I have seen a lot of retro style games coming out. When I say retro in my perspective I am talking about games made in the late 80s - early 90s. Double Dragon, Megaman, Ghost and Ghouls, and those slew of side scrolling fighters like Final Fight, TMNT arcade etc
I have been pondering on what makes these types of games fun and memorable. At first I thought it was just nostalgia, going back to simpler times when the only thing I had to worry about was not being able to locate a certain piece of Lego. But booting some of those back up, they are still pretty fun. Many modern games that use retro themes are a blast too.
I am new to game design, so this might be a really stupid question and simple one to answer for some of you. but what is it about those games that makes it enticing? What design elements do they do well and how did they translate into modern games?
Also for those throwback retro style games made now, do you see a combination of retro game design mixed with new?
What do you think retro games did well in terms of design and what were lacking
New “retro” games have a mixed of design patterns?
Thanks, hope to get a good discussion out of this.
For me, I gravitate to creating retro style games for a few reasons.
First, my skill set lends itself more to a 2d tile based game than it does to any 3d game, and certainly anything approaching real physics. I am a one man team with no budget. All the assets I’m using are assets I’ve created, and I find drawing a 2d character and some tiles to be way easier than trying to model, rig, texture, and animate a 3d character.
Second, I find that by removing the pressure put on your game by trying to be “modern,” you are able to distill your game down to one or two things and really focus on those things. By going “retro,” you are asking the audience to forgive the perceived shortcomings of your game in light of the one thing you are really trying to make shine.
I can’t really speak to questions 1. and 2. above, since I’m not really trying to make a “retro” game because I thought they were better. I’m doing it because the thing I’m trying to say comes across better in a more stripped down medium.
Most retro games are short-duration, multiple-replay skill games. Those are a decent fit for modern mobile gamers, who often have just a few minutes here and there to play while on the bus or whatever.
I have a few modern-style, epic storyline games on my phone, but they just don’t work for me, because I never have time to sit down and play them for long stretches. And by the time I pick one up, I’ve forgotten who’s who and what I was doing, and it’s just a frustrating experience.
So, yeah, I think there’s a lot of potential for retro-style games. My boys and I just released one a couple weeks ago (Rocket Plume). Like all App Store games, it’s having a hard time getting noticed… but reactions from players so far have been positive.
Maybe Retro inpspired games feel a little more distilled down to their (often violence based) core gameplay loop. Games like Assassins Creed have a world littered with collectibles, random encounters, online features and other distractions, whereas games like Party Hard are very much focused on the “killing people” part of the game. Iirc Totalbiscuit described the state of flow in such violent retro games as “murder trance”, which I think is quite fitting. It’s harder to find modern games that give you that, imho. Some Retro examples: Party Hard, Hotline Miami, Mother Russia Bleeds. Maybe immersion inducing world-building and core-gameplay based flow are sometimes at odds and Retro games tend to lean towards getting the later one right.
But it’s a good question. Apart from the hardware limitations, there is definitely a “feel” to those games that seems to have been largely lost. A couple years ago my in-laws’ kids spent most of Christmas day playing Joust on my Xbox. Simple mechanics, simple audio and graphics, repetitive game play … yet it’s fun and captivating for hours. I have trouble thinking of a modern game that would have the same type of appeal.
Nah, I really don’t think that’s it. You could handle tons of busywork fluff content with just text if you wanted.
I think I know what you mean, but I can’t find a perfectly fitting description either. Maybe it’s a bit like games with the retro vibe aren’t ashamed of being games first and foremost, and modern titles - both indie and AAA - often fall into the trap of wanting to be super serious narrative-heavy experiences, or as they say: “cinematic”. E.g. having 2+ hours of cutscenes in a 10 hour game does things to the flow and feel of the game.
Do you think multiplayer games have started to fill this demand for mechanics-focused gameplay experiences?
I think that’s probably as close as we’ll get from modern-day games. Deathmatch games are probably the nearest approximation to Joe’s observations:
However it still only feels very roughly equivalent to me. Even if you go back to much simpler modern-style games (I’m thinking of the Quake LAN deathmatches we used to play with friends) they still aren’t as readily accessible as those older arcade games were. I suppose that’s by design, too, though (Quake deathmatches were intense and fast by design), and maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place – I’m reminded of my earlier thread about the speed and difficulty of older games (Robotron etc) – they weren’t all so casual.
