when videogames went wrong

It seems like when all this 3DO/Jaguar/32x stuff happened, it seems like video games were jumping the shark. Looking back, it seems to be where video games got too adult. In the 16-bit systems, the games seem like they were for kids and teens just wanting to have fun. 32-bit and beyond the tech-obsessed older people became the main target for video games. I only play handheld games nowadays because I actually feel like I'm playing a fun kids game instead of the "latest textures and shading" stuff video game makers have been hyping and hyping forever. I want to feel like a little kid having fun when playing video games, not a tech geek.

Back to my point, I think the Neo Geo should have been the next gen in 1994/1995 instead of 32-bit. America never got to play any of the great arcade games made after 1995, there was no way of playing any of most incredible 2D games made at the time. All we were stuck with were generic games that are totally overrated because they all have the same 1 overhyped gimmicky special effect that got boring for me after only 5 seconds. That 1 overhyped gimmick special effect that got boring for me in only 5 seconds is non other than 3D itself.

Think about it, in the 16-bit years, there were a wide variety of special effects. In 3D there is only one special effect ever used. 3D hasn't been impressive since the second it has been invented. Once a system does 3D everybody knows it can do 3D, so why do people still get impressed by 3D if they know the system could do 3D in the first place?

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Originally Posted by dragonboy

It seems like when all this 3DO/Jaguar/32x stuff happened, it seems like video games were jumping the shark. Looking back, it seems to be where video games got too adult. In the 16-bit systems, the games seem like they were for kids and teens just wanting to have fun. 32-bit and beyond the tech-obsessed older people became the main target for video games. I only play handheld games nowadays because I actually feel like I'm playing a fun kids game instead of the "latest textures and shading" stuff video game makers have been hyping and hyping forever. I want to feel like a little kid having fun when playing video games, not a tech geek.

Back to my point, I think the Neo Geo should have been the next gen in 1994/1995 instead of 32-bit. America never got to play any of the great arcade games made after 1995, there was no way of playing any of most incredible 2D games made at the time. All we were stuck with were generic games that are totally overrated because they all have the same 1 overhyped gimmicky special effect that got boring for me after only 5 seconds. That 1 overhyped gimmick special effect that got boring for me in only 5 seconds is non other than 3D itself.

Think about it, in the 16-bit years, there were a wide variety of special effects. In 3D there is only one special effect ever used. 3D hasn't been impressive since the second it has been invented. Once a system does 3D everybody knows it can do 3D, so why do people still get impressed by 3D if they know the system could do 3D in the first place?

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I have to partially agree with you on this, games seem a bit too...smug...these days. It's as if it has to be the biggest, baddest polygon pusher or it won't sell, although the Wii has partially remedied this. And while it would have been nice to see the Neo go mainstream, the best bet for a continued legacy of 2D gaming was the Saturn.

"Jumping the shark"? I didn't think your generation watched Happy Days:)

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Originally Posted by dragonboy

It seems like when all this 3DO/Jaguar/32x stuff happened, it seems like video games were jumping the shark. Looking back, it seems to be where video games got too adult. In the 16-bit systems, the games seem like they were for kids and teens just wanting to have fun. 32-bit and beyond the tech-obsessed older people became the main target for video games. I only play handheld games nowadays because I actually feel like I'm playing a fun kids game instead of the "latest textures and shading" stuff video game makers have been hyping and hyping forever. I want to feel like a little kid having fun when playing video games, not a tech geek.

Back to my point, I think the Neo Geo should have been the next gen in 1994/1995 instead of 32-bit. America never got to play any of the great arcade games made after 1995, there was no way of playing any of most incredible 2D games made at the time. All we were stuck with were generic games that are totally overrated because they all have the same 1 overhyped gimmicky special effect that got boring for me after only 5 seconds. That 1 overhyped gimmick special effect that got boring for me in only 5 seconds is non other than 3D itself.

Think about it, in the 16-bit years, there were a wide variety of special effects. In 3D there is only one special effect ever used. 3D hasn't been impressive since the second it has been invented. Once a system does 3D everybody knows it can do 3D, so why do people still get impressed by 3D if they know the system could do 3D in the first place?

