gaming

[Directionless]

partcularly directed towards the convo in one-liners (didn't want to completely hijack the one-liners) hehe

you know the cliche 'hard to teach an old dog new tricks'. well I started gaming on 2600 & Intellevision. At some point my appeal for newer games started to dwindle exponentially.

my personal apex was 16-bit era (in my mid teens). It just can't (and won't) get any better for me, because of the euphoric memories locked in that timeline. i realize this is a factor of linear progressive existence more than anything else. but 2D 16-bit days were pretty damn cool also, so it just makes it that much harder to move past.

getting old sucks in this respect. some people are more adaptive than others. i'm not so much.

also, my old-time stubborness is directly mostly towards console gaming. in the PC world, I'm a lot more open-minded to what's new. Particularly because multi-player FPS games is where it's at, and doing this on a console totally BLOWS!

Like playing multi-player Halo on an X-box with a gamepad and 4-way split screen VS a mouse and keyboard and your own monitor? No contest.

I hope that much of this is just a 'new old guy' phase and that I will experience some kind of personal renaissance in years to come. hehehe... in the meantime, keep those good game suggestions coming!

[Sonicade]

Jumping from generation to generation is hard because the entire environment changes. All those people behind the games we all loved on SNES and Genesis are not necessarily the same people making games for Playstation, Xbox, PS2, Xbox 360, Wii, PS3. The technology changes, the people change and the way they make games changes so you have to completely rediscover entirely new experiences.

I have a bit of that syndrome myself, to this day I was never able to get into the Nintendo 64. The 3D just seemed so plain & flat to me but some people still hail Mario 64 the best Mario game so far apparently.

I think in our nostalgic recollections of all our favorite NES and SNES games-that gave us such good times, we tend to forget that there were a lot of crap games for NES and SNES that we never played (and would never buy). I think the same holds true for next generation console games in that there are a lot of crap games and a few really cool ones which you have to discover and try to start appreciating them.

My two cents!

Some fun games for consoles:

Rez (PS2) - Amazing music based game!
God of War (PS2) - Over the top adventure game!
Guitar Hero 3 (PS2+) - Surprisingly addictive!
Katamari Damacy (PS2) - This looks really cool, I want to try it!

[Directionless]

Jumping from generation to generation is hard because the entire environment changes. All those people behind the games we all loved on SNES and Genesis are not necessarily the same people making games for Playstation, Xbox, PS2, Xbox 360, Wii, PS3. The technology changes, the people change and the way they make games changes so you have to completely rediscover entirely new experiences.

I have a bit of that syndrome myself, to this day I was never able to get into the Nintendo 64. The 3D just seemed so plain & flat to me but some people still hail Mario 64 the best Mario game so far apparently.

I think in our nostalgic recollections of all our favorite NES and SNES games-that gave us such good times, we tend to forget that there were a lot of crap games for NES and SNES that we never played (and would never buy). I think the same holds true for next generation console games in that there are a lot of crap games and a few really cool ones which you have to discover and try to start appreciating them.

My two cents!

Some fun games for consoles:

Rez (PS2) - Amazing music based game!
God of War (PS2) - Over the top adventure game!
Guitar Hero 3 (PS2+) - Surprisingly addictive!
Katamari Damacy (PS2) - This looks really cool, I want to try it!

Yeah that's a valid 'flip-side' perspective. I think excessive nostalgia can also be a subconscious product of an unhealthy need to control one's environment. This reason at least resonates strong with my particular set of issues.

And as for those (speaking of subconscious feigned-subversion to control over changes haha) I'm closed-minded to music games, since i make music.

I've played God of War at a friend's house. Seemed pretty cool from what I played. For some of the potential gems like this, i'll either wait for PS2 emulation in years to come, or a strong PC version.

Katamari Damacy does look interesting and possibly really fun. Seems that i'd prefer using WASD and mouse for this.

About your nostalgic recollections remark about lots of the games being crap: yeah. I emulate fairly regularly. I'm not so focused on the shitty games but aware they exist and all was not some perfect dream. hehe

[Directionless]

I have a bit of that syndrome myself, to this day I was never able to get into the Nintendo 64. The 3D just seemed so plain & flat to me but some people still hail Mario 64 the best Mario game so far apparently.

forgot to respond to this.

Yeah I can relate to that. not only because of the bland 3D, but also despite its revolutionary design for the time, the n64 analog stick was far from ideal.

i've actually been able to go back and enjoy some of the better titles for the first time. using emulation the graphics are actually pretty superior to the original n64 play. plus you can reassign to mouse and keyboard, or at least use a better analog controller.

