Hey guys, just curious to know if N64 Era style games are still going strong?
I only hear about some of these games doing amazing - but I have yet to ever see one actually in front of me anywhere.
Big reason I’m wondering is because the game I’m making is like N64 Style graphics & gameplay.
Like I just love the way the art style is - not realistic, not too fake looking, but just in the nostalgia zone lol.
Now I’m sure just like anything else - it’s a niche thing. But the question comes to being - is a niche like this even that popular?
I hear about kids in their 20’s and stuff finding N64 games/consoles and buying them, so that makes me think that games like this would still produce well in society.
Because I know not just me but a couple other devs agree with me on that graphics aren’t what make a game fun, I mean it can help depending what you’re going for. But not sure if this would be considered a Retro game or whatnot.
But yeah - just curious if any of you think it would do well?
(Thinking of submitting it to Xbox for my ID stuff as well as Steam once it gets to a good enough point to show anybody).
There are people who like everything you can think of.
A good place to start would probably be checking out groups on Steam such as this one: Nintendo-64 Group and then view the members and see what kind of games they buy.
Well it must be a somewhat wanted kinda thing if you have kids that young wanting older games :p.
And yeah you’re right - gameplay would definitely help!
Just checked it out, oh my gosh I never knew there was a Banjo Kazooie level editor! hahahaah.
Yeah it amuses me often reading peoples views around here thinking you have to make certain games or you have to make games a certain way. It’s like they just don’t get we’re talking about people. There are people who love rocks. There are people who are fascinated by leaves. There are people who collect nearly anything imaginable that is possible to collect.
For any game you can think of there are a lot of people (as in enough to make money) who will like it. The challenge is not the lack of people or making the “right” game the challenge is in finding those people. Learning where they hang out. How you can make them aware of your game.
Anyway, enough rambling. Sorry @N1warhead_1 didn’t mean to derail your thread.
Technically you didn’t, you were talking on open interpretation that can be still subjective to the topic of this post :p.
And that is very well true! I’d love to find a major huge hangout spot for N64 style gaming now games, but gaming in general who love the older style games.
I’m working on my Christmas game now (took off work 2 hours early to wrap some Christmas gifts and work on my game) and just happened to check forum on cell but I’ll send some links to communities to you later.
Okay man, I just send you a message. Was unable to start a new convo so I tacked it on to one you had started.
EDIT: Doing things like thisparticularly on gaming forums can be helpful. You might contact this person and see if they’ll share the results with you. Admittedly, every time I see things like this I am reminded of the time I was into Internet Marketing. It was a pretty common practice for peolpe to set up polls under the guise of being a high school or college student in order to collect the information necessary to know if building a product was worthwhile as well as knowing how to build the product so they could sell it to that community. Not saying that is what is going on there but it’s what I think every time I see those kind of posts.
I don’t think there are many games (or at least their formulas) that haven’t been improved upon since. Most of the games were experimental (read as “controls were absolute shit”), and the good games were either made by Nintendo, and all of them have better/newer/updated editions, or were made by Rare, at which point it’s alright to start crying.
Oh I am, just wanted to see from a developers point of view if anyone has had any luck or have even tried to make these kind of games.
(checked it out - looks mega fun) like the blast corps game you mentioned, actually played that game the other day
I worked on N64 games (also SNES, Genesis, PS1, etc.) as an artist, and it’s so interesting to me how people these days actively try to make their graphics in the style of those systems.
A huge thing a lot of us game artists wanted to do back then was keep improving towards higher poly, higher detailed graphics. Those systems were super limited and we tried our best to push them to the max. What’s normal in games today was like the freaking holy grail of computer graphics back then.
All we ever wanted was to get to the point we’re at today, and all anyone today wants is to go back to where we were back then. It’s a strange and wonderful world indeed, haha.
Haha it’s so sad and so accurate to state that games with good gameplay are a niche. *And to this day, nintendo is the only AAA developer producing finished games with a minor amount of bugs.
*this statement taken from several forums, including steam forums, where people express the ridiculousness of the wii-u running games at 1080p60fps but fallout and jc3 have horrible framerates and load times up to 15 minutes on the ps4
Yeah I remember you mentioning this in this past about working on the older game consoles, etc.
And I agree, I remember when I was a little boy - I dreamed of realistic graphics, and at one point I remember the graphics to me back in the day were amazing from one console generation to the next, When PS2 came out I was like oh my gawsh look at the stunning graphics, but I go back and play it and I’m like uhh what? I really thought thoughs were stunning hahaha.
The main reason I have a fascination with older games is they were in the time of my life where the imagination could run rapid and it would be okay - because it was a game. But now days - AAA companies focus solely on graphics - and more trying to be something it is not - a real life situation. If I wanted a real life situation I’d go crank my car up and go race down the road, or if I wanted to play an FPS that was like real life I’d go join back into Special Forces again, and so forth. Nothing is more real than real life - so why try to even compete with the real thing if you’re never going to be anywhere near close in comparison. At least until you have gaming like that one show Video Game Highschool. (That was actually really neat show) lol.
Like has anyone forgotten about Duke Nukem 3D? Open up secret walls and get Atomic Health, jump into secret walls and hide from the duke bots, etc. Or even Quake 2, try to open a door and have to end up searching the ceiling to shoot a switch to open it.
They don’t really do this anymore, and if they do - it’s only occasionally done and have to hold your hand to do it.
I enjoy it where the games aren’t trying to recreate life - but just like a movie - you know it’s totally Hollywood special effects to make it work, not trying to be something it is not kinda thing.
With graphics details increase it requires today multiple character artists , lot of level designers graphics programmer, AI programmers etc … in the Nes era one guy could make the entire tileset of the levels and characters.
Choosing simple stylized graphics today is also a necessity to allow lone developpers to do like Amiga or Nes era, to be able to develop a game as one person or a small team. And visual simplification and stylized can be beautifull also.
Fun happens in player’s head, not on the screen. So, even if everything is looking real, people might get bored or ask for more. However, if you just throw them a hint of what they’re looking at OR even go into full text mode with no graphics, once their imagination starts running, they’ll having time of their life.
That’s why those older games are attractive. Anything from PS2 era end even a bit below usually gave you enough things to get your brain working - BECAUSE those systems were limited. Fighting a monster in Daggerfall for the first time can be quite terrifying even in this day. The monster will be a pixelated mess, of course. However, if you replace that with almost perfectly real replica, instead of being terrified, you might end up bored or spot few artistic mistakes. That’s because the thing you saw in your brain while fighting pixelated mess was more terrifying than high-poly model.
I still like original Doom even in this day, by the way. The game did one heck of a job of keeping the player busy through the whole levels, especially on ultra-violence mode, where you’d be making life or death decisions few times persecond. I gave up on modern shooters because those usually just want to fascinate you with visuals or force you into another team-based pointless multiplayer.
I won’t deny that there’s a whole caste of people that are into the games for visuals only. It is just that I usually don’t find that kind of games interesting, unless gameplay also has something to offer.
