Is it just me, or are classic 2D games often creepier than their 3d...

..counterparts?

One thing I noticed, and retro fans aren't going to like this. Is that the old 2D versions of games often felt lonelier and scarier than new ones.

Sonic fans aren't going to like this, but while old Sonic games were indeed some of the best, they left you only looking to the future of what cool new Sonic game could exist. And Adventure DX didn't do too terribly bad. Not at all. And I noticed as time went on and franchises built like this, they became less scary.

People whine about how terrible Shadowthe Hedgehog was for pushing away from the "bubbly" nature of Sonic. But really, that was part of the comics and television show and 3D games. Sonic was just at it's infancy in Sonic 2 and didn't really start to feel like a party at all until Sonic 3 at the very least. Sonic 2 was a foreboding land with just you and Tails in some fairly unforgiving and scary lands sometimes. By the end of the game, you didn't feel like you were on a happy adventure to overthrow robotnik, you felt like it was you and Tails against the world. It didn't feel any less barren than Shadow the Hedgehog. There was no Knuckles or Amy Rose. Just nasty chemicals, lava, robots with animals captive inside that run away, and robotnik. That's it. That's pretty foreboding.

And Mario does this as well. If you look at Mario 1, it's a bit lonely. It's a bit more up and down that Sonic, I find Mario 3 a bit scarier than Mario 1. But it definitely aired out and spaced as it got older and more 3D.

Am I just imagining things, or have retro games started feeling a little lighter and sunnier so to speak, as technology has progressed and more characters added?

edited 17th Jun '11 7:33:57 AM by Ukonkivi

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I thought it was a good thing for Metroid, for example.

Metroid II had the added bonus of being in black & white.

Far cry from chatting with other bounty hunters and space marines ya know?

edited 17th Jun '11 7:21:49 AM by ActuallyComma

Except [condescending response follows]. Because [sarcasm here]. You do understand [snark], right? POTHOLE TO SARCASM MODE

Metroid Prime still kept its foreboding aspect, really. Yes, some of the creatures you ran into weren't deadly, but you saw how the macguffin of the sub-series corroded and warped the local life. All the story of that game was told through logs and scans, none of it was through conversation.

By Prime 3, you're talking to people all the time. It feels like a very different game, and in some ways a bit too personable compared to the usual, but I'm told it's still more Metroid-y than ... what came after that.

Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.

Back in the day, 2D games, particularly platformers, usually spent less time trying to tell you a story other than setting you off an adventure to rescue a damsel, save the world or other shenanigans. Mood Whiplash was very common as you moved onwards toward the villain's fortress, the world becoming much bleaker and nastier, even if it didn't seem it was all that scary at first. As a kid you can get scared by many things that you might found yourself questioning as an adult.

In his first game, Sonic was pitted against a whole island of robotized enemies trying to kill him. You could say he was quite alone. You just don't really realize these things until much later and how scary that must be when you're the only person who can do something.

"Liar liar on the wall, give the world to me..."

Even Prime can't beat the sparseness of the 2D games, esp II, imo.

Also related: I feel like those old Wizardry games were creepier than they were meant to be, with the wireframe dungeons.

Except [condescending response follows]. Because [sarcasm here]. You do understand [snark], right? POTHOLE TO SARCASM MODE

Is it wrong for me to think that anyone who finds a 2D game scary has incredibly thin skin? >.>

I man, it's a mass of pixels. Ooooooooh~

Well, it depends on how seriously you mean "scary".

Immersion tends to mean being able to be scared. And if a horror game creator cannot make something that can scare you, they aren't doing their job right.

I think you're interpreting the word "scary" here, in both an overly literal and overly selective fashion.

When you get immersed in such a game, it has a darker or more unsettling tone when you're particularly alone in a cumbersome area where everything will kill you. The last area of Super Mario Brothers 3 isn't exactly bright and cheerful. The sky is black, the land is brown, and you have to go through loads of airships packed with bullets and fire.

