Notes From An Old School Gamer - Eski33's Blog

Eski33's Blog

Notes From An Old School Gamer

Posted on September 12, 2009 at 02:04 PM.

(6)

I have played video games since 1979. I have owned the Magnavox Odyssey (Pong), Atari 2600, Intellivision II (w/ Intellivoice), Commodore 64, NES, Genesis, PS One, Dreamcast, PS2, XBox, 360 and the PS3. Does this make me an expert? No. What it does make me, other than old, is a person who has seen video games evolve into something incredible.

My preferred genre is sports. I visit many web sites dedicated to sports games and over the years I have seen developers steer the games towards realism focusing on immersing the gamer into believing that what they are playing is a "real" game of football, basketball, etc.

With the developers adding more and more over the years, the expectations placed on them has increased ten-fold. When I was a kid, I remember when the Intellivision came out. The game had a 100-yard field that scrolled horizontally with 20-yard increments visible. When you made a big play it took at least 45 seconds to get the ball carrier to the end zone.

I owned many text-based simulations on my Commodore 64 with my favorites being Statis-Pro Baseball by Accolade and Basketball: The Pro Game by Lance Haffner. Minimal visuals but the stat tracking was outstanding.

Home consoles and video games in general took a big hit during this time. Too many crap games were getting released and the market somewhat took a dip except for diehards. Then came the NES. Tecmo Bowl was released with real player names, which was a first. The game was simple and beautiful at the time.

However, the system that really fueled my addiction was the Sega Genesis and the company that fed my flavor for sports games was Electronic Arts. I bought the system from a friend. He sold me the system, 12 games and an extra controller for $400. The one game that came with the pack was Lakers vs. Celtics. To see real players with real accessories (Worthy and Kareem's goggles) was awesome.

I remember picking up the first Madden. It had 17 teams (one was an All-Madden team) and was stunning visually as it was the first game I had seen play vertically with a 3D look.

EA was the first company that I saw that pushed sports games to where they are today in terms of realism. A couple of months later, NHL Hockey released for the Genesis and I was hooked.

Over the years, sports games pushed the limits of realism. I remember owning Madden 97 for the PlayStation and the opening CG video with the Patriots and Packers made me think -- What if football games looked like that and how awesome it would be.

Flash forward 12 years later and we have games that have far exceeded those visuals from that CG video. Real stadiums, jerseys complete with embroidered numbers and mesh in the right places, and 3D crowds. This is not even mentioning real players with faces, voices, animations and accessories.

This is where I get a bit steamed reading many forums on today's games. It seems that all I read is "EA sucks" or "2K sucks". I believe that gamers expectations of developers has gotten a touch out of control. With that, I believe that developers have allowed these expectations to hurt some games.

Gamers need to appreciate what we have. People want to nit-pick because a player appears to "skate" in Live, or a player doesn't have the correct sized wrist bands. Don't get me wrong, I love these little touches as it adds to the game but it definitely isn't something for gamers to whine about.

I also believe that people expect too much from the logic. People who play sports games, for the most part, understand the nuances of the sport in which the game they are playing is trying to emulate. However, keep in mind that things aren't always going to look right. Again, it's a video game and will never be perfect in respect to logic.

In short, gamers should appreciate what we have. Maybe it's because I have seen where sports games started that skews my opinion. Trust me, as much as I loved the games from the past I will take what is offered today compared to what I had when I was young.

So before you decide to go into a forum and rip developers for this and that, remember to stop and look at what we are so fortunate to experience every time we turn on our consoles.

Comments

# 1 eyeknowzz @ Sep 12

Agreed on all points. I'm an old school gamer myself and I have to laugh at some of the complaints that I see on OS. The latest thing seems to center around missing tattoos. Missing tattoos? Are you kidding me? I can't believe that people make a big deal about something so trivial. I hate to say it but many of these people spend way too much time sweating the small stuff in these games.

# 2 Eski33 @ Sep 12

@eyeknowzz....Yeah, that was my point. Tattoos amongst a number of other little things that are nice to see but irrelevant to the game itself.

# 3 ANDROMADA 1 @ Sep 12

Great article...I remember blowing into the Atari and NES cartriges just to get them to work right....and fliping the power of and on lol...You are right on point.

# 4 TreyIM2 @ Sep 12

Great post. We, including the people who posted comments, sound like we're all around the same age. I've been saying the same thing for soo long but the yungins, unfortunately, didn't come from our time plus, in this microwave society of increasingly spoiled children, it's very hard for them to appreciate ANYTHING let alone what videogames came from to where they are now. Remember how your parents used to say things about how they had nothing when you may have wanted something designer or something that was popular, in our younger days? Remember how you just couldn't relate? Lol, it's the same principle with gaming.

Sometimes, I feel like I need to just sit on my porch with a rocking chair and a pitcher of Country Time yet I do try to inform AND get at some of these cats who get ridiculous about tats and chin straps and this and that. When one is spoiled, they have a unbelievable sense of entitlement but the scary part is how many males come across like whiny little brats about every nook and cranny of a videogame. Young men are being groomed to become little b-i-t-c-h-e-s, unfortunately.

# 5 roolz @ Sep 23

Bit late to respond, but I agree, having gamed since the Commodore 16+4 (in the UK) the development of sports games (and games in general) have far exceeded what I could of imagined.

At the same time, I am one of those that complains - however I believe the biggest problem for gamers now is that the internet builds up so much expectation and puts into our mindsets , thoughts and images of the games before we even get our hands on them... sometimes we wont even bother with a game just because what someone says on the net.

In the old days, this wasnt a problem. I loved going into a gamestore, looking at all the cassettes of C64 games and just picking one or two based on the cover image, a little bit of text on the back... and then you played it, even if it didnt really live upto whatever expectation you had, you would still play it and enjoy it as that was how the world was.

Now its all about more, bigger, better, perfection.... its a shame as many good games are never touched by people easily swayed by views on the so called 'review' sites

# 6 Eski33 @ Sep 24

@roolz

I won't lie. I complain but I consider my complaints not to be from the realm of the ridiculous. I agree that the internet and forums fester negativity.

I have no problem with people having an opinion. Not everyone is going to like what I like. I also agree that many people jump on a bandwagon. If someone sees that a tattoo or a specific player's accessories are incorrect, everyone wants to jump on and hate the developers for such egregious errors (sarcasm).