Seeing as how 90% of GameFAQs.com run like this...
0. Terrible ASCII art
1. Useless table of contents
2. Overlong and pointless revision history
3. Petulent whining about stealing this FAQ (immediately followed by 'This is my first FAQ evar!'
4. Obnoxious introduction 'Why I LOVE this game' including stories of the author's friends and siblings
5. Actual useful info
6. List of shark codes stolen from somewhere else
7. Incredibly long and shameful list of thank-yous to every AIM screenname and forum account who ever emailed the author, along with warnings to properly address future emails with the subject 'FAQ-game X' or they will be ignored
8. Laughable attempt at copyright, similer to part 3 above
...I'll take a slick, full-color, screenshot-laden, official book every time.
Sure, 10% of FAQs are detailed and useful, but most of them are incomplete, full of embarrassing typos, and only marginally helpful. I wouldn't call for the death of the printed guide yet! Not that I don't use online FAQs, I do turn to them in a pinch... but there's a lot of crap out there. And a lot of out-and-out lies.
Also, there's something to said for a genuine piece of gaming memorabilia for a game you really liked. Most guides I've bought have been because I want a scrapbook for the game, so I page through it later and relive the game without having to play the 15 hours again. I like seeing the promo artwork, good design and layout, and lots of screenshots. Not all guides have that quality, but many do.
They can keep using the same characters as long as the games keep being good.
A-fucking-men to that.
Here's what everybody misses about the Mario franchise. Try to describe Mario for me. Tell me about his life, his backstory, his motivations. The answer is: he has none. He is purely a conduit for the gameplay. When it comes to character, he's as generic as they come.
And the games still come out first-rate nearly every damn time. That's what counts. Not that he's a cute plumber in overalls, or that he bounces on turtle asses, or that his world is colored in pastels and smiley faces... it's his games that matter.
This is why eventually Nokia have a good chance of succeeding.
Until Nokia gets games of the same length, quality and polish, they have no chance of succeeding. Just because you're willing to settle, don't assume everyone else will.
But 3 charges me 1c/kb downloaded.
Hiptop. $20/month for unlimited kb (plus all other data services, IM, email, Terminal), and the web browser actually works and looks like a computer screen.
Given Nintendo's record of quality and polish, I'd rather assume that a game featuring Mario/Wario/Princess Peach is fun, than a game based on whatever action movie blockbuster. Because 9.9 times out of 10, the Mario game will be fun, and the movie game will be rushed, ugly, messy and not be fun.
Quite honestly, I'm at a loss to name a recent Mario game that wasn't fun. People don't just jump at Nintendo franchises like puppets on a string, they continue to jump because the games have earned their respect. If Nintendo went through a year of releasing constant, absolute shit, they'd lose that rep. (Yes, parents would likely still buy them, but parents are often making decisions based solely on box art and known characters. And there's plenty of kids games available on PS2, by the way.)
Everybody likes to rag on fanboys, but they forget that fanboys are created, not born. Remember all the Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot fanboys? The games went downhill and the fanboys disappeared. Nintendo just has a goddamn stellar record in game design and very very few blemishes.
Do you play console games? When I played Super Mario Sunshine, it never crashed out on me, never needed a patch to fix a level glitch, and never stopped working after I played some other game. When I played Vice City, the worst thing that happened was once my bike got stuck on a vertical ramp and I couldn't ride it anymore. I had to go find a new bike. By and large, console games do just work. 99.9999% of the time. It's only a handful of online-enabled games that are starting to go this patching route, hardly the deathknell for consoles that you're making it out to be.
Or are we suggesting that applying service packs to Windows, or kernel patches to Linux is unforgivable? I'll take my patches thanks.
The problem with patching is that it is out of control. PC games are rushed out the door to meet the holiday rush, and they're buggy and unbalanced because of it. Then there's a new Windows fix or other random download that f's up the settings and breaks something that used to work fine. Console games don't have this problem, because up until now the concept of a patch didn't exist, and because the given hardware of the console just isn't changeable by the end user. I'm not saying that PC patches shouldn't happen, because problems should definitely be fixed... just that on the console side, you have a much better chance of the bugs never appearing in the first place. That's a huge strength. They're far more trustworthy from the outset.
