4 posts tagged “snes”
I'd like to believe that somewhere in the world there is always a marching band playing various music from classic Nintendo games.
It's Metroid-obsession month on Nick's Vox so I'll share a nice article I ran across today. Here's a history of Metroid development which probably lends too much sympathy to the series based on "poorly timed releases" but a great read nonetheless.
Super Metroid is on the Wii virtual console as of last week and apparently is enticing enough for me to download it. I recall never actually being able to finish this game as a child even though I had the first couple levels as a walkthrough in some ancient game guide tome.
The 1994 mechanics are actually interesting to think about while playing because you'll be completely lost in this game unless you understand the concept of shooting and/or bombing every wall, ceiling and floor you see for ways to find other rooms. It's easy if you know this because you've got a constant flow of new places to go, one of which gives you a new item which you use to find other new places... you get the idea. Unfortunately, if you miss a location you have to backtrack and then it gets boring. I think this was my fate as a child playing this game.
The game itself is still pretty fun. It's obviously way dated in terms of graphics but I've been mulling over this idea that the post-realism-in-games era will return to games like this that forgo being ultra-immersive for a smooth, high-quality and ultimately more fun experience. I'd buy an HD version of Super Metroid for my 360 with a ton of weapons, 4x the map size and really slick animations. Wouldn't you?
I have some serious nostalgia problems with 8-bit music. Anything that sounds like it was picked straight from a NES evokes a visceral reaction completely independent of my knowledge of the music or even the genre. These kinds of things show up in more and more public settings and somewhat obviously, video games have a certain sense of nostalgia for the under-35 crowd. It's a popular nostalgia - if you play the super mario bros. theme in the crowded theater you'll hear cheers, not boos. And it's not just the geeks cheering. But before you celebrate the national acceptance of video games as a pastime, it doesn't extend very far past basic recognition. Most people that realize what they're listening to haven't touched a console in years and probably stick to the games-are-for-losers mentality.
Before I go further I should get clear something up: I was raised a 16-bit gamer. Let's not get things mixed up, I have a NES on my desk at work and I can run through SMB in under 15 minutes but my childhood experiences were mainly with the first console I owned - a SNES. The primary NES generation is close to 30, if not older, and only in the last couple years have we started to see both music and art which is highly derivative of older video games. Those people driving creativity related to older video games are not the original generation of gamers but the second major generation of gamers, those who have a familiarity with the NES but truly hold their roots with it's 16-bit successor. This is pretty clear if you look through the mis-titled I AM 8-Bit exhibit where most of the art relating to Mario (those images from Ann on We ♥ Wii) has some clear connection to Super Mario World rather than the previous 3 NES games.
Discussing the reasoning behind this shift and the differences between the two game generations is more difficult. The change from SMB to SMW is a great one and Mario's world was given a lot more depth and clarity which surely went a long way in keeping kids glued to the screen for hours on end (myself included). Also, I don't really have a good way to end this short essay and concluding paragraphs take too long.
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