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The gaming industry has come a long way since NES. Gaming’s transition from its 8-bit origins to its current HD splendor shows that technology has increased at a dramatic rate, allowing developers to create more expansive and complex titles than ever before. Yet, while games made in this generation outperform the classics in numerous areas, such as technical and graphical feasibility, we generally lost a few important aspects over the years that made the NES so great.
PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U could all learn from NES. Here are five things that helped make this old system awesome.
You’re rebooting the issue numbering? O_O Does that mean those pages that preview the content of the issue will return? And the unique editorials?
Hand-holding in games has certainly gotten out of control, but even at their worst, Navi and her successors do have one redeeming quality.
My free time comes in completely unpredictable chunks. I might fire up a backlogged epic I’m halfway through and then … crap, what was I doing again? Looking for a cave south of some town? Or maybe it was east? Was I collecting something? Backtracking with a newfangled ability? As much as I hate little miss “Hey! Listen!”, sometimes I do need to have my memory jogged.
Now, all the unskippable spell-everything-out-for-you crap, yeah, that has to die in a fire. But a chirp every now and then from which you can optionally be reminded “hey, weren’t you going to go see what became of so-and-so?”, that can actually be useful.
I totally agree. I would just like it to be a lot less in your face. Like for example, Star Fox Adventures lets you know what to do and where to go if you choose to communicate with Slippy and Peppy. I really like that. God knows how annoying a constantly interjecting Slippy would be :p
Good piece, Anthony. For me, the Plug and Play aspect is the thing I miss most. I can appreciate all the things that today’s system can do that the old ones couldn’t, but man, it was nice to just hit power and start playing. I turn my consoles on to play games almost exclusively; the rest is just noise.
I hear that. That’s the main reason I’m excited for the Summer Wii U firmware update that will allow fast game access.
I remember telling my wife, “Remember when you could just pop in a game and play it?” Now we have to sit through ten minutes of installation with every disc. Luckily, the 3DS seems to be following this your code, and it’s success is proof.