Some time you just cant go back :(

[Octopus66]

Great to see the replies. I love Amigas and Amiga games

[Octopus66]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

For me it's the other way around. In the old times we played the games on crappy displays with low quality audio systems, slow loading times, error prone magnetic media that can ruin your game, and faulty hardware with sometimes crappy joysticks and keyboards.

Today, we can enjoy the same games with newer technologies. We can play on big displays, with better joysticks, faster (or even instant) loading times, bugfixed or enhanced versions of same games. We can record our gameplay and show it to the world, so it's not just bedroom gaming anymore. We have access to tutorials, we can compete with or watch much better players going through the games, so we can improve our techniques as well and learn about secret parts. Replaying these old games is more fun that ever.

With a PS4 DualShock I can actually play Overdrive (Team17).

[Amiga1992]

Coincidentally I was discussing this with a friend yesterday.

Most games I played back then I honestly wonder how I had the patience and drive to play them. They sucked in many aspects. They have not aged well at all. I guess because that's all I had, well, I played them, better than nothing! And on their own they were a lot better than if you started to compare them with what was available in other platforms. So with a bit of ignorance came a certain bliss for me.

There's few exceptions that stand out and I can still play today, but it isn't the norm. Also, if I try an Amiga game nowadays that I didn't play back then, chances are I'm not going to spend a minute with it because it's awful.

Nothing to be sad about though, it means you have matured and your interests, likes and other factors have changed with time too. I would be more worried if you'd feel the absolute same about everything like back then.

For the record although I play modern games, I still enjoy plenty of other retro games, more than many modern games. So it's not that modern games have spoiled me, is that after having played games for so long and thus having a lot of experience with games, I can empirically say most Amiga games are bad in my experience.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Amiga1992

Most games I played back then I honestly wonder how I had the patience and drive to play them. They sucked in many aspects. They have not aged well at all. I guess because that's all I had, well, I played them, better than nothing! And on their own they were a lot better than if you started to compare them with what was available in other platforms. So with a bit of ignorance came a certain bliss for me.

Ignorance was bliss 100%! You could like and enjoy a bad game back then because you liked it, nowadays you are told you cant like something, or why its bad, why you shouldn’t like it, please don’t like it, we will cancel you if you enjoy something we have told you not to enjoy!

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Amiga1992

Most games I played back then I honestly wonder how I had the patience and drive to play them. They sucked in many aspects. They have not aged well at all. I guess because that's all I had, well, I played them, better than nothing!

I usually strongly disagree with sentiments like these - for me, if I enjoyed a game back in the day then I still will today. In fact, I suppose I'm much more forgiving these days because of added perspective.


That said, our situation was different in Eastern Europe because piracy was the status quo and we didn't have to pay for games. I can imagine this being different for folks who relied only on buing and so it was easy to get stuck with some real stinkers and yet play them for the lack of other options.

[pandy71]

Contrary to most of you - sorry for that - i like modern games (but only some of them) and TBH games in Amiga times was not highly attractive to me (but TBH there is few titles on Amiga to made exception).

[VladR]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

That said, our situation was different in Eastern Europe because piracy was the status quo and we didn't have to pay for games.

Didn't have to ? More like, we were not allowed to - there were no game stores.

The first official store with games opened in our city around ~1996. Given the atrocious exchange rate between DEM/USD/GBP, the brand new games cost around 50-60% of an average monthly income - so this does not even qualify as an "option" for anybody except 1%-ers.

Even if we disregard the absurdity of the choice in ~1996:
1.Do I pay for a cheaper mortgage
2.Do I pay for one video game

Before ~1996, there was no legal official way to buy video game for any system in my country.

It took another decade till the price of brand new games dropped to merely slightly less absurd levels.

We're talking ~2005-ish, when an argument could be finally made that you're *probably* not going to be committed to an asylum / murdered [very slowly] by your wife for buying a video game from the store.

It was a very different world...

[alkis21]

What country was that, VladR?

