Retro Gaming vs Modern Gaming

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No it wasn't lost levels. It was Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World and it was a remake of Super Mario World. The original game was made in the 90s and this one was almost identical to it.

I love Super Mario World.. It was the first videogame I was ever exposed to. I was four years old, and my cousin had a SNES. I used to look forward to visiting him, just so I could play his SNES. I never got the chance to play through the whole game till I got the GBA version many years later, but to this day, Super Mario World is, and always will be, my favorite Mario game.

But, to get on topic, I couldn't vote in the poll, because I belong to neither the retro or modern camp. Oh, if you asked me that same question a couple years ago, I would have said retro, hands down. But, to me, things have been changing for the better in the last couple years. There has been a huge push for indie gaming, and indie devs continue to provide new and unique experiences, created out of passion for the medium, rather than than simply trying to cash in on what's popular. But, I also feel that mainstream devs are also putting their heart into what they make.

I enjoy games from a variety of genres, and though there are a few I generally stay away from, I would play almost anything if someone wanted me to play with them. But, I can generally tell if a game was made with love, or if it was made simply because a certain kind of game is perceived to be popular, and the devs behind it were only interested in making money. I tend to prefer the road less traveled, rather than the really mainstream stuff, but there will always be mainstream ips that interest me too. Plus, a lot of games don't get the recognition they deserve, and end up falling into obscurity, and lost to time. I pride myself on having experienced a lot of said games. I haven't dabbled as much with indie titles as I would have liked, and the ps3 wasn't a particularly great platform for that, but with the ps4, I think that will all change. I can think of a few indie titles from E3 that captured my interest.

I like retro gaming too, because there have been a lot of great games over the years. I recently discovered Primal for the ps2, and just finished it. It was made in 2003, but as a 10 year old game, it fits my definition of retro. I can best describe it as a dark, fantasy action puzzle game, with one of my favorite female protagonists of all time. As someone who grew up with 16 bit and 64 bit systems, and even the NES to some extent, I have no problem going back and experiencing older titles. I play even older games than Primal too. I just completed the 3ds download of Super Mario Land 2, and liked it a lot.

If I've never played something, then it's new to me. Graphics aren't a huge deal to me. I suppose I have different graphical standards depending on the system and era a game is from, but as long as the game is good, I don't care that much. Given my background, I don't care much for pre-8 bit games, or even some 8 bit games. I don't care much for really early 3d games, or really early 6th gen games, with grainy textures that are a total headache to look at, but I have a personal fondness for the 4th-6th gens. I guess I'm just open minded.

A game is a game to me, and sometimes I crave simplicity over cinematic awesomeness. My mood changes from time to time. I enjoy pretty graphics too, and companies like Naughty Dog and Quantic Dream continuously set the bar for graphics, while still providing excellent experiences, but sometimes I crave an old school sidescroller or classic jrpg. I am aware that there are lots of retro throwback games being released, especially by indie devs, and I enjoy those too. There are so many great games out there, and I will never be able to play them all, but I want to try anyways.

Old games can definitely be easier on the eyes. Today's action games have such obnoxious HUDs, with glowing arrows telling the player which way to go, and FPS's where the screen becomes unreadable for thirty seconds every time you get hit. The last time I played Fallout NV I set the monitor to black and white and disabled the HUD, it made the experience less harsh and more aesthetically pleasing.

I've played the original Super Mario World on the SNES, and I had to consult a walkthough for the first ghost house. I also use the first two stages on the first island to gain lives, and the ghost house to save. Lost Levels was notorious for being really hard, which is why I asked.

I think old games were more fun becouse they were usually much more simplistic and game play centred. They also run better, smoother and crash less, even more so on a newer PC is its a PC game. I remember playing meny games in MS DOS(i'm sounding very old arn't I), it was a very good smooth running OS with what, 16bit graphics, as long as you knew all the commands needed to open anything. SNES was great also or the same reasons, theres a reason they are so collectable now, i'm glad I kept good care of mine!

Last edited by rapidroy on 24 Jun 2013, 5:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Totally agreed.

