Chad Retrogamer
(media.scored.co)
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They're only bad if you're looking at games that pushed the envelope too hard and aimed for realism over stylization. All the best looking games of the past still look great, because they aimed to be appealing over being realistic.
And even then, why is everyone so hung up on graphics anyway? Shouldn't we care more about the games being fun to play, first and foremost?
No kidding - the ORIGINAL super bomberman on the SNES with the 4 tap expansion is still the ultimate frenzy game with a group of friends.
Modern graphics and styles have only worsened the playability - never made it better
I'm completely honest. I hate realistic graphics. Retro style graphics look infinitely better to me most of the time. To me they have more soul. Can't really explain why but I'm going to pick stuff like Gothic over Witcher 3 any day of the week. Perhaps it's similar to novels. The more the author wastes on describing every little detail the worse the reading experience gets.
If I had to venture a guess, it's probably verisimilitude. Having retro-style graphics means that your brain fills in alot of gaps and sets low expectations, while a more 'modern' game with it's hyper-realistic fashion allows you to see the invisible walls much more easily.
Simply put, if a game mirrors reality in extreme detail yet doesn't allow you to do everything reality allows, you start to see the pixels wether you want to or no.
To use an odd example, it's probably one of the reasons The Long Dark, a walking survival simulator, has remained popular to this day despite being over ten years old - it's odd water-color graphic design allows for alot of forgiveness for something that tends to be very 'hard' in terms of realism in alot of ways while failing horribly in others.
It's part of why I've been getting back into audio dramas lately. The imagination doing all the heavy lifting is really underrated tool for entertainment media.