New Games vs. Old Games (observation)

[kgriffin]

Since getting my cab "playable" temporarily, I have made the following observation.

My son (he is 4) is a video game wiz. He finished Spiderman (dreamcast) in 2 weeks and mastered Toy Story 2 (again, dreamcast) in a matter of hours. He has no problem with the complicated game pads. Let me stress again that he is 4 (actually, he turns 4 this month so he is technically 3)

Now, he is addicted to Jungle Hunt on MAME. He constantly says "This game is hard" yet, he has never said that about any dreamcast games.

My wife on the other hand, can't play the dreamcast games because she says she can't control the characters in a 3D environment, but loves to play Ms. Pac Man because it is easy.

We had some kids over last weekend and they all started on the Arcade machine but eventually (one by one) migrated to the console because they said the games were too hard.

It is amazing to me that children find 3D games and gamepads with multiple buttons and triggers easier to play than an old classic using one joy and one button.

Has anyone else noticed this?

[Tiger-Heli]

I hadn't thought about it, but now that you mention it, my kids are both much better on the Super Nintendo than I am.  I usually can't get through the second level and they'll have the game finished.  They'd probably be better than me in MAME too, but I have all those years from misspent youth dumping quarters in the local arcade and you know what they say about old age and experience . . .  

[Dave_K.]

I think its because of two reasons.  One: Kids today don't have the patience to play really hard games. Two: because of reason one, games are made easier (or at least the cheats are made available so anyone could finish a game).

Try to put a kid in front of Robotron or Stargate, and he will be bored in 2 minutes because its too "hard".

You also have to remember games from the 80s were only made to last 2-4 minutes per quarter (and were so hard they made you come back and get revenge on that machine that stole your money!)  At least thats how I saw Robotron and Stargate...well I got the last laugh by buying both cabinets....hahahaha!...you ain't stealing my quarters anymore!!.....oh yeah, they were kind-of expensive...DOH!!!

-Dave

[SirPoonga]

Yeah, just think if they made the games hard enough on the console that in a few minutes your game is over.  Games wouldn't sell then.

[Dave_K.]

Yeah, just think if they made the games hard enough on the console that in a few minutes your game is over.  Games wouldn't sell then.

Ya, makes sense now why "arcade" style games died out (or never made a good transition to consoles).

<Mod> Actually I take that back...consoles came out because of arcade games.  So somewhere along the way, the audience changed...must be this damn slacker generation I tell ya!</Mod>

-Dave

[SirPoonga]

But the console versions always were easier.  I can remember not getting past the first level in TMNT2 but flying through the nes version.

[Dave_K.]

But the console versions always were easier.  I can remember not getting past the first level in TMNT2 but flying through the nes version.

Well I'm sure you've seen the rom settings of games where you can set the difficulty.  Arcade owners crank it up to make you pump in more quarters for continues.  I don't even remember if there was a difficulty setting when it was ported to NES...if not, then I'm sure it was set on easiest setting.

-Dave

[HeadRusch]

Well, Kids today can't aprpeciate our classics for what they are......to them, they're a novelty..worthy of a few minutes of attention, but its alien to them.

Its like your mom and dad trying to get you to play Cowboys and Indians or something..in 1975 I didn't want to have jack to do with that crap.......gimme SWAT and EMERGENCY man!

They say 'they're hard' because they are.  

Console games today are designed to be 'easy to get into'....whereas our games  didn't know if they were going to wind up in a kiddy arcade, or a smoky dive bar.......so the difficulty was definately higher.  


Funny Thought about kids today who are 8 or 9 years old:
In 25 years they'll be buying up Dreamcasts on Ebay and delighting in the "primative retro games" of their youth

[txcanoeman]

I've only got games from 1977 to 1984 in my cabinet and the kids seem to like them just fine, although my boy keeps begging for fighting games.  

Observation:  When I had 200 games in there, they only played about a dozen games.  I have cut the list down to 50 games and they play almost all of them.  (It is a 1 player at a time cabinet with a 4way, 8way, trackball and three buttons).  Hope to build a 2 player cab next year.

I left the difficult settings alone for the most part but I did increase the number of lives you start with and lower the scores needed to get free lives.  Kids, and I, like that better.

