Playing Habits

When it comes to hobbies, how one participates will fall somewhere along a spectrum between a wide/shallow mode and a narrow/deep style. For example, I have a friend who has what I call “hobby ADD,” because he finds a new obsession and is super into it and excited to talk about it . . . for like 4 weeks. And then he moves on to a new hobby. The end result is that over time he develops a really wide and diverse set of skills/knowledge that can be useful in future endeavors, but it’s not something that he ultimately becomes a true expert/scholar at. The expression, “Jack of all trades, master of none” applies very much in this case.

Meanwhile, I have another friend who has basically 2 things he likes, and if it’s not those two things then he’s not interested in having a conversation. But he is deeply knowledgeable about them and can answer any question about them.

I fall somewhere in between, where I have a couple of things I do deeply and a lot more that I do superficially. But what I want to apply this analogy to is how I played each system in regards to their games. In this case, playing wide and shallow would mean playing/finishing a wide variety of games once or twice, and playing narrow and deep would be playing the same three games many times over.

With the NES, I feel that I played both widely and deeply. There were about two years between the time when the NES was released widely enough to where the populace was aware of it and the time I got one for Christmas, and during that period I was limited to playing at friends’ houses or convincing my mom to rent one (the whole system) for a weekend from a grocery store. Once we got an NES, I felt like I needed to catch up to my friends who had been playing these games for a while. Because we had access to a video rental store (literally 50 yards out my front door) we could easily rent a large assortment of games for $2, so we often did. We also traded with a few friends to get games that required more than a weekend to finish. So between ultimately owning around 15 games, trading with friends, and renting from stores, I ended up getting quite a few titles under my belt in the roughly two years between getting the NES and the SNES, and felt like I hit all of the major games/series in that time. Of course, once I got the SNES I still played the NES but over time it was used less and less.

When it came to the SNES, I was an early adopter which has both advantages and drawbacks. The obvious advantage is that I have access to the new system and can play it to my heart’s content, and that I was now in the enviable position of owning one and my friends would have to come to my house instead of the other way around. However, the disadvantage is that there’s always a limited number of games at launch, and everything is full price (later adopters might get bundles/discounts and have a better selection of games, by contrast). It also means that I only had one friend with whom I could trade games (Jake), and he already had the one that I owned (SMW), but he was nice enough to let me borrow some (like Ultraman) because he trusted me. 

One other disadvantage to early adoption was that it took a while for the rental stores to catch up and have a selection of SNES titles. They were probably a little annoyed that they had to run out and buy licenses/games for a whole new system and might have been a little hesitant to invest the money. So it meant that for the first year or so, I had a very small library and limited options to play other games and had to play the little library I had over and over. But once the SNES caught on and stores had more titles I could expand my horizons a bit. I don’t think I played as many titles on the SNES as I did the NES (paradoxically while owning it for a longer time period before upgrading) but a lot of the games took longer to finish (I’m thinking specifically about Square's RPGs). One thing that hampered my ability to get some things was that I gave up my paper route after the 8th grade, and didn’t have a replacement source of income until just after 9th grade, so for that year I was somewhat limited on my ability to buy/rent stuff on my own. However, I think I definitely got my money’s worth out of that system and while I did miss a few titles (ChronoTrigger and Super Mario RPG come to mind), I was pretty satisfied. I also invested in a few accessories - the Super Scope and the Mouse, and the Ascii Pad.

With the Game Boy there were several limiting factors in play. Firstly, while we weren’t early adopters (meaning that many games were available by the time we got one), there weren’t really a ton of avenues for playing things outside of our personal library. Stores didn’t rent them (I assume because they were too easy to lose/damage) and I only knew of two other friends who had one with something I wanted to play. 

So while the selection was limited, I didn’t feel like I missed out because a good chunk of the Game Boy games were just ports of NES games that are more easily played on the TV (Tetris, RC Pro-Am, Dr. Mario) or slight adaptations of NES games I already had access to (Mega Man games, Kid Icarus). The few that were considered a legitimate entry/sequel (such as Zelda: LA, Metroid 2, SML2: 6GC, etc.) I either owned or got to play from borrowing.

Looking back, I also feel that we played the Game Boys "wrong," meaning that we mostly used them in our house as the consolation prize when someone was already using the TV that had the NES or SNES. We didn't take them on medium length car rides or keep them on our person for when we would encounter situations where they would be useful (like DMVs, waiting rooms, etc.)

