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"Pb and Meka Sitting In A Tree...."

... With FM, Goatboy and Wookiee!

You have to get the rhythm right for it to work... keep trying if it doesn't!

There is a point to my risking losing friendship with these fine gentlemen, and it's this:

Being of roughly the same age, these 5 FOG legends have something in common... yes, age is one, but it's not what i'm talking about. What i'm talking about is starter games, and their gaming... heritage, if you will.

I'd have said that these lads, if I can call them that, are between 25 and 35 and that most of them have seen all the major turns in gaming from the release of the Spectrum all the way up to the latest next-gen announcements.

My point, or question is this...: 'With more companies re-making, and wanting gamers to re-live the classics that made gaming during the 70's and early to mid 80's, do you think there is a danger of spoiling the gaming memories that bring people like Meka, FM, Pb and Wookiee so much pleasure?

Not being able to play the game(s) has it's flaws, but somethings are best kept as memories, and heaven knows that going back to a game you loved as a child only to find out it's not quite as good can crush you! - I remember playing Fifa International Soccer on my friends Mega Drive years after it's release, only to find that the blocks that I once gawped at were too blocky and the isometric view that I thought was ingenius was infact, laughable! Now, I know it's 'all about the gameplay', but there are graphics you can't look past and to me, these were those graphics. I would have preferred to have left this game alone and kept the memories of playing it on the new TV with my brother sitting in the lounge on my 12th birthday, intact!

It doesn't exactly leave you completely devastated or emotionally ruined, but it does bring out the occasional 'Awwwww' and 'Noooooo'!

Recently, THQ and Sega decided to club together to bring back some classics to the GBA... I suppose it'll bring the indutry-making games to the gaming newbies of the world, but their time will come... you can't have the best of both worlds... you either get to drive a 50's Cadillac or a TVR Tuscan... you can't have both - It's a rule! (From now on...) The young gamers of today would probably shun the old classics, dubbing them 'sad' or 'too basic'... maybe so... but if you knew a scraggy old bear that you'd loved for years would you let it be fed it to the dogs for entertainment?! - I think not!

The PlayStation generation don't need columns when they have Bust-A-Move and Fantavision. They don't need Shinobi when they have Metal Gear Solid and Goemon. I can't see why companies that played a part in the birth of gaming would want to see their classics, that once took #1 spot, sit back in the shadows while Nickelodeon titles and more PokÈmon titles take the crown. Even then the re-born classics would scrape a few thousand pounds in every other country... so is it worth it to ruin the gaming veterans' foundation of gaming enjoyment? - I say no! Classics are timeless, yes. But that's where they stay to continue to be classics, in the history of time... not stacked on some shelf in the local gameshop for the 8th times on the 5th platform, where ANOTHER PokÈmon game sells 7-fold to that of the classic!

Maybe these guys (Meka and Pb etc) don't care... maybe they'd like to see these games revisited... but to me it seems like digging up old celebrity graves - 'where once a legend lay, bones are all that's left, bones that are indistinguishable to other bones to all who look upon them'...

Okay, so i'm no William Shakespeare, but surely you can see how upsetting this might be for some older gamers? Younger gamers might want to play the games, but I guarantee that most will cast aside the classic for the newer, 'in' title. There are plenty of developers and plenty of game ideas, why exhaust the classics?!

Thanks,


Game

Opinions Everyone? - Especially those mentioned in the topic!

... With FM, Goatboy and Wookiee!

You have to get the rhythm right for it to work... keep trying if it doesn't!

There is a point to my risking losing friendship with these fine gentlemen, and it's this:

Being of roughly the same age, these 5 FOG legends have something in common... yes, age is one, but it's not what i'm talking about. What i'm talking about is starter games, and their gaming... heritage, if you will.

I'd have said that these lads, if I can call them that, are between 25 and 35 and that most of them have seen all the major turns in gaming from the release of the Spectrum all the way up to the latest next-gen announcements.

My point, or question is this...: 'With more companies re-making, and wanting gamers to re-live the classics that made gaming during the 70's and early to mid 80's, do you think there is a danger of spoiling the gaming memories that bring people like Meka, FM, Pb and Wookiee so much pleasure?

