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Xbox 360 Has Nothing On Atari 2600
MBCook writes "Forbes has posted their thoughts on the launch of the Xbox 360. They start out with 'Has there ever been as confused a launch as the Xbox 360?' and it continues from there. Citing multiple confusing variations, unoriginal games, expensive bundles, and complexity of controls (among other things) it concludes: 'If anything, the Xbox 360 is aptly named: Microsoft is trying to give gamers the spin.'" Next Generation's not-so-next-gen impressions are similar. From the article: "The games you can buy today for Xbox 360 at your local retailer are not the future. As evidenced by the litany of solid but not outstanding reviews, and, my own hands-on experiences, they are but a whisper of what this machine (or the next generation of hardware as a whole) will ultimately be capable of."
To me, old systems were a lot more fun than any of the new systems. Back when they couldn't rely on good graphics to sell a game, they actually had to have good gameplay. Atari was great, as was the NES. When the Genesis & SNES came out, is when gameplay started going downhill.
I have no desire for a PS3 or XBox 360. The Revolution might be interesting, it looks like they are actually trying to innovate, and come up with something new, besides fancier graphics. We'll see though. For now, I'm sticking with my NES.
What, exactly, is this potential? Sharper graphics? More movie cutscenes? Yet another FPS, this time with accurate gibs?
What matters in a game system is how much fun it is, not the graphics.
We can't rely on game technology to push gaming forward anymore. Quake 4 was greeted with a collective ho-hum. Now that everything has 3D and 5.1 sound, now we only care about how good the gameplay is. And that's not any particular console's fault, is it?
Wow. I wonder a lot about the xbox 360 stuff, and I see the "Core System" model as a mistake-by-committee, but dang, that Forbes article was a rant. Yearning for the lost youth, when the whole idea of games was new? Who isn't? Want something fresh and exciting from an era when there was nothing to make a sequel to? Sure. of course.
Ending the article by declaring the greatest game of all time to be DragonStomper? Okay, this guy is nuts. I mean hell, for few years of my life I'd run into Steve, and while certainly he was held in high esteemed, and was known for his good works in the game field, nobody ever introduced him as "The genius behind DragonStomper" -- and these were his friends!
What's that guy smoking?
The other article is much more sensible and balanced, even if not in a huge national business publication.
It's sad to realize that I'm not employed by Forbes to write, even though the writer of this piece (reference intended), Ed Lin, is cashing Forbes paychecks even though his writing is absolutely terrible.
Let's begin with the gaming controller statements the author makes. The author states that it is a fact that games with more buttons are not as fun as the simple games of yesteryear. While this is true sometimes, it certainly isn't always true.
The author then exhumes the tired, dead horse, Macintosh one-button mouse example, and states that it "was always easier to use" than the PC two-button mouse. Apparently this is a fact as well.
The author then states that "The best title ever made in the history of U.S. videogaming was DragonStomper." Was this determined through numerous studies?
What a joke.
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The first article could have been written with xbox 360 replaced with any console from the last 3 generations. Old gamers will generally think the games of their time are the best. In reality, the 2600 had a myriad of horrible games. Out of that there were a few good games. The bad games are fogotten and the good ones embraced.
Same goes for the NES. I still play NES games on emulators to this day. However, going to vimm.net and playing some of those games makes me shudder. There were some horrible ones.
The last generation of systems had some terrible games too. But there were some gems. Maybe the idea is that the gems are becoming fewer and far between? I can agree with that. The only company still making a console that I find puts out really enjoyable games is Nintendo. I was playing the new Mario Party the other day and someone brought up a point. On what other system can you spend a whole day enjoying a game designed for 8 year olds? Nintendo still produces games today that I would put head to head in enjoyablity with the 2600.
As for the second article... Have we missed the whole point of the gaming console? Gaming consoles have one purpose. It isn't the GUI (dvorak). It isn't for the graphics. It isn't for the startup music. It isn't for the cool factor. It's definately not for the weight. It's about games. I bought a PC for my PC needs. I bought a home theater for my multimedia needs. Why is my console going to be judged on the same criteria as the previous two?
And in reality you can't judge a system in it's first months out of the gate. In ten years, no one's going to care about the initial launch. If the games are still lame in a year, then write the system off. It's really too soon to say.
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Earlier this year I got into eBay and bought an Atari 2600 game lot, more than doubling my collection. I pulled my Atari 2600 - the very one I've had since childhood - out of the closet, dusted it off, hooked it up, and started testing all the cartridges to see which ones still worked... ...And I noticed something: The games weren't nearly as fun any more. As I wandered around the maze in Adventure I realized that my tastes had changed over the years, and the simple gameplay - while still charming and laced with nostalgia - just wasn't as captivating any more as it was 20 years ago. I know that a lot of people will disagree, as evidenced by the popularity of remakes of these games on modern systems and cell phones. In my case however, I gradually gave up my Atari 2600 in favor of more sophisticated PC and Gameboy games. I'm now extremely picky about which games I like - shunning most console titles and playing only a few new PC games each year, along with a growing stash of older titles that still call out to me. I also increased my NES collection via eBay, and it seems to have fared much better in the enjoyment department (so far).
