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ATARI
AGE |
| ¦ | NES
WORLD |
| ¦ | NEO- GEO |
| ¦ | XBOX CENTRAL |
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THE GAMEROOM BLITZ
SYSTEM RATINGS
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First up to bat
is the NES, which wins The Gameroom Blitz's
not-really-coveted-but-still-pretty-impressive award for the
best game system ever made. This is the console that
changed the industry forever, transforming video
games from simple twitch-fests to sprawling
adventures. Rather than being trapped in a single,
claustrophobic screen, NES games gave you the freedom to
explore entire worlds! The NES also gave the industry
more classic series than any other system, including The
Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear, Castlevania, and Ninja
Gaiden. Even the controller included with the console
was an important advance for the industry, offering
the razor-sharp precision that was absent from past game
systems. It just doesn't get any better than
this!
Of course,
without the original Playstation, the PS2 just wouldn't have
been possible. Although saddled with an unfortunate no
2D games policy at the beginning of its life, the Playstation
ultimately proved itself worthy of the hype with its
versatile, powerful hardware and a huge catalog of outstanding
titles. The console had a nasty reputation of becoming
unreliable after frequent use, but let's face it, even
the NES had its own issues playing games after a couple of
years. I must have blown enough air into Nintendo
cartridges over the past twenty years to inflate a tractor
tire!
In an industry where the leader is often far ahead of
the pack, the Super NES and Sega Genesis were a bit of an
oddity. The two systems (and their respective fans) were
locked in a vicious battle for many years. When the
fighting finally ended, the Super NES had one broken
finger dangling over the finish line, with the Sega
Genesis gasping for breath just a couple of feet behind
it. I loved the Genesis when I was a teen, but over the
years I've come to realize that the Super NES, with its
superior audiovisuals and strong Japanese software support,
was ultimately the better of the two systems. That's not
to knock the Genesis, though... it had several advantages of
its own, including a swift processor, a keenly responsive
six button controller... and oh yeah, a little game called
Gunstar Heroes.
The Atari
2600 squeaks into the top ten with a wide range of addictive
games, all with a distinctive look that's best described as
charmingly primitive. The characters in many 2600 titles
(particularly Activision's) are drawn with layers of color,
giving them an appealing artsy aesthetic that's missing from
nearly all of its competitors. The
console also has a simple but easy to use interface... a
flick of the Game Reset switch or a tap of the fire button is
all it takes to set many games in motion. Replace that
clumsy 2600 joystick with a Sega Arcade Pad, and you're
guaranteed hours of retroriffic fun!
Then we have
the Sega Saturn. The system's runaway success in
Japan, and its complete lack of it in America, makes me feel
like I'm reviewing two consoles rather than just one. If
you're buying a Saturn just to play Western games, you're
going to be sorely disappointed... Sega and Capcom were the
only two companies that had given the system the support it
deserved. However, in the land of the rising sun, things
were far different. The system that was stone cold in
the States was on fire in Japan, with hundreds upon hundreds
of quirky games tailor made for a Japanese audience. If
you get a Saturn, make sure you get a Pro Action Replay Plus
and a handful of imports to go along with it... it's the only
way to truly experience the system.
The original
Xbox is a close cousin of the x86 PC, sharing most of its
technology. However, it was designed for one purpose and
one purpose alone... playing video games. This sharp
focus makes it more appealing than the average PC for
gaming. There's no need to sit through a ten minute
installation... the only set up you'll need
is opening the drive door and inserting the game you want
to play! The XBox is also more powerful than any of its
contemporaries, and the ability to create custom soundtracks
really comes in handy when the threat of EA Trax rears
its ugly head.
Trailing
behind them both is the Neo-Geo Pocket, which helped me keep
my sanity through the dark days when the wretched Game Boy
Color dominated the handheld market. For years, this was
the only way to go for serious gamers fed up with the Pokemon
hype. Seven years after its debut, the Neo-Geo Pocket is
still home to the best handheld fighting games ever
made. Just try to find a versus fighter on a portable
system that plays as well as Match of the Millennium... it
just ain't gonna happen!