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I think the 32bit era was awesome, to claim that it sucked because of the 32X/Jaguar/3DO is being a little short-sighted. Products have to reinvent themselves or they become stale. 3D was really the only way to go. I loved the 32-bit era because I could finally play all the arcade games I loved perfectly at home. The Saturn fulfilled this dream. I'm not a huge fan of 3D games because I've always been an arcade gamer at heart. Shooters/2-D fighters are my bread and butter and they were never done better than in the Arcades.

But I can't deny that there are games that I love that would never exist without 3-D: Panzer Dragoon series, Resident Evil, Sonic R (yes I love this game), Sonic Adventure, Medieval, etc.

Though, I personally think FPS games BLOW! Unless they're on a pc, I just love using precision of a mouse for that stuff...

I will always blame the countless platformers and Street Fighter 2 clones of the time for the death of 2d. Everyone was sick of it including myself.

Personally I'd like to see more 2.5D games, now THATs a format we see far too infrequently. Anyone here ever play Strider 2? its just brilliant how the sidescrolling sprites move across the 3D backgrounds and there are few if any games like it. Some games (platformers especially) just don't play well in 3 space, sure, games like Mario Galaxy make do, but its not the same as Mario 3 or even Super Mario Bros for the DS (a good example of 2.5D btw). I never really saw 8 and 16 bit video games as childish (spare for Barney's hide and seek), but rather just basic because of hardware limitations. Americans kind of have a permanent viewpoint that all things cute are automatically childish, but in Japan cute things are just cute just like gruesome things are gruesome. I don't consider these games childish, but rather just entertaining in its purest form. Many 8 and 16 bit games have insanely simple controls, so all the gameplay fun comes from the player's reflexes instead of memorizing pages and pages of commands to send your AI squad to kill the bad guys for you (every FPS since 2001). Some games like Sports games and Racing games benefit heavily from 3D, but other games should try to utilize 2D or 2.5D more often.

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Originally Posted by dragonboy

It seems like when all this 3DO/Jaguar/32x stuff happened

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I agree, as I think that that's exactly when the gaming industry started to shift its focus towards the western market. Prior to that, the success of the NES and Genesis in the US was seen as a phenomenon that more or less just "happened", but after the Genesis everyone thought to have the bulletproof masterplan on how to milk the market. What they forgot was that its been mainly Japanese games that made video gaming as big and successful as it was.

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Originally Posted by [url=http://www.gamepro.com/nintendo/wii/games/features/107845.shtml]gamepro.com[/url]

GamePro.com: It also seems that Japanese game developers are embracing this idea of coming up with different ideas [for the Wii]. Is this evidence that Japanese developers are more open-minded or are Western developers somehow more business-oriented?

Shirgeru Miyamoto: The impression that I get is that there may be perhaps more developers in Japan where the actual development staff is making the decisions about the products that they are releasing, whereas it may be that in America that there are more companies where the sales side has a bigger say in which products are being released. I wouldn't say that is an across-the-board stereotype; it's just an impression I get about some of the companies that we have seen.

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Originally Posted by Tanegashima

I think the 32bit era was awesome, to claim that it sucked because of the 32X/Jaguar/3DO is being a little short-sighted. Products have to reinvent themselves or they become stale. 3D was really the only way to go. I loved the 32-bit era because I could finally play all the arcade games I loved perfectly at home. The Saturn fulfilled this dream. I'm not a huge fan of 3D games because I've always been an arcade gamer at heart. Shooters/2-D fighters are my bread and butter and they were never done better than in the Arcades.

But I can't deny that there are games that I love that would never exist without 3-D: Panzer Dragoon series, Resident Evil, Sonic R (yes I love this game), Sonic Adventure, Medieval, etc.

Though, I personally think FPS games BLOW! Unless they're on a pc, I just love using precision of a mouse for that stuff...

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How many arcade-like games did they have on the Saturn? I thought Sega only wanted to do that, but didn't because they got forced by Sony to only sell 3D games to not look like a graphical weiner compared to the Playstation. I don't even think the graphics would be that bad in 2D compared to the primitive(today's standards) 3D they had back then, infact I love how the later CPS2, CPS3 and Neo Geo games look like much more than 3D.

So how many 2D arcade-like games were released on the Saturn and when was the turning point in the Saturn's life where it became 3d everything?

Saturn was 3D from the beginning when they released Virtua Fighter along with the console back in 1994. In Japan though Saturn got lots and lots of 2D and "2,5D" games during its life, while in Europe and NA, we mainly got fed with incredibly bad 3D games. The vast majority of the good stuff remained in Japan.

