GAMEPROs prediction about the interest in classic gaming

[lendelin]

In the recent GamePro (vol.189. June 2004, p.14) there is an interesting short editorial about present successful sequels of old classic games and their effect on interest in the old classics.

Basically, the GAMEPROS say that expanding new generations of gamers are experiencing better games of old franchises on new consoles which results in a fading memory of old systems and games.

GamePro:
"Sayonara, NES...With the population of game players expanding in every demographic direction possible, the memory of Ryu Hyabusa, for example, fighting the forces of 8-bit evil are getting dimmer and dimmer.Now, entire generations of game players are about to grow up experiencing only Ninja Gaiden in its soon-to-be-classic Xbox version.

Prince of Persia, Mega man, Metroid, Castlevania and a host of great game characters that trace their origins back to the NES are already staples on current consoles. They are all arriving in new, bigger, better, faster forms again this year...Time marches on and so do games."

At least the last stereotypical sentence is right, but they got everything else wrong. Progress in gaming goes hand-in-hand with interest of past gaming, they are not exclusionary, they re-enforce each other. Successful sequels of old franchises do not decrease interest in old franchises, on the contrary, they increase the interest in the origins of franchises and systems.

GamePros prediction doesn't make sense at all for continuing old franchises which saw sequels on every generation of consoles. Every sequel on a newer console would dig the grave deeper for the old game, which doesn't explain the increasing demand for the prequel and it's price as soon as a new successful sequel is published.

The prediction is even more off track for franchises which haven't seen a sequel for ages. The new Rygar sparked new interest of the old NES game, and the prices for the NES game reflect it. The interest of gamers in the origin of a game character increases with the surprise that there was long ago actually a game on the NES.

The crux of the prediction is the assumption that mere new game experiences for a new generation of players produce fading memories for old games.
1) The demographic of game players broadened indeed, and that means that more and more people discover games today who didn't experience older games at all. The players with a stronger interest in new games realize that they missed a lot of game eras, and we all know that this is the first step of buying older games and for some even the first step of serious collecting.

2) Even todays 12 year-old game players get older, and with age comes a stronger interest in the origins of their hobby for the ones who stick with it. A broadened demographic means more aging game players, more gamers who stick with games, and therfore more interst in the origins of gaming in the future.

The opposite of GamePros short-sighted prediction is true. As long as we have successful sequels we have interest in classic gaming. As long as we have an interest in present games, the interest in past games lives on.

[Ed Oscuro]

Time does march on, and people are becoming familiar once again with the classics through remakes...shame they mentioned Ninja Gaiden without acknowledging the SNES trillogy is in there, and even more shameful that they forgot Zero Mission.

Classic gaming fading away? I don't know. I certainly believe that classic styles of gameplay are here for the long haul, and whether or not companies will decide to bring back the classics is a choice to be made by each and every copyright holder according to their belief in the ability of their classics to be accepted and bought by gamers today.

If what you say is indeed what the article intended to convey (I guess I'll have to believe it o_O) then this is indeed very poor of them, you're right.

However, it's not GamePro, but us, gamers with roots in the past and present, along with those who'll join our ranks in the near future, who will decide if classic gaming stays relevant.

[NintendoMan]

Great post! I read the article 2 days ago when I got my new gamepro in the mail. I really wasn't exactly seeing what gaempro was saying, other than the NES was dead.

And I don't think that could be anymore about about the post put up on as long as their is hardcore gamers out there, not just the casual idiots that only play sports games, (nothing against sports games, I like some of them, just the people that won't give any other game a chance other than sports) there will always be interest in "classic games" or older games.

Having grown up in the 8-Bit Nes era, I know that I will never give up my classic gaming habbits and games. I love my old stuff do death, but I still get 2 or so gamecubes games a week.

[Bratwurst]

I threw a subtle insult in GamePro's direction in my earlier thread, not that anyone cares, it's just to establish I'm biased. My point is it's an idiot rag full of pretty pictures. Just skim over the letters they choose to publish and answer to. Hard hitting stuff there, I tell ya.

Hard to add to this thread without touching on anything lendelin has already eloquently covered, but it's a given that if some ten year old starts off on Mega Man X7 he'll eventually get curious and want to see what X1 was all about. And such venturing would possibly even lead him to the very first NES title. Though I figure it'll be more in the form of emulation than the kid bothering to pick up a copy through ebay.

