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16-bits games so polished and iconic they could pass for modern indie games paying tribute to the 16-bits era
- Thread starter DrHercouet
- Start date
To me the question should be the opposite. Indie games that are so polished so they can pass as actual 16 bit games. They are not that common. Owlboy or Blasphemous are good examples, but typically indie games look much, much worse than 16 bit games. Especially, if we take NeoGeo and arcades into account.
Tanglewood
Xeno Crisis
Pier Solar
First ones off the top of my head. They all run on original hardware, but are also available on other platforms.
Bahamut Lagoon with the larger sprites moving and the lightning/particle effects can look pretty solid still these days. But then again that's peak Squaresoft, end of the era kinda stuff. I'd be so much more down for SE's lesser-budget output like RPG Factory if it'd look like this.
If you showed someone who wasn't familiar with Yoshi's Island "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy" stage today they wouldn't believe it could be possible on the SNES.
I'm not sure that's true. The credits lists seem like they are usually longer for modern indie games. The difference is probably more in the 16-bit games having higher budgets on average.
I wish most pixel-art indies did look at least close to how polished the best 16-bits games looked. There is really no comparison, those games had the biggest budgets and the best talent involved, so modern indies don't even come close. There are exceptions, with something like Owlboy, but for the most part they're still playing catch-up.
There are too many Amiga games to mention, that all look better than your average pixel art indie game in 2020.
Yeah, Lufia 2 is an odd choice for "polished" since it's possibly the buggiest SNES RPG ever. Awesome game even with the bugs though.
I don't know if it could take that title when Maka Maka and Hourai High exist.
I'll go with Twisted Tales of Spike McFang as a great lite action RPG with tons of charm and excellent music. Still holds up just fine today I think. And it's all of like 2 hours long.
Oh, I meant actual SNES (aka NA) releases. There's even buggier stuff if you add in other regions.
I'd love to see a Hourai High sequel.
On the other hand, the microcomputer games back then were made by teams of 1-3 people, even at major publishers and their art quality is often below what you see in indie games today.
First game that came to mind.
I was thinking about how it could pass for a modern indie game when I was playing Super Metroid for the first time earlier this year.
This far in the thread and no mention of Final Fantasy 6?
I'd throw both the SNES Kirby games and Front Mission Gun Hazard up there too
I'd throw both the SNES Kirby games and Front Mission Gun Hazard up there too
Yeah, I found this thread kind of insulting toward the 16-bit games.
Many titles being posted are higher quality than many modern games.
Sure, there's some QoL improvements in games today - but overall, there were absolute all-time 2D masterpieces released back then that will probably never be topped (in 2D).
Super Metroid is still the gold standard in the Metroidvania genre and hasn't been surpassed.
Chrono Trigger is still one the best RPG's.
Super Mario World is mmm also still surpasses any 2D modern indie Platformer.
Link to the Past is also still toward the top of the 2D action adventure genre.
All of these would still be a hits if they released today.
Chrono Trigger is still one the best RPG's.
Super Mario World is mmm also still surpasses any 2D modern indie Platformer.
Link to the Past is also still toward the top of the 2D action adventure genre.
All of these would still be a hits if they released today.
I hope you mean Bare Knuckle 3. The US version, like Contra Hard C.O.R.P.S., had its difficulty overblown and killed its reputation.
Boy this is a weird premise for a thread. You're asking for games that were so high quality back in the day that they could pass as modern titles? That's an insult to the craftsmanship of developers back then and heavily implies that you think modern retro-inspired games are on the whole superior to those that came before them. Which is a fine opinion I suppose, but it comes off sort of poorly here.
There's a reason those games inspired some of us to take up the craft. Many of them hold up today just as well as they did back then.
Sorry, I don't agree with the central premise here at all.
There's a reason those games inspired some of us to take up the craft. Many of them hold up today just as well as they did back then.
Sorry, I don't agree with the central premise here at all.
I took the premise more as a "What games aged like fine wine?" type of thing
I agree with this, the mayority of actual 16bit inspired games are lightyears behind the best/average 16bit games of that era.
Super Mario World plays better than any modern game out there (if played on original hardware and CRT)
Someone already mentioned Pocky and Rocky, that game is timeless.
Shoot em ups like MUSHA have aged incredibly well.
played it for the first time recently and overall it's so ahead of its time. Does have issues though
Someone already mentioned Pocky and Rocky, that game is timeless.
