Comments on: The Obsolete Add-on

By: Port Sherry » Archive » New Year

Port Sherry » Archive » New Year — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:38:54 +0000

[...] first tablet was a Genius Mouse Pen. It served me well from the beginning and until “The Obsolete Add-on” (I believe I broke it slightly finishing “IdleTown“). You can get it for half of [...]

By: BlueNight

BlueNight — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 05:44:01 +0000

In 2006, I got hooked on Morrowind. Before I learned about the game mechanics, I was absorbing it all like a new world to explore, to learn, and to live. Eventually, I realized what the stats were for, and I started to win, and it stopped being as magical. But I’ll still remember the day I stood and watched the sun come up over Suran.

By: i used to use my imagination a lot more for video games | Red Mongoose

i used to use my imagination a lot more for video games | Red Mongoose — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 06:32:46 +0000

[...] linked me to this Port Sherry comic today, and it got me thinking about the approach I used to take while playing old [...]

By: DesignKitty » Blog Archive » Speaking of Comics & Video Games: Port Sherry – The Obsolete Add-on

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 12:16:03 +0000

[...] The Obsolete Add-on [...]

By: Josh @iDTech

Josh @iDTech — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:32:45 +0000

Couldn’t agree more!!!!! Was just thinking this the other day!!!

By: sg_06

sg_06 — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:44:34 +0000

This comic kind of got to me. It’s the same thing I experienced playing Earthbound.
Revisiting the game, I was shocked at the amount of events that I remembered happening but weren’t explicitly shown in the game.

By: Pedro A.

Pedro A. — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:14:43 +0000

@Yvette:

I haven’t played Patapon, but any game that lets you use your imagination is A-OK in my book.

@Calmiche:

I kinda remember that part. I wonder if that hack had the same abrupt ending of GGS. At the time, I wasn’t even sure I beat the game!

Glad you enjoyed the comic!

By: Calmiche

Calmiche — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:06:18 +0000

I actually had this version of the Great Giana Sisters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRU8bHzh0zE

It’s a copy that has been hacked back to look more like Super Mario. It was also one of the first games I beat all the way through. I remember playing flawlessly for level after level because I KNEW there was one almost impossible jump where you had to land on the side of a spike on the other side of a pit to get through a level. I would go through 10-15 lives every time I played and that would be the only place I would die.

Great game and thanks for the memories!

By: Yvette Dobosz

Yvette Dobosz — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:03:00 +0000

Im playing patapon nowadays, and I can tell you =o I love it, because I can imagine I’m the ultimate god of these little creatures. It lets me feel more like im in control of the game. All the other games just make you feel like some lame nerd. =( so sad

By: Pedro A.

Pedro A. — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:31:17 +0000

Will: that’s spooky, man. What a happy coincidence for us both to reflect on these games beyond natural nostalgia. As games strive for filling these once graphical blanks, this area demands less interpretation skills. This, in turn, makes vintage games look unreasonable in their asking of taking the onscreen graphics as mere stimulus, a starting point for a landscape of the player’s own creation. I loved the mention of game and magazine covers of the time in your article, because nowadays they are perceived as pretentious and disconnected from the actual game: in actuality, sometimes games looked even more daring and magnificent in our minds!

There’s still plenty of abstraction in games that requires of the player willing suspension of disbelief in terms of narrative, mechanics and even control (most player’s underestimate how alien is to non-gamers the idea of pushing a button to achieve an action), so it’s not like modern games are already-chewed experiences. I’m not campaigning either for a return to sparse interfaces that put the grunt of the work into the player. At best, it’s just an invitation to approach these old games with new eyes, with a willingness to pour yourself into them and make them unique experiences.

In the end, though, I made the comic just because… it was a special time for a kid to be a gamer, you know? That’s all. But of course you know: it’s all there in the article. Congratulations, Will!