[organic io]

me too on not liking the 64. at the time when it came out, i was heavily into pc gaming. Quake was going strong, and so was Descent, so i didn't have much interest in the new consoles at the time.
i downloaded a bunch of 64 roms about a year ago and i tried to test a lot of them out to see what kind of games i had been missing out on, and my feeling was largely the same as Sonicade's -- something about the untextured polygons makes me a little bit depressed for some reason. it puts me in this odd headspace, like i can feel the limitations of the gameworld pressing down on me. don't know how to explain it exactly, but it's very melancholy
oddly enough though, i never get this feeling with 2d games, no matter how simplistic their graphics are.

also strangely, i don't get this feeling with Alpha Waves
which is one of my favourite games for PC

i definitely love the 16 bit generation and use emulators quite frequently. i went through the entire snes and genesis libraries, loading up every single game and wrote down which ones i thought would be worth playing. indeed, there is a lot of crap, but there are a couple of undiscovered gems too, and many classics.

i've recently been discovering the joy of the 32 bit generation, there are a couple of oldschool platformers, and the 2.5D games like Klonoa and pandemonium, that are pretty good.

but my main gaming interest over the past 4 months or so has been 2d scrolling shoot-em-ups - "shmups" for short. there are a wealth of these for arcade, console, and PC. the challenge in them is not to feed them credits until you get to the end, but practice them and limit yourself to only 1 credit, or a few credits, until you get better and better and you are finally able to beat the game with 1 credit. so far i have only done this with a few of the freeware ones for PC.

most of my favourites are from a company called Cave, which pretty much exclusively makes "Manic" or bullet hell shooters. here are some of the ones that work fullspeed in emulators on PC:

DoDonpachi -
this game is solid & fun, very well thought out and insanely fun bullet patterns on the bosses. when you tap the fire button, you shoot regular quick bursts of bullets, and when you hold it, it shoots a powerful laser, but your ship moves slower. many games have emulated this technique but it is Cave who originated it

Guwange -
Set in feudal japan, this game is a little slower paced than Dodonpachi, but no less hard. you have a secondary fire which guides a "ghost" type thing around the screen and beats the crap out of people

Esp Ra.de.
In Esp Ra.de. you control a group of teenagers with psychic powers. this has some super cool bullet patterns and a secodary weapon system which i haven't really figured out yet.

Dangun Feveron
This game is incredibly fast, all the bullets are moving at 1 million miles per hour, making it much more about reflexes than tight bullet navigation. very hectic & fun, although the music and graphics sometimes are kinda WTF... (it has a disco theme)

then, there are some very very high quality PC shmups as well...

Warning Forever
This game is incredibly addictive. It is all boss fights. every time you beat it, it "evolves" and makes itself tougher in order to mess you up. i.e. if it kills you with a certain type of weapon, when it comes back it will have more of that type of weapon.

Blue wish Resurrection
this is pretty much one of the most polished PC shmups out there, insane manic style similar to a Cave game, but it's got its own flavor as well. great bullet patterns and boss fights

and of course there are lots of shmups on Dreamcast, my favourite being:

Under Defeat
great helicopter game where you don't have weapon powerups, you just have to make sure to charge and use the ship's option all the time. you can also aim left and right at an angle. this might be the one i've played the most (close to 10 hours)
best thing about this is it runs fullspeed in NullDC, i don't even have a dreamcast

there's tons more that are great, but these are just some of my favourites

they're fun because they are challenging. a lot of the fun comes from feeling like a hero when you manage to skillfully survive a bullet storm and you're like "how the hell did i do that?" ... and of course, when you get better at a game and you can gauge your progress and see that now you can get to level 5 instead of level 2 on the first credit, it's a great feeling

[hseiken]

I'm 28 and I do feel there's a trend generally towards game types I don't like. I.E. "I can do whatever the fuck I want in this world" type games like GTA and such. I'm an arcade junkie, so I tend to like jump-in jump-out type games. FPS kind of fall into this catagory, but not often. Usually deathmatch is preferred, assuming that all parties are of equal skill level.

Also, I REALLY love games that have the oldskool mentality of exploring something new. Katamari Damacy is a good example of this type of game that just goes oddball for no other reason than it can. Many old games did this, some hits some misses, but they were mostly experimental, and very abstract. I love this kind of game the most. Currently, Geometry Wars is my favorite game.

