Been a while since I posted here, although I have been keeping up with the posts (somewhat). As a side note, greetings to ck and Randy. I’d like to assure you guys that I’m NOT dead, and I’ll try not to take those comments personally <grin>. And my middle initial IS “T”, but thankfully, it doesn’t stand for “Tiberius”. And I premiered 6 years before the series, so I guess Mr. Roddenberry didn’t have his glasses on when he read the birth certificate.
I still firmly believe that a market exists, or could be created with VERY little effort. I’m so very tired of the same game being repackaged in different characters/artwork. “Resistance” is “Call of Duty” with aliens instead of Nazis, etc. There aren’t any games out there that really require any creative thought, or have the biting humor that made SQ in all it’s incarnations such a hit.
I was never a fan of the mouse driven episodes. The interface never seemed as much fun as the joystick/text combination. I was also a little disappointed by the more complex artwork. It WAS more sophisticated, to be sure, and beautifully rendered, but it somehow lacked the charm of the “cubistic” renderings. (I still get tickled thinking about the “ZZ Top Blues Brothers” in the original; or the Alien awkwardly stalking Roger down the corridor, intent on a romantic interlude). Subtle, but funny stuff.
Either of you guys remember “Lands of Lore” ? That was rather interesting, even though it wasn’t a huge hit. The Robin Hood adventure, “Conquest of the Long Bow” I think it was called, held the same kind of promise that any of the other games held back then, although it lacked “The Two Guys from Andromeda” sense of humor. And I think EA was responsible for “Starflight”, which even though monotonous, was still entertaining in it’s own way. It STILL required more thought than the “point, shoot, and slaughter” games of today.
I think, (and most certainly HOPE), that if this generation of gamers were presented with something “new and different”, (notice the twinge of sarcasm), that they would most likely respond. The one thing that 99% of all gamers, then and now, have in common is the desire to place themselves IN the game. And requiring thought to solve the puzzles AND having an interactive mode makes that easy. It doesn’t really require thought to steal a car, beat up some hookers, or destroy a city with a coded tank like in “GTA” It also doesn’t take a lot of thought to beat the crap out of either a computer character, or your buddy’s character like in “Mortal Kombat” or “Street Fighter” or any of a hundred other titles all with the same basic engine. (I DO concede to the manual dexterity aspect of these games, however).
Maybe I’m a relic – but I LIKE to think. I also like to laugh and chuckle. And those elements are exactly what are missing in today’s games. Yeah, the graphics are impressive – so what. Yeah, the moves are so complex that only kids can pull ’em off – so what. There’s no sense of triumph of having solved the riddle, or the satisfaction of having shared the joke with, or matched wits with the likes of Scott and Mark. I can almost guarantee that some software company somewhere would be stepping into a goldmine if they would run with the idea.
Regards –
James