Not being able to play the game(s) has it's flaws, but somethings are best kept as memories, and heaven knows that going back to a game you loved as a child only to find out it's not quite as good can crush you! - I remember playing Fifa International Soccer on my friends Mega Drive years after it's release, only to find that the blocks that I once gawped at were too blocky and the isometric view that I thought was ingenius was infact, laughable! Now, I know it's 'all about the gameplay', but there are graphics you can't look past and to me, these were those graphics. I would have preferred to have left this game alone and kept the memories of playing it on the new TV with my brother sitting in the lounge on my 12th birthday, intact!

It doesn't exactly leave you completely devastated or emotionally ruined, but it does bring out the occasional 'Awwwww' and 'Noooooo'!

Recently, THQ and Sega decided to club together to bring back some classics to the GBA... I suppose it'll bring the indutry-making games to the gaming newbies of the world, but their time will come... you can't have the best of both worlds... you either get to drive a 50's Cadillac or a TVR Tuscan... you can't have both - It's a rule! (From now on...) The young gamers of today would probably shun the old classics, dubbing them 'sad' or 'too basic'... maybe so... but if you knew a scraggy old bear that you'd loved for years would you let it be fed it to the dogs for entertainment?! - I think not!

The PlayStation generation don't need columns when they have Bust-A-Move and Fantavision. They don't need Shinobi when they have Metal Gear Solid and Goemon. I can't see why companies that played a part in the birth of gaming would want to see their classics, that once took #1 spot, sit back in the shadows while Nickelodeon titles and more PokÈmon titles take the crown. Even then the re-born classics would scrape a few thousand pounds in every other country... so is it worth it to ruin the gaming veterans' foundation of gaming enjoyment? - I say no! Classics are timeless, yes. But that's where they stay to continue to be classics, in the history of time... not stacked on some shelf in the local gameshop for the 8th times on the 5th platform, where ANOTHER PokÈmon game sells 7-fold to that of the classic!

Maybe these guys (Meka and Pb etc) don't care... maybe they'd like to see these games revisited... but to me it seems like digging up old celebrity graves - 'where once a legend lay, bones are all that's left, bones that are indistinguishable to other bones to all who look upon them'...

Okay, so i'm no William Shakespeare, but surely you can see how upsetting this might be for some older gamers? Younger gamers might want to play the games, but I guarantee that most will cast aside the classic for the newer, 'in' title. There are plenty of developers and plenty of game ideas, why exhaust the classics?!

Thanks,


Game

Opinions Everyone? - Especially those mentioned in the topic!

So you're saying retro games should stay that way and we should keep the memory of classic titles rather than playing them again in an attempt to revisit and see what they were like in our childhood?

If so, valid point, no need in ruining memeroy's we all want to look back and say "remember when we were kids and we was playing........".

I think Iv'e got this all wrong here but i'll say it anyway..

Do you not want developers to re make classic games like say Wolfstein because it may ruin how we remembered it during looking through rose tinted glasses of our childhood? If so I agree and disagree, I agree becuase I would rather keep a good memoery than ruin it by playing the game but (this may be a bad example) I played Mario Kart on the SNES one or two weeks ago and it's still as good a ever and brought even more good memories back to me so maybe companies wanting us to revisit our old classics could be a good thing.

Anyway good interesting post. :-)

I prefer to leave the games of old where they are:
In my memory in case they're crap and some part of my childhood is ruined forever.

Same reason I won't buy those classic kids programmes videos, I dont want to see how shabby they are now.
Games are the same thing.
My favs?

Way of The Exploding Fist (Spectrum 128k with tape-player built in).
Was awesome when I was 10, wouldn't stand up today.

Combat School:
Speccy again, 9mins to load. Classic button-mashing game.

Codemaster games of old:
When they were £3.99 for things like Kickstart. Budget games that rocked.
Jesus, I've just remembered that new games for Speccy were £9.99 and that was quite expensive.
I feel ancient.

I wont get emulators, because for me, those games belong in my foggy memory. Along with Spangles, Ludwig, Tiswas and Scooby-Doo (before Scrappy came along and ruined everything)
Nice post mate, made me think of my old games and how much fun I had with them.
But it's like losing your virginity, nice to remember but don't want to relive the moment thanks. Better left where my memory can distort it until I ruled the world and everyone made statues of me.

Old games are fine if you leave them at that. Old games you never go back to.
And what makes me happy is the progress made in 10 years alone, god only knows what we'll be doing in another 15.
I'll probably be laughed at by insolent, loudmouthed little Goatboy Jr because I used to use my hands to play games and had to wait for them to load.
God I'm almost 30.

