ONM Remembered – PSM Week, day 6

Friday, October 5, 2012 at 11:00 am Comments Off on ONM Remembered – PSM Week, day 6

“Sadly, the result is another load of sub-standard toss for the 16-bit gaming wastebasket.”


from PlayStation Magazine issue 62 (September 2000)

I admit I scanned this simply because it was another source of spite being hurled towards Blaster Master Blasting Again.

But it does remind me of what I find so captivating about the PlayStation – its library is goddamned huge. I think it’s really easy to underestimate how many games most consoles have. I mean, the Xbox 360 is still active and it’s got a whole ton of games, both disc and download, but I look at the shelves of a game store and I think, “I’ve seen these all before.” It doesn’t really help that there’s not exactly much variety on shelves. If you care to be cynical, once you’ve seen one Shooty McGunGun or Sporter Goalson game, you’ve seen them all.

But what’s amazing about the PlayStation (and PlayStation 2, I guess) is both the sheer quantity of games, and sheer variety. Do you want to play a game where you design a town by shooting buildings from a cannon? There’s a game for that. Do you want to play a game where cute but vulgar little blobs annihilate each other with realistic firearms? The PlayStation’s got you covered. Hey, want to play as a living domino? Scuba dive for treasure? There’s so many game concepts out there and I’ve barely played any of them. I can’t imagine many of them would be my cup of tea, but I earnestly admire the variety.

I think going back to simple concepts could make a winning design for a game. I always thought a game where you play as a bird would be particularly cool. Not like a bird of war or an undead bird or whatever… just a regular bird, y’know? Fly around and scoop up somebody’s chips and make a nest and crash into windows and fly around to your hearts content, in a big, big world.
But nah. Dudes need more shoot-guns.

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