[SirPoonga]

Well, Kids today can't aprpeciate our classics for what they are......to them, they're a novelty..worthy of a few minutes of attention, but its alien to them.

Reminds me of Wild Gunman in Back to the Future 2 in Cafe 80s.

[Sasquatch!]

Yeah, just think if they made the games hard enough on the console that in a few minutes your game is over.  Games wouldn't sell then.

Conversely, you have to remember that arcade games were not marketed to gamers.  Gamers didn't buy arcade games, arcade vendors did.  As such, the emphasis was on the amount of money that the game could make.

[CthulhuLuke]

Well I guess you could call me a somewhat young gamer since I'm 17, but I've been gaming since I was about 3 or so, on my brother's Commodore 64, now that takes me back.  I was too young to ever understand how arcade games worked, but damn did I play a lot of video games.
  In the battle of new vs old, i think one of the main reasons I can load up Mame32, pick an OLD school 4-way game, and play it, is because games back then couldn't rest their entire market on their "advanced" graphics, they had to rely a lot more on the gameplay aspects, like let's say Frogger.  All they could really do back then is make giant pixeled cars and frogs, but they could make it fun as hell.  A lot of newer games now a days have to rely on a MUCH broader style of gameplay, because you can't have a simplistic "Go forward, wait, go forward, wait, wait, oh you died, start over"  That would just be considered boring now-a-days, so designers have to think "Go forward, tilt to the right, watch out for the branches, don't get hit by the skeletons, find the secret, go to the next level, solve the puzzle"  and so on.  In a way, this is obviously a hella good thing, but also it runs into the problem of designers making bad gameplay, because back then, if you had a bad game, it was pretty obvious, but you couldn't screw up TOO much with such simplistic sets of rules.  Now a days, you have a MUCH broader range of things you can screw up in the gameplay, resulting in MUCH more crap games, which is sad, but true.
   Btw, Txcanoeman, I incourage you to let your sons play fighting games, my biggest suggestion is sit em down with a nice round of Street Fighter II, teach em a few moves, ( www.gamefaqs.com )  watch em button mash until there's no tomorrow, great stuff.
    -CthulhuLuke

[SNAAAKE]

hahhaha....

funny one man.seriouslly   > > make fun of people who mash buttons and make them feel bad  

for my opinion,i am leaning toward newer games because pacman came out before i was even born so i am not big 80's fan.however i do still love 90's games such as cadillacs and dinosaurs(first game i ever saw when i was like 7),sf2 and lots of other cool cp1 and 2 games.

and top reason i wont be playing any classics because there is no point for me.there is no 80's games thats i used to play.i only 18 damn it.
so pac man is not very tempting to me.

besides when games like METAL GEAR SOLID 2 comes out then its too hard for me to like/play/compare any other game.

games cant get any real these days.if anyone wondrin what i am talking about..

GO GET METAL GEAR 2..you will never regreat playing the most realistic game ever.however,there are plenty of crap games coming out these days because companies are trying to make it too good and end up making it total crap.

[brandon]

I think maybe kids are better at consoles simple because they have smaller hands.  Its much easier to precisely move your thumb than it is to move your entire arm.  Especially when you are that small.  Also I guess they are used to the 3d orientation and the 2d takes getting used to.  or maybe it's the analog gamepad vs. the clunky "all or nothing" control of a 4-way stick.  but it not a matter of gameplay because if you can master a 3d spiderman game, swinging, hanging upside down, shooting webs everywhere, then pacman should be no problem!  Find some arcade classics for Dreamcast and see if that makes any difference or get a gamepad for your computer and have them try that.  Who know you may be on it something here!

[Dink]

I'm 17, but I've been gaming since I was about 3 or so, on my brother's Commodore 64, now that takes me back.  In a way, this is obviously a hella good thing,

Using the term "hella" takes me back to 1997. Either that or the term is just arriving in Washington.  

[Lilwolf]

takes me back to 1997.

