An Ironically Boring and Not-So-Brief History of Entertainment (part 1)

     I don't consider myself to be a "gamer."  This might seem ridiculous, based on the number of hours I've spent playing just the NBA 2K franchise games - as evidenced by the 6 posts I've done in as many weeks about their last 2 iterations - but it happens to to be true nonetheless.  I've spent a figurative ton of literal money on games and consoles, from Battletoads and the original Gameboy to the Xbox one and NBA 2K14-15, and I've sunk about as many hours into them as successful people generally do into their careers; so I can see why some people might consider me to be a "gamer."  I'm not though - and not just because I hate the word, and am embarrassed for humanity as a species that it exists (though not nearly as much as I am for "teenagers."  That right there is a pile of linguistic vomit).  What I actually am, is a storyteller, and someone who is fascinated with and fully appreciates a story that is masterfully crafted and expertly told; so I am understandably fascinated by video games' ability to insert the listener directly into, and in many cases even completely control, the action.  It would be disingenuous of me, however, to say that I don't also enjoy playing the games, for the sake of the games themselves; although even with something as seemingly inane and story-less as the original, Super Nintendo Super Mario-Kart, I found myself crafting a sort of tale around my favorite racer, and doing my own internal commentary on every turn of the race,  So before we continue, just for fun (mine, not yours), I'm going to list every single game console that I've ever owned, along with both the game that I spent the most time playing, and the game that I think I would consider my favorite of the era - and they won't always be the same game.  I'm just letting you know up front.  The point of this brief - but space consuming - exercise, is to illustrate...well, nothing, really; I just thought it would be fun to think about.  I think you'll agree with me, since you are most likely nothing more than a figment of my narcissistic imagination - seriously, who else would waste their time reading, let alone writing all of this?

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

This is basically the only system where my favorite game is also the game that I spent the most time playing, which is largely due to the fact that I never actually owned an NES.  My aunt and uncle had one, and whenever we went up to Detroit - which wasn't often, mind you - we'd play some of the games.  We'd watch him try to beat Contra, and then we'd play Excitebike.  I loved that game; I was terrible at it, but it was awesome.  I'd make the sound of your bike endlessly tumbling over your person my ringtone, if I didn't prefer the theme song to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  The only NES game that my family has ever owned was a copy of the impossibly difficult Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, renowned even today for its relative impossibility - much of it due not to intelligent game design, but rather to designs of an exactly opposite nature - but we never made it past the electrical gates underneath the dam.  That's the second level, for anyone that's interested.  Though to be fair, as I said before we didn't actually own an NES, so maybe that and the fact that I was only 6 at the time had something to do with those failures.  My mother owned a pizza restaurant/video rental store (brilliant idea by the way, right?  What do you want most when you're watching a movie?  If you said anything other than pizza, you're a liar), which had a couple of NES's available for rent; on the weekends when one of them went un-rented, sometimes she would bring it home for the night for us to use; and my grandfather then bought us a copy of the Ninja Turtles game, but only brought it over when he came down from Washington for a visit.  Not a whole lot of time spent with either game, but there was still some time spent with them, so I'm counting it on my list.  Why?  Because it's my list, and you can't stop me.

Nintendo Game Boy

 I believe this was the first game system that my family actually owned.  It may or may not have been my older brother's, I don't really remember who actually owned it.  I just remember spending a hell of a lot of time trying to get past the third level of the insanely difficult Battletoads, and succeeding only at watching my amphibious heroes repeatedly die gruesome, explosive deaths.  But that's not my favorite game; because if I had a Gameboy right now, there's only one game that I would want to play on that green and dark-brown screen:

Check out that tag-line; priceless!