But I'll still be playing games when I'm really old.
Why?
Because I've seen the evolution of gaming, watched it go from rubbish little white dots for tennis bats to things like GT3 and Metal Gear Solid 2.
I cannot begin to imagine what lies ahead, but because I grew up with games, I can never lose interest.
I may have crippling arthritis in my gnarly hands and a callous like a rock with a mysterious X in the centre from pads, but I'll still whip my kidds on their PS14 when they've finished arguing about who stole their hover-car.

Excellent, being an old fogey rocks.

For me, it depends on the game.

Some I like to play on emulators still, while others I can't bear to touch. When I was in Florida in June, I went to a retro arcade (DisneyQuest) which was packed with old arcade cabinets. Some were great to play again (Defender, Moon Buggy, Spy Hunter) while others were naff (Boot Hill, Mr Wimpy).

Remakes of games also depend on how much they change. I loved the original Spy Hunter, but having played a demo of the new 3D PS2 update, I wasn't overly impressed. Maybe it's just me getting old, but there's such a thing as TOO quick in racing games!

One thing that the DisneyQuest arcade did make me realise, though, is that while games have certainy got a lot flashier, they haven't necessarily become harder. I may be able to cruise through some of todays games, but some of those older ones still gave me one heck of a challenge. Games have come a long way, but today's don't make you a better player!

Good point on the difficulty. Have you ever tried to complete Manic Miner, NightLore, Saberwulf etc? These great old games took hours of practise and were still nearly impossible to complete. I guess the main reason for there difficulty was the fact that you could never save your game. In most of todays games when I watch people playing games such as Half-Life, it's every five minutes, SAVE SAVE SAVE! This just makes gave much easier because if your foolish and die, you don't have to start right back at the beginning again. The same goes for games like Mario. Back in the days of the NES and the early gameboy Mario's you had to play through the whole game to complete it. Nowadays extra lives are a plenty, and even if you do die, you normally get given a fresh set of continues. I liked the fact that in games like Goldeneye and PD you could not save your game mid mission. This meant that you could be playing a level for about 30mins, get shot dead and have to start over. Though that might sound really annoying, and in practise it can be. It did make you play a lot better because you had to be more courtious/stealthy which added to the games imensly.

I don't think that all retro games should be left in the past. I recently got my hands on Yie Ar Kung Fu again and i've been trying that. I may not be playing a version for a different machine back then, but that game is rock solid, but i'm having a great time trying to beat all the people. {haven't gotten past Pole yet}. But other classics like Chuckie Egg, are still great fun to replay. I don't beleive that people should leave the games in the past and not relive some of their memories playing them. I admit that playing some of them now may make you think that there a bit naff. But put it into context that you were playing these 10 off years ago, and you can still see there charm.

As for more recent old games, as i'll put it, like Wolfenstein 3D. Playing that to this day it's still great fun. I also recently got that Return To Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer demo and it's really good! It's also quite good fun to play the original again to see where it all came from.

My final point. I bought Mario Brothers for the NES about for weeks ago now, for £1.99 from a shop near me. I stuck it in my good old NES, pressed the power button, and in a fraction of a second I was in the game. {Oh how I miss those super quick load times}. Well, I had a go, and it was still a great game. The classic Mario formula which made the series sooo great, was still good to this day. I even remembered where all those sectret parts were, with the warp tunnels. I still didn't manage to complete the game though, because when you run out of continues, you gotta start from the beginning again! Oh well, one day!

So I leave you with this:-
-----Relive the good ol' days, by getting a hold of the CLASSICS and having another bash! See if you can still play all the way through Chuckie Egg!

TWENTY-FOUR.

24 Dammit!

I'm not half way to 50 yet!

24!

I'm only 24, that's not old!

I'm only just out of 6th form, right?

Hang on, that was 5 years ago......

Meka_Dragon wrote:
> I'm only just out of 6th form, right?

> Hang on, that was 5 years ago......


Scary, isn't it?

You'll be 30 before you know it. I swear my 21st birthday was only a few months ago...

Hee hee, you old farts!

:)

Yeah!! My parents could be UNDER 40 by the time they are Grand-Parents. Then again, most of us will probably still be on a chatforum like this, still playing games when we are adults!

Cooky wrote:
> Hee hee, you old farts!

We'll give you such a kicking...

If we can catch you.