Issue date: 9/8/05 Section: Aggielife

Ivan Flores - The Battalion

Joel Heires had a job that most of us could only dream about. Working as the lead artist for a hand-held video game company, he had the opportunity to see his thoughts and ideas bloom onto a screen.

"Developing for the diminishing 2D (two-dimensional) market really allowed my childhood fantasies to come true," Heires said. "Since I was in the fifth grade, making games was always a dream."

There is something special about classic games.

"One of the things I love about the best 2D games is that from your brain to your hands, to the controller, to the screen, nothing is lost," Heires said. "Your intentions are translated perfectly. 3D games suffer from a lack of that kind of absolute control."

But is it just the controls that make people think of older games so fondly, or is there something more to it than that?

Megan Galloway, a former employee of Gamestop, has a theory as to the timeless appeal of retro gaming.

"The lack of great graphics required the focus to be on the story line, so older games are that much better," Galloway said. "Some of it was nostalgia, like people would sometimes come in and buy 'Super Mario 3' just to have it."

Having worked for a video game store, she has had the opportunity to see just how popular old school games can be.

"We could never keep cartridge RPGs in the store, even though they were priced fairly high because of the demand," she said. "For Playstation, it was stuff like 'Lunar 1' or 2, Xenogears,' and I've only ever seen one copy of 'Arc the Lad.' I almost never saw a copy of 'Super Street Fighter 2' for SNES (Super Nintendo)."

Sometimes, when a franchise is updated for a new generation of consoles, it manages to capture that intangible quality of the classic games.

Ivan Flores - The Battalion

'"Super Mario 64' was great, because it introduced new things that could only be done in 3D, and it made play control a top priority," said Sean Choate, a member of the Texas Aggie Game Developers. "Also, it generally had few issues with camera control (a huge factor in whether a 3D translation is any good). Again, I think 'Zelda: Ocarina of Time' did a fantastic job of using the 3D in the combat, dungeon puzzles and general feel of the world."

Unlike Zelda or Mario, 'Megaman X7' did not translate well into the 3D world, Choate said.

"'Megaman X7' did not make the player feel powerful or offer the excellent play-control of the previous games in the series," he said. "Also, the camera was terrible, and in several places, they took advantage of this to make the game harder."

So, while a classic game franchise can sometimes find new life in a modern setting, sometimes it loses that quality which originally made it a good game.

"It really depends on the franchise," Choate said. "If it is done with thoughtful recognition of what made the original games good in the first place and not just the assumption that, 'Gee everyone else is doing 3D, so why don't we?' Then usually it turns out well."

Since nobody can pinpoint what makes these older games so appealing, people often debate what exactly makes a classic game.

"As video games become more and more mainstream, not everyone will see some of these classic games as any good, even the ones that I consider masterpieces, because they were made for a different demographic, and with different assumptions about games of the time," Choate said. "However, like classic literature, I believe that some older games are played today for an understanding of where newer concepts and ideas came from and to see how the medium has progressed. So it's not just nostalgia and not just timeless classics."

Ivan Flores - The Battalion

Choate believes that such classic games are truly timeless.

"Games like 'Tetris,' 'Chrono Trigger,' 'Super Mario Bros. 3,' and other masterpieces will be around forever, because they are true classics, and not just because of fond memories from childhood," he said.

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