I love old games better ...

[rednova]

Hi all :

I have a playstation 3 and enjoy it a little bit, but not a whole lot.
I really love amiga and c64 games much better.
I was a teen when I had my first commodore, and Loved it very much.
I have a nostalgic feeling about it.
I totally love the older games much better than the new ones.
Anyone else feels like this ?

[ElPolloDiabl]

The 3D graphics are the worst, watching the diagonal lines twist around. objects are a cube with a photo of something on them. The graphics that are drawn are much better.
You can buy a lot of good 2D modern games.

[David Wright]

I have tried to enjoy some old Amiga games but how many versions of side scrolling shooters can there be?
To me some are decent fun, some for nostalgia.

For actual enjoyment of older games I have recently downloaded a bunch of PC games from old games. com
There are some enjoyable and playable games such as older Doom and flight simulator types. Space war types along with many classics from the mid to late 90's that look and play nice.

[Minuous]

@David Wright:

Are you by any chance the famous David Wright that ported CRobots to the Amiga, and worked with Chris Gray on Amiga Empire? I have been seeking to contact him for many years in hopes of getting source code for these, to enable further development of them.

[Pat the Cat]

Ummm... I think a few of the old Amiga games stand out really well.   First Samurai, Second Samurai? That's a pretty, classy scrolling beat   'em up, but it's only got so much depth.

I think the games with  random starts have a bigger longevity. They  offer more variety, but you  got to like simulators more than games.  Games like Civilization,  simulators like Microprose. The daylight  scenes are disappointing, but  views like night vision can be quite  "realistic", in terms of a military  targetting system.

Then you master them, and move on.

The  really good computer games are ones you play against other people.   Speedball2. That's still fun. Limited, but unpredictable with a human   opponent.

Any of you ever play Air Warrior? It wasn't bad on an  accelerated  Amiga, but it was horrible on a 7Mhz Amiga. Very clunky.  Kesmai online  flight sim, was OK on Amiga, but just way better on a PC. It was a  subscription game anyway. They did buy the rights to do the same with  Harpoon, but I don't think they released that. Harpoon started as a  paper rules modern naval and air battle wargame. There were some Amiga releases, but single player  only.

Apparently you can still play the DOS version of Air Warrior by browser. I really can't go there on this bag of bolts.

I  think the problem was that the Amiga didn't get the nice cheap PCI  and  AGP hardware, didn't get the cheap network connectivity. CBM  certainly developed some PCI connectivity, but didn't  pay to market it,  never brought it to market. They kind of got stuck  between "home"  machine, "game" machine, and ridicuolously priced and under spec "high  end" machine. The PC "game" machines got  the nice hardware, beat all  kinds of Amiga for price vs performance, and  that's the way things  turned out.

[David Wright]

Sorry, no. Just sort of famous in my neck of Michigan:biglaugh:

[BozzerBigD]

The  really good computer games are ones you  play against other people.   Speedball2. That's still fun. Limited, but  unpredictable with a human   opponent.

Agreed. Speedball 2 & Sensible Soccer will always be most  memorable because of the human element. However, co-op games were also  massive on the Amiga including mouse driven games and null modem games.  Settlers was special because you could play with 2 mice both  competitively and co-op! Great pixel graphics with massive personality  of the characters helped a great deal too! Rainbow Islands, Aladdin and  Turrican (II) get special mention despite being single player due to  colourful kid friendly playability, film quality animation and awesome  sound and graphics respectively :afro:

Mid 90s 3D PC games don't hold a candle to these 2D sprite/pixel art Amiga games. I like Doom but I prefer Theme Park and Settlers for the personality and charm.

[JimmiG]

The 3D graphics are the worst, watching the diagonal lines twist around. objects are a cube with a photo of something on them. The graphics that are drawn are much better.
You can buy a lot of good 2D modern games.

Modern 3D games look really good and manage to hide the flat polygons behind shader effects, bump mapping etc. Plus the actual poly counts are pretty insane these days.

The worst looking ones, IMO, are PC and Playstation 1/N64 etc. games from the 90's. They just haven't aged well at all, and it's weird to think we were so impressed by those 3D graphics back in the day. The textures are blurry, characters have simple triangles for noses, square hands without fingers etc. Meanwhile, 2D/isometric games from the era still look fine today.

