Hi

Just re-played The Secret of Monkey Island - am in the middle of LeChuck's Revenge (MI2) and will soon be moving on to The Curse of Monkey island (MI3)

[I've played these games many times before - as I have lots of my really old games - but have never lost my love for them ]

However, they do all have ANCIENT graphics and I was wondering how many people today would tolerate such graphics for the sake of a good game ??

I personally very much admire the ingenuity of the developers in managing to produce, as they did in those days, such enthralling games with such limited facilities

Cheers.

Mad

Mad, the graphics are not a problem for me as long as the story and puzzles are fun

I didnt used to mind the gfx but as time went on i do usually expect developers these days to use my hardware to its fullest potential so high res gfx with attention to detail and 5.1 music/sound. It does depend on the game tho as some games if the story and gameplay and interface are top notch goodness with not as current gfx and sound in em i probably would play em.

I really dont like the fact adventure games companys these days that have stuck to low 1024x786 or lower res tho. I wish they updated to minimum 1280x1024 res at least as its the industry standard nowadays i think since 19" screens are the most common screens these days.

I thought id like Al emmo or whatever it was called but i really couldnt get into it cos of the aging interface and gfx. If it had a more modern interface like still life or somit and a bit better gfx then i might have enjoyed it as it was supose to be a funny game to play.

The quality of TLJ is probably the lowest i would expect for newly developed games although at a higher res than TLJ as the res was the main prob for me, everything looked so pixelated. But i did love the game alot its the best game ive ever played and hope in a few more years to replay it if i can forget most of it by that time so its kinda new again to me.

I have been replaying indy jones FOA tho mainly the talkie version as i played it fully without voices so the talkie version is bringing something new to me when i replay it. The gfx are nice and the interface is spot on tho so they are major factors to me liking that game. Tho if i saw a game commercially produced to that degree of gfx and interface id probably not buy it as it kinda goes against my choices of new hardware. i mean i dont expect new adv games to be like crysis or call of duty 4 gfx but i definatly dont want them looking like there from 5-10 years ago.

Hi MaD...

I don't have a problem with cartoonist type graphics.
I am currently playing Jazz & Faust ....I am totally enjoying it.

I agree with L4L as long as the story & puzzles are Kool

But ..I do agree with you that nowadays graphics are so high tech & true to life one might say who wants to go back to the old Lucas Art type games..

Hey Mad,

I also not have problem with graphics, for me the story must be good. I love played some old classics adventures. Right now i am playing again Tex Muprhy Overseer and in the last month i played
again The Last Express

Love Maria

Hi Mad, I think the prize for the worst graphics in games I've played goes to Gabriel Knight 1 closely followed by Monkey Island 1! But both these games have compelling storylines & gameplay which knock the socks off many games produced since.

I love all the high tech graphics we are getting now, the genre deserves them & IMO the standard of many games as far as story & interface goes is very good but it will always be difficult to beat some of the old classics in these respects. I totally agree that they are to be admired.

The graphics wouldn't put me off playing a good older game but I'd love to see many of them re-made with improved graphics (without changing anything else!)

I don't mind the game having 'old' graphics, but I mind it if it has 'ugly' graphics.
Thid could mean bad character design, inconcistent things (like backgrounds and characters not fitting) or deliberate ugly designs. Luckily, this doesn't happen often, and usually games manage to look alright.

Knowing that the very early Monkey Island and Gabriel Knight games have such primitive graphics is what has put me off playing them. I certainly would not buy them now, when gaming graphics have advanced so much with newer releases. Yes, the storylines may be great, but if I buy a game these days I want the graphics to be great too - I don't want to revert back to the days of blocks 'n' splodges.

Hi

SkeeterUK .... Oh, I'm not at all suggesting new games be developed with old graphics. No one of us would want that.
What I'm asking is :
When a really good old game has really old graphics, does it nevertheless still draw you in ??

chrissie said .... "The graphics wouldn't put me off playing a good older game but I'd love to see many of them re-made with improved graphics (without changing anything else!)"

And my reply is .... Ahhhhh .... If only !!

Cheers.

