Black Tiger, EGM and GameFan's re-reviewing of games (or not) is an entirely different situation where the game they reviewed is often not 100% complete. A person simply should not be reviewing games in the first place if they haven't played a well-rounded catalog of games. They should also be reviewing games not based on memories of the first time they experienced them in 1992, but by playing them as much as they can right before writing the actual review. They should explain what makes them enjoy it or not. A re-review makes me think that a person missed something the first time, thus making their reviews suspect... how many other reviews are inadequate? Does this person always overlook stuff? Why isn't this person thorough? When will this person find the current review inadequate? Yes, opinions can change, but that should be no more than an amendment to the original review itself with something like "In my original review of this game, I forgot to press the START button at the title screen since I am a complete retard. So now I am enjoying this a little more than before". If you want to review games, stand up and have some balls. Only in serious cases where grave errors are made or serious mis-information was involved should the score be changed. If you disagree, don't ever accuse any person of being a hypocrite.
Do you think then, that someone shouldn't begin playing a game to write a review for right after, unless they first play most of whats out there in the genre first? Even if they are reviewing a game based on recent experience, trying to score a game so that it is proportionate to other games can only be done going by memory of everything else.
When Pong came out, it would've scored a 10/10. Whats wrong with going back to rereview it say, once every decade or so? I'm guessing that as much as it amazed people when it came out and as much fun as they had with it, anyone who has been playing games regularly ever since isn't going to be as impressed by it today.
If someone loved a game and scores it high, but later goes on to play many superior games of the same genre on the same console, whats wrong with them adjusting their score(s)? I think whats most important is just explaining the experience, breaking down the game to give the reader a good idea of what to expect and some insight into why different people might enjoy it or who should steer clear. And if a rereview explains how/why they feel differently about certain aspects, then its basically just an addition to the original review, providing further insight to how different people might feel about it.
Especially since most people seem to people have various biases about hardware/technology and as more and more time goes by, opinions of consoles seem to level out. Not as many people today feel that the SNES is as 'good-as-32-bit' as people did back when it peeked.
Toshinden got great reviews from everyone when it came out. Check out Nick Rox & Takuhi's comments in particular-
You can say they were just being idiots at first, but everyone did the same thing. Takuhi(?) put it best when he said "Sorry Takara, you don't get points for novelty anymore."
Plus many people aren't able to play console hardware with anything better than composite and later have different opinions of graphics once they get a 'better picture'. Some people can play a port in component or S-Video on one system, but only composite on another. Whats wrong with rereviewing the visuals once they're able to compare the graphics with a clear view of each. You can't even compare Genesis graphics in composite to TG-16 or SNES in composite, since its so blurry and different on various Genesis hardware. I'm now finding many Genesis games look radically different with a clear image and its changed my opinion of many.
