The Weekend Debate: Vintage or Vinegar?

I think the Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid games have aged very well! The things that keep them as such classics is the fantastic stories and gameplay, the way the players can relate to the characters is also vital in my opinion.

Sadly I think graphics have a rather large impact on people’s opinions of older games!

I remember booting up the PSOne classic Medieval. Back in the day I loved this game and I really considered it as a classic, when I seen it up on the PS+ update I was very excited

The gameplay of Medieval is still good throwing my arm at the enemies but the graphics for me made it pretty unplayable in my eyes. The textures and the chunky graphics mash the eyes up a bit and sometimes it is hard to distinguish enemies from trees lol

Does the game still remain a classic? In my opinion yes it does but ever since the PS2 and PS3 the bar is set very high so after being so used to amazing graphics as in Uncharted 2, most PSOne classics now seem unplayable. So some are best left in the memory vaults to remember the game as it was.

Of course HD remakes are a bit different. The Splinter Cell Trilogy for example does look pretty good and is playable on the PS3 bar the annoying cutscenes with the weird moving mouths.

Hope I didn’t stray off topic lol

“Which games have aged particularly well or particularly badly, and what aspects of the games are the most common deciding factors?”

i think super mario have aged particularly well

I enjoy these games as much as an adult as I did as a kid a truly fantastic game and one all ages would enjoy. I played Mario when I was 8 and still do 20 years later now i play Super Mario Galaxy

Games that tried to do things too early are the ones who have aged the worst. In my opinion, the world wasn’t ready for 3D until after the PS1/N64/Saturn. All 3D games for those consoles have aged poorly, including classics like Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid 1 etc. The games that instead improved on earlier generations and focused on increasing detail or telling a compelling story have aged better. Final Fantasy IX, Xenogear, Astal and Crash Bandicoot (half 3D but fixed camera) hold up better. The generation that followed still holds up decently but looks washed out and lacks detail. HD remakes are awesome for polishing these up.

well some are classic some are rubbish and some are brilliant but have been released like 20 times(i’m looking at you sonic) and some like crash bandicoot 2 are vintage and should be released. The way you’re doing it with ps2 games is sort of good as you get the same game but remade and havin classics from older consoles is important as the PS3 has no bc. But doing this you get probls like music, bugs etc. I just think in general whats the harm in having the option

I would say metal gear solid has aged well for the classic storyline continuing each game and crash bandicoot has aged badly because the games are a lot different now

Need fo speed underground 2. I mean i can play this game over and over and never even think that it’s old. The graphics are pretty good and for me it’s the tracks layout which make this game for some reason never get old.

The game that aged best is definitely Pokemon RPG. Playing Pokemon Red or Blue on my Gameboy is even better than playing Black & White, which has the same game mechanic. The first 150 Pokemon feel all nostalgic and you want to catch them all and putt them all in your team. It’s still addictive.

For the ones which aged particularly bad I can name a whole bunch. Let’s say in general most of the PSOne games. Every week with the PS Store Update a lot of PSOne games get requested. But with PS+ we get one free every month. Games like Resident Evil, Syphon Filter and even Final Fantasy look bad, play unsmooth and the storytelling isn’t that great when you play them nowadays and you haven’t played them in the past. It’s only for nostalgic people, because games nowadays are so much better. So I can name a big list here, but the games that I am nostalgic with, I can’t wait to play Spyro or Hogs of War again when they arrive in the PS Store. I enjoyed those games on my PSOne and if I can play them on my PSP I look just through the ugly graphics, lack of storytelling and unsmooth play. Because I love those games and love turns blind, but makes your life fantastic.

I think that final fantasy games have aged well, I mean can you count how may final fantasy games there has been! I think it is that final fantasy always has the best graphics of its time, a very enjoyable story and gameplay so long you really do get your moneys worth. I while back in a ps.com comp I won it and received FFIX as a reward(OH YEAH). I now play it one my psp and it is very enjoyable.

Games that don’t age well are usually sport games, I mean they always come out year by year but once the newest one has been released no one wants to play the older ones. Sports games that end in the year they were released such as FIFA 02, PES 2009, they are the games that are in the bargin bin in your local game store for 99p as everyone just wants the newer version.

By the way judge, I hope I am not at a disadvange to get a prize just because I have won a competition before. PLEASE, I haven’t won one of these yet, well I guess I don’t need to win this week but it would be nice. If I think of anything else I will post it. A weekend is a long time!

