Hi Tom.
well technically space invaders is a fixed shooter sinse a vertical shooter
would imply scrolling ala archaeist, z out or xenon, but I do take your
point. the reason however the classifications in the db don't attempt to
mirror mainstream mode classifications, are todo with what the genre
classifications are supposed to be for.
The intention of the audiogames.net db is to help people find games, thus
the genre classifications are meant to aide people in finding similar games
to ones of a style they may like, indeed the question of "are there any
games like X" comes up very often as you will know from the list.
thus, from a technical standpoint, jim kitchin's puppy1 is either a flight
sim, or a 3D shooter as in fact are games like 3D velocity and zero site.
Yet, those games are so amazingly different in feeling and intention, that
classifying them together as in any way similar would strike me as insane!
Jim kitchin's is a simple, wrack up score affair and perfect for a five
minute blast, where as the other two are very hyper complex, take a lot of
practice and are intended to give something of a realistic experience.
It is for this purpose of clarrification that i use the term "arcade games"
to describe fast action, wrack up score style games, to let people know
better the over all objective and feeling of the game whatever it's mode of
presentation.
Then of course, there is the issue that if we used strict genre
classifications, wwe'd have some catagories with just one entry. For
instance how many accessible pinball games are there?
Finally, there is the problem o games that in audio are very different to
their mainstream counterparts and thus do not have an accurate
classification.
One perfect example of this are games like packman talks and indeed super
egghunt, first person, fast action games but who's goal is wrack up score?
then, how do we distinguish first person from top down vertical movement,
for example games like treasurehunt and night of parasite. While from a
technical standpoint I'd classify these as third person top down absolute
movement, that is a rather technical deffinition for the db, and also
doesn't take into account the fact that such games may have vastly different
gameaplay, some having adventure or rpg elements, some being a pure action
fest.
and what about games like enemy attack or damage extreme? they really have
no mainstream counterpart at all that uses a similar interface. I suppose
they are all technically "shooter games" because you mmmm, shoot things, but
so is shades of doom, or clay pigion shooting.
thus, while I do take your point that representing games according to the
presentation of their information and over all genre classification the way
mainstream games do might be technically correct, I don't really see that as
an advantage, particualrly when many audio games carry rather different
concepts in style (as I've said, I find first person audio packman far more
fun than top down graphical packman).
?
?
I am however happy to muck about with the genre classifications according to
what new games come out, and when we have enough games to distinguish them
in style. i recently for example added the fps and simulation genres for
this reason.
beware the grue!
Dark.
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