I think you've nailed it. Don't like live-service games, don't play them.

Yeah, it’s a tale as old as gaming. People shout about how the industry is dead, then you ask them what they play and it turns out they never branch out into anything new.

I don't know, maybe some people are still playing Atari 2600 and think there aren't options available.

I mean, at least they’d have Yars’ Revenge… Yars’ Revenge is pretty fun.

Yars' Revenge was one of my favourites. Asteroids was good, too. My brother loved a submarine one, and my Mum liked a cowboy one, but I don't remember what they were called.

I'm not sure I can remember back that far; 'Centipede' is the only one that comes to mind for me.

Yars’ Revenge always sticks out to me because: A. It was the only game on the Atari I actually liked. B. I actually love Yars as a franchise to the modern day. One of my most wanted games for backwards compatibilty (that sadly never came) was Yar’s Revenge (2011), Yars Recharged is a fantastic modern reimagining of the original, and Yars Rising released in 2024 as a mostly-fantastic Metroidvania. C. I listen to a song from its [url=https://youtu.be/NehomSzQ1t4?si=UA9F9R97mflON9If]soundtrack[/url] at least once a day. Like River City Girls or TWEWY much of its soundtrack has vocals and feels like normal music rather than background noise. Hacking my Brain is a good one. I think it’s the second song in the video, starting at 2:50. I’ve been meaning to give more Atari Recharged games a look. Caverns of Mars has been on my wishlist for a hot minute, and both Centipede and the spider one look really good…

I've seen some Atari collections on sale in the PS Store but I'll be honest here...........I'm kind of spoiled when it comes to new graphics and controls. Sure, there are always those that still hold a nostalgic vibe for me ('Bionic Commando' for the NES comes to mind) but going back to that can be difficult at times. I bought the 'Mega Man' collection a while back and I just can't play those games anymore; have I lost my edge or are new games making players soft? I'm leaning towards the latter rather than the former. My progressing age surely doesn't help, either.

To be fair I’ve had issues playing nostalgic older games simply because I’m too used to everything using standardised control schemes these days, rather than every other game ‘innovating’ with tank movement or using a trigger to jump, or some other such dumb idea, so potentially games have just changed and you’ve forgotten how to play the older ones. Like I don’t think my reflexes have changed that much since I was 15 but it would take me a while to get as good at Guitar Hero as I used to simply because i don’t play it for 3+ hours every single day anymore.

Yeah, I agree with this. It's a shame, too, that a lot of innovative control schemes have been left to the dust. Like, there's almost nothing that plays even remotely like Crystal Chronicles, and this makes me sad. Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is the closest I've seen, but even then, it's like the very minimum... I think the perfect example of this phenomenon is Kirby Air Riders. Air Riders itself is super fantastic, and unique, and there's nothing else out there like it (except the original Air Ride, of course, but that's 20 years old), but the public perception of it for people who haven't played is that it's just Mario Kart with a Kirby skin. It's very much not, but people have gotten so accustomed to everything being the same, that their default assumption is that everything is. Thankfully, you can still find super unique games in the indie market if you look hard enough, but even there they're quite rare. You'll find maybe one or two unique games for every 10 Hollow Knight or Vampire Survivors clones... But on that note, it's also not 100% a bad thing, as long as the new game innovates on what was there. I recently picked up a game called Gunner.chan! which is basically Enter the Gungeon but with anime girl robots instead of living bullets. Which is a downgrade, to be clear. I miss my bullet men. [i]BUT[/i] I ended up falling off of Gungeon because I had a few major problems with it, and Gunner.chan! both remains similar enough to Gungeon to still scratch that itch, but [i]also[/i] fixes pretty much every problem I have with Gungeon, as well as giving a really nice lock on system that I didn't know I wanted but love so, so very much. After all, that is how almost every genre starts. They start as "(Game)-likes", and then grow into something unique over time. There is definitely a gradual stagnation happening, but games are still growing... Unfortunately, a lot of the bigger games that are more unique tend not to perform as well, which is kinda what leads to that stagnation. Balan Wonderworld and Neo: The World Ends With You are both good examples. I really loved both games, but since they didn't conform to the standard, Wonderworld got actively hated on by, like, everyone, and Neo:TWEWY basically flew completely under the radar. (sorry that ended up being much longe than I meant for it to!)

