The concept of age comes up an awful lot when it comes to media. When people comment on the idea of age, they usually mean how well that piece of media holds up when one revisits it, or how meaningful it is in a modern perspective. While for most other forms of media, it’s a tricky business to determine the relative endurance of a work to the rigors of time, video games provide a simultaneously easier and more difficult means of judging age. Be it mechanics, aesthetic, presentation, storyline, or even just the sound fidelity, the interactive nature of a game adds a whole new dimension to one’s introspection of it. However, due to the multifaceted nature of games, it also means that games don’t age the same ways that other media do.

Here’s three examples of great games that aged in unique–though not necessarily good–ways.

To take an example from a landmark game, let’s consider Ultima IV: Quest for the Avatar. This game is considered a landmark title in RPGs for its non-linear storyline, morality-centric mechanics, and its widespread influence on the genre as a whole. While the game has a lot of unique things that few games to this day still can’t match (namely, a morality system that still has more nuance than the classic 2-axis model we refer to today and a unique implementation of celestial alignments for its “moongates”), when I tried to go into it blind, I was utterly lost. Now, granted, I was raised in the era when RPGs actually did much of the work of navigation and task-management for you, but the fact that the game just drops you straight in with only the barest inclination as to where to go just left me bewildered. The same thing happened when I tried to play Ultima VII: The Black Gate. Now these are both really good games, but their mechanics are virtually alien to any modern RPG enthusiast.

I’ve heard of Butter-Face, but this is ridiculous.

Then there’s cases when a game is good, but the graphical technology makes it hard to revisit, such as the early Tekken games. I grew up playing Tekken 3, back when they managed to sort out how to do full-motion video on the PlayStation. Boy oh boy, did the earlier Tekken games look ugly as sin, especially in the full-motion video. Not even LEGO looks as blocky as the models in the first two Tekken games.  Then there’s Final Fantasy VII, with it’s infamous popeye arms and other exaggerated anatomy that flies counter to one of the most famous tragedies in video games. And yet, the games are still viable as games because their controls are tight and the story is good.

It may look great now, but just wait until they start *talking*.

And then, there are those games where the gameplay is smooth as silk, but the localization is laughable at best to cringe-worthy at worst. While in the 90s, Ted Woolsey was rocking text translation, when the age of dubbing came around, some games triumphed, and others floundered. Perhaps the best example is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I actually beat this game almost entirely on my own last month, and I had a blast playing it. Perhaps the most infamous thing in this game originally was the incredibly hammy dub. Lamentations on the nature of man’s relationship to evil, discussions on the histories of characters, and gazing upon one’s true form in despair made up most of the dialogue in these games. However, unlike the previous two examples, this actually makes it hold up ever slightly more just for the sheer over-the-top nature of the Castlevania series as a whole. When your primary character includes a man dressed in leather who manages to clear out an entire castle with nothing but an enchanted whip, there’s not exactly a high bar for seriousness to go with.

If these games tell us anything, it’s that games do not age in the same way as movies, tv, or books do. Because games are an interactive blend of multiple mediums, each game will age differently to its peers. Well, aside from music; that tends to be immortal.

Adam Nelon

Hobbyist Writer, Southern-Fried chicken fanatic, and unabashed lover of adorable girls and pastel horses, Adam was born in the saddle when it comes to games. Ever since his infant days with the Genesis, he's had a fascination with gaming, and loves finding obscure and unsung games for any system he can run them on.