Friday, December 30, 2011

"A Runway for an Overactive Imagination"

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/12/how-atari-games-showed-me-the-power-of-childrens-imagination.ars

Best description of video games I've ever heard, particularly in regard to older "vintage" games, where the low fidelity of the games provides plenty of room for imagination.

2 comments:

Daniel said...

Pure nostalgiaphilia - just like how "tradition is anything that happened to a baby boomer twice" (http://xkcd.com/988/)

Sean said...

Firstly, tradition is anything that happened to *anyone* twice.

Second, you're partly right. I've recently played a couple of *classic* Nintendo games and there's a certain simplicity that, for years, was missing from all but web-based flash games. There's been a recent resurgence in this under the guise of casual mobile games (iPhone games, mostly) but many of those still lack the forced simplicity.

I'm actually playing through "Jetpack Joyride" at the moment, a fantastic iPhone game that has only one (1) button, yet has a system of missions, levels, points, achievements, upgrades, extras, and leader boards enough to boggle the mind.