Well this is the thing. The cool indie darlings can very quickly become dead meme horses flogged by the community if they get big enough (like Undertale or Fez (Fez almost literally being flogged to death by the community lmao)), and the big weird games are either flops because nobody played them or they split gamers into lovers and haters (like Death Stranding). You can see why big studios with lots of employees and shareholders to keep hold of would go with safe options that guarantee money long-term.

Oh yeah, for sure. The biggest Indie games are the ones that play it safe, like Hollow Knight or Dead Cells. I agree with your main point, I was just meaning, you *can* find them, they are out there if you really want something. But when you do find one, you gotta be prepared for it to also make you sad when you see the bad reviews. Like, Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is right there on the store page, but it's getting middling reviews because it did something cool and unique, as opposed to Hades, which is a similar game but universally praised for playing it a lot safer and being closer to what you expect from the genre. Not to say Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, or Hades are bad games, to be clear. They're all fantastic. Just very safe.

Oh yeah for sure. My main rebuttal to people who complain that there “aren’t any good or interesting movies/games/shows/music these days” is that they clearly aren’t looking very hard. All it takes is a little effort and the courage to push your boundaries once in a while. You can complain that all music today is overproduced manufactured pop with advanced autotune and probably a healthy dose of AI, or you can use the magical powers of the internet to find that one weird Turkish band playing death metal on bassoons. It might take you a lot longer to find the latter rather than the former, but honestly that’s part of the fun. Especially with games; I love diving into a super deep sale and scouting out all the weird things people think of turning into games.

Can’t say I agree on account of how I [i]did[/i] play the Mega Man X collections not long ago! :p Bad graphics have never bothered me much. It takes me, like, 15 minutes to adjust at most. With the exception of that game Okami, but that one gave me some sort of motion sickness or something. That said, I wasn’t talking about ports of classic Atari games. The Atari Recharged games are brand new games based on the originals. New graphics, new soundtracks, new gameplay, the works. [url=https://youtu.be/OAzII4LDdyY?si=pZDtDhkMqOUC9Q3v]Yars Recharged[/url] As you can see, not a classic Atari game at all. Modern arcade game! The other Recharged games are the same way, though I’ve only played Yars. Most of them look really good! The other two are based on the Yars franchise, but take it in a whole new direction. [url=https://youtu.be/-epaR6Xwa5U?si=2NQ4BfY9NLAHqiYM]Yar’s Revenge (2011)[/url] was an on-rails shooter, like Star Fox and I miss it very much. [url=https://youtu.be/9m5rm3-Rg-o?si=71pDzIPietVutO-E]Yars Rising[/url] is a Metroidvania platformer dealie. Though, its hacking minigame is based on the original game, it’s actually got much more in common with a game like Hollow Knight. A bit handholdy, but very funny and quite fun. I actually made a post about it forever ago how every entry in this dumb series is totally different from all the other ones, and I love it.

No no, I said the 'Mega Man' collection; not the 'Mega Man [b]X[/b]' collection. Shame on you for not knowing the difference. 🫣

I was assuming you meant Mega Man Collection as a catch all term. There’s 2 Mega Man classic collections, 2 Mega Man X collections, a Mega Man Zero/ZX collection, 2 Mega Man Battle Network collections, and that new Mega Man Star Force collection. If it’s not specified, I assume “Mega Man Collection” refers to every single one of those. I still gotta go back and finish the Battle Network games… BN1 was a little… Much. Not very well designed despite the great premise. Kinda burnt me out on it even though I know BN2 is better. Saw a couple posts recommending just skipping BN1 altogether. :p

Alright, I'll concede I wasn't specific with that. Still, I feel like that's a distinction where a specificity should be unnecessary.

I mean, if there are multiple collections available, and you don’t reference a specific one (in this case I’m assuming Mega Man Legacy Collection Volume 1), then I think it’s reasonable to assume you mean the whole batch. Like, if I were to tell you that you should buy a Sonic classic collection, that could mean anything. I could mean Sonic Origins, or I could mean Sonic Mega Collection, or I could mean… Well, those are actually the only two I know, but you get my point. :p

Sort of. If I were to start talking about 'Castlevania' it's highly unlikely that most would think I was talking about the 'Lords of Shadow' series or the Playstation 2 games. Some things are kind of a given; at least, I think they should be. In retrospect, I feel those games were underappreciated.