-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
1983 article about "hardcore" gamers and differences between East and West designs
- Thread starter Coolio McAwesome
- Start date
DeaconKnowledge
Member
Kilrogg said:Why is Nintendo so bad? (1989)
The Nintendo bashers (1992)
Atari vs. Nintendo conspiracy????? (1992)
I haven't read through all of it, but I'm sure there's gold to be found in there.
It's really sobering to think we've been having the same "accessibility of gameplay vs. graphics" argument for over 30 years. That discussion even uses the same McDonald's metaphor.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
You forgot the best part:LCfiner said:
Also, slight past culture shock on my end...
Some things stay the same, others....not so much :lol
DeaconKnowledge said:
I think it's not that hard to imagine or realize if you've been in the industry for a very long time. But when you bring in new people with each generation and some aren't aware of the industry's history in the same way... there's nothing wrong with that, BTW - there's no exam you have to take to become a gaming enthusiast... it seems to recycle these same arguments because inevitably that conflict between accessibility and elite pandering will occur.
PataHikari
Banned
What the heck is a Lynx anyways.
It seems to have been some Game Boy killer but I've never heard of it before now.
It seems to have been some Game Boy killer but I've never heard of it before now.
revolverjgw
Member
Decades-old BBS posts are literally the most interesting things on the planet
PataHikari
Banned
Neat.Vinci said:
So in other words it was the PSP to Game Boy's DS. :lol
Muffdraul
Member
SYNTAX182 said:
I don't think he literally means that *nobody* hated Pac-Man or Donkey Kong. I wouldn't go that far. But yeah, thinking back, I myself can't remember even one single person ever saying they hated them, or that they "weren't hardcore" or whatever. We all went apeshit over Defender and Tempest, we all went apeshit over Pac-Man and Frogger. That's how it seemed at the time.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Not even that it was the ever-made car comparison, but that it was probably the worst, more inaccurate analogy I've ever read :lolLCfiner said:
Muffdraul said:
Imagine you're a new Wii owner ("casual gamer") right now. In 20 years you'd say the same: "there was no hate, we all had fun playing Wii Sports, everybody loved it". You wouldn't know about a vocal minority (GAF, sorry, some people on GAF) hating on the Wii.
In the same way maybe you never knew about those arcade enthusiasts at the time. I could be wrong.
Scythesurge
Member
That would explain everything!Jocchan said:
Muffdraul
Member
2Dcube said:
I would point out the fundamental difference that we're talking about what we actually experienced versus merely speculating on the future to build a strawman. And if you think Wii-hate is isolated and small-scale, you must not venture out to many gaming forums outside of GAF.
PataHikari
Banned
Muffdraul said:
This isn't small scale?
Muffdraul said:
Gaming forums, in and of themselves, represent the minority in gaming. That's the point. The interesting aspect of this is how cyclical this industry is - how this pattern of behavior continues to occur again and again. And I think that's simply due to how businesses work in this industry: Something new occurs, it becomes popular, and is copied until it becomes advanced, reaches a certain limit and is homogenized... just in time for the next new thing to occur and restart the process.
Muffdraul said:
The combined total membership of the largest gaming forums is probably sitting somewhere around 1 million. [Yes, I pulled that out of my ass, but I doubt it's more than that.] I guess someone could do a more accurate count based on member lists for each major forum, but it would still in no way compose more than 1/60th of the people who bought a Wii and likely woudln't come close to 1/3rd of those who own a 360 or PS3.
MightyHedgehog
Member
The only thing disappointing about seeing how little has changed is that the topics for discussion haven't broadened and general discourse is still marked by who can scream the loudest, make the most true-seeming yet still specious arguments, and the regular use of hyperbole as a means to assert too-simple and empty notions. The advance in technology for communication that affords more than text transmission on your average board has probably led to arguably dimmer gamer intelligence because of the reliance upon the image macro (as well as .gifs and memes beaten into the ground and out of whatever funny they once had) to act as replacement for more articulated thinking and better-defended argument. Hormonal surges and emotional instability, relative lack of life experience leading to narrow-minded views, and a strong fondness for the hobby to the exclusion of other interests are probably the biggest culprits more than mental deficiency and illness.
