As Yahtzee has suggested, people aren’t nostalgic for old games, but for how they felt playing old games. Much harder to capture that, and beautiful pixel art alone isn’t enough.
Because as a child, everything is novel and new for you so you get that sense of high and awe seeing something new. But now as adults, recreating that feeling is almost impossible because you have already experienced it before.
Nothing hammers this home like raising a kid.
The sense of joy and wonder they feel about something as simple as learning how to turn on a faucet. Suddenly, they’re magical and can summon water.
It makes you feel jaded.
You can get that feeling when learning something new as an adult, too. Your first python program is running? You renovated something in your home that your haven’t done before? Planted a tree and it’s having fruits for the first time? Changed the tires on your car? It’s awesome!
try envigorated. I don’t know if you watch let’s plays at all, but me I mainly do it with games that I’ve finished but can’t play again with the knowledge I already have. great puzzle and mystery solving games like obra dinn, the witness, etc. or games with amazing twists like prey… some things you can’t live through twice, but you can witness the joy in others when they do it for the first time. that’s why I do it. with kids, it’s literally everything.
you should watch the Love Death and Robots episode Pop Squad.
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This is why I started hiking and summiting mountains. I mean, not literally why, but it’s chasing that new and novel high.
You’re also literally chasing new highs though. Sounds like the whole package…
This has been language learning for me. Learning new words and expressions every day gives me that high. Stumbling through a conversation in a language I’m uncomfortable with is so scary and daunting, but when you actually have a meaningful conversation where both parties get something out of it, it’s an incredible feeling.
that’s why you should seek out new things to see wonder and novel in. as a person with hyperfixation/-focus, that is very easy for me.
This is the biggest problem for games like these. It’s trying to capture the childhood nostalgia. But to any modern gamer it’s: FANTASY SETTING 319, of course it feels hollow and stale. Even if the designers are passionate about the game, it you set it in the same type of world as all your favorite final fantasy games or fire emblem or whatever you’re making a terrible setting for a new game. It may not be a bad game, but the world you chose is actively working against it by making it stale.
I mean, it’s going to be a problem forever. The way you break out of this is by having a good 'ol visionary developer who has a unique story to tell. Unfortunately for every one of those there’s a hundred passionate developers either trying to make a quick buck or who lacks the imagination/skills to make a transformative game.
And that’s why I generally avoid games that advertise themselves as “pixel art.” I have no problem with pixel art itself and I play many pixel art games, but the art style is secondary to whether it’s fun.
This is why shovel knight looks and feels like the old classics it’s imitating. They artificially limited themselves to color pallets and some technical limits that old systems had. I think they ended up using 18 colors instead of 16, and double the sprites on screen, among some of them. Indie games usually just go with what looks good and use modern limits because they can. Most the time it’s not a choice, they just do what works and that’s ok too.
Eh I don’t think shovel knight looks like the old classics. It looks way too refined to me when compared to a nes title.
There’s a more comprehensive breakdown from yachtclub themselves here I was off a bit in my specific examples but overall they do a good job breaking down why their game fits and breaks the mold with lots of examples. The game is a lot more faithful to NES than the vast majority of indie pixel art games. There were a few late-gen NES titles that are relatively unknown but look way more detailed and complex than the typical NES game too.
Check out Retro City Rampage. The creator made a version that works on original NES hardware: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/retro-city-rampage-creator-makes-a-real-playable-nes-port/
It looks more like a Genesis/SNES title than NES.
I can’t remember if the game’s settings had a scanline filter switch or not, but that would be the finishing touch in my opinion.
I love limited pallettes. I love how in the original Legend of Zelda, Link changes colors a little every time the pallette swaps. I think getting creative with limited colors looks so much cooler than just having every color possible.
Restrictions breed creativity.
Anon is old, anon can see through the matrix.
When you were young you didn’t see the game, you just experienced the world.
you need a good scanline filter if you want modern pixels to look like classic ones
Incorrect, you need a good NTSC filter. Scanlines on their own are hotdog water.
And then your European players wonder why the color artifacts are all wrong. PAL and NTSC had different distinct looks (and presumably so did SECAM).
If it helps, for all fairness, the Nintendo, Sega, and Sony consoles were all Japanese, so NTSC was their native target before getting converted to PAL. It may not be what EU kids remember growing up, but NTSC is technically more “correct” from that perspective.
With that being said, always use PAL filters with PAL versions of games and NTSC filters for NTSC versions.
you can never go home
no indie rpg will ever make me feel like playing Golden Sun as a kid did
Yeah, they would need to be able to turn you back into your kid self, experiences and all. A lot of that magic is from you being a child.
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That main menu music was so great
I love the entire OST. the Saturos theme is one of my favourite ones
Playing Chrono Trigger as an adult will ever make me feel like playing Chrono Trigger as a kid did.
The sun will rise again!
I would imagine I’d absolutely love some of these indie games today as a kid. But there are things that make them less desirable to play now. The main things are being an adult with responsibilities gives you less time and tons of options for games now. I had maybe 10 games to choose to play from unless I rented.