Super Nintendo

This is the first system that I know for a fact that I owned...about half of.  My older brother and I saved up money for almost a year to buy the Super Nintendo in 1992...or 1993  Actually, I don't remember the exact year.  Give me break, I was in either third, fourth, or fifth grade.  I can pinpoint that much only because I know that we bought it while my family was living in Portland, which occurred during the three years I mentioned.  My favorite game at the time was almost certainly WWF Royal Rumble, which I played relentlessly.  However, over the number of years that we owned the Super Nintendo the game which I undoubtedly spent the most time with was the original Super Mario Kart; it remains the only iteration of the franchise that I have ever played.  But without a doubt, the best game on the entire console - and one of my absolute favorite games ever - was the legendary Chrono Trigger.  I never actually played the game until about a decade later, and never beat it until about five years after that, and even then on an SNES emulator which I had downloaded to my less-than-stellar computer.  But a victory is still a victory, and I'll take as many of them as I can get, even the meaningless ones.

Turbo Grafyx 16

Here was the first console which I owned completely by myself, also purchased and used almost exclusively while living in Portland, Oregon.  I don't remember what happened to it, it's possible that we sold it in order to help pay for the Super Nintendo, which makes sense because I really only remember playing it in the basement of the rented red house on SW Mollalla Court.  I don't recall personally playing any game longer than any of the others, although I remember denting the freezer on which the TV sat by bludgeoning it with my elementary-school-sized feet, while playing a Japanese baseball game - the name of which has been lost in the leaky banks of my memory.  I also remember playing a ridiculously pathetic fighting game called Pit Fighter a lot, and making very little progress even though there were really only three attack buttons: punch, kick, and throw.  But I mean, come on, the best game on the system is still one of the best platformers ever: Bonk's Adventure.  If you have never played this version of the game, and I'll give dollars to donuts that you haven't (actually, scratch that: I'm going to keep my dollars for myself and use them on donuts), then I slightly pity you.
 

Sony Playstation (PSX)

This is the console about which I tend to feel the most nostalgic; it was purchased with the lifeblood of our Super Nintendo console and games, and was totally worth it.  I know that most game critics feel that the graphics don't hold up very well, but screw that.  The games were fun, there were something like 50 different Street Fighter games from which to choose, and I distinctly remember spending a majority of my free hours after being released from the juvenile prisons in which I was forced to spend most of my day (also known as Apollo Junior High and L.V. Berkner High School) tearing through as many of the fantastic PSX games as possible.  The game I spent the most time with, by far, was the PSX exclusive Street Fighter EX: plus Alpha.

 Capcom included one of the most interesting game formats I've ever seen in a fighting game, and which I've never seen repeated.  It was your standard team battle, where you choose 5 characters to fight against your opponent's 5 characters...but it had a function that allowed you to keep the characters secret as you were selecting them.  Then, say hypothetically, you decided to choose the random character selector, while also keeping the choices secret, not even you would know what characters you had, or your opponent had, until each specific one took its turn.  It was a gigantic crap-shoot every time, and it was a pretty awesome versus mode.  Extremely underrated game, and my older brother and I spent a figurative eternity battling one another, but it wasn't my favorite.  An honorable mention has to go to the original Bushido Blade as well, one of the most inventive fighting games I've ever played, but my favorite game at the time was, without a doubt, Final Fantasy 7. 

Just look at the box art; it tells you everything that you really need to know about the game, without actually telling you anything at all.  It's got a dude that probably looks cool, but you can't really tell because of his gigantic f****ng sword, which he's about the pull off of his back, presumably to assault the shadowy tower/building/thing.  I'm hooked already, that's all I needed to see to want to play this game; and despite how it may appear based on the nature of this post, my single biggest defense against labeling myself as a gamer is the fact that, out of the 14 that exist, Final Fantasy 7 remains the only title in the series that I have ever played for longer than an hour, and I've completed it about 5 times.  I love this game.

