The Lasting Effect of the Retro Genres
What a year gaming has been for us. We have seen some fantastic new ideas these past couple of years but there is no denying the fact that retro ideas play a huge effect in new concepts. One of the strange things that is happening is the comeback of 2-D fighting games and true adventure games. These genres just recently started showing back up with re-releases and entirely new games to further help keep retro games alive.
If you haven’t been on Steam lately, I suggest you hop on there and see the slew of adventure games that was uploaded on there last week. LucasArts released some of the more known old-school adventure titles and TellTale is keeping the genre alive with all their different IPs including Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island, and the Wallace and Gromit series. To clarify for people that don’t know about adventure games, they are also point-and-click titles; and while seemingly simple enough in concept- still provide quite a bit of gameplay. The great thing about these games are the prices, generally very reasonable, and how they are truly episodic (yes, a knock again Valve, still love them though). 
Another genre that is getting more attention now is the fighting genre. While fighting games have never actually went away, it seemed developers started moving away from what made them great. Some developers can actually grasp 3D fighting games and make them work, but hardcore enthusiasts will all agree that the best fighters are the 2D games; that’s why Street Fighter 4 was such a hit because the game stays true to the 2D format but the character sprites are in 3D. Now developers are returning to what makes fighting games great- the return of the 2D fighters. I hope the new Mortal Kombat game goes back to how the originals were made and helps to reclaim that series.
The importance in keeping these ideas alive while developers might be working in a limited scope is that they still have not done all they can do with the genre. Look at what Nintendo did for the fighting genre with Super Smash Bros. Now I’m definitely not saying they need to do this with games like Street Fighter or King of Fighters, but this just proves that there are still plenty of ideas out there that developers can still work within. Adventure games used to just be pointing and clicking, but now some adventure games give you direct control of the character. Moving away from these two genres, platforming and side-scrollers are still getting plenty of attention with games like Muramasa, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time Re-Shelled.
Retro games will never die. I bet 90% of the games coming out for the rest of the year are either sequels or has previous ties to a retro game. I suggest if you haven’t played one in a while, to check out XBLA, PSN, Steam, or Virtual Console all of which house some amazing retro games(way too many to even begin listing), and become engrossed into some old school gaming.
1 Comment
People like the familiar, it's like comfort food. Every one likes to try something new once in while, but everyone always comes back to the fried chicken and mashed potatoes.