The Wii's death marks the end of an era

[Sinue_v2]

A "true" gaming system, in my humble fucking opinion, is a completely dedicated gaming system. It's not a multimedia device, it's not an external social hub. An internet connection shouldn't be necessary to fully enjoy the system.

So, in your opinion, a PC could never be a "true" gaming platform? So despite all of the hardware pushes it's spearheaded, all of the great innovative franchises that started there, and all of the potential it has for user-mods and homebrew, and even the fact that it's home to entire genres of games that just aren't viable on consoles... it can never be a "true" gaming system?

And if it can, in addition to being a work/internet/social/media machine... why wouldn't that also apply to consoles?

I just want to buy the console, buy the games and then play the games. No muss, no fuss.

How is anybody, or any of the extra features, stopping you from doing this? I know plenty of people who have 360's and PS3's, but don't have internet connections. They do just fine.

I think the console was a definite miss in gaming due to the over-abundance of shovel-ware and lack of good 3rd party titles

So, it being a "true" console didn't much help the Wii when it came to quality control or getting decent games on the system? I see...


I'm going to come right out and say this, and it might end up being even less popular than what you're saying, but classic games sucked ass. That's right. It was fucking horrible. Yeah, I'm not talking about your Street Fighters, Contras, Super Mario Worlds, or any of that shit. I'm talking about the vast majority of titles that were released at the time... the mode of this particular distribution. They were largely samey platformers, racers, and shooters who's sole differentiation was a "gimmick". Sonic ran fast, K. Chameleon could change outfits, Decap threw his head, Bubsy was... annoying. And by and large they controlled like goddamned bricks. Part of the issue was that gaming as a medium was still very young - and the technology to do anything really different just wasn't there. Even the "experts" didn't really know what they were doing yet. The PC end of the spectrum had far more innovative and competent titles thanks the expanded horsepower, better input devices, not being seen by the public as a children's toy, and because developers weren't tied directly to any particular hardware manufacturers for approval to publish. But holy shit ball, the situation was even worse there due to the avalanches of shovelware so dense it would make the Wii's library blush.

And the best part of all this is... at the time, you had no idea what you were getting into when you bought a game! It was a crap-shoot at a $60~80 table every time you went into a game store. Now we can download demos, watch gameplay videos, and have access to a wealth of information on a game before we purchase. Back then, at best, you had a small selection of titles you could rent from your local video shop - though you may have had to wait a few weeks for the serendipity of fortune to have it be in stock when you visited the store. At worst, you had to rely on a short blurb from some anonymous jackass in a gaming magazine, who's goal is to sell you games and make the sponsor platform look awesome (see: bias as fuck). Yeah, you had shareware on the PC end, but shareware tended to be rather crap-centric and downloading a 3MB file over a 2400 baud dial-up modem made it... somewhat prohibitive. Especially when at any moment in your 6 hour download the phone could get disconnected and you'd have to spend the next 3 hours fighting for a free node on the BBS so you could start all over again from the beginning.

We are WAAAY better off this generation. The titles are more diverse and innovative, they're much longer (a better value for your half-a-Grant investment), and we have access to demos, metareviews, breakdowns, and wikis - on our consoles - to fully inform our purchases beforehand. Plus, when that's all done, I can relax by streaming some of the nastiest Brazilian porn to my TV. "Pure gaming" be damned... how is that not awesome (unless you're a parent)?

Look, I grew up in the time period you're talking about. I'm nostalgic as hell for those times, and I still play a TON of them on Emulators/Dos-Box. Shit, just look at my Profile title. The only way I could be more hardcore into old games is if I were the CGA Warrior. But in every objective standard, you're full of shit... and we're way better off now with our "multimedia set-top boxes" than we were with "traditional" consoles.

Also: This is just an evolution of a trend that has been going on for a long, long, long time.

Spoiler!

[Palle]

SEGA Channel Christmas was the best Christmas hands down. There was no way for my parents to top that, ever again.

[Mike]

SEGA Channel Christmas was the best Christmas hands down. There was no way for my parents to top that, ever again.

I totally wanted the Sega channel but they didn't offer the service where I was growing up.

[steamcat89]

First off, what the hell? I didn't post this topic so a bunch of internet jockeys could rip me to shreds, this isn't supposed to be about me. Either way though, for most of us here, those retro consoles with the silly cartridges and no online play were what hooked us on gaming initially, and there's a reason you liked the old games. Those reasons still exist today, they haven't changed. You have. So if calling me nostalgic is what helps you sleep at night, so be it, but don't say that my gaming opinion is irrelevant because I have a fonder view of classic gaming than I do of the countless AAA rehashes you get on current systems.

tell em like it is meow



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[blace]

tell em like it is meow



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No need to bump posts longer than a month old.