I was having a conversation with my friend Luke Kane today, and we realized how iconic the first, or near-first images of old games are. This is especially true of games back "in the day" (that's what people who are as old as me refer to games around in the late 80's and early 90's). Since there wasn't a save system on most games back then, you ended up playing the first level dozens or maybe even hundreds of times.
I started thinking about this because of the emotional reaction I have whenever I see images from the first levels of some important, older games. These images have been seared into my memory and are instantly recognizable. You could probably remove everything but just a few aspects of each image, and people would still recognize it immediately. For example:
I bet if I were to leave a silhouette of just the bricks and blocks, most gamers would recognize it.
Let's look at some others.
Now, this doesn't really happen as often in newer games. Older games had such a limited perspective, what you saw in the first few seconds is about all there is to that vista. Entering the world of 3D games doesn't quite offer the same specificity. But there are some exceptions:
But for the most part, this doesn't happen quite so strongly anymore because of the ability to save your game and the flexibility in your perspective in 3D games. But it is something that is interesting to think about.
Anybody have their own examples?
I started thinking about this because of the emotional reaction I have whenever I see images from the first levels of some important, older games. These images have been seared into my memory and are instantly recognizable. You could probably remove everything but just a few aspects of each image, and people would still recognize it immediately. For example:
I bet if I were to leave a silhouette of just the bricks and blocks, most gamers would recognize it.
Let's look at some others.
Now, this doesn't really happen as often in newer games. Older games had such a limited perspective, what you saw in the first few seconds is about all there is to that vista. Entering the world of 3D games doesn't quite offer the same specificity. But there are some exceptions:
But for the most part, this doesn't happen quite so strongly anymore because of the ability to save your game and the flexibility in your perspective in 3D games. But it is something that is interesting to think about.
Anybody have their own examples?
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