I'm also with Koko. It's really annoying when there's one or two games you think look really cool, but they're for a console you don't have. When you're as strapped for cash as I am it's kind of hard to justify buying a $200+ console for one or two games. The only reason I have an N64 is because I won it.
PCs are much better in that regards. Granted, Linux and Mac support still sucks, but you still at least have the option of trying to play the game in a legal Windows emulator.
Personally I wish the consoles with CD-based games had legal emulators that played the original media (and cartridge consoles had legal emulators and for-fee ROMs). What they lost in console sales they'd make in game sales. (Let's face it, a PC geek who doesn't already have a given console likely wasn't going to buy one anyway, but they might like the games.) Seeing as how many companies take a razor-thin margin or a loss on the actual console anyway so they can rake in the money on games, this doesn't seem farfetched. (Believe it or not, the profit margin for a store selling a $300 PS2 console was, at most, $5. The margin for the console company was likely just as bad.)
Anyhoo. Getting back to less idealistic matters...
I used to like Nintendo better than Sony and Sega. Nintendo had games that had appealingly artistic graphics, a clean, friendly and goofy image, and were fun to play, and the Super Nintendo was THE RPG console. I've always found Sony and Sega's 3xtr3m3 g4m3rz!!1!1!! marketing image very off-putting, and thought that their trend towards polygonal 3D graphics was ugly. (Though there were some games on the Genesis that were quite fun to play.)
Of course, once the N64 also moved towards hyping the "bad attitude" image and 3D graphics, and, most irritatingly, having almost nothing but action games, I stopped liking it much. And very little about the GameCube has interested me.
One thing that Sony did get very, very right was having their PS2 have backwards-compatibility with PS1 games. If Nintendo offered ways to play the games from their old consoles on their newest one, I'd have my wallet out in a flash. It's a lot easier to justify buying a new console to try out the small handful of games that look interesting on it when you can play the dozens of old games you already find interesting as well.
Plus my old consoles are starting to wheeze and ask for Social Security. My NES in particular requires arcane rituals at specific phases of the moon to get working.
(Yes, I do know that their handhelds have always been backwards compatible, and that they're releasing versions of old games for their handhelds. But let's face it, I played the old games on a 25" TV, I want to still play them on a 25" TV.
Or at least a 17" monitor.)
I read an incredibly good lament/analogy in
an online article recently...
Imagine that every few years, the technology to broadcast television changed so radically that everything produced up until that time could no longer be shown. No more reruns of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," no more old Marx Brothers movies. You could only watch entertainment produced in the last two or three years. That is exactly what happens with computer games, where new technology is often incompatible with old games, turning great games into forgotten ones.
Kinda sad, innit? (Yes, the article was referencing computer games, but video games are just as bad, if not worse.)
Peace & Luv, Liz
