Here's the deal: I leave the quarter-century mark behind me this Saturday, October 11th. As I approach the 26th anniversary of being forcibly ejected out of my mother, I can't help but take stock of the things that I've learned in this span of time, and being a gamer of the highest order I tend to take said stock by comparing the past to the present in terms of entertainment software conquests. The recent releases of Mega Man 9, Bionic Commando Rearmed and Castle Crashers has made me realize something very disturbing: I wholeheartedly believe that games that operate on older play styles are still better than their newer, more "advanced" brethren.

Case in point: I love fighting games. LOVE THEM. I was the happiest person in the world when Soul Calibur 4 was announced, and happier still when I took that gleaming metal box home in my hands, ready to download the exclusive bonus gear that my limited-edition reservation afforded me and prepared to drink deeply from the well of what I considered to be the finest three-dimensional fighting game on the market. Flash forward two months, and I want to snap my SC4 disc in half and leave it on the steps of Namco Bandai's offices with a note that says "NEVER!", Rorschach-style. You see, Soul Blade was a revolution. Soul Calibur was a refined revolution. Soul Calibur 2 was a work of near-perfection on a level that hadn't been seen since the heyday of Super Street Fighter II Turbo (or Alpha 3, dependent on your particular tastes). Soul Calibur 3 was a botched rush-job, and Namco knew that, so they promised that SC4 would address these issues and restore the rock-solid gameplay of past incarnations. Unfortunately, to them that must mean making the game so filled with unnecessary additions such as armor-breaks, instant-kills, 85,000,000 guard-break moves for every character, high-hit attacks that lift you off of the floor repeatedly while lying prone, and other design decisions that, well, for lack of a better term, are just plain fucking stupid. What was wrong with just 8-Way-Run? What was wrong with balance? When did "Just Inputs" become something that every fighting game needed, and not just tired Tekken sequels? And it was at this point that I began to worry, not just about the industry, not just about the games, but about myself most of all. Am I right? Am I correct in thinking that too much is just that, or am I so mired in the past that I can't accept the simple fact that change is inevitable? Is the adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" really true, or is that something that old codgers said to justify keeping the old ways the only ways? And if that is the case...am I getting fucking OLD!?

It makes me think about Mega Man, and how the first game I beat was 1988's Mega Man 2. It makes me think about all the hard work and practice I put into that game, the dedication that I had for conquering something profoundly difficult at the tender age of six. It makes me see how that dedication has applied in multiple facets of my life, and it makes me see how kids these days have it so easy. Just for shits and giggles, I handed my nephews (one just turned 14 and the other just turned 6) my NES and my copy of Mega Man 2 and asked them to play it. Granted, this was going to be an alien concept to them - two buttons, one D-pad, Select and Start, and no excuses. And furthermore, these kids aren't slouches: the oldest is a gamer in his own right, and the 6-year-old is a fucking prodigy when it comes to games - he can beat all of his 14-year-old brother's friends at any FPS game they throw into their 360, no lie. I've seen it, and it's surreal. But hand them an 8-bit masterpiece and it's like everything they know and hold dear gets knocked on its ear. The 14-year-old scoffed at the graphics, and asked how I could ever play something so primitive. The 6-year-old was a lot more receptive to the experience, it was almost like he knew he was playing something historically relevant and he treated it with the amount of reverence that I was actually hoping for, which surprised the hell out of me. The 14-year-old couldn't get it, put the controller down after dying for his third time and seeing a game-over screen and started complaining about how the health bar didn't recharge and the enemies causing too much damage. The 6-year-old had trouble at first, but warmed up to it eventually, and made it all the way to Bubble Man with no problems on his 2nd continue/7th life. He actually wanted to beat it. He wanted to prove himself to something that set the odds stacked against you in an utterly ridiculous ratio, while his older brother went back to playing Mercenaries 2 and The Force Unleashed. That caused some strange mix of sadness and hope to stir within me, sadness for the child that was 12 years my junior, pandered to by games that coddle the player and do everything for you except wipe your own ass, and hope that the child that was TWENTY years my junior would see that as what games should be about and seek out those games accordingly. And then I realized that I was twenty years older than someone I knew, and my heart took its last little pixel of damage..."peew peew peew peew peew."

Things like this are what make me stop playing the mass-market bullshit and retreat to insane mode on Castle Crashers. I'm hoping that SF4 won't screw the pooch and overshoot perfection in the name of "making it awesome." I think most developers don't realize the level of awesome that they had in the first place half the time, and by trying to raise the ceiling of awesome, it only succeeds in turning it into asinine/inane. I'm really scared for what the future holds for me, scared of becoming that old war dog that sits in the corner talking about how the good old days were better, hoping that some young buck would just hear me out and learn a thing or two from the old school that'll take them one step beyond their peers. And I realize that with the release of Mega Man 9 and BC:R, there are a lot more of us old war dogs than I realized. Maybe I'm not so alone, and maybe us 8-bit war dogs are the majority after all, not these whippersnappers and their dreams of kicking ass on a guitar made from melted-down Fisher-Price popcorn-pop mowers.

And then I proofread this. Goddamn it, I'm getting too old for this shit. :D
- JAM