Forward by SevenofSpades7
If you are one of those people who believed the first game ever to be conceived involved a olive-armored space marine slaughtering hordes of aliens appearing in all sorts of shapes and sizes, then you sir, are in need of a lesson. You probably thought of a few different games with that vague description. Halo would have been the obvious example for those raised on the Xbox generation. Older PC gamers might have thought of the classic game Doom*, long before flashlights and guns were mocked mercilessly. Heck, maybe if you squinted hard enough and you were heavily under the influence of drugs, you can convince yourself that Pong was about two rectangular-shaped soldiers swatting a bouncy alien head at one another.
The point is, games, as much as gamers themselves, come in all ages, from the 4-bit colored Missile Command, to the 16-bit Super Mario World, all the way to the latest installation of the Final Fantasy Saga on today’s range of consoles. And while we – as both gamers and consumers – constantly look forward at the next greatest thing, we sometimes set aside those games from earlier years that we played. Then, years later, likely in the summertime where NOTHING worthwhile comes out, we might spend an afternoon to dig out an old console from the basement, pop a game in the system and play it, and two different reactions might take place:
1. Haha, now I remember why I liked the game. Ahhh, good times.
2. OH MY GOD!!!! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRAP?! I SHOULD’VE TRADED THIS IN AT FUNCOLAND WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE! GRAAAAAHAHHHHHHHH!
The first of these reactions are a result of what scientists seem to call nostalgia, are usually experienced by the more ‘experienced’ generation from gamers: those who grew up on consoles with controllers which had – get this – NO Analog Sticks! The second of these reactions, unfortunately, may leave the game system in a pile of singed microchips and melted plastic.
The reviews from this neck of the woods will look at games that came from the last century – Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Classic PC, and Sega Genesis. I’ll even try to find old Nintendo GameBoy Games if I can dig out my 1989 GameBoy from the closet (it should work….well I think it works). I’ll play them (either on an emulator or the hard copy) and see if they stand the test of time.
Unfortunately, this also means that I cannot reserve any judgment due to the graphics for the game. I’m aware that a lot of these games are ugly, especially the early polygon games. The first of these on a console was Star Fox for the SNES, and if we were to look at it today with our knowledge of 1080p HD, we would be looking at a plethora of asymmetrical diamonds connected by other asymmetrical diamonds shooting asymmetrical diamonds at one another. This is not to say that graphics were all atrocious back then – let’s face it, some games are 20 years old and still look great. Just that the graphics will not be given serious weight when reviewing a game…unless it looks really, really bad. Much of the focus will either be on the gameplay, on the story (if there is one), or both.
Got it? Good. Now…let’s get started.
*Yes, I know Doom was more about demons from hell than aliens…shhhhhhhhhh.
