Online you tend to hear some similar stock phrases that get tossed around a lot when discussing video games and it’s created a lot of misinformation. I’d like to clear the air a bit and question some of these “truths” many tend to assume is true.
“If you don’t buy it, they won’t make another one!”
This is either referring to a remake or sequel in a series. The assumption is here is that commercial success equals continued interest for the publisher, which is true only sometimes. However, considering how publishers treat their IP’s now, I’d say they’d revive or remake anything to make an extra buck. Saying “if you don’t buy it, you might not get another one” is not really convincing when the game in question is bad. You really think I want them to make more bad games? It would be better if there were no more games in that series.
I like the Goemon series from Konami and I like F-Zero but if Konami or Nintendo are going to make bad remakes or sequels then it’s just better to keep them in the past and not tarnish their legacy. You are not shutting the door for a company to make more games in a series by refusing to buy a bad product. If they don’t want to put in the work to make something actually good, they will use any excuse, but if you buy a bad game you give them every excuse to continue making bad games as long as they are rewarded for it.
A gentle reminder that the video games worth playing the most were not made to be monetizable as possible; they were made by people who actually liked what they were working on and wanted to work on it. I can point to countless examples of this, but I think that truth should be self-evident to anybody who thinks on it a little bit.
“It’s great for beginners!”
You often here that modern remakes or iterations in a series are often “better for beginners,” and I really disagree with that statement. Let me ask you, what is more intuitive for a player: a controller with a directional pad, two menu buttons and two face buttons, or a controller with a directional pad, four face buttons, two menu buttons, two shoulder buttons, two trigger buttons, two analog sticks which act as buttons when you push them in, and even things like screenshot buttons, back buttons, touchpads, etc.
Understandly, people have never played a game before feel pretty intimidated when they look at a controller with so many moving parts. This already makes modern games less approachable. The only way someone could say it’s more approachable is with the assumption that are intermediate or beginner-intermediate, which has a couple presuppositions:
- The player has general knowledge of what buttons typically do on a modern controller
- They are used to modern ways of using those buttons
- They have not played older games which use less modern control schemes or may be more “obtuse” and less intuitive
What people who say this are insinuating is that nowadays people who have just gotten into video games couldn’t handle the older titles. I find that really hard to believe considering a lot of (good) retro games have very simple controls and every game came with a physical manual explaining those controls and giving hints and tips to the player to look at as they please. Many children played these games, and they had the time to get good at them and spent a lot of time on a few games mastering them. Saying they aren’t for beginners makes it seem like older games are above beginner’s intelligence, which simply isn’t true. The only problem is that there’s a learning curve, which is worth learning if it’s a good game.
Not every game has to be compared to modern standards of control and feel. Making every game the same just makes them bland anyways.
“It’s made for children.”
Let’s talk about children’s entertainment, or should I say, lack thereof. Entertainment is not primarily made for children; this is apparently a hard concept for some to grasp, so let’s dispell another myth about children people seem to hold onto so dearly. Children are ignorant. I love children, I think they are a blessing, but that does not change that fact that they are incredibly ignorant about what is good quality and what is not. To use a personal anecdote, I used to play Epic Mickey when I was younger, and I really enjoyed it. Now, when I go back to play Epic Mickey, it’s a bit of a challenge. I still appreciate many things about it, but I thought a lot more highly of the game when I was a child versus when I figured out what smooth movement and good level design looks like in a 3D platformer. I gurantee that you, dear reader, have changed an opinion on a game like that in your lifetime. Go ahead and play that childhood game and tell me if it was just as good.
Turns out, some of them are just as good, or about as good. So there it is; a game isn’t “good for children” or “bad for adults”. It is either a good game, or it is not. Super Mario 64 isn’t just good for children, and neither are the other Super Mario Bros. games. Otherwise, they would not have stood the test of time. You don’t see people recommending Leapfrog games in quite the same way, do you?
Saying something is “made for children” is a blanket excuse that translates to “kids will play it so it’s ok if it’s lower quality because they don’t know any better.” Children may be stupid, but even they are not that stupid. Even as a kid I could tell that certain games were not as good as others. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out Gold’s Gym for the Wii is not as fun or polished as Wii Fit, and those aren’t even considered children’s games. If a game is lower quality and doesn’t have a E for Everyone rating, nobody says “it’s made for adults.” Also notice that rating from the ESRB; it says “Everyone”, not “Children Only” (which is an actual rating). You can’t even say it’s for children it’s not rated by the official game rating board that designates that kind of stuff.
It’s either good for all ages, or bad for all ages. Anybody who says otherwise is justifying flaws in bad faith.
“X aged poorly”
This is an analogy taken from the culinary arts. Some foodstuffs age well, like wine, cheese, and even certain kinds of rice (e.g. basmati). Over time, they chemically change (usually with fermentation) and the makeup of the food or drink changes and acquires new flavor or chateristics. Things that do not “age well”, like milk, still have a chemical change but it’s not considered palateable like wine and cheese. This analogy, while it seems pretty analogous to how games have “changed”, is not applicable at all to a video game and is completely errant.
Let’s take Final Fantasy VII for instance. This was a very early 3D game and the models they use have some pretty outlandish proportions. Many people have said that the game’s graphics have “aged poorly,” yet the game is just the same as it was in 1997. Literally nothing has changed with it, meaning there’s no inherent alteration like wine, whose chemical makeup fundamentally changes. To say a game has “aged” is akin to saying the binary in the code has taken on new properties over time, which isn’t true; the code is still the exact same.
Using the wine analogy again, let’s apply it appropriately this time. Imagine you have a wine that’s been aged over 9 years. However, you don’t have any tradtional wine glasses to pour the wine into, so you have to improvise. The only you have is a some large juice boxes, so you either have to funnel the wine in there or cut off the box top; either way, the whole thing is an imperfect solution, but at least you can drink the wine now. Imagine somebody had that same wine and started drinking it from a juice box after they had it the normal way. Would it be fair to say the wine “aged poorly” just because it had to be poured in a juice box? No, that would be absurd. The wine hasn’t changed at all, simply the way the wine is being consumed is different, and really is the inferior method. It’s the medium that’s changed, not the content.
Retro games are the exact same. They were not meant to be displayed on giant 4K monitors, they were meant for a technology that is fundamentally different from every modern display type and it worked extremely well within that environment. If you ever get the chance to look at a game side by side with a CRT and a flat-panel, the difference is extremely clear. Final Fantasy VII’s hoof-hands work when you’re screen is a lot smaller and the models don’t stick out against the pre-rendered background as much. It is not fair to blame these games for their “shortcomings” when the very method of how they were displayed has radically changed within the past 20 years. Just because your personal aesthetic standards are different or adjusted to modern expectations doesn’t mean these games need to acquiesce to your subjective standard of what “looks good”.
I’ll borrow the food analogy one more time. While the phrase “aged like milk” is typically seen as bad, there are actually many cultures that don’t mind leaving out milk long enough to make it sour. This is actually considered a palateable way to drink milk in these societies (provided you don’t leave it out enough to make you sick). Likewise, despite all the ways flat-panels mess with a retro game’s image, many of them still look pretty good. Why else would indie games try to replicate so much of that retro style if it was inferior?
There’s more to say on this topic but I’ll leave it there for now. Just know that “aging poorly” doesn’t even make sense when you think about how video games actually work and you don’t constantly assess things by a modern standard that even now, constantly changes. If a game has good aesthetics, it will still look good, even if it’s in a box instead of a glass.