I have found over twenty-year old posts I've made on BBSes...geeze, I was fucking stupid and easily led into dumb ideas back then...my own communication mainly dealing in extreme generalization and oversimplification in order to be right and 'win'. I dare not repost them for anyone to read nor claim them as my own if seen by others out of abject shame. Doesn't matter that I was a dumb kid of sixteen or so at the time...stupid is still stupid. :lol
I have found over twenty-year old posts I've made on BBSes...geeze, I was fucking stupid and easily led into dumb ideas back then...my own communication mainly dealing in extreme generalization and oversimplification in order to be right and 'win'. I dare not repost them for anyone to read nor claim them as my own if seen by others out of abject shame. Doesn't matter that I was a dumb kid of sixteen or so at the time...stupid is still stupid. :lol
Vinci said:
I was a regular in rec.games.video.sega, and one of the threads making me laugh is the point at which I was bitching about my Dreamcast broadband adapter being "held hostage". (Basically, for anybody trying to order a BBA around the time they were launched, they'll remember how big of a mess it was. I had ordered the BBA on Jan 10th, my card was charged in early Feb, and as of one post I found, 67 days after I had ordered it I still hadn't received it. Many, many calls to Sega with just as many excuses as to what was going on, and at one point they ended up charging me for a second BBA in trying to fix the issue of me getting the first one.)
I'm also laughing at some of my sigs, where I had comments people had said about me in the newsgroup:
MattyGrovesOrMe
Member
The car metaphor is a classic in the console debates of old. This is a snippet from a NY Times article on the launches of the GameBoy and Atari Lynx from June, 1989.
Castle Doctrine
Member
Muffdraul said:
I actually missed your post the first time around and read it after I wrote my post. It's funny how we said almost the exact same thing.
I agree with you, I've actually never heard a single bad word about Pac-Man in my life. :lol I didn't want to go against the grain to be a dick but it was driving me crazy reading the thread and how it was based on a premise that, in my experience, never really happened expect maybe for a tiny minority.
Coolio said:
You could be right there may have always a minority who've had something against friendly Nintendo type games. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, or in truth maybe because I was a big Ms. Pac-Man and later Nintendo fanboy and filtered out any negativity, and it's true, the haters have a larger soapbox now with forums and the Internet.
I do think that there are more haters now, though, than ever before, and it's not just a larger soapbox. Any haters way back when are tiny compared to today. From my own personal recollection, the significant shift happened after the PS1 came out. Obviously Nintendo and the Wii are doing great now so it doesn't really matter.
DreadTheUnDead
Member
Chris_C said:
inb4crash. Nintendo to the rescue...AGAIN.
and lol at modern "hardcore" gamers.
"OH! Let me just hide here behind this wall, and the blood will vaporize off my face until I am right as rain!"
Flakster99
Member
Muffdraul said:
35 here and I agree. Lived in the adcades from the late 70's to the late 80's and I also don't recall such an opinion being uttered. Pac-Man & Donkey Kong were played and beloved just as much as Wonderboy In Monsterland, Xaind' Sleena, Dig Dug, Rastan, Defender, Gauntlet, Afterburner, etc etc etc.
A good game is a good game is a good game. Digging the articles though.
revolverjgw
Member
DreadTheUnDead said:
Doesn't have much to do with this topic, but this repeated mantra may be the most idiotic argument in all of gamedom right now. It's a design decision and games are balanced for that and designed around it. It's like laughing at Doom because "LOLOLOL you can circle strafe a giant monster for 30 seconds right out in the open and take 8 fireballs to the face without dying".
D
Deleted member 284
Unconfirmed Member
Save Gauntlet, everyone of those games were Japanese and not built to suck quarters from the player.Flakster99 said:
And props to you for mentioning X'aind Sleena. I believe this was the first game to feature a double jump.