Will as much as some games are over released cough*sonic*cough I just think whats the harm in having the option. More choice the better.

Something I’d say would be the Gran Turismo series, I mean it took time to see GT5 but everything changed very quickly. The series will continue to be strong for the years to come.

As much as some gamea are over released cough*sonic*cough but if you have the option its better than not having it. The more the better

Sorry i thought it hsdnt posted oops : FAIL

It saddens me to say, but nearly everything from the original PlayStation era has aged terribly. Most notably it’s the graphics that have faired worst, but because of the first foray into 3D the controls of a lot of the games leave little to be desired. They weren’t as fined tuned as they became in the PS2 era and beyond. It can be rather awkward to play now. There are a few exceptions of course, but on the whole it’s rather soul destroying to have your rose-tinted glasses shatter when you revisit them.

Games that are still as great as they have ever been are from the 16-bit era. Games like Super Mario Bros., Sonic The Hedgehog and a number of others are still fun to revisit and they stay great games because the 2D gameplay was refined over 20+ years and while graphics were important, gameplay was still king. I still love to play them even if getting the old consoles and games down from the attic can be a pain!

That’s one of the main reasons why I’ve loved this generation. Not only do we get brilliant new games, but with the advent of digital distribution we get to relive the classics, often in glourious HD, without the need to hunt down the old games and consoles. It really is a win-win situation.

Generally, most pixelgames hold up pretty well. This is mainly because it has become an art direction in itself. One example of this is the Zelda nes/snes iterations, which still hold their own in the current wave of retro-inspired games hitting PSN and XBLA. However, the 2D gaming formula that had been refined for so long had to make way for new genres like the FPS. I think DOOM is such a title that was really great when it came out, but really only laid foundations for other games, and it’s now completely uninteresting because of it. When developers gained experience with the new graphics, the new classics were born, which aged pretty well. Games like Timesplitters, God of War, Halo, Deus Ex, Ico, and every gamer can probably add to that list games that are still fun to play.

Some games were ahead of the curve, some fell behind. My personal best aged game is the original Splinter Cell, which, probably because of its reliance on graphical features like shadows and the slower pacing, still has a great feel. My worst aged game was when I picked up Zelda Ocarina of Time again. I had a great deal of nostalgic fun, but man oh man, those controls, the weird frictionless running, I had a terrible time easing into it again.

Aged well Sonic 2 just always felt modern to me. Even the Mario games on All-Stars don’t come close – Sonic 2 will and always will be ageless. Porting it with better visuals is always a big plus. This game will never get old.

Uncharted 2 will become a classic as will dues ex and brink won’t as much as like it

I don’t think games aged well or bad. It’s only our eyes and context. Nobody thinks that a work of Van Gohh gets old-fashioned; you may not like it, but that work has his historic context, and without it you can’t understand, and the most important, you can’t see it properly. Think in other cases, like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

Some games have aged badly depending on the eyes of the beholder. On the eyes and, in this case, with the hands and patience too.

Sorry about my english!!

sonic the hedgehog and ages pretty well and the aspects of the game that is popular is the aged bit i think sonic has been around for years and peole know who sonic is and now the gaming is better quality but same gameplay u have to get hoops and it has always been hoops and running courses for years so everyone knows if you ask them “who is sonic the hedgehog and what do u remember from it” they’ll say a blue hedgehog that has been round for years and the thing they’ll remember is the concept of coming from a young 2d pixcelated hedgehog to a hd 3d brilliant quality one i love sonic!!!!!!

Personally I think Metal Gear Solid has aged brilliantly. The sheer graphical experience of MGS 4 is outstanding. The on line which none of the others had (other than portable ops) Is brilliant!.Each and every MGS game has gotten better and better. The 1st MGS which is available on the store still amazes me. IT was the first of it’s kind (stealth action 3rd person shooter) and still to this day it appears to be a great series. And with the HD remakes soon, it will only get better and better.

