Make Your Eyes Bleed: Classic Console Games That Are Outdated AF
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Make Your Eyes Bleed 15 Classic Console Games That Are Outdated
These vintage and classic console games from the 80s and 90s prove that comes games are too dated to play today. via themushroomkingdom.net/youtube.com (Inside Gaming) Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, but sometimes the yearning to relive your childhood can be so strong that it becomes deceptive. Case in point: all of the games you thought were so great back in the day, but which turned out to be big, hot puddles of garbage juice in retrospect. To be clear, I’m not calling you out for liking games that have lost their luster over the years. Time marches over us all, our video games included, and no amount of affection or critical success can protect a game from becoming a nigh-unplayable mess some 10, 20, or 30 years later. As hardware and software improve, gamers get used to playing with new, assistive technologies that simply did not exist when their childhood favorites first hit store shelves. That can turn any trip down memory lane into a slog through the mud, trust me. I’ll be the first to admit how awful it feels to realize that a game you always thought highly of isn’t nearly as enjoyable to play today. Having substantial flaws in retrospect doesn’t make a video game objectively bad, but there’s still that knee-jerk reaction against criticism of gaming’s most-lauded titles. You can deride Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest as much as you like, but to come for The Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy VII? Blasphemy. Folks, if you can’t criticize a video game you love, then you don’t really love it, OK? Video games aren’t meant to be kept in shadowboxes, protected from the elements. They’re made to be experienced until they’re threadbare, and that’s what we’ve done with all of the games below. THEGAMER VIDEO OF THE DAY The Legend Of Zelda
via YouTube.com (Rolf Cole) It’s easy to forget that games were ever so difficult that we were willing to pay money for someone to teach us how to play them. Enter The Legend of Zelda, a Nintendo exclusive that launched a franchise destined to thrive for more than three decades, and one of the most difficult video games ever made. The Legend of Zelda was so difficult that series producer Eiji Aonuma — who began working with the Zelda franchise during Ocarina of Time’s development — has never beaten it, and considers it to be the hardest game of all time. What makes The Legend of Zelda so difficult? Back in 1986, in-game world maps and clear directives were difficult to come by, and death lurked around every corner. The Legend of Zelda didn’t revolutionize anything in those departments, and although it offered a genuinely rewarding experience, its difficulty is more than a little off-putting today. Crash Bandicoot
via dorkshelf.com As many times as Sony has tried to revive it over the years, the Crash Bandicoot IP has never seemed to perform quite as well as its developers and publisher hoped. Later offerings have been mediocre at best, but even the original Crash Bandicoot hasn’t aged well. The PlayStation 1 title featured the same poor controls and wonky camera angles that plagued other early 3D video games, but it lacked the charm of Super Mario 64, or even Spyro the Dragon. Thus far, Crash Bandicoot remasters have only made improvements to the game’s graphics and audio, leaving the control and camera problems sadly intact. More recent Crash games have tightened the controls and modernized the camera, but even they haven’t been able to live up to the original Crash Bandicoot’s hype, which leaves nostalgic fans in a real bind. GoldenEye 007
via YouTube.com (Fant0men) Sometime after we all put down our controllers and stopped playing Paintball Mode, GoldenEye 007 went bad. When it came out in 1997, the Brosnan-Bond FPS quickly became the stuff of legends. Who were you, after all, if you didn’t have GoldenEye in your gaming arsenal? But in retrospect, GoldenEye 007 was never really that amazing of a game to begin with. Compared to other FPS games from the time, GoldenEye is clunky-looking and -controlling. Its single-player campaign leaves much to be desired, a fact that could be easily overlooked, given the title's excellent multiplayer game modes, were it not for the fact that we’ve long since grown accustomed to playing video games that are excellent both on- and offline. In spite of your fond memories, GoldenEye 007 hasn’t lived up to its own hype, much less aged gracefully in the 4K age. Sonic Adventure