However, I do own a Wii (bought it this week) because it has much potential to have new experiences in games. The controlpad is now cliche, and sadly, I don't think the real joystick has been fully explored, nor has 2D. But one must accept changes. I think the Wii is the system that will redefine games from here on out. If you look at history, Nintendo has constantly created standards for controlling gameplay:

The control pad: Origin - NES
Shoulder Buttons: Origin - SUPER NES
Analog Sticks: Origin - N64
Vibration Feedback: Origin - N64
Touch Screen: Origin - Nintendo DS (this one is coming more into play on newer cellphones, but wasn't so promininent until DS)
and what's next? The mother fucking WII motion sensitive controllers. Hell, Sony knew what was up and put in a shitty, watered down version in PS3 controllers at the last minute. They saw the trend Nintendo constantly sets. So I think the Wii has the potential to blow the lid off of involving, but simplistic and abstract gameplay. Games like Wii Sports and Wii Play are sort of 'dude, we didn't even try to make innovative games, but they're still innovative...c'mon, 1 up us already!"

Right now, I'm deep into Zelda: Twighlight Princess mostly because of the way the game is controlled (though the story doesn't hurt as does the action and feeling frantic as you shake your controllers around and such).

Wii is on top not because of price, I think. It's on top because it shows gamers that there is life beyond accepted standards. Standards is a synonym of OLD. Games that embrace standards and take new directions on them are fine by me..but as far as modern games, most stink unless there's a good twist to gameplay. Wii adds that naturally without even trying.

[Directionless]

great analysis. provides hope, that only seems fitting for Nintendo to deliver.

Part of my fascination with older games is re-discovery.

[Sonicade]

Directionless:
I hope I didn't come off as sounding pretentious. I was basically trying to sum up the difference between how games were made back in the day and how they are made now. I don't think it's unhealthy at all to be nostalgic about 'the classics', I am nostalgic for them myself.
I can't say im pleased with the general direction modern games. Still there are some good ones despite all the lame ones. If not Guitar Hero I would check out Rez, it's a trip!

Rediscovering the classics is great fun, I'm almost ready to do it again!

Djio:
Shmups rule! They should really keep that genre alive by combining cool 3d elements. Theres a cool site about developing shmups at http://www.shmup-dev.com/.

[Directionless]

Directionless:
I hope I didn't come off as sounding pretentious.

You didn't at all.

I love video games. It's just hard for me to understand some of the trend. I still miss Sega. :'(

The WII I have at least played - WII sports tennis - and indeed it was a revolutionary experience of gameplay.

[Sonicade]

Cool, yeah it seems like Sega has been so quiet and the poor Dreamcast didn't make it.

[hseiken]

BTW, how come the SHMUP list completely neglected Kenta Cho/ABA games killer bullet hell titles? Hell, he even has CAVE style mechanics as 'extra' modes on a few of his games (so I understand...I don't think I've played a CAVE game). Also, there's a really neat one he did which is like a cross between the concept of Katamari Damacy and a shmup called "Tokimeki Fighters" or something to that extent. Essentially, ANYTHING you kill will start to spin out of control off the screen. You can then 'stick' it to your ship (however it's facing when you touch it is how it sticks to you) for more firepower (even miniboss-ish ships with nutzoid fire-patterns can be stuck to your dinky little plane!). The extra ships do add 'bulk' to your fighter and you can either choose to use them as a shield from bullets, at which point the 'stuck' ship will explode but you'll be fine, or you can use a button to retract them to keep that awesome firepatterned-ship you caught to use against the boss. As well, there's a point system that awards you for keeping all your collected junk-ships exposed for lengthy periods. The longer you leave them out without retracting them to 'save' them, the bigger the award, which is given every second they are out.

Sweet game.

He also has a Robotron/Geometry Wars esque game called "Gunroar" which uses dual analog. There's also a two player version where both your ships are connected together by a 'string' type thing and a gun is in the middle and points perpindicular to the string. Unlike Robotron and Geometry Wars, though, you do have forward progression like a traditional shooter, but you control the pace, somewhat. There's also bosses. As well, it's got really neat abstract graphics for the water/islands (you play as a gun boat fighting other ships) which I don't think I've seen before, consisting of hundreds of transparent squares layered to achieve the desired effects and 'suggestions' of the background.

There's also another homebrew japanese shooter that I forget the name (Is it Z-LOCK?) of that has a mechanic where you can see enemies targets coming toward you. When they lock onto your ship, your firepower increases. So basically, waiting until the 'last second' to shoot becomes priority since your gun relies on enemies 'spotting' you. There's a secondary button that sucks all the targets to you instantly for a huge spray of bullets.

