Monday, May 11, 2015
Splatoon Impressions from the Global Testfire
Happy Gamer's Impressions of Splatoon Global Testfire by catholiccontriversy
Thank-you for watching. If you would like to watch pokematic's lets play, click here.
Sunday, May 3, 2015
I'm SICK of "Retro 8-bit" Indi Platformers, Happy Gamer Rambles
"People love nostalgia, and Shovel Knight did very well, so lets make a retro 8-bit indi platformer."
Hey everyone, this is what I imagine all the people that have been making retro platformers have said with the slew of "8-bit retro" indi platformers that have been coming out in the recent years, and I'm sick of it. Why am I sick of it, especially considering that I love retro games? There's many layers to it, but first I need to start with the game that started this craze (based on what I've noticed), Shovel Knight.
Now I should start off by saying that I love Shovel Knight. It is a fantastic game; great simple like story, tight controls, perfect difficulty, perfect punishment for failure and risk-reward, amazing controls, and it feels like it is strait out of 1988 in terms of style and gameplay. In fact, when you pull up the controls, it shows you a picture of a NES controller and says "these are what these buttons do" and you have to map the corresponding buttons to it. I bet that on the PC people have modded/repro with USB NES controllers that they use to play it, and it's glorious. It is what "kickstarted" kickstarter games.
However, this is kind of the problem. People saw how well Shovel Knight did, and they said "I can do that, so I'm going to make an 8-bit platformer." And that's where the trouble starts. See, the creator of Shovel Knight said "I want to make a NES game in 2014" and he stuck with it. Outside of a couple of extra colors and sound channels, and is MUCH much larger than a standard NES cartridge could hold, it could run on a NES. In fact, I bet there's some modders that are working on a physical NES flash cartridge ROM that makes slight modifications so that it actually runs on a NES. However, all these other guys just want the basic aesthetic of retro games, aka "blocky pixelated graphics and old sounding music." So many games are "yeah, these colors aren't possible on the NES, as well as the character model complexity with diagonal pixels, but it has blocky countable 'pixels' and that's what matters to make a retro 8-bit game." It's annoying because now what could have been a really nice looking game looks ugly.
What do I mean by ugly? Well there's a very good reason why games looked like they did 20 years ago, because that was the best they could do. If Nintendo had the capabilities we have today, they would make Super Mario Bros so much more detailed, probably just like the New Super Mario Bros games. Just look at Super Mario All Starts, that's Nintendo saying "these games are great, and this is what it would have looked like if they were first released on SNES." Now with these "retro platformers," game devs are instead thinking "I want to make this game, but since people want nostalgia we'll give it a blocky design and call it 'retro.' That'll sell copies." This is annoying, because we have such capabilities. We know what the Wii U, PS4, XBOX ONE, and yes PC, can do, and people instead want to make games that look like they were made for a NES. We could make games that look like Don Bluthes arcade Dragon's Lair, but devs instead choose to make games that look like Chip n Dale NES. It's wasted potential in my opinion.
I grew up with NES at my grandparents house. They had a NES and my brother, cousin, and I would play it all the time. I love NES games, but I also love SNES games, and N64 games, and GameCube games. In fact, I love platformers in general. I want to play platformers, but I also want a modern take on platformers. If I want to play retro games, I'll put a (S)NES cartridge in my (S)NES, not boot up a digital game on my Wii U. NES platformers pushed the limits of what the NES could do. SNES platformers pushed the limits of what the SNES could do. N64 platformers pushed the limits of what the 64 could do. So lets continue the tradition and get some Wii U platformers that push the limits of what the Wii U can do. But that's just me. Maybe you have different thoughts. Well, this has been Happy Gamer, signing off and lets let the retro stay legitimately retro and get some platformers that actually push the limits of what current hardware can do.
Hey everyone, this is what I imagine all the people that have been making retro platformers have said with the slew of "8-bit retro" indi platformers that have been coming out in the recent years, and I'm sick of it. Why am I sick of it, especially considering that I love retro games? There's many layers to it, but first I need to start with the game that started this craze (based on what I've noticed), Shovel Knight.
Now I should start off by saying that I love Shovel Knight. It is a fantastic game; great simple like story, tight controls, perfect difficulty, perfect punishment for failure and risk-reward, amazing controls, and it feels like it is strait out of 1988 in terms of style and gameplay. In fact, when you pull up the controls, it shows you a picture of a NES controller and says "these are what these buttons do" and you have to map the corresponding buttons to it. I bet that on the PC people have modded/repro with USB NES controllers that they use to play it, and it's glorious. It is what "kickstarted" kickstarter games.
However, this is kind of the problem. People saw how well Shovel Knight did, and they said "I can do that, so I'm going to make an 8-bit platformer." And that's where the trouble starts. See, the creator of Shovel Knight said "I want to make a NES game in 2014" and he stuck with it. Outside of a couple of extra colors and sound channels, and is MUCH much larger than a standard NES cartridge could hold, it could run on a NES. In fact, I bet there's some modders that are working on a physical NES flash cartridge ROM that makes slight modifications so that it actually runs on a NES. However, all these other guys just want the basic aesthetic of retro games, aka "blocky pixelated graphics and old sounding music." So many games are "yeah, these colors aren't possible on the NES, as well as the character model complexity with diagonal pixels, but it has blocky countable 'pixels' and that's what matters to make a retro 8-bit game." It's annoying because now what could have been a really nice looking game looks ugly.
What do I mean by ugly? Well there's a very good reason why games looked like they did 20 years ago, because that was the best they could do. If Nintendo had the capabilities we have today, they would make Super Mario Bros so much more detailed, probably just like the New Super Mario Bros games. Just look at Super Mario All Starts, that's Nintendo saying "these games are great, and this is what it would have looked like if they were first released on SNES." Now with these "retro platformers," game devs are instead thinking "I want to make this game, but since people want nostalgia we'll give it a blocky design and call it 'retro.' That'll sell copies." This is annoying, because we have such capabilities. We know what the Wii U, PS4, XBOX ONE, and yes PC, can do, and people instead want to make games that look like they were made for a NES. We could make games that look like Don Bluthes arcade Dragon's Lair, but devs instead choose to make games that look like Chip n Dale NES. It's wasted potential in my opinion.
I grew up with NES at my grandparents house. They had a NES and my brother, cousin, and I would play it all the time. I love NES games, but I also love SNES games, and N64 games, and GameCube games. In fact, I love platformers in general. I want to play platformers, but I also want a modern take on platformers. If I want to play retro games, I'll put a (S)NES cartridge in my (S)NES, not boot up a digital game on my Wii U. NES platformers pushed the limits of what the NES could do. SNES platformers pushed the limits of what the SNES could do. N64 platformers pushed the limits of what the 64 could do. So lets continue the tradition and get some Wii U platformers that push the limits of what the Wii U can do. But that's just me. Maybe you have different thoughts. Well, this has been Happy Gamer, signing off and lets let the retro stay legitimately retro and get some platformers that actually push the limits of what current hardware can do.
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