Alot of more recent PC stuffs can have all sorts of crazy issues, but alot of the really old stuff, back in the days of DOS, often JUST FREAKING WORKED so long as you had the required specs, and knew how to properly run the program. I liked DOS.... it bloody well did what you told it, and didnt do ANYTHING else. None of that endless background crap.


Some of my favorite games are from that specific era, like Arctic Adventure, that's one that I always loved. I really should try for a full playthrough of that one of these days.... I never did finish the game, way back when.

And it's not just OS's either. Hardware's gotten way more complicated. I remember when I could just look at the VRAM on a GPU (They were just called video cards in those days) and it would be fine. Bus speed didn't seem to matter, CUDA cores... just plug and play, baby. Or, hey, I remember on my old c64 where you just plugged in components externally!

But that's the thing. It was simpler, both for the software and hardware, and the games. The difference is what you can do with them. To go from Castle Wolfenstein for the c64 to Wolfenstein 3D to Metro: Last Light? It's more complicated, and you need to do your research, maybe have to poke at it a bit... but it all becomes worth it when you get that new GPU going and get to see The Witcher II on Ultra. Graphics and gameplay have both massively been improved, and a lot of the instability comes from the fact that developers are pushing the tech farther than ever before.

Although I do agree on the background crap. God, I hate Windows for all that ^&%*. Hey, Linux, when you gonna run games?

Eh, as the graphics go, that one's up to player preference.... frankly, most of the recent stuff lost it's ability to impress me long ago. I can think of plenty of older games though that had alot of complexity to the actual gameplay.... but can also think of *lots* of CURRENT games that are about as bloody simple as can be.


But yeah, agh, that background crap. I always wanna scream at it. It's like.... you know what, I didnt directly TELL you to run these 40 things in the background that dont even do anything useful, so why the heck are you DOING it? It's no wonder why viruses are such a problem, bah. Wheras DOS, or even the really early versions of Windows, just worked unless you screwed something up yourself. You turned the damn machine on, and BAM, it was on, there was the prompt, and then you told it to do stuff, and it just DID it. Not so anymore.... I swear, part of my daily routine is the initial battle with the damn task manager to get it to STOP doing certain stupid crap that it doesnt need to be doing.

And when I think about stuff like that, it gives me an understanding as to why some people say things like "They dont make them like they used to" or "Back in my day, we had such and such and it did THIS, and we liked it!".

Thief 1 and 2 , Starcraft, Warcraft 2 for PC.

Some older console favorites:

Super Nintendo: Super Metroid, Zelda, Final Fantasy 4,5, and 6

Playstation: Final Fantasy 8 , and 9 (did not like 7 that much), Castlevania:Symphony of the Night, Resident Evil

I honestly like older games better than newer ones. Especially the ones above that I tend to play multiple times. I was around when Super Nintendo first came out (I was ten years old) and was around for the original NES days. Got it when I was around 8 I think.

Completely agree with most everything said and I almost always have to fight with the task manager aswell, I can't understand how people can use a home PC without almost being a pro IT troubleshooter, perhaps that explains all the computer repair stores and services nowadays, hardly anyone sells anymore just fixes them.

Windows 3.1, 95 and 98 were good in my opinion and it must be understood that with those were all actually technically programs and DOS remained as the underwriting OS. For Windows 2000 I beleave and up they switched roles with Windows becoming the OS and DOS becoming just a program(and I beleave thats about when the option to restart in DOS mode went away).

I stayed with 98 until 2009 and I'm on XP now becouse thats what my about 7-8 year old bought off lease P4 computer came with, i'm scared to even think about upgrading. I'm going to build an older offline PC just so I continue to play the old games and programs and run Windows 98 as it was likely the best of all Windows programs. I learned to type in the commands when I was 6-7 years old and I would like to see if my half brothers a decade younger then I can actually learn the skill. The PC I used back then was a 266 upgraded to a 366 running Windows 3.1 and used in DOS mode more often then not.

I grew up playing Atari games and played Pac Man, Space Invaders, etc.

