Ready Up

Do We Have The Legs To Carry Us?

Holiday time once again throws up some more questions for me in relation to gaming.  Of course, being away from home allows me to whip out the DS or the PSP and catch up on some handheld gaming. The iPhone also helps with this but the battery life there is a huge problem for continued gaming.  None of those things were the issue that was thrown up, though; the issue was in direct relation to Rod Stewart, The Bee Gees and The Electric Light Orchestra.  Confused? I would imagine that you probably would be at this point and you are more than forgiven for being in that position, but I shall explain all and you may just see where I’m coming from.

Guitar Hero Bee Gees anyone?

Every year, before I go away on holiday I make up a CD to listen to in the car as we drive around Scotland. The process for choosing the music is very simple…I listen to music that I listened to with my parents when we did the same journeys 30 years ago.  This generally includes the aforementioned Rod Stewart, Bee Gees and all that that entails, I have as much fun making up the CD as listening to it and then when I’m driving through the Highlands I get whopping senses of nostalgia in a very good way.  I’m transported back 30 years to being young and remembering all that went with being young, I also remember what games I was playing 30 years ago and then the nostalgia wears away pretty quickly because they were mostly rubbish!

A harsh statement, I know, but to myself it is sadly true, I remember playing Pac-Man and Space Invaders on large table top versions in lounges of pubs and I remember it being fun at the time, but the effect has totally worn off now, unlike the music.  I appreciate that the technology involved with games has moved along to a huge extent so that games of 30 years ago have no comparison to modern games but they have aged to an extent that they are only playable in very short bursts.  For evidence of this you need look no further than the recently released Game Room on the 360, causing whacking waves of nostalgia with all the old games but was ultimately a bit rubbish due to time making them look terrible, and even game play can’t save most of them.

This is all a bit worrying for games because most other forms of dated media stand up very well to time – music, films and even some television programmes are timeless.  The Empire Strikes Back is thirty years old now and I would much rather watch that than have to endure Pac-Man in its original version for more than ten minutes.  Once again I realise that all this may be in relation to the advances in technology and that it may all have levelled out now, but what does the future hold for our beloved games?

This is retro modern, but looks old. Still a bit rubbish!

As I think about this issue, I move time forward in my head from 1980 and start to chart where games became good, and where I wouldn’t mind playing through older games again.  I remove my rose tinted specs and really think hard about this, Zx Spectrum – good, but confined to the past. Mega Drive/SNES also good, but prolonged play brings up many flaws. Playstation 1 – genre defining, but aged really badly in the last few years. Dreamcast – amazing and maybe the benchmark for my retro gaming.  Once again though, this is just a teeny bit worrying as it is within the last 10 years, nowhere near the 30 or more where other media is still enjoyable. The next test of time for games is how they can handle the next ten years, if there is no progress other than mildly improved graphics then I can really see the games of today having the legs to carry them further than any generation of games have done before.  The only way I can see current games becoming obsolete quickly is if the next gen embraces Holodeck-like technology, that said though, I don’t want to play ultra realistic games, I still like to have that bit of  knowing I’m playing a game in what I do.

Kirsten leads the Ready-Up 2040 meet up as Laura, Tony, Celeste, Martin and Dan look on.

One other thing that may help extend the life of older games is making sure that backwards compatibility is firmly implemented in any newer consoles.  The lack of a properly implemented system in any of the modern consoles has virtually alienated most games from the last gen unless you have an older machine to play them properly, and this is a huge factor in how long games will remain in the gamers consciousness. I suppose the question also exists where we have to ask ourselves if, in 2040, we could still happily play Gears of War 2, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, Guitar Hero and Modern Warfare 2 without them feeling a bit dated and a bit rubbish?  Now that is a genuinely scary thought, both in that I would be 70 (nearly) and that those great games will be rubbish!  I’m going to go and relax with a bit of Rod Stewart now.

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One response to “Do We Have The Legs To Carry Us?”

  1. Leon avatar
    Leon

    I think to a degree it varies from game to game – depending on a mix of gameplay and the graphics style. While I too find that many old games don’t interest me (usually ones that other people find nostalgic that I didn’t play in their heyday), there are some that stand the test of time fairly well. A lot of the time I think this is because the games *did* control horribly, but since it was the best we had we learned to put up with it.

    For instance, the original Sonic games were detailed 2D games that controlled sharply, and I think even now the graphics look good because they were colourful and not very blocky. Earthworm Jim similarly looks and plays quite well now too. But then they’re more like a painting, with the limit on art largely down to the imagination of the artists rather than graphical capability, they always look the same as we remember and we don’t fool ourselves into believing they looked any better than they actually did. It’s not true for all games – such as the old Castlevania games that controlled horribly and suffer now for it.

    I think the main games that don’t age well are 3D titles – the technology improved so rapidly that the PS2 left the PS1 in the dust, and the PS3 offered even another step forward. While Final Fantasy VII and Tomb Raider looked alright at the time, and we accepted the way they looked because that was the best we had. However, now looking back at them, graphics and controls have since been so improved and refined that I wonder how Lara ever looked attractive, and how I could actually interpret what was going on with the blocky shapes on screen. As the next Devil May Cry 3 looked fine to my eyes, I can’t even play it without my fond memories being somewhat quashed after I realise that my general expectations of graphics have raised without me even really knowing it.

    3D graphical improvements are a bit like family members you see every day – you don’t notice them change, but when you look back at how they really used to be you realise how much different they used to look.

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