Dragon Power! The History of Videogames

Videogames. They make us laugh, they make us cry, and they definitely make us lose a lot of sleep and study time. Since their inception, videogames have evolved immensely from blocky pixelfests to the gargantuan tirades the are today. In today's article, I'm going to relate not just a history of videogames, but my history of videogames, as I lived it. The facts may not be all straight, and I couldn't include everything I'd like to, but I think this is the gist of it. So, here we go, with...

My Personal History
of Videogames

First, there was nothing... and then, there was Nintendo. Alright, so there were videogames long before Nintendo, but none worth remembering, I'm sure. Besides, I never played Atari, or the Atari 2600, or the Atari 48000, or the Atari 8,000,000,000, or any of the other refridgerator-sized computers that Atari released, with random numbers at the end of their names. No, my first videogame system was the Nintendo Entertainment System. I remember my friends talking about playing this thing called Nintendo, and I had no idea what that was, but I was sure I wanted one, for some reason. So for me, Nintendo invented videogames -- or, rather, Nintendo invented videogames worth playing for more than five minutes without dying of boredom. Before Nintendo, all videogames looked like variations of this or this or this. You'd run a little man around a maze, collecting various fruits, and avoiding little gremlins that for some reason want to kill you. Everything would take place on one screen that you could never leave, and for some reason that screen was full of girders and ladders. Always with the girders and ladders, I just don't understand it. Whether you were trying to construct a giant hamburger, or save a princess from a horny primate, it always involved climbing some sort of ridiculous, ladder-riddled contraption. And when you beat the level, your reward was the opportunity to play that same level all over again. Really, can that be called a video game? That's more like a video job. A video job you don't get paid for.

Nintendo came along and brought me this beauty:

Sure, it's fine when Mario does it, but when I stomp on turtles
and kick them around in real life, I look like the bad guy!

When I first got it, I didn't know what the hell an NES was, nor how I was supposed to manipulate this grey, boxy robot into making me a sandwich or cleaning my room. However, it displayed more colors than my crayon box could hold, and it introduced me to a magical world, and an epic quest of jumping around on things and smashing the hell out of crap. Jumping around on things and smashing the hell out of crap was pretty much all I wanted out of life at the time, so this was a satisfying experience for me. The only problem was trying to get that little Italian man to move. For some reason, I recall having extreme difficulty trying to figure out the NES's complex controller mechanism. Yes, I know it only had two freaking buttons. Yes, I know that if I wanted Mario to run to the right, all I had to do was press RIGHT on the control pad. I don't know why I found that overwhelming, but I was probably like five years old at the time. I don't know what the average five year old is supposed to be capable of in terms of problem-solving ability, but I am hardly an average five year old, even today.

Super Mario Bros. taught me a great many life lessons at that tender age, including but not limited to the following:

1. My dad actually sucks at something.
2. Princesses need constant rescuing, all the time.
3. If you smash a floating box made of bricks, and a mushroom comes out of it, eat it. It will make you grow bigger.
4. Collecting $100 will let you die once and come back.
5. From now on, all games at recess must involve pretending to be Nintendo characters, and/or making Nintendo sound effects.

but, most importantly....

6. FEAR THIS MAN:

If Bowser really wanted me dead, he'd chuck those hammers directly at me.
No, he just enjoys watching me squirm... tossing them in that upward arc, like that...
What a devious bastard...

On the same cartridge, of course, was Duck Hunt. It was fun at the time, and it certainly united people of all ages in their hatred of that damn dog (both my father and grandfather were caught playing it), but it also smacked of the old, Atari-reminiscent "we're still not sure who our target audience is" attitude about videogames in general. I mean, you had these weird, "family"-oriented games like Paperboy or some such thing, which were always about doing something utterly mundane that I've already chosen not to do in real life. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed both Duck Hunt and Paperboy very much back in the day, but for the most part it was too ambitious a goal to try and get every age demographic playing Nintendo games. It's like when Cupid flew too close to the sun, and his wings melted, thus plunging him into the ocean. Okay, I know it's Icarus and not Cupid, but I hate Cupid! The little bastard won't get me a girlfriend! Talk about a slacker!

Another title worthy of mention in my personal videogame history is the original Dragon Warrior. I got it for free with a subscription to Nintendo Power, the company's official propaganda magazine that really was an impressive publication at the time. For a while, it was the most comprehensive videogame magazine available, just utterly chock-full of maps, useful tips and strategies, secrets, previews, lavish color artwork and tons of screenshots, and absolutely no advertisements to speak of. These things are no longer true, sadly, but that's another story. Anyway, back to Dragon Warrior. My very first RPG, even though I had no idea what an RPG was at the time, and wouldn't hear of that term until probably next generation. All I knew was that it was a tremendous fantasy adventure the likes of which I'd never witnessed before, and it had cute little slimy guys for enemies.

This thing was immense even before you popped the cartridge into the machine. Inside the box, I found:

- the standard instuction booklet, with neat little illustrations and pieces of advice on how to play the game

- a full-on strategy guide that walked you through the entire game, which also contained cool artwork and information on all the items in the game, as well as a narrative in the back of the book detailing the story

- a little card that had a chart of all the experience levels, detailing what spells you'd learn at each level, what your HP would be, and what areas are recommended for that level

- a map of every cave and dungeon in the game

- another double-sided map that was a world atlas on one side, and a list of every monster in the game and where to find them on the other side

- and finally, a totally kick-ass Dragon Warrior poster!

