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IF OLD GAMES WERE SO BAD THEN WHY DID I LOVE THEM SO MUCH? - by Mr bIFFO

15/3/2018

34 Comments

 
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So, here's a thing. Recently, I've been playing a lot of old games.

Some of them are proper, proper old games - like, from the early-80s. I'd talked about Space Invaders recently, and how much I appreciated its simplicity... but I've spread myself beyond it now and realised how many old games - particularly old arcade games - are similarly good for having the same clarity of vision.

Defender, Pac-Man, Phoenix, Q*Bert, Tempest, Asteroids... all these games have essentially one idea, and one gameplay mechanic, at their core... and they run with it. They're so different from what constitutes a blockbuster game of today, when epics like, say, Grand Theft Auto V are essentially an entire arcade in a single package, lurching from one style of gameplay - driving, skydiving, tennis - to story, and back again.

You get your money's worth to be sure, but they also lack the singular focus that really early arcade games had. It feels like everything these days gets buried beneath layer upon layer of busy work and distraction. Most games are just so over-stuffed, so hard trying to be all things to all people, that they lack personality.

However, what I've found weird in my recent forages into gaming history is that once you get into the home computer era of the Spectrum and Commodore 64, things take a turn for the worse. The simplicity on display in something like Space Invaders suddenly gets replaced by more complex games, which - frankly - were all a bit wonky and challenging for the wrong reasons. 

Whereas in Pac-Man I knew that if I died it was my own fault.... if I die in Jet Set Willy it'll often feels it's happened because the game is going out of its way to spoil my enjoyment. 

So why do I regard my ZX Spectrum as my favourite games system of all time?
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CRASH JUDGEMENT
See, there are a couple of things to consider about gaming in the 80s. Following the games crash which almost consumed Atari, consoles were replaced as the gaming format of choice by computers - and those computers weren't designed with playing games in mind.

However, perhaps the greatest success of those early home computers was in opening up game development to almost anybody. Whereas gaming had been a relatively corporate industry pre-1982 - as it is these days, albeit on a grander scale - during the middle of that decade you had something akin to the dawn of punk music in the mid-to-late-70s.

Punk proved that anybody could pick up a guitar and form a group. You didn't have to be good, you didn't have to be able to sing, or write songs. You simply had to want to be in a band. Similarly, when it came to the ZX Spectrum, and to a lesser extent the Commodore 64, all you needed to make a game was the desire to make a game.

What this resulted in, I'm finding, are games which are far more interesting, unique and idiosyncratic  than the carefully-curated triple-A epics of today. They're scrappy, quirky, and noisy... but mostly always an utter chore to play.

​And yet... despite that, there was something deeper at play through which I formed a connection.
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STARK
The number of Spectrum games which are actually easy to pick up and play is starkly minimal. Even some of the blockbusters of the era are woefully tricky.

I had a crack at Wanted: Monty Mole the other day, and lost all my lives within the first couple of minutes (and, of course, no saves). And the same thing happened again on my next six goes.

Then there are others which are challenging for different reasons; the classic Knight Lore is painfully slow. Way of the Exploding Fist is unresponsive. And I challenge anybody to ever finish The Hobbit, with its bewildering mazes.

There exceptions of course; by keeping it simple, Jetpac remains an arcade-like joy. Manic Miner - though demanding - is surprisingly solid. Skool Daze manages to overcome its fiddliness by rooting you in its familiar setting.

But more often than not, I'd play a game for a few minutes before quitting in a huff, asking how I ever became a video games fan in the first place. I mean, when I think back... I'm not sure I can name a single game from the 1980s that I ever actually finished.

Yet somehow, at the time, I still kept playing, still kept buying them - waiting for that moment where games caught up with what I knew they could be. But more than that, I kept playing because games back then offered me something that we all need; connection.
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BIG GAME HUNTER
Big games - the modern equivalent of your Underwurldes and Ant Attacks - are no longer interested in pursuing any one individual's personal vision. 

Much as I appreciate the grand, widescreen, nature of something like Assassin's Creed: Origins, it's an incredibly safe game, more interested in broad appeal than unbridled creativity. That's not a bad thing per se - I mean, it's great that games are more popular than ever, better value for money than ever, and more accessible and playable... but they're just not as compelling for me.

I believe that the singular nature of 80s game design made games a much more personal experience. Whereas contemporary games are the product of huge teams and box-ticking, back then it was as much about forming a relationship between the player and the one or two people who created the game.

The personality of the games' creators shone through, and that is, I think, why I got hooked on games which were often - objectively speaking - a mess. You had no senior producers overseeing the development, no teams of play-testers, no corporate strategy - just games which were whatever the creators wanted them to be. There was no watering-down.

