Goodbye hardcore, and good riddance

As we can all clearly see, there are more and more people playing video games every day. Some of us understand why this is happening, and some of us don't. Gaming is expanding through an easy-to-understand-yet-difficult-to-master gaming revolution, which is a delightful throwback to the early days of gaming. Frogger. Super Mario Brothers. Tetris. 

As internet web-games and Nintendo's Wii allow everyone from your 4 year-old-nephew to your 80-year-old grandma to play video games again, there are wonderful opportunities for all of us to play interesting new games which are full of surprises, that we can all enjoy together, and watch gaming-as-a-legitimate-entertainment-medium grow into it's own and rival the likes of TV, books, and cinema in the eyes of the mainstream.

Gaming as we know it is being redefined once again, with interesting new concepts and input devices, and what was old is becoming new again.

Unfortunately, there are “gamers” among us that don't appreciate the expansion of gaming, and have a much different vision of what gaming should be. They believe that it is complicated, difficult, and elite games that should be celebrated, and that "easy", “casual”, "simple" games are actually destroying gaming and should be rejected at all costs. These “gamers” refer to themselves as “the hardcore”. Fortunately, these “hardcore gamers” are part of a rapidly-shrinking minority, and will soon become irrelevant, niche, and easy to silence. While true gamers anxiously await this, however, we will find that these angry “man-children” and their pitiful inferiority complexes will continue to intensify their obnoxious whining in a desperate attempt to make themselves appear significant and powerful.

Still Alive...

It's been a long year, a lot has been going on, but I'm still alive and still an opinionated bastard. 

So much has gone on in the games industry... I'm cooking up a long blog post to sum up all my feelings in this regard. It's really getting ugly out there.

Got married, got a great new job, shed some dead weight, and made some new friends. Oh, and played some great games. Life is soooooo good.

Welcome back to your blog, Me.

Feature: Complainathon 1

This is a picture of Modus' new game-centric input device, "Darwin". From their website:

"Love the Wii? We do too. Now imagine the natural evolution of the Wii and you have Darwin."

Maybe to these guys the meaning of "evolution" is loosely defined, but when I look at "Darwin", I see multiple steps backwards in a human interface device, and almost no "evolution".

I've done a bit of research, but I still have lingering questions: How are these things powered? What type of wireless technology has been implemented? Does it have speakers? CAN THIS THING EVEN POINT AT THE SCREEN AND DISPLAY A CURSOR?

So far, I've found *no* information to specifically answer these questions, all of which are detrimental to their description of being an "evolution" of the Wii remote. As far as the on-screen cursor is concerned, the only related information I've found is Modus' own website basically slamming the Wii for using an IR sensor that sits above/beneath your television. Without any sensor in front of the television, it's impossible for Darwin to act as a DPD as far as I know.

Internet rumor-buzz is building up about Microsoft announcing that they'll be endorsing this controller as an official peripheral for the Xbox 360, and I'm wondering "why in the world would they think that is a good idea?" It's obvious by now to any open-minded gamer that every game console (next generation at the absolute latest) will use the Wii as an... "inspiration" for their controllers, but Darwin's lack of an IR pointer and speaker just make it look like a tacky Wii remote rip-off that is missing some of its most innovative and useful features.

Verdict: Send this baby back to the Galapagos for another 6 million years or so.

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Chrono Trigger DS

Last week, a Chrono Trigger remake was announced for Nintendo DS. Today, I first laid eyes on the "exciting new gameplay trailer". My first impressions? Not nearly as excited as I was at the initial announcement. I'm still in denial: The "exciting new gameplay trailer" is chock-full of gameplay videos-- all of which look, frame-for-frame, EXACTLY like the original Chrono Trigger for SNES and the Chrono Trigger remake for PS1 (when it was re-released as part of the Final Fantasy Chronicles disc).

Why fix what ain't broken, right? WRONG. Believe me, I'm as much of a Chrono Trigger fan as the next guy (as long as said next guy doesn't think Chrono Trigger is the best RPG ever made...) but I want Squareenix to put some fucking effort into it. Is that too much to ask? I really don't think so, compared to what they've already done in creating beautifully upgraded versions of past masterpieces.

Atari desperate to sell Alone in the Dark, Bears piss in woods

Atari's Phil Harrison spoke strongly about the single-player experience late last month, referring to their upcoming release of Alone in the Dark as "a beautifully crafted single-player adventure game", after telling Gamasutra earlier in the week, "I don't see that we're going to be making huge-budget, single-player games in the future." Now, one could come to the conclusion that Alone in the Dark could very well be Atari's last attempt to satiate the "core" gamer with a high-budget single-player AAA masterpiece, right?

We all know how Atari has struggled over the past decade or so, mostly due to being unable/unprepared to ride the trends of the market. Phil Harrison left Sony for Atari earlier this year to attempt to morph Atari's business model into a profitable one-- but well after Alone in the Dark began production. Harrison seems to understand where the market is headed, and he believes that games like Alone in the Dark aren't what's needed to ride the next trend in gaming. Despite that, however, he doesn't want their swan song to be a financial disaster while on his watch, and understandably so.

Now German gaming site 4players claims that Atari is threatening to sue over their generally negative and underwhelming review of the game. Atari claims that the site "Must have illegally obtained a copy of the game", because it's not been released yet. Two other websites, both based out of Norway (one of which scored Alone in the Dark a 3/10), are allegedly also chiming in claiming that Atari has contacted them and made legal threats regarding their reviews of the game as well.

The OTHER Top 10 SNES RPGs

What would a list of SNES RPGs be without the obligatory 4? (If you can't name at least 3 of the four games represented in the above graphic... actually that reminds me; I really should get to founding that retro videogame school for young'uns I've always talked about... but i digress.)

They stay crunchy, even in milk!

A lovely picture of some nintendo undies I found on Destructoid. Oh, what a beautiful sight to behold. My fiancee doesn't have a pair of these yet, why? I'll have to fix that.