Bobbuffalo said:
bardicverse said:
Garcian, I'm not sure where you're getting all this from. Zelda was considered a very long game, far more time than they could with Missile Command or Centipede. Yes, I agree, the arcades were about high scores. Think about what you are saying. You are suggesting that Tapper was more of a "core" game than Metroid.
Do you know the reason why "save games" came into play? Power outages. The developers saw that longer games are hard to start over again from the beginning, and a power surge or hardware glitch could undo severe progress. Imagine getting ready to fight Gannon in Death Mountain and then suddenly there's a split-second brownout in town. Those 4-5 hours you invested in getting that far are now gone. I do find it interesting how you translate save games into a "casual friendly" tool. To give you an idea, just from personal experience - my family were all gamers back in the days of arcades and Atari 2600. By the NES, only my dad would play, and that was Mario Bros and duck hunt. Everyone in the family backed out of gaming because it became more time consuming than they cared for. Games got longer, more involved than the simplistic design of Pac Man.
If people were complaining about the NES, it was because the games got harder, not because they got "casualized". Arcades were simple levels, like one of my favorites, Phoenix. They just got faster and harder. It was purely hand-eye coordination basics - the faster you could react, the further you could get. Even games that had stories in the arcades were simple reflex - think back to Dragon's Lair. Complete story, but all you had to do was follow the screen prompt to move in the right direction.
Your go from point a to b doesn't apply to many games on the NES, but Zelda being a prime one of those. The path wasnt clearly defined, and you didnt have to do most of the levels in order (tho it made it more difficult). Metroid was like this too. In fact, I can apply your argument only to side scrollers, where you couldn't even GO back to where you were (Super Mario Bros).
You seem to have a very different recollection, but it could be the location too. By some of your language, I would assume you're over in northern Europe. In New York City, entertainment culture changes rapidly, so the view on this side of the pond could have been different from your side. |
I didn't wanted to get on that topic because I was very young on the NES days but I remember a family anecdote.
I have this cousin who is now married and still loves videogames. On those days he had a comodore 64 and played with it. He didn't had a NES because he considered the NES games "lame and dumb" whil his C64 was "cool". But time laster, he bought a NES. The reason, my aunt WANTED one and he bought for her.
In the end, he sold his c64 to buy "zelda 2" "smb3" and TMNT the arcade game".
|
