A quick glance at my “Now Playing” sidebar over there on any given week will usually display more older games than newer ones. In that magical stretch of time when I was still living at home but was working my first well-paying full-time job, I amassed literally hundreds of video games. So between those and the steady trickle of games I had accumulated throughout my life prior to that, 99% of which I still have in my posession, the backlog of games I have yet to finish – or even start – is more than enough to keep me plenty busy without needing to have every hot new game as soon as its fresh from the mint. I occasionally make exceptions (see my previous entry), but for the most part, I don’t mind waiting until a game’s price tag sheds a couple of sawbucks before I bring it home. Basically, they aren’t going anywhere. No matter how long I wait, even if it’s a number of years, I’ll still be able to get my hands on that game one way or another, be it used, eBay, or emulator (hypothetically, of course, since I would never do anything illegal). 

Each of the four major home gaming platforms (including PC) have their own respective services that allow you to download smaller titles that probably wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) make it as full-priced retail releases. While downloading games from the internet used to be reserved for people who wanted yet another version of Ms. Pac-Man, we are now seeing a number of completely new and original titles made by independent developers. In an industry where game development costs have skyrocketed and few AAA publishers can justify spending tens of millions of dollars on anything but safe, guaranteed hits, platforms like WiiWare, XBox Live Arcade, and the PlayStation Store are the place to go for quirky, creative, and unique games at a reasonable price (usually between 5 and 15 bucks).

As someone who reads gaming magazines and listens to gaming podcasts regularly, I constantly hear about all of these fantastic little games and how much people are enjoying them. But something stirred inside me every time I would hear about a downloadable game, and for the longest time I wasn’t exactly sure why. Then it finally hit me: Where would these games be in 5-10 years? Unlike games that have hard-copy versions, will they simply disappear one day? I can click my mouse a few times and have a dozen NES games on their way to my house by morning. But how will I find Braid or PixelJunk Eden or Castle Crashers in 20 years? Are these games just going to be completely gone one day?

If when my PlayStation 2 eventually craps out on me, I’ll still have all of my games there, on my shelf, waiting for a new PS2 to nestle into. Sure, compact discs aren’t made out of diamond and they will eventually rot away, but I’m assuming that as long as I take decent enough care of them they will be playable for most of my lifetime. I bet that I’ll also be able to buy more PS2 games for most of my lifetime. Once a game has been pressed onto a disc, it exists and will always exist provided it’s looked after. But what about games that as of yet only exist in digital form? Even if we optimistically assume that the hardware companies will keep their online game stores persistent over many subsequent hardware generations, they aren’t just going to keep adding games to it and never remove any. XBLA is already beginning the process of removing low-performing games from its service. What happens to those games?

I’m always happy when a previously download-only game comes to retail. One major example is Sam & Max, which was a GameTap-exclusive episodic series that is now seeing its entire first “season” come to the Wii. So now, if GameTap breaks (yeah, I know, just bare with me), those Sam & Max episodes will live on, and people will be able to experience them later even if they don’t have the time or money right now. But that seems to be the exception. For every Sam & Max or Geometry Wars, there’s a dozen other great download-only games that may never exist in hard copy, and may one day be gone forever. And even if you are on the pro side of the emulation argument for the benefit of preserving games, since there is no physical copy for a rom dumper to get their hands on (which I’m sure is much to the delight of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft), there is no way to even keep them alive in that manner. Maybe some hacker will figure out how to get a game off of a PS3 hard drive and turn it into a ROM that is playable elsewhere, but with the way these types of things tend to work, if it hasn’t happened by now it probably never will.

This isn’t just a selfish fear for myself only because I can’t afford to buy every downloadable title I want and won’t be able to wait 5 years and get them all for next to nothing. Honestly, I just worry that there will come a time when nobody will have access to these games anymore, and those who didn’t get a chance to play them within a certain window of opportunity never will. What if people weren’t as able as they are today to go back and rediscover last generation’s gems that most people missed at the time, like Ico, Beyond Good & Evil, and Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath (all of which are easily findable and for really cheap)? Because mark my words, the games that we’re going to be talking about in the future the way we talk about those now are going to be the downloadable games, only they won’t be an eBay search away. I certainly shudder at the thought of a gaming future where there are games we look back at and say “Too bad I never got to play that, because now I can’t. Ever.”

I’m not even going to pretend like I can relate to kids today in regards to how much or little (most likely little) they appreciate the little treasures in life. In this age of high-speed internet, iPods, and the various other forms of technology that bring instant, on-demand entertainment of every kind, I would imagine something as trivial as getting one new video game is just a blip on the life radar of a kid or teenager who never had to worry about rewinding or fast-forwarding a movie. But for those of us who grew up in the days when video games came on cartridges so big that we had to lift them with two hands lest we pull our backs out, each and every new game was a magical event. This was especially the case for the kids like me who didn’t get them very often, and almost never outside of a birthday or [insert religious holiday of your upbringing]. One of my favorite new-game rituals was actually opening the thing up for the first time: Tenderly removing the outer plastic so as not to damage the box (that my mom would end up throwing out with the wadded up wrapping paper and TMNT action figure cardboard backings soon after anyway), sliding the game out in a manner that suggested I was expecting the actual characters to be riding on top of it, and perhaps my favorite pre-first-play ritual, reading the instruction manual. There was a time, young grasshoppers, when the manual was the only place to learn how to play the game, what the game’s story was, and what the names of the heroes and villians were. Such information was often not even found in the game itself. Anyway, the best was on those rare days when I was actually along for the ride to purchase the new game, and the treat on those occasions was that I’d get to excitedly open and ogle my new game’s assets on the car ride home.

Yeah, they say life goes on, long after the thrill of getting new games is gone. And once you’re old enough to buy your own games on a regular basis, a lot of the magic disappears. But I still often find myself opening and peaking at games I buy on the car ride home (which is a slightly more dangerous proposition since I’m also now driving said car), and if I don’t do that, then I most certainly open them as soon as I get home. Maybe it’s a combination of trying to keep that sense of childlike discovery alive inside my cynical adult body, and a purely Pavlovian reaction that I do almost without even thinking about it, but I still open most every game that I bring into the house even if I have zero intention of getting to it anytime soon.

