Gaming Innovation, Nostalgia and Achievement Hunting
Hello. I swear I’ve posted some of this before but I cannot find it anywhere. Maybe I’ve posted bits and pieces but oh well, it’s not like anyone reads this thing anyways. IF for some reason I have a dedicated fan that has read all my stuff and this sounds familiar; I’m sorry.
I started playing games when I was still in diapers, so I’m told. It was the NES, my parents got it for my sister but she wasn’t at the house throughout the week so I played it. I remember a lot of Tiny Toons, Mario 3, Mega Man 3, Ninja Turtles 3, Bubble Bobble. We moved when I was seven so my parents gave the NES to my sister since it was for her afterall. I eventually got a Sega Genesis, from a cousin I think but I really liked the Sega. Sonic 2, VectorMan 2, Light Crusader, Mazin Saga Mutant Fighter. I rented Light Crusader a lot and it had a save feature on it, which was cool but obviously whenever I got the game again my save was gone. Then came PlayStation. We went to the movie rental place to rent stuff and they had a demo station set up for Crash Bandicoot on PlayStation. I sat there playing it while my mom browsed. It was a 3D game and I couldn’t get by the first crabs. You could move in all directions. It was mind blowing, eye opening, it was the first 3D game I experienced. Eventually I got a PS for Christmas and it was great. Each console came with a demo disc so you had something to play and get an idea of what is out there because at the time there was no real way to know other than going to the store, word of mouth, maybe there were magazines. Games had cheat codes and other secret inputs. I remember one PlayStation Underground demo disc I had had a few inputs for a Spyro demo, some kind of Madden spreadsheet? I don’t know what that was, a trailer for some stealth ninja game and a Korn music video of Freak on a Leash. It was cool. PlayStation then added analog sticks for movement and looking around and rumble features. Things we still use now. And this is just my personal experience, the N64 had an analog stick but I don’t know when it came out in relation to the PS because I never had one. After that, things were rather stagnant for years. I know I’ve talked about how much I loved the 360 so I won’t do that again but we didn’t have anything new new until the Wii. The Wiimote, the motion used in games was really cool. PlayStation and Xbox tried similar things but to no real success like the Wii. The 3DS came out and THAT was REALLY cool. The original demo that was shown was CRAZY. I can’t find it absolutely anywhere but it was really cool. I still think the 3DS is one of the coolest things ever. Um after that nothing has really changed. Xbox hasn’t tried to do anything, PlayStation’s controller does some new things like the triggers can have like, more resistance when you try to use them for certain actions. Like, drawing a bowstring, prying a rock up or something like that. It has some kind of different vibrations that I notice most with rain in games. They’ve got a touch pad in the middle of the controller, that’s been around since the PS4 but that feature isn’t used much as far as I’ve seen, it basically is just a big menu/map button. The Nintendo Switch was pretty cool. A home console in a dock but can be taken out of the dock and brought with you like a portable console. So no real difference in the way you interact with games, not like the Wii and 3DS difference. One thing Nintendo has done too is adding gyro to their controllers and the 3DS had gyro too, once you get used to it it is pretty cool. So basically since the Wii and 3DS there hasn’t been any real new innovations and I don’t think we really will see any in the future. VR was a gimmick for a while but it hasn’t taken off like people thought it would. Steam making the Steam Deck and Steam Controller is neat but still nothing ground braking. There’s tons of emulation devices and other handheld PCs that I’m not familiar with but I don’t see anything truly new happening for gaming.
Time for some of my favorite games growing up; Crash Bandicoot original vs remake. The problem with remakes is sometimes the developer changes things. That’s fine for people who’ve never played the game but if you’re familiar with the original then it can be a little annoying. For Crash 1, one thing they did that was nice was they didn’t require you to get all the boxes in a level on one life. For the colored gems you had to but not the clear ones. That was rough back in the day. On Crash 3 original, when you did the relic races, if you got all the time boxes they would shave some seconds off your final time, it made getting platinum relics a lot more manageable. In the remake they do not do that. It’s really annoying. In Crash 3, probably after completing the game, then going back through to get the relics for all the levels and beating Cortex again you get the “true end” credits but somewhere in there you see the dev’s best times on every level. Like they all competed and the one who got the best time on that level had their name added to the list, like a high score on an arcade machine. It seemed like being a developer back then was a lot more fun. I’m sure developers still have some fun in the office while making games and I’m sure back then it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine, I’m sure crunch still existed but it just seemed like a better environment to someone who knows nothing like me. Getting the platinum relics in Crash 4 pissed me off and I stopped trying. You had to be perfect, PERFECT, in your run to get the platinum. There was no wiggle room and the way you had to run faster was kind of stupid too. You had to spin or hit the spin at certain times and you would move faster but it being a spin isn’t great. For one thing it’s another input you have to do and second, that’s gonna cause you to hit things like TNT crates or nitro boxes. I hated it and didn’t do it.
Oddworld Abe’s Oddysee is another one of my childhood favorites that got a remake. In the remake they added a ton of Mudokons where before there were only a few. Places that had three Mudokons now had like nine. It didn’t add anything to the game it just made things a little more tedious when you’re already trying to guide one guy through meat grinders to have to do that several more times was annoying. I remember in when I played the second one you had to use the Sligs for puzzles real early on. I did not know you could do that in the first game. I had gotten stuck in the paramite temple because I never knew you could control the Sligs. It made sense after thinking about it, how much sense does it make to be able to chant into something only to chant again and blow it up? I was a kid, kids are stupid. The remake or reimagining of the second game is ooookaaaayy? I haven’t played a whole lot of it but I kind of like reimaginings more than remakes.
