Games Inbox: Are retro games better than modern gaming?

The Monday letters page remembers the glory days of the Commodore 64, as a reader recommends indie game Beyond Words.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Old is new again
All the recent talk about the ZX Spectrum and other retro formats warms my heart, not least because they’re UK formats and not the NES, which I have ever seen in my life and definitely did not know anyone that had one when I was a kid in the early 90s.

I’m not sure why there’s been this sudden outburst of discussion but I imagine it has a lot to do with how messed up the games industry is at the moment and the five or more year wait we have between big games now. Compare that to the old days when you’d get a sequel every year, that was made by just one or two people.

The games felt raw and exciting, not the manufactured rubbish you get nowadays. Indie gaming is a lot closer to what gaming was in the old days but my problem with them is that so much of it is pandering to nostalgia and they’re always held back, either on purpose or by budget, whereas back in the day the game games were always pushing the envelope in terms of technology.

Now, I’m not so much of a hypocrite to say I’m not going to buy GTA 6 or any other big name games I like but more and more I find myself more interested in retro gaming and less in the modern stuff. Especially as there’s so much I didn’t play at the time, so there’s always something new to discover.
Jacob

The best bit
I haven’t seen the film yet (I know I’m going to enjoy it from what I’ve read) but all the talk got me in the mood for Star Fox so I thought I’d play a bit of Star Fox Zero and this game is terrible! When it’s just the Lylat Wars on-the-rails shooter it’s fine and it still looks great. But it keeps forcing you to use the GamePad for aiming and turn into that awful chicken thing.

It’s a great tribute to the N64 game at times but it’s just held back by these baffling gameplay decisions. If they do release a new game then hopefully they don’t try any gimmicks and just keep it as an on-the-rails shooter.
Simon

GC: It’s not terrible, but we don’t think anyone would argue the on-rails sections aren’t the best part. The problem for Nintendo is whether anyone still wants to play a game that is only that.

Licensed property
Talking about the C64 in the Inbox, I have just been watching the Commodore 64: Classic Game Insights Vol 1 Blu-ray and there is an interesting fact about Ron Gilbert (who made Maniac Mansion and The Secret Of Monkey Island games) when he started working at Lucasfilm he and his co-developers could not make any Star Wars games because George Lucas had sold the rights out to third party companies like Atari and others!

So, it’s a bit like somebody going to work for Nintendo and Nintendo telling their developers they couldn’t make Mario and Zelda games because they had sold the rights out to other companies! So what Ron Gilbert and his co-developers did was make up new games like Maniac Mansion and Secret Of Monkey Island, etc., in response to that.

The company that made this documentary is doing a full documentary for the C64 computer and it’s games and are looking for 2,000 followers on Kickstarter before they can launch the Kickstarter for the documentary. They currently have about 1,300 followers, one of which is me!

The people making the documentary also made The PlayStation Revolution documentary and the recent Rubber-Keyed Wonder documentary about the Spectrum, which were both very good in my opinion.
Andrew J.

GC: That sort of thing happens all that time. It’s why Sony still has the licence to make Spider-Man movies.

40 years, man and boy
I’m loving all this chat about the ZX Spectrum.

I never had one myself, but I did have friends when I was a young kid, that either had a ZX or a Commodore 64, so I would enjoy gaming via osmosis through them.

It’s weird because when I look back, I didn’t realise how much of a gamer I was, it was just a new and exciting entertainment form which I was happy to get involved in.

For me personally, it stated with those LCD gaming devices you could pick up at your local paper shop behind the glass cabinet for £2.99.

My friend used to borrow me his Game & Watch Mario and Donkey Kong and I didn’t care what my mom did for tea, as far as I was concerned I was living the life, it really fascinated me.

There was normally a high score of 9999 back then and I might be wrong but I’m pretty sure that’s where the term ‘clocked’ came from, when the game you were playing had no other numbers to give so just reset to 0, hence the term clocked.

