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Flashback NES
Gamespot has a piece in their Flashback series up, looking at the significance of the NES, Nintendo's original console offering in the United States. Last year the console celebrated its 20th year. Gamespot has a talk with Nintendo and reflects on the games that made the system great. From the article: "There was no denying that the NES was a phenomenon. By the 1990's one in every three American homes had an NES and video games had become a billion-dollar industry. Nintendo had taken over Saturday morning cartoons, cereal boxes, and the surface of commercial merchandise the world over. Through several different iterations, from the Japanese-exclusive Famicom Disk System to the 90's released top-loading NES, the NES dominated video game sales for nearly a decade."
I hope Nintendo's Revolution system is successful in their goals of providing a universally accessible, cheap gaming machine, the way the NES was 21 years ago. Each year, gaming has become more and more targeted toward the "hardcore" gamers, so that you need more buttons, longer FMVs, more licensed rap songs, and much more expensive consoles. All that so you can ooh and awe over seeing glistening sweat shaders on the polygons of a basketball player. It's pretty sad.
I remember my dad playing Super Mario Bros. with me. Rad Racer and a few others, too. There's no way he'd pick up Halo or Final Fantasy today. Not only do these games require an extended commitment (which means only hardcore gamers with lives can truly enjoy them instead of the pick-up-and-play nature of older games), they've abandoned their simplicity and uniqueness in exchange for more shaders and polys.
Immersion is supposed to draw you in, yes; but when you're immersed, the game should be fun to play. A good example is Legend of Zelda, which still remains reasonably simple to play, though Windwaker did add some complexities. But perhaps the greatest example of a "modern" game that was as simple as the old games yet had the depth people demand today is Super Mario 64. Controlling that game is such a piece of cake, and I think Nintendo wants all their games to be that easy to control through their new controller (which an EA rep leaked will have touch sensitivity as well!).
"Sufferin' succotash."
I agree with everything you say *if* you think PC == x86 DOS box. Those sucked for gaming in '86, true enough.
OTOH, to me PC == personal computer, so I count Amigas in that category. They had 68000s, which were a hybrid 16/32 bit architecture (later pure 32 bit with the 68020). They had excellent hardware for video games (hardware accelerated blits, the ability to change palettes in mid frame), digital sound, most had 512 Mb with some at 1 or even 2 Mb, and could even run 3D games (although very primitive ones by today's standards - no texture mapping).
The NES was quite primitive compared to the Amiga, so Amiga (and Atari) games were just much more sophisticated. The x86 machines were primitive also, but as you say, they surpassed everything else around the time of Doom, in the early texture-mapped 3D days.
Is it just me, or is Nintendo the only company that doesn't cater only to mature audiences? Does Gen Y (or Z or whatever) really demand such over-the-top nightmarish games? Am I so old that only us NES veterans enjoy games that even my young kids can play?
I went to the toy store to buy my son a birthday present. While I was there, I walked down the aisle, taking note of the rough percentage of games for each platform were rated anything below teen or mature. I noticed that only Nintendo had any games I'd want my kids to play.
I don't mind a little violence, but why does every game have to simulate a nightmare or a crime to be worth playing? I just don't understand. I'd appreciate it if someone explained it to me.