...And yet, within the last 4 months, it has taken a back-seat in my pantheon of PSX games, I think, to one which I recently managed to finally complete after ten years, four copies of the game, and 6 PSX and PS2 consoles: Chrono Cross. If you don't remember the game, I don't blame you: it was the relatively unheralded sequel to Chrono Trigger, released far too long after the original to capitalize on any sort of momentum.  To make it (seemingly) worse, you don't even get to play as, or really even see, the titular Chrono. Instead, you play as Serge, swapping between alternate realities in a quest of vengeance, heroism, understanding, and all the sorts of things you really want out of an RPG.  Here's what makes it great: it has one of the most complex, interesting stories you'll ever find in a game, without being confusing; it seems at the beginning that they were building a game that was totally different from the original game, and they had the license so they decided to just slap on the Chrono name in an attempt to create a franchise, but by the end they tie everything up rather well. There are a few unanswered questions - which is great, because it means you spend a lot of time after playing the game thinking about it afterwards - and one or two minor inconsistencies with the original story, like a character's hair color.  But the single most phenomenal aspect of Chrono Cross which makes it possibly my favorite PSX game ever - and one of my top 5 RPGs of any era or generation, is the unmatched awesomeness of the soundtrack.  The composer of the also-wonderful Chrono Trigger's soundtrack, Yasunori Mistuda, returns for the sequel, but with a full orchestra, rather than on a midi device.  Truly just phenomenally great music: I still listen to one of the songs on repeat when I try - and for the most part fail - to fall asleep.

Atari Jaguar

This one I purchased new at an Electronics Boutique, I think it was, for something like $20.  It was old, almost no developers had ever bothered even trying to put up with the weak engine and terrible hardware, so there were few enough games available; and the ones which you could find were, for the most part, vastly inferior to its competitors.  None of this mattered, though, because there was only 1 game which I wanted, and it was legendarily good:

Alien Vs. Predator; my white whale.

I had an old copy of Gamepro magazine which claimed that this might be the best FPS they had ever played, and I spent years trying to find a copy.  Unfortunately, I never did, because Amazon.com either hadn't been invented yet or I just didn't know about it.  I have yet to play a single second of this game, but it somehow remains my favorite game on this obscure console and I have no doubt that at some point in the near future I'm going to pick it up somewhere and realize just how stupid I've been for treating it like a digitized version of a gigantic, albino sperm whale with a taste for Nantucket limbs.

The only game I've ever played on the gigantic mess of a controller that comes with the Atari Jaguar, is the game that was in the box when I bought it: Cybermorph.  I have no idea what the game is about, or even what the point is; all I know is that I spent many hours flying around in a ship shooting at - and generally failing to hit - other flying objects, and occasionally a big green face would pop up in the middle of the screen and jabber incoherently at me.  So, basically, the best game ever made.  If you can explain what the hell was going on, or even what the title means in relation to the game itself, then sir or madam, you are a better man or woman than am I...though it shouldn't take much to be a better woman than me.  A proper set of female genitalia should have me beat.

Sony Playstation 2

If you were to look purely at the number of consoles which I've owned, you would probably assume that this was my favorite: I have owned 4 Playstation 2's: 1) The Original shipment, the day that it came out.  I was super excited about the DVD playing ability, even though I didn't own a single DVD, because not even my parents had a DVD player yet; aside from that, I didn't even have a single PS2 game to play on it.  The backwards compatibility more than made up for it, though.  2) My original version of the console was stolen, along with my older brother's Dreamcast and our copy of MTV Music Generator 2 (don't let the name fool you: that game was incredible), so I had to save up another summer's worth of money to replace it.  One year later, that one got stolen, but this time along with all of my family's DVD's and electronics and stuff.  3) About a decade later, I finally purchased another PS2 for one, singular purpose: to finally beat Chrono Cross.  Guess what didn't happen?  I never beat it on that console.  You know what did?  It got stolen again!  Seriously, I'm not making this up.  I moved away, left it at my parent's house for "safe" keeping, and it was never to be seen again.  4) Just about 6 months ago, I bought my current copy of the PS2; and it was on this one which I finally defeated what I have already suggested may be my favorite PSX RPG ever.

The game which I played most often on the PS2 was probably still Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha; but I'm not counting that one here.  The PS2 game with which I spent the most time was also, coincidentally, the first PS2 game I ever owned.  Well, technically it was a gift to the entire family from my Aunt in Portland (Beaverton, actually, but only people from the area know where that is, so I'm sticking with Portland), and it remains one of 3 games I've ever seen my father walk into the room and demand to play: SSX.  (The other two games were Sim City, which by the way he absolutely crushed.  I could never manage to build a city that worked properly; he sat down and in two hours had a metropolis that ran better and more smoothly than any city had any right to do.  City Planning lost a valuable devotee when he decided to be a lawyer, I tell you what.  The only other game was Ken Griffey Jr. Major League Baseball - another great game in its own right).



