Toys In The Attic -
October 9, 2001 - Brooke Bolander
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed
within this column are those of the participants and the
moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the
GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive
material afoot. I like it when the eyeballs fall out. Don't say we didn't warn you.
The Velveteen Genesis - a short story, by B. Bolander
Once upon a time, in a far-off land, in the magical year of 1992, there was a little girl who wanted a Sega Genesis very badly. She begged and whined and begged until, at last, her mother and father broke down and bought her one for Christmas.
Genesis loved his little girl very much, and always tried his best to please her, even when she swore foul oaths at him and threw various objects at his sturdy black plastic frame (usually while playing platformers.) Most of the time she treated him kindly though, and the two of them grew in friendship.
However, the years passed, and Genesis began to slow. His controller wouldn't work, his once-impressive 16-bit processing became passe, and dust settled over him, dust not wiped away by the girl. More and more time passed, and Sega Genesis was soon forgotten.
But then one day, Genesis was taken down from the darkness of the dusty closet. Hope sprang in his little slot - or was it a moth? "Oh yay!" he thought excitedly. "Maybe she's going to play with me again!"
Unknown to Genesis, however, there was a new kid on the block, a new kid named Saturn. Genesis was on his way to a pawn shop, a pawn shop where he would spend the rest of his days - at least until a group of stoned kids came in looking for something cheap and easy to destroy.
THE END.
Think of that next time you go to sell a system because it's obsolete and you need the cash, Dear Reader.
| Those carts are made of gold, baby. |
| Brooke--
When I was young and had no allowance and no job, I had few ways of making
enough money to buy my own video games. Waiting the long stretches between
birthdays and Christmas was, of course, out of the question. So I became a
huge repeat customer for Video Game Exchange. I'd sell my games to buy a
new one; and eventually, I sold my NES and SNES, as well. With the recent
purchases of a PlayStation and N64, I did not think I would miss them. I
quickly proved myself wrong.
Playing a game over and over is, of course, absolutely no fun. But I
guaruntee that I would have loved to dust off my Zelda or Breath of Fire 2
and pop them in just two years after I'd sold them. If I could. I seem to
remember my NES (and to a much lesser extent, SNES) working only when I blew
on it repeatedly, and even then, still required the magic talisman of my
crossed fingers and a good roll of the die.
I've since then discovered the usage of emulators. I'm not a "download ROMs
is evil!" type person, myself, so I have little moral difficulty in
replaying BoF2 or the original Zelda on my computer. But, being the
collector-type I am, I actually went back to Video Game Exchange to see if
that copy of Breath of Fire 2 was still available. I couldn't play it
without an SNES, but it IS my favorite gaming series, and I wouldn't mind
just owning the game for the sake of it. And, to my complete surprise, I
found my very own game, complete with the carved word "BUG" on it.
It costs 60 dollars.
For the same price that a brand new high quality N64 game would cost, I
could have bought an old game for an obsolete system that probably wouldn't
have worked. Needless to say, I went back to ROMs. And twenty bucks say
that, in ten years when PS6 comes out, I'll be downloading free Final
Fantasy 7 ROMs (I don't see why THEY shouldn't exist by then, either!)
instead of carefully cleaning and repairing the scratched disk to play it on
my ancient PlayStation.
-----------------------------------
The Great BobCFed08 has spoken.
Heed his words.
|
And the moral of the story is : Don't get rid of anything. I'll bet all those people who sold Panzer Dragoon Saga for 5 bucks at the local thrift shop are kicking themselves in the collective butts right now. Same thing with Chrono Trigger and FFVI - you can't find nice copies for under seventy dollars on EBay anymore. There are advantages to being a packrat, my friends.
As for ROMs, I'm split down the middle on that. I'll admit, I've gotten a few myself, mainly because of nostalgia. Getting ROMS of old games, that's alright with me. However - and there's a big however in here - I don't like the idea of games getting emulated as soon as they hit the markets. Something about that just disturbs me, way down in that moral center I do my best to stomp out. It seems more like blatent theft than downloading an old NES game because you're feeling nostalgic.
| Wish I had taken my own advice... |
| Dear Ms. Brooke,
People go back to systems, emulators and specific games because it is nice
to reminisce about the enjoyment that was had in the past. It is like
when you get into a conversation with friends you have not seen in some
time. You start to talk about past adventures that you have had together.
Games are the same thing. It is that same type of enjoyment. In fact
most people probably spend more time talking about past things they have
done, then actually going out and do new things. Likewise, gamers are
more inclined to talk about or replay older games then play new games.