[Adropac2]

I find the Amiga fairly timeless tbh. Just about all the games feel like entirely believable settings especially the 3d stuff. I get sucked in very convincingly. Same with C64 and even Atari 2600. Some adjusting sometimes but these experiences are examples of less is more I find over modern gaming which I do enjoy still as well

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Adropac2

I find the Amiga fairly timeless tbh. Just about all the games feel like entirely believable settings especially the 3d stuff. I get sucked in very convincingly. Same with C64 and even Atari 2600. Some adjusting sometimes but these experiences are examples of less is more I find over modern gaming which I do enjoy still as well

For me personally it is quite hard to go back to the Atari 2600. It was my first gaming machine, but I can't really enjoy the games anymore except for Pitfall. The C64 is quite okay, but the graphics just don't do it for me nowadays. I do still enjoy the games of course, but wish they had better graphics

[Catflap]

Originally Posted by TCD

For me personally it is quite hard to go back to the Atari 2600. It was my first gaming machine, but I can't really enjoy the games anymore except for Pitfall. The C64 is quite okay, but the graphics just don't do it for me nowadays. I do still enjoy the games of course, but wish they had better graphics

Just wait a year or two - AI must surely solve this for us!

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I usually strongly disagree with sentiments like these - for me, if I enjoyed a game back in the day then I still will today. In fact, I suppose I'm much more forgiving these days because of added perspective.

I don't think is something to agree or disagree with, more like you have an entirely different perspective, and that's great. If you enjoy them that's perfect.

I think, at least for me, it wasn't that I feel I stuck with "stinker" games, I had almost no point of comparison, not having game consoles or anyone that had them, and the very few friends with computers they could play games with usually had awful PC XT clones where games were clearly inferior so I thought "oh shit look at my Amiga game it's far superior". I didn't know of anything better (except arcade games) and thus I think my image of the games I played was better then than it is now.

Today you can open up a browser window and play games, quickly going through titles from a particular year in the 90s and see how things compare and be very precise about it

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by amigang

So made a long blog post about this...

https://amigang.com/cantgoback/


But basically to sum it up, have you guys had a game you loved growing up with and thought it was the coolest thing ever, and really want to go back and play it, but basically the magic was no longer there, it just was not as fun to play. I had this, the two stand out are Theme Park and Wing Commander both classic games, but i just cant find that magic I had as a kid playing them.


Any other games you feel the same?

Man, that is true for so many other things, not just games. your frame of reference changes all the time throughout your life.
There are a lot of sayings like ”Dont revisit your old heroes” or ”Rose tinted glasses” that relate to nostalgia and how we see things differently.
Regarding games, its hard to ignore whatever came oot for the last 30 years that puts things into a different light. Just think of how ones view of Amiga 2.5d racing games changed when you saw Ridge Racer on Playstation.
You could still enjoy Lotus but you never looked at racing games the same way.. ;-)

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by amigang

So made a long blog post about this...

https://amigang.com/cantgoback/


But basically to sum it up, have you guys had a game you loved growing up with and thought it was the coolest thing ever, and really want to go back and play it, but basically the magic was no longer there, it just was not as fun to play. I had this, the two stand out are Theme Park and Wing Commander both classic games, but i just cant find that magic I had as a kid playing them.


Any other games you feel the same?

Test Drive series and GP Circuit/Ferrari F1

[VladR]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Man, that is true for so many other things, not just games. your frame of reference changes all the time throughout your life.
There are a lot of sayings like ”Dont revisit your old heroes” or ”Rose tinted glasses” that relate to nostalgia and how we see things differently.
Regarding games, its hard to ignore whatever came oot for the last 30 years that puts things into a different light. Just think of how ones view of Amiga 2.5d racing games changed when you saw Ridge Racer on Playstation.
You could still enjoy Lotus but you never looked at racing games the same way.. ;-)

Curious you'd mention this because yesterday I started replaying (again) Quake1 on XBOX and I most definitely enjoy it way, way more than I ever did on my poor Pentium 100 MHz. OLED helps with blacks too.

And it basically only runs in higher resolution and has few additional FX (it's not the raytraced build). I get to enjoy the levels I could never play back then.

So, for some games, it's possible to enjoy them way more after 30 yrs. Can't really rationalize it, though...


