Retro Games As a Way of Avoiding Quality Standards

IGN's video review of the game, Shovel Knight calls it [the reviewer's] favorite game of 2014 so far.  How can that be, with games like Titanfall and Watch Dogs coming out this year?  And if someone really likes retro games, what about Strider HD or Trials Fusion?

Now, I haven't played Shovel Knight and don't want to.  It looks fun enough, but I played so many games like that in the 8-bit and 16-bit era, and I've moved on.  If I'm going to play a game with old school controls, it's going to be a game that at least attempts to meet modern presentation standards.

Shovel Knight does not look good to me.  It wouldn't have looked to me in the 16-bit era.  Okay, fine, it's supposed to represent an 8-bit game and not a 16-bit game.  But back then I always wanted games to look better than they did.  The developers were always trying to make their games look better.  That's what I don't understand about the more recent Megaman games.  They released better-looking Megaman games on the SNES than Megaman 10 looks on PS3 and Xbox.  Why go backwards?

Is Shovel Knight really better than Strider HD?  I wonder how many people who are exited about Shovel Knight gave Strider HD a chance.  Strider HD (like the amazing Bionic Commando: Rearmed), shows that you can take an old game, preserve everything that was good about it, improve on its weaknesses, and make it look great by today's standards.

Shovel Knight doesn't try to meet today's standards, of course.  I'm guessing that retro-looking games sell better than retro-style games that don't look retro.  So I can excuse the developers. But gamers should demand better.  I understand wanting the retro experience.  I understand wanted a change of pace with simpler controls.  But you can get those things without dated graphics and sound.

I'm open to the arguments of retro gamers who prefer games that look and sound old.  Why do you prefer that?  Have you played Bionic Command:  Rearmed, Strider HD, Contra Hard Corps, the remake of Castle of Illusion, etc.?  If you have, and you still prefer Shovel Knight, tell me why.

The Failure that was Zelda II

I enjoyed the Angry Video Game Nerd’s recent review of the NES game, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (a warning to those not familiar with James – his reviews are full of extremely salty language).  However, I can’t agree with his assessment that it’s a great game despite its flaws.

The problem is not that it’s mostly a side-scroller, with the other Zelda games being from and overhead perspective.  I’m not a Zelda enthusiast so that makes no difference to me.  There’s an NES game similar to Zelda II named Faxanadu (buy my used copy here).  It involves swords, magic, jumping, monsters, and labyrinths.  It too is a side-scroller, and far superior to Zelda II.  If Zelda II was of the level of quality of Faxanadu, it wouldn’t be considered a disappointment.

No, the main problem is that the overworld view is visually horrendous, tedious, and an embarrassment.

No, those graphics were not good or even acceptable by 8-bit standards.  Here’s how an overworld should look in an 8-bit game, roughly:

That picture if from Phantasy Star, a game that puts Zelda II to utter shame.  Notice how the water near the coasts has some subtle surf effects (the water line moved in and out to simulate waves), the sand features cactuses and dunes, there are some shadows around the town.  Zelda II has none of that.  It’s like they didn’t try.  Is that a characteristic of a great game?

Zelda II’s dungeons are bland and repetitive.  There’s very little variation in appearance, with the color of the bricks being the main thing that changes from one dungeon to the next.  The environmental obstacles don’t go much beyond pits to jump over, blocks, and elevators.

It’s true that that complaint could be leveled against the first Legend of Zelda, but for whatever reason the labyrinths in the game were fun most of the time and rarely tedious.  Faxanadu is a good example of variety and creativity in 2D dungeons.

 

James’ review covers the game’s difficulty and frustration level, so I won’t go into that aspect of it.

So, this was basically just a rant about a game that I think is overrated.  Yes, it’s part of a beloved franchise, but even fans of that franchise should be honest and admit the Zelda II is a total lemon of a game.

Konami is Learning

First they announced Rush'N Attack: Ex-Patriot, now a new Contra game called Hard Corps: Uprising.  Konami seems to be following my advice.  Here’s a quick review:

The Wrong Way to Bring a Classic Game to a Modern Console:

Example 1 (Super Contra for XBox Live Arcade)

Example 2 (Contra:Rebirth For Nintendo Wii)

(If you look at the screen shot above and think, “those graphics aren’t too bad”, you need to realize that those are 16-bit caliber graphics.  The 16-bit era end 15 years ago).

The Right Way:

Example 1

Example 2

Keep it up, Konami!

Sick of Playing Level 1

I’m too lazy and unqualified to critique the video game canon list created by video game scholars.  Everyone’s going to have their own ideas about what should and shouldn’t be on a list like that, but few people were continuously up-to-speed on developments in both the PC and console gaming worlds throughout the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s.   I have more gaming experience than most people, but I wouldn’t pretend to have enough perspective to be able to assess how important any particular game is.  It sure seems like a game like Doom is important, but didn’t Wolfenstein 3D pave the way for Doom?  How do you include Doom on the list but not Wolfenstein?  The list doesn’t seem important enough to put time or effort into researching and arguing for or against a game’s inclusion.  It would be a different story if I was getting paid to do that.

I’m mainly interested in the scholars’ defense of Super Mario Bros 3’s inclusion.  The article says it was included because, “its nonlinear play, a mainstay of contemporary games, and new features like the ability to move both backward and forward.”  I’ve got to agree with that reasoning and emphasize how cool a feature like that was and is.

