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It's the first in a five part series or so the guy claims. Not exactly sure what's the point of the article though. I think it's saying a lot of gamers from yester-year got shut out in the cold.



http://www.redorbit.com/news/scifi-gaming/381853/video_games_built_for_the_original_players/index.html?source=r_scifi_gaming

Video Games Built for the Original Players

Click to enlarge
By Daniel McNamara, The Daily News, Jacksonville, N.C.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a five-part series looking at the evolution of video games.

A pair of Italian-American siblings waged war against evil mushrooms and flying turtles amid the gurgle and chime of an improbably catchy theme song.

A swift blue hedgehog wheeled about a colorful and conspicuously ramp-rife world.

A man named Pac scarfed down power pellets and dodged a tribe of angry ghosts within a fluorescent labyrinth.

It's a history lesson that happened in the impossible, side-scrolling, low-fidelity landscapes dreamed up by a set of what turned out to be very rich men in Japan. But it also happened here, as devotees of the fledgling video game craze straddled the real world of homework and chores and the psychedelic domain of Super Mario and Luigi during the 1980s.

Those were simpler times.

These days, the popularity of gaming systems remains strong, to say the least. According to Reuters, the recently debuted XBox 360 sold 600,000 copies in the U.S. in less than two months.

But today's video games hardly resemble their prehistoric-looking predecessors with tinny soundtracks and blocky animation.

Today's gamers can model characters into spitting images of themselves, explore immense and interactive worlds in three dimensions and real time and master buttons and commands as they struggle to conquer the latest games.

And as the audience grew up, so did the games.

As a kid, Anthony Ramirez of Jacksonville figures he played his fair share of Metroid on the original Nintendo.

"I played that off the wall," said Ramirez, 20, who remembers getting his first Nintendo at age 7.

Ramirez now works for Electronics Boutique on Western Boulevard Extension, where he says many of the customers are the same ones who harassed their parents and horded their allowance for copies of Super Mario Brothers 3. These days, they're pre-ordering copies of Halo II and the latest edition of the John Madden football series.

"Most systems are catering to the older population," Ramirez said. "It requires much more attention."

With their cartoon-y animation and juvenile games, the once-dominant Nintendo systems, Ramirez said, have fallen behind competitors like Playstation and XBox.

And Nintendo isn't the only institution that has taken a hit as games and gamers matured.

"It was the baby sitter," 21-year-old Clay Midgett, a gamer from Sneads Ferry said of his parents' arcade.

During the 1980s and 1990s, arcades pocketed more quarters than schoolyard bullies ever could.

But arcades, formerly a staple in malls throughout America, have gradually given way to other enterprises. At the Jacksonville Mall, the space formerly occupied by Aladdin's Castle is now a Payless Shoes.

The arcade across from Jacksonville High School closed and is now a Number One China Buffet, said Craig Carney, 28, another one-time arcade-goer.

Video games can still be found around town, but they're not the arcades that 20 and 30-somethings remember from their youth. Then, packs of adolescent males appeared routinely after school let out, abiding by the "winner stays, loser pays" principle that would allow the greatest virtual warriors to remain at the joystick until a challenger could unseat them.

Rarities like the odd Ms. Pac Man can still be found shoved into the corner of Laundromats, but they attract little interest except between the rinse and spin cycles. Newer games like Golden Tee and Big Buck Hunter still draw crowds at local bars, but their presence is hardly enough to call the local watering hole an arcade.

At Chuck E Cheese on Marine Boulevard, customers can play a variety of popular kid-oriented games that allow players to earn tickets they can exchange for prizes, said General Manager Ivette Torres.

Kids may be entertained by the whirling display of lights and sound that erupts from the machines when a high score is earned, but competing for tickets doesn't compare to the thrill of duking it out with opponents who stood fiddling with the quarters in their pocket as they awaited their chance to overthrow the local Street Fighter 2 champion.

"Console games kind of killed the arcade games," said Midgett.

Previously, months or years would pass before an arcade game would find its way to Segas, Nintendos or Playstations. As technology developed, however, games went straight to consoles.

Other factors contributed to the downfall of the video arcade, though, namely ethics and money.

Over time, video games got gorier and arcades got more expensive. Few family pizza places endorse the sort of video games in which fire-breathing ghost ninjas decapitate each other, a fact that banished some titles into gamers' living rooms.

"(And) nobody wants to pay a dollar to play five seconds worth of a video game," Carney added.

Although they may never be fully resurrected, some relics from the 1980s have enjoyed a comeback in recent years.

Two years ago, Plug in Play systems that allow users to play classic games like Pac Man without a lot of expensive equipment debuted.

But some cravings can only be satisfied by the real thing.

Go to the Thieves Market at the right time of the month and some adventurous bargain-hunters might find an old Nintendo system hidden in the labyrinth of electronics, military gear, furniture and antiques.

There, working systems can easily fetch $65, according to owner Jim Rollen. Rollen stressed the "working" part.

"(Most of them) sit there and blink at you," Rollen said.

Those Nintendos that did survive the ravages of time don't occupy the glass display cases for very long. Rollen said he recently sold a deluxe Nintendo Entertainment System still in the box for $195, and the original Nintendos regularly sell for as much or more than more-advanced systems like the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and Dreamcast.

On eBay, a recent auction for 43 NES games had reached more than $400.

Asked what he thought makes people willing to shell out big bucks for antiquated electronics, Rollen credited nostalgia.

"People want to return to their youth I think," Rollen said. "They like to go back to what they grew up with."

Carney said that his peers, some of whom gave up video games in their teens, might prefer the old school versions because gaming skills have a tendency to diminish with years of neglect.

"It's nice, it's simple," Carney said. "You give them Halo II and they just can't keep up with it."

-----

To see more of The Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.jacksonvilledailynews.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Daily News, Jacksonville, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

MSFT, RTRSY, RTR, SNE, 6758, GME, NTDOF, NTDOY, 7974, CEC, SEGNY, 7964,



Source: The Daily News

Revolution FTW!!!