15th March 2005, 3:51 PM
Wow, there were a bunch of posts made while I was writing that long one...
I don't think the GG was ever as popular as the GB. Its battery life really killed it... that and the much better game selection on the Game Boy.
SNES does have more great games than GB, though. So does the NES. That's because it was second fiddle for its whole life... it was never the focus. And it spent three or four years in no so great shape... before Pokemon saved it, it was definitely struggling for a while except for a few great games. But still... GB managed a solid lineup of titles more than large enough for anyone to have a great, and reasonably large, collection.
GBC came out in time for christmas of 1998, actually. But as I said, yes, it should have had more games but spent several years with only a few bright lights popping up every so often. And the good games are good enough so that few people, I'm sure, regretted getting one.
GBC, in 2 1/2 years, came close to having as many great games as GB, really... and maybe has as many worth buying overall. It actually had good support for its lifespan, compared to the GB which spent so long with so little...
That said, I only bought 14 GBC games, and some of those are only decent, compared with 25 GB games. But there are a lot of good GBC games I didn't get... even so though GB probably has more But it lasted so much longer that I'd sure hope so!
It's a LOT easier to develop for PSP than it is for DS. You just make something like you've made before. DS is new, so it's tougher... so it's expected that even the first-party titles show signs of being not as good as they could be.
In some ways, yes... I don't want the final death of 2d, or handheld games which are just straight console ports! As for ports, both consoles have them, true. And yes, it's quite possible on DS too. But I am sure that Nintendo will be more diligent about getting people to make new games than Sony will be... 'just more power' is alright, but unique sfeatures are great too, and for the handheld market I like Nintendo's approach better than Sony's. For top-notch 3d games there's always the PC and major consoles. The handheld market is (and should be) somewhat different...
The PSP of course has a different philosophy, and is aiming at a somewhat different market.
I'm defending 2d games, that's what I'm doing. :) Oh, and the '3d doesn't work as well on handhelds' thing isn't just my invention, it's something I've heard before. It definitely can be made to work, though. For some game types 3d is obviously better on handhelds too... but with the small screens, some of the benefits of 3d are lessened and some of the problems made greater...
The PSP should do well within the market it creates. I'm just not sure how much that cooresponds with the majority of the current handheld gaming market... oh, it'll definitely hurt Nintendo. And in time it'll grow its market share. But is the PSP the machine that will defeat Nintendo in the handheld arena? Given its drawbacks (price, battery life, game price, fragility, etc), I'm not so sure.
Of course, I also don't expect the DS to be the next Game Boy-level success in the handheld market. It'll do well, but won't become utterly dominant like GB has been.
I absolutely disagree with this. You keep returning to this as your main point against the GB: Its games are awful when compared to Nintendo's REAL good games. Etc. You say it again in the same post, actually...
I just don't agree. Your premise is that because the games aren't quite as great as the major-console titles, they stink and the GB is a comparitively bad system. I definitely don't think that that is true at all. So they aren't quite as awesome. So? They're still awesome! And there are a lot more games than that that are just as good as major-console titles: Mega Man I, IV, and V, Mole Mania, Final Fantasy Adventure, the Micro Machines games, Tetris, Bionic Commando, Gradius, etc... it's just not as bad as you say and the quality difference, while there, is a small gap, not a huge gulf.
I address Mario Land later.
Yeah, the holiday season definitely includes early January because of all the delayed good games that come out then. But by February or March, it's died down to what I said. Oh, and some of those are perfect 'release at an off time' games -- like Star Fox Assualt for instance. That just wouldn't hold up as well if it was released at a time with lots of stuff coming out.
My point was that putting it anywhere near the level of the VB is incredibly insulting to a great console.
We need to wait for the DS to show its true potential first...
The amount of work required well might be similar, but you're not actually changing the movie...
I actually had more fun with FF Adventure than Sword of Mana, despite how good the latter game is...
As for Mario Land: Fun game. It really is. So it's not as great as SMB... it's still a really good game that is a lot of fun to play! It's got variety too, with the side-scrolling levels... a bit short, but other than that a very good game.
