More on the Gaming Industry

I took some time this past month to go a little old school. We're talking Nintendo 64 and SNES old school. I had a jones for some classic video gaming, having burned myself out on my Game Cube.

I spent the better part of a month playing through Super Mario World, Mario 64, and Mario Kart 64. I know every inch of these games, having put in more than just a little time on them prior.

Yeah, so it's not surprising that my renewed interest in the classics of the genre lead me to compare these past titles with the more current crop of video games. You are forewarned, I'm a classic gamer at heart.

I hate Mario Sunshine. Playing through Mario 64, letting Mario jump and bounce and roll, using all the gratuitous shortcuts I still remember, trying to get every coin in the level, it once again illustrated everything that was wrong with the follow up game. When you play Sunshine, you're literally limited in where you can go by what you are able to do with your water guns. The emphasis has been removed from the player's finesse of the controls.

I can sit in front of Mario 64 and long jump across chasms, cutting out seconds and even minutes of the game. And it was fun, exploring, adventuring. Trying to get a few seconds off my game simply for bragging rights... Yeah, I actually brag about Mario 64.

But I can't do that with Sunshine. Sunshine is simply too linear a game, with every shine basically being "run to a spot, fire your water, run again, fight some enemies with water, run again. Repeat." Really irritating.

Okay, so you understand it's linear. So is Mario 3, or Mario World. I do realize that, but in each of those games, you had a time limit. More emphasis there was placed on your platforming skills, with each jump being essential. With the new Mario games, you have to worry about reaching a shine, not your next jump... Although some of the bonus games were pretty rough.

Yeah, so maybe I'm bitching, but when you look at it, Mario 64 was all game. You load up Sunshine, you get pretty graphics, and a really bad follow up to it's 64 predecessor.

But, Sunshine isn't the only game I get tired of. Metroid Prime is a lovely game, beautiful, fun for a while... But I am so bored of it now. I'm over halfway through the game, and having put in 50 plus hours, I now can't play it for more than a half hour at a time. But sit me in front of Mario Kart 64, or Symphony of the Night, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 1, or Rock and Roll Racing (how's that for a cross cut of gaming culture) and I play for hours.

I think Game Companies somewhere along the way lost the fun. Every industry will at some point lose sight of the market and look instead at the money. Movies go through periods of copycat syndrome whenever something new and big makes money (like Titanic or the Matrix), taking the core idea or style and making 30 movies just like it over the next few years, all which make far less money than that one original movie that started it.

Television right now has one of the worst years for new shows, all because everything is like everything else. British shows get exported over here, and the American version fails. Medical show beget medical shows. Cop dramas beget a ton of cop dramas.

And video games, these friends that are now becoming one of the biggest entertainment industries ever, are cashing in, creating sequels and rehashed games under new titles, and most of them suck... Or at least are flash in the pan.

Gimmie some substance. Give me something that makes me sit in front of the TV, oohing and ahhing, something that makes me miss work for 3 days straight. I want magic.

So, I go and play Super Mario World, and wait for the next big thing.