Atari is simpler times

[Prizrak]

The Atari was my very first game system, owned by my parents before I even knew what it was and handed down to my brother and I as we got older (86-87). I played the system a lot, even after I owned the Vic 20 and then the C64, I still had fun with the old 2600. Fast forward to today and I play playstation, xbox games etc and the realism is crazy as well as the level of gore involved in some games. Atari games remind me not only of simpler times when it comes to being care free as a kid, no internet etc but of gaming in general.

 

I think prefer games that lack realism because they focus on the simplicity of game dynamics. Players when they died did so with a blip and less fanfare of today. Violence is there with the classic games but death in pixels is so different than today. Space ships may explode, characters dying, things being eaten but only for you to hit the button again to attempt to reach your next high score. I appreciate the 2600 for the lack of gore, lack of over the top fan fare. I can play a game for 15 mins or 2 hours and both have the same result. Yes I enjoy a good RPG and spend 3 hours and not realize they had elapsed but the love of being able to pick it up and play it will keep me coming back decades to come.

 

Games of yesterday are a struggle for players of today's generation, maybe I'm wrong. I feel they need a continual dopamine hit of loot boxes, save/check points and engaging story line to get me to enjoy some game time. Arcade games had a level of difficulty which was designed to feed the machines and keep the customers coming back to the arcade. That methodology doesn't work with today like it in yesteryear.

 

Anyone else feel this way? Not just a simpler time but a simpler method of gaming.

 

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[Gray Defender]

Amen brother...

[+cjherr]

Agreed 100%

[Mr SQL]

Agree, particularly when coupled with a classic Television. Phosphor trails and hexagonal pixels make games that lack realism feel more real.  

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Agreed. Also the last ZPH show had a similar poll question and the answers seem to confirm this too.

[Cynicaster]

100% agreed.  Appreciating classic games is one of those things where you either "get it" or you don't.  In my experience, there are lots of gamers who don't "get it" at all, and are absolutely baffled that anybody would want to spend time playing games that are 20, 30, 40 years old when there is an endless stream of cutting edge modern fare readily available.  

 

IMO, the fallacy of this kind of thinking is to assume that "graphics and realism" are automatically the top thing that everybody cares about, which just isn't the case.  For some of us, play mechanics and the level of required time investment are more important criteria than graphics and realism.  

 

There are other practical realities at play as well.  For me, here's the reality of it: retro games are the only games I can even think of fitting into my life with the time I have available.  If I wanted to play a big open-world modern game that is expected to take 200 hours to finish, I'd be lucky if I could play 1-2 games per year.  I suppose I could just play it for a few hours then move on, but then what's the point?  That seems almost like chewing your food then spitting it out without swallowing it.  

 

With retro games, if I have a half hour to spare I can easily squeeze in a few quick runs on any number of titles.  When the games are done, they're done.  There's no lingering sense of leaving something unfinished.  I've been playing retro games for over 10 years now and I'm still just scratching the surface.  With all of the options available for playing these games - real hardware, flash carts, emulators on various devices - there is a level of variety that is, for all intents and purposes, limitless.  

 

        

[jaybird3rd]

I absolutely agree.  I've talked about this before, but I loved that Atari 2600 games were often accompanied by stories in the manuals, and also by vividly detailed artwork on the cartridges and covers.  These were all enormously helpful for priming my imagination, giving me a dramatic context and visuals that I could superimpose onto the games while I played.  This was a tremendously immersive experience because it engaged me on different levels: there was what was happening (and what I was causing to happen) on the screen, and there was also the story that I was actively building and unfolding in my own imagination, and each had the effect of amplifying the other.  Many of the games were also abstract enough that if you wanted to, you could apply any number of different stories to them, so they didn't get "stale" nearly as quickly.

 

Modern games, by contrast, try to pack a complete story—complete with cinematic audiovisuals—into the games themselves, and for me, this often has the effect of crowding out the gameplay.  Because they attempt to be complete cinematic experiences, you're intended to enjoy them much more passively than the classic games, which is not as interesting to me.  Granted, they are games, so there obviously has to be some interactivity there, but as impressive as they are as technical achievements, a lot of the modern games seem to be very much the same when it comes to their gameplay mechanics; lots of "Call of Duty shootie shootie" over and over again.  They also demand a much larger time investment than I can spare, whereas many of the classic games were designed for the arcade, and thus had to hook the player and provide a fun experience in a much shorter amount of time.