As for Mario World (as opposed to SMB)... it's close to as good as Mario World (sorry, but the first Mario Bros. is better than SMB.)... not quite as good, especially because of the short length, but... it's a Mario game! Once you get past the bad graphics, the game is pretty good.
But they aren't actually FF games, so you shouldn't expect them to be the same...
(then OB1 says he dislikes DKL)
I also liked it. Very good game. Sure, it doesn't have the minigames of the SNES title and has fewer levels. Oh well. It's tough, it's a lot of fun, and the levels are well designed, so who cares? I sure didn't! It's a worthy title in the series every bit as good as the other three. Why don't you agree, OB1? I don't see how it's so different from the other titles at all, other than the lack of color!
Or is it the sprite-blurring you dislike so much (how the characters blend into the backgrounds)? I mostly played it on my GBC, I'm pretty sure, so I didn't have that problem. :)
But nor did you put it on your good list. Of course, you forgot a whole lot of fantastic GB games on your good list, and that's just one of them...
I have no idea why at some point you decided to hate the Game Boy, but it's just wrong. "I didn't say it's a bad system, I just said that it has a poor selection of games and I really, really strongly disagree with you if you want to say that you think it's a good system!" is ... well, let's just say that you really, really strongly contradict your initial statement that you don't think it's a bad system. :)
Nintendo DID make great games for it! It's the third parties that produced the bad stuff. Nintendo's games are great. So they're shorter. Portable games are meant to be shorter, so you can't consider that a huge bad thing. Complexity? Yes, GB games often lack there. That is true. But once you accept the kinds of games it does best, you see how good the console is... What you get is better than most major-console stuff and almost as good as the best. Indesputably.
Mole Mania, for instance, isn't just good by handheld standards. It's good by any standards and is a worthy follow-up to the gameplay you find in the Adventures of LoLo.
Quote:Well okay if that's not enough for you then you could check out the games I didn't list. I only listed the ones I've actually played because I thought that would be enough to remind you of why that system was so succesful. I mean, it didn't sell because of popularity alone right? If that's all there was to it, the GG would have totally beaten it due to how popular that was... at first...
I don't think the GG was ever as popular as the GB. Its battery life really killed it... that and the much better game selection on the Game Boy.
Quote:Thing is, for every system I've played, there are only about 20 or so over the course of the system I really think are "must haves". At least, that's the pattern I've seen. It's been broken this generation I think though... There's been an explosion in the past two or three years of awesome games the likes of which I never saw before. I mean, I can only really list about 20 or so games that defined the Super Nintendo experience. About 8 are RPGs (Final Fantasy, Earthbound, Breath of Fire...). Outside of that core experience, most SNES games just aren't worth owning, to me anyway. Again, I'm very picky. I didn't list modestly fun games like Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle because, well, it's just moderatly fun, something that's fun to play but I really wouldn't pay full price for it... ever...
SNES does have more great games than GB, though. So does the NES. That's because it was second fiddle for its whole life... it was never the focus. And it spent three or four years in no so great shape... before Pokemon saved it, it was definitely struggling for a while except for a few great games. But still... GB managed a solid lineup of titles more than large enough for anyone to have a great, and reasonably large, collection.
Quote:So yeah, I would say the GB had an awesome assortment of great games. Should that assortment have been bigger given it's lifespan from 1989 to 1999-ish? Yeah, it probably should have, but it was still definitly a system worth having. Certainly, I'd say that anyone who didn't get it missed out on a large number of great games. I really think that games like Link's Awakening, Tetris, Wario Land, and Donkey Kong are ones that people should play.
GBC came out in time for christmas of 1998, actually. But as I said, yes, it should have had more games but spent several years with only a few bright lights popping up every so often. And the good games are good enough so that few people, I'm sure, regretted getting one.
