I will give them one thing, they chose a smart company to make that light gun. Nintendo.
So the Yellow led and Taco Colored CGA pallets are cool?
Mmm, I sure do like all these exactly
identical sounding NES tracks! And those two were only using vanilla hardware!

Thing is:
* The Metroid Prime games were first person shooters, albeit with a metroidvania-style structure. That is very different from the 2D games, which are side-scrollers. This also means that the game has issues with things like having to do platforming in first-person, which I find does not work well.
* Metroid: Other M was criticized for other reasons, like the plot (and, in particular, how they handled Samus Aran's character), and how the game did so many things to force the player on the main path, like putting things in to block speed booster usage (at least this is my understanding; I never played or watched this game). (We actually see some of this in Metroid Fusion, a game that has been criticized for being too linear; it's the most linear of the 2D Metroids by far, unless there's been a linear post-Zero Mission 2D Metroid game I'm not aware of.)

Thing is, while Super Mario 64 was ground-breaking at the time, it really didn't feel like a Mario game, and not just because of the 3D:
* Mario punches and kicks; that doesn't really feel like Mario to me.
* Mario has a health meter; this was not previously true.
* Oh, and there's falling damage and damage from lack of air underwater; again, doesn't feel Mario to me (especially since I enjoyed the absence of such mechanics, particularly after the original (non-super) Mario Bros. had you dying if you fell a short distance).
* Where's the super mushrooms and fire flowers?

In fact, I'd argue that there weren't any new entries in the classic Mario series from the time Super Mario World was released (beginning of the SNES's life), to when New Super Mario Bros. was released on the Nintendo DS, a gap that spanned multiple console generations.

Meanwhile, Super Mario 64 can be considered the start of an entirely different series that just happens to use the same characters.

Could you explain what point you're trying to make without using sarcasm (or anything that sounds like it could be sarcasm) or youtube links (particularly unmarked youtube links, since they can result in video unexpectedly playing if one is clicked (or touched) by accident)?.

When it comes to 2D graphics, it's going to be mostly pre-NES games, although some games from Intellevision era like Frog Bog look okay to me. For 3D graphics pre-PS1, is my cutoff. Games with stylized art tend to age better than the ones that were trying to push something close to realism.

The biggest obstacle for me when comes to video games are control and UI. The Dark Sun was one of the few RPGs before Baldur's Gate, where the UI was usable. Arcade/console games have simple designs all-around so they are usually not a problem.

Never really cared for MIDI music even when it was still current. Fake instruments sounding fake never was my thing. *shrug*

For 2d:
Between 8-bit and 16-bit graphics, depending on the game. The GBA remake of Kirby's Nightmare in Dreamland is ok. I might tolerate a few of the better looking NES games, but not many.

For 3d:
Doom


I've never been able to tolerate monochrome games or cga games (so no original gameboy games unless they have gbc versions). I need at least a VGA level of color. For sound, it needs to use a sound card or sound chip and not a pc speaker.

I disagree. In fact, I found the UI of Baldur's Gate to be *less* usable than that of older games. You can't even move your characters directly! (Trying to use the arrow keys results in the camera moving, not the player, and the only movement related thing you can do is click somewhere and hope the pathfinding can find a way to route you there.) Not to mention how easy it is for your party to accidentally split up. (The fact that there are traps in these games doesn't help.)

Ultima 6 handled movement much better. You can directly control your characters with the keyboard, and as long as you're in party mode, your party will stick together. (Note that the default mode in that game is technically combat mode, mainly because, when you first gain control, you're actually in combat.)

Also, I find that early JRPGs have quite usable UIs, even if they're sometimes cumbersome (like Dragon Quest 1 requiring you to specify a direction for actions like talking (something fixed in the US version) and requiring an explicit command to use stairs (not fixed until sequels and remakes).

Heh, that's the point: good MIDI boards used real instruments as source unlike the waveform gens or synthesizers that were used in the consoles and FM chips. It was the best you could get at that time. Doom on a Terratec Maestro was something else.
I alwas have about 500 MB of instruments loaded in VirtualMidiSynth for the classics.