The notion that console games will be able to be patched scares me, because I don't want to have to babysit the playability of the new Zelda game on my console. I want it to work each and every time I play it, regardless of when I bought it and what I've bought since. If console games start making gaming as difficult as it is on the PC side, then they'll be in big trouble. That's just basic good business: you don't make things tougher for your consumers, you make it easier.
The cheap cost of a console is becoming more and more of a myth, as consoles try harder and harder to gain the same capabilities of a PC.
Are you crazy? Forgive my US pricing here, but the PS2 was $300 at launch. The Gamecube was $200. A useable PC is at least $1000, and most pros would shudder at even that low price. You note that consoles get cheaper into their run... yes, they do, but PCs do not. A two year old PS2 can still run current PS2 games. A two year old PC may not be able to run the latest PC games to their fullest without an upgrade. If I bought a $1000 PC in 2002, would it be able to run Doom 3 when it comes out later this year?
You know, you were probably okay until you decided to go into your "most powerful platforms" bit, which you tried to present as fact yet was filled with opinion and half-truths. Good luck in the future.
Increasingly more complex? I don't think that's the problem. What's more complex, your average Final Fantasy game or your average PC FPS? I think that it's the usual rush-to-market syndrome, coupled with the relative inexperience of console developers when it comes to online games (and online cheaters.)
Patching in games is rarely a good thing, so I wouldn't make it sound like PC games are better because they can be patched. Console games (prior to this generation) required stricter quality control because they couldn't be patched. (Yes, yes, buggy console games ship, but the overwhelming majority of console games are far more stable and polished than PC games. That's not always an indictment on PC games, just points to the endless ways the user can alter/upgrade/fuck up their personal system.)
What's that saying... if you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Well, if PC games are so amazingly better, why aren't more people buying them? For most casual users, it's not worth the effort to get PC games to work. Consoles just work. It doesn't matter how much more techpower is behind your shiny new Windows machine, if it's beyond what most people can stomach in terms of money and time commitment and engineering, it's not going to win compared to a $100 Nintendo. Why do you think Microsoft started up the Xbox?
Are you trying to get people to use something they've already decided they don't like? "So please open your minds. It may not suit your needs" You're going to need some stronger marketing language than that.
It supports hundreds of java games, eh? Whoop-ti-friggin-doo. What are the games that Nokia themselves pushes in all the store displays and tv ads? Sonic, Tomb Raider, and all the cartridge-based games. Not the java games. They tried to compete against the GBA juggernaut and failed. Lesson learned.
You aren't using it to the fullest advantages and yet you sell it short. Screen too small? I love the size of the screen.
You're an idiot then. Why would you want a smaller screen than just about anything else out there? Nokia is pushing this as a gaming device, and there is a limit to how small you can make a gaming screen and still have it acceptably play modern games. Playing 2D Sonic on a vertical screen is insane. Sure, the wireless support for multiplayer is a great idea, but I'll wait for that to show up in a product that people actually want to buy so I can find people to play against. And even then it better have more to do than racing against one of my friend's Tony Hawk ghosts.
Maybe Nokia should make a screen the size of a thumbnail, so you can play Snake at work more often and be really happy. If your workplace can't tell the difference between you playing a game on your N-Gage and you working, then you could swap in a GBA and fool them just as easily, because you must work for Ray Charles Incorporated.
You're assuming biology is the only factor is determing right or wrong. Are midgets allowed to hump non-midgets? Are eunuchs allowed to marry?
something fundamentally wrong and unnatural
Your opinion. Some cultures think eating dogs is wrong and unnatural. Or kissing. Or allowing women to show their faces in public.
need to marry Joan of Arc, and a few of these Martian rocks look sexy.
And now you've leapt to the absurd. Although I do applaud your over-inflated vocabulary in your attempt to make your bigotry sound just and reasonable.
