Is this fun?
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| As videogames grow older and older, more and more folks yearn longingly for the days when things were simple, exciting, and altogether new. The days when your hand-drawn maps were superior to anything provided by Nintendo, and when a complete lack of clarity or direction of where to go next was seen as
an asset to adventure; not a detriment. As a die hard fan of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and many other games that started in the late 80's, I still get as much of a kick out of tossing bombs at unknown rock formations and fighting Bahamut today as I did when I was four or five. Nostalgia works wonders when
replaying games from a more simple time, and I realized I had to ask myself whether these games are legitimately fun, or if my happiness was, in actuality, simply my own gilded ideas of a time that once was.
I first realized that rose-colored glasses might be obstructing my view while talking to a friend who had never played the original Zelda. No matter how hard I tried to convey how wonderful the sense of adventure and exploration was, especially for a title in the 80's, he just didn't seem to get it. It seemed like he really had to be there to get the same pleasure from needlessly burning bushes, bombing walls, and tossing meat at grumbling henchmen that make little sense. Even though he enjoyed the games from A Link to the Past on, he complained about the lack of structure and clear objectives and questioned how he was supposed to know how to find the first dungeon, let alone know to bomb the third wall from the left in the desert in order to get a heart container. This information seemed to be almost ingrained within me as a gamer, and I never realized how of my enjoyment of the game I might have to chalk up to nostalgia, instead of it being something that most would see as "fun."
You have no idea how terrifying this is.
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| Playing Metroid for the first time this summer opened my eyes to how badly some classic games have aged. While I thoroughly enjoyed my romp around Crateria and the like, it felt like the only true challenge in the game came from a lack of a map, explanations of what to do, and shoddy controls. Once I managed to not die jumping from place to place, vowed to shoot every door as much as humanly possible, and broke down and found a map online, the game seemed less like a grand trek and more like a rather dull and awkwardly colored spelunking adventure gone awry. It was then that I realized that this might be how other people feel now playing games that I loved as a kid. That isn't to say that the game wasn't immersive, worthwhile, or an important part of videogame history, just that it might not be as golden as many of us might think.
But even if Metroid seemed to miss the point for me 20 years later, the fact that I still saw it as an immersive (if flawed) adventure is still important, isn't it? To go on an adventure, one that is supposed to deeply immerse us in an alternate universe, is the overall goal of many (if not all) RPGs. Is it really the retro games' fault that gamers nowadays are spoiled with games that tell us what to do, where to shoot rockets at, and who to feed meat to? As games have progressed over the years, they have become (on a whole) more clear and balanced, so the chances of you killing the same monsters over and over again for about three hours in order to buy new spells for your party (ahem, FF1) tend to become a bit more slim. That's not to say that "hardcore" titles don't emerge all the time (Etrian Odyssey, Dracula X Chronicles, every Megaman game, etc.), just that games on a whole have become significantly better at holding new gamers' hands and making their needs much clearer.
In the end, I still think that many of my "golden" games hold up over time. That’s not to say that they don't have their problems or shortcomings (what games from 20+ years ago don't?), but there are still an overwhelming amount of positives that outweigh the negatives. With that said, there are certainly titles are certainly more gilded than golden, and it all comes down to who is playing it. If you're the kind of person that can appreciate the non-linearity of many early RPGs and excuse some minor hiccups in battle systems and difficulty, there's a whole world of splendid games that await you from gaming's past. Of course there is a monumental pile of crap out there as well, but if you can wade through it I'm sure you can find some wonderfully quaint adventures that are well worth your time. While some games have obviously aged better than others (and may need a dash of nostalgia for some to enjoy properly), with a little bit of work, most newcomers today can enjoy many classics for the first time if they give them a fair shot (and don't mind a few deaths).
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