To this day, I've never seen a game come with so much awesome swag included in the package, let alone a free game. All this treasure certainly served to immerse me in the whole experience of the game... exploring dark, labyrinthine caverns by the light of a fading torch... fighting desperately to stay alive on the perilous trek to the next town... searching every nook and cranny of the castles and villages for clues on where to go next... It was certainly a far cry from Mario's platforming romp, and encounters with enemies were no longer trivial affairs that could be avoided with a mere jump. No goombas here, no sir... here, you were faced with wizards, ghosts, dragons, and the like -- and each of them could tear you a new one if the battle went awry or if you were running low on precious MP for your measly Heal spell. These sorts of things are commonplace now, yes, but at the time, this was my first RPG experience, and I loved every minute of it. It really got me involved in what was going on, and having to really think about what to do and where to go next. What's more, this type of game sparked the imagination in ways that a simple "just get to the end of the stage" platformer philosophy never could. The same goes for other classics such as the original Final Fantasy or even The Legend of Zelda -- they were damn well inspiring.

The NES generation was where many of gaming's iconic franchises originated. Consider series like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, Castlevania, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Tetris, etc., which all originated on the NES and are all still hugely successful today. And even though other series like Double Dragon and Contra aren't big business today, they were almost universally embraced by the gaming community in the NES era, and certainly did a lot to shape the future course of events in the development of other games. In a lot of ways, the mythos of videogame culture was forged in the NES era. As much as I sound like a nostalgia-crazed old kook when I say this, it really was a golden age for gaming. A lot of ground was broken, a lot of succuess was to be had, and whatever good still exists in games today owes itself to the legacy of what the NES generation left behind.
For example, look back again at the Mario games. Super Mario Bros. 2 was a bit odd, not quite like how a Mario game "felt," but it was still a ridiculous amount of fun to play. Super Mario Bros. 3 was probably the definitive Mario experience, with a massive world and a treasure trove of new abilities and wacky suits for Mario to take advantage of. To this day, no Mario game has come close to offering that type of gaming feast. What I'm getting at here, is that there were certain games that only came out once in a blue moon, but when they did it was an event. Those games would be popular for years and years, and became true classics. There was a time when a Mario game was something special, something unique, and something you'd still enjoy playing far into the future.

For more than a few people, the early 90s was a time rife with females who needed rescuing and thugs and monsters who needed ass-kickings.

Eventually, the 16-bit generation came around. Nintendo released the Super Nintendo, and their main competitor, Sega, released the Genesis. Sega did their part in keeping Nintendo on edge, and had some nice games for their system -- I look back with fondness at Sonic the Hedgehog and Phantasy Star IV, for example -- but ultimately the SNES was the superior system. There was much the SNES could do that the Genesis couldn't replicate, and what's more there were just a hell of a lot of fantastic games coming out for the SNES that weren't ever on Genesis. The way I see it, it was just a continuation of the golden age of Nintendo, and things just kept getting better and better. Graphics and sound improved enormously, and the controller gained several more buttons, allowing for new kinds of sophistication and artistic expression that the NES was lacking. There was another Mario, another Zelda, more Mega Mans, more Final Fantasys, and it was all great stuff that kept their series' traditions while trying new things. It was a bridge between the klunky, imagination-dependent experiences of the NES era and today's leave-nothing-to-the-imagination era of full-motion video and voice-acting. If the NES era was just a hint of what videogames could be someday, the SNES era was a almost a full realization of that vision. Developers had a decent mixture of creative freedom and technological restriction, resulting in a stage where the brightest performers could truly shine.
Of course, one important point has to be made: while Nintendo themselves did pull their own weight in terms of first-party game development, much of their success was also dependent on strong third-party software support. Mario and Zelda are great and all, and perhaps they are enough for some people to buy a system, but as for me, there had better be other games too. Thankfully, in the days of the NES and SNES, there were other games. Tons of them.

And then, depending on who you ask, things either got even better or much, much worse. 3D technology was introduced to gaming, and a new generation of home consoles arrived. The competition really started to heat up as Sony entered the console arena, and for all intents and purposes, they beat the snot out of Nintendo. But, the way I see it, it was Nintendo's own fault, really.

How did this happen? Nintendo had all the great games on their previous system, they had an unreal amount of quality first-party series they could work with, and they had enough street cred to sink Sony ten times over. And yet, the Sony Playstation won the battle for the next two generations, leaving Nintendo in the dust. This is mainly due to how Nintendo screwed up in its designs for the Nintendo 64, their first 3D gaming system. This is the point in the article where I am going to get pretty opinionated in my storytelling, just as a heads-up...

