Welcome to my very first blog that I've written anywhere in the history of the internet. I should probably tell you to prepare to be offended. I wrote this to vent, not to offend anyone directly. If Nintendo is god to you, you probably won't like this blog and should just skip it. I'm probably doing it wrong as far a blogs go, but here we go anyway.....
I have to say, I avoided Nintendo systems for many years because I don't care for all the cutesy games that tend to exist on their systems. I went the other way with gaming, I was into my C64 or Sega Genesis or PS1 or 3D0, and then PC. You know, the systems with (at least the choice of) a variety of "cool" games to play that a more serious-minded person could get into that isn't all flower-and-bunnies all the time. I did play some decent games on the NES and SNES at friend's houses, but there was never enough different games that interested me (not to mention my interest in the "other" systems at the time) to actually convince me to purchase either of those Nintendo systems. When Nintendo started sanitizing games on the SNES, I just stopped bothering to even pay attention to what they were doing after that. I totally skipped over the N64 and Gamecube altogether and have never seen more than just fragmented snippets of gameplay from a few games in real life on either of them. I don't own a Wii either, and likely never will. I just don't care about them. The few good games I may have missed are nothing compared to the slew of pure crap I'd have to sift through to find the games I might actually like. Besides, I can just emulate most of it on my PC if I want to play any of that stuff now anyway.
I finally broke down and bought a GBA SP because I wanted a portable gaming unit that I could be sure would be around awhile. Unbeknown to me at the time, that was about a year before the DS released. I liked the GBA more-or-less, it had some actual cool games for it. There was a lot of fluffy-foo-foo I had to sift through to find them, but the cool games were there in much greater abundance than the DS has ever managed. And even though GBA isn't supported anymore and DS has a few times more games out for it, the GBA still has at least twice as many "cool" games compared to the DS, IMO.
When the DS released, I bought one within a month of release, stupidly thinking there would be some more cool games made for it too, like there was for the GBA. I was wrong. While there is the occasional game I like on the DS, they are VERY far and few between, and none that are like, "OMG F'ing SWEET!" at all. I stuck to mostly playing GBA games on it for a long time before any games I really liked (and flashcarts) came out for the DS.
The DS has been a very....meh...system to me. Every game I play on the DS has to be played with lowered expectations to be enjoyable. That feeling happens to a much larger extent on the DS compared to any previous gaming system I've ever owned before. I keep waiting for a good shmup, or cool platformer like Turrican to appear (don't tell about about MegaMan). I keep waiting for games that used to be considered staples of Nintendo like F-Zero and 2D Metroid and 3rd-party's like Street Fighter, Tekken or Gradius, etc. to be announced. But all I see is shovelware and RPG's and cutesy crap and movie-games and none of the no-brainer-type games that should have been released for the DS years ago and should still be a part of what gets released now. About the only thing that IS impressive to me about the DS is the flashcarts and how robust they are. That's pretty sad.
I expected to have to sift through a lot of games I don't like to get to the good games, especially on a Nintendo system. But my goodness! This 1 good game in 50+ ratio is really pathetic. And of those 49 games I detest and hate, about half of them are the very same games that actually sell? WTF?!? I mean, all you guys are going ga-ga over some game, and I boot it up to see what the hype is all about.....I play it......one eyebrows raises.....I play some more.....I start to make a face like I smelled something foul....I play some more....I shake my head and turn it off. I honestly don't get what you guys see in some of these games that's so damn interesting. To me, many of them are just.....Gah! Just boring with very little real action to them. Seriously, what's so great about them? (question is rhetorical, BTW) Too many games on the DS I play simply to have something to do, not because they were actually fun.
Now I remember why I always avoided Nintendo products for all those years. They like to say they cater to ALL gamers, but they don't. They cater to the fanboys they have carefully created and trained, the little kids who don't know any better and casual gamers who just seem to like crappy games....apparently, that's really about it. They only release a few token games for the mature gamer, usually by a 3rd-party. And by mature, I don't mean nudity and swearing and gore, I mean games that are cool and not full of cutesy talking animals and overly bubbly music. RPG's haven't really evolved any further than the graphics (especially on the DS) in decades. I've "been there, done that" way too many times (decades ago) to care about playing another cookie-cutter RPG again.....and I TRIED to like quite a few of them on DS, I really did, but I just don't. I'm burnt-out on RPG's, that's all there is to it I guess. And that's quite a large chunk of the DS's so-called "good game" library right there. If it wasn't for 3rd-party support and flashcarts, homebrew and emulators, I'd have tossed my DS in the trash years ago.
Now, I know that being a 42 year-old introverted heterosexual male, I'm not exactly the target demographic for any game system, especially since I apparently have drastically different tastes in games than almost anyone else that talks about games, even others my age......but they could at least make an attempt to appease us older gamers who were responsible for gaming being the phenomenon it is today. Not every person my age wants to play an FPS or MMO all the time, and most people my age certainly don't want to play a flower-and-bunny cutesy game with annoying music either. @Nintendo: There are other genres of games, you need to release some games for those lost genres too. And don't half-ass them like you've been doing when you do finally occasionally release one.