Quote:Now, if you want to bring up the disappointing lineup of Gameboy Color games, go for it! That had... well honestly only 4 games.. TOTAL... were worth my money. Those being, Super Mario Bros DX (A remake of an awesome game, including a neutered version of another awesome game, hard to call it an exclusive...), the Oracle games (good and original games, but honestly, not as good as the Zelda games before it, still, they are the crown jewels of the GBC), and finally, Zelda LA DX, which isn't really a GBC game so much as a GBC enabled GB game. Honestly, the improvements are nice, but an extra dungeon and a photo hunt, the latter of which can still be done on the original Gameboy, is not exactly a good reason to get a GBC. Oh, there's a 5th game I guess. There's Pokemon Crystal, a part of the "Metal" game series that, for reasons unexplained, can only be played on a GBC (while Gold and Silver were only GBC enabled and could still be played on the original GB, meaning they are part of the GB line of games), but um... that's not worth getting a GBC over. Yes, I would call the GBC a failure, except that it sold so inexplicably WELL, namely due to the system's existing popularity in the orignal GB.
GBC, in 2 1/2 years, came close to having as many great games as GB, really... and maybe has as many worth buying overall. It actually had good support for its lifespan, compared to the GB which spent so long with so little...
That said, I only bought 14 GBC games, and some of those are only decent, compared with 25 GB games. But there are a lot of good GBC games I didn't get... even so though GB probably has more But it lasted so much longer that I'd sure hope so!
Quote:I gotta say, ABF (and to a lesser extent GR..) I usually really enjoy your arguements with OB1, and think usually you put up a better fight than OB1 likes to make out.. but in this case, I think you're way off the mark here.
You're putting a lot of focus on Nintendo being only one developer/publisher, and Sony having the advantage purely because of third parties, but looking at those two lists.. it seems to me that Sony's in-house offering is also far superior to what Nintendo itself already has out.
It's a LOT easier to develop for PSP than it is for DS. You just make something like you've made before. DS is new, so it's tougher... so it's expected that even the first-party titles show signs of being not as good as they could be.
Quote:And I never thought I'd see the day that a machine would be bashed for having too much power. PSP offering only standard console fair? Only ports of PS2 games?? What exactly is the biggest game on DS right now? An N64 port? Why do I even need a PSP, when I can go out and play Lumines and Metal Gear Acid on my PS2 today! Great!!
DS has potential to offer unique experiences. Well, until this idea comes into fruition (I mean, ABF himself said that Nintendo can only do so much itself..) it's really a moot point. The PSP's more powerful hardware can also offer so much more than what the DS can offer. But wait, that's a bad thing.
In some ways, yes... I don't want the final death of 2d, or handheld games which are just straight console ports! As for ports, both consoles have them, true. And yes, it's quite possible on DS too. But I am sure that Nintendo will be more diligent about getting people to make new games than Sony will be... 'just more power' is alright, but unique sfeatures are great too, and for the handheld market I like Nintendo's approach better than Sony's. For top-notch 3d games there's always the PC and major consoles. The handheld market is (and should be) somewhat different...
The PSP of course has a different philosophy, and is aiming at a somewhat different market.
Quote:I've only skimmed the whole thing... is that really what they've been doing, bashing the system for having too much power? Yeah, that is silly... In this case, I think that ABF has gotten so used to arguing with OB1 that he actually is doing, for the very first time, the things that OB1 has always accused him of. It's like some weird psychology stuff only lazy could explain to us.
I'm defending 2d games, that's what I'm doing. :) Oh, and the '3d doesn't work as well on handhelds' thing isn't just my invention, it's something I've heard before. It definitely can be made to work, though. For some game types 3d is obviously better on handhelds too... but with the small screens, some of the benefits of 3d are lessened and some of the problems made greater...
Quote:The PSP has a lot of potential right now. I've said from the very beginning that I had my doubts namely because I didn't think that a very expensive handheld could succeed. When the DS was later announced, pretty quickly really, I said that if Nintendo's DS did well then I could easily see the PSP at least competing with them, though I didn't think they would dominate Nintendo in the least. Still, my own thoughts were that people wouldn't want to buy something that expensive. It wasn'treally a Nintendo vs Sony thing in my mind, but rather a cheap but weak vs expensive but powerful thing. When the DS actually sold by huge amounts, then I realized that peopel were willing to pay more for a more powerful system, and so I realized the PSP could do well, assuming it wasn't TOO expensive. I haven't read much about it, so I don't know the price, but so long as it isn't too much more than the price of a PS2, and the battery life is decent, then it'll do pretty well. Oh yes, I forgot that I said some things about the battery life, namely that I didn't think that it would be very long at all. Turned out it isn't very long, and predictably, Nintendo is attacking it. No matter, at the time I also thought that poor battery life might impact sales of the system if people today care about it as much as people cared about battery life with the Game Gear. OB1 pointed out that hey, this has rechargeble batteries. True enough, though my main fear was in them dying between opportunities to charge them back up. It's still something I don't like about it, but oh well, sales tell me that Japan, a country that cares more about battery life than us, doesn't care enough that they won't buy it.