Okay, so the Nintendo 64. Worst. Console. Ever. I bought one of those clunkers before I ever got my Playstation, and I have regretted it ever since. The Nintendo 64 was nothing but a world of let-downs and poor decisions. Let's look at the system as hardware, first:

- Cartridge-based media, as in previous generations. This was good for eliminating load times, but bad for information storage because you could barely fit anything on them. Games in this generation were in love with pretty things like full-motion video and real, honest-to-God recorded sound and music. These things take up a great deal of space on a cartridge, so making a game with all that stuff in it was next to impossible for the N64. I'm not saying pretty graphics and nice sound effects are what make the game, but they are an important part of it regardless of what Nintendo thinks, and choosing to shun CDs really was just a silly idea. If Miyamoto really wanted to make Mario 64 on a CD instead of a cartridge, he could have found a way. Maybe there would be longer load times between areas, or maybe the levels would be a little less open, but it would have been possible. Hell, there is always the option of making another 2D Mario, too, but maybe that's a notion so risqué that I should not have dared utter it.

- The sound chip in that thing must have been bought at a flea market, because it was actually worse than the SNES in terms of sound quality. I have never heard a remotely-pleasant sound come out of a N64 (okay, maybe Mario 64 or Zelda), whether it's in terms of simple sound effects or musical instrumentation and composition. Meanwhile, the other systems made by Sony and Sega had CDs that could play actual live-recorded sound effects and music, and had pretty nice MIDI synth equipment in them as well.

- I've been told, by those who consider themselves "in the know," that the Nintendo 64 was technologically superior to the Sony Playstation when it came to rendering 3D environments and models. I don't know if this means that it could handle larger environments without load times, or have more polygons on screen at once, or what... all I know is that, in practice, none of those claims ever got backed up. Every Nintendo 64 game looked the way they sounded, which was ugly as sin. I'm not sure if Nintendo just hadn't heard of putting textures on their 3D models, or if they were allergic to beauty, or what, but goddamn did they ever have some hideous software.

- That controller? Yeah, there was a time when I thought it was a work of genius, too. I mean, you have the analog stick and the digital pad, and all kinds of buttons all over the place, as well as three different ways of holding it. However, both the analog stick and the digital pad were a chore to use, a lot of the buttons (the C buttons, in particular) were awkwardly placed, and only one method of holding the controller was ever actually put into practice for any games -- and for good reason. I mean, how many games do you want to play where you have the analog stick, the digital control pad, and then just the L and Z button at your disposal? Less than fuck, that's how many. That controller was just stupid, no matter how you slice it.

1) No games I can remember enjoying ever required you to hold this nightmare contraption like you would a normal controller, at both sides.
2) No game I can even imagine would ever ask you to hold it by the left and middle handles, because that would be just idiotic.
3) The only real way to play N64 is by holding the middle and right handles, but -- oh! What's this, I can't reach the now useless L button! One could argue that Z is the new L, but that person would get a punch in the gut for saying something so moronic, and then I would ask Nintendo the question: "Why not just design the controller around that set-up in the first place, huh? What kind of mind games are you playing here?!"

Now, consider the Sony Playstation:

- CD-based media, allowing for truckloads of data storage. Games could have beautiful sounds, music, videos, and whatever else you wanted to cram on there. Even if you ran out of room on the disc, you could just have the game use more CDs. Hell, Final Fantasy VIII came on four freaking CDs for God's sake. Sure, there were lots of videos, but it was also just a long epic of a game. You couldn't even fit one sixteenth of FF8 on the N64, sans the videos -- and even if you did, it wouldn't look or sound any damn good at all. But, more on RPGs later on, because I have a lot to say about that in particular.

- Even ignoring the ability to play live-recorded sounds and music, the Playstation could still kick the N64's ass in the sound department because it actually had a half-decent MIDI output capability. In fact, most games used synthesized MIDI music for their games, because it was more practical, and it sounded good enough anyway. There have been many MIDI tracks in Playstation games that have been mistaken for symphony orchestra recordings, for instance. Granted, those mistakes were made by dummies, but on the other hand there has never been an N64 noise that has ever been mistaken for anything other than a donkey's fart.

- Even if the Playstation was technically inferior to the N64 in some obscure way, it was hard to tell. Perhaps because many Playstation game developers made good use of textures and made every polygon count. I've never really sat down and done a polygon count between an N64 game and a reasonable Playstation counterpart... but from my experience, if the N64 had more polygons powering its characters, 58% of them were used to give Link a rounder face and a pointier nose, and the rest were obviously hidden in some secret room in a cave somewhere that only the developers at Nintendo could unlock using a secret code. Like, seriously, even in Zelda, the best-looking N64 game Nintendo ever made, all the polygons went into Link, and obviously everything else in the game took the back seat.

I suppose I could admit that maybe N64 polygons had cleaner definition and crisper textures.
But on the other hand, that definition only served to accentuate what an infantile state 3D technology was generally in,
and those crisper textures only helped to inform me that Link's clothes were made of an indeterminate, flat-green blob.
At least Playstation games had worthwhile textures, even if they weren't as smooth.

- Not everyone will agree with me, but the Playstation Dual Shock controller is pretty much the greatest video game controller ever devised. You have all the buttons you could ever really need on there, without a feeling of having too many of them. The N64's controller technically had one more button than the Playstation's, if you don't consider "Select" a real button andyou ignore the Playstation's second analog stick -- but the N64's buttons were all over the place, and you had to contort your hands in strange ways or just plain hold the controller differently to access them. There was no way to hold the N64 controller and comfortably be able to take advantage of all the buttons at any one time -- but, lo and behold, the Playstation controller could claim just that. Everything on the PS1 controller was right there at your fingertips, with no need to bend over backwards or hold the controller sideways or any of that nonsense. You had four face buttons, two Ls and two Rs on top, a digital pad for precise directional or menu control, two analog sticks for whatever 360-degree movement you needed, and then your standard Select and Start buttons.

