Dear Mainstream gaming, I am fed up with you

[FatCobra]

Dear Mainstream gaming,

Between my mom selling my SNES, trying to focus my energy on my imported Saturn, many new games not delivering, and with the next gen almost already here, I am just about ready to hang up my controller on you. It is just not the same anymore, the old school magic is gone, 2-D gaming will pretty much be extinct when the next-gen hits stores. I know I have posted many topics about this sort of thing before, but when your mom sells the SNES you cherished as child and you wanted to play Earthbound again as an adult, and when I walk into Gamestop and die a little inside when a soccer mom buys her whining little brat some Spongbob Squarepants game, it's just the depressing reality I face.

I am an old-school gamer at heart and this is my lament:

I will never forget the day when I got my NES on my 6th birthday and my SNES on my 9th.

I will never forget the days when levels made no sense and powerups
were commonplace.

When the Fire Flower was considered the ultimate weapon to have.

When hype was almost none existent. When word of mouth was how you heard about Game X

When even the sports games were about fun and not updating the roster each year.

When every other game was not a damn Halo or GTA clone, but a Mario or Zelda clone instead.

When Sega was still making hardware, and Sonic games didn't suck.

When the Nintendo name carried alot of weight in the industry.

When Microsoft didn't have plans of world domination.

When the concept of playing a game on a CD seemed alien to the player because they were so used to using cartridges.

And most importantly of all, the arcade was still alive and shmups dominated.

What has happened to the public? What has cased videogames to become the way they did? What caused the corruption of the industry and the loss of the old-school values. My guess for this is called SONY. Sure, it is Nintendo's fault that the SNES add-on deal went sour, but it is Sony's fault that they released this CD-based hype machine into the world. All of a sudden, gameplay meant nothing and graphics were everything. You could photocopy your ass and it would sell millions just because of the 3-D graphics. No one wanted to play 2-D games anymore. This is how it became how it is today.

I know there was alot of crap back then too, and that there are good games still being made, but I'm getting fed up with swimming thru an ever-expanding sea of crap to find that gem. I am just about ready to sell my PS2 and collect retro games. I may have been fine if my mother did not sell my SNES, but see did, and that blew up the last ship on my 1CC run. I am sorry Mainstream, but you don't deliever the experience you once delievered back when I was six years old. I can see right through your hype and fancy technology. It is going to take more than a few shmups each year to piqe my interest again. It's going to take a resurgance of shmups as being mainstream again before I will consider wasting my hard-earned cash on you anymore. It's over honey, I am unplugging myself from your Matrix.

Forever Retro Gamer and Old Schooler,

Christopher Tichanuk.

P.S. Please don't bitch about my stubborness. I post on forums about a genre you consider dead and part of a niche anyway.

[jp]

I concur.

[FatCobra]

I concur.

Thanks for agreeing with me. I am going thru alot of emotional pain right now since my mom sold my SNES without my permission and took so long to tell me about it. I was looking forward to playing my old stuff again, a sacred place for an old schooler like myself to retreat from when mainstream gaming doesn't excite me anymore. A place where the spirit of 2-D gaming lived on...

I am tired of wasting money on all the new releases, and I feel that the next-gen is being pushed on me too quickly. Am I doomed to playing yesterday's systems and games? Is it really such a bad fate? I think not. The spirit of videogames as I once knew it died when the N64 and PS1 were considered new.

I know I'm beating a dead horse, but I can't help it. I am the gaming equal of the old man who tells kids to get off his lawn. I'm just pissed off at the way things are now, it was so much better back. I am 22 years old, yet I feel ancient old and I resent everything new. Why? I do keep asking myself? Why? I am I going insane?

[jp]

I went through the same thing my freshmen/sophomore years of college. I had gotten an Xbox the Christmas before and got a Gamecube my second semester of freshmen year. I bought every big name title upon release, and then ceased playing them. They lasted longer than the PS2 (which I didn't really own, a friend of mine lent it to me because he was going to sell it and his collection to me for a nice price, but um... yeah, that didn't even last a week).