The VB isn’t really worth talking about in this conversation. I ended up with 5 games, which is almost 24% of all titles. From that point of view that’s the highest percent of titles per system I own. But I mainly played Mario Tennis, Red Alarm, and Golf. I didn’t have anyone to trade with (literally - I still don’t know anyone else who has one to this day) and there were no rentals.

But starting with the N64, I felt like I got cheated out of some of my investment. Like the SNES, I was an early adopter and was paying for everything myself (at the time I was also collecting comics and cards, which ate into my game budget). It made it difficult to procure the extra controllers (which were a little spendy) and it took rental stores even longer this time to start getting N64 games. The other problem I ran into is that I knew there was a hard date where things would be interrupted. I had my first year of college and a 2-year trip abroad happening about a year after the N64 released. And that 2.5 year gap is right when the N64 hit its sweet spot in terms of good/popular games. So I felt that I was around for the launch and the first wave of decent games, then got to see the final act, but I missed out on a lot of the good stuff in the middle.

While it’s true that there was less 3rd-party support for the N64 so there was a comparatively smaller list of “essential games,” and it's also true that most of the essentials were 1st-party titles, I still can think of about 10 games that I would have bought without question if I had spent those 2.5 years with a job under more, shall we say, "regular," circumstances. In particular, I missed out on Smash Bros, F-Zero X, Paper Mario, Mario Party, some of the Rare titles (Banjo Kazooie/Tooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day) along with the hours of playing time. It also happened to be the last console that there was really any easy way of rentals. Stores stopped renting out to disc-based consoles because discs aren't as robust as cartridges.

Gameboy Advance - This is definitely a narrow and deep one. I mostly used it as a way to play the Zelda Oracle games and as the "Tingle Buddy" for Wind Waker on the GC, at least until I got the GBA Player for the Gamecube. But basically the Oracle games, and Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, X-Men Mutant Apocalypse and Minish Cap. I didn’t have anyone to trade with except Mitch/Brady (who lived 5 hours away) and like normal GB, there were no rentals. There are definitely a bunch of games that I could have bought, but a lot of them were SNES re-releases and other remasters of games I had already played, so their expense couldn't be justified by a college student with a new family. In that way, these SNES remasters were sort of like the NES ports of the original Game Boy that I didn't feel compelled to own. And like the original Game Boy, I also played this handheld "wrong," in that I mainly played it around the house, and only took it outside on longer trips to California for the most part. 

Speaking of being "poor," the Game Cube spanned a lot of the same time period as the GBA and so it had similar issues. We got it about 3 months after it released, which was roughly a year after getting married. This console was relevant during the majority of the time I was attending college and usually also working in some capacity, and also coincided with moving houses, having a couple of kids, and dealing with a lot of responsibilities in the church we were attending. In other words, there were plenty of things that kept us busy and poor, so I couldn’t buy a lot of games, and had to play the ones I did own multiple times when I got the time. So this was definitely a narrow but deep type of play. There were 5 main games I played - Rogue Leader, Wind Waker, Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, and the Lego Star Wars games. Near the end of its life, I did get some more games that were used so it looks like I ended up with a good set, but the collection was pretty meager for most of the time it was relevant. I did get to borrow a game from Brady here and there, but there were no rentals that I could find. 

DS - This one's easy. I didn't get one the whole time it was relevant. I only got one after getting a 3DS and it was only because my daughter decided to upgrade her Christmas present of the red Mario DS to a purple 3DS. And I've never owned a DSi (at least until I started collecting systems). 

Wii - This console came near the end of my time at college, so I ended up with a few more games than the Game Cube, but not by many. Besides the Zelda titles, the main things we had were several Guitar Hero games, several Lego games, and a lot of the things like Wii Play/Wii Sports. So it was a bit wider than the previous console, but we had multiple games in the same series. But one thing that I will say is that we had more accessories for the Wii than other systems - multiple Wii remotes (including Motion Plus and Nunchuks), the Wii Fit Board, and guitars for Guitar Hero. Had we not gotten those accessories we could have put the money to at least 4 other full price titles. This is also the first system where we could download digital games and we had a few of those. 