I'll wrap up
this chapter with the TurboDuo and Vectrex. It would be
easy to dismiss the Turbografx-16 CD as just another
flashy add-on designed to extort money from gamers who would
be just as happy with the base system, but NEC was a lot
more dedicated to their CD expansion (and the integrated
system that it would eventually inspire) than Sega.
Instead of taking ordinary cartridge games and throwing
in redbook audio and a couple of full-motion video scenes, NEC
justified its use of the new, high-capacity media with
original efforts like Y's Books 1 & 2, a great RPG made
better with double the content and quality voice
acting.
Middle of the
road... you see the darnedest things! That includes
Microsoft's Xbox 360, the first of the next generation of game
consoles. Now here's a system I want to like more than I
actually can. Sure, it's packed with more power than any
system that has come before it, and the multimedia features
are even more robust than those in the already impressive
Xbox. There's just one problem, though... the games just
don't seem to take advantage of that muscle. Once you
get past the colorful candy shell of games like Project Gotham
Racing 3 and Kameo, all you'll find inside are ordinary Xbox
titles. The Xbox Live Marketplace holds promise, but the
shelves are pretty empty at the moment, holding only twenty
downloadable games. There's only one reason to own
an Xbox 360 if its multimedia features aren't important
to you... but the outstanding Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is
the only reason you need!
The
Turbografx-16 is next on the list. The system loses a
lot of its impact without the optional CD-ROM peripheral, but
there are still enough fine games here to make it
worth kicking it into turbo. Some of the better
cartridges for the Turbografx-16 include nearly airtight
conversions of arcade hits like R-Type, SideArms, and Galaga
'90, as well as Japanese exclusives such as 1943 Kai and Rabio
Lepus Special (Rabbit Punch). You're probably noticing
that all of the games mentioned here are shooters.
That's because they're the Turbografx-16's specialty...
neither the Genesis nor the Super NES can outgun it in this
department. The system doesn't perform as well in other
genres, however. For instance, Bonk's Adventure doesn't
measure up to the timeless gameplay and charming
characters of Super Mario World, or the sleek visuals and
blazing speed of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Trailing
behind the ColecoVision is its competitor, the Atari
5200. The 5200 was quickly thrown together with Atari
800 computer components, but despite the hasty design and some
truly horrendous stock controllers, the system's got its
strengths. The Atari 5200 can push brighter colors
and more of them than the ColecoVision, and the scrolling is
smoother in most games. On the downside, the resolution
is lower, resulting in backgrounds and characters that are a
little on the chunky side. There's also the issue of the
included controller, an awkward marriage of the stiff 2600
sticks and the numeric keypad on the Intellivision. It's
no worse than the ColecoVision knob, but the Atari
5200 stick frequently breaks and is more difficult
to replace.
Well, on to
the Nintendo 64, the first disappointment in this
list. Oh, Nintendo... after the excellence of the NES
and Super NES, how could you give us THIS?! The Nintendo
64 was the first home game console without the benefit of
strong third party support. All the killer apps that
appealed most to the average gamer were either delayed on the
Nintendo 64 or never arrived on the system. Without
Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, or Street Fighter, it's easy to
see why the Nintendo 64 quickly lagged behind in the console
wars of the mid 1990's. There were a few great first
party titles on the system, but not as many as Nintendo
fans were expecting after coming down from the high of
Super Mario 64.
It's clear from
the name that Sega had high hopes for the Master System, but
the sleek black console never really lived up to
that title. It was technologically superior to the
Nintendo Entertainment System, with a faster processor and a
more diverse color palatte. In the end, though, it's all
about the games, and that was the one area where the NES was
the real master. Since Nintendo had already staked a
claim on the most popular arcade titles and the best original
software, Sega could only fall back on its own
coin-op library, as well as the rare third party
release that slipped through the cracks. A dependence on
arcade hits left the Master System library without the depth
and long-term replay value that was so abundant on the NES,
one of the many reasons that the console was left in the dust
a few short years after its debut.
Just barely
squeezing into this chapter of Systematix 2006 are those
eternal rivals, Panasonic's 3DO and the Atari Jaguar.
