In preparation for the Console Wars panel (Which happens to be in a state remarkably similar to "unstarted") I figured it would be good to see what it was that you, my friends and peers, really enjoy(ed) on systems of late and yore. It doesn't have to be long and involved. Heck if it's coherent I'll be able to read it- just trying to get an idea of what public opinion is.

Older systems had gameplay that didn't suck. With new systems, the developers almost always spend too much time making it look shiny, and don't get around to making it play well.

Marketing is the death of all that is good in the console world. Call something new and market it properly and people will believe it's the gospel truth. Nintendo DS is not the first system with a touchscreen (Tiger game.com's big selling point was the touchscreen, and I'm not even sure it was the first). The revolution will not be the first system with a remote for a controller (that would be the Phillips CDi). Yet marketing owns the world, and people believe stupid things rather than finding out for themselves.

Nintendo wins over all because they understand the party game.

Koorogi: Okay, but how "older" are you going? Personally, I think gameplay for Atari bites ass. Likewise for Virtual Boy (yep, actually played one- in a word: ugly). SNES, PSX, and N64 was good in many cases, but is that necessarily indicative of good gameplay in the broad spectrum? I can name many games for those three systems that suck to no end because of the gameplay (Ever play Rascal, Bubsy, or War Gods?)

Rail: This is true. However, even if they're not the first, does it matter? They <i>are</i> the first to gain any kind of public acceptance. What happened to the Game.com and the CDi? They flopped. Badly.

Mike: Yes, Nintendo and their associates have the "party games" genre pretty well in the bag, but Chrono Trigger was excellent without extra people. So is Crash: Warped and Super Mario 64. Sonic Adveture and ZOE Second Runner as well. None of these games are conducive to a party atmosphere but they are all good in their own right. The best games, whetever they are, come from a wide variety of genres.

Even though the first first game system I've owed was by Nintendo (it was a NES), I've always been a Sega fanboy. Some of their best games haven't been as mainstream and, ultimately didn't sell as well, but they were always innovative and fun to play. Plus they didn't censor their games like Nintendo did (compare MK3 for SNES and Genesis).

So, it's Sega for me, closely followed by Nintendo.

Point taken. I typically mean NES, SNES, and some N64 generation games (sorry Sega fanboys, I count game generations in terms of Nintendo :P ). And I have to agree about Virtual Boy too. It's no wonder that died a very swift death.

You will always have games that suck, and you will always have some games that are good. It's just been my experience that as soon as a game tries to incorporate 3D graphics, the whole game begins to revolve around whatever fancy things the devs figured out how to do with the graphics, and gameplay gets lost.

Of course there are always exceptions. Smash Brothers being a good example. Sure, they use 3D graphics to make it look better, but the game is still fundamentally a 2D game, and they don't try to force it into 3D because that'd be "the cool thing to do." I played Worms Forts Under Siege for the first time last night, and while it might be interesting to play around with some more, the controls are a pain in the ass, and it's just nowhere near as fun as the 2D-based Worms games.

Though some of this may just be nostalgia talking.

I never played it on Genesis, but have it one SNES. What's different?

One word: Blood.

I'm not implying that it's the most important part at all but in a game like MK3 blood is an essential part of experience.

That's funny. My copy of MK3 on SNES does have blood. There's an option to turn it off, sure, but it defaults to on ...

Correction: the original MK was bloodless on SNES and several fatalites were censored but it sold better than the Genesis version where you had to input a special code to enable blood. A similar situation happened with other SNES poerts like"Samurai Showdown".

As for MK3 for SNES, I believe but not 100% sure that it wasn't as explicit as the Genesis version.

I second the Sega fanboyishness! Better games, better systems, more innovations in gameplay styles and controls.... But REALLY POOR MARKETING. Urgh. Ah well, such is life.

As far as things that I really enjoy as far as games and systems, I need a storyline that forces me to keep playing 'till completion. That's prolly the most important thing in a game to me. The only exception I can think of is in the WipeOut series, which I liked because it was the first time the difficulty of a racing game seemed to be perfect, starting you out easy enough to beat but not kiddishly easy and progressing very evenly until it was excrutiatingly hard (but still beatable, especially as you gain skill by the way the levels are set up). Great controls, too. And controls can really break a game. Just look at Tomb Raider. Killer story, but the controls make you want to throw the controller through the window in anguish.

Graphics are nice if they're pretty, but I think they should always be secondary to gameplay and story. Heck, even second to sound. I still think Phantasy Star for the SMS is one of the greatest RPGs of all time, and that's 8-bit. It's just got a great story and great controls. It keeps you playing and has enough secrets and sidequests that you can always try new things. Another great classic game would be Secret of Mana for the SNES. 16-bit, and yet the music is definately good enough to listen to outside of the game. And the story is amazing (even if the controls are a bit hokey, they're definately bearable. The hardest thing is the goofy menu system).

I don't find party games very interesting. At all. Mostly because I seem to be incapable at becoming good at any multiplayer game ('cept for maybe DDR, and Sonic 2 two-player..). And losing can be fun (I love playing the suicide bomber in Halo!), but after a while it just gets really annoying being beaten into the ground time and time again. And I usually don't have anyone to play with, anyway. *shrug*

Right. So in summary, everyone needs to own a Dreamcast, and Long Live Space Channel 5! ^_^

I second that....Space Channel Five and Rez for teh win.

For me a good measure of a good game... strike that, a -fun- game is for crazy stuff to happen. Smash Brothers is a great example of this. The world can shift from order to chaos in a second. This characteristic seems more common in Japanese games than in American, though Halo 1 had a lot of screwy shit that could happen (particularly with the Warthog). Unfortunatly Halo 2 doesn't have nearly as much fun stuff attached to it. The Naruto party fighter series is another good example of a game where crazy stuff can happen.

