33 replies to this topic

[Ze_ro]

Like everyone, I had nothing but sarcastic comments after hearing about Nokia and Sony's recent comments about the GBA being too kiddie, which they hope to sell their consoles on. "Bah" I thought, "I own a GBA, and I'm perfectly happy with it! Circle of the Moon is hardly a kiddie game!" Besides, I know other people my age with GBA's too (Although most of the kids I know have attention spans that rival Sammy Jenkis, and can hardly concentrate long enough to play a game).

Then I went to EB today.

Out of an entire wall of GBA games, there were maybe three worthwhile games. About a third of the games were stuff that I already own for my SNES, and the other two thirds were awful, awful, shitty, awful games featuring the Olsen twins, Rugrats, Hamtaro (Whatever this thing is), or any number of cutesy characters designed to make 5 year olds smile. Having about a dozen Pokemon games in the middle didn't help things. The only three games I even considered buying were the Sega Arcade pack (Space Harrier, Outrun, etc), Megaman & Bass, and the latest Castlevania game. I couldn't find WarioWare on the shelf anywhere.

I'm still not entirely convinced that the GBA is a kiddie system, but this doesn't bode well when the system seems to be selling enough Olsen twins games to merit sequels. I really hope the recent comments will force companies to stop making such rubbish and make some REAL games... the kind that put hair on your chest.

Nintendo has everyone tricked. People think their target demographic is pre-teen kids. It's not. It's 40-something mothers who don't understand video games and just buy what their kids watch on TV.

--Zero

[Lost Monkey]

The high crap ratio comes is a result of expected high sales on the part of developers. Low effort + Large Userbase + Recognizable Franchise = $$$.

The same crap was all over the NES, Genesis, SNES, Playstation and is coming to the PS2. If the PSP sells like wildfire, it will get the same treatment...

[Yar]

Look at the other shelves. The good-to-crap ratio will be exactly the same.

It could be Disney Magic Soccer, The Adventures of Random Platform Jumping Character, or Generic FPS: Championship Edition. I don't really see too many "kiddie" games, or "adult" games, just crap ones.

[PuddWakkr]

I think in the mind of the general public handheld gaming in general has a ways to go to get rid of the "kiddie" image. Joe businessman can go home and play his gamecube or PS2 and it's considered acceptable. He may be playing GTA:VC or Pokemon. It doesn't matter which one he is playing the fact that there are a large number of adult titles available for the home consoles makes in publicly acceptable for adults to play them. No matter how much he wants to I doubt you'll see a majority of "joe buisnessmen" with purple GBA's sticking outta their back pockets. There is far more games geared for younger players than older ones on the Game Boy's. It doesn't matter if these games are good or not. Handhelds have a big "kid's toy" label on them and this is mostly Nintendo's fault (considering they totaly dominate the market) . I think it will either take a very concerted effort on Nintendo's part to change this or a competitor (PSP, N-gage, whatever) that will give adults more options. A handheld version of GTA, a strip poker game, a game featuring senseless nudity and violence combined you will never find on a Game Boy. I'm not saying that these would be good games but it's just a fact that games like these will have to be available before the general public, who doesn't really get into gaming, accepts portable gaming as an adult pastime.

I do think that when Nintendo does get competition in the handheld arena they will be in serious trouble. Back when NES and the Genny were considered "toys" Nintendo always catered to the younger audience. When they got decent competition from Sony who would put out anything that would sell regardless of content they kept to their morales and lost ground. I could see the same thing happening the the Game Boy. Nintendo has more than a year to get their franchise to appear less "kiddie". They don't have to put out total smut but whenever I open up a Best Buy store ad all I see for the GBA is three Pokemon games, and that is what everyone else is seeing as well. I think that the SP has helped quite a bit. It's slick and expensive looking, much better IMO than a purple GBA.

I'm not knocking Nintendo. I think that the Game Boy, even though I don't own one, is fine piece of hardware. It also has alot of good games for it. However if a Sony rep comes on stage saying that the GBA is too kiddie then hands out store ads for Best Buy most people would believe him.

[MegaManFan]

As far as most people are concerned, playing video games is "kiddie" anyway, even when you're playing seriously challenging games like Metroid Fusion, Warioland 4, Phantasy Star Collection and Castlevania: COTM. So I've accepted that the perception of the general public is that I'm a 29 year old doof that still plays GameBoy when half the people I see in the store around me are 1/4th my age, and I'm okay with that. They can make me grow up, but they can't take the kid out of me! Tomorrow I'm gonna go get Donkey Kong Country. WHEEE!

