Game consoles come with technical limitations. When they ship, they generally have upper bounds and lower bounds, and if your game doesn’t fit somewhere in that range, your game is going to be… less than enjoyable.
Let’s talk about going too far, first.
My classic example of a game that broke the gaming platform was Warrior of Rome for the Sega Genesis. This was an awesome game! You had different maps that you needed to conquer. Your opponent had a number of units, as did you, and your units could build buildings (coliseums or towns), train to fight (in those coliseums), provide siege defense (in those towns or coliseums), attack other units, run around the map, pilot boats, or try to tear down your opponent’s fortifications. Once your towns got to a certain size, you could recruit a new unit, which shrunk the town a bit. The neat thing was as each unit did each thing, they got better at it. If you built your fortifications with the same two units, by the third thing they built they were building things faster than new units. If you started each scenario by grabbing one unit and just having him run around the map like crazy, pretty soon he popped a brown horse, and then a grey horse, and then he was godawful fast at moving around the map. Plop your units in a town and they could heal up, so if you were careful, you could keep your units forever.
This results in a number of trade-offs. Your really fast cavalry guy can’t fight as well as the unit that you sent straight at your opponent’s units to duke it out early… but he can run up to those units, bash ’em a couple of times, and then use the Sir Robin the Brave tactic and draw them away from your opponent’s other units and towns, where you could cut them off and take them out with your stronger units. Your siege specialists could tear down your opponent’s buildings really fast, but they couldn’t run away fast if attacked, and they couldn’t defend themselves well, and so on.
The game’s AI ran right up into the capacity of the Sega Genesis and then
The
Game
Got
REEEEEEEALLLLY
SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.
Eggman and I would take turns running the controller, so that the other guy could get a break, because the game would respond so slowly that you had to pay attention to everything on the screen constantly… since the changes would be slow to register and the graphics were limited, you had to really be eagle-eyed to notice when the computer’s units broke combat and started to run away, for example, or by the time you noticed it, your unit would have chased it just far enough that you had to work really hard to try and save it. And of course, this is the Genesis, so there is no memory card and no saving the game. You play, you play the scenario all the way through or start over. Warrior of Rome II apparently allowed head to head play, but we never got it (although I have it now and we really do need to play it some day). The game was exhausting to play. We never really got to figure out how smart the AI really was, because its capabilities were masked by the limitations of the hardware platform.
So there’s an example of being “too damn good” at making games for your current platform. Okay, now let’s talk about being just the right amount of good for making games for your hardware platform. These are the games that utilize the capabilities of their console to the best possible tradeoff between complexity and playability, graphics and sound and feedback and everything else. Historical context counts! Since Wikipedia is down for the day, I’ll have to hold off completing this post until I have a better reference to check myself, but my initial candidates off the top o’ my head:
Atari 2600: Combat. Simple, enough basic options to keep it interesting, good for head-to-head play.
Atari 400: Graphics upgrade makes this a better Pac-Man than the really bad Pac-Man for the 2600. But the most fun arcade clone for the 400 was the Donkey Kong, which was as good as the stand-up console and (really) more fun than Pac-Man. The plumber wins.
Sega Genesis: Star Control. Stellar campaign mode, good default scenarios, and a laugh and a half when playing head-to-head.
Sega Saturn: Virtua Fighter 2. I’ve talked about VF before, and the Saturn was right in its capabilities wheelhouse. If you are talking campaign mode by yourself, Iron Storm beats out Civilization II.
Sony Playstation I: Syphon Filter. Metal Gear Solid was graphically better, but Syphon Filter was much more engaging to play and didn’t force you to spend your first 40 hours of gameplay in stealth mode, plus the boss fights in Syphon Filter were two orders of magnitude less annoying. Metal Gear Solid boss fights were invented just to give people RSI.
Nintendo 64: Mario Kart 64. Before Rock Band came out, this was the only game where 4 people, 2 of whom really weren’t video game players, could have a blast for an hour.
Nintendo Game Cube: Resident Evil 4.
Sony Playstation II: Lego Star Wars (the Original Trilogy). If you can’t have ridiculous fun with this game with another player of any age old enough to hold a controller and young enough to play videogames, there is something wrong with you.
The Playstation II is where my console collection stops. Anybody?
Offtopic, have you tried playing this game on an emulator?
No, I haven’t.
In fact, I’ve pretty much avoided the whole emulator experience myself, as I still have all those consoles in working condition (except the 2600, which I never owned actually).
OK, just thought you might get a different or better game experience playing Warrior of Rome with emulation.
Probably. Ethical conundrum: is it legit to use an emulator to emulate a game you own?
To the practical point: how does one find a reliable emulator that isn’t written by somebody who is including a keystroke logger for your PC?
