Retro Games: Less Imagery, More Imagination

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Published on June 16, 2025 5:12:49 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt34-aea9D0

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There's a reason why we fondly remember those older games, and it definitely wasn't the graphical fidelity. As games have proved time and time again, gaming can be an art form, no matter the medium. Whether through music, art style, or story, countless games have impacted us to our core. A game doesn't need to take up hundreds of gigabytes to be touching. Plenty of gamers out there remember Doki Doki Literature Club, Undertale, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill. The clunky tank controls had us dreading each and every movement, having to think in advance for the simplest gesture. And for games on a CRT monitor, some of them were made specifically with that hardware and console in mind, playing on those limitations. There are many times when a studio had the bare minimum to work with, and came out on top. Truly unforgettable experiences, like Psycho Mantis or the Colonel in MGS2. Times where the audiences' imagination would come alive, like Herobrine, or Lavender Town. And what about community-driven games, like the Backrooms, or SCPs? There are plenty of scenarios where game developers would send out ciphers or ARGs to stimulate their players before or during the release of a game. Every metaphorical rock and stone would be overturned for the tiniest bit of information. As games and graphics get better and better, our imagination has less and less to fill in. There are less lines and blanks for our minds, and more being directly told to us. This is how you play. This is how you feel. And it isn't really the same. Of course, it is mostly a generalization, as there are still games in this style, but it largely isn't the case, anymore. Those fuzzy, out-of-focus graphic styles are hardly used, and when they are, it is almost purely in favor of nostalgia, not of necessity. And what is that phrase...? Necessity is the mother of invention, right? So many consoles and games being pushed to their absolute limits years ago. And so many examples of games using these flaws to their advantage. It was truly a time of thinking outside the box. And that, in turn, leads us to more immersion, which is one of the most important things in gaming. Of course, that isn't to say immersion no longer exists; quite the opposite, in fact. It's just that, like everything else, it has transformed and came to us in a different form. As we get hungrier and hungrier for more shaders, ray tracing, better GPUs, we begin to forget what made gaming really great.