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Old School Games you used to love

_pH_ said:
speedball.jpg


the best game EVAAAAAAA!!!!!
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Superb Game! :cool:
 
internetstalker said:
whats the cuttoff point?

8-bit?

the 1990's?
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If I'm going to get all interlekshul about it, I'd say that it isn't actually so much a year or tech as it is a style.

Certainly pre-16 bit, games almost all came in a few distinct styles that you would recognise as old school. They tended to involve lives, brutal difficulty, score attacks and that kind of thing.

With 16 bit tech came the ability to massive increase the complexity of the interactive experience. They still made some old school games alright -- particularly in the early years -- but increasingly there was more to them than that.

Consequently, even the games that were old school in appearance (lives, platforms and so on) changed their nature. They became more forgiving of mistakes, started including save points, stopped having unforeseen deaths. It changed.

If I were to pick a particular year though, I'd probably go with something around 1988. It was shortly after that the likes of Zarch/Virus, Populous, Sim City and so on really revolutionised the whole concept of computer gaming.

There were definitely some modern games in amongst the earlier years though. Elite, for example, is totally a modern game.
 
arcade : galalxians , phoenix , scramble , zaxx and arkanoid
home comp : atic atac , cookie , jsw , frakk , sabre wulf and horace goes skiing ( lol )
 
For their 200th issue, Edge Magazine did "The 100 best games to play today." It was an interesting take on the "100 best" list, because it wasn't produced with historical context, but merely done by coldly considering if a game is still fun.

You can well imagine that very few old games made the list. In particular, the true "old school" just isn't represented, because it predated things like actual proper level design. When it worked, it was really a happy accident. I hate to say it, but in many ways that is what defines true old school gaming. Much as I still love many of them.

Robotron 2084 is there though, because that really was awesome.
 
True. You can't spell "Edge" without "Over the top masturbatory articles".

I do love it though. There's a lot to over-intellectualise about, if you allow it.
 
The thing for me about intellectualising game design is it strikes me as the same as when people try and get clever about dance music, either musically or in criticism - above all else, a dance track should make you want to dance...a good videogame will make you want to keep playing it and playing it until you've beaten it and you've enjoyed the experience.

But then I'm a simple twitch shooter at heart - my fave game on the PS3 is Super Stardust, and the last time I was running a C64 emu on a PC I played Dropzone almost constantly...having said that, I still reckon Mario 64 is the no 1 of all time...incredible game that just lets you play and have fun...
 
But there is no harm in trying to analyse what it is that makes you want to keep playing it and playing it. After all, the difference between something completely addictive and something completely useless is virtually nil, on the surface.
 
kabbes said:
But there is no harm in trying to analyse what it is that makes you want to keep playing it and playing it. After all, the difference between something completely addictive and something completely useless is virtually nil, on the surface.
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Here's my flight of fancy on the subject of good game design:

Like any other artform, good game design and construction can be dissassembled and pored over, in the same way you can pore over the technical details of Cottages at Cordeville, and make comments about the types of bursh, the use of different ingredients in the paint but none of it tells you why it's such a great painting.

Same goes for great game design - you can point to the graphics engine, collisoin detection, great controls etc but ultimately, each game is more than the simple sum of it's parts, and that bit is completely unquantifiable.
 
Exile for the BBC, the last big game ever created for it.

Outstanding game, even by todays standards. Bloody hard, but good.
 
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