Today, a wistful feeling has overcome me. As I see events unfold around me, I am disturbed and deeply saddened by how my beliefs are challenged and I am viewed as anachronistic and a relic for what I believe...I'm talking about video games, of course...
Granted, some things haven't changed much since I received my first video game console (a Colecovision) thirty years ago. One thing that hasn't changed is the general popularity of video games. Back in the early 80s, Atari, Intellivison, and Colecovision were extremely popular as game commercials dominated the airwaves, store shelves were well-stocked with games, and most of the kids I knew had at least one of those systems. When the Nintendo Entertainment System came out in 1985, it was an even bigger deal; I have indelible memories of ROB the Robot and Excitebike from times I spent at my friend Brian's house. Fast-forward to now, video games are still popular among the young and now the old, as well. Another thing that hasn't changed is how video games can bring disparate social groups together. Whether it be Starcraft across the Internet or a bunch of neighborhood kids huddled around a Wii, video games unify people. A third thing that hasn't changed much is the characters. Thanks to the staying power of such icons as Mario, Sonic, Snake, Samus Aran, the Belmont family, and Earthworm Jim (he's still popular... right?!), the nostalgia of the past lives in the gloss and sheen of the superior graphics and sound of the present.
However, much has also changed with the passage of time. Some may argue that games nowadays are not as "hard," and that you don't need the practice and precision of past games to master today's games; but some may counter and say that games as less "cheesy" than, say, Ninja Gaiden II or Rush 'n Attack (of which I have a fond disdain). Some may opine about the realism of first-person-shooters and how games just seem more violent today, while some may respond that games are no less violent today than 8-bit shooters like Contra or Metal Gear; "It's not that games are more violent, but that they're just more graphic," some may observe. There is also the complexity of games today, in which you can play for hours on end and barely stratch the surface of a convoluted storyline; conversely, you could finish The Legend of Zelda in eight hours or so (which would be insane, but still...).
One cannot argue with the cliche that "the more things change, the more things stay the same." Yet, as I watch the visual and auditory quality of games escalate with improving technologies, and the sheer number of buttons and analog sticks increase with each new in-game function, I am reminded that today's games lack something that past games had in spades: simplicity. Remember the Atari 2600 with its one joystick and one button? I challenge you to find an easier game to learn, but harder game to master on the Wii than Pitfall was on the Atari with just its one button. Remember the NES with its two buttons, or the Sega Genesis with its three buttons? Remember how easy it was for an inexperienced friend to come over and play games with (or against) you on those consoles because the controls were easier to master? I challenge you to train your inexperienced friend about how to play any current EA Sports game on the XBox and its ten buttons...
Besides simplicity, which factors into what I am about to state, games of the past seem lighter by today's standards. Whereas now one can get lost in a game world and not emerge for days, I could play a Genesis game for a couple hours and then walk away and enjoy the rest of my day. In this way, games today are immersive to a fault. Of course, some may argue that The Legend of Zelda or other older RPGs were the same way, but I could walk away after a few hours. Try doing that with Mass Effect or any of those story-based games... It's difficult.
But, the most apparent difference between the games of the past and today's games is the creativity it took to render great games with such comparatively poor resolution. Compare Super Mario Bros. on the NES to Super Mario Bros. on the Wii; obviously, the Wii trumps the NES big time, but think about the limitations those Nintendo programmers had to overcome to render a classic game on the NES. For the Wii, on the other hand, the developers had much more to work with when it came to graphics and sound.
Upon reflection, my wistful feelings about video games come from remembrances of more carefree times with friends in high school or college when we sat around and laughed at buddies messing up in a game, or discussed strategy or if the Genesis or the SNES versions of games were better. I suppose that kids today may look back on 2012 when they're adults and feel the same. The interesting thing I've observed, though, is that there is a fervent attempt to make games simpler with motion capture, as with the XBox Kinect and the Wii's long-in-the-tooth wand-based controls. Perhaps, we are seeing a renaissance of simplicity in gaming, pulling in a new generation of youngsters, but I contend that the retro-charm of jaggedly rendered 8-bit characters will always transcend the smooth textures of today's sprites because, as with many things in this world, we will always look backwards and remember we could walk away from a couple hours (or less) of play and be satisfied, while one often fills the day with gaming today to get their fix. In this way, realism isn't always good, and I am saddened to see that people today put that much stock in the realism afforded to us by stellar graphics and movie-quality sound when video games are best played as a brief escape from reality.
