Kotaku 
Enter your username and password.
Denver, 6:57 AM
Sun Nov 29
8 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip us:
Editor-In-Chief:
Brian Crecente
| AIM | Twitter
Deputy Editor:
Stephen Totilo
| AIM | Twitter
Senior Editor:
Michael McWhertor
| AIM | Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor, Japan:
Brian Ashcraft
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editor, East Coast:
Michael Fahey
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editor, Oceania:
Luke Plunkett
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editor, Weekends:
Owen Good
| AIM | Twitter
Correspondent, San Francisco:
AJ Glasser
| AIM | Twitter
Columnist:
Leigh Alexander
Columnist:
Tim Rogers
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/25/09
I wish I had an N64 right now...and a tv to hook it up to. I would play the hell out of that game...again.
11/25/09
Space Panic was in the arcades one year before Donkey Kong.
11/25/09
12:32 AM
Patenting jumping is ridiculous.
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
Super Mr. Video World
Mr. Video's Cement Factory
Mr. Video is Missing!
Mr. Video & Wr. Video
Mr. Video Party
Paper Mr. Video
Super Mr. Video Advance 4: Super Mr. Video 3
And my personal favorite:
Dr. Mr. Video
11/25/09
@KaneRobot: Might I add you forgot a title.
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
I'm sure by saying this I'm going to skew the response I'd normally get, since I'm sure people will be all defensive about this game, but...really?
Never got that Mario 64. It was a fun game but hardly "as close to a perfect game as you're going to get." Non-2D Mario games have never done much for me. I'll gladly take NSMB or even the older SMB3 or SMW over 64.
11/25/09
11/25/09
Games are just a a medium of entertainment that does not age well. A movie from 20 or 30 years ago that was a classic then can obviously still be a classic now, but I know that I have trouble revisiting even some games from the last generation of consoles that were my favorites for fear of spoiling my memories of them, now that I've played games like Bioshock and Modern Warfare 2.
I know lots of people will disagree with me and perhaps bring up how popular retro games are these days as a result of XBLA and PSN and all that but that's not really a fair judgement. For one, nobody would pay full price for those games like they used to. Two, they have many more new features. Look at Shadow Complex: old-school gameplay, for sure, but married to modern graphics, modern controls, modern storytelling. As I said before, not even comparable.
Games, more so than any other medium, are built on the achievements of their predecessors, and that really leads to the dual truth that we (and of course game developers, more importantly) must always look back to see what we can learn from past mistakes and failures in games, but we cannot ever really declare any game "the best ever".
Wow, I've just done more writing on a gaming website than I have for real life in the last few weeks and I'm supposed to be applying to college...
11/25/09
11/25/09
For some people, many of the old cinematic classics just look boring. Im not a fan of old movies, they just dont do it for me. And then there are movies from the 80s and 90s that i loved when they were new that not only do i think they pale in comparison to what modern film can do, but they are also no longer watchable for me. Some of its from being in my mid to late 20s compared to being a 6 yr old, and some of that stems from being jaded towards so many forms of entertainment due to heavy consumption.
I can think of examples of this in television, music, and sometimes even comic books. In contrast to your comment, ive experienced this even less with video games than any other form of entertainment.
When i was a kid, cartoons like x-men, spider-man, and batman were absolutely the best cartoons ever created in the history of time. I recently got back into cartoons, and caught some of the old shows on disney xd. Man was i disappointed, and i got some of my friends to watch it that responded the same way. Ive warned others to stay away from their childhood favorites if they want to remember them fondly. The thing is, most of these guys rarely watch modern cartoons, so the new stuff hasnt affected how they view the old (as it had in my case).
But with mario 64, i still hold it in high regards. Of course it doesnt impact me like it did when i was 13, but i still consider it one of the best experiences in gaming.
I dunno if its because im a fanboy for videogames or what (although many i talk to feel the same way as i do about the classics).
But in summary lol, i disagree.
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
NA 15 November 1996 -Tomb Raider
JP June 23, 1996
NA September 26, 1996
PAL March 1, 1997 -Mario 64
#speakup
11/25/09
as far as the movie response goes, yes of course there are many movies that were classics in their time that have aged very poorly. and i'm sure we can admit this is true for many games as well. my point was, whereas there are some movies that don't need impressive special effects to help them become classics, games are by their very nature defined by how we interact with them, either through the environment they create (and how well it is created -- let's face it, graphics are very important) and how well they control.
