here.

Edited May 2, 2009 by donssword

[donssword]

And, I would like to add, I don't think it is a matter of maturity, as much as experience with failure as a mechanism for progress within games.

 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/v...-Brick-by-Brick

First off, everyone gets frustrated. A child simply deals with frustration differently than an adult. "It's a very unpleasant thing to see," Smith says. "It's not just 'I don't like games - sometimes they're too hard.' It's genuinely very upsetting for children. It's like in a classroom environment - which is a learning environment, much like a game, where you're trying to live up to its expectations - to be told all the time you're a failure. ... It's frankly fairly abusive, if you were to translate that to the classroom metaphor."

 

In addition to being more accommodating, a LEGO game would have to step away from the industry rhetoric about making players do things - trying to lead them along the next step toward a necessary conclusion. The play needed to be more like play. "What can be conventionally thought of as failure can be rewarding," Smith says. That philosophy appeared most noticeably in the health mechanism, where a player wasn't punished for experimentation. Instead, they developed a positive reward system based around gathering tokens, which are lost when struck. A second application of their theory was the importance of cooperative play - or rather, people playing at the same time, not traditionally cooperative or competitive, but sharing a gaming space, like on a playground. "What we always hoped for, and eventually delighted to find, was parents playing with their children," he says.

 

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/22/...ng-of-the-past/

He thought that because there wasn’t too much of a penalty for dying, that players — adults and children alike — would be more encouraged to experiment within the game. “Very early-on the experience of many games is if you do not perform to the game’s expectations, you are punished and forced to repeat the lesson,” Smith explained. “There are some players who can respond well to that environment, but we felt that [that style of player death] was not encouraging of experimentation for most players. So with ‘Lego Star Wars,’ we set off very deliberately not to punish you… but actually to be friendly and to reward you in a positive way for the things that you chose to do.”

Edited May 2, 2009 by donssword

[yuppicide]

I am fortunate enough to have been born in 1973, so I grew up in the Atari era as well as the Nintendo era.

[retrozoneorg]

I think it's because gaems of the past required perfect timing - or very wuick reflexes to play. Modern games do not - you can pick up any new game be it racing or First person shooter and play out of the box and pretty much know you are going to get through the first level or 2. The old games were very unforgiving.

[Herbarius]

A lot of her trouble is with classic games punishing her for failure -- that is the arcade coin-op play model most of the older games were built on.

 

Yes, but especially the original NES had a lot of VERY hard games in its library, rivalling the Atari games more than easily in terms of difficulty.

However maybe the difference is that most Atari games were "open ended", so you could never "beat the game" like on the Nintendo, but are playing against your own or your friends' or family members' highscores...

 

That's of course directly transported from the Arcade model. It is even supposed to frustrate the player, but just enough to get the "Oh yeah?? We'll see about that!" type of reaction from the player, so he'll try again and again. However, that often doesn't work with ever player, and its especially hard to get it to work for players of varying skills. Also I think it especially works worse for women than men (Disclaimer: this sentence is independent from the last one, i.e. NOT implying women have less skill at games than men). So this COULD be the problem, perhaps try some Atari games you actually CAN beat.

 

But I wouldn't give up on the rest of the library either, I'd try the theory about the controller; a modded NES gamepad, a Sega Master System controller or an Atari 7800 Joypad (which is hard to get in America I think, but it was the standard pack-in controller of the 7800 in the rest of the world) could help.

Edited May 2, 2009 by Herbarius

[rhindlethereddragon]

Your wife is in the thumb controller generation. Are you using joysticks with your Atari? If you pick up an NES control pad modded for the Atari I bet she will do better.

 

You're right! I had a talk with her about this last night and she told me that the controllers are way too big for her "freakishly small hands" (her words). Isn't there a "me too" 2600 "nes like" controller?

[rhindlethereddragon]

NOOOOOO!

Now we have TWO Rhindle's and TWO Stan's floating around this joint!

Only one Slim Sandy

 

My GF grew up in the NES and SNES times but I have done a good job getting her into Atari both old and new games.

She does have problems with any game that involves shooting though and is better at the puzzle type games.

Wp

 

I didn't know there was another Rhindle. I could change my name to something else?

