Forgetting for a moment that the comparison of videogames and film tends to cause arguments, I was reading the editorial in the latest Sight & Sound magazine where a discussion surrounding ‘what process by which a film can be determined a classic’ has been taking place. They have looked to a literary opinion found in the introduction to Italo Calvino’s Why Read the Classics? and then adapted to film, which I have below switched out for videogames:
Classics exercise a particular influence, both when they first imprint themselves on our imagination, and when they hide in the layers of memory. Each re-playing offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first. Yet even when we play the game for the first time, it gives us a sense of seeing something we’ve seen before. The games never exhaust all they have to say. They come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the cultures through which they have passed.
A classic constantly generates a cloud of critical discourse around it, and yet always shakes the particles off. The more we think we know such games through hearsay, the more original, unexpected and innovative we find them when we actually play them.
A classic is any game that comes to represent a whole universe; a game on a par with ancient talismans, to which one cannot remain indifferent, and which helps one define oneself in relation - or even in opposition - to it.
In other words ‘Classics’ are SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!1
So if we are happy to use this rather worthy definition, and that’s up for discussion also, would we between us all be able to create a definitive list of true NTSC-UK Classics and what titles would you offer up?
Classics exercise a particular influence, both when they first imprint themselves on our imagination, and when they hide in the layers of memory. Each re-playing offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first. Yet even when we play the game for the first time, it gives us a sense of seeing something we’ve seen before. The games never exhaust all they have to say. They come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the cultures through which they have passed.
A classic constantly generates a cloud of critical discourse around it, and yet always shakes the particles off. The more we think we know such games through hearsay, the more original, unexpected and innovative we find them when we actually play them.
A classic is any game that comes to represent a whole universe; a game on a par with ancient talismans, to which one cannot remain indifferent, and which helps one define oneself in relation - or even in opposition - to it.
In other words ‘Classics’ are SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!1
So if we are happy to use this rather worthy definition, and that’s up for discussion also, would we between us all be able to create a definitive list of true NTSC-UK Classics and what titles would you offer up?
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