Historical Revisionism in Video Game and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[Azdul]

Like I said, it's very questionable that you say that OPL3 is better than OPN2.

Sure, OK. You're saying that because OPN2 gave some more direct linear control over the shape of the waveform that somehow makes up for the the missing 6 2-op channels. You can't say that. That's retarded. At most you can say it is an apples to oranges comparison.

Again, why are you so hung up on this? It's like the 3rd time you've asked me to put all the necessary caveats to the comparison here but why?

Do you understand what this means exactly? I certainly don't. It's clear which line is better but in what way do the results differ from each other.

It's referring to knobs and levers the chips provided over the exact shape of the shape of the waveforms which were being modulated -- mainly to square off or linearize parts of the otherwise smooth perfect sinusoidal wave forms. It gives the resulting sound a different flavor, but you need to understand this functionality is not fundamental to the way FM synth operates or from where it derives its general power -- which is modulating a carrier signal (one operator) with a modulating signal (another operator) and then feeding that in further down the chain (if possible), and importantly, superimposition through different channels. Mathematically speaking, any signal can be described by simply superimposing enough sinusoidal functions:

so you don't strictly need enveloping (though it is a very important shortcut, but less important than FM itself, which too is a shortcut I suppose). Now if you knew the first thing about signal theory, you would know that, but I don't seem to be talking to someone who does, but someone who is just pulling random info from the internet and doesn't understand how things fit together.

I don't know what "algorithm" refers to in what you quoted as it is an incredibly broad term, but frankly I don't really care, because it seems like another lame attempt at a "gotcha" to achieve what exactly? I still don't understand the point you are trying to make.

Completely agree - frequency modulation can recreate any sound wave. PCM channels, Linear Arithmetic, wave tables were invented by ignorants who slept over on math lessons.

Truth to be told, recreating any sound wave is also possible through PC Speaker or resistor ladder connected to printer port, and I can give mathematical proof for that.

 

[jimster]

It sucks because I liked to use Youtube to discover games from channels that reviewed random indies or old niche games. Now it's hard to find channels like that amongst all the ones that make video essays about stuff every nerd over the age of 20 already knows about.

 

[Silverfish]

"The games I like are better than the ones you like" thread

Anyone who adopts this attitude is a GigaChad regardless of whatever games they like.

 

[Falksi]

The issue surrounding Chrono Trigger is that this thread is about how history has been distorted by American journalists who grew up on the NES and/or SNES.

To recap some of the earlier high-quality discussion, the American coasts are an exception, where Europe was much more SEGA-heavy, with significant Master System and Megadrive uptake, plus a strong PC tradition on the continent. But because American journalists grew up with the SNES, they tend to over-emphasise it in histories of video gaming, resulting in an internet that is full of clickbait lists that ignore wider history, or often ignore all of PC - an old example to illustrate:

The Top 100 Video Games of All Time (IGN, 2021):​

100. Borderlands 2

99. Divinity: Original Sin 2​

98. Final Fantasy VII​

97. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag​

96. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge​

95. Burnout 3: Takedown​

94. Fallout 2​

93. League of Legends​

92. Mega Man 3​

91. Animal Crossing: New Horizons​

90. Thief II: The Metal Age​

89. SimCity 2000​

88. Inside​

87. Titanfall 2​

86. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2​

85. Monster Hunter: World​

84. Resident Evil 2 (Remake)​

83. System Shock 2​

82. Mortal Kombat 11​

81. Persona 5 Royal​

80. Dark Souls​

79. Fortnite​

78. Fable 2​

77. GoldenEye 007​

76. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate​

75. Spelunky 2​

74. Return of the Obra Dinn​

73. Dota 2​

72. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe​

71. Donkey Kong​

70. The Sims 3​

69. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory​

68. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island​

67. Silent Hill 2​

66. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas​

65. XCOM 2​

64. Control​

63. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare​

62. Rise of the Tomb Raider​

61. Batman: Arkham City​

60. Dishonored 2​

59. The Witness​

58. Journey​

57. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves​

56. Overwatch​

55. Apex Legends​

54. Hollow Knight​

53. Ms. Pac-Man​

52. Counter-Strike 1.6​

51. Left 4 Dead 2​

50. EarthBound​

49. Diablo II​

48. StarCraft​

47. World of Warcraft​

46. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic​

45. Fallout: New Vegas​

44. Final Fantasy VI​

43. Pokémon Yellow​

42. Metroid Prime​

41. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim​

40. Resident Evil 4​

39. Shadow of the Colossus​

38. The Last of Us Part 2​

37. Red Dead Redemption​

36. Metal Gear Solid​

35. Sid Meier's Civilization IV​

34. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time​

33. Minecraft​

32. Halo: Combat Evolved​

31. Half-Life​

30. Final Fantasy XIV​

29. Doom​

28. Tetris​

27. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater​

26. Half-Life: Alyx​

25. God of War​

24. Chrono Trigger​

23. Portal​

22. Street Fighter II​

21. Super Mario Bros.​

20. Undertale​

19. Bloodborne​

18. BioShock​

17. The Last of Us​

16. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt​

15. Halo 2​

14. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night​

13. Hades​

12. Grand Theft Auto V​

11. Super Mario Bros. 3​

10. Disco Elysium​

9. Half-Life 2​

8. Red Dead Redemption 2​

7. Super Mario 64​

6. Mass Effect 2​

5. Super Metroid​

4. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past​

3. Portal 2​

2. Super Mario World​

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild​

As previously mentioned, these lists are just pasted everywhere all over the internet, virtually ignore the history of PC gaming, and often exclude non-Nintendo consoles. Like as Falksi previously mentioned, two Marios and no Sonic in the top ten. No Deus Ex, no X-Com, no System Shock, no Planescape, etc, etc, etc. There is also the Wikipedia article "1994 in gaming" which I previously posted, where it didn't mention a single PC game, when X-Com, Doom 2, TIE Fighter and System Shock were all released that year.

