The other what type of gaming content do you wish you saw more of thread (not about videos)

VmprHntrD · Friday at 6:25 PM

I wish we had more meaninful throwback style gaming and that's a broad stroke you'll have to accept. I mean thinking back to the pre-CD era of stuff, back when space was limited and many games were perhaps hi score runs to a few hours of play at most once you figured it out and could plow through.

It's utterly disengenous of the wanker pit online saying a game is 3hrs for main game or whatever, sure, but those counts count someone who can just knock it out. How many hours went into getting to where you say it can take 3 hours?

So thinking on that, I'd like to see more swings at how games were designed in the mid-end 80s through the 90s and into the 00s on the handheld side once consoles went big ticket/big storage. If some of them are arcade like shallow experiences that's fine too, others could be the next Super Mario Bros or Sonic but with quality of life imrpovements, but not overkill overcomplication style improvements some foolish developers do because as often you find less is more.

I think it's safe to say here, enough people are probably 30-50 aged or up given the age of this place right? You can only do so few hours around family or other responsibilties, being damned tired or having more than one interest in life put so few hours into something. So I'd like to see more of that less is more approach, give me something I can chip away at like a kid on a NES that maybe in theory an hour game, but will take me 40 hours to get there in time. Give me some easier to pick up, harder to finish and master enough to do so style games where I feel my time was impactful and not wasted.

I think some of the games companies like Modretro and incub8 have done a solid job of with their non-reissued 8bit GB/GBC releases as a prime example.

radicalten · Saturday at 2:37 AM

Aside from the monetary factors, part of the reason why we do not see games like those you described is that popular design sensibilities have changed through the years. It would take someone, such as yourself, to thoughtfully embrace the 80s-00s mindset during the entire development process to achieve your goal.

Have you considered developing the game yourself? Even a demo of the first level could be enough.

If that is not an option, perhaps you could create a short list of your favorite examples of this type of game design, and share it.

For example, R-type comes to mind as a game that fits your description, except that it might be too difficult for the scenario you described.

Thanks for this discussion.

VmprHntrD · Saturday at 6:21 AM

Oh well I mean I have had designs, problem is I can't code, that has never worked out well for me for decades trying. Design, test, research are where I do well which amounts to not much without a team, or at least a very strong understanding of like GB Studio or NES Maker.

Long ago being salty that ActRaiser never got a true sequel, it still hasn't considering the butchering and poor choices in the remake, I had designed a true sequel. It kept the basic monster generators, but expanded the god powers and sim growth of the town as the original was light, yet making the action stages a bit more detailed and challenging with somewhat less clunkier movement and more skills/magics to pick up to make for a more rounded and larger title.

Another was thinking about how to bring the OG Macross to life on the Gameboy Color in the era, all 3 forms, various stages based upon not just the environments of the anime, but other stages given the war raged on far more than the episodic nature would have.

I had gone as making tiles and sprites to design things and a write up, but that storage media I used in the era killed itself decades ago and lost it.

Taleweaver · Saturday at 12:35 PM

Personally, I'm fine. More than fine, even. If I had to describe my state, it'd be 'abundance'.

I'm try to elaborate by comparing it to music. Last year, wife and i had tickets for a national concert. Four days, 6 or 7 stages (one was with video games like just dance) and from around midday to well after midnight.
I didn't knew most bands, and we went often by hearsay and what we 'researched' on the internet beforehand. The lineups were from local to national to international bands. Recent, classics... It's the sort of festival where you could see rap, rock, reggae, pop... By the same artist, in one instance. Not everything was my jam, but i certainly picked up great experiences.
Hardly any on the main stage, though. Some great artists, yes, but imho not the best, which probably means I'm getting older (45,btw).

Now three things:
1) the video game industry is larger than music
2) music reporting on that concert covered all bands... Game reporting barely covers anything not on the proverbial main stage
3) it takes a whole lot longer to 'consume' a video game than any other medium

Like... I've got an established taste i must name after the studio size ('indie') because key words like 'innovative' have lost all meaning, captured by pretty much anyone who self describes anything.
I'm 45, and only now I've heard of the McNally award (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seumas_McNally_Grand_Prize) that lists a bunch of my favorite games.
I cling to my favorite designers and studios like a music roadie because what they make next is more likely more what I like than what some algorithm throws in my feed.
Gimme dotemu for nineties revival. Draknek & friends for sokoban puzzles, suspicious designs for humor... I can go on. Like I said: I've got plenty.

hippy dave · Saturday at 6:10 PM

Taleweaver said:
Draknek & friends

OH HELL YEAH

radicalten · 2026-07-19T00:49:37+0100

VmprHntrD said:
Long ago being salty that ActRaiser never got a true sequel, it still hasn't considering the butchering and poor choices in the remake, I had designed a true sequel. It kept the basic monster generators, but expanded the god powers and sim growth of the town as the original was light, yet making the action stages a bit more detailed and challenging with somewhat less clunkier movement and more skills/magics to pick up to make for a more rounded and larger title.