 

I've been reading a book recently about parsing algorithms.  The author illustrated the cover with his own ASCII art, featuring a knight riding a dragon.  In the book, he described character art in this way:

 

Quote

The art form is known as "ASCII-art" and calls for the artist to draw upon a limited set of characters.  ASCII is a standard that, like Unicode, specifies a set of characters and their approximate appearance.  The artist applies this palette to express meaning that transcends the value inherent in the characters.  The ASCII artist and the computer programmer summon meaning from the keyboard for differing purposes.  Adherents of either art may seek and may achieve mastery over their characters, learning to conjure powerful objects from a primitive source.  The dragon rider on the cover extends the mastery theme, depicting the knight's mastery over the dangerous and powerful dragon.  The dragon represents the complexity of creating new computer languages; the knight represents you, who can master the dragon for your own purposes.

 

I like this quote very much, especially now that I program games, because it's an elegant expression of programming as an art form—particularly for classic systems which have a limited memory capacity and instruction set, and graphics that are limited to a low resolution and a limited palette of colors.  If art thrives on restrictions and limitations, as a number of people have observed, then the limitations of these classic systems needn't prevent anyone from creating an immersive experience.  On the contrary, I find those limitations to be creatively engaging: they present a set of well-defined constraints to the programmer/designer, and the challenge is to find a way to create something immersive and fun within those constraints.

[youxia]

I could never understand why this always has to be one or the other. I switch between modern and retro without a problem, because both can be awesome. Another thing is that most of anti-modern arguments in threads like these are either based on sweeping generalizations or personal dislikes. And it's not like retro games were problem-free either.

[Prizrak]

Retro games have become so popular indie software companies make a bunch every year for Steam. Someone had the forethought to make retro gaming stores, which are hard to find in my area but I make it work.

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[Mr SQL]

3 minutes ago, youxia said:

I could never understand why this always has to be one or the other. I switch between modern and retro without a problem, because both can be awesome. Another thing is that most of anti-modern arguments in threads like these are either based on sweeping generalizations or personal dislikes. And it's not like retro games were problem-free either.

Great question, and many good perspectives on this thread -

 

Video games are art and some retro designs are artistic in a way that can only be properly displayed using simple classic hardware.

 

Here's an example of a game for the demo scene, compared to a ZPH showing using more complicated setups involving emulation and modern displays:

 

 

 

The ZPH show has a picture of a simple hardware setup but the upper left looks to be the Retron77 and the main screen PC emulation.

Neither more complicated setup shows the game as it was designed to look using the simple hardware setup.  

 

[zzip]

I play classic and modern games.   I appreciate both play styles.   But I do get annoyed when I hear modern gamers demand that a game must have twenty hours or more worth of content or it's a rip-off.   Or that Dark Souls is too hard because *gasp* you die too much!  

 

Seems like there's not much appreciation for arcade-style gaming among gamers these days, where you die constantly, the game lasts 10 minutes if you're good, but has replay value!

[kermit73]

I have the opposite experience, where I really enjoy the classic games, but often fail to appreciate the newer games.

 

I think a key difference between the genres is with the classic games, the primary goal is almost always to get the highest score and a secondary goal might be to achieve a certain level (i.e. getting to the pie factory on Donkey Kong or to the banana or to "Act 3" on Ms. Pac-Man).  Toward the late 80s, the primary goal started to transition from getting a high score toward where we are today where often the primary goal is to complete a story.  I still have my childhood Ms. Pac-Man high score memorized, but have no clue what what score I may have gotten on the arcade version of Super Mario Brothers.  I just remember getting frustrated with Super Mario Brothers on the "Player Choice 10" machine since no matter how good I was at the game, when the timer elapsed, I had to feed the machine another quarter.  When timed story-based games started becoming commonplace in the arcades, I started playing more pinball, where you're rewarded with free games for achieving a high enough score.

 

While I have played a few newer games and have started to gain some appreciation for their differing goals, I still prefer the classics, where achieving a high score is the primary goal.  If I want a good story, I'm more inclined watch a movie or binge-watch a TV series on Netflix.

[Zap1982]

Well I am hurtling toward 40 now and when I was a little kid it was all Nes, Master System, SNES or Megadrive (Genesis) and I got interested in the 2600 about four years ago now. Whilst I didn't grow up with it I find it's games very similar to some of the BBC Micro or Acorn Electron from childhood. In fact certain games I played back then where Atari games under different names that I didn't at first realise started on the 2600.

