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- Dan Mahlendorf, from issue #4 (April 2008)
Ever read the saying on a T-Shirt that happened to get your mind turning, pondering its meaning? I’m not talking about something quite profound like the secret of the universe or something as important like asking if I saved a seal today or if I’m aware of [insert malady or distressing situation that has a ribbon emblem here]. No this was geared more toward the game geek, those who had been around the block and those who cut their baby teeth on a Playstation or Nintendo 64. The saying I came across was only two words long, in fact it was only two syllables long. It was a simple question but enough to make me think about my hobby and Nintendo’s drive for “gaming for the masses”.
The question: “Wii Who?”
This little question was screen-printed in bright yellow letters, positioned in between one’s shoulder blades above a gigantic Atari 2600-style joystick on the back of the 2007 Classic Gaming Expo T-Shirt. I bought this shirt at the expo while my wife and I were on vacation last year in Las Vegas. I held the T-Shirt up and snickered at the saying but as I traversed the expo, seeing the throngs of people playing the many classic games that were available the question started to become more serious than a classic-gamer inside joke it first seemed to be. The answer came to me when I attended the after-show party that night. In a corner of the lounge room the party was being held in was a TV suspended from the ceiling with an Atari VCS attached to it. The game being played was Warlords and there was a small crowd huddled below the set, necks craned upwards and mouths agape as the players tried to blast each other’s king to oblivion. The group was laughing with players ribbing each other as they pounded on each other’s castle walls and then after all was done controllers were passed around and the game started again.
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There aren’t many who don’t know about Nintendo’s latest money-printing dynamo. The Japanese game company is lauding it as the game machine for the masses with its easy to pick up and play control mechanism and games that are simple to learn, fun with many titles geared toward group play. Reading the information released by the “Big N’s” public relations department and sales people you’d almost think that Nintendo came up with this concept and to be honest many consumers and the news media believe it. While I do admit the game market as of late has been up to its digital neck in first-person shooters, gritty action games and way too many “sand box” games but for Nintendo and the media to trumpet to say how the Wii, its unique control method aside, is a “new direction”? To borrow a concept from “Rowdy” Roddy Piper: I’m your reality check- this trail has already been blazed about thirty one years ago by the once great Atari with probably their greatest success: the Video Computer System, a.k.a. the 2600.
One of the most important things the Wii strives to do and what the VCS pioneered is to have a low barrier of entry in regards to playing games. While the Wii has motion controls that can allow one to make familiar real life movements to accomplish virtual movements on the screen (like swinging the remote like a tennis racket to make your Mii hit a ball with their racket), Atari gave the world an eight-way joystick and a button. When you think about it, you really can’t get much simpler and yet be dynamic than an Atari joystick. Prior to it the majority of controllers were designed for specific functions like the paddles for dedicated Pong machines of the early-to-mid 1970’s. While at times the Wii remote can have issues judging your movements (anyone who’s played Wario Ware can probably agree with that view), “up” is always “up” on a joystick-unless you’re holding the stick wrong, are playing a flight game that mimics real-world control (as in “up” is “down” or as some would call it “nose dive into the nearest tree or rock”) or happened to get the controller with the rubber removed from the stick and had been tossed into the wall several times like a medieval flail after a few bad rounds of Cosmic Ark. For the games that were either designed to bring the “feel” of the real thing (as best as latter 1970’s technology could) or for a different spin on playing games, you broke out the venerable paddles to play. It was either your steering wheel in racers like Night Driver or it was your precision control scheme in games like Circus Atari or Activision’s Kaboom!.
We can talk all about great controls or features of a console but everyone knows a console is nothing without its games. Nintendo and its third
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parties have worked at making games that appeal to all ages and all audiences, from the simple pack-in Wii Sports or the zany mini games of Rayman: Raving Rabbids to the more hardcore-gamer type titles like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption or Red Steel. Considering the past couple console generations have primarily focused on more multi-button complex affairs with more mature themes, this is actually a breath of fresh air but it’s just a reinstatement of a past trend. The 2600 had a strong library of titles that literally anyone can play. Not interested in the twitch blast-a-thons of the arcade? No problem-just pop in video versions of timeless games like Backgammon, Hangman, Video Chess or Othello and play against a friend or the computer. Not into board games? Maze Craze, Haunted House (possibly the first survival horror game for consoles, baby!), Video Pinball, and Adventure were great options for those that didn’t have the cat-like reflexes of the 80’s arcade gamer but wanted to play something with a heartbeat.