Coolio McAwesome
Member
donny2112 said:
In fairness, Flakster99 probably would have been seven when this article was published in January of 1983. Obviously, Eugene Jarvis wasn't really talking about the gaming habits of seven year old kids, though. Rather, he was specifically talking about "elitist video cowboys." The term elitist, in of itself, implies that a person is in the minority. The philosophies expressed in the article were not purported to be the prevailing philosophies of the day among the typical video game player; and the article certainly didn't suggest that games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man weren't popular. If anything, it suggested the opposite. The author suggested that Japanese games "appeal to a wider group of people,"and Jarvis went so far as to suggest that "novice" games could potentially mark the end of what he described as "video freak
In any case, I found the article to be pretty fascinating. This seems like a pretty good discussion thus far, so I've decided I might as well type out the rest of the article. I'll try and post it later tonight.
@The Warning & Muffdraul: You guys are saying that you never heard that sort of thing but that is restricted to your local arcade and school basically so thats why you never heard that. I had no idea there were people that hated the NES until reading this so I could say the same thing about that as you guys are saying about arcades, but the thing here is that our experiences back then were only local, technology isn't what it is today. If the internet existed back then as it does today I'm sure we would have read all this same stuff that were on some very obscure newsgroups. It really is all about the internet and the bigger soap box to stand on. But make no mistake, just because we can hear these opinions more now doesn't mean that they are much more shared among the populace, they are still very much the minority.
As for the posts themselves, man they have it all: calling PC gamers pirates, terrible car analogies, casual/kiddy/low tech Nintendo, whining about tech specs. It makes that chapter in Super Paper Mario (chapter 4 I believe) all the more incredible.
As for the posts themselves, man they have it all: calling PC gamers pirates, terrible car analogies, casual/kiddy/low tech Nintendo, whining about tech specs. It makes that chapter in Super Paper Mario (chapter 4 I believe) all the more incredible.
Coolio McAwesome
Member
As promised, I transcribed the entire article. I do not wish to infringe on any copyrights and I am not sure what this site's position is on posting 27-year-old articles. If this post violates any rules, feel free to erase this post.
In any case, here is the article in its entirety. It's easily one of the best gaming-related articles I've ever read, and I say that without a hint of hyperbole.
---------------------------
Zen & the Art of Donkey Kong
By Mark Jacobson
Woke up this morning with an intense craving for Japan. Crawled over to the tube and flipped on Mothra, wondered if the two tiny princesses who sing to the big bug grew up to be Pink Lady, and felt a little better. Then I went out for some sushi. Scarfed (can you truly "scarf" food that looks like tinker toys?) some kappa maki, maguro, ebi. Still unsatisfied. So got on the subway, pretended it was the "Bullet Train" to Kyoto with Mount Fuji rising above the smog layer in the distance, made it up to Fascination in Times Square, and threw quarters into Donkey Kong.
Let the new wavers slice off their hair, suburbanites brag about gas mileage, and businesswomen get awestricken by Theory Z. When I want Japan, I head for Donkey Kong. Got to be honest: I'm an old fart pinball nonwizard who's yet to see the elevators, except on the machine of the 8-year-old juvenile delinquent playing next to me. But bathing in the radiating glow of the Donkey Kong screen enlightens me, like an electronic muse.
The question then for today is: Philosophically speaking, do Japanese video games differ from their American counterparts? The answer is... (game show music here, Richard Dawson kissing a housewife on the mouth)... a complicated one, of course. After all, we're talking about Japan.
Theory #1: "Up and Down, not In and Out"
When delving into the essence of a thing, it often helps to examine its outer appearance, especially when this exterior carries with it historical import. Soon, given the usual trend of global capitalism, American and Japanese games may all look and play the same, but as of now they still retain some of the elements of their respective cultures. When I was in Tokyo, I spent hours in noisy, grubby places called "Pachinko parlors." These are Japanese arcades filled with rows of Pachinko machines. I never quite got good at it, but Pachinko is essentially an upright pinball game with a two-dimensional board, face-high to the player. You deposit silver balls into the cabinet, which then filter from the top of the machine to the bottom. The idea is to capture the balls in the little "house" on the board for "reward" balls that you can exchange for prizes.
Pachinko is very popular in Japan, and its basic set-up is seen in many of the "flat" maze video games coming from Nippon. The first screen in Donkey Kong is the virtual video equivalent of Pachinko. Space Invaders, with its rows of descending aliens, is another example of "up and down."