But who would buy a game they don’t plan on playing right away? Well, someone who tries to support the industry that he loves, and especially the people who he feels are trying the hardest and taking the biggest risks. I’ve always taken pride in trying to buy games that I want to “support”, even when I don’t think I’ll be playing them anytime soon, because buying a game 6 months after the fact in a clearance bin or used from GameStop isn’t doing the game’s developers any favors. I bought Okami for PS2 immediately after its release, for example, even though I’ve yet to have the time to devote to it. And yes, I opened it right away.

You should always uphold your own personal traditions and principles. Nobody knows that better than me after what happened to me recently. Now you’ll notice that I kept saying how I “almost always” open every new game that passes through my doorway. Well, sometimes, for whatever reason, I don’t. And it’s a very, very rare occasion when this happens, and it’s usually by some fluke or string of events that I just toss a game onto my shelf without shuffling it loose its shrinkwrapped coil. I’d venture to say that, of the 700+ games I’ve purchased in my entire life, less than 10 weren’t opened within hours of purchase. I don’t know percentages so I’m not going to try and give one, but it’s very low. And okay, so sometimes a game comes out that I know needs my support and that I know I’m going to play and probably love one day, but maybe I opted for, say, a new Grand Theft Auto instead and that game got forgotten until I ran across it later on, lying pitiful and quivering in a $10 bin at Circuit City. Such was the case with Psychonauts, Tim Shafer’s brilliant platformer for Xbox. I bought it cheap, and I didn’t open it until a few days ago when I finally decided to start playing it (absolutely love it so far, not surprisingly). Upon tearing away its plastic for the first time and opening up the game’s case, I was immediately greeted with this:

So yeah, in case you can’t tell, it says “Congratulations, Psycho-Soldier! You’ve Won $5,000″

That is, I would have won $5,000 had I redeemed my prize by 07/19/05. Three years ago to the very day that I finally opened the game. I went against a tradition that I almost never break, and a principal I uphold as often as my meager bank balance allows, and it cost me $5,000. Kiss my ass, karma.

UPDATE: I shared this story with the forums at 1UP.com because one of their podcasts, 1UP FM, was doing Psychonauts as the featured game on their Backlog segment (where they choose a game and play it for a month, discussing it amongst themselves and the listeners each week). On the fourth week, they closed the show by sharing my story, which in and of itself was cool enough. But then, the following week, they had Tim Shafer (creator of Psychonauts and other classic games like Full Throttle and Grim Fandango) on for an interview, and they brought me and my story up to him! They all talked and joked about it for several minutes (you can listen to them either directly from the website or on iTunes). It’s pretty awesome to have something like this happen to you, and have the game’s creator find out about it personally. My foot is in the door! Okay, not really…

In case you haven’t heard, longtime Tecmo developer Tomonobu Itagaki recently surprised the gaming world by announcing his resignation from, and subsequent lawsuit against, his now former employer. If his name doesn’t ring any bells, you’ll certainly know his work: His Team Ninja is responsible for the Dead or Alive series and the latter-day re-imagining of the Ninja Gaiden franchise (which began with the Xbox release in 2004 and continued to the recently released sequel for the Xbox360). The popularity and success of the games on his resume aren’t the only components of his legacy, however. Itagaki is just as well-known (maybe more so) for his often controversial opinions about not only his own games, but the work of his peers as well. In case you are unfamiliar with his musings, I’ll sum them up for you: He is a god who manufactures orgasmic perfection in polygonal form. If you make games and you aren’t him, you’re a no-talent hack. Especially if you make Tekken.

(Note: there is a YouTube video within this article that features some racy video game footage. Granted it’s YouTube so there’s no nudity or anything too graphic, but I wanted to warn you anyway. Maybe don’t open it at work is what I’m trying to say.)   

I’ve always had a very low tolerance for extreme arrogance. I especially have a low tolerance for it when I feel it isn’t sufficiently backed up. And more often than not, it seems like the loudest mouthpieces are never anywhere close to being the best in their respective fields (how well did that last Limp Bizkit album sell anyway, Mr. Durst?). This phenomenon is especially prevalent in video games. The true legends are, for the most part, extremely humble and also respectful of their contemporaries. How much trash-talking or outright bragging have you ever heard from Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, Will Wright, Shinji Mikami, Mark Cerny, or Sid Meier? It always seems that the most outspoken, opinionated personalities in gaming are the ones who just aren’t on a high enough level to give them the “right” to be the braggarts that they are. Lorne Lanning, Dave Perry, even Nolan Bushnell (gaming “forefather” though he may be) all talk far more talk than is proportionate to their walk. But I’m not going to elaborate on them, because they don’t hold a candle to Itagaki in regards to people who have been given far too much freedom to talk far too much utter nonsense.

I’m not going to look up and link to all of the quotes floating around where he slams other companies. Or even his own, as he now says Ninja Gaiden Sigma for PS3 - which members of his own team made but he himself was not in charge of - is “no good”. Way to support your people, pal! You can find all kinds of quotes and quips for yourself if you’d like. My intention here is to put his own work under a microscope, and detail why he simply is in no position to put himself on such a nauseatingly high pedestal.

The Dead or Alive games are fun, no doubt. They are fast-paced and easy to play, and don’t require the level of commitment that most other fighting games ask for in order to be competitive against anyone other than the AI set on Very Easy. But let’s be clear here: DOA is no Soul Calibur. And DOA is certainly no Virtua Fighter. DOA is to 3D fighters what Guilty Gear is to 2D ones: more flash and rock-n-roll than hardcore, technical fighting game. Which isn’t to say that’s a bad thing. The problem is that Itagaki paints a different and inaccurate picture with all of his boasts. Instead of just being honest and saying “We make fun, fast fighting games with jiggle-chested babes thrown in for good measure”, he goes on and on about the masterpiece that each one of his games are, and how the competition can only dream that they’ll ever be as good. This is especially ridiculous when you consider that the DOA series has just been resting on its laurels since DOA2, making basically the same game two more times with parts 3 and 4 with very little in the way of improvement beyond the obligatory extra characters and shinier graphics. Sure, picking on any one game franchise for simply inching forward with each installment is unfair given that so much of the industry works in this manner, but fighting games should be (and usually are) different. Look at the evolution of the Virtua Fighter series from its first through fourth core installment. Look at how Tekken has changed from parts 1 and 2 to part 3, and then from part 3 through part 5 (though arguably not always for the better). And with both of those franchises, they’ve had “side games” to the main series when they just wanted to either try something different or add or tweak a few things. Virtua Fighter 4:Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution::Dead or Alive 2:Dead or Alive 3/4. Street Fighter did that for years, releasing version after version of SF2 before finally giving us the TRUE (and extremely different) sequel in SF3, which then has gone on to do multiple versions. Granted, they also charged full price for the home versions of each of these updates, but at least they came out quickly. DOA has had only 4 installments across 11 whole years. When you are going to take that much time to give us a comparatively short-numbered franchise, each one better be damn different.

