Don’t hate me because I’m old School

by RRFB 

When comparing the games of the SNES era with games today, it's harder to give an honest, objective opinion of them, mostly based on the fact that many of us (at least the patrons of this site) began gaming in general with the SNES, and tend to view those times through rose colored glasses. This is the only point that myself, and Wisdom hold in common. Unlike Wisdom, I do not think I have the authority to come out and say which era had the better games, however, after analyzing what makes a good game, maybe you can decide for yourselves which games were better.

There is no doubt that the games of today are more evolved than the games of yesteryear, it is an undeniable fact. But playability and “innovation” are two different things. Innovation is not always what it is cracked up to be. For example, many people may have found the innovative platform game play, mixed with clashing (but innovative!) 2-D characters and 3-D backgrounds of Xenogears, which was one of wildfires examples of a better modern game, frustrating. The difference between the innovations of Xenogears and say Chrono Trigger is the latter’s innovations (i.e. no random battles, and new game plus, multiple endings) were much more significant at the time, and even more so than most modern day innovations (like say the drawing system for example).

Another difference from the games of the SNES era was the Environments. To be put simply, many people simply prefer two-dimensional, storybook like backgrounds, to hyper realistic pre-rendered backgrounds (myself included). It’s not a matter of me being stuck in the past, it’s merely a matter of taste.

The thing that really irks me about Wisdoms editorial though, is his insistance that one game is better than the other. I think this pretty much speaks for itself:

“Chrono Trigger pales in comparison to Xenogears or Final Fantasy VII--it barely beats out FFVIII, and that's only because I really, really despised the combat system in that game.

I know that I should probably just stop now. There is no need for any further rebuttal, especially with credibility destroying comment seen above. He fails to say by what criteria that the above games are “better”, leaving his argument every bit as worthless as he claimed wildfires was.

“ The system had its high points, and I recognize those merits, but the Playstation has consistently produced more innovative, more mature, and more enjoyable games than the Super Nintendo.”

Again, who is Wisdom to say which games were more enjoyable? That is a matter of taste. As for innovation, I don’t think the playstation had much in terms of innovation. Sure, it had Final Fantasy 7 and such, but how was that game at all innovative. They followed the same formula of every other Final Fantasy, the only thing different this time around were the breath taking graphics. While it’s pointless to argue that aspects of the system it’s self were in no way innovative (I.E. stealing the idea of rumbling controllers with analogue sticks from Nintendo, the countless Mario 64 clones), the games themselves were often unoriginal copies of some other crappy game (twisted metal and it’s clones, doom and it’s clones, all those shitty cart clones, crap puzzle games), and the majority of the games were critical failures also, which was certainly not the case with the Super Nintendo.

The point that I am really trying to get across is that modern games are not unquestionably better than games of yore, and that not all people who consider older games to be better are jaded, nostalgia induced retards, both of which were asserted by Wisdom.