What has changed with video games over the last 25 years, and what has not
&gt; After all, could you really, badly, critic a 30’s movie because it is not shoot in HD?<p>1930s films did &quot;shoot in HD&quot;. Most films were either 16mm or 35mm, both of which have more than enough fidelity to represent video at 1080p or higher without loss of quality. Here&#x27;s a copy of Wizard of Oz on 4K UHD: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Wizard-Oz-Limited-Anniversary-Collection&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B07WT62PPT" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Wizard-Oz-Limited-Anniversary-Collect...</a><p>A more realistic take is could you criticize 1920s films for not shooting with sound, and the answer is yes, absolutely. Films went from almost entirely silent to almost entirely talkies in roughly 3 years because of massive, unprecedented, and immediate commercial pressure to do so. Audiences ate up even mediocre talkies and shunned silent works now considered classics. The only reason colour film adoption wasn&#x27;t similarly fast was because of Technicolor&#x27;s monopoly.<p>Flash forward to the 1990s, where cinema as a medium was very sophisticated. Now look at blockbusters beginning to use CG rather than animatronics. The airplane in Air Force One. Jar Jar Binks in Phantom Menace. Hell, take the 1997 re-releases of the Star Wars trilogy which inexplicably added garbage like CG Jabba the Hutt. The purple stuff in The Langoliers. Even going back to Lord of the Rings, even going back to the Hobbit, even going back to &quot;early&quot; Marvel films there are tons of moments where CG is jarring. The Polar Express -- an excellent and heartwarming Zemeckis film -- is mostly known because no one likes the dead-eye CG. Yes, absolutely, technical barriers have affected peoples enjoyment of film and still do!<p>In video games the most obvious period of time that is conspicuously a donut hole is the Playstation 1 &#x2F; early 3D era. The PS1s 3d games featured really quite nauseating affine texture warping due to a lack of hardware correction support. Here&#x27;s one video of many talking about this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=x8TO-nrUtSI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=x8TO-nrUtSI</a> Early 3d controls are atrocious -- the &quot;tank controls&quot; of Resident Evil are famous for this -- because controllers initially didn&#x27;t have analogue sticks and when they did, they didn&#x27;t yet have basic paradigms around how to best use them.  The Nintendo 64 was built around analogue control, which is why Mario 64 works so well, and yet it has a completely rotten camera system because there&#x27;s only a single analogue stick and the c-buttons aren&#x27;t a good substitute. And that&#x27;s the PS1&#x2F;N64. If you go back to the earlier era of 3D, especially on the Super Nintendo, you find low framerate, awkward controlling messes with flat polygon shading. Try playing an unmodified copy of StarFox or Stunt Race FX, I dare you.<p>No one is saying to throw Casablanca out with the bathwater, just as no one is going to throw Super Mario Bros, out with the bathwater. I&#x27;m not saying that technical issues mean we should never play old games or watch old movies. I&#x27;m saying that it shouldn&#x27;t be surprising that people do count technical issues as part of the reason why they prefer newer stuff.<p>I also think the article misses widely when it pretends that &quot;old ways&quot; of making games don&#x27;t exist today. Games are made in now-dead genres, with now-dead mechanics, all the time. They have commercial budgets at least as large as they ever did and large, warm communities. In many cases, the original teams working on games in the 1980s and 1990s still make games. I can&#x27;t find an example in the article where you can&#x27;t find similar games to play today.<p>The article mentions that isometric games would be anathema today. Disco Elysium is one of the most acclaimed games of the last few years. Wasteland has two recent sequels, both well liked. Hades is also one of the most acclaimed games of the last few years. Age of Empires IV retains a basically isometric perspective for an RTS. Diablo Immortal just launched and Diablo 4 is coming. Huh?<p>The article mentions unnamed youngsters not liking the real-ish time mechanics of Titanic Adventure Out of Time, or the difficulty of the puzzles, feeling that they&#x27;re too punishing. I doubt it. Majora&#x27;s Mask (1999) is considered an excellent Zelda because of its time mechanics. Dead Rising (2006) was one of the first major hits of the HD era of video games and it&#x27;s on a fixed timer. Final Fantasy XIII-3 (2013) uses a similar mechanic, and while the game is often criticized for being terribly written nonsense, it&#x27;s not because of the mechanic.<p>Or if not the time mechanic, then needing to take notes? Hollow Knight is maybe the most critically acclaimed indie game of all time and most people play it with a fan wiki open, to say nothing of From Software (Dark Souls, Elden Ring) suddenly becoming the apex of prestige developer. Point and click adventures are still quite popular: The Return of the Obra Dinn is widely considered among the best games of the 2010s.<p>The article claims unnamed gamers today are reacting negatively to the visual choices of the new Monkey Island. This just seems entirely untrue. The reaction across the internet, including on gaming forums, reddit, and here, was overwhelmingly positive. A few people said &quot;okay, this style reminds me a bit of the not-great LucasArts Singapore modernizations of the first few Monkey Islands&quot;. This does not presage a great backlash against the game, it&#x27;s just people shooting from the hip, the vast majority of anyone who cares to comment is excited even if they have concerns about the visuals. And anyway, 99% of the people commenting are greybeards like the rest of us, not young people.<p>Overall I can&#x27;t find much here that resonates with me.