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I don’t feel I belong here anymore. I haven’t been here for a while and there is a reason for this. I’ve sold my Dreamcast and all its games and have not replaced it with anything – I am completely console-less.
I sold my Dreamcast because I had finished Skies of Arcadia and, despite it being worthy of entry into gaming legend for its sheer greatness on several levels, I had no desire to play through it again. This also, to some extent, applied to several of my other games. Therefore I felt the machine had to go and the money was used as part payment for the laptop I’m using as I write this – something which has been granted much more of my attention than my Dreamcast would have done.
Why have I not bought a PS2? Will I choose to buy an XBox? Or perhaps a GameCube? These are some of the things I’m sure some of you are thinking. The rest have probably stopped reading already because you think this is another infamous ‘console wars’ topic.
Far from it. In fact, if anything, the war is over for me and all three sides seem fatally wounded. Forget exclusive titles, power of hardware, joypad design or whatever else you use to compare them. The fact of the matter is that I just don’t enjoy games like I used to. Correction – I don’t enjoy games in the way I used to. Gone are the days of Mario Kart where myself and a friend could while away hour after hour, week after week on the game and still enjoy each new lap as much as the first. Street Fighter, in all its recent incarnations and crossovers, just doesn’t have the same effect as the first SNES version did on me. Marvel vs Capcom 2, for example, is a truly outstanding game and one which I expected to last beyond the natural life of the system running it, but by the time I’d unlocked all of the 30-odd extra characters I had little interest in using any of them.
Take Zelda: A Link to the Past. Between the SNES version (bought the day of release, no less) and my perfectly emulated one I must have played through it over a dozen times. The same goes for The Secret of Mana. So why was I so reluctant to give Skies of Arcadia a second full play? To tell you the truth I don’t really know.
Go back even further to my C64 days when Clyde Radcliffe and friends in ‘Creatures’ used to be forever found in my tape deck. CD loading times? Pah! You could eat you tea between levels on those days! I’ve played through it dozens of times (cheers to emulators again for adding to that total) and I could happily do so again right now. Caverns of Eriban? Bliss! Anyone remember Maze Craze on the old Atari 2600? That must have wasted as much of my life as Mario Kart has done and I’m not complaining one bit. Tears of laughter have been known to pour down my face as one of us got ‘squelched’ just before watching our opponent race past our paralysed bug to victory. It’s nothing to do with simplicity. Street Fighter 2 is relatively very complex but no worse off for it.
If I’m honest I can see myself eventually buying a GameCube. Not for Mario Sunshine (‘short but sweet’ – that frightens me, and makes me think of ‘have-a-quick-go’ style puzzle games). Not for Zelda (to me, the look of an RPG has a great bearing on how immersed you can become in it and I don’t see how I could immerse myself in a world that looks like a pre-school cartoon, even if it is a superbly animated one). No, the game that looks to be drawing me in is Star Fox Adventures and the prospect of a supposed 100 hours of varied gameplay (most likely exaggerated, but aren’t most estimates like this the same). To me this says ‘non-linear’. To me this says ‘there are loads of bits to miss and find’. To me this says ‘play me again…and again…and several times more’.
But I could be wrong – and one game is no reason to spend £150+ on a new console. I’m confident that there would, in time, be enough superb games on each system to warrant buying any of them. However I’m going to need a lot of convincing. Until that time I’m going to be living in the past and, in doing so, will probably make it even more difficult for me to give the present the appreciation it deserves.
Perhaps the only real casualty in these so called ‘console wars’ is me. Maybe games have changed. Maybe I have changed. Either way, something is not what it was and, largely thanks to emulation, I have been made aware of this all too clearly. I guess there is a lesson to be learned here. Taking a brief nostalgic walk can be great fun for a while, but if you get too involved with how good things used to be, you’ll start to forget how good things are now.
I think I already have.
I sold my Dreamcast because I had finished Skies of Arcadia and, despite it being worthy of entry into gaming legend for its sheer greatness on several levels, I had no desire to play through it again. This also, to some extent, applied to several of my other games. Therefore I felt the machine had to go and the money was used as part payment for the laptop I’m using as I write this – something which has been granted much more of my attention than my Dreamcast would have done.
