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Comment by videotopia | Hacker News Reader

Could you expand on this a little for the uninitiated amongst us?

Today, to keep people engaged in a game you need to have 50-100GB of graphics, 1GB of sound, some sort of AI, half naked cartoon ladies on the cover, 100 different weapons/races/etc.

But if you think of Centipede, Donkey Kong, PacMan, etc, their simplicity is that make them so great and timeless.

I remember I had BubbleBobble on the PC (back in the Amstrad PC 1512 days) and I would start and finish that game between 45-55 minutes no-matter-what.

Not so with Nintendo. I think I read somewhere that "if the game isn't fun with circles and squares, all the graphics in the world won't make it fun." Or something to that effect.

Exactly the kind of reason that a game like factorio can be wildly popular, it's not pretty by any means, but it does what it does very well

I don't know how I feel about the condescending tone of this comment, especially the "half naked cartoon ladies on the cover" dig.

It's a shame your refined senses can't appreciate the fidelity to game designer's artistic visions modern technology has brought to video games, the rest of us will enjoy them in your stead.

The sexism dig isn’t about refinement. It’s something that’s rife in all popular media from music videos through to movies and computer games. However that has always been the case in gaming. There’s nothing new there. Even 8bit games for the C64/Amstrad/etc would often feature highly embellished cover art.

Things are getting better though. Before it was just the accepted status quo but at least now those clichés are being challenged.

> The sexism dig isn’t about refinement

Didn't imply it was?

Bubble Bobble's PC version was a really bad conversion though. A lot of powerups appeared under completely different conditions, white ghosts didn't shoot, even the mechanics of some levels (72 I think) were different.

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