Xbox 360 Fanboy

who thinks the penny arcade guys are annoying, and should just shrivel up and just go away and never be mentioned on a blog again?

Reply

"After all, if you don't like retro titles, haven't played the original game, or didn't enjoy the title, you could always not buy it."

Doesn't that apply to new games too? You can just not buy them... but isn't that the point of the review? Regardless if it's a classic, some people like to know whether or not anything changed with it... or maybe they just want to know whether it was remade accurately without any annoying quirks. It's sometimes nice to know details about something before you buy it. I dont know, the way i see it is if a retro game receives a "6.5" because it hasn't brought anything new to the table, but within the review it states that the game is essentially the same as it was before... then perhaps thats exactly what somoene wanted to know because they liked the original so much. In that case, the score isn't what matters, it's the fact that they said it's exactly what they would expect. I just don't see any harm in reviewing retro titles...and it's stupid to bitch about extra content on game websites and magazines because...uh.. "you can always...not read it"

Reply

Seriously.. as much as i'd like to appear as a "true gamer!".. the real me is 10 seconds away from declaring war on retro games.

Because, sure.. its always great to remember where you came from. However, remembering and obsessing are two different scenarios.

Yeah, Pacmans cute, Zeldas always pretty fun.. but uhhh, so were 140LB Macintosh computers from 1976. You dont see people walking around with 85 pound laptops that run on 8k's of RAM and a 128mb hard drive.


Get over it. 99.9% of retro games are a complete waste of time. Worthless ports for gamers living in the paste to be sorely disappointed by the lack of technology in their childhood days.

Reply

I'm 100% in agreement with you, Hibernation, but I still have to say:

"gamers living in the paste"

That's gotta be the best typo I've seen in a while. Most of the people buying these retro games are probably eating the paste they're living in!

Reply

Personally, I enjoy a lot of the retro titles that reappear. Perhaps more often than not they're a waste of time, but there's enough good stuff out there to make it worth while. For every game I don't care for, some one else likes it. It's hard to just dismiss that because some people don't care for them.

Seriously, I'd say just as much new stuff is crap now. The novelty of being able to download every thing to one system is hardly comparable to the idea of lugging around a 20 pound computer.

I don't think a lot of the retro arcade titles should be reviewed the way they are... but in some ways, I almost feel like a lot of XBLA titles are reviewed as though they're full retail products. Nothing ever really seems like enough, there's always more needed and certainly the budget never seems to be taken into account.

This seems especially jarring when I go from IGNXbox360 to IGNWii and see NES ports of arcade games getting 7s in graphics because they're "just like they were on the NES", but lower on 360 because "they're just like they were in the arcade". It's incredibly confusing.

Personally, I wish they all just took 1Up's approach with the retro titles. Thumbs up or thumbs down and a small paragraph.

You can stretch this out to a bigger review argument in general. I mean, let's face it, these numbers given to games in general are completely arbitrary. If anyone can explain how a final score is reached if none of the parts form an average or what makes a game a 8.9 instead of an 8.8, I'd sure like to hear it. And even in that case, something has to be a 10 and something has to be a 1. At times I don't even know what the score given relates to... IGN's Forza 2 seemed almost like a non-stop complaint fest, but it still got an 8.9.

It's just to the point where essentially the three pages that precede the score are entirely ignored. Even IGN seems to have realized this by finally putting the final score on every page of the review, rather than the final one.

I just don't think it works.

Reply

So much anger and a missing of the point. Their point is that they don't need reviewing and scores, it's needless. Pacman is Pacman, duh. The retro games are as fun as they were when they first came out. Yes, they are not as beautiful as todays games but (here's the kicker) THEY ARE OLD GAMES. Enjoy them if you like, don't if you don't, but you don't need to tell me how they compare to today....once again DUH.

Reply

I think that Retro games ought to be reviewed with the understanding that we're dealing with a port of a really old game. That being said, I think there's a value in rating this port in terms of fidelity to original source material... and most importantly, is it still fun? Some games are timeless and others... aren't and I think those gamers just a little too young to have played these games when they came out ought to get from a reviewer whether a walk down history lane is just for "research" or if the game is still a blast to play (regardless if there's a nolstalgia factor).

XBLA allows one to demo the games so that helps a lot.

I just think that retro games ought to be reviewed as Retro games... everybody knows what they're getting into, they just want to know if it's worth it.

Reply

Let's be honest, Tecmo Bowl, Pro Wrestling, Altered Beast, etc. are not great games. In their time, however, they were intensely fun. Back then we didn't view games the same, it was all about playing with your cousins (brother, sister, friends, etc.) and throwing controllers on the ground. It was learning the system, exploiting it, and seeing who could come out on top. Come on, if we think we can "review" those games, we're doing a disservice to what games are and how they have evolved.

I hope you bring this up on your podcast and I hope you discuss the issue I am getting at (it's late and I'm slightly tipsy, so take this and run with it!).

II VALIANT II

Reply

But then again Tycho likes his old games because he played them and loved them when he was a kid. If Spider-man ps1 (being my favorite game ever) was released for live arcade and someone gave it a 4.7 for graphics I would be pissed as well.
I agree with Ninegauger, The grade should be based on how good the emulation is.