[Chickybaby]

Don't worry about your name, they are teasing you. There is a Rhindle the Red who has been on here for a while and is a great guy. I'll just nick you "Red Dragon" to differentiate if both of you post in the same thread.

 

I play on a 7800 since a 7800 plays 2600 games and either with a Joypad controller - https://www.atari2600.com/item--Atari-Joypad--PROD7277.html or also use a genesis controller as well which my 2 yr old prefers.

There is also a mod that allows you to convert an NES controller for the 2600 as well if you are the do it yourself type.

[kaishaku]

I'm not much of a gamer but they're both frustrating to me in their own ways. It took me a long time to get used to dual-stick controls in FPS even though I was always pretty good at Doom or Wolfenstein 3D, but I've never caught up. I wouldn't dare play online with others because I'd be a handicap to whichever team I was on. "Who the heck is shooting me?!" (looking around 360 degrees) "Oh, I'm dead now."

 

Then there's the frustrating technical aspects, like not having an HDTV sometimes means I either can't see a detail, or I can't read the tiny 6 point text telling me something important. (Capcom is notorious for this in titles like Dead Rising.)

[Herbarius]

Isn't there a "me too" 2600 "nes like" controller?

Yes, I already mentioned the Atari 7800 Joypad Controller, it's also compatible with the 2600, although naturally only one of the two buttons will work.

 

However, if you are from America you'll have a hard time finding those, because they're quite rare. In Europe and Australia those were the standard controllers that came with the 7800 so they're easier to find.

 

Also the Sega Master System Controller is very similar to the NES controller and also works with the Atari 2600.

Edited May 2, 2009 by Herbarius

[donssword]

I'm not much of a gamer but they're both frustrating to me in their own ways. It took me a long time to get used to dual-stick controls in FPS even though I was always pretty good at Doom or Wolfenstein 3D, but I've never caught up. I wouldn't dare play online with others because I'd be a handicap to whichever team I was on. "Who the heck is shooting me?!" (looking around 360 degrees) "Oh, I'm dead now."

 

Try the TimeSplitters series by Free Radical (just bought by Crytec).

 

Free Radical was formed by some of the ex-Rare employees who worked on Golden Eye 64 for the N64. TimeSplitters was built from the ground up for console play -- go straight to TimeSplitters 2, or TS3 called TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, both of which are available on the PS2, the orig XBox, and the Nintendo Gamecube--none of their console servers are online, it really makes no diff which one you pick up -- I hate dedicated servers, btw. They offer 4-player split screen, or LAN play on the PS2 and XBox versions.

 

As a series they are a little cheeky--they don't take themselves seriously, tend to be a little more accessable than other FPS titles, and run really fast.

 

For the hard heads out there both games can be run through tunneling apps like XLink Kai to tunnel a LAN online.

[homerwannabee]

Your wife is in the thumb controller generation. Are you using joysticks with your Atari? If you pick up an NES control pad modded for the Atari I bet she will do better.

 

You're right! I had a talk with her about this last night and she told me that the controllers are way too big for her "freakishly small hands" (her words). Isn't there a "me too" 2600 "nes like" controller?

The Sega Genesis controllers work with the Atari 2600.

[rasty]

Interesting discussion..!

 

I think the final answer is a combination of most all that was said in the thread.

 

Specifically, I think that "old school" games had a very distinctive - and different - gameplay, compared to their newer counterparts.

Games used to be much more repetitive back then, surely forced by the limited amounts of resources available to work with. Challenge was given by different factors: not really the desire to progress further, but rather the need to become perfect and therefore master completely the few available stages in order to achieve the highest score possible.

Also, since games offered fewer variety, they also had to be on average more challenging (difficult).

 

I know I'm not saying anything you don't know already, but this different approach to the games - this different philosophy - could not be immediately evident for someone used to different mechanics.

 

By the way, reconnecting to the concept of becoming more and more perfect at the limited-content "old school" games versus the new games with huge contents/missions/goals: I always get the feeling, while playing such new releases, that I don't really get the most value out of them since, being practically forced to progress quite rapidly in order to achieve anything, I never really get to exploit the most out of them, and much less feel "connected" to them!

I'd have to replay the same game quite a few times, but who does really have the time or will to replay Half-Life 2 a hundred times?