On the other hand, Americans have long preferred the three-dimensional "coming-at-ya" feeling of a horizontal approaching ball. With all of the pinball companies going into video you can see many of these distinctly pinball characteristics turning up on the little TVs in the arcades. Stuff is always flying at you in American games.
Theory #2: The Decline of the Sperm Game
I was going over the differences between East and West video game styles with Eugene Jarvis, the 27-year-old designer of such "hardcore" games as Robotron, Stargate, and Defender, the other day when he brought up the notion that the Japanese, with the "easier" games "were giving a boost to the novice player, but ripping off the expert." If this continued, Jarvis maintained, it could wipe out the cult of the "pinball wizard" and the "video freak." I thought about this and decided it was absolutely true. Top Japanese games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man are far more accessible to the "novice" and appeal to a wider group of people. They are colorful, cartoony, friendly, inviting. The "plots" are basically benign. Mario's love for the girl in Donkey Kong, and his persistence in pursuing her, is sort of sweet. Pac-Man's dot-eating proclivities are nothing if not cute. My mother in law, a Pac-Man fan who doesn't care for many of the American games, says "eating things is much nicer than blowing them up." In fact, Pac-Man is often described as a woman's game, with all the implications of the term "woman's drink."
This is exactly what Jarvis was talking about. Formerly, a typical video game player might be a warty teenager, a National Lampoon reader, blasting AC-DC in his room, who went to the arcade to kick a machine's butt. "From shit to God for a quarter," Jarvis commented. The games this type of player favors are almost invariably the American ones: Tough to play, intimidating to the novice, shooting-driving-destroying paranoid filled games. "Sperm games," Jarvis calls them. But now, he went on, these elitist video cowboys might be as extinct as their doggiepunching pinball forerunners. Says Jarvis: "How can you feel cool if your mother is playing in the same arcade? It's like she put your Led Zep record and liked them better than you."
A reason for this trend can be found in the Japanese idea of the "youth-culture." Quite simply, there isn't one. In Japan, a trip to the arcade is often a family outing, which probably accounts for why Japanese games tend to be easier to play. (Nintendo's Japanese version of Donkey Kong is a breeze compared to the company's American one.) So, as video games begin to break big, demographically, in the States, it makes sense that the games leading the pack would be the "less intense" Japanese creations.
Theory #3: Bomb Innocence
Ever wonder where the Japanese come up with bizarro notions like making the "Carpenter" in Donkey Kong an Italian? I dunno, he looks Italian to me, and I hear he looked Italian enough to the American ad agency who handles Nintendo's account to name him Mario (the Japanese simply call him "jumpman" but they did come up with Donkey Kong, which means "stupid monkey"). Japanese pop culture is full of weird items. Most of the cartoons on their television, stuff never intended for export, feature blonde and blue-eyed heroes (i.e., Astroboy) and heroines. This, from a country that is as close to a "pure" race as there is in the world. In Japan, almost everyone is "Japanese." I have always imagined this apparent free association had something to do with a twisted inferiority complex that somehow, coupled with national grace, came out being very winning and innocent.
This pop culture innocence runs deep: The cartoon shows, like the video games, are not just for kidsthey play round the clock. If you stay at a ryokan (a Japanese-style hotel), you'll find stacks of magazines to read on your futon, almost all cartoon books. Even the sex-porno lit is done in cartoons. Call it extended childhood, call it a preponderance of ghostlike unreality surrounding daily life. Whatever, it turns up all over, and the playfulness of the video games is only one aspect.
What other culture could have created Godzilla as the symbol of horror of the atomic age and then turn him into a lovable, almost goofy savior of children? And why would Nintendo resurrect King Kong in a video game? Could it be that the Japanese are simply more at ease that we are with the all-too-obvious burgeoning of terrors of the modern world, more at home with technology and less afraid of its dubious side effects, and therefore not nearly as paranoid about the potential apocalyptic visions swirling inside humanity's head? Could this have something to do with having already experienced, at Hiroshima and Nagasaka, what we all fear? After all, what's the driving force of most American video games? Isn't it dread?
