Topic: What Retro Systems do you think hold up well?

So as of late, I have been an a sort of Dreamcast kick, maybe cause I just got a copy of Soul Calibur for it. I was amazed at how well the game holds up even today. Then it got me thinking that other games in general, Virtual Tennis, Sonic Adventure even Crazy Taxi on the DC hold up well and that in general the Dreamcast hold up pretty well.

I even found that alot of games on the original Xbox have held up well like Jade Empire.

So what retro consoles do you think hold up well in this day and age and for the sake of argument let's say PS2 and older are considered retro.

I lost my original PlayStation, but currently my PS2, PS3 and of course ps4 are all hooked up and functional in the house . Can't say I have any older consoles still....

Turbografx-16 (PC Engine), the Genesis / Mega Drive, and the Super Nintendo...........the 16 bit era.

Developers had perfected 2D gameplay, many titles still had that instant gratification / arcade style gameplay (for those quick plays), while you could also find titles with large amounts of depth (Shining Force 2, Chrono Trigger, etc)

@sub12: Yes I will agree that the 16 bit era holds up really well too, heck I still play my SNES and Genesis regularly. Sadly I don't have a TG-16 and wouldn't mind getting one but I have played a few games like Rondo of Blood through the VC on the Wii and other means.

• Pre-8 bit / Atari era = Has held up quite badly IMO, lack of depth in a lot of titles.
• 8 bit era = Has held up moderately well, games like Mega Man 2 and Contra are still amazing to this day, although, usually speaking, post 1986 is where you want to go.
• 16 bit era = This era has held up very well IMO, sprite graphics are easy to appreciate from an artistic viewpoint, developers had mastered 2D gameplay / mechanics
• 32/64 bit era = Has aged quite badly, some games excel, but many suffer from poor / awkward controls and ugly graphics. The hardware just wasn't there yet.
• Post 32/64 bit = Everything has held up pretty decently from the Dreamcast onwards, albeit to various degrees,........by around 1999-2001, most developers had a decent grasp on 3D.

@Tasuki:

The TG16 has a lot of great titles, although the multitude of formats (hucard, CD, and super CD), makes it a very awkward platform. Technically, it's all the same console, but the basic PC Engine is more or less like a slightly less powerful (but more colorful) Genesis/Mega Drive, while the Super CD games at times rival Neo Geo titles.

Lot's of great SHMUP's, puzzle games, and platformers.

I think Gamecube holds up well, mainly because a lot of first party titles and exclusives are from Nintendo and just ran like a beauty.

I still love my SNes and think it holds up well for its generation but then it could be a nostalgia thing.

I must say I have been tempted for a long time to get me a dreamcast and hook it up because I kinda miss those era arcade games - it was really the last dedicated arcade machine.

@Rudy_Manchego: Yup the Gamecube games do hold up really well. I would say the GC trumps the Wii from a gamer rather than casual viewpoint all day long.

I would say alot of what we are talking about is nostalgia, after revisiting alot of classics recently from Pacman right through to the end of the ps1 era the majority of games dont play or look great. Disappearing sprites, slowdown, no dialogue, rubbish controllers, weak music and sound effects etc. There's obviously stand out games like Super Mario Bros 3, Megaman 2, Mario Kart, Streets of Rage 2, Final Fantasy, Metal Slug, Sonic 3, Final Fantasy 6-9 and tons of others which took full advantage of the hardware but there are 50 times more games which are rubbish and would struggle to hold your attention in this day and age.

The Neo Geo and loads of arcade boards still look great today in my eyes but even then my kids think they look terrible so maybe its all nostalgia.

@themcnoisy: Or it could be that kids don't appreciate older games and just dismiss them cause they don't have the graphics that today's games do. I was the same way when it came to movies when I was a kid. So many great classic movies I passed up when my dad tried to show them to me stuff like Citizen Kane, a few Alfred Hitchcock movies etc all because they were black and white lol. I didn't even give them a fair chance just figured well they're not colored so they muse be bad lol.

Years later when I got older I watched them and appreciated them for what they were looking pass the older technology and focusing more on the story and even the special effects they did at the time like for movies like King Kong. Now those movies are some of my favorites.

Point being is it might not be nostalgia when it comes to the younger generation views.

@Tasuki: That I agree with. But the reality is I struggle to enjoy most recommended retro games I haven't played already myself. Chrono Trigger, I understand it was a tremendous game - not to me, not anymore. Its alright but it had no nostalgic value. Why would I play that when I can play Lost Odyssey or Mass Effect? Super Mario RPG - same issue, its just a pants generic rpg with Mario characters. Galaga - boring as hell we have Resogun. All were recommended and it has to be nostalgia as they are all pretty rubbish in comparison to later games in roughly the same genre.

