Posted by Morpork at August 20th, 2008

I have a fascination for old games. Some of them like Star Control 2 and KGB because I played them while I was young. Some like XCOM because veteran gamers worship them and I heard so much of them I finally gave them a whirl, some 10+ years after they were made. I wouldn’t get on my knees and worship the holy 5ΒΌ-inch magnetic halo for being artifacts harbingering bliss on earth but the games are remarkable. More than what you can say for modern games which have a simple trend: Longer development time, greater development cost, less content.

Old games do tend to have a common trait. They are Hard. Perhaps a better way of putting it is the game does a good job of killing you. Just think of Hugo and the number of ways you can break the game. Have an elephant sit on the stream. Drop your matches into the river. Fall into a 2D cliff. Really.

Perhaps the difference between old and modern games is that after that happens, you are more compelled to start over than thrash your keyboard.*

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* This doesn’t apply to everthing. Metal Gear 1 and Metal Gear 2 are both annoying I think. Dropping players to the beginning and forcing them to go through all the traps again without warning is not cool.