Retracing Steps

I've been away a while. You know how it is, too much to do, not enough life to do it in. Mostly though it's because of Persona 4 and Spec Ops: The line. This post was supposed to be about Spec Ops, but over the weekend Edge Magazine ran an article on Yoshi's Island, and I was really impressed by how well the overall look of the game had aged.

Have you played anything old recently? Did it look like total ass? Probably. But then again, maybe not? You might be lucky enough to have played something that inexplicably looked great even though it was made before some of the people you know were even born.

That really does happen to people. You don’t realise how old things are sometimes. My girlfriend recently had to explain what a floppy disc was to the kids she was teaching. Really. My sister didn’t know you could play both sides of a vinyl.

But I digress.

If old games look good, they look good for two reasons.

1: Absolutely sky high, top notch, incredible art design.

2: The ability of the artists to translate that into polygons or pixels.

Take Ridge Racer Type 4 as an example. It arrived late in the PS1’s life and Namco had really got their Ridge Racer mojo. Hell, even the intro movie looks great and it was made in in the last century! Ridge 4 is bursting with personality, from the Pooka trackside on Phantomile, to the Cessna buzzing overhead on Wonderhill. Each locale is lovingly crafted, yet clear and clean. Grab a screenshot and you can see the attention that went into every single inch of every single track. There are blazing orange sunsets, taxiing aircraft and bright blue seas. There is something like Chinatown, cobbles and winding mountain tarmac. Ridge Racer has always felt like a great place to drive in, but Ridge 4 is unmatched, before or since. 

Really though, the thing that still makes Ridge 4 pop is the cars. Almost every one of them beautiful to behold, with great race liveries, despite the low resolution. Watching them blazing through the night trailing red streaks from the tail-lights is still a joy to behold. Gran Turismo had real cars, but Ridge 4’s were desirable. To this day, I want an Assoluto Bisonte, and if I ever become a millionaire I’m going to approach Namco for the models and find a way to build one on top of a Ferrari chassis. All the supercar houses in all of Europe never made a car as beautiful as the best that Ridge 4 could offer. 

Another great example from the Playstation era is WipeOut. Play any WipeOut game released before WipeOut HD and you'll be surprised by how fresh and clean they still look. A lot of this is down to the peerless concept work of The Designer's Republic, whose sleek, clean and bold vision of the future of racing seemed to jump fully formed into the hands of Psygnosis all those years ago.

Art quality is crucial to how well newer games age. If you check out most last gen games with realistic graphic design, they will look pretty bad to your modern High Dynamic Range Lighting addled eyes. I remember the first Max Payne blowing my socks off, but returning to it now, it's not so pretty. On the other hand, games with a really stylised look fare better. Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Sly Raccoon, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus may not outshine more modern games, but I've never said, "Ugh, this looks awful," whilst playing them. In the future, it will be games like Braid, Alien Hominid, Limbo and the flat out gorgeous Bastion that will have us commenting about how well they have aged.

The same holds true to 16-Bit too. Mortal Kombat has looks pretty bad next to contemporaries such as Street Fighter II or the fabulously obscure but tons of fun Brutal: Paws of Fury. Compare MK's digitized sprites to the fluid animation of Brutal's silhouetted character select screen and there's no competition.Yoshi's Island's crayon aesthetic means it still looks as charming now as it ever did, whereas the SNES' other SuperFX fueled graphical powerhouses frankly don't. 

I could go on and on with games like Flashback, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Wind Waker, Alundra, Final Fantasy, E.G.G and Sonic. In the end it always comes back to the art. Good art, it seems, is timeless and without borders. Just as the art connoisseur can appreciate the works of the old masters in the gallery, the gamer can find good graphics no matter what the age of the system he or she is playing on.

All this makes me sound like a graphics whore, and you know what, I am. I'm not afraid to admit it. And while there are a lot of great games with badly aged graphics (here's looking at you GoldenEye), there's a pretty strong correlation between games looking nice and playing nice. Besides, everybody likes to look at something pretty, and it can be a great way to get people to look at classic games who may not necessarily check them out. The next time someone tells you they don't play old games because they look rubbish, or because they play badly, find a way for them to play Yoshi's Island. If you can't lend them a SNES, find it on the GBA or emulate one. It's easy enough. At the very least, show them a youtube video and get them to guess how old it is. I guarantee you they'll probably get it wrong. Even if they don't, they'll jump on the retro wagon eventually.

Retro gaming is getting a lot of love at the moment. Old, but cool is how it was described in Wreck It Ralph, and that's pretty much on the money. Personally I think it's because there are people old enough now to have been around gaming for as long as they can remember. They're looking back and wanting to recapture the memories with their mates, or in cases like this on Penny Arcade, sharing the past with their children. That's cool in itself, although realising they game you're playing with your young 'un is older than they are can be pretty harrowing experience.

It seems to come to us in different ways. I have a friend who can quote correct eBay prices for rare games off the top of his head, who is consumed with the desire to own every Gamecube game ever. There's me, always late to the party, trying to get hold of something I missed out on first time round or looking out for old stuff that remains easy on the eyes. I recently paid £23 for a thirteen year old copy of Discworld Noir on the PS1, and I'm irrationally excited about it. I've even managed to find room on my memory cards so that I can play it on the TV rather than emulate it on my laptop. I have a feeling that G-Police and Colony Wars will be next on the list. Then there are the hardcore retro heads, like the guys who run 8-Bit Lounge at the Hare and Hounds in Birmingham. That they have access to all this stuff in itself is amazing, but that they are willing to share it all and let you play for free is special. If you haven't heard of them before, check out the site and perhaps show your face at the next event. It's a great show of how inclusive gaming can be, and a side of our hobby that's rarely seen by a mainstream  media that sometimes focuses too much on the negative aspects of games.

We are getting to the point now where gaming has a long enough history to look back upon to appreciate the significant works of the past in the way we do with other media, such as film, music or art. Interest in old games is something I think will continue to flourish as the medium as a whole continues to mature. After all, you've got to know where you've been to find out where you're going. No matter how well, or otherwise, the graphics have aged.