Why PC Games From 1993 Feel Different

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.

——————-

Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Three Possible Reasons Why 1990s Videogame Nostalgia Is Stronger

Well, I thought that I’d share a few theories about why 1990s videogame nostalgia seems to be one of the strongest types of nostalgia. Yes, these are just theories based on looking at my own feelings of nostalgia about it, but it interested me enough to write this article. I’ll also be focusing more on console gaming than PC gaming here too.

And, yes, this was something I ended up thinking about when – whilst tired one evening – spending about half an hour watching Youtube footage of someone playing an old SNES game called “The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past” (1991/2). This game, along with a small number of other SNES games – like “Super Mario World” (1990) and “Super Castlevania IV” (1991) – instantly evokes a ridiculous amount of childhood nostalgia in me. And I wondered why videogames in particular do this.

There are probably three main reasons for this, which all combine together into a stronger type of nostalgia. These three things are scarcity, tribalism and time/interactivity.

1) Scarcity: Back in the 1990s and early-mid 2000s, videogames – on consoles at least – were a bit less common. This wasn’t quite as much of a cost-based thing as you might think, since things like second-hand games (anyone remember those?) and budget re-releases of games meant that console gaming was more affordable back then than it is sometimes portrayed.

For example, although the three SNES games I mentioned earlier were from the early 1990s, I mostly played them during the mid-late 1990s. The console and the games were a hand-me-down from a relative. Likewise, I also remember buying second-hand Game Boy games for just £5 each from a local second-hand shop during the mid-late 1990s too. Whilst videogames weren’t ultra-cheap back then, they weren’t always as pricey as the “buying a new copy on release day” prices might suggest.

No, games were a bit less common because they usually had to be released on physical media back then. This meant that most games available were mid-high budget games. Yes, this resulted in higher quality games – especially since the lack of online updates meant that games actually had to be finished before they were released. Even so, games from back then are often a bit more memorable because there were fewer of them.

Your game collection wasn’t a gigantic digital list of tens or hundreds of games, but often a small pile of physical cartridges or discs. Each game was something you knew a bit better and something which mattered to you a bit more. As such, these games can feel a bit more nostalgic than you might expect.

I mean, I can still remember all of the other SNES games I played back then – whether it was the ones I didn’t really enjoy that much like a “NHL” ice hockey game or one called “Pit Fighter”. I can remember SNES ports of cool games like “Doom” and “Mortal Kombat”, which were technically inferior to the originals but still surprisingly cool.

I can remember the 3D graphics in “Starwing” and how I misheard one of the gibberish phrases spoken by one of the other pilots as being “W..W..Wing! Dammit!“. I can remember the Mute City music from “F-Zero” and how cool all of the futuristic racing tracks looked – and how dramatic it looked when one of the cars accidentally flew off of the track.

I can even remember playing a rotoscoped platform game called “Another World”… where I always got completely “stuck” on the very first level. Plus, I also vividly remember playing the very first level of “Super Star Wars” at a relative’s house once too. Fewer games makes each one more memorable.

2) Tribalism: Everyone who grew up around videogame consoles during about the early-mid 1990s knows about this already. But, back then, you were either – to use the American terms – a “Nintendo kid” or a “Sega kid”. In other words, you either played games on consoles manufactured by one of those two companies. Yes, PC gaming was its own thing back then and it sat above all of this old “console wars” stuff with a smug grin on its face (and, yes, I also played PC games as well back then).

Still, if you played console games back then, you probably either picked a side or – more commonly – accidentally found yourself on a given side. And the game companies played into this rivalry, with quite a few games and recurring characters who were exclusive to each manufacturer’s console. Each console had it’s own “atmosphere” and personality too – whether it was the style of graphics that they used or even the attitudes taken by their parent companies (eg: Nintendo was less “edgy” than Sega was).

This artificial rivalry and tribalism was a cynical and divisive marketing tactic, but it gave younger players a feeling of identity in a way that you just don’t get with modern games. Yes, there are still a few “exclusives” these days (especially Nintendo games…) but games are often much more multi-platform than they used to be. This is really good, because “exclusives” are an anti-customer thing, but it means that modern games don’t really evoke the highly-specific type of nostalgia that older games do.

Again, it was more of an identity thing. Virtually all of your console nostalgia back then was focused on just one manufacturer and/or console. For example, people who were “Nintendo Kids” back in the 1990s will get nostalgic about characters like the Mario Brothers, Link, Pokemon, Donkey Kong, Kirby etc… and people who were “Sega kids” probably get nostalgic about… Sonic the Hedgehog? Again, the console games you played back then were almost part of your identity.

3) Time and interactivity: This one also applies to paperback novels to a lesser extent, but videogames are such a potent source of nostalgia because not only do they require active effort from the audience but they also take up a lot more time too.

You can watch a film in about two hours. But, due to the “scarcity” thing I mentioned earlier, older videogames were much longer and often more difficult than they are these days. These were games that you’d start and probably never actually complete – but you wouldn’t feel cheated because you’d still sink literally tens or hundreds of hours into trying to complete them. They were also often gameplay-focused enough to be inherently fun in their own right, even if you didn’t progress that far through the story.

All of this time and the high degree of active interactivity due to the solid focus on actual gameplay means that nostalgic memories of 1990s videogames can often be a lot more vivid than other memories from the time. They were a skill that you learned and a “place” that you spent quite a bit of time in.

—————————–

Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Three Reasons Why Older Computer And Video Games Are So Awesome

Well, since I couldn’t think of an idea for an article, I thought that I’d take a break from my usual art/writing-themed articles and devote an entire article to gaming. In particular, why older games are so fascinating and just generally awesome.

