The Joys of (Re)Discovering Old Video Games
How many of you are older gamers?
How many of you have grown up on the old Super Nintendo, or even the very original Nintendo? How many of you reading this have grown up with the old Atari 2600, or an ADAM computer, playing video games when the concept was at its infancy?
Ok, not even I go that far back, but I remember when I was three years old, my parents took me to Toys "R" Us and bought me a brand new Nintendo Entertainment System (NES to some, Famicom to others), and from that day forward I had become a soldier in the army of interactive video game players. Games were simple back then, though they weren't nearly as simple as the games of the '70s, which created for a very magical experience. And then eventually I moved up to the Super Nintendo, the PlayStation, and forward into today's video game generation -- a new generation of video games that I could never imagine being possible ten or twenty years ago.
Yet some of the fondest games in my memory are in the past. They're back in the year 2000, or perhaps even years before this. There are some games that I can play forever, and they are games that have been made long ago, and we've all moved on past them.
The funny story behind this, however, is that game critics feel the same way. The highest-rated video games of all time are not the big blockbusters of the last few years. Despite the widespread commercial and ciritical success of the later Call of Duty games, the Halo franchise, God of War, etc., a number of critics and bodies regard The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to be the greatest video game made, and it was released in 1998. In twelve years, no game has dethroned it in the eyes of many, even when video games have become more interactive, intricate, and involved.
And when we go back and play some of our favorite games, we get that sense that we know why the critics feel the way they feel. There are some video games that are just timeless, and one of the greatest feelings for a gamer is to be able to find an old copy of one of their favorite games and be able to pop it in and play it once again for old time's sake. Time makes the game seem new to us again, yet at the same time these old titles remain familiar to our senses. I am reminded of when I bought the remake of my favorite game, Final Fantasy Tactics, and I played it again for the first time in years. I just couldn't put the game down. I spent a lot of my childhood conquering that game over and over again, and nostalgia crashed over me like a tidal wave. I used to listen to specific CDs or do other things when I played that game, and I found myself associating old artists and albums with that game (it was far too mixed for Tactics, but I had a Final Fantasy IV playthrough listening to nothing but Vertical Horizon's Everything You Want, so whenever I hear a track from that album, my mind immediately goes to FF4). It becomes no wonder at all that game designers are going back to the roots of old video games, either to refresh established franchises with a new fusion of old and new or for kicks and little easter eggs and the like.
But I actually wrote this article with something very different in mind. This article was originally inspired not through me finding some old video game I had thought lost and had the pleasure of exploring again, but of playing a game that I missed when it first game out, but finally had the chance to discover what the hype was all about all those years ago.
Neverwinter Nights was released in 2002, and back in the day I had only heard about the game briefly, but I had never actually played it. In fact, I didn't even have an interest in the game. But eight years later I decided to buy it and give it a shot. And what I found was like having discovered an old friend. The graphic style and ambience of the game were very familiar to me, and having played BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic franchise, I was very familiar with the overall gameplay style. Yet this game was a very brand new game to me, and even though the game as eight years old, I found myself preferring it over games made only months before it. I have already beaten in once, and I've downloaded a plethora of fan-made modules which I am slowly playing through -- eight years after most of the world has finished this game completely. I've always been one for questioning ratings, but there are some games that have earned their prestige, and even years later the games are as good as they've always been -- and NWN was one of them.
I've had a similar experience with EarthBound, but the details are a little different. When I was younger, I had read about this game and I've seen it played in flea markets and the like, and I've always wanted it. The problem was that because the game came in such a huge package and included the player's guide and such, EarthBound was typically more expensive than the usual SNES game and my parents couldn't ever really afford to buy me it on a whim. So years went by and I had moved up in the systems world, more or less forgetting about EarthBound. Then one day during 2005 or 2006, my cousin and I managed to find a copy of this game sitting at one of his relative's houses with an ond SNES. How did it end up there? I can't say for certain. However, we both still had functioning SNES consoles of our own, so we borrowed the game, and at long last we were able to play through an RPG that eluded the both of us throughout most of our lives (up until that point anyway). The end result? We were rolling on the floor laughing at the hilarity that made EarthBound so famous. And while I wasn't able to complete the game myself, I watched him finish it and I was happy to have been a part of it. This was another joyous disocvery that was otherwise well past its prime and archived away from the eyes and minds of most players. It took us some time, but we finally got a chance to bring a classic to life for ourselves.
There are a lot of new, younger gamers who have been raised on a new quality of games, and many of you may be on this site, reading this very blog right now. Going back into the past, delving into a video game generation cruder than the one you've first entered into game in is a challenge, and it's a challenge that most may not truly be able to comprehend. Despite the great love for the old Atari 2600, I can't play most Atari games (like the Atarti collections with the mass of 2600 titles) because I don't get the point, they bore me to death, and/or I don't find the early menalities in gameplay and enjoyment (born of the 2600's technical limitations) engaging or interesting in the least. Maybe I could if I started with the 2600? But I also believe otherwise, because the video game jump between the Atari 2600 and the Family Computer (NES) was the most drastic jump in video game media since the jump from pinball tables to the Odyssey, and after the NES video game media didn't shift or change so much as evolve from its crude roots.
Either way, I challenge gamers young and old to try to beat that mentality. For the new year, I challenge gamers to find games a generation old or more that have been lauded by critics and the general public alike, and give them a shot. Go discover -- or rediscover -- some old video games and play through them. Good quality may age, but there are games that we've paseed by that have been long since beaten and catalogued that will still surprise you and give you hours of fun. I challenge you to find one of those games just like I did this year, and give them a shot for 2011. You won't be disappointed.
Happy New Year, everyone. I hope 2011 works out well for you.
