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These
days, with our state of technological advancement everyone has
their own little fascinations. We the gamers all love our consoles
for the visual entertainment, our stereos for their bumping
harmonies and our TV’s for the occasional movie - and it would be
a little hard to play our GameCube’s without a screen of some
sort. Boy racers have their toys (their funny pretend sports cars),
punks have their iPods (although I’m sure that entering into such
a hefty campaign of such pre -constructed marketing appeal is
somewhat derogatory to the “punk” image) and surfers have their
boards.
My
love is my Nintendo family; from my SNES to my NintendoDS. Since I
acquired a Game Boy in the early 90’s I’ve carried it
everywhere, I used to get it confiscated nearly everyday at school
(only because the teachers used to love draining your batteries),
which as you can guess caused an uproar. With some of the most
famous games and franchises ever to grace us with their presence;
the infamous and very successful Mario franchise being
probably the most famous games series in the world ever, aside from
Pokemon, and the Legend of Zelda series being the
darker more fantasy sword-and-chivalry escapades of Nintendo’s
archives. Games such as Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime II;
Echoes and Metroid Prime; Hunters, StarFox, Donkey
Konga (which is only called Donkey Kong because of a
miss-print) have recently been the hosts to significant sales
peaks. Nintendo’s infamous franchises have never been matched by
any other software company, and with a few new faces promised for
the next generation, the Revolution is sure to just improve on
their success.
Already
released is the NintendoDS - which is an innovation the industry
has been waiting in anticipation for. The Touch Screen is a far
better control system than any other I have ever came across, in Metroid
Prime: Hunters the Touch Screen acts as the right analogue
stick giving you control of the view, whilst the D-Pad is used for
movement. This gives you pin point accuracy, as with the two
screens being perfectly pixel-calibrated to one another, where you
aim is where you shoot. The Touch Screen also gives you new found
abilities to unroll toilet paper or throw turtle shells, should you
so choose to.
SONY
had success in the 80’s with the SONY WalkMan, which for people
who can’t remember the 80’s the WalkMan was a quite a large
device that fixed to your belt or trousers which played tapes. In
the 90’s SONY and Nintendo came up with the PlayStation, which
was originally intended as an add-on for the SNES, until they
parted business and SONY released it as their first successful
console  to make a mark on the worlds gaming industry. Then about
six years later came their second instalment, the PlayStation2,
which is the console which for some reason the average gamer thinks
is the best; ok so its got literally thousands of games to choose
between, but comparatively very few that a great deal of thought
and patience polishing off all the blemishes - you know, the
squares in the low resolution textures and the freezes between
sections of the games. SONY then released (in Japan only) the PSX -
a PlayStation2 with a hard drive, DVD Recorder, TV Tuner etc. which
had such bad sales that it was never released in other territories.
SONY also had success with the Mini-Disc, just another format which
never got the recognition it deserved outside the industry it was
developed for. The PSP is on the verge of release in the
UK
, with about 30 games on release day and about 10 UMD Movies
(Universal Multimedia Disc) proposed. There is quite a large
selection for the hungry gamer. With its large and flashy screen
and its cool styling it is guaranteed to be a huge success in the
UK
.
It
seems to me that Sony have won most of the gamers over to their
side, even though their system is the least powerful and isn’t as
capable of pulling off the graphics of the other systems. So where
do Microsoft come in? Right in the middle. Most people who own a
PlayStation2 or GameCube seem to own an Xbox, with games like Halo: Combat Evolved
and Conker: Live and Reloaded, which are Xbox exclusives.
Pulling in the punters, it seems to be the must have second
console.
What
I would love to see is Sega making a come back. The DreamCast -
their last system - flopped all over the world, even though it was
a great system. It came too late when systems like the PlayStation2
were just around the corner. But let’s hope SEGA give it another
go.
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