But on the other hand, once I installed Homebrew on the Wii, it breathed a whole new life into it. We used it to play old NES, SNES, and GB/GBC/GBA games that I never got to play as a kid and as an easy way to play the classic games without having to rely on ageing hardware. Overall, I would classify the Wii as more narrow/deep, but it became more wide/shallow with the Homebrew.

3DS - This one started out sort of narrow and deep but it has evolved into a very wide and deep library. I got it roughly a year after release, so there were several decent games I could have gotten, but at first I used it to catch up on the two DS Zelda games (PH and ST), the DX version of Link's Awakening, and Four Swords Anniversary Edition. For a good while it was only those 4 Zelda games. But over time, I would expand the library (and the number of 3DS systems) with enough titles that my 18 game case was full and so were my kids' cases. These included the DS games we got as well as the 3DS games. In the household, we probably have around 40 game cards, which is pretty decent, besides a lot of digital titles. It felt more like the original NES to me in that we had a lot of the "must haves" and plenty of other games so it's a wide and deep console for me. This console also happened to hit its heyday right when I started earning more money and we were more financially stable, so I was willing to spend a little more money. 

Additionally, when we got Homebrew on our 3DS systems, it opened up avenues to easily play a lot of the retro games without needing to drag the GBA and a case of cartridges around. I still play it quite a bit and hope to keep doing so. 

Wii U - In contrast to the 3DS, this one is both narrow and shallow. I actually have like 4 physical games for it that I've never played, and several more digital games that I haven't touched. I mainly used it for the two Zelda HD remakes and playing the Metroid Prime Trilogy. My kids played Smash and Mario Kart 8 on it quite a bit, as well as a few other games, but it wasn't nearly as used as all the other systems we have had. 

The Switch is interesting in that I have played a few games (mainly Breath of the Wild and Octopath) quite deeply but I have also bought quite a lot of digital titles when they were on sale. Many of these games I have only played through once and probably won't pick them up again, but I was glad to have played them. During the NES/SNES days, I purchased games I knew to have replay value and rented the rest. As there are no rentals these days, what it's become is waiting for a game to go on sale for $5 and buy it digitally. I figure that's what a rental probably would have cost, except that I actually get to keep it. So instead of looking at my library with sadness that I spent money on games I'll never play again, I see it as a long term rental with the option to play it again should I choose to. 

My Experience with the DS, DS Lite, and DSi

This is probably going to be the shortest post of this blog. My experience with the DS, DS Lite, and DSi has been extremely limited, and chronologically this post is out of place since I didn't really get one until after I already had a 3DS. But since I'm doing these articles in the order of system release date, I'm putting it here, along with the pictures that wouldn't fit in the post about the systems. 


I remember on launch day an acquaintance of mine from Weber State got one along with Super Mario 64 DS, and he showed it to me. As mentioned elsewhere, during this period funds were very limited, and I didn’t have much inclination towards portable gaming at the time. I saw people with DSs and DS Lites occasionally, and a couple of times I read up on them on the internet. Mostly I just wanted to try out the two Zelda games I was missing (Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks).


On two or three occasions, I got a chance to hold one for a few seconds, but nothing of any consequence. Here and there I would get to see someone playing something over their shoulder. My brother had a DS, and then he later upgraded to a DSi the same year my niece also got a DSi (Black Friday sale). 


But it wouldn’t be until almost a year after I got a 3DS that I would own a DS Lite. Avery and I both had a 3DS, and for Christmas we got Aurora a used DS Lite (with a Petshop game) and Logan a GBA SP. It was a red DS Lite with a Mario “M” on it, but the hinge had a crack in it that prevented it from staying open. Our solution was to buy a clear plastic case to put around it to add some friction to the hinge. It didn’t work super well, but helped a little. She had hoped to be able to communicate with her cousin from Idaho who had a DSi with it, but I couldn’t find any avenue for that to occur. 


A few weeks later, Aurora elected to upgrade her gift to a 3DS and pay the difference. The main thing that motivated her to upgrade was the prospect of having her own Netflix player, and perhaps the ability to send SwapNotes to her cousin in the future. Unfortunately, we had bought the DS from eBay, and the serial number had come off (a problem for these systems as the serial number was just a sticker on the bottom of the unit). So I decided to take it myself and pay her what she would have gotten for the trade-in. 

