Debate time! Which do you prefer; the platforming days of Mario and Sonic or the action-packed shoot-em-ups of today?

Personally, I'm a much bigger, “retro” fan. Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man my 2 favorite games franchises ever.

Retro forever, man. Retro games are AWESOME! The older Mario games are great! And some of the PS1 games look REALLY great! And the Zelda series is also really fun! So, I'd say retro. Oh, and I also really want some N64 games, like Banjo-Kazooie.

I think that games as a whole haven't done much but improve over time. In the NES days, 99% of games were bad. The few “good” games from back then don't really hold a candle to most modern “good” games. This is probably because of more freedom with games. Anyone can now make a game that looks, plays, and sounds better than most old games, without having to be a professional studio.

Modern games are also much cheaper than retro games. Buying a game in the 80s and 90s could be like $70 and there was little assurance that it'll be any good. The best AAA games from last year can end up selling for $5 on Steam, with all of the reviews and opinions.

When I think of games in comparison I don't give the slightest thought to “hey! This has higher-res shading! And look at that anti-aliasing! Man these graphics are insane! Who cares about gameplay, these graphics! Wow! Just wow!” I look at gameplay. I also look at the heart that the developers put into the game. I know when a game has thought and care out into it instead of money. Call of Duty— all for the money, uses the same engine every game.

Let me start with the fact that pretty much every non-Nintendo game today is some form of a shooter, whether it is futuristic warfare or zombie mow-downs. I like war games, but I liked how old video games were ACTUAL wars like WWII. Now it's this made-up stuff, and you don't get to place yourself in a position that was once in real life. I like older war games for their storyline, but newer war games for the controls and such.

The majority of games today are part of franchises that began likely over 10 years ago. Mario Kart, Call of Duty, every sports game, etc. If anything I feel like it really depends on the game. There are many old games which are fabulous and never got any attention. Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction for the PS2 has a much larger world than GTA, better gameplay, any skyscraper can be destroyed, and it is a realistic war. Yet, Mercenaries is basically an unknown game. I bet you haven't even heard of it, at least the first one, and it is great. What I see in it is a lot of love and care, low may the budget be. Then I look at modern-day GTA and see that it's a bunch of inappropriate content and running people over. Nothing exciting at all compared to Mercenaries and the North Korean nuclear war.

Anyways, I'm going off-topic

I like a mix of both, there are classics, but some newer games are just as good if not better. Saying the retro days of video games were perfect probably isn't the most accurate thing to say because for all those classics, there were games that were really, really bad. In some ways, I'd say modern gaming is better because at least almost all bad games at least have some sort of understandable mechanic, the retro days had game developers who didn't understand proper mechanics.

@turkey3:

Paragraph 1: New ways of displaying graphics only opens up new aethetic choices. I think it's funny that you mention Call of Duty in that paragraph. It's pretty well known that it's visuals are very otdated. Why did you say that you don't care about “high-res” shading, but you think it's cheap that it uses the same engine every year?

Paragraph 2: Every recent non-Nintendo game is a shooter? No idea what you're talking about. The reason why a lot of “old” games were about WWII and not recent games is because everyone got sick of them. Most retro games were about completely fictional battles too, so I don't get this point either. Also: retro games barely had a storyline, what are you talking about?

Paragraph 3: Play some indie games if you want new concepts (not all modern games are from 10+ year franchises). There are old games that were good and didn't get attention, and there are new games that are good and didn't get attention. It's not surprising most people haven't heard of the first game of an abandoned series from ten years ago (I have heard of it actually). “Good” is subjective, by the way. Just because you aren't a fan of GTA doesn't mean it's a bad game or any worse than Mercenaries.

turkey3 wrote:

Let me start with the fact that pretty much every non-Nintendo game today is some form of a shooter, whether it is futuristic warfare or zombie mow-downs.

Not going to talk about how a lot of “non-Nintendo games” aren't shooters, but I would like to talk about how 2D platformers were just as bad if not worse.

puppetadventurer wrote:

@turkey3:

Paragraph 1: New ways of displaying graphics only opens up new aethetic choices. I think it's funny that you mention Call of Duty in that paragraph. It's pretty well known that it's visuals are very otdated. Why did you say that you don't care about “high-res” shading, but you think it's cheap that it uses the same engine every year?

Paragraph 2: Every recent non-Nintendo game is a shooter? No idea what you're talking about. The reason why a lot of “old” games were about WWII and not recent games is because everyone got sick of them. Most retro games were about completely fictional battles too, so I don't get this point either. Also: retro games barely had a storyline, what are you talking about?

Paragraph 3: Play some indie games if you want new concepts (not all modern games are from 10+ year franchises). There are old games that were good and didn't get attention, and there are new games that are good and didn't get attention. It's not surprising most people haven't heard of the first game of an abandoned series from ten years ago (I have heard of it actually). “Good” is subjective, by the way. Just because you aren't a fan of GTA doesn't mean it's a bad game or any worse than Mercenaries.

All my opinion though. By Call of Duty using the same engine I wasn't meaning the graphics, but the fact that they basically just replace some maps and guns from the old game, pretty much the same. Modern Warfare 1 and 2 were good, and Black Ops 1 also, but recently it's been poor.

turkey3 wrote:

Let me start with the fact that pretty much every non-Nintendo game today is some form of a shooter, whether it is futuristic warfare or zombie mow-downs.

I think that you should try to look at more games on Steam. That is not true at all.

turkey3 wrote:

All my opinion though. By Call of Duty using the same engine I wasn't meaning the graphics, but the fact that they basically just replace some maps and guns from the old game, pretty much the same. Modern Warfare 1 and 2 were good, and Black Ops 1 also, but recently it's been poor.

