MisterStone
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2006
- Messages
- 9,422
So I've been spending some of my free time lately trying to catch up on all the cool CRPGs that I missed out on in the 90s, when I never owned a PC. The problem is, I find that ~16-17 year-old games run on DOS box are actually much bigger pains in the ass to play than games from the 1980s. No doubt this might be because I grew up playing the latter from an early age, but there are some issues...
1) Mouse interface. I don't know if it is just because of DOS box emulation, or if mouse interface for PC games in the early 90s just sucked. Games like Darklands, or RoA2 can be a real pain in the arse as I hold down right button, left stuff button, drag thingies around and try to use them as a pointer, drop them onto other icons etc. etc. This kind of stuff always seems kind of clumsy. Flipping through windows via mouse is a pain in the ass. I suppose that there are hot keys for a lot of games, but it always seems like there are always at least a few things that cannot be done without a mouse.
2) Real-time combat and tortuously animated sprites makes things suck more. For instance, Darklands again- while this is a sweet ass game, with lots of wonderful detail and depth, the combat sucks, and the graphics for the combat screen looks like utter crap. This game would be 20x better if it simply had turn based combat and old skool Ultima IV tiles instead of the blobby lumps of crap that skid across the screen whenever combat starts. And what the hell is with devs back then making 20-frame animations for explosions, spell casting etc. etc.? It's like they were all so impressed with Battle Chess that they decided to try and have their own set of CRAAAYZZEE sprite death/battle animations. Needless to say, this slows shit down and makes things worse when playing through an emulator.
Complaints one and two go for Ultima VII as well... for me, that game would be a lot better with tiled graphics rather than fully animated sprites and all that stuff. And the interface is still kind of clunky/annoying in emulation/through exult.
3) Graphical fidelity ages poorly. For instance, I tried to enjoy Ultima Underworld, recently, I really did... but let's face it: With the annoying mouse interface and crappy dated graphics (which were so next-gen back in the early 90s) run through an emulator, the game is a huge mess right now. Dungeon Master, which used fewer animation frames and had a much better mouse interface (in my opinion) on the Amiga, is still pretty fun, but UUW will take a pretty major effort to get used to, assuming I even want to.
I'm not trying to say that these games suck because they are slow and clumsy when I try to run them on an emulator, I'm just saying that for me it is harder to enjoy ~17-18 year-old games now than it is to enjoy, say, ~22-23 year-old ones. Something like Ultima IV or Wasteland is easy to play, because the interface is fairly simply- you learn maybe two dozen keystrokes and you can do everything in a second or less. Granted, later games had more depth, which led to more survivalism challenge/combat tactics option/character development/puzzles than the earlier games, but it seems like they never invested a lot of time in getting the interface down IMHO.
So is this a personal issue, or do other people have similar problems?
1) Mouse interface. I don't know if it is just because of DOS box emulation, or if mouse interface for PC games in the early 90s just sucked. Games like Darklands, or RoA2 can be a real pain in the arse as I hold down right button, left stuff button, drag thingies around and try to use them as a pointer, drop them onto other icons etc. etc. This kind of stuff always seems kind of clumsy. Flipping through windows via mouse is a pain in the ass. I suppose that there are hot keys for a lot of games, but it always seems like there are always at least a few things that cannot be done without a mouse.
2) Real-time combat and tortuously animated sprites makes things suck more. For instance, Darklands again- while this is a sweet ass game, with lots of wonderful detail and depth, the combat sucks, and the graphics for the combat screen looks like utter crap. This game would be 20x better if it simply had turn based combat and old skool Ultima IV tiles instead of the blobby lumps of crap that skid across the screen whenever combat starts. And what the hell is with devs back then making 20-frame animations for explosions, spell casting etc. etc.? It's like they were all so impressed with Battle Chess that they decided to try and have their own set of CRAAAYZZEE sprite death/battle animations. Needless to say, this slows shit down and makes things worse when playing through an emulator.
Complaints one and two go for Ultima VII as well... for me, that game would be a lot better with tiled graphics rather than fully animated sprites and all that stuff. And the interface is still kind of clunky/annoying in emulation/through exult.
3) Graphical fidelity ages poorly. For instance, I tried to enjoy Ultima Underworld, recently, I really did... but let's face it: With the annoying mouse interface and crappy dated graphics (which were so next-gen back in the early 90s) run through an emulator, the game is a huge mess right now. Dungeon Master, which used fewer animation frames and had a much better mouse interface (in my opinion) on the Amiga, is still pretty fun, but UUW will take a pretty major effort to get used to, assuming I even want to.
I'm not trying to say that these games suck because they are slow and clumsy when I try to run them on an emulator, I'm just saying that for me it is harder to enjoy ~17-18 year-old games now than it is to enjoy, say, ~22-23 year-old ones. Something like Ultima IV or Wasteland is easy to play, because the interface is fairly simply- you learn maybe two dozen keystrokes and you can do everything in a second or less. Granted, later games had more depth, which led to more survivalism challenge/combat tactics option/character development/puzzles than the earlier games, but it seems like they never invested a lot of time in getting the interface down IMHO.
So is this a personal issue, or do other people have similar problems?
