Games you thought aged well, but didn't.

Marc_LFD

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Power Stone 1 & 2 (DC)

I am very nostalgic about these two games and thought they were amazing, that's until I played them recently and realized they're a product of its time. My nostalgia blurred the game for me.

The Getaway & The Getaway: Black Monday (PS2)

These games are barely playable nowadays. Cars feel awful, when shooting you don't have a dot to know where you're gonna hit, and the main character has a huge bobble head.

Road Rash 64 (N64)

It lacks everything that made the original on Genesis so good, yet when I was a teen I played it nonstop. Now.. I just can't.

Games are meant to be enjoyed and if they for anymore aren't, try a different one.
 
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Taleweaver

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Heh... How many do you want? :P

Jazz Jackrabbit, Duke nukem 1&2, leisure suit Larry, king's quest, wolfenstein 3d (how did I ever finish this?), hexen... I threw away entire spindles of games that I didn't even wanted to try to get it to work.

Super Mario bros and world... Maybe. See, the 'new' line since the wii have smoother air control, which makes returning to the original feel like you're playing a running brick.

C&c would be there too, but the remaster saved it
 

ital

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Point and Click adventure games from the 90s. Man, we were super easily "entertained" back then by "click your entire inventory and then every pixel on the screen" masquerading as gameplay. Plus super convoluted, illogical puzzles long before FAQs were a thing.

A handful of good ones aged well and are still decent but most are revealed as the crap they were but we didn't see it back then.
 
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Marc_LFD

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Super Mario bros and world... Maybe. See, the 'new' line since the wii have smoother air control, which makes returning to the original feel like you're playing a running brick.
Mario World? I respect your opinion, but that game is a classic and remains to look amazing in its 16bit graphics.

I'd somewhat say that about Mario 3 'cause if I play it, just makes me wanna go back to the superior sequel.
 

Taleweaver

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Mario World? I respect your opinion, but that game is a classic and remains to look amazing in its 16bit graphics.

I'd somewhat say that about Mario 3 'cause if I play it, just makes me wanna go back to the superior sequel.
Ey...by all means. I'm not disputing anything you said about Mario world. I'm just saying the movement feels clunky, that's all. :)
 
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ital

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Ey...by all means. I'm not disputing anything you said about Mario world. I'm just saying the movement feels clunky, that's all. :)

Its odd you'd pick NSMB line and compare it to SMW which is seen as the pinnacle of 2D Mario whilst the New line is heralded as boring derivative crap with floating controls and lots of recycling.

I actually made a thread about the amazingness of these games if you actually give them a chance and how they are an evolution of Super Mario Land 2 on GB and bypass the SMW era to try something different. The thread also gave rise to this little beauty:

k4PLnFe.png


https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-general-hatred-online-of-nsmb-and-you.577326/


BTW - Go and play Super Mario Land 2. Its the exact opposite of the premise of OPs thread as it was great when it first released and even better now when you look at how much they crammed in, all the experimentation, risks they took, how unique it all is. Everything. It just delivers.
 

Ravag3

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I'm gunna go with jade empire. I loved it when I first played it, but just from memory i know it would be clunky AF if i tried to play it now, if it even worked.
 

CoolMe

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Power Stone 1 & 2 (DC)

I am very nostalgic about these two games and thought they were amazing, that's until I played them recently and realized they're a product of its time. My nostalgia blurred the game for me.

The Getaway & The Getaway: Black Monday (PS2)

These games are barely playable nowadays. Cars feel awful, when shooting you don't have a dot to know where you're gonna hit, and the main character has a huge bobble head.

Road Rash 64 (N64)

It lacks everything that made the original on Genesis so good, yet when I was a teen I played it nonstop. Now.. I just can't.

Games are meant to be enjoyed and if they for anymore aren't, try a different one.
The Gateway's 3rd person gameplay and shooting was clunky/awkward even back then, i remember never getting past the first mission (after they kill his wife in the streets etc).. i just loved driving around town with the few selection of European cars in the game. I liked the idea of the tail light serving as an indicator leading you to your destination, though it fails to do its job properly. 🤷🏻‍♂️ All the game has is its a sandbox style experience which is set in London, which is/was interesting (at the time).
 
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TomRiddle

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Mario 64 is a game in some ways has aged either good or really bad, let me explain why I personally think this.

To me the platforming and the star challenges hasn't really aged too well to me, (although it was the first game to hit the marking in 1996, and it's also just the passage of time itself).

Meanwhile the controls and the exploration of the levels feels good even today (even if the latter can be jankey)

I always question if Mario 64 is a okay game or a masterpiece, and to a degree it can be all of those things at once.

That's Mario 64 for you, a game that forever changed the industry and the way we approach 3D games in 1996.
 
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Marc_LFD

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I played Burnout 3: Takedown after Burnout: Revenge and it felt like a huge downgrade, but Takedown is still a good game, just not as great as many praise it to be.

Revenge was more polished, fun to play, check cars (take them out of your way), and the adrenaline rush-feel was higher.

However, Takedown had some more iconic cars so if I'd play, it'd be for that. Revenge's cars are excellent in their own right and the game looks and plays superbly on PS4.

Just don't get the 360 port it looks... Uh, ugly.

3Nnte7q.jpg
 

Tsukiru

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I played Phantasy Star Portable and its sequel back before Phantasy Star Online 2 got an NA release. I enjoyed them enough, though by end game you are reminded this is in fact a series about grinding. But I still liked the gameplay enough to get that far, yeah?