Speaking of that audience-the “hard core” video victims of then were definitely well taken care of, possibly more so than the Wii does for that similar audience of today (if Internet message boards are anything to go by). The 2600 had a plethora of games ripped right from the arcades like Asteroids, Defender, Space Invaders, Missile Command, Phoenix, Ms. Pac-Man and Centipede. A slew of original or derivative titles adorned the library from Atari themselves and from the first third party companies in history like Activision (who literally was the first), Imagic or M-Network. Activision’s Pitfall! and Pitfall II could easily be considered that generation’s Super Mario Bros. (well, without the brother anyways). You thought Cooking Mama put your skills to the test? Pressure Cooker puts you on the spot by forcing you to assemble made to order burgers spat out onto a conveyor belt, then boxed and put into a bin all within a time limit. While many of these titles can put one’s hand/eye coordination to the test a majority of them came with a variety different difficulty and play settings, allowing those not endowed with arcade skills to enjoy the same titles but at their own pace. How many modern games of any platform offer that?
Another of the major selling points for the Wii was the concept of it being a multi-player console. “It’s not about you or me, it’s about Wii,” said C.E.O. and president of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime when the Wii was officially unveiled at a conference back in 2006. The mere mention that a system has multi-player seems like a useless bullet point in this age of the Internet with services like Xbox Live but the general concept of competitive multi-player games, especially those not involving a gun with a first person view and having to be online, have been in steady decline since as far back as the early 1990’s as scoring and competitive play started taking a back seat to single player games with defined and generally scoreless goals. Unless of course you count the start of what would be a continuing and disturbing trend of annual sports franchises, but that’s for another article.
Have video games come full circle?
I have to agree with Nintendo on their multi-player approach, as nothing will ever beat playing games against or with people in the same room. I know it’s fun to play against people in Xbox Live but there’s still something about making a snide comment to your opponent and having them smack you in the arm after they pound your score into oblivion. Again, however, what Nintendo has done was meticulously remove the overgrown weeds, edge the sides and swept the stone path that the 2600 had helped create. A majority of games for the 2600 were designed to be two player alternating titles. One player would see how far they could get before the lost then the next player would get the controller to see if they could beat the other’s score. About the best comparison that I can think of would be the Epyx titles Summer and Winter Games or Konami’s Track and Field compared to Mario and Sonic at the Olympics. Video athletes, rather than move their controllers in different directions or positions, would rapidly move the stick in rhythm or time their movements depending on the event in order to score well. If you know what a group looks like trying to get past mini games in Mario & Sonic, I can assure you that people looked about the same back in the 80’s playing the Epyx classics. As for head to head games titles like Warlords or the tension building race game Dodge ‘Em allowed you to pit your skills against other players at the same time. Some games back then offered co-op play (while still competing for score) like Joust or one of the game modes in Space Invaders.
I’ve always been told that everything comes in cycles and it’s certainly true. Music, with new bands hitting the airwaves and the Web with sounds reminiscent of the 80’s and fashion with jean jackets and circa 70’s striped polos being shown in new spring fliers have shown those parts of culture have come full circle. With Nintendo’s push for “casual” games along with similar type titles on Xbox Live Arcade or Flash based games on the Internet, perhaps the cycle is almost complete on video games as well. It may seem like I’ve dogged the Wii in this article but my goal was to remind others to remember their history. To really appreciate what you have today one should at least experience, if at all possible, what was had yesterday-may it be listening to a vinyl record instead of your iPod or watching an old movie with stop motion special effects made in a time before you were born. If you go back and play a game from the 2600 library or happen upon a modern re-release of the system (like the two Flashback systems or the recent keychain-to-TV portable game systems) maybe you’ll find joy and perhaps understand the question the ones who made the CGE T-Shirt posed. Then when someone comes up to you, Wii remote held in their outstretched hands as an offer and says “Wii would like to play” you could smile, hold up your faux-woodgrain V.C.S. and ask “Have you played Atari today?”
