Once upon a time you had to replay certain parts of a game again and again, because you had to. And you know what? Those times were filled with joy and laughter.



What makes World 1-1 or World 1-2 in Super Mario Bros. such classic levels, that everybody remembers, is the fact that everybody remembers it, because of playing them so often. Everytime you turned on your copy of Super Mario Bros. on the NES, you had to play through them again. But even after playing through them countless times, nobody was complaining about it.

There are a lot of things, that insure replayability in Super Mario Bros. with tons of hidden stuff, that is impossible to find on your first playthrough and a difficulty level, that penalizes mistakes harshly but still motivates enough to let you keep going at it. And although the game mechanics are limited, there are various ways to play the level. Either you run through it as fast as you can or you aim to collect all the coins you can get or you just stroll through the level and have a great time. And all of this is done without any explanation what to do. You just figure out on your own, that you basically have to run from left to right to win a level.

At the end of World 1-1 waits the flag pole everybody knows about. And even though it is just the end of the level, it is so much more of an experience than just a simple exit. The joy of having finished the level is then again overpowered with the challenge of getting a good score on the flag pole and maybe even time it good enough to get a firework.

Now fast forwarding over 20 years in the future to the present games have changed a lot. In a way they have become a lot more user friendly with check points and the functionality to save your game. But on the other hand the beginning of most games isn't fun anymore, because it's filled with tutorial stuff.



Even if you want to replay newer games most of them are a chore in the beginning, because of the frequent messages like "Press B to Jump.". Seriously, if you can't figure out which is the jump button, something is seriously wrong with the game design. More than once have I have restarted a game just to turn it of some minutes later, because the tutorial portion of the game. If your game is overly complex to actually need a tutorial, put an option to turn it of in the game or even better make a tutorial level, that is accessable from the main menu.

Some games try to circumvent the tutorial problem with limiting your actions in the beginning of the game to make it easier for you, but if you try to replay the game this makes everything only harder for you. To find out that you are still unable to do the double jump and therefore miss some platforms in the beginning isn't a very satisfying experience.

Now going back in the past again. Games were a lot shorter back then. Nowadays games are often advertised by game length and a lot of people refuse to buy games, that are shorter than 5 hours, so games are often made longer than they should be. Take Wind Waker for an example. Wind Waker is for the most part an almost perfect game. The story is entertaining, the world is fun to explore and the dungeon design is pure perfection. But near the end of the game you have to sail all over the world to find triforce maps, you then have to get translated by tingle for quite a bit of money and then go and find the treasure boxes with the triforce pieces. This part is very very tedious and not fun at all. I will happily play any part of the game again and again, but just thinking about having to find all those pieces again makes me lose all interest in playing the game that far ever again, which is a shame.



Super Mario Bros. is a lot shorter than Wind Waker or even that treasure collecting part in Wind Waker. You can easily complete the game in half an hour, if you know what you are doing. But those 30 minutes will be fun from start to finish unlike certain parts of Wind Waker. A lot of this is the arcade game feeling you get from Super Mario Bros.. A good arcade games wants you to come back for more and therefore needs a lot more polishing. Say you play a Shoot'em Up and you get to a stage, that is absolutely no fun, would you throw in another quarter to keep playing that annoying stage or would you rather walk away and spend your money on something else. So instead of 30 hours of gameplay with inconsistent quality, I would rather have shorter games, that are amazing from start to finish.

Another thing retro games lack from a modern viewpoint is depth in story. And don't get me wrong, I love story in video games, but I don't have to watch it over and over again in its full length. I loved the story in MGS4 and enjoyed every second of it (even the incredibly long ending), but when I came back for my second playthrough I couldn't care less about it and skipped all the way through it. The story in Super Mario Bros. is more than simple, actually unless you read the manual you most likely won't know, why you are running from left to right and jumping on Goombas along the way. That's because the gameplay is fun and interesting and not the story. Yes, story telling has come a long way in games, but if I only sit through a game because of the story something is wrong. (Note: Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII is one of the games I only endured because I wanted to know the story) But it's even worse if you are taken out of fun gameplay only to watch some mediocre story (and unskippable to annoy you) you couldn't care less about.



The final part of the retro magic is challenge. With the whole casual gaming is the new big thing and games have to dumbed down so everybody can enjoy it, games are getting easier and easier. On the other hand controlling them gets harder and harder with aditional buttons and two sticks. Not a single of my non gaming friends is able to play a FPS on a console, because the controls are way too difficult for them. With retro games it's exactly the other way around. The controls are very simple, but there is quite a bit of challenge in the games. When Super Mario Bros. was released, everybody considered it to be a game, that could be enjoyed by everone. Or PacMan was actually made to get women interested in videogames, because women like eating and PacMan looks like a pizza. So in other words Super Mario Bros. and PacMan have been casual games back then and even now everybody understands the simple rules and controls of PacMan. Although both games aren't exactly the most difficult games ever, there is quite a bit of challenge to be found in both of them. And this challenge is what keeps you coming back for more.