Kiss Your Old, Hard Nintendo Games Goodbye

[fkusumot]

When I started gaming I played card games and board games. Video games did not exist when I started gaming. I was always attracted to the more in-depth games. Chess, Go, the games by TSR and several of the Avalon Hill games. From that period the games that I think are the best are the ones that are the most accessible, i.e., Go, Chess, Acquire, D-Day, Gin, Poker and Diplomacy.

The game of Go can be be easily played by a seven year old. Chess is also very accessible and there have been several instances of 8-12 year old prodigies that can beat master level players. Diplomacy is a complex social game with a very simple rule set. Most good card games (except Bridge) can be played by preteens and the strategy board games can be played by adolescents. All accessible and gratifying to varying degrees for players of all ages.

Look at the game of Go. It has one of the simplest interfaces of any game created. A child can play it. It has an almost perfect handicapping system. Yet Go is perhaps the deepest game ever created and the most beautiful in its simplicity and elegance. The game is perfectly accessible and will almost certainly be enjoyed by a person who has a predilection for the genre (strategy board game). The difficulty is not in playing the game it is in mastering the game.

Looking at video games some of the very best and most successful are extremely accessible. Space Invaders, Asteroids and Tetris are some earlier examples. Current examples are Meteos, Bejeweled (Puzzle Quest), Lumines and the excellent rhythm games. These games can be very difficult, especially when you are trying to improve your score or to beat someone else's high score. Difficulty and accessibility can co-exist.

Looking at the world of games past and present it seems to me and I think to many others that the best games are those where difficulty and accessibility exist in a kind of tense harmony. These are the games that become very popular, possibly last for generations and then last the test of time. Some game designers are motivated by the challenge of creating one of these gems and perhaps Miyamoto is one of them.