Are older games better than newer ones?

[The name master]

I was just thinking, which are better? Older or newer game? I like some of the old classics, like asteroids, space invaders ect. I think they should remake Wario Land 3 in the style of Super Mario 3D World. Imagine the zombies!

[RocketMember002]

I think it's nostalgia for the most part when people claim old games are best - If I try to play an old game that I didn't play when it was new then I just can't get into it. Even now when I try to play the older pokemon games I get annoyed at how many quality of life changes don't exist yet. (20 bag slots, seriously!?)

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I think it all depends on the game and if it has been remade or remastered. It also depends of ports or console/systems you are playing.

[Kpyna]

Definitely depends! The rose tinted glasses aspect is definitely a problem. Like, I don't understand people who say gen 1 is their favorite generation of Pokemon. Honestly, imo, not the best pokemon games, and they were the ones I started with. I feel like games now just aren't as simple as the old ones, and that's a good and bad thing I suppose. I love complicated games (DOTA 2 nerd here), but tbh you can't beat playing old school GBC role playing games on your phone

[Lord Raven]

No.

Some of them do stand up to modern ones in terms of writing, design, music, etc.  Many of them don't.

On the flipside, many games these days aren't great either.  I just think people are unwilling to take the good with the bad all the time, they are unwilling to accept change, and consequently look down upon newer games simply because they're different and they do things differently.  They also add a bunch of complexity to a bunch of games which make them tedious at times, but in general people are unwilling to learn and they go back to their Final Fantasy 6s and crap like that.  Granted FF6 is one of my favorite games, but I definitely don't care for someone's opinion if they keep referring to it as a classic as opposed to a very good game.

Some other stuff that I thought of is how FE8/9 are better than its predecessors and successors, Pokemon Black/White is the same, and FF has not gone downhill but it's almost always the only JRPG willing to go into new directions which means that every game is not for everyone.  People mistake this for declining quality, but in reality they just don't like the new direction and it's extremely frustrating.  Shadow Hearts 2 is definitively better than 95% of the crap JRPGs they used to smear all over the PSX and the generic stuff on the SNES.

Let's also remind ourselves that "classics" of the 90s haven't aged well.  FF7 needed this remake for the past 20 or so years because the original game aged horribly both in Japan and the US.  Some games are just weird in their storytelling due to 90s conventions.  Ocarina of Time needed the 3DS reboot because of its poor graphics.  Other games have aged well, and stuff like FF8/FF9 has actually stood through the test of time and they still look great despite being dated, same with other SNES JRPGs like the SNES FFs, and even Generation 3 of Pokemon has aged well.  A lot of gamecube games have aged remarkably well too (Wind Waker, anyone?  What about Colosseum/XD?)  And the newer GTAs are definitely superior in every way possible to GTA 1/2.  I can keep going, but it's a matter of people confusing taste with quality.

I showed my sister a bunch of modern video games and modern video game storytelling (The Last Of Us being a prime example, I showed her the opening scene) and she was actually astonished that the games didn't attempt to necessarily be flashy and shallow, and that the video game medium was actually much much better than she had ever realized.  She's kinda opened her mind from the 90s video game nostalgia.

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 have stood up pretty well for the past decade and so has Super Mario World and Ultimate Mortal Kombat. The last one seems to be the most popular choice to be rereleased and remade as there are several variations of the game. Kirby Super Star (Ultra) is another excellent game that has stood the test of time. Most Kirby and Mario games seem to hold up very well. The first two gens of Pokemon are fun to play for nostalgic reasons but they are not the best due to graphics and system limitations. The remakes always make the games better and more engaging. The GB Pokemon games are excellent for speed runs though. My record for beating all the important trainers in Crystal including Red was somewhere under 48 hours.

[The name master]

I'm thinking of taking back what I said about liking old games! I'm terrible at asteroids. I keep losing at pong! It's so hard to get a point against the computer in pong! Although I'm great at space invaders. I may be good at Pac-man too.

[Milsap]

Let's also remind ourselves that "classics" of the 90s haven't aged well.  FF7 needed this remake for the past 20 or so years because the original game aged horribly both in Japan and the US

Whereas Resident Evil 2 didn't

I think too many people are caught up in the graphics aspect now and are judging games purely on the graphical content. People were genuinely upset that Fallout 4 was 'only' going to be 9-something-p on the consoles and limited to 'only' 50fps or something like that. To be honest, I can't tell the difference.

And I think that was my main beef with this (now confirmed) Resident Evil 2 remake. The original game aged terribly so they remade it and expanded on the lore for the Gamecube to tie in with the release of Resident Evil 0. The story, the gameplay and everything else for RE2 was fine, it was by far the best game in the series. People only wanted the remake for the shiny graphics.

But that said, GTAV, The Last Of Us, Heavy Rain and Modern Warfare 2 are all 'modern' games that were absolutely brilliant in terms of story, gameplay and graphics.

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Storywise, FF VII has stood up pretty well. It's the graphics that are considered horrendous by today's standards that don't hold up so well. When it was first released, the quality was great but now those weird dumbbell arms are rather distracting and even scary to look at. Why is the mid arm so skinny but the hands and upper arms the same width and length?

[Lord Raven]

FF7's story has not stood up well.  Its writing and pacing is quite bad by today's standards and even by the standards set by the very next game.  Believe it or not, this is a game that has needed a reboot for quite a while to sort out all of the script and pacing issues.

It did things that no other JRPG did before that, and very few video games did as well, so it still works as a pioneer.  But nostalgia aside, its story has quite a lot of flaws.

I think too many people are caught up in the graphics aspect now and are judging games purely on the graphical content. People were genuinely upset that Fallout 4 was 'only' going to be 9-something-p on the consoles and limited to 'only' 50fps or something like that. To be honest, I can't tell the difference.

Really?  Because I hear more mud slinging against games with good graphics because of a supposed lack of depth.  Granted, some do lack depth, but others don't.

[The name master]

I just downloaded q*bert! such an old classic!

[Milsap]

Really?

Yeah. Just did some looking into it and it's locked to 30fps on the consoles, while the PC can get 60+.

[Lord Raven]

Oh, I meant to respond to the first few sentences of judging too much on graphics.

Consoles tend to be locked to 30fps and the PC versions tend to get 60+ anyway.  This isn't news.

[The name master]

Is it just me? Or are older games (espically the bosses) easier than newer ones?

[Lord Raven]

no they arent

youve been playing the wrong games