Of course, you can’t talk about DOA without going into its spin-off, the DOA Xtreme [sic] series. First there was Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball for Xbox. I’ll admit I was initially really excited about this game. I love volleyball, and I love volleyball video games. It started with Kings of the Beach for NES, which my brother and I played the hell out of it, and it continued through the long-overdue resurgence of volleyball video games in the last generation. Beach Spikers for Gamecube, Summer Heat Beach Volleyball for PS2, Outlaw Volleyball for Xbox…I had to have them all. I enjoyed Beach Spikers and Outlaw Volleyball quite a bit and played them both for a significant amount of time (I just couldn’t get into the play mechanics of Summer Heat). And I was still ready for another in DOAX V-ball. I’d be lying if I said I was completely turned off by the notion of the multitude of unlockable bikinis of gradually decreasing size and the option to watch them jog on the beach and lounge by the pool, but in total and absolute honesty, I just wanted another good volleyball game above all else. Plus this one also promised a whole beach resort with which to explore and frolic on, including minigames, a casino, and a whole “relationship system” with which you try to build alliances with the various other girls on the island. Well, most of those promises fell flat. For one thing, you couldn’t actually just WALK from place to place; when you weren’t in an actual activity, it was just a series of static screens and menus. An example: First I’d select to go to the shop from a menu to buy some accessories, and I’d see a shop in the background of the next menu, where I made my selections. Then when I wanted to go to the casino after that, I’d select it from another menu, and poof, there’s the still shot of the casino. Then I’d choose poker, and bam, there’s the static shot of the poker table. I could’ve swore I was playing this game on an Xbox, not an SNES. In a post-GTA3 gaming world, not being able to just freely and physically walk from place to place is practically unacceptible. The gambling stuff was sort of fun I guess, but it’s hard to get into video game poker when you don’t see a single character on screen, just the table and the cards magically flying around. The supposed relationship system was a complete crapshoot, and it seemed totally random whether another girl accepted my gift or not. It’s always fun to save up and buy a really expensive bathing suit for another character to wear, only to have her hate you for some strange reason and not accept it. And then it was gone forever. But whatever, I did say I just wanted a solid v-ball game, and all this peripheral stuff shouldn’t have mattered anyway, right? Well the v-ball was average at best. It was way too simple (which I suppose was sort of the point, but it wasn’t to my liking), and there was no way to adjust any of the rules of the game (for example, the serving team wasn’t the only one who could score a point, EITHER team could; and you couldn’t change this. Boo.). It was fun for a few games, but not enough to carry a whole game. None of the aspects of this game were strong enough to carry a game, and putting them all together almost made it work as a total package, except that as I said it just didn’t feel like a cohesive experience. Oh, and you could only play in “two week” intervals each time, and then it was over and you had to start again from scratch with zero dollars. Awesome! Okay, so it was a decent enough game for what it was, just a collection of lazy summer activities and girl watching. But again, from the guy who we are supposed to believe makes nothing but pure gold, it just wasn’t good enough, especially not for an Xbox game. Besides, the concept was nothing new: Japan has been making games like this for years. This is just the first one that was released here and had any degree of real polish, for whatever that’s worth.

Sales and reception of DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball were good enough to warrant a sequel, which came to the Xbox360 in 2004. It was basically more of the same, with a few new activities and the expected bump in graphical quality. I will admit outright that I never played this game, but after my overall disappoint with the first one and the subsequently poor reviews, I didn’t want to. Based on what I can gather, actual gameplay took a backseat (more so than usual) to eye candy this time around. A significant amount of time seemed to be placed on the “breast physics” in this game. DOA has always had massive jiggling mammaries, but now each boob actually swings and sways independent of the other. Fine, so this is next-gen and everything in a next-gen game should have real-world physics placed on it, but give me a break. Maybe it was a necessary evil when you already designed these girls and their DD-cups that you have to make them move the way boobs that are that big would move, but then you have to make sure you at least do it “right”, not make the breasts jump and swing wildly when the girls so much as turn their heads (see video above). Plus, you should then try that much harder to make sure the actual game that takes place around their curves is as equally well-crafted and next-gen. From what I’ve seen and read, it wasn’t. The DOAX series went from a fun, flirty summer to a Girls Gone Wild commercial passing off as a game. I also didn’t even touch on the tan lines, and I’m not going to.

Of course, we can’t forget about Ninja Gaiden. I have to tread somewhat lightly when I talk about this game, because it is an extremely well-regarded and highly respected title. For me, it was just too damn difficult. Maybe I’m old-school, but I don’t want an intense duel with every single character in a game, starting with the very first one I face. But I did enjoy it for as long as far as I was physically able to get in the game, and unlike other games where I wonder how everyone else but me can be so very, very wrong (and no, I’m not going to give an example now), I can and will concede to the popular opinion of Ninja Gaiden and its merits. I didn’t play Ninja Gaiden II, but the buzz so far seems to be positive. Alright Itagaki, I’ll give you this one.

