I found this article interesting and it touches on some of the topics we had talked about in this thread.

Quote:Child's Play

Donkey Kong is "lame." Tetris is "boring." Space Invaders "needs a superbomb or something." And why play Pong when it's more fun to "jump up and down on one foot"? Hey, save your irate letters--we didn't say this stuff. The nostalgia-nuking commentary is from our original Child's Play story in EGM's November 2003 issue, in which we had kids of the PlayStation generation playtest classic games from the '70s and '80s. Mortified gaming grown-ups wrote in to call it blasphemy--and call these outspoken scamps a name that rhymes with "brittle truckers."

I loved this comment.

Quote:This is like Pong. Everybody thought it was amazing and good, but now we're just thinking, "Oh, it's only a good loading screen for Test Drive."

Quote:EGM: Before this came out in compilations, we used to put quarters in arcade machines.

Parker: You wasted quarters in this?

EGM: Yeah.

Parker: That's so sad.

Quote:EGM: Now imagine you've reached the 10th stage, and you're on your last life. Once you die and you put another quarter in, you don't just continue from there-you start all over.

Parker: Are you serious?

EGM: Yup. When you lose all your lives, you have to start over. You don't keep going.

Parker: And you guys back then were OK with this?

i play mspacman at work. and even tho its set to free and unlimited play, its still hard as fuck to beat, i can only get to the 4th set of levels after the second cut scene

I sincerely hope that DQ stays around for a much longer time. I have only played a few of the instalments, more accuratley 1, 2, 3, and 8, and all of them(except for DQ8, which I've only played for a few minutes) remain in my top ten favorite video games. I also disagree that they are all same, however basically. For example, the gameplay in Dragon Warrior 3 was much different from one and two, and even though I only played DQ8 for 5 minutes, I've watched my friend play, and the gameplay seemed alot, and I do mean alot, and in many ways, different from the three originals. So the gameplay and style of the game do differ from one another, and it is ignorant to say other wise. Now I could post all the changes and differences from each game, but I won't. And for those who disagree, I think you need to think again.

Sincerely,
Annoyer

Quote:Original post by tstrimp
I found this article interesting and it touches on some of the topics we had talked about in this thread.

After reading it, it just shows to me that they are young.

Quote:
Dillon: And to think 20 years from now, people are going to think, "Oh, you're playing [GameCube Zelda game] Wind Waker? That's boring."
EGM: What are you going to say when your kids say Wind Waker looks boring?

Parker: Get out of my house. You're out of my will.

EGM: Don't you use your imagination right now to imagine that's a warrior running around?

Garret: No. It's hard to make the comparison.

Bobby: He gets eaten by evil ducks. Or "dragons." How could you think he's a warrior.

Rachel: It's hard to make comparison between a little dot and then jumping to Zelda and the new and improved games.

Quote:
Parker: It looks like midway through the game, they just gave up. They're like, whatever, and just stopped.
Bobby: I'm not afraid of these, because I could just stick my hand through one and chop it in half.

Garret: There's no depth perception to this game.

Parker: It looks like something off Kid Pix.

EGM: What's that?

Parker: Every school has it. It's a drawing program.

Quote:
Bobby: I've played this on my cell phone.

OK, my gawd, why are 10 year olds getting cell phones?

Quote:
EGM: What does this game need to make it as good as Space Invaders?

Parker: Worse graphics.

Quote:
Parker: These graphics are kind of bad.

Quote:
EGM: So if you could add anything you wanted to this game, what would you want?

Anthony: Better graphics. I don't really care about blood or anything.

Quote:
Parker: Did this game do really well?

EGM: Would it surprise you if we told you it did?

Parker: Not really, because it was Atari and was state of the art back then.

Bobby: And because people were stupid and like addictive games. People were like, "Wow-such good graphics! I mean, they got a dot with a key. Woooh!"

Now, as I've previously stated, I don't think anyone will argue about the graphics or sound, but little of the article covered gameplay, outside of the part where enemies gaining health if they hit you was unfair, having no map in Zelda was unfair, dieing and restarting from the beginning was unfair, etc.

And after reading a few more sites on the upcoming Dragon Quest, I've been hearing about how it's going to be a short game because of the limited space of the DS card. This is something that bugs me about BluRay and DVD comparisons with the XBox 360 and PS3. A megabyte is 1048576 bytes. The DS can hold 128 megabytes. Final Fantasy 6 for the SNES was on a 3 megabyte cartridge, 3!!! Games themselves don't take up that much space if you take out all the FMV and full sound.