This month's OPM has a Lifeline demo. Yeah, the fight seemed to be simple commands (although it was a simple fight), but the game supposedly knows 2000 words... so it's not just a short list of commands. According to the game's bullet points, it does have a "rich verb set." Whether it can understand you saying them is a different matter!
It's a cool idea, and it could be very cinematic, but the demo showed how spotty the voice recognition is. When it works, it's pretty cool... almost like having a real conversation. But then you'll suggest searching the table and she'll eat a health-up. Gah!
Or a map which couldve easily been on screen in the corner like in previous games.\
And another thing. The whole goddamn point of having a map on the GBA is to get it off the goddamn screen. No need to pause to see the map. No map covering up a corner of your view. No clutter. It's there on the GBA, always on, always useful. When I played Splinter Cell and Wind Waker, it was an incredible help.
Why in the world would you be against something like that?
So how would they give each player a secret mission? Ask the other 3 players to close their eyes? How would they give each player a different sub-screen and therefore different responsibilities in the dungeon? How would they allow 3 players to simultaneously restructure their command lists, while the 4th player moves the party, without cluttering the screen?
So just because you want to play an old game, they should be declared free property for all? Your local game store probably has a section with old consoles and used games, and the three you mentioned are all reasonably common. Go buy them. (Alternately, there's a new River City Ransom coming for GBA, Bubble Bobble has been made and re-made a hundred times, and I believe that Super Dodge Ball Advance was a GBA launch title.)
So we have to sit here and *hope* that some company will release an old game?
Yes, you do. Because it's their property. As long as they continue to hold the rights, they get to decide what happens to it. If they never make a new version of Mappy, that's too damn bad for us Mappy fans.
If Nintendo would go through their rom library, identify all those that they think they can make money off of
And how exactly do they do that? Who knows what game or franchise could be suddenly re-released, remixed or redone to acclaim? It's far easier for companies to hold on to their property, than to let go of something that could be potential profit. Unfortunately, that's business. If you were to tell the Desilu people that they should drop their claims to the I Love Lucy TV series because it's old and only a small portion of people like it, they'd call you crazy, because there's plenty of potential dough there. And once you give up on something, it's next to impossible to ever get it back. So it's a huge business decision, even if the product in question is something as un-remembered as an obscure arcade game. If Nintendo had released Balloon Fight into public domain, they couldn't make $5 per eCard set.
This whole thing is a lot more complicated that the FREE ROMZ types make it out to be. What about the people who originally created these games? Suppose the guy who wrote the music still needs to be paid a couple bucks because of his contract? There's legal hoops to jump through, and it's often just not worth it.
Pick any TV show you liked that is no longer on the air. If you're lucky, there's a DVD or VHS available somewhere. If not, too bad. You can't just claim My Right! and demand that it be released for free by whatever company still owns the physical tapes or film. Most times, you can't even demand it be released for purchase... for the same legal reasons I described above. Actors and writers and musicians and producers all can have any number of claims against the show... wages, royalties, fees. I don't see why video games are any different, except that we have this creeping disrespect for "intangible" works, and a digitally transmitted ROM file comes close enough to that.
a win-win situation in which the old fans get to relive their memories, and they, in turn, now like and will support the publisher.
This is very admirable and dreamy, but I don't see any business buying into it. There's no indication that fans will later support a company that gave away everything for free. Most times, they just get pissy when the company starts timidly asking for money. Go see all the furor when IGN (and dozens of other formerly free websites) started up a pay premium service. Sure, some people will make the connection between "These guys gave me River City Ransom for free, so I'm going to go buy their new GBA version" but most consumers will not.
It's about the game you can't play anywhere, or the movie that you won't find in any Blockbuster nearby.
Except that most people are stealing games that you can play anywhere and movies that you can find in Blockbuster. And I notice you didn't include music in that statement.
