Zoomongy… Online Video Gaming at it's Best!

“Classic video games” is a term which in itself is probably enough to set alarm bells ringing in the heads of many people. However, video games have been around for over a generation now, and it is about time that people let it go. Classic films have certainly been made in the last thirty-plus years, and classic novels have been penned too, as have classic albums. Therefore it is fair to say that classic video games do exist, even if the concept upsets a few people. What those games are is another debate entirely.

For many people, the ultimate classic video games are ones which were released very early on when gaming was more simple than it is now. In fact, some people will try to convince you that the old, simpler games are more deserving of the “classic” tag than ones developed ten or twenty years later. They’re really just trying to convince themselves, though. Some of the more recent games are undoubtedly genuinely jaw-dropping in their playability and their innovation. If an album recorded in the last five years can be dubbed “an instant classic”, so too can a video game.

Of course, what makes a game deserving of the tag “classic” is another matter. It is probably in the eye of the beholder to a large extent, as playability and enjoyment are totally subjective things. Consensus seems to settle around the real classics, which gain the title through being constantly surprising, addictive (in a good way) and original.

Nintendo is making a strong case for the classics in the new versions of Mario Cart, and others… Check them out!

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The technical term is “cross-platform”, and it applies both to games which have made the leap from one console to another as well as just about any form of media which has been adapted from one medium to another. It’s not a new concept, even if the jargon is new. Often in the past, when individuals harangued one another to read a certain book, it would be seen as somewhat humorous to respond with the quip “Nah, I’ll just wait until the movie comes out”. This doesn’t happen so much with video games, though. The quipping, that is, because games are increasingly crossing platform.

OK, so there are some games which will never make a good movie. PacMan would lack a certain something in terms of story development, it’s true. It is also hard to imagine anyone particularly wanting to spend the price of a good meal and two hours of their life watching “Space Invaders: The Movie”, but others have made the move and been successful in doing so. One which springs immediately to mind is Tomb Raider. Additionally, stalwarts such as Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat have been released to mixed reviews.

The reason often offered for this is that video games are becoming increasingly film like in terms of their look and feel.

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It is often said that video games are more similar to films than to the games of the past. While this is as much a reference to the increasingly realistic graphics and the more interactive relationship between your character and others than anything else, there is perhaps another reason behind it.

In the past, video games “happened” a certain way. You would play in one setting, kill a certain kind of enemy and work through to the end of that setting where you would have to kill a really big enemy, who might need to be hit fifty times or more before he’d go away. Then you would move to the next level, and repeat the process. This “multi-level” system would be very explicit in the game, with opening screens telling you which level you were on.

Now, there is a certain style of game which attracts the description “non-linear”. There are multiple settings, and you move between them as you see fit. To advance the storyline you have to complete certain tasks, but not necessarily in the same order every time. How you complete those tasks can dictate the future path of the game. Games now are very like films, and while we may not script them we certainly play a part in directing them.

Of course, you will still find multi-level games, which will never die out as long as one set of gamers exists that remembers the joys of PacMan and Donkey Kong. The difference is that the new titles are far more likely to be in the newer style.

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When you have a command and mastery of a video game, it is possible to play from the beginning to the end of the game without your character “dying”. Of course, there is a learning curve involved with playing video games and, while you are trying to get to grips with a game there is every chance that you will “die” with frustrating regularity. This is why many of the traditional video games give a character three lives to start with, and offer more as the game goes on (if you play particularly well, it may be a lot more). They are a lot like an incentive system for video games.

The “power up” is something which does not feature in some of the more modern day games, in which a character doesn’t so much “die” as have their efforts brought to a halt at a certain point and have to restart from the last obstacle they cleared. This allows players with perseverance but no great amount of skill to advance further in the game than ordinarily they might. However, in the older games, “power ups” include: an extra life; greater speed or strength; invincibility; invisibility (to the other characters in the game); and more of the game’s “currency” – in some games you pick up coins and in others it may be something else.

While completing a video game is quite enough of a target in itself, the inclusion of these power-ups helps to buttress a player’s resolve to get as far into the game as possible – a series of mini-tests before the big one at the end.

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The vast majority of us will have to accept that the triumphs we dreamed of as kids will probably be beyond us in the end. Not because of failings on our part, but simply because of simple statistical fact. How many people play football professionally? How many will pilot a plane in a war zone? How many will build a new nation and run it along egalitarian principles? As a percentage of those who dream of these things, a pretty select group. Life gets in the way. Practicality messes things up. It’s something we learn to live with pretty early on.

Does this mean that we have to cut that dream out of our life? Once upon a time, maybe it did. However, now there are video games. And while it may not be anything like the same thing to score the winning touchdown in the Superbowl against digitised linebackers, it at least gives us the chance to play at being the best. While it’s not even a substitute for the real thing, it at least allows us to participate in something we identify with strongly.

