I love some games that would be considered retro games. I
reminisce about the soundtrack to Comix Zone, being my favorite gaming
soundtrack of all time. I loved the huge satisfaction that you would get
from passing a level without scaling difficulties. Though, for the most
part, I do not find old games more appealing than more recent games. I
may be materialistic, or superficial, but when returning to game titles which
have recent iterations, I can't help but stack the two against each other.
Controls, visuals, gameplay, and storytelling methods have all been
greatly improved over the decades, and I believe it's for the better. I
would much rather listen to engaging dialog, see the character's emotions, and
pick my response in Mass Effect, than read lines of dialogue in an rpg of the
past. This may be totally lazy, but I don't care. Current games can
be bogged down with unorthodox motion controls (Twighlight Princess), or
ridiculously complicated UI (The Witcher), but as I whole I prefer the depth
and style of gameplay that is allowed by current gaming technology.
Admittedly, retro games do absolutely have their advantages, (see: http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/29/why-i-love-retro-gaming-and-why-its-still-relevant-readers-feature-3564251/), but I have found
the advances in gaming technology to be primarily for the better.
Beyond the games themselves, I have difficulties with the term
"retro games". In the Suominen reading, retro games were
loosely defined as "Typically the current retrogaming refers particularly
to the usage of game devices that were used before personal computers (common
since the early 1990’s)." While I appreciate the suggestion at
making a blanket term to cover most, if not all videogames that were produced
before, after, or during a certain time period, the term retro game actually
raises many more questions than it answers for me. Are remakes of retro
games still retro? It is not uncommon for game developers to revive long
lost games with new remakes which polish up the graphics, and update the game
mechanics and controls to be friendlier to the modern gamer. Is this a
retro game? Does the designation of when a game becomes a retro game
change with time? Is the chronological line that is drawn separating
retro from non retro games static? Or will it dynamically change when
time advances? Are there any features of modern games that will never be
considered retro? Will all generations of gamers be subjected to the same
rules for what is and is not a retro game? How can a player return to a
game that was released before their birth? Is a game status as retro
purely based off the year they were released? Or are the game's features
more important for it to be assigned the title as retro? Modern games
which strive to look or resemble older games, such as Hotline Maimi, or 3D Dot
Game Heroes, will they receive the retro title?
For people like me, who have a difficult time with such an inclusive,
and exclusive term as retro games, I would prefer simply stating a game's
console or year of release, instead of qualifying it as retro.
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