Although I’ve probably mentioned this in other articles, I thought that I’d talk about a few of the reasons why older PC games from 1993 often have a very slightly different atmosphere to modern ones – even including modern retro-style indie games.
One of the main differences with older games is that they re-use things a lot more. Just sticking to games from 1993, the classic first-person shooter game “Doom” had ten different monsters (including bosses), and two of those monsters (the “Spectre” and “Shotgun zombie”) are just altered versions of two other monsters. Likewise, whilst there are a few different location types (eg: tech-base, hell etc…), there aren’t that many different ones. The game has a limited number of textures and the designers had to re-use and reconfigure them in all sorts of creative ways to prevent the levels being visually monotonous.
Another game from 1993 is the action-platformer game “Duke Nukem II” – which I seem to be re-playing at the moment. Even though this game has four different episodes and will occasionally introduce new monsters or new location types, expect to see levels with a similar visual theme showing up in all or most of the episodes. And, even though the game’s 2D nature allows for a decent amount of monster variety, expect to see new monsters show up again at least a few times too.
Back in the days of floppy disks – and, to a lesser extent, CD-ROMs – space was at a premium. The original “Doom” (1993) was – depending on edition/version – 2.39mb to about 12mb. “Duke Nukem II” (1993) is about 6mb in size. Depending on the game and the edition, that’s between about three to nine 3.5 inch floppy disks. Yes, CD-ROMs existed in 1993 – “Myst” was famously released on the format – but these tiny 1.44mb disks were a lot more common back then. So, there was a lot of incentive for developers to keep their games as compact as possible, resulting in lots of clever re-use. And this gives these older games a distinctive atmosphere which you don’t really see as much in modern games.
Another main difference is probably references. Whilst the internet existed in 1993, it was nowhere near as advanced as the internet you’re reading this on. Most people at the time didn’t even use the internet either – it was more of an obscure, niche type of thing. Not to mention that, whilst “Doom” (1993) and “Myst” (1993) helped to popularise PC gaming a lot that year, gaming itself was a bit more obscure as well.
And all of this has an effect on how these games handle references. Whilst games from 1993 sometimes included quirky personal humour and in-jokes from the – often fairly small – development teams, references were both more open and more hidden at the same time.
Because people back then couldn’t just look things up on the internet, references had to be “obvious” pop-culture things which people at the time would know about from their “offline” lives. For example, one of the post-apocalyptic levels in “Duke Nukem II” (1993) has humanoid robots and the words “NO FATE” scrawled onto a wall. A pretty clear reference to the movie “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (1991) – a popular blockbuster film which was only maybe two years old when the game was released. It’s a reference that most people at the time would get – except, ironically, me – because I was only about four or five years old back then.
But, because games were a bit more of an obscure medium and because the music industry hadn’t been seized by the sort of greedy and anti-creative copyright obsession that it would develop during the late 1990s onwards, games could reference music a bit more freely. Whilst all of the games I’m talking about are – strictly speaking – games with original soundtracks, this context allowed the developers to parody and/or tip their hat to their influences a little more.
For example, the famous E1M1 music from “Doom” (1993) has occasionally been likened to various classic metal songs – everything from “Master Of Puppets” by Metallica to “Painkiller” by Judas Priest. There was a moment in the soundtrack for “Duke Nukem II” (1993) which vaguely reminded me a little of the beginning of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”. And, in the version of “Myst” (1993) I tried to play during the 2010s, one or two moments from the music in the planetarium area vaguely made me think of Vangelis’ amazing soundtrack to the movie “Blade Runner” (1982).
None of these songs are exact identical copies of their inspirations, and the moments in question are fairly brief, but they still seem like really cool references/parodies. And I just love that there was a time – thanks to the relative obscurity of PC gaming – where game developers had a bit more freedom to reference their inspirations and the surrounding culture. Yes, they had to make some of the references a bit more “obvious”, because people couldn’t just look it up online, but it’s interesting how older games could be a bit more referential.
Still, I guess that the largest difference between games in 1993 and now is just the whole culture and context surrounding gaming as a whole. Even just sticking to 1993, it’s very telling that a lot of what inspired the original “Doom” – everything from thrash metal, to “Dungeons And Dragons”, to films like “Aliens” (1986) etc… – was stuff from the 1980s. And this wasn’t some “retro throwback” thing in the way it would be today. In 1993, the 1980s would have been as recent as the 2010s are today.
Not only that, because games weren’t the giant super-business they are today and because the technology was a bit more basic, PC games in 1993 were developed by smaller teams. Yes, modern indie games can easily replicate this, but – in 1993 – this level of personality and creative vision was pretty much standard for PC games back then. Something helped by the fact that, unlike consoles of the time, the PC was a much more “open” platform in a lot of ways.
And, perhaps most of all, games weren’t really seen as “high art” in the way they are today. The medium didn’t have anywhere near the level of critical respect that it has today. And, yet, this actually worked to its benefit – it made developers focus more on fun gameplay than flashy graphics, more on self-expression or “because it’s cool” than on market research and more on making games rather than interactive films. Yes, serious “art games” can be brilliant – but even the best examples of those will pair their narrative and visual artistry with the sort of solid gameplay that used to be standard back in 1993.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
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