It is not legal, if that is your question.
Ryan,
I actually think that depends. Xbox is written using half the Windows API anyway… so you’re just emulating “do this and that” with a different CPU.
And, as always, there’s a difference between “is it legal” and “will anyone care to prosecute this??”
You use an opensource emulatorn (pretty easy to grep for tcp commands, I suspect). I recommend DosBox.
(and I’m pretty sure Microsoft ain’t prosecuting anyone using dosbox)
I believe that it’s perfectly okay, legally, provided you own the game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions
Ah, well, this is actually debatable:
“The Copyright Office approved two exemptions in 2000; four in 2003; six in 2006 and 2010. In 2000, the Office exempted (a) “Compilations consisting of lists of websites blocked by filtering software applications” (renewed in 2003 but not renewed in 2006); and (b) “Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage, or obsoleteness.” (revised and limited in 2003 and again in 2006). In 2003, the 2000 “literary works including computer programs” exemption was limited to “Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete” and this exemption was renewed in both 2006 and 2010.”
I would feel okay with fighting that out in a court of law if it came to that. It’s certainly the case that I own all the hardware and games and I don’t think any game company could argue that they weren’t obsolete.
Maybe we should drag Burt into this question.
Also from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console_emulator#Legal_Use_of_Emulation
Under United States law, obtaining a dumped copy of the original machine’s BIOS is legal under the ruling Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc., 964 F.2d 965 (9th Cir. 1992) as fair use as long as the user obtained a legally purchased copy of the machine.
Patrick/Kim,
The problem is not the emulation of the console so much as the emulation of the games themselves. My understanding is that the legal basis for creating a copy of a game is something about “in case of damage”, and it absolutely requires that any copies be made by the user him/herself. Downloading a ROM to play on an emulator, even if you own the original, seems to be in violation of that.
In any case, as Kim says, it is highly unlikely anyone would bother to prosecute you for emulating much of anything, especially in a case in which you’re emulating something you own anyway.
Ryan,
so it’s okay, but only if you do copying/hacking yourself?
That’s my understanding, although again, there’s that bit about damage (or obsolescence) that means you can’t just copy a Wii game because you don’t feel like playing it in the living room.
Apropos of this whole discussion:
http://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/oh-god-i-clicked-without-reading-and-i-slightly-modified-a/
I wonder if it’s available on the Wii’s Virtual Console – lots of Genesis games are available there for purchase – I’ve bought and played a fair amount of my favorite 8- and 16-bit games there.
That said, I think the OS remains the main chokepoint and things that your NES had trouble displaying are still glitchy on the emulated version.
“So there’s an example of being too damn good at making games for your current platform.”
Eh…I wouldn’t say that, really. It’s not like it’s hard to program an algorithm that eats up a bunch of CPU cycles. The challenge is actually getting it to work within the limitations of the hardware available to you, and it sounds like they failed at that.
What I think is cool is the Super Nintendo games that extended the capabilities of the hardware by putting an extra graphics processing chip in the cartridge.
I was thinking the same thing, that was a really big problem on the NES and Genesis where games would sometimes have too many sprites on the screen and the game would skip or mis-render most of them.
Sorry, I left the sarcasm tangs off. Fixing it.
Programming for your platform is necessary, or you ruin your game.
Here’s my stab. My console experience only extends to the Wii. I started hard-core into PCs around the late PS2 period.
Atari 2600: Pitfall! The first game I recall where every screen was not just a slightly different version of the last one.
Atari 400: Never had one. . . 🙁
Sega Master System: That neither.
NES: Mega Man 2 – Great graphics, great music, extremely well-handling controls that made it a joy to play. I have soft spots for Super Mario Bros. 2 and Faxanadu for similar reasons.
SNES: Super Metroid, great model for how to do a sequel on a more powerful console.
Sega Genesis: Herzog Zwei. First RTS ever (that I know of!), fast-paced and really great music.
Sega Saturn: Baku Baku, but that was the only game I ever played for it. . . but I still wish I could play it now.
Sony Playstation I: Metal Gear Solid was the game where I realized how much I hated the big narrative SP games that everyone was drooling over. . . I’d say Einhander, which is still the best side-scrolling space shoot em up of all time.
Nintendo 64: Mario Kart 64 is up there, Goldeneye 64 has exactly the same resume and I’m not sure which I would prefer. Many, many weekend nights were spent passing controllers about with my friends.
Ocarina of Time would be the easy answer given it’s (well-deserved)reputation, but I had more fun with Mario Kart and Bond.
Sega Dreamcast: Pretty easily Soul Calibur. The DC had really, really great first-year titles, not much after, sadly.