 

For me, there isn't really a generation of consoles and games that are "better" than one or the other - they are just different. You can take any console at random and there will be great games, terrible games, fun games, dull games and ones that are just programmed so badly they are unplayable. 

 

I think the only thing I notice more of now (and by "now" I would say post-xbox 360, Wii and PS3) is people seem to be obsessing over hardware specs. As I said above, for me it's the games. For many others now, yes the games are a factor but so is the asthetic of the console, the texture of the buttons and lets not forget teraflops! I see people chatting more and more about CPUs etc. There is also this bizarre debate about "Generations" that a generation is determined by specs alone.

 

The Nintendo Switch for example just like the XBox X/S and PS5 is a 9th Generation Console - done, finished. It is the successor to the Wii U which was 8th Generation just like the XB1 and PS4 - done, finished. Yet there is a whole culture to try and justify the opposite argument because the consoles are "underpowered" compared to Xbox and Playstation!!

 

My Grandfather was taller than my Dad. So by this logic, my Dad to my Grandfather  was "last generation" then.

 

Again, in my day it was "Sonic vs Mario" not "well my controller has 4 face buttons and two shoulder buttons" or "I'm not getting an N64, it takes cartridges so it's last gen"  weird..

I still play newer games sometimes but there is very little outside franchises I have followed since their dawn that can capture and HOLD my attention. Never been interested in MMOs etc or playing online. 

 

Maybe I am old or just weird or somewhere in the middle!?

 

 

[CapitanClassic]

Console Generations arent an exact science. It makes the most sense to say that consoles that completed against each other were the same generation, with caveats of course. For example, the SMS was a direct competitor to the NES system. It wasnt until the Genesis came out that SEGA had a viable competitor to Nintendo's market dominance (wont get into Nintendo's anti-competitive policies). Then Nintendo released its SNES to compete with the Genesis. So, the NES and SMS were the same generation,  and the SNES and Genesis were the next. (Even though Genesis was in direct competition with NES for several years for market share)

Similarly,  the VCS Jr. Was rereleased when the NES came out, but I wouldn't out it in the same generation as Nintendo,  because it was running on 10 year old hardware and was a cash grab as a budget alternative to the NES.

 

Things get really squishy when you compare across countries. Some systems like the SMS had lots of support in South America well past the life of the console in the North American region. Then there are consoles that had niche markets (Neo-Geo) but spanned several generations. 

 

Mostly I would define console generations by the time they were originally released, their competitors at the time, and their relative hardware. (I.e. CD Rom technology defined the 5th (?) Generstion of consoles with the Playstation, Saturn, 3DO, and several other consoles. Although I would put N64 in tne same generation, and SegaCD in the previous generation)

 

 

Edited February 22, 2021 by CapitanClassic

[The Usotsuki]

9 hours ago, Cynicaster said:

100% agreed.  Appreciating classic games is one of those things where you either "get it" or you don't.  In my experience, there are lots of gamers who don't "get it" at all, and are absolutely baffled that anybody would want to spend time playing games that are 20, 30, 40 years old when there is an endless stream of cutting edge modern fare readily available.  

 

IMO, the fallacy of this kind of thinking is to assume that "graphics and realism" are automatically the top thing that everybody cares about, which just isn't the case.  For some of us, play mechanics and the level of required time investment are more important criteria than graphics and realism.    

Yeah.

 

When I play a game, I want to PLAY A GAME, not watch a glorified movie with a few interactive bits.

[+somebooks]

I sometimes feel like 2600 games are more like poems -- like haikus even. Very specific limitations, and within those limitations people find amazing ways to surprise you and to push the creative boundaries beyond the expectations of the form... and certain players/readers can appreciate that, and sometimes even find their own meaning in the simplicity of it all.

 

While a lot of modern games are more like novels. More story, more character, more words. Which can be great too.

 

But there's this beautiful elegance to the actual code of early games, which you can feel on the screen, just as there is weight and meaning in every word chosen, every punctuation mark, and every bit of negative space on the page of a poem. You can sit for an entire afternoon -- sometimes a lifetime -- pondering, revisiting, and finding deeper meaning in a single poem... just as you can spend an entire afternoon -- or an entire lifetime -- playing Mr. Do! again and again, discovering new strategies, attempting higher scores, and then someday finally realizing after 30+ years that his name is obviously pronounced "mr. doh" not "mr. doo" because "do re mi fa so la ti do" ugh so stupid why didn't anyone ever correct me?