Anyway, summery, the DS is doing VERY well, and the PSP, while not doing as well as the DS, is holding it's own very well indeed, as I thought might happen if people actually wanted to dish out that money. All in all, hopefully the PSP will sell well enough that Nintendo has some real competition that forces them to do more than release what are literally ports of old NES games, just as an example.
The PSP should do well within the market it creates. I'm just not sure how much that cooresponds with the majority of the current handheld gaming market... oh, it'll definitely hurt Nintendo. And in time it'll grow its market share. But is the PSP the machine that will defeat Nintendo in the handheld arena? Given its drawbacks (price, battery life, game price, fragility, etc), I'm not so sure.
Of course, I also don't expect the DS to be the next Game Boy-level success in the handheld market. It'll do well, but won't become utterly dominant like GB has been.
Quote:DJ, I respect your opinion, but can you really say that most of these Gameboy games were anything but pale imitations of their big console brethren? Aside from Zelda and DK (and maybe one or two more), just about every single "great" GB game is only great when you look at the horrible quality of the average GB title. Mario Land is by far the worst 2D Mario sidescroller ever. Mario Land 2, while being much better than 1, was still just a pale imitation of Mario 3/World. Mario Land 3 is probably the best of the bunch, but still... pale imitation. Other pale imitations? Donkey Kong Land... check. The Final Fantasies... oh man CHECK. Even Metroid II was by far the worst Metroid game out there. You can do this with just about every single so-called "great" GB game. Compare that with the Gameboy Advance which is full of SNES ports, but still, stuff like the Castlevanias, Advance Wars, Fire Emblem FF Tactics, Sonic, etc., are all great original titles. The GBC had a good lineup for how long it lasted.
I absolutely disagree with this. You keep returning to this as your main point against the GB: Its games are awful when compared to Nintendo's REAL good games. Etc. You say it again in the same post, actually...
Quote:The fact that you included such mediocre titles as Mario Land, Final Fantasy Legend, and Contra kind of ruins your list there, guy. Mario Land was the first mediocre Mario platformer ever, the FF Legends were half-assed versions of the homeconsole games, and the same goes for Castlevania (even though II was pretty good for a GB game, it still paled in compared to the NES games), Contra, and almost any other "great" GB game you can mention. The only good GB games that I can think of that didn't pale in comparison to the home console versions are Link's Awakening, Donkey Kong, and the Kirby titles. That's pretty much it.
I just don't agree. Your premise is that because the games aren't quite as great as the major-console titles, they stink and the GB is a comparitively bad system. I definitely don't think that that is true at all. So they aren't quite as awesome. So? They're still awesome! And there are a lot more games than that that are just as good as major-console titles: Mega Man I, IV, and V, Mole Mania, Final Fantasy Adventure, the Micro Machines games, Tetris, Bionic Commando, Gradius, etc... it's just not as bad as you say and the quality difference, while there, is a small gap, not a huge gulf.
I address Mario Land later.
Quote:en. For the DS as well as the GC.
Jungle Beat is a terrific game. Maybe not AAA, but it's a GOOD game. And GT4 and DMC3 were just a few titles I chose. Let me continue:
Mercenaries, RE4, Oddworld Stranger, Tekken 5, Project Snowblind, Republic Commando, Minish Cap, and Star Fox Assault. Lots of great games that got pushed to early 2005 because hoiliday 2004 was too full.