Perhaps you could implement some of your sim ideas in the open source GBC city building game ucity by AntonioND:
https://github.com/AntonioND/ucity
Having a strong base to work with could help with development.

Taleweaver said:
I'm try to elaborate by comparing it to music.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

Taleweaver · 2026-07-19T05:48:16+0100

Got another example of what economists call 'the long tail'... But perhaps I should talk about that first. Back when Amazon started as a book selling website, common wisdom had it that with limited stock space (and stock by definition has a physical limit), you had to select which books you carried, which priorized evergreens like your Stephen King books, hot cooking books and such. But Bezos was among the first to ensure that ALL books should somehow be able to be sold on his site. Because while it's true that about 80% of sales comes from 20% of books, those 20% can form an enormous amount (hence 'long tail').
Digital goods have far less issue with stock size, so steam and itch.io can be much more liberal with what they put on their store. Less edited, less middleman involved, small projects... At the cost of less marketing in a much more crowded field.

One of my current beloved games is nurikabe world, a grid puzzler i bet none of you ever heard about. It's small in scope, casual, and i bet you can say it should have been a mobile game. But for a few bucks I've got 900 decent levels (I'm at around 100), good visuals for what it is, clear interface... It's a work of love, and i can tell. But I can hardly look for those, as even steam only brings it up if i type in the name.

But what I was getting at: not long ago i wanted to check out newest virtual board games. But searched from Google only highlighted commonly known 'the best' of those, the far majority i already knew. I couldn't find much i didn't know, so presumed nothing fancy was released...
... And then i found kingdomino in a fanatical bundle, of all places. Kingdomino... Somewhere in the bgg top 100 of board games. But not a single mentioning by Google.

What I'm getting at: how do you know that that content you're looking for doesn't already exist?
Ufo50 bundles 50 of those things and it's a treasure trove. Titanium court is a match 3 wargame/Shakesperean story kind of game. Forbidden solitaire is like a hidden philips cd-i launch title (nineties' FMV gory horror). And the late totalbiscuit pointed me to roundabout, which took an obscure ds game (kuru kurukin or something) and made it into a spinning limousine open world with hilarious fmv videos.
Sometimes these productions get a fair share of limelight (silksong, Ori, shovel knight), but there's a shitton of games like these too be discovered.

hippy dave · 2026-07-19T12:42:24+0100

Taleweaver said:
Got another example of what economists call 'the long tail'... But perhaps I should talk about that first. Back when Amazon started as a book selling website, common wisdom had it that with limited stock space (and stock by definition has a physical limit), you had to select which books you carried, which priorized evergreens like your Stephen King books, hot cooking books and such. But Bezos was among the first to ensure that ALL books should somehow be able to be sold on his site. Because while it's true that about 80% of sales comes from 20% of books, those 20% can form an enormous amount (hence 'long tail').
Digital goods have far less issue with stock size, so steam and itch.io can be much more liberal with what they put on their store. Less edited, less middleman involved, small projects... At the cost of less marketing in a much more crowded field.

One of my current beloved games is nurikabe world, a grid puzzler i bet none of you ever heard about. It's small in scope, casual, and i bet you can say it should have been a mobile game. But for a few bucks I've got 900 decent levels (I'm at around 100), good visuals for what it is, clear interface... It's a work of love, and i can tell. But I can hardly look for those, as even steam only brings it up if i type in the name.

But what I was getting at: not long ago i wanted to check out newest virtual board games. But searched from Google only highlighted commonly known 'the best' of those, the far majority i already knew. I couldn't find much i didn't know, so presumed nothing fancy was released...
... And then i found kingdomino in a fanatical bundle, of all places. Kingdomino... Somewhere in the bgg top 100 of board games. But not a single mentioning by Google.

What I'm getting at: how do you know that that content you're looking for doesn't already exist?
Ufo50 bundles 50 of those things and it's a treasure trove. Titanium court is a match 3 wargame/Shakesperean story kind of game. Forbidden solitaire is like a hidden philips cd-i launch title (nineties' FMV gory horror). And the late totalbiscuit pointed me to roundabout, which took an obscure ds game (kuru kurukin or something) and made it into a spinning limousine open world with hilarious fmv videos.
Sometimes these productions get a fair share of limelight (silksong, Ori, shovel knight), but there's a shitton of games like these too be discovered.

