noiseredux wrote:Original, when you say "it's just that I don't think they'll ever make a video game that is just about pushing a video game as far as it can conceptually go" I feel like you're not putting such games as The Legend Of Zelda into perspective of the video game landscape that it was released upon. I mean, if that game didn't push itself as far as it could at that time conceptually, then I'm not sure what you would consider it's conceptual superior during that time?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game), although I certainly understand what you're trying to say. Listen, I'm not trying to say that the video game industry doesn't owe a TON to Nintendo - but like Mr. Popo expertly verbalized, I feel like Sega was perhaps the closest a major video game company has ever been to following art for art's sake. Not that they're superior, it's just that the identity that they created for themselves - showed most prominently in the Dreamcast years - is to be sorely missed. For such a large company, they were certainly endearing at least for their penchant for consistently taking huge risks which pushed along new concepts in gaming before the industry was ready for them throughout the entirety of their existence as a major player in the gaming industry.
crux wrote:The Nintendo of today hardly bares a resemblance of the Nintendo of a decade ago, but then neither does Sega. Nintendo had to adapt to the pressures of competition against two of the biggest corporations in the world. Nintendo plays it safe because Sony and Microsoft has made the industry one of calculated risks. I don't entirely respect it, but I also think Nintendo is very fortunate to still be making consoles at all. Microsoft alone could eat Sony and Nintendo combined, and Sony could digest Nintendo many times over. Nintendo found a niche and they're playing it safe. Sega's safety was ensured through Sammy, and we're never likely to see the Sega we once knew again.
As far as Sega being too reckless to be considered a financial strategy, I again point to Sega of America, the 32X, and the Saturn. It seems absolutely insane to me as well, but it did happen, and it was to the detriment of gamers, not to the benefit. I'm STILL waiting for a translation of Shining Force III episodes 2 and 3, a dozen years after I played the original. My point with CSK was not a denouncement of Sega, but merely a reminder that those that develop the games at Nintendo aren't the same people that developed toys forty years ago.
Well, as I've stated a few times now, I wasn't trying to denounce Nintendo, only trying to point out the differences in the way those two companies create games. Nintendo has always played it very safe, though - certainly they have done a marvelous job of upgrading franchises from generation to generation and even throwing in a few odd-balls from time to time (Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Mother, WarioWare, and the occassional eccentric additions to established franchises such as Donkey Konga and Kirby Tilt N' Tumble), but for the most part, they've built their empire primarily on sequels. You're correct, it is unfair to base the Sega/Nintendo comparison using data from from Nintendo's current endeavors, but to say that there's not much difference internal offerings of both companies from a decade ago in the home market is a kind of crazy thing to say if you ask me. Sega was treading new grounds with online gaming, digital distribution, whatever merit the VMU has, and innovative motion controls. Nintendo was cooking up the Gamecube, which did not feature online connectivity, and whose only notable hardware innovation was Gamecube-to-Gameboy Advance connectivity. Sega also offered up just as many, if not more original IP's in the three years of the Dreamcast as Nintendo did during a whole decade with the Nintendo 64 and Nintendo Gamecube combined. That's not to say that in 2000 you wouldn't have rather been playing three or four of Nintendo's big-name instead of ten of Sega's equally-inspired, but less perfected gaming experiences, but the differences between the companies were immense. Their aura of gaming ADD struck me as a passion to create more, more, more, and I can certainly see why people could see that as a detracting factor, but I miss that lateral sense of ambition to cover as much ground as possible while still retaining enough vertical quality for the games to be legitimately engaging and memorable.
I think that if Sega were composed of the same people today as they were in previous years, they'd still be creating games in a million directions and y'know what? They'd still go out of business in the face of Sony and Microsoft, and I love them for that reason precisely - they represent so much of the creative (now often referred to as "retro") spirit that they can't exist in the face of this new industry. It's wonderful that we still have the creative force of Nintendo around to offer an alternative to Sony and Microsoft, because even though Nintendo was always more conservative than Sega, they're certainly more creative than the likes of Sony and Microsoft, but still - I hate what this industry has become, and even though Nintendo has retained a fair amount of their former identity, they've sacificed alot to adapt to it -- Sega refused to, and that's beautiful to me. I know that it's not an effective strategy, and it's ultimately more of a tragedy than a triumph, but it takes a strong passion for the art you love to die for it in such a proud fashion.
I certainly respect people who view Nintendo as the superior company and whole-heartedly agree that they were the smarter company - and I certainly prefer then to the likes of Sony and Microsoft - but video gaming's former spirit on the mass-market scale has withered away with Sega's demise in my opinion. Even though I see spurts of true creativity in gaming from time to time such as Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, Flower, and Super Mario Galaxy from time to time, it's nearly impossible that we'll ever see a pure embodiment of it like the Sega Dreamcast ever again.
Anyway, I'm not blaming Nintendo for the decline of the video game industry - and even though I give them a TON of credit, perhaps that's still not enough praise as is deserved - it's just that the industry has changed alot since Sega died, and that's not Nintendo's fault - although I still believe that generally speaking they didn't display as much ambition as Sega, it might have been going too far to attribute the shittiness of modern gaming to a combination of all three major companies' traits so much as the addition of two of the three major companies. I guess a statement I could present that might be more accurate and digestible is just that even though there are still some constants in the gaming industry such as Nintendo being high-quality and relatively-speaking very ambitious, it's just not as inspired as in the days when it was Sega, Nintendo, and the PlayStation's host of third-party developers duking it out - at least a third of that equation that's missing these days is Sega, therefore I attribute alot of the loss of inspiration to the loss of that company.
Also: I was praising Sega for being so incredibly supportive of a game like Seaman, although I do acknowledge that it was created by Vivarium, which is why I referred to it as being produced by Sega as opposed to developed or created by them. What I'm saying is that Odama for the Gamecube was just as conceptually strange as Seaman, but Nintendo certainly didn't hype it even remotely as much as Sega did for Seaman (most gamers hardly knew of Odama's existence). It's not that I'm criticizing Nintendo for not hyping it, but the fact that Sega produced, distributed, and marketed the hell out of Seaman shows an immense passion for the game.
Also also: Yeah, I had an English professor last semester who got mad at me for an over-abundance of semi-colons (although they were implemented correctly), so she told me to start using dashes occassionally to switch things up - I'm entirely new to using dashes as a form of punctuation, I'm embarassed to say, so I'm incredibly sloppy with them. That run-on was a marriage of that sloppiness with dashes and me not being quite as exuberant about typing these posts since I'm no longer on a soap-box, but rather merely attempting to communicate that I'm not trying to diss Nintendo, but that I just think that video gaming sucks pretty bad these days and that the loss of Sega's creative spirit is a huge part of the reason why (since I'm less excitable about the post, it follows that I'll be less intimate with proof-reading it).
