Good games that aged badly.

[Gleebergloben123]

Games don't age.

Yes, they do.

No, we do. A good game is always a good game, and the converse.

No,we age as do games.

[strat]

Any number of games (classic RPGs in particular come to mind) where your fate is subject to a random number generator instead of skill/strategy.

A lot of old console RPGs feel more like timewasters than they did 30 years ago. Dragon Quest/Warrior on FC/NES has one character and DQII-IV don't even let you select commands with your party members - that got fixed in their remakes on later gen consoles. In the first Final Fantasy, your attack is wasted if it lands on a dead enemy. Many later RPGs have enemies visible on the map and battles can be avoided. This seems like an admission that older genre staples, like high encounter rates and difficulty running from battles were simply wasting the player's time to make the game seem longer.

Some RPGs can be beaten with minimal leveling up (Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG are good examples) but most of them require some arbitrary grinding to beat at all.

In general, saying a game "aged" doesn't mean anything. Super Mario Bros. 3 makes the first one look more primitive, but they're both still fun to play in different ways. Mario 3 is a masterpiece to savior, but SMB has this immediate, rip-through quality every following Mario game lacks. Mario 64's camera might suck, but I'd still rather play it than Mario Sunshine. I'd probably prefer OOT over the later 3D Zeldas. And let's not even go into how the NES Megaman games are much better than Megaman X5 and 6.

[djc]

Alone in the Dark