I recently played through Snatcher (Mega CD game) and have to say that it has (for the most part aged amazingly well. I would love to see it rereleased, not so much for improved graphics but just so it could reach a wider audience given that the Mega CD release was the only English release. Given the recent revival of point and click style adventure games I would have thought a revival of this Kojima classic could do really well!

a game that aged well for me is jak and daxter the precursor legacy i just love the adventure. i find it more then a game did u ever just go to the jungle at night and look up at how beautful and peaceful the jungle is at night or how about how exciting racing the lerkers on the zoomer was or how about breaking the sages out of the prison and the music is awesome!!! i love the snow mountain music and the jungle and the village and well all the music to be honest and i forgot about the different ecos. they are all cool. red eco makes jak stronger blue eco makes him run faster yellow for fireballs and green for health and the gameplay is awesome and its all fun. things that made this age well. fun,good gameplay,replayable,nice music,no loading times,i love the look of it and how nice it is when its night in the game and the areas look so cool and peaceful and beautful

the big test for older games is how well they stand up on todays big hd screens. most now look terrible. as said above the final fantasy series stands up really well. but my fave game of all time stands up well too, mainly due to the smaller than usual characters. this is sensible soccer on the Amiga. it still looks excellent and is still just as playable.

I think the game that stands the test of time is Metal Gear Solid. The graphics aren’t much to write home about now, but with a game of that age, it’s inevitable. On the plus side it has a very interesting story that is easy to understand but at the same time the twists aren’t obvious. Of course the best part of the game is the gameplay. It had some very innovative elements at the time which are still fun and effective today. I think it’s safe to say that metal gear solid has greatly influenced the games industry for the better, and without it there would be so many games that probably would have never been made.

On the other hand, I think the Crash Bandicoot games have aged badly (even though I love them) because the gameplay is essentially in 2D and once you’ve played any recent 3D game where you can move in all directions, trying to go back to a 3D game where you walk in a straight line all the time eventually gets boring in my opinion. I would love it if there could be a decent new Crash game that updates the gameplay.

“Which games have aged particularly well or particularly badly, and what aspects of the games are the most common deciding factors?”

-I feel that the games which age well are those where the game play is new, wherein it has defined a genre, or so refined that it has changed a genre.

-An example of this would be Vib-Ribbon: The game was different and the basic art style means it holds up well.

i reckon the most common deciding factor nowadays is the story if you dont understand what a games about the your not gunna like it very much take final fantasy 7 for example your a mercenary that only cares about money that realises that there are better things to fight for than your next paycheck so you join a rebellion to help fight an evil corporation from killing the planet and on the way you find a greater evil that harnesses the power to become a god

and on the other hand theres a game like monsters inc which is basically fill up a metre buy scaring robots and progressing onto the next level which gets repetitive and repetition leads to boredom and a boring game isnt gunna be played by anyone

by scaring robots*

Final Fantasy VII and Vagrant Story have aged very well, the graphics may seem a little dated in the main stories, but the FMVs are still as stunning today as they were then, and the gameplay will never age. Vagrant Story’s innovative weapon development system and the countless materia combinations in FFVII will mean these games will never grow old and I will never tire of replaying them.

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My picks for ages well:

-STREET FIGHTER
-MORTAL KOMBAT
-MEGA MEN
-CRASH BANDICOT
-ZELDA
-TMNT
-TEKKEN
-WARHAWK
-BATMAN
-MARIO
-GTA
-FALLOUT
-DEUS EX
-TETRIS
-MGS
-ASSASIN CREED
-CALL OF DUTY
-GOW
-CONTRA

ages badly:

-Goldeneye
-Superman
-Mario Kart
-Silent Hill
-Duke Nukem
-Doom
-Wolfenstein
-Iron Man

also another game that has aged well is spyro i love that game omg it has aged well so much from ps1 to ps2 and ps3 the aspects of this game that are so polular is that people can play on it so long and it has been around so long and its been around since i was a baby so its grown up with me basically all my life and so everyone loves the dragon because ok its babish but hes grown up with me and others so thts why i think!!

As a shooter I think games like black ops and mw3 are very badly age rated because Number 1: it says bad language and 12 year olds know about that nower days number 2: it says strong violence but in cod waw it’s much more gory and bloody but thats only a 15 rated game. But now health and safety have gone a little over the top so I would expect this.I think this should just be a 15 rated game at the most personally.