HAHAHAHAHA... Man I'm old... I would never ever say takes me back to 1997.... Thats WAY to recent

[kgriffin]

Hey, I'm old and ignorant. I though it got started by No Doubt this year. (Yes, No Doubt the band...I'm old, but cool )

[HeadRusch]

Bah, kids have no real interest in "our games" because the games we grew up with were designed to be played in 5 minute increments...then we'd move on to another game.  Only rarely did we dump quarters into the same game over and overa nd over.  Todays arcade games require you to spend $20 bucks just to figure out what the game is about.

But......the games are still the same.

The fanciest racing game out there is still just NIGHT DRIVER with super updated graphics

Seriously, console games are by in large easy.......they're also designed to be played for much longer than 5 minute increments.  That having been said, I *HATE* most modern console games.  

Kids today aren't going to care about Temptest or Tron or whatever....they'll be attracted to the pretty cabinet, then get bored when they realize there's no licenced character that they can recognize in the game.

Re-code WIZARD OF WOR to have Pokemon monsters instead of dungeon "creatures" and you'd probably have another instant hit on your hands

Kids today drool over Mortal Kombat 12, while in my heart of hearts I drool overe Lunar Lander and DIscs of Tron because *those* are the games that "take me back".

[txcanoeman]

   Btw, Txcanoeman, I incourage you to let your sons play fighting games, my biggest suggestion is sit em down with a nice round of Street Fighter II, teach em a few moves, ( www.gamefaqs.com )  watch em button mash until there's no tomorrow, great stuff.
    -CthulhuLuke

Oh I do let them play fighting games occasionally like when we go out for pizza or whatever.  It is just that when I had TMNT, XMEN and the like, that was all the boys would play, for hours and hours on end.  And their regular play became more violent.  Now it is 5 or 10 games of 1942, then Centipede, Mappy, Donky Kong.  

[1UP]

The simple, old games were great!  Unfortunately, I don't get to come home at 3:00 and play games for hours before doing homework.  Modern console games are AMAZING, but they take days or weeks to play!  Needless to say, my playstation is gathering dust for that reason.  Final Fantasy 7 and Tomb Raider were killing all my weekends a couple years back, so I stopped getting new games.  But with my cabinet, I can just sit down and play a bunch of quick games in my spare moments!

[Howard_Casto]

You guys are looking at this the wrong way.... The difficulty of games is based on how advanced the game is.  Back in the 70's and early 80's games were, well ugly.  There wasn't much to a game environment and there was little to no story being told.  Back then the object of the game was to beat the high score of the person before you, not to get to the next level.  Why?  Well save maybe a pallete swap level 1 looked just like level 2. Also there were probably only 3 or 4 levels anyway.  So in order to get people to pump quarters into the game, the developers had to make the games very hard. To both make the game seem larger and to give the game replay value.  

Around the late 80's/ early 90's all that changed.  Game graphics and memory size had progressed to the point to where a bit of a story could be told.  There were usually 8 levels or more and each level looked distinct and was interesting to view.  Now the goal of the game had shifted... The high score became irrelevant the goal was to "see what level x looks like" or "see the big boss at the end of level x."  Because of this the developers had a new selling point, namely the ending of the game, or the big pay off.  Now they had to make their games easier to where the player could get far enough in the game to be involved in the story but yet not finish it.  This way they would continue to pump quarters in to try and view the ending. The Snes console games also mimiced this gameplay style as the selling point to the snes was that it was "arcade quality."

Now skip ahead to the newer, 3d console games.  These games are console only, so the quarters are irrelevant. What the developers do is stress the story line even more, making the gameplay environment one of the characters.   They have found that a massive 3d game has to be easier or else the consumer wont' buy it.  Why?  Because the player no longer wants a unbearbly hard game, they want more of an interactive story.  They want to explore the world they are given and they get frustrated when a game is so hard they can only see a portion of it.  So what developers do now is make a HUGE non-linear game for players to explore.  The difficulty of the game in terms of reflexes and twitch response is farily easy.  The true difficulty in these games is how to know where to go and what to do when you get there.  

I hope that helps you understand why things have turned out the way they are.

Personally I think that at arcade length sessions the classics are way harder than the newer games. But, when you go to hour long or more sessions, the modern games are way harder.  They require adaptive gameplay while the older games just require getting used to one or two timing patterns.

