The era of NES was wild. I don’t think it is purely kid’s-experience nostalgia although that is certainly a factor. A lot of the language of gaming and the genres that are still in existence in some form today were being created for the first time, mostly from thin air. Wolf3d and Doom were probably the last time that a new “language” for gaming was created in that same way, directly in the mainstream of gaming and outside of niche / experimental games.
Also, the scope was incredible. For no reason. I along with a lot of other people had the experience of playing one level or one screen of an NES game and assuming at first that it was the whole game. No, that is 2% of the game. Why did they make so much game? For no reason? With no particular competition that would cause them to need to invest all the resources into creating this luxuriously massive experience? It can only be love.
Nah, Wolfenstein and Doom were not the last. GTA and TES brought us open world games later on. Max Payne brought us cinema-like adventures. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is just a complete mind fuck never seen before. And you’re forgetting VR, VR is full of unprecedented experiences, from physical action in Beat Saber to immersive story in HL: Alyx to time manipulating Superhot VR. And my personal favourite - No Man’s Sky, it’s just a very unusual game.
I’m not talking about just creating something that hadn’t been seen before. That’s always going to be happening. I’m talking about creating a genre from scratch that didn’t exist at all before.
HL: Alyx does some great stuff but it doesn’t have buttons that do basic concepts that buttons hadn’t done before, in the same way that run/jump/shoot was invented as functions for the A and B buttons in Super Mario, or the inventory screen was invented for Zelda 1. I’m not intending to be critical of the idea of building on new stuff and inventing new paradigms to go on top of it. I’m just saying that the initial creation is a special type of time.
I would actually describe the structure of VR games as a feature that has prevented them from seeing widespread adoption in the same way that the early game consoles got near-universal adoption: They don’t invent a new language. They just try to retrofit the existing languages of first-person video games into their new environment. Maybe there is no new paradigm that’s suitable for VR in a way that would make it groundbreaking and make possible some things that are totally different from “sticking the player in first person into a first person game instead of showing stuff on screen.” Maybe there is and it just hasn’t been invented yet. I don’t know. But it seems like they’re not adding all that much beyond just immersing you in the game world. They’re still looking for that change that happened before from Adventure to Zelda or from Pitfall to Mario.
We know what is possible today. When these old games were new they were quite frankly cutting edge and pioneering what was possible.
You don’t achieve that today even with the most dedicated adherence to retro limitations.
One could argue that the dynamic shadows of the day and night cycle in Sea of Stars were actually kind of breaking new ground in pixel art.
The era of NES was wild. I don’t think it is purely kid’s-experience nostalgia although that is certainly a factor. A lot of the language of gaming and the genres that are still in existence in some form today were being created for the first time, mostly from thin air. Wolf3d and Doom were probably the last time that a new “language” for gaming was created in that same way, directly in the mainstream of gaming and outside of niche / experimental games.
Also, the scope was incredible. For no reason. I along with a lot of other people had the experience of playing one level or one screen of an NES game and assuming at first that it was the whole game. No, that is 2% of the game. Why did they make so much game? For no reason? With no particular competition that would cause them to need to invest all the resources into creating this luxuriously massive experience? It can only be love.
Nah, Wolfenstein and Doom were not the last. GTA and TES brought us open world games later on. Max Payne brought us cinema-like adventures. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is just a complete mind fuck never seen before. And you’re forgetting VR, VR is full of unprecedented experiences, from physical action in Beat Saber to immersive story in HL: Alyx to time manipulating Superhot VR. And my personal favourite - No Man’s Sky, it’s just a very unusual game.
I’m not talking about just creating something that hadn’t been seen before. That’s always going to be happening. I’m talking about creating a genre from scratch that didn’t exist at all before.
HL: Alyx does some great stuff but it doesn’t have buttons that do basic concepts that buttons hadn’t done before, in the same way that run/jump/shoot was invented as functions for the A and B buttons in Super Mario, or the inventory screen was invented for Zelda 1. I’m not intending to be critical of the idea of building on new stuff and inventing new paradigms to go on top of it. I’m just saying that the initial creation is a special type of time.
I would actually describe the structure of VR games as a feature that has prevented them from seeing widespread adoption in the same way that the early game consoles got near-universal adoption: They don’t invent a new language. They just try to retrofit the existing languages of first-person video games into their new environment. Maybe there is no new paradigm that’s suitable for VR in a way that would make it groundbreaking and make possible some things that are totally different from “sticking the player in first person into a first person game instead of showing stuff on screen.” Maybe there is and it just hasn’t been invented yet. I don’t know. But it seems like they’re not adding all that much beyond just immersing you in the game world. They’re still looking for that change that happened before from Adventure to Zelda or from Pitfall to Mario.
You’re wrong.
Glad we got that cleared up lol