Oct 9th, 2003, 08:17 PM
The only thing I really miss is the good old 2D sidescroller, whether of the platform (Mario), adventure (Metroid), or shooter (Gradius) type. The Gameboy Advance looks like the only place we're going to get more of those, aside from the very rare remake. I would personally rather see another dozen 2D Megamans, Marios (a la the NES/SNES games), Castlevanias, Metroids, and the like on the big consoles than more first person shooters, driving games, SPORTS GAMES, and such. Let's hope Nintendo and its developers appreciate the success of the GBA's great sidescrollers enough to keep putting them out.
Oh, and the challenge. Few recent games can stand up to the challenge of the good ole NES, with its Contra, Battletoads, Castlevania I, TMNT, and similarly brutal titles. Their replay value lay in frustration and the fact that it took you a year to learn all of the enemy patterns and to cope with all of the horribly unfair stuff they did. And thereafter, you could run through them almost without thinking (I eventually managed to beat most of Japanese SMB2 just running to the right and hitting jump at the right times).
If a game wasn't hard in general, it was neverending instead. Levels repeated, getting harder, faster, and more maddening, and the only point was to be able to say "I made it to level 103!" or to boast about your ridiculous high score (*all* the games had points back then, a holdover from the arcades. Even the first Mega Man had points.). No one cares about points anymore, no one takes risks to shoot that one spot on the screen where that cool little yaschischi symbol will show up and give you a huge point bonus but won't make you tougher or faster.
So that's why I still look back fondly on the classics. Not because they were better games, but because they included all these elements that are so unfortunately missing nowadays.
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