Ah, now this is what I'm talkin' about. Notice how both the analog stick and the digital pad
are right there next to your thumb, and not fifty feet across the room.

Aside from the hardware concerns, there are scads of other problems I had with the Nintendo 64, as compared to the Sony Playstation. For instance, the "death" of 2D gaming. With the birth of 3D technology as a viable gaming solution, a lot of developers stopped producing 2D games forever, as if it were obsolete. This was especially true for the N64, because even though it was supposedly "better" at rendering 3D in some intangible way, it completely sucked at everything else, including displaying a freaking 2D sprite on the screen. I have no idea why that was, but everything 2D on the N64 looked oddly out of place, in a way that the Super Nintendo and Playstation didn't have to worry about. Maybe that was all just my imagination, but you can't argue with the fact that 2D games just did not exist on the N64. The only exceptions are Mischief Makers, which wasn't even completely 2D anyhow, and Tactics Ogre, which was supposedly the only worthwhile RPG in the system's history and soon got ported to PS1 anyway.
Any 2D games that did get made were made for the PS1, and for good reason. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which is still considered by many to be one of the greatest games of all time, is the prime example. It was an excellent platformer/action-RPG, with stunning graphics and an often live-recorded and orchestrated soundtrack. The control was spot-on, there were tons of secrets to find and hundreds of items and weapons to collect, and countless kick-ass monsters to fight. What's more, it revolutionized an existing series, and made it far better than what it was before. This sends a powerful message early in the PS1's lifespan -- that this is the type of game you can expect from the system. True, it can be pointed out that some of SOTN's structure was a little too reminiscent of Super Metroid, but even then, that's a case for the SNES and not the N64, and I would argue that at least Castlevania had a plotline (admittedly, not a great one, but it served well enough) as well as far more atmosphere and style than Metroid did, as well as just plain cooler characters and more stuff to find. Also, it's worth pointing out that the N64 didn't even have a Metroid game. What it did have was a rather bad 3D version of Castlevania that nobody liked. What's up with that?

Nintendo, from as far back as the final days of the Super Nintendo, just for some reason started adamantly hating RPGs. I have no idea why that was, but it seemed like Nintendo's stance on RPGs (or any game with a story, really) were not worth your time, and were better off not played. Even back when I still had my beloved Nintendo Power magazine subscription (and before it fully turned into the sloshy mess it is today) it was becoming clear that they weren't too keen on RPGs. In fact, I'm not sure Nintendo has even adopted the term "RPG" into their vocabulary. That's not a sarcastic jibe, I mean that literally -- Nintendo Power would refer to games like Final Fantasy III, Harvest Moon, Civilization, and Illusion of Gaia all collectively by the vague umbrella label of "epics." They had a section called Epic Center, where they gave tips on anything that wasn't an action, puzzle, or sports title, and hardly ever was the term "RPG" ever used. While everyone else knew what an RPG was, Nintendo just didn't seem to understand, or perhaps just flat-out refused, to use the acronym much. It's as if they just didn't have patience for games that made them read.

One of the very few Epic Center articles in which the term "RPG" is used, although it's part of the phrase "RPGs and simulations."
Also, note that it is an article about Tales of Phantasia, a mind-blowing SNES game that boasts an engaging storyline,
voice-acting (including a fully-voiced opening theme song), and the best graphics of any SNES game, RPG or not.
Naturally, this game was never released in North America, except in an enhanced Playstation version,
and recently a really limp and watered-down Gameboy version with crappy sound and a mangled interface.

Of course, this wouldn't be a problem for them if their next system simply didn't have any RPGs, right? The N64's entire gaming library can be summed up by the following categories:

a) sports
b) first-person shooters
c) games Rare made
d) ports of other systems' games
e) miscellaneous puzzley crap
f) first-party Nintendo games (Mario, Zelda, F-Zero)
g) silly platforming kiddy games

Now, there were techinically a few RPGs, but I'm fairly certain they consisted entirely of the aforementioned Tactics Ogre (which was apparently pretty good, ironically enough, though I could never find it in stores), and two pieces of shite that were made by the same company and regarded by anyone and everyone who played them as the worst games ever. One of them was literally called Quest 64, and I had the misfortune of renting this abomination (I should have suspected from the barbarously generic title that something was amiss). The other was called Aiden Chronicles or some such thing, and I've not read good things about it. The guy who made Earthbound tried and fought like hell to make another RPG for the N64, and for some reason the project was cancelled. While I don't know for sure why that was, I can only speculate that the cause was 25% "Nintendo being crappy" and 75% "Nintendo being really crappy." A fun side note: There has recently been another Earthbound-type game released in Japan for the Gameboy Advance (whoop dee doo, a gameboy game, what a fucking slap in the face), however Nintendo refuses to translate it to English.
Aside from those games above, there were absolutely no RPGs for the N64 system at all, or even very many games with decent storylines or characters. All those went to the Playstation (or, to a lesser extent, the barely-worth-mentioning Sega Saturn), just serving to further define what sort of gamers should go Sony and which should go Nintendo.

