From Pong to Gears of War

As a long time gamer, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the industry over the past two decades. From my humble days playing Q*Bert on Atari 2600 to playing Gears of War and Resistance: Fall of Man, I’ve seen a lot of changes. I thought it would be fun to do a compare and contrast on some of things about games in the 80’s to today. First off, let’s look at gaming in the 80’s.

80’s Gaming:

• Gameplay: When going from the 2600 to NES, I thought its controller was a god-send. Now we have two buttons to play with…and a gamepad with a start and select button! This was all you needed…or so we thought. Games like Double Dragon II made use of using both B and A buttons simultaneously, combinations of d-pad presses and button presses to do moves (Turtles 3’s Down + B to flip enemies). These told us that controllers were begging to have more buttons towards the ed of the 80’s. Before then, though, most games were so simple that spare buttons would be unnecessary. The games were all 2D and either sidescrolling or above view. The rare “3D” games were either on vectors or just mimicked 3D with animated frames.
• Game Length: This was a non-issue then. Games typically took 15-30 min to beat back then. We didn’t even think about that as being short. Just a nice quick play session with your friends.
• Multiplayer: Most games were up to 2 players, if it were above that then it was something special that required a multi-tap device. They were almost always cooperative as well, or played alternately. Sports games were really where you found competitive gaming.
• Graphics: Man oh man, what we thought about then. Systems competed on having more on screen colors, total colors available, how big you could make sprites and how many you could fit on a screen. Parallax scrolling was a cool new thing that brought depth to a game. Issues with graphics at the time were tons of slowdown and annoying flicker.
• Sound: When Nintendo came out I thought its sound was revolutionary for the simple fact that music played constantly as you played. That never happened on my old 2600. Everyone was also awe-stricken if they ever heard voice on a game…really garbled, static-y voice.
• AI: A-Wha? Oh, you mean a guy running the same pattern over and over? Difficulty in the old days was limited to punishing level design and bosses that were fast, cheap, and strong. The times were different then. You could memorize patterns to beat a game. Don’t get me wrong, there were some punishingly hard games then (Bayou Billy, I’m looking at you) that I am not sure I could beat to this day. One more thing, most games had no saves and checkpoints. If you died, that’s it, game over, start again.
• Popular Game types: Side scrolling platformers and action games ruled this era. Let’s not forget side scrolling shooters as well. Gradius and R-Type were two of the most popular, and in R-Types case, difficult games around.

Now:

• Gameplay: Egad, have controllers gotten complicated! Any non-gamer would be intimidated by the sheer amount of buttons, save but the innovative Wii controller. 3D is king, and has been since the mid-90’s. This whole new playing field not only adds the ability to move in 360 directions, but the ability to manipulate objects and the environment. Thus, more gameplay options open up. No more simple run and jump games. Now players command squads, Climb walls, shoot and load guns, hide behind cover, ride vehicles, blow up and steal cars, you name it, you can do it.
• Game Length: 6-8 is now the average length for action games…and most people are actually complaining that that is too short! Compare that to the 15-30 minutes on a NES game and I think it is fair to say that 6-8 hrs is plenty. RPGs, though, have gone insanely long with gameplay time up to the hundreds.
• Multiplayer: Hello online gaming, how are you? Multiplayer gaming has really branched out into homes everywhere. Now, I can game with my brother across states, thanks to online gaming. Now games can go up to as many as 64 players at a time. The shift has really changed, though, to competitive gaming. Luckily, cooperative gaming is making more of a comeback, though, and I welcome it.
• Graphics: The fight over colors is no longer an issue. Now we have fancy things like textures, lighting effects, water effect, advanced skeletal systems, and physics engines. It’s like a Hollywood production. Let’s not also forget a thing known as 1080p.
• Sound: Once again, like a Hollywood production! Companies are pulling all the stops with full musical scores, voice acting, and 5.1 surround sound.
• AI: Wow have we evolved. Enemies now react to our movements, flank us, throw grenades back at us and more. This is a totally different animal now. We’ve been spoiled by having checkpoints now, but given game length today, it’s very understandable and mandatory for our own sanity, in some cases.
• Popular games: Shooters definitely dominate the market now, if games like Halo, Gears of War, Rainbow Six, and Half Life 2 weren’t already any indication. Open ended sandbox games have become more popular thanks to the Grand Theft Auto Series, as well.

Looking back at all this you can see we’ve come a really long way in gaming. I love both my old games and new, and I could go on and on about the differences, I’ve only scratched the surface. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip to the past as much as I did!