via segabits.com Sonic Adventure functions as a cautionary tale. Here we have a great title that swiftly descended into the realm of crap when it was ported from the Sega Dreamcast to the Nintendo GameCube, next to PC, and then to Xbox Live Arcade. In addition to the quality lost on being — eventually — a port of a port of a port, Sonic Adventure also failed to hold up to the march of time as its formula was rehashed and reskinned to make the myriad 3D Sonic titles that have come out over the intervening years. For some reason, Sega execs clung to the taste of Sonic Adventure 2 at the expense of real innovation, leaving Sonic to stagnate until more recent titles returned the blue hedgehog to his roots in 2.5D style. If you have a problem with a 3D Sonic game, blame Sonic Adventure. The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind
via elder-scrolls.com The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind was everywhere, even on Toonami, when it first made waves in 2002, and its legacy lives on today in the Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind expansion. When the third Elder Scrolls game hit store shelves, creative spots were honest about the game’s flaws, including the lack of in-game instruction and difficult combat. The combat element has not improved over the years, and even gamers who loved Morrowind must be able to accept that the game’s battle system received a dramatic upgrade in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which itself was not a perfect game, by any means. Morrowind may have marked the beginning of Bethesda’s Western-RPG dominance, but there’s a reason it hasn’t been remade in the decade-and-a-half since. Jet Force Gemini
via IGN.com An early third-person shooter on the N64, Jet Force Gemini was released in 1999 to rave reviews. Critics praised the game’s multiplayer aspects and “beautiful 3D environments,” but those elements weren’t enough to save Jet Force Gemini from ruin when it was ported to the Xbox One as part of the Rare Replay collection in 2015. Adapting the original game’s 1-joystick control scheme for a 2-joystick controller proved to be easier said than done, and the port process rendered Jet Force Gemini nearly unplayable for today’s gamers. Rare was later forced to release a patch for Rare Replay that would allow players to use a more modern control scheme while playing the game, which improved the experience greatly, by all accounts. Still, the differences between Jet Force Gemini on the two consoles serve as a harsh reminder of just how much our opinions of games may change with time. Mass Effect
via YouTube.com (bomboy02) Back in the 2000s, BioWare had a reputation for making great science-fiction RPGs, and the Canadian developer rocketed onto a new generation of consoles with Mass Effect in late 2007. At the time, the game’s complex character development and interactive setting helped it to stand out among a sea of mediocre action titles and a dearth of role-playing games. A decade later, Mass Effect’s controls have aged a little worse than other ’07 releases, but not terribly, and the same can be said for its visuals. But one huge component of Mass Effect’s gameplay hangs over today’s replays like a thick funk: the Mako. The tank used by the Normandy crew to go planetside was ostensibly intended to bring a greater depth to Commander Shepard’s expansive universe. Unfortunately, the Mako's clunky controls and the absolute necessity of the vehicle make Mass Effect replays feel like a chore. Ogre Battle March Of The Black Queen
via YouTube.com (Vizzed Gameplay Videos) Another in a class of games that is only enjoyable if you know what you’re getting into well beforehand, the Super NES tactical RPG Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen works hard to earn its high difficulty rating and low replay value score. Combat alone is complicated enough to dissuade some gamers from completing Ogre Battle. The game doesn’t allow players to control their battlers directly, instead opting to allow you to change your team’s tactical style. Aside from ordering a retreat, those general controls are all the power the player has to dictate the flow of combat. There’s also a tarot card system and a morality factor that can alter battle and gameplay. Putting up with Ogre Battle’s drawbacks may be worth the trade-off for a detailed story of political intrigue, but it’s hard to imagine many first-timers will enjoy such a blast from the past. Contra
via giantbomb.com Many gamers can tell you the Konami code, but far fewer know why it was so necessary to implement it back in the late 1980s. Contra players know that just one bullet or instance of enemy contact was enough to lose one of the three precious lives they began with. The Konami code allowed gamers to increase their life pool to 30, but that was hardly enough to make it through a sizable portion of the game without serious grinding and pattern memorization. Nowadays, AAA video games are made with adult players in mind, by developers who realize that their target audience doesn’t have hours to devote to learning the particular paths that enemies and bullets take. That’s why bullet hell-titles now have their own special subgenre: because we decided that games like Contra had no broad place in the modern gaming industry. Final Fantasy X
