Why do those old dusty games gotta be on every list?
The best way I can put is is this:
Imagine they made a list of the top 100 albums and Thriller is #84. Songs in the Key of Life is in the low 70’s. What’s going on doesn’t make the list at all. Taylor Swift gets the #1 spot. To me a list like that just reeks of clout chasing and a lack of respect for the history of the medium.
To be fair, older games had their faults—I don’t miss limited continues or inputting passwords for example.
But there’s a lot that new games can learn from the older generation of game developers in terms of trimming the fat and getting straight to the point:
• I’m tired of games that try too hard to be movies instead of having engaging level design, puzzles, fun game mechanics, etc.
• I’m tired of holding the up button and walking through an empty field for 10 minutes every time I want to see the next part of the game.
• I’m tired of tutorials that take hours just to get to the good stuff.
• I’m tired of people acting like every game has to have 1000 hours of content to be worth playing. Sometimes it’s fun to be able to play through a game like Super Metroid over a weekend.
Why would I want to deal with any of this bloat or filler when I could be playing a game like Mega Man X, Chrono Trigger, or Streets of Rage that gets straight to the point?
Not saying that every recent game does the above, or that saying Ocarina of Time needs to be #1 again, but dismissing pre-2000 games as “old and dusty” is a disrespectful and an overgeneralization IMO.
But but but TMNT should at least be #2 above Elden Ring right?