Theory #4: Buddha's Bluebeam Screen
Eugene Jarvis has a pretty philosophical outlook on his world within a box. The metaphysical differences between American and Japanese games, he says, "comes down to a concept of Free Will. Japanese games are basically pattern games. There are set paths, predetermined courses. The attitude is life is a rigged thing, you've got to recognize the correct way to go and go that way. Like in Scramble and Donkey Kong, there isn't a lot of choice about which way to move your man. You either do it a certain way, or you're going to get zapped. Just follow the right way and you'll win. It's like there's a trick to happiness, and if you know it, you'll be happy.
"American games are more random," Jarvis continues. "In Tempest or Defender, you can go whichever way, basically, you want. There's no pattern, the grid isn't a fixed thing. You go on your competence, abstract skill is what counts. You don't have to memorize anything, no teacher is asking you, "Well, was Lake Michigan discovered in 1519 or 1615?' Sure, you can get blasted out in the first minute, but that's life. American games give you a chance to absolutely fail."
Listening to all this made me think of an article in a recent Harper's magazine which purports to explain the Japanese character to Americans and vice-versa. The article depicts the American hero as a lone ranger riding off into the sunset, the Japanese hero as the person who, by most closely conforming to the path prescribed as perfect, contributes the greatest good to the group as a whole. A close look at each country's video game products bears this thesis out.
But, this is a whole lot to think about when you're trying to doge a fireball and jump onto a moving elevator platform. A smart and shifty player wouldn't want to get weighted down with this sort of baggage. Still, being a reporter at heart (and an 8,000-point Donkey Kong player at best), I asked a preteen kid named Johnny, who announced himself as being "from uptown" and wore a green running suit, if he saw a difference between American games and Japanese games.
"No difference," he said, continuing to throttle his joystick, "Just line 'em up, I'll knock 'em down, Watch me carve my name in this one." Which he did. A moment later, with more than 100,000 points to his credit, Johnny typed "J27" to the machine's program. He'd just made the highest score of the day on Donkey Kong. So I figured, you pays your quarter, you takes your choice.
---------------------------
Jacobson, Mark (1983) Zen & The Art of Donkey Kong Video Games Illustrated, 1(4),30-33.
I didn't realize it before, but this article was actually written by Mark Jacobson! He's what you might call a real journalist, and is probably best-known for his contributions to The Village and New York Magazine. American Gangster (the 2007 film starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe) was actually a film adaptation of an article Jacobson wrote, entitled "The Return of Superfly." I've provided a link to the article if you are interested. If you want to check out more of his writing, I'd recommend checking out Teenage Hipster in the Modern World. In any case, I think he had some pretty interesting observations on the video game industry. I think his point about American gamers preferring "three-dimensional 'coming-at-ya'" games was especially astute; especially considering that he made that observation 27 years ago.
In any case, here is the article in its entirety. It's easily one of the best gaming-related articles I've ever read, and I say that without a hint of hyperbole.
---------------------------
Zen & the Art of Donkey Kong
By Mark Jacobson
Woke up this morning with an intense craving for Japan. Crawled over to the tube and flipped on Mothra, wondered if the two tiny princesses who sing to the big bug grew up to be Pink Lady, and felt a little better. Then I went out for some sushi. Scarfed (can you truly "scarf" food that looks like tinker toys?) some kappa maki, maguro, ebi. Still unsatisfied. So got on the subway, pretended it was the "Bullet Train" to Kyoto with Mount Fuji rising above the smog layer in the distance, made it up to Fascination in Times Square, and threw quarters into Donkey Kong.
Let the new wavers slice off their hair, suburbanites brag about gas mileage, and businesswomen get awestricken by Theory Z. When I want Japan, I head for Donkey Kong. Got to be honest: I'm an old fart pinball nonwizard who's yet to see the elevators, except on the machine of the 8-year-old juvenile delinquent playing next to me. But bathing in the radiating glow of the Donkey Kong screen enlightens me, like an electronic muse.
The question then for today is: Philosophically speaking, do Japanese video games differ from their American counterparts? The answer is... (game show music here, Richard Dawson kissing a housewife on the mouth)... a complicated one, of course. After all, we're talking about Japan.