Mostly, I used it to play GBA games with a lit screen now and then, and occasionally a DS game. To help with the broken hinge problem, I put a red rubber band around the hinge, and it more or less fixed the problem; now it will stay open, but it won’t close the whole way. All it takes is to put something else on the DS to weigh it down in order to make it close. 

Because I had grown accustomed to the 3DS style menu and always leaving it in sleep mode when not in use, it was hard to get used to how often the DS needs to be turned off and on to change games or mess with the settings. 

The DS Lite was unofficially “Anne’s” for a while, as the rest of us in the family have a 3DS, so this way it can be said that everyone has some flavor of DS in our family. But the reason the quotes are around her name is because she didn’t really play it much (until I convinced her to play Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks). She has since inherited my old 3DS and plays that a lot more often these days. But with regards to the DS Lite, usually it’s just me playing it whenever I use it as a GBA. While the DS and DS Lite are basically the same thing with a different shell design, the DSi is different and I haven’t really played with one extensively to document all the differences and intricacies. We own several DS games, but I’ll be talking about them more on the 3DS section for obvious reasons. 

 

 

The DS, DS Lite, and DSi

The Nintendo DS was the next handheld produced, and it dramatically changed the look, feel, and controls of handheld games. The DS stood for Dual Screen, as it had a regular display screen and a second touch screen. The design was inspired by the GBA SP’s clamshell design and the old Game and Watch games produced by Nintendo in early 1980’s. It was also the first handheld to drop the name, “Game Boy,” and many saw this as way to look more “grown up” and less kiddy in the public’s eyes. Despite this, it took a while for people to stop using the term “Game Boy” and replace it with “DS” as a generic word for a portable game system. As was the case with previous systems, it was available in multiple colors.

One unique feature was that it had 2 different game slots – one in front and one in back. The back one was called Slot 1 and was used for DS games, which were called Game Cards instead of cartridges. The game cards were similar to an SD card in size and functionality. Like most SD card slots, Slot 1 was spring loaded to allow the player to easily swap cards. Slot 2 was in the front of the system and was used to insert GBA games. Unfortunately, it was not backwards compatible to GBC or GB games. 

The top half of the clamshell was slightly smaller than the bottom half, and housed the upper screen and both speakers. The lower half featured the touch screen and basically the same main buttons/layout as a SNES controller, with the exception that the Start and Select buttons were located above the XYAB buttons, while the power button was above the D-pad on the lower half. The volume control and the headphone jack were on the front of the unit on either side of the GBA slot. 

Included for the example of the remote.

Next to the headphone jack was a small port designed to be a jack for a headphone/microphone combo that was sold as an accessory. Many Japanese electronic devices had these jacks for things like CD/MD/MP3 players so that someone could adjust volume or change tracks on a remote without clicking the buttons on the actual device. The back had the power jack (which was the same as the GBA SP jack) and the slot in which the stylus was kept when not in use on either side of the game card slot. 

The DS had several features to make the playing experience more interactive. The main one was a touch screen that allowed a different kind of input. Besides tapping menu selections, it allowed players to do things such as sign their name or answer a fill-in-the-blank question by writing a number. Other examples of creative use of the touch screen were letting players write notes on a map or keep time with a beat. Players can use their finger/thumb or the included stylus to use the touch screen, as well as the thumb stylus that was on the wrist strap. 

The other feature to add interactivity is the microphone, hailing back to the days of the original Famicon (the 2nd player controller famously had a microphone instead of Start and Select buttons). Some games used this in conjunction with primitive voice recognition software to let players say their answers aloud instead of pressing a button (e.g., BrainAge or Phoenix Wright), or simulate blowing out a candle (Zelda: Phantom Hourglass). 

Like the GBA, it had two LEDs that indicated the system being powered on (green for power, red for low battery) and the system being charged/plugged in (orange). The LEDs and the microphone were near the bottom of the lower screen. 

When the system was turned on, it booted with the health/safety warning about playing too long (just Nintendo doing a little CYA for legal reasons) along with a distinct startup sound. The menu had the current time, calendar, and battery life on the top screen. The bottom screen featured the options for settings, brightness, alarm clock, and then 4 game choices – DS game, GBA game, Picto-chat, and DS Download Play. The options screen let the player input a name and birthday to the DS, set the language, change the color of the menu, calibrate the touch screen, change date/time, and choose on which screen the GBA games would display. There was also an option to automatically load any DS game and bypass the menu. 

