I have a 9 year old brother (I’m 26), and he had the “unfortunate” luck of being born around the gamecube era. He did grow up with one, but his older brother would “educate” him in the matters of videogaming, I introduced him to the NES and SNES, showed him good old 2D Mario, Zelda, Contra, Castlevania etc. At first like most children, he was more interested in 3D animation, so the gamecube had him more entertained. But now that he’s older he’s surprised me in how he prefers the games of old instead of the new stuff; though he still plays some 360 games form time to time. Lately he dug up my old Gameboy and started playing Pokemon Red. Out of nostalgia, I told him I’d play the Yellow version so we could trade Pokemon and fight each other (note, he does have a DS and the latests Pokemon games for it plus the GBA ones). What amazed me was that he seemed to enjoy those 12-13 year old games (made before he was even born) more than the new ones; so I have a theory, bear with me a little and let me explain.
The original Gameboy was released in 1989, the first Pokemon games were released in 1996 in Japan and in 1998 in America, so that’s 7 years after the release of the GB in Japan and 9 in America. My point here is that you don’t see this kind of support from Nintendo nowadays, like you said, they believe in this kind of “cycle” crap, where it seems they have to get rid of a console after 5-6 years of being released. I know you missed the Pokemon phenomenon, but you are well aware of it. In 1998 it exploded like in Japan had exploded a couple of years before, that game single handedly revived interest in Nintendo’s hand-held, in Japan you would see lots of people using the link cable (which before this game it was seldomly used) to trade Pokemon, fight each other etc.
Pokemon in itself was a completely Blue Ocean game, it did away with useless complexity and was perfectly tailored for the handheld experience. Seems everything was right with this game. The game had a simple but deep system that made it really addictive and interesting to play. Your decisions of what Pokemon to use, what attack to use etc. were all meaningful. YOU were the main character, you got to name it, it was YOUR adventure and YOU were in total control; sure you had to follow a certain route, but you could still sidetrack or tackle the Gyms out of order, and YOU decided what Pokemon to raise, how to raise them, what attacks to use, what to teach them. It had good content and very good re-playability.
Fast forward to the second batch of games, they enhanced the system, added tons of new content and what is amazing to me now is how even if it was released when the GBC was already out, they supported the original Gameboy, without any significant drawback, whatsoever!, you could play the game with your old 4 shades of gray gameboy just as well as someone with a full color Gameboy. You don’t see any game company do that anymore, they’re so fixed in getting you to buy their next console so they stop making games for the console you already had (Nintendo is very guilty of this with N64, GC, SNES and now it seems they’re gonna do it with the Wii). I understand that the technical similitude between the GB and GBC made this possible, but they could very well opted to not support the GB (many games did this), but no, they made the right choice, they got the most players in because of that. I know because I played Pokemon Silver with an original phat GB.
Right now my brother and I are playing Pokemon Gold and Silver and we’re having fun and are addicted, just like everyone was back in 2000. This game proves that you don’t need cutting edge technology to deliver a good game, that gaming is not dependent on technology itself like the industry and many developers think (Just imagine if the original Pokemon games were released on the Virtual Boy). If Nintendo made a great game back in 1996 with only a very small screen and 4 shades of gray, why can’t anyone make a GOOD game with HD graphics and cutting edge processors of nowadays?
THIS is what creativity is, I believe. Making the most with what little you have; not doing whatever you want. But no, you got a bunch of developers saying that if the console is not powerful enough it “hinders their creativity”. Creativity is born and flourishes when there are constraints not when you got everything available to you. We live in the era of developers doing whatever they want to do, not what the audience wants to be made. I don’t know where this trend of “we need a powerful hardware in order to express our creativity” came from. I don’t want a game with a “creative” concept, I want a game with good FUNDAMENTALS, Pokemon back in the day had good fundamentals, Classic Final Fantasy had good fundamentals, Shakespeare, Picasso, Da Vinci and all those famous classic artist didn’t get “creative”, they followed FUNDAMENTALS, they had a technique and adhere to the laws of nature. Game developers nowadays think that because they get to do stuff on a computer they are above people and nature, and that’s why, like you often times said, their games fail, are crappy and will never reach the expanded audience.
I miss gaming phenomenons, I had the great fortune of living the NES and SNES they were full of them (the NES specially). I hope you keep posting, if don’t care if you don’t want to talk about the industry, you could talk about just gaming itself and maybe between you and we the readers can finally solve what is what really makes a game magical, memorable and timeless.
I am cheering at all you’ve said. But I’m going to talk about ‘creativity’ since that apparently is my theme for today.