@Tasuki: I actually think my personal golden era was from the release of ps1 through to the xbox original. Loads of choice, loads of great games, no dlc and pay per play rubbish. Childish stuff gave way to more mature and deep gameplay, better stories and not every game was short (like 8bit) or too bloated like nowadays. So everyone of those consoles, the PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, Xbox, GameCube and PC games at the time are all my favourites.

@themcnoisy: I agree with both points. It might be nostalgia. For me though I love older SNES RPGS like Chrono Trigger, FF III (VI) but newer ones like Mass Effect, Dragon Age , and Fallout fail to impress me and I have tried those games multiple times. Then again I do enjoy Borderlands so who knows.

@Tasuki:

It's not nostalgia, the 16 bit era kicked a$$,.........it's called having good taste.

All of them.

Retro gaming >

@themcnoisy: Defo the GC but also the PS2 Xbox era - I remember getting Spiderman 2 on the GC and thinking, this is great, I'm actually webslinging across a whole city.

I'd say a lot of this is nostalgia but also recognition that there were some truly great games that should be celebrated. The amount of re-releases and the demand of backwards compatibilty are not (in my opinion) purely nostalgic - people are recognising that some of the originals were landmarks in gaming and influenced current gen games. I also feel that for this generation, we haven't seen the same landmark titles that will define the generation yet in the same way we saw for, say, the PS3/360 generation. I think these will come as the generation matures but it means people do look backward a little.

I have to say, the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis still hold up pretty well. The gamecube...which I was amazed at, held up pretty well and almost looks like a Wii game when putting it in (guess there wasn't much of a graphics comparison between the two). Some of the PS2 titles still look pretty good too, but yeah, I see what you mean about certain X-box games...they really are starting to look bad (only some of them though). The other system that I saw that doesn't look like the games held up real well...due to the blockiness of them and the sound...the N64...don't get me wrong, a very small few still look fine, but most of them need a fresh coating of HD re-release to make them look clean again. The Atari could look better if you connect it to an non-HD television, but if it's connected to an HD television, it's blurry and fuzzy and has lines throughout the screen. Dreamcast (some of the games) still look well, PS1 looks its age and (as long as you don't play them on the Wii U), the Wii games still look alright (as long as they're the good games, not the cheaply made ones). For some reason, the Wii games (when put into the Wii U) look horrible.

@Tasuki, a bit off topic, but I'll admit I'm still bad about overlooking old movies, lol.

With a few exceptions (Star Wars, Jaws, the Wizard of OZ, Superman the Movie, the original Godzilla, and maybe a few others), I just can't get into anything made before 1980 (I was born in '91, for reference).

When it comes to games, I have a relatively easy time going back, as I grew up playing NES, SNES, and Genesis (it's not all nostalgia though, as I played Super Metroid for the first time a few years ago and was blown away by it).

@RR529: Star Wars is pretty rough though. I mean, I like it but watching some of the scenes look pretty bad. Like Jabba or the weird dinosaur thing in the city. Old CG (like from 2010 or older) looks bad. For some reason though, the space battle still looks really good.

As for games, I like PS3. I still play my PS2 ('cuz that's the only way to play Silent Hill 2-4) but everything older than PS3 looks fuzzy and pixelly on an hd tv (that includes the Wii). Gamecube had some good games and that's where most of my nostalgia comes from, but while the gameplay still feels solid, it has the same fuzzy pixelly problem as PS2.

I like PS1 games though, and that's because I bought a bunch on the ps3 because they're so cheap and I've grown to like them. Snes games are mostly platformers, and control pretty badly. and NES is practically unplayable (and looks terrible).

@Utena-mobile: You need a CRT mate, If you have all those consoles it's wasted on a widescreen hd TV. I started building an all in one entertainment unit and gave up but the screen I put in looked brilliant with the mega drive, pity the controllers are unusable nowadays. It was a general tv sat in the back of an electronics shop with a huge back, but that screen was all power. Strangely brighter than what I have now and the colours really pop. Sold both as I never used it, but if I ever set up my dream retro station I need a 17inch proper square CRT TV.

The strange thing is I think a lot of the consoles/machines themselves do hold up. It's often a case of specific games. But I do think some machines hold up more easily than others, as appearances can be deceptive. Often when people actually get into the games themselves, they have a great time.

A lot of people bash the early 3D consoles, and their games, for not holding up. But in my experience, a lot of the younger gamers actually really like them. I worked in a computer museum in Cambridge for a while and we found that every type of machine got a look in. Part of the way in for people was seeing how games for popular characters today played back then. Hell we even had the UK home computers like the ZX81, which is black & white with no sound, but the kids still enjoyed the good games on the system.

And even then I've just had odd moments which surprised me. I remember my local GAME shop showing footage of the Crash Bandicoot download for PS3 a couple of years ago. I remember a kid begging for his mum to get him a download voucher as he'd played it round his friend's and thought it was one of the best games he'd ever played. This was in 2014!

The thing is that if something is solidly designed in a game, it'll always be good.