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'm naming my firstborn "Sharkeye." Don't say we didn't warn you.

Not much to say today ... so let's just go already and have done with it.

In the red corner....

Lasting appeal is a funny term. It is often associated with words like 'retro' and 'classic' in the gaming community. When we pick up games long past their prime we usually cast a sceptical glance at their (nicely phrased) archaic graphics and wonder where the appeal was. How could someone enjoy a game so ridiculously dated? Let's back it up, I am a gaming fossil. I remember my Atari's, Colecovisions, etc. I remember the games I used to play, I remember the games I used to revere. I have had the good fortune to witness the birth and growth of the console gaming world. As a result, I am constantly badgered and pestered by my younger siblings who laugh at me when I glorify the titles of yore (Pong was a good game, damnit!). They fail to see the allure of such a game. They routinely point to the graphics. Apparently, in this day of age, graphics counts more than gameplay. Naturally, Pong and the other 'hits' of that era can't compare to todays uber-games (in terms of gameplay and graphics) but the philosophy remains. Graphics are the selling point for games in this day and age. Gameplay has almost become a secondary consideration. The new gaming market is more focused and centralized on producing visual eye-candy than it is titles with substance. That isn't to say that games today lack depth, but try and convince me that graphics aren't *the* selling point for todays titles. How does this all tie-in to lasting appeal? I just can't picture a 'first-timer' picking up a 'classic' or a 'retro' game and showing much interest. Why play something old and ugly when you have something new and pretty? The only genre that offers any lasting appeal in games, is the RPG genre. True RPG fans will always be willing to try out a 'classic' for the sake of playing a quality game. Visually it may not be much, but gameplay is usually the stronger selling point for RPGs than it is for other genres. I can point to yesterdays topic, DWVII, to further embolden my claim. The graphics were dated but is was well recieved. The quality of gameplay in RPG's offers the only lasting appeal. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to drag my knuckles back to my cave... - Justin p.s. You were right, I did forget Gabo! Hmmm, I guess you were right on two counts - they failed with his design as well...damn your good!

I've been gaming since the Intellivision, and I dig what you're saying, man.

Few people raised on the mind-blowing graphical goodness of the present and recent past will give a "classic" the time of day. Yes, pong may have featured timelessly addictive two player gameplay, but it's simple formula's since been rehashed a hundred times with a prettier, faster, generally better interface of some kind. Why play Pong when you can play Mario Tennis? Hell, why play Warlords when you can pop in your Making of Lunar disc and play Lords of Lunar?

RPGs, meanwhile, have always been something of a storytelling medium, and while a good story may become dated, it'll never be entirely outdated.

There is, however, an equally valid antithesis to this way of seeing things....

...and in the obscenely overlong block of unbroken opinion corner....