Theory #1: "Up and Down, not In and Out"
When delving into the essence of a thing, it often helps to examine its outer appearance, especially when this exterior carries with it historical import. Soon, given the usual trend of global capitalism, American and Japanese games may all look and play the same, but as of now they still retain some of the elements of their respective cultures. When I was in Tokyo, I spent hours in noisy, grubby places called "Pachinko parlors." These are Japanese arcades filled with rows of Pachinko machines. I never quite got good at it, but Pachinko is essentially an upright pinball game with a two-dimensional board, face-high to the player. You deposit silver balls into the cabinet, which then filter from the top of the machine to the bottom. The idea is to capture the balls in the little "house" on the board for "reward" balls that you can exchange for prizes.
Pachinko is very popular in Japan, and its basic set-up is seen in many of the "flat" maze video games coming from Nippon. The first screen in Donkey Kong is the virtual video equivalent of Pachinko. Space Invaders, with its rows of descending aliens, is another example of "up and down."
On the other hand, Americans have long preferred the three-dimensional "coming-at-ya" feeling of a horizontal approaching ball. With all of the pinball companies going into video you can see many of these distinctly pinball characteristics turning up on the little TVs in the arcades. Stuff is always flying at you in American games.
Theory #2: The Decline of the Sperm Game
I was going over the differences between East and West video game styles with Eugene Jarvis, the 27-year-old designer of such "hardcore" games as Robotron, Stargate, and Defender, the other day when he brought up the notion that the Japanese, with the "easier" games "were giving a boost to the novice player, but ripping off the expert." If this continued, Jarvis maintained, it could wipe out the cult of the "pinball wizard" and the "video freak." I thought about this and decided it was absolutely true. Top Japanese games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man are far more accessible to the "novice" and appeal to a wider group of people. They are colorful, cartoony, friendly, inviting. The "plots" are basically benign. Mario's love for the girl in Donkey Kong, and his persistence in pursuing her, is sort of sweet. Pac-Man's dot-eating proclivities are nothing if not cute. My mother in law, a Pac-Man fan who doesn't care for many of the American games, says "eating things is much nicer than blowing them up." In fact, Pac-Man is often described as a woman's game, with all the implications of the term "woman's drink."
This is exactly what Jarvis was talking about. Formerly, a typical video game player might be a warty teenager, a National Lampoon reader, blasting AC-DC in his room, who went to the arcade to kick a machine's butt. "From shit to God for a quarter," Jarvis commented. The games this type of player favors are almost invariably the American ones: Tough to play, intimidating to the novice, shooting-driving-destroying paranoid filled games. "Sperm games," Jarvis calls them. But now, he went on, these elitist video cowboys might be as extinct as their doggiepunching pinball forerunners. Says Jarvis: "How can you feel cool if your mother is playing in the same arcade? It's like she put your Led Zep record and liked them better than you."
A reason for this trend can be found in the Japanese idea of the "youth-culture." Quite simply, there isn't one. In Japan, a trip to the arcade is often a family outing, which probably accounts for why Japanese games tend to be easier to play. (Nintendo's Japanese version of Donkey Kong is a breeze compared to the company's American one.) So, as video games begin to break big, demographically, in the States, it makes sense that the games leading the pack would be the "less intense" Japanese creations.
Theory #3: Bomb Innocence
Ever wonder where the Japanese come up with bizarro notions like making the "Carpenter" in Donkey Kong an Italian? I dunno, he looks Italian to me, and I hear he looked Italian enough to the American ad agency who handles Nintendo's account to name him Mario (the Japanese simply call him "jumpman" but they did come up with Donkey Kong, which means "stupid monkey"). Japanese pop culture is full of weird items. Most of the cartoons on their television, stuff never intended for export, feature blonde and blue-eyed heroes (i.e., Astroboy) and heroines. This, from a country that is as close to a "pure" race as there is in the world. In Japan, almost everyone is "Japanese." I have always imagined this apparent free association had something to do with a twisted inferiority complex that somehow, coupled with national grace, came out being very winning and innocent.
