unpopular retro opinions

[ChopBlock223]

15 hours ago, Revae said:

Why? And what was your basis for comparison in the 90s? It's not like there were many options. LCD screens were mostly relegated to laptops and looked pretty bad by modern standards. Not criticizing your opinion, just curious where you're coming from.

Fuzzy image, makes high pitched coil whine (which stops being audible to you as you get older, but I was a little kid at the time), and glares up like crazy if you have a light on or the blinds open in the same room. Also takes up a lot of space.

 

Didn't have much of a comparison in the 90s, short of my Gameboy Pocket, which obviously isn't comparable display technology, and wasn't without its own issues. Until we got an LCD screen at home for a new PC, I actually hadn't thought much about it until then, except for the coil whine, which I noticed the flat screen lacked completely, then I started paying attention to what else it lacked, like glare, and I got used to having to sit up straight and have the screen angled right, and with some tuning of display settings, I noticed I really loved how clear and sharp the image was.

[seed]

8 minutes ago, ChopBlock223 said:

Fuzzy image, makes high pitched coil whine (which stops being audible to you as you get older, but I was a little kid at the time), and glares up like crazy if you have a light on or the blinds open in the same room. Also takes up a lot of space.

 

But they had something that we had been missing for a long time after LCDs replaced them, and that was perfect colors and awesome contrast.

 

This will forever be my main gripe with flat panels, they are more practical and personally speaking, I take 16:9 and 21:9 format over 4:3/5:4/16:10 etc. any time of day, but the garbage blacks they have is infuriating. In the past you could easily get a nice CRT monitor/TV and enjoy these things, now you have to spend a fortune to get good color reproduction since most basic TVs and monitors are dogshit for the task.

[mrthejoshmon]

Gothic 1 is a masterpiece

 

Gothic 2 (specifically Night of the Raven) is unbalanced, ridiculously difficult and has no idea what difficulty spikes are.

[pcorf]

- The bosses on the three Super Star Wars games on the SNES have crazy amounts of health. But I like them.

- Baby Mario crying on Yoshi's Island was insane but I still preferred the original SNES version over the GBA port.

[VGA]

10 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Gothic 1 is a masterpiece

 

What is the best way to play it on a modern PC?

[Doominator2]

1 hour ago, VGA said:

What is the best way to play it on a modern PC?

Buy it off Steam or GOG and install the unofficial patch.

[mrthejoshmon]

17 hours ago, VGA said:

What is the best way to play it on a modern PC?

I had little issues on Windows 10 using the GOG version, had to force the resolution higher but I played without mods/patches, I'd recommend patching it though as some of the bugs retained in all versions of the game are horrendous when encountered but easily avoided but also easily encountered at the same time, you just gotta be aware of what could possibly go south.

 

For example do not interact with objects during a transformation spell, it will shit the bed.

 

You can also play the Gothic Remake teaser on Steam if you purchase any Piranha Bites game I think, I bought the whole Risen franchise and Steam tried to give me 4 copies of it.

[seed]

OPL2 > OPL3.

Blood and Duke music sounds like dogshit in these two modes.

[ChopBlock223]

I don't like any shooter's music with any of the OPL synths, they're all so tinny and understated.

 

I want to clarify that I don't hate OPL overall, for some games where the music is composed with it very much in mind, it can actually be charming.

Edited October 31, 2020 by ChopBlock223

[RichardDS90]

On 10/28/2020 at 12:59 PM, pcorf said:

- The bosses on the three Super Star Wars games on the SNES have crazy amounts of health. But I like them.

- Baby Mario crying on Yoshi's Island was insane but I still preferred the original SNES version over the GBA port.

ESB is just batshit crazy with that man. Did feel fairly cheap.

 

I don't know which version I prefer, I do prefer the sound and visuals of the SNESbut it's nice the GBA version got extra content. But then the Yoshi sounds are so-so.