In that thread, some good points were made about how the games were designed to maximize profitability (25 cents at a time) … and honestly that probably plays into the design aspect more than anything else. Some AAA publisher-backed title knows every player is going to cough up $59.95 so there isn’t a lot of incentive to design it to be instantly playable with little or no learning curve, there’s no need to balance play time with entertainment value, or any of the other factors that go into the “arcade loop”…
Hmm… we have a MAME machine in our house, filled with a small set of hand-picked 4-player co-op games. The idea is something kids can easily jump into and play, with nobody getting beaten up. Joust is 2-player and only sort-of co-op… but you’re right, it is an amazing game. Maybe we’ll throw that in too!
I sometimes wonder though, these 8bit style games were a special time in gaming history? Maybe it was a time when gaming was first so available to the consumer market at such a massive scale. I say this because we never have games in retro atari style, but 8bit and 16bit is popular.
It is sort of like how you see those 60s American diners still around with that timeless look. I mean I doubt 50 years later we’d see people replicating 90s Denny’s decor as a “throwback”. Perhaps the same can be said in 50 years, you won’t see new games emulating the “feel” of Call of Duty.
Thoughts? do you guys think any of our modern game styles will have a timeless feel like the 8bit 16bit era? Do you think that 8/16bit era will continue, or just die out.
A few things come to mind:
old games, due to their restriction were kind of limited in their functionalities, games were simple, which meant in most cases they were very easy to jump into(or learned), which also meant the developers had more time spending on polishing other things like soundtracks etc. or to make the whole experience more cohesive.
Also their graphics are leaving alot of room for our imagination to fill out the rest and that means we fill it out with what we personally prefer to see
The thing that every element of a game had to be so much more simplistic also forced games to decide on their core interests and functionalities, just due to restrictions.
it meant working much more with what you actually have available.
When I think about modern more problematic games in comparison, they often have issues ranging from too much complexity and/or too much content. In other words, hard to learn, often unintuitive, takes time and actual investment and additionally too much content can cause paralysis of choice, for players AND developers alike, the focus in game development might be too spread out to actually focus on the core of a game and for some reason people seem to be obsessed with the “real graphics” thing, which is really hard to pull off without years and years of training, ending up in some weird place called “uncanny valley”. Also this obsession takes alot of the own imaginational freedom from players.
This of course doesn’t mean that today’s games are all bad, but when comparing why so many games from that time still feel fun, even though they lack graphics and complexity from our current point of view, I would say these are the main differences. And if you look into games that are fun without retro graphics etc. from nowadays I’m sure you can pinpoint the core of the game quite easily.
Just thinking about a game like dragon age as example…which main focus was the story and the complexity of sidequests and combat system etc. are more like spices added to a soup, rather than trying to fit in as much as possible in an already cramped soup pot
They indeed have a sense of nostalgia, but there were plenty games that were just plain bad too. Some games are timeless because they were thought out well and added the right ingredients to the formula.
Double Dragon uses the appeal of martial arts. Everyone loves ninja’s, flying roundhouse asskicking hero’s. One of the key things in a good game is ‘role playing’; being Billy is like going on a Bruce Willis streak with mixed martial arts in the soup. However, one of the amazing things was the 2-player mode; most people who played Double Dragon on the arcade, probably did this with a friend. Play Double Dragon II with a friend and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Final Fight is - in my opinion - the improved Double Dragon.
Mega Man is all about timing and skill; a bad jump means your last jump and your opponents are always stronger than you. This makes Mega Man timeless in its gameplay. The game provides a non-linear approach to reach Wiley, yet still the requirement to finish everything before that can happen. The levels are quite consistent made; the first parts are like a mini-tutorial, a mini-boss happens mid-game and the grand finale is a boss - one that gives you no grace period and you can’t escape. The ability to swap weapons and increase in buster modifications provide the player a diversity in strategy when taking on a boss. Especially when certain levels give out obvious hints that a specific modification might provide a shortcut or a the reward of getting that scarce powerup, raises the replayability.
Ghost and Ghouls is a really good example how a mixture of mechanics are well blended together. The gameplay mixes the action in all directions (similar in the shooter game Contra/Probotector), it uses the horror genre for the scenery with the art and background (similar in the action game Castlevania) to make the “world” come alive, and has in-game power ups (similar like R-Type), with unique mechanics: some with even the ability to affect the environment. G&G plays like Super Mario on steroids with a lore.
TMNT had two things going for it; the Ninja Turtles were icons. The cartoons and toys were everywhere - and if the game would be crap for the NES, everyone would’ve still played it. The other thing is that it is a really good game. First of all, the characters; four similar yet distinct characters that have their own trades and special moves; to this day a winning ingredient for many action adventures. The difference though is that the first game has an overworld; even though it is a side scroller beat 'm up, the overworld provides exploration and change of scenery that affects pace - an important mechanic.
