Then you don’t want to see the specialized controller that came with XBox’s Steel Battalion.
Nintendo seems to agree with you. Their next console appears to be completely based around making games that are more accessible and easier to control.
The makers of Sim City agree too, they don’t know how they’re going to produce another game in the series. The complexity in Sim City 4 is just about enough to go on at the moment, in fact IMO a bit too much for it to be enjoyable.
Perhaps you might enjoy the wonderful, free world of online Flash games? For example, Sonic the Hedgehog: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/sonic.html
And instead Will Wright is focusing on his Spore (warning, not dialup friendly. Damn catchy music though), glibly called SimEverything. Complex, and it looks ridiculously enjoyable.
I get out my old SNES from time to time whenever I want to play video games. If I had had the cash to upgrade from SNES years ago (and then keep upgrading thereafter), I’d probably still be gaming away all my free time! I love games.
PC games are actually the hardest for me. I’m not a great typist, and using a keyboard to move around and such does NOT come easily. And even the new multi-multi-function handheld controllers are clunky in my hands at best.
That’s what happens when I try to play Halo. I move the joystick a tiny bit and BAM! I’m looking at the ceiling. Then I try to move it down and it whooshes to the floor and the whole time I’m being shot at.
It’s not that I’m not coordinated. I don’t know what it is. I just think it’s the realism and level of complexity that confuses me. I did, however, completely master Banjo-Kazooie on Nintendo 64. I think that was as advanced as I ever got as far ad video games are concerned. One of my favorite N64 games was “Yoshi’s Story” because it was side-scrolling while at the same time being sort of 3 dimensional.
And there is one other 3-D game that I kind of enjoyed. One of my friends and I would spend hours playing Goldeneye: 007 on the N64. We both sucked at controlling the person and using guns though, so we always put it on the mode where you could only slap each other.
But Goldeneye, even though it was more “realistic” than cartoon, still felt fake. I like the fakeness.
Neat controller, but who the hell forces web browsers to a specific size anymore?
I completely agree. Goldeneye is the greatest game ever, not only because it just complex enough to still fun, but also because the N64 controller was the most conducive to playing 3-d games. However, I think Sim City 3000 was still fun.
I haven’t used a gaming system since the 2600 joystick. I suspect the learning curve is beyond my reach at this point.
I would say get a Game Cube, and start with a game like Mario Sunshine. The game teaches you the controls slowly, a little at a time, and gives you unlimited amounts of time to practice your controls before sending bad guys after you. In fact, bad guys rarely come after you. You have to actively go after them, and only when you’re ready.
Prior to them, we had the NES with A B Select Start, and the Genesis with A B C Start. But MK had five buttons. SF had six. So they needed special controllers. The console makers and the game companies seemed to decide that every game needed to use more buttons and that controllers needed more buttons. The SNES six buttons plus select and start. Things just kept going. Now controllers have direction pads, mini joysticks, at least four buttons, plus those long buttons on the back face of the controller.
I want at most, one direction pad/ joystick, a pause/menu button, and no more than six other buttons.
Alone In The Dark is one of my favorite games ever. You need the arrow keys on the number pad, the space bar, and the esc key.
Archon Ultra- arrowkeys, and two keys for creature’s abilities.
Dude!
I have never beat that game. But I’m going to now.
Was it just me, or did anyone else get horribly lost in Castlevania II. You could walk down those staircases to the right forever, as far as I could tell, and all the scenery looked the same.
The problem is trying to play FPS games on a console with a joystick!
Three words:
Mouse
And
Keyboard
I still have an old 16-bit Sega Genesis. Picked up at a garage sale several years ago. The ones I’ll pull out and play more frequently are Sonic, Sonic 2, and Madden 95 Football.
On that note, I also still have (in my closet) an old Intellevision system, and a box full of games, from when I was a kid. Although last time I ever tried to hook it up, it didn’t work right.
crickets chirp.
You know, Intellivision[sup]TM[/sup]?
ribbit
No?
Crap, I must be older than I thought…
This technique still requires you to be more or less ambidextrous. You favor the mouse/keyboard combo because you’re accustomed to it, just as you’d say “the problem with Chinese writing is it goes up and down! Everybody knows writing is left to right.”
There’s nothing inherently better about mouse and keyboard over a two-joystick controller. One requires large muscle movements (arm and wrist to use the mouse), the other fine motor control (thumb on joystick, finger on trigger). Speaking as somebody who is good at mouse/keyboard, keyboard/nomouse, and 2-joy gamepad (hey, I play piano, ambidexterity comes naturally), none is magically better in my view.
I don’t know about other games mentioned, but Halo has a remarkable set of control options for people who have a different intuitive sense of how the joysticks should work, in addition to the standard “inverse Y axis” controls and sensitivity/responsiveness of the sticks. When I show the game to people who have never seen an Xbox, they can usually get used to one setting even if they can’t figure out the others. It might help.
I won’t comment on video games in general because I just don’t know enough. There does seem to be a certain emphasis on flash over fun, and I’ve got low standards - I just want the good time - so the flash doesn’t impress me. I mean, the technology is fascinating, but it’s not going to get me to buy anything.
When it comes to sports games, I’ll play whatever. But the only video game I really love, and the only one I’ve ever shelled out money for, is Super Smash Brothers. I bought the game, a SNES, and some extra controllers, and I’ve got no plans to buy anything else. I prefer the original version to the better-looking and more involved sequel, and almost everyone I’ve ever played the game with felt the same way.
I just tested that code on an NES emulator and it works. Damn! Good memory! I’m the same age as you and I can barely remember the Konami code. 
Some of those passwords could be obscenely long, too. The NES cartridges with batteries in them worked well, but those games tended to cost more.
Then there were the password systems that just weren’t very well thought-out. For example, Mega Man 2 had a grid containing red and blue circles. Write down the position and color of each circle in the grid and you could resume your progress. In addition to the fact that drawing a grid was even more of a pain in the ass than copying long strings of letters and numbers, they seemed to have completely forgotten about kids like me who only had B&W TVs in their rooms. It was nearly impossible to tell which circles where blue and which were red. Ugh.
My friend has that. I think it was the worst 200 bucks he ever spent. Consequently, when he plays it and I am around, I push random buttons and piss him off.
I’m such a horrible person, I’m surprised I still have friends.
And I suck at Halo as well. The best I can do is find a grenade launcher, stay out of the way, and maybe hit someone in a tank.
My 9 year old brother can beat Ocarina of Time and I can’t even screw up my courage enough to enter the Shadow Temple.
I’m not convinced of this. I’m 38 years old, and only took up FPSs in the last 5 years. Granted, I played them on PCs, but the mouse/keyboard combo was terribly easy to use right from the start. I suppose that the argument could be made that, since I was very PC-savvy, I was already accustomed to the mouse/keyboard team, but FPSs require, IMHO, a very different set of motor skills than word processing or web surfing. I took to it like a duck to water.
We got an Xbox for Karaoke Revolution, but I bought Halo 2 along with it. I have never felt so handicapped in my life. I thought, “well, maybe it’s just this game.” Nope. Crimson Skies, Spiderman 2, Splinter Cell…same result.
There’s probably an interesting study in how different people respond to different input devices. Unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the patience to study such things.
In my opinion, THE game that got it right was Wing Commander (and the first couple of sequels). It had exactly the right level of control complexity to keep you engaged, but the controls were simple enough to allow you to become competent very quickly.