At any rate, I eventually got fed up with the drivel I was buying and felt there had to be another way. Sophomore year I 1CC'd Ikaruga in front of my roomate and he posed the idea that "2D shooters were my favorite games."

I thought about it... bought I think 7 Saturn shmups, sold off the Xbox and Gamecube stuff so I could continue ye old Saturn collection (which I actually abandoned for a bit), and now I'm the antichrist of hardcore gaming according the Thunder Force.

So be it. At least I'm actually having fun now. Which is something the Xbox/GC/PS1/PS2 never even began to achieve for me.

[FatCobra]

jp, I am speechless. You and I are definitely thinking on the same wave pattern here. I am just about ready to sell the PS2 and get most of SNES stuff back.

I used to have a Gameboy SP, but I got rid of that too. I know you think this is puzzling coming from someone who loves the SNES, but the Gameboy really didn't excite me anymore. The SNES ports felt....watered down and I really couldn't get into most of the new games. The DS is a bit too weird for me right now. The dual touch screens seems neato, but it's basically the N64 all over again. The PSP just screams "OMFG!! It's 1995 again!! LOL!!11!!!1!!" The next gen doesn't even seem to interest me, except for Revolution, espeically after the evil act my mom performed. But even then.....it's basically legitimized emulation. XBox 360 is a dumb console name, and PS3 has that dumb boomerang controller. Of course, the next-gen is still a couple months off, so who knows what will change before launch? But, is it really worth buying a new machine so I can play the same drivel, only with prettier graphics?

I used to be a mainstreamer too, until I rediscovered shmups, a lost childhood love. I am glad I am not a mindless sheep that blindly follows the current trends.

[neorichieb1971]

The games you love will never die. They are all still there.

I miss my old school friends, I miss being free of any job or needing any money besides buying games. Those days are gone..

But you can still play old school games.

There is always the import option.


When you get older and more financially capable. You will join the hoards of us that try to regain our history. You will have to lose something to appreciate its worth when you get it back. That is the beauty of life.

[Zigfried the Trizealot]

A photocopy of an ass would be 2-dimensional, not 3D.

//Zig

[raiden]

I´m just wondering why you even spend so much time informing yourself about the new generation. What´s holding you back? Just get rid of your modern consoles, buy a SNES or whatever and play it. Although I agree on most of your points, the amount of threads you open on the subject makes it spamming. Face the fact that there are people who enjoy modern games as well, you won´t change their taste by screaming "I want my childhood back".

[Marc]

Not again.....

I used to be a mainstreamer too, until I rediscovered shmups, a lost childhood love. I am glad I am not a mindless sheep that blindly follows the current trends.

That comment is so stupid it doesn't even deserve a reply.

Keep playing your shmups, retro, whatever. Blind yourself to the fact that there's still good stuff to be played on all 3 consoles if it helps you sleep at night. But do you have to start a new thread going on about it every other bloody week?

Thanks for agreeing with me. I am going thru alot of emotional pain right now since my mom sold my SNES without my permission and took so long to tell me about it.

It's a game console. No-one died right? Emotional pain...?

[neorichieb1971]

Thanks for agreeing with me. I am going thru alot of emotional pain right now since my mom sold my SNES without my permission and took so long to tell me about it.

It's a game console. No-one died right? Emotional pain...?

That sir is the truth. Wait until you lose your job, or your girlfriend aborts your first child or something to that nature.. What you going to do then, buy an Uzi?

[Specineff]

Or when you lose your best friend of five years, and chest pains start assaulting you out of pure stress and sadness. Now that's a tragedy.

Give your mom a piece of your mind, and try to heal. That's the best advice I can give you. Good luck.

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

"Back when hype was almost non-existant."
What!?

Yawn...

[Marc]

but it is Sony's fault that they released this CD-based hype machine into the world. All of a sudden, gameplay meant nothing and graphics were everything.

