Childhood Games That Don’t Hold Up
Tomb Raider
Lara Croft is one of gaming’s most iconic protagonists, and at this point, her adventures have been far more extensive and incredible than any Indiana Jones ever embarked upon.
Her original adventure debuted back in 1996, in an adventure so influential it is still seen as a touchstone of 3D action games to this day. The game was also a commercial success, selling more than 7 million copies, which was no small feat back then.
But as influential and successful as it is, the original Tomb Raider is finicky and frustrating. There is a precious little action; in fact, you spend more time fighting the camera than any endangered species, and the nature of platforming on the PS1 means you are going to fall to your doom more times than is fun.
Much has been made of blocky Lara, and like a lot of PS1 era games, this games graphical style has not held up at all. However, Lara herself has stood the test of time, with multiple mainline games, remasters and reboots.
Tomb Raider remains as relevant as ever, but stick with the newer games, as they are infinitely more playable.
Childhood Games That Don’t Hold Up
Zombies Ate My Neighbours
Zombies Ate My Neighbours might actually be one of the greatest horror games ever made and a legitimately great co-op game. You play as teens Zeke and Julie who must battle hordes of undead and various B-movie monsters in a quest to save the neighborhood, and maybe even the world.
However, this comes with some serious drawbacks.
The game’s passwording system is downright draconian, wherein if you were to use a password to skip the first two or three dozen levels, you would start off with nothing but a squirt gun, the most basic weapon in the game, which does not cut it against high-level foes.
The titular neighbors, who need to be rescued before you can progress to the next level, are surrounded by enemies that spawn in as soon as the player enters the area. This leads to a lot of unfair game overs and plenty of frustration, as you need to save at least one to proceed to the next level.
Couple this with the frankly awful boss design and this game is better left fondly remembered than revisited.
Childhood Games That Don’t Hold Up
Battletoads in Battlemaniacs
1993’s Battletoads in Battlemanaics was just about the most 90’s thing ever conceived. A trio of knock-off Ninja Turtles (that are actually toads) named Zitz, Rash and Pimple must battle pig-men in a digital world called the Gamescape that looks like hell and along the way have to race a rat-man named the Scuz for the fate of the planet.
A game that was truly more style than substance, Battletoads in Battlemanics was a fairly short game where each level had a different take on popular gaming genres, whether that was a sidescrolling beat em up, incredibly poorly implemented platforming sections or the games infamous speeder bike segment, AKA the hardest stage in gaming.
Only real 90’s kids will remember being duped into thinking this game was cool. The best part was the start, which was actually kind of a fun co-op experience.
That changes real quick, though, as the difficulty skyrockets and lives become extremely limited. The soundtrack, however, still holds up.
Childhood Games That Don’t Hold Up
Grand Theft Auto 3
Grand Theft Auto 3 was one of the first truly open world games, and for that fact alone it will always have a special place in the annals of gaming history, especially with how prevalent that kind of structure is these days.
Couple that with the fact that this was the first true breakout of the series, achieving a level of popularity that was previously unheard of.
And it’s easy to see why. The free-roaming murder-simulator was something that could be picked up and played by anyone at all, and the mobility and freedom of action were truly novel concepts.
Nowadays, every other game is open-world, with many other series doing the kind of exploration and interaction better and more specialized ways, like the Assassin’s Creed series and its focus on stealth.
And while the variety of vehicle and missions available meant there was plenty to sink your teeth into, there really isn’t a whole lot of reason to revisit GTA3.
While it was a huge step forward for the series and gaming in general, later games would improve on virtually every aspect. Just go back to playing GTAV instead.
Childhood Games That Don’t Hold Up
Twisted Metal
I am still waiting for a Twisted Metal movie. In a perfect world it would be a Christopher Nolan joint, with an extended look at Sweet Tooth’s childhood and how they welded Axel in between those wheels… oh wait, I finally get that joke, nearly 20 years later,
Car combat games are a tricky proposition at the best of times, especially when they are arena based. I think Mario Kart 64 probably did it best with Blockfort, but the key there was the balanced nature of the game.
In Twisted Metal, each character has their own unique move, some of which are wildly overpowered, and others being frustratingly situational.
For example, Mr Grimm, while clearly the coolest from a visual standpoint, has about one-third of the health of other characters, and has an incredibly tough time of it, compared to sturdier characters like Warthhog or Sweet Tooth.
The imbalanced character match-ups, along with truly bad camera work and bland graphics even for the time, make Twisted Metal not worth revisiting.