My favorite of the SSX games, though I acknowledge the gameplay-superiority of SSX-3, was actually the 4th installment which apparently lost a large portion of the fan base because they dumped the musical stylings of Razzell for a slew of MTV picked indie-rockers: SSX On Tour.  But you know what?  I discovered 3 of my ten favorite bands off of this game's soundtrack, and with Chrono Cross remains the only Soundtrack to which I listen on an almost daily basis.  So I call that a win.

But even that probably isn't my favorite game from the PS2 era.  To be honest, it's barely even a contest.  My favorite PS2 game also doubles as my pick for the best basketball game ever made: NBA Street Vol. 2.  You might think that, given the modern basketnall games and my obvious addiction to them despite how much they aggravate me, I would have selected a 2KSports NBA 2k simulation.  To be sure, from about 2010 to 2012 I probably would have picked 2K11 as the best basketball simulation, but I have since learned a valuable truth: there are far too many variables to ever make an accurate basketball simulation, so why bother trying?  The one basketball game which I never fail to love is EA Big's physically impossible, ridiculously entertaining, and wonderfully eccentric street-ball farce.








Interlude

It is here that a little bit more chronology is probably helpful in properly expressing my history with video games.  I stopped playing games of any kind from 2003 - 2007.  I remember being in a grocery store up in Vancouver, called, hilariously, The Real Canadian Superstore - like there's a fake one out there somewhere, masquerading as the genuine superstore; and the owners of the real article wanted to make sure that it's customers knew from which of the twain they were purchasing their foodstuffs - and while developing some photos at the stand in the electronics sections, I saw a twenty-something dude in the video game section pointing out a game to his wife, I don't know which one, and speaking animatedly about how much he wanted it; I assume for a Christmas present, since it was near that time of year.  Whatever the case, it reminded me of a 5-year old trying to convince his mother to buy one of the fancy, name-brand cereals with the sugar-coated, chocolate frosting and the fancy toy inside, rather than the general Malt-O-Meal schlock to which he was generally subjected (and if you think that example isn't autobiographical, you are very much mistaken), and it left a sour taste in my mouth.  I decided then that, while it had been nearly a year since I had played a game anyway, I was done with video games for good.  (It wasn't actually until after this sabbatical that I played SSX On Tour).  But then, one day, one of my roommates bought a used copy of a certain Action RPG, and then...

Microsoft Xbox

I had played Halo with some friends when it was new, but it never really grabbed my attention; and soon thereafter I gave up video games anyway.  I recall staying up all night playing the 8-way Slayer mode at a friend's the night before he moved away, only to drive home, sleep exactly 20 minutes, and then drive to the Oil Depot in Allen (Texas) and working the longest 10-hour shift of my life.  But that was simply a one-night detour from my plan to quit games cold-turkey.

It was the very first Fable that dragged me back in.  It was absolutely the best game that I had ever played at the time, and I mortgaged almost an entire month of my life pouring over it obsessively.  And while its sequels may have had better gameplay (Fable II), or a more interesting story (Fable III), neither one of them were as fully-realized in all aspects of gameplay as the original.  This would probably be my favorite game on the Xbox, if not for...



...Travis Pastrana's MTX Mototrax, which, despite the advanced graphics engines and development capabilities offered by the newer generations of gaming consoles, remains the best and most realistic motocross simulation ever made.  I've played MX vs. ATV, Dirt, Mud, and just about every other attempt, and none of them felt as much like riding an actual dirt bike does as Mototrax.  Sure, the graphics are a huge step down, but if you want to rail a berm and slide the back end out through the turn - kicking up a gigantic pillar of roost as you go - then you can't do any better.  I'm not sure if I like it better than Fable, but it's close enough to where I would never want to have to pick between the two...but given that both Fable II and III are both nearly as good as the original, whereas no other motocross game has ever even come close to being as consistently entertaining as Mototrax, I might end up taking MTX.  I'm just saying.