That's the level of historical revisionism this thread seeks to redress.

Well, what game among older PC games do you think should be on this list? most of the games you mention have aged quite a bit.

Making a best-of list needs to be either historically based or based on the current day. The list you posted fails both criteria though, having Super Mario 3 on a current-day list is absurd, while a on historically based list it would fare very well.

There are very few games before 2000 that compare to newer games without nostalgia glasses.

There are tons of older games PC which destroy modern ones.

How on earth isn't Planescape Torment on there? I can't see another game there with a better story on there. PS:T and Deus Ex still stand up today as the two most thought-provoking stories I've ever played. Deus Ex half predicted the future with regards to I.T. manipulation and global virus scares. Nah, let's put some dumb "friends team up to kill God and save the world" shit like Chrono Trigger on there instead. Fuck philosophical questions like "what can change the nature of a man?", there's a big bad thing with no personality to go and kill.

X-Com '94 and Apocalypse both blow their modern counterparts away for tactical depth. I really like the new Firaxis games, but they're done with after a few plays as the pod system has been memorized; it completely destroys them. The old X-Coms you can replay a thousand times over with their very analogue nature. Wild that X-Com 2 is on there ahead of the older ones.

Duke Nuke 'Em still blow away most FPS games for excitement, gratification and sheer badassery.

Star Control 2 and Starflight do space exploration better than any Mass Effect. Star Control 1 is also literally space chess with action involved, you can play it forever 2-player. If Tetris is on there (which it is) Star Control is the next best example of simplicity used to create almost endless gameplay loop.

System Shock 2 actually requires the player to engage their brain a bit, and isn't just a largely un-interactive story like Bioshock is. Bioshocks gameplay does not even come close to matching the depth that System Shock 2 has in it's tree system. Again, the dumbed down version gets on the list.

Absolutely nothing comes close to Hexen 2 in modern gaming for brutal, challenging, dark fantasy FPS action with wicked level design. It's dark souls in FPS form, but with puzzles. And casual shit like Goldeneye is getting on the list ahead of it? Do me a favour.

Flashback still remains the best cinematic adventure game I'd ever played. God of War is piss poor by comparison in every way other than presentation.

Slightly outside of your date range (but not by much)...how the fuck is Baldurs Gate 2 not on there, but Divinity Original Sin 2 is? I'll give D:OS2 it's dues for it's combat system, but everything else from characters, to world, to pacing, to story, to builds, to replayability etc. are all significantly worse.

And I'm just sticking to PC there, and not bringing in the fact that the silly cunts who made the list featured arcade games like Ms. Pacman and Donkey Kong, yet missed off stuff like Afterburner, where you sat inside a moving cab and had the single most exciting, adrenaline rushing game experience which gaming has offered.

The list is fucking dire, and should contain both way more PC games and way more games from other systems in general. As Louis_Cypher says, it's made by very small-minded North Americans with very limited gaming experience, and who were clearly heavily raised on Nintendo. Not including at least 1 Sonic game in the entire list but 3 Mario games in the top 11 shows that bias very much.

And how is there not a Beat Em' Up like Streets of Rage in there? Or a SHMUP like Thunderforce 3 or 4 or DoDonpachi? The 80's and early 90's were built on those two genres, alongside RPGs I play SHMUPs more than any other genre because the intense excitement compliments the methodical contemplation of an RPG, but IGN doesn't even recognize the genre.

I'll stop there, because I'm only scratching the surface here lol. It's a list which bleeds normie-itus and "I played this game by watching it on Youtube" from it's core.

This is what I am talking about, nostalgia glasses.

For example, the UFO Defense interface and perspective are horribly outdated. It's slow and corny to play. I played it through, it was the fucking shit back in the day, but now it's a relic that feels stiff and old.

Star Control 2's gameplay is like something from a kid's drawing. It's like something from a python coding tutorial.

System Shock 2 plays like punching through a carpet, it's extremely slow and awkward. It's worse than Daggerfall.

Flashback is a stickman simulator, it takes 2 minutes to walk across the screen. It was outdated 30 years ago.

Streets of Rage is like an hour-long tech demo.

All of this is just your bias and childhood affecting your views. It's nonsensical to compare this to newer games. Historically, they were great and important, but if you took 10.000 people with no biases or nostalgia in a room, 97% of people would rather play fucking Dirt 4 than any of this.

This just tells me you're shit a games.

Star Control is ridiculously playable, it puts modern games to shame in 2 player. The visuals have nothing to do with that.

System Shock 2's play isn't that great, but like I said, it's the depth that makes that. Bioshock plays laughable bad anyway, with Vita Chambers which essentially make you invincible, and it has awful design like enemy respawns from thin air.

Wow. You can't find the run button in Flashback?

The Streets of Rage games are badass and as good as couch co-op gets. You were Nintendo raised, you don't have badass in you. But regardless, the point is that there is not ONE single BEU or SHMUP on that list. The were 2 pillars of the entire Arcade industry, and not to be able to find a single one to fit into 100...when you then have over-representation in other pillars of the era such as platformers... just shows pure fucking spasticness. "Mario! Mario! Mario!... but we'll forget ALL of the Double Dragon series, Final Fight series, Streets of Rage series, D&D Arcade series, Aliens Vs Predator, Golden Axe series, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, Punisher, Captain Commando, Aleste series, Darius series, DoDonPachi series, R-Type series, Batsugun, Ikaruga etc. etc. That's just bollocks. Some of them are still an absolute blast to play, and built the industry.

