Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be…

As a young scamp my formative gaming years were spent on the NES and Megadrive. In the age of ROMs it’s quite easy to access and play all those games from my youth so I decided to have a look back at five of my old favourites and see how they held up by my standards now. I chose:

• Mario 3
• Streets of Rage
• The Legend of Zelda
• Golden Axe
• Doom

Mario 3

By far the best of the three NES Mario games and despite the fact it’s been out 22 years it still plays well to this day. It was an inventive game that had tremendous range of worlds and items. It was far ahead of its time and the polished presentation means the graphics haven’t aged nearly as badly as most other games from that area.

Mario and his brother Luigi for indiscernible reasons once again down tools and set off to rescue her from Bowser (although I think he was still known as Koopa back in those days). The plumbers set off across eight different worlds each governed by one of Bowser’s children. I was going to make a comment about the fact you never, ever see any allusions to Mario or Luigi actually being plumbers but let’s face it – realism does not come into Mario’s equation.

For an eight bit game it was pretty damn big, it also boasted a pretty impressive musical score. It could have done with a save feature as I can’t think there would be too many people who could get through all the vast number of levels in one sitting. It was simply a great game that can still stand tall amongst the flashier titles of today.

The Legend of Zelda

Remembering the countless hours spent playing this classic title as a six year old in South Carolina I got the collector’s edition of this game when I bought my Gamecube.

I sat in my little room in the university halls and waited to take a trip down memory lane. That familiar theme tune struck up and even my cynical heart lightened, I started a new game and even named my character Link to make it authentic. I had my sword and three hearts, the world loaded up and I took my first steps in this world I was revisiting after 14 years.

I took about fifteen minutes for the realisation to come. Hell, I was determined to enjoy this game – it was Zelda for crying out loud! How could I not fall back in love with this?

Then as I got stunk by barely visible harpoon flung by an enemy off screen for the umpteenth time and realised there was no real hint about where the hell to go I realised. “This is shit!” I thought to myself and that part of my heart that had lightened on hearing the theme tune again blackened and died. I switched it off and have never played it again. The later Zelda games can be summed up as follows: princess captured, go get princess, visit levels and get bombs, get boomerang, get hook-shot, play mini-games, save princess again.

What is it with Nintendo and recycling the old “princess has been captured storyline?” Jesus if she’s such a high profile target why not beef up security considerably rather than rely on a single vigilante time and time again. If I was Link or Mario I’d probably have given up the third or fourth time the dumb bitches got captured. I’m guessing Zelda and Peach are by now so used to being captured they probably like it. I’m not saying they enjoy the inevitable gang rapes at the hands of Gannon’s and Bowser’s goons but they’re not complaining so much either are they? This is probably a good time to move on…

Golden Axe

The dwarf with axe, the dude in blue pants and the chick in the red bikini: three retro icons. Did they even have names? No-one ever went the dude, I think even as nine year olds we thought controlling a muscular, long haired guy in a thong seemed kinda wrong.

I can’t really remember the storyline, some enemy is on the move again and you have to stop him by cutting through waves and waves of his henchmen. You can co-op, ride dragons and use magic. It seemed good at the time.

I replayed it recently and once again my childhood standards seem to have been way off. First of all you can’t block at all so if you don’t get the first hit in you just have to sit there and take it like a bitch. The controls felt clumsy and there was little skill involved other than making sure you got the first hit in. Plus your characters are just so maddeningly slow it’s inevitable you’ll have to endure quite a bit of punishment. The spells are also piss-weak and about as much use as tits on fish, this whole game is a war of attrition that takes a lot of time and more patience than I am currently able to muster.

As a sapling I actually completed this game, revisiting it I could barely get past level three. I wondered just how I could possibly have revered this game as it was utterly crap.

Streets of Rage

Another side-scrolling beat ‘em up from Sega. This is one game that actually stands up well. Right from the off you know you’re playing a classic, the soundtrack is one of the best in any game. You bash through a few punks with a decent variety of moves – unlike Golden Axe’s hack, slash, hack you do have some options and the three characters contrast nicely.

The levels vary well from grimy streets (have a look at some of the vandalism in level two) to a boat to a lift. Throughout the game you have the option to call for back up in the form of a police car that fires a mortar that instantly kills any goons in the area yet also does no damage to the players. Most of the time it gets saved for the boss at the end of the level.

One of the main reasons this game still plays well today is the simple fact that a side-scrolling beat ‘em up could only ever work on a 2D format. It’s impervious to technological improvements.

Doom

I almost feel bad slagging this one off but not bad enough to stop me from doing so. It’s premise is simple – you’re the last marine left alive, a ton of gruesome enemies stand between you and the end of the level. Kill every single thing that moves and pick up lots of new toys on the way.

Simple mindless fun.

When I played it again recently it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t really good either. You can’t look up so stairs become a bit of a lottery, the graphical limitations make some of the “horrific” scenes in levels seem laughable. The enemies kill each other which would seem like a good touch but they do it so much you’re often left wandering corridors of slain foes feeling a bit aggrieved that you didn’t get to do it. The levels are very similar: find the red key, find the blue key, find the yellow key, find the exit.

The novelty wears thin and the killing becomes repetitive all too quickly, its hard to play something like this knowing some of the titles that are available now. It simply cannot stand up to the top FPS games of today.

I know what some of you will be thinking “they were good games for their time” and they probably were but the thing is that time was twenty years ago. Very few are even playable now, you can quite easily download almost all of these old games in an afternoon and I guarantee the novelty will have worn off by the evening.

Games are better now than they ever were and in ten years time most of the titles today won’t seem up to much. Put it this way – the Wright brothers crafted the first plane and for it’s time it was the best flying machine available. Today we have 747s, if I need to fly somewhere I know which one I’d take.

Leave the old games where they belong – in your memories. If you try to play them today you’ll just be sorely disappointed. Move with times and enjoy the innovations as they come and maybe in twenty years time Nintendo might come up with something a bit more compelling than “the princess has been captured”.