Is this not what 2D Mario platformers are? They add new levels, EVEN GRAPHICS SOMETIMES, and a power up or two.

ImagineIt wrote:

turkey3 wrote:

Let me start with the fact that pretty much every non-Nintendo game today is some form of a shooter, whether it is futuristic warfare or zombie mow-downs.

I think that you should try to look at more games on Steam. That is not true at all.

turkey3 wrote:

All my opinion though. By Call of Duty using the same engine I wasn't meaning the graphics, but the fact that they basically just replace some maps and guns from the old game, pretty much the same. Modern Warfare 1 and 2 were good, and Black Ops 1 also, but recently it's been poor.

Is this not what 2D Mario platformers are? They add new levels, EVEN GRAPHICS SOMETIMES, and a power up or two.

I never said Mario 2D platformer a aren't repetitive. They totally are, so I stick with the 3D mario platformers.

Dabby wrote:

but i wouldn't be so bother by new big budget games if the protagonists weren't MOSTLY white men in dark and edgy settings.

I can agree with that, and it wouldn't even be as bad if they weren't all the same character too.

I like the time when they were easing out of retro and getting to the beginning of modern.

It's not really subjective that games on technical levels have improved a ridiculous amount over a short period of time and I think it's awesome how in 25 years we've gone from the dawn of 2D, 256 colour 16-bit games to completely 3D games running at beyond 1080p and over 60FPS (if you own a next gen console or PC, anyway). So in that respect, modern games are obviously far superior.

But in terms of game design I'll always be split on what I prefer. I was born in 1998 and I've been accustomed to the era between the PS2 to the PS3/4 and my first actual experiences of video games were on a SEGA Mega Drive so I'm rather used to all sorts of games, old or not. I ADORED the classic Sonic the Hedgehog games - even to this day, my favourite 2 games of all time are Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic CD - and I've also really enjoyed many classics back in the 16-bit era. Our family were SEGA nuts and the games I most remember playing included Comix Zone and the Street Fighter games.

I really enjoyed many games from the PS2 era as well. Of course I very much enjoyed Sonic Adventure (not the second one though) and (although I was probably a bit too young to be introduced to it at the time) the Resident Evil games were fantastic too. RE4, specifically, is my favourite Capcom game and it just goes to show how very fundamentally simply designed games can produce hours and days of fun. And Super Mario Galaxy might just be my favourite non-classic-Sonic platformer ever.

I'm fond of many modern games as well and I'm looking forward to multiple games from E3 - namely, Sunset Overdrive and many Nintendo games stood out to me. What gets me about modern games isn't necessarily the games themselves but how many of them are dominated by DLC these days. I never buy DLC and I don't understand why people even do it - most of it is pointless rubbish like skins and themes for your characters in game. The practice of cutting bits out of the retail game and then forcing you too pay extra for it via DLC is also stunning and I hate it.

So… really, I love games regardless of age, but it's mainly the industry that concerns me - not the games themselves. Developers of both consoles and games are turning their products into massive cash cows and originality is a little dry when it comes to more mainstream games, but that doesn't mean there aren't any creative games out there.

puppetadventurer wrote:

@turkey3:

Paragraph 1: New ways of displaying graphics only opens up new aethetic choices. I think it's funny that you mention Call of Duty in that paragraph. It's pretty well known that it's visuals are very otdated. Why did you say that you don't care about “high-res” shading, but you think it's cheap that it uses the same engine every year?

Paragraph 2: Every recent non-Nintendo game is a shooter? No idea what you're talking about. The reason why a lot of “old” games were about WWII and not recent games is because everyone got sick of them. Most retro games were about completely fictional battles too, so I don't get this point either. Also: retro games barely had a storyline, what are you talking about?

Paragraph 3: Play some indie games if you want new concepts (not all modern games are from 10+ year franchises). There are old games that were good and didn't get attention, and there are new games that are good and didn't get attention. It's not surprising most people haven't heard of the first game of an abandoned series from ten years ago (I have heard of it actually). “Good” is subjective, by the way. Just because you aren't a fan of GTA doesn't mean it's a bad game or any worse than Mercenaries.

Well, retro games had a storyline, it's just that it usually wasn't explained in the game, that's all. It was usually explained in some sort of poster or something.

Of course, there are good modern games. Borderlands 1 and 2 were good, and I still have loads of fun with Halo: Reach multiplayer. My big problem with games like Call of Duty or GTA is the repetitiveness.

Look at CoD: Modern Warfare 2. The guns fire bullets fast, and there's maps with open spaces and buildings. Now look at Modern Warfare 3. Same thing, right? As well as that, at least through my experience, practically no skill is needed; it's all a matter of who has a better gun or who shot first. (Han did)

Now, if you look at, say, Super Mario Bros. 3, and compare it to New Super Mario Bros for the DS, You have new level designs between games and new power-ups that offer a new challenge (although challenge may be stretching it for New SMB) and give each game it's own identity.

vinpenguin wrote:

Debate time! Which do you prefer; the platforming days of Mario and Sonic or the action-packed shoot-em-ups of today?

^ This.

I'm not really in on the current gaming market. Everything I've heard is Watch Dogs, CoD, games like that…those, in my opinion, aren't as much games as they are unimaginative remakes of each other.

While it's true that only the really good franchises from the old days have survived, resulting in information bias, I don't believe that there'll be nearly as many games from today to be called “retro” in the future…I prefer the old-style games because, at that time, there was no established way of doing anything. People were just experimenting with making something fun. I want that mindset back.

vinpenguin wrote:

Debate time! Which do you prefer; the platforming days of Mario and Sonic or the action-packed shoot-em-ups of today?

Personally, I'm a much bigger, “retro” fan. Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man my 2 favorite games franchises ever.

I like Gamecube and N64