Defining the Dark Ages, or Why Your Childhood Favorites are Actually Horrible
Have you ever heard of an NES game called “Kickmaster”? It was an action sidescroller starring a dashing young hero, leveling up his magic and kicking his way to save a beautiful princess. Fighting monsters and knights and ogres, it was a harrowing tale of love, danger, and kicking. When I was a child, I was absolutely engrossed in this little title, playing all the way through and actually completing the game, which is a feat considering the unreasonable difficulty.
Kickmaster is, as it turns out, a horrible game.
How about “A Boy and His Blob”? No, not the recent, critically acclaimed Wii remake. I’m talking about the original Nintendo NES version. Many friends of mine are similarly in love with this game, going through insane hoops to make any substantial progress in the game. My only play session lasted about five minutes, after which I became thoroughly frustrated and gave up.
A Boy and His Blob is also a horrible game.
What do I mean when I say horrible? I mean that they just don’t stand up to common standards of quality. The controls don’t make sense. The artwork is poor compared to other games in that time period. The Core Experience is muddled and the goals confusing. In short, if you were to play the game for the first time right now, you wouldn’t give it a second thought.
Everyone has a game that they adore from when they were a child. A game that captured their hearts, that took them to places they’d never been before. And just as many people can reminisce about the classics such as Mario, Sonic, or Pokemon, but everyone also has their weird, off the wall game that is just terrible, nay, unplayable, and yet they fawn over it just as they would the masterpieces of the era.
This is a phenomena that has been seen across all walks of life (or at least in my conversations with other game developers), so what’s going on here? How could such terrible games find a place in our hearts?
The Dark Ages
One interesting thing that you will notice about universally criticized games that are still praised by a few dissidents is the period of time that the players were exposed to them. This is usually the time from around age 4-11, a time period that I like to refer to as The Dark Ages.
This is a magical time. It is a period of time when, as a child, you are beginning to explore the world and understand it for what it is. You are mostly just trying to take everything in and understand it, you are searching for experiences and learning as much as possible. This is a very impressionable time period, and it is the time period that most people happened to play the unlovable games that they still managed to enjoy. Why is this? Why are so many horrible games, and other media for that matter, able to get through to us during this period?
At that age, you have such little mental capacity for comparing games based on their merits. More concretely, most children lack the ability to critically analyze something. Because critical analysis requires an in depth understanding not only of a text/game, but also of the possibilities that the game could have reached, children aren’t able to complain. Everything is just taken as is, “I guess that’s how this game works.” Do you die every three seconds? An adult would say, “This game is terribly frustrating. You shouldn’t die every 3 seconds.” But a child would say, “I keep dying every 3 seconds. I guess that’s how this game works. I guess I’m supposed to try harder…?” An adult would reject the game, but the child, attempting to fit this new data point on a sparsely populated graph representing their view of the world.
Bear in mind that I’m no child developmental psychologist. If you happen to know of any online articles discussing this theory in a more professional detail, please feel free to leave a comment. However, it seems difficult to deny the existence of such a stage and its implications for games and other media. Because of this unusual window of opportunity, children at this age are able to be exposed to the experiences and titles that they hold on to for the rest of their lives.
Revealed in the Core Experience
Where the concept of the Dark Ages becomes most fascinating is when players report that they “grow out of” certain games. Some of these franchises that were enjoyed during a person’s childhood were successful and still around today. The Legend of Zelda may be a good example. Often, adults played games in this franchise when they were little, but now shy away, claiming that they just don’t enjoy them anymore. ”The classic versions were better”, they say, often with vague points such as how the older games had more “heart” or “soul”.
But I propose that this is a faulty analysis. Most often, the games that are descendants of older, more beloved franchises are not only equal in quality, they are greatly improved. The designs, the artwork, the music tracks are objectively more advanced and more informed than their predecessors, based on years of that studio’s experience. The game is delivering the same Core Experience, but it is not received by these adults.
Why does this happen? The person experienced the game during their Dark Ages, when their expectations were zero and they took the experience for what it was. Now, however, they are a different person, and they compare the game to other experiences in their life. With more data points on their graph, they recognize the faults, understand the challenges, and are no longer interested by them.
But who is interested in these games? Children, of course. And so the cycle starts over. Children embrace many games that adults once enjoyed, but play no longer. And when the children grow up, they will have left their own Dark Ages to move on to other experiences.
How about you? Do you have games or other media that you only enjoyed because you experienced them during your Dark Ages? If you had never seen them until now, would you still have appreciated it?
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Good article, I too had noticed that many games I loved so much are indeed, now, unplayable; either from insane difficulty or terrible controls.
Some still shine, but my fond memories are damaged by playing them again; I try not to go back to them, to preserve this rose tinted view.