So if it's harder in the long term to master newer games then why are the young kids scared of the classics beause they are too hard?  Simple... level 1 of pacman is just as hard as level 2 while the first levels of mario64 are way easier than the last.    Your kids are afraid that the game gets harder as you go along, like modern games, plus they are used to a game that grows with you, in that its easy at first so you can get used to the gameplay and gets harder as you master new moves.  


So really one era isn't any harder than the other it's just a different gameplay dynamic.    

Ok I'm done.

[BombProofPlane]

yes most games these days are easy

it seems as that around the ps1 days we hit a peak in legnth

now it seems they are shorter and shorter

it takes me an average of 5 hours to beat a ps2 or any other next gen system game
heck i beat devil may cry in under 2 hours

but i must disagree on mgs2 being the most realistic game ever

1 nearsighted guards
2 you can take a lot of 5.56 bullets whats that about? even 7.62 sniper rounds dont stop you
3 guards cant strafe or move and shoot (problem in many games)
4 guns don't have recoil
5 no reload time
6 no clips, bullets taken from total
7 bodies disapear
8 unrealistic sounds
9 you can hold as many guns as you want
10 weapons apear in your hand you dont pull them out

thats just 10 that deal with realism not to mention the storyline, etc

i think the metal gear games are heavely overated if you want realism you play rogue spear or swat 3

you get shot you limp not just bleed
you reload the remaining bullets in your clip are gone
the enemies have eyes they run away from grenades
you pull guns out
you have recoil
you have bodies that dont go away
you have bullets that kill you

[Malenko]

After 20 or 30 frustrating minutes of StuntMan on my PS2 I need to play 20 or 30 minutes Donkey Kong or DoDonPachi to calm me down. I dont think howards intent was to say what is better old or new, especially when we can have both.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is a phenominal (sp?) game but in my opinion so is 1942, for very different reasons. MGS2 I played to see what happened, 1942 me and a friend can play to see how far we can get and how high our score can be.

back on topic:
My nephews play my mame cab alot more then me, and other then fighting games (mainly Samurai ShoDown, Street Fighters and Pit Fighter) they LOVE driving games like out run, 1000 mile rally and NeoDrift. They can actually play and keep up in those games and not get killed by the computer in Ridge Racer V or Gran Turismo 3.

Im gonna hook my PS2 steering wheel, thats collecting dust, up to my mame cab (Ihave a bunch PSX2USB converters) once I find a way to mount  it so that they can enjoy OutRun the way it was meant to be played.

And on a side note (damn this is a long post) My mom has never been into video games, but when I had a commodore 64 she loved pac man, and she is the biggest machine hog when she visits and play Pac-Man/Ms.Pac-Man

[BombProofPlane]

i have the gt3 steering wheel right here its usb??

so you wont make any comment on my realism of mgs post???

[Malenko]

I meant like this:
Steering wheel--->PSX plug->PSX to USB adapter----> USB port of mame comp

you posted your post as I was typing mine. as for realism in MGS2.... I never said it was realistic, I said it was fun. If I want it ultra real I'll joing the marine corps and get killed, heh

And with SWAT 3 and the like, your comparing PC to PS2. Personall I think SWAT 3= Suck Fest.   I cant play FPS much I get motion sickness and I prefer RTS games anyway

[BombProofPlane]

never played swat 3 really mostly the r6 series which include rogue spear

i never played it mostly because it has no multiplayer grrrr

[SNAAAKE]

c,mon people..dont look for flaws in METAL GEAR SOLID 2.

look for good stuff and compare how the games is played..i am pretty sure no game would ever come any close to mgs2.

and the reason they dont make all and i mean all realistic because there are some things that you gotta keep for the next metal gear.

but hopefully next time around konami would fix the body disapear issue and make guards even smarters.

also top reason kids dont like classics because they dont know how to pull off moves..i have friends that started playing games when ps1 came out.and they have ZERO clue on arcade games.they hate so much because they cant use joysticks and prefer game pads..

yees i am THE king around here when it comes to arcade games(capcom games to be honest).

heheh..funny but true.

