Neither of them look good to me ;) (Gaming)

by uberfoop , Seattle-ish, Friday, May 05, 2017, 07:16 (2764 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY
edited by uberfoop, Friday, May 05, 2017, 07:32

Collings recently launched a sub-brand called "Waterloo". The guitars they build under this label are recreations of some of the off-brand acoustics built in the 1930s. Like all of Collings' guitars, these Waterloo models are flawlessly built, with a painstaking attention to detail. The problem is that the 1930s guitars that the Waterloos are replicating were without a doubt some of the worst sounding guitars ever made. They were cheap, bargain bin instruments back in the day... and now you can buy a perfect recreation of those lousy instruments for almost $3000 USD. Sounds a bit silly, right?

So, here's a couple of bicycles I have.

1983 Miyata 710:

2016 Emonda ALR 5:

They've got a lot in common, to where they're arguably about the same bike separated by 30 years. Both are in the midrange of their respective catalogs. They both use double cranksets, and both would have been considered to have reasonably wide-range gearing for their day. Adjusted for era, it could be argued that they have the same color scheme.

And there are plenty of ways to argue that the Emonda is the better bike.
It's several pounds lighter. The brakes are more powerful. There are 11 gears in back rather than 6, and the total gearing range is 50% wider. Because the shifters are integrated into the brake levers rather than positioned on the frame's downtube, shifting while pedaling out of the saddle is practical. The bike features two bosses for mounting bottle cages, rather than one. And so on.
Technologically, it's clear that the Emonda is more sophisticated. For example, the 710's frame is built from cylindrical steel tubes brazed together with the help of lugs; the Emonda's frame is made from aluminum tubes that have been hydroformed into complex shapes and then welded together. The Emonda's shifters are indexed mechanical paddle-shifters, while each shifter on the 710 is just a lever tightened against a friction plate. And so on.

But the differences in experiencing the bicycles are not merely quantitative. The bicycles have different characteristics and temperaments. How the steering sways as the bike is rocked side to side. How the cranks shrug and roll with the pedal stroke, how the bike responds to torque. As the chain whirrs and the wind slices through the wheels and frame, both sing and hum songs, but these songs are not the same.

Is one a better riding experience than the other? Well, what's "better"? There are some circumstances, like steep climbs, where the Emonda can be a bit faster. The difference is hardly significant enough to spoil the old Miyata, though.

The important bit - and why I have the 710 around - is that the Emonda is not simply the same but better. Regardless of how an "objective" reviewer (lol) would rate the two machines, they each usefully flavor experiences in ways the other doesn't.

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And so about those guitars. Are the Waterloos silly? I don't think so.

Could it be argued that they're "inferior" to a modern high-end guitar? You could certainly make all kinds of arguments in favor of that.
But a modern high-end guitar isn't simply the same but better. They have qualitatively different appearances and audio characteristics. And regardless of the notion of a "bad-sounding guitar", a good guitarist can still seemingly coax good music out of a Waterloo. Does it have its own limitations? Sure, much as my Miyata sucks on steep hills. But that doesn't make the whole thing silly.

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And this is also part of the reason that vintage games still get played. FPS developers today aren't making "original 1993 Doom, but better." They're practically working within a totally different genre. Regardless of whether modern games can be argued to be "better" or not, if you like the style of play that is OG Doom, you're not trying to find it by playing Battlefield.

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In some cases, the technology of an era does limit certain things in important ways.

For another bicycle comparison, consider mountain bikes in the early 1980s. That's when they were first going into mass production, but they were extremely primitive compared to what we have today. Frame geometry was still being figured out, some components weren't ruggedized well for the rigors of those styles of riding, shifting systems were clumsy to use while handling the bike on technical trails, brakes weren't beefy enough, and they had rigid forks because suspension forks weren't a thing.
So if your goal is to kick butt on gnarly MTB trails, a very good argument could be made that they're quite obsolete.

Although, vintage rigid mountain bikes were somewhat fortunate. They're kind of just long beefy road frames with big clearances and lots of attachment points, making them incredibly versatile. Many have been turned into all kinds of weird not-mountain-bikes. The 1983 Stumpjumper is a legendary early mountain bike, now mine is this rather versatile machine at home in road pacelines or on loose gravel:

Somethings are less lucky. The first decade from which I'd place films amongst my favorites is probably the 1920s. And even then, it's partly because almost nobody makes films like them anymore. It's very rare to see modern filmmakers use cuts to bang the screen like a drum, for instance, which totally defines everything that Eisenstein made that was any good. By the late 1930s, some films more recognizable "modern" start really appealing to me.

And so I do agree that some games have, perhaps, "truly" aged badly in some sense; that they might have been appealing at the time simply because there weren't alternatives. That maybe defines the issue of working well within limitations.

(And I think I'd probably agree that much of the NES library has "truly" aged to a fair degree. Much moreso than the subsequent generation, which allowed rich production to come through better.)

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But, at the same time, I think "true" aging gets conflated with a lot of other issues.

Like acclimation.

I'm a pretty big fan of Halo 1, but even I need to play a bit after a long break before I'm back into its rhythm. The warthog's handling can feel "dated" and "bad", until I've taken a moment to get back into the scheme of controlling with momentum and not worrying so much about pinpoint direction. If I were a new player in 2017, in an era where the game doesn't have the initial novelty to encourage me to adopt, perhaps I would be inclined to drop it rather than acclimate.

Similarly, vintage bicycle drivetrains each have a lot of their own character. Feel, shifting patterns, so on. Even someone familiar with vintage drivetrains would have to ride for a few miles to really feel in tune with the bike, to feel like they have mastery. If someone only familiar with modern drivetrains hopped on it, and they even needed to learn how to shift, they might not want to bother with it... whether or not it eventually could have been rewarding.

Is that "true" aging? It's a contextual accessibility issue. I dunno.

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That's exactly how I feel about the painstaking lengths people go through in order to play vintage video games in their original state.

Playing in their original state is simple. It's because they often...

They look bad, sound bad, and play worse than modern games.

...look, sound, and even play better than they do on inaccurate setups.

CRTs are the simplest example. The way the electron gun turns pixels into blobs is usually better-looking than scaling algorithms used for flat panel displays. Getting accurate colors and contrasts is much easier and more possible. Overscan can actually be useful. Garbly CRT speakers are what the audio was designed around, and can reconstruct the audio more correctly to developer intent and sometimes hide artifacts. The lack of input lag can make the games much more responsive.

Sometimes this seems to hold even for relatively recent stuff, even lots of sixth-gen stuff. Halo 2 sounds much better on my old Trinitron than on my flat panel's speakers.