Microsoft Xbox 360

I didn't buy one of these until 2010, well into the console's life cycle, but it was definitely a worthwhile purchase, if for no other reason than the many hours on it which I've spent watching my numerous DVD's.  I bought it mostly to play to NBA 2K10, Fable II and Batman: Arkham City, but none of those games makes the list as either my favorite of the generation, or the one on which I wasted the most of my time.  The latter of those esteemed superlatives goes to either my favorite game of the entire NBA 2K series, 2K11 - due solely to the fact that it allowed you to play a career mode as Michael Jordan, and as a person who spent his entire youth wearing one of 3 consecutively-owned Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jersey's (seriously, between the ages of 9 and 13 you won't find a single photo of me without one of them rotting away on my person), I was sold the minute I saw the cover - or possibly Soul Calibur 5.  I had to open 3 seperate accounts on my 360 just to accomodate the character creation models I was churning out; I wouldn't have even bothered with the gameplay anymore if it wasn't for the fact that you have to play through it in order to unlock more items for customizing your characters.  I never quite understood that: why put a limit on the number of files you can use on one account, when there was so much open space on my hard drive?  Why not allow you to create as many as your hard drive allows, rather than tie the characters to the game-data?

But without a doubt my favorite game I ever played on the Xbox 360 - and, to be honest, my favorite game I've ever played on any console - is the Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.  I knew nothing about the game when I bought it, only that it had won Game Informer's pick for the best game of the previous year, and there was a used copy of the enhanced edition available for $20.  I now own every copy of the novels from which the games were drawn that have been translated into English, and am eagerly awaiting more.  But not quite as much as I'm anticipating The Witcher 3: the Wild Hunt.  If CD Project Red can deliver on even half of what I've heard and seen of the game thus far, it will easily replace it's predecessor as my favorite game ever; but I'll explain why in part 2 of this post - which is actually the whole purpose of writing all of this in the first place.

Microsoft Xbox One

This was purchased with my 2013 tax returns, specifically for NBA 2K14; again, if you have read any of its interminable review, you have some idea of how that turned out.  Ironically enough, though, it remains the game into which I have poured more of my time than any of the others, and despite it's improvements I highly doubt 2K15 will surpass it in that regard.  It is most certainly not my favorite current-gen game, though.  That distinguished achievement goes not to the slew of other great games I've already played on the console - Saints Row 4, UFC, Dead or Alive 5: Last Round, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, or even Dragon Age Inquisition.  Instead the honor goes to a game which is admittedly more limited in it's game-play and even worse in it's replay-ability (especially if, like me, you get everything right the first time); yet the narrative(s) in which I was able to immerse myself make it the most enjoyable experience I've yet had on Microsoft's current-gen console.

What game is this of which I speak/write?  Why, none other than Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments.  I have read every single one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about the fictional-yet-still-legendary consulting detective, and from my understanding of the character I can say with no small certainty that Maximum Games/Frogwares absolutely nailed the tone, writing style, and even the nature of the crimes themselves.  True, 2 of the 5 crimes which you are asked to solve are ripped directly from the books - although there are ancillary pieces added to the cases to add some measure of uncertainty - but if you approach the other 3 with the same mindset with which Holmes himself claims to approach every case ("when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" and "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts"), you will be able to solve them in a very satisfying manner.  The only possible variation in a replay, then, would be the decision of what to do with the guilty party once they have been discovered, but even then I feel like I made the decisions best suited to each individual case - which do not, and in staying true to Doyle's literary style should not always end happily - so even though I tried replaying through it recently, I found it difficult to maintain interest for long.

Why then should such a game make the top of the Xbox One list (although I'm pretty sure it won't occupy that spot for any longer than it takes for me to pick up a copy of the Witcher 3)?  That's going to be the main topic of the second half of this post, so stay tuned.  (Yeah right.)