@25 by your logic i would suggest games that would stand the test of time are things like primal and legacy of kain series, these are fantastic examples of how great storys can drive games much further than actual gameplay or graphics, i cant stand people who skip cut scenes on there first playthrough and there like ” i just wanna get on with the game”.

that is the bloody game, story! i agree with final fantasy and metal gear and resi, they are all going on forever and the story gets better each time. also devil may cry will look fantastic!

oh and fifa has aged really well and call of duty and the concept thats really poplaur is realism fifa and cod are really realistic two most popular games the gameplay on both is brill so 4 good games

Like everyone has mentioned, it is great to see these PS classics released on PSN, especially the HD remakes. I seem to remember getting more from games back then, but I guess they were all breaking ground in their own ways. When MGS came out it totally blew me away, I can honestly say that none of the current crop have had the same effect on me, not even MGS4 amazing as it was. True, the graphics aren’t as impressive as we remember them, they have aged, but maybe not as much as we think. Remember the screen you played them on? CRT’s and probably in most cases much smaller than the panels most of us use today. Playing an old classic on a modern HD display isn’t doing the game justice, if you really really want to relive those golden memories see if you can dig up an old TV, set up the PS3, kick back and bask in times gone by…

I think the only games I play UNTIL NOW are Hercules, Crash series (Specifically Crash Team Racing) and Pepsi Man (:P). Those games have a feel to them that none of the modern games have! They simply are unique ever since they were released. Those games aged pretty well. Oh man, I can’t forget the old days when I used to play Pepsi Man and reach that level where there are lots of holes on the ground because of all the digging.. damn, as much as devs improve their games to be next-gen, I still miss those good ol’ days, where games were challenging with no auto save And, as for the deciding factor of games, well, it’s basically Multiplayer support. Who wouldn’t like to buy a game and play with his friends whether on split-screen or online? I, for one, buy games with my friends. So, as soon as a game is released, we all go to the retailer and buy the same game to play together.Multiplayer is a huge factor for me, this IS what differentiates the PS3 from the PS2. This is a feature me and my friends were dreaming of in the days of the PS1. It’s SO fun and it’s the main reason I got a PS3. I wish Pepsi man had Multiplayer. Just imagine how fun it would be to play Co-op in the game!

I tried replaying Populus a couple of weeks ago when I found it in a charity shop for 50p!! unfortunately the graphics had aged very badly, even my PS3s upscaler and smoother could do nothing to help, but I persevered and secured my tribes future although possibly at the expense of my retina!! :s

I think there are countless games that can still stand the test of the time. I think the best one though are the franchise that continue to keep going and improving on them while still keeping the magic formula that made them originally great.

I still have pc games that i play to this day like comand and conquer, footbal manger games and uplink.

I do think it’s great that in these days of the ps3 though that we can go back and play great games brought up to todays standards and remember those great times we had with them. To date i have all the HD remakes on ps3 so far except GOW volume 2 but fingers crossed i can add that to my collection too soon. )

games have aged particularly badly

Crash Bandicoot The controls were bad enough
Pitfall Pitfallis a horrible, horrible game
Mortal Kombat(Arcade) It just looks incredibly silly nowadays, not helped by the poor animation and poorer costumes. The gameplay itself isn’t much better
Wild Arms Wild Armsis decent enough, and is still worth playing, but it did not stand the test of time and, even back in the day, did not do all that it could have done in the face of Square Enix’s
Altered Beast(Arcade) Everything about this game is bad. The slow, plodding, side-scrolling combat is dull at best and frustrating at worst. The bosses are a shambling mess of button mashing and spammed attacks, the digitized voice “acting” is a joke and the graphics look like someone smeared bacon over a child’s drawing of ancient Greece.
Tomb Raider ,Metal Gear (MSX2, NES),Half-Life (PC),GoldenEye 007(Nintendo 64)

games have aged well God of War, God of War II, God of War 3, God of War: Chains of Olympus,God of War: Ghost of Sparta

Hi james! One game,infact the series,that’s aged very well is the old Rayman games! I’ve got great memories of throwing my armless fists at rusty, robot pirates! =D but sadly, with all this rayman rabbids nonsense the series has died… :,-( Anyhow, what makes a classic for me has got to be “a new idea” something that spices up the game and lets it escape the generic! Take shadow of the collossus for example, GIANT BOSSES!!! It had not been done before, therefore people enjoyed the experience. Instant classic! Thanks for reading!!!

It depends on what you mean by each game ageing, take Sonic for example, the original(s) have aged pretty well, anyone could go back to them and have fun and get the Sonic ‘feeling’, but if you mean age as in sequels than Sonic has aged terribly (hopefully a return of form with Generations), the recent ones weren’t what we loved from the original Sonic, so they were poorly received.