Aside from hating RPGs, Nintendo seemed to also hate anything that wasn't kid-friendly. The result was a lot of cutesy platformer-type games, with most of the good ones put out by Rare. I remember liking Banjo-Kazooie, for one thing. Not enough to buy it, but it was fun. Of course, Rare also made Donkey Kong 64, a game so monumentally bad that all the Angry Video Game Nerd made-up swears in the world can't account for it. I mean, they effectively did the exact opposite of what Konami did for Castlevania. Rare took a perfectly good 2D platforming series from the Super Nintendo and made it into a 3D "find all the bananas, then find all the red bananas" fetch quest, where the fiercest enemy you'll face is your own boredom. The DK Rap at the start of the game was kind of cool, in a "so bad it's funny" kind of way -- but the thing about "so bad it's funny" is that deep down, it's just plain bad. Why not make "good"? Was that out of the question?

In fact, that's another point I want to make -- a whole lot of the N64's games were fetch quests. Like, take Super Mario 64 for example. A fun game, sure, but in my opinion nowhere near as great as Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World. Those are real action/platformer games, where you run through actual levels, and dodge enemies and obstacles, etc. Once you finish a level, you go on to the next one. There's supposed to be a bunch of levels in a Mario game, and lots of variety between them. But in Mario 64, once you finish a level you wind up having to go back and do that same level over again because you need a certain amount of "Stars" to unlock the next one. In fact, in order to get all the stars in any given level, you had to complete that level like 10 or so times. When did this become what a "Mario" game was all about? Remember what I said about what it would be like if Miyamoto had made Mario 64 for the Playstation? The individual areas would be less open (but not unbearably so), and there would be more loading, but I'll bet 50 red coins and 30 golden bananas and 18 blue keys and 27 purple chestnuts that a PS1 Mario would be a lot closer to the classic Mario games of the NES and SNES era, and there would probably be a lot more levels, rather than just a handful that you have to run through over and over. Also, this "completing the same level over and over" fiasco is strangely reminiscent of the pre-Nintendo days of Pac-Man and Burger Time and the original Donkey Kong. Sure, it's fun the first time, but once you complete a stage, you want some kind of reward, in the form of a new stage. You don't want to play that same stage again -- I mean, what's the point? Again, this is like a video job, not a video game. Whenever anyone wants to complain that today's games, with their videos and whatnot are more like interactive movies, you just remember what it was like to find 60 mauve balloons, and then when you're done, the game tells you you have to go in there again and find 70 burgandy balloons.

"Open" areas (read:areas with no cieling?) are all well and good, but when those vines you're swinging on
are clearly just hanging in mid-air, it looks pretty stupid.

This emphasis on collecting useless crap over and over again wasn't entirely Nintendo's fault, though. It turns out that making 3D environments was pretty storage-heavy, and probably fairly difficult at the time, since the technology was still fairly new to gaming in general. As a result, a lot of action games started disappearing, being replaced by what Nintendo would refer to as "exploration." Exploration meant, of course, going over every inch of a room with a fine-toothed comb, just in case you may have missed one or two little tokens. In the old days, collecting 100 of something was a side issue, and not necessary to complete the game. For instance, in the Donkey Kong Country games I think there were big coins or something you could collect, and if you scored like 100% for the whole game you might have unlocked some secret or a different ending or something. And in Super Mario World, if you found all the Yoshi coins in any given level, you'd get an extra life. But, none of those things were the focus of the game. The focus of the game was on the challenge of getting through the levels. Collectable items were carefully hidden and out of the way. Once 3D came along, there couldn't be as many levels, or even a decent amount of enemies and obstacles, so instead you had to patiently go around performing menial tasks within an area, just to win a coin or a star or whatever the token of that particular game was. That became your character's raison d'etre, and it just plain wasn't as fun as how games used to be.
I mean, just look at Super Mario Bros. 3 compared to Super Mario 64. In Mario 3, there were 8 different worlds, and each world had a whole bunch of stages within it, plus a bunch of castles, Toad houses, optional stages, and a big airship at the end culminating in a boss battle. There were tons of different badguys, and it seemed like just as many power-ups. Remember the raccoon suit that lets you fly? The tanuki suit that turned you into a stone statue? The hammer brother suit? The freaking boot?! Those are just a few of them, and they were all awesome. In Mario 64, on the other hand, you couldn't even get so much as a mushroom. You had 50 different kinds of wonky jumps that never really went the way you wanted them to, plus the wing cap, the metal cap, and the vanish cap But that was it, and you couldn't save those caps for later -- you had to use them where Nintendo wanted you to, and only for a short amount of time, which isn't really a power-up at all when you think about it. The point of the game wasn't to go through levels, hop on enemies, etc. The point now was to run around the same rooms over and over again, finding all the stars. You got a star generally by getting to a certain place in the level, by collecting 10 red coins, by going down a slidey race, or whatever. It was always the same stuff, and it got very repetitive. You couldn't even save time by snagging multiple stars in one trip -- you had to get one at a time, and each one in the order Nintendo dictated to you. I'm not saying Mario 64 was a terrible game -- I enjoyed it at the time -- but, it wasn't really a Mario game. Nintendo hasn't really made an honest-to-god Mario game ever since.

