Are games really better in the present day?
OPINION
It sure feels the other way around! I was recently thinking about all of the games that I have played in years gone by and was wondering if they might have been better games then what is being offered today. I would have to think that there shou
I would have to consider games of years passed as being titles that were at least 10 to 15 years old or older. I would also have to say that games that could be taken into consideration should be limited to the IBM or PC incarnation of computers. The reason for this is for the simple fact that the PC has been the dominant machine in the gaming world and it has been capable of running games virtually from its inception. There was the Commodore, the Apple, the Atari and others but those have not survived nearly as long as the venerable PC has. In fact the PC version of machines has virtually remained the same through out its 25 plus year history. The only real differences in the PCs of yesteryear and today are its constantly evolving hardware and software technologies that have advanced and changed as time has advanced. That technology has pretty much remained the same versus when it all began. Basic transistor technology and the use of binary code have not changed at all. It has become more sophisticated. The new game consoles that we have today have not been in existence long enough to be factored into this equation. Plus dedicated game machines are just that, dedicated game machines. They can do nothing except run games where as computers can do it all. Plus computers have a multitude of add-ons and different controllers, where as the game console has pretty much the same type of game pad on all machines.
What are we looking for?
What are we looking for as far as what games of years past should have had but did not have? Remember that this is purely a subjective article and it is laced with my personal opinions. In the present of today we have the luxury of looking back many years into the past and we can compare what was and what is. I know from my many years of experience with computer gaming that things have changed immensely. It has changed so dramatically in fact that youngsters of today would not recognize games of 20 years ago as being anything but horrible endeavors of futility. When we as older more mature persons look back on the glory days of computer gaming we see it as being a marvelous and very exciting time to be alive. I feel this way about games of 20 or 25 years ago. Why would an older person feel this way you may ask? Well that older person has had the opportunity to see gaming in both its infancy and in its more mature state, which would be the present day offerings.
Let’s get into it shall we?
Lets get into what I as an experienced gamer believe is the best period of gaming, today or yesteryear. I will take into consideration many different factors. Some of which will be the hardware and software technology that was available 20 years ago and what is available today. Obviously the machines of today are a quantum leap above what was available back then. With that said let’s start our little unscientific analysis in the following paragraphs shall we?
Remember the good old days?
Remember the day of the blinking cursor next to the a:> or c:> prompt? Do you think those were an enjoyable experience? For myself, as a computer savvy individual I really can’t say that it bothered me much. I knew the commands and I knew how to get things to work. But this story isn’t all about me. It’s about what people in general perceived as being fun. Although I was able to get most games to run on my various incarnations of computers I must say that fiddling with DMA channels, IRQ’s, the Config.sys, Autoexec.bat files and other mind blowing things was not fun.
In the years before Windows XP came along getting a game to run properly was one difficult proposition. Sometimes the sound wouldn’t work or the mouse or joystick would fail. Or perhaps the game itself would not run at all because you didn’t have enough memory or your video card wasn’t good enough. The problem with this is that you had no idea what was wrong, mainly because they didn’t tell you. You had to try different things and possibly be lucky enough to have one of your friends tell you what to do, because he had encountered the same thing. Or maybe you just stumbled on to a solution. Don’t get me wrong because we still have problems today. If your system in the present world of computer gaming isn’t up to snuff then you won’t be able to run the title. You might be able to run it but it will be very slow and jerky. This is fine because you will not feel like an idiot for not knowing something. With all of that said I would award the first point to the present as far as ease of use in getting a game to run properly. Today we simply pop the disk into the drive and it auto loads and installs the game. In years gone by you needed to be a computer engineer to get a game going correctly.
The software edge?
Remember I mentioned earlier that the one’s and zero’s of binary code hasn’t changed at all as time has passed. Until they can figure out some sort of biological form of programming then we will be stuck with this endless stream of code. It the past things were much more compact and better written. You could fit a good game on to a single 1-megabyte floppy disk. It was small and compact and you didn’t have to worry about scratching the disk or possibly losing one of them. Game programming has taken quantum steps as it has evolved in to the world of the present. The graphics are near real life looking and it is very realistic. This is a good and a bad thing. In the past we had what can now be considered as poor graphics, but in the day we had no idea that it was bad. We were just so happy to be playing a game on our computer. With the graphics being so unrealistic and poor this forced us to use our imagination and brains more then we are today. When playing a game from the present it is very much like watching television. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I am saying that it takes a bit of the mind out of the game. Today it seems like many of the titles are simply the mindless slaughter of demons and monsters. In days past we played games that forced the mind to think and to imagine what it would be like in real life.
Tell me that story again?
I am by no means saying that good graphics are bad. In fact it is the greatest thing since apple pie was invented. What I am trying to say is that games today leave very little to the imagination. They are often poorly written and require numerous patches to get them to work properly. In bygone days it seemed like most games had a very rich story to tell and the replay-ability was often better. I like a good story and playing a game back then was sometimes like reading a book. It gave you something to think about. You weren’t required to just mindlessly point and click. The point for the software side of it is a toss up actually. Yes things were better written in the past and the story was more in depth and it required the mind to work a bit more. I remember playing different games where my mind was working out ways to accomplish different in game tasks long after I turned the computer off. Today it isn’t like that at least there hasn’t been a game that has made my mind work like that in a long time. Today it seems like we have to be dazzled by the brilliant graphics and sounds. It seems like the story side of it is a bit lacking today, that’s why I wish we could combine the rich story telling of the past with the fantastic video and graphics capabilities we have today. That is also why this part of it is a toss up and a tie.
The intangibles of computer gaming, a wrap up
So far we have decided that games were hard to use in the past but they had a more involved and rich story line. Throw out the aspect of graphics and I could declare this discussion a tie. The fact of the matter is this. As time progresses things get better. We all know this. The price of buying a game may not be better but we definitely have it better today. Gone are the hassles of trying to get things to work. Gone are the grainy and often pitiful graphics. Gone are the be-bops and the down right awful game sounds. Gone is the sad excuses for a steering wheel that the up and down arrow keys were. And gone are the frustrating amount of time we had to endure watching the stupid game AI bump in to a wall and not know how to get back on the correct path. Now we have sounds that are so realistic that you could swear the monster was right in the room with you. Now we have graphics that actually look better then what television has to offer. Now we have so many different genres and varieties of games that a gamer couldn’t play them all in his lifetime even if he or she played round the clock 365 days a year. And last but not least, now we have online games where we can actually play against other living and thinking human beings and not just the dumb old computer AI of years gone bye.
No folks I definitely wouldn’t want to go back in time and have to suffer through the things I had to put up with while playing a game. Sure I loved it like life itself. That’s because I didn’t know any better. I was a child that had never experienced anything except the primitive graphics and sounds that emanated from my pokey slow old computer. I was a kid too dumb to imagine what the future would or could hold. Now I am a mature adult that can only wonder what computer gaming will bring us in the next 20 or 25 years. I love the way games are today and would never want to play or even see the ugly graphics of games from 25 years ago. If I want to read a book, then I will read a book. If I want to play a game then it will be like I am actually driving my racecar on the track with other cars passing me by. The only thing missing will be the wind blowing through my hair. If only I had some hair left!