It’s called mockery.
I, admittedly, haven’t been taking notes as I read your posts in this thread. You pretty clearly also haven’t been doing so as you read mine. The difference is, I’m not going after you.
Re-read the thread if you want to continue this. I shouldn’t have to untangle this knot of an argument you’ve made.
I won’t know if Nintendo set anything back again until the next generation of consoles arrives. I said Nintendo set the culture back 10 years in the 80s. My reasoning on that is as follows:
Atari died because (in part) consumers were switching away from home consoles to cheap home computers like the ZX Spectrum and the glorious Commodore 64. The audience for these machines were older as they were marketed towards kids entering high school and university. Do your homework and play games for the same price! These are the kids who had grown up in the arcades only a few years earlier and were looking for more advanced games and even starting to create their own games, as seen in the demoscene. You started seeing complicated titles like racing sims or the revolutionary Elite or The Last Ninja or Sim City. You also had more adult themes such as war simulations with North vs. South or, yeah, Strip Poker. The entire interactive fiction genre was people trying to make something meaningful and artistic with the medium.
In 1985, Nintendo stomped all over that evolution by spending millions to sell market video games to children and a shameless amount of licensed merchandise. I don’t know how many Nintendo Entertainment Systems games I’ve played – easily over 100 – and I’m struggling to think of something that matches the complexity or themes that started appearing in the post-Atari pre-Nintendo window. Certainly a few exist, but they’re largely ported from the early home computer platforms and nothing Nintendo self-published is close to those. By complexity, I mean the player needs to consider how the various dynamics of the game interact with each other. Not the memorization requirements that defined “Nintendo hard.” Consider the contrast between NES epic The Legend of Zelda and non-Nintendo Ultima IV.
Anyway, the 10 year aspect is how long it took the Nintendo generation to grow up. I think in the early-to-mid-90s there is a real shift in the spirit or feeling of gaming. The success of Sony’s Playstation is part of the shift. You also saw commercials like this advertising single gaming components that cost as much as a console. Why? Because gamers had grown up and had money. You had Red Annihilation in 1997 where Nintendo-raised Thresh won a Ferrari with more turbos jammed in it than I knew was possible. This is where things were going in the 80s, until Nintendo delayed it 10 years. That’s my reasoning for Nintendo holding back the culture.
Of course you’re not going after me. You’re not going after ANYbody. That’s the very definition of a strawman. And I’m not all that interested in continuing to point that out to you, so I’ll bow out.
Good. I hope you mean it, because you’ve scarcely made a lick of sense in this thread and I have little hope of that improving if/when you return.
PCs didn’t cease to exist when the NES came out; if that’s what the market truly desired, the NES would not have been successful. Plus, the NES certainly didn’t kill what you define as having existed–the PC has been home to games of that ‘complexity’ for decades.
Furthermore, what you define as “setting back” is, really, a misnomer. Nintendo didn’t set anything back–they lit the world on fire. Is it true their games didn’t fit your strict definitions of “complex” and “thematic?” Sure, but they set nothing back from a market perspective, instead delivering what the customers wanted, which clearly was an emphasis on fun (and I would argue they expanded gaming in numerous others ways, but that’s for another thread–at least I hope it is).
Also, almost none of the games demonstrated in that 3DFX commercial–racing (also on Nintendo), shooters (also on Nintendo), sports (also on Nintendo), Adventure (also on Nintendo)–exhibit any of the qualities you cite as being “complex” or “thematic.” That would also apply to most PlayStation games as well. Check the top 10 selling games for PSX–it consists entirely of Gran Turismo (or racing, also on Nintendo), Final Fantasy (also on Nintendo), Tomb Raider (which has, as its core, no more complexity than a typical Nintendo title), Crash Bandicoot (a platformer, also on Nintendo), and Metal Gear Solid (a franchise which was also on Nintendo).
The shift you do cite (which, again, exhibits qualities quite different from your argument in the first paragraph) is more a result of hardware enabling 3D creations than anything else. I feel like what you argue had been killed has existed all along, just largely relegated in numbers to its proper place in the market, as dictated by consumers.
I’d be more concerned about the games. DKR shows so many things wrong with the current generation of games – really, the entire 3D generation since the N64. I mean how do you mess up a 2D platformer so badly? Especially with 3 exemplary SNES titles serving as the perfect blueprint? GoldenEye Wii was going for this trend. Metroid Other M did serious damage to the franchise. Prime 3 was one of the most gimmicky games I’ve ever played.