I am referring to ‘creativity’ as in the entertainer thinking his imagination is the greatest thing since sliced bread and the audience has no imagination. Creativity is slang for ‘clever’. Macguyver, who apparently can make anything work with duct tape, could be said to be ‘creative’. But they mean it in terms of being clever and useful, not how creativity is most often applied. (The creation of the ‘Game Gods’ is due to this belief in ‘creativity’. The only true way to slay the Game Gods, I think, is to drive a stake in the modern concept of ‘creativity’. Sakamoto’s take on Metroid is NOTHING like why Metroid became originally popular. But apparently this doesn’t matter because he is ‘creative’.)
Iwata says that Japanese games do not sell overseas anymore because of greater expression of graphics, sound is illustrating Japanese eccentricities more and more. I might have agreed with this once, but no longer. Japanese games were always eccentric.
Let me frame this another way. Once upon a time, in the Dark Ages, goods from the Far East (Japan, China, and India) made their way to Europe. These goods included spices, silk, cotton, and other things. Europeans were stunned at the craftsmanship of these Far East goods, and demand always exceeded supply. This Western desire for Far East ‘well crafted’ goods literally shaped our world today (and by literally, I mean literally. Nations are where they are because Europeans were trying to make a new trade route to the Far East.)
There were always Japanese video games. But with the NES (as well as Sega’s consoles), they were almost all Japanese. For example, we all knew Daniel Crane’s “Pitfall” of a side moving character jumping around. But then there was “Super Mario Brothers” which was so well crafted, so ridiculously well, it blew everyone’s minds. And then think of Konami or Capcom’s games. Glorious. It created a type of obsession, a real sense of phenomenon, and people couldn’t get enough of these games.
It is, perhaps, an inappropriate parallel to draw between the Middle Age obsession for Far East goods and the Golden Age of Consoles’ obsession for Far East video games. But it is not inaccurate. If I told the emailer that Japan was still making these games of similar or better craftsmanship of the 8-bit and 16-bit generations, I think he would say, “Damn! Then I declare myself to be the new Christopher Columbus, and I will establish a new trade route to get to these video games.” (Columbus was originally trying to reach Japan.)
I’m constantly looking at games between then and now and wondering what happened. How did we go from Metroid to… Metroid: Other M? How did we go from Legend of Zelda to… Spirit Tracks? How did we go from Mega Man to… whatever the hell Capcom is putting out? Western games have not suddenly ‘become OMG so much better’ than they used to be. I’d say Western games have declined. But nowhere near as much as the Japanese games.
If I declare myself to be ‘Doctor Malstrom’ and must examine the dying patient known as ‘Japanese video games’, the symptoms all point to a mental disease passed around the Japanese game developers. It is this modern dogma of ‘creativity’. That is the best explanation I can give why Metroid turned into Other M, why Zelda turned into Spirit Tracks, and so on. The game makers, themselves, keep saying their purpose is ‘creativity’. If Japanese gaming is to survive, perhaps they should look at this ‘creativity’ as a bad thing. The original Far East goods that caused Europe to go mad weren’t ‘creative’ either. But they were extremely well crafted.
I’ve noticed kids do choose to play the ‘old games’. They love Pac-Man. They love Galaga. While graphics can be a barrier, modern games based on the old style have worked very well. NSMB DS and Super Mario Brothers 5 sold extraordinarily well.
Remember playing the classics for the first time? When I rented Mega Man 2, I didn’t expect much, but I… could… not… stop… playing. It was too much fun. I ran out, bought the game, and bought Mega Man 3 the DAY it came out. With a game like Metroid, I was in awe (and in fear) of the majestic labyrinths. I remember putting in Ducktales, thinking it to be a junky kids game, but was consumed by its awesomeness.
It seems as if the Japanese games are ‘crafted’ only in terms of their polish. They are cleanly presented, have no problems. But the fundamentals are not there. I get the ugly feeling in my gut that the entire reason why the game was made was for the developers to exercise their ‘creativity’ (i.e. bad story). The Japanese may or may not have done this in the past, but arcade gaming acted as a ballast that kept everyone’s heads on straight. Street Fighter 2 is a great example of what a game, with very strong fundamentals, can do. Before that, we had ‘Karate Champ’. Fun game, then, but nowhere near Street Fighter 2.
Despite how ‘simple’ these games are, have you noticed that these indie game developers and ‘casual games’ makers cannot make anything anywhere like them? There is a certain… craftsmanship with these games that appears to be forever lost.
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