The preservation argument only gets you so far, and it doesn't address the concept that the game's owners might and should have control over how their stuff is "preserved." Nintendo certainly speaks loudly on this issue, since they "preserve" all their old games by continually re-releasing them. If a game company declares that Game X is public domain, then by all means, preserve away. Until that time, it's still stealing.
Ok, ok, fair point. Now, have YOU done anything about it? Have you played Fatal Frame? Beyond Good & Evil? Adventures of Cookies & Cream? Wario Ware? Ico? Conker's Bad Fur Day? Blast Corps? Pokemon Snap? Jet Grind Radio? No One Can Stop Mr. Domino? Mr. Mosquito? Animal Crossing? Disaster Report? Karaoke Revolution? Dungeon Keeper? Deception? All of those are "original" to some degree, either in gameplay or character or theme.
The best way to prompt more original games is to buy more original games. Some points to remember:
1. Not all sequels are bad. Ratchet & Clank 2 was terrific, and most people agree that Tomb Raider 2 was the best of the series. Since the mainstream will tend to buy whatever is familiar, you have to discern for yourself what is good and what it bad... and not just turn your nose up at anything that's a sequel. Crash Bandicoot: Warped was a really good sequel. Sonic Heroes was not.
2. Just because the title is familiar doesn't mean the gameplay is. Look at how Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles diverges from the rest of the FF games. Or Mario Party... yes, there's now 5 games plus a card game, but when it premiered, nobody had ever seen a multiplayer-arcade-action-board-game, and it's certainly not adherant to the age-old Mario style of platformers.
3. If you don't find these games and talk them up at every opportunity, no one will. Cookies & Cream comes up on every single damn list of Good Multiplayer Games, yet no one ever buys it. Ever.
4. All franchises have to start somewhere, so there is an impetus for companies to create new games. Especially once tastes change, games slip, and the current cash cows die off. If the Crash Bandicoot series was still alive and kicking ass, would we even have gotten Jak or Ratchet or Sly? Maybe not! Those three PS2 games mentioned in this article all debuted in 2002. These are not old games by any stretch. All three were considered fresh and original merely two years ago. And Ratchet, at least, proved that the developers know how to make a great game even better. Will R&C3 measure up? We'll see.
5. Don't become unappeasable. Just because the lead stories on slashdot are all copy-and-pasted from IGN headlines, don't assume that's all the gaming world has to offer. Don't figure you've seen it all because you've spent 5 minutes browsing at EB. The original, the rare, the special, the weird... they are all out there. Without actively searching out new concepts, you risk driving yourself right out of the hobby due to boredom.
I'm not trying to beat up on you, buddy... I'm just trying to flesh out the No Original Games Anymore complaint and show what gamers need to do about it.
This is the saddest excuse for a story topic ever. Some idiot hits an early mid-life crisis and we're all supposed to care?
I'm 29, married, with a full-time job, and I still game almost every night. It's my hobby, I enjoy it, and fuck you if you think it's childish. I switch from Warcraft 3 to Animal Crossing to Fatal Frame 2 to Karaoke Revolution without skipping a beat. Good, fun games are always out there... if you've stopped looking for them it's nobody's fault but your own.
All you dicks who have jumped out of the shadows to harp on How Important It Is To Grow Up should realize that you're on Slashdot debating Linux flavors three forums over.
And to the original questioner: Your taste in games has stagnated, and your appeal for sympathy is boring and pathetic.
No kidding, moron. These aren't meant for anybody who's ever heard of MAME. These are meant for Mr. & Mrs. Average, who walk past the racks of them at Toys R Us.
Furthermore, some of us would prefer playing these games on a big tv with an appropriate-styled joystick... without wasting our time plodding through shady illegal ROM sites. And, bonus, here's a way to actually own the games instead of stealing them.
Rainbow Six 3 has over 100,000 people playing AT A TIME over Xbox Live.
Not according to this article citing Microsoft as a source.
