Chad Retrogamer
(media.scored.co)
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Some 2D is still bad when you start going back too far. Once you start getting back to the mid to early 80's, the games are nearly unplayable by even pre-modern standards.
Until you go back REALLY far, for the original wave of video games, with treasures like The Monuments of Mars, Centipede or Round 42. Back then graphics were so basic they succeeded on gameplay alone.
Fair enough, if you can't look pretty, you're game play loop better be squared away.
The big developer stuff still holds up. There are some game mechanics that can be seem "unfair" like mob respawn triggers with no cooldowns, losing control during post-damage animation along with movement stall, and of course limited lives then game resets.
But the Nintendo, Capcom, Konami stuff is all still perfectly playable. Sega seems to have fewer "timeless" games but still a few gems.
Maybe it's my age, but I don't have a problem limited lives and game resets. At a certain point, there has to be a "get good scrub" mechanism that punishes players for failure.
I would just pair that with a difficulty slider and competent enemy design so there never feels like any "cheap" deaths.
It was probably fine back then where your only options were like 4 games and beating battletoads was at the top of your to-do list, but as someone who grew up playing my dad’s old NES/SNES/Atari games…simply throwing myself at the wall of bullets for hours on end got boring pretty quick. Some are better than others (I loved Megaman) but I specifically remember I hated playing through battletoads specifically
Well, to be honest. Battletoads and TNMT were horrifically designed games for difficulty curve. I think they may have originally been meant as Arcade games, but that monetization strategy doesn't work for a home console.