A naming convention that I feel is sort of sneaky is that Capcom has branched off with these different series like Battle Network or Mega Man Zero just to start off with a new sequence of numbers. It almost dismisses the fact that there were titles before these games came around.

[StrychNiNE]

I threw a subtle insult in GamePro's direction in my earlier thread, not that anyone cares, it's just to establish I'm biased. My point is it's an idiot rag full of pretty pictures. Just skim over the letters they choose to publish and answer to. Hard hitting stuff there, I tell ya.

I don't have anything particularily interesting to add...but any thread with something to do with gamepro...I have to add my hatred to. Any "prediction" from gamepro is as good as saying "drunken hobo says that in 2005 videogames will". It's a worthless magazine written by idiots, for idiots. Kind of like what Interplay has become.

[Epicenter]

Newer is not always BETTER, but GamePro of course begs to differ. Most games nowadays are terrible! 1% of them are good, probably less! Whereas back in the 'day' (1983-1996 approx.) it was at LEAST 40% by the count of most gamers. Publishers are 'drunk on technology'. They think it's all about pretty, bump mapped graphics and gameplay doesn't matter.

Nintendo's present CEO even made a blind statement about gaming's future .. and with no words can I apprehend what led up to this nonsense:

[ PARAPHRASED ]
"Gamers don't care about state of the art technology and processors. They don't care about great graphics, epic storylines, high quality sound or fantastic gameplay. They want 2 screens."

Yeeeeeeah.
Is it just me, or are these the end-times? Maybe a meteor hits the earth and we all start gaming on the scavenged 8/16/32 bit system fragments we are able to piece together from the remains of our crater-pocked planet. It seems biblical enough to happen. ;D But odds are nothing stops the way the industry is going right now and we keep seeing trash like MARIO PARTY 43 and SONIC GOLF 9, FINAL FANTASY 904682 (part 9) a decade from now.

[chrisbid]

as long as modern mainstream gaming continues to grow and get away from classic style gameplay, then the classic gaming community will also continue to grow. However, they wont grow at the same rate, and the percentage of classic gamers within the video game market will shrink. The evidence is shown in the number of mainstream chains that carry classic systems. EB no longer carries old systems and games, and neither does gamestop. Gamecrazy is a new chain, and they carry old stuff, but for how long is anyones guess, as their shelf space is generally the smallest of the three chains.

of course the reasons why gamestop and EB (and Gamecrazy will soon learn) that they dont earn a lot of money on classic games is because they overcharge, and they dont preserve boxes and instructions when given the chance. I wouldnt mind paying the higher prices gamestop had on their NES, SNES, and Genesis games, if they had bothered to make an effort to keep the packaging.

but gamepro sucks anyway, they are only trying to reassure themselves and their readers that us old timers are just sentimental coots that arent in touch with reality. That may be partially true, but fun is universal and is something that really cant be improved or diminished.

[charitycasegreg]

I just read that article in my issue. That is so dumb. gamepro used to be ok back in the early 90's. I say you should email gamepro abot the stuff you said about that article.

[Milk]

Right now, it's becoming faddish to be a classic gamer. They sell NES T-shirts in Hot Topic, for goodness sake! If Gamepro and Gamestop think it's going to fade soon, they're foolish. The kids who were born in the '80's and reared on gaming are coming of age and buying their old toys back. As that generation gets older and earns more money, it's just going to build. Did you see the plug-in controllers that have collections of old games out 5 years ago? What about the NES-style Playstation pad? Did you hear anyone saying "Know your roots" in reference to gaming? On top of that, Sony has made it cool and mainstream to play games, so some of the people who threw out their old systems after they reached puberty are being lured back in.

[Aussie2B]

They are all arriving in new, bigger, better, faster forms again this year...Time marches on and so do games."

Anyone who would say such a moronic thing should be stripped of their job as a game reviewer. I guess by their logic the games they love today and give perfect or near perfect scores to are actually crappy games because in 20 years the games will be so much better in comparison. And I guess Castlevania: Lament of Innosence is SO MUCH BETTER than Castlevania 3, Castlevania 4, Rondo of Blood, *insert nearly any other Castlevania game here*, right? *rolls eyes* I can't believe people get paid to spout such garbage...

Calming down now...

