Retro Vs. Modern Gaming: Who Wins?

Video Games

Jan 6

Playstation 2 title screen — Image Source: Reddit

As media advances, so too does gaming. What was once seen as a fringe activity for a few people has become an industry that in 2022 alone made almost 400 billion dollars. That’s more than every major sports league combined, and it’s not even close. What started out as a pixelated ball being bounced between two paddles has developed into Grand Theft Auto 6, a game that reportedly cost more than two billion dollars to make. Making it the most expensive media product ever. From studio juggernauts like Mario and Sonic, to indie smash hits like Five Nights at Freddy’s, not to mention franchises such as Call of Duty and Madden, video games are every bit a part of pop culture as movies and television. Even if you’ve never played a single video game, you know who Mario is.

But with advancement comes analysis. We’re living in an era of gaming that the creators of Pong and Tetris wouldn’t be able to imagine in their wildest dreams. The graphics on games sometimes make you feel like you’re playing something in real life, and some games can be flat-out art. However, is it better now than it’s ever been? Are we living in a golden era of video games, or did we have it better before?

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Let’s get the easy one out of the way first. Graphics. As mentioned before, graphics in video games have never been more lifelike. Even many of the more cartoonish games still have an insane level of detail in them that makes the world feel real. Modern gaming easily wins that round. However, how much does that matter? Yes, it’s nice, but it’s like a good garnish for a meal. It doesn’t mean that the whole product is going to be worth it.

How about gameplay? Well, that obviously very much depends on the game. I’m certainly not going to go around pretending that every retro game is better than most modern games. Every gaming company has had its massive failures over the years. It’s an extreme example, but the E.T. video game famously almost killed the industry. I’m not going to pretend that because it’s retro, it has to be better than what’s being put out today. Each era had its classics and duds.

The same thing goes with stories. With the advances in modern gaming, some games feel more like movies that you play. That’s not to say that we didn’t have some great stories in older games. Far from it. Modern games, for the most part, have the ability to go into more depth. Increased hardware, the budget to hire top-tier voice actors, and, as I said before, the ability to create more in-depth worlds. A game like The Last of Us wouldn’t have worked, or at least had the same staying power, if it was on the PS1.

So modern gaming obviously gets the edge on graphics. Old and new games are split on the gameplay and stories. Does retro gaming have anything that holds a large advantage beyond what modern gaming can touch? Yes. The first word that comes to mind is one that everyone hates: microtransactions.

Whoever invented those would likely find himself in the bottom circle of the inferno if Dante did another round. It’s bad when they’re useless cosmetics that you’re buying, it’s worse when it’s used to unlock things that make the game a bit more fun (weapons and characters and so on) but it’s at its worst when it’s just vaguely disguised gambling. I never had to pay two dollars to open up a loot crate in the hopes that I’d get the cart I wanted in Mario Kart Double Dash or pay $5 in hopes that I’d get Link in Super Smash Bros. And this isn’t an issue that just affects big budget games either. Go onto the app store and most of the games you download will have microtransactions themselves. But why wouldn’t the industry do that? It’s made them so much money. We’ve all heard the stories of the kids who, on their parents’ phones, spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars on microtransactions without their parents' permission.

Incidentally, that’s why the purchase feature on Google Play for my phone is password and fingerprint-protected.

Then there’s the fact that most of the games aren’t even yours. You’re renting them, and the gaming companies can shut them down whenever they like. I know most media today is like that, but still. I recently purchased a copy of the latest Madden game (I know, I know, it’s just a roster update with a few other tweaks, but I cannot stress how much I love football) and I got a digital copy instead of the disc. If EA or Sony decides to shut down the servers for that game, then the vast majority of the game is useless, including story mode. On the surface, downloading games doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Most PCs don’t have disc drives anymore, and downloading them means that you don’t risk a disc being lost or broken. But it’s never really yours. Your copy of Resident Evil for your Playstation might be scratched up from years of use, but it’s yours. When you download a game, it’s not. And the thing is: the example I gave of EA/Sony shutting the Madden servers down, making the game I paid $40 for unplayable? It will happen eventually. Guaranteed. However, my oldest child just started playing my Mario Party game that I played 20 years ago, and we’ve had a great time playing it together.

Controllers are a personal preference. Some people like the freedom of wireless controllers that you charge instead of batteries, while some might prefer corded controllers where you don’t need to do either. It is frustrating that Joy-Con drift for the Nintendo Switch seems to be a feature, not a bug, though.

Overall, a lot of it comes down to personal preference. Personally, a lot of it may be nostalgia bias, but I just can’t overlook the microtransactions, the fact that most games these days are rented and not purchased, and things like DLC, which is just “you can have a great game for $60, then pay us another $20 to have an even better one!” Back in my day, you and three buddies/siblings could pop in a disc for your favorite game with four controllers that you never had to worry about running out of charge, then play to your heart’s content, secure in the knowledge that you both got the full game and that you didn’t have to worry about any server crashes that reset everything.

For me, the old days of video games were better.

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