The games that people seem to think are so great these days just amaze me at how badly they actually suck. You guys have been corralled to a "null zone" where they tell you the game is great and that you are supposed to like it, and so then you guys suck them up like candy from a pinata. I can think of no other explanation than you guys have been brain-washed. It was a subtle mind-manipulation over the years, guiding the gamers into this insane "null zone" where a few certain genres of games are the ONLY games that people want to play anymore and all other genres are forgotten. It must have taken place during the N64 and Gamecube days, because I seem to be unaffected by this mass-euphoria that causes people to like crappy/cutesy/unoriginal/gimmicky/boring/tedious games.
Nintendo themselves have admitted they have lost touch with "core" gamers and that's been quite obvious to me for a long time. Notice they rarely ever say "hardcore", just "core" They cater to the casual crowd that will play almost any old shovelware tripe they slap together, not to true gamers anymore. They have somehow managed to lull people into thinking that boring unoriginal (or overly cute and gimmicky) games are innovative and special and worth bothering with. They have succeeded gloriously in fleecing the sheep they have flocked together and trained so carefully to like the bile they belch forth and are very rich for it.
I know there are many people who feel as I do. But most of the people like me don't hang out on gaming forums. Most of them have just given up on gaming or just stick to their emulators, wishing they could have more new games that they would actually like. Many of them don't have time for games anymore because of real-life. So we aren't a very vocal bunch, but we do exist.
Companies have spent so much time trying to direct what games people get to play and control their tastes to make them like such a narrow genre of games so much that they don't even listen to what gamers actually want anymore, nor do they care. They just keep fleecing their flock and to hell with the "black sheep" gamers who want something else besides the big dollar guaranteed seller game that actually sucks, but everyone else seems to be trained to like. Over the years, that has apparently taken a toll on a gamer's mentality to the point where they no longer have the ability to see that the games they are playing are crap.
I'm actually envious of you guys who are getting so much enjoyment out of the DS library. Where can I be brain-washed into liking all these crappy games that get released on the DS all the time? I want to have some games to play too.
I have purposely NOT named any games that I may consider total crap (there's just too many of them to list anyway). A flame war is NOT the point of this post. If this blog offends you severely, then I'm sorry to inform you that you obviously didn't read the whole thing, or you just didn't comprehend the message being conveyed. Either that, or you're one of the brain-washed millions who are trained to take offense to my opinions and this blog was not meant for you to take lightly. There are a lot of vague points and references made in this blog. I could clarify, but do you really want to read even more text? I doubt it. I'm sure this was more to read than you bargained for as it is.
I have to say, I avoided Nintendo systems for many years because I don't care for all the cutesy games that tend to exist on their systems. I went the other way with gaming, I was into my C64 or Sega Genesis or PS1 or 3D0, and then PC. You know, the systems with (at least the choice of) a variety of "cool" games to play that a more serious-minded person could get into that isn't all flower-and-bunnies all the time. I did play some decent games on the NES and SNES at friend's houses, but there was never enough different games that interested me (not to mention my interest in the "other" systems at the time) to actually convince me to purchase either of those Nintendo systems. When Nintendo started sanitizing games on the SNES, I just stopped bothering to even pay attention to what they were doing after that. I totally skipped over the N64 and Gamecube altogether and have never seen more than just fragmented snippets of gameplay from a few games in real life on either of them. I don't own a Wii either, and likely never will. I just don't care about them. The few good games I may have missed are nothing compared to the slew of pure crap I'd have to sift through to find the games I might actually like. Besides, I can just emulate most of it on my PC if I want to play any of that stuff now anyway.
I finally broke down and bought a GBA SP because I wanted a portable gaming unit that I could be sure would be around awhile. Unbeknown to me at the time, that was about a year before the DS released. I liked the GBA more-or-less, it had some actual cool games for it. There was a lot of fluffy-foo-foo I had to sift through to find them, but the cool games were there in much greater abundance than the DS has ever managed. And even though GBA isn't supported anymore and DS has a few times more games out for it, the GBA still has at least twice as many "cool" games compared to the DS, IMO.
When the DS released, I bought one within a month of release, stupidly thinking there would be some more cool games made for it too, like there was for the GBA. I was wrong. While there is the occasional game I like on the DS, they are VERY far and few between, and none that are like, "OMG F'ing SWEET!" at all. I stuck to mostly playing GBA games on it for a long time before any games I really liked (and flashcarts) came out for the DS.
The DS has been a very....meh...system to me. Every game I play on the DS has to be played with lowered expectations to be enjoyable. That feeling happens to a much larger extent on the DS compared to any previous gaming system I've ever owned before. I keep waiting for a good shmup, or cool platformer like Turrican to appear (don't tell about about MegaMan). I keep waiting for games that used to be considered staples of Nintendo like F-Zero and 2D Metroid and 3rd-party's like Street Fighter, Tekken or Gradius, etc. to be announced. But all I see is shovelware and RPG's and cutesy crap and movie-games and none of the no-brainer-type games that should have been released for the DS years ago and should still be a part of what gets released now. About the only thing that IS impressive to me about the DS is the flashcarts and how robust they are. That's pretty sad.