Still, it’s not enough. If Hideo Kojima made only Metal Gear Solid – my all-time favorite game - and the DOA series, and was an arrogant jerk, I still wouldn’t respect him either. To be honest, I think that even if Shigeru Miyamoto had his current resume but Itagaki’s attitude and personality, it wouldn’t sit well with me. And Miyamoto could probably get away with it. The point is, I view Itagaki’s leaving Tecmo as fantastic news. I don’t doubt that Team Ninja is full of extremely talented designers, programmers, and artists and will do just fine without him, maybe better now that they can choose not to slave away on the minutiae of the female form and put that work towards things like gameplay and innovation. Tecmo owns everything connected with DOA and Ninja Gaiden and is free to continue on with those series’ as they see fit. We’ll see just how far Mr. Cocky can go without a great team under him, and without long-established franchises and characters to mine from. It is completely up in the air at this point what his future plans are, but there is no way a man like him can live out of the spotlight. Surely we’ll have to endure months of interviews from him about his resignation and his supposed mistreatment from Tecmo, as he rides that publicity wave for as long as he can. After that, when he emerges with whatever new project he’s pushing as the greatest thing since the push-up bra, I’m sure gaming journalists will be lining up to snap pictures of his smug, sunglassed face and be eager to hear his thoughts on how horrible the gaming world has been in his absence and how his new game will change everything. And I’m sure it will; after all, somebody has to be the first one to realistically capture the effect that water has on a white t-shirt against human skin.

Nintendo is a very old, Japanese company. One of those very old Japanese companies that firmly believes in having its own traditions, values, and beliefs and in upholding them above all else. Of course, arguments can be made that they have often held onto those traditions to the point of stubborn arrogance, and in doing so they have made decisions that led them from being the saviors and rulers of the video game world to the company that was a distant 2nd- and 3rd-place runner-up in the previous two console generations. As we all know, that is no longer the case with the Wii, which has put Nintendo back on top and once again made them the household name that they arguably haven’t been since the NES’s dominance two decades ago.

Besides the obvious main factors of a cheap price point (with included game) and the anyone-can-use-it Wii-mote, the other key to Nintendo’s return to glory is them finally striking the right balance between upholding their tradition and embracing the new. I’m not going to go into the things they did the same and the things they did differently, because that’s not what this article is about. Instead, I’m going to focus on one particular (and particularly annoying) long-held Nintendo tradition that has always been my least favorite thing about my most favorite company: Their strict adherence to releasing all of their in-house games at full price and waiting far longer than almost any other company to drop the prices.

I’m not going to go as far back as the 16-bit era, because games in general were far too expensive on both the SNES and the Genesis, primarily because of the cartridge format. Plus, big box electronic stores were still in their infancy, FuncoLand was hardly the institution that EB/Gamestop is today, and “finding games for cheap online” was a sentence that wouldn’t have even made sense to the people of 1993. So at the relatively few stores that actually sold games, they started expensive and they stayed expensive. It’s just the way it was. Then in the PlayStation/Saturn/Nintendo 64 era, things began to change. PlayStation games came on CDs, which were far cheaper to manufacture. In time, the price for the average brand-new PlayStation game was a mere $39.99. Compare that to the average N64 release at $20-$30 more. It made sense: an N64 cartridge was far more cost- and labor-intensive to make then just zapping games onto CDs and shooting them out the door by the dozens. It also made sense that when the two consoles began releasing their best sellers at a budget price, PlayStation game creators could afford to let games go at only 20 bucks a pop, while Nintendo couldn’t do better than $40. Still, sensical or not, you had games like Super Mario 64 which, classic and excellent as it may be, was still considered an “old” N64 game but was going for the same price as brand-new, top-tier PlayStation titles several years into that generation’s life span. I admit that I don’t know much about profits vs. manufacturing costs, and whether or not Nintendo could truly afford to have a budget line cheaper than that for their older titles without losing money. But for games like Mario 64 and Goldeneye which had easily already recooped all of their development and production costs and then some, so what if they would’ve barely made any additional profit on them had they been an additional 10 or 20 dollars less? Doesn’t it give off a better impression that you’d be willing to practically give a million seller away to the people who are only just now able to afford your system or the people who have to wait until a game is as cheap as possible before they can buy it? I’d be willing to bet that there was a decent amount of PlayStation Greatest Hits that could’ve kept selling at full price. It just makes it feel like a gift to the patient and/or less-wealthy gamers out there.

Let’s give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt and say that they simply could not afford to let a new N64 game go for a penny less than $39.99. What about Gamecube? Now we’re talking disc-based games that, while maybe Nintendo’s unique disc format that the Gamecube utilized cost a little more than widely-available CDs and DVDs, still have to be pretty cheap to manufacture. But again, we saw history repeating itself with the Gamecube: Games stayed full price for literally years, way beyond PlayStation 2 and Xbox games released in similar time frames that had already dropped to $20. And even now, the few stores that still have brand new Gamecube games laying around rarely have a Nintendo-made game cheaper than $20. I’ve seen Super Smash Bros. Melee, a Gamecube launch title, still selling for $20 as recently as several months ago. Seriously, Nintendo? Yeah, I get that you still want to sell Gamecube games to Wii owners since its backwards compatible, but come on. For $20 I can probably get 6 excellent PS2 or Xbox games if I shopped smart, but I’d be lucky to get 2 decent Gamecube games for that.

Perhaps the worst offenders are Nintendo’s portable systems. You cannot tell me a Game Boy Advance game costs that much to produce, either in development or manfacturing. Yet GBA games (primarily Nintendo-made ones) took way too long to drop in price as well. $30-$35 was way too much to spend on 90% of the GBA library even at its peak. Yet you still have to fork out $19.99 for a new copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (which I’ve seen going for that as recently as this past Christmas), which is a port of a SUPER NINTENDO game, not to mention one you can get on Wii’s VC now for only 8 bucks. The Nintendo DS is just as bad. Pretty much any game that came out in the DS’s first few months should be, at most, $20 by now. Yet you’d be lucky to find Metroid Prime Hunters or Mario Kart DS for that much. And don’t even get me started on Super Mario 64 DS. Again, this is a port of a game that’s practically ancient by video game standards, and I still see the damn thing going for a full $35. You can’t tell me that that many people are still buying it that Nintendo just can’t justify dropping it even 10 dollars in price. One of the only exceptions to this rule is the Brain Age/Big Brain Academy series for DS. Hey Nintendo, don’t you think that one of the biggest reasons for those games’ massive success was their $19.99 price point? And didn’t you make a ton of money off of those games because they sold more than enough to make up for them being so cheap? Just thought I’d point that out. Of course, I’m making this point to the company that then brought one of them to the Wii (Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree) and made it $50 (and it was practically the exact same game). Sigh… 

Which brings us to the Wii. Surprise surprise, same deal. While you can find other Wii third-party launch titles like Red Steel and Rayman Raving Rabbids for $15 or less, Nintendo’s ExciteTruck still fetches 50 bucks at most places that still carry it new. Maybe great games that sold really well – but not nearly as well as they deserved to in comparison to the number of people who actually have Wiis, like Metroid Prime 3 or Super Mario Galaxy - would get boosts when they dropped in price after some time had passed. I’ve heard Nintendo say Twighlight Princess sold under expectations. Maybe give that one a price slash as well. How many units of those games are still moving per month? And how many more would they move if they were cheaper. “Yes, I finally got my hands on a Wii. And look, a Zelda game for only $20! I might as well go ahead and grab that now, too.”