[chrisbid]

i dont buy the "kiddie" thing. When a company caters to a "mature" audience, in reality, they are marketing to 13 year old males.

now as far as shovelware goes, i agree, the GBA has too much, but so does every other system.

i love my GBA for the simple fact that it is the last oasis of 2D gaming today. Once its gone, 3D and FMVs will have nearly 100% of the market.

[Video]

Nintendo's only problem in the handheld market is competition. As in, there is none.

GBA does get a lot of crap and kids games. But it does have enjoyable games that adults can play too. No console has that ratio of kiddie games (even gamecube) because it simply wouldn't survive.

But GameBoy had good all age games like the Super Mario games. And mor adultish games like Doom, Doom 2, Dark arena, Duke Nukem (he cusses, never thought I'd see that on GameBoy) Ecks VS Sever, Driver.

And then there's the games that probably only appeal to us older gamers. Atari museum, Namco Museum, Midwest colection (or something like that) All great games that would probably scare little kids cause they don't have flashy graphics. LOL

GBA is ingeneral, thought of as a kids machin. Part of that is the games. A good chunk of that is brought on by Nintendo themselves with their odd "anti mature rated games" policy.

Do I consider it kiddie? Heck no. It's my favorite game system of all time. And It's my most played system. Because the games are great.

[cryptik76]

chrisbid said:

i love my GBA for the simple fact that it is the last oasis of 2D gaming today.  Once its gone, 3D and FMVs will have nearly 100% of the market.

FMV's? Didn't they die after the Sega CD? It's been a long time since I've seen a game with FMV. Maybe our definitions of FMV are different. I think of FMV's as games that use live actors/sets, games like Night Trap or Who Shot Johnny Rock?

Video, what is the "anti mature rated game" policy? Because I have one Mature rated game (Wolfenstein 3-D) for the GBA.

[itatton]

no, FMVs were used a lot in the PSX generation. its just that they used CGI graphics instead of movies. But nevertheless they were still cut scenes.

[kisrael]

itatton said:

no, FMVs were used a lot in the PSX generation.  its just that they used CGI graphics instead of movies.  But nevertheless they were still cut scenes.

Yeah, often CGI prerecorded, as opposed to the N64, who had to do its CGI scenes on the fly... (and Conker's BFD stands out for having an INSANE amount of voiceover recorded...)

One thing, I wouldn't blame Nintendo for handheld gaming's kiddy image. Handhelds are inherently kiddish because it gives kids independence, traditionally (though this is changing a bit) kids are less likely to have their own TV, so a handheld keeps 'em from needing the family television.

Also, our culture is generally a bit too quick to divide things into adult and kiddy. Like comics...just for kids, or urban hipster artsy types. Only in the last decade has general gaming started to be more acceptable for post-college age guys...probably because they're the first generation who grew up with better-than-pong games, and saw little reason to give 'em up.

[z28in82]

BTW Hamtaro isn't just for kids, I have played the game before and actually liked it. Maybe you shouyld try and play a gfame before you feel the urge to catagorize it

[SmileyDude]

z28in82 said:

BTW Hamtaro isn't just for kids, I have played the game before and actually liked it.

Well, my six year old was pretty dumbfounded when Hamtaro poped up on TV one day... he was pretty much convinced it was a baby show. It would be pretty tough to get him to play the GBA game after that.

It's a shame that there are a number of good games that have some sort of license attached to them. The same goes for Pokémon -- most people who play it say that it's not a kiddie game, and that it's really good. But anyone who hasn't played it is gonna say it's too kiddie.

I'm just happy that games like Advance Wars were released without some kind of licensed name. Can you imagine how popular the game would be with the older gamers if it had the characters from Yu-Gi-Oh in it? Sure, they would've gotten a bunch of sales because of the license, but on the otherhand, they probably would've sold less copies overall and less systems, since I'm sure that game has brought in quite a few older gamers.

[cryptik76]

SmileyDude said:

I'm just happy that games like Advance Wars were released without some kind of licensed name.  Can you imagine how popular the game would be with the older gamers if it had the characters from Yu-Gi-Oh in it?  Sure, they would've gotten a bunch of sales because of the license, but on the otherhand, they probably would've sold less copies overall and less systems, since I'm sure that game has brought in quite a few older gamers.

I'm 27 years old, and I mainly bought my GBA because I could play Doom on it. I don't know if more mature games like Doom or Duke Nukem Advance have sold many systems (at least compared to Advance Wars), but for me, the novelty of being able to play first-person shooters on a hand-held system was enough to convince me to buy a GBA.

But then I discovered Castlevania: COTM, Golden Sun, Breath of Fire, Zelda, Advance Wars, and all those arcade collections. Now I'm a GBA addict.

[kisrael]

Haven't tried it, but my one complaint with GBA doom would be that they don't let shot corpses linger...that was one of my fav parts of the original, being able to see where I'd been, like a trail of breadcrumbs.

