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Beaten By Cringe... PS1 Games Weren't Self-Parody
7 years ago
I tend to sleep on posts before I make them, and I try to avoid posting while tired, but I want to rant.
Jordan Peterson once said "Don't compare yourself to someone else today, compare yourself to who you were yesterday." This is advice I try to follow due in part to my tendancy to get discouraged.
Many years ago, I had an idea for a PS1 throwback. I abandoned the idea after almost universal criticism of the idea. The logic was sound, the arguments made sense, and it was coming from everyone who had any kind of experience with the subject. Years later, the game Strafe was a massive success on Kickstart. However, the PS1 throwback trend didn't really take off due to the hyped games not being very good. Only DUSK and Banned Memories seem to be pulling it off well, but they have seemingly disappeared, existing in a pertunal state of "coming soon".
Many years ago, I had the idea for a game. I don't know when exactly this idea came to me, but my first art commission was of the character for this game. That character was Leanna. 7 years, and while I've tried making the game in various forms, it never really panned out. Ideally, I'd like it to be a survival horror game in the style of the classics like Resident Evil 1-3, Alone in the Dark, and others from the glory days of fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds.
I bring all of this up because I came across a twitter account of an indie dev who made a fixed camera survival horror game ...in 6 days. Kind of puts to shame my 7 years of not making the game.
But the problem is the game looks awful. Part of that is that the game is a joke. Enemies are a textureless ninja and a zombie that is dressed like Lo-Pan and bunny hops around with his arms in front of him. Maybe it's jealousy? I don't think so, but it's possible. Other, similar PS1 styled games are likewise look really bad. Not in terms of graphics, though they vary on that front from period accurate to textureless polygons, but in term of gameplay most seem to offer little.
I think part of my distaste for these games might be the self-aware self-parody nature of these kinds of throwback games. To kinda quote Razorfist, "These films have more winks and nods than a methodone clinic. Fuck your winks! Fuck your nods!". Yes, I get it. PS1 games were often silly, goofy, and in most cases aged about as well as goats milk. We all remember Jill Sandwich, Lara Croft's triangle tits, or those ads declaring that Ramero would make you his bitch. But isn't the goal is to make a game in that style, albeit with some of the rough edges smoothed off with the benefit of 20+ years of game design progress? Resident Evil wasn't made as a big campy joke, they were trying to be scary. Wether or not they succeeded is for you to decide. The same goes for gameplay. Simple games did exist, games like Kurushi and Ray Tracers, but the best know games of the era were games like Metal Gear Solid, Gran Tourismo, and Final Fantasy 7. ie. Games that were more than 3D endless runners or jumping on blocks.
But, what do I know?
Jordan Peterson once said "Don't compare yourself to someone else today, compare yourself to who you were yesterday." This is advice I try to follow due in part to my tendancy to get discouraged.
Many years ago, I had an idea for a PS1 throwback. I abandoned the idea after almost universal criticism of the idea. The logic was sound, the arguments made sense, and it was coming from everyone who had any kind of experience with the subject. Years later, the game Strafe was a massive success on Kickstart. However, the PS1 throwback trend didn't really take off due to the hyped games not being very good. Only DUSK and Banned Memories seem to be pulling it off well, but they have seemingly disappeared, existing in a pertunal state of "coming soon".
Many years ago, I had the idea for a game. I don't know when exactly this idea came to me, but my first art commission was of the character for this game. That character was Leanna. 7 years, and while I've tried making the game in various forms, it never really panned out. Ideally, I'd like it to be a survival horror game in the style of the classics like Resident Evil 1-3, Alone in the Dark, and others from the glory days of fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds.
I bring all of this up because I came across a twitter account of an indie dev who made a fixed camera survival horror game ...in 6 days. Kind of puts to shame my 7 years of not making the game.
But the problem is the game looks awful. Part of that is that the game is a joke. Enemies are a textureless ninja and a zombie that is dressed like Lo-Pan and bunny hops around with his arms in front of him. Maybe it's jealousy? I don't think so, but it's possible. Other, similar PS1 styled games are likewise look really bad. Not in terms of graphics, though they vary on that front from period accurate to textureless polygons, but in term of gameplay most seem to offer little.
I think part of my distaste for these games might be the self-aware self-parody nature of these kinds of throwback games. To kinda quote Razorfist, "These films have more winks and nods than a methodone clinic. Fuck your winks! Fuck your nods!". Yes, I get it. PS1 games were often silly, goofy, and in most cases aged about as well as goats milk. We all remember Jill Sandwich, Lara Croft's triangle tits, or those ads declaring that Ramero would make you his bitch. But isn't the goal is to make a game in that style, albeit with some of the rough edges smoothed off with the benefit of 20+ years of game design progress? Resident Evil wasn't made as a big campy joke, they were trying to be scary. Wether or not they succeeded is for you to decide. The same goes for gameplay. Simple games did exist, games like Kurushi and Ray Tracers, but the best know games of the era were games like Metal Gear Solid, Gran Tourismo, and Final Fantasy 7. ie. Games that were more than 3D endless runners or jumping on blocks.
But, what do I know?