Hail to the chief, that chief being me, I'll cut to the point on today's subject- lasting appeal. We're at a turning point in videogames, where us gamers aren't really sure what we want to have in a good game. If we want a deep story, then there's a good chance we're not going to get lasting appeal (when you get right down to it, unless you're a toddler, having an experience [Gimmick Note: Storywise] multiple times grows tiresome). If you want lasting appeal then you have to make a game so simple that anyone can play it, and also so basic as far as storyline goes that no one can complain about it. The only games that really have lasting appeal are true arcade classics- Space Invaders, Pac Man, Pong, and especially Tetris to name a few- games that were birthed when gaming was new- these games are the roots that spawned so much of what gaming is today. If you try to recreate the replayability of these arcade giants today you'd get scratch- gamers would complain that it was too much rehash, or some other blah, yet these same gamers probably play Tetris and the others at least every now and then. It's simple- these games are the roots, and the roots were all about replayabilty, lasting appeal, and pure fun. All we have today are the trees and the branches, and there's no room for lasting appeal in this market, it just can't be done well. Have you ever played Incoming for the Dreamcast? Case in point. Repetitiveness just can't pay off. I think the very vitality of gaming as a whole relies heavily on the fact that today's games have no lasting appeal- why play Final Fantasy X when you could just play VII over and over and over again, and still get a great gaming experience? In order for the gaming industry to work, games must offer a great experience once or twice through, but must then grow stale and then allow the gamer to go out and buy more games. That's why no one that's in this business to make money (most are) will allow their game makers to make the end all be all of games- because it would not give the market a chance to grow. When you make a game that's just absurdly good to a great deal of people, like say Tetris was to it's audience way back when and even now, there really isn't much room for growth. I mean, where do you go from Tetris? I guarantee there are gamers who won't play anything but else besides those oldies, obvious when you consider events like the Classic Gaming Expo. Game makers are capitalists, and while they want you to enjoy their games, they still want you to buy the next batch they put out. They're not going to make the "mistake" (depending on how you look at it) that was made when the industry was young- the mistake of making a game that's so good you could play it and not easily grow tired of playing it. This is why story is being used more often, and linearity is slowly becoming a rule. Well on to another subject, which sorts of contrasts Erin's reasoning on the subject. I really don't get how the first two Final Fantasy's are anything you could always go back and play. In fact, I just plain did not like the old Phantasy Star's. I'll admit, I grew up on computer games (as my dad worked for an American software company and was boycotting all that came from Japan) such as Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, and arcade classics such as Tapper and Space Invaders. I am a staunch console gamer now (ever since I bought, believe it or not, a game gear), so I don't feel I'm that biased towards old games. I am being sincerely honest when I say that I do not get that nostalgic feel when I play Final Fantasy 1, I instead get a "this is crap" feeling. Same is true with Phantasy Star. I liked Final Fantasy 3, I don't mind "old school" graphics in an RPG, and I just feel that before stories became at least somewhat good RPG's just didn't make any sense. I feel that if Erin were looking for some games from that era, she could have said Super Mario or something, but not some of the ones she mentioned (the only one I really agree with is Zelda). What are your opinions on that? Well anyway, that's about it for this rant and I hope I've somewhat touched on the subject, and somewhat made some sense (Erin's descriptions sometimes throw me off)[Gimmick Note: You did clarify this quite well when you introduced your topic for today, though I still hope this makes some sense]. -Gimmick The Agent brings up another interesting topic. Here's my obscure opinion. I'd say puzzle games are the obvious choice for lasting appeal with the graphics being there mainly to convey meaning and usually make no presumtions about pushing the envelope of technological achievement. So how about Tetris Attack and its ilk (Poke'mon Puzzle Challenge/League)? I actually hadn't even played the game until my first year of college in 1999 and immediately fell in love with its simplicity and elegant design. Never before have I been so adamant about getting every single one of my friends to play a game. Earlier in the day before meeting this SNES wonder I'd spent hours fraggin' around in QIII. After tasting this sweet delight I had a veritable renaissance of my gaming habits. My bread and butter was still any RPG that moved but instead of turning to FPS's for my multiplayer quick fix needs, I'd shoot up with puzzle games instead. It's pure competative fun distilled from the essence of pattern matching. Another example of the same type of lasting appeal in a puzzler include Super Puzzle Fighter (Sakura is a MAN). And I'll never pass up a chance to voice my opinion of the portable Link-ish games (Link's Awakening/Seasons/Ages). They're battery-eating deamons that help to pass the time like sleeping pills on an empty stomach. Unlike the pills though, Link doesn't leave a bitter taste in your mouth or wind you up at a betty ford. What gives them such a lasting appeal though is that they fit the platform so snugly that they make your gameboy worth keeping around. Pick it up and hop through a dungeon or loan out to folks who need a gaming fix for a long trip. Now for my unpopular opinion. I've got to say that most of the FF games have a low lasting appeal. But I'd like to close with saying that any game with a substantial amount of monkey-age has significant lasting appeal. There's something about hardcore full frontal simian games that will be popular for years to come. Of course, this is coming from the guy who traded in FF8, Diablo II, and Chrono Cross toward his set of Dreamcast Maracas. So I have a problem. Can you blame me? -Azerphale Status: Currently saving his pennies for a copy of Super Monkey Ball and controllers to accompany his new Game Cube. Thought for the Day: Dance, monkey. Dance!

To further clarify, when I originally proposed this topic a few Fridays ago, I mentioned the early FFs, Zeldas, DWs, etc. - but not because I was implying that these were the games with lasting appeal. Instead, I was trying to make a point about what sacred cows these early classics have become for those who started with them - it's easy for someone who played FF as a credulous kid to say "Well, hell! FF's a classic. It's way better than the crap they turn out now!" from behind their warm sticky veil of nostalgia, but that doesn't mean the game will amuse an objective newcomer.

That said ... I doubt there's a snowflake in hell's chance a game like FF would hook a newcomer in the present.

We tout RPGs' stories above all else ... and the fact of the matter is that the earliest offerings ... well ... didn't have them.

Suicide solution

Dear Agent: Damn, I really hate to do this. I want to nominate some game that sold less then fifty thousand copies, something that most normal gamers wouldn't use to balance their kitchen table, yet was so absolutly fun to play I couldn't put it down and am so enamoured I must sing it's praises from our college's bell tower. But I couldn't think of anything, so I'll have to go with the obvious choice: Final Fantasy 6 Even though most modern games have done lots of stuff better then FF6, like battle systems, character customizing, graphics and sound, FF6 has something else. It's the intagibles, like how the story overcame it's cliched plot, and how the characters became more then the usual video game heros, and became people I cared about. Everytime I play FF6, I can still feel their desperation after the World of Balance is destroyed, and everytime I see Celes try to commit suicide, I still choke up. the insane bovine Daniel Nelson

I often regard FFIV as the first in the series to get the formula right: it was not only the first FF to feature characters I gave a damn about, it was the first game to feature characters I gave a damn about, period.