Childhood Games That Don’t Hold Up
Goldeneye
Where it all began. Goldeneye 64 is likely the first multiplayer shooter you ever played, and you probably have fond memories of manic split-screen marathons that lasted long into the night. The game’s single-player campaign was actually pretty great, with its plethora of secrets and unlockables tasking you with completing missions under all kinds of conditions.
But when you get right down to it, Goldeneye is the kind of game that is best left fondly remembered. It controls like hot garbage, with the camera controls being mapped to the C buttons, as a Nintendo console with a right stick was still years away from being a reality.
And while it’s rarely an issue these days, screen-cheating was a very real part of life and probably ended more than a few friendships.
And don’t even get me started on Oddjob. The game’s hitboxes were already kind of whack, but a multiplayer game where you literally can’t hit someone without aim correction? No thank you.
I, for one, am grateful for the internet and modern multiplayer gaming, with every player sitting alone in the dark as they were meant to be.
Childhood Games That Don’t Hold Up
Metroid
The original Metroid on the NES seems virtually ancient at this point. Samus Aran’s first adventure should need no introduction at this point, and even if you never played it you have certainly played games that have been inspired by it.
At this point in gaming, Metroidvania is a part of the common vernacular, and with good reason.
But still, there was a time when unlocking new abilities that would, in turn, allow you access to new areas was a novel concept. Metroid was hard-as-nails too, in that sort of unfair way that only games of this vintage can get away with. And while it has certainly earned its place in gaming history, it can make it a pretty tough prospect to revisit.
If you want to play something similar, you are much better off playing something slightly more forgiving, with some modern sensibilities. Be sure to check out this list for some inspiration.
Childhood Games That Don’t Hold Up
Crash Bandicoot
Sic parvis Magna is a phrase that developer Naughty Dog popularized for modern audiences, and if you take a look back at their catalog of games, it seems to apply especially to them. Who would have ever predicted that the studio that gave us Crash Bandicoot would go on to create something like The Last of Us?
Few would deny there is a certain charm to Crash, with his jorts and over the top death animations. Fewer still would argue that the original game holds up today. 1996’s PS1 exclusive was the epitome of the character-platformer, and it committed some of the genre’s greatest sins.
Chief among these was the platforming itself. Except for the vaguest of shadows, players had very little way of knowing where they were actually going to land after any given jump.
This is to say nothing of the infamous chase sequences, in which absolute rote memorization is required to proceed. Forcing the player to run at the camera while platforming blind should be a punishable offense.
There is a reason why you only play a brief snippet of Crash Bandicoot during Uncharted 4, because it hits all of those nostalgia triggers without the frustration of, you know, actually playing Crash Bandicoot.
Childhood Games That Don’t Hold Up
Syphon Filter
Syphon Filter is one of those games that a friend of yours got for Christmas or a birthday and had nothing else to play, and so insisted it was cool in what is the gamer’s equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome.
The plot of Syphon Filter revolves around a secret agent named Gabe who attempts to apprehend German terrorists at the behest of the United States government, which sounds kind of cool on paper.
In reality, Syphon Filter was conceived as just a name, that developers Eidetic then built a game around. No, really. It was almost cancelled several times during development due to the dev teams lack of inspiration and their inexperience in creating video games. Read all about it here, it’s wild.
Despite all of this, the original Syphon Filter actually received pretty great reviews. It did have the great misfortune to be released just a few months after the original Metal Gear Solid, you know, that other tactical espionage action game about an enigmatic super-spy.
Unlike Metal Gear, the gameplay just doesn’t hold up, and the game has not aged well.
If ever there was a time for a remake though, it’s now. The stealth-action throne that Kojima once sat upon has been empty for too long…
Childhood Games That Don’t Hold Up
Mass Effect
RPG fans owe a lot to BioWare, and to the Mass Effect series in general. Taking a whole lot of inspiration from giants of the genre like Black Isle Studios and their Infinity Engine games, the Mass Effect series modernized character driven western roleplaying games and brought them back in a big way, and on consoles, no less.
And while Mass Effect nailed its world-building and inter-party interactions with the elegance of those venerable CRPG’s, the gameplay itself has not stood the test of time in nearly the same way.
Gunplay has never been BioWare’s strong suit, with that trend looking to continue with the upcoming Anthem, but the original Mass Effect made some questionable gameplay decisions that don’t hold up so well.
Who could forget the Mako, and its shonky controls? It was like trying to drive a parade float that had rockets strapped to it. Furthermore, the planets you would explore in it were mostly barren and uninteresting, offering the barest illusion of exploration. Even that was preferable to the interminable planet scanning mechanic that was slapped onto every other planet in the system.
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