My Snes Collection

This is just a vid showing my Snes collection. As usual, I am streaming an old analog camera through my capture card.

Later in the vid, I noted that I have been playing Final Fantasy since 1993 with the first one, when I watched my vid again, it almost sounded as if I was saying that FF came out in 1993.

Also, I know my opinion on OOT isn't a popular one, but despite how much I loved LTTP, OOT just had some nagging issues that annoyed me when I first played it in 1998, and when I still play it today. That being said, I have probably played through it around 5 or 6 times over the years, so my opinion on the game is not coming from someone who hasn't played it. It has grown on me over the years, but the GC Zelda games fixed a lot of the annoyances I had with OOT. I'm not saying that OOT sucked in any way shape or form, I'm just saying I was sort of disappointed with it.

A Quick Look at the Colecovision and Atari 7800

Shaky and low quality with muffled sound, but it does the job well enough. My Coleco is rather dirty, is has always been dirty since I have owned it. I have only on rare occasions pulled it out to play it over the years.

Annoying Gaming Cliches: Forced Training Modes

This is my first poor attempt at reading something I wrote. Not the best, and the way I get audio files is still laughable.

In some ways this is a response to video from user Elbryan42 who recently blogged his 15 biggest pet peeves. Check out his video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQEKQnGdVgs&feature=plcp

If you have never come across his playthroughs of games, you should know that his throw-away runs are better than my best runs in games, so do him the honor of subscribing.

I decided to show footage of Tomb Raider II for this vid, to show a game where completing the training is almost required to understand the game, and get the hang of the controls. I forgot to make a note about how older, more complex 3D games, like TR, or even Half Life never forced you into training, but left it as optional.

Here is a transcript of what is being said:

Training modes, since the advent of 3D gaming they have been around in one form or another. The problem is, they used to be optional. Nowadays, there are a number of developers who have decided to take optional out of the equation, and have decided to force these modes onto unsuspecting gamers.

Did you ever have a teacher in high school that would talk to you like an idiot, because the rest of the class was full of idiots? Essentially, that is what developers are doing to gamers. Just because some of the people who are playing, may be new to gaming, or may only game casually, they decided to treat all of us as if gaming was something we discovered yesterday.

I would just like to know, WHO THINKS THIS IS GOOD DESIGN? Does it really improve the game at all when you take a mode, that used to have a separate option on the title screen in games, meaning it was optional, and then force gamers to go through a tedious training mode, sometimes after you already let them play through the first level of the game. Are gamers so stupid that they cannot figure out how to press buttons to find out what they do? Press "A" to jump. Really? Because I never would have thought to press a button if you had not told me to.

Forced training modes are tedious enough, however, what I like to call simon-says training modes are the absolute worst examples of training modes, and the best example of bad game design there are. "Press "A" to jump." "Oops, you punched, failed. Let's start again. Press "A" to jump." Oops,You tried moving, FAILED. How dare you try to do anything else but what I have commanded you to do."

One very good example of the worst kind of forced training mode that has stuck in my head is in Spiderman 3. I borrowed the game from a friend a few years back, and by the time I got done with the training mode, I was already done with the game. You even get scolded by Bruce Campbell for trying to press buttons to skip through the talking. I finished the training, mode, stopped playing the game, and gave it back to my friend. I want to play a game, not be forced to jump through hoops before I ever get to play the actual game. By the time I am done with these modes, I have usually lost complete interest in a game, and just move on to the next one. If you can burn me out of a game before I ever actually play the game, then you've got talent, or lack there of.

Gears of War was a huge game, and the great thing about Gears is that it gives the player the option to forgo training. Mirror's Edge starts out in a training mode, but by pausing the game, you have the choice to skip the training. These are great examples that other developers should be following. Why, especially if you have already played through the game multiple times, are developers still forcing this horrible design idea on us? When did it become, in developer's minds, a good idea to make an optional mode mandatory? This is what bad design looks like, and forced training modes need to be taken out of games. If fighting games, who are one of the few game genres that I see the need for an in-depth training mode due to their complexity, and for the good ones, depth of play, do not force a training mode on you, then what makes developers think their game, who's gameplay is already watered down for mainstream appeal needs one?

