Conference rusure::nintendo

661.0. "What Games Are Like Today" by ALIEN::EDP (Always mount a scratch monkey.) Mon Aug 26 1991 14:40

Article        18332
From: [email protected] (James Hague)
Newsgroups: rec.games.video
Subject: What's wrong with today's games.
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 22 Aug 91 15:47:04 GMT
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Richardson, TX
 
Please note that this is not a critical follow-up to a previous
posting.  I'm just including the following text to show where I'm
coming from.
 
[email protected] (Michael Portuesi) writes:
>
>When I was a teenager, I was a video game addict on machines like the
>Atari 2600 and Intellivision.  Even though the games on both machines
>were woefully primitive by today's standards, the selection of games
>was pretty varied.  You could get shoot-em-ups, maze games, sports
>games, action/strategy games (Intellivision Sea Battle is probably the
>best example of this type), pure strategy games like checkers/chess,
>role-playing games, and original games based on far-out ideas, such as
>Qix.  I also owned an Atari 800, which played several games that were
>showcases of creativity and good game design,  Archon, M.U.L.E.,
>Pinball Construction Set, Rescue on Fractalus, and Ballblazer are just
>a few of the original, fun games available on that system.
>
>I've noticed that there's now a standard set of terminology to
>describe features of video games.  "Power ups" and "bosses".  All it
>says to me is that most of the games on the market (at least the
>Genesis) share so many common elements that you can give them names. 
>These video games are following a formula.  Perhaps this is because
>everybody is in a race to get titles on the market.  But why do I want
>to buy the same game all the time, only with different graphics?
 
YES YES YES YES YES!  Finally, somebody can see through all of this
nonsense!  Another thank you to Teh Kao Yang for similar comments.
 
First of all, I am NOT a Genesis hater or a Nintendo hater or a hater
of any video game manufacturer.  I would also say that I am not a fan
of any such corporation either.  I realize that many readers of
rec.games.video have violent loyalties to certain companies and that
their reaction to my comments will be clouded by such.  You can be a
fan of a particular game or of a game designer or group of designers or
maybe a company that writes games.  But to be a "fan" of a giant like
Sega or Nintendo?  It's like being a fan of Proctor & Gamble or
DuPont.  I have better things to do than spray paint "GENESIS RULES" on
a bridge.
 
It is also tempting to think that I'm just reminiscing about the Good
Ole Days when every game was a classic and everyone lived in harmonious
peace and tranqulity with the universe.  But the fact is that there
WERE video games before the current wave of systems and you have a very
limited view of things if you were never exposed to them.  There were
games for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Intellivision, ColecoVision,
Astrocade, Vectrex, Vic-20, Odyssey-2, Channel F, AdventureVision,
Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit computers, Apple II, and TI 99/4A.  *LOTS* of
games.  THOUSANDS of games.  The Atari 2600 alone had several hundred
games for it.  Plus, coin-op arcade games have been in production since
the early seventies, and hit a major peak from 1979 to 1982.  All of
this before anyone heard the word "boss" or "power-up" or used a
conjugate of the verb "solve" in reference to a game by a company other
than Infocom.
 
During all of this time, video games never really "settled down."
Games were constanly changing in an effort to find a new audience.
Sure, a big-hit like Pac-Man would come along and spawn a quick splash
of clones, but unless a clone added some new feature, like the doors in
Mousetrap, it was quickly forgotten.  After all, Pac-Man is a concept
more than it is graphics.  Any other maze game full of things to eat
and energizers basically WAS Pac-Man.  So game designers moved on to
different ideas.
 
From '80 to '82 there was Donkey Kong, Robotron, Xevious, Mr. Do,
Defender, Galaga, Carnival, Reactor, Missile Command, Zaxxon, Tempest,
Centipede, Qix, Crazy Climber, Dragon's Lair, Sinistar, Joust,
Kick-Man, Tron, etc--just look at the variety.  Some general themes
would stick around for a few years, "cute games" for instance, and out
of that would come Pengo, Burger Time, Q-Bert, Food Fight, Frogger,
Domino Man, and so on.  Being "cute" was about all they had in common.
 
Out of all of these thousands of games, the great majority of modern
home games are based on FOUR of them:  Scramble (1981), Front Line
(1982), Karateka (1983), and Karate Champ (1984)--maybe Kung Fu Master
(1984) as well.  This is completely ridiculous.  Sure, these games were
great and fun and everything else, but this non-stop cloning is a
complete joke and has been for years.  It's getting hard to
differentiate between individual games, the only things that that
change are the shape of the enemies, the bosses, the power-ups, and the
scenery.  The game itself is still the same.  You can play poker with a
different deck of cards, but it's still poker.
 
Of course, not ALL games for the Genesis are like this.  But after
weeding through the Scramble clones and Front Line clones and Karateka
clones and so on, there's not much left.  And what little there is
isn't very original and is usually attacked by the magazines for not
being shooters, so they don't sell as well, giving very little
incentive for future originality.  To make things worse, a lot of the
"new ideas" may look completely different, but the underlying concept
is still "get to the end and 'win'."
 