And that, I think, spoke to me, and inspired me, and taught me that if you want something that is true and raw and honest and truthful... you can't get that from creating things by committee. You might not get an end product that is "perfect", but you'll get something that's far more interesting and real. While they might not know it consciously, the consumers of that product will know it on a much deeper, primal, instinctive level.

Just as I appreciate people being themselves - even if the real them might be more challenging than somebody who feels a need to be liked by everybody - so I prefer games which are exposed and imperfect, warts and all. 
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34 Comments
Dan Whitehead
15/3/2018 11:07:17 am

What I've always found is that those early games, especially from the British home computer explosion of the early-to-mid 1980s, were made by people who were still figuring out what a "game" could be. There was no dogmatic insistence on the right way to design or balance the gameplay experience, it was still more art (or guesswork) than science, and as a result a lot of it just didn't work, or rather it worked at that time and place, but without context now just seems baffling.

I also think we, as gamers/consumers, were a lot more open-minded for the same reason. We were just excited to have GAMES, and would (in my experience) give pretty much anything a go if it looked cool, or interesting, or fun. There were also a lot less demands on our attention and time, so when you got a new game you generally kept plugging away at it for a long time, even if you never got very far. Compare that to today, when there are games everywhere you look, not to mention social media and other "platforms" that use game-style metrics and systems to keep you hooked. And yet the core idea of what games can and should do has become much narrower, in the commercial sphere at least. Very few developers will come up with their own control scheme these days, or experiment with new ways of displaying the game world. Partly this is down to progress - in-game cameras have made the need for isometric or rotating viewpoints redundant - but they also mean that developers no longer need to think their way around basic problems of movement and feedback, because so much of that stuff is baked into off-the-peg game engines. That's why you get so many games that feel the same, and experiences that deviate only slightly from an expected norm. The games that don't tend to be quirky indie stuff, or get ripped to shreds by angry players who claim any change from the expected experience is "broken".

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Craig Anderson link
15/3/2018 11:19:51 am

Actually, you're right - I also cannot remember finishing ANY Spectrum game, ever. I remember getting through the YS demo version of Dan Dare 3 and seeing a message saying something like "Thanks for playing the demo - now buy the full game" but have no recollection of ever completing a full game.

Bear in mind that a lot of them had no end - Daley Thompsons Decathlon, for example, just kept going and going with no chance of basking in medally glory.

Manic Miner only had a death screen, not a "Woohoo! You're out of the mine!" one.

Horace never reached "I'm actually a bit full now" status.

I don't think that most of the early games were complete-able

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Hamptonoid
15/3/2018 01:15:19 pm

I think you're right. I only ever competed games when I cheated, but that didn't lessen my enjoyment of them. I guess some arcade game ports were only really possible that way (like feeding more coins in).

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CdrJameson link
15/3/2018 01:57:46 pm

The very idea of 'completing' or 'finishing' a game was not even settled back then, so it's not that common. In the arcades you never finished a game, just got a high score. The only real games you could run out of were text adventures, so it was something of an innovation to complete an arcade game at all.

Scott C
16/3/2018 09:39:37 pm

Indeed, I found out recently that the first game I "completed" was Ghostbusters on the ZX Spectrum. I didn't realise this at the time because when the game is completed it simply goes back to the beginning, but with you given more cash to buy different gear at the start of the new game.

Omniro
15/3/2018 03:05:09 pm

I remember there being a certain point around mid 90s where I realised this had changed. I then expected to complete a game, whereas prior to that the idea of completing was so unlikely that it wasn't even a goal.

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Dan Whitehead
15/3/2018 04:50:12 pm

Manic Miner did have a final screen. It was called The FInal Barrier, and showed Willy's house on the surface. Once you reached the exit (which turned into a fish and a knife, for some reason) Willy appeared in front of his house. Admittedly there was no congratulations message, and the game immediately started over again, but it did have a "Woohoo! You're out of the mine!" moment.

Look: https://youtu.be/BgUzteADsRI?t=22m1s

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Hamptonoid
16/3/2018 11:46:32 pm

My early favourite games were, I think, a mix. I remember fondly dizzy, Rick dangerous, exile, creatures...they all had a purpose, and (to me) a reason to finish them. I could never have completed e.g. Dizzy without cheating (one life!), but for me, it was more fun cheating to finish a game rather than leaving it half done.
Other games e.g. spy vs. spy, blue max, barbarian were great fun to play without a defined "end".
But this is probably much later than the article refers to, so point taken (and well made)

Monkeymanbob
15/3/2018 11:21:17 am

Great article, can't help but agree with all that you've written.
The personality in not just the games but the box art and inlay blurbs was something I have a lot of affection for, (apart from Ultimate the scamming bastards). Also think the lack of British identity in games is a real loss too.

