Appreciating the Great to Discern the Derivative

As time passes, it is confirmed for me, again and again, that the simplicity and pick-up-and-playability of "old" video games is vastly superior to the glitz and graphics of today's three-dimensional offerings. Sure, one may marvel at the visual explosion of garish hues of any PlayStation game, or guffaw at the side-splitting and muscle-tearing action of XBox Kinect or Wii games, or even be wowed by the audio saturation emanating from one's quadrophonic sound system as one plays games... well, on any of those consoles. However, I find that it is difficult to trump the quaint jaggedness of 8-bit or 16-bit sprites, the plip-ploppiness of 25-year-old game sound effects, or even the mind-bending elegance of one D-pad and two, three, or six buttons.

The reason why I am waxing nostalgic and gushing with needlessly verbose prose is because I experienced a moment of peculiar lucidity today. During a work training session, rather randomly, I asked one of the attendees (who happened to be my age) if he remembered the infinite-life trick in Super Mario Brothers for the NES. For a few seconds, the attendee (who was attending via WebEx, actually) admitted some ignorance, but then corrected himself and recalled with impressive clarity that if you jump on a certain creature (in this case, a Koopa) a certain way (on the edge of its shell as it descends stairs made of blocks), you can set up an infinite loop of life gain. Floored by his apparent recall of that tactic, I filled in the blanks of his description by noting that it happens in World 3 and results in cryptic symbols replacing numbers next to the Mario life indicator that is displayed before the start of each level.

As this moment of lucidity passed, I was reminded that though games like Super Mario Brothers were easy to learn and somewhat challenging to conquer, there were arduous aspects of the gameplay that made even seasoned gamers pause, such as trying to advance anywhere in Legend of Zelda; also, there were wondrous moments of revelation that etched indelible impressions in our psyches, such as the infinite life trick. What was revealed to me was that while the simplicity of those old games lured us into becoming fans, it was the hidden and the discoverable that kept us returning to play over and over. There was something eminently rewarding about unearthing such tricks or conquering levels of ridiculous difficulty. I contend that games today, even with their Easter eggs, hidden levels, and downloadable content do not have the payoff of  the infinite life trick, of setting the correct tree on fire, or climbing the once-inaccessible tower to find a 1-UP (a la Knuckles the Echidna). I suppose it's because these games live in the rosy-tinted world of my memories. However, when I watch my sons play the old games or I hear a co-worker describe his son's admiration of Super Mario Brothers, I realize that if we all bring up our children to appreciate the things of the past, we bless them with the gift of discerning what is great from what is derivative.

Top Ten First-Hand Nostalgia Sega Genesis Characters (2)

So far, I have covered numbers 10 through 3 of my Top Ten First-Hand Nostalgia Sega Genesis Characters. Many of them have been in-game depictions of real-life athletes or celebrities, but a few have been genuine Sega characters, like Ecco and the dweebs from Gunstar Heroes. Going back to picking "real" characters, my number 2 doesn't need much introduction: Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic made his debut with the eponymously-titled game Sonic

the Hedgehog, which most Genesis owners acquired by sending away for it along with a cutout of the UPC barcode on the Genesis retail box. Upon inserting and activating the game, players were treated with the exhilarating tones of the Green Hill Zone theme, which has been indelibly etched in the minds of gamers everywhere. Sonic the Hedgehog would prove to be only the beginning of a franchise that would not only spawn multiple titles on the Sega

Genesis, but also on the Saturn, Dreamcast, and now on the Wii and PlayStation - consoles from Nintendo and Sony, which used to be Sega's competitors before Sega fell out of the hardware business.

As a character, Sonic is well-known for brash youthfulness and speed... lots of

speed. But, as one plays any of Sonic's titles on the Genesis, one may find that Sonic is about much more than running fast and liberating forest creatures; Sonic games were based on patient platforming that sometimes required accurate, well-timed jumps and careful navigation through some tricky and frustrating zones. That said, Sonic games were also about kinetic fun, as any fan of the Casino Zone of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 may attest.

Over time, Sonic was joined by numerous characters, the two most notable of

which are Tails and Knuckles. Tails is the two-tailed fox with the uncanny ability of using his tails as helicopter-like rotors to fly; and Knuckles is a red-haired echidna with spiky knuckles and the ability to glide. There are also a host of other characters that I won't mention here, but I must give a shout-out to Dr. Robotnik, who was often responsible for all the mayhem in the Sonic games.

To date, Sonic has endured Sega's cessation of hardware production and has gone on to even co-exist with his erstwhile rival Mario in such games as Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii. It's kind of odd seeing Sonic in the same games as Mario, seeing how they were once mascots pitted against each other. In a way, it was a sad day for Sega when production on the Dreamcast was halted -- it was the end of an age...

You might be asking, "How could Sonic be number 2?" Wait for the final installment to find out!