It is easy to say that "there aren't any original ideas left," but this
is bunk.  Atari Games still maintains that early-eighties will to
experiment, and each of their games reflects it.  But for the most
part, the big game companies have everyone fooled into thinking that
there isn't anything other than shooters and RPGs so they'll keep
cranking 'em out and everyone will gobble them up so they'll make
more.
 
Another problem is that there are VERY few good game designers.  Lots
of good programmers, but not designers.  Just about all of Nintendo's
hits were designed by the same person.  Designers used to first come up
with a game concept.  Nowadays, they decide to write a shooter and then
concentrate on burning questions like "what power-ups should we have?"
 
You can put ANYTHING onto a CRT that you can possibly imagine.  There
is no restriction saying that it has to be a bunch of junk that scrolls
to the left with a boss at the end.  But if that's what you want, that's
what you'll get.
  
--
James Hague   
[email protected]

    Re. -1
    Hear, hear!  Every time I go to Toys R Us I'm virtually swamped by
    RPGs, Ninja-this, Karate-that and clones of every description. There
    are so damn many look-alikes for the Nintendo that it's enough to
    drive you right back to Space Invaders!  
    
    Why is everyone afraid to break the mold???????????
    
    
    Eric-who-keeps-his-2600-to-play-Missile-Command-occasionally....

    Hi Eric
    
    I LOVED missle command!!  I wish there was something like that on the
    NES or SNES.
    
    Pam

    Ahhhhh.... Missle Command! Now there was a game. I remember many a
    mis-spent night in the local pool hall playing away my youth on that
    one.
    
    They just don't make 'em like that anymore....>sigh<
    
    John D.

    I was always disappointed that i could never find DEFENDER on any kind
    of machine. The 'clones' nowadays have so much extras that it just
    takes gameplay away!

    Re. Defender
    
    Have you tried "Defender II" for the NES?  I have it; it's kind of a
    cross between Defender and a stripped-down Stargate.  Though it has
    a few flaws, it pretty much captures the flavor of the coin-op
    original, IMHO.
    
    						--Eric--

    What ever happened to Tempest???  That was a game that I could play for
    hours!  I found it to be a real adrenalin rush.  Between it and Joust
    (another very original game) I spent many quarters!
    
    I'm disgusted by most of the games today.  They all seem to involve
    either street fighting (be it man, turtle, toad, or Bart on a
    skateboard, it is all the same) or Ramboism.  I remember when the video
    game came out that caused all of the hubub, the one where you drove the
    car around, hit the people for points, and they turned into tombstones
    for obsticles.  The claim at that time was that this game was too
    violent!  I was in the arcade the other day, and the screens were a
    regular blood bath!  I sometimes feel some of these new video games
    help promote the street violence.  NOTE:  I said "promote", not "are
    the cause of", so don't misquote me if you reply to this.
    
    One last thing, while in the arcade I did see something new.  It was
    from Sega, and it was a Holographic game!  No matter where you stood
    (in a 180 degree radius) you could see the figures standing.  My wife
    had to reach inside to make sure they couldn't be felt.  The game
    looked dumb, but the technology was slick.
    
    Later...
    	Mike

    Hi all;
    
    Not to get further down the Arcade game rat hole, (ok, I'm gonna
    go down it, but what the heck...)
    
    The last time I got "excited" about an arcade game was a couple of 
    years ago.  I was visiting my Brother in Orlando, and we happened
    upon an Arcade in the City somewhere.  They had this Car Racing
    Game, (don't remember the name but maybe others have seen it?)
    
    What was "unique" about it, (at least I've never seen any others
    like it) was that there were 4 sit-down seats.  In front of each
    seat was a separate screen for each driver.  From 1-4 participants
    would dump in 50� and every one would race in the same race.  The
    display showed you in respect to your position on the track, and 
    a little display showed you where you were in relation to the other
    drivers.  
    
    Well, it was really fun to play this one, cause the competition between
    my Brother, his wife, and myself got intense.  We would take turns
    ramming each other or driving over the other causing them to crash, 
    and start up rolling again...  
    
    The track itself wasn't a great challenge, but the competition seemed
    to be the thing here.
    
    IMHO - You can take any Streetfighting/Karate/wrestling game and 
    stuff-em in the toilet.  I'm not even that big a fan of car racing
    games.  THis one just seemed to hit the right balance.
    
    Brgds, Don

    
    RE: .7
    
    Sounds like FINAL LAP.
    
    They now have a FINAL LAP II that is awesome!  The graphics are a
    much clearer and the animation a little smoother.  There was a FL
    and FLII side-by-side up at the beach this summer. 
    
    When I was at the beach on labor day it started raining so my friend
    and I went to an arcade... we spent about $20 each and the next five
    hours in head-to-head races.  FLII has four courses to choose from, and
    I have played with four people simultaneously.  What a rush... 
    
    - Jim