Cybertuna Gamers

Life in Pixels

With Video Games, Newer And More Complicated Does Not Mean Better   by Art Gib

Video games have certainly come a long way in recent years. Every new system that comes out is a little more advanced than the one before. Graphics are becoming more and more realistic. Story lines and plots are more in depth and complicated. Long gone, are the two button controller days. Now, one must master eight to ten buttons, multiple joysticks and movement pads, and endless complicated movements. Games used to be so simple.

Part of what made, for instance, the original Nintendo games so much fun, was the simplicity. You never really had to read an instruction manual to play. The plots were simple, and the game play was easy. Complexity isn't everything.

Contra, for NES, was probably one of the most popular games of that era. It was a side-scrolling shooting game, where the simple characters-either a nondescript red guy or a blue guy-ran through levels, killing everything from aliens to other soldiers. There were various different power-ups for guns available, from flame throwers, to rapid fire machines guns, to lasers, to a shotgun-esque spread shooter. The graphics were simple, but the game play was extremely fun. No dialogue, no complicated plots. Just running around, shooting and blowing things up.

Another example of a simple, yet extremely fun game was Castlevania IV, for the super Nintendo. This too, was a side-scrolling game. Your character was Simon, a man with a whip, and a vendetta against Dracula. There really isn't any more depth to the plot than that. There were a few different throwing weapons that could be acquired and used to make your quest easier-daggers, a cross shaped boomerang, an axe, and grenade like vials of holy water.

You simply battled your way through various levels of undead creatures, and destroyed level bosses such as Medusa, or a mummy, until finally Dracula himself. No intricate puzzles to solve, no complicated experience points or magic to earn. Just a whip, some daggers, and a whole lot of undead creatures.

The Mega Man series for NES was also very popular, and still pretty fun even today. A side-scrolling, multi-platform level game, Mega Man put you on a quest to defeat a robotic enemy. Each level was ruled by a specific boss-Fire Man, Water Man, Ice Man. Upon defeating a boss, Mega Man would gain a new weapon that was specific to that boss. So, for example, upon defeating Ice Man, you would receive an ice cannon, which would be effective against Fire Man. Even though you typically had a choice about which level to play, the game was still very simple, and extremely fun.

Even though the newest and latest games are great, they have lost the level of simplicity that made the original games so much fun. No matter what the latest and greatest games happen to be, old school games will never become obsolete, because they will always be fun.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2008 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.