Try two things. First, in your start menu, under "All programs", there's a folder called "Startup". If you right click it and open it, it should contain shortcuts for every program that launches at startup. Delete them all. After that, in your start menu, use the search bar to run command prompt, and when it comes up, type MSCONFIG. Go to the startup tab, and you can uncheck any program that you don't want on startup. It's more effective than the folder delete option.

Second, google Adblocker and Ad-Aware. Ad-Aware, especially, will nuke any spyware on your PC that might run in the background. Set it to scan automatically when you're in bed or at work, and you're gold. Adblocker will remove all banner ads and pop-ups that might end up sticking spyware on your machines. Plus, it's just awesome anyway.

It's pretty quick and easy to do both of those, and it's basically solved the task manager battle.



Yeah, but I guess it has to do with your attitude. I honestly like fixing my computer. It feels like I'm smart (for a change ) Honestly, I wonder if I should can all aspirations of Biology or Anthropology, get my certifications, and get into IT. And that goes for games, too. It's funny, in that new thread about Morrowind, I mentioned modding. That's what I enjoy most about games. Tweaking them, pushing them beyond their limits, making it do crap that it really wasn't meant to do. Then I get it working, it's smooth, it's sexy, and I lose interest and go do it with Fallout. I like seeing what things can do. I like seeing what people can do. It's why I'm not anti-retro game (you should see my GoG), but I always find myself defending modern gaming, because it can do so damn much more than even the best modern games are doing. We just need a bit of ambition.

I'm thinking about becoming a retro gamer and saving my money for one of those old consoles like the Sega Genesis and getting a few game cartiridges. I used to only play modern games but I'm starting to see why a lot of people think retro games are better.

So I downloading Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition off of steam, not bad. The top down view mode that apparently is not on the console versions really reminded me of a modern Baldur's Gate. Its still kinda easier compared to Baldur's Gate but I must admit I reloaded a few times with the Ogre that was on top of the Tower of Ishal. Reminds me of kotor a lot too and probably even a little bit harder. I have really enjoyed it so far, thanks for the suggestion.

I am playing with no mods but all the DLCs enabled.



I recently built a old dos base system for fun (Yes I know there is dosbox, it was for fun) and I have to admit, I had no technical problems with it. I even copied and pasted the game directories from my Dosbox folder on Linux to the Dos hard drive and the games worked fine as if they were installed regularly. You obviously can't do that now without breaking a lot of stuff.



Linux does run some games such as the Penumbra series, Doom 3, Quake and so on. There is also wine but I see your point, more native games running on Linux would be nicer than running a compatibility layer. I am running Dragon age on Windows 7 just because 1. I have the hardware 2. its easier than fighting with wine.

The story really picks up later on, and the "Dwarf" section of the game is ridiculously good, amazing atmosphere in that region. I actually envy you playing it for the first time, because that whole area was so much better the first time around. But, yeah, there's a lot of influence from older cRPGs like BG and Fallout in there, and of course, being Bioware, KotoR had some influence. If you get comfortable enough with it to start modding, check out a site called Dragon Age Nexus, it's got everything you'd ever want, from storyline additions and new characters, to weapons and armor, to massively upgrade textures. At the very least, check out Dragon Age Redesigned. It's a character overhaul that allows you to chose between totally lore friendly character appearances, balanced, and un-lore friendly but aesthetically pleasing appearances for nearly all characters in the game. It's a big DL, but so worth it.

What are you playing as? I've beaten it as a Human Noble and a Dwarf Noble, both Shield Warriors, and I'm thinking of doing a mage playthrough.

I am playing as a Mage, I am only a level 9 right now and am doing the Dalish elf quests, was going to do the dwarf section next. I like to play games vanilla (unmodded) my first run through but I'll definitely check out the upgraded textures and Dragon Age Redesigned. I normally play all RPG games as a magic based character because in my experience they tend to be the strongest towards the end of most games. For example, in Baldurs Gate the Mage is one of the weakest characters to play as but towards the end they out preform almost every other character build. I am thinking the same may apply some what with Dragon Age as my Mage can deal some damage but tends to die rather quickly if targeted.

BTW Morrigan disapproves of this thread lol