I was kind of
excited for the God of War trilogy remake but now I’m sour on the idea and
they’re probably going to fuck it up anyway. Because of all this discless stuff
I’ve been thinking about emulating the originals. I was thinking about looking
around for the retro stuff but like I said in my other post, I’ve rebought
things way too much, not today. I’m not going full blown pirate, I still plan
on buying new games but as far as this old crap that I’ve had before, that I
can’t easily find and play, yeah, I think that’s fine. I think a lot of the
problem now-a-days is developers try to make their games into movies. Like yes,
a good story is nice but it doesn’t have to be the next Harry Potter. It’s a
game, it just needs to be fun. You’ve got actual Hollywood actors doing the
voices and having their likenesses used (I personally think actors do a much
better job then voice actors nine times out of ten), mocap, you name it. And
maybe mocap does make life easier when you have someone doing the movements and
you just have to slap your character onto their wire frame, I don’t know, I
don’t know how hard it is to make a character jump. I know I just hate in
games, when I’m controlling a human and they just aren’t doing normal human
things that it pisses me off. When I’m screaming “Act like a human!” you’ve
done something wrong. In the original God of Wars, Kratos was just an asshole.
There was just him and his desire to kill Ares for tricking him. There was no
overarching plot that taking down Ares would help the rest of
Achievement hunting was something I liked doing even before games added it. I did all the things in the original Crash games including CTR. Got the 100%, 101%, 108% and 105% respectively (to my knowledge that’s how that went), even getting all the platinum relics. I remember my wrist hurt so much from constantly holding the X button in CTR. I remember just curling up in my bed in pain one night. I tried to beat God of War on God Mode but I just could not do it. I got to Ares but I just couldn’t beat his final phase. In Halo 3 they had the marathon/security helmet if you got all the achievements. I really wanted the helmet so I went out of my way to do all the things with no help (pretty much) and before they changed the lone wolf playlist. You would have people in the lobby sometimes asking for help with achievements by letting them kill everyone and getting their overkill or whatever. But not me. I earned all that shit. I might’ve exploited someone’s try at an achievement but I had to work for it. There was an achievement for killing three or so people real quick with a sword I think and someone in the lobby asked for help to getting that done. One or two guys offered to help and an evil thought crept into my brain. We loaded in, the map was The Pit and I spawned pretty close to the sword room so I hightailed it there, got the sword, crouched and waited. Two guys came to the room, I cut both of them down and I just needed my third. I fell to the bottom floor and found a third person. I was chasing them, they were backpedaling, shooting, slowing me down, making me lose time but I ended up locking on and getting the achievement. I got the overkill in lone wolf before they started adding rocket only matches and when there were only five of you in a match. These are the memories of achievement hunting, achievements in most games now are just playing the game. “You did the thing we told you to do, yay!!!” Achievements used to mean something and unlocking things from achievements was the ability to show off and say “yeah, I did the thing.” Now you can just spend money for cosmetics for no real reason. It’s not really to show off to others, it’s just for your own personal reasons. Apex Legends; if Wattson gets a cool skin I’m gonna try to unlock with in game currency or real money. It’s not for anyone else but me which is also stupid because it’s a first person shooter, I’m hardly gonna see it. It’s not like if someone sees this skin they’re gonna think “this person is good.” Back in the day when you had to earn cosmetics it was a visual representation of that persons dedication and if you happen to take them out you felt pretty good about yourself. Now it’s like the opposite. People, kids really, will buy a cosmetic in hopes that people will think they’re good but they’re not. And vice versa, some people with fancy skins have those skins precisely because they play a ton and have the game currency for it.
The old days made me think of GameSharks and Action Replays and stuff. How did that shit even work? They like hacked games or something? I remember using one to get like infinite master balls in Pokemon and I had one for PlayStation I’m pretty sure. Man things used to be fun man, everyone is so uptight with their shit now-a-days. I’ll have to find a video on YouTube explaining it.
I do think that
this choice from Sony will overall hurt PlayStation. They seem to be banking on
people with disposable incomes but you hear all the time how expensive
everything is and now their next console could be $1000+? $80-$100 games?
People are NOT going to go for that. Maybe the schmucks that only buy Call of
Duty and Madden every year but the average person is not going to want to do
that. I think they’re forgetting also that gaming has kind of always been seen
as a children’s hobby. Sure now-a-days lots of us game because it’s what we did
as kids and we continue to do so but it’s still seen as a children’s hobby.
Parents are not going to be spending that kind of money for a console or games.
Again, part of the overarching problem is that games are taken way too seriously
now. They used to be something you could run through in an afternoon and now
they can take weeks to get through even one playthrough. And maybe there are
still games like that, maybe there are still “kids” games I just don’t see them
advertised because I’m not the target audience. It’s like Gushers and Fruit by
the Foot, that shit is still in stores, someone is buying these things. I never
see ads for them. I think Sony’s projections of how much they will lose isn’t
low enough. Yes PlayStation is a small part of Sony as a whole but you look at
movie projected opening weekends, you look at
Alright, sorry for all of that. I’m sure there’s some things I’ve missed but you get the idea. With all this nostalgia for the old days and cheat/secret codes I had a thought; Toys For Bob is the developers working on the new Spyro the Dragon game. They have done the Spyro trilogy remakes and Crash Bandicoot 4. I reached out to them on Twitter and said “Hey, @ToysForBob, with the PlayStation news has made me depressed and nostalgic I was thinking; would it be possible to do an update to Crash 4 and put a Spyro demo in? For extra flavor it could be a "cheat" code input like back in the day.” That’d be really neat as far as I’m concerned. Like sure, you could put a standalone demo out on storefronts but this way is more fun! Alright, tell me what you think in the comments, bye-bye.
Check out these other, similar posts. How to Kill Your Brand. Physical vs Digital.
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