Because these characters aren’t built the same as old games. That was part of the magic of older games, using as few resources as possible but cleverly cutting the spirit into easily manipulated bit maps that can be flipped and rotated as necessary to animate the character.
These are overly detailed and missing the CRT effect.
I also think gaming now a days just feels different and not in a childhood wonder sort of way but a walking into an obscure bookstore kind of way. Social media makes learning about a video game way too easy. Spoilers are hard to avoid and the more people talk about a game the less novel it feels. I didn’t spend much time on forums as a kid so most games i learned about was via word of mouth or from demo disks. I’ll never forget my first play through of Halo 1 on the OG xbox. Played it coop with my bro. Was completely scared shitless when the flood was introduced. No one told me there were zombies in my shoot man game. Like no one talked about it. Good times.
I would also make an argument that the limited technology at the time led to different kinds of games versus what we see now. Sure there’s the obvious things like internet enabled games and being able to get updates but I think even the less thought about things like restrictions on RAM and the power of computers led to restrictions on what you could do which led to specific types of games which aren’t made that way anymore because they don’t have to work around those restrictions. And while in a lot of cases those restrictions going away has allowed for better mechanics and gameplay it also still makes the games different which to people who were used to and liked those games will feel not as good anymore.
There’s something about those early games that were in the first generation of their genres and people hadn’t figured out the rules yet. Lots of experimental stuff. Things that could created a wall that the average kid would stall on.
Try playing the Marathon trilogy and then go right to Halo CE. You’ll realize why Cortana walks you though most of the game. The line “This cave is not a natural formation” came from when the opening was more natural looking, but even with the dialog, play testers had trouble fining the opening. Still way better then dumping yellow tape or green lights everywhere.
I will take this moment to recommend Crosscode, one of the all time greats
We know what is possible today. When these old games were new they were quite frankly cutting edge and pioneering what was possible.
You don’t achieve that today even with the most dedicated adherence to retro limitations.
One could argue that the dynamic shadows of the day and night cycle in Sea of Stars were actually kind of breaking new ground in pixel art.
Could anyone id the game in the screen shot for me?
Thanks!
The question is not only what game is it, but also, is it any good?
It was the television or crappiness of it that made them look better than it was…
https://www.gamerevolution.com/originals/378895-heres-retro-games-look-awful-compared-remember
Can’t believe that guy left out this:
The pixels and shading on them were designed to look better with a different display pixel layout
Ive found that a cheap 1080p projector onto an unprepped painted white wall does a great job of making old crt stuff look correct.
How’s the lag on one of those things? Doesn’t matter for an RPG, but playing some of the old platformers on a modern TV is an exercise in misery, and I just couldn’t get past the first couple of levels in Um Jammer Lammy without connecting up a PC monitor instead.
Places where I’ve seen that live of projector are for eg. showing the football in a pub, and the sound and screen are noticeably out-of-sync.
It wouldnt be any good for speed runs on an OG console. But I’m using all those re-release mini consoles so they are effectively emulated and not always perfectly so its ok. Best thing is I think I paid $50 for the projector brand new so its not expensive to give it a try, and even if you think it sucks theres a novelty to playing NES on a 3 meter “screen”
Good enough that I’m still a hot hand at Metal Slug.
I like how they specified the xo-1 lcd. Everyone knows the one laptop per child computer from like 2010 is the most relatable device in 2025…… 15 years later… fuck. I wasn’t even 15 when that came out.
I still think someone needs to make a gaming screen with built in retro screen emulator capabilities. Fuck you’re 8K ultra wide crap I want to play old school games in their proper resolution without it looking like crap.
yea funny enough I got that high when recently playing Planescape torment but not Baldurs Gate I, dont know why. Still a good game though.
Baldurs gate is good but it really shows how much they were trying to capitalise on 5e actually gaining mainstream attention (not that I blame em, folks gotta eat) Divinity Original Sin 2 is a previous title by the same company and IMO feels a lot better to play both mechanically and in terms of actually having a unique feeling universe.
OP is talking about the first Baldur’s Gate game. Not Baldur’s Gate 3 which you are talking about. Also Baldur’s Gate 3 was in production in 2017. While it may have been in response to Stranger Things season 1 coming out, I honestly doubt it was that. BG3 is a huge labor of love and that dev team was much more intent on making a good game than cashing in on popularity of any particular ttrpg system. There are no dlc or micro transactions and marketing was sparse. I pretty much only heard about it through word of mouth. If the goal was to capitalize, they failed that. You don’t capitalize by making a game that people can buy once and have nearly limitless experiences in without spending a dime more.
huh? BG I is 2nd edition DnD? Played both Divinity I and II, liked I better
a lot of what makes old game have that charm isn’t just having the good pixel art but also matching the system sprite design, color pallet and replicating the imperfect displays of the time. Which the last is the one i think tends to be forgotten about a lot. Of course not all games are trying to replicate a style but more like a general vibe.
More than that, not being aware of genocide and looming climate collapse and student loans made those old games a lot more fun :)
I think it goes more on thise lines. We got tons of great games done by very passionate people. But is hard to enjoy something if you can dedicate only 1 hour tops and then go to sleep cause you have to work tomorrow.
It’s not just the pixel art but the rest of the game as well.
