Shovel Knight: Breaking the NES

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

One of you guys has to explain to me why making a game with a retro look is a bad idea.

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You're pointlessly fucking up your game to appeal to nostalgia. To me that's just beyond sad.
If you're gonna take the limitations seriously (like megaman 9 did), fine, you're basically continuing something that already existed. If you're making something truly new limitations breed creativity too.
If you're making a new game on a series and you're reusing the style, fine too (like SOR Remake).

But making your game look old (but not quite, just kind of, there isn't actually any limiting going on), just to appeal to some crappy hispter retro fad, is a total waste.

This game seems awesome and would have been way more so if it stopped pretending to be what it's not.

I can't rep anyone...

But I completely agree. This Shovel Knight game personifies what is wrong with video games today. Old games are now some sort of horrible cultural icon that non-gamers are just eating up. It rises prices on old stuff, encourages hipster garbage like Shovel Knight and actually makes people forget why old NES/SNES games were fun in the first place. This hipster phenomenon also encourages Nintendo revisionist history, where non-Nintendo consoles were worthless and had no good games. A perfect example is the Genesis, you can buy an awesome Model 1 for a fraction of the cost a pee yellow SNES costs. There are tons of SNES games worth over $100 now, LOOSE. Genesis? Maybe a small handful.

dead @ almost every single post in this thread tbh.

just enjoy the fucking games guys, jesus.

I dunno. I grew up with the NES (and SMS and MD) and it is sufficient to hear the sound and see the graphics of any random shitty NES game to put a smile on my face. (If the game isn't quite as shitty then that certainly is a bonus.)

Personally I wouldn't complain if 100% of all games released today were new NES, SMS and MD games and nothing else. Of course I am aware that this thought doesn't appeal to everyone but I would be perfectly happy with that.

As far as I can tell only a handful of such games are released in like half a decade (unless I am missing something here) so I do not know what you guys are complaining about.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

One of you guys has to explain to me why making a game with a retro look is a bad idea.

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I don't mind the retro look, I'm just bothered by them marketing every damn retro game with "It's just liek teh NES!"
use the word RETRO you morons, all this because they're catering to a crowd of hipsters who weren't even born when the NES was out.

Just say "we're going for an 8-bit retro look" but no, gotta throw some NES in there. (followed by how they're completely deviating from it)

And its not that I hate the NES, I would have have been raging as well if they were throwing SMS around like that.

I wouldn't even care about this game if not for the article.

"Breaking the NES". It's insulting on so many levels, pretty much everything that's wrong with this freaking fad condensed into a single article.

Neo said it pretty well.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

You're pointlessly fucking up your game to appeal to nostalgia. To me that's just beyond sad.
If you're gonna take the limitations seriously (like megaman 9 did), fine, you're basically continuing something that already existed. If you're making something truly new limitations breed creativity too.
If you're making a new game on a series and you're reusing the style, fine too (like SOR Remake).

But making your game look old (but not quite, just kind of, there isn't actually any limiting going on), just to appeal to some crappy hispter retro fad, is a total waste.

This game seems awesome and would have been way more so if it stopped pretending to be what it's not.

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So, if they had developed their game so that it actually ran on an NES, they wouldn't be appealing to nostalgia? That's silly. Any developer that develops for a retro system is appealing to nostalgia, especially Megaman 9 and SoR Remake. There is absolutely no reason to develop for those systems except for nostalgia (aside from some programming challenge, which is a very good reason, but not likely to apply to most situations).

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Originally Posted by Guntz

I can't rep anyone...

But I completely agree. This Shovel Knight game personifies what is wrong with video games today. Old games are now some sort of horrible cultural icon that non-gamers are just eating up. It rises prices on old stuff, encourages hipster garbage like Shovel Knight and actually makes people forget why old NES/SNES games were fun in the first place. This hipster phenomenon also encourages Nintendo revisionist history, where non-Nintendo consoles were worthless and had no good games. A perfect example is the Genesis, you can buy an awesome Model 1 for a fraction of the cost a pee yellow SNES costs. There are tons of SNES games worth over $100 now, LOOSE. Genesis? Maybe a small handful.

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Judging from the feedback on pretty much every hardcore gamer site out there, "non-gamers" are not the ones eating Shovel Knight up. If you've ever enjoyed an 8-bit game before, you should really try Shovel Knight. You don't have to be embarrassed if you enjoy it.

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Originally Posted by NeoVamp

I don't mind the retro look, I'm just bothered by them marketing every damn retro game with "It's just liek teh NES!"
use the word RETRO you morons, all this because they're catering to a crowd of hipsters who weren't even born when the NES was out.

Just say "we're going for an 8-bit retro look" but no, gotta throw some NES in there. (followed by how they're completely deviating from it)

And its not that I hate the NES, I would have have been raging as well if they were throwing SMS around like that.

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You should actually look at their Kickstarter page and website. They almost NEVER mention the word NES. Don't base too many assumptions off of the OP article. The tagline to the game is "A groundbreaking love letter to 8 bits!". The very first sentence of their Kickstarter pitch: "Shovel Knight is a sweeping classic action adventure game with awesome gameplay, memorable characters, and an 8-bit retro aesthetic."