Let me put it this way: a movie like Die Hard, which is widely considered to be an action movie classic, is still completely watchable today. Live Free or Die Hard, which came out just a few years ago and as a result had all the benefits of modern CGI and conventional special effects, was in a sense "bigger, badder and more exciting" in every way than the original. It still had the same formula, the same over the top action and effects, and the same one liners, but people generally agreed it wasn't as good as the original, right?
Now let's look at a game like The Legend of Zelda. The original, or if you want, even A Link To The Past, are both nearly universally recognized as groundbreaking games that were the best of their time. Yet when Ocarina of Time came out, despite being more or less the exact same plot, setting, and formulaic outline of gameplay, was still lauded as one of the best games of it's time, rather than regarded as lesser than the originals. Why? Because of the graphical advances, and the way we interacted with the setting. I'm not saying we shouldn't regard OoT as a classic, it absolutely is, but the advancements in technology play a much larger role in how we regard video games than in how we do movies and TV.
I think the biggest reason we still love these old games is our sense of nostalgia for them, so that we can overlook what modern games have improved on in them.
Even if those 'classic' games were so vastly superior to their day's counterparts and were so ahead of their time, which I agree that they truly were, if I put nostalgia aside and look at it objectively, I'd much rather play Half-Life 2 than Doom.
Maybe I'm being too one sided about this. I'm not saying we should discard all the old games and never play them again. There's still fun to be had, they still have great merits. I mean I still play tetris on my game boy color sometimes. I just strongly feel that nostalgia is most often the deciding factor when looking at old games, and I don't know how fair that is.
Please though, continue this discussion! It's very interesting to me, and clearly we've touched on a subject that creates strong opinions in many people. Maybe this will get promoted by someone a little higher up, or we can open this discussion again in a weekend talk among yourselves?
#speakup
11/26/09
#speakup
11/26/09
what im saying is that if you compare return of the jedi's effects to episode 3's, its not the same impact as going from top down control to actually being able to freely roam around a ranch and ride a horse until the sun goes down.
the jump from 2d to 3d is like nothing else any other media has had.
another thing is that 2d games from certain areas hold up well. only problem with some people is that you have to have a certain mindset to enjoy them.
nostalgia doesnt always play a factor in this, sometimes its simply taste. i think thats why i was enjoying 2d ds games and 2.5d psp games more than my 360 for awhile, i just enjoy the genres that much. or howabout me playing bikermice from mars for the snes for the first time some months ago and being hooked? nostalgia wouldnt play into that because a) i hated the show, and b) i never played the game as a kid.
if you tried to play a game from the atari 2600 era, youd probably struggle with it unless youre going off nostalgia, but many people can manage nes games, and super nes/genesis games are mostly playable for a wide variety of people - newcomers and veterans alike. its because of the graphics really. id probably compare atari 2600 to ps1, nes to ps2, and snes to ps3.
going back to a polygonal ps1 game, especially if you didnt play it when it was newer, is a difficult task. i dont know how you have a hard time going back to last gen even. unless the games were ugly to begin with, i have no problem playing games from that era. thats exactly how i am about the master system/nes games. and now were at a point where 3d looks pretty solid, so i dont think many will cringe at 360's graphics until we go the next phase (lol whats that? holographic?), and even then.. that will only be the die hard bleeding edge graphics whores.
i imagine the classics become classics for a reason. production qualities aside, at the core you have some strong mechanics or story that make the game fun/good to many people regardless of when they play it. thats how i see super mario 64.
by contrast, many people dont like classic rock, but soooo many people do. i grew up with guys that loved led zeppelin, ac/dc, pink floyd.. and so many other bands. the styles were different, the production quality lacking, but the song structures to many stood the test of time. not to mention, many of these kids had the albums exposed to them by their parents.. and they'll probably do the same to their kids. video games are the same way, i see so many of my contemporaries open their children up to more than the shiny graphics and "adult" themes of todays biggest games. nes, genesis, n64, and sometimes dreamcast.
i remember in 2001, when some friends and i got really deep into mame. at the time, i was 18, and one of the guys was 16. his little brother was 8, and he grew up playing dreamcast and high end pc games. he liked what we were playing still though. he was playing beat em ups and fighting games on mame in no time. and even though he had splinter cell on xbox, or smash bros on gamecube.. he was thrilled when i brought over streets of rage 2 on the genesis.
why? good games will always be good games to so many people. when you do something right, it will hold up the test of time for the nostalgic and new comers.
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
Thanks Kotaku...
11/25/09