Yeah, the holiday season definitely includes early January because of all the delayed good games that come out then. But by February or March, it's died down to what I said. Oh, and some of those are perfect 'release at an off time' games -- like Star Fox Assualt for instance. That just wouldn't hold up as well if it was released at a time with lots of stuff coming out.
Quote:Again, thanks for not paying attention. I said "save the VB", which means EXCEPT for the VB.
My point was that putting it anywhere near the level of the VB is incredibly insulting to a great console.
Quote:Yeah thanks for not paying attention to what I said. Please list conventional and unconventional GAMES for the PSP and DS.
We need to wait for the DS to show its true potential first...
Quote:Muh? You have no idea how the process works, do you? Film has infinitely greater "resolution" than dvd can handle, so a LOT of picture information is lost when it gets tranfered to that medium. A LOT. If you didn't notice it on dvd you won't notice it with PS2 to PSP.
The amount of work required well might be similar, but you're not actually changing the movie...
Quote:Adventure was definitely better than the Legend games, I'll give you that.
I actually had more fun with FF Adventure than Sword of Mana, despite how good the latter game is...
Quote:It's as much a Mario game as Yoshi's Island is. It still counts. And you really liked it as much as Mario World?
Well okay...
As for Mario Land: Fun game. It really is. So it's not as great as SMB... it's still a really good game that is a lot of fun to play! It's got variety too, with the side-scrolling levels... a bit short, but other than that a very good game.
As for Mario World (as opposed to SMB)... it's close to as good as Mario World (sorry, but the first Mario Bros. is better than SMB.)... not quite as good, especially because of the short length, but... it's a Mario game! Once you get past the bad graphics, the game is pretty good.
Quote:I never said they were ports, just that they sucked in comparison to the home console FFs.
But they aren't actually FF games, so you shouldn't expect them to be the same...
Quote:I really did like Donkey Kong Land. Donkey Kong Country was the first and is still my favorite of the series, but Donkey Kong Land was as good as any of the sequels they made in the series, to me anyway.
(then OB1 says he dislikes DKL)
I also liked it. Very good game. Sure, it doesn't have the minigames of the SNES title and has fewer levels. Oh well. It's tough, it's a lot of fun, and the levels are well designed, so who cares? I sure didn't! It's a worthy title in the series every bit as good as the other three. Why don't you agree, OB1? I don't see how it's so different from the other titles at all, other than the lack of color!
Or is it the sprite-blurring you dislike so much (how the characters blend into the backgrounds)? I mostly played it on my GBC, I'm pretty sure, so I didn't have that problem. :)
Quote:I don't believe I included Mega Man 5 in my list.
But nor did you put it on your good list. Of course, you forgot a whole lot of fantastic GB games on your good list, and that's just one of them...
Quote:I never said that it was a bad system, just that compared to every other Nintendo system ('cept the VB, of course) it had a very poor selection of games, considering how long the system's lifespan was. And that was largely because the system had very little real competition. Nintendo didn't have to make stellar titles for it. The games were good enough by portable standards and that's all that mattered. I honestly think that people give the Gameboy far too much credit and rate their games so highly simply because they were portable. The GBA, on the other hand, actually stood up to the big consoles. Some of the best games released in 2003 were GBA games. That says a lot.
But you know, if you really love those Gameboy games so much then I won't debate that. I'll just have to strongly disagree with you. Really, really strongly disagree with you.
I have no idea why at some point you decided to hate the Game Boy, but it's just wrong. "I didn't say it's a bad system, I just said that it has a poor selection of games and I really, really strongly disagree with you if you want to say that you think it's a good system!" is ... well, let's just say that you really, really strongly contradict your initial statement that you don't think it's a bad system. :)
Nintendo DID make great games for it! It's the third parties that produced the bad stuff. Nintendo's games are great. So they're shorter. Portable games are meant to be shorter, so you can't consider that a huge bad thing. Complexity? Yes, GB games often lack there. That is true. But once you accept the kinds of games it does best, you see how good the console is... What you get is better than most major-console stuff and almost as good as the best. Indesputably.
Mole Mania, for instance, isn't just good by handheld standards. It's good by any standards and is a worthy follow-up to the gameplay you find in the Adventures of LoLo.