The Compact Disc- The future of gaming?

A look at the technological advancements in gaming from the 90s to now

No, you haven't stumbled across some ancient blog in the depths of cyberspace. I am writing this on the 30th January 2012. Whilst rummaging through my collection of games last night, a friend and I happened to stumble upon the dusty ghosts of two brilliant titles. The first was Flicky (from the glory days of SEGA) and the second was Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. Being the age that I am, Flicky is a good example of the starting point of games for me. It didn't take days to complete a game and there was no such thing as a save file. You might get a game with passwords now and again but the majority of games could be passed around and shared, despite being 1 player games. You could have a five minute go on a game and then go about your day- something that seems ridiculous when you think about how ridiculously short an hour on Skyrim feels. Games were pixellated, 2D, simple, colourful and -above all- addictive.

With that as a backdrop, consider the next ten years in the world of games. 1994 gives us the first peek at the very ominous 'Project Reality' and come '97 it reveals itself as the Nintendo 64. With this comes the spread  of the 64BIT cartridge which means that we can play games with 3D characters in a 3D world! We can run around in circles and rotate a camera angle 360 degrees. This was a big jump and considering the fact that it coincided with the growth of the Pokemon franchise, Nintendo 64s were very popular with kids like me, hungry to get their mitts on Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Coliseum.We see the introduction of a console so futuristic and advanced that its games do not come on cartridges, but these new fangled 'Compact Discs'... Consoles the world over quake in fear as the most intimidating bit of kit bursts onto the scene and the era of the Playstation begins. During Sony's reign of terror, the SEGA Dreamcast is born and presents a lot of exciting ideas such as the first hint at online gaming. Unfortunately the world was not ready for the Dreamcast and so it didn't sell well and just kind of dissolved into the gaming fade. All in all, my childhood saw the making, breaking and advancement of many different technologies such as the Gameboy, GameGear, SEGA Dreamcast, Playstation 1&2, Nintendo 64 and XBox. What a childhood it was.

























So why all the rambling about the past? I just wanted to give a general feel of just how fast paced the market was in the nineties and early noughties. Naughty Dog released three Crash Bandicoot titles in under four years. Just think about that for a second. Three of the most popular games of the nineties were all developed  insanely quickly and in succession. If a game takes a year to develop now then it's a sure-fire bugfest and general letdown (cough cough- Dragon Age 2.) Skyrim- wonderful and complex as it is- took FIVE years to develop and it's still not flawless. That is the nature of gaming nowadays, true, but what a jump we've seen in the last fifteen years. People didn't wait five years for a game because in the time it took to make it, new technology would make the game obsolete. Imagine if Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped had been held in development until 2004. It might have looked a bit nicer and it would be bug free, but it would be on the shelves next to San Andreas on PS2!

Crash Bandicoot

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped

The evolution of Final Fantasy

I don't want to go on about this for much longer, because I want you to read to the end and participate with your opinions, so I'll wrap it up. The trend, in my opinion, has shifted in the build up to, and since the introduction of the seventh generation consoles (PS3, 360, Wii). In the past there has always been a limit to what you could potentially do when making a game, so progress was usually in the form of pushing the machine to its limits. This could be in terms of versatility such as the varied level designs and play styles in the Crash Bandicoot series. It could be in terms of sheer amount of content and visual quality as shown in the Final Fantasy series. The point I'm making is that the emphasis was always on getting the most out of the machine and then making a better machine to keep up with your ideas. Now we have a set of machines that are equipped to deal with more than ever before and the fact that the seventh generation isn't going anywhere fast means that developers don't have to worry about being left behind. Rather than having a framework of levels and worlds and loading screens in which you have to contain your ideas, developers can now attempt to do away with limitations and divides between what you can see and do. There doesn't have to be a distinction between the playable area and the background any more, because as we see in Skyrim, it is possible now to make the 'background' playable if you walk far enough.

In an attempt to wrap this up again, I would just like to point out that this is not an essay and is incomplete without the ideas of others. I would really like for people that read this to post a response with their opinions because that makes it so much more fun for me! Please contradict me, challenge me or improve on what I've said. I need a third party to bounce ideas off, because my ideas aren't as inspired as they once were when I had people to discuss them with- I'm looking at you Jyggalag.

DannyDarko x

Final Fantasy VIII (8)

Time for something a little bit older here. Final Fantasy 8 is one of the many installments of Squaresoft's (now Square-Enix) Final Fantasy series. Most of the games are completely separate stories set in different fictional worlds. There are common features in all of the games such as Mogs and Chocobos, but there are also lots of recycled names and non-player characters. Final Fantasy 8 was originally released on PS1 in late 1999. Back then it was on 4 discs, which shows just how big this game was, considering that most games fit on one disc. This was also the case for it's predecessor, FF7 which was released in late '97 on three discs. After the commercial success of FF7, Squaresoft were regarded by many as master storytellers and brilliant game maker, but following FF8's release they became known for smashing the competition to pieces with their stunning cut-scenes. The cut-scenes in this game were so advanced that it is difficult to believe there was room for improvement. The characters looked more real than anything in any game or animated movie and I don't recall any other game of the time coming anywhere near as precise and lifelike as FF8. 

Cutscene

Like any gamer that revisits a treasured nostalgic game, I started FF8 with quite a knot in my stomach. I was wondering if it would be as good as I remembered. Would it be as good-looking? Would it be as encapsulating? Would it feel the same? This time round I have downloaded FF8 from the PlayStation network and played it on my PSP, which removes the element of undivided attention from the proceedings, because I tend to do other things while I am using my PSP. It was probably for the best however, because this game is very time-consuming. Back when I was 10 years old this was a huge plus, because it meant that for the price of one game I could be entertained for months and months. Now that I have other things in my life such as a job and a relationship and family etc., I do have to split my attention between more than just games and food. So, in a roundabout way I'm trying to say that the PSP allowed me to play for an amount of time I could not give to the PS3.

In-game

 The game was just as I remembered: lots of menus, drawing magic from monsters, equipping magic to raise stats, stealing, fighting, finding, reading and exploring. Each of the characters that I found along the course of the story were like old friends I was catching up with, scheduled and familiar because I knew when they all came into the story, of course. The story unfolded as I played and I knew what was going to happen at every turn. I found myself returning to a random corner of a house or stealing from a certain boss because I just knew that that's what I should do. It would seem that all of the habits and tricks I had picked up in the past had stuck with me over the last decade. Playing the game felt very much like de ja vu and I took delight in the fact that I had remembered to play cards with the boy in the blue top and the Trepe Groupie #1 in order to get my Minimog and Quistis cards. This might sound crazy to anyone who hasn't played the game, but if you have then you will know what I'm talking about. If you've played the game again recently then I'd really like to know if the game had the same effect on you. 

Battle

If I was looking at the game as a new release in 2012, then I would have to say that the cut-scenes look good, the in game graphics are grainy and the lack of spoken dialogue means the text boxes are a bit heavy on the eyes. I would probably think that the turn based battles were a bit slow and that the story was good, but the game's difficulty hiked up by the games complicated levelling and junctioning system was too difficult for a newcomer or casual gamer. That said, if you've enjoyed other Final Fantasy games then I would recommend this, as well as the others. If, like me, you haven't played this game for a long time I would say it's definitely worth a trip down memory lane.

DannyDarko x