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. "

Comments

Bizzaro world

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Dissent

[mstromb]

There seems to be some... dissent about the quality and veracity of that article. I mean, parts of that article are horribly wrong. Should IGN hold themselves to some shred of a standard for quality? Or do they get a free pass because they write about video games?

What about the other fundamentals?

[pandrijeczko]

I don't doubt that there are some excellent games within the Castlevania/Final Fantasy franchises (I've never played any of them) but if articles like this are trying to be taken seriously, then they need to also take a look *outside* of the obvious console market at some of the other great games that had an influence on modern gaming.

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?