Is Retro our future?

Mike Bantick
Saturday, 16 June 2007 17:49

Opinion and Analysis

Nostalgic gaming has always been well-liked, with stretched development resources, safer decision making on game styles and the high cost of new IP, coupled with the popularity of current-gen console online stores, such as the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console, are we looking at a future full of games from the past?

Recently we saw the gaming media go nuts about a 30 year old game - Pac-Man - and its reinvention under the Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) guise.  The face-lift of Pac-Man into Pac-Man Championship Edition gave the pill popping eighties icon a new sheen, faster-continuous game-play and yes, a new lease of life.

XBLA has given the makeover to a number of iconic arcade games from the past, Geometry Wars, Frogger, Scramble, Time Pilot and more recently Centipede/Millipede have become time-fillers in my house-hold.  In those particular cases, the core game did not change, simply the addition of a new multi-layered sound effect system and retina burning graphics.

Many of the XBLA offerings are complete remakes of original 80's classics, or direct game-play copies of games from the same era.

Meanwhile over in the land of Wii, the Virtual Console concept receives additional titles each week.  Not prettied up, just pure ports from the days of eight bit home consoles, NES, SNES, N64, Mega Drive/Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, MSX and Neo Geo.

Grabbing these old titles for your spanking new gaming console, in a lot of ways feels like a step backwards.  Until, as a fan, you begin to play, many joys of classic game-play come flooding back. Generally, simple, repetitive action, small in-context rewards for progression and the odd boss-battle to contend with is enough to get you addicted for hours.

Contrast this with today's games; complex virtual sand-box worlds, technological 3D marvels, complete novels of interactive dialogue and symphonic orchestral sound tracks.  A modern AAA game title absorbs the resources of a major Hollywood movie.  In fact that is an understatement, with development time for a game stretching in some cases to four or five years.

Now comes the tough question though.  Is it worth it?