Este post iba a medias en español, pero me emocionó tanto el regreso de los foros de Insert Credit que lo reescribí todo en inglés para compartirlo ahí. Me pondré a trabajar para traducirlo, limpiarlo y alimentarlo con puntos interesantes que salgan de la discusión que le siguió, pero por lo pronto aquí está el texto en bruto, con enlaces relevantes. Desde luego, se aceptan comentarios a favor o en contra en este espacio. No es necesario que estén escritos en inglés, obviamente.A certain trait found on classic game reviews has been bothering me for a time now. I've seen it in some Action Button reviews, rampant in lots of game forums (mostly by young posters) and just yesterday while looking for information in Wikipedia about the Saturn version of Resident Evil. There I found a choice paragraph that led me to question a few things about how we treat vintage games. Here it is:
The gameplay environment consists of polygonal 3D characters placed over prerendered 2D backgrounds. As such, the game relies on pre-determined camera angles as opposed to a real-time camera. As a result, the game uses a "tank-like" control scheme. Instead of the player moving the character in the direction pushed on the control stick, the character instead moves forwards by pressing up, backwards by pressing down and will turn on the spot by pushing left or right directional buttons. Many of the series' detractors have criticized this control scheme, claiming that it is confusing and unsuitable for a third-person game.
Technically, it's accurate, but reading it I'd squirm in my seat and think, "well, yeah... nowadays!" Innocent as its writing might had been, it smacks of revisionism, or at least of a skewed historical standing: the writer assumes that the game was always controlled with an analog stick (it wasn't); it uses the "tank-like" description that, while accurate, has always carried a negative connotation, mostly by contrast with "normal" 3D control; and ends again with a true fact, the blasting of the series for its awkward control scheme by detractors, but without mentioning that that's only in light of more advanced and recent control configurations, and that, at the time of its release, it was a novel and clever way of dealing with simulated 3D spaces.
Now, before somebody thinks I'm criticizing Wikipedia, let me repeat that this is just but one example. Recently I came across a thread called "What did people ever see in Ridge Racer 1?" and, no offense to the original poster, my first impulse was to post "You weren't there!". I remember poring over Super Play magazine and drool at the importers ads, astounded by the fact that you could play something like that AT HOME. I mean, it looks trite and primitive today, but absolutely rocked our faces back then: what looks like a bunch of triangles now was almost life-like in comparison to the best games at the time.
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This is where conflict enters: I was born in 1979. All my life I've been in the most privileged position, growing up hand in hand with videogames. I've witnessed their achievements and missteps in real time, as they happened. Except maybe for Pong and Space War, I've been there when all games were new. I remember the initial impact, the way they paved the way for what we play today.
Now, when some teenager, who might have the brightest opinion of today's games, grabs an ISO of Tomb Raider or Resident Evil and shits all over them for being slow, ugly and primitive, or worse, calls well established SNES classics "overrated" in an effort to demystify them, I get angry... but I also feel it's unreasonable of me to expect them to get the whole picture. To see them for the monumental achievements they were in their time. To approach them like I did, as a blank slate, enjoying an awkward camera for the first time or playing a SNES platformer without comparing it to Symphony of the Night.
After all, shouldn't games be judged in the same way of movies, based on their own merits, detached of their original environment? I strongly believe that in 2007 it's correct to say "Final Fantasy IV is a great game" instead of "Final Fantasy IV was a great game". Games stick around, and twenty years from now people will still be discovering them via emulation, warts and all, and will be submitted to the harsh judgment of people who would have seen better. Gears of War or Shadow of the Colossus won't be new or original to them: they will be merely primitive forefathers.
Now, the more I think about it, the more I find a difference between games and most established mediums of communication: the medium of videogames is in the most unusual position of having the content dictated by the available technology at a given time. Film, for example, has remained the same pretty much since the introduction of color, and even before that it had developed a basic, solid vocabulary that allows us to enjoy a thirties film just as well as a modern one. Not so with videogames: to make a parallel, had film been in the same situation, at first we would have nothing but cartoons for a while, and then suddenly real life actors-- but just two at a time, crowds would've been impossible to film. See what I'm getting at?
(Actually film was in such a position in its early stages: watch an early Mickey Mouse cartoon and you would find no plot at all, just gags, as they hadn't developed storytelling, at least not for just one reel. Film got its act together fairly quickly, though, and reached an even plateau where skill and techniques developed.)
For the longest time I'd fear that my "call" to see the games in their original context was a way to validate my own nostalgia-clouded judgment. So I never said anything, really, thinking it was just a quirk of mine. The one thing that kept bugging me, though, is this: what about the new games, and the way we judge them? Is the shock and delight that we feel confronted with an original and revolutionary idea something that is to be discarded and not taken into account when five years from now that idea looks so basic, confusing, even awkward by future standards?
It's not really about nostalgia. It's about the nature of the medium, always evolving, always learning. In an ideal world, people would be educated if they are to approach classic games--not to force themselves to like them, but to curve their expectations to a realistic level. I can't even begin to describe the frustration I feel when a reviewer sums up his or her experience with an "I don't see what the fuss is about". Perspective would help you put aside all the refinements the genre has seen to this day and appreciate the bold steps the game took to get it there.
But maybe that's impossible. How do you trick yourself into believing something is new, specially when you know firsthand better and prettier versions of it? I don't know. As I said, I'm in a unique position, but as a lot of you grow older you might begin to feel the same, only instead of crude and primitive SNES and PS games being attacked now it will be crude and primitive PS2 and Xbox 360 games then.
So, my advice to anyone who tries to tackle a game released before his or her time, would be to not try to be a smartass and declare "well this isn't fun now and people who thought they had fun back then were just deluded and didn't know any better", because you'll be just making an ass of yourself. Saying that condemns all of gaming, past and present, as even our beloved classics of now would be easy prey to the more jaded and young down the line. Don't be so quick to try and knock over institutions: there's a difference between reverence and respect.
My question to you would be: what do you think of this approach, of contextual appreciation? Does the unique nature of gaming as a medium should somewhat excuse it of the rule "if it was good then, it is good now?" Or are the surpassed games forever doomed to be forgotten and ridiculed?
Pedro Arizpe, 09/12/07
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