Better or worse? (The Retro Years)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	The Retro Years
Date:	15/03/01 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Better gameplay, cheaper, longer lasting

Disadvantages: Crap graphics, 15 min tape loading times...

As with everything else, there comes a point where you’re bound to proffer the statement “It’s good, but not as good as when I were a kid…” To this end, the history of computer games is exactly the same. A few years ago, we were all reminiscing about Bod, Bagpuss, TISWAS, Swap Shop etc. and now that we’re entering the 21st century, it’s the 20 or 25 year old history of computer games that’s the subject of conversations all over the place.

The problem is that these days, people are seemingly more concerned with the flashy multimedia aspects of games, and not the important aspects like playability (he says reading his old Zzap64 magazines). Is this the case, or is it just a case of us “oldies” who have been home computer gaming since 1980 complaining for the sake of complaining.

In the early days there were two types of games – Pong in the arcades, and pong in a box at home. I remember owning a “Grandstand” version which also came with a light gun for shooting square things onscreen. Also, around this time was the Atari2600, but as it was a console, I won’t really go into it here… I’m more concerned with the home computer aspect of thing.

In the early days of the ZX81 and VIC20, we were treated to computers with 1K and 3.5K of RAM respectively, and we thought that games created for these machines were great. Admittedly, most of the games I remember playing on these machines were with added RAM expansion packs, and so the games were slightly more complex. But to be totally fair, the games were total cack, with maybe the rather splendid conversion of Jet Set Willy on the VIC-20 as an exception.

Now to the bit where gaming got interesting, namely Spectrum 48K and Commodore 64 computers. These had 48K and 37K of RAM respectively. The quality of games on these machines is far superior to anything that appeared previously on a home machine. Gra
phics and sound were improved (as you would expect of a next-step machine). These platforms (even though there were plenty of ‘my computer is better than yours’ arguments going on) both produced some outstanding games, as well as what could now be considered “personality programmers”. People like Andrew Braybrook, Jeff Minter (hippy programmer ahoy!), Sensible Software started to produce top class games, as well as a pop star like following. It even went as far as musicians so there were people like Rob Hubbard and some guy I can’t remember the name of, but I think he was James Galway’s son (golden flute blokey). Outstanding games such as Paradroid, the Zork series (for those rich kids with C64’s and disk drives), the early US Gold arcade conversions, Jet Set Willy, Boulderdash, Spy vs. Spy and of course Elite set the standard that other games had to follow. At the same time, while being a minority machine, the BBC computer in it’s various guises also produced some stonking games – obviously the two that spring to mind are Elite and Chuckie Egg, but there was also another one called Starship Command (a top down 4 way scrolling shoot em up).

Now, of course, the graphics, and sound aren’t a patch on games of today, but what you have to realise is that programmers produced games in less than 64K which contained not only great sounds and graphics (for the time) but also gameplay in spades. Coupled with the prices of games in those days (I remember C64 games being £9.99) and the amount of time spent playing them (not the 15 minutes it took to load the bloody things!) I think this is one of the reasons why we all look back on the older games with such fondness.

Obviously, things were changing, and so with the advent of the Amiga and ST we were now seeing games that were able to take advantage of much higher processing power, as well as disk drives and better graphics and sound. I think it was h
ere that things started changing. Due to the higher capabilities of the platforms, it was incredibly difficult (if at all possible) for lone programmers to code entire games on their own. Programming teams sprung up, and as such, production costs rose sharply. I think that at the same time, what happened was that fewer games were released than on the old 8-bit machines. When flicking through Zzap64, or Crash there was barely a month went by without a top class award (or two) being given out for games, and there were a lot of games being released for those machines. When the 16-bit machines came along, the combination of programmers merging into teams, along with the size and scope of games being produced, resulted in the amount of games being released. This, in turn, resulted in the amount of quality games on the market falling as a result. This was only to be expected, I suppose.

On thing I have noticed since my days of C64 gaming is the amount of playing time you get out of a game these days. There are few games on the market these days that will give you any more than maybe 2 weeks play at most, but some exceptions would be any form of Civilisation, Half-Life (if only due to the multi-player MODs around) and sports games like Fifa, or PGA Golf. Back in 1986 however, I remember playing games for much longer. There may be many reasons for this (including the loading times I stated earlier) but I do remember my gaming when I was younger being a lot more social. Friends would come around to my house, and us “taking turns” to play games, while the rest of my friends mucked about etc.

Another thing that I remember being true is that games were playable out of the box – there were no patches to fix bugs or compatibility issues (because every computer was the same as the next one) and games weren’t rushed out in time for the Xmas market.

For these and other reasons, older games will always appear to be a lot “bette
r” than the newer games – certainly in terms of the all-important gameplay. Whether they are or not is entirely open to debate – the only thing we can say for certain is that home computer gaming over the last 20 years has changed considerably – for better or for worse though?

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