Why Machines Like The Gp32 & Gp2x Are Imporant


tdp

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I came across this article which I thought was interesting. I have to admit compared to some of the PS2 and PSP games I have played, some of the older Atari ST/Amiga/SNES/Megadrive/Mame games were truly challenging. So have a read and let me know what you think:-

http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20050902/index.html
 
i agree games should be harder, i always nowadays put games on the hardest difficulty and i still find it rather easy (while others may find hard i don't), I like games where you get shot 2-3 times you die it more realism but it adds more difficulty to it. When he talked about saving making it easier, it does. IN it's own way. I think checkpoints are good but they shouldn't over do them or don't use them and just make you restart the lvl from the begining. I don't like it when i have to start the game completely over cause i hate having to play parts over and over and over again just cause i can't beat one boss... But I agree there should be penalties, one game that comes to mind is Steel Battalion, if you forget to eject you loose your pilot and have to create a new and start over, if you do eject, your VT is destroyed and you have to buy a new one which cost Points, if you loose all your points no VT for you and game over. I agree that games should be harder but some games are fun to just beat in 4-6 hours cause you're bored and want to pass time.
 
I don't think the general increase in ease has anything to do with the increase in graphical power. I actually feel that it's more a matter of the target gamer age increasing and the new reliance on grabbing the "casual gamer" dollar. Older consumers simply do not have the time to deal with 70 deaths in a row. They usually have about 2 hours a day of free time after coming home from a long day of work and catching ER, they dont want to spend all that time dying they want to advance through the game reach a point of conclusion and move on to another game especially since they come out 5 at a time now during the fall and autum months.

Games might be easier but I still have a pile of about 80 PS2 games I've hardly gotten half way through.


The other side of it though is that there are developers who don't quite understand HOW to make games harder. Instead of creating more challanging puzzles or some other game play complexity they simply throw more bullets at you or make bosses with insane numbers of hit points that take even more time to defeat.
 
I only wanna play easy games, these days.

When the next great Final Fantasy 7, or Elite comes out it might be different. But I just don't have the time to play a 100hour+ game any more, sadly!
 
I'm not sure it's really a valid point that games are now easier than the old arcade games. Since the early days games have come on leaps and bounds, okay lets take two of my all time fave games one from the past, another a lot newer. Pacman & Spyro the Dragon.

Pacman is very easy to pick up and play, but incredably difficult to master. Once you get the hang of the game, that's it, the same maze over and over, the same monsters only the difficulty increases. But it's one heck of a lot of fun! The GAME OVER scenario is ideal for this type of game as the only real challenge is to get to higher levels. It's simplistic and brilliant.

Spyro the Dragon on the other hand is an adventure, and adventures need save points. It could take you days to really complete it, and by complete I don't mean just getting to the end. To complete I mean finding all secrets, finding all gems etc. You get a secret level at then as a bonus.

I don't think that playing either of these games is less rewarding or less fun. For me they are simply different. When I beat my last high score on Pacman I'm very much the happy bunny. And when I complete Spyro 125% (Yes 125%) I'm still a very happy girl indeed!

Maybee it's just me, but I like to really complete games 100%. I know people who say "Yeah, I finished the game in like, 8 hours" But I bet they cheated or simply got to the end then the game ends up on a shelf, and they missed all secrets and some kewl visuals and experiences. I think this is where the problem really is. Gamers these days are getting lazy, if it's not liniar or on a plate the average joe simply gives up.

Here's another thought, remember Doom? I can complete doom easily. It's liniar, stright through, just find some keys, hit some buttons and advance. Remember Hexen? Hexen is hub based, and was heavy on puzzles. It's doom but more taxing on the grey matter. For me, Doom shouldn't allow you to save anytime, only at the begining of levels. But Hexen, is more of an adventure, and saving is a must!

Some of my pet hates in newer games were a critical point in the older games. Take Crash Bandicoot, now that game really annoyes me, you gotta be pixel perfect, and it's really makes me go mad when start falling off a platform that I have been leaping too and from earlier. Not sure this is a skill thing or me getting bored. Older 8 bit games that jumps had to be timed i.e. Donkey Kong Jr were just fun. I think for me that some game eliments work best if it's old school.

