I like to consider myself as an O.G., an Old-school Gamer. I like the feel of the game play. Minimal buttons, simple control, and that subtle nostalgic feeling that I get reliving my childhood over and over again. Such a great feeling versus the same old polished pieces of crap that seems to be put out in the industry. And by that I mean for you to just think real hard and find a game within the past 18 months (hell, the past 36 months even) an original title that was good. I bet you that it will be less than 10 or so out of the 100's that are being cranked out for the herd that buys them out of the pure aspect of the title that it's trying to carry.
Now don't get me wrong, I like the new stuff, some of it at least. I give credit where credit's due. Little Big Planet and Wii Sports for example are great original titles (well, original title and technical demo on how to use a controller) and the fundamentals of it are phenomenal. But when I see a rehash of Metal of Honor or yet another Madden title, the ball falls short in my book. They seem so uninspired, so safe, closed to the cuff, and they know that it will play to those who don't want to stray from their precious safety bubble. I at least try to get out of that and look for stuff off the beaten path.
But I guess early video games have traveled the then unclaimed frontier and yet my bias towards that is where my allegiance will lie. Of course after the video game crash of 1983 what bold new outlook came into the picture? An 8-bit sprite of a plumber that ate mushrooms and stomped on killer turtle looking creatures to defeat a fire-breathing, badly drawn dragon to save a princess and her kingdom of toadstools; and it was good. And that brought forth a gauntlet of other games to peoples homes to play and kick butt in. And it brought forth competition from other manufacturers to overtake it's throne and the rest is history, video game history, and I'm proud to have had a part in it as well as being a product of it.
That resurgence of such brought back life to the culture that is what it is today. But we have lost track of such. Now it seems that creativity has taken a backseat to greed and demand for more of the same old lame old. Very little forward motion is happening and I fear that video games are not in the foreseeable future but will decline to a crashing halt.
We need to get back to our roots. Just the other day I went and bought out my old NES to play Wizard and Warriors for a couple of reasons. One was nostalgia and the fact that it was not available for download on the Wii Channel. Two was because I needed something other than the majority of the crap that is out in the market today. Three, well it didn't occur to me but after the fact it was the motivation of making this post trying to find my video game identity again. I was really in it, working on the game for about an hour and a half, on the last stage, and then my kids were playing in the living room as well and bumped into my console (probably a good time to mention that my NES was a top loader model) and glitched my game. Those types of games did not have save spots because it relied on a simple concept of replayability. It brought you back again and again even if you've beaten it to try and do it again. Of course I was mad that my work was lost and I had to start over again, but the fact of the matter is that I would happily start over again because of that factor. Games nowadays don't have that. They're practically disposable and you sell them or trade them in for other pieces of crap.
The fact of the matter is that we need games. Good games. Original games that us O.G.'s can pick up and cherish for a long time. Until next time, I'm gonna play me some Ocarina of Time that I just downloaded on my Wii.
(How funny, I just caught the irony of an old-school gamer playing Ocarina of time.)
BootLeG sampler.. siging out...
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