AI-assisted development is bringing old games to platforms we'd never have thought possible. That's exciting, but the growing flood of unfinished ports is beginning to raise an uncomfortable question: how many of these games are actually worth playing?

Some of the ports we’re seeing in the retro handheld community lately have been great, and I love seeing developers push these little devices beyond what they were ever intended to do. But I’ve definitely noticed what feels like a growing amount of ‘port-slop’, with new projects appearing seemingly every few hours, many of them feeling more like quick experiments than anything particularly worthwhile.

I’m not against the experimentation at all, but I do wonder if we’re reaching a point where quantity is starting to overshadow quality. Anyway, I put together a short opinion piece about it, just my own thoughts on something I’ve been noticing lately, especially here with my favorite old system: the PSP.

  • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
    131·
    3 days ago

    Just like the good old days where you had to wade through tens of thousands of shovelware to find a high quality game

    • otp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      81·
      3 days ago

      I agree with the sentiment that there used to be a ton of crappy old games, but I think each year, there are more releases in Steam and other virtual stores (e.g., the Nintendo eShop) than there were in e.g., the Atari 2600’s entire life.

      The junk to gem ratio is much worse now.

      • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        There was so many shit games back then, video games almost ended as a concept. Nintendo pretty much rescued the industry with their “Nintendo seal of approval” system, which built back trust that you were buying something playable.

        I don’t think we’re anywhere near that level of drowning in garbage lol in fact I have so many amazing indie games to play on Steam that it’s impossible to actually play them all. We’re drowning in quality and FOMO, if anything. Sure there’s asset flips and trash games but if you read the reviews and it’s “mostly positive” then it’s probably a good game

        • otp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          4·
          3 days ago

          It’s more accurate to say that the American video game market collapsed. Video games were still going strong in Japan, as they were (on computers) in Europe.

          We absolutely are drowning in that level of garbage, if not moreso. There are some differences though:

          • Buying a game (to know what you’re getting) is a much smaller commitment these days
          • There are (as you mentioned) reviews to read these days. There weren’t reviews back then; at least not readily-accessible reviews. This makes it so much easier to know if you’re getting something closer to a gem or closer to junk.
          • There are so many cheap options available, mostly because it’s low-risk to release digital games. You can get new full games for $20 these days. Back then they cost the equivalent of $100 or something crazy like that because of all the logistics around building cartridges, shipping them, and storing them.
          • There are so many games to play, so it’s incredibly easy to find something else. Back then, you had a handful of games, and got maybe 3 games a year. If you got junk, you were stuck. If all you had was junk every time, you found different hobbies.

          I mean, your own mentioning of looking for “mostly positive” reviews suggests that you intuitively know how much crap is out there. Start sifting through games without looking at review scores, and you’ll see how much crap is out there.

          Also, there were all kinds of ET-level crappy games on the NES with Nintendo’s supposed “Seal of Approval”.

          • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            3·
            3 days ago

            Also just to add to the point that it was more of an American console market problem. I’ve met a couple grey and white beards who were part of the PC gaming side of things during the crash and according to them they were small but thriving since they were able to filter trash and share things around as needed thanks to the community aspect of things. Who knows maybe in an alternate world where the NES flopped it was the Commodore 64 that reigned as king for early home gaming, hell maybe we could’ve gotten a proper port of Metal Gear years earlier.

    • Tattorack@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      I wish I could again, because there are a lot of PC scrolling SHMUP demos I played on the old Windows XP that I cannot find back anymore.

      SHMUP databases tend to only have the popular arcade/console ones. Not the ones you’d find on PC Mag demo discs between 2000 and 2010.

    • Grid Gremlin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Cover-disc demos from that era are a good thing to hunt for, since the Internet Archive hosts a lot of scanned magazine CD images that you can browse or search. The TipOfMyJoystick community listed in this sub’s sidebar is also good at identifying half-remembered games from a description of the ship, music or level look.