It was interesting how different games used the two different screens. Some used the regular buttons, some were focused on the touch screen, some used combinations, etc. Some games used the bottom screen as the main play screen while the top screen served as a map or HUD, while other games reversed this.

Closing the system put the DS into sleep mode for most games and was the easiest way to pause a game when needed. While the GBA SP could also close, putting it into sleep mode usually meant having to go through the pause menu, and bringing it out of sleep required a 3 button combination. But the DS and its games were designed to immediately pause/sleep when it was closed (with one notable exception) and awaken when opened so it was significantly quicker and easier to do. 

The DS also had a Wi-Fi connection that some games used. The setup for the Wi-Fi connection was handled inside of individual games rather than the main DS menu. This allowed players to play games with others online natively for the first time without the need of an extra modem accessory. The servers for these games were shut down in 2014, so it’s no longer possible to play in this manner. Games with multiplayer features could also be played using local wireless, so link cables were now a thing of the past. Some games required each player to own a copy of the game, while others let multiple players download specific portions of the game to play together. 

Pictochat was a built-in application that let users send messages and hand drawn pictures to each other over local wireless within a certain range. 

Some DS games were able to detect certain games from the same series in the GBA slot and unlock features, like how the GC/GBA cable unlocked content when certain games were put together. So for example, having a certain DS Pokémon game playing while also having a previous Pokémon game in the GBA slot would unlock special content in the DS game. 

Several accessories were made for it, most notably being a browser that was programmed into a DS card but required a RAM upgrade that was inserted into the GBA slot. There were other things like cameras and an add-on to play games like Guitar Hero or a Rumble Pak to add in rumble features (like the N64). 

About a year and a half later, the DS Lite was released. It was a redesign of the physical hardware that fortunately didn’t change gameplay or user experience. The top and bottom halves were the same size, and compared to the original DS, it was slimmer and lighter. It had a repositioned power button (a slider button on the right side) and fewer “speaker holes” in the top half. Some of the other changes included being more brightly lit, changing the AC adapter jack to a new shape and style, moving the LEDs to the right shoulder, moving the stylus to the right side, moving the microphone to the hinge, and the Start/Select buttons were moved to the front of the unit. Because of the new size, GBA games now stuck out of the front of the DS Lite a bit. It also came with a “filler” cartridge to keep out dust when a GBA game wasn’t inserted. 

Nearly 3 years after the DS Lite came out, the DS got another upgrade in the form of the DSi. Unlike the jump from DS to DS Lite, the DSi was a much bigger upgrade. The mild physical changes included a slightly larger screen, moving the power button to near the touch screen under the D-pad, moving the LEDs to the left shoulder and adding one to indicate Wi-Fi connectivity, replacing the volume slider with a rocker button, changing the design of the shoulder buttons, and yet another change in the power jack. But there were some other new upgrades that made the DSi more desirable. 

First was the inclusion of two cameras – one on the hinge and one on the back of the top half. The hinge camera was next to the microphone, and served to take “internal” pics for games and applications that needed a “selfie,” while the outer camera could take pictures of other things. The cameras weren’t great, even by the standards of the time, but they weren’t horrible either. 

Second was the addition of an SD card slot. The SD card is where any pictures taken would be stored so they could be easily transferred to a computer. But the SD card slot came at the cost of the GBA port, so no more retro games. 

The menu was completely redesigned and upgraded to resemble the Wii’s “channel” based menu, but only appeared as a single row instead of an array. Along with the standard PictoChat and DS Download play there are little apps for the camera functions and a music player. The music player requires that the user transfers music files (in a particular format - not MP3) onto the SD card using a computer. It can also do voice recordings that can not be transferred to a computer. The camera app allowed the user to enhance pictures taken by drawing on them, warping them, or adding things like sparkles. There was also an included internet browser that didn’t require a separate game card like the DS did. Like the Wii menu, the icons could be rearranged by the user. 

Another big change was the DSi store – an online shop where users could download games developed exclusively for the DSi called DSi Ware. This was patterned after the Shopping Channel from the Wii, which also featured Wii Ware. The games were saved onto internal memory and each one added its own icon to the menu. Along with adding new software, it also had the ability to upgrade its firmware. 

The final iteration of this handheld was the DSi XL, a larger version of the DSi that had a screen that was nearly 50 percent larger, but featured no other significant differences.