"Microsoft celebrates its busiest weekend ever largely attributed to the consoles recently released Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 videogame. Over the weekend a total of 24,478 gamers signed into go head to head in gun blasting covert ops action. Microsoft reports counting 6,731 people simultaneously playing the latest hit from developers Ubisoft at one point during the weekend. Totals for all games on the Xbox Live service show up to 83,652 players signing in and spending a total of 262,268 hours playing."
And fixing the damn GBA game cartiridge reader as to make it tons easier to remove and insert new cartridges. The GBA reader - ingenious (to make the GC even more adaptable), but it's design leaves much to be desired.
Insert: push in the cartridge.
Remove: flip the switch on the right hand size.
Great replies, AD. You've punctured the balloon of his pomposity.
What these guys should be saying is: "The Xbox doesn't have a lot of games featuring characters with blue hair and big eyes, and that appeals to me." But because they want to throw in a few jabs and prove they're on the winning team, they equate blue-hair-and-big-eyes to "non-adult" games, which is asinine.
Whether or not you like games from Japan, or games with blue hair, or however you want to call it... that's a personal choice and has nothing to do with a game being "mature" or not. I'm sure if we would have kept this line of thought up, we'd eventually slide into the old line about how the Mario / Zelda / Sonic / etc games are all somehow specifically made for children.
They have completely fallen for the marketing message, and all else is to be ignored.
Most of which are available for other platforms. Xbox has managed to generate only a handful of exclusive, must-have titles. PS2 and GameCube have been doing much better on that score, but the Xbox is winning the online battle.
Slashdot Mirror
0. Terrible ASCII art
1. Useless table of contents
2. Overlong and pointless revision history
3. Petulent whining about stealing this FAQ (immediately followed by 'This is my first FAQ evar!'
4. Obnoxious introduction 'Why I LOVE this game' including stories of the author's friends and siblings
5. Actual useful info
6. List of shark codes stolen from somewhere else
7. Incredibly long and shameful list of thank-yous to every AIM screenname and forum account who ever emailed the author, along with warnings to properly address future emails with the subject 'FAQ-game X' or they will be ignored
8. Laughable attempt at copyright, similer to part 3 above
Sure, 10% of FAQs are detailed and useful, but most of them are incomplete, full of embarrassing typos, and only marginally helpful. I wouldn't call for the death of the printed guide yet! Not that I don't use online FAQs, I do turn to them in a pinch... but there's a lot of crap out there. And a lot of out-and-out lies.
Also, there's something to said for a genuine piece of gaming memorabilia for a game you really liked. Most guides I've bought have been because I want a scrapbook for the game, so I page through it later and relive the game without having to play the 15 hours again. I like seeing the promo artwork, good design and layout, and lots of screenshots. Not all guides have that quality, but many do.
A-fucking-men to that.
Here's what everybody misses about the Mario franchise. Try to describe Mario for me. Tell me about his life, his backstory, his motivations. The answer is: he has none. He is purely a conduit for the gameplay. When it comes to character, he's as generic as they come.
And the games still come out first-rate nearly every damn time. That's what counts. Not that he's a cute plumber in overalls, or that he bounces on turtle asses, or that his world is colored in pastels and smiley faces... it's his games that matter.
Until Nokia gets games of the same length, quality and polish, they have no chance of succeeding. Just because you're willing to settle, don't assume everyone else will.
But 3 charges me 1c/kb downloaded.
Hiptop. $20/month for unlimited kb (plus all other data services, IM, email, Terminal), and the web browser actually works and looks like a computer screen.
Quite honestly, I'm at a loss to name a recent Mario game that wasn't fun. People don't just jump at Nintendo franchises like puppets on a string, they continue to jump because the games have earned their respect. If Nintendo went through a year of releasing constant, absolute shit, they'd lose that rep. (Yes, parents would likely still buy them, but parents are often making decisions based solely on box art and known characters. And there's plenty of kids games available on PS2, by the way.)
Everybody likes to rag on fanboys, but they forget that fanboys are created, not born. Remember all the Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot fanboys? The games went downhill and the fanboys disappeared. Nintendo just has a goddamn stellar record in game design and very very few blemishes.