In the end, forced training modes need to be taken out of gaming for good. Either make them a separate option in games, or use hint messages that can be turned off to tell us what the buttons do. And by hint messages, I mean ones that pop up on screen during the gameplay, not ones that pause the gameplay to tell you something.

But for the sake of argument, and the possibility of there being one person out there who thinks that forcing training on gamers is a good design choice, I would love to hear from you. How does one justify it as anything but bad design? Let me know.

My Sega Genesis Collection

Oh yes, I did it again, I did use an old analog camera and stream it through my capture card. So yeah, bad quality. I do have a Flip HD camera, but the computer I have is too crappy to run it.

My bro had an ebay business going for a while there, and in one of the big game lots he acquired a bunch of Sega Genesis cases. Some with the artwork, and others in just plain black cases, so he gave me a bunch of cases for my Genesis games.

I also say we a lot, because a number of these are games I have had since childhood, and my memories are between my bro and I collecting a number of these. We used to have a shared collection, but he ended up giving me the entire collection of games.

I still feel like I'm missing a few games here and there, but overall, this is the majority of my collection. It certainly isn't the greatest Genesis/Mega Drive collection in the world, but it's a respectable one. My collection for my older consoles isn't as good as for my newer consoles, because kids don't usually have the kind of money to buy a bunch of games. I rented the hell out of games in the 16-bit era, but I didn't start buying heavily until the end of the PS1's era when a bunch of games were in the bargain bins, and, being older, I had more money to buy them.

If only I was cool enough to be a geek today

Something has been brought to my attention again that I forgot about. I realized, after watching a few news videos from some popular gaming websites, that I'm suddenly not cool enough to be a gamer anymore. After watching their news vids, which usually feature some douchey guy (who is the only one who finds himself funny) or some blond-haired bimbo, neither of which know their heads from their asses in real gaming, trying to be funny and entertaining, I suddenly realized how ignorant the mainstream is.

Now that gaming has become "hip," and by hip, I mean phony, shallow, mainstream-hip, I'm not cool enough to fit in with a bunch of wannabe geeks. I guess I'm just saying f*** the watered down mainstream gaming crap, and f*** trying to be a "cool" geek. We real gaming geeks know who we are, and we don't need acceptance from a shallow crowd in order to be considered "geek" enough for them. I guess I'm neither douchey enough, nor ignorant enough to be a gamer anymore. I generally despise the mainstream of anything, but I really despise it in gaming.

I miss the days where gaming editors (I do not consider them journalists) had standards. Sure, the gaming magazines of old sometimes made some questionable reviews here and there, but at least they took their jobs seriously. They weren't trying to be cool.

2.5D issue number 2 is up and ready for Download

I've got the new issue of 2.5D the fanzine up and ready for download.

Download it here in PDF form.

I couldn't get the reviews to display the way I wanted them to when I saved it to PDF form for some reason.

Here is how I wanted the reviews to look:

Is it Just Me.... (Random Thoughts)

Or are there just too damn many games, and gaming platforms out nowadays? I'm not talking about the big three platforms so much, because last gen turned out just fine, but with the extreme amount of games coming out nowadays for not only the main consoles, but all the handhelds (aside from the DS, and PSP, I'm talking I-phone, I-touch, and a ton of other none gaming specific devices like cell phones), and then you can factor in the downloadable service for each console as a platform to itself for the most part. There are literally thousands of games released each year. It makes keeping full track of all the good to great games of this generation nearly impossible, and if you do manage to keep up, that means that any game that's over a week old is ancient in your world. To be honest, I sometimes wonder if the industry isn't going to crush itself due to it's sheer size.

Yes, having more platforms means more possible chances for your game to sell, but unless you've got millions for advertising to hype your game up, it's just not going to get noticed. It's a wonder why many of the smaller to medium sized 3rd party developers have either died out (RIP Midway, and Free Radical), or have switched to the so called casual games out there, because they take a lot less money to make so even a small number of sales can turn a profit.

It's that same hype machine that makes some games multi-million sellers, and buries other just-as-worthy games. Between the huge number of games on the market each year, and the giant hype machine, I foresee a future where most 3rd party developers either go out of business, or just get eaten by the big guys like EA and Activision. The market is completely bloated right now, and I don't see that changing.

I get the feeling that the future is Call of Madden, and pet games with a "Z" in their title.