Wipeout 1 2 & XL, Resident Evil1 & 2, Gran Tourismo, Ridge Racer, Tekken 1 & 2, DonPachi, DoDonPachi, Strikers 1 & 2, R-Type Delta, R-Types, X-Men COTA, Gradius Gaiden, Tomb Raider (come on, admit it, we all enjoyed the first one), Syndicate Wars, Theme Park, Doom, Captain Commando, CapCom Generations, Final Fantasy VII, Vandal Hearts, Vagrant Story, Silent Hill, etc...

Not bad list of titles for a hype-fueled wonder machine is it?

I shouldn't even respond to such stupidity, but I'm in a shit mood this morning.

[Capt. Takehiko]

I agree with many of the ideas but you shouldn't deal in absolutes, FatCobra. And the SNES is really quite replacable.

[roushimsx]

I shouldn't even respond to such stupidity, but I'm in a shit mood this morning.

Yea, this is the boat i'm sailing in right now.
Fatty, you know I love you, but blanket hating "mainstream games" is as retarded as blanket lovin' shmups.

On a total tangent, I finally got around to playing Skygunner on PS2 and I'm not liking it. At all. Back to Mark of Kri I go.

[sethsez]

Dear Christ, you don't stop do you?

We are all aware that you don't like modern gaming. We are all aware that you consider yourself above the "sheep" who do.

NOW PLEASE SHUT UP ABOUT IT

Believe it or not, you don't need to create a new thread every single time you remember that mainstream gaming doesn't tickle your balls like the games of yesteryear do. It's not your opinion that's annoying, it's that you absolutely insist on making it known as often as possible. You're like the obnoxious born-again everyone knows who just won't shut up about Jesus for more than five minutes, and it's getting really tiring.

And really, if you're going through a lot of emotional pain because your mom sold your SNES, consider yourself lucky that THAT is the kind of thing that deeply saddens you instead of, you know, serious things. My SNES was stolen when I was ten and I took it better than this.

[FatCobra]

I can't help it. I miss the good old days. I know it's just a stupid SNES, but some people take things differently.

I don't completely hate the mainstream, there's just alot of junk out there that it sometimes is not worth it for me to dig thru it.

You know what mods, delete or lock this topic. I have accepted the fact the good old days are not coming back and I just need to get on with my life.

[Diabollokus]

Common man, the shmups of today are new and alot of em are dam good no need to soley go retro a hell of a lot of great titles will always emerge amongst piles of crap.

Agree on your sony the basis of all console evil though, someday microsoft will steal the market from them and the cycle will continue.

I've been retro ish collecting for 2 years now but yeah I'll probably buy a next gen console xbox 360 if the softwares good, I've exhausted the dreamcast and saturn librarys I need something new.

[FatCobra]

Common man, the shmups of today are new and alot of em are dam good no need to soley go retro a hell of a lot of great titles will always emerge amongst piles of crap.

Agree on your sony the basis of all console evil though, someday microsoft will steal the market from them and the cycle will continue.

I've been retro ish collecting for 2 years now but yeah I'll probably buy a next gen console xbox 360 if the softwares good, I've exhausted the dreamcast and saturn librarys I need something new.

Agreed, I am enjoying the XS Games port of Castle Sikigami 2, which still puzzles me. How can a $10 game be so darn good, while some games aren't even worth $50? Hell, we've had crap back in the old days too, just the crap-to-gem ratio has gone up higher now thats all.

As for next-gen, it's a wait-and-see sort of thing for me. I mean, I just GOT my PS2 a couple months back.

I'll build my Saturn collection slowly, that way I won't exhaust the library so quickly.

Now excuse me while I go back to playing Midnight Club 3 online.

[Andi]

Yeah, yeah, FatCobra hates mainstream gaming. Cool, whatever.

Can we talk about all the things I hate in life now?

[FatCobra]

Yeah, yeah, FatCobra hates mainstream gaming. Cool, whatever.

Can we talk about all the things I hate in life now?

I don't hate mainstream gaming completely, there's just alot of stuff I don't like. But enough about me, what do you hate Andi?

[CMoon]

I think what I miss most from the older games is the mystery present because you couldn't see or do everything (it simply wasn't possible with the graphics and game engines then.)

