• 6May 07

  How it all began and where is going to end up?

  Recently I found myself playing flash games almost every day.  At one point I started to get addicted to flash-game sites. How can those simple games be addicting? Within the questing lays the answer. They are simple. You jump into action: intuitive controls, simple objectives = plain fun.

  

  

  This got me thinking, where is the gaming industry going? Trying to look the best, span the action across the globe or even universe, give you complete freedom . . . you know the games I am talking about. All I see is increased complexity hence decreased accessibility, both in terms of required hardware and user interaction.  Not everyone can afford $500 console along with $1000 TV to play that FPS that requires the use of your 10 fingers simultaneously.

  If I had to use 15 buttons to start out my gaming career, it would never start out. Instead I had to use joystick to control pixilated plane, I am talking about River Raid. It was my introduction into gaming world. I would spend hours trying to beat that game and I would enjoy it.

  Few years later NES would come out. Contra would seem like a huge leap in the gaming technology.  NES would be my first truly addictive console; social life, school . . . who needs it when you have Duck Hunt and Zen: Intergalactic Ninja.

  

  

  Then, one day I would walk into a store and see SEGA Mega Drive.  Once you see Aladdin on TV screen, you begin to ask yourself "Can games look any better than this?".  It looks almost as good as the original cartoon (at least that's what you would think back than). Mega Drive had dozens of hits: Comix Zone, Dune II, Mortal Combat, Earthworm Jim, Golden Axe, Zero Tolerance, Road Rash.  Each one of those games deserves an article of its own, and I am sure if you'll Google them, you'll find them.  I play most of those games to this day, at the times of Xbox 360 and PS3. I think SEGA and Super NES introduced the best games ever created, why else would I by playing them almost 15 years later.

  After Super NES and Mega Drive the "Age of Confusion "would come (at least for me). I guess gaming started to pick up and people realized there's serious money to be made. Several consoles flooded the market trying to outperform each other : Sega CD and Sega 32, Panasonic 3DO. I never had those consoles, even though I used to play them at the friend's house. 3DO did look amazing, but beyond Need For Speed (to which I was introduced through 3DO), I can't remember any other decent games.

  

  Everything seemed to freeze, 3-D gaming came and it was nothing spectacular. That is until PlayStation arrived. Twisted Metal, Soul Calibur, Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider and Gran Turismo series seemed to work just right in 3-D.  How could we live without it? PlayStation would yet again produce dozens of mega-hits and surpass its opponents (Nintendo 64 and SEGA Saturn).

  All the consoles that came out after PSOne improved only on one thing - better graphics.  Do the draw distance and HD make the games better? You might say what about Xbox Live and Wii. Innovative controls, multiplayer gameplay - it surely makes the game world better. It might . . . but those are just add-ons, the core game mechanics stays the same. I guess I feel nostalgic, or maybe hungry for another innovative console like PlayStation or SEGA Mega Drive.

   

  • Posted May 6, 2007 4:59 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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