Question I don't get pixelated game popularity

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
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Gaming technology has evolved, so that pixelated graphics have greatly improved. I don't get the people who seem to like the 'art style' of pixelated games.

When the technology was limited, that was one thing. But it was a limit, not a positive.

I could understand a very small bit of nostalgia, but it seems to be a large market. And most of the fans of pixelated games seem to be younger gamers who coudn't have 'nostalgia' about them.

Sometimes older art has things to recommend it - I think music was best decades ago, old movies have a lot of great works - but would we really want 'Gilligan's Island' simplicity as a modern prime time series?

The legitimate reasons for pixelated games I see are basically be easier and cheaper to make, and that's it. I don't get the bad graphics being a positive selling point for the game, and demand for that.

It's a little like demanding music have mono sound, lots of static, and be played on cheap $5 speakers.
 

bbhaag

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2011
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It may not make sense but sometimes what is old can become new again. You see this a lot in fashion and home furnishings and now apparently video games.

My wife and I recently bought a new home and decided to update our furnishings while we where doing the remodel. The amount of mid century modern styling out there is insane. From lighting to furniture and everything in between.

I guess now that Minecraft made the look mainstream there is a demand for it and people seem to not mind it. As long as the game is solid who cares what it looks like right?
 
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Fenixgoon

Lifer
Jun 30, 2003
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Gaming technology has evolved, so that pixelated graphics have greatly improved. I don't get the people who seem to like the 'art style' of pixelated games.

When the technology was limited, that was one thing. But it was a limit, not a positive.

I could understand a very small bit of nostalgia, but it seems to be a large market. And most of the fans of pixelated games seem to be younger gamers who coudn't have 'nostalgia' about them.

Sometimes older art has things to recommend it - I think music was best decades ago, old movies have a lot of great works - but would we really want 'Gilligan's Island' simplicity as a modern prime time series?

The legitimate reasons for pixelated games I see are basically be easier and cheaper to make, and that's it. I don't get the bad graphics being a positive selling point for the game, and demand for that.

It's a little like demanding music have mono sound, lots of static, and be played on cheap $5 speakers.

there's definitely a nostalgic factor - SNES games are still very enjoyable - but big graphics cost big dollars. that's really what it comes down to at the end of the day.
 

SMOGZINN

Lifer
Jun 17, 2005
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I don't think that the pixel graphics are a selling point so much as not a major limit. If the gameplay is good, then I am okay with basic graphics. Some game types just don't need much in the way of graphics to be fun.
 
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Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
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You're mistake is the assumption that it is 'bad graphics". Your second mistake is assuming it has to be pretty to be good. That isn't something anyone is going to change your mind on, so this thread is pointless.

I made neither such mistake. I'm the one who still promotes rogue, which is ASCII graphics. Your response is what's pointless.
 

Zenoth

Diamond Member
Jan 29, 2005
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Not to be or sound rude, but the question (for me anyway) needs to be asked: you want us to change your mind about it?

Because if you "don't get it", but you already made up your mind about why it doesn't seem to make sense for you then I don't see why we should sort of 'make you get it'. It would only devolve into more subjective opinions thrown around and you going "Yeah, but no", and someone going "But how about..." and it wouldn't stop. Because you already made up your mind about it, apparently. In your book it's about maybe some nostalgia here and there, but otherwise it doesn't make sense to you (I.E. you "don't get it"). Well... ok? What if there IS nothing to get about it?

Fact: There's popularity for pixelated games.
Person #1: I don't get it.

o_O

Well, it works? Ain't enough? It's... because they're fun? Gameplay? Never crossed your mind? I myself play some NES, Genesis and SNES games. Not very often, and not for long when I do, maybe... what... 15 minutes for one game every week or so? (And it wouldn't matter anyway even if I would play such games 24/7). I still play them because I genuinely still enjoy them, I have "fun out of them" still all those years later. The graphics are 'dated' yeah, I don't care. A lot of people like me would understand and wouldn't feel the need to defend it, or explain it.

