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I was looking at Perfect Dark, which I'd just switched off, then I glanced at my dusty old Mega Drive, sat dormant on top of my cupboard, and a thought occoured to me.
Now maybe it's just a question of me getting older, and my relationship with whatever console I may have at a given time having changed, but I'd just turned Perfect Dark off because I was bored of it, and I wanted to go try to find something else to do, and this after I'd only been playing for a short while. I remembered playing on classics like Bubble Bobble, Asterix and Double Dragon, and despite the 2D poorly animated simplicity of these games, they kept you coming back, even after you completed them, because they were so enjoyable to play. These at the time were games that weren't considered anything special by games magazines, I could have given any examples I could think of, and the chances are the same things would have applied. Now, Nintendo's finest seems to fail to live up to these games. The question has to be asked, why?
Well, in my opinion producers have become so preoccupied with the sharpest graphics, slickest gameplay, biggest licence and most features that they seem to have forgotten about what makes a game worth having. Sheer fun playability.
For all the features of Perfect Dark, there's something lacking there. And my favourite part of the game is playing with fly by wire rockets and spy cams. And look at the graphics there. (If you are yet to experience the Dark, I'll tell you now that for these 2 features the graphics are (intentionally) shakey).
What's the answer then? The producers don't need to abandon their graphics and 3rd dimension, if they did I don't think the game would be taken seriously or given a chance, but if they could re-inject the fun factor of the classics surely they would end up with something that would benefit themselves and game players. And I can say for certain that if there were to be a straight conversion of some of the classics to my N64, I'd be the first queing outside the shop in the small hours of the day of release, and I would like to think that some of you would join me too.
Now maybe it's just a question of me getting older, and my relationship with whatever console I may have at a given time having changed, but I'd just turned Perfect Dark off because I was bored of it, and I wanted to go try to find something else to do, and this after I'd only been playing for a short while. I remembered playing on classics like Bubble Bobble, Asterix and Double Dragon, and despite the 2D poorly animated simplicity of these games, they kept you coming back, even after you completed them, because they were so enjoyable to play. These at the time were games that weren't considered anything special by games magazines, I could have given any examples I could think of, and the chances are the same things would have applied. Now, Nintendo's finest seems to fail to live up to these games. The question has to be asked, why?
Well, in my opinion producers have become so preoccupied with the sharpest graphics, slickest gameplay, biggest licence and most features that they seem to have forgotten about what makes a game worth having. Sheer fun playability.
For all the features of Perfect Dark, there's something lacking there. And my favourite part of the game is playing with fly by wire rockets and spy cams. And look at the graphics there. (If you are yet to experience the Dark, I'll tell you now that for these 2 features the graphics are (intentionally) shakey).
What's the answer then? The producers don't need to abandon their graphics and 3rd dimension, if they did I don't think the game would be taken seriously or given a chance, but if they could re-inject the fun factor of the classics surely they would end up with something that would benefit themselves and game players. And I can say for certain that if there were to be a straight conversion of some of the classics to my N64, I'd be the first queing outside the shop in the small hours of the day of release, and I would like to think that some of you would join me too.
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I was looking at Perfect Dark, which I'd just switched off, then I glanced at my dusty old Mega Drive, sat dormant on top of my cupboard, and a thought occoured to me.
Now maybe it's just a question of me getting older, and my relationship with whatever console I may have at a given time having changed, but I'd just turned Perfect Dark off because I was bored of it, and I wanted to go try to find something else to do, and this after I'd only been playing for a short while. I remembered playing on classics like Bubble Bobble, Asterix and Double Dragon, and despite the 2D poorly animated simplicity of these games, they kept you coming back, even after you completed them, because they were so enjoyable to play. These at the time were games that weren't considered anything special by games magazines, I could have given any examples I could think of, and the chances are the same things would have applied. Now, Nintendo's finest seems to fail to live up to these games. The question has to be asked, why?
Well, in my opinion producers have become so preoccupied with the sharpest graphics, slickest gameplay, biggest licence and most features that they seem to have forgotten about what makes a game worth having. Sheer fun playability.
For all the features of Perfect Dark, there's something lacking there. And my favourite part of the game is playing with fly by wire rockets and spy cams. And look at the graphics there. (If you are yet to experience the Dark, I'll tell you now that for these 2 features the graphics are (intentionally) shakey).
What's the answer then? The producers don't need to abandon their graphics and 3rd dimension, if they did I don't think the game would be taken seriously or given a chance, but if they could re-inject the fun factor of the classics surely they would end up with something that would benefit themselves and game players. And I can say for certain that if there were to be a straight conversion of some of the classics to my N64, I'd be the first queing outside the shop in the small hours of the day of release, and I would like to think that some of you would join me too.
Now maybe it's just a question of me getting older, and my relationship with whatever console I may have at a given time having changed, but I'd just turned Perfect Dark off because I was bored of it, and I wanted to go try to find something else to do, and this after I'd only been playing for a short while. I remembered playing on classics like Bubble Bobble, Asterix and Double Dragon, and despite the 2D poorly animated simplicity of these games, they kept you coming back, even after you completed them, because they were so enjoyable to play. These at the time were games that weren't considered anything special by games magazines, I could have given any examples I could think of, and the chances are the same things would have applied. Now, Nintendo's finest seems to fail to live up to these games. The question has to be asked, why?
Well, in my opinion producers have become so preoccupied with the sharpest graphics, slickest gameplay, biggest licence and most features that they seem to have forgotten about what makes a game worth having. Sheer fun playability.
For all the features of Perfect Dark, there's something lacking there. And my favourite part of the game is playing with fly by wire rockets and spy cams. And look at the graphics there. (If you are yet to experience the Dark, I'll tell you now that for these 2 features the graphics are (intentionally) shakey).
What's the answer then? The producers don't need to abandon their graphics and 3rd dimension, if they did I don't think the game would be taken seriously or given a chance, but if they could re-inject the fun factor of the classics surely they would end up with something that would benefit themselves and game players. And I can say for certain that if there were to be a straight conversion of some of the classics to my N64, I'd be the first queing outside the shop in the small hours of the day of release, and I would like to think that some of you would join me too.