The title is somewhat "clickbait", but what I'm getting at is I hate going to threads of "what games still hold up today" and seeing so many rose tinted posts. While there are a few old games today that really do stand the test of time, most don't. Even the most critically acclaimed titles don't. At best they're playable and fun, and but do not fully hold up to games released today.

If you were to give a gamer who started gaming this generation different games to rate, most of those old games "that stand the test of time" would be consistently rated worse than the games of the last few years. They wouldn't have any expectations of games yet as they're a new gamer, yet they would rate the old games consistently worse, even on things like fun factor, and enjoyment, (not counting obvious ones, like graphics or quality).

For pretty much every old game, you can find a similar new game, that the modern gamer will have more fun and enjoyment with.

Most new games are terrible by today's standards.

Tell that to Commandos (1998) fans, or Thief (1998) fans, or Grim Fandango (1998) fans, or Xenogears (1998) fans.. see what I'm getting at. Have fun playing your third person action games and first person military shooters.

I'm used to play old games and I find more enjoyment out of then tham with some new games. I agree that some games haven't aged particulary well, but there are a lot of exceptions.

Games with great design and fundamentals can age like wine.

Some games that I loved from various points in the past have definitely aged poorly. I feel gen 5 has fared the worst in this regard. I was even rocked by some recent gen 6 action. I played GTA 3 in Jan 2016, for the first time since I played it in 2001, and it was a donkey punch to the breadbasket. Took me a few hours to "adjust" to it, and begin enjoying it. Even with the initial shock subsiding, it never became the game it was to me all those years ago.

Gaming is a mix of technology and art, and from a technical perspective there have been improvements. Not just graphical fidelity, but learning about game design. In the early days most programmers were throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Now it has become more of a set science of what makes controls intuitive or how to work a camera.

I remember reading from a design perspective on puzzle titles that Tetris is actually a deeply flawed title that would never be made today, and yet it has sold truck loads because personal enjoyment is not so easy to quantify.

To me gaming went through stages of discovery and refinement (repeated this when the shift to 3D occurred in the 1990s). The issue when grading Super Mario Bros. or Ocarina of Time by 2017 standards is it removes the absolute sense of awe of experiencing something new and unexpected.

I'd argue the SNES as the best to stand the test of time because it was a refinement, and then there weren't really more refinements wholesale on it with the shift to the N64. If you started on the PS1 you've experienced 4 generation of refinement, so going back would be much harder to go back because everything has been been built on prior work.

Well... you said "most" and I think anyone would argue with that. If you had said "all" we would have to argue. A lot.

There are games, even from the Atari era, that hold up well, but just if people trying them make the effort to clean their mind and understand the era when that game was launched.

It´s like watching an old movie.Movies like Limelight, Metropolis and Nosferatu are quaint compared to today´s movies, but if you understand the industry standards at the time they were launched, and how people used to appreciate movies back then, they can be quite enjoyable.

Games like Keystone Kappers on the Atari, Sonic on Genesis/MegaDrive, TMNT 3 and SMB3 on NES etc. have great gameplay and are quite enjoyable. We just need to be open-minded.

Somewhat agree.

I didn't grow up with Nintendo or playstation. So when I got into gaming (pc and xbox) with the likes of Halo and Splinter cell I found most of the games on other platforms unplayable. Especially Japanese ones like Onimusha and countless number of moronic hack n slash games like DMC and GOW.

Golden Era for me was 2003 - 2008. Since then games have been quite stale.

User moderated -Aura7541

Most popular games today cater to the mind-numbed masses.