作者：Carolyn Petit

我能够想象，当我以后回顾2012年的游戏市场时，印象最深刻的并非今年的大型商业热作。同样，我首先想到的也不会是《XCOM: Enemy Unknown》或《Dishonored》这类佳作。在我看来，最能够完美诠释2012游戏市场的当数今年我体验过的两款最难忘且最有趣的游戏，它们可以称为对过去游戏的致敬之作。

当然，利用玩家（伴随80或90年代的游戏长大）的怀旧心理制作游戏并不算是一种创新形式。任天堂的《新马里奥兄弟》系列设置的每个项目都在力图吸引那些喜欢体验“旧作”的玩家。而且，发行商复兴并现代化包装过去那些备受拥护的游戏属性已成为普遍现象。作为NES版本《Bionic Commando》的忠实粉丝，我总会想到其2009年那些令人失望的更新版本。

但于今年发行的《荒野老城》与《阿波波大冒险》这两款游戏与过去建立的关系却不同以往。它们不再改装旧作，引用我们喜爱的特定角色或游戏场景，满足我们小时候对系列游戏新作的渴望之情。相反，它们借鉴大量不同类型的NES游戏，以此向整个NES时代致敬。虽然它们仍然拥护过去的游戏理念，但却采用完全不同的制作方法。

荒野老城(from gamespot)

《荒野老城》采用的是20世纪80年代还未出现的游戏类型，即开放世界的城市犯罪冒险——我们可以设想一旦发生此类事件，整个城市将陷入何种境地。《荒野老城》原先的开发定位就是“Grand Theftendo”，并且瞄准的目标平台是NES硬件，因此在视觉与听觉上极其类似80年代作品。如果你钟爱NES，那么体验《荒野老城》会让你想起把一款新盒装游戏带回家，插进红白机中，然后沉浸在全新的8位世界中的感受。

这是一种令人兴奋的感觉，其怀旧力量与探索《天际》的大陆或自由城街道的现代紧张感截然不同。由于80年代还未出现《荒野老城》这类游戏，它重新唤起了玩家体验到新鲜游戏的兴奋感——这不同于你首次体验《银河战士》、《Blaster Master》或《塞尔达传说》这些游戏的感觉。然而，最终的情况会演变为，由于现在是21世纪10年代，不是19世纪80年代，我们已玩过类似《荒野老城》这种游戏，以及比它更出色的游戏。该游戏的视觉效果与音乐能够唤起玩家回到过去的快感，但其创举并不如《银河战士》与《塞尔达传说》刚出道时那般大胆。

《荒野老城》在视觉与音乐上的效果已突破了8位时代水平，试图唤起玩家在过去体验游戏的温暖舒适之感。同时，该作还借鉴众多特定的游戏、角色、媒介特性、电影元素以及80年代流行的其它人造文化。其中某些借鉴内容可能会赢得玩家的认同感，“嘿，那家滑板店的名字居然引自《Skate or Die》！”有些借鉴模式会博你一笑，而有些则毫无作用。然而讽刺的是，《荒野老城》在引用其他经典游戏的玩法这一点上，却是它向80年代游戏致敬的最大败笔之处。

《Paperboy》和《Tapper》这类游戏，以及原版《魂斗罗》中仿3D关卡等这些特殊元素均给玩家一种特殊感，而对于从小便开始玩这些游戏的我们来说，操控游戏的感觉已在我们脑海中根深蒂固。结果，当我们体验《荒野老城》中效仿这些游戏的某些回合时，游戏呈现的画面（比如，其中的房间仿造《Tapper》中的酒吧）总与我们的感受无法吻合（其控制方式与《Tapper》中的独特操控方式不大相同）。我喜欢《Tapper》，但体验那些借鉴内容却无法让我想起钟爱《Tapper》的原因。

abobos big adventure(from duelinganalogs.com)

另一方面，《阿波波大冒险》则精确复制了它所模仿游戏的所有玩法。与《荒野老城》不同的是，《阿波波大冒险》并没有在8位时代的视觉效果与声音中融入更具现代感的风格或理念。事实上，《阿波波大冒险》包含的每个元素（游戏邦注：包括每个角色与每个环境细节）不单引用过去的游戏元素，它几乎再造了完美的像素构图。