How, and why would you explain your preferences of tastes in food? Music? Other forms of art? Even people? You don't, is the real answer.

Now, in my opinion, your analogy / comparison to the music (and the mono sound) is terrible for this subject. But you're using it to please yourself based off of you preconceived notion that it has to be only about a bit of nostalgia, price and - for the developers - because it's cheaper to make them like that. Alright, what if those reasons ARE indeed (like you say yourself) legitimate? They aren't enough for you? You need more "legitimacy" around said popularity? Why? Your local pizzeria will make better pizzas next time? Your wage will get better? Global warming will stabilize?

The reason why I reply this way is because there's no room for "discussion" since you already mentioned the reasons you find legitimate for the popularity of pixelated games to be a thing, and you also mentioned why for you it doesn't hold much value. K, then case closed? The only 'other legitimate reasons' I can add to the ones you mentioned are the ones I also mentioned above: Gameplay / Still Having Fun. Now, if you cannot fathom that some person can feasibly still have fun out of some old-school pixelated game (be it an original one from way back, or a new one made to look and play and feel like an old one, such as recent Indie games) then there's absolutely no reasons for you to change your mind about it, nor should we spend time trying to make you "get it".
 
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PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
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I'd argue pixel graphics aged a lot better than first generation 3D graphics did. There's a nostalgia factor and I see a lot of games that seem like its entirely a stylistic choice, but some types of games like platformers just seem to lend themselves to that graphic style.

A style I see a lot of recently is hand drawn cartoon graphics recently, which I guess are just high resolution sprites.
 

Dannar26

Senior member
Mar 13, 2012
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I don't understand why everybody is assuming the OP needs or wants his mind to be changed. This is a PC enthusiast forum, in the PC games subforum. Are we not allowed some conjecture about these things? It's a trend in gaming. Discuss. We're aren't politicians in need of swaying voters.
 

BSim500

Golden Member
Jun 5, 2013
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Gaming technology has evolved, so that pixelated graphics have greatly improved. I don't get the people who seem to like the 'art style' of pixelated games.
Back in the 90's the future was deemed to be photo-realism (hence the FMV adventure game trend for a period). 20 years on, and a lot of early 90's (or even late 80's) P&C games like Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Space Quest, etc, have aged a lot better in ScummVM with 2-3x HQ upscaling filters vs the videos in FMV stuff like Harvester, Tex Murphy, Phantasmagoria, etc. As for "why are The Darkside Detective, The Last Door, etc, popular today", it's sometimes down to encouraging that one thing that "fills in the gaps" often missing in the "Crysis crowd" - imagination. Same reason why people 'still' read books instead of watching movies based on the same book. Some people are simply better at "filling in the gaps" than others. Part of it is nostalgia for that 90's LucasArts vs Sierra Golden Era period, other times it's because they like the feel of older engines (eg, Adventure Game Studios / Scumm vs Unity).

Obvious question already asked is - do you want to know why other people like them or are you asking other people to convince you to like them? Personally, I've never "gotten" or liked the style of Japanese Anime, and yet I get that people simply like it because they like it and demanding they go into objective "technicals" of something highly subjective by nature would be over-thinking it.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
58,054
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I made neither such mistake. I'm the one who still promotes rogue, which is ASCII graphics. Your response is what's pointless.
That seems a bit odd, if one still enjoys old-school Rogue, the supposition would be that gameplay is the primary driver of interest.
I buy and play pixelated games, and I buy and play modern games as well.

I think a better music comparison than in your OP would be modern lo-fi recordings versus modern heavily produced pop. Neither is "better" than the other, they are simply appealing to a different taste (I say as someone who abhors highly produced modern music).
 

zink77

Member
Jan 16, 2012
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I don't get the people who seem to like the 'art style' of pixelated games.

People who prefer gameplay over graphics. Many people and kids don't mind the "ugly graphics" because they only care if the game looks fun to play. Games are fundamentally different from movies, for instance, if a car in a driving game controls badly, no amount of graphical polish will save the horrible driving experience. Whereas if a game has low fidelity graphics, good gameplay can compensate for the lower quality art.

