In the past blogs that I have posted, I have always discussed my childhood memories of video games that I used to play in the past. And I will actually do that from time to time. But sometimes, I might wander off and talk about something but it will still remain in the retro world.
For example…..
So the E3 is over and the smoke is clearing. From what I was seeing online, we are in for an amazing year of gaming. Also, there have been announcements of “new” retro gaming systems that are coming out. One in particular is the Neo Geo Mini. Which I must say, I am actually excited for.
But after seeing the lineup of games that are on the American and International systems, I came to a conclusion of personal reflection….. Why are there so many fighting games? But when I say that, let me explain. I will start with the Street Fighter series.
When the first one came out, there were huge buttons and somewhat difficult to control characters. But then again, this was years ago and I wasn’t that great at games like that. But anyway, when Street Fighter II came out, it was completely new and different compared to the SF I. There were more characters to choose from, the graphic and music were a lot better, and the character control was even better than before and that is what made it awesome! But then, they started to bring out more. I mean seriously, look at this:
In case you missed it, there were a total of 43 versions of Street Fighter. And the worst part is, I kept pumping quarters into each and every version. But all that really ever changed was adding a few extra characters or changing the speed for some. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Street Fighter collection as much as the next person does, but is that really necessary? I know for the most part of some of the machines, it’s just a replacement board and marquee and a few other things, but really?!?!?!
Then there was the Neo Geo system, where everyone was going ballistic for King of the Fighters…..
Unbelievable!!!! Besides adding characters and changing the art and making new moves, I don’t understand why there was so much hype to the genre. And again, I loved the games at the time and played a lot, but today I am thinking, why the heck did they do so much?
Unlike the Mortal Kombat series that had a total of 5 versions in the arcade. But between 1,2,3 and Ultimate again, the graphics changed, more characters, more ways to die or do Friendship moves or even Babalities. Once again, hundreds of dollars fed into these machines and I loved them all, with the exception of Mortal Kombat 4, which attempted to cross the 3-D line with new moves and more. Epic fail. But later on, they had a huge success with the Playstation 4 and Xbox versions of Mortal Kombat X and XL.
I can understand having one or two games to follow a successful game, but everything listed above just doesn’t make sense to me. Once again, I know that new games came out all the time. Is it like when dealing with cars? You can have the 2017 model with a CD player or 2018 with the MP3 player. Seems like when dealing with video games, it really is bells and whistles that will attract the player. Oh well, I guess I’ll just go back to playing Donkey Kong and Pacman. At least when they do something different, it is COMPLETELY different.
By the way, the views and opinions of KCAIC are not those of Old School Gamer Magazine. And sometimes it might not be 100% accurate. 🙂 It’s just the opinion of one old gamer that sometimes has trouble trying to……
Keep Calm and Insert Coin
