are there too many sucky modern retro games?

[orthicviper]

I've seen a lot of retro-style games on Steam but most of them are too retro. I want 16/32-bit style or SVGA graphics, but most of them are NES style or EGA PC graphics style and it's too ugly for me. Some of the 16-bit style ones still look a bit lazy with the artistic level of detail or graphics that repeat too much. Terrian Saga and Super Cyborg are among the only few that've stood out to me. I wanted to like Oniken and Odallus but I don't enjoy NES graphics unless it's an actual NES game. 

How about you all, what kind of retro graphics style do you want? 

[twiztor]

modern games made to look retro are usually a pass for me. they lack the charm of the actual NES games that i love so much. I feel that many times it just leads to shortcuts in other places also that i just don't dig.

a couple exceptions are Shovel Knight and Retro City Rampage. love both of them.

[kitsunebi]

So long as they don't start making retro-style games that emulate the look of 32-bit PS1 3D graphics.  8-bit and 16-bit graphics look just as good as they always did, but 32-bit polygons are hideous to behold through modern eyes.  It was an entire generation of games saddled with janky cameras, polygon clipping, and draw-in.  Not the sort of stuff you want to re-create on purpose.

[E-Day]

I was never a fan of the 32-bit polygon look, even when I was living through it. The novelty of having a 3D world was great, but it was definitely ugly. These days I prefer 2D games with hand drawn graphics, 16-bit style graphics, or even the 2.5D stuff, or isometric games. Full 3D games except for racing and sports games don't really appeal to me.

[MisterXiado]

This is a complex situation, and this is my understanding of it.

People who spent a large portion of their time consuming media without actually studying it, have been placed where they can now create this content, be it films, television, literature, or in our case here, games. The problem is, they don't have the skills or knowledge to form a complete project. Like how fans of the Simpsons now write the show, and no matter your taste, the show stopped being good a long time ago. People will just copy a few keystones from the original material, and do a poor job of building the rest of the arches. You see this in "retro" games made by complete hacks, in varying pixel and sprite sizes on the screen at the same time (no visual consistency), random music that could go anywhere (lack of compositional sense), and poor play control (poor math skills, copypaste code). In summary, it seems like the new guard, barring a talented few, are just aping the greats of the past without all of the study and training that those people went through to become great.

[vgmax]

Raijin you hit the nail right on the head. We have lived through the progress but not through the process. People don't want to acknowledge that the amount of information that created the classics was huge and that it takes deep thought and reflection to develop an effective design. Games are not this "fun factory"... they are serious business because our brains have serious elements that require serious content.

[orthicviper]

I agree that the 32-bit console style 3d graphics are too ugly but I think I'd enjoy retro 3d graphics in the style of World of Warcraft. I never played that game but it's an example of the kind of 3d graphics that I think are good enough to enjoy in a retro sense. I remember when I first played Twisted Metal on PS1, maybe my first PS1 game experience, and I was like wow cool graphics. But nowadays it is beyond ugly. It's the same thing with Super Mario 64. 

[MajorLag]

You know, I couldn't disagree more about the 32-bit era early 3D look. It's probably all nostalgia, but there's something about low-poly, low-res 3D that I think is really neat. Maybe it exists in its own kind of uncanny-valley where the effect is more surreal than disturbing, I don't know. The affine texture mapping I could do without though.

 

Hell, I'd even be up for a modern take on absurdly low-poly flat-shaded EGA era 3D aesthetics. I guess I'm weird like that.

[MisterXiado]

Late year 2D spritework was pretty much perfected, and it was butting up against early 3D, so it's not quite a fair comparison.

[orthicviper]

On 6/10/2017 at 9:26 PM, MajorLag said:

You know, I couldn't disagree more about the 32-bit era early 3D look. It's probably all nostalgia, but there's something about low-poly, low-res 3D that I think is really neat. Maybe it exists in its own kind of uncanny-valley where the effect is more surreal than disturbing, I don't know. The affine texture mapping I could do without though.

 

Hell, I'd even be up for a modern take on absurdly low-poly flat-shaded EGA era 3D aesthetics. I guess I'm weird like that.

Actually I can enjoy the textures of 1st party PS1 games or 3d games later in the systems life, but I gotta have more polygons. Mitten hands are too annoying for me.