Holy shit, I just realized...where the fuck is Contra?!? FIVE Mario platformers in there...but not one Run N' Gun like any of the Contra series, Turrican series or Gunstar Heroes etc. Jesus... it really is a proper baby's first games spastic grade list.

And I still play all the games I listed and more regularly, because most modern games are shit by comparison. I like depth and excitement, RPGs give me depth, arcade games give me excitement.

And another tell on that list is when you just look at the developers which aren't on there too. No Treasure, Toaplan, Technosoft, Taito, Cave, Data East etc. The mind boggles.

 

[Nutmeg]

I feel like understanding the arcade format has become kind of an arcane knowledge to be passed down by word of mouth to the chosen few gamers who have the necessary temperament and love of the medium to be able to enjoy it.

"1 hour tech demo" lmao

 

[Hellraiser]

both bad examples, since x-com ran on an amiga, less powerful than a snes,

It was ported to newer AGA Amiga's though, which were slightly younger than the SNES IIRC, and not earlier models like the most popular A500. Looking at the specs I think the A1200 (most common AGA model and likely target of the port) wins this:

CPU clockspeed it is night and day in favor of the Amiga 1200. 14+ MHz of an A1200 vs 3,58 MHz on the SNES.

AGA vs SNES graphics chip is a more complex topic, if not apples vs oranges due to how the hardware works, but at least looking at color both support 256 on screen color in indexed mode, although the snes can pick out of 15-bit color so just ~32k colors available for the 256 color onscreen pallete as opposed to the 24-bit of the AGA which gave you 16,8 million choices to put into your indexed palette. Supported resolutions are also in favor of the A1200/AGA.

 

[Necrensha]

Most videogames are borderline lost media or impossible to acquire without going to a pirate site, I've mentioned in the past that something crazy like 90% all games ever made cannot be bought legally. With stats like that it's no wonder that you don't get accurate top tiers of any kind, most people simply have no way of accessing any of this stuff and the ephemeral nature of both videogames and the machines that play them means that mountains of this stuff gets lost in time.
Not to defend shitty journalism, but games have are usually very time and skill intensive and most people have a short window of time within their lives where they'll be willing to take the challenge before becoming a couch potato like all the others. It's much easier to play a braindead easy game like Ocarina of Time than to fire up Hexen 2 and spend an hour running in circles in search for that door that just opened.

 

[Falksi]

I feel like understanding the arcade format has become kind of an arcane knowledge to be passed down by word of mouth to the chosen few gamers who have the necessary temperament and love of the medium to be able to enjoy it.

"1 hour tech demo" lmao

Agreed. It's wild. Someone's just literally reposted this meme in a Retro FB group, and the comment below made me piss...

For those who want to see running comparisons...





It's night and day, Scud Racing blows Mario 64 away.

Of course, there is the usual cope in the comments of "bUT iTS aN aRCADE GaME!! tHEY aREN't AllOWED!!!"... As if being an arcade game somehow makes you exempt from being the best.

Most videogames are borderline lost media or impossible to acquire without going to a pirate site, I've mentioned in the past that something crazy like 90% all games ever made cannot be bought legally. With stats like that it's no wonder that you don't get accurate top tiers of any kind, most people simply have no way of accessing any of this stuff and the ephemeral nature of both videogames and the machines that play them means that mountains of this stuff gets lost in time.
Not to defend shitty journalism, but games have are usually very time and skill intensive and most people have a short window of time within their lives where they'll be willing to take the challenge before becoming a couch potato like all the others. It's much easier to play a braindead easy game like Ocarina of Time than to fire up Hexen 2 and spend an hour running in circles in search for that door that just opened.

You're spot on, but here's the thing, much like Historians try to keep history accurate and alive with their finds, gaming journos should do the same to some degree. The brain dead masses are always going to gravitate to gay shit like Ocarina of Time over Hexen 2, much like they need their vaccines and would sooner listen to Taylor Swift rather than The Prodigy or Black Sabbath, but self-proclaimed gaming "experts" should be WAY more balanced with their views.

As I've said, these idiots aren't just missing games off the list, they're missing entire genres off the list that were pillars of gaming for it's initial 10-15 years. Which wouldn't be so bad if they then didn't include several games from only one of the other genre-pillars of that era, but they do.

I mean even then we used to joke that SHMUPs were for the grown ups, platformers for the kids, and this list literally displays that.

Thankfully, I think more modern tubers and such like are waking up to this. But as they say, you can't spell ignorant without IGN.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

TBH I see an Amiga as being much closer to a proprietary PC, than a typical Japanese under-TV console like SNES.

It might be worth thinking about why a lot of people have this perception, accurate or not. It ain't just that an Amiga superficially looks like a PC. I think it boils down to "culture". When I think of a typical Japanese-designed under-TV console, I think of a platform that is rooted in Japanese "arcade culture". A PC could have technically handled contemporary console games, but they usually didn't make it over. The Gen 3/Gen 4 consoles tended to have a higher proportion therefore of games with "arcadified" Japanese hallmark design, and PC's had a higher proportion of contemplative "sims" like X-Com.

Like I say, the distinction has disappeared, and you will get Streets of Rage 4 day one on Steam.

Yes the C64 was a "gaming machine" first, but it was rooted in a more PC culture sensibility.