Oh and Timesplitters hasn’t aged at all, still a great game and over 9000% more fun than FPSers today, please get in touch with Crytek asking for TS4 and a ‘Splitters HD Collection, thanks :3.

speaking of clunky classics though there’s a couple i’ve bought of the store in recent years that i’ve found myself ubnable to play cause they
are just to clunky and old and just are just unplayable. The two examples i can think of the G-Police and Desctrction Derby. I so wish someone would bring those games backs. )

There are some good examles of psone games holding up games like crash bandicoot, Discworld, Broken Sword, Syphon Filter to name a few.

p.s Go on Sony you know you wanna announce a new Syphon Filter game for ps3. )

Crash Bandicoot! Not only because it still is an awesome game, but the great memories. Always had a friend, whom would sleep at my house and we would play Crash Bandicoot till 2-3AM in the morning, passing the controller after every level. Even after beating it, we would still play it multiple times and not many games can do that these days! Not to mention, GTA 2!!!

I think the MGS games have held up really well, the HD collection will only make them better

As for what makes a game stand the test of time, it’s got to be a good story. The narrative is often what makes or breaks a game for me, so if a game has got a good story, it’s still going to be a good story in 5, 10, or 15 years time.

Think about games like Bioshock, Half Life & Uncharted. They’ve got great stories, atmosphere and characters, and no matter how far the graphical leap goes in the future, those stories are going to be the ones that people remember and keep going back to, to experience again and again.

Deus Ex is one of the games that aged well. It didn’t look too good even at the day of it’s premiere (so it wasn’t a major contributing factor), but the controls were good, the plot was pleasantly complicated and during my recent replay of the game (guess why I did that;) ) was as much fun as my first adventure as J.C. Denton. I also liked how difficult it was – not frustrating, but challenging.

And for the games that aged badly…well, it’s hard to tell really. Mostly because games are developing, with better graphics, more user-friendly controls (oh, how I loathe to control Spyro in his first adventure!) and the fact that we look at them with our nostalgia glasses on.

But if I had to choose, I would go for Mortal Kombat. The visuals look silly and so unrealistic, that I can’t understand how come I was so creeped out by this game as a kid (prolly because of my imagination, though I hope I haven’t lost too much of it in my adulthood…). It’s unresponsive (as compared to the new MK) and getting a fatality is annoying rather than difficult.

I’m going to be the first to say SNAKE, Tetris, Pac-Man, Arkanoid and Command & Conquer, they age so well because they all have so simple game mechanics. A game that has aged badly would be Crash Team Racing I put the PS1 cd disc in and man is it slow and hard to control, racing games have come a long way since then.

Off to test crash 1 and ctr byeeee

I was looking forward to this one.
”Which games have aged particularly well or particularly badly, and what aspects of the games are the most common deciding factors?”
Tekken 3 has aged surprisingly well, Of course the Graphics aren’t that great when compared to Tekken Tag Tournament 2.
Infact it’s still my favourite fighting game ever!
Maybe it was because I grew up with Tekken 3, I do not know.
If you only care about graphics then why do you call your self a gamer?
Tekken 3 has everything it needs for a fighting game, great music, average graphics, great gameplay what more do you want from a classic?

A game that has aged particularly badly is the original Resident Evil.
Sure the story mode was fun, but I’m mostly referring to the voice acting.
Compare those to Resident Evil 5 and you know what I mean.
In a few words,It’s not the graphics which make a game age well or bad, it’s other factors such as music, story mode, and bonus content.

It depends on what criteria you are using to judge the games on tbh. Graphics wise there are very few games that have aged well, even some of the HD re-releases still look jaded when put up against their modern counterparts. But if you are using gameplay as the main base for judgement then there are an awful lot of games that still, despite their age, stack up just as well, if not better than the more modern takes on them. The first God Of War Collection, for example, had amazing gameplay that still stood head and shoulders above the likes of Dantes Inferno. As far as I’m concerned its the gameplay that should be the true gauge of how well a game has stood the test of time – if it still plays well compaired to a more up to date itteration, or clone or whatever then it has aged well; however if, when you go back to play them, they play like a bag of spanners (clunky! lol) then time has defeated it, sadly. Some games are best left in the memory as great games of their time allowing us to move forward.

Marty

Time Crisis and Point Blank hold up really well. Even though the graphics on Time Crisis are awful, it’s still fun to pick up a lightgun and kill some mooks. I’m glad that the Move is bringing back lightgun games like Dead Space: Extraction!

I went back to the original Driver on the PS1 and that looks awful. The driving is really awkward, the draw distance is tiny and it just feels really clunky. The cutscenes are hilariously bad as well!

I don’t mind graphics so much, it’s more weird when you play a game that didn’t use the analogue sticks or has shoot as X instead of the shoulder buttons.