Malstrom,
You said:
“[…]and yet, AAA games never become classics. Have you noticed that?”
Even though I believe there are a handful like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter which may or may not become “classics” in the future due to being quite well-crafted (still, we’ll have to see), I do believe you have a point.
I feel the only way modern, overproduced AAA games like Call of Mountain Dewty could ever get embedded into the mainstream psyche is by becoming a corny internet meme.
The garish production values only make them age like milk. Instead of acting as preservatives, they only serve to make the game a lot more dated than it should be.
I’m not going to claim that all “retro” (my goodness, that word) games age like fine wine, but there is something to be said when I’d rather play classic Doom than the thousand and one CoD and Overwatch clones on the market.
We have enough data from prior generations to connect that Hyped Games Because OMG Graphics = Forgotten In The Future. In the future, all games lose graphical advantage.The game is either good or not.
One reason why I like writing about games is that I have so much faith in gamers. Despite game industry’s best efforts, gamers, in general, will not accept bad games. The 1983 Great Crash was due to the belief that the market will buy ‘bad games’. The lesson was that the market would not.
Why does the NES and SNES Mini sell like hotcakes today? It is because the games are very, very good. It is as simple as that. It is a big ‘fuck you’ to game developers (of both game industry and Nintendo) who dismiss the older games. “They were only popular because of that time period,” they tell us.
I don’t understand why gaming is so scared of the classics. By classic, I mean games that will be continued to be played by people who weren’t born when the game was released. Super Mario Brothers came out over 30 years ago. Do we have to wait until 50 years or 100 years before we can call it a classic? Or is Nintendo going to continue to say, “Bah! Who wants that old retro crap? Here is fancy dancy new 3d Mario for you. Yuk! Yuk! Yuk!”
Old Schoolers kept crying out for Open World mechanics in Zelda that were found in Zelda 1. Nintendo poo pooed the idea, and we watched Zelda franchise tank. Someone, somewhere, got their head out of their ass and went, “Hmm. Maybe Classic Zelda is loved because of reasons not relating to the time period. OMG!” They put some of those elements into the new Zelda BoW game, and then magic happens. “What is going on here?” says the exasperated Nintendo as they run around in circles.
I do really, really enjoy Nintendo’s surprise and bafflement at how NES and SNES Minis are selling TO NEW GENERATIONS.
Remember this video? It came out before the Wii. It is certainly cringe worthy, but it brings up an interesting sentiment: we hate the ‘industry’. Looking at it again made me cheer when I saw Bomberman there. Is it any coincidence Switch early adopters bought the hell out of Bomberman R? And Zelda BoW “Wow!” was a return to old school form. It was bought left and right. And what about Sonic Mania? Bought. Even Ultra Street Fighter 2 was bought.
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