Or are we suggesting that applying service packs to Windows, or kernel patches to Linux is unforgivable? I'll take my patches thanks.
The problem with patching is that it is out of control. PC games are rushed out the door to meet the holiday rush, and they're buggy and unbalanced because of it. Then there's a new Windows fix or other random download that f's up the settings and breaks something that used to work fine. Console games don't have this problem, because up until now the concept of a patch didn't exist, and because the given hardware of the console just isn't changeable by the end user. I'm not saying that PC patches shouldn't happen, because problems should definitely be fixed... just that on the console side, you have a much better chance of the bugs never appearing in the first place. That's a huge strength. They're far more trustworthy from the outset.
The notion that console games will be able to be patched scares me, because I don't want to have to babysit the playability of the new Zelda game on my console. I want it to work each and every time I play it, regardless of when I bought it and what I've bought since. If console games start making gaming as difficult as it is on the PC side, then they'll be in big trouble. That's just basic good business: you don't make things tougher for your consumers, you make it easier.
The cheap cost of a console is becoming more and more of a myth, as consoles try harder and harder to gain the same capabilities of a PC.
Are you crazy? Forgive my US pricing here, but the PS2 was $300 at launch. The Gamecube was $200. A useable PC is at least $1000, and most pros would shudder at even that low price. You note that consoles get cheaper into their run... yes, they do, but PCs do not. A two year old PS2 can still run current PS2 games. A two year old PC may not be able to run the latest PC games to their fullest without an upgrade. If I bought a $1000 PC in 2002, would it be able to run Doom 3 when it comes out later this year?
You know, you were probably okay until you decided to go into your "most powerful platforms" bit, which you tried to present as fact yet was filled with opinion and half-truths. Good luck in the future.
Patching in games is rarely a good thing, so I wouldn't make it sound like PC games are better because they can be patched. Console games (prior to this generation) required stricter quality control because they couldn't be patched. (Yes, yes, buggy console games ship, but the overwhelming majority of console games are far more stable and polished than PC games. That's not always an indictment on PC games, just points to the endless ways the user can alter/upgrade/fuck up their personal system.)
What's that saying... if you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Well, if PC games are so amazingly better, why aren't more people buying them? For most casual users, it's not worth the effort to get PC games to work. Consoles just work. It doesn't matter how much more techpower is behind your shiny new Windows machine, if it's beyond what most people can stomach in terms of money and time commitment and engineering, it's not going to win compared to a $100 Nintendo. Why do you think Microsoft started up the Xbox?
It supports hundreds of java games, eh? Whoop-ti-friggin-doo. What are the games that Nokia themselves pushes in all the store displays and tv ads? Sonic, Tomb Raider, and all the cartridge-based games. Not the java games. They tried to compete against the GBA juggernaut and failed. Lesson learned.
You aren't using it to the fullest advantages and yet you sell it short. Screen too small? I love the size of the screen.
You're an idiot then. Why would you want a smaller screen than just about anything else out there? Nokia is pushing this as a gaming device, and there is a limit to how small you can make a gaming screen and still have it acceptably play modern games. Playing 2D Sonic on a vertical screen is insane. Sure, the wireless support for multiplayer is a great idea, but I'll wait for that to show up in a product that people actually want to buy so I can find people to play against. And even then it better have more to do than racing against one of my friend's Tony Hawk ghosts.
Maybe Nokia should make a screen the size of a thumbnail, so you can play Snake at work more often and be really happy. If your workplace can't tell the difference between you playing a game on your N-Gage and you working, then you could swap in a GBA and fool them just as easily, because you must work for Ray Charles Incorporated.
You're assuming biology is the only factor is determing right or wrong. Are midgets allowed to hump non-midgets? Are eunuchs allowed to marry?
something fundamentally wrong and unnatural
Your opinion. Some cultures think eating dogs is wrong and unnatural. Or kissing. Or allowing women to show their faces in public.
need to marry Joan of Arc, and a few of these Martian rocks look sexy.
