Nostalgia Versus Reality

[Dog_Man_Star]

About a month ago I bought a Sega Saturn, as I had been reminiscing about all the great games that I remembered playing when I had purchased it after launch. So, I picked up Nights, Panzer Dragoon, Virtua Fighter 2, and Legend of Oasis (which by the way I find overrated) hoping that they'd still be as fun as I had recalled. Nights, Virtua Fighter 2, and Legend of Oasis have aged fairly well, but when I first booted up Panzer Dragoon I think I puked a little. Gone from my memory were beautiful, crisp, non-muddy graphics and textures, but instead were replaced by pixelated, low-res piles of crap. I was honestly shocked at how terrible the game looked; It was completely unexpected and kind of tainted my existing memories of the Saturn. The game's gameplay is still fun, but that game used to be a showcase for the graphical ability of the Saturn.

Has this ever happened to you, where your memories of playing a certain game are ten times better than actually playing it?

[racketboy]

About a month ago I bought a Sega Saturn, as I had been reminiscing about all the great games that I remembered playing when I had purchased it after launch. So, I picked up Nights, Panzer Dragoon, Virtua Fighter 2, and Legend of Oasis (which by the way I find overrated) hoping that they'd still be as fun as I had recalled. Nights, Virtua Fighter 2, and Legend of Oasis have aged fairly well, but when I first booted up Panzer Dragoon I think I puked a little. Gone from my memory were beautiful, crisp, non-muddy graphics and textures, but instead were replaced by pixelated, low-res piles of crap. I was honestly shocked at how terrible the game looked; It was completely unexpected and kind of tainted my existing memories of the Saturn. The game's gameplay is still fun, but that game used to be a showcase for the graphical ability of the Saturn.

Has this ever happened to you, where your memories of playing a certain game are ten times better than actually playing it?

Panzer Dragoon is pretty ugly -- I actually thought it was when it came out. Zwei is a bit better.
But yeah, many times our brains will remember the best parts about things in our past and hide the bad aspects.

This is kinda why I put together my lists of the best games for today for a given system like this one:
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2007/01/ ... y-top.html

You'll notice I left off the original Panzer Dragoon games since they don't really hold up -- especially when compared to Panzer Dragoon Orta on the XBox.

[msimplay]

lol I don't think its really fair to compare early 3d games to the 3d games available today as I remember Panzer Dragoon was one of those games I used to show my Sega Saturn off and sure the graphics can't really be considered good anymore but they were great for their time.

[metaleggman]

Panzer dragoon is fun and even tho it may not have been the best the saturn could offer graphically, eh, it does alright.

[Mozgus]

...I think PD1 still looks great. I don't care if they used a lot of tricks and illusions to bring us impressive effects, because, in the end, they were presented very well. Like those water reflections may just be sprites overlayed on the surface, but they look great.

[Perseid]

Panzer Dragoon is kind of a bad example because it was a launch title. Lots of launch titles look worse even compared to later games for the same system.

IMO 3-D games age worse overall than 2-D games. A game with good 2-D artwork is still the same 2-D artwork many years later even though its pixels may be bigger than what you've become used to. 3-D on the other hand is more dependent on the hardware to decide how "well-drawn" it is. Look at Virtua Fighter versus Street Fighter. The original SFII doesn't hurt my eyes today. The original VF does.

[ImportBoy]

I don't find Panzer Dragoon's graphics particularly bad, considering it was one of the early titles produced. Just seemed to suffer from low draw distances if anything.

Look at Virtua Fighter versus Street Fighter. The original SFII doesn't hurt my eyes today. The original VF does.

Funny how I recall being impressed with Virtua Fighter at the time (the 32x version). I recently picked up the Saturn version - practically the same though I instantly thought "Wow this music is 100% better then the 32x version!".

[msimplay]

I don't find Panzer Dragoon's graphics particularly bad, considering it was one of the early titles produced. Just seemed to suffer from low draw distances if anything.

Look at Virtua Fighter versus Street Fighter. The original SFII doesn't hurt my eyes today. The original VF does.

Funny how I recall being impressed with Virtua Fighter at the time (the 32x version). I recently picked up the Saturn version - practically the same though I instantly thought "Wow this music is 100% better then the 32x version!".

Yeah I remember the 32x being a major disappointment and I was one of those silly people that bought one.
However the new hardware did feel good because games like Doom were not possible before the 32x especially on the 16bit hardware, It was the one game I wanted to play because a lot of multi format magazines were telling everyone that DOOM was the game of the year.
I remember reading about the 32x in the manual it said everything would be greatly enhanced and music would be one of those things,
to me it sounded just like the Megadrive

[neohx_7]

Because old consoles look worse as TVs and gaming technology gets better, emulators that enhance graphics are the way to go. You can almost eliminate any lag whatsoever and with controller adapters you can get a decent experience. I have a ton of old consoles, but I only play the real DC, PS2, and GC consoles on a regular basis. In a couple years, I hope not to have to play the real PS2 anymore, emulation can make PS2 games look spectacular. Just my opinion, I know that console purists with their euro RGB connections to old CRTs may chastise the emulator fans.

[alexkidd]

Or you could have put in Vampire Savior with the 4M Ram cart and thought "Wow ten years later and they haven't made much improvement in 2D fighter graphics".

With Saturn games it's not a question about which 3D games still look great... none of them do. It's a question of if the ugliness of the graphics actually disturb the gameplay... which unfortunatley is the case with Panzer Dragoon 1. Take Shining Force III town scenes, those houses and buildings aren't the prettiest but they serve their purpose.