I'm the last person on earth to defend GameStop, but they don't all actually throw away boxes and manuals, chrisbid. The one near me here in NYC does, but this semi-cool one I went to in Washington didn't. I guess they didn't have the funds to be all fancy by having games sealed in used packaging hanging on racks, so wherever they had the space, they'd shove the used games they had. I'd take a guess that they had more N64 games with manuals and/or boxes than loose N64 carts. They kept the NES, Genesis, and SNES games all together, and a few had boxes/cases and/or manuals (mostly just the Genesis games for obvious reasons). I'm gonna check out the store again this summer, so hopefully they haven't changed anything (besides no longer taking in DC, Genesis, NES, and SNES games).

[christianscott27]

god, i hope they're right!

i'm sick of the competition, every kid getting into classic gaming is another punk getting in the way of my greedy need to get all the games for myself! i long for the day when kids will walk past a pile of carts in the goodwill without even knowing what they are! mine, all mine!

[Kid Ice]

I predict Gamepro will continue to be unreadable.

[Epicenter]

When I pick up GamePro, I feel like I am touching death. The death of my youth, my interests, a huge facet of my world. Then I put it back on the rack, make sure no one's looking and give it the finger. Or both fingers. And pick up Retro Gamer or a magazine about PC gaming which hasn't been destroyed as badly as Console gaming has been.

As for GameStop .. all the ones near me (3 or 4) take their classic games and throw them in a rack. There will be 1 crumpled, near unreadable manual shoved in between every 40 or 50 games. Most games will be highly damaged. Packaging was most likely discarded. An in-box copy of SMB3 (but by no means new) copy seems to warrant $60 there. (WTF?)

And the FunCo land that had NES titles as far as the eye could see and MD titles nearly that far, was just converted to an EB Games. Something is very wrong with the world. Or just the industry. :P

[portnoyd]

I predict Gamepro will continue to be unreadable.

Amen brother homie. I also predict that Gamepro's rating scale of Needs Ritalin, Mildly Excited, Half Asleep, and In a Coma will be a major contributor to why no one really takes gaming seriously.

Yes, I know they finally changed it, but I wanted to make a gag, eat a dick.

Gamepro shouldn't be allowed to say anything where they have to make an assertion on anything. Prozines are bad enough these days, but Gamepro is the same magazine they were 10 years ago, just with more ads.

Let them pass it off as a fad. Won't bother my ass none.

dave

[Ed Oscuro]

To venture in the other direction, though, I take comments such as "only 1% of current titles are good" to be far from the truth. I manage to enjoy most every game title I come across, and if there was a meter for determining how much tolerance of games a person can have, I'd expect "Played the CD-i Zeldas" and "Has good things to say about arcade ports on the Spectrum" to qualify me as some sort of gaming maschiochist. Regardless, I look at games today and most of them are just as well done as classic, say, Konami titles (with their excessive borrowing from 80s movies).

Game developers have much more to think about (and worry about - try to convince Hideo Kojima that he can use the likenesses of a dozen real life actors and other famous personalities today, whereas his early classic Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake does just that). Many games are overcomplex today, but there are many that manage to deliver pure, simple gaming bliss despite the hardware.

We have a ton of FPS titles today because that method of displaying a world view is intuitive. In the 2D days we saw all manner of creatures walk from the left to the right. Yesterday's cast of characters was easily as diverse as the characters we control today, including Dragons in a certain Intellivision game, robots that take over other robots in a classic Commodore title, and lots of ninjas and warriors. Today we have Spyro the Dragon in a certain PlaySated title, characters that hack and take over devices, and lots of the same ninjas and warriors that we saw back in the 1980s.

It's alright if one refuses to accept the new way of presenting the world and giving the player control, but I don't think all that amounts to games being much worse than they used to be. The problem lies with companies that suck at updating their classics and break the system. I'm going to guess one of the reasons Epicenter wrote that would be his experiences with the 3D Sonic titles. They're nothing much at all like the classic Sonic titles, but classic updates are (thankfully) only a small portion of the market.

Some deride Ninja Gaiden, saying it's just a DMC clone...but back in the late 1980s, it was stated that original titles like Tetris and Quarth (from Konami) appeared "much less than we'd like to see." Castlevania was just a polished version of Ghosts 'n Goblins, and how many Street Fighter 2 (or, for that matter, Yie-Ar-Kung-Fu and Fighting Street) clones did we praise back in the day? The quality is still there, and so is a lot of unwanted hype. There's much to like in gaming today, and lots that didn't work out well.