由于《阿波波大冒险》并非一款商业游戏，而是免费的Flash游戏，因此它可以复制《双截龙》（包括完整的美妙音乐）的第一环节，而你将会面临来自《超级马里奥兄弟》、《Renegade》、《大金刚》、《Kung Fu》以及其它作品的敌人。如果你玩过《双截龙》，那么你不单只会从《阿波波大冒险》的视觉与听觉上体会到怀旧之感，你会感受到该作的整体效果与《双截龙》并无两样。如果游戏并未产生这种效果，那么你会感受到类似《荒野老城》的Tapper关卡那种脱节之感。但该作的进程十分和谐，且充满趣味。

《阿波波大冒险》的显著之处在于让你重新领会经典NES游戏的视觉、听觉与感觉。其中某个关卡可能模仿《塞尔达传奇》中的防御堡垒战略，也有某些关卡模仿《Pro Wrestling》的竞技模式。或是重新改造《魂斗罗》的最初阶段，又或者以《洛克人2》Quick Man关卡的弹跳与射击为模版进行改造。类似《双截龙》的开场模式一样，这些并非枯燥无趣的直接复制。它们包含来自其它游戏的大量角色，而且时常会冒出一些意想不到的boss，以及出现我们十分熟悉的故事情节。但它总会抓住游戏中最关键的细节，总会为我们呈现恰到好处的感觉。《荒野老城》让我们想到了那些经典佳作，而《阿波波大冒险》则让我们想起自己对它们的喜爱之情。

如果玩家并未体验过NES游戏，情况又会如何？对于并不熟悉8位游戏历史的玩家，我们更应该提供哪类游戏呢？现在，向玩家提供8位游戏体验仍旧充满趣味，相比《荒野老城》，《阿波波大冒险》能提供更加多样化且更棒的游戏体验。然而，这种直接对比可能有些不公平。毕竟，一款是以引用8位时代的视觉效果与幽默元素为主的有趣开放场景游戏。另一款几乎完全是由8位游戏的各个部分打造而成，其中包括精灵、背景、音乐及游戏机制。但是，如果以后有更多的游戏均向NES时代表示致敬，我希望它们可以向《阿波波大冒险》取经，并且认识到，我们对游戏的长久喜爱之情并非来自它们的像素画面或芯片音乐元素，而是它们的体验方式。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Nostalgic Game Design Can’t Be Just Skin Deep

by Carolyn Petit

I imagine that when I look back on the games of 2012 in the future, it won’t be any of this year’s big commercial hits that stand out most. Great as they are, it won’t be games like XCOM:

Enemy Unknown or Dishonored that spring to mind first. Rather, what will define 2012 for me most is the fact that not one but two of the most memorable and interesting games I played this year are tremendously referential celebrations of gaming’s past.

Of course, games that capitalize on the nostalgia of players who grew up with the games of the ’80s and ’90s are nothing new. Each entry in Nintendo’s New Super Mario Bros. series attempts to appeal to those who have fond recollections of the “old” Super Mario Bros. games. And it’s not unusual for publishers to resurrect and modernize beloved properties of the past. As a huge fan of Bionic Commando on the NES, I always think of the disappointing 2009 update as an unfortunate example of such games.

But two games released this year–Retro City Rampage and Abobo’s Big Adventure–have a different relationship with the past than those other games. These games aren’t new entries in old franchises, playing on our fondness for specific characters or worlds, our yearning to play a new game in a series we loved when we were younger. Instead, they reference a wide variety of different NES games, and in doing so, they celebrate the entire NES era. Yet though they share a similar reverence for the past, their approaches are wildly different.

Retro City Rampage takes a type of game that didn’t exist in the 1980s–the open-world urban crime adventure–and envisions what it might have looked like if it had. Known early in its development as Grand Theftendo and originally designed to run on actual NES hardware, Retro City Rampage looks and sounds very much like a product of the ’80s. If you loved the NES, playing RCR will bring memories flooding back of how it felt to bring a new cartridge home, slam it into the Nintendo, and dive into a new 8-bit world.

