Percieved current state of throwback genres

[cuttingagent]

I was just thinking that the amount of stuff going on in Shmupdom seems pretty lively compared to other throwback genres, but I'm not actually sure as I haven't put out much effort to catch up with the others. So here's my current assessment the state of these genres. This is not supposed to be an accurate assessment, it's supposed to be exactly what I myself am aware of--the perception of an average gamer or even an average niche-gamer. I just wanna hear what other people think about all this and see if there's a ton of stuff I'm missing out on. I've never heard of a dedicated run-n-gun forum, but I'm sure one exists, and maybe it's even as active as this one for all I know.

Shootemups
At least one company still churning out good games on a regular basis. Games on all major consoles. Lots of indie/doujin offerings. Not making much money but certainly not dying anytime soon(CAVE may go under, but ZUN probably won't get his computers repo'd).

Run-and-Guns
That one game came out for Neo-Geo and Dreamcast awhile back. Doesn't seem to be much going on. There's the Shank series on PSN but I don't think I like it (Here's why--it sets up cool things like, you're in a meat locker and you can swing hanging sides of frozen beef around to attack enemies with. Awesome. 'Press ___ button to swing frozen sides of beef' shit popping up onscreen takes all the fun out of it.) Metroid has gone FPS. I'm unaware of any truly worthwhile indie or doujin offerings besides Cave Story--great game but too easy a lot of the time, and a little too slow... maybe more of a walk-and-gun.

Hack-and-Slash
See also Shank series. Castlevania makes 2D on handhelds and 3D on consoles until... Castlevania HD on PSN. But it's terrible, in fact, it's SURPRISINGLY terrible because they could have just made a regular Metroidvania but instead they made one where you sorta need 2-4 players but you kinda can't see what the hell you're doing unless everyone is in the same room. Co-op play often involves one person standing on a switch for 5 minutes while the other backtracks through the level for something else while the screen zooms out further and further. All the sprites are recycled from DS games, bosses, everything. Seriously, does anyone actually like this game? Then there's Blade Kitten (episode 1) on PSN. I loved this game until I beat it. Zero replay value. Those Touhouvania fangames are pretty cool, but flawed. The characters and environments should've been more Touhou/Eastern lore than redraws of the Castlevania Bestiary. But the music is good and the gameplay is tight. Aside from this, I'm unaware of any valuable indie/doujin offerings.

Beat-em-ups
Probably the least active genre of all. Castle Crashers is completely just awesome and shows that there's plenty of room for growth in the genre. Other than that, I really don't think any big games have come out in years, and it's not hard to tell why. The games were slow as fuck and aren't that fun to play anymore. Arguably the only direction for them to go in is much like what CC did with it; turn it into a beatemup metroidvania. Still the gameplay seems much faster and is just a lot of fun. There's Beats Of Rage, a MUGEN-type engine for beat-em-ups instead of fighting games. I would imagine that the limitations of using this will not help the genre grow in terms of gameplay much at all. That is to say, it's probably great for making classic, slow, clunky brawlers and not much else. This is of course merely speculation, I've never used it.

Fighting Games
Still getting big titles, but companies have realized it's unwise to saturate the market. As a result of this we don't have to rifle through 30 different fighting games a year to see which ones are actually good. On the other hand, we basically have Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur, and Virtua Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and pretty much nothing else. Capcom has left the Darkstalkers IP to rot in the dust for over 10 years, while they at least came out with a new franchise, Skullgirls, which I hear is pretty good. SNK is not even a household name anymore and will probably never unveil a new franchise, and simply continue to update and rerelease KOF and Shodown.
A larger problem right now is that people don't want to have all this DLC shit in their fighting games, I myself have little interest left for SFxTekken anymore, and I was very excited about it at first, I was even considering getting a PS3.
As far as indie and doujin games, there seems to be plenty of it, but nothing stands out as being particulary impressive. Melty Blood AC:CC or whatever was supposed to be pretty good, but playing it bored me and I just went back to games made 15 years ago that look just as good, but, maybe I'm missing something for having not stuck with it for longer. There's MUGEN, which is certainly interesting, but suffers from the same problem I mentioned with Beats Of Rage. You can make a classic fighting game, yes, but you can only do things which have already been done, and that is not going to make for worthwhile gaming or genre growth in the long run. We will just have 600 Naruto fighting games of varying quality.


So keep in mind if I'm WRONG about something it probably wasn't on my radar. Admittedly I don't own any consoles right now and I don't really spend a lot of money on games, so I'm probly missing a good bit. There's also the fact that I've somewhat receded from the market in general. The state of things is bad enough that I don't consider myself a customer of the gaming industry, I'll let them rip off 12-year olds on DLC and broken games and prohibitive DRM. I still study what's going on in the industry, just more of an outsider than a prospective game buyer.