Exactly. It's the same 'instruments' over and over again. Same 'noise generator' instead of percussion.
Note: I didn't say that the melody/composition was the same, just the sound.

Now let's compare your two examples on hardware from 1983 with some other examples that all run on the same Amiga vanilla hardware from 1985.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFzh-GXYYsE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQZh6iyrgC0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EtgtP1qVo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA8ghBfSmW4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtfqiydeqD4

DtGreene

You got what I was trying to say about Metroid.

I think Mario 64 is the closest thing to the Classic Mario experience,
but with a little bit of an Updated change to how you play, adding
Physics to the Game. Water Physics, Fire Physics, & with this came
the Health Change.

Now I liked it because of that while still being 3-D, but I get that it's
not for everyone, some people still prefer the Originals, which I also
get that, too. I still remember playing Mario for hrs not getting anywhere,
& now today I could speed run the Game on both Single Player &
Multi-Player. I almost never speed run any Games. So this came at a surprise.

I usually play Super Mario Bros on the Longest rout, & speed run it,
instead of cutting corners, & taking shortcuts, cause taking short cuts
makes the Game way too simply easy.

Thing is, not counting the change from 2D to 3D, Super Mario 64 changed so much that it no longer feels like the same series.

(Also, taking shortcuts doesn't necessarily mean the game is easy. With SMB1, you still have to play through all of world 8. Also, even with all the warp zones, good luck beating the game in under 5 minutes! (It's possible, but only by like 5 or 6 seconds.))

CGA is a lot better than you think. It's just the RGB emulation that sucks, it lacks the composit mode colors and most of the time uses the wrong palette.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQbAdAXIpZY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL818tN3dRQ

edit: Here's Doom on CGA hardware :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDqYmdmngs8

It's all about immersion and entertainment for me. Anything that breaks that or spoils that is heading for bad.

So a game that is a real chore, can turn me right off.

For me a game has a few factors, graphics being one, story another, gameplay another, value for effort another, etc.

I can forgive a few flaws or lack of visual quality due to age, just like I do with movies etc.

Sometimes if boils down to story being everything, though humor can be an important aspect ... one way or the other ... as in corny can be highly entertaining sometimes ... just like some B-Grade movies are great, because they are so bad.

The hardest thing for me to forgive, is often the music or sound, which can be really annoying ... or anything that jars ... like bad voice overs or acting. I also rebel against anything that insults my intelligence, though if things are right I am happy to suspend disbelief for the sake of good entertainment.

That said, lousy controls or lack of the ability to rebind keys when needed, is right up there as a deterrent, as is too high a degree of difficulty. Some might get off on that last, but some games are so difficult they suck the enjoyment right out of them.

Very difficult games, are no doubt an ego thing for the developers, especially if there are no easier options. It's even worse for me because I lack controller skill ... the N64 controller being about my limit ... I well remember how tough it was for me to finish the Goldeneye solo campaign, which I stubbornly persevered with to get access to the extra levels, though the game was at times quite spoiled for me by the level of perfection required. Give me a mouse and keyboard any day. Fighting some of the bosses in Quake for instance, is as hard as it needs to get, and anything beyond that is just ego tripping.

The controls have to make sense. I got a lot of games out of bundles and sometimes, I just couldn't figure out the controls to the extent that I was pressing every key on my keyboard one at a time trying to get it to do something. Sometimes I would stumble upon the controls, but usually I'd end up just giving up on it. I shouldn't have to fight with a game just to figure out how to play it.

This also applies to the game's interface and menus. Things should make sense as to where to find stuff.

I'm not a big fan of the indie pixelated trend.
I think they tend to look rather unpleasant and are a far cry from proper pixel art, like the arcade Metal Slug games.

It's usually games that are really vague on what to do, clunky and bad UI and controls, or extreme and tedious gameplay.

Basically the bull**** a lot of really old games did.

Don't really have one but would prefer a dungeon crawler with ACSII graphics that you could win over a prettier arcade game that would just keep going and going until I clocked the scoreboard if I had the skill!