5mo ago

Shovel Knight artist says throwback games need 'retro authenticity' but can't coast on nostalgia alone: 'Part of the appeal of the NES era of game making was that everything was a new idea'

www.pcgamer.com

35 comments

"The original NES hardware literally only had around 55 colors that were pre-programmed in and no other color was allowed," Wozniak explained. "We broke this rule by adding 5 colors to help with a few things the NES palette lacked⁠—namely, darker and desaturated colors. But we justified that decision by treating it as compensation for the fact that everyone is playing these games on much brighter, higher fidelity screens than the CRTs of the past."
This is a great example of how some retro-style projects get it and some don't. The successful projects are the one that have the feel of the games you used to play in the context of today's gaming, not the ones that do a historically accurate, 1:1 conversion. There's an art to it.
That's the problem with many modern AAA games. They lack innovation. Since they only look to maximize profits, they stick to reliable formulas that are known to be profitable.
This is the reason why I only play indies nowadays. How many AAA studios have new ideas? Sure, we see, every now and then, a new game that really feels new, but they are rare. Meanwhile, the indie sphere cooks new things constantly. Sure, not all are pretty or good or polished, but at least they try new things!
- I hate that people use "AAA" for this argument, because nobody knows what the hell "AAA" means anymore. It's the "woke" of complaining about games.
  For what it's worth, you're not wrong that there is a subset of studios, big and small, that tend to think the recipe for recouping their risky investment on a creative product is doing something that is already successful in the exact way it's already successful. Which is consistently a problem, because the successful thing already exists and people are already playing it, so there isn't much incentive to go play the same thing again elsewhere, especially if twenty different identical games just sprouted up like weeds.
  But that's not a "AAA" thing. For sure it's near-universal in the GaaS sphere where everybody is trying to tap into the same blob of users, but there are plenty of interesting, unique ideas in very large games and plenty of derivative small games. How many iterations of Meat Boys and Hollow Knights and "2D Dark Souls" have you played in the last decade? Because I'm pretty sure I can't count them with my fingers anymore.
  
  For the record, an AAA game is a game with a big budget from a big studio. I think everyone can agree that an Assassin's Creed is an AAA game while shovel knight isn't.
I dunno about "everything" being a new idea. There definitely were some, but there were a lot of clones of other games and genres being beaten to death just like now.
Mario-style platformer? Side-scrolling beat-em-up? Couldn't count them all.
This is a whistful nostalgia cherry-picking perspective.
The NES had a metric buttload of games that sucked and were obvious lousy branding tie-ins. Mostly crappy side-scrollers with bad controls and questionable relation to the source material. Back to the Future 2+3, Blues Brothers, the 7up Spot, Yo Noid, and IIRC, California Raisins games are a few I can think of off hand.
There was a lot of clear repurposing of game architecture constantly on the NES - Even Mario 2 was a clone and repackage of another game.
- Adam's Family Fester's Quest deserves mention for unconnected to IP
  
  Sunsoft was all bangers back then.
- I wanted to comment on this earlier but I thought people would think I’m crazy if I started talking about Blues Brothers out of nowhere.
  I think the original point stands regardless. It was just that much easier to create something new back in the day because everything was unexplored. People were happy to play a video game at all, with that game being good at all being kinda secondary. Most of them were pretty hard and you didn’t know if it was fair or not yet. I had a blast playing Blues Brothers (on cousins Amiga I think), mostly because you got to play as guys from Blues Brothers and those guys were so cool, dude. Yeah, it sucks now but that’s fine. It did something new for people then.
  The problem is we wanted this to go on forever and by now it’s very much figured out as a business which was driving it so far. Most interesting things now happen outside of what big publishers do so at a smaller scale and harder to find too. Valve/Steam is keeping half of that industry alive (or keeping it at their mercy) with their content exploration capabilities but you have to swim through a lot of junk just like before, just not overwhelming amounts.
  