I just don’t get the logic in staunchly sticking to the “full price” philosphy for every game and still not having an offical budget line for either the Wii or the DS yet. Get with it, guys. You are finally embracing online play. You are finally designing hardware that asthetically looks more like hi-end electronics than children’s toys. Fine, so some of the things you didn’t change have just as much to do with your current runaway success. But you are still just too damn tight in the wallet. Put some more money into Wii production so everyone who wants one can finally have one (18 months later). And take a small financial hit in order to get your still-amazing games into the hands of as many people as possible, especially the ones that were released in fiscal years that you’ve already long-since filed away. If other console manufacturers can do it, and other publishers on your hardware can do it, you’re going to have a really hard time convincing anyone that you can’t do it, too.

I was listening to 1up.com’s fantastic Retronauts podcast a few days ago, and they were taking a look at the history of the Street Fighter series. After spending a better part of an hour discussing the minute details about the changes between the various versions of each game, be it from the arcade to the home port, or from the originals to their updates (SF2 Hyper Fighting, SF3 Third Strike, etc), one of the guys finally spoke up and said something that really resonated with me. I’m completely paraphrasing in the loosest sense of the word here, but it was something along the lines of him not really devoting enough time to Street Fighter games to get into the extreme minutae of parries and cancels and isms, because he simply has too many other games he wants to play.

That’s always been my approach to gaming. Ultimately, I want to play as many different games as I possibly can with the relatively small amount of time I’m going to have in my lifespan to play video games. There’s simply too many games that I want to get to, ranging from the all-time must-play classics to the little throwaway diversions that I use to take a break between epics. I just can’t relate to people who pick one specific series or genre and devote all of their time and effort into learning it top to bottom, like the afforementioned fighting game fanatics, or the people who somehow find the time to play RPGs all the way through five times. And the gamers that I really can’t get inside the heads of are the MMORPGers who put literally hundreds of hours into doing little more than “leveling up” (and don’t you dare accuse me of trivialzing an MMO. You know damn well that’s all you are really doing a good chunk of the time). Not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with different approaches to gaming. To each his own. I just can’t really fathom taking an approach to video games (or anything else for that matter) that limits the amount of new and different content you are getting exposed to. When I think back to some of the great games I’ve played and finished in the past year or so - BioShock, Resident Evil 4, Zelda: Ocarina of Time (yes, it was my first time finishing it, so sue me), God of War 2, Bully, GTA San Andreas, Portal – I find it very hard to believe that someone who spent the same amount of time playing one or two games as I spent on all of those combined got as fulfilling of an experience as I did.

Of course that last statement hinges entirely on personal opinion and preference, which I acknowldege 100%. But they certainly didn’t have the range of complete experiences that I had. I can’t see how spending that same amount of time killing rats for better armor (again, I don’t want to hear it) or fine-tuning your custom combos could be anywhere near as fulfilling as the seven completely different stories and universes and casts of characters I experienced, each with a defined beginning, middle, and end. So maybe I ultimately suck at fighting games because I don’t devote much time to them, and maybe I can’t engage in deep discussions about the intricate details of any series’ history or its stories or characters because I basically play every game once and I don’t go above and beyond to explore every corner and unlock every secret. But if the trade-off is that I play a lot more games in a given month, year, or lifetime than someone who is hardcore about a specific game or genre or franchise, then that is fine by me. There’s just too many games to experience and not enough time to experience them. You wouldn’t just read one book over and over or only watch the same handful of movies repeatedly, so why approach games that way?

Crossovers and guest stars seem to be all the rage in video games these days, with the recently announced Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe, the Star Wars characters in Soul Calibur IV, and the dream match that was once thought to be impossible but finally happened, Mario vs. Sonic in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. And while some quibble over the details and inconsistencies that some match-ups present (why can’t Darth Vader’s lightsaber slice right through a sword, for example), I think ultimately most of us are just giddy to see characters out of their elements and interacting with characters from other universes. That is, those of us who don’t think we are just too good and too passionate about our games to have a little nonsense fun. Get over yourselves.  

What I’m reminded of when I see something ridiculous like Solid Snake fighting Jiggly Puff or a Daytona 500 car boxing with a ninja (and no I’m not explaining that one; you’ll either know it or you won’t) is playing with my action figures as a kid. Although I tended to take my toy playing rather seriously, with ongoing story lines, wars that lasted for weeks, and characters that only “died” when they actually broke, I still mixed toys from a myriad of sources. It wasn’t uncommon for Gambit to work his cajun charms on April O’Neal, or He-Man to be locked in an epic struggle with Lion-O. It didn’t matter that the proportional sizes of the various toys sometimes made things look a little ridiculous. And in the case of battles, it also didn’t matter too much that certain characters just could never actually fight each other “realistically”. Sometimes you just had to go with it for the sake of fun. After all, as seriously as I took the continuity of it all and the politics that caused the wars and the feuds that ripped teams apart (yes, even as an 8 year old), they were still toys, and they were still supposed to be fun.

