(A Rant) The History of Video Games and Its Transformation
The History of Video Games and Its Transformation into a Sensationalist Phenomenon Filled with Monopolies, Tragedies, and Casualties
This is a rant I just wrote. I went on a lot of tangents, but it was in response to a topic on another forum about how gaming has kind of dried up for those who don't like first person shooters. This quote is from an article I wrote on the same forum earlier in the year, about the Zelda series and how that too has been drying up. I was forewarned by *cough* an unnamed member *Cough* against posting here, being told you guys would viciously tear it apart (since i'm most certainly no Dreamcast guru, I don't even own one) and I also have of course not lived through the 80s and even the entirety of the 90s as many of you have.
The Legend of Zelda is one of my favorite franchises, but in recent years it has really gone downhill. The last memorable Zelda game that I thoroughly enjoyed was Majora's Mask, which I completed last April I believe. I know my sig says I have been playing Zelda II for ages, and I have yet to actually play it (lol.) It is one of my favorite Zeldas, but it takes a lot of repetition and grinding. For a Zelda game, I'm willing to do that. I'd much rather see Zelda go down the RPG route instead of the medocre adventure game route, especially when it becomes a top-down 3D adventure. What's up with this? On the consoles, we had an extraordinary revolution in gaming from 2d to 3d. On the handhelds, we're merely adding another dimension. Look at Pokemon, and Zelda. Animal Crossing is similar, but this stems from its somewhat top-down routes on the Nintendo 64/GameCube.Back in the mid-late 1980s, Nintendo mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto created a game. That game was The Legend of Zelda. It garnered high ratings and critical acclaim, spawned many sequels, with each building up on the last.
In 1987, The Legend of Zelda was released. Two years later, its sequel, The Adventure of Link, was put out on the market. The sequel recieved a lot of criticism for being “more like an RPG than a Zelda game” Don’t get me wrong, i love AoL, but as the 8 bit era blew into the 16 bit era, there was deep thought over what direction the Super NES sequel would take the franchise. Thankfully for many, they returned to the top-down perspective like the original, in Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
In the late 80s-early 90s, the gaming industry began to grow rapidly as it had a decade earlier, and as the industry expanded, big name companies began to realize they needed to upgrade their equipment to keep up with other industries, which had much better visual and audio quality. If they could do this, they could gain more followers. So Sega created the Sega CD, an ultimately failing attachment for their Genesis that however allowed for pretty good graphics for the time.
Nintendo, however, had a different story. Initially, they had partnered with Sony to create a CD attachment for the SNES. When the project was nearing completion, the product was deemed too expensive and Sony demanding too much money, the partnership was cancelled and Nintendo turned to Philips. Sony gained enough info on creating games and game systems to produce its own system a few years later, the PlayStation. However, for some odd reason, they ended up cancelling the product alltogether and Philips unfortunately gained licensing rights to some of Nintendo’s characters in the process, including Mario, Ganon, Zelda, and Link to use in their own system.
When Gunpei Yokoi created the Game Boy in 1989, a new door was opened for game developers. Games could be played anywhere. In the car, on a plane, at school. Link’s Awakening was released four years later. After that, Zelda fell off Nintendo’s to-do list for five long years. Five years covered in the awefulness of the Philips CD-I Zelda games.
1998 proved a glorius year for Nintendo. The Nintendo 64 was well into its life. Super Mario 64 was out. 3-D graphics proved to be possible in gaming, and they brought many great things to Nintendo and Sony. That year, Ocarina of Time came out. The fifth game in the official Zelda franchise, this game is known as one of the best games ever, if not the best game of all time. It was a very long, drawn out game, not one second of boredom, an amazing storyline, and deep character personalities that actually drew you into the game. It perfectly transitioned Zelda from 2D to 3D, and also introduced the Z-Targeting system. This is one of my favorite games of all time, of course.
Two years later, an equally great game, Majora’s Mask, came out. Although seemingly shorter, it still was just as long, and focused more on story than on action. They are both great. Then the Oracle games came out, good stuff. Wind Waker was great too, although it was way too short and only had replay value for the final boss fight, the music perhaps, and the pictobox statue collection. Then came a bunch of rereleases, and The Minish Cap, which was somewhat okay, not the greatest. That fall came the most anticipated game of the past 2 years. Twilight Princess. It succeeded on storyline, but not so much on controls and replay value. Not to mention there were some things that were so confusing it made you just want to give up.