And now you've leapt to the absurd. Although I do applaud your over-inflated vocabulary in your attempt to make your bigotry sound just and reasonable.
a gift from the creator
There is no creator. Sorry about that.
It's a cool idea, and it could be very cinematic, but the demo showed how spotty the voice recognition is. When it works, it's pretty cool... almost like having a real conversation. But then you'll suggest searching the table and she'll eat a health-up. Gah!
And another thing. The whole goddamn point of having a map on the GBA is to get it off the goddamn screen. No need to pause to see the map. No map covering up a corner of your view. No clutter. It's there on the GBA, always on, always useful. When I played Splinter Cell and Wind Waker, it was an incredible help.
Why in the world would you be against something like that?
So how would they give each player a secret mission? Ask the other 3 players to close their eyes? How would they give each player a different sub-screen and therefore different responsibilities in the dungeon? How would they allow 3 players to simultaneously restructure their command lists, while the 4th player moves the party, without cluttering the screen?
Go ahead, I want to hear this.
So we have to sit here and *hope* that some company will release an old game?
Yes, you do. Because it's their property. As long as they continue to hold the rights, they get to decide what happens to it. If they never make a new version of Mappy, that's too damn bad for us Mappy fans.
If Nintendo would go through their rom library, identify all those that they think they can make money off of
And how exactly do they do that? Who knows what game or franchise could be suddenly re-released, remixed or redone to acclaim? It's far easier for companies to hold on to their property, than to let go of something that could be potential profit. Unfortunately, that's business. If you were to tell the Desilu people that they should drop their claims to the I Love Lucy TV series because it's old and only a small portion of people like it, they'd call you crazy, because there's plenty of potential dough there. And once you give up on something, it's next to impossible to ever get it back. So it's a huge business decision, even if the product in question is something as un-remembered as an obscure arcade game. If Nintendo had released Balloon Fight into public domain, they couldn't make $5 per eCard set.
This whole thing is a lot more complicated that the FREE ROMZ types make it out to be. What about the people who originally created these games? Suppose the guy who wrote the music still needs to be paid a couple bucks because of his contract? There's legal hoops to jump through, and it's often just not worth it.
Pick any TV show you liked that is no longer on the air. If you're lucky, there's a DVD or VHS available somewhere. If not, too bad. You can't just claim My Right! and demand that it be released for free by whatever company still owns the physical tapes or film. Most times, you can't even demand it be released for purchase... for the same legal reasons I described above. Actors and writers and musicians and producers all can have any number of claims against the show... wages, royalties, fees. I don't see why video games are any different, except that we have this creeping disrespect for "intangible" works, and a digitally transmitted ROM file comes close enough to that.
a win-win situation in which the old fans get to relive their memories, and they, in turn, now like and will support the publisher.
This is very admirable and dreamy, but I don't see any business buying into it. There's no indication that fans will later support a company that gave away everything for free. Most times, they just get pissy when the company starts timidly asking for money. Go see all the furor when IGN (and dozens of other formerly free websites) started up a pay premium service. Sure, some people will make the connection between "These guys gave me River City Ransom for free, so I'm going to go buy their new GBA version" but most consumers will not.
Except that most people are stealing games that you can play anywhere and movies that you can find in Blockbuster. And I notice you didn't include music in that statement.
The preservation argument only gets you so far, and it doesn't address the concept that the game's owners might and should have control over how their stuff is "preserved." Nintendo certainly speaks loudly on this issue, since they "preserve" all their old games by continually re-releasing them. If a game company declares that Game X is public domain, then by all means, preserve away. Until that time, it's still stealing.
The best way to prompt more original games is to buy more original games. Some points to remember:
1. Not all sequels are bad. Ratchet & Clank 2 was terrific, and most people agree that Tomb Raider 2 was the best of the series. Since the mainstream will tend to buy whatever is familiar, you have to discern for yourself what is good and what it bad... and not just turn your nose up at anything that's a sequel. Crash Bandicoot: Warped was a really good sequel. Sonic Heroes was not.
