nesdev.org

FrankenGraphics wrote:i'm an '86:er

You probably kept in touch with 8 and 16-bit stuff though, or got reacquainted with it sometime ago, while most people your age quickly moved on to newer things or simply abandoned gaming altogether. I wouldn't be surprised if these people had a pretty distorted perception of what retro gaming actually looked/felt like.

Here's something that happened to me recently: the other day I played Fatal Frame 2 on the Wii for the first time, and while watching the FMV sequences I thought to myself: "These look slightly improved over the original PlayStation 2 version". Then, out of curiosity, I looked for a direct comparison on YouTube and... man, did the PS2 version look bad! Everything was completely redesigned for the Wii, and looked nothing like in the original game! If I can be so wrong about more recent generations of consoles, I'm pretty sure that people who haven't touched 8 and 16-bit games since back in the day can have badly distorted memories of those systems influenced by what passes for "retro pixel graphics" these days.

As for the Stranger Thins game in particular, sharpness and fluidity aren't the deal-breakers that make this impossible on the NES (the resolution isn't that different, and the NES can handle fluid animations just fine as long as the screen isn't packed with enemies), it's mostly the color count and the sprite coverage, although the zooming and transparency effects, which are a far cry from what most 16-bit machines could do, certainly aren't helping.

This is obviously one of those titles that are very loosely based on 80's and 90's games, but with no regard at all for the actual technical limitations that justified that aesthetic. The result is often very inconsistent, because of the arbitrarily chosen limitations, which don't always play along with each other.

You’re right bud, childhood memories of 8 bit games from back in the day are rarely carried over 30 years down the line...time will certainly weed out titles that dont hold up but in stark contrast there are some that do hold up...Last year I played Mario 1,2&3, Legend of Zelda and Mcdonaldland...they’ve held up so well I dare say they’d still be fun in another 30 years...it all boils down to gripping gameplay and pace...graphics count for nothing without them which brings me onto the idea of Stranger Things...if the visuals were cut right back to run on an old 8 bit platform I honestly dont think it would matter as the gameplay is outstanding...I remember when I first downloaded it, I was convinced it would just be a cheap cash grab but was totally bowled over with how deep and immersive the gameplay was.

You probably kept in touch with 8 and 16-bit stuff though

True, i didn't think of that. I lost interest in new stationary consoles up until wii starting with playstation.. the NES always stayed with me.

Perhaps you'd enjoy playing What Remains, a free NES game that was released recently that seems to have taken some inspiration from Stranger Things:

https://iodinedynamics.itch.io/whatremains

Wow! Only 80 cartridges are being produced!? Just messaged them, hope I’m not too late!

The font in menus looks 8-bit (complete with white on black background) but otherwise I'd say it looks a bit high res even for 16-bit. Gameplay reminds a bit of Mission Impossible for NES, but I wouldn't say it's 8-bit specific because of that.

tepples wrote:The PC Engine came out in Japan in October 1987, and except for the zooming, all of what I saw on a brief skim through the video looks doable on a PC Engine.

PC Engine was released internationally as TurboGrafx-16. Don't let the number fool you; it has an 8-bit CPU. But its VDC does have 16-pixel-wide sprites, 16 of them on a scanline, and its VCE has 16 background palettes each of 16 colors (one transparent) and 16 sprite palettes each of 16 colors (one transparent).

FrankenGraphics wrote:The japanese release date of PC engine doesn't mean anything the popular culture in USA at that time

Never mind the PC Engine, the arcades were always ahead of home console gaming and the 16-bit era started in the late '80s in arcade halls I believe. If the show is about the early '80s, it doesn't really matter though.

According to interviews the 16 in TurboGrafx-16 stands for 16-bit as the VDC and VCE are both 16-bit. Though I still regard it as a powerful 8-bit console, even though it survived long into the 16-bit era. As an aside Turbo stands for the fast speed that beat both the SNES and Mega Drive and Grafx refers to its collorful graphics of the time. PC Engine means the "heart (Engine) of the computer (PC)" as the console main unit is the heart of the family of hardware and software. Also the PC Engine was released in Europe (UK I think) as only the TurboGrafx (without "16") and also unofficially as PAL-modified PC Engines (there were no PAL-optimized games though).

tokumaru wrote:

FrankenGraphics wrote:i'm an '86:er

You probably kept in touch with 8 and 16-bit stuff

People from that age is too young to remember the adult world of the '80s, as they wouldn't have opened their eyes for the adult world yet, but they are definitely not too young to remember the 8-bit gaming era (and probably some earlier games like Space Invaders, Pac-man and Donkey Kong as they where still widely played), nor would they have a hard time being able to tell the difference between games from before the 8-bit era, the 8-bit era and the 16-bit era (unless you lost touch with those games like Tokumaru said). Also the NES survived a long time into the 16-bit era in Sweden I think (and even longer in Japan). I know people that are born in the '90s and still started with NES despite that the 16-bit era started before they where born.

FrankenGraphics wrote:

koitsu wrote:but the whole 8-bit vs. 16-bit concept is lost on folks that young.

I wouldn't say that - i'm an '86:er and when our family got a console (i think i was 6 to 8, i really don't remember when all that well), NES and SNES sets were sitting alongside each other in the toy store. My parents chose a NES because of the why pay more for the 'super' suffix? The distinction was definitely lost on them. The same sentiment is mirrored in this 1991 time capsule: youtube clip.

Meanwhile, most neighbors got or rented a SNES, although there was that one neighbor with a c64. So anyway.. i think me and other kids in my age and at that time were acutely aware of the differences.

I think we've discussed this before, but my recollections of the NES and SNES "generations" were the same. Eventually it would become all about the SNES of course (even if it was honestly just a few years before the PlayStation came out), but for the first few years, no one saw the SNES as a "replacement" for the NES. Sure, it was the new cool thing, and it was clearly superior to the NES. But the idea of console "generations" being a thing wasn't really discussed. They were just all different products available on the market. Similar to you, I also didn't get my own NES until after the release of the SNES.

This might be a European thing moreso than the Americas, though? After all, a lot of games took literally several years to come out here, meaning we got to play Castlevania 4 before Castlevania 3. It was just all a bit weird.
Still. The last Famicom game came out in 1994.

Yeah the SNES was the new cool thing all kids wanted but I remember most parents were too cheap to buy it when it came out. I was lucky that my dad likes new things and bought it as soon as it came out. I had a friend whose parents bought him a used NES with lots of games although the SNES had been out several years already. He had more games than I had thanks to that but he was not very proud to have such an aged system. I became kind of nostalgic to NES at that time so I borrowed all his games against him borrowing my SNES and games. He was very excited to have a SNES and I was excited to play a bunch of games I hadn't played for years and also many games that was new to me. He thought I was crazy to be excited about the old dusty NES (this was still before the PlayStation came out I think).

The last New Famicom was produced around 2000 I think, so in Japan it was very long living.