Japan is so much cooler than America. There even allowed to show beautiful naked girls on little kids shows. Ever seen the Japanese version of the teletubies?, the teletubies are all naked girls spray painted different colors.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

In Japan though Saturn got lots and lots of 2D and "2,5D" games during its life, while in Europe and NA, we mainly got fed with incredibly bad 3D games. The vast majority of the good stuff remained in Japan.

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This was largely down to Bernie 'shithouse' Stolar's: "If it isn't 3D we don't want it" attitude.

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Originally Posted by dragonboy

Japan is so much cooler than America.

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I am not Anti-American and I am not exactly a big fan of Japanese culture but I love Japanese video games ! and I do think that what I previously posted was what went wrong with SEGA at the very least, if not the entire video game market since about 1993/1994.

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Originally Posted by mick_aka

This was largely down to Bernie 'shithouse' Stolar's: "If it isn't 3D we don't want it" attitude.

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I am not sure how much truth is to that "Stolar is to blame" theory. In my opinion the entire management at SOA (and SOE for that matter) started loosing perspective as soon as the Genesis became successful. Stolar alone never could decide all by himself about each and every single game as to which has to be released and which not - ...and if they necessarily need to release a 32X or not (instead of just waiting for Saturn, and e.g. concentrating on pushing the CDX as their new flagship for the time being) - ...or the Sonic debacles during the post-Sonic & Knuckles era (Sonic 3D Blast / Flicky's Island, Sonic Xtreme, Sonic R, Knuckles Chaotix for 32X instead of Saturn, etc. pp.)

Damn Weeabos.

That quote from Miyamoto is incredibly ironic (read: Shiggy's full of shit), given the direction Nintendo has taken. It now caters to the lowest common denominator, and it's been slowly leaving the fans that made it what it is out in the cold. Just look at this year's E3 conference, for example.

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Originally Posted by mick_aka

This was largely down to Bernie 'shithouse' Stolar's: "If it isn't 3D we don't want it" attitude.

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He had that attitude since he was at Sony, which is what caused Vic Ireland to support the Saturn. When Stolar moved over to Sega, Ireland shifted over to the Playstation.

I'm convinced that Stolar's decisions to leave Thunder Force V, Radiant Silvergun, Silhouette Mirage, and others in Japan - when their developers asked for domestic releases - stems directly from his statement at the 1997 E3 that the Saturn was not Sega's future. He just wanted to kill it off as quickly as possible.

I can't imagine that SOA wanted to kill off Saturn, they had nothing else and they were loosing money!

Saturn was a huge success in Japan. More than half of all existing Saturns were sold there. By releasing the most interesting Japanese games, they could have at least kept the few die-hard fans happy that they still had.

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Originally Posted by dragonboy

Think about it, in the 16-bit years, there were a wide variety of special effects. In 3D there is only one special effect ever used. 3D hasn't been impressive since the second it has been invented.

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When Alone in the Dark appeared for the PC in 1992, it was the first adventure game I had ever experienced that sported 3d graphics - and boy, what an incredible experience it was! The game set a creepy, occult, disturbing yet enchanting atmosphere, with unique characters, enemies, situations, weapons - whatever I could have wanted in an adventure game, AITD had it and more. I played that game over and over, start to finish, more times than I could count. Then, having grown tired of simply playing through the game (but still rabid to keep playing it!), I decided to experiment with the game's seemingly limitless options and possibilities, to see if I could uncover some secrets and glitches. In retrospect, that's how I define a game as phenomenal: If I, after having played through it countless times, am willing to go back and try to strain out more drops of fun through experimentation, even to the point of bug hunting, it's got to be a perfectly wonderous product.

But wait!! Alone in the Dark was a 3d game. 3d was an emerging technology in PC games at the time; I wasn't very fond of it. The 3d games of the time looked very awkward, and the models lacked any shading or detail. They were almost completely uninteresting to me, and I wished they'd go away. Even in these modern times, where 3d graphics are vastly refined and their methods and concepts improved, I'm still very uninterested in them.

Then why the obsession with AITD?

