How Gaming has Changed: A Retro Gaming Story

Gaming has changed so much over the years, we see faster sharper graphics, more intense gameplay and drastic increases in necessary response times. But do all these changes make better gamers?

The answer isn’t as simple as a yes or no. What we develop these days are different gamers. Gamers today may have faster response times and a higher number of actions per minute, but would today’s gamers have the patience and persistence to work their way through a puzzle in Zork? Would they be able to take a full game reset after missing a single jump in Ghouls ‘n Ghosts?

How Gaming Has Changed

Today, most games offer at least a glimpse of success before forcing the player to work for their prize. Most of the time instant or near instant gratification is all too prominent. Like we need that hit of “Feel good juice” before we get to the hard stuff, if there even is a “hard stuff section”.

The ‘Old Days’ of Gaming

Having grown up in the 90’s I had the pick of the litter when it came to video games. NES was still very much a huge system, and with the SNES on the way it was a feast of gaming that no one could have foreseen.

We had PC games and any number of gaming systems to choose from: RPG games, puzzle games, racing games, action games, side scrolling shooters, the list goes on and on. A lot of what we see today in the form or genre is inspired from the earliest of early games.

All the way back to the text-based games, which were basically Choose Your Own Adventure books turned digital. These games really knew how to punish and reward the player - any misstep could mean instant death and a full reset (hope you wrote down that continue code from completing the last level).

But completion meant that you got a new piece of the puzzle that was the game. Seeing the end of a game meant you were the cream of the crop, you were elite, you persisted; bruised, battered, and beaten only to walk away victorious.

I pull no punches when I say that early games were the hardest of the hard games to have existed. There are some comparable recent games that come close, but ultimately are still more consistently beatable than most retro games.

Retro Gaming Skills

I learned so many skills in all the games I played early in life that I still use today, patience being the most obvious and prominent.

The ability to sit at a puzzle and work it out for an hour left me with the ability to pull apart many challenging tasks into simpler steps and use that patience to push through completion.

I would recommend revisiting the games of my youth, some. But these games will test even the greatest gamer, push them to their limits and past.

If you can work your way through the Under Ground Empire in Zork to collect all the treasures and make your way back to the forest you have true patience, memory, and the knack for puzzles that it takes to best some even harder games. If you can get to Sardius in Ghouls and Ghosts then you know pain and repetition. Level 30 in Doom on Nightmare Difficulty and you will know skill and dexterity.

These were some of my favorite games growing up, I had the time of my life testing my skills against their maps and monsters.

There are so many more games that, on the outside, look simple and straightforward until you get into the very deep depths of their true nature.

The saying ‘never judge a book by its cover’ goes double for games. What looks like a simple side scrolling platformer will test your patience as you wait for a single enemy to get into the best position to dispatch it. The simplest-looking shooter can overwhelm you with enemies and not enough ammo to kill them all.

Why Play Retro Games?

My intent is not to discourage but to encourage. Look to the past for inspiration, do not be afraid to test the very limits of the word “Hard”.

Make something so challenging that more people give up than complete the game. Then you will know the feeling of accomplishment that we felt back in the early generation of gamers. My ultimate list of the Top 30 Best Retro Videogames will break down my favorites and why everyone should experience them at some point in their life.

Now, a fair amount of these games were only available in an arcade for a nickel or quarter per-play depending on the year. I spent many hours in movie theater arcades and nickel arcades playing these games to death. Every time I got any sort of allowance from my parents, got paid for mowing the lawn or some other chore, that money was either spent on buying new games for the systems I had or dumped into arcade cabinets around the San Francisco Bay Area.

These days most of these retro games can be downloaded and played on an emulator, or you can find a remastered version that can be played on a current generation system. If you are interested, I recommend checking out a couple of these games if you have not already. Test yourself in the trials of the past and perhaps learn some new skills to put to use in the current generation of games.

The How and Why of Retro Game Difficulty

While I do not claim to be a game developer, I think that my experience with games allows me to speculate why a retro game might be more difficult.

A lot of the time a game released during the 80’s and 90’s were the first of their kind. There were no expectations so a game developer could take any liberty they wanted with a game that they chose.

If they thought the game was fun at its current difficulty, more than likely someone else would also find the game enjoyable and rewarding. They were given free reign to shape, mold and build worlds of their very own in a digital medium.

Before this all these visuals would only take place in one’s own imagination, and each person playing would experience the scene differently.

Another thought as to why these games might have been more difficult or challenging would the lack of power or resources to run it. Think about it, today we have save files hundreds of Megabytes large. Most games back then didn’t even run with a single Megabyte of memory.

Corners had to be cut to just fit the whole game on a single card, often some of those corners ended up being a Save function. This meant that every game was a roguelike or a one-shot run, hope you perfected those jumps. No second chances here.

 Later the way around storing data on the game disk was to allow for recall codes to be displayed at the end of levels which would allow you to start from that point and move forward, if you remember to write them down before you move on to the next level.

There was also the possibility that the developers wanted to make the player work for their reward. They prided themselves on having a game that people play over and over again just to reach the end.

This meant more attention and a returning fan base for their game, which brought them pride in their work and likely some amount of money as well. These were also people who came up with the idea that a game can have secrets that are almost not intended for a player to find.

Some of the first Easter Eggs in games came in the form of invisible pixels that had to be manipulated in an extremely specific way in order to unlock their secrets. These were carried on as tradition in later games in more and more unique and interesting ways. From promises of Cake to a Grunt Birthday party, and many more.

Your Thoughts on How Gaming Has Changed

Let me know what you think. Do you think that gamers today are more skilled or talented than the older generation?

Do you think that the older generation are the masters at all things game? Or are we simply different gamers with different expectations and goals?

Personally, I just think that with different teachers we develop different students, each with their skills, some overlapping some unique. But each equally qualified to be listed as a genuine gamer.