One Change That Would Make A Retro Game Perfect

[WerewolfJones]

Recently I’ve started on a little project. I have Nintendo Switch Online and a ton of retro game collections, so I’m going through my backlogs of games on them. Some of them are games I’ve played before, others I haven’t. But I want to give them all a shake because I’m finding more and more how deeply I prefer retro to modern gaming.

Right now I’ve dived back in to the Cadtlevania Anniversary Collection, and I’m playing through the first Castlevamk for the first time in forever. Castlevania has aged like fine wine: great music and graphic for its atmosphere, tough ass difficulty including some truly brutal enemy placement. It’s a near perfect platformer for me. But there’s one thing that really gets me.

I really hate the whip upgrade. It seems superfluous to me, and having to hope you get whip upgrades after you die is obnoxious. I get the basic idea of it, but unlike, say, it really feeling like an integral mechanic like Arthur and his diminishing armor in Ghosts an’ Goblins, it kind of just feels like a cheap way to weaken your primary tool and pad game time by how much of a penalty death is. If your whip was just static, the game would still be difficulty, but at least more fair.

anyone else got any examples of this, where there’s just one little thing that turns a 10/10 to an 8 or 9?

 

[Pinballbuzzbro]

Making it so that when you die in Rendering Ranger R2, your weapon upgrade level doesn't reset back to zero. Either that or increasing the power of your base gun by 5x.

Legit took that game from being an 8/10 to a 5/10 for me, hate to sound cliche but genuinely wtf were they thinking with how slow and pitiful your stock peashooter is. Even something as simple as a DOOR takes almost 10 whole seconds to simply SHOOT DOWN with the thing, so you can imagine how nightmarish fighting basic enemies and obstacles is.

 

[Ogmios]

It would seem that in the effort to make games back then more "whole" they made them difficult for the purpose of allowing you to gain pattern recognition, timing, and spatial awareness, and it was a commemorable practice but did some of them really have to make it  one hit? Sure, is that an example of an 8/10 to 5/10? Probably not in the general sense, that would be skill issue territory on my part, but the examples I'm thinking of are Contra or Sunset Riders. The latter I was actually playing earlier. Games like that are bullet hells. They're designed in a meticulous way where dodging is essential, but in my opinion the one hit kill makes what again I find to be a commemorable practice into needless padding.

 

[Burzuru]

maybe not "perfect" but playing Jak 2 would be much more tolerable if half of the npcs roaming around haven city where just removed.
kingdom hearts 358/2 days would have been amazing if the combat was much smoother and less of a slog.
king's field but i could play it with m+kb or at least the analog sticks

 

[RockinACup]

All the classic lego games on ps2 should've had character creation from the beginning with the first lego star wars.

maybe not "perfect" but playing Jak 2 would be much more tolerable if half of the npcs roaming around haven city where just removed.

Holy crap could not agree more. The fact that your hover bike also takes damage from their impact too is also bs. Like GTA 3 npcs were pretty dumb (mostly construction workers telling you their from the YMCA for some reason) but they wouldn't run out in front of you or just be acting unaware of things (sometimes).

Speaking of GTA 3, I know they got rid of general flying in that game due to 9/11 but they should have still added it in when they "remastered" it. Gliding in that dodo is a total pain.

 

[LaserMoose]

Keeping the Sonic Adventure titles (both 1 and 2) more focused on the speed stages would've greatly improved my overall opinion of the two games.

I don't dislike everything about the other gameplay styles, and I understand that SA1 was used more as a tech demo for what the Dreamcast was capable of. That said, the Sonic levels are much more enjoyable for me than the others, and would've loved to see more of those levels over some of the other character campaigns in SA1 or the treasure hunting levels found in both games.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Not Gameplay, But Lorewise

Spoiler: Mostly Zero 1, but of the entire Zero saga in retrospective

Had Megaman Zero Kept uss believing that Copy X was the real deal until his return in Zero 3 would be a better compromise to the axing of the "X became evil due to tiredness of the Maveric Wars", instead, Ciel just randomly spawns in the door to the final mission and drops the fact the Neo Arcadia tyrant is a copy of her making like

"Hey Zero that guy is a bootleg of your friend i made to try to keep humans and Mavericks from killing each other but he ended as a tyrant...whoopsy"

 

[E0N]

I mostly play retro JRPGs and 2 things will make them perfect for me: 1. Getting rid of random encounters 2. Being able to save anywhere.