[seed]

Since I was recently looking for Hexen 2 ports, I remembered a hot take of mine:

 

- Graphic mods in older games can be absolutely great, and I often prefer an HD look over their vanilla aesthetic. This is especially true for Quake with DarkPlaces and packages such as Epsilon. Also DP is great, and the only reason why some people seem to utterly resent it nowadays is because of purists who cannot look at anything other than vanilla.

[ChopBlock223]

I think that people who complain that hitscanners aren't fair, are kind of bad at Doom (and other shooters), and instead of complaining, they should learn to employ tactics which are suitable for handling such enemies.

[ChopBlock223]

11 hours ago, seed said:

Graphic mods in older games can be absolutely great, and I often prefer an HD look over their vanilla aesthetic. This is especially true for Quake with DarkPlaces and packages such as Epsilon.

I can see the appeal in true 3D level geometry, dynamic lights, brightmaps, normalmaps, etc, and these are features I like using when available, even a little bit of bloom (such as playing in GzDoom).

High resolution textures is something I think seldom works for old shooters however, often it makes level geometry look flatter, as much higher resolution on a surface, but with no added depth can make things look like a photography pasted onto a perfectly flat wall. I feel high definition textures usually only look right on high definition geometry. Like imagine 4K wall textures in Wolfenstein 3D, wouldn't it look flatter than ever?

 

 

11 hours ago, seed said:

Also DP is great, and the only reason why some people seem to utterly resent it nowadays is because of purists who cannot look at anything other than vanilla.

I've never tried it, but I've heard people complain about lack of compatibility with things like Arcane Dimensions. How widely can the graphics be configured in DP?

[[McD] James]

I've never heard anyone complain about Darkplaces. I personally think Quake looks terrible when you enable all of Darkplaces' graphical enhancements, but when you enable just a few (smoke, bullet marks, a few other small things) it looks fantastic. Quakespasm is generally better though because it has a higher level of compatibility and is a bit easier to use. 

[mrthejoshmon]

Quake 2 is infinitely more enjoyable to me than Quake 1.

 

I have Played Quake 2 to death, I could only stomach one run of Quake 1, I just don't like how it felt, then again I probably would've liked it if I had used something like Darkplaces over vanilla.

[GraphicBleeder]

Postal 1 is better then Postal 2.

[Firedust]

Diablo 1 and 2 are crap :p

[Matias]

-Most old games are mostly good because of nostalgia even if you never played them, it's nostalgia for the era

-Crt:s are overrated and mostly an elitist thing

-scanlines look like shit

-Most retro games are better played on emulators

-Nintendo franchises are nothing special

-Half-Life has aged extremely poorly, or maybe it was never that great

-Most nintendo consoles (since snes) are purposefully handicapped with inferior hardware, and sell with gimmicks and those awesome nintendo game franchises just because nintendo doesn't want to compete with others, also nintendo didn't save the videogame industry

-Doom was rushed and rest of classic doom releases were just cashcrabs (even tho they are still really good)

-Final Doom is better than Doom II

 

Spoiler

i play more old games than new, and have bunch of original retro consoles and games btw

 

[Sunnyfruit]

51 minutes ago, Matias said:

-Doom was rushed and rest of classic doom releases were just cashcrabs (even tho they are still really good)

 

Agree if Doom 2 isn't counted among "the rest of classic doom". And cashgrabbing with quality content is not only good but should be a golden rule for companies.

 

edit: Nintendo is the most overrated videogame company there is and I think that it is ironic to see a company claiming "Emulation is IP theft" when this same company was known for abusing its dominant position and forcing developers to give up rights on the products they published for their ubiquitous systems.

brb I just got a C&D for writing Nintendo's name on this post. whoops did it again

Edited November 4, 2020 by Sunnyfruit

[Maes]

21 minutes ago, Matias said:

-scanlines look like shit

 

Scanlines don't exist. Or at least we didn't really see them back in the day. They seem to be an artifact of nostalgia, exagerrated and fueled by retrophilia.