The reason why "pixelated" games are still around is because people like variety. For instance not everyone during the Super Nintendo era was gung ho for photorealism. In fact many of us oldsters couldn't give a damn about whether something looks realistic or not, we care about whether the game is fun to play.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
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I don't think that the pixel graphics are a selling point so much as not a major limit. If the gameplay is good, then I am okay with basic graphics. Some game types just don't need much in the way of graphics to be fun.

Admittedly, they're not USUALLY a selling point, but I'm surprised how often I've seen them used as one, rather than just being understood as a compromise.
Back in the 90's the future was deemed to be photo-realism (hence the FMV adventure game trend for a period). 20 years on, and a lot of early 90's (or even late 80's) P&C games like Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Space Quest, etc, have aged a lot better in ScummVM with 2-3x HQ upscaling filters vs the videos in FMV stuff like Harvester, Tex Murphy, Phantasmagoria, etc. As for "why are The Darkside Detective, The Last Door, etc, popular today", it's sometimes down to encouraging that one thing that "fills in the gaps" often missing in the "Crysis crowd" - imagination. Same reason why people 'still' read books instead of watching movies based on the same book. Some people are simply better at "filling in the gaps" than others. Part of it is nostalgia for that 90's LucasArts vs Sierra Golden Era period, other times it's because they like the feel of older engines (eg, Adventure Game Studios / Scumm vs Unity).

Obvious question already asked is - do you want to know why other people like them or are you asking other people to convince you to like them? Personally, I've never "gotten" or liked the style of Japanese Anime, and yet I get that people simply like it because they like it and demanding they go into objective "technicals" of something highly subjective by nature would be over-thinking it.

Why people like them. I disagree with your analogy - this isn't saying 'why do people like Jazz when I like classical'. IMO, pixalated are basically much uglier and worse, with rare exception, just as black and white filmmaking has rare exception where it's better (e.g., Dark City). We could go on all day with analogies making my point - if we were talking about food, it might be being offered a meal of an animal badly cooked over a fire unseasoned 'just like they use to make' instead of modern cooking. Why not ride around in a slow, unssafe, unreliable Model T instead of a modern car, other than simply doing it for the historical experience while recognizing now much worse it is, rather than claiming it's a 'better ride'?

If you're arguing that pixelated actually are 'just as good' and just a different preference, like Jazz or Classical, we just disagree, but that is an answer - if people feel that way, it makes no sense to me, but that'd be interesting to know.

With a game like Rogue, that claim CAN be made, that it's a different yet gaming experience where better graphics could detract from it - a better analogy there could be the enjoyment of 'roughing it' camping instead of a nice cushy hotel. Bit most games don't seem to me to benefit from that.

I was asking why some people seem to praise pixelated more than makes sense to me. I'm still not seeing a lot of answer to that other than 'because they do'. Your FMV analogy is a good example where 'improvement' was quite dubious as improvement and could hurt games more than help. Sort of like when synthesizers were overused in some songs early on in music, or bad 'tv dinners' when they were first invented.
 

ImpulsE69

Lifer
Jan 8, 2010
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Admittedly, they're not USUALLY a selling point, but I'm surprised how often I've seen them used as one, rather than just being understood as a compromise.


Why people like them. I disagree with your analogy - this isn't saying 'why do people like Jazz when I like classical'. IMO, pixalated are basically much uglier and worse, with rare exception, just as black and white filmmaking has rare exception where it's better (e.g., Dark City). We could go on all day with analogies making my point - if we were talking about food, it might be being offered a meal of an animal badly cooked over a fire unseasoned 'just like they use to make' instead of modern cooking. Why not ride around in a slow, unssafe, unreliable Model T instead of a modern car, other than simply doing it for the historical experience while recognizing now much worse it is, rather than claiming it's a 'better ride'?