It’s a heady sensation, with the power of nostalgia making it distinctly different from the contemporary thrill of exploring the lands of Skyrim or the streets of Liberty City. And because games like RCR didn’t exist in the ’80s, Retro City Rampage initially recaptures the excitement that came with playing something unlike anything you’d ever played before–the first time you played Metroid or Blaster Master or The Legend of Zelda. But eventually, it sinks in that, since we’re now in the 2010s and not the 1980s, we have played games that play like Retro City Rampage, and that do what it does better. The visuals and music conjure a pleasing sense of returning to the past, but what it’s doing isn’t nearly as bold today as what games like Metroid and The Legend of Zelda did back then.

Retro City Rampage goes beyond its 8-bit visuals and music in attempting to stir up warm, fuzzy feelings for gaming’s past, though. It also dishes out references by the dozens to specific games, characters, media personalities, movies, and other pop culture artifacts of the ’80s. Some of these nods elicit a pleasing sense of recognition, a simple but satisfying, “Oh, hey, the name of that skate shop is a reference to Skate or Die!” Others may make you chuckle, while some fall flat. But ironically, it’s when Retro City Rampage goes beyond textual references and tries to reference classic games via its gameplay that it stumbles the most as a celebration of ’80s games.

Games like Paperboy and Tapper, and particular elements of games such as the faux-3D levels in the original Contra, all felt a specific way, and for those of us who played those games when we were younger, the feel of the controls is an intrinsic part of our memories of them. As a result, when playing the sections of Retro City Rampage that are modeled on these games, there’s a jarring disconnect between what we see (a room that is clearly modeled on a bar in Tapper, for instance) and what we feel (controls that make no effort to imitate the distinctive way Tapper felt). I know that I enjoyed playing Tapper, but playing the stage that spoofs it in Retro City Rampage doesn’t remind me why I enjoyed it.

Abobo’s Big Adventure, on the other hand, duplicates with remarkable precision the way it feels to play the games it imitates. Unlike Retro City Rampage, Abobo’s Big Adventure makes no attempt to mix 8-bit visuals and sound with more modern genres or concepts. In fact, nearly every element of Abobo–every character, every environmental detail–is not just a reference to something from gaming’s past, but a nearly pixel-perfect re-creation.

Because it’s not a commercial product but a free Flash game, Abobo’s Big Adventure can get away with replicating the first stage of Double Dragon (complete with its fantastic music), and pitting you against enemies from Super Mario Bros., Renegade, Donkey Kong, Kung Fu, and other games. If you’ve played Double Dragon, the experience isn’t just nostalgic because it looks and sounds like Double Dragon. It’s also nostalgic because it feels like Double Dragon. If it didn’t, playing this stage would feel just as discordant as it feels to play the Tapper level in Retro City Rampage. But instead, the experience is harmonious, and pleasurable.

What’s remarkable about Abobo’s Big Adventure is that it takes you back to the sights, sounds, and feelings of classic NES games not just once or twice, but over and over again. There’s a level that mimics a fortress in The Legend of Zelda and one that imitates a match in Pro Wrestling. One faithfully re-creates early stages in Contra, and another sees you leaping and shooting through a remake of Mega Man 2′s Quick Man stage. Like the Double Dragon stage that opens the game, these aren’t dry, unimaginative replicas. They’re filled with characters from other games and have frequently hilarious surprises in the forms of unexpected boss fights and other tweaks to these scenarios some of us know only too well. But it always nails the most crucial detail. It always feels right. Retro City Rampage reminds us that we played these classic games. Abobo’s Big Adventure reminds us that we loved playing them.

What about players who didn’t grow up with NES games? Which game has more to offer players who aren’t versed in 8-bit gaming history? By offering a sampler platter of 8-bit gaming experiences that are still fun to this day, Abobo’s Big Adventure is ultimately a more varied, better-playing game than Retro City Rampage. The direct comparison is, however, perhaps a bit unfair. One game sets out to be a fun open-world game with visuals and humor that reference the 8-bit era. The other is made almost entirely of actual pieces of 8-bit games–sprites, backgrounds, music, gameplay mechanics. But if we see more games in the future that strive to celebrate NES games to the extent that these two do, I hope that they take a cue from Abobo’s Big Adventure, and recognize that it’s not the pixelated visuals or chiptune music that makes those games so worthy of our enduring affection. It’s the way they play.(source:gamespot)