Vintage gaming community.
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Holy crap that's Bad Street Brawler. I have this game still. It's straight up the worst game I've ever played.
I've just played the first level on a Spectrum emulator.
I have no real wish to play the second.
The name really does say it, it's a bad street brawler.
To think all you had to do was wait 2 more years for River City Ransom to come out. If only precognition was real.
Uh...bad street brawler was amazing
I decided to play Crystal Warriors recently because of the awesome cover art. DUDE I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED. That game rules!
I'm reading this game's wikipedia page and it sounds very fun. What a shame it's stuck on the game gear and the now nonexistant 3ds eshop. I hope Sega does another re-release. Not that it matters to me 🏴☠️.
As someone who lived through that era, let me tell you, the gameplay graphics were never a disappointment. In your mind they looked as good as graphics today. The only thing I can remember being disappointed about was the Nintendo Powerglove. Man, what a collosal, non-working, over hyped advertising lies, piece of shit that thing was!
Box art back then was more akin to book cover art: an artist’s interpretation of the content. It never disappointed me. I even miss it sometimes. I used to collect images of box art even without the games, because it really was art.
When I give a digital game as present I go to the shop to print out the cover art on photo paper and then put it in a card. It gives them something they can immediately look at, handle, and discuss.
Here are a few I've used recently, they are more literal than the cartridge era but they are still artworks in their own right:
Nah there were definitely games that had disappointing graphics relative to what I was expecting lol
Although it's true, we generally were more forgiving about graphics back then than we are these days.
Mario 3 was the most mind blowing leap in graphics I think I've ever experienced.
ahem....
That's the masterpiece that helped kick off the new age of gaming!
My games were all pirated. Covers had a handwritten list of all games on the cassette (and later CD). The first legit game I've ever seen was Mortal Kombat Trilogy and I remember being taken aback by the waste of using a full CD for a single game (iirc the game used just 30 MB of space on that CD).
10s of MB software with the rest of the disc as CD audio was standard for the time.
Even with those constraints PS had noticeable mid-battle lag as it loaded in animationss.
I remember renting Phalanx just because of the box. like "why's this old man playing the banjo?" then you look at the back and it's a friggin space shooter. I had to rent it.
The agency that created the box art created it for the exact reason you picked it up.
"you can't take the sky from me"
TIL Firefly is part of the Phalanxverse.
It's the same with lots of indie games now. Oh, and mobile ones too
Back in the day, deep down you knew what you were really getting. I'm a little annoyed these days when indie games use marketing visuals that look like they could be in-game for a modern title and then it's all pixel art style. I get that you don't make a pixel art poster, but in that case, go all-in on an art cover don't let it be mistaken for game graphics.
The first game that always comes to my mind in that regard is Super Time Force Ultra. It kept showing on my steam page for weeks on end years ago, with a cartoony-looking cover and "minimalistic pixel" style for actual gameplay
The "actual game" looks like a Altered Beast that takes place in a US park.
I was always so disappointed in the 90s to see 'realistic' looking graphics and then you play the game and realize it was just a point and click game
Everyone always praised Myst for its great graphics. I always thought it was cheating because it was pre-rendered.
Even being prerendered, it was an intensely impressive game for 1993.
And it's not like they didn't have plenty of problems to solve.
Here's an interesting interview with founder Rand Miller about developing Myst and how they were barely able to make it work due to the limitations of CD drives.
LOL, that quicktime butterfly animation on the main island was hot shit back then.
Lots of the best games were prerendered! Donkey Kong Country, Fallout, Jagged Alliance 2, Duke 3D, the Pro Pinball games, just to name a few.
I do have a soft spot for prerendered graphics.
I 💯 went through this disappointment. I used to also love looking at a game's concept art because they always looked so much cooler and atmospheric than the game. I remember the inflection point clearly. I was playing Mass Effect 3 and walking around the citadel wards/docks, with it's beautifully detailed textures, evocative colours, and painterly lightshafts, feeling absolutely enthralled, and thinking "Holy shit, they've finally done it, the gameplay looks better than the box/concept art."
I'm so glad I finally got around to playing the ME series. Such a memorable trilogy of games