Go play that area and then go play Super Mario Sunshine.

Or rather, I have one video per post I can use. Let's start with Super Mario Sunshine.

And now an oh so famous video of Mario 3 beaten in 3 minutes. In hyperlink since I can't embed more than 1.

[1]

And just a video of the last area by itself.

[2]

Much different tone, don't you think?

Also, you don't have to have crazy graphics to be immersed and/or scared. There are definitely some scary things in 8-Bit games. Though little pixels can say a lot to a person.

edited 17th Jun '11 8:30:03 AM by Ukonkivi

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Nope, I find 3D games much scarier than 2D games. The only 2D games that got me worried were Metroid Fusion and any 2D game that combines Under the Sea with Nothing Is Scarier...but even then 3D games don't even need to mix those to creepy to me.

Okay, Pokemon kind of did too, but that was more because of what I read on the Dex.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

I've never found a 2D game I found scary and very few I find have creepy moments. Mother 1 is one of those few. The Forgotten Man is just amazingly creepy. Really. He sits there next to a window on a high tower type thing and he talks about how he has been forgotten and how no one loves him. Any attempts to tell him otherwise lead to him snapping at you and accusing you of lying to him just to make him feel better. The only way to make him move is to tell him exactly what he wants to hear which is namely that he is meaningless and forgotten. He disappears after this.

Did I mention he was standing near a window?

There's other little moments like this as well. Mother 2 and 3 continue this tradition as well. They also keep the quirky humor and the touching nature of the first game. In fact they push all these areas above and beyond.

I find very few 3D games I find scary as well...Maybe tense or capable of giving me a few jumps every now and then, but never really scary...

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

That's mostly because a lot of games rely too heavily on cheap tactics, like jump scares, if they're trying to be scary. True horror lies in subtlety.

Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.

Exactly, and 2D gaming couldn't rely on graphics on horror so it had to rely on other things.

edited 17th Jun '11 3:41:11 PM by ActuallyComma

Except [condescending response follows]. Because [sarcasm here]. You do understand [snark], right? POTHOLE TO SARCASM MODE

Like jump scares?

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

There are probably some actual examples of this occurring, but not the ones you picked.

Harsh 8-bit graphics and lack of modern features like a map, along with actual difficulty give Metroid 1 a bit of a rougher atmosphere. It still wasn't 'scary' so much as atmospheric.

Mario was never scary, but back in the days of Mario 1-2 before he found a consistent graphical style, it was sure weird as hell, and very crude. Read the manual for the first game if you ever find it, it's very Japanese mythological and less cartoony than the rest of the series. Definitely more unique than the standardized same ol' Mario we've had since 1991.

Zelda II might be an example. Tell me you did not shit a brick the first time you got a game over. That's more due to how much Nintendo kiddied the series up since Wind Waker, than actual intentional scariness, though.

edited 17th Jun '11 2:54:20 PM by Mammalsauce

Y'all are putting a lot of emphasis on "creepy" and "scary" in a lot of ways that still seem very selective. When you accustom yourself to such graphics and suspend disbelief, it can feel quite disorienting. What's "scary" often overlaps with the bizarre. This is why someone posted a picture of a fellow in a business suit with Majora Mask on it in a thread about "creepy" things.

There can be something very eerie and otherworldly about some 8-bit areas. And since I can't seem to see eye to eye with some users ever since I put the word "scary" out there, and we're talking about 2D versus 3D, have some Yume Nikki.

This is considered one of the most scary games out there by many people. And you can't even die in it.

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Yume Nikki is s perfect example of 'creepy' vs. scary. It's not scary at all but incredibly atmospheric. There is a huge difference to me, but a lot of overlap between the two so I can see why some people see it as scary. However it doesn't have a 3D counterpart (unless you count LSD?) so I don't think it illustrates your point very well.