I took my week old GBA w/ busted pixels in and upgraded to the SP...

[cryptik76]

kisrael said:

Haven't tried it, but my one complaint with GBA doom would be that they don't let shot corpses linger...that was one of my fav parts of the original, being able to see where I'd been, like a trail of breadcrumbs.

I think they had to do that because otherwise the framerate would tank. I thought GBA Doom was good, but there are a lot of changes to it that any Doom fan would notice immediately (level design changes, entire levels changed, no Cyberdemon or Spiderdemon, no Invisible demons, a lot of power-ups missing, textures changed to more generic ones, green blood, etc.). I think most of these changes were made because of cartridge limitations.

The strange thing is, a different company did Doom II for the GBA, and it came out MUCH better. All of the levels, creatures, textures, sound effects, music, everything from the original Doom II is in the GBA version... except it still has disappearing corpses and green blood. That doesn't bother me so much because in Doom II the levels are smaller.

The only thing I miss is that "Sloooosh!" sound effect when you shoot an Imp or a soldier with a rocket and they turn into chunks.

[kisrael]

cryptik76 said:

I think they had to do that because otherwise the framerate would tank.

Yeah, I know. But a 486 could handle HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of corpses (well, I'm thinking of the last level of Doom II actually) without breaking a sweat. I'd put on a cheat code, let it play itself for like half an hour with monsters constantly generating, and it was fine. I think it crashed overnight though...

Quote

The strange thing is, a different company did Doom II for the GBA, and it came out MUCH better.  All of the levels, creatures, textures, sound effects, music, everything from the original Doom II is in the GBA version... except it still has disappearing corpses and green blood.  That doesn't bother me so much because in Doom II the levels are smaller.

Huh, good to know, I won't bother with Doom itself then, but maybe I'll try II.

[cryptik76]

kisrael said:

Yeah, I know. But a 486 could handle HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of corpses (well, I'm thinking of the last level of Doom II actually) without breaking a sweat. I'd put on a cheat code, let it play itself for like half an hour with monsters constantly generating, and it was fine. I think it crashed overnight though...

That's true. I don't know how the power of a GBA compares to a 486, though. Some of the larger outdoor locations in Doom have been compressed on the GBA. For instance, that large outdoor level in Episode 3 has been compressed, yet the framerate is still bad.

I think that maybe once developers learn the limitations of the GBA, they can better optimize games for it. Doom was among the first generation of first-person shooters on the system. They've been getting better since then (for example, Doom II and Duke Nukem Advance), and I think they'll get even better.

kisrael said:

Huh, good to know, I won't bother with Doom itself then, but maybe I'll try II.

Duke Nukem Advance is another one worth checking out. Reminds me a lot of Duke Nukem 3D for the PC (it even has some of the same sound effects, weapons, and characters).

[SmileyDude]

cryptik76 said:

That's true.  I don't know how the power of a GBA compares to a 486, though.

That's tough to gauge properlly -- the GBA has a 16mhz 32-bit RISC processor. The added registers that comes with a RISC chip is very handy. A good assembly programmer can get a lot more out of a ARM chip than a similarly spec'd 486. The problem is that the 486 isn't similarly spec'd -- they are much faster in the megahertz deptartment (well, depending on which 486 you are looking at ).

But, then again, the graphics chip in the GBA is much more capable than any PC video from that era -- so, for a lot of games, the difference in video alone can make a big impact.

Another limitation on the GBA is RAM -- I don't remember exactly what was standard on 486s back in the day (4 megs?) but whatever it was, it was more than 256k + 32k + 96k -- that's all the GBA has RAM wise. And the 96k chunck is video RAM, so it's not exactly usable for game data. This is certainly going to be a factor in keeping track of those dead bodies

[Vic George 2K3]

I personally would prefer games that can be enjoyed by any age group, rather than see games targeted for only one age group at the risk of alienating other age groups. I would rather see less of the "questionable morals" kind of games in the area of Grand Theft Auto.

[ussexplorer]

I have big hands, with big fingers. All of the Gameboy units are to small for me. That is why I like the gamegear. I can actually handle it. I have the same complaint about notebook keyboards.

Later,

Josh

[Defiance131]

MegaManFan said:

As far as most people are concerned, playing video games is "kiddie" anyway, even when you're playing seriously challenging games like Metroid Fusion, Warioland 4, Phantasy Star Collection and Castlevania: COTM.  So I've accepted that the perception of the general public is that I'm a 29 year old doof that still plays GameBoy when half the people I see in the store around me are 1/4th my age, and I'm okay with that.  They can make me grow up, but they can't take the kid out of me!  Tomorrow I'm gonna go get Donkey Kong Country. WHEEE!