So when I tell someone about MK Vs. DC, and the first thing out of their mouth is “Come on, none of the MK characters could even put a dent in Superman, nor could a lot of the DC characters, that is so lame”, it kind of annoys me. I mean obviously I’m a pretty big geek, and I’ve had my share of intense discussions and heated debates about things of that nature. But not so much that it would affect my enjoyment of a game with these sorts of inconsistencies, or that I’d refuse to even play them. I remember being in a chat room talking about the platform-specific guest stars in each version of Soul Caliber II, and we were debating which one we thought was the coolest. Well, just about everyone at least agreed that Heihachi was the lamest of the three and barely even warranted consideration. Except for one guy, one of these really hardcore fighting game guys, the kind of guy who could go into ridiculous detail about the fundamental differences between Ryu in Super Street Fighter II and Ryu in Super Street Fighter II Turbo. He said Heihachi was the best of the cameos by default, simply because it made the most sense within the Soul Caliber universe. Yawn. I don’t care that there was no good reason for Link to be there, it’s freakin’ Link in a Soul Caliber game! Who cares “why”?! Maybe it’s me, but I just don’t need a “reason” or an “explanation” for it, and I don’t need it to make sense. Even though it wasn’t my style of game, I put in a lot more time than I normally would have with Marvel Vs. Capcom just because it was a smorgasbord of ridiculously awesome characters and match-ups. I just eat that stuff up.

I know we all want games to be taken as seriously as other forms of media, and many of us even want games to be considered art. But if a 2-on-2 basketball dunkfest pitting Bill and Hillary Clinton against DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince isn’t considered art, then I guess I’ll truly never understand what “art” is.

I go to the movies a lot, on average 4 or 5 times a month. And I do the whole soda and candy thing (I’m not a popcorn guy); sometimes I may even get some actual food depending on the theater. Hey, don’t turn your nose up at me, there are some nice theaters out there with decent food. I even know of one with a full restaurant-caliber menu, as a matter of fact. While I often go during the day, even matinee prices are only a buck or two off of the full price anyhow so it barely even matters. So basically, my average trip to the movies can run me $20-$30 when you factor in treating my girlfriend (although she often pitches in). So how do I feel about that? Just fine, thanks. And if you are the type to complain about how the moviegoing experience is too expensive, I’d like to say a few things in defense of a pastime that I still thoroughly enjoy, and one that I feel that no amount of at-home technical gadgetry can ever duplicate.    

You may or may not share the sentiments that ended the last paragraph, but the fact of the matter is that going to the movies is not that expensive, and I find it amusing the ways that people use to exaggerate how much movies actually cost. For starters, the average movie ticket these days falls in the $8-$10 range. Obviously there are exceptions going both ways, but I think we can all accept $9 as the cost of a movie for the sake of arguement from here on out. So, for $9 you get 2 hours of entertainment, which includes both the movie and previews of upcoming movies (which beats watching them on YouTube). Now, how many other things can you think of where you go out and only spend 9 bucks and are totally covered for 2 whole hours? Certainly you’d be hard-pressed to only spend that much at a bar in 2 hours, even if you don’t drink (unless of course you are one of these girls who goes out and makes it a point not to bring any money, expecting to be bought drinks all night, in which case I don’t much care what you think about anything, truth be told). A lot of bars and clubs will cost you at least that just to get in the door. What if you were to spend 2 hours in a mall? I think we can all agree that it would be quite a proud accomplishment to shop for that long and be out less than $9. Oh, and let’s not forget that if you are doing something in a big city, chances are you’re either going to cab it or have to pay to park somewhere, and we all know how hard those two things hit the wallet (yes, a lot of theaters charge to park these days too, but I’ll get to the extra charges in a minute). So what else do people do when they “go out”? Miniature golf? Bowling? Casino? Concert? Poker at a friend’s house? Sporting event? Strip club? Bingo? Tell me 2 hours doing any of those things aren’t easily going to set you back at least $9. The point I’m trying to hammer home here is that, in today’s world, a movie ticket is still quite reasonable – even at $9 – for the amount of entertainment you are getting.

Now, if you want to talk about movie quality, certainly some movies are going to feel more worth the money than others. But just about anything you do when you go out can end up being lame. Is paying full price for a crappy movie so much worse than spending $20 on a dinner that wasn’t very good or paying the cover to a club only to find out it’s dead and leave 10 minutes later? I just don’t see how bad movies rank as so much more of a blow to our hard-earned money than when any number of other comparable activies end up not being what you thought they’d be. I don’t hear nearly as much bellyaching about spending all night at a boring party where you spent more money than you can even count than people do about losing 9 measly dollars on an underwhelming movie. And if you really want to get into movie quality, I also don’t care to hear whining from people who exclusively see all the big Hollywood movies that are plastered all over buses and on TV every other commercial break. It isn’t exactly a new phenomenon that the average Hollywood movie is nothing special. So, if your time and money are so precious to you, venture beyond whatever is the hot movie on the front page of Yahoo and take a few minutes to read about a smaller movie. I’m not talking bizarre black-and-white subtitled French arthouse films; I just mean the more interesting and/or smaller-scoped flicks that weren’t “sure-fire” enough for the big money. They aren’t all as inaccessible as you might think. Napolean Dynamite, The Blair Witch Project, Swingers, Clerks…these are all movies that at one time were little indie movies that weren’t playing all over the place and relied mostly on word-of-mouth, and I don’t think anyone would call any of them too quirky or weird for the average moviegoer. And that’s a great place to start: Find movies you like, find other lesser-known movies with the the same writer, director, or actor(s) and go from there. There are a ton of quality movies out there, you just have to look for them. Plus, you’ll find that even the movies you don’t like will still at least be interesting, and you’ll still feel more fulfilled than if you saw a big-budget dud because you at least took a chance on something different - and maybe you’ll see a preview for another interesting-looking movie that you’ll end up loving.

Now we come to the part of the complainers argument that bothers me the most: adding anything and everything that isn’t the movie itself and counting that as the price of the movie. Fine, so you always got soda and popcorn. So I guess when you watch movies at home, you don’t eat while you’re watching them? Is NetFlix giving out free pizza with their movies now? I mean fair is fair: If candy, popcorn, and drinks count towards the cost of the movie, than those potato chips and those pizza rolls do, too. By all rights, anything you consume as part of your movie-watching experience must count towards the cost of that particular movie if that’s how you are going to do it with going to the theater. Sure, a can of Mountain Dew and a bowl of pretzels don’t cost nearly as much as theater snacks. But when you start really nitpicking in that way, plus the price of the mvoie rental (or purchase if you bought it outright), and the cost becomes a lot more comparable. And while we’re at it, what about your TV? What about your DVD, HD-DVD, or Blu-Ray player? What about your fancy-pants surround sound set-up? By all rights, these all count, as you all of this is part of your movie watching. So take the amount of money you spent on your entire home theater system, and divide it up evenly amongst all the movies you rent or buy. You’ll have to rent a whole lot of movies before you are able to say that you are spending less than $9 per movie.

