Not rehashes. Original, phenomenal games covering damm near every genre and if there is a genre you're missing, I can find a modern game to match.
Do you actually engage with modern games?
The puzzle games in your list have no equal though. The NES is pretty light on puzzle / adventure games, though it did receive really nice ports of the MacVenture games (Deja Vu, Uninvited, Shadowgate) as well as Maniac Mansion, and it has a couple of unique ones with Nightshade and Solstice that blend in a bit of action while remaining primarily adventure games.
Speedrunners use 1 frame tricks in more modern games as well. It is considered extremely hard even amongst the already insane speedrunning community, no matter whether the game is SMB, Odyssey, or anything recent.
It's not just games though. Computers have done the same thing [1]. Modern PCs are an order of magnitude slower, latency-wise, than an Apple II.
As a game dev, this is true. Old hardware input was very fast whereas today it’s software and it’s 50ms give or take. Add more milliseconds for your TV to refresh. It was common to see 150-250ms lag.
The NES and SNES had 1-3 frames of latency depending on the game.
I have a 12 year old Samsung LCD monitor that is advertised as 2.5ms
But there are other sources of latency that stack.
Even then, most VA/IPS/LED displays have something more like 20ms of latency in game mode due to slow LCD refresh rates. Controllers are also randomly delayed by 2.4GHz interference.
This 8bitdo Pro 2 on my desk has 18ms latency all the time. It actually kind of sucks and it's one of the faster wireless controllers.
Edit:// those 8bitdo controllers are pretty terrible looking at that list, Wow.
I’m as nostalgic as anyone, but games today are just so much better in every way.
- Shovel Knight
- Spelunky 1/2
- Rogue Legacy
- Cuphead
I think they’re the exception that proves the rule. There are fewer of them (noteworthy ones anyway, I’m sure there’s a long tail of obscure ones) than there were popular games of this kind on the original NES. I think Derek Yu’s release of UFO-50 is indicative of his similar need to scratch that itch!
And these are just ones that I've personally played.
Celeste is kind of an example of what I was talking about though. The game gives you a ton of movement options and "floaty" air control with a lot of maneuverability. NES games never did that. The controls were simple and highly responsive, but generally very "committal."
The only recent game I know of with controls that really felt like a NES game was La Mulana. That game did not allow you to reverse directions in the air after a jump. Once you jumped forward you were fully committed to the arc of that jump.
Personally, I really hate being forced to commit to a jump direction like you would in Castlevania.
But there are quite a few NES games that give you control in the air: Megaman, Ninja Gaiden, SMB2 as Peach, Contra, etc.
Different strokes for different folks.
Modern platformer devs seem to be very much heavily biased to the air control side, where characters can maneuver in both directions at high speed to a far greater distance than their jump height. I really don't like that level of control, as it leads to the need to make level designs based on large amounts of horizontal movement in the air. It's a style of gameplay that came out of Super Mario World's infamous cape powerup, which severely undermines the challenge of that game.
SMB3 introduced us to Raccoon Mario which lets you also cheese large sections of trickier levels.
I only see three games here less than five years old. The oldest is from three console generations ago. Do /you/ actually engage with modern games? Remember the time you’re comparing to had 5-year console generations. This is like someone on the release date of the PlayStation 3 saying that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is a “modern game”.
The original commenter made a very clear claim: that the most recent "peak" system was the Xbox, which was discontinued in 2005, and that everything after that has been a rehash.
If you want "modern", 5 years old maximum, then we have, for example:
Backpack Battles. Elden Ring(Nightreign). Tainted Grail. Monster Train 2. Escape from Duckov. Nine Sols. Hollow Knight Silksong. Black Myth Wukong. WH 40k Rogue Trader. WH 40k Space Marine 2. Spirit of the North 2. Patrick's Parabox. Stacklands. Balatro. Ender Lilies/Magnolia. Tunic. ANIMAL WELL. Dome Keeper. Inscryption. Reus 2. Astral Ascent.
I just had a scroll through my steam library and picked some games I really like/love that felt like they should be less than 5 years old. I've not double checked. This is what I meant by "etc. I could go on, and on, and...". I wasn't saying that cause I ran out of games to list.
And comparing time periods like that isn't proper, 10 year old tech now is a lot more similar than 10 year old tech was in 2006. 1996 and 2006 are vastly different tech-landscapes. 2016 and 2026? Barely different.
Or do we wanna pretend the leap from Doom to Crysis is the same as the leap from the Witcher 3 to Clair Obscur? Modern is a relative term and we did not define it at the start of this conversation.
So for you to just join in afterwards and retroactively try to apply your own definition, which you are yet to share, on to my original comment just doesn't make much sense?
What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to convince? And of what? Chill out man.