Last year, in 2007, Phantom Hourglass was released. This was the epitomy of crap, pardon my language. It was just horrid. You run back and forth between temples, and have to go through the same temple over and over and OVER. I HATE IT!! Not to mention you have to go through the same spots time after time. It gets tedious. Don’t rant that I suck, I don’t, it’s just unneccessary work. Also, you really can’t just “wander around” in PH. Sure, you can go around the map endlessly, but there’s so many freakin obstacles its damn near impossible without having your boat sunk. Overall a horrible game, and the Wifi was horrid, nothing more than a horrid minigame at that. At least its not really anything you can cheat on........as far as I know at least. Mario Kart DS had its fair share of that.
The Zelda series has really come a long way since 1987. I’m hoping they dump the whole “zomg giant ocean” thing, unless they go back to having a huge huge map broken into sections like WW with tons of stuff to do and lots of routes to take. This may be why i prefer GCN Animal Crossing over Wild World, although we’ll see what happens if i get City Folk for Christmas. I hope they go back to the format of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, focusing more on developing the plot and characters rather than just a “save the princess” kind of thing. That’s for Mario, not Zelda. It’s basically collect bugs, light up a sector, go in a temple, beat a boss, repeat. I understand that was basically what the first few zeldas were, but those were 8 bit. It was expected of the NES for that. A Link to the Past had sidequests, and games after that had a trade sequence. Would you like to know another thing that TP lacked? A MAGIC BAR! I didn’t see one. Did you? No! The Zelda franchise has had a magic bar since Adventure of Link!!! Twilight Princess really lacked a lot, and also did minimally on the development of characters. I admit, sometimes i couldnt tell the kids apart.
The Zelda franchise has had its ups and downs. Ive been a loyal fan since i first got Ocarina of Time 5 or so years ago. Im hoping that Nintendo turns around and creates a truly stunning game again, instead of feeding us this bull**** they have been for the past 3 years. To be honest, i think it all started with Nintendogs.
There are few recent releases that I as a consumer are willing to plunk money down on, because I am worried it is either going to be too short, not my style, or too difficult to understand. No offense to ZAT (another member on that forum), but when i bought Tales of Symphonia at the request of another friend, I was too reluctant to notice that it was lacking a manual. This makes the game increasingly difficult to understand, much less play. In another currently active topic, I stated I like both long and short games. The problem is though that with long, story-intensive games, I often forget the story. This happens to the Resident Evil games, Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, and Tales of Symphonia. This is partly the reason why I like classic games so much. Easy to get used to, easy to play.
I don't have many SNES RPGs as of late, but I'm hoping to get some someday, to see just how far that corner of the game industry has come. I have most certainly seen how far First Person Shooters have come, as I own one of the very first, Dungeons of Daggorath on the Tandy Radio Shack Color Computer 2. It is one of my favorite games to date, and it hasn't dated as much as Atari. It is a fairly difficult game, and it is a lot more strategy and skill than the violent gorefest that modern games have become. I also own some of the newest FPSes. I have Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4 (Which i will continue to dub as an FPS, despite contrary belief), as well as Half Life 2, Area 51, and Team Fortress 2. Metroid Prime is enjoyable, as is Team Fortress 2, which I have only purchased just recently. Resident Evil 4 was good the first time through, but it really has little replay value and the story was poor compared to the others in the series.
One of the reasons I have yet to purchase a PS3 or Xbox 360, besides my lacking of an HDTV or sufficient funds, is the fact that they are seen as predominantly FPS systems. Another thing that scares me away from the xbox 360 is the payment required for online play, and the PS3 shys me away from it for its play of PlayStation 2 compatibility. Gaming has generally gone downhill for me, and I feel that there are many factors leading to this. These factors are way too numerous to count or explain, and I may expand on them later.