Gonna check out nurikabe world, I've played that type of logic puzzle before but the vibe on this one looks great

Edit: yep can confirm, vibes are immaculate

radicalten · 2026-07-19T21:10:09+0100

Taleweaver said:
What I'm getting at: how do you know that that content you're looking for doesn't already exist?
Ufo50 bundles 50 of those things and it's a treasure trove. Titanium court is a match 3 wargame/Shakesperean story kind of game. Forbidden solitaire is like a hidden philips cd-i launch title (nineties' FMV gory horror). And the late totalbiscuit pointed me to roundabout, which took an obscure ds game (kuru kurukin or something) and made it into a spinning limousine open world with hilarious fmv videos.
Sometimes these productions get a fair share of limelight (silksong, Ori, shovel knight), but there's a shitton of games like these too be discovered.

Thanks for the game recommendations.

My initial point was that even with an abundance of game releases (100k+ Steam, 1.5M+ Itchio, etc.) or even an abundance of releases in the same genre (2d platformer, adventure, etc.) there can still be aspects of older game design that is not fully captured by present releases. (Not to mention the genres of games with lesser popularity, and therefore less releases).

To use economic terms, as you did, the modern releases are not fully fungible with past ones.

Perhaps a table-top gaming example will help elucidate: Suppose you enjoy MtG, but only non-planeswalker sets. You would have had to wait nearly 20 years between Lorwyn and LoTR to play a new MtG set designed around non-planeswalker cards! (The reason for the change was a difference in sensibility: all new sets must be designed around planeswalkers).

I am also not saying that no throwback games exist, merely that I would appreciate more of them. (Earthion by Ancient is a good example of recently released throwback game.)

Taleweaver · 2026-07-20T05:38:17+0100

radicalten said:
Thanks for the game recommendations.

My initial point was that even with an abundance of game releases (100k+ Steam, 1.5M+ Itchio, etc.) or even an abundance of releases in the same genre (2d platformer, adventure, etc.) there can still be aspects of older game design that is not fully captured by present releases. (Not to mention the genres of games with lesser popularity, and therefore less releases).

To use economic terms, as you did, the modern releases are not fully fungible with past ones.

Perhaps a table-top gaming example will help elucidate: Suppose you enjoy MtG, but only non-planeswalker sets. You would have had to wait nearly 20 years between Lorwyn and LoTR to play a new MtG set designed around non-planeswalker cards! (The reason for the change was a difference in sensibility: all new sets must be designed around planeswalkers).

I am also not saying that no throwback games exist, merely that I would appreciate more of them. (Earthion by Ancient is a good example of recently released throwback game.)

O
I see your point. It's true that a lot of the throwback games are made by fans of the original (how obscure it might be) , whereas the original was there by... Well, sort of trying what the then new medium could do.

VmprHntrD · 2026-07-20T17:13:43+0100

I'm not sure the concept of the Sim side of actraiser would really apply to uCity, which is a fantastic port of the classic Sim City. I've played that off and on for the GBC format for some years now, but build wise it along with GBA seems I guess abandoned at this rate as I don't recall seeing updates.

This would be more in line with a far more complicated use of SNES tools, and they suck compared to NES Maker/GB Studio level stuff. Perhaps a growth of the ActRaiser ROM to twice the size to accomodate more building mechanics in line with a Sim City classic setup would be nice with more rural and commercial/industry choices to help grow a wider set of stats for the hero god in human form for action stages for more HP, MP, defense, attack, stuff like that, but not too into the weeds like a true Diablo (or D&D) style stat growth. Just have more meaningful city building with good results.

Then on the action side where you now can have a bit more than just one jump and one swing attack along with the single selected spell before coming to life on land. L/R used to select spells for more diverse targets and bosses. Use of maybe an optional shield mechanic guarding with the large sword to negate partial damage or deflect bullets. Add some basics like the ability to slide or back step, not just squat, walk run at one speed, jump at one level, etc.

That's kind of what I could recall would have been smart moves 20 years ago I would have implemented into a true sequel and not the janky broken gameplay of ActRaiser 2 that lost the sim, or the atrocity of Reniassance that adds in shitty tower defense, harassement of NPCs, clunky obnoxious battles in monster lairs, and some of the dumb moves they did to the action bits as well as it's an all around fairly bad game. It looks great against the real POS homage Sol Seraph from a few years before it, but you can see where some bad ideas were inspired from and somehow made worse.

I've always wanted to get a true remake or just straight up ActRaiser 3 off the ground, but try as I may my brain could never get wrapped around the logic and sequences needed in coding as I did try for awhile and couldn't do crap, only D I ever got in college when I tried using that to help too (though the prof was a bitch that C-F'd everyone and let go not long after since students refused his class in time.)

The other what type of gaming content do you wish you saw more of thread (not about videos)

Well-Known Member

Active Member

Well-Known Member

Storywriter

BBMB

Active Member

Storywriter

BBMB

Active Member

Storywriter

Well-Known Member

Similar threads

Popular threads in this forum