This crazy crap is what Mario used to have to deal with on a daily basis.

Mario 64

In my day, finding a Star was a rare and special event, and they made you invincible, so you could run around and clobber goombas to your heart's content.
Now, there's 10 stars in every level, and they don't even do anything. They're just keys to open a door that leads to another room full of keys, for another door.

But anyway, back to the "kid-friendly" stance Nintendo had, and still has today. Game companies don't seem to realize that the more "kid-friendly" something becomes, the less "adult-friendly" it becomes. There is no such thing as true "family" entertainment, because there is nothing that all age groups will enjoy equally, unless it's something abstract like Tetris. For every attempt at being inoffensive or politically correct, there is someone who will be offended by your political correctness. For every Pokémon fan that came in, there was a Metal Gear Solid fan who left the Nintendo flock. Anything with blood, politics, religious references, more-than-mild violence, sex, or any of the other interesting or thought-provoking things in this world, was eliminated from Nintendo's worldview. It was okay for Nintendo to be all Ned Flanders back in the NES and SNES days, because there weren't a lot of adult gamers anyway, relatively speaking. But since that time, gamers have grown up, and they didn't abandon Nintendo -- Nintendo abandoned them. I would argue that it was this -- along with their obtuse hardware choices -- that did the most harm to Nintendo's reputation.

Honestly, now, which one of these would you choose?
If you said "the stupid bear guy," congratulations -- it's giggling rainbows and sugar-coated unicorns for you!
One thing I don't get, though -- why does Banjo shave his face, feet, chest, and his grotesquely human-like hands?

In what can only be described as the Sony Playstation era, a lot of new series got their start. Resident Evil introduced many to the "survival horror" genre, which started off as basically just a slow-paced action game with poor controls, limited ammo, and zombies -- but it soon became more refined and gems like Silent Hill started popping up.
Metal Gear Solid unearthed a long-forgotten series and made it something new, unique, and beautiful, while simultaneously inventing the so-called "stealth" genre. Frankly, I don't think of "stealth" as a genre so much as just "Metal Gear and everyone else who copies it," but whatever.
Final Fantasy kept going strong, but with Final Fantasy VII, it changed from one of the most popular RPGs to one of the most popular games, period. Squaresoft established themselves among the entire gaming community as masters of the gaming craft, as well as one of the finest creators of CGI animation, for games or otherwise. That game sold a lot of systems, and I think it helped get more media attention towards videogames in general. Videogames were on the road to being one of the fastest-growing entertainment industries in the world, rather than the niche hobby it was previously. Game system specs began appearing in the business section of the newspaper, not just in gaming mags. I think the gaming consoles are Sony's central industrial focus, now, and I'd wager it's getting that way with Microsoft now.

This trend not only continued, but intensified, in the next generation. Sony brought forth the Playstation 2, which for all intents and purposes won the system war again. Using the DVD format instead of CDs, it meant the system could also play movie discs, which I suppose was a draw for a lot of people. Generally, the PS2 was a whole lot of good news, with countless returning series as well as original titles, many of which have been outstanding. Also, whatever illusions people had about Nintendo's system being more technically savvy than Sony's are put to rest. What's been coming out for PS2 lately has been really stunning, whereas Gamecube games generally are still candy-coated affairs with mediocre graphics. Consider Shadow of the Colossus, which is a true masterpiece. Graphically and musically, it is a marvel to behold. Gameplay-wise, it is deceptively and artfully simple, and feels much like a Zelda game where you explore the landscape and its natural secrets -- in fact, the hero is limited to only a sword, a bow and arrow, and a horse the entire affair, making Link seem bogged down and gimmicky, like the gaming equivalent of Inspector Gadget or James Bond. The world is not as populated or deeply-saturated in hidden treasures such as rupees, pieces of heart, arrows and bombs -- yet at the same time the game possesses a unique vastness, sophistication, and tranquility that has never been duplicated. In terms of storyline and plot, there is almost none, on the surface -- indeed, there is hardly any dialogue until the very end. However, certain details can be inferred by the reactions and motives of the main character, as he fells numerous gigantic beasts. These beasts are not the bosses at the end of a level -- these creatures are the levels -- they're just that big, and victory is won only through careful thought and creativity. It feels more like a desperate contest of wills, rather than an act of violence. Truly, violence and blood is not what makes this a mature game. In fact, it feels quite innocent enough, and is not incredibly "mature" in the ESRB sense of the word. No, the fact is that the game appeals to adult sensitivities, perhaps even beyond words, and challenges the player's heart and mind rather than their reflexes. It communicates with the gamer in ways that only mature gamers will appreciate, much like a symphony to a musically-trained ear. This is where true maturity lies, not in blood and guts and sex. Excuse the tangeant there, but I just think that in rejecting the "blood and guts" kind of maturity, Nintendo has inadvertantly also rejected the truer, more subtle kind. Ideally, Shadow of the Colossus is the kind of game that I'd like to associate the PS2 with, not only because it has the technology and the software precendent for it, but because it is the only system that has earned the audience for such a thing. Nintendo has the kiddie set, and sort of dug their own grave in that respect -- and Microsoft's Xbox has the Halo and Ninja gaiden players, who would probably just drop the controller when they found out Shadow of the Colossus doesn't have a rocket launcher or a whore in a bikini. Sony's PS2 is where the art lies, at least for now. In truth, I'd like to see Zelda go in this direction, because it needs a major change -- but I plan to elaborate more on that in a future article.