 

[MrCounts]

I'm a Zelda II defender but I really don't like playing vanilla a whole lot. IMO the biggest singular improvement Redux and the fan remake made was making the lives permanent upgrades.

The game's structure of starting at the same place at the start of the game every time you game over and letting you gradually unlock new routes and items to let you get through the world quicker is very cool and well built but is betrayed by its life system. Getting lives in the vanilla game is not only underwhelming but arguably feels detrimental because they don't respawn between game overs, meaning you won't get to collect it again later.

Actually having the lives respawn would probably be good enough but turning them into permanent upgrades really lends itself to the near rogeulike nature of the game and makes it feel a lot less tedious. For me, this takes the game from fine to great!

 

[aquova]

That said, the Sonic levels are much more enjoyable for me than the others, and would've loved to see more of those levels over some of the other character campaigns in SA1 or the treasure hunting levels found in both games.

I'm a diehard lover of the treasure hunting levels actually. I think they're really fun for the exploration element, and they're my favorite in 2P mode.

Actually, I'd want to change SA2 as well. I hate how everything was bound to the B button -- using abilities, light speed dash, somersaulting, the bounce -- they really should have put things onto other buttons.

 

[solidbatman]

Better platforming for Threads of Fate on the PS1. Its such a charming game with a fun story and solid gameplay, but the platforming mixed with the boss battles is a big oof. Simply making the levels easier to traverse (prolly by making the game a ps2 release with its better 3d rendering) would help. PS1 3d platformers could be so messy.

 

[LaserMoose]

I'm a diehard lover of the treasure hunting levels actually. I think they're really fun for the exploration element, and they're my favorite in 2P mode.

Actually, I'd want to change SA2 as well. I hate how everything was bound to the B button -- using abilities, light speed dash, somersaulting, the bounce -- they really should have put things onto other buttons.

I think on my end I associate the treasure hunting/shooting stages as replacements for Knuckles' and Tails' more traditional gameplay from S3&K, which I really loved. I don't mean to take away from your enjoyment of the different gameplay styles - it's not my intention, at least.

I don't hate the treasure hunting, racing or shooting levels, but I wanted to see Knuckles and Tails levels as true alternatives to the speed stages, like how they were in the Genesis games before.

Oddly enough, I think the closest we've had to a proper 3D interpretation of Knuckles' or Tails' gameplay without any extra strings attached was found in '06, disregarding the whole dummy ring bomb thing that Tails was given in that title. Of course, that game has an entirely different set of issues unrelated to the topic that I'll refrain from mentioning.

I definitely agree with you in regards to the way moves were handled, though. More buttons definitely would've helped remedy some misinputs from occurring.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

disregarding the whole dummy ring bomb thing that Tails was given in that title.

I think it's based off the rings from Heroes when the Fly character is alone.

 

[YULEcannon]

SNES F-Zero should have gotten a special edition that included 2 player split screen.

Capcom should have have remade Final Fight on the Final Fight 3 engine, so they could have all 3 playable characters in the game on SNES.

The Mutant League games should have a CPU vs CPU option because I thought all sports games did that type of thing till I went back to play Mutant League Hockey recently and saw it wasn't possible.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

SNES F-Zero should have gotten a special edition that included 2 player split screen.

SNES Starfox with at least stable 30 FPS.

 

[Another Iori]

'The King of Fighters '95' has the best backgrounds in fighting game history; Kyo effectively becomes the protagonist and the Orochi and Iori Yagami storyline is introduced for the first time (along with his memorable saxophone-based theme), however, it has a major flaw: the damage is completely unbalanced and the antagonist Rugal likely reads the player's inputs, which often ruins the fun.

I have no idea if a hack was ever released to fix all this, but SNK never did anything about it, furthermore, it would have been great if at least the home versions of 'KOF '98' had included all the backgrounds released up to that point, or an option to relive each chapter's story (In a way later, the anthologies did solve this problem, but no special edition of this specific game has ever included the features I mentioned all in a single title).

 

[snes9x]

The ability to change camo on the fly in Metal Gear Solid 3 is the biggest one I can think of.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Time trials not being mandatory in Crash 3 for the 100%, instead being mere post-game fun