After all, although I have played some vaguely modern games over the past couple of years (after getting a second-hand early-mid 2010s computer), I’ve spent most of my life slightly “behind the times” with gaming. And, although it seems unlikely that I’ll ever get round to actually reviewing the older game I’m playing at the moment (“The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind” [2002]), it has reminded me of how awesome older games can be.

1) They did more with less: One of the great things about older computer games is the very same technical limitations that make them look “old”. To the game designers of the past, these limitations were more like a challenge than a restriction. In the past, game designers were constantly coming up with clever ways to not only make games look better but also – more importantly -to make the gameplay itself good enough that the players wouldn’t care about the limited graphics.

This often results in games that hold up surprisingly well when played today. For example, one common trick in the 1990s – used in games like “Myst” and “Resident Evil” – was to use static 2D images in order to give the impression of “3D” landscapes or backgrounds. This simple trick allowed the “primitive” computers and games consoles of the day to achieve a level of realism that still looks reasonably good today, especially after it had been refined with practice. Here are some screenshots from the sequels to both of the games I mentioned earlier to show you what I mean:

These are screenshots from “Riven” (1997) and the 2000 PC port of “Resident Evil 3: Nemesis” (1999). As you can see, the use of 2D pre-rendered backgrounds makes them look much more realistic than you’d expect a 20+ year old game to look.

It would take at least a few years for “proper” 3D games to start looking this good. Not only that, because the game designers had limited resources to work with, they also had to focus more on things like composition, a unique art style, pre-baked shadows/chiaroscuro lighting etc… and other stuff that makes these “old” graphics look surprisingly timeless.

Not only that, because games couldn’t rely as heavily on “realistic” graphics and because the graphics of the time cost less to produce, this meant that game designers also had more time and resources to focus on things like well-designed gameplay, inventive level layouts and/or a greater level of complexity too.

All of this results in a game that – whilst it may not look as good as a modern “AAA” game – will often be a lot more fun to actually play.

2) Smaller teams: One of the cool things about older games is that, because the hardware was less sophisticated and games were less “mainstream”, they were more likely to be made by slightly smaller teams who also had more creative freedom. Since games cost less to make and weren’t major pieces of popular culture, there was more room for experimentation, quirkiness and/or personality.

For example, many earlier first-person shooter games (like “Doom” and “Duke Nukem 3D”) were inspired by their creators’ love of things like heavy metal, “Dungeons and Dragons” or cheesy ’80s action movies. Because they had smaller teams and the games were cheaper to produce, these games – though “old” in some ways – are still surprisingly refreshing to play today for the simple reason that they have an actual personality.

Smaller teams and lower budgets also led to a lot more experimentation too. When you play older games, you can really get the sense that people were still exploring a completely new artistic medium. Whether it is old “point and click” games that made heavy use of full-motion video, whether it is early 3D survival horror games like “Alone In The Dark” or the original “Resident Evil”, whether it is games like “The Last Express” that tried to emulate real time etc… game makers had a bit more incentive and motivation to experiment and explore the medium than they do now.

In short, older games can be a lot more creative than you might expect. Major games from the past often have individual personalities and feel like creative works of art in a similar way to a lot of modern low-budget indie games these days.

3) Length, Content and the internet: Although games cost less to produce in the past, they often cost more to actually buy (if you account for inflation etc…). This led to many game designers focusing a bit more on “value for money” – often resulting in long and rich single-player experiences that would make the average novel seem brief by comparison. Yes, sometimes this could lead to games including quite a bit of unnecessary “filler” content, but it also meant that an older game could often be like a trusted friend that you could return to night after night for several weeks.

Because new games were expensive (but second-hand games were thankfully still a thing, which was a godsend if you were growing up in the 1990s/early-mid 2000s), each game mattered more. When you found a game, you tended to play it a bit more. It became part of your life. It wasn’t a piece of disposable entertainment or anything like that, it was the game you played during a certain time period. And game designers knew this and, if they were any good, made sure that your time and money didn’t go to waste.

The internet also played an important role in why older games were so awesome too. Because the internet was a lot slower in the past – and people didn’t always have access to it – this not only meant that many games were usually primarily designed for offline single-player (with local or internet multi-player often being a fun extra, rather than the primary focus of a game. *sigh* I miss those days…), but it also meant that games could also allow more player creativity too.

Because the internet wasn’t as much of a popular medium for selling stuff – and computer game designers wanted to make sure that people stuck with their games – they would sometimes provide tools for fans to make and share their own content for games. For free. And this focus on non-commercial fan creativity has ensured the longevity of a lot of classic games, such as how new levels for the first two “Doom” games (1993-4) are still being made by fans to this very day 🙂 Likewise, game designers were sometimes more open about releasing the source code to their games, allowing fans to create “source ports” to either keep them running on modern computers or make them compatible with other types of computers.

The primitive internet of the time also had another bonus too. If a game company wanted to sell bonus content, they had to make a substantial “add-on pack” and then sell it on CD, DVD or floppy disk. This was a world apart from the “DLC” of the mid-2000s onwards. These “add-on packs” would often be whole new episodes or large level collections, often also featuring new weapons, costumes, items, monsters etc… too, to the point that they were basically like a small game in their own right. Plus, with the internet not being guaranteed or very fast, things like “Loot boxes”, micro-transactions etc… just weren’t a thing in mainstream gaming 🙂 So, games were less greedy.

————

Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