Did all of those comparisons sound ridiculous? Well they are. But it’s ridiculous the other way, too. Is it fair to say a Big Mac costs $5 because you always get the Value Meal with it? Should you add coffee and donuts to the amount you spend to fill up your gas tank since you always get breakfast when you’re at the gas station? And speaking of gas, shouldn’t you just go ahead and factor in the cost of whatever gas you used when you go anywhere? The movie itself costs what it costs. Everything else is seperate. It is all optional. Because you simply can’t resist those Junior Mints doesn’t make it Iron Man’s fault. There is so much useless junk we throw wads of cash at on a daily basis; I just don’t see why movies are so much more evil than anything else. In a world where we spend $6 on coffee, $4 on a bottle of water, $40 on a t-shirt, or a $15 monthly fee to play a single video game, why do we suddenly pretend to be all thrifty and cost-conscious when it comes to a movie ticket?

Everything is expensive these days, and our paychecks don’t seem to keep up with the inflation like they are supposed to. Relatively speaking, movies are a bargin. Yeah, I said it: a bargin. You don’t have to agree with me. It’d be nice if I changed some minds, but if I didn’t, oh well. That’s one less fidgety person in the theater who doesn’t want to be there, ruining the experience for the rest of us who still enjoy and appreciate it.

After a false start on PSP last year, Earthworm Jim is again poised for a comeback. Very little is known thus far other than there’s a new game, TV series, and movie all said to be forthcoming, with original EWJ character creator Doug TenNapal set to be involved in all three. There was no mention of any involvement by original Earthworm Jim developer Shiny (now a part of supergroup Double Helix Games) and/or David Perry, the shiny-headed former head of Shiny. Which is a shame, really, because I for one love it when there’s a big-time David Perry game in development: the hype, the promises, the delays, the cuts, the disappointment, the backlash…it’s all just so magical.

In the meantime, we’ll be able to relive EWJ in his glory days as his two Genesis outings are on their way to the Wii Virtual Console, along with two other Interplay, um, classics, Boogerman and ClayFighter.

I find it interesting that, while we demand that almost every form of audio/visual media improves in technological quality as time passes, most of the population seems more than happy to sacrifice quality for convenience when it comes to music. We have these ridiculous home theater systems, and overpay for Blu-Ray versions of movies (while the DVDs often still have far more special features) just so our movies can look and sound that much better. Of course, video games continue to demand equal attention in the technology department. Even televison, a medium that long relied on wire coat hangers jutting out in all directions just so the picture wouldn’t be fuzzy is so advanced that Jay Leno has been in High Definition for longer than the average person was able to afford to watch it that way. It’s just too bad HD doesn’t make you funny. But I digress…    

So why, then, do we continue to happily settle for the compressed, subpar quality of MP3s and the various other forms of digital music? While plenty of people claim they don’t hear a difference, it’s an indisputable fact that MP3s don’t sound as good as CDs when you get right down to it. (I found this article detailing the sound qualities of the different forms of digital music to be very informative if you are interested.) Granted, there are many different types of digital music these days, some sounding nearly as good as a CD, but with what most people listen to that isn’t the case. Of course, hardcore audiophiles will chime in that CDs don’t sound as good as vinyl albums. I’ll admit that I can’t speak on that particular point with a significant amount of experience. However, there is a radio station here in Chicago, The Drive (97.1FM), that has a feature called “Album Sides Thursday”, where they play the entire side of an actual vinyl record album. And even through my car’s default factory sound system, I swear I do hear a difference. It just sounds, I don’t know…richer or fuller, maybe.

So if albums sound better than CDs and CDs are (mostly) superior than the music the average person downloads off of the internet, then those people are currently listening to music in a format that is inferior to what was the standard thirty years ago! Compare that to how television looked in the 70’s to now or how Atari 2600 games look next to PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 and you’ll see just how silly it really is. I know a guy who recently switched cable TV providers based entirely on the fact that one had more HD channels than the other. This same guy also overpaid for the 20gb PlayStaion 3 model just so he could have Blu-Ray that much sooner. Music? Eh, iTunes through crappy earbuds is fine for him.

Probably the most key aspect of this that I haven’t addressed is convenience. Is it easier to just point and click and have your desired song playing within seconds rather than rifling through cumbersome jewel cases, taking the disc out, putting it in your stereo, and so on? Well, yes. Is it more convenient to have 10,000 songs on a music player the size of a credit card rather than a bulky Discman and a big book full of CDs? Of course. At the same time, though, the conveniences of other forms of media have grown along with the increase in quality, not instead of. It’s much easier to find what you want to watch on TV with on-screen menu guides, and easier to record shows with DVRs. It’s a cinch to pop in a game disc and start playing right away without having to blow on it or spend 10 minutes making sure it’s sitting just so inside the system before it’ll play properly. And DVDs and Blu-Ray’s are far easier to navigate than the archaic fast-forwarding and rewinding of video casettes. But as I said, with all these ways that things were made easier, they were also made “better”, and we wouldn’t have accepted anything less.

Look, I’m not so high and mighty that I’m above this whole digital music thing, nor do I think I’m too good to ever put convenience over quality. When I put a movie on my iPod, which I do frequently, I’m sacrificing quality for the ability to watch that movie on the go. When I buy the PSP version of a console game, another thing I’ve done several times, I’m making a conscience choice to have the inferior version in order to be able to play it anywhere. Even as I write this, the soundtrack to my blogging is brought to me via the iTunes player on my PC. I suppose the difference is that what’s on my iTunes came off of my actual CDs. I’m not saying that as a commentary on the buying of physical CDs versus downloading albums, although I have enough opinions on that to fill its own rant. The point is, when I’m doing housework or just want to relax and listen to my new or favorite album in its entirety, I put on the CD. Maybe it doesn’t sound that much better, especially through my rather unremarkable 7-year-old stereo. Maybe I just misunderstood what it was that is truly bothering me about this whole thing.