-Adrian, who just got a Saturn
|
Ahh yes, reason number two for hanging onto systems long after they've stopped making games that actually sell for 'em - nostalgia. It's funny...you can play a game until you are absolutely, disgustingly sick of it, but wait a year and the disgust will magically turn into a warm fuzzy feeling. Memories of staying up until six in the morning breeding chocobos or fighting some super-tough battle will come flooding back, and you will find yourself half-dressed, freezing your ass off on a rickety attic ladder looking for that system you packed away. Good luck finding that Master System underneath three boxes of Encyclopedia Britannica, sucker.
| Dream A Little Dreamcast (doh!) |
| Simple answer for this one, Brooke. it has to be the dreamcast -- I can't
think of any system that i would want to pull out years after it is obsolete
and gone than the dreamcast. it doesn't even have to do with graphical wow
since you know that years from now - even Shenmue will look somewhat
primitive when hyper realism is the phase (you know - somewhere around PS9
and X5 from MS).
It doesn't even have that much to do with RPGs, though Skies is a
masterpiece of a game (never got my hands on Panzer Saga so i am going to
have to call Skies the best Sega developed RPG - Phantasy Star be damned!).
the other games -- Samba De Amigo (with accompanying maraca controller),
Seaman, Virtua Tennis, VOOT, Jet Grind Radio, Soul Caliber, even the other
games that are being ported over to other systems like Ecco, Space Channel 5
and Crazy Taxi still feel better on the old Dreamcast. you can't beat the
imagination that fueled the Dreamcast games -- though we never did see the
aparition in the apartment game - Roomania 202 or something like that.
hell, even Typing of the Dead was a break from the same old same old.
Even the RPG scene (though extremely limited) has some classics - the
aforementioned Skies, Grandia II (while extremely derivative, i enjoyed it
very much), Shenmue, and to even some extent PSO (even not online it proves
to be a boring yet addictive dungeon crawl). i can see myself in years down
the road, plugging it up to have one more run through some classic games --
like I do with the old Genesis every once and a while (Gunstar Heroes
rules!!).
- william defoe
And where is the props for the stoner, psychedelic games? I loved Tail of
the Sun and basically any Artdink titles because it was so different from
anything else (look at Argonaut's Holiday) - same could be said for a lot of
other trippy games. so what do you think takes the cake, Brooke?
|
As much as I love the little white box, I have to wonder how much lasting power it's going to have, especially when you take into consideration how many of the 'exclusive' DC games (Grandia II, for example) are getting ported to other systems. I'll still love you though, Dreamcast!
Best psychedelic game? I'd have to say Kolibri is still the most surreal thing I've ever played. The image of that little hummingbird shooting projectile lasers out of his beak will be burned into my conciousness until the day I die.
| I'll put 300 on PS2!! |
| My vote is for the X-box. After all, when one gets tired of playing it, it
can always double as an attractive stool or end-table. Now that's value,
baby!
Seriously though, I don't think any console is worth a $300 price tag. I
always wait until it's within the hundred buck range before I jump in, and
even then I want to be just about guaranteed that there will be at least a
small handful of good games that I want. Uncharacteristically, I bought a
GBAdvance right off the bat, but I hadn't bothered with getting a GBColor,
so I already had a lot of catching up to do. I play it all the time, so it
was well worth the investment.
I know I'll get a PS2 eventually, once the price is right because, lets face
it, where Square goeth so goeth I. As for the Game Cube, well, that remains
to be seen...
- El Cactuar
|
You can also swing the controller above your head and bring it down with a mighty crash upon the heads of your enemies - who the heck needs a mace or a morning star when you have the handy-dandy X-Box controller for protection?
Every time you buy a system, you are, in effect, gambling. You put 200, 300 dollars down and say 'I sure hope this gets plenty of good games.' If that's not gambling with your cash, I don't know what is, because if you've just purchased the next 32X, you might as well be buying a pricey paperweight.
As for the GameCube, there's just something absolutely adorable about the little buggers, isn't there? I have no idea why, but every time I see one, I get this involuntary urge to hug it, take it home, and dress it in doll clothes. Who's a cute system? Who's a cute system? That's right, YOU are!
| Sixteen years?! |
| None of the above. Systems are going to see a smaller and smaller play life due to our ever increasing technology. I'm sure we will start to hear specs for the the Playstation 3 next year about this time.
Kandrin, master of ninja-men.
|
Good point. The time in-between new systems seems to be getting shorter and shorter with each wave. It seemed like years passed before the reign of the SNES was over, but the PSX came and went in a heartbeat. Or maybe it just feels that way the older you get; we aren't getting any younger, guys. Soon enough the kids and the grandparents will be squabbling over who gets to have the next turn playing Parappa....ahh, what a future. Now there's a good reason to keep your systems - pass them along to the next generation.
