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If Next-Gen Is Too Pricey Go Retro
Via RetroGaming with Racketboy, a story in the San Francisco Chronicle suggesting that you go retro if the new consoles are too expensive. They single out the (still excellent) Sega Dreamcast console as the best buy for your money vs. enjoyment. The folks at SF Gate also mention several other older games and consoles that will allow modern gamers their fun without breaking the bank. From the article: "Scenario 4: I'm poorer than any of the characters from 'Angela's Ashes' but not quite as poor as Jim Braddock's family when the heat got shut off in 'Cinderella Man.' (I pulled this newspaper out of the recycling bin at BART.): You've presented a challenge, but not an impossible one. I saw a copy of the PC game Grim Fandango, a complete masterpiece that most people never played, for $6 on eBay. Since it came out in 1998, you can probably find an abandoned computer on the curb that will play it. You'll be experiencing about 98.5 percent of the fun that the Getty heir who bought the PS3 is having, at about 1 percent of the price. "
Or so you've been told. Reality is that no, it's not so advanced and PS2 games can actually hold their own in gameplay with Motorstorm. I have no scientific facts or such to back that up, of course, but I didn't see any in the above post either. Yet by simply playing the game and comparing it to similar games on the PS2, and even the Dreamcast, there's not much difference in any physics. Nothing noticeable, anyway, since if it's true that there is more physics stuff going on, I sure didn't experience it.
It's basically everyone being told that these expensive, shiny new systems are superior in every way, and people see the shiny graphics, drool, and believe every word of it. People want to believe what they are told, and especially those who buy these systems defend the price they paid for it in their minds by fooling themselves into believing it will do everything including curing cancer, and do it better. Sure, the PS3 and the XBox 360 are a bit more powerful than their predecessors. The issue is whether they are significantly more powerful so that games for them are truly next-gen. And in general, except for the graphics, they're really not. And graphics, sorry to say, are not the most important part of a game. If you like pretty graphics and stuff exploding, go watch a movie, go outside, or whatever.
On topic, it amazes me how we march forward into the next generation of gaming and are so willing to pay so much money to be entertained in the same way that we have been entertained by consoles in the past. Given that there are so many good games available for past consoles that you haven't played (unless you are just a hardcore, no-life-outside-of-games gamer that has literally played it all), it's hard to imagine the need for a new console generation. The same, unfortunately, can be said about other entertainment media, especially film which is suffering from the same style-over-substance problem that gaming has, so it is not just gaming that is at issue here. Just like many modern film fans who love the latest SFX-filled action yawner and turn their noses up at old black-and-white cinema classics, new gamers that drool over graphics and won't give old games a second look are shallow people who do not care about the substance of the medium.
It's sad, really.
Right now, I'm replaying (actually re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-replaying) The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past for SNES and loving it. Old Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 (granted, only a few 2600 games are compelling enough to get regular play, but there are a few of them) games get regular play. I even played through Zork 1 recently. All of these are gaming experiences lost on the latest generation of gamers whose gaming snobbery prevent them from even looking twice at a game without shiny new 3d graphics.
Their loss.
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