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Mark M
15/3/2018 01:45:48 pm

Box art - now much less of a "thing" given so many sales are digital. Bob Wakelin was a genius.

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Mark M
15/3/2018 11:31:00 am

I had an Amstrad CPC but used to play on my mate's Speccy a lot. You could tell how infuriating a lot of the early games were by the mountain of joysticks he went through. Let's just say patience wasn't his forté.

Definitely agree that there's a case of rose-tinted specs with the early titles but I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing the likes of Harrier Attack and Manic Miner on the CPC. Things did improve massively later on to be fair and I can think of a lot of games I'm still happy to pick up and play.

I think you're on to something with the singular purpose comment. Some modern games can get to the point where they're almost overwhelming. Having 27 quests open simultaneously is a fuggin' nightmare for a completionist freak like me.

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QuackAttack
15/3/2018 11:38:51 am

Purity. It’s purity that we’ve lost.

The last time I found it in a game was Bust-A-Move2 on the first PlayStation. This game is itself an arcade conversion and there’s definitely something in what you say about arcade games being simple. I suppose they are evolved to take money in exchange for player satisfaction and the most direct (“pure”) means of doing so will result in the most satisfying gameplay and greatest earnings for the coin-op company.

Actually I just played Bubble Bubble on the PS4 with my wife. Why would I return to this game after decades on a modern console capable of letting me actually walk around inside games with VR? Why does my wife like playing it? Because it’s pure.

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MENTLIST
15/3/2018 12:56:07 pm

There's a surprisingly large amount of purity in mobile games these days, if you find the right ones.

Threes is as pure, simple and satisying an experience as one could wish for in the history of gaming (excepting that it's been cloned to hell and back since release).

I believe amongst the first of the cloners was a company called Ketchapp, who made 2048, but they've done tons and tons of simple-concept games, which are generally released free, but ad-supported. In particular one called Ballz, which is like a one-shot Breakout, but you gradually get more and more balls to fire is incredibly absorbing.

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DEAN
15/3/2018 12:12:37 pm

My brother had a Spectrum and despite being enthralled with it, I never particularly liked it. I thought Bombjack was superb. And like you, I was excited by the potential of what gaming could be.

Next I had my own C64 which I really liked a lot - Bruce Lee is probably the first game I ever completed and I have very fond memories of playing it.

For my money, gaming really started with the NES - that's when all the planets were in their correct alignment and gaming absolutely positively felt into place - Nintendo brought order and to this day I'm absolutely stuck in a rut of loving, worshiping and adoring the NES and Gameboy and that's okay.

BUT you like people to just be themselves?
I'm 50/50 on that. We should at least try and be civil, right? But then knowing somebody's arsehole quotient upfront is handy and can save a lot of 'shit'.

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Starbuck
16/3/2018 12:11:01 am

Bruce Lee was awesome. Finished the Spectrum version. It captured the atmosphere of the envuenviron well, and the AI was convincing. Loved it!

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MENTALIST
15/3/2018 12:39:34 pm

"once you get into the home computer era of the Spectrum and Commodore 64, things take a turn for the worse"

This is pretty much the same as your complaints about the N64 era. In the 80s home computers, games were trying to transform between 3 minute 10p arcade experiences and things you'd spend hours doing sat at home. The format was finding its feet, until the Console-led late 8-bit and early 16 bit eras where everything came together.

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Phil
15/3/2018 12:48:44 pm

The only game I really recall finishing on the Spectrum was the first Robocop - only to be dismayed that, on finishing the last level, the game just started over.

Groundhog Robocop.

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Hamptonoid
15/3/2018 01:01:22 pm

Have you played Lumo? That is a brilliant homage to ye olden games. It straddles the line between brilliant and frustrating perfectly. There's even an option to play it with limited lives!

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Mrtankthreat
15/3/2018 01:37:32 pm

Having read this article the one question that pops in my mind is, why didn't you like Dark Souls again?

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Ste Pickford
15/3/2018 01:45:56 pm

The arcade / spectrum comparison is interesting, although slightly unfair, as arcade games were produced in a very different commercial environment.

As I understand it, coin-ops would typically be deployed in certain 'test arcades' when they were first completed, and measured against a very simple metric - how many coins were collected in the money box at the end of a week. If the coin-drop figures weren't high enough, the developers would keep working on the game, changing things, improving things, etc., and release a new version. This cycle would continue until the coin-drop figures were high enough to justify the cost of giving the game a wider release. Some games probably never got past this phase - they didn't make enough money in the test arcades, so never got properly released, and probably don't exist in any form today.

