Grab-bag Post #4

 

Grab-bag Post #1

Grab-bag Post #2

Grab-bag Post #3

 

Why physical games are better

Whenever possible, I get physical versions of games. As convenient as it is to have a ton of games all on one microSD card, I prefer to have physical copies of games. Now that I have 3 different Switch consoles (OG, OLED, and Lite), I don’t want to pay $20 to download Portal onto each one or mess with account sharing. By contrast, I can pop my Metroid Dread gamecard into any of them and play without problems, and also let my kids play the game on their Switch as well. Another reason is that there have been times when publishers retract games that have been paid for on certain platforms or the shop just gets taken down entirely (this has also happened with digitally bought music and movies). If I have a physical copy, Nintendo can’t stop me from playing the game even if it gets pulled from the digital store, and they can’t barge into my house to take the game back.

I also tend to avoid games whose main draw is the multiplayer aspect of it. Once that server goes down and the ability to play multiplayer goes with it, the game loses all value and interest (see various versions of Call of Duty). Meanwhile, if the single-player game is the main focus, when the multiplayer gets taken away most people don’t notice (see Phantom Hourglass, for example). This is similar to why I also strongly dislike the, “games as a service,” model, since the games can’t be preserved for future generations unless someone also makes a fan server, which only happens to the biggest games.

It also goes for physical games which require many gigabytes of updates to make it playable. 

 

Being a hardware minimalist

This is a little expansion of something I mentioned on the Collecting post, but I have usually been a hardware minimalist for the most part. And what I mean by that is my priority has always been about being able to play the games themselves. When the SNES was announced, I knew I needed the new hardware to play the new games. By contrast, when the Game Boy Pocket or Switch Lite was announced, I didn’t see the need because they were just smaller. When I got the Game Boy Advance, I knew I could play any original GB game, GBC game, or GBA game on this device. Even though the SP added a backlight, it didn’t allow me to play anything I couldn’t already play on the original model. I skipped the DS and DSi and re-entered with the 3DS, but that allowed me access to all previous DS and DSi games up through that point. So in theory, I could have played any Nintendo handheld game ever made and I was happy with that (until I got the idea to get one of everything).

Obviously this doesn’t apply to the home consoles as much, as there are fewer revisions, but I didn’t feel the need to get a SNES Jr, or a Wii Mini because they didn’t allow me to play any new games.  

 

 Collector's Editions 

In a similar vein to being a hardware minimalist, I usually don’t go for extra bells and whistles when games are released. Some games have Special Editions that include a book, a map, a carrying case, a steel gamecase, or some other collectible. I just want to play the game, and don’t need the extra junk, especially if it’s some kind of guidebook, because I prefer to discover things for myself. But I can see the appeal to people who like those sorts of things. I did buy the collector’s edition of Twilight Princess HD because it came with the Wolf Link amiibo, but only because 1) I hadn’t yet discovered NFC-215 tags yet, 2) it was supposed to unlock new content for both TPHD and BotW, and 3) it was Zelda stuff. The same goes with movies that used to have special editions. I remember kinda wanting the $80 Lord of the Rings Extended Edition sets for the extra junk, but ultimately I just wanted the movies and the other stuff would probably be collecting dust in a cabinet.

 

 Pop Culture Loss

I suppose this might fit better on the Evolution of Gaming series, but I don’t have enough to say to warrant its own post.

There are both positive and negative aspects to the various facets of progress, but one I’ve noticed is that with a lot more choice comes a loss of connected pop culture. Back when I was a kid, (insert uphill both ways joke here) most people had the same console (NES), and then later one of two options (SNES or Genesis). Because of that, it was almost always possible to find someone to trade games with, and at some point we all kinda played each other’s games so we could all share in a common experience. Likewise, with only 4 real TV channels (and PBS), we could all talk about a lot of the same shows.

But I fear that these days we have lost the major aspect of pop culture – that being popularity, by which I mean seen/played by a good majority of the people. When it comes to TV, due to different cable packages or streaming services, someone might have a completely different set of shows they watch than their friend, and so they have less in common. The same might go for someone who owns a Playstation and a Nintendo console with a friend who does only PC gaming. Plus, in both cases there is now so much content and so many games that it would be impossible to keep up on all of them. With a lot of streaming shows, we never know if our friends are “caught up” or if they’re waiting for the season (or series) to end and to binge it all at once, and it can somewhat stifle conversations at work/school that would normally bring us together after having had a common experience in order to avoid spoilers.