I didn’t realise, until I started playing The Messenger last week, that I had started to see this kind of game as a bit of a chore. The kind of game I’m talking about is the rigorously observed reconstruction of an 8-bit style of gaming, right down to the limited colours, three-slot save system and chugging, popping, tweeting sound effects. And I only realised I had started to see all this as a chore because I found I was surprised, an hour or so in, to be enjoying myself so much.
I am still a bit confused about it all, to be honest. I don’t think it’s the games I’ve played that have put me off. I loved Retro City Rampage, which managed to reimagine a modern open-world adventure for the era of the NES, and since then I have happy memories of a handful of similarly styled platformers and Castlevania knock-offs. They do start to blend a little, though, once they’re left in the memory: I’m left with a generalised sense of artful glitches and anachronistic leetspeak.
And then, I guess, my own associations come in to muddle everything further. We’re venerating these games rather than trying to do new things, we’re making a brief period of gaming into a golden age at the expense of the present and, with that, focusing on a handful of attributes – difficulty, ninjas – and in some way limiting what games are.
Source: Eurogamer The Messenger is modern retro done right