But where FFIV passed the test, FFVI aced it, breezing through with a nerdly 4.0 GPA.

FFVI's cast not only battled the standard evil force bent on world domination - they tackled suicide, identity crises, loss and teen pregnancy. And they did it with style, easily making FFVI one of the first RPGs I personally would deign to have "lasting appeal." Nearly a decade later, I've seen Celes' leap of faith elicit tears from a first-time player with my own eyes.

You should've just said Chrono Trigger....

I would say Chrono Trigger definitely has "lasting appeal", but it's already been well established that the game also has a high "replay value", and my level of nostalgia for it probably reaches irrational levels. So instead of going out on a limb, I'll stay comfortably next to the trunk and say: Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, Dragon Warrior. Think about it. The vast majority of games owe their genres, nay, their very existance to these three games. The moment any open-minded young gamer picks up a controller and jumps on a goomba's head, or uses the "attack" command to slaughter a slime, they become hooked. Besides, the rereleases of these games (witness Super Mario Advance) bring in incredibly huge revenues to this day. I'd say that's "lasting appeal" for you. - Panadero, who thinks he should have just said "Chrono Trigger" http://csd.varlew.net

Way to ruin our wanton rambling with a rational point...

Zelda, Mario and DW have all continued their glorious 2D reigns in remakes and spiritual sequels on the GB and the GBA, and moved a respectable number of units in the process.

You could chalk this phenomenon up to the nostalgic consumer oomph of the older set, but I'd say there's quite a few kids loving every second of their portable brushes with the past.

... because you knew damn well someone had to.

Hey Erin! As an RPG gamer who started with FFVII (hate me), I think I can accurately answer this question since I didn't play the16 bit RPGs until I was eighteen, which would be...umm...last year. That said, I think that the most fun I've ever had with a game was the two weeks I spent playing Chrono Trigger. The story and characters were simple, but engaging and there was a tremendous attention to detail. I loved the fact that all the little loose ends tied together. When Robo is dumped in the past, you can still go pick him up in the future. Things you do in different timelines do change the present and even though you are pushed towards a larger goal, you can still take lots of side trips on the way and do different things to influence the outcome of the game. I also liked the fact that your main character had such a defined sense of home. I think too many RPG's have the main character wandering around with his hometown destroyed or thousands of miles or years away. He can't go home until you've finished the game, which kind of prevents you from ever really becoming involved in the game world. If the main character doesn't have any ties to the world, how are you supposed to? I like the idea of popping in to say "hi" to your mom as you're out on your quest to save the world. On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to mention that it isn't really the graphics that seem to have aged so badly with the 16 bit games, but the translations. Console games never really had graphics to write home about anyway compared to PCs and Macs (with some recent exceptions), but they had other qualities which made up for mediocre graphics. However, even though I enjoyed it to some extent, I could barely play through FFII (or V or whatever) because I could barely understand what the hell was going on. Definitely something that recent games have improved upon. Anyway as a new-oldschooler: Adios! Washington Irving, who wishes he could choose a less cliched title, but knows there probably aren't many classic "alternative 16 bit games." Wait, what about Earthbound? Nevermind. He'll just shut up now. And stop talking about himself in the third person.

When someone can pick up a game 6 years after its release and still be amazed ... I'd say it's successfully infiltrated the ranks of "Lastingly Appealing." Chrono Trigger was a natural shoe-in, anyway, but this letter nicely backs up any such claims - and all from the fresh-faced perspective of a post FFVII-er.

Additionally, I'm glad someone brought up the matter of localizations. For anyone who, God forbid, may not have grown up with spoony bards, the hideous quasi-English of translations past is something of an instant turn-off. Chrono Trigger marked a step in the right direction for Squaresoft, but incidentally, your briefly-mentioned "alternative" title, Earthbound, was the first RPG in which I ever consciously noticed a fantastic English script as a young 'un.

A decent localization can give an old game a substantially longer shelf-life, I should think, than a Daravonese-riddled dud of the kind that typified 8-bit and early 16-bit RPGs.

Hell. Look at Lunar.