I discovered just in the process of writing this is that what is really getting to me more than anything is that people just don’t seem to really appreciate music as a whole, at least not like they used to. People just don’t seem to really love music. We microwave popcorn, order a pizza, and invite friends over to watch a movie. We go to midnight launches and call in sick the day a new video game comes out. We go to “viewing parties” at bars or peoples’ houses every week to watch a TV show, and discuss it for the entire week afterward. But when it comes to music, we download it off the internet (many of us by stealing it in some fashion), dump it onto our PCs and our portable music players, and it literally just gets lost in the shuffle. And if we do make a point to put something particular on, it’s not for the specific purpose of enjoying said band or singer or album or song. it’s usually just pouring out of our tinny computer speakers as background noise to something else, something more “important”. Like, say, shopping for a 50″ LCD television and a state-of-the-art home theater system to make sure Jay Leno looks and sounds amazing.

I finished Bioshock within about 2 months of getting it as a Christmas present. And I absolutely loved it. I’m not writing a review here so I won’t go into too many specifics, but it was one of those mind-blowing gaming experiences that had me consistently riveted from start to finish and I have almost no ill to speak of it. If I were to write a review, I’d be sure to give attention to the amazing story in the game, which (I’d say in the review) had me captivated throughout its many twists and turns, the emotions it stirred, and the psychological questions it raised.

But really, in all honesty, I wasn’t exactly sure of the details of what was happening a pretty good chunk of the time.    

I mean I could write a parapgraph that summed up the basic plot (and don’t worry, if you haven’t played the game or haven’t finished it yet you won’t see anything even close to a spoiler here). I know you play as some guy with a sort of mysterious past who finds himself in a decaying underwater metropolis called Rapture, which is now overrun by humanoid creatures with costume ball masks who speak and walk like perfectly normal human beings but, you know, flip out and try to kill you when they see you. And some guy name Atlas gets ahold of you over a radio and is trying to help you find his trapped family so that all of you can safely escape Rapture together. The man who built the place, Andrew Ryan, is a bad guy who had all these conformist rules laid out for the citizens of Rapture and now wants you dead for some reason. And then there’s these big dudes in oversize diving gear called Big Daddies, and they only seem to get upset when you attack one of the Children of the Corn little girls that walk around with them. Oh, and there’s this Umbrella Corporation-type drug that originally was distrubuted with apparently good intentions but is what caused all of the people of Rapture to turn into crazy, flame-throwing, teleporting monsters. And there’s these drugs called Plasmids that give you special powers like electric bolt attacks and the ability to turn invisible. Uh, yeah, that’s about how I remember it.

Now maybe you have played Bioshock, and you have a lot of problems with my description. It’s also very possible I’ll think a little more about it in the next few days and decide I want to change the description completely. But the point is, I only had the vaguest sense of the minutiae of the experience as I was having it, and even now as I reflect on it. However, I still loved the game. Now maybe that speaks to the incredible gameplay and overall atmosphere of the game, but let’s not get off topic. That’s not the point I’m getting at here. 

Certainly I won’t say the game was necessarily hard to follow, or that the plot was overwrought or overly complex. The fact of the matter is, and it pains me as a hardcore, lifelong gamer to admit this, but a pretty large chunk of the time, I don’t know truly what’s going in on the stories of the games I play. I usually only have an “idea” of what’s going on, and that’s especially true of adventure games, RPGs, or any game of a decent length. The reason behind this probably has less to do with my ability to follow complex stories as it does the very nature of video games themselves and the way they are played. When you watch a movie, you (usually) watch the entire thing from start to finish in a single sitting. When you read a book, you wouldn’t normally read two pages today, take a week off, read 3 pages next week, and then put the book down for a month before reading another chunk. And when it comes down to it, that’s how I (and I think many other adults) play video games.

Look, I’d love it if I was able to wake up one morning, boot up a Final Fantasy and play it non-stop until it was finished, breaking only for the consuming and releasing of food and beverages. But that just isn’t possible. Even “shorter” games like a Resident Evil or God of War will take me weeks, maybe months to play through. It’s just the way it is when you factor in work, relationships, friends, kids, pets, sleep, other hobbies, and the million other non-gaming facets of life. Not to mention the fact that it isn’t as if only one must-play game gets released each month, and you have that whole month to finish it before the next one comes out. So it is just plain impossible to stay as on top of a game as would be required for me to stay immersed enough in its story to never miss a beat.

What about television? Why is it that we’re able to watch a half hour- or hour-long show only once a week (sometimes longer) and still be able to “keep up” with it? The answer is simple: pre-show recaps. Before the new show starts, we get a little refresher on not only what happened on the previous show, but often the whole saga thus far. That way we’re always up to speed. And usually all it takes is for the key points of the previous shows to be touched upon, and suddenly our memories of the entire thing are instantly jogged. How hard would it be to do this in a video game? Driver 2 for the PlayStation had this feature. Every time you loaded your saved game, you were treated to a montage of the CG cutscenes you had watched up to that point before you started the game, and the montage was updated as you played the game and furthered the story. It seems to me that if a PS1 game can do it, any game can today do it.

It doesn’t even have to be as involved as the cutscenes, either. Even if it was just a paragraph or two of text, or better yet, a narrator filling you in on what’s going on (since today’s gamers complain whenever they have to actually read something in a game). The developer can go ahead and write out the game’s entire story in advance, and as you play it would slowly open up relative to the point you were at. Doesn’t seem like it’d be that hard to do. Even with the more open-ended games, there’s often still only a singular, largely unchanged overall plot running through it. Okay, so maybe games like Fable or Mass Effect wouldn’t be as easy to do. I still can’t imagine it’d take that much extra work to give us a “Previously on…” update every time we start even the most branching of game stories. You worked hard on those game stories, and you want us to believe that storytelling and character development in games has come so far and is either going to one day eclipse movies, or already has. So wouldn’t you want to do everything you could to make sure we are actually taking in all of this amazing storytelling, rather than just enjoying the action and only kinda-sorta knowing the reason behind it all?

With all that being said, I still want the option to skip any and all cutscenes if I want to