I remember the Tomytronic games and the Tomy Racing Turbo, that was a particular favourite of mine.

Anyway what I’m getting at, is it took me years to realise I was a gamer.

I work with a gentleman who takes the mickey out of his son in law and his PlayStation 5 yet he spends most of his time playing online snooker against other people!

I think we all have it in us to enjoy gaming in the same sense you really have to be a movie buff to enjoy a movie or watch a lot of television to enjoy a programme.

It’s a great hobby and I feel very fortunate to have watched it grow up from its infancy.
freeway 77

GC: We believe that ‘clocked’ started with pinball games, but that is the gist of it.

Beyond Balatro
I wanted to write in to alert possibly yourselves, but mainly your readers, to a new game released on PC and Switch 2 (not sure about other formats).

It’s called Beyond Words and it is similar to Balatro but it plays along the lines of Scrabble rather than poker.

It for me, it isn’t necessarily as polished as Balatro but having put a few solid hours into it already… it is going to be right up there for replayabilty. It’s only just over £10 at the minute, so for all those that loved Balatro give this one a try.
Complex

GC: It seems to be on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S as well, to judge by the trailer.

What are ya selling?
I’ve finally gotten around to playing the Resident Evil 4 remake on PlayStation 5. I have to admit the game looks better but more importantly the controls are much improved. Sticky situations with the hostile locals are less sticky now that Leon can move while aiming.

One change for the worse I’ve noticed, however, is the merchant. Have the developers recast him? Leon sounds the same to me, but the merchant definitely isn’t as good. Why change the merchant? Wasn’t he a very popular character when the original version of the game came out?

If I recall correctly the original Resident Evil 4 merchant had a sort of a pirate voice. The new merchant just sounds like a bland cockney. What a bad decision if the developers recast this character. Why not simply reuse the voicework from the original game?

Anyway, I’m enjoying the remake apart from that, but I do fear what else has changed for the worse. Are the regeneradores/regenerators still scary? Is Ashley less annoying?
Michael Veal (Twitter/X)

GC: Everyone was recast; Metal Gear Solid Delta is the only big budget remake we can think of that has ever reused the same voice files from 20 years back. But the merchant was always meant to be cockney.

The unfunniest day of the year
Read some stuff online that the Nemesis system patent had been revoked, you seen anything credible about that?
Magnumstache

GC: We’re afraid that was an April’s Fool ‘joke’. Although if any company wanted to do something similar a patent wouldn’t stop them. Lots of video game ideas are patented – Sega owns the patent to changing camera angles by pressing a button, for example – but they’re always too general to stop anything but a straight clone.

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Stardew nightmare
Great to hear that Graveyard Keeper 2 will be an eventuality, as I thought the first one was a great attempt at a variation on the Stardew Valley experience. It was definitely an interesting theme on the management genre, taking care of the corpses in a correct manner to get cemetery ratings.

It was following the crafting, technology, and economy as what is required in these games, but with the added disposing and preparation of the corpses dropped off by the donkey delivery service. Conducting autopsies for crafting was a great idea, along with the skull ratings you get for doing a good job with the body.

Then putting them in the cemetery making them look as good as possible, with decorative items. It was a great way to do your grave keeping whilst farming parts for the technology and crafting side of the gameplay and then choosing the paths you want to use these items and resources in the technology tree.

Now what’s interesting for the sequel is how it is to expand the creative part of the game and it’s not just fixing up a graveyard and church but an entire community in a zombie infested town with a zombie apocalypse on the horizon.

The town management is definitely a step up, with whole new areas of research to explore and take control of. Can’t wait for another indie classic.
Alucard

Inbox also-rans
I totally understand where the reader at the weekend is coming with when it comes to the GameCube. It was the first console I bought as a wage owner and despite its problems I have very fond memories of it and its games.
Wendel

With so many Resident Evil remake on the way I wish they’d remake the remake of Resident Evil 3, as that was awful was barely anything like the original. Resident Evil 1 is going to be remade twice, so why not that?
Carlet

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

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