Games that haven't aged well.

[Sarge]

Speaking to RPGs, I will definitely agree that a lot of the PSX and PS2 era saw battle systems that were too sluggish for their own good. When Dragon Quest VIII came out, I was worried it would be as slow as a lot of the others, but it's pretty quick. Not as quick as the older games, but compared to much of its PS2 brethren, it's blisteringly fast.

Happy to see some DKC love here.

[Tanooki]

I guess I wasn't off base.

Love the comments, as I wasn't going to detail it but it's covered.

DKC2 suffers from bloat, trying to outdo the other but takes it too far with dumb coin lockouts and being trickier for tricky and being different sake. The pacing around it because of that blows compared to either of the other two. DKC3 has some of what DKC2 did but dialed it back not to be annoying and unbalanced, and even though they added in that big baby it gave us back having DK(DKC1) like character control which I missed in #2.

[Omerta]

Most people agree that Goldeneye and Perfect Dark have aged very poorly. Many people who loved this game can no longer enjoy it because of the controls.

Nearly all of the N64 first-person action games are borderline unplayable for me anymore due to control reasons. A lot of the early twin stick games that won't allow you to change inversion or use the left stick for aiming are difficult to replay, too.

I will say that Perfect Dark is much more useful on XBLA / Rare Replay and the Goldeneye remake should be as well (though it's not very close to the same game from what I hear).

[pook99]

I would say that most 3d games from n64/ps1 era have aged poorly. I could deal with the hideous graphics but the controls in the pre dual analog days is horrific and very hard to adjust too, add in the often terrible camera angles in these games and you have a large family of once great games that have lost lots of their luster. As mentioned earlier FPS in this era have aged poorly for similar reasons, although ps1 fps are slightly easier to stomach than n64 ones.

[marurun]

There are technical reasons that era’s games suffer as well. Affine textures causing texture warping and swimming on PS1 and Saturn, and low-accuracy math causing polygons to jump and gap on the PS1, and then there’s the hilariously low texture size on the N64. A great many games during this period really wrestled with the design choices of the hardware, in ways few 2D consoles had to. Arguably the N64 came closest to doing 3D correctly, but it still represented a set of bizarre compromises.

[Segata]

One thing N64 did that was neat PS1 couldn't do is the music could on the spot transform into another song. CD's could not do that on PS1. A small but cool thing for the time.

[Exhuminator]

One thing N64 did that was neat PS1 couldn't do is the music could on the spot transform into another song. CD's could not do that on PS1. A small but cool thing for the time.

Actually, the PlayStation had a 16-bit 24 channel PCM based SPU, and could generate music in realtime, in addition to playing CD music. That means the PS1 could technically "spot transform" from one song to another as the N64 did, if a game was using the onboard SPU. Most PS1 developers simply preferred to stream CD based OSTs instead.

[alienjesus]

Anyone who struggles to play N64 FPS these days due to the controls should try switching to the control scheme I use - the default for most games on the console is that the control stick is to move forward & backward and turn, and the c buttons are strafe and look up and down. It's way easier if you map the move and look buttons to the same controls.

My preferred control set-up is that the c-buttons are move/strafe and the stick is used for looking and turning - it's very similar to a modern dual analogue layout, just mapped the other way round. You have the option to do all aiming with the c-buttons too obviously, and with the N64 FPS having such strong aim assist, that works fine too.

Games like Perfect Dark let you use the D-Pad like the C-buttons too, so you could try something crazy like using the d-pad to move and the stick to aim and it's basically like dual analogue then. You just have to figure out how to map the limited buttons you can reach. I have a friend who can only play Perfect Dark this way now.

[Reprise]

Anyone who struggles to play N64 FPS these days due to the controls should try switching to the control scheme I use - the default for most games on the console is that the control stick is to move forward & backward and turn, and the c buttons are strafe and look up and down. It's way easier if you map the move and look buttons to the same controls.

My preferred control set-up is that the c-buttons are move/strafe and the stick is used for looking and turning - it's very similar to a modern dual analogue layout, just mapped the other way round. You have the option to do all aiming with the c-buttons too obviously, and with the N64 FPS having such strong aim assist, that works fine too.

Games like Perfect Dark let you use the D-Pad like the C-buttons too, so you could try something crazy like using the d-pad to move and the stick to aim and it's basically like dual analogue then. You just have to figure out how to map the limited buttons you can reach. I have a friend who can only play Perfect Dark this way now.

Oh yeah, this. So much this. The funny thing is that is the control scheme I have ALWAYS used for console shooters. I used to annoy the hell out of my mates back in the nineties and early 00s, because they'd come over for multiplayer and would have to change the controls back to how they like them e.g. the default. It's kinda funny in retrospect, since everyone now uses my preferred control method, albeit now in the form of dual sticks.

[pook99]

Puzzle is perhaps the genre where the games age the best, particularly the ones that had no flash to pull you in like Kwirk and Tetris. But I do find the latter overly simplisticand repetitive nowadays.

I would argue that most 2d games have aged wonderfully as well. Platformers, run n guns, schmups, beat em ups, metroidvanias are all genres that play just as well today as they did back then.