By the way, you all throw the word "hipster" around just as bad as developers throw around terms like "It's just like the NES!" O V E R U S E D.

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Originally Posted by JumpingRyle

So, if they had developed their game so that it actually ran on an NES, they wouldn't be appealing to nostalgia? That's silly. Any developer that develops for a retro system is appealing to nostalgia, especially Megaman 9 and SoR Remake. There is absolutely no reason to develop for those systems except for nostalgia (aside from some programming challenge, which is a very good reason, but not likely to apply to most situations).

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If they really did program Shovel Knight for NES, then at least their claims of NES quality graphics would be accurate. It way overshoots NES standards, it's already in SMS territory.

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Originally Posted by Gogogadget

dead @ almost every single post in this thread tbh.

just enjoy the fucking games guys, jesus.

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Impossible! It looks like an NES game.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

If they really did program Shovel Knight for NES, then at least their claims of NES quality graphics would be accurate. It way overshoots NES standards, it's already in SMS territory.

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Well, they don't ever say that their graphics are NES quality, do they? They say they are going for a retro aesthetic, and the OP article talks about why their graphics AREN'T NES quality.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

I can't rep anyone...

But I completely agree. This Shovel Knight game personifies what is wrong with video games today. Old games are now some sort of horrible cultural icon that non-gamers are just eating up. It rises prices on old stuff, encourages hipster garbage like Shovel Knight and actually makes people forget why old NES/SNES games were fun in the first place. This hipster phenomenon also encourages Nintendo revisionist history, where non-Nintendo consoles were worthless and had no good games. A perfect example is the Genesis, you can buy an awesome Model 1 for a fraction of the cost a pee yellow SNES costs. There are tons of SNES games worth over $100 now, LOOSE. Genesis? Maybe a small handful.

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You're sitting here complaining about "non-gamers" barging into your hobby and ruining it and you're calling THEM the hipsters?

Frankly I'm pretty pleased that Genesis prices have stayed down for the most part though that's starting to change.

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Originally Posted by JumpingRyle

By the way, you all throw the word "hipster" around just as bad as developers throw around terms like "It's just like the NES!" O V E R U S E D.

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Barely a post in this thread even uses the term Hipster correctly.

It's just amusing, since the developers themselves on their Kickstarter page didn't even use the term NES once, this is just developers in their late 20s or 30s, a bit like the bedroom coders of the home computer scene developing a game that reminds them slightly of games they played when they we're kids, no different at all to a filmmaker making a black & white movie despite colour film (or just shooting entirely in digital), or a band deciding to make blues rock.

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Originally Posted by JumpingRyle

Well, they don't ever say that their graphics are NES quality, do they? They say they are going for a retro aesthetic, and the OP article talks about why their graphics AREN'T NES quality.

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The article speaks about how they had the NES aesthetic in mind at all times, and how the game could potentially have been made to run in one with extra chips (except for the parts where they completely said fuck it and just ignored limitations entirely).
They also made a "true" NES soundtrack + VRC6, again, appealing to the NES fad.

Why are you even keeping the NES aesthetic in mind if you're just gonna ignore everything in the end? Why not just make the damn game without worrying about stupid shit like that? Because it's what sells, and that is sad.
Want a retro aesthetic? Fine, make a low-colour high-contrast look, no need to limit yourself to NES standards.
Want a retro soundtrack? Fine, make a chiptune. No need to copy the NES audio limitations.

I would have the exact same issues with this game if they were trying to appeal to Commodore 64 fanboys too. Well, that would be even worse, since the game would look like complete crap.

You guys don't care and that's fine, but I do, I hate this freaking fad I find it a complete waste of talent.

I'm not a fan of the fad, but as a fan of 2D platforming I'm going to recognize when it's done well and this is one of the only times I've actually seen the 8-bit throwback style done well. It feels like it adds to the type of gameplay they created instead of being there solely for marketing reasons, but that's just my opinion after having played through the entire game.

If the issue is all about the marketing, I don't know what to say. Yeah it's kind of assy but at the end of the day they didn't really limit themselves to what the NES could do so they didn't really gimp their game in the interest of being faithful to the NES. That might make them a little dishonest, but their marketing doesn't have much to do with the game itself where their creative decisions won over the NES limitations every time.

It's really hard to argue about to people who haven't played the game because I was pretty cynical about it and scoffed at the Kickstarter myself until someone convinced me to try it.

I suspect a lot of terrible me-too games are going to flood out after Shovel Knight's success in the same way they did after Cave Story and that's really the only bad thing I can say about it. I think it'll put a smile on the face of fans of NES platformers which is what it was designed to do while being well made enough to appeal to people outside of the nostalgia bubble. But if it's not your thing, it's not your thing.

When you take a step back this thread is kind of hilarious:

A small, independent studio releases their debut game and it gets rave reviews and is probably one of the best platformers of the year, better than most AAA releases, and people are nerd raging because, despite the developer never claiming otherwise, the game has too many parallax backgrounds, too many colors, and no sprite flickering.

:|

You all need a hug.