gigachad

More like kilochad amirite?

Nay, that is Megachad, we didn't have such large storage back then.

The bad graphics don’t bother me, but the control schemes on some of those old games are atrocious and really hard to control in 2025. Tried playing syphon filter and I was smashing into every wall

only when its good

City of Heroes.
Such a great example of what an MMO should be. Old, and not without it's flaws, but it did so many things right that even contemporary attempts at the genre miss entirely.

Old Graphics =/= Bad Graphics
edit: furthermore old =/= bad. Old is a quantitative measure and bad is qualitative. Trying to use one measure as the litmus for the other is like saying "there are five apples on that tree, they must taste terrible."
inb4: i dont care if it isnt a perfect analogy and there's actually some study somewhere that showed that apple trees that retain prime number multiples of fruit on their branches statistically taste worse when rated on a blind taste test.
- ≤≥
  
  ))<>((

It's almost like mechanics trumps graphics.
See Dwarf Fortress.
- Not really? I would love to play complex game like df or cataclysm with good 3d graphics.
  
  DW has good graphics now compared to what it use to have.
  
  Check out Going Medieval. Doesn't have everything DF has, but it's something.
  It's low-poly so it's not that big of a jump, but the 3d camera alone makes it so much easier to play than dwarf fortress.
- Shitty visual aesthetics has kept me from playing so many games from small devs, i don't want their crappy pixel-graphics bullshit, I played those when I was a kid I don't need that anymore now that we have the ability to do better...I don't want one or the other, I want both. I would rather play a game with mediocre mechanics and great graphics than one with great mechanics and mediocre graphics.
  
  everyone is free to play whatever they want, but everyone is also free to call your opinion dumb. which it is.
  
  To each their own, but when I play games I want games that are fun to play. When I want realistic graphics I just go for a walk.
  
  by that logic xkcd is bad
  
  I think this kind of attitude means you're going to miss a lot of fantastic games, honestly. Games offer a lot more than just visuals, and many very pretty games are extremely bad games.

The thing that really stops me from enjoying a lot of old games I liked back in the day is the abysmal controls. Years of having good controls has ruined my ability to go back to when devs were still trying to figure out the whole 3D thing.
- It's better if you look at games that are not 3d.
- Years of having good controls has ruined my ability
  Where my WAXD gamers at? The Chaos Engine was a fun game, but the controls were a bit weird.
  
  Damn, there's a blast from the past.
- Yeah I tried going back to play the witcher 1 and 2 after finishing 3. I just could not get into 1 at all and 2 had some wack as well with where you could go. I could not even beat the first boss.
  
  That's understandable.
  They were not very good on a technical level at launch, either. I never beat 1 back in the day because I got to a point where it would just crash consistently at the same spot, every time.

There's a charm to early 3D. Late 2D is a timeless look, but early 3D is unmistakably mid 90s to early 2000s stuff.
I've been running the original Resident Evil trilogy. The graphics age it, of course, but the games are just awesome. Resources are limited. You have to consider what's worth wasting ammo on. You have to consider if you've done enough to justify a save. The puzzles aren't terribly difficult, but they're satisfying. And I love a good old fashioned jump scare.

They're not bad graphics, they're good graphics... for their time
- Nahhh, some of them really were bad graphics. Morrowind and Mario Sunshine came out in the same year.
  
  The scope of each of those games is so vastly different that I don't think that's a fair comparison. The art styles are wildly different too.
  
  Morrowind is beautiful :(
  
  Different styles. All Morrowind's missing is ragdolls and physics.
  Though Oblivion Rosacea is hard to look past...

It’s cute that people think those are low res graphics.
- It's cute that people think the games they are playing have good graphics
  
  It's cute that people think

New games look like realistic pencil drawings that were smudged to shit.
I literally have Elden Ring screenshots on my PS4 that look worse than Super Mario 64 screenshots.
It's like modern games all have a screen shader at the end specifically to fuck up the graphics and blur details. I know it's TAA and friends but damn. It feels weird that so many games have broken graphics that only look good when taking promotional screenshots. And people call them good looking games lol
- ... so many games have broken graphics that only look good when taking promotional screenshots.
  This is a huge pet peeve of mine, especially when looking at the screenshots or even videos of a game.
  You'll be looking at the store page for like a top-down strategy game, and all they show are a bunch of cinematic closeups of character's faces with FXAA 99999 and 0 screenshots showing the UI. Bro, that is NOT what playing the game looks like.
  I want to see the UI. I Like The UI. I like the strategic camera angle. I am an ACTUAL FAN of this genre and have willingly put myself in your sales funnel - show me the features of the actual game that I want to purchase and play, please.

