14 DAY TRIAL // For most of the older gamers, the glory days are, like for many other things, in the past. The best titles are always the ones we used to play, and rarely the ones we are playing. But shiny graphics, shaders and foto-realistic textures are something we all enjoy, even if they can't always beat the 8-bit nostalgia. So, every time a game comes out that has a completely revolutionary take on modern graphics, we can't help but wonder how our favorite titles from back in the day would look like if they had today's technology. Some do more than tickle the imagination, and the never-ending franchises like Final Fantasy, Might and Magic or even Need for Speed can give us an actual look at how the series evolved as far as graphics go.
Sometimes, developers are boggled by the idea of what their early creations would look like if they made them today, and recreate the games as proper and somewhat authentic re-makes. Progress is always on our minds and it's the human's logical side of the brain that pushed us to move forward. But emotions play a bigger part in creation, and, sometimes, on rare occasions, these compel us to think illogically and, instead of moving forward for the good science and the benefit of all humankind, we decide to re-live our past and satisfy that nostalgic emotion. Sometimes, we think what the games of today would look like if we came across them back in the day.
One such person is Eric Ruth, aka PixelForce, who decided to work in the more classic and ancient game design format. His latest creation is the “de-make,” or downgrade, of Left 4 Dead, brought down to the level of the Nintendo Entertainment System. The title's downgrade is a pretty loyal depiction of Valve's zombie-shooter, while still staying true to the concept and the generation of the NES. The game is run in a 256x240-pixel resolution, on 16 colors and a four-sound channel soundtrack and features all four playable characters of L4D.
The video preview of the game features the No Mercy level, played with Bill. One might say that the fact that you don't have the rest of your NPC team with you is an obvious drawback, that there are far too few zombies to shoot at and that even the AI is really weak. But it's still without a doubt some sort of L4D, and, even though it's obviously not a competent contender on today's market, when the game will be launched in January 2010, you can be sure that there are going to be a lot of people that will want to relive the days of times past and get this game. It's not graphics that make titles great, it's the concept behind them and Ruth is here to remind us of that.
The video preview, along with Eric Ruth's YouTube channel can be found here.