Comment on Let's discuss: 8-bit Era Games
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 1 month agoI’ve been watching Jeff Gerstmann work through and rank the NES library over the past year, and I agree with your sentiment. It seems like there are only like 10-20 NES games that actually hold up, and the rest of the library is either “good for the era” or absolute garbage.
Mondez@lemdro.id 1 month ago
I’d argue that is true of any generation, a few games are must plays and endure as such, then there are many that are just okay even at the time and then a bunch of crap it’s hardly worth playing.
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 1 month ago
The “floor” for how bad a bad game can be has gone up as the generations have gone on. There’s always a few stinkers, but most PS2 games are objectively better than like half of the NES library.
Mondez@lemdro.id 1 month ago
Better by which objective metric? Amount of content? Total size of game code and data? Got to disagree with you otherwise.
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Like, half of the NES library is games riddled with bugs, or they are licensed games where the devs barely knew what they were doing so they just cranked out a piece of software that barely qualifies as a game. I’m not talking about the games that we remember. If you remember an NES game, even if you remember it as bad, I am 99% certain it isn’t one of the dogshit games I’m thinking of. I’m not talking about like, Excitebike or Bubble Bobble or whatever. Those are classics, even if they’ve aged poorly. I’m talkin games like, Fester’s Quest, or Mickey Mousecepade, or Jordan vs. Bird: One-on-One, or Time Lord. Games where just playing them feels bad.
jecxjo@midwest.social 5 weeks ago
I think the difference is that in the 8bit generation yhe majority of the game were bad relative to each other. The peak of the bell curve for 8bit was between mediocre to kinda bad games.
While there are more games in later generations, it feels like the console manufacturers took more control and regulated what was published. Bad games happen now because of shitty business decisions and bad story writing. You dont see garbage being published just because you can.