Platforming games! Racing games! Fighting games! Adventure games! Horror games! Shooting games! Puzzle games! and even Sports games! We used to have it so good. So, what went wrong? I have wanted to make this video for quite
some time now. Why are older games better? That’s what we are going to talk about in this
video. Sit tight and grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever you prefer because
this is going to be a long one. Before we get to my points and reasoning for
why I’m saying this I need to tell you where I’m coming from regarding the gaming landscape.
Especially because younger audiences lack the perspective of a gamer who has seen it all
growing up unless they have researched it but even then they don’t have personal experience
with how gaming was back then and how it is now. So, I was around when games looked like this! The first gaming system we had at home was
Commodore 64 computer with a cassette deck, no less. That’s what our parents got us when
we wanted the Nintendo Entertainment System but they found this guy who was selling his
C64 and it was much cheaper than the NES. When we were picking it up the guy who was
selling it asked me what kind of games I liked and I mumbled something out of
my mouth like “Super Mario Brothers” and he was like okay and loaded
up Giana Sisters from one of his multi-game cassettes and I thought okay
if it’s this or nothing I’ll take this. Of course, we could never load that
Giana Sisters game anymore because none of us in our family really knew how
to use the damn thing. But mainly because most of the stuff we got was very legal
copies with multiple games on a single cassette meaning you had to be pretty precise
with the tape deck to load what you wanted. The good thing about that was we discovered lots
of games like the amazing International Karate+, one of the first fighting games I ever played. The first one would be the very
similar The way of the Exploding Fist, which was actually one of those
few legit games we got with it. So, it was easy to load from the cassette because
that was the first and only thing on it. So, we had some fun with it but we finally
got what we really wanted on Christmas that same year. The shiny new Nintendo
Entertainment System, or NES for short. So, I’ve been playing games both on consoles
and on home computers or PC if you prefer, for the longest time and I like both
experiences for different reasons. And when it was time for 16-bit action,
again, we had both a home computer and a console. Both had 68 000-heart on
fire. Of course, I’m talking about Commodore Amiga 500 and Sega Mega Drive,
or Genesis depending on where you are from! A few years later the console market started
to oversaturate with subpar systems from many manufacturers like 3DO Company’s 3DO multimedia
player, Philips CD-I, and Atari Jaguar. I read about them from gaming magazines of
the time and wanted them all because they all looked fine on screenshots. After
the fact, I’m happy I didn’t get any of them because the good ones were only
coming in the next two to three years. Of course, I’m talking about, probably my favorite
generation of console gaming the Sega Saturn, Sony PlayStation, and Nintendo 64. I never
had a Sega Saturn but I really wanted one, and actually still want one, someday,
someday. But I sure had PlayStation under my TV for Christmas 1996 and N64
at some point in 1997, a few months after it came out here in Europe. Yeah, it was
March 1997 when it was released in Europe. Both of these systems blew my mind so hard, especially Super Mario 64 when I first
time saw it playing on some local video game TV show for a preview of upcoming stuff.
I knew I had to have it; a few months later, I did. Nothing had been so mind-blowing when it
comes to video games before that and since then! Generational leaps like that just don’t happen
anymore. Look at some PS4 and PS5 games, for example, you have to take out your magnifying
glass Digital Foundry style to start picking up differences! Sure the trained eye can spot some
of them without zooming in 800% but I digress. So, why knowing this backstory is important?