Nintendo GameCube: Sadly, Windwaker. I always thought it was vastly underappreciated, but it’s hard to look at it as the best game of it’s console generation without lamenting the Gamepurse as too short on good games. The only other one I could consider might be Metroid Prime.
Sony Playstation II: We <3 Katamari. Obviously not as innovative as Katamari Damacy but a remarkable achievement in expanding on one of the most fun games of all time without losing anything and really pushing the system's limit. Shadow of the Colossus is up there for aesthetics.
Nintendo Wii: Hard time here, too. Maybe Skyward Sword or Mario Galaxy 2 will assert themselves if I ever get around to opening the cases.
Herzog is awesome (we’ve had this conversation before) in head to head, but the AI is really not. It’s horrible. It’s programmed almost intentionally to lose, just take a very long time to do it.
The AI for Star Control is a lot better.
I could never get into Star Control, I think I was just a touch too young and too new to strategy games at the time to figure it out and get my footing. That probably also explains why Herzog seemed just hard enough at the time.
I have a lot of fond memories of the Genesis period but mind-blowing games just aren’t coming to mind (remember how Strider was supposed to be this massive achievement?).
Gunstar Heroes is one that ought to have also come to mind.
I did not play Star Control on the Console, but I did not the computer and that game was awsome. Played that constantly. Then they ruined the vs mode in Star Control 2. The storyline was decent in #2 though and I played that a bunch.
I adored Star Control!
… and then the debug algorithms ate an alien race (not kidding, knew a guy who worked on that game).
Perfect Dark is a better game than Goldeneye. I realize this is blasphemy, but that’s the most perfect N64 game.
Yeah, where is the Colecovision? I had one of these and loved it because they made some games that you could find in the arcades at the time like Galaxian. But my favorite was Zaxxon. Played that for a very looooooong time. What O loved about it was they attemped a 3D game where they use the X, Y, and Z axis.
Never owned the Colecovision myself (nor the Activision), but I admit I did like their port of Bump n’ Jump.
The Colecovision was great at the time. It had many games that were out in the arcades back then and I thought that was awsome. Of course, while the games looked the same, many did not play the same as the stand-up arcade game and that bummed me out the first time I went back to the arcades thinking I was awsome at Donkey Kong and then was smashed…
The Skyrimmy games might be examples of the current limitations of the system. Go inside a house? Load screen. Leave said house? Load screen. Leave the city? Load screen. Go into a cave? Load screen.
We’ve replaced one kind of slowdown for another.
Divinity 2 was actually fairly good about this. The main maps were fairly large and the screen loading time is quite fast.
Play Thief, Again. There, they had fantastically LARGE worlds, beautiful worlds… and they didn’t chug slowly.
A world without loadscreens may be visually cramped (you do need to limit vistas, with most engines), but at least it doesn’t drop you out of the dang world every single time!
And, for the love of god, if you’re going to have to have load screens, put them in as part of the Story! I can deal with an elevator taking 5 seconds to move to a different floor. But a dangbit door??? No, do better, storytellers! At least show the character picking the lock. It’s a nice loadscreen, and gives a visual representation that “um, you’re actually doing something”
In addition to Mario-Kart, I can play F-Zero 64 for hours and hours.
And I am not even a fan of racing games.
I think your memories may be mixing up Warrior of Rome with its sequel. Pretty much all of your descriptions of the gameplay match up with WOR II — right down to the brown/grey horses — whereas the original was a vastly inferior game that had no depth and very little to recommend it. Also, WOR was password-based, with one password for each of the game’s four missions (though it had a RAM disk function that let you save and reload as long as the console stayed on), and WOR II has a save battery.
I’m in the middle of playing through WOR II right now, with two scenarios left to clear (out of 15). It’s EXTREMELY time-consuming, but I’ve come to appreciate the game’s depth; the first few battle are pretty dull, but it heats up when you get a bit further into the game, and one scenario in particular has you fighting against insane odds. Clearing that one was very satisfying!
I think your memories may be mixing up Warrior of Rome with its sequel. Pretty much all of your descriptions of the gameplay match up with WOR II — right down to the brown/grey horses — whereas the original was a vastly inferior game that had no depth and very little to recommend it. Also, WOR was password-based, with one password for each of the game’s four missions (though it had a RAM disk function that would let you save and reload as long as the console stayed on), and WOR II has a save battery that lets you save anytime.
I’m in the middle of playing through WOR II right now, with two scenarios left to clear (out of 15). It’s EXTREMELY time-consuming, but I’ve come to appreciate the game’s depth; the first few battle are pretty dull, but it heats up when you get a bit further into the game, and one scenario in particular has you fighting against insane odds. Clearing that one was very satisfying!
Whoops, sorry for the double post…