So, bringing the topic back to the main point, the danger of a cadre of American journalists, with a SNES-dominated youth, having had control of the main gaming publications for so long, and having written the narrative for younger folks, is that a lot of the "public perception" of gaming has become rooted specifically in the NES and SNES. In reality, SEGA made huge contributions, far more important outside North America, and there is an entire other side of gaming, i.e. PC. That means a bias toward JRPGs, over CRPGs, for example. With the importance of things like Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger magnified, and things like Ultima, Wizardry, Bard's Tale or M&M minimised. It means a greater emphasis placed on platformers like Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, etc, and a minimisation of sims like Wing Commander or Master of Orion. If we are talking "games as art", lists at the top of Google, like the 2021 IGN list above, or the GQ one, are just as astonishingly bad. Deus Ex is an artistic work of extreme and long-term importance, surely, predicting 21st century politics; how can it not be ranked in a top 100, when say a Chrono Trigger or a Journey are? What about Bloodlines for aesthetics? Or DF2: Jedi Knight for art design? Quake?

 

[Nutmeg]

Yes the C64 was a gaming machine, not PC, but it was rooted in a more European PC sensibility.

What are you talking about? it was most definitely a PC lol. This isn't some strange perception of yours, that's what it was. It wasn't a PC in the sense of an "IBM PC compatible" but it was most certainly a Personal Computer. This is doubly so for the Amiga. People did their spreadsheets and taxes on it.

I am surprised anyone at all thinks the fucking Amiga and C64 were game consoles. How fucking retarded are you young people these days? Geez fuck the title of this thread is 100% accurate.

And European? The Commodore 64 may have been popular in Europe, but it was an American machine. The people who made it made it to compete with the Apple 2

 

[Mountain]

Streets of Rage is like an hour-long tech demo.

JFC.

It's a legendary title, but playing Streets of Rage in 2025 is not the same as it was in the early 90s.

Consoles couldn't even handle a lot of the best DOS games in that era; imagine trying to run X-Com

Interesting you raise this question - Xcom was ported to the playstation and the Amiga. You're contributing to the revisionism and blabbering nonsense. You're better than that.

There are very few games before 2000 that compare to newer games without nostalgia glasses.

You, however, are not better. Of all the vast wealth of amazing games pre-2000 that embarrass the hell out of the majority of modern braindead soulless garbage, you choose Earthbound and Chronotrigger. Those aren't even remotely notable accomplishments among the glory of 90s games. In fact they're barely games at all. You are 100% the problem we're talking about. You celebrate non-games as accomplishments over real ones with 50x the depth. You don't know video games beyond your nintendo and modern brainrot, and even among those limited parameters your exposure is obviously lacking. You parade around the internet spreading ignorant propaganda that gamers 100 years from now will have a hard time filtering historical fact from foolishness. You cluelessly aim to erase the superiority of game design history by claiming very little of the golden era was good, when anyone adequately experienced will know that things were generally better back then. Please leave.

I never said anything special about Chrono Trigger or Earthbound, apart from that Earthbound has a legacy because of its setting and approach to America. Because a game is easy, it doesn't make it a "non-game" lol. There are many terrible hard games as well, a game is simply interactive media. It's not about difficulty, but the design and how the game works. Your argument is as useful as "The Lion King is a horrible film because it's a child movie", "The Seven Samurai fucking sucks because it's black and white". Childish.

Some of the best games are easy as fuck but have game designs far exceeding hard games. And I never said anything from the golden era is "not good". I said it has aged.

Pretty much everyone on here gets so angry when questioning their brainwashing that they make up a story that I am saying "all old games are bad". I love old games.

The only reason why you think it was "better back then" is because you don't play new stuff. It's like a person who only listens to Coltrane and refuses to admit anything since has any value.

The "Nintendo" argument is a cliche on this forum.

The issue surrounding Chrono Trigger is that this thread is about how history has been distorted by American journalists who grew up on the NES and/or SNES.

To recap some of the earlier high-quality discussion, the American coasts are an exception, where Europe was much more SEGA-heavy, with significant Master System and Megadrive uptake, plus a strong PC tradition on the continent. But because American journalists grew up with the SNES, they tend to over-emphasise it in histories of video gaming, resulting in an internet that is full of clickbait lists that ignore wider history, or often ignore all of PC - an old example to illustrate:

The Top 100 Video Games of All Time (IGN, 2021):​

100. Borderlands 2

99. Divinity: Original Sin 2​

98. Final Fantasy VII​

97. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag​

96. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge​

95. Burnout 3: Takedown​

94. Fallout 2​

93. League of Legends​

92. Mega Man 3​

91. Animal Crossing: New Horizons​

90. Thief II: The Metal Age​

89. SimCity 2000​

88. Inside​

87. Titanfall 2​

86. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2​

85. Monster Hunter: World​

84. Resident Evil 2 (Remake)​

83. System Shock 2​

82. Mortal Kombat 11​

81. Persona 5 Royal​

80. Dark Souls​

79. Fortnite​

78. Fable 2​

77. GoldenEye 007​

76. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate​

75. Spelunky 2​

74. Return of the Obra Dinn​

73. Dota 2​

72. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe​

71. Donkey Kong​

70. The Sims 3​

69. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory​

68. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island​

67. Silent Hill 2​

66. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas​

65. XCOM 2​

64. Control​

63. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare​

62. Rise of the Tomb Raider​

61. Batman: Arkham City​

60. Dishonored 2​

59. The Witness​

58. Journey​

57. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves​

56. Overwatch​

55. Apex Legends​

54. Hollow Knight​

53. Ms. Pac-Man​

52. Counter-Strike 1.6​

51. Left 4 Dead 2​

50. EarthBound​

49. Diablo II​

48. StarCraft​

47. World of Warcraft​

46. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic​

45. Fallout: New Vegas​

44. Final Fantasy VI​

43. Pokémon Yellow​

42. Metroid Prime​

41. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim​

40. Resident Evil 4​

39. Shadow of the Colossus​

38. The Last of Us Part 2​

37. Red Dead Redemption​

36. Metal Gear Solid​

35. Sid Meier's Civilization IV​

34. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time​

33. Minecraft​

32. Halo: Combat Evolved​

31. Half-Life​

30. Final Fantasy XIV​

29. Doom​

28. Tetris​

27. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater​

26. Half-Life: Alyx​

25. God of War​

24. Chrono Trigger​

23. Portal​

22. Street Fighter II​

21. Super Mario Bros.​

20. Undertale​

19. Bloodborne​

18. BioShock​

17. The Last of Us​

16. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt​

15. Halo 2​

14. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night​

13. Hades​

12. Grand Theft Auto V​

11. Super Mario Bros. 3​

10. Disco Elysium​

9. Half-Life 2​

8. Red Dead Redemption 2​

7. Super Mario 64​

6. Mass Effect 2​

5. Super Metroid​

4. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past​

3. Portal 2​

2. Super Mario World​

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild​

As previously mentioned, these lists are just pasted everywhere all over the internet, virtually ignore the history of PC gaming, and often exclude non-Nintendo consoles. Like as Falksi previously mentioned, two Marios and no Sonic in the top ten. No Deus Ex, no X-Com, no System Shock, no Planescape, etc, etc, etc. There is also the Wikipedia article "1994 in gaming" which I previously posted, where it didn't mention a single PC game, when X-Com, Doom 2, TIE Fighter and System Shock were all released that year.

That's the level of historical revisionism this thread seeks to redress.

Well, what game among older PC games do you think should be on this list? most of the games you mention have aged quite a bit.

Making a best-of list needs to be either historically based or based on the current day. The list you posted fails both criteria though, having Super Mario 3 on a current-day list is absurd, while a on historically based list it would fare very well.

There are very few games before 2000 that compare to newer games without nostalgia glasses.

There are tons of older games PC which destroy modern ones.

How on earth isn't Planescape Torment on there? I can't see another game there with a better story on there. PS:T and Deus Ex still stand up today as the two most thought-provoking stories I've ever played. Deus Ex half predicted the future with regards to I.T. manipulation and global virus scares. Nah, let's put some dumb "friends team up to kill God and save the world" shit like Chrono Trigger on there instead. Fuck philosophical questions like "what can change the nature of a man?", there's a big bad thing with no personality to go and kill.

X-Com '94 and Apocalypse both blow their modern counterparts away for tactical depth. I really like the new Firaxis games, but they're done with after a few plays as the pod system has been memorized; it completely destroys them. The old X-Coms you can replay a thousand times over with their very analogue nature. Wild that X-Com 2 is on there ahead of the older ones.

Duke Nuke 'Em still blow away most FPS games for excitement, gratification and sheer badassery.

Star Control 2 and Starflight do space exploration better than any Mass Effect. Star Control 1 is also literally space chess with action involved, you can play it forever 2-player. If Tetris is on there (which it is) Star Control is the next best example of simplicity used to create almost endless gameplay loop.

System Shock 2 actually requires the player to engage their brain a bit, and isn't just a largely un-interactive story like Bioshock is. Bioshocks gameplay does not even come close to matching the depth that System Shock 2 has in it's tree system. Again, the dumbed down version gets on the list.

Absolutely nothing comes close to Hexen 2 in modern gaming for brutal, challenging, dark fantasy FPS action with wicked level design. It's dark souls in FPS form, but with puzzles. And casual shit like Goldeneye is getting on the list ahead of it? Do me a favour.

Flashback still remains the best cinematic adventure game I'd ever played. God of War is piss poor by comparison in every way other than presentation.

Slightly outside of your date range (but not by much)...how the fuck is Baldurs Gate 2 not on there, but Divinity Original Sin 2 is? I'll give D:OS2 it's dues for it's combat system, but everything else from characters, to world, to pacing, to story, to builds, to replayability etc. are all significantly worse.

And I'm just sticking to PC there, and not bringing in the fact that the silly cunts who made the list featured arcade games like Ms. Pacman and Donkey Kong, yet missed off stuff like Afterburner, where you sat inside a moving cab and had the single most exciting, adrenaline rushing game experience which gaming has offered.

The list is fucking dire, and should contain both way more PC games and way more games from other systems in general. As Louis_Cypher says, it's made by very small-minded North Americans with very limited gaming experience, and who were clearly heavily raised on Nintendo. Not including at least 1 Sonic game in the entire list but 3 Mario games in the top 11 shows that bias very much.

And how is there not a Beat Em' Up like Streets of Rage in there? Or a SHMUP like Thunderforce 3 or 4 or DoDonpachi? The 80's and early 90's were built on those two genres, alongside RPGs I play SHMUPs more than any other genre because the intense excitement compliments the methodical contemplation of an RPG, but IGN doesn't even recognize the genre.

I'll stop there, because I'm only scratching the surface here lol. It's a list which bleeds normie-itus and "I played this game by watching it on Youtube" from it's core.

This is what I am talking about, nostalgia glasses.

For example, the UFO Defense interface and perspective are horribly outdated. It's slow and corny to play. I played it through, it was the fucking shit back in the day, but now it's a relic that feels stiff and old.

Star Control 2's gameplay is like something from a kid's drawing. It's like something from a python coding tutorial.

System Shock 2 plays like punching through a carpet, it's extremely slow and awkward. It's worse than Daggerfall.

Flashback is a stickman simulator, it takes 2 minutes to walk across the screen. It was outdated 30 years ago.

Streets of Rage is like an hour-long tech demo.

All of this is just your bias and childhood affecting your views. It's nonsensical to compare this to newer games. Historically, they were great and important, but if you took 10.000 people with no biases or nostalgia in a room, 97% of people would rather play fucking Dirt 4 than any of this.