That’s because it gives the context for my opinions of what I’m going to say in
this video. Now you know how and when my gaming life started and how I grew up and
lived through what I call the golden era of gaming, the PS2 generation. Before the DLC,
microtransactions, cookie-cutter copy-paste Ubisoft-style open-world games, day-one
patches, and overly political correctness. Let’s talk about those generational leaps first because I already touched on
the topic a little earlier. As I mentioned earlier Super Mario 64 blew my
mind when I first time saw it on television! Even though I would have played 3D
games on PlayStation before it, like Jumping Flash! which is also a very impressive
generational leap coming from 16-bit 2D games. If you came from Super Nintendo Entertainment System to Nintendo
64 where games used to look like this To games that looked like this
instead! The jump was humongous! 2D games were all we knew before
the 5th generation of video game consoles. Sure there were some rough 3D
things on PCs and even on Mega Drive and Amiga but they were usually very low polygon
counts, no texture mapping, and very low frame rates at the time when most console games ran
60 frames per second or fields per second. Then suddenly I’m witnessing this new
Mario game with a truly realized 3D world and smooth 30 fps gameplay, texture
mapping, and texture filtering. Nowadays I prefer the PlayStation look for that era
of 3D games with sharp pixels but texture filtering was a thing back then and was
appreciated. The game was more advanced if it had it. 3D accelerated PC games had it
and it was preferable to software rendering, not alone for texture filtering but for higher
frame rates and resolution and additional effects. Going for the new millennia and
new consoles, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, and GameCube showed us another huge
leap in visuals and graphical fidelity. You could tell when you saw a PS2 game
that it was a tremendous leap from the original PlayStation wherever it was No
matter what game or genre of games it was! The last time I felt we had such a leap in
visuals was the move from the PS2 generation to the PS Triple. Now we had fully programmable
shaders and the jump to high definition! But I don’t remember feeling anything at all
when I first time booted a PS4 game. It just looked like a PC version of a PS3 game
to me. Higher resolution, better anti-aliasing, and higher frame rates. We are now experiencing
diminishing returns in graphical fidelity from generation to generation. This is only natural
as the more advanced graphics get but still, it added to the feeling of playing something
really new, and we don’t have that anymore. Really the most impressive thing about this
current generation to me was the Matrix Unreal Engine 5 demo on PS5. And even that isn’t such
a huge leap as we used to have back in the day. Generational leaps weren’t always just about
graphics either. Systems using then futuristic CD-ROM technology introduced us to games with
CD-quality music! Even though I really appreciate chip tunes today, back then it was amazing to
have real music instead of peeps and poops. Also, I remember when I first time used
that analog stick on that N64 pad to control Mario on the screen it was a
revolutionary feeling! Shortly after Sony introduced their Dual Analog controller
for the PlayStation I knew I had to have it! Yes, analog controller before Dual Shock, I have never actually owned Dual Shock for
the original PlayStation. And I think this is still the best feeling controller
ever made. I prefer non-rubberized concaved sticks and bigger and better-shaped
handles than the ones on the Dual Shock. I still think the best analog stick
was on the N64 controller though, well, before it had worn down to the point
of failure. It was amazing when it was in flawless condition but clearly a flawed
design that broke down rather quickly for most people. It just felt different compared
to any other analog stick on a controller ever since. If you haven’t experienced it
you don’t know what I’m talking about. At least Dual Sense or Dual Shock 5 as I like
to call it has something new and exciting going for it with haptic feedback and adaptive
triggers but still I don’t think it’s such a game-changing thing as the first analog sticks
on controllers were. Maybe Virtual Reality motion controllers can offer something truly new and
groundbreaking. I had HTC Vive for some time and I think it was a neat trick for a while but
I don’t think that’s how I want to play most of my video games. I ended up selling the thing when
it was untouched in my closet for three months. The next thing on my list of why old games were
better is the fact that when you bought the game before the always-connected era you knew you’d get
a full and working product. The game was on the disc or the cartridge ready to go and playable
from start to finish without the need for any updates at any point. Or even online connectivity
which slows down game menus for example because they send telemetry to the publisher about
everything you do in the game. For example, before I connected Tekken Tag Tournament 2 online the
menus and loading were way faster! What mistake! I’m not saying that game-breaking bugs didn’t
exist at all but at that time they were way less common because these developers and
publishers knew they were impossible to fix after the fact. And some games received newer
revisions on later prints to fix some issues. A fine example is Gran Turismo 2 on PlayStation
where some races had rivals impossible or at least close to impossible to beat because the
game had a bug that allowed the computer to enter with a higher-class vehicle than intended.