 

Anyway, I love a lot of modern games, but I've never talked to / shouted at / laughed with an AI opponent as much as the one in Alan Miller's Basketball. I think its a more personal experience to be interacting directly with the code and hardware like that.

 

[Cynicaster]

11 hours ago, somebooks said:

I sometimes feel like 2600 games are more like poems -- like haikus even. 

...

...

While a lot of modern games are more like novels.

 

 

That is an excellent analogy, actually.  

 

Some people are going to appreciate both forms, some people will only care for one or the other.  Similarly, in video games, people who play arcade-style score attack type games are looking for certain characteristics and a certain type of experience, while people who play modern AAA titles are looking for a completely different type of experience that is not remotely comparable in any meaningful way. 

 

If somebody said "The Catcher in the Rye is waaaay better than The Raven," then that would be nonsensical, right?    

 

 

 

 

[youxia]

48 minutes ago, Cynicaster said:

Similarly, in video games, people who play arcade-style score attack type games are looking for certain characteristics and a certain type of experience, while people who play modern AAA titles are looking for a completely different type of experience that is not remotely comparable in any meaningful way. 

 

I can't really agree, I think on fundamental level they are very similar, sometimes the same. To me there is not much difference between a COD and a Batsugun player: both are trying to improve their game and get better, and the core gameplay - shoot things and avoid getting shot - is also very similar.

 

It's the same for other genres: Gran Turismo is not much different than Pole Position, The Witcher than Ultima, etc...

 

There also seems to be an implication that somehow people only get the kick from a "long" modern game when they finish it. This of course does not work like that: you get a sense of fulfilment by completing small bite-sized tasks (quests, checkpoints, whatever) which are not unlike older games, the only difference is that they are linked by a bigger framework.

[Rogerpoco]

Not really attempting to "answer the question"(offer an opinion, rather), but somewhat "on topic".

Ah, like it or not, they are all the same, in a sense.

I'd "grown past" real classic gaming, tad too young(IMO), started with the 8/16 bit stuff, really.

Never really was any "good", I just always played games, usually RPG's, so "reflex skills" were rarely put to use, essentially a "stinky gamer".

Well, I got on the Atari 2600, had great Friends mentoring/teaching me, learned to isolate what's important, not even notice what's not, and figure out the best way to "score".

After that "training" I realized I had gotten better "across the board", using that philosophy of focusing on "a pixel"(for example), even on the newer games.

 

I don't really play modern games, or even pay them much attention, tbh, but I do respect them and all, in the end they are "games", and some people do like the "story mode" stuff, but there are plenty of other options out there.

 

Basically, I really don't think they are as "different" as some people perceive them, they are just made in different eras, with whatever technology was/is available.

[Cynicaster]

11 minutes ago, youxia said:

I can't really agree, I think on fundamental level they are very similar, sometimes the same. To me there is not much difference between a COD and a Batsugun player: both are trying to improve their game and get better, and the core gameplay - shoot things and avoid getting shot - is also very similar.

 

It's the same for other genres: Gran Turismo is not much different than Pole Position, The Witcher than Ultima, etc...

 

There also seems to be an implication that somehow people only get the kick from a "long" modern game when they finish it. This of course does not work like that: you get a sense of fulfilment by completing small bite-sized tasks (quests, checkpoints, whatever) which are not unlike older games, the only difference is that they are linked by a bigger framework.

 

How far do you want to push it, though?  To go a bit further, I could say "playing guitar is not much different from painting: in both cases the artist is looking for a creative outlet, trying to get better, to express themselves, to avoid cliches..."

 

I can tell you that I love playing guitar, but I haven't the faintest interest in painting.  

 

If you introduce enough layers of abstraction you can draw parallels between almost anything; it doesn't mean that the experiences are at all interchangeable, which was my point.  

  

[youxia]

55 minutes ago, Cynicaster said:

If you introduce enough layers of abstraction you can draw parallels between almost anything; it doesn't mean that the experiences are at all interchangeable, which was my point.  

 

Yes, your point seemed to be that these experiences are "not remotely comparable in any meaningful way". But, yet again, how does that apply to Pole Position vs Gran Turismo, or any other of my examples?

 

There is also no abstraction whatsoever - unlike in your comparison, we're talking about the same medium, where you often basically do the same things that people used to 40 years ago, only with improved technology. Film has been around for well over a century, it has changed substantially along the way, and yet nobody would say that the core experience now is much different from how it was at the beginning.