This just tells me you're shit a games.

Star Control is ridiculously playable, it puts modern games to shame in 2 player. The visuals have nothing to do with that.

System Shock 2's play isn't that great, but like I said, it's the depth that makes that. Bioshock plays laughable bad anyway, with Vita Chambers which essentially make you invincible, and it has awful design like enemy respawns from thin air.

Wow. You can't find the run button in Flashback?

The Streets of Rage games are badass and as good as couch co-op gets. You were Nintendo raised, you don't have badass in you. But regardless, the point is that there is not ONE single BEU or SHMUP on that list. The were 2 pillars of the entire Arcade industry, and not to be able to find a single one to fit into 100...when you then have over-representation in other pillars of the era such as platformers... just shows pure fucking spasticness. "Mario! Mario! Mario!... but we'll forget ALL of the Double Dragon series, Final Fight series, Streets of Rage series, D&D Arcade series, Aliens Vs Predator, Golden Axe series, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, Punisher, Captain Commando, Aleste series, Darius series, DoDonPachi series, R-Type series, Batsugun, Ikaruga etc. etc. That's just bollocks. Some of them are still an absolute blast to play, and built the industry.

Holy shit, I just realized...where the fuck is Contra?!? FIVE Mario platformers in there...but not one Run N' Gun like any of the Contra series, Turrican series or Gunstar Heroes etc. Jesus... it really is a proper baby's first games spastic grade list.

And I still play all the games I listed and more regularly, because most modern games are shit by comparison. I like depth and excitement, RPGs give me depth, arcade games give me excitement.

And another tell on that list is when you just look at the developers which aren't on there too. No Treasure, Toaplan, Technosoft, Taito, Cave, Data East etc. The mind boggles.

You are married to the past. Depth does not excuse poor gameplay. The reason why you put some of these games over newer ones is because you grew up with them.

It's like the opposite of zoomers who only play Madden and Fortnite, their concept of the past doesn't exist just as your concept of the current state of gaming doesn't exist. So you have to call people idiots to defend your view, just as the zoomers do.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

What are you talking about? it was most definitely a PC lol.

Well, you are preaching to the choir. I've always thought that. But go back a page or so, and a couple of people were holding the Amiga port of UFO: Enemy Unknown up as an example of "a console running X-Com". Perhaps in some technical sense, the C64 is a console, in that it was designed principally for gaming, but I just see a PC.

Ultimately, the reason why the NES is so fondly remembered and the C64 and the like is not, is because Nintendo succeeded in building a profitable game company and produce mainstream franchises like Mario that brought in the cash and attention to sustain it.

I agree that what Nintendo and SEGA did well in Gen 3/Gen 4, was making the home market experience that was streamlined, well marketed, well packaged as a plug-and-play experience. Games on their systems were often a reliable distillation of the Japanese game culture, with more PC-like ports of titles like Ultima 4 or M&M1 occasionally.

 

[Nutmeg]

sims like Wing Commander or Master of Orion.

You think MoO and WC belong to the same genre?

 

[Falksi]

You are married to the past. Depth does not excuse poor gameplay. The reason why you put some of these games over newer ones is because you grew up with them.

It's like the opposite of zoomers who only play Madden and Fortnite, their concept of the past doesn't exist just as your concept of the current state of gaming doesn't exist. So you have to call people idiots to defend your view, just as the zoomers do.

No I'm not. I play modern games too and recognize the great ones there. It's just older ones often did it better.

A lot of these games I'd not even played before, so "you just grew up with them" is bollocks. I spoke to plenty of posters on here stating I was going to dig into the past libraries and play a lot for the first time. You're just doing that cope thing of having to make stuff up to find a way to fit your limited view.

Some examples of games which I played for the first time after 2017 which I now class as some of my favorites ever include...

• Hellfire
• DoDonPachi
• Alien Soldier (and I hated this at first. But, unlike you, I took people's advice and pushed through initial skill hurdles, rather than dismiss them in full without any real effort)
• Blackthorne
• Contra Hard Corps
• Langrisser 2
• Exile: Escape From The Pit
• Blades of Vengeance

...and there are plenty more too.

That doesn't mean I don't love modern games like Dark Souls series, Nioh, SMTV Vengence though. Unlike yourself and those games journos, I've a balanced appreciation of games, old & new.

 

[Nutmeg]

Well, you are preaching to the choir. I've always thought that. But go back a page or so, and a couple of people were holding the Amiga port of UFO: Enemy Unknown up as an example of "a console running X-Com".

I think the point was it was a non-IBM PC compatible running X-Com.

Anyway let's do a good exercise in historical clarity.

When would you (or anyone else here) say that games for IBM PC compatibles reached rough technical parity in audio-visual output with games for the "16-bit" consoles?

Of the top of my head, I would guess 1993.

I can't think of anything on IBM PC compatibles that could match Thunderforce 4 or Axelay in 1992

 

[Louis_Cypher]

You think MoO and WC belong to the same genre?

Where the fuck did I say that, don't start degrading the thread with childish stuff. The internet is bad enough without the usual "assuming what the other person is saying" shit. Wing Commander is a space combat flight sim, Master of Orion is a 4X, which is a type of management sim. Other than that, they OBVIOUSLY have little in common.

Does it even need stating?

 

[Nutmeg]

You think MoO and WC belong to the same genre?

Where the fuck did I say that, don't start degrading the thread with childish stuff. The internet is bad enough without the usual "assuming what the other person is saying" shit. Wing Commander is a flight sim, Master of Orion is a 4X, which is a type of management sim. Other than that, they OBVIOUSLY have little in common.

Does it even need stating?

Yes it is obvious which is why I was so surprised you mentioned both of them in the same breath. But yes OK it was just awkward phrasing on your part not an error.