But, like you said, Ridge Racer and NFS destroyed all previous racers for me too...

[oscar_ates]

I am playing warzone 2 and each time I play it still impresses me. Graphics, game mechanics, guns etc.

[Megalomaniac]

Maybe it depends on what the appeal of a game was at the time. If it was purely graphics and sound, and the underlying design have issues, you're much more likely to spot them now that the technical side will have been outdone by games on later systems. If it was that a game was the best of its kind on the Amiga, but not as good as the same or similar games on PC/SNES/Megadrive, that's more apparent now, as we can own or emulate so many systems easily. If it was an original game with design flaws that were resolved by a sequel or later clone, perhaps we'd rather play what took the idea and did a better job with it?

If a game genuinely had a great difficulty curve, varied levels or sections, reasonable audiovisuals, some imagination and character and great controls, why wouldn't it still be fun now? I love the idea of our kids discovering and appreciating the games we loved (speaking as someone who as a kid preferred his dad's Beatles records to almost anything in the charts).

[Adropac2]

Originally Posted by TCD

For me personally it is quite hard to go back to the Atari 2600. It was my first gaming machine, but I can't really enjoy the games anymore except for Pitfall. The C64 is quite okay, but the graphics just don't do it for me nowadays. I do still enjoy the games of course, but wish they had better graphics

I think the topic is certainly an interesting one because there's likely lots of factors why we do or don't like these games as much. I do firstly have to enjoy the game at a gameplay level otherwise there's not much that can help. A game for example like Demon's Attack or Atlantis both on 2600 are just belters to me at a gameplay level because they're so tight and pure doing what they do but it's also the game worlds that I remember being in

On the C64 one of my faves is Falcon Patrol 2 that I often play and again it's the gameplay that captivates more that the visuals but it's wrapped up in an atmosphere and tone from those simpler visuals that creates something I just don't get from newer games a lot of the time. I guess things just work better at a certain level for some people and the results are just more appealing maybe

Or perhaps another example of less is more could be Midwinter or Mercenary which effortlessly and entirely pull me into their worlds I think because there is just less to break the illusion. Compared to how brilliantly close games get today visually while not maintaining that for other aspects which can pull you out of the experience

[Adropac2]

I think it can be easy enough to think our opinions are filtered through rose tinted because while that can and certainly is true, it's dependent on factors of course. Some even needing we adapt back to or not which can sometimes decides weather we see something the same way. Ultimately with that coming down to how we think and feel on these things

Some might think for example that revisiting Stunt Car Racer was to reveal how archaic it is now but I'm in awe still how astonishing good this game is and hasn't aged other than it's a simpler look. The one thing I think will always be true is that something great at one point if it truly is, remains that and providing games are played to the same merits then they too can be enjoyed as they were. For some it might not be something they enjoy but objectively at least I think the best stuff remains that

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Adropac2

I think the topic is certainly an interesting one because there's likely lots of factors why we do or don't like these games as much. I do firstly have to enjoy the game at a gameplay level otherwise there's not much that can help. A game for example like Demon's Attack or Atlantis both on 2600 are just belters to me at a gameplay level because they're so tight and pure doing what they do but it's also the game worlds that I remember being in

It most certainly has to do with what games we enjoy. The Atari 2600 has some great pure arcade like games, but except for Tempest I was never really into them. If anything that has only gotten 'worse' over time so today I can fire up a game for the 2600 and play for a couple of minutes before I loose interest.

Originally Posted by Adropac2

Or perhaps another example of less is more could be Midwinter or Mercenary which effortlessly and entirely pull me into their worlds I think because there is just less to break the illusion. Compared to how brilliantly close games get today visually while not maintaining that for other aspects which can pull you out of the experience

That's a very good point. I'm currently playing Spiderman Remastered and while the version of Manhattan in the game is very detailed and full of people, cars etc the game's mini-map and on screen waypoints make sure I never really feel immersed in that 'world'. When I think back to playing TES III Morrowind about how that island felt 'real' and sucked me in for days at the time (still does today, but to a lesser degree) there is certainly a certain truth to 'less is more'.