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Comment by orev | Hacker News Reader

Playing Doom today needs to be approached like any other nostalgia trip — you need to go into it with a mindset of what things were like at the time (like watching the original Star Wars movies). You really won’t get much out of it if you compare it to some game you’re playing today on your Xbox, and it’s somewhat disingenuous to try to do so.

Everything has a context, and learning to understand where something came from is a skill that is not just useful in appreciating old video games, but is broadly applicable in pretty much any human interaction.

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>Playing Doom today needs to be approached like any other nostalgia trip

I see this a lot in regards to older games especially things like doom or goldeneye. I understand when it comes to graphics or some tedious gameplay features and controls but I find from an actual core gameplay standpoint, a lot of older games hold up a lot better than more modern games. I'd rather manage ammo, while searching obscure tunnels for secrets and keys shooting at blurry pixels than press 'space' for the next qte between beautiful 30 minute cutscenes after the umpteenth tutorial guided linear coridoor I receive the next shiny trophy for walking down where the only risk is having to restart 3 seconds earlier from the last auto save point with a possible bonus for failing too many times accompanied with a link to the ingame store where I can purchase ammo or armour for the price of a cup of coffee.

Sometimes I get conned into buying a game that’s a large series of cutscenes with poor gameplay elements, but there are actually a large number of really good games released every year, even today.

In the 90s there were a lot of crappy games too. I think there’s good games in every time period, and trying to pretend that the past has a monopoly on core gameplay is only remembering the best games of the past.

Don't get me wrong, I understand there were lots of crap games from back in the day and there's good games being made now, I was just saying that I don't think nostalgia glasses are necessary to enjoy quality games from the past because despite a rough appearance and obtuseness the core mechanics behind those good games are just as solid as they were then and a vast majority of high budget titles being made now tend fall on the side of shallow money vaccuums....not that those never used to exist, but the lack of effort in providing an engaging, challenging experience is pretty noticeable as a trend.

As someone who regularly plays games from the 80s, I have to disagree. Unless you're playing a game from an iterative franchise where all are trying to achieve the same vision (sports, cod, simulator), older games absolutely can be compared to modern ones. Obviously the graphics can't, but if the gameplay sucks or the level design is monotonous then it doesn't matter how modern or old a game is. Look at today's Blizzard, who keep pumping things out that annoy their own fan base. Annoyed to the point that people petitioned them for wow classic, and are now petitioning for them to re-release the original warcraft 3.

The best example off the top of my head is the speed running community. The most popular game is super mario 64, which came out in 96. It has a smoothness to the controls that is almost never achieved even in modern games.

I'm a big fan of interactive fiction (think Zork) where there are no graphics, just talking to a parser.

This is one neat area, where the old Infocom games are well respected (see "Get Lamp" documentary on YouTube) today, but it is well recognized that the technology and text game complexity has reached entirety new heights that have pushed the boundaries forward immensely.

I’m currently playing through the original Doom games on Switch. They’re a lot of fun still! Even Doom 3, the weakest of the series, is very enjoyable in handheld mode.

They also don’t constantly nag you or hold your hand.

That's all well and good, but if I need to make a particular effort to appreciate something, particularly if that effort includes suspending my ordinary standards of fun and quality, that something is not going to match up to the assertion "X is the best shooter you can play today." At least not by any standard definition of best.

Fwiw I don't think the og star wars movies require nearly the same suspension of standards that something like Doom does. Maybe for sfx buffs but I think most people go to movies for the human elements. That's not the same with videogames because of how the medium is interactive.

That's fine, and very common, as you say. But it is not what is meant by "it stands the test of time as the greatest in the genre." That epithet, explicitly, means an exception to that rule.

A lot of music from the 80s is good in the way you described. Thriller however, is an album that stood the test of time.

I want to say Tetris has stood the test of time. It has actually followed through to modern times, but I’m pretty confident I could play it on a gameboy today and not feel stuck in the past - just playing a game that’s been around a long time.

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