Some time you just cant go back :(

[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?

[chip]

Totally !



I am not able to play games nowadays

[TCD]

I find that certain games (and movies and series and books...) have that 'problem'. Other games are really interesting to get into now (when I wasn't able to before). There are still a good number of games that are just as 'magical' as they were when I first played them

[Seiya]

Every retro games have that problem. They was fantastic and intriguing in that era. Today we are used to play to modern games and very veyr difficult back to those old games. We love that exists, we love play with them for some minutes, try again some nostalgia moment, but then stop.

[d4rk3lf]

I have somewhat totally opposite experience.

When I run mentioned Wing Commander on my A500 with Aca500+ card, I was again impressed how that title is truly an AAA title with cinematic experience, nice gameplay, good story.. etc.

For Settlers it was even better.
Back in the day, I knew how to play it, but there were many things that I didn't understood. Now, when I played it recently, I was hooked so much that I constantly playing it for weeks.
Same for K240.. an amazing game, that I couldn't stop to play until I beat all the races (and I play it still sometimes).

I think all these nice Amiga platformers aged very well (Ruff 'n' Tumble, Arabian Nights, Turrican, Brian the Lion.. etc), and even kids these days can enjoy them (tested on my friends kid (7 years old), and he enjoyed them very much, and esspecially fighting game Brutal Pawns of Fury ).

I still very much enjoy playing Mortal Kombat 2, and I think it's amazing port.

Frontier, Civilization, Flashback, Arcade Pool, Castles.. etc... are also on my list that I constantly play.

[no9]

We can't go back, but we can visit...

[ Show youtube player ]

[kremiso]

the milestones are still there, waiting for a new longplay every now and then

Pitfall 2, Montezuma Revenge, Impossible Mission and many others

all-time lifesaver, just in case

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Seiya

Every retro games have that problem.

Not Dungeon Master with Chaos Strikes Back.

Originally Posted by Seiya

play with them for some minutes

I can spend days on Chaos Strikes Back.

[gimbal]

Theme Park is definitely one. For one it is SO SLOW, but secondly when I was playing it as a kid I was completely ignoring the financial sim part, I just wanted to build a park. I generally didn't even save, just played for an hour or two and then quit doing the same thing again the next time I played. As an adult I cannot ignore the financial sim part anymore, and it is just a terrible part of the game. Not fun and even a little busted.

Utopia is another. Its just... too linear? You do the same thing in the same order every time you play, you'll win pretty much guaranteed.

Valhalla 1&2. At the time I was wowed by the fact that the game speaks to you (and I find the looking up at the player bit still a great idea that has not really been repeated), but now I see only one thing; too much backtracking and you walk and turn so slowly. So, so slowly. With the droning footstep sounds. I have too few years left of my life to be spending it walking to and fro for no good reason other than searching for altar #1001 that I need to put an item on to have it morph into another item that I need to use on the other end of the map.

James Pond. I like the idea of this game, but play it without a trainer (I did play it with a trainer as a kid) and it is pure torture. You lose energy too quick and whoever thought it was a good idea to have both enemies you can't kill that like to hang around teleporter exits and items you need to pickup AND enemies you can only see and kill when you are wearing glasses, should be verbally abused daily and like it.

Reunion. Again a game I love the idea of and boy did I spend many hours restarting this game to get a little bit further again. But any game with timed events you have to pretty much randomly discover is terrible to me now. I've been spoiled.

[Megalomaniac]

I didn't really retain much interest in games beyond the Amiga era, a disturbingly high amount of my favourite PC games were sequels to Amiga games. This could be why I don't generally find this, most of my favourite games from 30 years ago are still fun for me now, even if there are faults I didn't really notice at the time that are more apparent now.

Interesting that so many people find this, it doesn't seem to happen with music and films - most people's favourite music (including mine) is still what they loved in their youth, regardless of whether Stormzy or Taylor Swift are 'better' than The Beatles or Nirvana. Maybe it comes down to the life associations you make while listening, that's its harder to get into new music when you're married, working 9-5 and not clubbing anymore? Games may not have the same psychological attachments.

Maybe people having this experience is a consequence of video games being a fairly young medium when the Amiga was in its prime? The sheer advances in technology compared to 7Mhz 1Mb 32 colours (in most cases), even allowing for the Amiga's custom chips, is almost incomprehensible. The technology used to make music and films just hasn't leapt forward in the same way. Another point is, Amiga games weren't always as well playtested as console one of the same time - do we find the same thing when playing SNES or Megadrive games?

[Predseda]

[ Show youtube player ]

[Predseda]

I do NOT play any modern games. And modern for me is post 2000. Except Amiga games.

So for me anything Amiga, Megadrive or SNES works. Thats all.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Predseda

I do NOT play any modern games. And modern for me is post 2000.

No Skyrim

[Predseda]

No.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Thorham

No Skyrim

No James Bond movies post Brosnan!

[Predseda]

No. To be honest, I played several new games on PC, I think up to 10 during last 10 years and almost all were indie games, some even came from crowdfunding campaigns. But I told myself STOP. There is so many Amiga games I have never tried that playing anything else could distract myself from Amiga forever. So I settled with Amiga games only, with occasional exceptions for C64, Megadrive and Super NES.

Movies are different story, but I still enjoy most sci-fis from 60-90s. And you are right, i do not like Bond movies post Brosnan ;-)

[klx300r]

my kids have all the latest consoles and computers so I'm up to date with the 'latest' games but I still still much prefer the gameplay of my C64 and Amiga's! I don't need fancy graphics to make things look better than reality

[Amigajay]

Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, going back and watching, reading, playing something you remember enjoying so much as a child/teen will never be the same revisiting it, not unless you played it every week for 30 years!

[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.

[Calabazam]

Frankly no.
There are games i have admired 30 years ago that still do the magic for me.

- For instance, Realms. My pal and myself were fascinated by that game and i still understand why with these nice looking 3D fractal graphics. The music is awesome on the Amiga (poor musics for the PC MSDOS version). I still play it every few months but the game IA seems CPU dependant. It felt too easy on the Amiga 500 at the time, now it gives me hard time on a 68060 and i can't beat it on a Vampire V2.

- Lotus 2 : never gets old, always feel the same about it. No wonder my daughter like it too.

- Populous 2 : i loved it in 1992, found it interesting and really beautiful. Then i stopped playing it because other games became available to focus my attention (Dune at spring 1992, then Sensible Soccer at summer 1992, then Goal, then Championship Manager, etc. Now i enjoy playing it again with same fun.

- Cadaver : almost 35 years i want to beat that game. It still plays nice to the eye to me and i enjoy it but i am stuck until the WHDLOAD trainer can be improved.

- speaking of Dune : even if i know everything about it, i still love to play it, but i do prefer the PC version.

- Robocop 3 : i still love that solid vectorial 3D of the time and i still find the game very attractive. When i play it, it remembers me exactly where i bought it in a dark evening of saturday of January 1992.

- Gobliiins : was fun to play alone at the time, still awesome and fun to play with my kids in 2024.