Vintage clothes, shellac plates, old metal signs – in many living and consumer areas, from clothing to music to foodstuffs, things are once again very popular, are celebrated uncritically, sometimes transfigured in a romantic way and are regarded as tastes of a supposedly good old time. This works, among other things, because lovers of these objects believe in them to find values that no longer seem to exist today.
Retro Gaming: How to make a game a classic?
Old clothes look diffuse and stylish, shellac plates have their own sound, and historical metal plates are so much more high-quality and more stable than the current plastic stuff. Video and computer gamers are also susceptible to such retro-transfiguration: keyword retrogaming. If you follow the discussions on old console games in relevant Internet forums and on YouTube, you will find that they can be divided into two categories: those about games, which today are no longer comprehensible, why they have found anybody at all Those who are still as much fun as they were 15 or 20 years ago.
When looking at old consoles games, today we often see mainly pixel graphics and fiep sound. For the most part, we are longing for two-dimensional pixel figures that bounce through eight-colored landscapes and usually do not experience the end of the game, because life energy is much too soon. This alone does not make a game a good game. Successful titles from the 80s and 90s were characterized by more than just the graphic and sound elements characteristic of this era, as well as a relentless difficulty.
There would be accessibility first: console games at that time were often difficult to master, but good titles in most cases are all the more easy to learn. The first parts of Mega Man or Castlevania came with two buttons and a control cross, a tutorial was not available, why also? The games were self-explanatory. Whoever wanted to master the game, on the other hand, had to go deeper into the mechanics of the game - memorize the motifs of opponents and find out how certain abysses were the easiest to overcome Code>
In the level design of large console classics, there is another great strength: it smoothed smoothly - as if every pixel was exactly where it was supposed to go. There were platforms in Super Mario Bros. 3, if you could reach them - whether the players did it, then depended on their hand-eye coordination. In contrast to the numerous unlicensed NES games, there were always unreachable platforms and power-ups in impossible places, just to annoy the player. In good games, Leveldesign, on the other hand, never happened to chance, but thought through.
In order for games to be so fluidly playable, developers needed the time to develop genres. A game must be mature to become a classic and to be played with fun years later. Jump'n'Runs have never been better than Super Mario Bros. 3, apart from further developments in graphics and sound, but have reached at most the same or an almost high level. The same is true for Adventures on the PC: Games such as Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island 3 have reached a level that makes them a timeless classic in terms of game design, usability and comic graphics.
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A former representative such as Maniac Mansion, on the other hand, broke ground on his appearance in 1987, but today is rather tough food. Control is cumbersome and the player can maneuver through wrong decisions in dead-ends. There seems to be only one exception to this rule: games, the concept of which is so simple and fascinating from the outset, that a further file is practically no longer necessary. This includes, for example, Tetris.
The game brought it worldwide popularity, especially through its game-boy version, and is still as playable as 1989 - similar phenomena are solitaire or Minesweeper - both are popular because they are easily accessible and famous because they are free to everyone today Windows version. In addition, these games lure with quick rewards, a few rows in Tetris are quickly dismantled, players are totally absorbed in it, deepen themselves in it and develop an urge to continue. The fortune-teller, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, calls this the "flow" - a complete concentration on one's own actions, as far as the drifting out of actual events in the real world.
If game developers are now looking to recreate the charm of old games, pixel graphics and chiptunes soundtrack are not enough for a pleasant retro feel. Especially from the scene of the indie developers come numerous roughly resolved pixel games, which try to simulate the gameplay of old NES, Super-Nintendo or Mega Drive classic. This project is rarely successful. The platformer Shovel Knight is popular with critics and players alike. The developers also do not rely on groundbreaking innovations, but on proven ones.
This is exactly what threatens to become a problem in the AAA sector. Numerous game makers and publishers are concentrating year by year just on developing and improving well-known brands in homeopathic doses. Innovations are becoming less frequent. Even though indie developers are starting to follow this trend, the game market might look dull and boring in the foreseeable future. Which games in 20 years as classic will be valid today is not foreseeable.
However, what still leads to a title being remembered at the time is a perfect jump mechanism, a meditative game experience or a story that encourages us to think. Although it seems as if the game market is currently dominated by a flood of sequels, there are still such games. They are no longer called Castlevania or Probotecor; they are no longer necessarily the shooter or action platformer, but titles like Journey or Kentucky Route Zero, which choose an artistic way of showing and inspire the player's imagination
This and other articles about "Rewind Retro: New Thoughts on Old Games" can be found in the issue 6 of the WASD, the magazine for games culture