Mad

I don't mind older graphics in old or new games. I had a bit of a bias against clunky graphics until I started playing a lot of underground (indy freeware) games last year. That really changed my mindset about adventure games and that the most important parts (for me) are plot and puzzles -- graphics are always secondary in adventure games. With RPGs and FPSs I totally understand that high-end graphics can make or break a game. I just don't feel that way about adventure games though.

While I appreciate beautiful artwork, I'd rather see a well-written, well-played adventure game with not-so-great graphics versus one with high-end/beautiful graphics and a shoddy storyline and gameplay (I'm looking at you "Paradise"!).

I also said this in another thread regarding the move back to 2D for some upcoming games:

"I welcome the move back to 2D for adventure games as well (or even sticking with 2.5D)! There are so many adventure gamers who don't have computers that can handle 3D and when it comes right down to it, a lot of the bells and whistles of 3D really aren't that necessary IMHO to adventure gameplay and certainly not plot or puzzles."

As for Mad's question, yes, if a good game (old or new) has older graphics, it still definitely draws me in. If there is a follow-up question about would I still buy a new game that has older graphics, the answer is definitely yes. I am a huge fan of the Blackwell series and am eagerly awaiting the third in the series.

I guess if you really liked a old game and wanted to play it again you wouldn't care so much about the graphics you would remember how weak they were. But you would expect more from the new games. When I first start to play a new game and the graphics are beautiful in detail it draws me into the game, I just want to see more. Now if the graphics are not so good on a new game it turns me off almost from the very begaining. Then the story line has to capture me right away to keep my interest. The best games to treasure are when the graphics and story line are good. I tried a few old games and couldn't get into them.

Well i have yet to play gabriel knight 1 as the gfx being old did kinda put me off a bit and the very start was a bit boring. So yeah old gfx can kinda put me off.

Gabrield knight 2 FMV, the long winded intro really put me off i watched it once and couldnt be bothered to play it after lol so i didnt. Tho one day i hope to. I just hope theres a skip intro thing.

One of my first games was Phantasmagoria, and to my 'eye' the graphics quality holds up well to today's standards... and I 'can stand playing similar (12-year-old) oldies.

Hi

I can only say, SkeeterUK, that I'm sure (if you can only manage to "get beyond" the old graphics) you will find Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers to be an incredible adventure game.

It has everything ....
A terrific story, characters you can relate to and plenty of good puzzles to solve

And like so many of the older games it is truly full length

Cheers.

Mad

Maybe the graphics aren't the tops but the Gabriel Knights (all of them) Broken Sword, are great games. Now playing Mummy Tomb of the Pharaoh, and have Frankenstine (Jim Carey)to play. Also about through Byzantine, great story lines. I guess it's the story first, them the graphics. My favorite GK is Sins of the fathers. My favorite BS is Sleeping Dragon. I keep wandering about finding old games to see whch will play on XP.
Have a good day.
Charllotte

I don't have a problem with graphics as old as the VGA version of Monkey Island 1. I even enjoy the visual puns the designer sometimes adds, which wouldn't work with high resolution graphics. I start to have a problem with 16 color graphics. I don't think I could play something that looked like this
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/dj-vu-a-nightmare-comes-true/screenshots

Hi Jenny100

Oh, dear !! A bit vivid to say the least

Without a list of "games by date", I can't say which is the oldest game I've played - but maybe around "Maniac Mansion " time .... 1987 ??

I know many people have played older ones than that .... but I was a late starter

Cheers.

Mad

Ha! I think I could play it. My first adventure game I ever played was the original King's Quest 1 on a green monochrome monitor! Actually that game you linked looks very interesting.

First game I played was the first Space Quest. It isn't the graphics I mind now, its the command parser. I don't enjoy having to type what I want to do.

But could you play it now?


It was remade for PocketPC, and looks much better there
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/games/deja_vu.htm



It wouldn't be so bad if most parsers weren't so stupid.
Remember this?
http://justadventure.com/articles/SeriouslyWhacked/SW_Jan4_2002.shtm

That was great.

I can stand bad graphics much more easily than I can stand some other things which are extremely frequent in modern adventure games.

-Simplistic storylines

-Paper thin characters

-Overused themes (Atlantis, Egypt, murder, curse, enchanted object, etc.)

