Ben-DutkaEvery time you turn around these days, another retro game gets announced.
I'm just wondering one thing: Why now? What's with the recent explosion of old-school-like productions? All of a sudden, the digital world is loaded with games like Hotline Miami , OlliOlli , Terraria , and others. Some, like Terraria , only look old-fashioned and in fact offer plenty of modern depth. Others, such as Hotline Miami , really aren't much different than the games we had a quarter-century ago.
But maybe I just answered my own question: These are digital offerings, and the digital world has allowed smaller developers to step up and give us lower-budget productions. Low-budget only translated to "crap" in the past, but retro isn't "crap." It's outdated visuals that hold a huge amount of nostalgic value for an ever-aging gaming population. That's probably the other reason: As gamers grow up and start to assume adult responsibilities, they quickly become wistful concerning their lost childhood. Such titles go a long way to bringing back those warm, fuzzy memories.
Lastly, I have to say that games from yesteryear offered entirely different interactive experiences. I'm not saying they were better; I'm merely saying they were different. Nothing that comes out today really feels like Contra , for example. Therefore, there may always be room for the "old" games, simply because they offer a unique form of entertainment that very nearly disappeared.
What do you think?
Oh God, the PS4 update makes it so I can't log into the Store because my region (America) isn't good enough.
Ahem, back to the topic. Retro is big just because gamers are all old and development has finally caught up with that. I'm hoping that eventually translates to new JRPGs that are in it for more than a nostalgic trip.
It isn't just the old gameplay and graphics that are big, even something like Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon was a smash success thanks to us 80s babies. I wanna see that become a franchise too.
80's action heros rule these wussy boy 2000 heros.
My dad is my hero. Takes your heroes to town.
Glad to see you older folk getting some much deserved blasts of the past.
I think this retro wave (and it's indeed enormous!) is primarily due to the new low-performance platforms (smartphones and tablets). With that a whole new huge market opened up where low budget, retro style games on much lesser performance hardware became the rule rather than the exception.
This has given small developers a huge momentum, something that dribbled down also onto the other, more capable platforms, and in the end it's us, the gamers, who are the winners, with a wider selection of games than ever.
And a healthy thriving developer environment that recruits new talents.
Last edited by Beamboom on 2/5/2014 3:13:28 AM
I Heard somewhere real physical new NES games are being made. I'll have to check my sources and get back to this. I believe it was IGN.
Retro games have been big ever since Steam started the Greenlight program, which allows the community to help push small, indie projects into the limelight, and those that do well on Steam generate enough revenue to get ports to the consoles. Sony not being massive dipsticks about indie development the way MS has certainly has helped as well.