Haven't gotten Phantasy Star Collection yet. But I'm about halfway done with Golden Sun and can't wait to start the second one. As a former Pokémon hater, I was converted after getting Ruby. My sense of humor is juvenile enough that I get a kick out of giving the Pokémon dirty names (bigferret wins tho, his first Pokémon was named "HoSlap"). I just picked up Sonic Pinball Party, and can't stop playing the NiGHTS level, or playing minigames with my Chao. Plus, I've got Puyo Pop and a fantastic version of Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo -- which is about as perfect as the version on Playstation.

Plus, since I did play Animal Crossing once upon a time, I *needed* a GBA to get my island and to scan cards. And of course, the SP does all of those things better.

In any event, it's not so much a question if something is too kiddie or not. It's a matter of whether or not the system has games you want to play, and if you have some extra cash to pick one up. Why does my husband have just about every version of Ms. Pac-man? Because they're there.

[kisrael]

Vic George 2K3 said:

I personally would prefer games that can be enjoyed by any age group, rather than see games targeted for only one age group at the risk of alienating other age groups.  I would rather see less of the "questionable morals" kind of games in the area of Grand Theft Auto.

I dunno, the trouble with "any age group" is that it makes sure everything is kid friendly, you lose your ability to say "this is for adults".

It's happened w/ movies. NC17 was introduced because-heck-maybe there are some things worthwhile for adults that kids aren't ready to deal with. The beautiful movie "Henry and June" kicked it off...adult in more than ways than our culture calls adult. But, NC17 quickly got the same damn stigma as X, so we're back to the usual gamut of what's safe to play in Iowa. (And Walmart has a similar effect on videogames)

[liveinabin]

I don't think it's GBA that's seen as particularly 'kiddie' but handheld gaming in general. Home gaming has, over the years, largely broken the stigma but handheld gaming still has some way to go.
It's just that you don't see very many adults out with their GBAs but you do see a lot of kids. Ergo - handheld gaming is seen as being for kids.
I'm sure it'll change eventually. Mobile gaming and, perhaps, Sonys input should shift it a bit. Nintendo probably won't be able to change opinions in this consoles lifetime. After all, it is STILL called the Gameboy and that, to most people, means:-
a) The system you see the kids playing on
b) The system you played on as a kid
personally, fuck em all, I don't care if people think I'm an infant playing Pokemon on the train - I'm having a lot more fun than they are:)

[Ze_ro]

cryptik76 said:

I thought GBA Doom was good, but there are a lot of changes to it that any Doom fan would notice immediately (level design changes, entire levels changed, no Cyberdemon or Spiderdemon, no Invisible demons, a lot of power-ups missing, textures changed to more generic ones, green blood, etc.).  I think most of these changes were made because of cartridge limitations.

If I recall correctly, GBA Doom was based on the Jaguar version, which also lacked all the things you mentioned, so that could account for it. I've never actually played GBA Doom, but I have played Jag Doom to death. It's still a good game, although the whole time I felt like I was missing things. The Jag version also lacks in-game music (although it plays during the end of level stats), has much brighter lighting than the PC version, no big-bosses or invisible demons, no blur artifact or light-amp, and has only 24 levels (+1 secret). The Jag version did have red blood though. Stupid Nintendo.

Is the last level in the GBA version called "Dis", consisting of only two rooms; one filled with Barons and the other filled with Cacodemons? If so, then I think that would seal it. That level first appeared on the Jaguar to replace the last boss fight from the PC version.

How's Duke Nukem Advance compare to the PC version? I imagine it's quite different, but do you actually get the feeling that you're playing a Duke Nukem game? Or does it just feel like a cheesy knock-off?

--Zero

[bargora]

I know what you mean when you talk about the "wall of kiddie" at the local (EB, Gamestop, etc.). Even stuff that's not licensed crap aimed at the 8-year old set usually has bright colorful packaging. Advance Wars and Super Puzzle Fighter II come to mind. And where's Doom and Doom II? They never even appeared at the local Gamestop stores in Cleveland. I went to ebay for Doom and Toys R Us for Doom II.

While it's true that Doom has the more hacked-up levels, an incomplete monster roster, and lower resolution as compared to Doom II it's still a fun little cart. And if you play the games on the "Nightmare" setting (which really is "Ultra-Violence" from the original games) (and you are playing it on Nightmare, right? You're not wussing out, right?), Doom has a better framerate than Doom II. Sometimes Doom II gets choppy enough that lining up a shot becomes annoying, at least untiil enough bodies hit the floor (and vanish) and the framerate improves.

All I'm saying is that you shouldn't count Doom out, especially since it's going for under $15 on ebay these days.