This is poetry in motion, in a way most other game developers can only dream of creating.
The game isn't even all that long, or video-intensive, but the audience for it just isn't there on the Gamecube or Xbox.

Sega tried their thing again, producing the Dreamcast. However, just as I would describe their entire history as a company, their efforts were in vain, and in the end they didn't have many, if any, quality titles for their system. The system died quickly, only garnering loyalty from a minority of gamers.

Yet again, though, I had problems with Nintendo's new Gamecube. Luckily for me, I had the bitter taste of the N64 still in my mouth and I wasn't tempted to buy one. After all, the Gamecube was pretty much another N64, but with prettier games and nicer sound. I'm sure you're wondering what problems I could possibly have with the Gamecube, though, so here they are:

First up, the disc format. Finally, Nintendo abandoned the cartridge format, and tried to make something like the round, flat, shiny things the other game systems were using. But, for some reason they made their discs much smaller than a CD or DVD. I can't imagine why the hell they would do something so stupid, honestly. I guess it's in keeping with their ardent opposition to fitting sufficient content for a game of more than three hours in length, and it also ensures that there will be a minimum of videos and nice music, which apparently they must also hate. I've heard rumors that the smaller discs are meant to protect against piracy, but that seems a little silly to me. After all, Sony games were pirated like crazy for two generations of systems, and yet they still won the system war both times, so I guess business couldn't have been too bad. Also, how about this crazy idea: instead of making Gamecube discs smaller, why not make them slightly bigger?! You can't copy a disc that doesn't fit in your computer's disc drive, and the larger format would allow game companies to fit more resources on there, thus gathering the third-party support Nintendo sorely lacked. I'm no hardware expert, but doesn't that make sense? I'm aware that disc size alone doesn't determine how much information can be stored for a game (just look at CD compared to DVD format), but I have serious doubts that Nintendo was able to come up with a disc so dense that they could actually make it half the physical size of a CD and still expect to fit a sizable game on there. Apparently there were a few nice good sized games, though, such as Resident Evil 4, and a port of the original PS1 Metal Gear Solid (a version which was graphically superior but artistically moronic) but they were few and far between. Most of the other worthwhile games were actually put out by Nintendo themselves, which to me doesn't really hold up when there's like 20 times the quality titles on another system.

The controller is pretty bad, too. Nintendo didn't repeat the mistake of creating another three-pronged disaster, and generally the controller is functional enough, but just look at this thing:

It looks like a Playstation controller, as redesigned by Salvador Dali and Fisher Price. Visually, it just gives me the creeps. It's like an amoeba or something. First of all, the A button is disproportinately huge, because Nintendo wants to make that button the central focus of your game-playing experience. The underlying reason for this, I would guess, is that for the average Nintendo game you really only need one button to jump around, or eat candies, or hug a goat, or turn your frown upside down, or turn lemons into lemonade, or whatever silly kid stuff it is that you do on the Gamecube. That's all you do in Mario Party, for God's sake. You just mash the A button endlessly so you can, yet again, collect stars or coins or hearts or farts. For more insightful commentary on the series, which I'm sure has more sequels than I've had birthdays, please consult this handy Penny Arcade comic:

Apparently this comic is taking place in that alternate, infinitely white space that is usually reserved for iPod advertisements and in The Matrix where they keep all the guns.

Anyway, back to the controller. Why are the other face buttons smaller, and sort of melting around the A button? Also, why are they so far away from the A button? I know that in the picture they don't look far away, but they are far enough apart to make a significant difference. I have to change the position of my thumb each time I want to hit one of them. Nintendo should have been keeping that to a minimum. It's by no means as bad as the N64 controller, but that's like saying that microwaving a cat is not as bad as microwaving a human baby. Neither are acceptable, in reality. The microwave just makes a huge mess. The BBQ is clearly the place for them.

And what's with the L and R shoulder buttons? I suppose I should just be glad that they're even there, and not on the back of the controller or stuck on a power glove or some such thing... and the analog sensitivity in them is quite nice. It's just... a little too analog. I don't need 7000 degrees of sensitivity for what is essentially going to be my camera rotation buttons or my left/right veering buttons. God help any game developer that was counting on using them as just plain command input. Lemme tell you, it's some trip to try and get those things all the way down into the controller where they can do anything in a consistent and timely manner. Again, I much prefer Sony's solution: the L and R buttons behave as regular, no-nonsense buttons -- and if you want analog sensitivity, then you can press down harder to varying degrees.