Wizardry 7 still remains one of my favorite games because there was a great feeling of freedom and exploration while so much was still left open to the imagination.

I think it is important to seperate the games from the technology. The GTA game for instance are IMO horrible games in a really intriquing game engine. Imagine for instance a landmass as large as San Andreas but it is an exploration game like the old text game Zork. Man, I can think of a MILLION things better to do with the GTA game engine than they actually did with it, and I still enjoy messing with the game more for that then the game itself.

That few companies seem willing to take a leap creatively speaking, it is no doubt due to the super high costs of making impressive looking 3D games (and no one wants to play a shoddy looking game anymore). No one is going to make that Artic exploration game I WANT TO PLAY when they have no hard data that anyone else wants to play a game like that.

If mainstream gaming sucks, it is for the same reasons that mainstream music sucks--namely, in trying to reach the greatest common denominator, you end up with something of very little substance.

[jp]

Wow... looks like you hit a nerve FC.


This place is starting to get as silly as the Vestibule on IGN.

[Acid King]

Common man, the shmups of today are new and alot of em are dam good no need to soley go retro a hell of a lot of great titles will always emerge amongst piles of crap.

Agree on your sony the basis of all console evil though, someday microsoft will steal the market from them and the cycle will continue.

I've been retro ish collecting for 2 years now but yeah I'll probably buy a next gen console xbox 360 if the softwares good, I've exhausted the dreamcast and saturn librarys I need something new.

Agreed, I am enjoying the XS Games port of Castle Sikigami 2, which still puzzles me. How can a $10 game be so darn good, while some games aren't even worth $50? Hell, we've had crap back in the old days too, just the crap-to-gem ratio has gone up higher now thats all.

As for next-gen, it's a wait-and-see sort of thing for me. I mean, I just GOT my PS2 a couple months back.

I'll build my Saturn collection slowly, that way I won't exhaust the library so quickly.

Now excuse me while I go back to playing Midnight Club 3 online.

Anyone else have an overwhelmng sense of irony after reading that last sentence? Anywho, it's not mainstream gamings fault you and jp blew so much money on every "big name game" released, it's yours. Instead of renting, or reading about games and being selective you were the ones going out and buying stuff blindly without considering whether or not you'll actually like it, you bit into it. The rest is just waxing nostalgic, romaticizing a lost era and selective memory.

With the way information is dispersed now (i.e. the internet), it's much easier to find the good games and the games that you'll like, not to mention the expansion and ease of import gaming. This opposed to just having a wall of video games on which you have no information other than a few screen shots and a blurb on the back of the box. How many millions of shitty games were sold like this? And for the record, fuck word of mouth, i'd rather have a million opinions and screen shots and videos and reviews and descriptions on the internet.

And as far as the crap to gem ratio, as you put it, is really REALLY debatable. A) It's completely subjective. B) If you used an objective scale i.e. ratings from a certain magazine or site or whatever and only count games that rate 9 or over) the ratios would probably be almost identical. Even then more games inevitably means more crap, but it also means that much more gold. Once in a debate about Playstation/N64 I used IGN and counted all the games released and counted the number over 7 or 8 i think. There was around 30 for N64, and, IIRC there were almost 200 for the Playstation. The ratio for N64 was a bit better, but who fucking cares when there were over a hundred more good games for the playstation? C) There was no such thing as a "budget" game in the days of the NES and SNES. If the medium for games still cost as much as it did during the days of the NES and Genesis, good games released as budget titles like CS2 Sanvein and all of the shitty budget games would never be released at all.

. The GTA game for instance are IMO horrible games in a really intriquing game engine. Imagine for instance a landmass as large as San Andreas but it is an exploration game like the old text game Zork

Morrowind? [/quote][/b]

[FatCobra]

For your information, I rented Midnight Club 3 and loved it so much that I ran out and bought a $50 copy. I do rent games now just to make sure. Reviews and screenshots can give a person a general idea, but the only way to make sure is to go out and rent the damn game.