This was corrected on later runs of the game. So, one could argue that updates are good. Well,
yes. If it didn’t lead up to releasing games mainly broken on launch with release it and fix it
later mentality. Some games never get truly fixed. Also, if I’m not mistaken Sony has a policy
in place where the game is required to be on the disc playable from start to finish, if it
releases physically that is. But apparently, this is not enforced by Sony very
much because there are few examples having minimal data on the disc, and the
rest is downloaded from the Internet. So, back to my point that back then
you knew the game was fully on the disc when you bought it and it will work
as long as your device reads the disc. No servers are needed for acquiring patches
and game data needed to play the game. One could say you had literal ownership of
the game. Not to be confused with intellectual property or IP of the copyright holder. But the
ownership of your copy of the software. You could lend it to a friend, you could sell it, give it
to somebody or keep it forever. No online checks and DRM schemes to verify your right play. Your
right to play was guaranteed by having the disc, cartridge, diskette, or even cassette in
your hands. Sure there were convoluted DRM schemes on PC games back then too but this
wasn’t an issue with console gaming really. Now I have PS4 games on my shelf
that say “Ultimate Edition” on the box but when you open the box the
disc inside is just for the base game and additional content was given to me
as redeemable codes. In other words, the physical copy of the game really
isn’t the “Ultimate Edition” isn’t it? If I was to sell this game now when I have used
the codes for the additional content. Should I sell it as the base game that it really is for the
buyer at that point or just say “Ultimate Edition” and the codes might have been used? I’m pretty
sure the buyer wouldn’t be too happy about it. Then there is the collectors' problem. A buyer who
wants the base game wouldn’t want this box and the buyer who wants the “Ultimate Edition” wouldn’t
get it. This game is literally unsellable and that’s by design I think. These companies have
always wanted to kill the used games market. I don’t have issues like that if I
wanted to sell any of my PS2 games for example. True ownership of
all of the content it came with. Of course, we have the exact same issues as a
buyer. I can confidently go and buy a PS2 game or even a PS3 game knowing that the whole game is
on the disc playable from start to finish. On PS3 there might be some updates but nothing on the
magnitude of modern games and maybe some games had online passes you would need to buy if you
wanted to play them online but that really isn’t a concern for games whose servers and online
support are long gone anyway at this point. And when I say the whole game is on the
disc I also mean no DLC or downloadable content as it was known during that era
when primary distribution was still a physical product. That leads us to my next point. The dawn of the DLC was on Xbox during
the 6th generation of consoles but it wasn’t really a problem yet. It was
truly used to enhance the games you enjoyed playing the most. Nothing was
chopped away from the games before the release to sell you separately or upfront
as a more expensive edition of the game. Sure there were expansions for some games
especially on PC already at that time but even then they were huge packs that expanded
almost all aspects of the game and you really got your money’s worth when you bought them
and they weren’t chopped away from you if you didn’t buy the more expensive game. I’d
be naive to think they didn’t plan some of these expansions beforehand but still, it
wasn’t the bs tasting thing like these days. The DLC isn’t even most of our worries
these days when buying a game. On top of whatever a modern triple-A game
costs in your region modern games have the audacity to ask for more of your
hard-earned money when you just bought it. I’m sick and tired of hearing that it’s just
optional cosmetic things etc. No, it’s not! For example, in some Ubisoft games, they literally
sell you a “time saver” ultimately admitting the game is not properly balanced without this
optional thing you can buy for more money. And even if it was only cosmetics I actually
miss the days when additional costumes for characters among other things
were unlocked by playing the game! We get to my next point from here. The
cheat codes. Yeah, back in the day, we used to have cheat codes in
games, to make them easier, harder, or other things to have more fun. But now in the
era of microtransactions and in-game purchases, cheats have to be bought for more money.
A fine example of this was in NHL games where you basically were required to have
this golden stick thing to be competitive. I’d say that Ubisoft time saver is one
form of a cheat as well because you gain more experience points than the players
who don’t want to waste money on that! I’m not saying everybody should cheat
in video games, especially online games it should be zero tolerance but I mainly talk
about single-player games here. But back then, if you really wanted to cheat, it was
free! And last but not least when you were mostly done with the game it was time
to have fun with game-breaking cheats! Even if you thought games were
too hard or not so you wanted to utilize the cheat codes leads us to my
next reason why old games were better. Next thing I think old games did better
than the new ones is that they didn’t think the player was braindead. Sure
there were some cryptic and confusing things because of mistranslations
and even because of poor games design But mainly games were challenging but still fair, especially during the 5th and
6th generations of consoles, which would be the original PlayStation, Saturn,
and N64 to Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. There weren’t obvious go-here markers in games
like Final Fantasy VII for example. It put you on this huge map and lets you go to do your thing
as a player. Yeah, sure you could waste your time and wander around aimlessly before going in the
right direction and get clues from people who lived in those places. You actually needed to
listen, or in this case, read and pay attention because this was the direction you were given and
then you had to think a little and go from there. Games didn’t think you were stupid, they were designed in a way that they
counted on your ability to figure it out! And if you didn’t they happily sold you the
official strategy, I kinda miss those too! Lots of times you didn’t even need to
buy them separately if you read the gaming magazines because they included them
regularly. And if you still needed more help, there were those cheats, for free. All you
needed is to acquire them from somewhere. And yes, usually every single issue of
those gaming magazines had them too! Another thing, I didn’t even
plan to include in this video! Even video game journalism was so much
better than these days! We all know video game journalists are a joke today.
They talked about games, and only games, not politics, and their goal was to
help and provide information to players. I can understand if younger people especially
would think that older games were hard and punishing because sometimes they really were.
