GoldfishX Aug 2, 2011
If you have faults with the article please point them out, Goldfish. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Vert1
"Old-timers, hardcore gamers, Japan-hounds: these are the kinds of people this essay is written for (indeed, these are the kinds of people this website is written for). As for everyone else: the lazy kids who whine about the difficulty in such simple games as Ninja Gaiden (the latest one, yes) or Devil May Cry 3; the casual, party gamers with their Wiis and ever-growing collections of gimmicky mini-games; the PlayStation generation that missed out on gaming's golden age and never got a chance to develop good taste in games; the hordes of uncouth, uneducated retards who practically live in videogame forums across the internet, grouping themselves into rival camps of fanboys, unquestioningly loyal -- like dogs -- to a single hardware platform, genre or developer; the "games are art" fags who won't shut up already about Ico and Rez, and who can't even tell the difference between basketball (a game) and the Mona Lisa (art); or the new games journalists and their impressionable adolescent followers who think that some flowery adjectives dug up from a thesaurus can make up for the fact that they don't have a f---ing clue about what it is they are talking about -- as for all these people, as for the masses, yes, I am afraid there is no hope for them. Nothing can be done about it."
"None of that f---ing bullshit is effective in an arcade environment where every coin a player drops in the slot is effectively a vote for the quality of that game, and where the player will simply quit the second he feels he is not being entertained. The fact that the "voters" themselves are usually older and more experienced than the average person who buys console games (which demographic nowadays includes millions of market-distorting kids and their moms, dads, relatives, etc.) helps explain why Arcadia's monthly lists of the top arcade earners are always filled with -- at the very least -- good games, whereas the various top console game charts around the world are usually made up of the worst imaginable dreck scooped up from the inside of a seemingly bottomless barrel."
As usual, any good points made are totally drowned out by the condescending writing and one-sided opinions, though thankfully the usual JRPG bashing is MIA (then again, I just skimmed, so it might be there).
Get over yourself. There is no "right" way to play games and I happen to love playing in arcades (in the rare occasion I can actually find one). However, I personally don't miss having to insert a credit every time I want to play a round in a fighting game, while having to pray that all six of my buttons and my joystick work properly (as opposed to my trusty TE stick).
"Arcades survived in Japan because far more players there came to understand the essence of arcade gaming, while realizing that those newfangled full-motion-video wankfests that started appearing during the 32-bit era could never provide them with the rush that only an unforgiving arcade game can. So even though many were seduced by the cheaper, easier, better-looking console games, many others were not, and they are the ones we have to thank for the survival of the arcade form.
In the West, however, the one-credit rule never really took hold, and as a result the vast majority of players never managed to get good at anything -- many of them in fact being so ignorant as to regard 1CCing as impossible. Going back to my childhood, I remember that in the arcades I frequented there were always a couple of guys who were said to have 1CCed this or that game, but I rarely ever saw such a feat in person, and pretty much everyone around credit-fed games when they could afford to.
Credit-feeding was never looked down upon in the West, and therefore the vast majority of players never got a chance to become skilled in any particular genre. So when the consoles overtook the arcades in the technical specs, and when, for the first time, home games started looking better than arcade ones, the masses became seduced by the high resolutions and pretty colors and CG cutscenes, and there was nothing that they missed from the arcade days -- indeed, they were happy to be finally rid of all those "shallow quarter-munchers". They never knew the buzz one gets from ruthless high-level competition (as in all kinds of versus games), or from that of high-level performance requiring intense concentration (as in shooters, side-scrollers, puzzle games, beat 'em ups, etc.), and so they never missed it."
If they're going to blame the masses for the supposed dumbing down of gaming, they also should have a section for American arcade owners who:
A: Never ordered the games people wanted to play
B: Never knew how to fix controls, hence people stopped coming. It is hard to 1CC a shmup when the up-left diagonal isn't working! Or is that supposed to be some kind of hardcore handicap?
C: Filled their arcades with useless redemption machines and funky riding machines that gave less than a minute of gametime for a dollar or more
D: Jacked the prices in arcades up. A game of Street Fighter IV is not worth more than 50 cents, but regularly a single game in most arcades goes from 75 cents to $2! I've been playing Marvel vs Capcom 3 routinely since it came out and even it is not worth more than 50 cents per game, especially since people tend to trade wins in that game as opposed to go on a winning streak.
SOME good points are made (this is one of more tolerable Insomnia articles I've seen, not that it's saying much, but more because I wish arcades had a better fate in the US), but I think the anger is misguided in this part.