[sjewkestheloon]

bollocks the lot. there are great games on every console. there are strengths in every genre. gross generalisations abound here and to be honest i don't know why i'm wasting my time. on my shelf lies gran turismo 4 alongside super mario world, next to strikers 1945 2, next to sonic, need i carry on. lots of great games from each generation.

and a final point, just cause it's new and hyped doesn't mean it's bad kids...

this is getting cretinous

[roushimsx]

Dear Mainstream gaming,
I will never forget the day when I got my NES on my 6th birthday and my SNES on my 9th.

Hey, mainstream systems

I will never forget the days when levels made no sense and powerups were commonplace.

Sounds like a mainstream design concept

When the Fire Flower was considered the ultimate weapon to have.

Super Mario Brothers was the epitome of mainstream gaming back in ~85. Hell, they even made a movie about it. That's mainstream.

When hype was almost none existent. When word of mouth was how you heard about Game X

"word of mouth" is another term for "hype"

When even the sports games were about fun and not updating the roster each year.

You mean like Tecmo Bowl, Tecmo Super Bowl, Tecmo Super Bowl 2, etc?

When every other game was not a damn Halo or GTA clone, but a Mario or Zelda clone instead.

This one is fun. First of all, calling any sci fi FPS a Halo clone is like calling any sci fi action movie a Matrix clone. It has been argued in the past that Halo is simply a more graphically pleasing Unreal and Unreal is simply a more watered down Marathon which was just a more complex Doom which was a simplified and watered down sci fi Ultima Underworld wannabe. In short, no one cares.

GTA clone is always a fun one to play with as well, since there are plenty of games that used a similar game style beforehand, just not nearly as successfully as the Grand Theft Auto series. GTA3 really shocked the shit out of the gaming population because not many people really expected it to be as good as it was (unless you were a DMA Design fanboy, in which case there was never any question to its badassity ). Why not just call the games Space Station Silicon Valley, Body Harvest, Quarentine, etc clones while you're at it? Hell sometimes people will call totally unrelated games GTA clones, such as Mafia (which itself was in development long before GTA3...). In short, no one cares.

Finally, Mario or Zelda clone? Sounds pretty mainstream to me.

When Sega was still making hardware, and Sonic games didn't suck.

I loved Sega's hardware but I'm glad they're making just software. I just wish they'd play more to each console's strengths. Why does the new Sonic DS game split the screen in the middle of the play field? Why does Sonic Adventure DX have slowdown? Why does Spikeout have such unreasonable load times and unskippable sequences? Why did you let a team of amatuers rape Golden Axe?

When the Nintendo name carried alot of weight in the industry.

Maybe if they'd stop relying on gimmicks their name would carry more weight.

When Microsoft didn't have plans of world domination.

Microsoft had plans for world domination long before you started playing games.


Ok i'm bored and tired. Time to hit alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica.* and see if there's any good movies to watch.

[FatCobra]

You PWNED me roushimsx.

[jp]

Anyone else have an overwhelmng sense of irony after reading that last sentence? Anywho, it's not mainstream gamings fault you and jp blew so much money on every "big name game" released, it's yours.

I don't know about FC, but its not like I was buying Madden titles or Rockstar games or rhythm games. Obviously, I only bought things I felt I would be interested in, and obviously, they didn't hold my interest very well.


I will say that I'm probably going to be buying another Xbox eventually, mainly so my roomate and I can have something to play. But apparently FC enjoys the games on his SNES more than he enjoys the stuff out today, the same way I would prefer my Saturn to everything out today. I know its an impossible concept for a lot of people to wrap their minds around, but maybe... just maybe... FC and I have different tastes from other people?

[sethsez]

I know its an impossible concept for a lot of people to wrap their minds around, but maybe... just maybe... FC and I have different tastes from other people?

Nobody has trouble grasping this. What people have trouble grasping is why:

1) Some people can't accept that this goes both ways (ie, while FC genuinely prefers SNES games, other people genuinely prefer modern games and aren't just sheep), and

2) Why it needs to be stated over and over and over.

The fact that some people personally prefer retro games isn't something anyone has a problem with. I mean, come on, look at the site we're discussing this on.