Why have I not bought a PS2? Will I choose to buy an XBox? Or perhaps a GameCube? These are some of the things I’m sure some of you are thinking. The rest have probably stopped reading already because you think this is another infamous ‘console wars’ topic.
Far from it. In fact, if anything, the war is over for me and all three sides seem fatally wounded. Forget exclusive titles, power of hardware, joypad design or whatever else you use to compare them. The fact of the matter is that I just don’t enjoy games like I used to. Correction – I don’t enjoy games in the way I used to. Gone are the days of Mario Kart where myself and a friend could while away hour after hour, week after week on the game and still enjoy each new lap as much as the first. Street Fighter, in all its recent incarnations and crossovers, just doesn’t have the same effect as the first SNES version did on me. Marvel vs Capcom 2, for example, is a truly outstanding game and one which I expected to last beyond the natural life of the system running it, but by the time I’d unlocked all of the 30-odd extra characters I had little interest in using any of them.
Take Zelda: A Link to the Past. Between the SNES version (bought the day of release, no less) and my perfectly emulated one I must have played through it over a dozen times. The same goes for The Secret of Mana. So why was I so reluctant to give Skies of Arcadia a second full play? To tell you the truth I don’t really know.
Go back even further to my C64 days when Clyde Radcliffe and friends in ‘Creatures’ used to be forever found in my tape deck. CD loading times? Pah! You could eat you tea between levels on those days! I’ve played through it dozens of times (cheers to emulators again for adding to that total) and I could happily do so again right now. Caverns of Eriban? Bliss! Anyone remember Maze Craze on the old Atari 2600? That must have wasted as much of my life as Mario Kart has done and I’m not complaining one bit. Tears of laughter have been known to pour down my face as one of us got ‘squelched’ just before watching our opponent race past our paralysed bug to victory. It’s nothing to do with simplicity. Street Fighter 2 is relatively very complex but no worse off for it.
If I’m honest I can see myself eventually buying a GameCube. Not for Mario Sunshine (‘short but sweet’ – that frightens me, and makes me think of ‘have-a-quick-go’ style puzzle games). Not for Zelda (to me, the look of an RPG has a great bearing on how immersed you can become in it and I don’t see how I could immerse myself in a world that looks like a pre-school cartoon, even if it is a superbly animated one). No, the game that looks to be drawing me in is Star Fox Adventures and the prospect of a supposed 100 hours of varied gameplay (most likely exaggerated, but aren’t most estimates like this the same). To me this says ‘non-linear’. To me this says ‘there are loads of bits to miss and find’. To me this says ‘play me again…and again…and several times more’.
But I could be wrong – and one game is no reason to spend £150+ on a new console. I’m confident that there would, in time, be enough superb games on each system to warrant buying any of them. However I’m going to need a lot of convincing. Until that time I’m going to be living in the past and, in doing so, will probably make it even more difficult for me to give the present the appreciation it deserves.
Perhaps the only real casualty in these so called ‘console wars’ is me. Maybe games have changed. Maybe I have changed. Either way, something is not what it was and, largely thanks to emulation, I have been made aware of this all too clearly. I guess there is a lesson to be learned here. Taking a brief nostalgic walk can be great fun for a while, but if you get too involved with how good things used to be, you’ll start to forget how good things are now.
I think I already have.
Page:
I do have a PC. It's a laptop with little in the way of 3D graphics muscle behind it (although it is a damn fine machine). I do have a couple of (slightly older) PC games. Sadly there's nothing currently out there to interest me that it's capable of running.
Apart from a moderate interest in the occasional RTS game (so long as it's Total Annihilation or Kingdoms) the majority of PC games are too 'serious' for my taste and fall into too few genres for me to consider it as a gaming contender.
Although I agree a PC can be a fine machine for the right sort of person to use for games they just don't offer what I'm looking for.
Apart from a moderate interest in the occasional RTS game (so long as it's Total Annihilation or Kingdoms) the majority of PC games are too 'serious' for my taste and fall into too few genres for me to consider it as a gaming contender.
Although I agree a PC can be a fine machine for the right sort of person to use for games they just don't offer what I'm looking for.