Shoot em ups like MUSHA have aged incredibly well.
played it for the first time recently and overall it's so ahead of its time. Does have issues though
Some Amiga love:
Fate of Atlantis
Assassin
Cannon fodder
Chaos engine
Also first samurai, superfrog, Walker, shadow of the beast
Fate of Atlantis
Assassin
Cannon fodder
Chaos engine
Also first samurai, superfrog, Walker, shadow of the beast
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The gameplay felt pretty dated to me (I played it years ago).
Snatcher on Sega CD holds up very well, and it would probably be appreciated even more today with the popularity of Visual Novel style adventure games in the West.
Not 16-bit but Wario Land deffo has that mid-90s super polished quality and great gameplay. It's like a 16-bit game on Game Boy, and it's really sweet.
This was my favourite game on the og Gameboy. It really does look impressive compared to everything else on that system.
I don't work on games at all, so forgive me if I sound ignorant or ungrateful or anything, but I do think it's fair to acknowledge that QOL improvements, standard feature sets etc. are better on average now than they were back in the 80s-90s when these games were coming out. To me, that was the point of the thread, games that just nailed it and aren't wanting for any obvious upgrades that would make them easier to jump into.
It's kind of like movies, you know? You can do way more with technology like green screen or CGI today than you could even a decade ago, and there are certainly some movies that came out in the 80s-90s that look awful now even if you can recognize that there was some revolutionary stuff happening for the time. But there are also movies that could be dusted off and released today with few adjustments, compared to others that were great for the time, but would probably require drastically different approaches if someone tried to make that same movie today.
A lot of people mentioned Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which holds up amazingly in my eyes and compares very favorably to Sonic Mania, which only released three years ago. There are plenty of bells and whistles in Mania that make it the better overall package, but I find S3K's core gameplay (mainly level design/theming) more fun, and more importantly, the added features in Mania are kind of superfluous to the point where I do not mind at all that they're missing in S3K (compared to like, if the game didn't let you save, or something).
My first thought was Super Metroid but that's covered. Streets of Rage 2 is a great pick too.
I'm going to say Alien Soldier. Its complex controls and steep difficulty curve make it a difficult game to get to grips with but it has a depth that fits in more with modern games than its contemporaries. Customisable HUD is a feature ahead of its time, parrying bullets by double-tapping the attack button also feels modern as does the zero teleport that lets you dodge attacks. Resource management of your weapons is a big part of the game and then there's the structure as it's essentially one big boss rush for the most part. It was too complex for its time but feels right at home alongside modern hard-as-nails indie sides rollers.
I'm going to say Alien Soldier. Its complex controls and steep difficulty curve make it a difficult game to get to grips with but it has a depth that fits in more with modern games than its contemporaries. Customisable HUD is a feature ahead of its time, parrying bullets by double-tapping the attack button also feels modern as does the zero teleport that lets you dodge attacks. Resource management of your weapons is a big part of the game and then there's the structure as it's essentially one big boss rush for the most part. It was too complex for its time but feels right at home alongside modern hard-as-nails indie sides rollers.
Link to the Past is such an excellent game that it passes the anti-Belda test. Release that game in 2020 in a world where the Zelda franchise has never existed and it would be the Indie Game of the Year without competition.
OP
OP
Yeah, sorry, I was being very convoluted because sleep deprived mostly. The premise was exactly that : "What are some 16 bits era games that are holding up so well one could 100% believe they've been made today with the 90s in mind" (maybe the indie word was too much)
You've been mentionning so many games I still don't know and I can't wait to dive into them! Meanwhile, still having a blast on Lufia 2! Man, it's almost as fun as Chrono Trigger, I'm really hooked (plus it's GORGEOUS on the PS Vita OLED screen my god)
i mean considering that by 1995 some people working in the industry making the pixel art for the best in class games were experienced people who had multiple high quality high budget titles it's not a surprise.
Even more so when you realize that only indies even consider doing pixel art games.
Axelay
Axelay is really impressive. Somehow shmups started regressing after that era and even with all the modern processing power at their disposal, it's hard to find recent shmups that are as impressive as the 16-bit greats.
More like it used to be an essential skill if you wanted to produce computer graphics. Those skills have been rotted out as newer techniques have completely supplanted them and today the art is basically kept alive by hobbyists.