Games that haven't aged well.

[Sarge]

I still love DKC. There, I said it. I think it plays incredibly well. I prefer the straightforwardness of it compared to DKC2; strangely, despite being the one everyone says is the best, I didn't cotton to it that much. (It's still a good game, mind; just not my fave.)

[Segata]

Ultima 1
Dragon Slayer 1


Amazing for the time. Just not good these days. More of a historical importance than fun to play anymore.

[pierrot]

As far as things that haven't aged well, some early CD RPGs come to mind. Take something like Lunar on the Sega CD. Chop out the "CD" aspects (video, voice-acting) and you're left with a slog of a game.

Lunar came up in the slack channel today, too, so I'm repeating myself a little bit, but I didn't find this to be the case, personally. I played through Lunar for the first time last year, on the Sega CD, and found it to be a pretty brisk, fun game. Under 30 hours, evenly paced, and a highly decent story for the time. It's a little drab, but that's about the only complaint I could level at it, and even that's not too bad.

After beating the Sega CD version, I thought I could quickly tear through the Saturn version, but they made it SO SLOW! Yeah, it's more colorful, and there's more interaction with the environments for finding items and such, but getting in and out of battles, time spent in battles, the frequency of battles, and just some "objectives" that seem to have been added to pad the game made the newer version feel unplayable to me, by comparison. I couldn't stick with it past meeting the dragon in the first cave. Once he told me that he wanted me to root around inside the cave again to look for something, I said, "Absolutely not."

Dragon Slayer 1

I just have to be blunt here: No. The original Dragon Slayer is forever classic. It's practically 2D Minecraft, and informs the structure for The Legend of Zelda.

[Jmustang1968]

I would say most RPGs age fairly well. I think this is partly why there is an ongoing demand for them. I believe many platformers, beat-em ups, and shmups age well also. I guess 2d fighters do as well, but I don't play them often

What doesn't age as well are many of the early FPS games (Goldeneye comes to mind). Field of view, draw distance, and graphics actually help shooters in the gameplay department. Obviously, most of the early 3d stuff looks rough now.

Other things that haven't aged well to me are games with passwords instead of save functionality.

And some aspects of RPGs bother me I suppose, even though as a genre I think they hold up. Save points, unskippable cutscenes, and long load times will kill replaying some old games for me.

[pierrot]

[...L]ong load times will kill replaying some old games for me.

I think this is something I have much less patience for now. If it's some 60+ hour, behemoth game with long load times, that's become much more of a reason for me to take a hard pass on a game. I can forgive it more easily in shorter games, though.

[Tanooki]

I still love DKC. There, I said it. I think it plays incredibly well. I prefer the straightforwardness of it compared to DKC2; strangely, despite being the one everyone says is the best, I didn't cotton to it that much. (It's still a good game, mind; just not my fave.)

Probably belongs in the unpopular thread saying it, but I think DKC2 sucked the most. I prefer 1 and then 3 over it.

[Xeogred]

Not just here, but in general lately, it kind of shocks me how many people knock on the DKC games. I still go back to them a lot off and on over the years and freaking love them. DKC1 is my favorite. Admittedly I'm starting to think I might be liking Yoshi's Island more than them nowadays. Throw in SMW on that list and it would be hard for me to rank these.

[chuckster]

When I play old games, I make it a point to avoid presentism. Video games evolve so quickly--especially with graphics and presentation--I find it disingenuous to judge a game made in 1990 by the standards of even 1994, much less those of 30 years later. In this context, I find it hard to find games that age poorly, but rather games that were just always good or bad, and that were later improved upon.

Any game that rides on technical superlatives or spectacle will lose it's sheen with the march of time, but gameplay is by and large timeless (though not universal). I find games like DKC age really well, because for all their graphical hype, it was a good game underneath. Of course quality is so subjective everyone will have a different outlook.

I still love DKC. There, I said it. I think it plays incredibly well. I prefer the straightforwardness of it compared to DKC2; strangely, despite being the one everyone says is the best, I didn't cotton to it that much. (It's still a good game, mind; just not my fave.)

Probably belongs in the unpopular thread saying it, but I think DKC2 sucked the most. I prefer 1 and then 3 over it.

As someone who never went for the collectibles, I always ranked the DKC series as 1>3>2. The second is a phenomenal game but I felt it was a little bloated compared to the others.

[Exhuminator]

DKC > DKC2. DKC has proper pacing, is better balanced, and has funner level design. I think Rare got carried away with trying to make DKC2 more challenging than DKC, to DKC2's detriment. I haven't played DKC3 enough to have a fair opinion of it.

[Jmustang1968]

I do find that games seem to be have aged better if I played them growing up, as opposed to those that are well regarded but I never played. Some games do things that I wouldn't forgive if playing it new the first time that I can somehow overlook if I already expect it.