One was designed as a top-of-the-line
multimedia device with all the fixin's, and the other was
Atari's attempt to play the numbers game with a 64-bit
console. Panasonic gets points for ambition...
at the time of its release, there really was no other CD-based
game system that could stand on even ground with the
3DO. The console was like a proto-Playstation, with
the muscle to display texture-mapped polygons and crisp
full-motion video. It also had an outlandish price,
tipping the scales at seven hundred dollars (and you
thought the Playstation 3 was bad!). At $250, the Jaguar
was more economically priced, but it just didn't pack the
punch of the 3DO. Some Jag releases were
barely upgraded ports of Genesis and Super NES games... and
not even the good ones! A few titles carried more
impact, especially Jeff Minter's psychadelic masterpiece
Tempest 2000, but practically everything else in the Jaguar
library smacked of desperation... the kind of desperation that
can only come from ten years of bleeding money in the hopes of
dethroning Nintendo as the king of the video game
industry.
The lesson
learned from the Atari 7800 is that when you go to war with a
company that's on its way to industry domination, you don't
step into the battlefield with last year's ammunition.
The 7800, developed in 1984 and released two years later, had
no chance against the more advanced, forward-thinking Nintendo
Entertainment System. The NES offered bright colors,
sharp artwork, and lively animation. The best the 7800
could muster were muddy, dated graphics best suited for
old-school arcade games like Centipede. The NES had
thunderous explosions, pounding bass, and clear voice
digitization. The 7800 was stuck in the 1970's with a
stone-age, single-channel sound processor. The NES had a
four button joypad that gave the player more options and
precision than anything that had come before it. The
7800 only had two buttons on its uncomfortable, oversized
joystick. The only advantage the Atari 7800 had was once
again rooted in its unwillingness to let go of the past... it
was backward compatible with nearly every 2600 game ever
released. The only problem was, anyone who still wanted
to play these golden oldies either already had a 2600 at home,
or could get one for fifty dollars. Whoops!
The Sega CD
will forever be known to gamers as "strike one" for
Sega. More than just an optical disc drive, the Sega CD
brought scaling, rotation, and a more advanced sound processor
to the Sega Genesis. Unfortunately, the add-on did more
to undermine the system's reputation than address its
shortcomings. Far too often, Sega CD games were little
more than standard Genesis titles with redbook audio, grainy
full-motion video, and the unwelcome addition of excruciating
access times. The few games that didn't fall into this
category were typically 64-color films with little player
interaction, leaving a scant dozen releases that helped
the hapless Sega CD owner stave off that nagging feeling that
they had been fleeced.
Now onto the
N-Gage. People who like this kooky phone and
gaming hybrid (and there are a few of them out there) are
quick to argue that its critics haven't spent enough time with
the system to judge it fairly. OK, I'll bite. Even
though I was turned off by Nokia's image-obsessed marketing, I
was willing to give the system a fair shake, buying not only
the more wisely designed QD model but a handful of the
N-Gage's better games. After several frustrating hours
of what could only be charitably described as gameplay, I came
to the same conclusion everyone else had... that Nokia
had no business being in the video game industry. The
controls alone make it clear that they've got no idea
why people play games in the first place. If
the stiff, stubborn D-pad doesn't kill the N-Gage experience
for you, the tight cluster of numeric keys that serve as
action buttons almost certainly will. It's a shame, too,
because N-Gage software is a big step up from what passes
for "games" on other cell phones.
Next up is the
Wonderswan, a low-rent handheld which proved that
Gumpei Yokoi was incapable of learning from his past
mistakes. Rather than addressing the many flaws
that made his last creation, the Nintendo GameBoy, such a
nightmare to use, Yokoi actually worsened them with a control
scheme so awkward and convoluted, it made the clumsy D-pad and
jumbled numeric keys of the N-Gage look like a masterpiece of
ergonomic design. The Wonderswan's twin directional pads
(broken into four separate buttons each) were designed so that
games could be played from both a horizontal and vertical
perspective; a feature that typically proved more aggravating
than useful. Instead of designing games for one
orientation or the other, many Wonderswan titles used both
interchangably, forcing the player to flip the system at
regular intervals. To add to the "fun", the first Swan
had a primitive monochrome display so blurry that it made
games nearly impossible to play, no matter how you looked at
them!