 

[Inec0rn]

My problem with modern games is that the best examples of virtually any genre are 15+ years old, sometimes 25 years old. Original X-Com has never been bested, and every game in that genre was hyped by being like X-com, no one has ever actually given us a real successor or continuation to it - which is infuriating.

TFTD is a reskin.
Apoc - has some glimmers of genius (the city concept and alien world was great), the game was over-hyped and was unfinished on release, the turn-based mode is pretty much unplayable broken, forcing you to play a pretty garbage real-time mode if you want to beat it. The art-style has some 50's inspiration and is sub-par to original X-Com.
Intercepter - was just bad and shouldn't bare the xcom name.
Alliance (did it actually release?) - again it's not an xcom game more of a space hulk clone. Space Hulk 1993 another game with incredible game-play no-one attempted to replicate.
Battle Isle Incubation - was okay at the time, but has a very linear progression, it's so so.
Silent Storm - one of the better attempts and has some destructible environments, but still nowhere near as good as xcom.
nuXcom 1 and 2 - is nothing like the original game, it's okay and i confess I've beaten them both but they are very shallow games in comparison to the original.
Warhammer turn based games - more similar to nuXcom, it just doesn't scratch the itch for me.
Pheonix Point - i think the default game is broken/unplayable, there's apparently a mod that makes it playable but i've not been bother to install it.
Xenonauts 1 and 2 - both suffered from development hell, this guy actually tried making a real spiritual successor but it lacks half the features of the original 1.44mb game, they just arn't good enough unfortunately.

Then there are the bigger mods for the original game like Xcom Files and xPiratez that add 10x more depth to an already unbeaten classic game. I just can't get excited for any new turn based squad tactics game, new developers don't even try to make a comparable game. Okay and this is one game in one genre we could explore many more.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Amiga. People did their spreadsheets and taxes on it.

I am surprised anyone at all thinks the fucking Amiga and C64 were game consoles. How fucking retarded are you young people these days? Geez fuck the title of this thread is 100% accurate.

i did mainly video montage (scala mm400) and as a hobby terrain rendering (vista + scenery animator). i heard some crazy guys were into 3d graphics and pulled out of an amiga stuff like jurassic park, terminator 2 and star trek tng thanks to imagine and lightwave. it wasn't just andy warhol and deluxe paint. lots of techno and synth music has been done with octamed.
amiga was a beast of a workstation which happened to be good at videogames too.

 

[Inec0rn]

It took a while for the PC to catchup and surpass the Amiga back in the day. It had coral draw, a decent graphical OS, it's sound chip was better before sound-blaster etc started becoming mainstream. It had music production suites, Coral Draw was the go-to photo-shop equivalent and quite decent.

commodore dropped the ball being first to market with a superior product and just let the competition surpass them.

 

[GamerCat_]

What are the consequences of revisionism in video games, as covered in this thread?

My friends and I talk a lot about "revisionism", but always in relation to culture. Transgirl video essayists trying to change and rewrite the truths of how people felt about and interpreted things, what people were doing and cared about that produced certain cultural moments. THAT is dangerous historical revisionism. Psychotic trannies being allowed to rewrite moments in cultural history and attribute things to false sources, give credit where it doesn't belong, puff up bad fake forces while burying real ones. I don't see how bald gen-x guys arguing over whether the amiga or commodore had more gigaflops matters by comparison.

And apparently there's a whole world of youtube I've never noticed of anemic looking oomerwoomerjoomers lying about consoles and games they've never played saying blatantly wrong shit like that everyone was a massive 'Croc' fan in 1999. I don't really see how that substantially matters in any way connected to anything else.

And it's so far behind us now but OP can't seem to decide if he's mad at revisionism or re-appraisal.

 

[Hellraiser]

commodore dropped the ball being first to market with a superior product and just let the competition surpass them.

I think these kind of debates on Commodore fucking up despite the Amiga's strengths are missing the elephant in the room. The IMB PC won because Microsoft managed to entrench itself within the school system and corporate offices. Microsoft going to school etc. and shilling MS office (plus windows) was a slamdunk and massively helped PCs getting adopted at homes (it's for school/work mom, honestly!).

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Most videogames are borderline lost media or impossible to acquire without going to a pirate site, I've mentioned in the past that something crazy like 90% all games ever made cannot be bought legally. With stats like that it's no wonder that you don't get accurate top tiers of any kind, most people simply have no way of accessing any of this stuff and the ephemeral nature of both videogames and the machines that play them means that mountains of this stuff gets lost in time.
Not to defend shitty journalism, but games have are usually very time and skill intensive and most people have a short window of time within their lives where they'll be willing to take the challenge before becoming a couch potato like all the others. It's much easier to play a braindead easy game like Ocarina of Time than to fire up Hexen 2 and spend an hour running in circles in search for that door that just opened.

It's why I don't mind re-releases so much, if it means a new generation will get to play older games.

It's overall good for preservation, if say Nightdive slowly pump out all the 1990s shooters, like remastering Dark Forces, adding a bit of QoL, in addition to the existing free Force Engine fan remaster. Just more availability all around for an older important game, expanding a pool of potential/available users.

The grogs can play the GOG original with or without the Force Engine, the normies can have a monetised digestable product presented on their app of choice, with added Steam or GOG or PSN support, that will be down to £2.99 in a few years time, and hopefully remain in circulation for a long time.

I would rather see a re-release like that, on popular digital platforms, packaged for people who get their games the vanilla way, just to see them preserved or available to youngsters, than not. People don't have to buy them at full price.

It's shit like what Blizzard did to Warcraft 3 that are the problem.

What are the consequences of revisionism in video games, as covered in this thread?