I think that a lot of the more 'fun' games are aimed at kids, and therefore they are easier, so I guess we should be comparing pacman against something much harder than Spyro! But for me, I love games as a whole, if it entertains me and makes me happy, then it's obviously a good thing. Talking of Spyro, where's me PSone gone :D
 
Although he does have a valid point, there truely is no going back now...

There's a huge difference in the simple games, where the only difference between levels are increase in enemy amout, speed or attack pattern and the standard 15 hours games of today.

Checkpoint really have no point in the first mentioned type of games, since "how far you can get" is the main attrection in these games.
We are usually talking about the simple game concepts of tetris-like games, breakout games or shooters here.

Grafics HAVE something to say in this question, since alot of grafic-design has gone in to modern games. Thus you are MEANT to experience it all oppose to get stuck midway.

I actually believe that the hardness of some older games was a result of bad gamedesign, rather than anything else.
I think this was the case in The Last Ninja for C64, which actually was kind of a "showcase-game" featuring beautiful graphics and spectacular music... kind of like todays many hours+ games.

The game itself could ONLY be defined as frustrating: crossing water/quicksand should be done by jumping from one rock to another with pixel-precision, you could not avoid taking damage in fights (not quite true since there was a sweet-spot where opponent apparently didn't notice he was hitting nothing... but this is a flaw to) and you had to die at least once before you discovered that you were confronted with a puzzle.

Now I played that game a lot.... but then again I had a *+++trainer * attached to it, so that made playable.

Now this was just one example, but I seem to recall that MANY games had some unintended hardness, that basicly just was a result of bad gamedesign.

@ tdp:
Is this this why consoles like the GP32 are important? because I figure that playing old games through emulation which all feature savestates today destroys the games original game-mechanics :p

Edit:
It took me quite a while to write this post, and in the meanwhile Clare postet some of the same points... damn ;)
 
GiG posted on Sep 4 2005 at 10:01 AM said:
WarmFluffy, I love you! :p

I second that. Great points as usaul from the Gaming Goddess!

Why can't my wife be more like her? The only game she wants to play is Lumines... (another simple great game!)
 
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for me i think it can be put in a nutshell.

new games are harder to complete, old school 2d games are harder to master.
 
it could be as simple as the "old games" were often arcade conversions or used in arcades (pacman is a great example of this).
They were made purposfully hard so you would die and have to put more money in, they didnt charge you 30£ for a lifetime they charged you 1£ per life and you could waste 100's if our addicted to a good arcade game.
Its all about money and getting the most from a game.
Nowadays people wont pay per life in arcades due to the advance of home consoles so companies need to make games easier so people (kids mainly) will make that one time payment and buy the game.
 
lubidog posted on Sep 4 2005 at 07:50 AM said:
I only wanna play easy games, these days.

When the next great Final Fantasy 7, or Elite comes out it might be different. But I just don't have the time to play a 100hour+ game any more, sadly!

I know this is offtopic but I would check out oolite. Its a bitch to get working but its getting there.
 
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feddon posted on Sep 4 2005 at 12:19 PM said:
it could be as simple as the "old games" were often arcade conversions or used in arcades (pacman is a great example of this).
They were made purposfully hard so you would die and have to put more money in, they didnt charge you 30£ for a lifetime they charged you 1£ per life and you could waste 100's if our addicted to a good arcade game.
Its all about money and getting the most from a game.
Nowadays people wont pay per life in arcades due to the advance of home consoles so companies need to make games easier so people (kids mainly) will make that one time payment and buy the game.

I'm not sure about this. I'm getting so off topic. I remember when arcade hardware used to be so much more advanced than console hardware. Now arcade hardware is based on console hardware. Also console hardware offers you convenience that, arcade hardware can hot hope to acheive.

Its a shame really that kids miss out on one of the more social aspect of gaming.
 
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Cyclops posted on Sep 4 2005 at 12:34 PM said:
feddon posted on Sep 4 2005 at 12:19 PM said:
it could be as simple as the "old games" were  often arcade conversions or used in arcades (pacman is a great example of this).
They were made purposfully hard so you would die and have to put more money in, they didnt charge you 30£ for a lifetime they charged you 1£ per life and you could waste 100's if our addicted to a good arcade game.
Its all about money and getting the most from a game.
Nowadays people wont pay per life in arcades due to the advance of home consoles so companies need to make games easier so people (kids mainly) will make that one time payment and buy the game.

