What Made Classic Games Great

Not long ago, Michael Abbott over at The Brainy Gamer asked some interesting questions about evergreen games. In particular, he examined the dissonance between the lasting appeal of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Ultima IV for the NES. While he does admit that comparing these two games from such different genres is akin to comparing apples to oranges, Mr. Abbott asks some interesting questions, and he got me thinking about those games from the days of yore which still maintain their appeal.

Just two days later, Lee Bradley over at his blog Collect examined what he called The Nostalgia Business. His article examines why classic games ought not to be crammed into new genres, but should be updated using their original genres and using the original mechanics in order to preserve that which made them great. This argument is often made by critics to explain why new iterations on a classic franchise fail to deliver that delicious flavour we experienced in the past.

In my opinion, however, mechanics aren’t the whole story. In fact, I think they’re only a small chapter. I’ve always loved the Super Mario franchise. I can’t count how many hours I spent with Super Mario World. When the games went 3D, however, my affinity dissipated, only to return with Super Paper Mario and later the advent of The New Super Mario Bros. on the DS. At first, it may seem like this example supports the argument that the original mechanics are what make those games great, but I believe that it was, in fact, the game design. While the 3D Mario games have had impeccable level design, they are still fundamentally different from the original 2D games.

Perhaps a better example is the Bionic Commando franchise. Bionic Command Rearmed was a recent game which gave the old game a fresh coat of paint, but kept the action in the original design. More recently, Bionic Commando was released for Xbox 360 and PS3 as a third-person action game. This change in perspective altered more than just a camera angle. If you look at the reviews of the new game, the negative comments are not that swinging and shooting don’t belong in a third-person game, but rather that the design of the game, it’s execution in level development, is what doesn’t stack up to the original.

If you go back to Super Mario Bros. 3 you can see exactly what I mean by design. Each of the eight worlds in the game had their own theme, whether it was desert, water, or liquid hot magma. Within each of these worlds the levels could often be divided into sub-genres. This design, a variation of the much-lauded Nintendo “garden” methodology, could have produced level after level which was essentially the same. Nintendo, however, insisted in making each level a perfectly unique flower. Each ice level in the water world had its own unique design and strategy for success. Few games these days are able to execute a similar design.* It’s for that reason that I can still enjoy playing Super Mario Bros. 3, not because it performs only in the two dimensions.

There are many games we remember with fond feelings because at the time they were the best there was. I think that’s what Ultima IV had going for it, and why Michael finds it not as great right now. Many other games, such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Bionic Commando, and even Pacman, maintain their splendour because they achieved a perfect storm of design which is seldom seen in modern gaming. I only hope that more developers go back to those early games in order to learn the lessons of how to develop a game which will stand the test of time.

_{*: Interestingly, the sub-par movie game Transformers: The Game did a good job executing a similar method of unique style from level to level.}