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Let's discuss: 8-bit Era Games

The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!

Based on a recommendation I received, we’ll change things up by actually not discussing a game or series like in earlier posts…

Let’s discuss the 8-bit era of gaming. What is your favorite game of this generation? What aspects do you like about it? What doesn’t work for you? Feel free to share any thoughts that come up, or react to other peoples comments. Let’s get the conversation going!

If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).

Previous entries: Animal Crossing, Age of Empires, Super Mario, Deus Ex, Stardew Valley, The Sims, Half-Life, Earthbound / Mother, Mass Effect, Metroid, Journey, Resident Evil, Polybius, Tetris, Telltale Games, Kirby, LEGO Games, DOOM, Ori, Metal Gear, Slay the Spire

cavemeat ,

Og castlevania is awesome, I gave it a try in an emulator after playing Bloodstained:Curse of the Moon (made by the original developer, and very reminiscent of castlevania)

luciole ,
@luciole@beehaw.org avatar

The NES was epic for its time, but nowadays those controllers make my hands cramp after minutes. Thank God for the modern big curvy controllers.

Some classics of that time might be of interest to the contemporary gamer, although I think you need to have some kind of historical curiosity for it to be worthwhile. The tools of the times were rudimentary to an extent that hurt what the devs could do even more than the capacity of the consoles imho. I mean, they were flipping bits in assemblers.

The audio though. 8-bit music is fucking stellar. The energy contained, the catchiness, it’s amazing.

As for recommendations: The Guardian Legend is my pick. Cool scifi action-adventure/ shmup hybrid.

FlashMobOfOne ,
@FlashMobOfOne@beehaw.org avatar

I still play the original Castlevania games at least once a year.

I think they’re masterpieces, but there are so many incredible classics. I even recently found a site online where you can play the Commodore 64 Nightmare on Elm St.

Glorious.

Bitrot , (edited )
@Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

The game Overlord on the NES had the best intro music of the generation, IMO. It was a port of Supremacy from Amiga and other PCs. The Commodore 64 version had really great intro music too! (I love SID music and warez chip tunes) The Commodore intro melody was later used in a Machinae Supremacy song.

I really enjoyed the game StarTropics too. It had real world tie in stuff with physical media (anti-piracy, but it was neat), and I enjoyed the music and story. The second StarTropics had graphics that blew my mind, everything just looked so smooth.

chloyster , (edited )

I kind of feel a lot of 8 bit era games haven’t aged the best. But there are a few that I love. Of course smb3 is really outstanding. That game is timeless and really showed how well Nintendo can make games. While I may personally prefer smw, smb3 was in my eyes the first to perfect the side scrolling platformer.

Mother is another game from the era I enjoy a lot. It hasnt aged as well as smb3, but it’s still a fun game to look back on. I feel the game was a bit ahead of it’s time, and with a few gameplay changes I think it would still be worth playing for any jrpg fan today

luciole ,
@luciole@beehaw.org avatar

The only flaw of SMB3 to me would be that this game needed save games reeaal bad.

chloyster ,

Lol that’s fair! Been a while since I played it without save states

theangriestbird ,

I’ve been watching Jeff Gerstmann work through and rank the NES library over the past year, and I agree with your sentiment. It seems like there are only like 10-20 NES games that actually hold up, and the rest of the library is either “good for the era” or absolute garbage.

Phen ,

My favorite 8 bit game was The Little Samson. So few people know about it but it was an incredible game for that time.

littlecolt ,

It came out in 1992, at the end of the NES lifecycle. The SNES was already out and many people were only interested in games on that platform. This is why end of life games like Little Samson did not sell as well as they should have, and consequently, only had one small production run. That, in turn, is why these games are among the most expensive and sought after by collectors. There are just way less of them out there! I would love to have a Little Samson cartridge, but I don’t have $3000 to spend on a Nintendo game lol

knokelmaat OP ,

Also, I made the picture for this post myself from the different Wikipedia entries using GIMP. It was quite a headache 😅.

knokelmaat OP ,

I personally have almost zero experience with this generation, though I realize it’s historic value. So many great game franchise originated here: Super Mario, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Zelda, Metal Gear, Mega Man, Mother…

I’ll give a shout-out to Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, which I got to know by watching a YouTube video on the world record history for this game. I then played some of it myself on my Switch and was actually quite impressed with the almost puzzle like gameplay!

I also played Super Mario Bros. While I respect it for being the first, I thought it was quite ridiculous at times (the way to progress in the final world was so stupid).

Still have to sink my teeth in the others!

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