I still plan to keep my Atari 2600 around, but it will probably not get played very often except perhaps by curious house guests. I imagine that's a better fate than most XBox 360's will see 25 years from now though...
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Microsoft has never been about innovation. It's always about the package.
There was absolutely nothing innovative about the original XBox. All of the basic concepts used by MS in it were either heavily derived from earlier systems or grabbed from the PC world.
The fact is that the success of the XBox can be attributed to the fact that Microsoft bundled all of these ideas into a package in a manner that had never been done before in the console world. Microsoft has always focused on the sum of the parts rather than the parts themselves.
Windows 95 was the first consumer OS to successfully combine multitasking with a decent GUI. Unix was without a doubt better at multitasking, and most would argue that the Mac OS GUI was a lot more mature than the Win9x GUI... Of course, this is an over-simplification of the facts, but the point stands.
Halo was far from an innovative FPS. It's incredibly fun because it took the best aspects of all the successful FPS games from the past few years and combined them into one package. If you pick the XBox apart point by point, you can find another console that outdoes the XBox hin that particular category, but once you compare them as a whole, the XBox comes out on top.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
So I hit Google and found ZSNES, a really nice Super Nintendo Emulator. Onward, I went looking for ROMs of my favorite games, as well as games that I never owned or rented at the time. To my mild surprise, most of the games I scrolled past were pretty terrible. I downloaded about a dozen, and mostly play Metroid, Megaman games, and Super Mario Allstars. (I don't have time for the two SNES Final Fantasy games.)
For all the years that the SNES was out, only a handful (or two!) of games were really excellent. The rest, mostly so-so, sometimes really really bad.
Though that may sound somewhat optimistic for the 360, I think these new consoles suffer the NeoGeo problem -- Lots of hype, lots of tech, but way too expensive for what you get back, in my opinion. The games sure look shiny, but that only gets you so much.
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The article in Forbes is obviously both human interest and nostalgic. I'm not sure why a discrete number of buttons is ever considered in rating a game as "fun" or not. Let's face it, if Pac Man had a button and didn't use it, it'd be less fun. If Galaga didn't have the button, but required you tap the joystick down, it'd be less fun. When the buttons match the required utility of a game, the game interface can then be rendered as "natural." Bank Panic and Missile command had Three that were intuitive and felt right. Defender had tons of buttons, including "Reverse," but it was fun to those who played because they learned how to use the complex setup effectively. Since there's the Atari 2600 comparison, Raiders of the Lost Ark required two joysticks for one player because the controller was inadequate.
I think the real point to walk away with is that a fun game with a bad control scheme is diminished.
I read the Forbes article and it was terrible! The author complains about how the Xbox 360 was much worse than the Atari 2600. He even mentions that the 2600 was the best console ever - well.. that's probably the NES, given that the progeny of the NES are still being played today, and people are all talking about the Revolution. Can't see anyone mentioning a brand new Atari console coming any time soon.
The author mentions that the Atari joystick was better because it had one axis and one button, and the Apple mouse is much easier to use because it only has one button. While technically you could say he was speaking the truth, you can't do a lot with only one mouse button (take away a Mac users funky bonus keys on his keyboard then ask him to do something useful with his mouse!) and you can't have intellectually satisfying games with only one joystick button.
He goes on about how much fun the Atari games were and how he doesn't get any of the same joy from playing 360 games. Well frankly, the article is just misguided. You can't bag the Xbox 360 on the premise it didn't make you 12 years old again, so you can experience all the wonder of discovering computer games once more. But that's just what the author is really doing.
The Xbox 360 is a great console (despite heat issues, something the PS3 will suffer from as well). It won't make me a kid again. But the games will still be fun to play, and on a face value, I would always choose an Xbox 360 game over Atari. As the consoles have become more sophisticated, people's tastes have followed. Ask anybody you know who's into retro gaming if they've spent an all nighter playing space invaders. Ask any contemporary gamer if, lately, he's stayed up all night playing, say, Civ 4 or any other very addictive new game. I think I know who'll be saying yes.
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These new "talkie" motion-pictures are horrible! I remember when you had to imagine what people were saying on the screen, or watch ornate subtitle screens with delightful piano music, to follow the plot. And these new plots these "talkies" have: how awful! Whatever happened to tying a damsel to a train track? That little device has a lot of legs on it still, and these "stories" told by "talkies" are just making things more complicated. They take away from why I watch my motion-pictures in the first place!