I just find it funny that people are defending not going for HD, yet defending motion controls. The former does no harm. It’s a perk. The latter is absolute garbage for gameplay, outside of casual party games or whatever (bless their hearts, if it makes $$$ go for it, but it also harms core game controls).
You have it all wrong. Don’t focus on the particular platforms. It’s the trends that’re important. Nintendo didn’t focus on “fun.” That’s stupid. All games are trying to entertain on some level. My point is that Nintendo, in the 80s, focused on a very narrow range of what’s “fun.” Mario is fun, but it doesn’t share the same appeal as SimCity or Strip Poker. All of the obnoxious marketing pushed people away, which paused the development of gaming culture. All of the licensed products – cereal, bed spreads, lunchboxes, everything – focused on children. They spent a fortune getting kids to bug their parents for money of making something for the whole family to enjoy, which is something you see in a lot of the home computer commercials. Nintendo was too successful. They changed the definition of the customer. The final paragraph should describe 1987, not 1997.
Funny, while I’m a bit too young to remember the mid 80s and not much of the late 80s, my family only had a 286 (until late 1992, then we got a 486) and not a NES. We had a ton of games for that thing. Early versions of Wheel and Jeopardy, plus some other game show based games like $30,000 Pyramid and Family Feud. Board game clones of things like battleship or backgammon, or bigger programs like Chessmaster 2100. A number of games made for children under the Disney name. Moraff’s early games (before they switched to nothing but Mahjong), whether puzzle games like Entrap or what I now think of as a Roguelike in Revenge. Never had Zork, but some other text-based games like Oo-Topos. There were platformers like Commander Keen and Monuments of Mars. Educational games from The Learning Company (Super Solvers and Reader Rabbit series) and lots of the Carmen Sandiego games. A number of adventure games, either Sierra and LucasArts or shareware like the Hugo games. Flight sims. Wing Commander. 688 Attack Sub. Side-scrolling shooters. The Seventh Guest. Zany Golf. Test Drive II. Sim City and lots of other Sim games. Civilization and Master of Orion. The list could go on and on and on, especially if I went and looked at my hard drive, all the old 5.25" floppies I still have, and what I’ve got on CD. Suffice it to say I’ve played a lot of games in my life.
Anyway, I don’t see how Nintendo making it big on consoles set back computer gaming. A number of games would be difficult to impossible to play on a console, even now. A friend had Wing Commander for SNES and it wasn’t really any fun compared to playing it on the computer with a joystick or mouse. I’ve played a ton of Civ IV, but when my fiancee got me Civ Rev for PS3 I played it once or twice and I don’t like it. I can’t imagine playing Sim City on a console. The remade Monkey Island games are playable on PS3, but it’s not as easy as having the mouse control and the verb list and item list right there all the time. Why would I want to spend $30 for a board game or game show game on my PS3 when I can get a similar game for $10 or less on my computer or even run DOSBox to play my copy of Jeopardy from about 1987? I think there’s casino and poker games on the consoles, but I don’t see why I’d want to tie up the console and the TV for those. It may seem silly to use my PS3 to play Final Fantasy I, but hey, a fun game is a fun game.
On preview, I don’t see anything wrong with Donkey Kong Country Returns. Sure it’s hard and uncompromising, but so were the originals. The only problem I have is that I don’t like the way the forced waggle control is used, especially as a multi-action control.
Anyway, the various online stores were mentioned earlier. I will say that I like the way that purchases are handled through PSN the best, as there’s not of this silly points business. The game costs $9.99 plus tax and that is exactly what will be charged to your credit card. None of this “you can only buy in blocks of 1000 points but games cost 800 or 1200 or whatever” so that it’s hard to not leave additional money that can’t be easily used.
Also, bashing motion controls, does that include the Sixaxis controller and DualShock 3? Flower is a great game, as is Flow, and a number of games use it for various functions, some better than others.
Right. I mean, it’s not just gameplay or graphics. It’s not like you can’t have both. And dammit, I want both.
