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Nintendo To Be the Hero of the Adventure Genre?
DreamWinkle writes "If you've spent the last few years playing old King's Quest VGA updates and longing for Space Quest and Day of the Tentacle, you'll be interested to know that the Adventure genre might be facing a resurgence — at Nintendo's hand. The adventure game was killed off by the console (poor controls and too much competition), and so it's ironic that Nintendo might be able to pull it from the grave. An article at About.com looks at how Nintendo could use its virtual console to make adventure games profitable again." From the article: "The reason that adventure games are disappearing is because they don't compete well with other genres. Trying to create an adventure game that meets the graphical standards of an audience taught to expect Elder Scrolls IV makes the whole endeavor far less appealing. However, building a product to compete with Geometry Wars might be more doable. Adventure games are not disappearing because no one is buying them; they're disappearing because people are buying other types of games far more often. "
Considering that the internet has existed as a distribution method for adventure games for...oh, over a decade now and that there hasn't been a huge resurgence, I've got my doubts here. Don't get me wrong - I love the genre and would applaud its rebirth. But when you've got a title like Sam and Max, that was close to 90% done with years of anticipation behind it...well, you lose faith. I'm not sure what it'll take to revive the genre, but we haven't hit on it yet. But on the other hand...the Wii's controller is definitely suited towards a point and click interface. ;)
Goo goo g'joob.
I don't think graphical quality is any impediment to making good adventure games that can compete. I can certainly imagine a Monkey Island game in beautiful 32-bit color at 1280x1024 resolution, with smooth professional animation. Far from being obsolete, I think computers are at a point where it's possible to do adventure games with very high-quality artwork. Realtime-rendered 3D games might be the fad right now, but realtime 3D rendering still has some visual limitations. A 2D adventure game could very well look better and handle better than most 3D games if done properly.