2. Just because the title is familiar doesn't mean the gameplay is. Look at how Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles diverges from the rest of the FF games. Or Mario Party... yes, there's now 5 games plus a card game, but when it premiered, nobody had ever seen a multiplayer-arcade-action-board-game, and it's certainly not adherant to the age-old Mario style of platformers.
3. If you don't find these games and talk them up at every opportunity, no one will. Cookies & Cream comes up on every single damn list of Good Multiplayer Games, yet no one ever buys it. Ever.
4. All franchises have to start somewhere, so there is an impetus for companies to create new games. Especially once tastes change, games slip, and the current cash cows die off. If the Crash Bandicoot series was still alive and kicking ass, would we even have gotten Jak or Ratchet or Sly? Maybe not! Those three PS2 games mentioned in this article all debuted in 2002. These are not old games by any stretch. All three were considered fresh and original merely two years ago. And Ratchet, at least, proved that the developers know how to make a great game even better. Will R&C3 measure up? We'll see.
5. Don't become unappeasable. Just because the lead stories on slashdot are all copy-and-pasted from IGN headlines, don't assume that's all the gaming world has to offer. Don't figure you've seen it all because you've spent 5 minutes browsing at EB. The original, the rare, the special, the weird... they are all out there. Without actively searching out new concepts, you risk driving yourself right out of the hobby due to boredom.
I'm not trying to beat up on you, buddy... I'm just trying to flesh out the No Original Games Anymore complaint and show what gamers need to do about it.
On Slashdot, no.
In the real world, yes.
I'm 29, married, with a full-time job, and I still game almost every night. It's my hobby, I enjoy it, and fuck you if you think it's childish. I switch from Warcraft 3 to Animal Crossing to Fatal Frame 2 to Karaoke Revolution without skipping a beat. Good, fun games are always out there... if you've stopped looking for them it's nobody's fault but your own.
All you dicks who have jumped out of the shadows to harp on How Important It Is To Grow Up should realize that you're on Slashdot debating Linux flavors three forums over.
And to the original questioner: Your taste in games has stagnated, and your appeal for sympathy is boring and pathetic.
Furthermore, some of us would prefer playing these games on a big tv with an appropriate-styled joystick... without wasting our time plodding through shady illegal ROM sites. And, bonus, here's a way to actually own the games instead of stealing them.
Not according to this article citing Microsoft as a source.
"Microsoft celebrates its busiest weekend ever largely attributed to the consoles recently released Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 videogame. Over the weekend a total of 24,478 gamers signed into go head to head in gun blasting covert ops action. Microsoft reports counting 6,731 people simultaneously playing the latest hit from developers Ubisoft at one point during the weekend. Totals for all games on the Xbox Live service show up to 83,652 players signing in and spending a total of 262,268 hours playing."
Insert: push in the cartridge.
Remove: flip the switch on the right hand size.
What needs to be easier?
What these guys should be saying is: "The Xbox doesn't have a lot of games featuring characters with blue hair and big eyes, and that appeals to me." But because they want to throw in a few jabs and prove they're on the winning team, they equate blue-hair-and-big-eyes to "non-adult" games, which is asinine. Whether or not you like games from Japan, or games with blue hair, or however you want to call it... that's a personal choice and has nothing to do with a game being "mature" or not. I'm sure if we would have kept this line of thought up, we'd eventually slide into the old line about how the Mario / Zelda / Sonic / etc games are all somehow specifically made for children.
They have completely fallen for the marketing message, and all else is to be ignored.
I'm about to type in all the games I have for my PS2 and GameCube. Please check back in five months when I'm done typing them all in.
Congratulations, you've fallen for their marketing! Now go pick up a copy of Pac-Man World 2 or Blinx the TimeSweeper or Sneakers.
Dungeon Keeper 2 has a whole bunch of timed audio cues like that. I, however, ignored those warnings.
Most of which are available for other platforms. Xbox has managed to generate only a handful of exclusive, must-have titles. PS2 and GameCube have been doing much better on that score, but the Xbox is winning the online battle.