Has it really been sixteen years since Super Mario Brothers came out? Jesus, I can feel the wrinkes forming already...
| No thank you. |
| I'm not going to bash the XBox, but if you look at history, new companies making their own consoles has come up short. The first, of course, was Atari, but Atari later destroyed itself with the Jaguar. Then there was the 3D0. The only real systems that had done well were Sega and Nintendo, and for a long time that was it. Then Sony stepped in, and, already being a billion-dollar corporation, it was able to pull support for the Playstation. Sega fell off the deep end with Saturn after the success of Genesis, and made some quick initial popularity with the Dreamcast. (However, I argue that the death of Sega as a console designer will be their glorious rebirth as a software company.) I've seen polls around the Internet - most people will be buying a PS2 or a Gamecube. The XBox is left for the 15% category. I'm afraid that Bill Gates better stick with his monopolizing of the OS business or he will lose a lot of money with this venture. Because I don't know about you, but if Bill Gates tries to monopolize the video game business, he'll be getting assassination attempts.
- Gunstar Heroes
|
Despite the money Microsoft is going to be backing the system up with, I don't feel that they'll be able to come anywhere near the success that Sony had. You may all call me biased against the Xbox, but there's something about it that reminds me a little too much of the Jaguar, the 3DO, and all those consoles that have come and gone without a peep. Of course, I'll probably be proven wrong, but ....eh. I'll be saving my cash, thanks.
| Good Idea, Bad Idea. |
| Brooke,
That's one thing I have to give Sony props for. They
made the PS2 backwards compatible. That way, you don't
NEED to drag that old PSX out of the attic - just pop
in Xenogears/Suikoden II/FF7/Vagrant Story/any of the
other mega-rockin' games made for that console. Hell,
even though I recall scoffing at the news at the time
("Square is doing this simply to make money! HAW!"
said I), reissuing some old SNES games on the PSX,
thus making them PS2-playable may have just saved them
from being forgotten ("Yeah, FF6 was pretty r0x0r, but
I don't wanna take the time to dust off my SNES and
plug in that damn cartridge!") by all but the
"h4rdc0r3 37337 g4m3rzzz," as the kids say nowadays.
So simply put, maybe the PS6 will be backwards
compatible as well, and maybe by then the other
companies will wise up and do similar things.
I wonder if they sell Alucard plushies anywhere...
- Sephiroth Katana, who isn't like them but can pretend
|
Two sides to this. One, I'm glad they made the PS2 backwards compatible, because it means people like me with a limited amount of cash and a deep well of wariness towards buying a new system can go buy one and still feel good about ourselves. I can still play my old games, yay!
On the other hand, I can't help but feel cynical about it. Where's the heart? How can you get attached when you'll be saying goodbye so soon? There's just something impersonal about having a system that can play all your old games as well as the new ones. Back in my day, the games played on only one system, and we liked it, dagnabbit. There's also a tiny voice deep within me screaming "this is just another way for them to sell consoles quicker! Don't do it! Stick it to The Man!!"
But in the end all things must change, and you've gotta go with the flow, so I guess it's a good thing. I never thought I'd see the day my PSX and I would part ways, though.....I'm sorry, I think I have something in my eye.
| I named mine Sparkles!! |
| Dear Brooke,
It's a simple matter that the systems that we'll all be playing
down the road are the ones with the most memorable games. PSX, for
example, has earned an eternal place in my heart, and my mini-arcade, as
has the SNES. The N64, well the jury's out on that one. Saturn? Yep.
NES? Maaaaaaybe, but that one had so few memorable titles.... 3DO?
Nope. Jaguar? Hells no. CD-i? With THAT controller!? *giggles* Point
is, we fairly well know which systems will hold the test of time and
which will not. It's the ones which we had our finest gaming moments
on. Though maybe the PSOne system won't get as much use thanks to
backward compatibility and all...
Jesus Zamora, who bought an SNES on ebay about two years after selling
his old one.
|
Yeah, I guess it all comes down to what kind of person you are and how much fun you had with the system. If you're the kind of person who gets easily attached and ends up naming your beloved GameCube "Blippy" or something, then I doubt anything is going to tear you away from that system - hell, that one particular model. If you go through systems and posessions like Nirvana went through drummers, however, then it'll probably be a short stay.
There's always the age bracket, too. The older you get, the less likely you are to go out and sell your old SNES because you need money for food and CDs.
Closing Comments:
Whooo, Nintendo's finally dropped that 'Seal of Approval' they stuck on their games for so long. While I don't really see it making that much of a difference, how do you see this - good or bad? Is it even going to affect the quality of Nintendo products? Or is this all yet another way to rake in the cash so Old Man Yamauchi can sleep on a bed of money?
Discuss, my little droogies. Discuss.
- Brooke Bolander, who wants to sleep on a bed of money too.
|
