Little bit of column A, little bit of column B.
Playing what you had, good or bad, is how it was back then. Everyone has that game which is terrible to most but we love because it’s what we had available.
Back when they still had video rental stores that carried games, and you had to carefully select what game you were stuck with for the weekend lol.
I hope the Croc: Legend of the Gobbos remaster will be fun to play.
For me one of the few games I can play (without remaster) to this day, is Age of Empires. And the remasters and remakes have been really great too! And started playing it like 25 years ago!
Some games were terrible and you made them better in your memory on accident.
Some are still exactly as good as you hoped.
Most had a cool vibe that made you like it but were guilty of multiple atrocities of game design.
As someone who pretty much only plays games I also played as a kid…
Yea.
Tonight I got my ass kicked in Rocket League by my daughter. I had to immediately pay OG Super Mario Bros for a pick me up.
I’m so much more competent as an adult. So I’m enjoying some games a lot more as an adult. I also have less time. So some grindier games I am not enjoying as much.
It isn’t bad. It can seem bad now because every AAA game is psychologically designed to give the biggest possible dopamine response to increase in-game spending. So your brain, being conditioned on such games, will think the older game is bad because it was designed to be fun but also engage your brain and make you think. Since your brain has to work for it, it subconciously thinks the tradeoff is not as good as new games.
It’s a good thing I don’t play that kind of trash.
Sonic Adventure fans be like:
Played both as a kid and found them really cool
0 desire to touch them nowadays and wouldn’t recommend younger people to experience them
And it’s not like I don’t like the old games I played back then, I play a lot of Super Mario World from time to time (though in fairness exclusively ROMhacks except about every 10 years where I look at the original again). Sonic Adventure for me just didn’t age well.
But that’s fine, not every game has to be a timeless classic. I have good memories of the games and that’s what’s important
Quest 64? Oh yeah, absolutely.
Star fox 64? I can play the shit out of that right now.
Star fox 64? I can play the shit out of that right now.
Played this game a lot when it was new, then kind of ditched it completely later. But I often have to think about how good it actually was.
Nah. Those games weren’t bad at all. Aren’t bad today either. Go play OG Ninja Gaiden, or Mario Kart, or Mario World, or hell BATTLETOADS. Or Metroid.
Or the original Zelda. God damn games were good. Even damn Tetris is good.
Unless you grew up on an Atari. Fuck those games were bad.
Honestly, as a Metroid series fan, the OG was kinda bad (but tried something that was quite new for the time). Return of Samus was ok, especially considering that it was a Gameboy game. Then Super Metroid absolutely knocked it out of the park. The only thing that feels off when playing it today are the somewhat finicky movements
The only thing that feels off when playing it today are the somewhat finicky movements
Super Metroid is so good. But you’re right. The controls are… not great.
If you can live with playing a ROMhack, give Super Metroid Project Base a try. It feels so much better to play. The map isn’t quite the same as the original - I consider it an improvement, but it’s not exactly the same.
I just wish the SM /LttP randomizer had the option to enable the new movement.
Original Ninja Gaiden trilogy is great (I hate Ninja Gaiden II’s stage hazards but still).
Super Mario Kart… eh, it’s pretty average compare to the kart racers that came after it. It’s not worth playing beyond curiostiy or nostalgia.
There is nothing wrong with Super Mario World but for some reason it doesn’t quite click with me.
Battletoads would be a fun game if knew what the fuck it wanted to be.
Original Metroid? It’s kinda jank and a pain to play without a map, just play Zero Mission.
Zelda’s overworld can fuck right off, I swear it’s only there to sell strategy guides. Dungeons are fun but if I already dumped 50$ on the game in the 80s only to realize there is no way to get through it without a guide or a magazine I wouldn’t be super jazzed.
Tetris is a timeless classic.
Atari was great until 83, I think Activision’s 2600 library hasn’t aged one bit. It’s all downhill from there, computers were the place to be for Western titles back then.
The only games from my childhood I can ever recall being like that when thinking back would be the edutainment style games I had, obviously.
Mario Teaches Typing comes to mind, lol
I don’t think I ever had any type of games that taught teaching. I had games like hooked on phonics type stuff and a Land Before Time math game, among a few others.
Typing was never something formally taught to me, even from a video game. I guess by the 2000s they just didn’t think it was important enough to be taught in elementary school to kids. Yet cursive was deemed something we needed to know.
We had typing in the 90’s, but that was on electric typewriters, and was in I guess what you would call middle school not elementary.
Later there was ‘Mavis beacon teaches typing’ as the earliest typing ones that was really popular
My parents got my on PC young, used to love the Jump Start games and magic schoolbus games.
Non edu games I remember fondly from that time, Jazz Jack rabbit, Earthworm Jim, the flying toaster games, pajama Sam, putt putt, Freddy fish.
My wife said spy fox must be added :D
I remember playing one of the Spy Fox games, the ozone destroying one, sometimes when I would go to speech therapy. It was such a fun game for kid me. Same situation with one of the Pajama Sam games (can’t remember which).
Cannot recall ever playing any jumpstart or magic schoolbus games, though.
As for non-edu games I had as a young kid, I remember having one of the first 2 rollercoaster tycoon games (can’t remember which), a few of the classic “1000 In 1” game discs (pretty sure one might have had a full-on casino game that I used to love) almost everyone seemed to have at least one of, and an I-Spy game (cannot remember which one, but I think it was in a quaint small town on an island).
Where are my fellow Rascal survivors?
Resident Evil 1, Apple Cider Spider (c64), and Glover come to mind…
!["It's going to be fun to play this game again!" [Azul Crescent's silly scribbles]](https://lemmus.org/pictrs/image/3755ef6a-f9c2-4359-865f-646e5e5b8b3e.webp){kind=link}