If you're arguing that pixelated actually are 'just as good' and just a different preference, like Jazz or Classical, we just disagree, but that is an answer - if people feel that way, it makes no sense to me, but that'd be interesting to know.

With a game like Rogue, that claim CAN be made, that it's a different yet gaming experience where better graphics could detract from it - a better analogy there could be the enjoyment of 'roughing it' camping instead of a nice cushy hotel. Bit most games don't seem to me to benefit from that.

I was asking why some people seem to praise pixelated more than makes sense to me. I'm still not seeing a lot of answer to that other than 'because they do'. Your FMV analogy is a good example where 'improvement' was quite dubious as improvement and could hurt games more than help. Sort of like when synthesizers were overused in some songs early on in music, or bad 'tv dinners' when they were first invented.

Most people aren't playing games 'because' they are pixel art. They are praising the game itself which is fun in spite of being pixel. That isn't to say all pixel art games are good, or even playable. For instance, as much as I'd like to play Ultima VII since I never played it back in the day, I cannot because I cannot for the life of me make out what is going on on the screen with it's pixel hunts.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
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People who prefer gameplay over graphics. Many people and kids don't mind the "ugly graphics" because they only care if the game looks fun to play. Games are fundamentally different from movies, for instance, if a car in a driving game controls badly, no amount of graphical polish will save the horrible driving experience. Whereas if a game has low fidelity graphics, good gameplay can compensate for the lower quality art.

The reason why "pixelated" games are still around is because people like variety. For instance not everyone during the Super Nintendo era was gung ho for photorealism. In fact many of us oldsters couldn't give a damn about whether something looks realistic or not, we care about whether the game is fun to play.

If we were talking Chess, I'd agree. I don't need the unity engine for a chess game. But do you want the 'variety' of just worse experiences? Would you rather play the original Command and Conquer over the later C&C's, if not a modern RTS, other than for the historical experience? As I said before, Gilligan's Island has nostalgia, but would it really be a good prime time series today?

There's a reason Imax movies are widely appreciated as a step up in movies, why 4k is preferred over old CRT's. Above games like 90s LucasArts were mentioned - yet there's a reason they made remastered versions of Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttled and Grim Fandango and it wasn't because pixelated is 'better', only historical/nostalgic. I can understand SOME games as exceptions on pixelation in theory.

No good examples come to mind, though.

We're not talking about where it has some purpose - when Fallout adopts some old 50's style for its showing old cold war movies with black and white low res bad acting grainy films, that's great, there's a reason for it, an aesthetic that needs that. When you're exploring an old dungeon, no one says 'this game would be better is this were a modern, clean, brightly lit prison'.

My point is, saying 'preferring gameplay over graphics' doesn't answer my question. It's just reasserting 'graphics don't matter' without explaining why outside of limited cases where there are reasons for that.

If I asked why someone would prefer the original "Superman TV series" over modern Marvel movies other than its historical interests, and they said 'because we prefer quality content over visuals', that wouldn't really answer the question why they think the content was better quality in that series, much less why the low production values are an improvement.

Now, the original Twilight Zone over the color 'Night Gallery' series much less modern attempts?

Yes, because I think there the content really is better, and even that the black and white aesthetic doesn't even really detract and many could feel adds to the experience. But I'm not asking about apples and oranges here, quality pixelated gameplay versus bad nie graphics gameplay, I'm asking about pixelation preference for the same 'good gameplay'.

That's the apples and oranges answer you gave with a 'good' driving game and bad graphics over a 'bad' driving game with good graphics. That's not my question. My question is, for the same 'good' driving game, why would driving around with 8 bit graphics be a plus over nice graphics?

You can add my favorite racing game - Burnout: Paradise City - to that list of 'good' games remastered for improved graphics supporting my point.

To repeat, it's not about there being some nostalgia appeal, and the ease of development of pixelated games. It's about why they seem more attractive to some players than those things explain.

Games like a remastered 'Day of the Tentacle' will include original graphics as an option, but for historical purposes, because it's fun to see what it looked like.