  I don't disagree with the sentiment overall, and of course branding tie-ins were all about the names and not about the game. There's no reason to build a game from the ground up in terms of gameplay when you're leveraging IP. MegaMan is the perfect example of this. Six(!) NES games, even one IIRC after MegaMan X for the SNES was released, that were all little more than slight upgrades to the same gameplay of the original. The game was the brand, so you do just enough to give it some variation, and you're good.
  The counterfactual for this is arcade games ported to NES, which were often much more tied to their IP. TMNT 2 is a port of an arcade game released a few weeks after the TMNT 1 NES game, and look at which of those have the same look and feel of the show. The Simpsons games - same thing. Arcade titles needed to be instantly recognizable as a way to throw money at IP. NES titles did not because once you bought the game, you've committed to the IP tie in. Disney did a better job with matching NES gameay and IP, but thats because of their own standards.
  Personally, I wouldn't call too much of that innovation or creativity, as it's cosmetic. Some, absolutely, bit not much. Very few companies went in for unlicensed cart manufacturing because of the capital needed. Wisdom Tree, the first company to work out how to get unlicenced carts to work, only made 13 games intended for a niche religious market, and their only SNES title was a reskin of Wolfenstein 3D. Sports games like RBI Baseball saw some of the best success because the requirements of NES licensing meant an approved UI bottleneck, which is where going from sports to NES had such a wide array of options possible.
  
  I am here to defend Blues Brothers, which wasn't a crappy tie-in as much as a bad version of a game that made a lot of sense (and was much better) in the computers where it orginated. I played the crap out of the DOS version of Blues Brothers when it came out and absolutely loved it. I was very confused about its reputation in mainstream US-driven retro culture until I tried the Nintendo versions.
  But yeah, I mean, you guys aren't wrong, popular consoles generated tons of shovelware since day one. The entire first party structure of the NES is an attempt to mitigate how bad it got on the Atari 2600, and don't get me started on the libraries of unlocked Western microcomputers.
  I don't know that it disproves the argument in the article, though. It's true that nobody knew what the set structures were, and that was itself part of why you could jam together some absolute garbage and nobody in the process, from creators to first parties to reviewers and end users, could tell it was terrible. It led to heaps of praise put on absolute garbage, often engineered by toxic patterns and malicious marketing, but it also led to a lot of quirky creativity.
  And damn, that beeper rendition of Peter Gunn was stuck in my head for a good chunk of the 1990s.
This comment is true for all games, regardless of graphics quality. If a game offers nothing new from a story/gameplay perspective, its graphics wont carry it very far.
Shovel Knight brought with it a ton of new ideas in terms of gameplay, but a lot was borrowed as well.
- To be fair, it was like that in the actual NES era too.
  Unless you're an actual enthusiast, there are TONS of NES games that you've never heard of, that inspired the gameplay of other games.
  Then there's the games that were japan only, never got an outside release. But then a later game that DOES get an outside release uses elements from those games. From out perspective, that 2nd game invented that formula. You find out years later it wasn't.
- That's how all art is.
  
  Yes well, even though I was raised by artists and have given over a large portion of my life's energy to creative pursuits, nobody actually told me that art is the study of choice (and everything started clicking into place) until about a year ago and I've been riding that high ever since.
- Sure, but they've made more games. Shovel Knight Dig and Pocket Dungeon are both fun genre-blending twists.
  I don't think he's saying you should make something entirely unique, just that you should disregard modern tropes and treat what you're making authentically:
  "I can tell when I’m playing a game made by people who are well versed in the game type they are making," said Wozniak. "The people who are making an NES game should play a ton of NES games and be experts on the topic.
  