The game had stellar gameplay, an interesting story spun from deep mythos and lore, and unique and varied characters, enemies, puzzles, weapons, and options - my God, you could do just about anything in that game: Throw items across rooms, place items on the floor, walk, run, jump, fight without weapons, fight with knives, fight with swords, fight with guns, move furniture around (and if you were creative enough, trap enemies behind it!), eat, drink, climb, interact with enemies and objects, open and close doors, open and close chests, search areas... and more, more, more. You name it, it was possible in AITD. Then, once 3d was becoming more established and the AITD name somewhat familiar, two sequels followed for the PC: Neither of which had even close to the same depth, non-linear plot, functionality, character charm, etc. of the original.

As I said, 3d games interest me very little. I love 2d, I always have and I always will. Yet, even so, the original Alone in the Dark for PC is my favorite game of all-time... and it's 3d. Fathom that.

Thus? Graphical approach (be it 2d or 3d) is irrelevant. Special effects are irrelevant. The limitations (or lack thereof) of any given game console are irrelevant.

It is all about gameplay, plain and simple. Videogames must be an experience. If not, why are we wasting real life to play them?

Jesus 3d isn't the problem if its done properly,
its that endless gta fucking engine drives me mad, its so boring playing every damn game with the camera staring at your main characters back... or worse again FPS, whilst the quality of the experience from fps to fps will vary, the diverseness of the experience seldom does..

3d just allows game producers to be lazy, they just have to fire out another 3rd person camera view, a few lazily animated streets or a mini city and dump in some bullshit storyline..

2d platformers may have been done to death but at least they were a million times better that the horrible 3d platformers...

Spyro, Croc, Rayman even the sonic and mario 3d platformers remind me of endless collecting and precision jumping from platform to platform..

Crash Bandicoot shows the potential for an incredible platforming experience combining skill, speed, fun, some crazy ideas and a bit of linearity (it doesn't always hurt)

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Originally Posted by CMA Death Adder

When Alone in the Dark appeared for the PC in 1992, it was the first adventure game I had ever experienced that sported 3d graphics - and boy, what an incredible experience it was! The game set a creepy, occult, disturbing yet enchanting atmosphere, with unique characters, enemies, situations, weapons - whatever I could have wanted in an adventure game, AITD had it and more. I played that game over and over, start to finish, more times than I could count. Then, having grown tired of simply playing through the game (but still rabid to keep playing it!), I decided to experiment with the game's seemingly limitless options and possibilities, to see if I could uncover some secrets and glitches. In retrospect, that's how I define a game as phenomenal: If I, after having played through it countless times, am willing to go back and try to strain out more drops of fun through experimentation, even to the point of bug hunting, it's got to be a perfectly wonderous product.

But wait!! Alone in the Dark was a 3d game. 3d was an emerging technology in PC games at the time; I wasn't very fond of it. The 3d games of the time looked very awkward, and the models lacked any shading or detail. They were almost completely uninteresting to me, and I wished they'd go away. Even in these modern times, where 3d graphics are vastly refined and their methods and concepts improved, I'm still very uninterested in them.

Then why the obsession with AITD?

The game had stellar gameplay, an interesting story spun from deep mythos and lore, and unique and varied characters, enemies, puzzles, weapons, and options - my God, you could do just about anything in that game: Throw items across rooms, place items on the floor, walk, run, jump, fight without weapons, fight with knives, fight with swords, fight with guns, move furniture around (and if you were creative enough, trap enemies behind it!), eat, drink, climb, interact with enemies and objects, open and close doors, open and close chests, search areas... and more, more, more. You name it, it was possible in AITD. Then, once 3d was becoming more established and the AITD name somewhat familiar, two sequels followed for the PC: Neither of which had even close to the same depth, non-linear plot, functionality, character charm, etc. of the original.

As I said, 3d games interest me very little. I love 2d, I always have and I always will. Yet, even so, the original Alone in the Dark for PC is my favorite game of all-time... and it's 3d. Fathom that.

Thus? Graphical approach (be it 2d or 3d) is irrelevant. Special effects are irrelevant. The limitations (or lack thereof) of any given game console are irrelevant.

It is all about gameplay, plain and simple. Videogames must be an experience. If not, why are we wasting real life to play them?

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Ace post this one..

And my oh my have I some memories of this incredible game, to say it was mind blowing is doing it a disservice.

What a beautiful incredible game that maxed out the wits..

Just goes to prove that when effort is put in a rich experience can be garnered from that extra dimension, pity publishers are just bloody lazy as hell and we end up with endless "mammoth" fps' and hock like "the getaway"