Today, gaming technology is at its peak. Games like “The Last of Us” bring us Hollywood-worthy story and performances, technologies like the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive bridge the gap between the virtual world and our own and mobile platforms allow us to bring our games with us literally wherever we go without needing to worry about taking anything other than the essential items we carry every day. With the gaming industry being by far the most successful financially, overshadowing the movie and music industries, it’s pretty clear that we’re living in a golden age of gaming no matter how you look at it. Games have never been more immersive, more groundbreaking, more… Well, good. Or have they?
Despite the fact that today’s games provide all sorts of experiences, there’s still a group of dedicated gamers who don’t want anything to do with that. No, to them, gaming stopped existing somewhere around 1995, since the majority (or in some cases the only) games they play are from the very early days of the medium. We’re talking about titles for the NES, SNES, Genesis, Nintendo 64, even early operating systems such as DOS. “Mega Man”, “Super Mario 64”, “Comix Zone”, “Star Fox”, “Final Fantasy” and “King’s Quest” are all games with lasting appeal which the retro gamers hold in high esteem. Many of those games have received sequels in the modern era, but oddly enough it’s the originals which remain the most lasting among the retro crowd.
So the obvious question is why? Why are so many people ignoring the marvels of modern gaming and sticking instead to the old classics? Well, every retro gamer has his or her own reason behind it. A popular sentiment online is that “nowadays games just suck”, which is pretty obviously untrue, but it’s still a perfectly valid personal opinion to have. Still, I believe there’s far more than that. Many (even most) retro gamers grew up with the retro systems, and to them, retro games are a way to get a small taste of what made them happy as a child. It’s exactly why so many of us hold classic Disney movies in our hearts – they allow us to remember and maybe even relive a simpler time, a time when we had very few responsibilities and a lot of spare time.
But there’s another reason, a more objective one. The interesting fact about retro games is that they’re all very minimalistic, in both appearance and gameplay. Working with very primitive technology, game designers had to use every trick in the book in order to create the experience they wanted (for example, the clouds and bushes in “Super Mario Bros.” are the exact same object, just colored white or green). In today’s gaming, if the player had to be taught that their character can double-jump, all it’d take was a character shouting “Quick! Use your double jump/jetpack/rocket boots to get over this gap!” But in the early days of gaming this obviously couldn’t work, so game designers had to get creative. I’d like to show you this presentation by Internet personality Egoraptor who goes in great length about the various tricks that designers used in order to use what little assets they had intelligently.
My point is that many people enjoy this type of minimalist design quite a lot. And why shouldn’t they? When done right, it’s a work of art. Many of the most popular games today (like “Minecraft” or “Dota 2”) are well-liked precisely because they allow you to do a lot with very little. Despite their limitations, they, like the games of old, have been custom-built to provide a very particular experience to the player, which is definitely something worth admiring. It’s true that many of today’s games can learn a lesson or two about intelligent design from their retro counterparts. And at the end of the day, isn’t that a good enough reason to love them?