But if you can say why someone might say 'I prefer the original DotT graphics', other than nostalgia, that's what I'm asking.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
I don't understand why everybody is assuming the OP needs or wants his mind to be changed. This is a PC enthusiast forum, in the PC games subforum. Are we not allowed some conjecture about these things? It's a trend in gaming. Discuss. We're aren't politicians in need of swaying voters.

Thanks for that point about discussing the topic.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
I'd argue pixel graphics aged a lot better than first generation 3D graphics did. There's a nostalgia factor and I see a lot of games that seem like its entirely a stylistic choice, but some types of games like platformers just seem to lend themselves to that graphic style.

A style I see a lot of recently is hand drawn cartoon graphics recently, which I guess are just high resolution sprites.

Ya, I did exclude nostalgia, but I feel less able to discuss platformers on this. I don't feel I quite appreciate game taste on them as well as other genres. For example, I don't like twin stick shooters so much that I couldn't begin to guess what makes one more attractive than another.

My favorite platformer is The Lost Vikings, and while I'd enjoy an 'improved graphics' version, it is a case of 'great gameplay, who cares much about the graphics'. But I have a hard time seeing why I'd prefer more pixelated graphics in that game.

I'm not sure which games you're referring to with the cartoons, but one game that made a deliberate and effective aesthetic choice was that recent one that used 1920's style cartoons. That makes sense as an exception, that is a case where 'variety' and 'difference' are good explanations.

But to add to the long list of analogies, is there anyone who it makes sense to enjoy 'Steamboat Willie' for its 'story' or aesthetics over later, improves cartoons, other than its historical aspect?
 

zink77

Member
Jan 16, 2012
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If we were talking Chess, I'd agree.

You don't get it, as someone who gamed from the earliest of days of pong... older gamers saw all the generations of graphical upgrades. We stopped being wow'd since every new console generation or new advance in 3D hardware acceleration brought a bump in graphics. After a few generations of consoles or 3D cards you're no longer interested in the graphics, you're more interest in if the game is fun. You see games as movies or general entertainment, "you are the masses", aka the non gamers who use games as a vehicle for the aesthetic cinematic experiences. Real gamers don't give a crap about that.

Rage and Quake 4 are excellent examples where graphics are not enough to make a fun game. Rage despite it's amazing engine at the time was just not a very good game. You seem to equate graphics = fun, there are tonnes of cinematic stinkers in gaming or boring cinematic set piece AAA games that merely retread every first person shooter trope over the last 20 years.

The idea that we live in some "modern" era where gaming is the best it has ever been is bullshit, most FPS games today can't even live up to UT2004 in terms of multiplayer design because it has to cater to casuals. Gaming got way simplified when it hit the masses in 2000. RTS got dumbed down into moba's, fps got dumbed down into halo and regenerating shields. You don't seem to have any awareness of how most games have gone backwards in time in terms of design to cater to the reflex challenged masses.

For instance. I can't stand World of warcrafts god awful auto mmo combat that caters to the reflex challenged. Just because a game is new does not mean it is good. I'll take god of war, or darksiders 1 even with it's flaws over the slow idiocy of mmorpg combat in most mmo's.

The difference between a "true gamer" and someone using games as general entertainment, is that a real gamer is there for the mechanics - the underlying mathematical structure that gives birth to the fun. They are interested in systems like Alpha centauri and Civ 4 as examples.

Many classic PC games still hold up today like Freespace 2 /w the fan graphics update patch.

Freespace 2 open


Freespace 2 SCP

http://scp.indiegames.us/
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
You don't get it, as someone who gamed from the earliest of days of pong... older gamers saw all the generations of graphical upgrades. We stopped being wow'd since every new console generation or new advance in 3D hardware acceleration brought a bump in graphics. After a few generations of consoles or 3D cards you're no longer interested in the graphics, you're more interest in if the game is fun. You see games as movies or general entertainment, "you are the masses", aka the non gamers who use games as a vehicle for the aesthetic cinematic experiences. Real gamers don't give a crap about that.