The software for the Gamecube didn't really hold up, in my opinion. Again, I admit that I haven't played much Gamecube, and that I don't own one, but this is because there simply aren't enough games that interest me for the system. Personally, I like RPGs most of all, or at least a game with some form of plotline I can follow. It can be an epic storyline, or a simple case of "some badguys stoled my girlfriend!", but it's nice if there's some reason I'm running my little character around and doing stuff. It doesn't even have to be a narrative, just some sequence of logical events, a feeling of purpose, or stuff that happens over the course of the game that further complicates the situation in a meaningful way. A feeling like I'm on some kind of adventure, not just a little round guy collecting stars for God knows what. Nintendo still frowned on such things, and was happy to rehash its old Mario, Zelda, F-Zero formula -- and from my point of view, it was just the N64 all over again, with better graphics. Mario had a water hose or something this time, Zelda was cel-shaded, and F-Zero... well, to be honest I can't tell the difference between N64 and Gamecube F-Zero. At least there was a Metroid this round, but it turned out to be some first-person shooter thing, and I dunno about that. I played Doom back in the day, and that was about enough for me.
Besides those titles, Nintendo has quickly become all about multiplayer or "party" games. Those are the sorts of games I like other people to own, so I can play them when I go to their house. But I'll be damned if I'm going to pay as much money for something like that when I can get a more involving game that is probably going to entertain me for 60-100 hours. Eventually, it actually became exceedingly difficult to find a worthwhile game for the cube that didn't require at least three or four players at all times, and even then each of them had to bring a Gameboy Advance with them (heaven help you if the batteries were low, too). I will say this: Zelda: Four Swords and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles are phenomenal games, and I did also enjoy Warioware and DDR: Mario Mix. But, none of those games are something you can just relax with after work and play by yourself. You need others with you, and for me it's not always possible to get three other people together at a moment's notice, let alone three other people who want to play some Nintendo game. It's just not worth the investment, in my opinion.
What's more, even though these games are enjoyable party solutions, they are all quite kid-friendly and generally not examples of serious gaming in the traditional sense. Even Final Fantasy, which typically has some degree of gravity about it, is a simplified, "Nintendofied" version with more childlike characters, and more of an action game than an RPG. And again, all you do is mash the A button constantly.

That's another thing -- Nintendofication. Can't Nintendo just make something that doesn't contain Mario in it? Why couldn't there have been a regular DDR game for Gamecube, instead of a much-easier "DDR Jr." kind of romp with tunes remixed from existing Mario games? Why did almost every game for N64 have to end with the suffix "64"? Why do a suspicious number of third-party Nintendo DS titles have titles with the acronym D.S.? I'm not sure how much of it Nintendo is directly responsible for, but it's kind of creepy nonetheless.

Anyway, aside from the Gamecube and PS2, Microsoft entered the fray that generation. For the most part, everyone just scoffed at the idea, because nobody really likes Microsoft, and seeing Bill Gates trying to hang with the gamer kids was like suspecting a narc at the coke party. Now, from my perspective, all the gold Microsoft touches turns to lead, so their Xbox was not something I was looking forward to. It didn't do well at first, though over that generation it slowly grew in popularity until it became a force to be reckoned with. However, in my opinion, it still doesn't have very many worthwhile games for it, if any. In fact, I can't think of a single Xbox exclusive that I really want to play. The system was mainly relegated to Halo and various shooters, etc. Me and my Japanese story games really never caught the Xbug.

Honestly, Halo is just another shooter, people! It's not special!!

Now, we've finally come to the current generation of consoles, and I have no idea what's going on anymore. Everything's going topsy-turvy.

Microsoft made another box, the Xbox 360 specifically, but they made like 3 or 4 different versions of it, and none of them work if you believe the rumors. Still, there are no good games for it but shooters and racing, so if that's your thing, then good for you.

Sony has gone completely insane, pricing their PS3 at around $800 or so, from what I can recall. No one has that kind of money, for anything. What's more, there are hardly any games out for it, but I suppose it's still too early to say.

Then again, the Nintendo Wii is still new, and there's all kinds of cool shit for that machine. In fact, congratulations Nintendo, but you're back in my good books, at least for now. The Wii is my favorite of the systems right now, but hopefully this will be only temporary. I say this because, even though it's the most affordable system and the controller is really neat, and the whole OS of the system is really nice to play with, I don't think my kinds of games can work on the system. The virual console, which lets you download old NES and SNES games, is genius. But, technically speaking the system is only a little more powerful than a Gamecube, so if you couldn't fit a Final Fantasy or a Metal Gear on Nintendo before, you're not going to get one now, even if both Sony and Microsoft go under. That motion sensing technology is pretty cool, but it's going to get old fast unless there's more to back up the gaming experience. So far, it doesn't sound like that "more" is happening.

Trauma Center: A very good game, sure, but they can't all be like this.
Wario Ware: Also great fun, but is this all there is to the Wii?

So, I'm in a place where -- even if I had the money, which I don't -- I just wouldn't want to buy any of the new generation's systems. The PS3 is always going to be too expensive, the Xbox 360 just seems like another Xbox with more games I wouldn't like, and the Wii is still the system for quirky motion and party amusements rather than real games. I hear the new Zelda is nice, but I also hear it plays like Ocarina of Time, which came out two generations ago.

Right now, I'm still enjoying my PS2. There are still tons of great games coming out for it, like Final Fantasy XII, Odin Sphere, Okami, Rogue Galaxy, etc.

In Okami, "exploration" means just that, and when you go exploring you're probably going to stumble on something immediately valuable rather than just another coin or banana.

Frankly, I don't think we really needed a new generation, right now. Developers are still finding new ways to make games, and better ways to fully take advantage of the technology they already have.
Well, that's it. That's my personal videogame history, up to now. I'm sure you may not agree with me in several areas, so if you want to write up your own little history, go ahead. This is how things went, as I see it.

HOME