via kotaku.com.au When Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster came out in 2013, it reminded us of just how beautiful the original games were. They remain two of the most gorgeous titles ever made. Even if certain plot holes still yearn to be filled after all these years, Final Fantasy X ranks among the best Final Fantasy titles to date. There’s one element to Final Fantasy X that isn’t all fayth and pyreflies. The 2001 title was the first in the franchise to feature voice acting, and it went about as well as you’d expect. There’s a reason Tidus’s laughter became a meme, or why you can’t quite get some of Final Fantasy X’s lines out of your head. The voice acting was that bad. If you want to play through Final Fantasy X again, then do so, by all means. But mute the game if you want it to not feel dated. ActRaiser
via retrogamesplanet.it Sometimes, mere ambition can cause a game’s failure to thrive as it ages. Such is the case with ActRaiser, a Super NES title from Enix that put players in control of the Master, a demigod driven away from the world by his evil counterpart, Tanzra. When the Master returns, he must liberate and maintain the cities of the world from Tanzra’s forces. ActRaiser’s gameplay, then, is split into two distinct parts: side-scrolling action portions as the Master liberates his cities, and top-down city-management as he attempts to increase the world’s population. Unfortunately, although ActRaiser does a good job of explaining why it divides itself in such a way, the gameplay still feels disjointed. It’s a unique experience, to be certain, but the jarring effect it has won’t endear it to today’s players. F-Zero
via chi-scroller.com F-Zero might not be as well-known as Mario Party, the other series Captain Falcon appears in, but it at least deserves recognition for being one of the most difficult racing games ever made. First appearing on the Super NES in 1990, F-Zero featured a steep learning curve that required players to manage health and vehicle integrity as resources. Speed too fast in your hovercraft, and you’ll run the risk of exploding if you so much as buzz a track wall or — horror of futuristic horrors — swap paint with another vehicle. F-Zero is unforgiving in a way that we aren’t used to today. In the early 1990s, this was a mainstream racing game. Today, F-Zero belongs in a category of supremely difficult racers, perhaps even one in which it stands alone. Metal Gear Solid
via YouTube.com (Necroscope86) Speaking from experience, it’s almost never a good idea to go back and replay the shooters and action titles that you loved on consoles past. Some stones are better left unturned, and replaying Metal Gear Solid is one of them. Hideo Kojima’s 1998 action game controls in a way that feels entirely unfamiliar today, and its emphasis on stealth turns routine enemy interactions into merciless encounters. Aiming mistakes aren’t easily corrected, making Snake more noticeable than he should be, even in the game’s early stages. Time is of the essence, generally speaking, and rushed players are never better performers. Combine the number of sure misses with Metal Gear Solid’s limited ammo supplies, and you’ve got a recipe for gaming disaster. Put simply, Kojima’s PlayStation 1 masterpiece was brilliant back in the day, but better left to memory or remasters today. Super Mario 64
via highsnobiety.com Also known as The Nintendo 64 Launch Title That Everyone Played, Super Mario 64 captivated Nintendo fans of all ages by opening up the Mushroom Kingdom for full exploration by Mario. Born at the dawn of home Internet access, this 3D adventure spawned Luigi conspiracy theories and now-debunked myths about unlocking Yoshi and undressing Princess Peach. Super Mario 64 was the first 3D offering from the red-hatted plumber, which means that you can quickly point fingers against it for every great and terrible thing found in later Mario titles. As is the case with many — or even most — N64 games, a return to Super Mario 64 means a steep learning curve as players adapt to its unforgiving hitboxes, slippery controls, and terrible camera angles. Coming back to it after two decades may mean a lot of heartache for gamers who haven’t kept their ‘90s-platformer skills polished in the interim. Final Fantasy VII
via YouTube.com (ROFLSoup) Even for the uninitiated, Final Fantasy VII carries a reputation of industry-shaking excellence. Between Cloud and his oversized sword, Aerith’s shocking death, and Sephiroth’s bishounen aesthetic, the PlayStation 1 classic quickly became a trendsetter and trope-namer. Aesthetically, Cloud and friends look worse today than contemporaries like Final Fantasy Tactics and Mario Kart 64, although neither of those titles was nearly as complex as Cloud’s adventure, so some sacrifice in Final Fantasy VII’s graphics department is to be expected. But it’s still worth noting that, in spite of its enduring popularity, Final Fantasy VII is no longer the visual feast it was in 1997. In fact, the game looks more like a LEGO adventure than a Square RPG, and its clunky polygons will swiftly suck the air out of a newcomer's attempt to play the Final Fantasy series’ most famous installment.