I expected to have to sift through a lot of games I don't like to get to the good games, especially on a Nintendo system. But my goodness! This 1 good game in 50+ ratio is really pathetic. And of those 49 games I detest and hate, about half of them are the very same games that actually sell? WTF?!? I mean, all you guys are going ga-ga over some game, and I boot it up to see what the hype is all about.....I play it......one eyebrows raises.....I play some more.....I start to make a face like I smelled something foul....I play some more....I shake my head and turn it off. I honestly don't get what you guys see in some of these games that's so damn interesting. To me, many of them are just.....Gah! Just boring with very little real action to them. Seriously, what's so great about them? (question is rhetorical, BTW) Too many games on the DS I play simply to have something to do, not because they were actually fun.
Now I remember why I always avoided Nintendo products for all those years. They like to say they cater to ALL gamers, but they don't. They cater to the fanboys they have carefully created and trained, the little kids who don't know any better and casual gamers who just seem to like crappy games....apparently, that's really about it. They only release a few token games for the mature gamer, usually by a 3rd-party. And by mature, I don't mean nudity and swearing and gore, I mean games that are cool and not full of cutesy talking animals and overly bubbly music. RPG's haven't really evolved any further than the graphics (especially on the DS) in decades. I've "been there, done that" way too many times (decades ago) to care about playing another cookie-cutter RPG again.....and I TRIED to like quite a few of them on DS, I really did, but I just don't. I'm burnt-out on RPG's, that's all there is to it I guess. And that's quite a large chunk of the DS's so-called "good game" library right there. If it wasn't for 3rd-party support and flashcarts, homebrew and emulators, I'd have tossed my DS in the trash years ago.
Now, I know that being a 42 year-old introverted heterosexual male, I'm not exactly the target demographic for any game system, especially since I apparently have drastically different tastes in games than almost anyone else that talks about games, even others my age......but they could at least make an attempt to appease us older gamers who were responsible for gaming being the phenomenon it is today. Not every person my age wants to play an FPS or MMO all the time, and most people my age certainly don't want to play a flower-and-bunny cutesy game with annoying music either. @Nintendo: There are other genres of games, you need to release some games for those lost genres too. And don't half-ass them like you've been doing when you do finally occasionally release one.
The games that people seem to think are so great these days just amaze me at how badly they actually suck. You guys have been corralled to a "null zone" where they tell you the game is great and that you are supposed to like it, and so then you guys suck them up like candy from a pinata. I can think of no other explanation than you guys have been brain-washed. It was a subtle mind-manipulation over the years, guiding the gamers into this insane "null zone" where a few certain genres of games are the ONLY games that people want to play anymore and all other genres are forgotten. It must have taken place during the N64 and Gamecube days, because I seem to be unaffected by this mass-euphoria that causes people to like crappy/cutesy/unoriginal/gimmicky/boring/tedious games.
Nintendo themselves have admitted they have lost touch with "core" gamers and that's been quite obvious to me for a long time. Notice they rarely ever say "hardcore", just "core" They cater to the casual crowd that will play almost any old shovelware tripe they slap together, not to true gamers anymore. They have somehow managed to lull people into thinking that boring unoriginal (or overly cute and gimmicky) games are innovative and special and worth bothering with. They have succeeded gloriously in fleecing the sheep they have flocked together and trained so carefully to like the bile they belch forth and are very rich for it.
I know there are many people who feel as I do. But most of the people like me don't hang out on gaming forums. Most of them have just given up on gaming or just stick to their emulators, wishing they could have more new games that they would actually like. Many of them don't have time for games anymore because of real-life. So we aren't a very vocal bunch, but we do exist.
Companies have spent so much time trying to direct what games people get to play and control their tastes to make them like such a narrow genre of games so much that they don't even listen to what gamers actually want anymore, nor do they care. They just keep fleecing their flock and to hell with the "black sheep" gamers who want something else besides the big dollar guaranteed seller game that actually sucks, but everyone else seems to be trained to like. Over the years, that has apparently taken a toll on a gamer's mentality to the point where they no longer have the ability to see that the games they are playing are crap.
I'm actually envious of you guys who are getting so much enjoyment out of the DS library. Where can I be brain-washed into liking all these crappy games that get released on the DS all the time? I want to have some games to play too.
I have purposely NOT named any games that I may consider total crap (there's just too many of them to list anyway). A flame war is NOT the point of this post. If this blog offends you severely, then I'm sorry to inform you that you obviously didn't read the whole thing, or you just didn't comprehend the message being conveyed. Either that, or you're one of the brain-washed millions who are trained to take offense to my opinions and this blog was not meant for you to take lightly. There are a lot of vague points and references made in this blog. I could clarify, but do you really want to read even more text? I doubt it. I'm sure this was more to read than you bargained for as it is.
