Except that they look nothing like SNES or Genesis games. About the only game that does I'm aware of is Barkley 2.

I don't know why it is, but literally every indie dev (well not every, but a huge amount) use this cartoon art-style that looks like it was ripped straight out of some hipster webcomic.

It makes me want to claw my eyes out.

If a developer cannot use a subdued and reasonably realistic artstyle then they can blow off.

Have you not heard?

"Reelistic grafix suks, wit cartoony grafix our art style is timeless and will never age just like 8-bit and 16-bit sprites while realistic grafix gamez like Ultima 9, Far Cry 1, and Crysis 1 will just age and age and look ugly once better reelistic grafix comes out"

So says every person on the fucking internet, which I say screw them sprites are overrated.

yes inspired and yet failing to even capture half of the fun ;)

Yeah and non of the Metroidvania games look interesting at all.

You just cannot beat the fore runners apperantly :P

The reason why most of the indie games suck has nothing to do with the graphics. Some of them have good graphics, like that horror game you mentioned (Late Night in office or something like that) but are fucking boring and offer nothing of worth.

If you managed to look past graphics, you'd see that both fancy graphics and retro graphics have very little to do with game's quality.

recent examples:
Papers, Please (awesome)
Slenderman the game (shit)
Eador 2 (rather shit)
Spelunky (awesome)
Sanctum (awesome)

You did not like One Late Night? Did you not get scared at the part where you have to find batteries for the flashlight while the Black Figure is randomly appearing in all the office rooms, everytime I get to that part I get scared in which it will pop out.

Anyway I know that graphics have nothing to do with gameplay but sometimes I had enough of the cartoony style thats all, or perhaps I grown up and cannot take kiddie indie games seriously unless they are from Nintendo.

I may be in the minority here, but if I see one more "understated physics-based puzzle platformer with a moving story and a unique gameplay twist" I am going to throw up. As a die-hard fan of old-school platforming action, most indie platformers don't have much to offer me.

So you just described Braid?

Ok, late night had some moments, but most of them were jump scares and all that. And every horror game after SCP and Slender are the same. I was much more scared playing Lone Survivor...

And yeah, I agree with you, too many indie games are similar, but it's not only the graphics. They are making entire games similar. How many epileptic space shooters? How many generic platformers? The answer for why is that happening is simple - they are the easiest ones to make.

But just because some game has a pixelated graphics, it doesn't mean it's bad. I liked Home (horror adventure) very much even though it wasn't really a game, but an interactive story with pixels bigger than your fist.

And you will love GTA5 even though it will have substandard graphics :-) But the gameplay will be awesome, so the graphics are not that important.

For me, the game is either good or bad, and graphics have very little to do with it.

Every time TET is saying on his "This week on GOG" that this magnificent 2d indie platformer has a TWIST, I cringe... literally.

Yeah, I felt mostly the same, and at that time I was getting a bit bored of those 1st person semi-realtime Dungeon Master clones where fights were square-dancing... Ok the beginning of, I think EOB2, was a bit interesting when those nice people in the temple turned out to be something else.

EOB2 was the first game in the series I played, and I endured to finish it. EOB1, I got bored quite quickly and never finished it. I don't think I've played the third one yet.

You got scared by that, really, I cannot take the game seriously when the protaginist is a smiling all the time.

Also GTA 5 looks gorgeous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSAp_OsUPoY

I guess the problem for me was that most of the 2D platformers on PC (and Amiga) were quite poor, to be frank. I guess you'd really have to go to 8/16-bit consoles to play them, like the Mario games.

Magic Pockets, GODS, Zool, Duke Nukem 1-2... yech. The newer Commander Keen games were a bit better though, quite charming.

In fact, I think it was when I was playing Magic Pockets on Amiga that I thought to myself: "That's it, I guess I'm done with Amiga gaming.". It seemed more and more Amiga games started to look like poor man's SNES-wannabe games. Albeit, they did release some good games on Amiga after that, but that was the push for me to get out of Amiga gaming.

PC platformers were even worse, but then I was more interested in simulators and such on PC.

I know you're trying to trap me there, but yes, Braid is the very first thing that comes to mind when I think of the sort of platformers I don't want more of. I found its puzzles clinical and unsatisfying, and the less said about the story, the better. It was a decent game, but hardly deserving of the worship it implicitly gets from so many other indie games.

There were a handful of great platformers back in the day that broke the mold, like The Lost Vikings. I never wanted The Lost Vikings to become the mold, though, and Braid is definitely not The Lost Vikings.

The problem is that I can get a lot of this stuff already on Steam. I don't come here for Steam 2. I come here for the stuff no one else is doing - classic games, restored to run on modern systems, preserved with their supporting documentation, and packaged into a coherent collection.