THEN there was another game of which I forgot the name to, but it was by the guy who did Warning Forever and it had fighting game-ish maneuvers to launch secondary attacks (i.e. up, down, up, fire = bomb and such). As well, each enemy is one of several colors. The more of each color you destroy successively, the more the gun corresponding to that color you posses powers up exponentially...i.e. if theres a mix of red and blue guys, kill all of the red guys first then all of the blue guys, or else your gun won't power up that much. Adds an extra element to the game that is somehow satisfying. Unfortunately, there's only one level, but it's nice and hard and definitely requires you to maximize on the the game mechanics to be successful.

And for those who like TEMPEST, Kenta Cho did a 'version' of it (slightly crossed with STUN RUNNER and such games) called TORUS TROOPER. In it, you fly at *CRAZY SPEEDS* down twisting tunnels. The faster you go, the more your bullets spray. A charge shot slows you down while charging, but you get multiplied points for destroying many enemies and bullets with one shot.

My personal favorite, though, of Kenta Cho games isn't a shmup, funnily enough, though...it's AX7PG, a strange freeform packman game with nice demo-scene-ish graphics...it's probably the closest a raster monitor will come to looking like a true vector monitor. At any rate, you fly a little green ship trying to collect gold nuggets. You can thrust faster for a short time. The faster you are going when you collect gold nuggets, the more 'energy' you get from them. When your energy is full, you become a fire that can destroy enemies. As well, your thrust coming out of your ship can push enemies away from the gold if you need to get there and an enemy just won't leave. Also, it's got KILLER music (actually, all his games have kick ass soundtracks).

Hopefully, this post doesn't regurgitate what everyone already knows, but I didn't see these mentioned, so I thought I'd throw them out there for the shmup guy and others interested in challenges that are rewarding when successfully conquered.

[Sonicade]

Dude Torus Trooper is fuqin awesome! I came across that game randomly and was really impressed. I'll check out AX7PG!

For all this talk of console games I'm actually a PC Gamer at heart. What are some of everyone's favorites, old or new?

Lately I've been playing:

Oblivion - Best rpg for the PC yet imho. I've been playing this one for months. The world is huge and the dialog, characters and game engine are really well designed.

Unreal Tournament 3 - Incredible visuals and music, gameplay is solid and fun if not ground breaking or new. Feels like UT2004 with new levels and beautiful graphics.

Guitar Hero 3 - For PC! I love music of all genres and this game really makes it fun to play along with rock songs. You know your not playing a real guitar and yet it's still fun to play. It's especially fun with other people so you wanna practice on your own.

Crysis - Same old FPS routine but very impressive interactive world physics and environment)

Supreme Commander - A resource (cpu, memory, etc) intensive large scale RTS! If anyone played Total Annihilation, this is the successor and it's pretty awesome. There were a number of complaints about the AI especially and they came out with an expansion (Forged Alliance) to address those but I still prefer the original version.

Command & Conquer 3 - Pretty fun latest installment of the C&C games. Not as resource intensive of Supreme Commander which makes single and multiplayer games easier to play.

Hitman Blood Money - Haven't played this for awhile but really enjoyed it a lot. If playing an assassin sounds appealing this game delivers pretty well.

[organic io]

THEN there was another game of which I forgot the name to, but it was by the guy who did Warning Forever and it had fighting game-ish maneuvers to launch secondary attacks (i.e. up, down, up, fire = bomb and such). As well, each enemy is one of several colors. The more of each color you destroy successively, the more the gun corresponding to that color you posses powers up exponentially...i.e. if theres a mix of red and blue guys, kill all of the red guys first then all of the blue guys, or else your gun won't power up that much. Adds an extra element to the game that is somehow satisfying. Unfortunately, there's only one level, but it's nice and hard and definitely requires you to maximize on the the game mechanics to be successful.

i really wanted to like this game, except i hate memorizing button combos like in fighting games, plus yeah there is only the one level. i wasn't sure about that, i thought maybe since i didn't do very well, i didn't graduate to the next level

i didn't mention Kenta Cho because even though i do like some of his work (rrootage, noiz2sa), especially because they are some of the only manics you can play on PSP, it's not really of the same calibre as the ones i've listed.

you said you haven't tried a Cave game yet , PLEASE go download Dodonpachi and MAME

[aGIANTpupafish]

it's all about continuum: http://subspace.legendzones.com/

(i'm obsessed )

[organic io]

Oblivion - Best rpg for the PC yet imho. I've been playing this one for months. The world is huge and the dialog, characters and game engine are really well designed.

Yeah I'm reinstalling this and Shivering Isles as I type. I've been on a 6 month sabattical on shmup games but I'm ready to get back into some more in depth stuff on pc