I'm not sure about this. I'm getting so off topic. I remember when arcade hardware used to be so much more advanced than console hardware. Now arcade hardware is based on console hardware. Also console hardware offers you convenience that, arcade hardware can hot hope to acheive.

Its a shame really that kids miss out on one of the more social aspect of gaming.

That was my point

i love arcades, i like to "waste my money" playing what are really out of date games that i could play at home for free, there is just something specail about it.
Playing an old school fighter with your mates is great.

Kids are to fat and lazy to leave the house now though...
 
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I agree, makes me remember games like The last ninja 1 & 2 & possibly 3. I deffinately completed 1 & 2, cant remember 3 to well (might not of had it but it definately was about). I owned the game on the bbc micro model b, I remember it being the best surpriseingly on the beeb because of the keyboard use (there were alot of buttons for that game, c64 joystick didnt do justice).

It was very hard particually the first level of last ninja 1 when you had to throw a smoke bomb to land directly on the dragon nose to proceed to level 2. That problem had me stumped for like half a year. You had to play it really to know how difficult some of the problems on that game were. Great game Great days

I havent emulated that game yet, dont think it would work very well on the gp32 because of the amount of keys involved (virtual keyboards suck). Also we dont have a beeb unfortunately, was it any good on other formats ?? any good emus out there that can do this great game justice ??? Also whats the keys like on that game and emu ??
 
I appoligise to ringo, I just read the whole forum and he already mentioned last ninja but it was truely a unique game which was ahead of its time, makes me think how did they squash all that in to 32 - 64 k. I know each level loaded seperately (which resulted in long ass loading times). But makes you think !!!
 
This is probably the first time I've done or said this yet, but I really don't feel like reading all of this thread right now... I have no idea why, I just feel extremely lazy... so I'll just throw in my 2 cents and hopefully don't repeat something somebody else already said...

It kind of depends on how you look at it, but I would say for the most part games have gotten easier, but at the same time have become more complex(some of them, not all) and tedious. Also, due to simplicity of older games, they're more... ruthless. Whenever I'd kill an enemy and have to move so that the enemy's spawn point was off of the screen, and I moved back into the spawning area of that enemy only to find him alive again, that REALLY pissed me off. Things like that, or dying from simply touching anything on the screen that isn't a powerup ONCE made the older games hard. So did not having a huge supply of health pickups or lives. Look at Contra. You get 3 lives, zero health pickups(there is no health in it at all... 1 hit from anything, even if it's just some guy running into you), and about 8,000 enemies to deal with.

Now let's look at a more modern game... Actually, let's look at two of them... Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Call of Duty. Both of them are World War 2-based first person shooters. Instead of just running around and shooting stuff, in both of these 2 games, you have to sneak around(not always sneaking, but there is a good amount of it), destroying radios and tanks, defending certain spots, etc. But the thing is that you're pretty much always told exactly what to do. You're given detailed orders. It's not like something just randomly happens, and you're expected to deal with it. And you have an unlimited number of lives... You can even save and load whenever the hell you want to. And in Medal of Honor, there's always a health pickup for you lying around somewhere. They're more scarce in Medal of Honor than they are in Call of Duty, but the ones that are there usually restore more health... and you don't take damage as quickly in Medal of Honor. In call of Duty, pretty much every single German you kill will drop a canteen(which restores either 10 or 25% of your health, if I remember correctly), and there will be other things like first aid kits during certain "stages" of each level. It's a little more open ended, but during a pretty big portion of the game, you have some kind of AI helping you.


Personally, I prefer the old games because I grew up on them. the NES was my nourishment. If I didn't get to play my NES any day, it was like I went to bed without breakfast, lunch, AND dinner. The games were extremely fun, and the music was great... And being able to play these great games when I don't have access to an NES/TV combo or my computer is awesome. The GP32 is what I thought the gameboy was supposed to be(until I actually had one...) and a whole lot more. I can't speak for anybody else, but the reason I have my GP32 is to play the good old games. Most of the newer games coming out today just aren't fun or interesting anymore. And they pretty much all seem like ripoffs of the previous game from the same genre. There's more importance placed on making the graphics look good than there is on making the game fun and interesting. It's sickening... As of right now, I have absolutely no reason to buy ANY next-gen console. Sure, the X-Box 360 and PS3 LOOK amazing, but so what? I don't care how they look, I care that the games don't suck, and graphics have nothing to do with how good a game is. Good graphics can improve a game, but the game has to be good in the first place for it to make enough of a difference for the game to be worth buying anyway.
 
