Hi Dark,
I'd agree with that assessment. The games written in the late 80's and
early 90's were some of the best games ever written and are among my
favorites. Mario Brothers, Castlevania, Double Dragon, Dragon Warrior,
Prince of Persia, Megaman, just to name a few really all got their start
in that time period. Plus there are some other factors as well.
First, the NES quickly cornered the market when it came to video game
graphics. The Atari 2600, 5200, and 7800 didn't come close to the range
of colors and detailed graphics of the original NES. As a result better
graphics and animations was a huge plus in Nintendo's favor. Other
consoles like the Colleco and Sega had decent graphics, but NES was
clearly the better console all around.
Second, where Atari became famous for arcade games like Centipede, Space
Invaders, Packman, and Asteroids Nintendo was the first to heavily
market adventure games like Mario Brothers, Castlevania, Megaman, etc
which was at the time a new concept. Side-scrollers for the Atari were
pretty rare, and Pitfall and even Montezuma's Revenge were pretty
simplistic compared to the games Nintendo would become famous for.
Legend of Zelda was definitely the first stab at a roll playing video
game, and I can give Nintendo a lot of credit for stepping out of the
arcade genre to explore roll playing games on the console.
Finally, Nintendo had a number of optional controllers that were
revolutionary for their time. The boxing glove for boxing games, the gun
for hunting games, racing wheel for racing games, as well as the
traditional gamepads. Even to this day Nintendo tends to create very
specific controllers for specific games which is definitely an
interesting marketing strategy.
Anyway, I think where mainstream gaming went wrong is by the mid 90's
Microsoft had entered the game console arena with Windows 95. Oh, Dos
games had been around since the 80's, but nobody took those as seriously
as the big name consoles. All that changed with Windows 95 and the
introduction of DirectX. ?Suddenly, game companies were experimenting
with a lot of new technologies like 3d graphics, realistic sounds and
music, as well as better CPU power, etc. Games now could be shipped on
cds rather than cartridges which allowed them to become larger and more
detailed. At the same time I think what happened is game companies
forgot about trying to create a good game with good game play, a good
storyline, etc and were trying to outdo each other through technical
details like who had the best 3d graphics, who had the best cinimatics,
who had the best music soundtrack, whatever. In other words games
improved on a technical front,but suffered because they lacked the
entertainment value something like Super Mario had 10 years earlier
without all the flashy graphics and high tech audio effects.
Cheers!
On 5/22/2012 2:43 PM, dark wrote:
I wasn't exactly sure on the numbers, sinse it's a long time sinse I
heard that story.
One amusing fact about the huge slump in games though is that most
crytics hold that it ended in 1985 when nintendo released a rather
obscure game a few people may have heard of called Super Mario
brothers :d.
Of course, from then on things just got better, and the late 80's and
early nineties is still regarded by many as the most revolutionary
period in game developement, as most of the classic series metroid,
mega man, castlevania, F0, Zelda, Dragon warrior etc all started
around that time.
Rather sad that things from about 1995 got huge, multinational and
corporate, indeed there are many in the retroremakes community that
see this as the point when games went wrong, though of course sinse
this also marked the point when for me new releases like donkey kong
country that I could play were replaced with 3D games that I couldn't,
I probably am not the best person to evaluate that period of
developement from an objective viewpoint.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
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