So why are these games popping up in this style?
A game engine like Unity does all the heavy lifting. Creating a game in a retro style as an indie is much more feasible than doing a full blown FPS. I’ve yet to see a one man game that has all elements in place - including the art. If you have a decent programming background, some good art at your disposal, some experience with Unity and understand how game mechanics together increase entertainment, you could roll out a game in a relatively short time.
Games like these are shorter in playthrough. Less playthrough, means less content to make. They are designed about replay more than length. Again, rolling out a game is done faster.
They are incredible easy to learn. Almost every gamer has played Super Mario once. There is no need for a hero’s journey, or a good story. People tend to disagree on that point, but Super Mario is the perfect example again for having the worst kind of storyline yet being awesome to play.
These games were made for arcade machines and consoles that had a fraction of the power most mobile devices have today. They are pretty much a guarantee that the games will run on many lower end devices.
I hope this helps you on your game design quest.
EDIT: a tiny note to say about these games, is that each of them were iconic; their art was well done, the audio was incredible and added to their authenticity, their gameplay were intuitive.
I read a post-mortem from an Indie that makes retro RPG’s. His argument was simple: “If it was fun once, it’s still fun”. Plus there’s the nostalgia factor.
I guess one of the key things in the original retro games is that graphical capabilities were not as strong because the hardware simply didn’t allow it, so instead those design constraints ‘caused’ people to have to become very inventive and creative in terms of getting the most out of what was possible… leading for the most part to more of a focus on gameplay.
Also because these were earlier games, they explored new genres and were often simpler, so they were a bit more ‘pure’ in terms of genre and not so complicated. Less is more. Simple is better. Also many of them tested skill and abilities a lot more than many modern games, which have seriously watered down the difficulty/challenge factor to cater to expanded more casual/social/older audiences.
In some ways many modern games have really lost sight of the “basics”.
Sometimes I like how games (2d mainly) go for a retro look with limited palette etc… but sometimes when people just go all super-chunky pixels and very limited palette, it really just looks unappealing given how we’ve gotten too used to glorious huge amounts of $$ being put into graphics. When someone goes all super-low-res I find it’s a turn-off and often an excuse for not spending the time and effort or having the ability to create good art.
This raises a couple of issues I am wrestling with on Rocket Plume this week.
We just got reviewed in the TouchArcade podcast. They really liked the gameplay, but were a bit put off by the retro look — echoing what you’re saying above, @imaginaryhuman_1 . At once point they said it would’ve been the “killer app of 2009”. They also suggested that it could be “jazzed up” by adding powerups or similar, to give it more depth and delay somebody else coming along and just cloning it.
But this raises two questions.
How exactly would you go about improving the graphics in this game, where the only graphical elements are the environment (which needs to be pixels to support the central mechanic), the rocket plume (ditto), and the rocket itself?
I’m just not seeing what could be done in this case.
I also subscribe to the “less is more” school in a game like this… it’s meant to be a quick, multi-play game, where each playthrough lasts maybe a minute or two. Think Flappy Bird, Doodle Jump, etc.; or think of pretty much any arcade game from the days of yore. Do powerups really add to a game of this sort?
Sometimes a lack of a deeper experience can make a game seem amateur or too basic. There is a difference between polished simplicity and just a rough-around-the-edge basic design.
In the above game, to ‘modernize’ it I would maybe add better texturing to the land parts, and not have them all look the same color/texture. Then you could create at least some more variety - some dirty, grass, rocks, etc. Maybe you can then get a little bit more into ‘materials’ like you can’t destroy rocks - which starts to then add more gameplay nuances.
The rocket looks a bit… basic? Maybe consider replacing it with a character of some kind?
Also the backdrop, all-black is okay for contrast/usability, but you could add at least a dark-yet-textured background of some kind… or just something simple, that can scroll by with some parallax.
Are there things to pick up and collect? Bonuses and such?
Are there some different weapons perhaps that simultaneously help in some ways and hinder in others?
Most of this would be cosmetic but maybe you can add some gameplay elements with the varied materials and ways of interacting with the environment. Add a bit more challenge and variety. Not sure what that’d do to what you’re referring to as retro. I don’t see this as looking retro right now.
People who are of the age to create their own thing are generally creating more of the thing they enjoy at the critical age of 8-12.
So right now, most game developers fall into that range and are wistfully remembering the early 90s. In time, this will shift again. As a bonus, software of that era can also be produced with small teams.
They also suggested that it could be “jazzed up” by adding powerups or similar, to give it more depth and delay somebody else coming along and just cloning it.