I guess I just love nostalgia too much. Honestly, I hate 3D. Seriously, I think 3D graphics look horrible at best. I go to movies, and I see very bad CGI. Yes, I'd rather have computer graphics than the cheap claymation they use to use, but when I watch a movie, I want to see a movie. I think the George Lucas style movie is completely against good cinema (ie: adding computer graphics to the background where no computer graphics are needed, just because he wants to add computer graphics to every scene). I think having 3D graphics in games for the sake of 3D graphics is bad.

I guess I must be in the niche gaming crowd, because when I play a game, I want to play a game. I want to have fun. Yes, I don't like the later Final Fantasys. I think they're heavily overrated bad stories that contain battles to add time between the unnecessary cut scenes. I see people playing World of Warcraft even though they don't find it fun anymore, and hate grinding. I see little kids playing sports and their parents pushing them and yelling at them and other things.

tstrimp, this isn't directed at you, just a rant of mine in general.

As I've stated before, Dragon Quest makes no excuse for what it is. I like the gameplay of Dragon Quest. To me it's fun. If people choose not to play it due to old graphics or sound, don't claim that it's because of gameplay. And if you don't like the gameplay, don't state how another game with similar gameplay, but better graphics and sound, is a good game. I honestly don't think people play games for fun. Now, I'm not going to be naive and say games back then were so much better than now. Every generation has 95% stinkers and 5% good games. But the games with the gameplay that I preferred (I'm a very big adventure game fan) did exist back then and not today. And I'm personally glad that a series I did enjoy (DQ) is still coming back.

Quote:Original post by Nytegard
And after reading a few more sites on the upcoming Dragon Quest, I've been hearing about how it's going to be a short game because of the limited space of the DS card. This is something that bugs me about BluRay and DVD comparisons with the XBox 360 and PS3. A megabyte is 1048576 bytes. The DS can hold 128 megabytes. Final Fantasy 6 for the SNES was on a 3 megabyte cartridge, 3!!! Games themselves don't take up that much space if you take out all the FMV and full sound.

Seriously? I thought SNES games were typically in the 16 to 32 meg range. Genesis stuff certainly got up there (eventually), unless I'm completely imagining things. And I'd expect an FF game to be on the upper end of the scale. Somehow I can't imagine FF6 as smaller than... well, practically everything for GBA. x.x

Quote:Yes, I don't like the later Final Fantasys. I think they're heavily overrated bad stories that contain battles to add time between the unnecessary cut scenes. I see people playing World of Warcraft even though they don't find it fun anymore, and hate grinding. I see little kids playing sports and their parents pushing them and yelling at them and other things.

QFMFE.

Quote:Original post by Zahlman
Seriously? I thought SNES games were typically in the 16 to 32 meg range. Genesis stuff certainly got up there (eventually), unless I'm completely imagining things. And I'd expect an FF game to be on the upper end of the scale. Somehow I can't imagine FF6 as smaller than... well, practically everything for GBA. x.x

Yep. This was a big issue of the ongoing PC vs Console debate long ago, before the days of BluRay, DVD's, and CD's!!! Companies used the bit size of the game instead of the byte size of the game for advertising purposes. After all, when selling games, which sounds better? This game is 3 megabytes! Or: This game is 24 megabits!

But as I understand, the GBA still advertizes in bits, not bytes, so it may not necessarily be smaller than every GBA game. But many of the games I've seen for the GBA are 32 megabit or bigger, so yes, FF6 is smaller than those. The Nintendo DS can hold up to 1 gigabit of information (128 megabytes), so it could theoretically hold FF6 42 times on a single card.

Yes, I agree, it is hard to imagine that such a game could be held in so little space, but it did :) All this on a 3.58MHz processor. The same processor used as the Apple ][ GS.

Granted, there is a lot of compression, but you have to give these developers some credit. Some of the tricks the developers used today are extremely clever to get more speed, more data, more colours, etc. (Example is Loom, which only uses 16 colours, but due to graphic tricks, manages to display more). Fortunately, computers have gotten to the point we don't need to use such tricks, but at the same time, some of the computer wizardry that use to exist has died imho.

Heck, I think my release version of Hello World compiled by Visual Studio is larger than the original Super Mario Bros.

Quote:Original post by JBourrie
I thought again. I still don't agree with you.

Obviously there are cosmetic differences... a 3D world vs a 2D world, automatic use of stairs vs choosing "Stairs" from a menu... but the core gameplay has not changed: the battle system. Yes, it gets more refined but it is still the same battle system that has been used since the first game. That's ok, Final Fantasy did the same thing with 4-9, because it worked.

Now the battle system, the core gameplay, is changing. And of course the purists are up in arms, but Final Fantasy XII pulled it off with amazing results. That's why I say to give DQ9 a chance.

Battle systems can be very different within the context of the same sort of turn-based structure, actually.

Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to DQ9. I have faith in Horii.