This brutal trial-by-commerce ensured that almost all arcade games had a pretty high level of playability, could be instantly understood, and were fun enough to keep you coming back.

With home computer games they were written then published, and the only real significant user testing came after release, when it was too late to make any changes. It all seems crazy and quite unprofessional now, and that's true, but I suspect arcade games of the same era would be just as awkward and unplayable if they were released and published in the same way, without the brutal real-money test process they went through.

And 'finishing' a game wasn't quite such a big thing back then either. There were some games you expected to finish, like text adventures, and some arcade games with endings (Manic Miner, etc.), but there wasn't really the expectation that everyone (or even most) people who bought a game would finish it. We were copying the way arcade games worked where the ending of a game was often something legendary, that although technically possible, you didn't expect to see. You might hear a rumour of somebody at an arcade in the next city who'd completed Ghosts 'n' Goblins for example, and you might believe it was true, but it wasn't something you'd ever expect to see with your own eyes.

It was later, in the console era, that the idea of expecting to be able to complete every game you bought become a common one.

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Mrtankthreat
15/3/2018 02:04:00 pm

"If old games are so bad then why did I love them so much?"

Eh, because they were the only ones available?

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Nikki
15/3/2018 02:59:27 pm

I remember completing 4 spectrum games.

Turbo Outrun

Some hacking game about making a satelite explode, which was just a load of logic puzzles. I seem to remember it being called "Hacker" but looking it up on YouTube, that was a different game.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

And, Barbarian. Which was so easy I could literally complete it with my eyes closed.

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Mark M
15/3/2018 03:13:35 pm

Ahhh but the fun in Barbarian was 2-player. I still remember most of the moves despite not being able to recall what I had for lunch yesterday...

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Sonicshrimp
16/3/2018 09:49:23 am

You might be able to help me here. I’m 32 and very very first gaming memory was a game that involved a joystick and what looked like a plastic piece of paper, both plugged into a box with keys. The game that I loved was when I was a man with a sword, fighting another man with a sword and if I randomly played with the joystick then occasionally I could get me man to spin around , sword aloft, and swipe of the other bugger’s head. The BEST part was then a small, yoda-like, thing would come and drag off the head (or body I don’t remember) whilst me man celebrated. Gold. Ps it was in colour. Was this barbarian?

Linda Lusardi
16/3/2018 11:29:22 pm

Yes

Wolf
16/3/2018 11:51:16 pm

Let me tell you something. You were rubbish at barbarian and you got lucky when you completed it.

《Pushes goblin over and storms out》

Kelvin Green link
15/3/2018 04:02:22 pm

The last game I played that felt like an "old" game as you describe it here, Biffo, was Katamari Damacy on the PS2. It was made by a team of people at Namco, but it felt like the sort of basic gameplay concept you'd get from the bedroom coders of the past, and -- obvious technological advances aside -- it's the kind of thing I would not be surprised to see being sold for £2.99 on tape.

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Scott watson
15/3/2018 06:32:23 pm

Yeh I don’t remember completing any spectrum games either.The next system I got was a Sega master system and it was quite revolutionary to me at the time to think oh I can actually finish these games

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James Walker link
15/3/2018 11:55:45 pm

I completed loads of games in the 80s.

Because I'm awesome.

So there.

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Mark M
15/3/2018 11:59:57 pm

Typing in pokes doesn't make you awesome. :P

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Starbuck
16/3/2018 12:13:13 am

Wanted: Monty Mole was hardcore to the point of cruelty. Those randomly-timed crushers - ugh! Too stressful.

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PS1Snake
16/3/2018 12:13:30 am

I think for a lot of people, the games of their childhood end up being their all-time favourites. And a lot of modern games these are less-game and more cinematic experiences ie the gaming side feels tacked on. And you have to invest a lot more to get the complete experience. Take FFXV, for example, the player has to purchase several different pieces of content to fully understand what is going on.

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Paul Taylor
16/3/2018 01:08:14 am

The thing is all these games are intractably merged with our memories of the joy and wonder of being children. The 80s was a miraculous time to be a kid and nothing takes me back there like old speccy and c64 games. Playing them now, very few of them are interesting except as hits of nostalgia. (There are exceptions - I still play Paradroid and Uridium; Andrew Braybrook is a genius)

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Craig Grannell link
18/3/2018 10:27:26 am

As a couple of others here have hinted at, the soul of old-school gaming largely survives intact on mobile, in countless indie titles. Sure, you’re not down in the guts of the machine, figuring out how to make a character move, but you do have that sense of experimentation and uniqueness that’s more often lacking elsewhere. Natch, a great many people dismiss mobile entirely, though, because it’s not “proper gaming” – and that even includes those pining for the good old days.

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