I've been playing games since the early 90's (C64, then A1200, then PC), and I actually think now is the best time to be a gamer. The market for games is so huge that you can always find something to suit your taste. The drawback is that you have to do your research online before you buy a game, because there's so much junk out there.

[BozzerBigD]

I've been playing games since the early 90's (C64, then A1200, then PC), and I actually think now is the best time to be a gamer.

I disagree. Putting StarCraft 2 and BioShock to one side as modern day masterpieces I think without KickStarter the modern game industry would be devoid of ANY games I want to play. Elite Dangerous and Tower 57 had to be crowd funded and to get SEGA to release a sequel to the amazing Alien Isolation (or even a VR version) would require the same method of funding! No risks are being taken and only 4 million people paid for Super Mario Run so mobile isn't the new dawn either! RIGS was a great VR attempt and yet Sony closed the developer Guerilla Cambridge despite great promise. The exonomics no longer add up and the games are suffering unless crowd funded.

[JimmiG]

I disagree. Putting StarCraft 2 and BioShock to one side as modern day masterpieces I think without KickStarter the modern game industry would be devoid of ANY games I want to play. Elite Dangerous and Tower 57 had to be crowd funded and to get SEGA to release a sequel to the amazing Alien Isolation (or even a VR version) would require the same method of funding! No risks are being taken and only 4 million people paid for Super Mario Run so mobile isn't the new dawn either! RIGS was a great VR attempt and yet Sony closed the developer Guerilla Cambridge despite great promise. The exonomics no longer add up and the games are suffering unless crowd funded.

True there are a lot of very unimaginative, dumbed down AAA titles these days, but then again, there's crowd funding and Early Access now.
The funding and development model of games have changed thanks to digital distribution, but it doesn't mean the games are worse or that there are fewer of them. There *are* games like Elite Dangerous and Tower 57, after all. Game development is a lot more interactive these days, vs in the past when a new shiny box just magically appeared one day in the shelves of the local video game store.

[BozzerBigD]

Game development is a lot more interactive these days, vs in the past when a new shiny box just magically appeared one day in the shelves of the local video game store.

The fact the funding of games now needs to be crowd sourced because the industry is so risk averse is not a good thing. It means even respected companies with a proven track record like Frontier cannot get a publishing deal or direct investment unless they pitch safe AAA first person shooter type ideas to their investors. Crowd sourcing has become a necessity to stop the industry imploding.

Q. Should I have to pay up front so new, varied and exciting games see the light of day? Ans: No.

Q. Did companies like Team17 take a punt on Amiga games long after it became clear that the economics didn't automatically make sense. Ans: Yes they very much did and it paid off with Worms and to a lesser degree the new Alien Breed Trilogy.

Heck, Superfrog actually wasn't that profitable despite being a highlight for the Amiga platform and a polished gem of a platformer to compete with the consoles.  Where are the publishers taking risks today? They definitely aren't Sony or Microsoft.

I agree the digital platforms have saved our bacon with Team17 again leading the way in helping other indies stay in profit. Steam and GOG are the other winners. Star Wars fever is again riding high but will there be a new X-Wing vs Tie Fighter game? No of course not that 'flight sim' type game is not as accessible as Assassin's Creed or annualisable like Fifa so why take the risk? We'll be lucky to get a full VR campaign for Battlefront 2!

[fishy_fiz]

In my opinion things haven't changed drastically.
Cookie cutter games are pretty typical nowadays, but they were "back in the day" too.
The only real difference is the games being cloned to death.

People often cite the volume of generic AAA titles as evidence that games have declined in quality, but this has always been the case. Team17 for example,.... nothing but clones of the hits of the day, and I can't think of a single one of their games that's as good as what they're cloning. They're not bad, but nothing but clones of the popular genres of the day.

If anything, and the differences are marginal, I'd say gaming is better today, but unlike yesteryear you have to do a little searching for the gems. There's simply too much stuff out there for big name magazines and media to cover everything nowadays.

[Pat the Cat]

If anything, and the differences are marginal, I'd say gaming is better today, but unlike yesteryear you have to do a little searching for the gems. There's simply too much stuff out there for big name magazines and media to cover everything nowadays.

Believe it or not, the issue has occurred, died down, and reoccurred again throughout the history of personal computers.

For instance, during the Atari 2600 years, there were so many games available, across different markets, you needed a magnifying glass just to read some adverts about which games you could buy, mail order.

When you get large volumes of releases, across different formats, the problem happens again. Too much data, not enough analysts and commentators to cover everything.