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The Fundamentals of Gaming
IGN has two great features up this week, looking back at two amazing gaming franchises. Their piece on the evolution of Final Fantasy takes in the changes and twists the iconic JRPG series has had over the years, while Castlevania: The Retrospective looks back on the last 20 years of vampire-hunting goodness. From the Castlevania piece: "Though Castlevania wasn't one of the original 18 launch titles for the NES, it was part of the unofficial second wave of games, and an integral part of the Nintendo Entertainment System's premiere years. From that point on, each Castlevania title (though still primarily a stand-alone adventure) was subsequently added into the overarching timeline, and while not every piece of the puzzle clicks from game to game, it remains to be one of the most prominent classic franchises still recognized today for its outstanding gameplay.
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...that fails to mention its origin on the MSX (as vampire killer) is not worth reading.
Since when did Castlevania become the fundamentals of gaming? I know it is a good game and the sequels have been nice. But fundamental? Not really. Not any more than Ninja Gaiden or Metroid or Zelda or Super Mario or Kid Icarius. And that's just the Nintendo Universe. Gaming goes far beyond that (no matter how much I like the Wii and think it is the current best offering on the market).
They acknowledge Castlevania: Bloodlines as the last TRUE Castlevania. I, for one, regard Symphony of the Night as the beginning of a different series that simply happens to have the same title. (the N64 games and the unfinished Dreamcast game, however, belong in the first series)
Circumcision is child abuse.
There have been other titles that were great. Starting with Zork and arching over Ultima to titles like Quake and the whole Mario franchise. Titles and games that sold just 'cause they had a certain name. It usually works until the developers start relying solely on the name and stop investing time to add new tricks, gadgets and twists to it.
In every franchise, there comes a time when all that's added is new graphics and some eye candy while leaving the game essentially unchanged. And that's when the title becomes stale and starts to erode.
And this puzzles me to no end. You have a title that you only have to ANNOUNCE to sell it. You don't even have to advertise. The game is already selling because people remember the other titles, and remember them fondly. Why do studios simply throw away great names just for a quick buck? Yes, you can sell that crappy game, but after that the name is destroyed, a name with a value that is usually by magnitudes greater than the meager reward you can reap.
All for the allmighty quarter report.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Can we please at least try to acknowledge there is gaming in the world other than video gaming?
I'm just gonna complain a bit, but the Final Fantasy article doesn't delve into anything as deep as the evolution of Final Fantasy. That would have required them to atleast mention what changed over the course of the series. this is more a "what's final fantasy XII's heritige" sort of piece... and not really a good one at that.
It's this sort articles that usualy makes me stay clear of IGN.
The article isn't really clear as who it's aiming for, gamers who has played previous titles and knows what "the Sphere Grid system in Final Fantasy X" is or the gamer that is unfamiliar with the history of the series who needs to learn what a Chocobo - "a large, traditionally (but not necessarily) yellow, flightless, bipedal mode of transport" is.
Sometimes, authors of such articles need to remember that the global gaming community is a *lot* more than Japan and the USA. During the pre-PC years in Europe, the main focus was on home computers, not consoles, and by far the majority of good games that were produced for the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and ZX Spectrum (amongst others) were not "Officially Licensed" by the likes of Nintendo but happened because a few programmers in a bedroom somewhere came up with a good idea,
It could be argued that games like "Manic Miner" on the ZX Spectrum were a core influence for the Mario platformers and text adventures from the likes of Level 9 allowed graphical RPGs like Final Fantasy to come about.
Why no mention also of "Elite", "Dungeon Master", "Impossible Mission" or the Infocom adventures, all of which, in my opinion, had a much greater influence on modern gaming?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Nothing to flame here, except that I personally consider most console rpgs, badly designed and highly boring in their linearity. The sad thing is, that rpg gaming should have followed the ultima route to a bigger extent by tring to bring things into the openness of table top rpgin, american and european rpgs have successed in various degrees and some of them currently suffer from the automated generated content syndrome, which is equally bad as lock in. Japanese rpgs and final fantasy is the rule not the exception have followed the we do not change game mechanics route, and still keep the broken design which just was invented because machines 20 years ago simply had limitations.