Yes, thanks for that lecture, but I've gamed since *before* pong was invented, so, ya, you are not talking to who you think. I've gamed ascii not for nostalgia but when it was the best graphics available - and Hercules and CGA and so on. So, you should probably recognize the difference between your assumptions and a difference of opinion.

Of course 'better graphics for the sake of better graphics' - at the expense of gameplay - has ALWAYS been a controversy in gaming and a commonly held view that it's a bad thing, which completely misses the point of this thread when graphical improvement is NOT at the expense of gameplay. Your comment about 'how I see games' is ignorant and incorrect. So, you are not adding much there.

It's as if you have a little button that makes you recite a speech about 'graphics at the expense of gameplay' rather than actually paying any attention to the actual topic and being a bit rational about it. Complete with the 'you don't know what it was like' climbing on a pedestal.

It seems you haven't understood any of the discussion. For example, I made an analogy about the overuse of synthesizers causing bad music early on - unlike you, I don't think that means they haven't been used to outstanding effect later, just as I recognize better graphics as an enormous improvement and not only the harmful change they've sometimes been when they were slapped on to a bad game.

There could be a lot more good discussion about more issues related to all this, but the inability of people to discuss this simple topic says there's no point. I still have interest in the larger issues whether games or music of how - to use an extreme case to make the point - the graphics and effects are so good as to really arguably harm the consumer's even better use of imagination - e.g., 'watching' a movie of Lord of the Rings with incredibly good graphics and effects compared to the experience of reading the books. On another note, when movies were first invented, it was enough to show a film of a man shooting a gun aimed at the audience - people fainted. It was new. There are bigger, interesting issues, but we can't even have a discussion about this simple topic of pixelation it seems.
 

zink77

Member
Jan 16, 2012
98
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There could be a lot more good discussion about more issues related to all this,

Except you seem to be the one that's deluded here, you're posting a diatribe because of some strange delusional certainty of your own rightness of your own opinion instead of seeing that other people see VALUE in old and ugly things because they understand their value better than you. One man's junk is another man's treasure. That's all that needs to be said. It's no more complex than this.

Sure you can have big discussions about interesting details of these things but everyone seems to be fighting a phantom. Believe me I've already been there and done that, since I was this person back in the descent days 20 years ago.

I'll give you an example, back in the day Descent series was the "red headed" stepchild of PC gaming, as in it was a game played by only a minority of hardcore gamers. Only a small minority will ever play or ever get piloting the pyro (the ships name) in descent in the 3rd dimension because it was a game you had to "be there" to understand and it was demanding to play in terms of reflexes and therefore frustrating for those who were not reflex gifted and had a high tolerance against motion sickness.

Many of us, developers and fans wondered how we could make descent more popular without breaking what made descent great. The problem is you can't force people to like or be good at games that are demanding on one's reflexes, flying the pyro in 3D with a joystick and even a mouse is rather demanding then the typical "ground pounder" as many fans of descent playfully called first person shooter gamers that didn't get the "true awesomeness" of descent back then.

There's also the problem with being a "purist" many of us back then, both developers and fans were "purist" in the sense of being anal retentive about the maximum turn speed of the descent ship for instance and the janky mouse controls in descent 2 would really turn off modern gamers. We had "nerd wars" over mouselook (aka insta 360 degree turns allowed in quake). Because we were young nerdy and immature.

Looking back at 40 ish on those nerdy discussions, the developers of overload on playoverload.com were STILL in that immature state back when we were having those discussions 20 years ago... when I being the adult in the room tried to remind team revival, that triple chording (the extra speed boost you get from holding town thrust vectors at the same time as a result of) was something nobody in the modern gaming environment would be aware of let alone care about since they were humming and hawwing religiously about it still inside their heads. Since to be aware triple chording even exists requires rather advanced knowledge of games and game culture that 99% of modern gamers don't care about since most gamers are no longer PC nerds of the 90's, with ini files, and qeradiant level editors, programming sdk's and the console commands of quake.