Phantasy Start Portable 2 ended up getting a rerelease that was Japan only and recently translated on here. I was like oh hey, I can play that game I liked.

I apparently just straight up made up options (like automatically pick up items?) and it was a clunky PSP game right on the 1st/2nd new missions. I'm still unsure how I beat those games.
 

ital

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A lot of the appeal of retro games isn't the game itself but the memories of the time when you first played it. This alone can make you forgive a lot of crap, especially if life now doesn't feel as it good as it did then as you're happy to escape into the rose tinted world of yesterday.

Things evolve and improve generally. Then again, they also can become boring and repetitive as you've seen better before. Especially true in gaming and how commercialized/big its become from the days of bedroom coders and true innovation.

Personally I've come to see gaming as a bit of coping mechanism for saddos who don't have much else going on in their lives apart from pixels. Sure its fun but since obtaining a wider viewpoint on my motivations and psychological states at previous ages I see it for the blatant escapism it is.

Of course, most people will vehemently deny this because of what it says about them but that doesn't make it any less true. Mainly just kicking around here out of habit these days
 

mightymuffy

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A lot of the appeal of retro games isn't the game itself but the memories of the time when you first played it. This alone can make you forgive a lot of crap, especially if life now doesn't feel as it good as it did then as you're happy to escape into the rose tinted world of yesterday.

Things evolve and improve generally. Then again, they also can become boring and repetitive as you've seen better before. Especially true in gaming and how commercialized/big its become from the days of bedroom coders and true innovation.

Personally I've come to see gaming as a bit of coping mechanism for saddos who don't have much else going on in their lives apart from pixels. Sure its fun but since obtaining a wider viewpoint on my motivations and psychological states at previous ages I see it for the blatant escapism it is.

Of course, most people will vehemently deny this because of what it says about them but that doesn't make it any less true. Mainly just kicking around here out of habit these days
....wow. You started off so well there too! ..but things took a rather significant downturn on paragraph 3 didn't they... I think you might want to look at your psychological state at the moment after reading that - 'blatant escapism' is very true, but there's a whole load of other personal reasons for gaming other than being 'a saddo without much else going on' - many of us will have used gaming to escape, momentarily, from the hectic life they have? Like me in the PS2/Gamecube days having two small children, 2 jobs, a disabled parent that need looking after, and a wife I was still in 'the honeymoon period' with... not every person is the same you know! ;)
 

ital

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....wow. You started off so well there too! ..but things took a rather significant downturn on paragraph 3 didn't they... I think you might want to look at your psychological state at the moment after reading that - 'blatant escapism' is very true, but there's a whole load of other personal reasons for gaming other than being 'a saddo without much else going on' - many of us will have used gaming to escape, momentarily, from the hectic life they have? Like me in the PS2/Gamecube days having two small children, 2 jobs, a disabled parent that need looking after, and a wife I was still in 'the honeymoon period' with... not every person is the same you know! ;)

Hence "personally" as a preface to paragraph 3. The escapism part is 100% true, the saddo part varies on a case by case basis but generally it depends on how you define the word.

For me a saddo is someone who is not living up to their full potential and may or may not be consciously aware of this. Gaming allows them to "be" someone else and this was actually the driving force behind Achievements and their implementation because people with nothing else going on tie their identity and self concepts in with them and think they've made progress pressing buttons when they're just wasting their lives.

I don't expect you, nor most of the people on here to get it. But I do like to drop a hint every now and then to check the temperature of this place where I still post mainly out of habit and nothing to do with the games I rarely play these days.

Its all depends upon your level of self awareness I suppose and seeing things for what they are vs what you want them to be so YMMV as it indeed should because we all evolve at different rates. The entire entertainment industry is designed to offer a psychological security blanket to offset a society wracked with neurosis they would rather die than admit.

Case in point that illustrates it well:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/why-do-...pensive-stuff-vent.601666/page-2#post-9743162
 

dudeguy2022

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Power Stone 1 & 2 (DC)

I am very nostalgic about these two games and thought they were amazing, that's until I played them recently and realized they're a product of its time. My nostalgia blurred the game for me.

The Getaway & The Getaway: Black Monday (PS2)

These games are barely playable nowadays. Cars feel awful, when shooting you don't have a dot to know where you're gonna hit, and the main character has a huge bobble head.

Road Rash 64 (N64)

It lacks everything that made the original on Genesis so good, yet when I was a teen I played it nonstop. Now.. I just can't.

Games are meant to be enjoyed and if they for anymore aren't, try a different one.
super monkey ball
 

Dark_Phoras

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Mass Effect - the dialogue is nowhere near as complex or interesting as I thought as a teen, and the gameplay is a complete non-entity. I probably enjoyed it due to my lack of maturity.

God of War III - another game in which the gameplay is a non-entity; one only needs to mash and press and mash the same buttons mindlessly.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - I think Uncharted: Drake's Fortune aged very well, although it isn't a perfect game. The second chapter, however, loses all momentum with the constant interruptions in gameplay, to watch pre-determined events that span from 5 to 20 seconds.

Mirror's Edge - this one is somewhat unfair, and not the game's fault. First, the use of colors and visual clues embed in the environment to guide a player is now commonplace, and in here it seems a bit archaic. Second, the controls weren't perfect when it came out, particularly in combat, but the movement controls were smooth and graceful - that is no longer the case, now they feel wonky.
 

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