I agree completely. I went through the NES goodset a few years ago and there's something terrifying about rough 8-bit sprites on a pitch black background, the only text is unintelligible moonrunes.

I think I agree with this thread, it's just that you couldn't have picked worse examples because Mario and Sonic were never even remotely scary for a second.

Here's a good example of (unintentionally?) terrifying 8-bit graphics used to great effect (ignore the retarded youtube poop shit at the end:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIkGS_a97A4

edited 17th Jun '11 9:58:27 PM by Mammalsauce

WHY DID I HAVE TO CLICK ON THAT LINK

UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRÈS DE TOI

...I've never found a 2D game scary. At all. Hell, I've never found them 'creepy', either, at least not compared to their 3D counterparts. I love 2D games, but they can't immerse me to a degree even close to that of a 3D game.

And yes, I've played both the 2D and 3D Metroid Games. I like the 2D ones more, but the Metroid Prime series felt significantly more immersive and atmospheric to me.

^^That was more silly looking than scary. Looks like something from the Gameboy Camera.

edited 17th Jun '11 10:46:16 PM by Miijhal

I didn't realize there was a big difference between "creepy" and "scary". I've been using the words interchangeably for years. They're certainly common synonyms.

Well, what I mean is creepy. The word that I used in the topic title, first and foremost.

Well, the thread was about tone in general. "Dark" versus "sunny" in general, from the scary to the creepy to the what-else. Which is why I spent so much time talking about things like Shadow the Hedgehog. Which isn't a scary game, but people hated it because it was "dark", instead of stereotypical "sunny" Sonic. But playing old games like Sonic 2, it doesn't feel particularly sunny at all. And older games in general seem to have a darker atmosphere than newer ones of the same franchise on average. I'll repeat again in attempt to rerail the thread with will probably go ignored, but Sonic didn't even come close to being a part of sorts until Sonic 3. Back in Sonic 2, it was just you against the world with Tails. And please, people who have ignored me, go back and look at the tone difference between the Super Mario Bros. 3 video and the Super Mario Sunshine one.

People just latched onto the word "scary" and borderline derailed the thread, if not that. In fact, I think users here greatly do not want me to rerail the thread. Once I used "scary" colloquially, I will get no quarter from people who want to come in and say "stop saying that's scary, you silly scaredy-cat".

edited 17th Jun '11 10:57:22 PM by Ukonkivi

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That reminds me, I still hear people going on like; "Oh, SA2, what a great game for kids!"

Oh yeah; genocide, murder, weapons of mass destruction, revenge and genetic experiments, what a great game for kids!

Honestly, I find it fascinating just how many things these old 3D games got away with. Today they would probably be bumped up to T rating or something.

"Liar liar on the wall, give the world to me..."

Everything is sunny when you dress it up that way.

Speaking of "creepy" 2D games, since it's what this thread has unintentionally become about, I love Aver Sion, and this sites wikipage about it.

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Is it odd if I find 2D games more "immersive" than 3D ones? o-o I mean, in 3D games its most of time to me feels more like you are following events through a camera and in 2D games I guess I use more imagination? -_-; Sorry that that sentence made no sense...

... that I don't know. I tend to think otherwise about the case of "immersion".

But I don't think it's weird to be more creeped out by a 2D game than a 3D game.

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Many old 2D games and newer Retraux games have massive amounts of Fridge Horror under their Excuse Plots and paper thin premises than only tends to kick in if you actually begin thinking about what you're playing. Otherwise, you're just a colorful blocky man running through a colorful blocky environment.

'Mature' games have really desensitized us by throwing it all at the player, unfortunately.

Hell yes.

Especially any game where you have to travel to the arctic to meet a whale who lives in a maze of icy death, who then sets up a meeting with a double-helix who sends you back into the past so you can get magic powers which allow you to traverse alien machinery and defeat an H.R. Giger painting.

Older games give me nightmares sometimes, even today. It's a sensation altogether unfamiliar in recent years.

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