The A-list

Erin - There are games that stand the test of time better than others. After all the reviews, record sales, and hype are long forgotten, the true test of quality is whether some uninitiated soul can pick up a controller, play a game, and say, "Hey, that was fun." The longer a game survives, the higher the "true" quality. Some good examples (in no order at all, not even that in which I think of them): - Chrono Trigger. You know, the game with ravenous legions of fans (myself included) who call it indisputably the best RPG ever. The one so endearing, people describe all that is good about Final Fantasy X with the phrase, "It feels like Chrono Trigger." Yeah. That game. - Street Fighter II. The game never dies. Never. I see arcades loaded wall-to-wall with brand-spanking-new machines, and tucked away in its hallowed corner is an aging SF2 machine. - The Neo-Geo. Not really a game, but the system itself. Best. 2D. System. Ever. After something like 12 years of existence, I still walk into arcades and say, "Oh, sweet! The've got a Neo-Geo!" Everyone remembers King of Fighters, Metal Slug, Samurai Shodown, Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move, WindJammers...well, maybe not WindJammers. Screw you, that game was fun, too. - Super Mario Bros. Oh, come on. I know I don't need to explain myself here. I mean...it's Mario, for God's sake. Sheesh. - Pac-man - The other arcade game that never dies. Almost as prolific as Street Fighter II, with significantly fewer incarnations. - Pong. Second oldest game ever. Try and name the oldest, and I'll bet you actually have to think about it. But does anyone ever forget Pong? Nope. Never. Uh-uh. - Tetris. Hands down, the most addictive game in human history. Everyone remembers the history test they failed because they were up all night trying to beat their friend's high score, right? ...Right? Right? See, now wasn't that fun? - An'Desha - will be the last person of his generation to beat FFX.

This letter makes some good points. It also makes me wish I had one of those cocktail-style Ms. Pac-Man tables in my living room.

Mindless concurrance

Erin: Lady of the Lake, Lasting appeal is such a cryptic, vague term that it's bound to be interpreted several different ways and I'm sure the range of examples is going to be vast. However, I'd like to at least think that there's some sort of common thread that we can define. My first choices for games with lasting appeal would be Tetris, Bomberman, and Doom. Almost anyone I know could pick up any version of these three games and be entertained for a good, solid hour. From analyzing these three games, I've made these assumptions on what a game with great lasting appeal normally contains: 1) A very simple, but very addicting concept. Face it: there has been at least one point in your life where you found yourself playing Tetris for 2 or 3 hours. Why is that? The Russian guy who invented it (Alexei Pajitnov or something to that effect) was obviously in cahoots with the government to create a game so addictive that the Capitalist Pigs would all become complacent and would fall to the Communist regime. Or maybe it was just a really simple and enjoyable puzzle game. 2) Presentation isn't overly important or the focus of the game. While the game shouldn't be hard on the eyes (DW7), the visuals should by no means be the focus because 5 years down the road, it IS going to be ugly. See FF7 as Exhibit A. Amazing when it came out, a dog turd (visually) just 4 years later. 3) The game should have great replay value, even if it's something as insipid as beating your high score. Bomberman + Doom have obvious replay value as long as you have 3 people to play with you. 4) This is the one I think is very important... it hasn't been done better since then. Most of the old games I can still go back and play (and more importantly, get others to play with me) are games in genres that haven't moved very far since their early days. There are other great block-dropping puzzle games (Puzzle Fighter), competitive party games (SSBM), and FPSs (uhhh...), but none of them are significantly better than their founding fathers. On the contrary, the console RPG genre has evolved greatly in many ways since its humble beginnings. While "I" may still pick up and play FF1, FF4, FF6, and Secret of Mana because I have fond memories of them and can pull some kind of enjoyment from them, a lot of folks weened on the more aesthetically pleasing PS1 RPGs simply can't. And that's okay. I probably wouldn't be able to either. Well, I may not have necessarily answered any questions or even addressed the original topic correctly, but hopefully I've added something productive to the discussion. Feel free to tear me a new one or concur mindlessly. Griffin, desperately searching for his SNES Multi-tap. The bomb calleth.

Will do, mate. I agree.

Closing Comments:

Some of you may remember a fleeting moment in history when a direct sequel to FFVII was rumoured to be in the works.

Undoubtedly you've seen this - so now you know folks is talkin' 'bout sumpin similar.

While I somehow doubt Square is actually planning to go through with a direct sequel to FFX, the possibility raises some interesting questions.

Final Fantasy is partially characterized by the way in which the series renews itself with a fresh story in a fresh new gameworld for each iteration. Do you think a direct sequel would weaken the series? Dishonor its predecessor in the same way the last two Aladdin movies desecrated a perfectly all right animated film? Beyond FF, what are your views on direct sequels in general?

Let's find out. A-one, a-two-hoo, a-thrrree. Three. Oh ... wait. No. Just ... send letters, 'kay?

-Erin Mehlos