Retro79 posted on Sep 4 2005 at 12:56 PM said:
I agree, makes me remember games like The last ninja 1 & 2 & possibly 3. I deffinately completed 1 & 2, cant remember 3 to well (might not of had it but it definately was about). I owned the game on the bbc micro model b, I remember it being the best surpriseingly on the beeb because of the keyboard use (there were alot of buttons for that game, c64 joystick didnt do justice).

It was very hard particually the first level of last ninja 1 when you had to throw a smoke bomb to land directly on the dragon nose to proceed to level 2. That problem had me stumped for like half a year. You had to play it really to know how difficult some of the problems on that game were. Great game Great days

I havent emulated that game yet, dont think it would work very well on the gp32 because of the amount of keys involved (virtual keyboards suck). Also we dont have a beeb unfortunately, was it any good on other formats ?? any good emus out there that can do this great game justice ??? Also whats the keys like on that game and emu ??


Iz he Still Ear?
 
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I've always liked the hard 2d games, especially Contra and Battletoads games.

I think games getting easier is largely a myth. Most of the games that were difficult but not frustratingly so were hard but not ridiculously so.
You had to play through the whole games without checkpoints, but the range of time it took to complete a game then was 20-40minutes. Now games tend to have checkpoints, or level ends, every 20-40 minutes.So it's the same amount of penalty but in the context of a longer game.
Dues Ex (pc), Shinobi(ps2), Stuntman (ps2), were all fairly difficult modern games.

I'd agree that difficulty in games is important, but I'm not sure I agree that the difficulty need be hard and unforgiving. The sequel to Dues Ex, Dues Ex: invisible war is a cakewalk, the game is around 6 hours long and easy. I've played it through a bunch of times I think it's great. I can get through the entire game without dying. Dying is a distraction to gameplay, if a game can be fun and difficult, without being hard maybe they should be. Dying takes the player out of the experience, the designers of Prey prattle on about that, and are trying to do things differently.

If you value your games to be hard and unforgiving, take the memory card out of system. ps2 games will prompt you, that you don't have a memory card, say ok.
Boom, instant oldschool transformation. I played Onimusha before I got around to buying a memory card, I got up to what I presume was the second last boss.

If you really want to be pro, you should be attempting to beat your games without dying once from the first time you pop the game in. Hideo Kojima wanted to make a game that would void itself if you died.

Way of the Samurai (ps2), was a game that didn't tolerate death in a playthrough. If you died you had to start over and you lost the sword you had developed. On the harder settings it was pretty tough.

As games become more advanced, designers need to be more advanced at how they approach difficulty.

p.s: I have two psp games, Tenchu; Shinobi Tiazen and Wipeout Pure, and I haven't finished either of them yet.
 
lubidog posted on Sep 4 2005 at 12:02 PM said:
GiG posted on Sep 4 2005 at 10:01 AM said:
WarmFluffy, I love you!  :p

I second that. Great points as usaul from the Gaming Goddess!

Why can't my wife be more like her? The only game she wants to play is Lumines... (another simple great game!)

Gosh guys, you're making me blush now :wub:

Edit, By the way, At this moment I'm playing "Wheel of Time" So far the playability has been fantastic! Anyone else played this gem?
 
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And in Medal of Honor, there's always a health pickup for you lying around somewhere. They're more scarce in Medal of Honor than they are in Call of Duty, but the ones that are there usually restore more health... and you don't take damage as quickly in Medal of Honor. In call of Duty, pretty much every single German you kill will drop a canteen(which restores either 10 or 25% of your health, if I remember correctly), and there will be other things like first aid kits during certain "stages" of each level.

What difficulty were you playing on? On the harder difficulties they don't drop them nearly as much and they hardly restore any health.
 
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