As I seem to say all the time, I have the strange situation of having followed the development of console games quite closely without ever actually having been really part of them myself, never having one up until the original PS - most of my nostalgia for them is either through my emulation phase or through one of the very few decent games-related TV shows that Britain has ever had, Bad Influence. And I remember them specifically insisting that the gameplay of the new Mario game on the Ultra 64 (as it was then called) wasn't a technical demo or cut-scene - that it really was based around giant-for-the-time 3D environments. Actually, here's that very video - I tried playing it through myself fairly recently, but only ever got about halfway through.
It's odd how much better things can seem when they're released compared to looking at them now... Mario 64 only looks slightly like it's built out of Lego, and it's easily one of the best-aged of the early 3D games. Other games that I glimpsed then seemed to deteriorate dramatically over time - did we really think that Resident Evil looked decent just ten years ago, for example? Even my memory of the non-live action cut-scenes from that - particularly, the one when you interrupt the first zombie from his meal - was of something approaching PS2-era smoothness, rather than the sad sort of crude 3D sock-puppetry that the game actually contains. (I started playing that recently as well, but couldn't continue because it was too hilarious.) Meanwhile, Lomax still looks incredible.
The games you listed as being excited about... there's something different about them, but I'm not sure what it is - they're still new games, but... acceptably retro-styled? I don't know what it is. (And are they seriously naming the next sequel XX Accent Core Plus? How long is this name going to get?)
I'm also very impressed at the mention of The Little Prince! It seems to be less obscure than I had first imagined. I must have read it about ten years ago, and it had some wonderfully thought-provoking commentary - my mum loves it, and has it in three different languages.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-05-02 10:11 pm (UTC)It's odd how much better things can seem when they're released compared to looking at them now... Mario 64 only looks slightly like it's built out of Lego, and it's easily one of the best-aged of the early 3D games. Other games that I glimpsed then seemed to deteriorate dramatically over time - did we really think that Resident Evil looked decent just ten years ago, for example? Even my memory of the non-live action cut-scenes from that - particularly, the one when you interrupt the first zombie from his meal - was of something approaching PS2-era smoothness, rather than the sad sort of crude 3D sock-puppetry that the game actually contains. (I started playing that recently as well, but couldn't continue because it was too hilarious.) Meanwhile, Lomax still looks incredible.
The games you listed as being excited about... there's something different about them, but I'm not sure what it is - they're still new games, but... acceptably retro-styled? I don't know what it is. (And are they seriously naming the next sequel XX Accent Core Plus? How long is this name going to get?)
I'm also very impressed at the mention of The Little Prince! It seems to be less obscure than I had first imagined. I must have read it about ten years ago, and it had some wonderfully thought-provoking commentary - my mum loves it, and has it in three different languages.