I wonder if this kind of obsessive analysis of popular NES-era games will end in a couple decades, as the people who grew up in the console's heyday grow too old; or if they'll continue because interest in these particular games transcended a particular generation (and they're simple enough for people to really take them apart).
NES games are still being played, analyzed, and mastered by new people, including people who have only known the NES as "retro" gaming.
Hell, the most recent winner of the Classic Tetris World Championship (which plays NES Tetris) was only 14 when he won the 2021 competition. The speedrunning community for NES games also contains a lot of people much younger then the games they're playing.
Given that, I think I can say with confidence that NES games will transcend a particular generation because they already have. And there's no sign of that slowing down anytime soon.
I don't think so. Those are the only generation of games that can be analyzed this thoroughly. Plus, computer geeks in the future will still be interested in the fundamentals of computing. And console games are really the only piece of mainstream software whose assembly would be interesting to look at.
Granted, this is already niche content, and it will continue to be going forward. But I bet a lot of people watching those videos weren't even born when SMB came out or have even used an NES.
SNES, N64, and even Gamecube (though less so) games get this level of scrutiny as well. Some examples are Mario 64 and Super Smash Bros Melee as some of the most popular examples on later platforms receiving assembly-level scrutiny.
I'm also fascinated with the trend of decompilations of newer games that weren't written in assembly. There exists a functional decompilation of Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy for PS2. I'd love to see/help make happen the same for Guitar Hero 1 and 2. I don't have the C++ knowledge to make it happen, but there does exist a community with a lot of knowledge about the non-code aspects of the engine (like the bespoke Lisp-ish scripting language).
Even the SNES is substantially more complicated than the NES. The tooling available to examine the SNES games like NES games are at least pretty similar, but the capability and complexity of the SNES is a huge step up from the NES.
The N64 content is a different league though. It's not nearly as easy to understand and follow. Plus, Mario64 is written in C and most of the content I've seen has been people adding features to it (HD upgrades, ray tracing, 60fps, etc).
I was into console emulators in the late 1990's and believed even at that time that it was possible to know everything there was to know about the NES. So given that we're a couple decades plus later and random hackers at home are still digging up interesting information, I feel like the tail on this kind of thing is quite long.
(And I'm still continually surprised that 80's-90's retro gaming/computing as a whole is such a popular hobby! If my teenage self had a crystal ball, he would have been very pleased to learn this.)
Archaeologists still study garbage heaps from tens of thousands of years ago to figure out things about past civilisations. So my guess is on no - people will study the digital garbage heaps of humanity as much as they study the... once-were- stinkier ones.
> Archaeologists still study garbage heaps from tens of thousands of years ago to figure out things about past civilisations. So my guess is on no - people will study the digital garbage heaps of humanity as much as they study the... once-were- stinkier ones.
Super Mario Bros. isn't a garbage heap though, it's more like a statue or a mosaic.
I was thinking more like will it end up like a forgotten pop song from 1890 or something like a Tchaikovsky song that's still played and appreciated (and not reliant on nostalgia for continued attention).
I have nostalgia for Super Mario Bros., and that's why I pay attention to it. It's getting old enough where we might be able to perceive effects independent from nostalgia (though I think there may now be a phenomenon of "nostalgia for other people's nostalgia" that may still make accurate perception difficult).
I think the NES-era (and to a lesser extent SNES-era) will continue to be heavily represented. As you stated, they are simple enough for people to really take them apart, in a large part because the games were actually written in assembly, unlike later eras of gaming.
But also, the NES-era games have aged better than earlier games. As much as I love River Raid, it's no Super Mario Bros. Something about on-screen menus (what do you mean I need to hit "reset" to start the game, Atari?), having more than one button, and enough processing power for decent physics.
I suspect you'll still have academics doing it, but with less overall cultural relevance. There are still historians of early film, TV, etc. doing great work. Often it's by consulting new types of sources or using newly available technical tools.
I'm vaguely sure that many of the hackers picking apart 8-bit games are in their twenties, if not teens. Meanwhile, even people who grew up with SNES and Genesis would now be in the late thirties.