Well do you have a PC? If not I strongly suggest it. There is plenty of choice and when it comes to wanting to replay games there usually isn't time. If I like a game enough to replay it I usually have to wait for one of the occasional lulls in PC games quality. There was one recently and I finally dug out Ultima 9 to see if it would work (to my suprise it did, well done Windows XP) and then played Startopia and Baldur's Gate 2. So with a PC you have high quality games both coming and going and there's more choice than on any console too. Personally I like to have both a console and a PC, which can admittedly be expensive but is worth it for the quick play and multi player console properties and the time investment qualities of the PC. Anyway, I suggest you buy a PC if you haven't got one and with current minimum spec it'll probably last a long time regardless of which you buy. Then buy Return To Castle Wolfenstein for the best FPS ever (until Jedi Knight 2 comes out hopefully), Freespace 2 for the best space combat sim, Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 is possibly the best ever RTS (look out for Warcraft 3), Startopia can be your management sim and don't forget the Baldur's Gate series for RPGs. Or buy an issue or two of PC Gamer (then every one thereafter if all goes well) and this will help you find games which appeal to you.
I don't think there's anyone in the world who isn't catered for by some games somewhere, so go forth and search.
I don't think there's anyone in the world who isn't catered for by some games somewhere, so go forth and search.
If you dont feel then dont come here.
I don’t feel I belong here anymore. I haven’t been here for a while and there is a reason for this. I’ve sold my Dreamcast and all its games and have not replaced it with anything – I am completely console-less.
I sold my Dreamcast because I had finished Skies of Arcadia and, despite it being worthy of entry into gaming legend for its sheer greatness on several levels, I had no desire to play through it again. This also, to some extent, applied to several of my other games. Therefore I felt the machine had to go and the money was used as part payment for the laptop I’m using as I write this – something which has been granted much more of my attention than my Dreamcast would have done.
Why have I not bought a PS2? Will I choose to buy an XBox? Or perhaps a GameCube? These are some of the things I’m sure some of you are thinking. The rest have probably stopped reading already because you think this is another infamous ‘console wars’ topic.
Far from it. In fact, if anything, the war is over for me and all three sides seem fatally wounded. Forget exclusive titles, power of hardware, joypad design or whatever else you use to compare them. The fact of the matter is that I just don’t enjoy games like I used to. Correction – I don’t enjoy games in the way I used to. Gone are the days of Mario Kart where myself and a friend could while away hour after hour, week after week on the game and still enjoy each new lap as much as the first. Street Fighter, in all its recent incarnations and crossovers, just doesn’t have the same effect as the first SNES version did on me. Marvel vs Capcom 2, for example, is a truly outstanding game and one which I expected to last beyond the natural life of the system running it, but by the time I’d unlocked all of the 30-odd extra characters I had little interest in using any of them.
Take Zelda: A Link to the Past. Between the SNES version (bought the day of release, no less) and my perfectly emulated one I must have played through it over a dozen times. The same goes for The Secret of Mana. So why was I so reluctant to give Skies of Arcadia a second full play? To tell you the truth I don’t really know.
Go back even further to my C64 days when Clyde Radcliffe and friends in ‘Creatures’ used to be forever found in my tape deck. CD loading times? Pah! You could eat you tea between levels on those days! I’ve played through it dozens of times (cheers to emulators again for adding to that total) and I could happily do so again right now. Caverns of Eriban? Bliss! Anyone remember Maze Craze on the old Atari 2600? That must have wasted as much of my life as Mario Kart has done and I’m not complaining one bit. Tears of laughter have been known to pour down my face as one of us got ‘squelched’ just before watching our opponent race past our paralysed bug to victory. It’s nothing to do with simplicity. Street Fighter 2 is relatively very complex but no worse off for it.
If I’m honest I can see myself eventually buying a GameCube. Not for Mario Sunshine (‘short but sweet’ – that frightens me, and makes me think of ‘have-a-quick-go’ style puzzle games). Not for Zelda (to me, the look of an RPG has a great bearing on how immersed you can become in it and I don’t see how I could immerse myself in a world that looks like a pre-school cartoon, even if it is a superbly animated one). No, the game that looks to be drawing me in is Star Fox Adventures and the prospect of a supposed 100 hours of varied gameplay (most likely exaggerated, but aren’t most estimates like this the same). To me this says ‘non-linear’. To me this says ‘there are loads of bits to miss and find’. To me this says ‘play me again…and again…and several times more’.