[SNAAAKE]

I meant like this:
Steering wheel--->PSX plug->PSX to USB adapter----> USB port of mame comp
.   I cant play FPS much I get motion sickness and I prefer RTS games anyway

OHHH MAN..

i thought i was the only one...i get sick of pc fps shooter..

not all but some games makes ya sick.dizzyness..

i used to play duke nukem and almost went to hospital.however,i do love medal of honor and soldier of fortune.

[Howard_Casto]

c,mon people..dont look for flaws in METAL GEAR SOLID 2.

look for good stuff and compare how the games is played..i am pretty sure no game would ever come any close to mgs2.

and the reason they dont make all and i mean all realistic because there are some things that you gotta keep for the next metal gear.

but hopefully next time around konami would fix the body disapear issue and make guards even smarters.

also top reason kids dont like classics because they dont know how to pull off moves..i have friends that started playing games when ps1 came out.and they have ZERO clue on arcade games.they hate so much because they cant use joysticks and prefer game pads..

yees i am THE king around here when it comes to arcade games(capcom games to be honest).

heheh..funny but true.

Classic games don't have "moves" I dont' know what you are calling classic but classic arcade games are generally 1989 and below.  Street Fighter 1 came out in 88 and it was very unpopular.  


Btw HOWARD is the king of fighters.    And I'm talking true fighting games like street fighter 2 and mk2 not the 40 hit combo, don't have to remember special moves because you can put it on easy, I have no clue how to do a fireball but I can memorize 80 button presses and kill you with one huge chain of combos crap that passes as a street fighter now.  

Remember kiddies mk2 was perfect and it all went downhill from there.  

[SNAAAKE]

i was talking about classics that are classic to me.NOT YOU

classics to me would to sf2,sfa1,sfa2,msh(these are the only onces i consider playing with people).

however i do prefer the 100 hit air combo.i rather play new games marvel vs capcom 2 then mk 2...

i could make people cry on that game man...i am still waiting so the game is emulated and can fight folks online.

i am tired of winning locally.

[1UP]

So if it's harder in the long term to master newer games then why are the young kids scared of the classics beause they are too hard?  Simple... level 1 of pacman is just as hard as level 2

Huh?  Pac-Man levels may LOOK exactly the same, but they are definitely progressively harder.  In level 2, the ghosts are faster, the energizers don't last as long, and the fruit bonuses disappear faster.  Same with level 3 and so on.  Just wanted to point that out...  

[Howard_Casto]

i was talking about classics that are classic to me.NOT YOU

I realize that but what you said was totally out of context..... when you look throughout the thread you realize that we were referring to the games of the 70s/80s as the classics.  That means that in order for us to understand what you are talking about you need to use the word in the same context so that we know what you are talking about.  I caught it and that's why I pointed it out, so others would get what you are saying, not to pick on you.

As for the newer fighters.... I love to play them with the combo hungry youngsters like youself.  I can beat em every time and I never use a single combo.  I can do this because I started at the beginning.  My first street fighter was karate champ.  Go look that one up.  Anyway back then it was more about strategy and less about memorizing combos.  The new 2d fighters are basically super street fighter 2 turbo (the peak of the franchise) with a bunch of unneed crapp thrown on top.  I prefer purity over this.  Remember, less is more.  My god I wish game developers would remember that.  

[Howard_Casto]

So if it's harder in the long term to master newer games then why are the young kids scared of the classics beause they are too hard?  Simple... level 1 of pacman is just as hard as level 2

Huh?  Pac-Man levels may LOOK exactly the same, but they are definitely progressively harder.  In level 2, the ghosts are faster, the energizers don't last as long, and the fruit bonuses disappear faster.  Same with level 3 and so on.  Just wanted to point that out...  

Yeah they are slightly harder.  But it starts out hard was my point.  There isn't a level one with ten dots, one ghost and a power pellet  on either side of the ten dots.  On newer 3d games the first level would be of that level of difficulty.  On a personal not, except at extreme levels I've never found speed to be more or less difficult. (with the exception of tetris style games)  If you play it enough you don't notice the speed difference as the game still plays the same and you are used to the pattern.

[KeithD]

I guess I'm not the only one who needs dramamine before a session of Duke Nukem, or Descent, or Half Life.
Even some of the consoles make me ill if I play too long. Mostly fast-paced ones like Twisted Metal and some space-racing game that I never play.

BUT.... I'll sit down in front of the MAME machine and play Omega Race, Road Blasters, Asteroids, or Centipede for hours if I don't have to go mow the lawn

K

[Xiaou2]

I hadnt read this post before... and its way ot.. but, I just thought Id pass on my opinions...

My grampa was like the first person to own a vic20.  I think I was 6 or 7.  He had a game like pac man for it, and it used the commodore character as the pac guy.  That began my obssession with games!  ^_^

 From there, my father took me to chuck e cheese, and they had like 50 classics.  It was insane, and truely awesome.  What they didnt have, a few other local arcades did.

 Ive played games from pacman all the way up to the tekken3 and beyond.   Ive owned several consoles, and spent way too much money on games for them!

 As for someone saying that MK2 was the best, and it all went downhill from there... I have to dissagree.  Simularly, I dissagree with the people who think that thier time period was the greatist that ever beheld... and arnt open to new things...

 The most dramatic 'Combo' game I was aquanited with,
was Killer Instinct.   At first, I didnt even want to touch the game.  I didnt have that kind of $ to try to learn all those insane combos.  Luckily, an arcade attendant game me several free games and showed me some moves/combos.  From there, I was hooked.    The game is not just about combos... it has a great ballence to it.  

 When MK III came out, I was a little disturbed at first... but after a friend showed me subzeros combo... I found it quite fun.    Its not my favorite game... but, its good.

 Combos are a real aspect to fighting.  If I hit you in the throat, you are going to be stunned for a while... long enough for me to do multiple strikes on you.  Im a skilled martial artist,  so Im well aware of how real combat works.

 Combos help give a game more variety.  If all games used the same MK2 style... then eventually, it would get boaring.  

 And for that matter, its not like a dragon punch or ducking uppercut is real, nor is it easy to jump over someones head!   Its all there to add gamplay and that 'larger than life'  feeling to the game.  

 Simularly, Chinese kungfu flix have been made from the early 70's and probably before that.   After several years of the same old thing... they added the aspects of supernatural abilities (wire-foo).   My initial responce to this, was ugg! How phoney, how unrealistic.   But after several viewings of various movies, Ive come to appreciate the fantasy 'vision'  looking past the sorta fake look to it.  

After all, remember when we got our atari2600's,  and when we shopped for a game... the box had this awesome artists painting on the front of the box... and when you got it home... it looked worse than a bunch of legos.   We had to envision the game for what it was representing.  Sorta imagining it as being better as we played it.

 My point is simular to what a mom might say to a young child... always try something before you say you dont like it.   Obviously, by this I mean, really pick a character and learn it inside out.   Try to get all the specials and a few combos.   I swear your opinions will change, as mine has.   I tell you, when I first got SFII for snes... it took several hours and a bleeding thumb before I could figure out the dragon punch.  Now its as easy as clicking a mouse button.  

 And Howard, You shouldnt say that you can beat someone up that plays combo games.  Let me tell you... I worked in an arcade, and some of these guys that play tekken III and the marvel games would make you cry.   Every move perfectly timed, fakes, broken combos, special footwork, and stratagy that you couldnt possibly imagine.   Trust me, these guys are just as good at the oldskool fighters.  Its an insult to say someone isnt good at something just because they arnt as Old or played some havnt played some other game.     In addition, with so much more complexity,  it takes a lot more skillz to work these characters.  Its both fun and challenging... and mentally expanding.

 Old and New,  its all good.  Give em a good try.


 Peace
 ^_^

[Howard_Casto]

I like old and new games... I think you misunderstood.  I have played every major genre from the old 70's vector games up onto the brand new 3d fighters.  My opionion was based on this.....

Killer Instinct is a very good game, it was one of the few that acutally used a combo system correctly.  Btw it also came out around the same time as mortal kombat 2, so I don't consider it after mk2.  

Unfortunately, in my book that's just not good enough to justify it being "better" than mortal kombat 2.

The problems I have with killer instinct and other, newer fighters in general:

#1 Generic characters...

All of the newer games simply recycle characters and character fighting styles from the orignals (mk and street fighter 2)  How many girls in tight outfits with generic ryu moves plus a faster fighting style, huge slow moving grapplers, or ryu clones are there gonna be?  I mean I can understand why companys do this... We like these type of characters and are familiar with them.  But it gets really lame/boring after a while.  What's even worse are characters that look different, but have the exact same move sets.  If they play the same then why have two different characters?

Mortal kombat 2 brought us wildy orignal charcters, each with distinct fighting styles.  Every character wasn't simply a "zaginef clone or a ryu clone" (which btw is still the only two syles of fighters you will see in any modern fighter series)  each character looked different, did their moves at different speeds, and had a totally different type of gameplay associated with them.  Yes a lot of characters had "fireballs" but each one had a different one.  I don't just mean this visually speaking either.  Each fireball in mk2 had a different speed, size, and in some cases arc.  Also the "pallette swap" characters had totally different movesets.  Scorp and Subzero may look similar but they play totally different.  Although I enjoy the amount of characters in newer fighters, what really pisses me off are "palette swap" secret characters that are exactly the same as thier regular counterpart with differnt combos... which gets me to my next peeve.  

#2 Combos......

Combos as they are today suck.  Combos have nothing to do with beating your opponent.  Combos take away from the fun of the game. Now before you fighter kiddies jump down my throat let me explain. Small combos are great and should be encouraged as they add to the gameplay.  Huge combos that take away more than 15% of the lifebar are silly and cheapen any game. Back in the day you had to use several moves to kill your opponent.  Now you can do about 4 super combos and they are dead.  What exactly is the point in this?  Once the combo is started your opponent has a very small window in which to reverse... if he doesnt the computer takes over and finishes the combo.  There isn't any interaction, no strat, nothing.... you just press a bunch of buttons really fast to activate the super combo and then the computer does the work and the poor other player has to sit there because you got your 500+ button combo in before he did.  That isn't fighter gameplay... that's button mashing gameplay, although the game companys make your press several buttons to trick you into thinking that it isn't.  Apparently it worked, because I am amazed how many youngsters it fooled.  

With that being said mk2 had the first combo system.  "Wha?" you say.... "but I thought mk3 was the first mk game to have combos and every game had them by then..." you say.... Sorry but you are slightly mis-informed and understandably so.  Mk2 didn't display "xx combo hit" this is true, but it had the first combo system.  Games before it allowed multiple hits, but only with a single special move. Mk2 was the first game to allow you to hit your opponent a few times with different moves before he would fall/backout.  If you don't believe me go and try it.  Mk designers have always made the decision to keep combos on a very low priority.  They were correct in this philosophy.  While companies like capcom and snk had to come out with a few new fighters every season to keep kids interested, mk only has 4 1/2 games to it's credit.  This is because their games are orignal enough and based on improved gameplay mechanics, not new combos/special moves/characters that players will play them longer.  This gets me to my third and final point....

(continued)

[Howard_Casto]

(see above)

#3 Originality/Ground breaking additions....

Mk2 did a lot of things.... it invented a new pacing to fighters that to this date still hasn't be replicated.  In my opinion it has the best pacing of any fighter ever produced.  Mk2 perfected the fatality.... Even in the mk series, finishers sucked for characters after mk2.  Mk2 had the highest number of totally orignal characters ever and still holds this record. It even intorduced a staple in the modern fighter... the "mimic" character.  Shang Tsung could morph into any of the other fighters and use their moves.  He was in mk1 but he was computer controlled and only used the speicals of the other fighters. These new games like kof and the capcom fighters recycle speical moves and characters so they have very few truely orignal characters.  The two secret characters, smoke and noob were the only two clones.... all others can be considered totally original as none of them share a single common speical move.  How many modern fighers can you say that about?

Now what do post mk2 fighters have to offer?  Well they have exploited combos to their limits... that might be noteworthy.  Virtua fighter moved them to 3d so it deserves some credit.  Vf was very primitave and, well, kind of sucked, though, so it wasn't a mk2 quality game overall.  The new 3d fighters are definately visually more complex but the gameplay is still the combo abusive, 2d layout that the capcom company made for us about 5-7 years ago.  There isn't anything original about any of these newer games. Tekken might be the only exception so exclude it form the list.  It actually used different motions to pull off special moves. What a concept!    But the tekken games did lack true special moves and the characters were rather bland with some exceptions.  Anything else?  Well no new characters, no new gameplay modes, no new game physics, so I guess we are done with the newer games' orignal break-throughs.  But don't feel bad... even the mk series isn't immune.  

