Too much nostalgia

There is a new Punch-Out game coming for Wii. It let's you use the classic controller, nearly all of the characters are re-hashed from old Punch-Outs, and the only thing that looks to be updated is the graphics. And the jump from SNES sprites to Wii graphics is not that huge of a jump, honestly. Next month, millions of people will pay $50 for a game they already have. There won't be an online component to school middle-aged Wii players across the country. There probably won't even be a multiplayer component aside from a few party/mini-games. You will memorize patterns and use your reflexes to defeat boxers you've already defeted while moving up through ranks you've already attained 20 years ago.

Nostalgia is nice. Street Fighter IV took the best of the old, polished it to perfection, and added new, improved features. Punch-Out is taking the best of the old, and polishing it to perfection... and that's it. There are supposedly only two new fighters in the whole game, and the only one revealed so far is the incredibly boring-looking Disco Kid. He flashes white before he punches. Oooohhh innovative! Not.

Nintendo fans are so starved for "hardcore" games that they will gobble up any game that even appears to allude to the company's former glory in the 8- and 16-bit days, even when the games bring absolutely nothing new to the table. I understand the mentality of remaking a game. It's a guaranteed seller in a market in which financial risks are increasingly hard to justify. Okami's poor sales single-handedly shut down an entire studio. Still, while Nintendo fans may not always crave something completely different from what they've played before (who wouldn't want to play the next Metroid or Mario?), they do want something better than what we've already seen. Without progress there is only stagnation, and the Wii is starting to stink.

Good things come to those who wait

If you have Xbox Live Gold and you're not an automatically renewing member, sooner or later, it will expire. After that time, you will log into Xbox Live one day and it will demand of you, "Give us money or revert to (gasp!) Silver status!" Honestly, I didn't play many games online. Sure, I spent a good chunk of time climbing the Rock Band leaderboards, and there's plenty of SF IV achievements that you can only get by playing online, but it was never really a big deal to me. Growing up, I was one of those gamers that lived in his parents' basement, gobbling up the latest RPG's while effectively ignoring the fact that there was a big glorious world right outside full of girls and war, happiness and regret. Now that seemingly everyone is online, it's hard to keep myself from even not having the option. I started looking around for a new year-long Gold card in stores, because if you buy it in real life you get the 13th month free! I found it cheapest at Sam's Club - $43 for 13 months. Not too shabby, less than 4 bucks a month, even after tax.

Then today, I got an e-mail from Microsoft itself! "Come back, we miss you. Here, have a year of Gold for $40!" Sold. Now I can go back to ignoring my "friends" and playing online once every few months. At least my dashboard won't continuously remind me that I don't have Gold and am not hip enough to hang with their crew. Passive aggressive Microsoft jerks.

Part VI - What makes fighting games so great?

Fighting games are all about one-on-one competition. Having the skills to best somebody in a match, whether you're online or sitting next to them on a couch or at the national EVO Tournament, is a huge ego boost. Winning a fair fight against a peer gives you a great sense of accomplishment and power. Losing hurts, too, though, but it makes you want to try harder, to practice, to become better, to be the best.

There have been many fighting games over the years, from Street Fighter to Guilty Gear to Dead or Alive to Marvel Vs. Capcom to Tekken, and they've all shared one thing in common: two people enter, and one person leaves. There is a lot of testosterone flowing around the fighting field with all the one-upsmanship inherent in the battles. The well-balanced fighting games are never about button mashing - they about about counter attacks, blocking, canceling, and waiting for your chance to strike with a well-placed combo.

Super Smash Bros., while technically a fighter, is more of a party game that you pull out to play with a bunch of friends. "Pure" fighting games like SFIV won't allow you to win if you merely mash buttons. I think that's the appeal. To be good at fake fighting, just like real fighting, takes a lot of practice. There are strategies all over bookstands and the Internet about how to be and beat the best in the world (including this humorous but ultimately accurate Ken flowchart). The national champions know all about how to best utilize their distance from their opponent, their combos and special moves, and their blocks and counters and throws. Just the fact that people can devote hours a day to one game says there must be something important there. Many fighting games have the "easy to learn, difficult to master" appeal, and, hopefully, they won't go away.

Quake 3.1

So the Quake Live Beta has been up for awhile now, and it's fun. However, it's not impressive. It is merely a free Quake 3.

You spawn. You find armor and a rocket launcher. You try to kill others while not dying. Sure, there are assorted game variants like Capture the Flag and Deathmatch, but nothing that hasn't been done before just as well. The graphics are about PS2 quality, a far cry from other PC shooters like, well, Far Cry 2.

It's not new, but it's still fun, and it's free. But a lot of older, similar games are just about as free. You can download the original Half-Life off Steam for $4.99 (or free on BitTorrent LOL). It's not a $60 next-gen game. But it does remind you why you play Quake 3 so much back in the good ol' days. Nostalgia is neat. But Street Fighter IV shows that it can be even neater than just a re-hash. Well, for $60.