Sometimes I play old games because of the graphics, not despite them. For nostalgia and the fact that my crappy laptop can handle them.

You can have my Project 1999 when you pry it from my cold, dead, fingers.

I think Final Fantasy IX looks outstanding. That's fairly old now.

Bad???

Fact: PS1 games in an emulator with increased resolution looks super cool
- More than cool, add in other enhancements and most 3D games don't need a remaster that will most likely be bloated data-wise.
  Particularly when it comes to vertex colors (see Spyro's skyboxes) rendering at modern res immaculately, upselling into photorealism is just throwing out the smartest and most unique thing the game had.
- not only based, but also gay.
  because gay is good, therefore the original point is good.
  edit: lemmy does not respect formatting 100%. I wanted larger gaps between sections.

I love chunky pixels and great gameplay. I love games that you can get hundreds of hours of fun out of, only take up 1gb of storage, and can run smooth on a dinosaur PC. No DRM, supporting a small team who respect you as a supporter and passionately make a piece of interactive art you get to enjoy the rest of your life.
The graphics snobs have the worst brain dead takes man. Not being able to enjoy a game just because it ask you to use creativity and imagination to interpret the art that acompanies the interactive experience. But I guess to each their own. Who knows maybe in 20 years when their old favorite games look like shit their tune might change. In the meantime I hope they enjoy the 170gb weekly updates for the newest unoptimized reheated game franchise. I hear the newest version of the Ark dinosaur game is doing just great, I'm sure the next assassins creed and cod and whatever Bethesda is making in between skyrim releases will give you a novel and memorable experience.
- Only 1GB. A lot of the good old games fit on a CD and had enough space left to have a full album of red book music!

Is that PS1 Hagrid?

Or: people who play new games in this style :) two examples I've enjoyed very much are Lorn's Lure and ULTRAKILL.
- Gotta shout out Parking Garage Rally Circuit, neat little racing game that just came out using this retro style. Like Mario Kart, but just the sweet drift boosting and none of the shell bs lol

It's exactly that game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4D_Sports_Boxing

Yeah! And people who play unpopular sports despite small crowd sizes - what are they, insane?

What do you mean by "Bad Graphics" ?
- Bubsy 3D, or Super Mario 64
- ~~Bubsy 3D~~

Lately I've been replaying the campaign in Railroad Tycoon 2 (available for a just few bucks on GOG) and I've had just as much enjoyment as playing a full priced modern title. Granted it's got pretty timeless 2d(ish) graphics and a studio recorded bluegrass soundtrack at a time when most games just opted for midi soundtracks. It's even got a complete stock market simulation where every action you take affects your company's stock value, and you as an individual can manipulate the market to benefit your company and vice versa. I've had particular enjoyment by personally selling a bunch of stocks to artificially depress the value of another company right before attempting a merger. That and trying to survive margin calls without being forced to sell my 90% stake in every single railroad company that inevitably tanks the value of every single railroad in the game
Pretty dang good for a nearly 30 year old game!

I bought Trackmania United Forever last weekend and it's kinda interesting because the stadium environment still looks great, most of the rest look ok and some others look pretty bad.

Been playing a lot of Beamrider lately. Am I chad now?
- No. You know why. You know what you did.

GO TEAM TOME!
Although, have to say its graphics are the way it is because it is a rogue like

...Reminds me of Max Payne.
Wasn't born in the PS1 era, sorry...

The weird thing is that they're usually only bad in comparison to all the newer games you've played after that.

i've got an old version of FCEUX that I boot up all the time to run The Guardian Legend. One day, I'll do a full run in one sitting. Then, maybe I'll speedrun. I can dream.

Also me playing a brand new mons hunter game on low graph because they shipped a broken game.
- That and Denuvo... but supporting scummy companies is all on you, as a consumer. Don't give them the money.