(continued)

[Howard_Casto]

Mk3 was a terrible failure compared to preious mortal kombat standards and sales.  They wanted to pump out the game too fast and as of consequence they made a lot of the mistakes I've pointed out above.  They had a ton of clones....They screwed with the pacing, and the fatalities were made more generic and bland.  They even took out their most original and popular characters!  They also introduced a true combo system which I suprisingly have no complaints about as it was well balanced. It was so much of a flop that they made the umk3 only a few months afterwards.  Umk3 was a slightly better version of mk3 that re-inserted the old characters and added a bunch of useless ninja clones.  They also messed with the timing again, making it slightly better than before but still not the perfect mk2 pacing.  Williams realized how bad they had screwed up and tried to fix it in mk4/mkgold.  They actually did a good job.  They finally got the pacing back up to par with mk2 and got back to making orignal characters.  Unfortunately the transition to 3d wasn't very kind...  The characters were good but were all old characters.  This was a good thing as they only kept the very best, but the few new chars they added were rip-offs of older mk chars.  (kung-lao, kano,  shang tsung and  sheeva... you figure out what their mk4 equivelents were. )  Also there weren't enough chars.  It had less characters than mk2 had which is a big no-no in the fighter genre.  But I'm glad they made a few good characters rather than making a bunch of crappy ones.  Also the morphing effects were gone, as were multiple fatalities.  MK4 was an attempt from williams entertainment to recapture the magic of mk2... they even stated this in a press release.  Unfortunately, even they will admit that it fell just a little bit short.  Hopefully mk5 will get it right and be the first ground-breaking 3d fighter, but I'm not holding my breath.  

Now with all of that being said. I LIKE newer fighters and games.  I have fun playing them, they are good.  The problem is they aren't great. When I used to play the orignal street fighter I could set down for hours and play it, just to see endings and try out lmoves on my friends.  With the modern capcom fighters my attention span is about 15 minutes tops.  They have pretty much removed the ending from their line and the characters and bosses have been recycled so many times it's become sad.  Come one guys how many capcom games have bison as the boss?  He's the boss for like 10 of em.  Don't you think he would be dead by now? I like bison too, he rocks, but make him a sub-boss or just a playable char... they need to retire him. Now Snk fighters are wierd.  They seem to spend 90% on the combo and 10% on speical moves and character design.  All of the snk fighters are very solid, but they are bland and predictable, just like the newer capcom ones.   Plus I think they have too many characters, espeically the king of fighters series.  I like to play a game knowing I will have time to master every charcter and see his/her ending.  With those games there's no way.  That's probably why they use the same ending and sprites for each game... they hope no-one will notice.  

(see above)

Now do you understand what I am saying?  The newer games don't outright suck but they are nothing special.  Mk2 was pretty much the plateu, there hasn't been anything truely speical to come around in a long time.   The new games aren't getting worse they are just slight worse then their classic counterparts and they haven't improved much in all this time.  They are still trying to achive the perfection of their ancestors and eventually they will get there.  They just aren't there yet.  

Whew!! See what you made me have to type.

[John]

Wow Howard.  that's an eyefull.  I sure feel lucky that I own my MK2 pcb that came with my cab.  i think i'll hold on to it (instead of selling it back to my vendor for $50)



John

[Silverwind]

Nice post...

I agree with you mostly...  I don't really like combo's much either..  doesn't seem as much strategy is there.. just memorize the 20 buttons to do it and mash it.. if you miss you just do it again..

The original mortal kombat has been my favorite in the series...

Graphics and sound were good.. all the characters were pretty good.. and the single player was pretty good... mirror and endurance matches.. as well as goro and shang..

MK2 was good also but I didn't play it quite as much.. (maybe a time factor, didn't have as much time on my hands when it came out)

Tekken3 is one of the only recent fighters that I have enjoyed..