But I could be wrong – and one game is no reason to spend £150+ on a new console. I’m confident that there would, in time, be enough superb games on each system to warrant buying any of them. However I’m going to need a lot of convincing. Until that time I’m going to be living in the past and, in doing so, will probably make it even more difficult for me to give the present the appreciation it deserves.
Perhaps the only real casualty in these so called ‘console wars’ is me. Maybe games have changed. Maybe I have changed. Either way, something is not what it was and, largely thanks to emulation, I have been made aware of this all too clearly. I guess there is a lesson to be learned here. Taking a brief nostalgic walk can be great fun for a while, but if you get too involved with how good things used to be, you’ll start to forget how good things are now.
I think I already have.
I sold my Dreamcast because I had finished Skies of Arcadia and, despite it being worthy of entry into gaming legend for its sheer greatness on several levels, I had no desire to play through it again. This also, to some extent, applied to several of my other games. Therefore I felt the machine had to go and the money was used as part payment for the laptop I’m using as I write this – something which has been granted much more of my attention than my Dreamcast would have done.
Why have I not bought a PS2? Will I choose to buy an XBox? Or perhaps a GameCube? These are some of the things I’m sure some of you are thinking. The rest have probably stopped reading already because you think this is another infamous ‘console wars’ topic.
Far from it. In fact, if anything, the war is over for me and all three sides seem fatally wounded. Forget exclusive titles, power of hardware, joypad design or whatever else you use to compare them. The fact of the matter is that I just don’t enjoy games like I used to. Correction – I don’t enjoy games in the way I used to. Gone are the days of Mario Kart where myself and a friend could while away hour after hour, week after week on the game and still enjoy each new lap as much as the first. Street Fighter, in all its recent incarnations and crossovers, just doesn’t have the same effect as the first SNES version did on me. Marvel vs Capcom 2, for example, is a truly outstanding game and one which I expected to last beyond the natural life of the system running it, but by the time I’d unlocked all of the 30-odd extra characters I had little interest in using any of them.
Take Zelda: A Link to the Past. Between the SNES version (bought the day of release, no less) and my perfectly emulated one I must have played through it over a dozen times. The same goes for The Secret of Mana. So why was I so reluctant to give Skies of Arcadia a second full play? To tell you the truth I don’t really know.
Go back even further to my C64 days when Clyde Radcliffe and friends in ‘Creatures’ used to be forever found in my tape deck. CD loading times? Pah! You could eat you tea between levels on those days! I’ve played through it dozens of times (cheers to emulators again for adding to that total) and I could happily do so again right now. Caverns of Eriban? Bliss! Anyone remember Maze Craze on the old Atari 2600? That must have wasted as much of my life as Mario Kart has done and I’m not complaining one bit. Tears of laughter have been known to pour down my face as one of us got ‘squelched’ just before watching our opponent race past our paralysed bug to victory. It’s nothing to do with simplicity. Street Fighter 2 is relatively very complex but no worse off for it.
If I’m honest I can see myself eventually buying a GameCube. Not for Mario Sunshine (‘short but sweet’ – that frightens me, and makes me think of ‘have-a-quick-go’ style puzzle games). Not for Zelda (to me, the look of an RPG has a great bearing on how immersed you can become in it and I don’t see how I could immerse myself in a world that looks like a pre-school cartoon, even if it is a superbly animated one). No, the game that looks to be drawing me in is Star Fox Adventures and the prospect of a supposed 100 hours of varied gameplay (most likely exaggerated, but aren’t most estimates like this the same). To me this says ‘non-linear’. To me this says ‘there are loads of bits to miss and find’. To me this says ‘play me again…and again…and several times more’.
But I could be wrong – and one game is no reason to spend £150+ on a new console. I’m confident that there would, in time, be enough superb games on each system to warrant buying any of them. However I’m going to need a lot of convincing. Until that time I’m going to be living in the past and, in doing so, will probably make it even more difficult for me to give the present the appreciation it deserves.
Perhaps the only real casualty in these so called ‘console wars’ is me. Maybe games have changed. Maybe I have changed. Either way, something is not what it was and, largely thanks to emulation, I have been made aware of this all too clearly. I guess there is a lesson to be learned here. Taking a brief nostalgic walk can be great fun for a while, but if you get too involved with how good things used to be, you’ll start to forget how good things are now.
I think I already have.
Page: