🚀 go-pugleaf

" Steve Young" <su2...@eclipse.co.uk> wrote:

>Noppa wrote in message <35d5426a...@news.nmp.nokia.com>...
>>The same applies to the old games on 8bit machines. I mean, all
>>Infocom text adventures were clones of each other, weren't they?
>>Using a same kind of parser system all the time? And wasn't it
>>annoying telling that bonehead character in Infocom adventures all
>>actions very accurately, like "drop the pants", "take flower" "fold
>>the paper and throw it" etc. etc. etc.
>
>That's your opinion. Many would disgree with your views about the Infocom
>games. If they are so bad why is it hat the collection is still being sold
>by Activision.

Hmm so it Myst. I guess it must be a spectacular game then.

>Hardly believe Quake and its clones will be bought by people
>10-15 years after they were released.

You are comparing apples to oranges. People buy ancient text parser
games because there aren't any new ones. That is not the case with fps
shooters, because newer and better ones in that genre appear all the
time. Buying Infocom games now has more to do with nostalgia than them
being inarguably better games than anything available today.

>>I see rows of interesting RPGs, adventure games, flight combat sims
>>etc. You have to know what you are looking for.
>
>Like I said before, once you weeded out all the unsuitable stuff there is
>not much left.

You should shop around more. There are loads of interesting non-arcade
games for PC. Back in the eighties 95% of games available for any
machine (Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, Apple 2...) were simple
action games. If you had weeded them out, you would have left only
with the few Infocom and Origin games you guys only remember today.

>>It is only because people demand more today (more competition), and
>>people who played in 1979 have grown older and have simply grown out
>>of games. Back in 80s even crude games did well because you couldn't
>>ask for more.
>
>By the mid 80's this was hardly true. Ever seen the game Lords of
>Midnight(not the poor remake made recently) which was released on the 48k
>Spectrum on cassette.

I know the game. It was great YEARS ago. Not today. Same way like
Elite was unbelievable back in the eighties running on BBC or C=64,
but today it would be laughed out because of the repetitive gameplay,
poor and unrealistic flight characteristics etc.

>Machines are 100's times more powerfull now plus the
>storage space of CD'S. I doubt if the games are 100's of times better
>though. I wonder why.

Using the same logic, a car costing 500 times more than a second hand
VW Bug should be 500 times better than that VW Bug. Hardly so.

The power of a gaming system does not linearly correlate to the
"betterness" of its games. But when I look at the games available
today, I would have "killed" to have such games on 1983 home
computers. Be it I-War, Betrayal at Krondor, Final Fantasy 7, Flying
Corps, F1RS, Fantasy General, Close Combat 2, Last Express etc. etc.

Oh by the way, none of those games above are arcade games.

>Well here I agree wholeheartingly with you(Atari 2600 games that is). I too
>always thought these games were crap, not surprisingly considering the
>machine they were made for. Had an Intellivision myself, and it was to my
>utmost annoyance that this was so unsuccessful compared to the Atari 2600.

I liked Mattel better too, but it isn't like it had lots of non-action
games either. Golf, any others?

>Same as today. Crap games made in the knowledge that there was a gullible
>audience willing to buy the stuff even though there were viable alternatives
>elsewhere. Trouble is in the software industry today there is no choice if
>you are into more minority based genres.

As for today, I can think of such titles like Grand Prix Legends,
Longbow 2, I-War, Close Combat 2 etc. The realism in these games would
care most people away (no simple arcade action), yet these games were
(or are about to) released after all.


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