More from Hironobu Takeshita, who talked a bit about purposely putting bugs and flicker into Mega Man 9:
As we talked about, [Castlevania] features design that hasn’t been done for some time. Do you think it’s important to keep the classic style of designing games alive? Do you feel there’s something intrinsic to that that is important to preserve and continue alongside things like next-gen games?
HT: I like to think of it not as an 8-bit style, but more of an artistic choice, if you will. It’s another type of creative expression, because nowadays, everyone wants surround sound and 3D graphics and things like that, and they get too caught up in that. I don’t think it should be that way, because you could do an 8-bit game. You can do a 16-bit game. You should do whatever is creatively expressive and what you want to do. I think that will open up the whole gaming world in general, by being able to have these creative outlets.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Mega Man 9 was a much bigger deal than people realized. Hopefully this stellar quote goes a long ways toward showing what I was getting at. Good games are good games. Graphics will always complement a game’s accessibility and playability, not define it. Unfortunately that dynamic has been ass-backwards for some time. No longer.