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!
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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!