Some platformers aswell... they can only be developed so far as they're limited by a 2D landscape, strategy and sim games too.

Snayperskaya wrote:

Most real-time strategy games still look good (even though DOS didn't have a lot of those). C&C, Dune, Warcraft 2, Constructor still look fine for me.

Some advanced 3D games for the hardware they ran, like Mechwarrior 2 and Twinsen's Odyssey are still pretty good too.

Platformers on computers are hit or miss. Aside from the ones I've played, others doesn't seem to hold much value. Early (8/16 bit) console/arcade platformers are better on this aspect.

All strategy games that where well balanced aged very well.
One example to add is Total Annihilation that I still fancy to play from time to time, new additions are still made and with 5k units per side even modern computers struggle to keep it going flawless above 12k units total ingame 🤣 😵

I feel games that make good use of the hardware but are aware of its limitations tend to age the best.

For example the original Sonic The Hedgehog games on the MegaDrive really stretched the hardware to the limits (we're talking a 7 MHz chip with 64 KB of RAM). Yet today, it looks like the graphics were a design choice. All the more impressive was the 60 frames per second which the game mostly ran at:

From the PlayStation, MediEvil showed that edgy low-polygon graphics could be made a Burtonian style:

From the PC a very good example is the original StarCraft which considering it's low 640x480 resolution and 256-color palette still looks great even today!

It's all about knowing what you have and how best to use it.

To be honest that hedgehog thing looks like garbage, design choice or not.

I've been playing Age of Empires Rise of Rome for the past 15 years and the many options for building a new map makes this game never grow old. Now that I have an abundance of collect-a-puters around my house, I play it with whatever sound card I feel like for the game midi music. Be it anything from a classic Soundblaster 16 to Microsoft GS Wavetable. 😁

I don't know why, but I prefer the first AoE game than AoE2 and AoE3.

Whenever I find a new game I really really like, I play it till the end of time! 😀

leonardo wrote:

I feel games that make good use of the hardware but are aware of its limitations tend to age the best. […]
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I feel games that make good use of the hardware but are aware of its limitations tend to age the best.

For example the original Sonic The Hedgehog games on the MegaDrive really stretched the hardware to the limits (we're talking a 7 MHz chip with 64 KB of RAM). Yet today, it looks like the graphics were a design choice.
.

Yeah and also many Gameboy Advance games looked just like Super Nintendo graphics! 😁

Some older games age better than later ones thanks to their aesthetics. MW aged like crap, MW2 is fine wine, and MW3 feels like a plastic corn artifact of a product feeling appropriately Hasbro.

out of this world
wing commander privateer
x-com ufo defense
indiana jones and the fate of atlantis
settlers ii

Solid game play and hand drawn/computer art with good mood setting sound & fx can age well, 3d modeled games almost always don't, I'm thinking of skinned models, the early flat shaded polygon games appeal to me but I would except today's gamers wouldn't feel the same. An exception to skinned to me is unreal tournament, but then that maybe nostalgia talking again.

Some games don't really age at all... sort of: I enjoy a game called "Gazillionaire", which is an economic strategy game, which can actually be very involving, plus the game takes into account how long you take to do everything so for instance, you travel to one planet to buy a product at a cheap price so you can sell it on another planet who is paying a high price for that product, but while you're at it you take into account what the NEXT planet is selling for very cheap so you can repeat the scenario. Well, if you take too long then one of the opposition will get there and buy it all up before you do, etc. It's a simple game, but not as simple as you first suspect. Plus there are all manner of unforseen incidents which can happen such as space pirates, your ship breaking down, etc.

The graphics are zany and colorful, the sounds are created in like kind, and there really aren't any animations to speak of so in that sense it is not overly polished, but it was meant to be an educational game so ability to run on low-end systems was a priority.

OK... So I haven't commented on this thread despite my background in game design because this is a really tricky topic to give a solid opinion on. However, right now I'm in a good mindset to tackle this, so, here's a list of the basic requirements necessary to make a game which ages well:

1. It MUST have 99.9% SOLID gameplay.

You can have one or two VERY minor glitches, but for the most part, your gameplay needs to be so solid that you couldn't cut it with a lightsaber. People don't return to games which have issues because once those issues rear their heads, the people playing are like, "Oh yeah, I remember how annoying that was..." and after a little longer they stop playing and don't go back for months or years.

2. It MUST be unique in some way.

This is a part of the reason why clones are forgotten about, because in order to think about the clone, you typically have to think about the game it was cloned from, but games typically don't get cloned unless they're really good, so once you think about the original game, you latch onto that one and decide to go play it instead of the clone. Without some form of uniqueness to set your game apart in the minds of the people who play it, they won't ever think about it again.

3. The difficulty curve MUST be properly balanced.

To put it simply, if your difficulty curve is wonky, the only people who'll go back to a game and play it for any appreciable length of time are people who enjoyed the game to an immense degree. Everyone else will immediately stop playing once the difficulty spikes up, because it's too aggravating and they don't care anymore, or even if the difficulty plummets, because it gets boring because they would've already slogged through that part before and again, don't care to do it again.

4. Having a good story and identifiable characters whom players can relate to really helps.

Single-player RPGs (NOT MMOs) tend to age better than most games in general because of the heavy emphasis on story with minimal gameplay mechanics, however, a story needs to be memorable not just in execution, but also in terms of characters. If your characters are too generic, then no matter how good your story is, it's too hard to remember it and thus doesn't help your game stay in the minds of people.

5. Having a memorable soundtrack also really helps, but having a soundtrack any less than "decent" hinders.

Ever notice how you can still hum the tunes of really good, old games to yourself? Ever notice how it's much harder to do that with newer games even though the music is perfectly fine? Case in point. Every once in awhile though, a modern game comes along with a great original soundtrack. So long as you're humming the tune to at least one original song from the game, there's hope for its aging process. :)

6. It MUST have a decent framerate.

Seriously. This may seem trivial but the framerate is extremely important towards raw gameplay and control, not to mention the more fluid something moves, the easier it is to remember as it imprints in the mind better. Most game systems and computers do 50 to 70 FPS, so anything less than an average 25 to 35 FPS will make for a game which is hard to look at the next time you play it 5 to 20 years in the future. :P

7. Modding substantially extends the life of any game. DLC (NOT physical expansions) have the opposite effect.

Any OK or better game made to be easily modifiable, either through included tools or through the use of third-party software, will end up with a community of people creating content for it, which will substantially extend the life of the game beyond what the authors could've ever envisioned. However, DLC has the opposite effect because once the DLC is no longer sold, people become less inclined to play the original game again because they can no longer experience the expanded content they never originally obtained. Expansion packs on the other hand, sold separately and in physical form, don't cause this same situation. This DLC effect can be avoided so long as there's a later release of the game which comes with all DLC pre-included for a very decent price.

8. It can't be an MMO. Period.

In the face of games like World of Warcraft, this may seem wrong, but WoW isn't an exception to the rule, it simply hasn't run its course yet. Once it has, it will be forgotten and never replayed just like the vast majority of once popular MMOs out there. There will always be fan servers for some of the better ones, but the number of people playing on those servers will always be tiny compared to the hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of people who once did when the official servers still ran. Not to mention, if no servers exist for an MMO anymore, it can't be played at all. What good is an old game if you can't play it? :P