Video games as a child - Today vs back then

[Machismo]

Or eyes and ears are the limiting factor when it comes to the advancement of sound and graphics. Twenty years ago, there was a great deal we could advance upon, but that just isn't the case any more. Most of us cannot detect the difference between the latest upgrades, so we think that it's not there. It is. I play old games all the time, and I enjoy them The best older games were not reliant on graphics, but on the story/playability. New games are so focused on graphics, that they tend to forget about those things. The games that stand the test of time, are those that can grip a person emotionally. Fallout 3 comes to mind in that aspect. With the FPS revolution, most games will be "obsolete" within 5 years. Unless a game has true immersion, it will be forgotten in time. Honestly, it's no different than going back and watching old cartoons. If you watched a cartoon because it was exciting and modern, it's terrible only a few short years later. If it had an actual story, it may still be worth watching.

[May90]

That's the problem, "Games today are [simpler/easier/dumbed down/etc]" is almost a meme at this point. People say it - and some people like saying it because it makes them feel better about their "gaming cred" - without any actual context or frame of reference.

I think it is just that everything was new back then and looked differently at. I remember the day my dad brought a floppy with Doom on, back in 1994 - it was something from another reality, hard to describe by words, we hadn't seen anything like that (yes, there was also Wolfenstein 3D and a couple of other games, but Doom truly was a step up). Today, a new, even a truly amazing, game comes out and it doesn't look like something from another planet: we have played so many games, it is hard to really surprise us by something. Objective people realize this aspect and don't let it affect their perception of new games, but many people are not very good at doing that, if they are even trying.

[dwightyo39]

Just to nitpick the OP, I think the jump from Atari to NES was greater than NES to Genesis/SNES. The atari games were "move your rectangle from one side of the screen to the other while avoiding squiggly lines".

I'm still a NES fan. However, as others have stated, there were games that lacked in the understandable objective department. Some seemed to require kids to beg their parents for a Nintendo power subscription or a call to the nintendo hotline (I'm looking at you Simon's Quest for the "kneel with red crystal by cliff for x seconds to summon a tornado that warps you to the next mansion" or similar deal to gain access to the stairs inside the lakes while kneeling w/blue or red crystals).

[Repefe]

I remember my time being a young boy ... it was the time of dungeon siege 1. Reading about it in magazines, playing demo of it, trying to find every hidden room and enemy. I will never get that feeling back.

Nowdays developers focus too much on the wow factor, best cgi, best graphics, biggest worlds ... back then it was just magic. Great story, fun gameplay. What more do you need.

[Ergar]

I just miss the fact that games back then (when i was a child) were just fun. You didn't really care if the graphics were shit, or if the story or w/e was bad, because most of the games were just really fucking fun to play. Games like CTR, the 1st three crash bandicoot games (not ctr), rayman, or even some of the later ones like battlefront 1&2, the sly cooper series, etc.

Nowdays there are so many factors for me to find a game really enjoyable. Not to say that games today aren't fun, just that i miss being a little innocent child.