This pop culture innocence runs deep: The cartoon shows, like the video games, are not just for kidsthey play round the clock. If you stay at a ryokan (a Japanese-style hotel), you'll find stacks of magazines to read on your futon, almost all cartoon books. Even the sex-porno lit is done in cartoons. Call it extended childhood, call it a preponderance of ghostlike unreality surrounding daily life. Whatever, it turns up all over, and the playfulness of the video games is only one aspect.
What other culture could have created Godzilla as the symbol of horror of the atomic age and then turn him into a lovable, almost goofy savior of children? And why would Nintendo resurrect King Kong in a video game? Could it be that the Japanese are simply more at ease that we are with the all-too-obvious burgeoning of terrors of the modern world, more at home with technology and less afraid of its dubious side effects, and therefore not nearly as paranoid about the potential apocalyptic visions swirling inside humanity's head? Could this have something to do with having already experienced, at Hiroshima and Nagasaka, what we all fear? After all, what's the driving force of most American video games? Isn't it dread?
Theory #4: Buddha's Bluebeam Screen
Eugene Jarvis has a pretty philosophical outlook on his world within a box. The metaphysical differences between American and Japanese games, he says, "comes down to a concept of Free Will. Japanese games are basically pattern games. There are set paths, predetermined courses. The attitude is life is a rigged thing, you've got to recognize the correct way to go and go that way. Like in Scramble and Donkey Kong, there isn't a lot of choice about which way to move your man. You either do it a certain way, or you're going to get zapped. Just follow the right way and you'll win. It's like there's a trick to happiness, and if you know it, you'll be happy.
"American games are more random," Jarvis continues. "In Tempest or Defender, you can go whichever way, basically, you want. There's no pattern, the grid isn't a fixed thing. You go on your competence, abstract skill is what counts. You don't have to memorize anything, no teacher is asking you, "Well, was Lake Michigan discovered in 1519 or 1615?' Sure, you can get blasted out in the first minute, but that's life. American games give you a chance to absolutely fail."
Listening to all this made me think of an article in a recent Harper's magazine which purports to explain the Japanese character to Americans and vice-versa. The article depicts the American hero as a lone ranger riding off into the sunset, the Japanese hero as the person who, by most closely conforming to the path prescribed as perfect, contributes the greatest good to the group as a whole. A close look at each country's video game products bears this thesis out.
But, this is a whole lot to think about when you're trying to doge a fireball and jump onto a moving elevator platform. A smart and shifty player wouldn't want to get weighted down with this sort of baggage. Still, being a reporter at heart (and an 8,000-point Donkey Kong player at best), I asked a preteen kid named Johnny, who announced himself as being "from uptown" and wore a green running suit, if he saw a difference between American games and Japanese games.
"No difference," he said, continuing to throttle his joystick, "Just line 'em up, I'll knock 'em down, Watch me carve my name in this one." Which he did. A moment later, with more than 100,000 points to his credit, Johnny typed "J27" to the machine's program. He'd just made the highest score of the day on Donkey Kong. So I figured, you pays your quarter, you takes your choice.
---------------------------
Jacobson, Mark (1983) Zen & The Art of Donkey Kong Video Games Illustrated, 1(4),30-33.
I didn't realize it before, but this article was actually written by Mark Jacobson! He's what you might call a real journalist, and is probably best-known for his contributions to The Village and New York Magazine. American Gangster (the 2007 film starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe) was actually a film adaptation of an article Jacobson wrote, entitled "The Return of Superfly." I've provided a link to the article if you are interested. If you want to check out more of his writing, I'd recommend checking out Teenage Hipster in the Modern World. In any case, I think he had some pretty interesting observations on the video game industry. I think his point about American gamers preferring "three-dimensional 'coming-at-ya'" games was especially astute; especially considering that he made that observation 27 years ago.
The assertion surely isn't that some, or most of us haven't live through the years covered.
I was 8 in 1989. playing games too. The point remains that these posts, are far better barometers than subjective, selective, personal anecdotes. An eight year old in 1989 would be only aware of such topics insofar as it is covered in the easily accessible media of the day, mainly schoolyard gossip, magazines, and maybe TV shows.