Try telling a kid playing his favorite game that they don’t get to experience these dreams in real life.  While Adults know this is just fantasy…A huge number of Kids are also extremely smart, intelligent individuals who are perfectly aware of the logical disconnect between gaming and reality.  Just keep it real Kids!

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Video Games Where No-one Gets Shot

The popular view of video games seems to be that they involve someone sitting with a controller in their hands, shooting people on a screen.

Of course, this is a simplistic view, and there are several other kinds of video games that are not violent in nature that are a blast to play!.  However, the games which fit a common stereotype idea of what are the most popular today… seem to wind up with games that “shoot other people.  Many other video games, however, are based around a more considered, statistical way of getting to an end goal… and they certainly don’t fit into  ”they rot your brain” idea of what much of gaming entails.  Ther are alternatives for Kids who want to stretch and test their minds.

Sports management simulations are very popular. Perhaps the most popular of all is the soccer management game Football Manager. Unlike a great many sports simulations, at no point in this game do you control a player and choose his immediate path to goal. Instead, you take all of the duties of a soccer manager and try to create a winning team. You sign players, you choose tactics, you give motivational team talks and you try to analyse the computer-generated opponent to get the best results.

As this game gets developed and updated at least once a year, new elements are added. It is possible to release a statement designed to play mind games with your opponent before a big match, and players who aren’t getting much time on the field will express their disillusionment with you. It cannot be long before the game develops to a point where you leak stories to the press about players who are annoying you – but there is such a thing as “too realistic”.  Hey Kids… remember… Your goal is to learn and to have fun testing your skills.. not to learn to hurt someone!

Hands up if you have heard someone say “those video games are no good – they rot the brain and poison the mind”, or something that approaches that attitude in terms of an emotive response to video games. Now, put your hands back down. Put your hands up if you regularly play video games and have found that the game frustrates you because it poses a problem you cannot work around. Now, do you see the point this article is about to make?

The assertion that video games prevent people from broadening their minds and even work to retard the brain in some way really is an idiotic one. Let’s think about this for a minute. So many of the games out there on the market require the player to really think about what they are doing. Each has a quite logical pattern which can be followed by the gamer to get them to the next level. They very much encourage logical thinking rather than retarding the brain.

Of course, there will be some people who when playing a video game simply run around the (virtual) play area shooting everything that moves and, when they find something that doesn’t move, shooting it until it does.  It is a wate of time if your mind is not challenged to solve a problem.  Of course, We all need to make choices of how we spend our time with family and friends that we can look back on and say “that was fun!”

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The popular view of video games seems to be that they entail someone sitting with a controller in their hands, shooting people on a screen. Of course, this is a simplistic view, and there are several other kinds of video games. However, the ones which fit in with a stereotypical idea of what the games entail tend to involve controlling someone’s physical activity in a very simplistic way. Many video games, however, are based around a more considered, statistical way of getting to an end goal. It doesn’t fit in with the “rots your brain” crowd’s idea of what gaming entails, but never mind.

Sports management simulations are very popular. Perhaps the most popular of all is the soccer management game Football Manager. Unlike a great many sports simulations, at no point in this game do you control a player and choose his immediate path to goal. Instead, you take all of the duties of a soccer manager and try to create a winning team. You sign players, you choose tactics, you give motivational team talks and you try to analyse the computer-generated opponent to get the best results.

As this game gets developed and updated at least once a year, new elements are added. It is possible to release a statement designed to play mind games with your opponent before a big match, and players who aren’t getting much time on the field will express their disillusionment with you. It cannot be long before the game develops to a point where you leak stories to the press about players who are annoying you – but there is such a thing as “too realistic”.

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The rise of sport simulations on video game consoles started a few decades ago, but the advances that the medium has made since then are quite something to behold. There was a time when whatever sport you enjoyed, playing it on a video game would be somehow unsatisfying. Unless your chosen sport was golf, it was incredibly hard to make players and conditions anywhere close to lifelike. Once you discovered a way to hoodwink the computer player’s defense, you could rack up as many goals, touchdowns or baskets as you liked, and scores would end up unrealistic and a little bit boring.

Video game software houses were no less aware of this than the gamer, and with every new release – for a sports game franchise is nothing without an annual update – they have added to what you can do. It used to be the case that an NFL simulation game had you controlling one player on offense and another on defense, and that was it. Now you can be general manager, head coach and conditioning co-ordinator and much more besides. A little confusing and overwhelming for a first-timer but blissful for the stats junkie.

Of course, there are now consoles which even let you participate more actively. Boxing by means of controllers which you hold while “punching”, tennis which involves you swinging the controller around like a racquet. This – we are told – will make us all fitter, and it is a response to the accusations that games are making us lazy. It seems to be popular, too. But it is not going to mean the death of the armchair sports simulation, for sure.

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