There has been barely any technological progress in the last decade, yes. Which is what makes the last 10 years not compareable to the 1996-2006 period. During that period, you had massive technological innovation which could inform and enable innovations in gaming at a greater rate than the current technological trends allow for. You can only do the 2D to 3D transition once. We can't really go into 4D.
But that's TECHNOLOGICAL progress. Gaming is also an art. Art doesn't "progress", it just changes. Harry Potter isn't more "progressed" than the Epic of Gilgamesh, it's just different.
I could write much more, but you clearly don't actually have an opinion, as you never respond to anything, you just try to "gotcha" me, and even when presented with good modern games you just decide they're invalid cause they don't fit your undefined definition of modern. Then when you do get "modern" games given, you dismiss them cause they weren't presented first.
This is so dumb man, truly.
Only VR has come close recently, but that hasn't hit in the same way because it is still too expensive and cumbersome.
The first one was Team Fortress. Remember that? Still strong today as a ftp title TF2. The second one was a spec-ops style delta force mod (I can’t remember the name) but it gave the 3rd modder the idea that a modern setting could work. Counter-Strike was released as an early alpha on my forum and the rest was history.
I mention this because this was a tuning point from fixed function pipelines to programmable pipelines (shaders).
There was this awe of what we can do, what could be possible, and today’s modern games are a fulfillment of that. I feel this same sense of awe when it comes to some of these foundational models. It’s just incredible what they are capable of.
In reality, while AAA titles have been pumping out annual titles to keep shares high and pigs fat, there have been some wonderful indie titles, smaller budget games, that have made a significant impact on the games industry as a whole.
Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Dark Souls, and Return of Obra Dinn were among the mentioned titles. All of these games tell a story, each of this game does it in its own, magnificent way.
You act a bit like those kind of games are hard to find, but some of them are highly popularized best sellers that keep getting remasters (I don't mean remakes), and still find a huge audience in entirely new YouTube Let's-Plays alone.
Half-Life used the GoldSrc engine [0], based mostly on Quake 1 and also some parts of QuakeWorld and Quake 2
Yes, I have over 1,000 games in my Steam library going back to 1999. I engage in most games that make the top 500 and have so since I was a teenager making games myself.
Like the other commenter said - I hope I don't become jaded like this about video games, it still brings me joy to see how every new game twists the known formula a little bit more and in new and exciting ways, I believe there are several nieches where we haven't seen the game of that genre yet and I can't wait to see it emerge and how and who is going to do it.
I have a feeling you haven’t played those games otherwise you’d see the similarities.
Yes, I am ABSOLUTELY looking at the mechanics of the game. I’m also looking for innovation. Take something someone tried (maybe it was a big part of their design) and make a full blown out version of it. Pushing the genre in either a new direction or opening one up. Outer wilds did neither. Not to say it wasn’t a good game. That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying outside of those that played it, it will be forgotten. It changed nothing. It came, it endeared, it left.
I'd finished a playthrough of RDR2 in 2022 and thought I was done with gaming forever, that nothing would ever be able to touch that level of experience again. I stopped playing for months, completely having lost interest.
Then I discovered Outer Wilds, went in completely blind, played in VR, and had one of the most engaging experiences of my life. It's a true gamer's game.
Did my review not tell you that I had?
I'm curious if you think this way about movies/TV too. It's very strange to me to just dilute things down to their genre(s) and then expect innovation to come out as new genres.
Are they fun? Yes, they are designed to be addictive. So you spend money on pixels.
Outer Wilds, 1000xResist and What Remains of Edith Finch all moved me to tears. I still can't casually listen to the soundtracks of Outer Wilds or 1000x, as they simply evoke too many emotions.
Stop conflating Call of Duty and the like with "modern gaming".
You're jaded, and I feel sad for you.
I didn't know it took place in Indonesia though, that's very intriguing. It will probably be my next game of this ilk then, thank you!
And yeah, no stranger to To The Moon :P
Try Blue Prince.
I'm sorry to say, your nostalgia-colored-glasses are so strong, you're actually blinded by them. I grew up in the same gaming era as you (started around early to mid 90s, but the peak was later), and I too have fond memories. But there undeniably has been some magnificent progress in pretty much all aspects of gaming.
Somewhere between 2005 and 2010, I thought I had outgrown gaming, and that no game would have anything to offer to me anymore. But years later I learned that that was just because I was stuck thinking that JRPGs were the pinnacle of gaming, it turned out that I had grown out of those. Obviously your story will be different, but I bet there is some story to you somewhere.
Calling outer wilds or Clair Obscur "not innovative" just tells me you haven't played these games from start to finish, and I don't mean any offence saying this. Unless you mean just mechanically?
>>also borrows a lot of worldbuilding from Dark Souls
I see that comparison a lot and I don't see it, and I've played every From Soft game from start to finish. Maybe the painted world from DS3 is sorta-kinda similar, but not really?
These kids don’t know.