It took the game industry a decade longer than Namco to run into the problems Namco did with Pac-Man 2, that's all.

[SoulBlazer]

Great post, Ed, my thoughts exactly.

[Daria]

The only real difference is back then we didn't have the internet to gather in large groups on and bitch about the state of gaming today. :P

And on a side note I liked Zelda's Adventure... >.> The other two CD-i titles were complete crap though.
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WELLBUTRIN SETTLEMENT INFO

[lendelin]

I don't like the posts of GamePro bashing too much. GamePro isn't so bad, the reviews are pretty accurate, and GamePro was the only magazine I read which actually called 'Enter the Matrix' a below average game and gave it a mediocre review grade, whereas GI explicitly recommended buying a premature released game, and so did NP.

Ed Oscuro, overall I agree with you. I agree even with the provocative statement in the GamePro editorial that game quality overall improved in the last 30 years. Like you I recognize more copycat games and games with bad control during the NES times than today. I also think that games have to develop, have to go in different directions, after all, who wants to enjoy for fifteen years the same 8-bit gameplay over and over again? Game development can't stand still, and game developers aren't masochistic to produce the same stuff ad infinitum. We just overlook today that gamede velopment was and always is slow and gradual, and we are today as impatient with the lack of innovation as gameplayers were 15 years ago.

The revival of classic gaming today and overall game quality today is besides the point of the editorial, however. It simply says that the interest in older systems and games gradually vanishes because new generations of players and more players experience successful sequels of older franchises.

Without hard data about gaming habits of different age groups and their first gaming experiences I'm speculating like the guys from GamePro; but I think the better arguments of speculative reasoning looking at reality is on my side.

If GamePros evaluation were true
- the interest in Atari 2600 would almost equal zero.
- there would be no expanding collecting scene for older games.
- there would be no Videogame Museum at the upcoming E3.
- there would be no younger gamers who enjoy Joust and the first Castlevania because of their refreshing linear simplicity in contrast to the games today.
- there would be no increasing number of publications about videogame history.
- there would be no Hall of Fame for videogame developers.
- there wouldn't be compilation discs of older games and franchises like the upcoming Mega Man compilation release.

While all of these phenomena could be tweaked and forced into GamePros evaluation with a lot of twists and turns, the editors opinions aren't convincing. If you have a lot of phenomena who are so obviously in conflict with the editorials assertion, the core of the assertion is probably wrong.

Basic interests in games isn't a generational problem. Basic gameplay and the motivation to play didn't change dramatically in the last 20 years, which means that the potential interest in older games are always there. Successful franchises, their sequels, and the broadening demographic of players is almost a guarantee that interests in older systems and games increases as well. More CASUAL gamers mean more hardcore gamers becasue some of them will mysteriously transform into hardcorers (who are just players who play more often than others and are interested in game history). Embrace more financial success of the industry, embrace casual gamers because that's the recruitment field for the hardcore crowd. If the ratio between casual and hardcore gamers tilts a bit to one side or another isn't so relevant for the topic, I assume it was and will be the same ratio.

The more successful the game industry overall becomes, the more successful sequels we have, the more gameplayers there are, the more interest in older systems, franchises and game history will develop. Not only newer games become increasingly an established and recognized form of entertainment; with the increasing success of videogames their past becomes established and recognized as well.

If we didn't have successful sequels, no interest in newer games, no succesful game industry, THEN we'd have a problem, then the interst in older games would vanish as well and the editors were right. Then the Atari 2600 crowd were just a bunch of old farts no-one take s seriously. Fortunately, that's not the case.

If Gampros generational argument were right, that would also mean that UNsuccessful sequels of old franchises would spark interest of younger players in better older franchises. I don't think that's true either.

[Ed Oscuro]

The top-down one? It does fetch insane amounts of money...which you must've paid to play it unless you got it back in the day...

It's the one CD-i Zelda title I don't own.

[Push Upstairs]

The only reason Gamepro is saying this crap is so its readers will continue to buy NEW games and continue buying their magazine to read reviews on them.

Gamepro doesnt sell magazines if everyone is buying games they do not cover anymore.