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[DreadTheUnDead]

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".

Yeah I'll admit it was a little harsh, I'm just not a fan of how it allows for crazy killing streaks, but lets not derail the thread

 

[Kilrogg]

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.

you mean the ninrakedough, cause that's what it is: a nin raking dough

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.

zip

Thank you!

 

[Lonewolf_92]

What on earth is a "Pinball Wizard"?

I'm not in the habit of necrotizing potentially dead threads, but this made me sad. This is a Pinball Wizard.

 

[AniHawk]

Neat.

So in other words it was the PSP to Game Boy's DS. :lol

I was about to say, "well, Nintendo only did it really quickly in response to the Lynx" and then I remembered that the DS was a kneejerk reaction as well.

It was in Stephen Kent's book. Something about some people at Nintendo getting a look at Lynx while it was in development, going back home, and then making the Game Boy.

 

[MarshMellow96]

Article

So basically being American, Japanese (i.e. your culture) etc. reflects on your work as a designer.

When it's put like that you can definitely see the parallels with the 'American Dream' with regard to the American stuff.

Holy shit videogames are like literature after all :lol

 

[Lonewolf_92]

I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen more documentaries about the industry and it's fan following from the pinball arcades up to present day. There is a metric ton of history with many interesting personalities there to be exploited. I'm sure the backroom stuff that was going on at Atari and Commodore during their times in the sun would make for some compelling watching.

This thread keeps blowing my mind. Seriously, if you just replace the system and game names, these things could look like posts on this board.

People are still going to be having these exact same arguments in 20 years, aren't they?

And the way things are going, Nintendo will probably still be an sticky arguing point when our children's children take up our banners and go marching into cyberspace to fight the good fight! :lol

Looking at that article tells me that the industry shifts between casuals and hardcore periodically. We so called "hardcore" will get our day in the sun again shortly.

Except the people called "Hardcore" now would've been the ones referred to as "Novices" back then, it's the niche gamers who would inherit the industry if there was such a shift. The "Hardcore" gamer of that era only cared about difficulty (the more balls-hard, the better), not the "experience" provided in the game.

Oh wow

I think it is true that many of the PS3 games are better than 360 because the designers had to really work to wring good playable games out of the hardware. - Gaf's Uncharted 3 hype thread a year or so from now

Also, google was around in 1989? I had no idea

That was already sort of done in this thread about Sony working with devs on new hardware.

 

[yurinka]

I recently found an interesting article written in the January, 1983 issue of Video Games Magazine. This article looks at the differences between Japanese and American video games and also touches on the differences between "hardcore" and "novice" gamers. Here is an excerpt from said article:



I was somewhat surprised to learn that the topic of "hardcore" games was even being discussed in 1983. Much in the same way that "hardcore" Call of Duty fans may scoff at bright and colorful games like Mario Kart or Wii Sports, fans of Defender were apparently scoffing at games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man 27 years ago. I find it hilarious that a game as notoriously difficult as Donkey Kong could some how be viewed as a game for "novices," but I guess the issue was always more about accessibility than it was about challenge. Insecure teenagers didn't want to play the same games as their parents in 1983, and nothing has really changed. You won't have to look very hard to find some self-described hardcore gamer trolling about "soccer moms" or "old folks homes" when discussing the Wii. The prevalence of first-person shooters in this current generation illustrates how little has changed in the past few decades. Japan (Nintendo in particular) is still pushing out "colorful, cartoony, friendly, inviting" games; while western development seems more focused on "shooting-driving-destroying" games. I realize that this is a generalization, but it's interesting to see how closely our current generation mirrors the early 1980s. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Awesome finding. Eugene Jarvis was a visionary, he really understood it at that time.
I've never found these differences in these classic games.
BTW where is Eugene Jarvis righ now? I know he was at Midway, but his last game I see credited is SmashTV for XBLA(2005).

 

[Refreshment.01]

The thing that gets me the most in this thread its how the mayority of posters reacted. So 20 or 30 years ago people exhibit the same behaviour or thinking patterns? Honestly, i think there's no need to be shocked, altough one most admit its kind cool to visit the past. What we see in this thread its just human nature, plain and simple.

People seem to forget also, that this extends beyond the videogame landscape to many other aspects of life.

Now, now.... What i found astonishing is that one of the best videogame related articles i seem to remember comes from 1983.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Awesome finding. Eugene Jarvis was a visionary, he really understood it at that time.
I've never found these differences in these classic games.
BTW where is Eugene Jarvis righ now? I know he was at Midway, but his last game I see credited is SmashTV for XBLA(2005).

Not sure what he's particularly up to, but he runs Raw Thrills now. They make arcade games, which is pretty much where he should be. Recently, Terminator Salvation, H2Overdrive, and of course, Guitar Hero Arcade.

The last thing I can truly connect him with without putting any effort in was Target: Terror, but I'd be shocked if his fingerprints weren't all over Terminator Salvation.

 

[Safe Bet]

Says Jarvis: "How can you feel cool if your mother is playing in the same arcade?

How can you feel cool when your 5 year old child is playing the same game as you?

 

[Lonewolf_92]

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.

Of course, gaming in those days was more of a social experience. If it was only about "wanking to high-scores" as you put it, alone, gaming would've never took off to be what it is today. It wasn't just getting a high score, it was getting a high score for all to see and the back patting and celebratory rigmarole that came with it in the arcade setting that was the attraction back then. Being with your friends (maybe making new ones) and hanging out, the games were just there to help sort out your place in the pecking order (were you the guy getting the Donkey Kong Kill Screen, or the guy going around telling everyone about it coming up).