Also I'm sure ALL these genres are somewhat well-represented on things like PSN, XBLAH/XBLIG/Steam/and Games On Demand(whatever that is), but my first question about them is, are any of them worth playing over the extensive back-catalogue available to us? I mean, if it weren't for danmaku, I wouldn't play new shootemups, I'd play MUSHA, cause it's not like I've ever beaten it. Without similar advancements in other genres, there's really no reason to shell out for a new game. We already have thousands of games we probably haven't fully seen yet.

Sorry about the long ramble. Just interested in hearing what anyone else thinks.

[null1024]

Supposedly, SNK is still doing that MOTW sequel we've been hearing about for the last 13 years, but I'll be damned if it ever comes to fruition. I don't see them even touching Samurai Showdown in the near future, barring ports. And KOF 13 is the sex. Looks damn nice, and is gobs of fun.

Fighters definitely have a pretty good future right now. And for all the flak it gets, I still had tons of fun playing SFxT, and there are a few smaller fighting game series worth mention [although, being 1:06am as I type this, I'm too lazy to go and try to remember the name of them].

Regarding run-and-guns, wasn't Hard Corps Uprising pretty good? Dunno what else of interest came out in recent memory.


Dunno much of what else to say. Haven't kept up too much with the current state of gaming, I've been semi-joking that I bought a Dreamcast just because of this E3's turnout...

[EmperorIng]

Seeing this year's E3 justified my purchase of a dreamcast a few weeks prior.
/thug life

On topic, it sure seems like 2D platformers are king right now (outside of the obvious FPS). At least in terms of press and exposure. Metroid Other M was actually an attempt to bring the series back to its platforming roots, but its problems shot itself in the feet far too many times. While 2D platformers are my favorite game type, the stuff coming out now doesn't have any of the charm or style - the whole western "indie" shit with bad developers making bad games.

2D fighters also are riding the coattails of SFIV.

I see shootemups as being more and more doujin/indie centric - then again, that already has somewhat been the case with the success of Touhou and the copy-cats its spawned. Not so much as pushing the genre forward but rather exposing people to the genre in general and being their introduction to shmups; I would wager a good number of folks on this forum were introduced to shootemups via touhou.

[stryc9]

Regarding Beat 'em Ups: There is the upcoming Double Dragon Neon by Wayforward, as well as the SOR Remake V5, and I played Arad Senki (Dungeon Fighter) for a while before being IP blocked.

I thought Arad Senki was fantastic and the best MMORPG I've played, as it requires some skill to play (enemy herding etc just like any good beat 'em up) and access to new moves depending on character class as you level up.

Apparently there is a 360 version coming which obviously I'm very interested in.

PS @null1024: I never heard of SNK planning a MOTW sequel. Where was this said?

[cuttingagent]

I'm only just now hearing about Uprising. Upon giving it a quick look, the graphics look kinda stupid. When they take a 2D game and give it 3D modeled backgrounds there's usually something missing, the art of it all. Sprite art is by necessity very stylized while 3D art is rarely so. I'm not saying sprite art is better, but this world doesn't look like the Contra world. It looks the same as the world in every newer 2D platformy game. I see one review criticizing the background art as being often bland, too. Looking at Konami's official page, the words 'retro' and 'homage' don't get my hopes up much in terms of a new Contra game actually offering something NEW. And something in the back of my head bets it's probly a lot easier than a Contra game, but, I suck at Contra and rarely ever play it anyway so you'd have to ask a die-hard fan of the series. I'm split between wanting these big old companies to keep making 2D games and wanting them to just stop so that somebody can step up to the plate and inject some actually new (non-gimmicky) ideas into the whole thing. That said I don't really see many doujin devs actually doing that...

I know I forgot to mention Mega Man 9&10, but what I know of those is that they're exactly like the first 5 Mega Man games, which doesn't make me want to run out and buy them instead of just playing the old ones. Heh... maybe if the graphics were better. Authentic sprite flickering? I would kill to get rid of the sprite flickering in my favorite NES games. There's no need to have that in a current-gen game. They could've used a real colour palette too, the gameplay wouldn't suffer and they could've made the game pretty.

On a sidenote, all these genres being marketed as 'retro' reminds me of something that's been bugging me for awhile. I kinda hate the term 'retro gaming' because it makes it seem like people play certain games because they're old, not because they're good. I listen to old music, not to be retro, but because good music was being made during that time. If someone ever called me a 'retro gamer' I would feel like some shallow hipster douchebag who only loves playing the games because it allows him to talk to people about how much he loved playing the games as a kid. I really hate nostalgia. The experience should always stand on its own, not simply remind someone of enjoyment they had in the past. What is wrong with people these days? I really like reading Racketboy but everytime I see the term 'retro gamer' I have to cringe a little.

[null1024]

Regarding the MotW sequel, http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/217.html and http://web.archive.org/web/200808220703 ... 000064.htm are what I pulled up. I've seen it mentioned other places, but it's 1:53am and I'm too lazy to look more. And IIRC, SNK hasn't said anything to refute that it's being worked on since those statements.


