Old school games
The Boston Globe's Sunday edition today has a piece penned by Geoff Edgers called "The Atari comeback." It talks about the return of Atari 2600 "homebrew" games, Activision compilations published for new consoles and computers, and even JAKKS Pacific's Atari 2600 joystick, which Bonnie and the kids got me for a birthday present last year.
A game designer interviewed for the piece notes that "the design was so primitive...[game developers had to] work and refine gameplay." His point is, old video games looked like crap, so gameplay became of paramount importance.
That's true, to a certain extent, but I don't think that's all of it. There's no question that at least a few old-school video game designers honed their skills to a fine art, but I think that you can count them on a couple of hands. Nostalgia is a big part of the draw for many of us to download MacMAME or to pick up anthologies of classic Atari 2600 games -- relieving the days of our youth with skinny leather ties and shoulder pad-enhanced jackets. The games are primitive, both in their look and their play.
The thing is, I think that gameplay has come a long way in the decades since the 2600 made its debut.
Anyone who's spent more than a few minutes with a modern platformer or strategy game can readily attest to their relative depth and breadth compared to, say, Pitfall or Yar's Revenge. The wonderful thing about those olde games, however, is instant gratification.
You're in and you're out in five or ten minutes, you get the high score or whatever, and you start over again. Comparatively, the games that I'm buying for my PS2 and GameCube take hours to play through. Hell, Bob's still playing through Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast, and hasn't unlocked everything yet.
There are at least a few game companies that make an effort to recapture the fun of those older games with updated graphics and gameplay. The most recent example of that which comes to mind is ThinkTanks from Bravetree and GarageGames. Just a fabulous little 3D action game which takes what's popular about online arena games like Unreal Tournament and mixes them with gameplay that's more reminiscent of Combat for the Atari 2600.
I'm happy to see this design theory make a full circle and come back into play. I don't expect it'll be a new trend or anything more than a curiosity, but it makes my heart warm to see game designers who have the same sort of love for these old games that so many of us of a certain age do.