Times change... and that's fine. Just like how many modern generations of gamers will never play or get the original doom, duke nukem 3d, or quake. Every generation has it's games that fires it's memories, that don't translate from one generation to the next because "you had to be there".

Just like many modern gamers don't know about or understand game modding or dedicated servers or LAN because the PC is now in the hands of millions of computer illiterates who also now game.

Those people will never understand the gamer nerd culture of the 90's, you don't strike me as someone who gets that culture because you just don't get the zeitgeist.

If you think modern gaming is the best games have ever been, you really don't understand how gaming has gone backwards in terms of mechanics in many genre's. The loss of dedicated servers, level editors, and programming sdk's in the AAA space is probably one of the greatest gaming disasters in all of PC gaming.

When internet allowed companies to steal games and get kids to pay for them in the new "you never get the game model" of f2p/mmo gaming (paying money for a game that you never get to own). That was pretty much the deathknell for what most of us loved about gaming back then.

The fact we've gone to a fuedal/slave like model of software ownership is downright dystopic.
 

BSim500

Golden Member
Jun 5, 2013
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yet there's a reason they made remastered versions of Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttled and Grim Fandango and it wasn't because pixelated is 'better', only historical/nostalgic
90% of the time "that reason" for remakes of old games is simply wanting a console port for XBox / Switch, etc. That's the real reason Bioshock 1-2 were 'remastered' with barely any significant "upgrade" in textures (original vs remaster) along with a ton of new (still half unfixed) bugs. For simple point & click adventure games, they want it on Apple / Google smartphone stores. That's the beginning and end of why they get remade from the publishers point of view.

But if you can say why someone might say 'I prefer the original DotT graphics', other than nostalgia, that's what I'm asking.
I'll answer this. Does Day of The Tentacle Remastered look better than the original? Yes - because it remains very close in art style. OTOH, I find Full Throttle Remastered now looks too 'cartoony' and has lost a lot of that "rough around the edges" pixelly grit that fit the original game perfectly. Many people (inc myself) also didn't like the character art changes in the Monkey Island series vs original MI1-2. That's why MI: "Talkie Editions" (a script that rips then merges the remastered 'talkie' audio with the original non-talkie graphics to use in ScummVM) is a thing. Grim Fandango was 'remade' mostly due to controls and Residual engine flakiness on modern PC's rather than graphics (which is the same background art in same 4:3 ratio). Likewise for HD texture packs, there's some great stuff done right (Thief 1-2, Torchlight, etc). But there's also been a lot of other stuff that's tried too hard to be reinvented in a different style (too dark / colorful / modern, etc) and didn't work out at all. So yet again, slapping a "HD" pack / remaster on anything will be subjective as to how it won't be received as 'better' by 100% of people.

If I asked why someone would prefer the original "Superman TV series" over modern Marvel movies other than its historical interests, and they said 'because we prefer quality content over visuals', that wouldn't really answer the question why they think the content was better quality in that series, much less why the low production values are an improvement.
TV series remakes are a different subject though. I'll happily answer you with "many 60's-90's original TV series had the charm of actually being an original instead of a milked to death franchise that exists purely for the sake of IP extension / production quotas". Personally I can't stand modern Marvell movies and I also don't see endless cheap TV cash-in remakes as "better" regardless of their production quality, when like many other people I'm suffering from "remake fatigue". Reboots of 1970-1990's shows are bad enough (Charlie's Angels, Charmed, Dallas, Dynasty, Kojak, Knight Rider, Lethal Weapon, MagGyver, Magnum PI, Twin Peaks, etc), but when they start remaking even 1960's stuff like Bewitched, Ironside, Lost in Space and The Munsters, that's an open admission that they are so completely out of ideas they've run out of stuff to copy from their parents and are now throwing a lick of paint over what their grandparents produced, which to me personifies everything wrong with modern movies / TV / video games (with the ultimate in dumbing down being "too dumb to make anything original").