I'd argue the main consequence of a failure to understand gaming history, will be lessons missed by newer games. To learn from past failure and success drives genres forward.

 

[GamerCat_]

Most videogames are borderline lost media or impossible to acquire without going to a pirate site, I've mentioned in the past that something crazy like 90% all games ever made cannot be bought legally. With stats like that it's no wonder that you don't get accurate top tiers of any kind, most people simply have no way of accessing any of this stuff and the ephemeral nature of both videogames and the machines that play them means that mountains of this stuff gets lost in time.
Not to defend shitty journalism, but games have are usually very time and skill intensive and most people have a short window of time within their lives where they'll be willing to take the challenge before becoming a couch potato like all the others. It's much easier to play a braindead easy game like Ocarina of Time than to fire up Hexen 2 and spend an hour running in circles in search for that door that just opened.

It's why I don't mind re-releases so much, if it means a new generation will get to play older games.

It's overall good for preservation, if say Nightdive slowly pump out all the 1990s shooters, like remastering Dark Forces, adding a bit of QoL, in addition to the existing free Force Engine fan remaster. Just more availability all around for an older important game, expanding a pool of potential/available users.

The grogs can play the GOG original with or without the Force Engine, the normies can have a monetised digestable product presented on their app of choice, with added Steam or GOG or PSN support, that will be down to £2.99 in a few years time, and hopefully remain in circulation for a long time.

I would rather see a re-release like that, on popular digital platforms, packaged for people who get their games the vanilla way, just to see them preserved or available to youngsters, than not. People don't have to buy them at full price.

It's shit like what Blizzard did to Warcraft 3 that are the problem.

If someone doesn't care then they simply don't care. Accessibility moves like this are mostly for the benefit of bored idiots who don't really care about anything and will just kind of coast through this stuff as a meaningless flashing light show. I get that from without video games can seem obtuse and impenetrable. Only way I see to really fix that is human connections. I have personally led outsiders into appreciating video games. The hard part isn't really finding them or getting them running. It's what to make of all of this and how to move through it. The whole entire steam catalog and GOG and the rest, they don't really make things much easier than piracy. It's still a bewildering monolith of a culture.

If these historian types on youtube actually cared about video games (I've never gotten the impression they do) they could try to lead people in, explain from zero. But it seems like on the whole it's more of a poser arms-race that only makes things worse.

A true, deep appreciation of video games is extremely rare even if not especially among self proclaimed gamers.

What are the consequences of revisionism in video games, as covered in this thread?

I'd argue the main consequence of a failure to understand gaming history, will be lessons missed by newer games. To learn from past failure and success drives genres forward.

Anybody with a real will to understand the history I think will be able to do so fairly easily. They won't be watching "Scott the Woz". This shit is infotainment for Mexican ipad babies. Like saying the bad quality of tv news is going to harm your intelligentsia. This shit is for idiots and animals.

Real, dangerous revisionists exist. But I believe the primary thread is spiritual hazards. People who build a brand and approach around trying to capture and manipulate the actually thinking and feeling and direct them down demented paths to join what are basically their own personal neurosis-cults disguised as high critical theory. I wrote a big angry post on some shithole forum last year about these people. I shouldn't need to say it explicitly but I understand this place often struggles to keep up with me. The greatest threat to a serious person who actually could understand video games and wants to is not a lack of access to the games, or any number of incorrect repeated data points and bits of historical trivia. It's that the gaming internet is ridden with cults of psychotic transsexuals obsessed with trying to groom and break these people and make them affirm that the point of culture is to cut your penis off.

 

[Nutmeg]

Between 1987 and 1995, with regard to 4X, grand strategy or "business simulation" games, consoles were very much so downstream from PCs i.e. most console strategy and business simulation games were often inferior (though not always so!) and quite late ports of Japanese PC games (Koei, SystemSoft, Artdink), and every now and then an American one too (e.g. Civilization or Sim City for the Super Famicom).

But this isn't so for tactics games during the same time period, where for example the Battle Isle games for PC were downstream of Nectaris, and there was nothing on PC quite like Fire Emblem or Super Robot Wars (along with many lesser known titles like Jyutei Senki). If we extend it to Japan vs America, rather than PC vs console, then we can also add that Panzer General was downstream of Daisenryaku.

X-Com's come up a few times now, and I've sunk 100s of hours into that game both back in the day as a teenager and as recently as 2015, and while it is certainly a very detailed simulation (simulating light, height levels, sound, destructible terrain, fluid dynamics (smoke and fire spread)), within this simulation is only a very simple, and very rote game. The Japanese console "puzzle" tactics games, while much much simpler when viewed as simulations, and far less entertaining as toy boxes, were far more complex as games.

Ironically the codex console favorite Tactics Ogre for the Super Famicom (1995) is much closer to X-Com in both design philosophy (a simulation) and result (a very simple, brainless game past the initial learning curve), than to other Japanese console tactics games, though its simulation is very primitive compared to X-Com's.

Another codex favorite, Jagged Alliance 2 dialed the simulation aspect back a great deal compared to X-Com, which if not benefiting the game within, didn't hurt it. On the other hand, X-Com Apocalypse only added to X-Com's simulation, but at great (tho not necessary) expense to the game (just needs (a lot) more tuning, here's hoping OpenApoc fixes it), leading it to be less fondly remembered here (tho it has its fans) suggesting even codexers have some kind of standard for game quality.

I actually think tactics gaming on PC right now is at its gameplay peak -- there was nothing at the quality level of Field of Glory 2 or Unity of Command 2 back in the day -- though perhaps too dialed back in ambition. I haven't played many modern squad based tactics so I can't speak for those, I'm just speaking as to the genre broadly.