This applies to many platforms, Spectrum to Playstation and PC. I think it depends how well designed they were; Often, I cannot play simply because I cannot figure out what the controls are, whereas contemporary games are far more likely to have tutorials and pop up hints, making them accessible for much longer.
However we view them now they are part of our lives and should be remembered fondly.
I look forward to your next article.
Hi there :)
Thats a very interested article. We have a four year old daughter and we are currently teacher her to play games on the wii, some hand held devices, and on websites (like our own and sesame street).
I hadn’t really thought about her behaviour before, but she often exhibits that sort of attitude towards the games. Playing Mario Cart for example, she loves to drive, but just drives into the water over and over again. She understands how to steer, but it doesn’t upset her that she falls in the water and needs to start again. Its just how it is.
Our drag and drop games are still quite difficult for her as well, but again, the fact it takes her several minutes to position each piece doesn’t really faze her.
I have actually been reading articles today about girls in gaming. It almost seems that one of the answers to broadening the games girls/women are open to might be to indroduce them to different types of games earlier (in the 4-11 window) when they are less likely to be frustrated or turned off by the experience.
Anyway, thanks for the article… some interesting thoughts :)
The games i probably spent the most time wiht in my Dark Age were probably Donkey Kong 64, Pokémon Silver and Age of Mythology. I still think all of these Games are greate and i still liked them when i played them recently.
But there is one game i didn’t actually loved but still spent a lot of time with it which gets affected by your theory. That was Empire Earth, probably the first Computer Game I ever owned. The game was really complex and difficult, at least too complex and too difficult for an 8 year old boy. But even though i only survived until the first attack of the enemy and never beat any of the campaign missions i kept playing it.
Paradroid always has and always will survive.
I can’t think of many games that I liked as a kid that don’t hold up today. Back then, even, I lamented how hard many NES games were, how much time the devs of Super C must have spent on levels that hardly anyone would ever see.
One game that might fit this is 4×4 Evo 2. I loved that one in 8th grade, but I could only handle one race when I reinstalled it a couple weeks ago. The physics and graphics felt terrible and I could no longer stomach the lack of analog control (and I was too lazy to hook up a gamepad). At the time, it was the first game I could play online. It was also the first game I modded and for which I interacted with a modding community online. It also used the Gran Turismo CarPG system during a time when I knew I liked that game design and I had no Playstation. I can definitely see a ton of examples of things that are done better today. I still think the game was great for its time and I’d love to see a third one today, or a similar title. F.U.E.L. is a similar, and awesome, recent title. Unfortunately, it has a few glaring faults that ruin it for a lot of people. I really think that game could be turned into something truly great with just three months of work by some people that are detached enough to understand how to make it play to its strengths and fix a few of the polish issues.
Honestly, I think more games should be “sequels,” but in terms of gameplay rather than story. Too many dev teams waste time coding their engines from the ground up instead of using better, existing ones. If someone wanted to make a good Zombieland game, I think they should try to work a deal with Valve to make a Left 4 Dead: Zombieland edition rather than making some terrible game. I think there could be a great City of Ember game as a Fallout 3 mod, too. The terrible game route is probably more profitable, though. Having to deal with two licenses and two approval processes would probably be practically impossible, too. I hope stuff like this can be worked out in the future somehow.
Heather said:
“I have actually been reading articles today about girls in gaming. It almost seems that one of the answers to broadening the games girls/women are open to might be to indroduce them to different types of games earlier (in the 4-11 window) when they are less likely to be frustrated or turned off by the experience.”
I’m not sure how much this will help. I keep hearing this research repeated that says girls and boys tend to like video games the same amount at the age of six and earlier, but then girls begin to be less interested in them after that time. Still probably a good idea though.
I think this view is a little narrow. For one thing there are some adults who enjoy the old games that were adults when they first played certain games. It was their first exposure to games sure, which has something to do with it. You didn’t have all this extra internet stuff, and game rentals (although you started having game rentals on 16 bit machines). So basically it’s all you had so you either liked it or you didn’t. Secondly, the reason we can’t go back to some old games is now we’re so used to the new stuff, we’re lazier, we have more lax imaginations and so forth. I think people, back in the day, were so much more engaged, they used their mind more, manual dexterity was more difficult, etc. We’re just not now. We have everything handed to us. Photo-realistic graphics and easier gameplay, etc. There’s no more fun aspect because they’re trying to craft something realistic, and/or complex.
Keith, great points. Not all games need to be played when you are a child in order to be enjoyed. Of course there are some games that are interesting to adults as well, and those will be appreciated if the player is in that window. And as for going back to how games were, yes, times change, expectations change, and that influences what people will put up with.