But I’d argue as well that they were also way more rewarding when you eventually overcame the
challenge or figured out something instead of an arrow pointing you to the next thing you
needed to go to. Or some prat yelling you the solution to the puzzle before you even had the
time to give any thought to how to solve it. And then there were way more genres in gaming
back then because there weren’t real standards on how to do things yet. Especially
when we moved from 2D to 3D. Sure, some of those designs were bad, really bad. But what I’m trying to say is that when there
was more experimentation we had more diversity in how the games were played. Meaning that
if you finished game A and started to play game B even if it was somewhat the same
genre it probably played very differently. And we get to my next point from here. So, we had way more varied game designs and
genres of the games back then. Partly because real working standards weren’t figured out
by developers yet. You could argue of course that it’s better now because we have those
standards for example for 3rd person shooters. Yeah, sure, I agree with you. To some extent. But
it also creates a problem for me. Every single 3rd shooter game feels like it’s exactly the same
game to me. Just different window-dressing. Add to that a typical cookie-cutter empty soulless open world of today and we have a
cookie-cutter modern third-person shooter open-world game in our hands we have
played through too many times at this point. It’s just not enough anymore that a story changes,
theme, graphics, characters whatever it is to differentiate these things. At least, it’s not
enough for me anymore to keep up my interest. Especially because stories, the content, and
character designs, especially female designs have to be overly politically correct these
days I have zero interest in them anyway. I have to mention the Ubisoft formula
and how tiring it is at this point. How many times you have played the same
game that basically started somewhere like Far Cry 3 or something, or
the original Assassin’s Creed? Discover a huge empty map, liberate
some outposts from enemies, climb a tower and reveal more of them.
Rinse and repeat 50 times. I’m sick and tired of that formula in 2023. It should
go away and preferably never come back. If you want to make an open-world game in 2023, it really has to have something else going on
for it than this copy-paste Ubisoft formula. The open world used to be my favorite
video game genre. For example, my all-time favorite game Super
Mario 64 kinda had an open world, and it was my first experience with such
open-ended gameplay and I loved it. Sure probably some of it was because it was so new
at the time. Of course, Mario 64’s world is very segmented and small by today’s standards but
it was impressive back then on N64 of all things. And last but not least I have to mention
the death of B-games or double-A games or whatever you want to call them as long as
you don’t call them “middleware” because that’s a completely different thing and out
of the scope of this video but for example, Havok physics and Speedtree are middleware
technologies to speed up game development. So, for simplicity’s sake, I
call them B-game in this video. Nowadays we mainly have only two categories
of games or at least two that’ll get the most media attention. The triple-A games
like Marvel’s Spider-Man, Call of Duty, etc. And then we have indie or
independently produced games that are completely opposite of the production
value and budget of the triple-A stuff. But we used to have plenty of games that
landed somewhere in the middle. The B-games. Couple examples of B-game would be something
like WET for the PS3 and Xbox 360, published by everybody’s favorite Bethesda Softworks
and developed by Artificial Mind & Movement, today known as Behavior Interactive. And here you can see this game’s middleware
solutions. So, the game is NOT middleware, it’s a B-game or A or double-A but I promised to
call them B-games to not make it more confusing. Another example is Yakuza Fury on PS2
and it’s a 3D Beat ‘em up of all things, those were extinct pretty much at
this point already and I was very sad about it because it was one
of my favorite genres of games. This one is published by 505 Game
Street or now just 505 Games and developed by Vingt-et-un Systems. Even
sounds like a B-game developer. Yeah, I’ve never heard of that before
researching it for this video. So, this type of game we lost between
then and now. Sure there are some games, especially in the JRPG genre that would fall
in this category or games like NieR: Automata. But they aren’t as nearly as common as
they used to be. And the reason I loved these games so much because that they kinda
looked like games that belong on the system they were designed for but of course couldn’t
match triple-A production quality. That didn’t mean they weren’t fun games. Actually, more often
than not they were more fun than many triple-A productions that started already to fall into
the trap of cookie-cutter standardized molds. And no. Indie games aren’t a replacement for them. Most indie games just aren’t interesting enough
and most importantly don’t look the part. What independent game today comes even close to
matching triple-A production values of today? There can be hidden gems, oh damn I
love that term. There can be hidden gems in the vast sea of shovelware quality
indie games but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t mostly garbage. Just like
shovelware games were back in the day that was made for best-selling
systems just for a fast cash grab. And there it is, my reasons why old games were
better than the stuff we have today. Of course, there are some other issues with modern gaming
like the fact that lots of triple-A games are more interactive movies than actual video
games these days. But I leave it here for now. If you want to see something else
I made click on the video on your screen now. Thanks for watching, bye for now.