These pre-WWW postings are from a priviledged minority who had access to the service and it also underlies another basic objection, that the opinion wasn't 'uttered' enough.
Many of the opinions on NeoGAF would seem remote if all we relied on were TV, family, and friends. The soap box provided by the internet has amplified various strains of thought and bringing disparate proponents of such thought into ideological camps and to clarify each position.
So the point stands. Adults of the day were making largely similar arguments, framed in similar contexts and sometimes using similar analogies. Replace Lynx with PS3 and Toyota with Wii in the Tramiel quote and you have a similar quote from a Sony executive from 2006.
And surely, none of you would suggest your memories from your youth and whatever possible videogame discourse that was possible to that young brain, would rival, the kind of tribal conservations occuring on the BBS groups?
I was 8 in 1989. playing games too. The point remains that these posts, are far better barometers than subjective, selective, personal anecdotes. An eight year old in 1989 would be only aware of such topics insofar as it is covered in the easily accessible media of the day, mainly schoolyard gossip, magazines, and maybe TV shows.
These pre-WWW postings are from a priviledged minority who had access to the service and it also underlies another basic objection, that the opinion wasn't 'uttered' enough.
Many of the opinions on NeoGAF would seem remote if all we relied on were TV, family, and friends. The soap box provided by the internet has amplified various strains of thought and bringing disparate proponents of such thought into ideological camps and to clarify each position.
So the point stands. Adults of the day were making largely similar arguments, framed in similar contexts and sometimes using similar analogies. Replace Lynx with PS3 and Toyota with Wii in the Tramiel quote and you have a similar quote from a Sony executive from 2006.
And surely, none of you would suggest your memories from your youth and whatever possible videogame discourse that was possible to that young brain, would rival, the kind of tribal conservations occuring on the BBS groups?
SuperAngelo64
Banned
Ah, another western chest-beating thread.
Stay classy, GAF.
Stay classy, GAF.
This thread reminded me of something I witnessed in the late 80s or early 90s at ToysRus. Maybe 1989? So I would've been about 6. I remember it so vividly because it was so SHOCKING for me to hear someone not like the NES. I wanted one so bad at the time.
Some older guy, well he was older to me at the time, probably only in his late 20s or 30s was standing by the NES display. He was complaining how "The Nintendo" changed everything he ever loved about video games. Arcades, and Atari used to be about joysticks and high scores.
Then "The Nintendo" came out and suddenly and you had to move directions by pressing buttons with your thumb. How could people use controls like that? THE ONLY PURPOSE of playing videogames was to get the highscore. Now nobody cared about the score, you had to beat/finish a game and get to the ending.
Some older guy, well he was older to me at the time, probably only in his late 20s or 30s was standing by the NES display. He was complaining how "The Nintendo" changed everything he ever loved about video games. Arcades, and Atari used to be about joysticks and high scores.
Then "The Nintendo" came out and suddenly and you had to move directions by pressing buttons with your thumb. How could people use controls like that? THE ONLY PURPOSE of playing videogames was to get the highscore. Now nobody cared about the score, you had to beat/finish a game and get to the ending.
SuperAngelo64
Banned
Ericsc said:
To me this is when videogames became videogames.
Awkward Joysticks and wanking to high-scores on a single screen was just so static and bland.
To be fair though, the best games were the best of both worlds; arcade co-op sidescrollers. Some of my most awesome arcade memories were of groups of people gathering around 4 kids about to beat the final boss in a good ol' 'beat 'em up'. The Konami Simpson's game was like something that you and some friends planned all day at school and then walking to the arcade with pockets full of quarters people would actually fucking follow you to see how far you could go. Good times.
I think those memories carved my current obsession with MMOs.
More Fun To Compute
Member
Ericsc said:
That wasn't me but I could never get along with the dpad myself. I even find it frustrating to use to navigate menus so I only got into console gaming when the N64 when it came out with an analogue stick. It is hard to explain how infuriating dpad controls are unless you have a controller in your hand that you find really awkward and unresponsive after playing with an arcade style stick for years.
Never really cared about high scores that much.
Similar threads
- Poll