Another quality I enjoy in games, and one that is definatly more Japanese (and to a certain extent Nintendo), is eccentricity, or a novel atmosphere. Games like Guitaroo man which are goofy and innocent in their own warped little way I really like. Earthbound is a great example of this, as is Katamari. Illusion of Gaia is a great example of a game that is totally detached from this world, and yet on some level still strikes a very human chord with people.

I definitely have to agree about Nintendo games here. Nintendo has the reputation of making children's games, and to a certain extent they deserve it. But they also are really good at giving great unique environments and feels to their games.

Take Yoshi's Island for example. The story revolves around a bunch of babies. Yoshi's carying around Baby Mario, looking for Baby Luigi, and you have to fight Kamek (a Baby Magikoopa) and Baby Bowser. And the graphics add to this perfectly. They look like they're drawn in crayon, or designed for a nursery. It's hard to explain well, but the odd style of the graphics adds perfectly to the feel of the game. I'd say that to this day, it's in the top 10 best games Nintendo ever made.

I've always been of the mind that Nintendo's reputation in that respect is as undeserved as the reputation anime has for being "Japanese cartoon porn". Sure, it is true to some extent, but when you start actually playing...Well I really can't recall a Nintendo game that children are going to be able to get deep into. Take Yoshi Story for example (Yes, I hate the game, but it serves to prove a point): The first...four levels I think, are easy in that eating 30 pieces of fruit is easy to do. The game gets steadily more difficult and you end with a showdown with Baby Bowser. But wait! That's at a low to middling level of play. Next time you play Yoshi Story (If you lest such a thing happen again), try to get 30 melons each stage; a perfect score- the game suddenly becomes far more difficult. Even Yoshi's Island (A wholly awesome game) has added challenge from 1-1 if you choose to pursue the "Get Everything" route and want perfect scores on all stages (All stars and other fun stuff). I really do like games that allow you to push yourself further as you play- they stay challenging that way.

To get into deciding factors. the most important consideration is the entertainment. I don't care how chaotic or amazing it is, if it's not fun I won't play it. If it stops being fun, I stop playing it. Of course, I'm preaching to the converted in this case. As for eccentricity, such games tend to broaden horizions on how games are played. Katamari is an excellent example of this. Can someone name a game preceding it that used both analog sticks as an integral part of the gameplay to the exclusion of almost everything else? Revolutions don't have to be purely based on hardware, as Nintendo would have you believe. Actually, the most amazing breakthroughs have been in software (For those that don't know me, I'm talking about Linux here.)

PS: The whole "Are video games art?" debate should have ended with Rez. I still want to do more than just look at it...

When I say that Nintendo somewhat deserves their reputation as making children's games, I don't mean to say that their games aren't suitable or challenging for older audiences. Just that they have a history of trying to stick to more children-friendly games. The removal of blood from early MK games, for example.

I think there certainly are many people who think they make children's games, and therefore have nothing to offer adults. Those same people are missing out.

And thanks for reminding me - I need to get back to trying for perfect scores on yoshi's Island.

To me, Nintendo has always seemed a bit childish, as if targeted at younger children. But then they've always had their gems that were targeted at the older ages; the Metroid series, the Sim games, RE4, etc. It's like "well, your younger brother has a Nintendo, so here's some games for you to play on it".

I happen to like childish games tho, so it's all good ^_^;;

Can Nintendo really be said to make children's games? Take one of their most classic, most recognized games - Mario. If that's a children's game --- then what's with all the shrooms?! :P

Now, more seriously, Nintendo may target games at kids. Like Mario - it abstracts away all the violence. There's no blood or gore - you just jump on an enemy's head and it vanishes. It's a kids game. But that doesn't make it any less worthy for adults. It's still fun, and many of the games are still rather challenging.

Basically, I'm just saying "Kid Safe" doesn't necessarily mean "Not Suitable For Adults".

What, only five people that like console games on this forum?

Apparently we're not at our computers as often as the PC gamers or something.

Somebody who wont play a game because it seems a tad bit childish is probally playing video games for the wrong reason. Ive meet way to many people who try to bash nintendo for their game selection. But when you look at their game selction its usually one good game after the other, because nintendo truely cares about making quality games.

I agree with Sextoy. Not playing Nintendo games because they are too 'kiddy' is childish in itself. Nintendo is devoted to making excellent games, and I respect that.

While I certainly agree that Ninendo's games are consistently good, I do feel that this can ultimately be a bad thing in terms of perception. I say this because, as much as I see Nintendo bashing for childish games, I see even more cases where people put them on an untouchable pedastal. This causes two problems. First off, it brings about the perception that only Nintendo games are worth playing which is far from true: they don't have a monopoly on good games on consoles any more than does Raven or Valve on PC. The second, and larger, problem is that it causes conflict of ideals within the gaming community (actually, this is true of all so-called "console fanboys"). Nintendo people make ambiguous claims about needing something with gameplay, or otherwise questioning the judgement of others. Xbox people are very haughty about the superiority of Madden and Halo, not taking into account that not many people like sports games and, outside of it's relatively tight-knit community, Halo isn't well liked. Sony supporters don't have much to say because there really isn't much to say. Most of it focuses on a few key franchises and tearing into the shortcomings of the other two systems. This is what I've seen happening and with all the FUD being spread about by varous factions I have no doubt it will continue to be an issue.

Console and PC fanboys are retarded. Why make such a damn fuss over which platform is better, when in the end it accomplishes nothing but wasting yours and everyone else's time? Time that could be spent doing something more productive than comparing the size of one console's e-peen to another's.