How much of an old game's flaws are you willing to excuse?

[95tan - TheBestOS -]

When I'm playing an old game, I find myself repeating the phrase "ah, it's an old game. It'll have some kinks," from time to time. A glitchy texture, an annoying section, an unclear objection. One or two and you can shrug it off.
Whether you can excuse it for being old is person-to-person. But even for those of you who CAN, there does have to be a limit.

What's yours?

 

[Guinea]

Even new games have some kinks and unclear objectives but I get ya. If Google is required more than a few times to figure out where to go or what to do because details are too obscure then I'll probably just move on to the next one.

 

[Felipe]

I can go with any old game as long as the bugs, difficulty and gameplay arent much of a problem. I stopped playing Fallout 1 due to the bugs and the official patch not fixing the most serious ones till i found the unofficial patch and i played it again till the end.

 

[Zerpina]

It's like Castlevania 2 on the NES...

It was plagued with bugs, the awful load times between day and night, you know the "What a horrible night to have a curse" and such. And the problem that plagues most 2D Castlevanias to this day the being sucked toward a pit if hit... of course, a bad translation like Simon's Quest had didn't help.

I kind of overlook stuff like the hitback thing, as that's just part of it. But the janky day-night thing was awful. If the game is fully riddled with bullshit like that, I can't deal with it, honestly.

Again, the pit thing I can deal with, just how it was designed to be hard as nails.
Mind you, fans have fixed most of the bugs with that game. As they are on a lot of older titles.

A better question is... if they remove all the jank, are they still the same games?

 

[PSVitaForever]

I'm not sure if you mean "old-game-like-flaws" in new games, or "old-games-flaws" in old games that we're not used anymore to because of QoL improvements.

In "Shadow Hearts" (played it on emu some month ago), I was glad about playing it with a guide because I'm spoiled by minimaps on the corner of the screen (or a map I can always bring up). I was also glad for savestates because in later battles I screwed quite a lot with the ring.

I'm not used anymore to random battles: I think "Bravely Default" (the first title on 3ds) did it great, you can put them off to explore and then on again when you need to grind. A modern game should follow that example if they want to put random battle in it and for some reason they don't want enemies onscreen.

Also: I like saving whenever I want. Sometimes you need to do something else and if you have to turn down your console and you're far from a savepoint AND you've been grinding for a bit or won a difficult battle... it's sad.

 

[Advil Lavs]

I guess it's a case by case basis. If it's something small I have to do a lot of times, it would get annoying but if the rest of the game is great, I'll excuse it. If it's a difficulty spike, if I can't overcome it in that or the next play session, I might just drop the game.

 

[bjork]

I'm curious what constitutes an 'old game.' I'm basically as old as the 2600 so I've seen and endured a lot. The only unforgivables to me are if a game crashes a lot, or if it's impossible to finish in its released form. Something like DOS TMNT with the jump you can't make, or Jet Set Willy having to be reissued due to a bug with arrows in one room. But other than that, I can take a lot.
The main things I have low patience for are damage sponge enemies in any kind of game, or poor map designs/item placements in metroidvanias. But those are both newer era design choices.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Am I having fun? If so I’ll excuse all of its flaws.

 

[TheMinuMaster]

The first two hours of any N64 game always have me thinking, ‘this cursed old camera…’ But the funny thing is, by the end I’m always like, ‘what a masterpiece, not a single flaw.’

 

[.xxxevious]

Am I having fun? If so I’ll excuse all of its flaws.

Same, it's all about how much fun I'm having so it's really case by case. If anything, I almost find it more charming when an older game has some minor flaws, even lag when there's a big explosion or something.

When we were kids lag was a sign that the game was getting so crazy our consoles could barely handle it! Now I feel it points more towards poor optimization? If that makes sense.

I usually pull up guides for unclear objectives, but if I'm having too much trouble even with that I just drop it. I need to be having more fun than I am frustrated with my incompetence

 

[Dr.Kisaragi Dr.Kisaragi]

Well I grew up on old games never played modern games (PS4 and above) I have a high torelance.

 

[χKai]

Game can be straight-up bad and as long as it's NES or Famicom, I'll probably like it anyway.

It's when gaming and techbology have come to a point where issues haven't been a problem in most games for a long time, and a developer decides to make one with all the easily fixable problems of that era, that I truly become offended.

One example is Super Chinese World, these games would have been great if they didn't lag atrociously. In an age where most lag problems in games were a thing of the past, it's sad they took such potential and flushed it down with the rest of the poop.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Almost anything as long as it's not cryptic BS designed to make you stuck forever... Never had any tolerance for that.