 

You can of course say that Asteroids is vastly different than Skyrim, and that you much prefer the former. That's perfectly fine, but it's also talking about a personal preferences for  vastly different genres and that's not something which can be used to make sweeping claims about entire gaming eras, which is what this thread is all about.

 

Besides, if somebody made Asteroids RPG, in uber-realistic 3D  and a 100-hour long storyline, that would differ as a whole from the original, for sure, but it'd be still possible to get the same (or at least very similar) fix by completing a mission or two and ignoring the meta stuff. All in all, it's definitely comparable, in quite a meaningful way too.

[Cynicaster]

55 minutes ago, youxia said:

Yes, your point seemed to be that these experiences are "not remotely comparable in any meaningful way". But, yet again, how does that apply to Pole Position vs Gran Turismo, or any other of my examples?

 

There is also no abstraction whatsoever - unlike in your comparison, we're talking about the same medium, where you often basically do the same things that people used to 40 years ago, only with improved technology. Film has been around for well over a century, it has changed substantially along the way, and yet nobody would say that the core experience now is much different from how it was at the beginning.

 

You can of course say that Asteroids is vastly different than Skyrim, and that you much prefer the former. That's perfectly fine, but it's also talking about a personal preferences for  vastly different genres and that's not something which can be used to make sweeping claims about entire gaming eras, which is what this thread is all about.

 

Besides, if somebody made Asteroids RPG, in uber-realistic 3D  and a 100-hour long storyline, that would differ as a whole from the original, for sure, but it'd be still possible to get the same (or at least very similar) fix by completing a mission or two and ignoring the meta stuff. All in all, it's definitely comparable, in quite a meaningful way too.

 

For me, driving games are a special case.  They're an example where I feel like the "realism" afforded by modern technology enhances the experience in a way that goes beyond the superficial.  I still have my PS3 hooked up in the basement with my Logitech steering wheel, and GT6 is the only game that has been played on there in years.  So I'm with you on that one. 

 

But you lost me when you drew a link between Batsugan to COD.  I'm pretty sure most fans of either game style would agree that the link between a modern FPS and a classic arcade shoot-em-up is tenuous at best.  

 

As for the hypothetical Asteroids RPG, I feel like we may be living in different universes, because that wouldn't be comparable at all for me.  In fact, traditional scoring systems being supplanted by "trophies" and "achievements" is one of the primary reasons I stick with the older stuff.  

 

 

 

[roadrunner]

Everything was better in the 80's 
music, movies, tv, games, fashion
 

[Zap1982]

21 hours ago, The Usotsuki said:

Yeah.

 

When I play a game, I want to PLAY A GAME, not watch a glorified movie with a few interactive bits.

Remember the FMV craze of the Mega / Sega CD?

 

Now and again you get to press a button to initiate a cut scene... 

[MrTrust]

I started disliking modern games during the Xbox360/PS3 era.  The gratutitous R-rated stuff was getting really juvenile at that time, and the franchization of everything just started grating on me.  Modern gamer culture was and is really insufferable, and the cinematic pretensions and tortured attempts at profundity in the writing of so many games is just eye-roll inducing.

 

I've tried to play newer games.  I enjoyed what I was able to do with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and those Batman games are neat-o.  I was kind of into Warframe on my daughter's switch before we had to delete it to make room for lother stuff.  I do play a lot of Nintendo stuff with her; they are like the Disney of video games.  They're good for playing together as a family, and there's enough to keep both kids and adults entertained in their own ways.  She loves to watch me play Atari, but other than Castle Crisis, we really can't play together (maybe when she's older).

But, for me, so much of modern gaming are just too big of a commitment.  There are, of course, tons of nu-retro games, and some of them are real nice.  There's plenty of gameplay depth in modern games if you want to find it.

 

So, what does it come down to, other than nostalgia?  Modern games are depressing.  Everything is dystopian, everyone is either an anti-hero, a monster, or a murderin' meat robot.  The soundtracks are all either dissonant, maudlin, or forgettable.  There's no sense of triumph.  Things just generally don't work right, either.  It's a dreary hamster wheel.  YMMV.

 

Real retro games, by contrast, are full of hopeful visions of a triumphant future humanity, simple depictions of pure heroism, and the simple pleaures of a carnival midway.  The "art" games of the time were mich better too.  Games that used the medium as a means of expression rather than deliberate, deconstructionist anti-games, or a bunch of postmodern rambling bolted onto a boilerplate genre.  The peak was the 80s/early 90s because that was the last time most people had a conception of the future and technology that wasn't miserable.

 

 

Edited February 24, 2021 by MrTrust