Reply

The point PA was trying to make was that REVIEWING retro games can be done tastefully, like it is on 1up, but RATING retro games is mindnumbingly dumb. Tycho wrote, "It isn't impossible to discuss fundamental games in a way that is interesting and valuable. But I don't know if plugging ancient games into the Hardcore Review Machine and outputting your stupid little number improves the world."

It's reasonable for a reviewer to say whether he/she thinks a retro game release merits a purchase or not today, but it's completely unreasonable to rate that retro game using the same ol' 10-point grading scale used for new games. It's just nonsense, because rating categories like "graphics" and "sound" are beside the point on a retro release.

Insisting that XBLA games must boast "improved" graphics and sound in order for them to represent a valuable purchase is stupid. Ergo, the journalists at IGN 360 are stupid. Anyone who cares about gaming, like game journalists ought to, should NEVER be insisting that games are essentially disposable things that developers should constantly be painting new prettier art over. If games are ever going to be respected as a "medium" or as "art," then people have to first stop constantly devaluing the old classics simply because they're old.

Reply

I won't mind retro games being rated but they need to be separated from the rating system used for the $60 games. Anyone remember the reviews for the XBL Arcade games at launch and later? Reviewers were using the full game reviewing system. They could go on and say how much fun it was for a 800 mp game but had to give it low scores because of their graphics and short time to beat.

Reply

I for one love retro games. I don't jump into most with the same fervor as I would with say Halo 3, Gears of War, Super Paper Mario or God of War, but they hold a place near and dear for me.

Retro gaming can be, for me, anything from Pong to Nintendo 64 titles, and anything in between.
I love so many; ToeJam & Earl, Haunted House on the Atari 2600, Kid Chameleon, Super Mario, CastleVania SOTN, and the list goes on and on.

My point? They have credence. Good gameplay will always be good gameplay, world-realistic graphics or not.

I feel retro games should be reviewed, but if not for the actual content or lack thereof, then at LEAST for the transition to current-gen consoles and..controllers.

Would you have not liked to know that Street Fighter dosen't (so far) play well with the analog stick on the 360? How about the mushy controls for the non-C.E. Pac-Man games? We all love Contra, but we all benefited when we heard the transition was craptastic.

I could go on. IGN, X3F, whoEVER..please keep reviewing any and all games, including retros. If the transition sucks, is broken, or is less than the original content in any way, let us know before we buy.
Inquiring minds want to know!


(Now THERE'S a retro reference for ya!!)

Reply

I don't know. I am 28 so I know all of these games and therefore do thing the reviews are pointless. However, what about those punk kids out there who think the Playstation was the first ever videogame system? I think these reviews would be helpful for them.

Reply

I would kill myself two times if PA made a funny strip!

Reply

"Personally, I wish they all just took 1Up's approach with the retro titles. Thumbs up or thumbs down and a small paragraph."
Yeah, i agree with that.

"So much anger and a missing of the point. Their point is that they don't need reviewing and scores, it's needless. Pacman is Pacman, duh. The retro games are as fun as they were when they first came out."

but thats where they are missing the fact that new gamers are born every day. Sure, classics are usually good and some people love them, but there is always a person who hasn't played them, and that nastalgia effect isn't there for them.
Gabe and tycho don't get it, since they are in their mid 30's, and every game ever created for a console was after done after their date of birth.

There is a whole new generation of gamers, ones that didn't grow up with "ataris", "NES", "SNES or Genesis", "PS1, N64, or Saturn", "DC, Xbox, or PS2" and now, just have the current generation. They don't know about what we consider classics, and how could they? When i was a kid and discovered NES wasn't the beggining of video game history it blew my mind. Now after playing pretty much every game that is considered a "classic" i can tell you i would have been better off if i had some guidance.

I got robotron off XBLA for free when i renewed my subscription.... and i hated it. It's considered a classic. I'm sure some people love it, but with a little bit of a description i could realize it's not my genre and a ye or ne could have given me a good idea of the what it was like.

Reply

@14.

Lucky for you, it'll never happen.

Reply

They should absolutely be reviewed. A: If you are putting out a retail product and asking people to pay for it, you should have to answer to critics if said product is crap. The flip side of this is that quite a few "retro" titles are STILL amazing and good reviews will make people more likely to pick them up. B: The glorious people at sony and nintendo don't offer demos for any of their "retro" titles, so without reviews, what the hell would the consumer have to go on? Personally, I played a vast majority of the VC games (and all the sony ones) when they first came out, however, that is not true for most Wii owners. A "retro" product is still a product and should be reviewed and it should be held to today's standards.

Reply

More to the point, I think it's important that anyone "reviewing" a re-released retro title should be "qualified" to do so. And by "qualified", I mean, "was around back in the day to have played the original version in the context of the time period it was presented in".

Any moron can run a copy of a retro game within MAME (or other emulator, where applicable) and then play the shiny new re-release claiming it's somehow "better". But only those of us who have actually experienced the thrill of playing a retro game back when it wasn't quite so "retro", can really give an accurate assessment of where a modern update of such a game gets it right or wrong.

Reply

I'm not sure that sites should stop reviewing them, they should just make it clearer that they are actually reviewing a retro game and put the reviews in a distinct section of the site.

I keep getting suckered into thinking actual new games are being announced, like when I thought there was already a Sonic sequel for Wii coming the other day.

Reply

This is one topic that can be so easily over-debated. Reviews are reviews classic games or not. Like 'em? Great. Don't? Move on. I understand his funny rant, but it's not worth us all dissecting.

Reply