EDIT - I'd really like to get another point out there as well. GameStop has had just as much of an influence in the gaming market as well. It's become a centralized hub for gamers, yes, but it has also caused disruption with the way we buy games. It has gained notoriety among parents as a place where you can trade in your games, so the majority of unwanted games go there to begin with. Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, there was actually *gasp* competition in the video game resale market. We had Funcoland, GameStop, Babbages, EB Games/Electronics Boutique, and Game Crazy, at least around where I live. Funcoland had great prices and great customer satisfaction. They would let us test the games and see if we liked them. I remember that was where I first played sonic the hedgehog, and wouldn't again for another 5 years at least when i got a Genesis of my own.
I have a lot of NES games with GameStop labels on them, and some with labels from other resale companies. Most of them are no more than 5 or 6 dollars. Really? Half the reason why people were complaining about the Nintendo 64 was because of the price to produce the game and manufacture the cartridges, compared to discs. Here these games were being resold for a very small fraction of the original price. Now this was 2001/2002, around 11 years after the games were originally sold, so perhaps the age may have some hand in the matter. GameStop soon bought up all its competition, and I remember the time when Funcoland's sign changed to GameStop and the test stations left the store.
Then GameStop got rid of the Atari and NES games, then SNES, then Nintendo 64. Now they only carry the games from the latest two generations. Why is that? Because the console libraries are so massive that they can't possibly hold more if they were to have people trading in their older console games. Plus they weren't seen as profitable anymore, since they pretty much had the entire industry to themselves and could set whatever prices they want on the newest games. Gamers today are greeted by a beautiful 10 dollar price difference between the new games, which aren't really new but already open and gutted, possibly scratching the disc, and used, which give you a 50% chance of missing the manual and almost guranteed some scratches on the disc.
The biggest problem with this is portable games. GameStops recently phased out Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, but the GBA games have yet to budge pricewise. Now we already have the DSi out, which is sure to phase out these older incompatible games soon. What's going to happen to UMDs? Are those going to leave too? Not soon, i'm sure. But it makes you wonder, why haven't GBA games gone down in price? The average price of a game is roughly 15 dollars. You can get a comparable GameCube game for that price or less. One of my favorite GC games, SSX Tricky, ran me up for 3 dollars. It's sequel? 7 dollars. I've been wanting to expand my GBA library for the longest time, but it's nearly impossible at these prices, and there's just too many good GBA games to be able to gamble your budget on.
Back to the new/used scam. 10 dollars to gurantee a good condition game. No, not at gamestop. At a proper store. This once applied to GBA games as well. Target had been selling FireRed and LeafGreen for the longest time I believe, and their tactic for GBA games that have an MSRP of 35 dollars is to sell it at that price for a month or so, then drop it 5 dollars. A game brand new in box for 30 dollars, versus a used copy at gamestop for *gasp* 35. What? 35? yeah that's right.
Oh, and also, Pokemon Emerald? also 35, and it initially retailed at 30. Ruby and Sapphire, 6 years old and the most common game on the system? 25-30. What bargain prices, huh? Is GameStop really trying to cash in on the name, or is it really that rare? Heh, you tell me.
I really wish I could get games like GameCube and 360 "Cheap" in 5-10 years, but it seems they'll be leaving us soon cause GameStop can't keep up with this constantly increasing market and libraries. Anyone notice how the Nintendo 64 went out much quicker than the three generations preceding it? Why is that? The market has become so much larger than a small-store chain can handle, even if it is a big chain
Another problem is these multiplatform games. Sure they're good for the consumer in the long run, but in the 90s we had fierce competition for the best games out there, and it was rare that the same game was out for both systems. Sure, that may be because of the monopolistic license chokeholds Nintendo had in play, but still, who doesn't like a little competition? Remember the slogan "Genesis does what Nintendon't"? that doesn't really apply today. What Nintendon't, Nintendo never wanted to do, because it's not in the interest of them for money.
Nintendo's licensing restrictions granted them top notch games, and the Genesis was able to successfully compete with that, but they soon brought Nintendo to court for it, and I feel that the gaming market dearly lost something with that. Then Sega tragically went downhill through the 32X, Sega CD, and Saturn, and although the Dreamcast has a cult following, there were many failures and shortcomings that made it ultimately falter and caused Sega's (un)timely demise. Sony rose to prominence in the wake of Sega's downfall but now its future is not so sure. Xbox rose in the next generation, and it seems to have grown into a repeating battle to see who can overthrow the incumbent king, Nintendo.
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Originally Posted by Game Freak