In case anyone isn’t clear on what nonlinearity means, think of the first Super Mario Bros game.  The game always starts on level 1-1.  You beat the level and go to level 1-2.  At certain points you can warp ahead, skipping some levels.  But you can never go back, and never avoid starting the game on level 1-1.

Most of the games of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras are like that – certainly the majority of side-scrolling action/platform games.  Players just accepted that, but we were all secretly and not-so-secretly sick of playing level 1 every time we to played the game.

Super Mario 3 featured an overworld that meant the gamer didn’t have to always start the game at the first level.  He could play any level he previously passed.  This was unheard of at the time.

Super Mario 3 was not the first game to implement this.  Bionic Commando did have an overworld, but it’s wasn’t as nice.  In addition to the interface being clunky and unattractive, the lack of progress saving limited its usefulness.

Progress-saving combined with the overworld really put SMB3 ahead of its time.

I was an early adopter of the Genesis, and although I owned an NES, I was contemptuous of the NES, Nintendo, and gamers who only owned an NES (yes, I was a gaming elitist).  The 16-bit era had arrived, but Nintendo continued to milk the NES.  I realized that it made good business sense for Nintendo to do that, but I wished consumers would forsake their 8-bit consoles for the superior graphics and sound of the Genesis (or the TurboGrafx-16 – yeah right).  In any case, SMB3 is the one NES game that I was envious of.  I wished that game developers for the Genesis would have put some of those features in the 16-bit games.  But they didn’t get it, and some of them still haven’t gotten it.

The funny thing is, making a game non-linear would have been easy to do.  The overworlds themselves don’t have to be graphically impressive.  SMB3’s definitely was not beautiful.  They just have to work.  They’re basically graphical level selection screens.  That’s all they have to be.

Sonic the Hedgehog was released in 1991 – three years after the Japanese release of SMB3.  The developers would have know about the innovations of SMB3.  And while Sonic blew the Super Mario games out of the water in terms of graphics and sound (including Super Mario World for the SNES), its lack of an overworld and progress saving hurt its overall quality and in particular its replayablity.

Sega didn’t learn this until Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast.  As far as I know, that was the first Sonic game to have an overworld (which, at that point in gaming, had evolved into an immersive 3D environment with the same controls and graphical quality as the particular levels).  The Genesis Sonic games – Sonic 2, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 3 – all lacked an overworld and progress saving.  I’m not even convinced that the upcoming Sonic 4 will have a an overworld or more importantly, level selection.

Why didn’t more developers in the 80’s and 90’s see that as an important feature?  I’m guessing that it’s because nonlinearity does not sell games – at least not back then.  Gamers mainly wanted better graphics and sound.  We wanted screen shots of games showing the best the games had to offer graphically.  If a game had nice graphics, that was 75% of the sale.

Take a look at these screens:

These are from James 'Buster' Douglas Knockout Boxing and Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf, respectively.  At the time, those graphics were unbelievable.  When a person would come across an ad featuring those screens in a magazine, the only reaction was “wow!”  The games themselves were bad, but they were effective marketing for the Genesis.  They’re colorful, exciting, detailed, and beyond what was possible on the NES.

So the motivation for developers to put “deep” features like nonlinearity and progress saving in games was not as high as it was for them to load up games with cutting-edge graphics and sound.  That’s still the case.  Overworlds are not particularly exciting.  But as I said, they add to replayability, they make games less linear, and they make games feel more substantial.

The main lesson here is that the best features of games – the features that become standard in later generations of games – are often the small things that seem inconsequential.  Whereas the graphics will look less impressive over time, innovative and substantive features tend to stand out even when looking back at a game 20 years later.

Bringing a Classic Game to Modern Consoles The Right Way

I was not a fan of the 8-bit NES / arcade game Rush'n Attack. But the planned remake looks cool.

It looks like Konami saw the awesome Bionic Command:Rearmed and decided to try with one of their old games.  I'll definitely check it out when it's released, but I'm wondering why Konami opted for Rush'n Attack over something like Contra.  Contra is one of the most fondly-remembered 8-bit games.  The Contra code is famous.  Rush'n Attack, on the other hand, was the kind of game people bought because they thought the name was clever, and because it sounded like fun to run around killing commies with knives and machine guns.  In the days before downloadable demos, that kind of thing is all we had to go on.  Unfortunately it was a pretty bad game.  Repetitive, slow-paced, and fairly difficult if I remember correctly.  I'm sure the remake will be good, but I still don't understand that choice given the alternatives.

In any case, I'm glad to see Konami realizing that gamers appreciate some effort going into bringing classic games to modern consoles. As opposed to this:

Ughhh...that image alone makes me sick to my stomach. You know what's better than that? 1) Contra on MAME. 2) Contra III on a Super NES Emulator. 3) ANYTHING.

Konami and everyone else -- we will gladly pay $15+ for classic games on our modern consoles if you put some effort into optimizing them. Widescreen and high definition are the main things I want. Achievements, enhancements, different modes of play are also nice. But I won't pay one penny to play a non-optimized, emulated version that runs in a letterboxed window, so don't waste your time.

Edit: I just discovered that Konami did release a new Contra game for the Wii last year called Contra ReBirth. IGN gave the game a decent score, but those graphics -- yikes!  Contra III for the SNES looks much better.  That is not rebirth, Konami, that's more like a zombified Contra, dug up and reanimated in a grotesque, vile form through evil magic, a.k.a. a half-assed development effort.  Those graphics can't be considered acceptable by today's standards on any console.  Thankfully, the new Rush'n Attack screens show that Konami is putting a little more effort into their next 8-bit remake.