Aaaaand finally caught up with the thread. I'm impressed GAF, I was expecting this thread to have died a lonely death. Nice to see we have some people of class and taste here.

How can you feel cool when your 5 year old child is playing the same game as you?

Depends, is the kid whopping your butt at it? ;p My four year old son has pretty much completed Smash Bros. Brawl, even beat Subspace Emissary on it's hardest settings. I've never had a prouder day in my life as a gamer!

 

[TheSeks]

Robotron and Defender are creme-de-la-creme games, so I hope you're disagreeing with the part about being like CAVE shooters, and not with the part about them being well-designed, Princess.

Man, there was a Robotron machine in the break room of the Target I worked at years ago.

Who says Arcades have to die? Just move them into retail break rooms. :lol (But this one was a free play machine, pretty awesome old-school feeling)

I miss Arcades. Mostly the fighting game side of them.

 

[Bolt Vanderhuge]

These old posts get even better when I read them in my head with Chris Remo's crapbox/suckbox voice.

 

[britthithard]

http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?t=14437

i think NAG has better arguments.

 

[DangerousDave]

Well, I remember that era, the Commodore, Spectrum, CPC, Amiga, etc.

Japanese games were wrongly considered as easier games.

They were easier, but because three reasons:

1.- They were much more user friendly. Less keys. Crearer controls. Cleaner interface. Menus of one or as much two deep levels. Less painfully consequences to the errors. You only need to compare Dragon Quest I with the Ultima I or Wizardry games that they use as reference, and Dragon Quest seemed a educative RPG, in that era.

2.- They balanced the difficulty. Japanese games were hard, but at least they were possible to finish. Western developers made games that only 1% of the people who played them was able to finish. Energy based games were very few in the occidental market, nearly all the occidental platform games of 80's was life based games with blocky collisions where you got killed if you got too close to the enemy. With dirty one-fail-game-over tricks, when failing to certain pits will imply that all your remaining lives will be lost respawning and falling to the same pit.

3.- They used game designers. In western games, in 80's, there weren't game designers, the programmer was also the designer and, sometimes, even the artist. That's why a lot of old western game designers (Sim Meier, Molyneux, etc) started as programmers, but also, if the programmer was too closed-minded, the game was a selfish sadistic challenge of the programmers to the players.

I still love some of those stupid impossible games, and when I was a child I preferred them over the japanese simpler and easier games. But obviously, japanese games were better, even if we didn't know it.

For example, Mission Elevator: It was a kind of rippoff of Elevator Action. And it was uber-complex. You need to look in the different furnitures looking for clues about where it was the key (pressing down), but sometimes that makes you kill because of crouching to avoid a bullet when you were next to an electric outlet. You got money from furnitures, and you need to look in the doors for guy that will give you the key to the next zone (but that guy only appear if you already found a certain object in the furnitures). Also, you was going up, instead of down.

The game was great. But it was not so straigh-forward as the game that tried to copy. It was really difficult and very slow-paced.

 

[Faxanadu]

Best thread in a long, long time.

In full agreement!

 

[DeadTrees]

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.

You know, even without the benefit of hindsight, and even if Street Fighter II had been created in the US instead of Japan, this analysis was self-serving and inaccurate...not to mention an example of vintage 1980's jap-bashing via dogwhistle code phrases ("there isn't a lot of choice", "You either do it a certain way, or you're going to get zapped", "You don't have to memorize anything", "American games give you a chance to absolutely fail").

By 1983, there were numerous examples of hit US games that didn't conform to this description:

Pong (100% Newtonian physics)
Breakout (ditto)
Star Wars (on-rails shooter)
Dragon's Lair (memorization-fest)
Most of Activsion's big hits, like Pitfall (nearly everything that happens is fixed and pattern based, the overriding goal is to find the most efficient path to all the treasure within the time limit)

Meanwhile, from Japan:
Mario Bros (heavily influenced by Joust, cultural dichotomy says what?)
Time Pilot (360 degree shooter)
Qix (the Qix's movements are random, players can wall off each level however they like)
Elevator Action (red doors and agents are random)

 

[MightyHedgehog]

I think there's a reason why it's called a generalization, man.

 

[petran79]

Bumped the thread due to this interview from a developer who worked on both consoles, computers and arcades and in Japan as well during the 80s and 90s.

Interview from Gregg Tavares in Retro Gamer

Was making games in Japan different to your previous experience in the USA?

They were actually very behind on their tech which was weird, because it didn't look like that when you had games like Daytona or Virtua Fighter 3 which were out around then. The division I was in was AM1, which did stuff like The House of the Dead and they made beatiful games but their tech... like, they had no tools for the artists to make a level. They'd have to write stuff down in graph paper and hand it to a programmer who'd type it in! If you wanted to make a new Virtua Fighter character, you handed them a folder and you'd get to see what it looked like in the next day. It was insane. We'd been using level editors since the Eighties...

Did you try to change the situation?

I built tools to try and make things easier but they do things differently. In the West, a designer would make, like, a 400-page document describing a game but in Japan, they'd kind of make storyboards, like for movies. Very few words but lots of drawings and diagrams with stick figures on, showing how the game flows.