  Same way that if you're going to write, you've got to read a lot. My favourite metaphor for creativity is a conversation, and the most interesting "statements" in any creative conversation come from a highly relevant observation based on everything said so far, not from someone who blurts out a complete non-sequitur. A brilliant random comment can add worthwhile variety to a conversation, but they're not the moments that feel like something insightful has been discovered - I hope that hangs together, mostly.
  Yacht Club does feel like one of those people who, when they speak up you always want to listen. I don't do much mobile gaming, but I went out of my way to play a bit of Pocket Dungeon. It put me in mind of mobile games from way back before everything was an addictive by design skinner box, but it also managed to be something I could pick up and put down with very little friction. It's kinda perfect, and if I was going to play more mobile games I could do worse than going back.
Super Amazing Wagon Adventure was a great example of retro style mixed with modern wtf madness
https://youtu.be/ADhIG4cF_88?zDsMXOlrSWYVgLYg
- Jump the river, always
Old games stood on their own merits: artwork, sound design, game mechanics. I have no idea what "retro authenticity" is supposed to be, but it doesn't sound like it involves inspiration or imagination.
Gonna get lynched for admitting to this here, but I've stayed away from Shovel Knight because of how premium they take themselves to be. I have gotten Hollow Knight and plenty of other Castlevanias on discount, though, even though I'm not a fan of the genre. I think this statement coming from them is a bit ironic consider how they treat their product, although they aren't the only one.
- I'm SO confused by what you're saying. And I think what is happening, is you're saying something so outragous that my brain REFUSES to process the information. Leaving me bewildered by recent developments.
  Let me get this straight......you think that the studio behind shovel knight doesn't deserve to state their opinion on how to mske good retro games??? And this is based on the fact that they don't discount their games, and they take the genre too seriously.........just to make sure I understand you. That's what you're going with?
  
  I mean, we can wait for them to clarify, but the way I read it is that... it's bad that they don't sell their game for cheaper?
  I profoundly disagree there, too. There's this notion that pixel art games are inherently low-end, cheap stuff and that's just not true. Plus games are too cheap these days anyway. I bought Shovel Knight full price (several times, actually), and while it's not my favorite 2D platformer it always felt like good value. I mean, the soundtrack alone is worth the price of admission, and all the expansions are fun and worth playing. Even if they weren't, the franchise now includes more interesting games I am glad their success was able to fund.
  
  Not that they don't deserve their opinion, just that it is somewhat hypocritical to use nostalgia to put the game on a pedestal and prevent it from being as accessible. Most devs don't take it as a personal attack to their character to make their games more accessible to players and get more of a fan base going, and frankly, ease of access for a lot of kids of free retro games on their emulators is what has compelled them to later become loyal fans of the franchise. It is not a commentary about the value of games itself, and I will not shed a tear for indie devs that are already millionaires keeping prices high on their games as if it was necessary. Also not a fan of IP laws that are just an excuse of profitting way beyond the cost of development of something.
  This would not be acceptable anywhere outside this particular sub-industry, and it does not even make sense once sales have dropped down low enough since the benefit you get from advertising is greater. This only makes sense if you see any sense in huffing and puffing and taking it as a personal aggression having to consider selling your product that has already profited its development costs several times over for less.
  Personally, I will not buy it because it is not a genre I particularly like. But I would not mind buying it to see what all the fuss is about on discount. Take that as you will, but the outcome is that I will probably play something made inspired by the game before I play the game itself. Counterexample for me is Tunic, would not have bought it, in fact, I haven't even finished it, but the devs didn't put it in a pedestal so high that I didn't mind giving it a try and adding it to my library. Doesn't mean it isn't a great game, specially for those into the genre. I'll let you get right back to getting offended now.
  Actually, a better counterexample: Bastion. Not a fan, but aspects like the quality, the way the game handles replay-ability, and other aspects of the game like the narrator, now has made me a fan of Supergiant Games and anything else they make, even if I'm generally not a fan of the genre. Also why I supported them with Hades on early access and why I played Pyre when I generally wouldn't have.
- Last year there was a sale with 50% off, if that is what you're upset about?
- Game bad because no sales is a weird take. Not really sure why you're ascribing a "holier than thou" attitude to Yacht Club Games because I don't really see it but different perspectives I guess. I'd argue comparing anything to Hollow Knight will make it come up short. That game is a masterpiece and it still only costs $15. You should try Shovel Knight. It's not really a Metroidvania so the comparisons to Hollow Knight and Castlevania isn't wholly accurate. If you don't like it you could refund it. Disagreements aside, Silk Song looks like it's going to be fire when it finally releases, but it's been so long I'm not going to keep the hype up anymore Happy gaming, homie

35 comments