Oh, and I totally forgot about Scott Pilgrim regarding beat-em-ups. It's pretty nice, although the way shit bounces off things is fucking annoying, and it's definitely made for having 4 players, as opposed to going through alone. Don't have a 360, so I haven't played it in a while.


@cuttingagent
I've always liked 2D on 3D [thought Strider 2 looked slick, same with MvC2], but it's entirely personal preference, although Hard Corps Uprising's backgrounds are definitely pretty bleh.
MM9/10, I liked the throwback look, but I'd kill for a Mega Man [or better yet, a new Mega Man X] game done in SNES or Saturn era style 2D visuals. I know 9 was done like that to make it seem like a new beginning, but then 10 comes, looking effectively the same, and reminding us that they've made too damn many Mega Man games.

[Kaiser]

Well from beat-em'ups outside Castle Crashers, I can safely throw in Scott Pilgrim vs The World too (there's a demo available for this game on both XBL and PSN), sure it's not very long (7 stages) but it's fun, everything is hand-drawn and the music is freaking epic.

[cuttingagent]

I absolutely couldn't stand Scott Pilgrim VS. The World. It is so incredibly slow and clunky. If it were an arcade game 20 years ago it may have been passable, but in this day and age the gameplay is just terrible. There seems to just be something really crappy about the controls too. I was pretty disappointed as the sprite art looked nice enough and the music is, yeah, pretty decent. But 15 minutes with this game is about 10 minutes longer than it takes me to get annoyed at it.

Funny thing about Other M, I read a scathing 3 page critique about all its failing points without ever realizing it was a 2D platformer rather than an FPS. It was written by that guy who made I Wanna Be The Guy.

EDIT: Also, I'm not saying 2D on 3D can't look good. I think Radiant Silvergun looked great. MvC2... The couple times I've played it I actually must not have noticed, which means it was probably fine. However, I'm hard pressed to think of many games with 3D backgrounds where I could say 'The background art is just so beautiful' yet there's so many sprite-art games I've had to say it about. I really think it's just the lack of stylizing that gets me. Maybe real is boring. I like what SFIV did with the fake brushstroke stuff over the 3D models, that's a step forward. Cel-shading had potential too. I think there was more potential in the PS1 era where we wouldn't have realistic textures and such, but that's what everybody wanted, so we missed a good opportunity to experiment with stylized polygons.

[DEL]

EmperorIng wrote;

On topic, it sure seems like 2D platformers are king right now (outside of the obvious FPS). At least in terms of press and exposure. Metroid Other M was actually an attempt to bring the series back to its platforming roots, but its problems shot itself in the feet far too many times. While 2D platformers are my favorite game type, the stuff coming out now doesn't have any of the charm or style - the whole western "indie" shit with bad developers making bad games.

That is surprising. 2D platformers were the first genre to be absolutely anihilated with the advent of more proficient pseudo 3D technology in the 1990s. But is this resurgence of 2D platformers merely a fashion for retro thing Therefore meaning it will fizzle out ASAP...?

As for the thread title: Percieved current state of throwback genres, there are a couple of things that can be said. For many years now, 2D games have been relegated to 'budget games' if they appear on modern consoles, or simply relegated to handhelds. With the inference that they are inferior. I think this has worked pretty well for the 3D game developers.
As for the term 'Retro' being banded about. At least shmups are not retro - they evolved and are still being made. But....do the Public know this

[Friendly]

@DEL

I would assume that the New Super Mario Bros games and Rayman Origins are fairly well known.

[DEL]

^Yes, but are they the only 2D platformers in this resurgence?
If so, I'd hardly call it a resurgence.

[moonblood]

There's a new run'n-gun in development with graphics by the scott pilgrim artist, paul robertson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jopRHhEn ... r_embedded

Looks alright

[Skykid]

Regarding run-and-guns, wasn't Hard Corps Uprising pretty good?

No.

[Kaiser]

Regarding run-and-guns, wasn't Hard Corps Uprising pretty good?

No.

Seconded, the game was seriously unbalanced, final boss was too fucking unfair even with lifebars on. Also note: this game features some of worst sound effects and voice acting in todays games

[cuttingagent]

There's a new run'n-gun in development with graphics by the scott pilgrim artist, paul robertson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jopRHhEn ... r_embedded

Looks alright

Hmm, weapon crafting. I could dig that, if the gameplay's on point. Odd that the trailer doesn't mention which platform it's going to be on.

[Jeneki]

For run-and-guns, I got some enjoyment out of Serious Sam Double D. It's really over the top, in typical Sam style. Shoot 6 guns at the same time, make a mountain of corpses to jump on to advance to the next area, absolutely silly enemies (hamster maze stage and boss had me laughing for a long time).