On the subject
of computers with gender-reassignment surgery, there's the
Atari XEGS, intended to replace the 7800 as the Tramiels'
secret weapon in the 8-bit console wars. What Jack and
company failed to understand was that the XEGS, cobbled
together from bits and pieces of computers dating back to
1979, was even more outdated than the system it was supposed
to succeed! The XEGS did have the advantage of an
established library of games- it could play practically any
cartridge designed for the Atari 400 on up- but titles like
Space Invaders and Galaxian were from a different era of
gaming, an era which Atari's target audience had
long since outgrown.
Poor Virtual
Boy. You're such an easy target that it's not even
sporting to take shots at you! However, for the sake of
the list, I must forge onward. I don't know what I can
say about your paltry selection of games (many awful), your
ridiculous double D-pad controller,
or your eye-traumatizing LED display that
hasn't already been said before. So I'll try to think of
something nice to say instead. Let's see... you
were the first system to give Nester, the long-suffering comic
relief in the Nintendo Power comic strip Howard and Nester,
his own video game. That was really nice of you,
especially since you only had a dozen or so games to
spare. What else? Well, I don't think you ever
literally blinded anyone, so that's a big plus.
And oh yeah, your 3D is still more convincing than anything
I've seen on other game systems. Objects in the
foreground really do seem closer than those in the background,
which makes the only must-have in your collection, Wario Land,
more fun and immersive. Mmm... yeah, that's pretty much
it.
You'd think
that color would be a step in the right direction for the
GameBoy line of handhelds, but the GameBoy Color proved that
Nintendo still had a long way to go before they
could find an audience past the ever-reliable Pokemon
crowd. The system had great promise back when it was
shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 1999, with
everything from NES classics to adaptations of modern
hits like Resident Evil on display for E3 attendees.
Then, once everyone went home and the GameBoy Color was
released, everything changed. The NES ports weren't as
good as the originals. Resident Evil vanished from the
radar, only to be replaced with an unremarkable first-person
RPG bearing that title. Then the flood
of craptastic movie-licensed games came. Not a day
went by that IGN.com didn't slam some awful new Titus or
T*HQ release for the system, but Nintendo did nothing to stop
the damage. They didn't need to! After all, the
system was carried entirely on the backs of Pikachu and his
verminous friends. Then, just as all hope seemed lost,
Nintendo mercifully put the GameBoy Color out of its misery
and replaced it with the greatly improved GameBoy Advance,
promising that third-party releases would be subject to
stringent quality assurance. Usually, nobody benefits when a game company
replaces its console after just two years, but the news of the
GameBoy Color's death came as a welcome surprise to
players who wanted more from their handheld gaming
experience.
Practically
every game system, no matter how terrible, is redeemed by
at least one good game. In the case of Fairchild's
Channel F, that game is Dodge-It. You're a little dot,
avoiding contact with the other tiny dots bouncing around the
screen. The longer you survive, the more dots you'll
have to contend with, until you're eventually overwhelmed by
the little bastards. Despite its simplicity, Dodge-It
manages to keep you on the edge of your seat with its
strangely compelling gameplay. If that sense of primal
urgency had been in most of the Channel F's games, it would
have risen at least five spots on this list, but sadly, the
fun this ancient system has to offer begins and ends with
Dodge-It. Everything else is so boring and primitive
that the average gamer will be begging to change the channel
after a couple of minutes.
So that leaves us with two completely horrible game
systems, both wimpy monochrome handhelds. Who will be
the ultimate loser? Will it be Milton Bradley's
ambitious but misguided Microvision, or Tiger's cynical cash
grab, the game.com? Hmm... I guess that answers the
question right there. The MicroVision came much too soon
and was held back by the limited technology of the time, but
its designers had their hearts in the right place. On
the other hand, it's clear that whoever created the
game.com not only had his heart in his wallet, but his head up
his ass. The system that was hailed as a marked
improvement over the GameBoy was in fact ten times worse, with
an even blurrier black and white display and games so choppy
you'll be rubbing your eyes for weeks. The game.com had
a couple of good ideas- hell, even the world's biggest moron
has to stumble across a few of them in his lifetime!-
but anything the system could do, the Nintendo DS can do
better. Much better. Much, much, much, much,
much... |