-Little to no research on the game's subject. After 677 Atlantis games, you'd think the developers would take the time to read a book or two on the latest theories regarding the lost continent. But noooo, the little 'historic' info they include revolves around the same theories that have been discredited since the early 90s. As for the 12,298 games set in Egypt... I'm surprised they don't make the pyramids rectangular.

-Less than 5 inventory items, less than 10 actual adventure puzzles, less than three hotspots per screen.

-Difficulty level suitable for 8 year olds. This seems to follow the trend of modern times. For instance, remember the time when you needed to know everything from the price of rice in Kenya to the population of Tongo in order to have a chance in winning a TV show contest? Now all you have to do is open boxes. Adventure games of today seem to be no different.

-The oh-so-popular "The game is too short let's add 20 slider puzzles and 75 levers that are in no way related to the story"

-Hybridization

-Less and less interaction. At this rate, the adventure games of 2020 will be movies with nothing but a 'Click here to continue' button.

-It seems to me that the sum of {story quality} + {puzzles quality} + {graphics quality} in adventure games is constant. And the graphics get better and better.

OK I'd better stop because I'm babbling.

I don't claim that my games will be flawless, but I'm positive that whether you like them or not, you will be able to say "now there's someone who spent more than 20 minutes to write this story, and actually read it a couple of times before releasing it".

As for the gentleman who wrote that article on text adventure parsers, he obviously didn't play the right games. How about these parser commands:

-MEMORIZE OZMOO
-OPEN TUB THEN LOOK IN IT
-TAKE ALL FROM CUPBOARD
-DROP ALL BUT NOTE AND SWAG BAG
-BET ON GREY RAT WITH NOTE

Hi

"Jenny100 .... Remember this?"
I do !!!! Priceless !!!!

Alkis ....
I agree with so much of what you say and it would be nice if we could all have what we want but then again we do all want something different
And there is probably someone out there RIGHT NOW who would be quite happy to just "click the continue button" as their way of enjoying an adventure

Cheers.

Mad

I have actually played some of those games and the amazing thing is people still get stuck. I love your list!

Ana

One thing that the people who are interested in playing old games might find useful:
If you play a game that was originally designed for a 14'' screen at a resolution of 320x240 in your 22'' wide screen monitor, full screen, it is only natural that it looks awful. The best thing you can do is to use a tool such as DOSBox and play it in Window mode.

Hi all,

I don't mind outdated graphics if the game is older. I recently played Monkey Island for the first time and had a great time despite the graphics (mind you, the graphics in MI2 are worse) because at the end of the day it's the story that counts. I love the Gabriel Knight series and I don't care about the graphics because these games have awesome storylines and puzzles; same goes for Broken Sword.

I do enjoy good artwork, of course; Black Mirror, Syberia, Nostradamus, Secrets of Da Vinci, Keepsake, The Longest Journey - these were games that had me open-mouthed because they were so beautiful to look at and provided a good to excellent storyline. The gorgeous looks aren't worth a dime, though, if the story is boring or I don't care for the main character(s). I enjoyed the looks and style of Runaway, for example, but found the game overall to be not entirely my cup of tea - even though the story was ok. Just didn't care for the characters.

Hi Jehane, and welcome to GameBoomers!

mmm! ... just need to ask - never come across the terminology of 'parser commands'. What do you mean by these?? (I feel very um ... thick at the mo! )

Chrissie, they mean text commands like in the early days of adventure games (both completely text based and graphical).

parser as in "look at tree" typed in and the game would use keywords to look at the tree in the scene. Etc.

Alkis that sounded like a cry from the heart! By hybridisation you mean mixing elements of Adventure games with FPS etc?

On click through games there's already been Sinkha and Hyleyn where all you do is turn the pages.

Would attempting to create style guides for what Adventure games should be help? People have tried in the past to do this, but I don't think they've had much impact apart from felling virtual trees.

For those who do have a bias against lower-end graphics, I urge you to try and overlook that. There are so many older games that rival anything put out in the past few years. Not only that, there are so many truly newer excellent underground (some reviews here) and indy games as well with excellent storylines and puzzles.

Oh yes my friend... A desperate one.



Yes, that's what I meant. I call it degenreration (degeneration + genre, a poor pun but you get the idea).



I don't consider myself important enough to write such a guide. But if I'm not boring you, please hear this notion that's been on my mind for a couple of years:

I (and several of us who like to call ourselves "old adventurers"), had this impression for quite some time: We believed that people who have been playing adventures for a decade or less did not like the 'classics' because they actually preferred minimum interaction, non-existent puzzles and everything else I talked about in my previous post. I began changing my mind after I released the freeware title Other Worlds, ugliest game in the world, which was somehow played by thousands of people who weren't even born when Monkey Island 1 was released.

I asked myself, what proof do we have that modern gamers do not like old style adventures? That they refuse to play the classics? But isn't that natural, considering the outdated graphics? That they buy recent titles? What alternatives do they have, with no 'traditional' point & clikers out there?

So I had this crazy idea, what if I tried to give the people a commercial game that stayed loyal to all the values that made the genre popular 20 years ago? Because believe it or not, adventure games were THE genre in the late 80s - early 90s. What if I gave them an "old style" adventure game in a modern package (at least as modern as my budget allows)? How would they react?

That's what Diamonds in the Rough is: My proposal to the world. A game where every pixel is a hotspot that can be described and interacted with, a game that requires some thought, and provokes some as well. It might feel weird to some, the multiple cursors may seem less convenient than an all-purpose magic arrow that makes the choices for you, and perhaps you'll get stuck more often than usual, but who knows, you people might end up liking the "old ways" after all. Or not. But at least I will have tried.

Hi

"But at least I will have tried."

And all credit to you for doing so, Alkis !!

Cheers.

Mad

Thank you misa & Skeeter - I've never played any text based games so not so familiar with the term!

alkis, after reading the description in your last post I am so looking forward to Diamonds in the Rough! - I know it's a game I am going to enjoy!

You don't bore me Alkis. I'm very glad you and others are trying. The rise of casual games says to me there is still room for games with puzzles and story.

I do wonder if the range of Adventure gamers, from those who major on the puzzles and feel the story gets in the way, to those who play games for the story and the puzzles are how you turn the pages, from those who like 3D 360 free movement to those happy with 3rd person pre-rendered, causes difficulties for game makers.

To the original topic starter, and everybody really. Not an aggressive post, but just got out this way...:

graphics, music, voice acting, animation, cinematics, all are tools to the developers. Primitive years you couldn't really have huge story or anything like that, due to RAM limitations. PC MAN is... pretty much tiny! Tetris as well! Rogue even worst!

And still, people are playing rogue, even the original, for years now, with no intention of stoping. Even if it's in ASCII! And you are talking about coloured VGA graphics and midi music??!?!?

I understand completely where you're coming for and I agree in todays Bioshock, or Hellgate, MI graphics are lame. Then again, in my case, nostalgia works it's way up, and I still enjoy monophonic tunes from various games, or 2 coloured games, even more great games like MI, or KQ series (the early ones), or anything like that.

Now, it does take a bit of education to what was possible 20-25 years ago, in order for the younger generation to understand why these games look so 'bad'! Otherwise there's little chance of persuading the Wii generation that the keyboard can also be used for playing!

Still, while this is the norm today, I can't see why great graphics, must mean bad story, or gameplay... There must be games of any era which had it all, no?

I agree wholeheartily with Alkis, in all honesty with one exception. While Ditr had budget issues, if the next game doesn't, I would mind seeing 3-d graphics. Of course I don't mind Ditr as it stands today! For the record I did work for Alkis and made all music for Ditr!

_____________________

You know what, though?

In todays time, we get a "relatively new" genre of games, which lack pretty much all comodities as found in AAA games! Flash games! Graphics? Quite ammateurish at best. Audio? Close to 0. No loading time! Voice acting? you're kidding?

And yet, these games, make it, and pretty good as far as I know!

So... Can't see anything wrong really!

What Alkis said. For a Greek, your English is excellent. Better graphics is better, better sound is better. But no enhancements in these areas will EVER make up for the story. I think Jane Jensen said it first. My most cherished games are the Oldie Goldies. I like the Oldie Goldlie movies on late night TV the best too. I record them on my VCR\DVD unit to watch at a more convienient time. A Great story in black and white will trump super color trash any day. I've been in the game blahs lately. I think a visit to The Secret of Monkey Island might fix that, though I recently bought a few new games that might inspire me.

Albert