I know there was a time probably not too long ago that I figured that everything concerning the "golden age" of video games which incidentally was last year rather than the late 80s like everyone seems to think. Also, of course there is some evidence that the Dreamcast was truly the greatest console EVER even though it sold horribly and had around 5 good games over it's WHOLE life span. All of this I considered normal and no big deal. But there doesn't seem to be any end in sight.
I knew when I began to write this article that there were probably going to be hundreds of Nintendo fanboys waiting to get to the end of this article to flame me until I'm literally on fire. But please folks, I'm SO TIRED of Nintendo and EVERYONE else who seems to be SO LAZY that they can't come up with a new franchise so they just recycle every franchise from that era. Wanna play some nostalgic games here, play all day man.
Now, there seems to be a giddy exuberance in the professional journalism community about Punch Out which seems to be a literal recycle of the original game with few additions which includes the tacking on of the Wii controls. Wow, what fun! If they called it Wii boxing and had the main character be named, "Fred." Not only would it get NO PRESS but it would be destroyed by professional reviewers. It's a very one dimensional game and this is just the latest evidence of Nintendo going back to the catalog. Everyone seems very happy when they do this, but quite frankly I couldn't care less. Because folks, I'm old. I started playing video games back in Atari 2600 days when the console had fewer pixels available than my current $100 cellphone.
So all these games are great, but by the time I was playing them for the most part my childhood exuberance was pretty much for arcade fighters and to me most of e Nintendo faire were in fact, kids games.
Everyone seems so thrilled about old games being "updated" for the new consoles. Well, these games for the most part aren't bad and the nostalgia factor might have actually drawn some money from the publisher. But really, what the heck is point of some of this. Space Invaders Extreme bares practically no resemblance to the original.
I certainly love games like Pac-Man Championship and certainly the aforementioned Space Invaders Extreme is great but were these games completely necessary to carry the names of their predecessors to be good games. I don't really think so.
Retro games for the most part have been done to death with varying degrees of success but games like Doom, Wolfenstein, or heaven forbid Marathon 2: Durandal? Come on! Seriously? Or my even worse than the aforementioned Frogger 3D! What garbage!
This is has all been done to death and the only reason people buy these games is to, "fondly remember the good old games." And to that I say "WTF?"
Compared to say, last year! What was so good about these games? Pick up and play? Well, so is basketball but no one refers to it as a "good old game." When there are SO MANY original Community Games out there that are getting no funding and no attention it seems that there could be some cash for NEW IP rather than all these HORRIBLE reworkings of games that should have given up the ghost years ago. Worst of all, I was listening to a video game podcast the other day and one of the guys actually was saying he was waiting for the next Sonic game to come out and was upset that there hasn't been one in a while. My reaction was, "WHAT? The last good Sonic game was on the Sega Genesis! I guess your opinion of a good game is really messed up!"
Of course no one is doing good updates like: Killer Insinct, arcade perfect Samurai Showdown, Shinobi, and come on what happened to all those Panzer Dragoon games?
At least these updates would be totally original rather than those done all ready FAR TOO MANY TIMES. Like Sonic for instance. But as I stated above and I stand by this. No matter how fun you THINK the game used to be, if you ACTUALLY go back and play that game. You will NEVER have anywhere near that much fun. It's called experience guys and I don't mean the kind that is collated on a bar. Most times these games were played when you were younger and yes a little dumber than you are now. Which usually means that when you go back to play them, well, something is definitely going to be missing.
Just give it a rest guys, new IPs are ALL WAYS better than old. Now I WILL make one exception to all this STREET FIGHTER IV is THE BEST FIGHTING GAME EVER MADE! But that is the only exception I make to this rule. Just give it up folks. It's not novel or fun any more. I honestly think this was all 2005-2007. The thrill is gone... Please just come to grips with that fact and funnel your money to new IPs or at the very least sequels to new IPs.
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