And you’re saying that if you saw the exact same artistry pumped through a crisper, clearer, higher resolution, more colorful system that isn’t “better”? You’re saying that if the artist that put together Link for the Wii built the same Link using more powerful graphical tools on 360, but kept the design exactly the same, that’s not “better”? Winwaker Link without all the shitty jaggies isn’t “better” to you? Do you think that they draw artist concepts of these characters with jaggies and visible polygons in them when they draw them on paper to begin with?
These arguments are what make Nintendo fanboys come off so combative.
Why did you buy an HD TV then? You could’ve played the 360 and PS3 games on a standard def TV. You can watch football on a SD TV as well.
Something else to keep in mind with respect to the Wii. The Wii is a DVD-based system with no real usable storage space to offload disc content onto for playing.
So the people saying that the Wii should have been able to do both are asking for the Wii to be able to present full-length, enjoyable high-def games on a media type meant for SD. (and no, “Please insert Disk 5 now” is not a viable option)
So it wasn’t just a matter of Nintendo slapping a HDMI output on the box, we’re looking at Nintendo having to take sides in the still-ongoing HD format war, both of which were still expensive, and/or completely re-arrange how they did storage for the unit, again which would have made it more expensive.
Sure it’s better. It is not, however, necessary. By not going to HD graphics, Nintendo kept the Wii’s price point lower than the 360 and PS3 while still turning a profit on each unit sold and, here’s the important bit, the games aren’t any less fun because of it.
Yeah it was. HD doesn’t inherently take any more storage space if your rendering it at run time. It just takes slightly more processing power and the right cables.
But they did. They forwent story, exclusively adult themes, and other non-gameplay related things to offer core experiences that were fun, original, and accessible. Do all games strive to be fun? Most do. My point was that ‘having fun’ was Nintendo’s only goal, and offering ‘thematic’ or ‘complex’ (using your definitions) elements wasn’t something necessary for that goal.
I thought you were joking about the Strip Poker thing before, but no, it’s clear you’re serious. My point is that virtual strip poker isn’t innately any more fun than standard poker. A game doesn’t have to have adult only themes to be enjoyable.
And yes, Mario doesn’t share the same appeal, just as SimCity or Strip Poker don’t share the same appeal as Mario. That isn’t a negative.
Okay, so you hate commercialization. There are literally hundreds of NES games that did not feature any products, marketing, or commercialization, outside the game itself, I hope you realize. Most Nintendo published ones included (I can’t think of any besides Mario and the spin-offs, really)
Nope, that’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is that complaining the Wii could look better is akin to saying 360 games would look better on a PC or next-gen systems. Games will now and forever possess the ability to look better. That does not mean I desire or require such to enjoy it. I can still enjoy games from decades ago, while still fully appreciative of their visual qualities. There is so much more to visuals than merely what resolution is runs at or how many polygons it’s pushing.
No. What makes Nintendo fanboys–as you call anyone who dares defend non-HD graphics apparently–seemingly combative is your inability to process our opinion that good graphics are neither required to be HD, nor are a pre-requisite for a game to be good.
Because my job requires recording HD content for publication–without the TV, I can’t record my game. I would be perfectly happy playing said games on an SD TV (and in fact was for many years), unreadable text on 360 and PS3 aside.
Give this man a cigar. HD costs a lot of money to develop for. Right now, I’d rather have developers putting their money elsewhere. If they have the budget to made a truly grade A title with excellent graphics and finely tuned gameplay (Halo, Starcraft, etc.) then fine. But most companies can’t actually afford to do that.
Nah, that’s pretty dumb given how many indie developers are making HD games on XBLA and the PC. If small groups working part time can manage it, it isn’t a barrier for any real developer. The hardware just renders your assets in HD. It isn’t a matter of how much you invest in creating those art assets.
It does if you want a meaningful difference. I’m sorry, but unrendering is not the same as designing a game in HD. Talk about a strawman argument. “They should just use this tech that no one uses in the HD space”? (Okay, fine, some stuff uprenders from 720p to 1080p, but that’s nowhere near the same order of magnitude).
You can’t just uprez an SD game and call it HD.
But the Dolphin emulator does and it looks awesome.
Yes, and you can’t just upconvert a DVD and expect the same picture as a Blu-Ray. But the thing is, it often doesn’t matter, especially on the equipment a lot of us have and for a lot of what we’re playing. And content still matters, which is why I’ll still be watching my laserdisc transfers of Star Wars while Lucas is trying to sell the new Super Special Digitally-Enhanced Blu-Ray versions.