 

21 minutes ago, Matias said:

-Doom was rushed and rest of classic doom releases were just cashcrabs (even tho they are still really good)

-Final Doom is better than Doom II

 

I actually agree with those :-o

 

Although cashgrabs imo were much worse when they simply started rehashing "Classic Doom" in all formats and consoles, starting with Doom for Windows 95. That one was already incompatible enough with the DOS releases (DEH support in particular) that it could be its own game, and thus boldly introduce new features, but nope, it was really a least-effort implementation.

[seed]

17 hours ago, Ajora said:

I've never heard anyone complain about Darkplaces. I personally think Quake looks terrible when you enable all of Darkplaces' graphical enhancements, but when you enable just a few (smoke, bullet marks, a few other small things) it looks fantastic. Quakespasm is generally better though because it has a higher level of compatibility and is a bit easier to use. 

 

Depends on where you hang around. I've checked some Quake related places and DP seems to be reviled by purists in particular, and those who hate graphic enhancements, which is what it's mostly known for. That resentment seems to be alive here as well, as illustrated by the overwhelmingly negative reaction I got back when I linked a video of Quake Epsilon some time ago. I was the only one to not think it made the game look atrocious.

 

It's known for its incompatibility with some mods as well.

[lazygecko]

When I tried Darkplaces it inexplicably altered the weapon bob animations from the original pigeon thrust to the Doom style swaying. Couldn't even find any option for turning it back to normal. It really aggravated me.

[VGA]

18 hours ago, Maes said:

Doom for Windows 95. That one was already incompatible enough with the DOS releases (DEH support in particular) that it could be its own game, and thus boldly introduce new features, but nope, it was really a least-effort implementation.

It was the only way to play Doom in high res, though! 

 

@lazygecko

Darkplaces is one of those source ports that are better for creating new games with, not for replaying the original game. Quakespasm, its Spiked fork or the vkQuake fork are the best ways to play the og Quake.

[seed]

1 minute ago, VGA said:

Quakespasm, its Spiked fork or the vkQuake fork are the best ways to play the og Quake.

 

No.

[VGA]

Just now, seed said:

 

No.

What do you prefer and why? A software renderer like Mark V?

[Maes]

32 minutes ago, VGA said:

It [Doom '95] was the only way to play Doom in high res, though!

 

Not exactly, there also were some obscure Macintosh versions (I think they were PowerPC only) that could go up to 640 x 400/640 x 480 as well. Incidentally, once a link to a "Doom 2 demo" for Mac based on the v1.8 IWAD (which appeared to be the full IWAD) was posted here on DW and no action had been taken on the hosting site to take it down. I had actually tried it with an ancient Mac G3 I had at the time, and posted a full account of it, but that post was made in the now defunct Blogs section.

 

Edit: nope, seems the original story and my "review" are still alive after all:

 

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/946190

[seed]

4 hours ago, VGA said:

What do you prefer and why? A software renderer like Mark V?

 

Whatever floats one's boat, of course.

 

I myself prefer vkQuake and DarkPlaces. I tried FTE too, but it isn't as smooth as I had hoped, and the non-GL renders definitely deserve their "Experimental" mark (read: they exhibit graphic anomalies).

 

I tend to like something that allows for visuals enhancements in this game.

Edited November 5, 2020 by seed

[SOSU]

Castlevania Dracula X, the snes version of Rondo of Blood isn't as bad as people make it out to be, i believe it's a fun and super challenging version for more hardcore Castlevania fans :D (But it still does pale in comparison to the original version.)

[VGA]

3 hours ago, seed said:

 

Whatever floats someone's boat, of course.

 

I myself prefer vkQuake and DarkPlaces. I tried FTE too, but it isn't as smooth as I had hoped, and the non-GL renders definitely deserve their "Experimental" mark (read: they exhibit graphic anomalies).

 

I tend to like something that allows for visuals enhancements in this game.

Ah, OK, you answered "No" to me and thought you objected to QuakeSpasm and its forks.

[seed]

Just now, VGA said:

Ah, OK, you answered "No" to me and thought you objected to QuakeSpasm and its forks.

 

No.