 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 They don’t make 'em like they used to. By Kevin Bowen | Mar. 23, 2003 Like any other industry, the video game biz has its ups and downs, highs and lows, upswings and downturns. And its fair share of unfortunate fads. For example, a couple years ago when Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider games were generating a lot of buzz, every other new game on store shelves seemed to be some sort of third-person action\adventure that primarily involved staring at the shapely backside of a groaning, attractive young female heroine. Different types of games come go for a variety of reasons, mostly technological ones. Many of the popular games of today simply couldn’t be done fifteen years ago, and the popular games of fifteen years ago now seem rather quaint. That being said, here’s a list of ten types of video game sub-genres which are either in decline, not as popular as they used to be, or pretty much dead. 10. Space Shooter or "Shmups"  The glory days of Shmups are long gone. Thanks to games like Ikaruga the Space Shooter isn’t quite dead yet, but they certainly ain’t the powerhouse they once were. Back in the early arcade days, pretty much every coin-op involved spaceships shooting at aliens, other spaceships, or space rocks. Why? Well, for one thing, outer space was really easy to render on the simple hardware of that era: just throw a couple white dots on the already black screen and boom: you’re an astronaut with a laser gun! Unfortunately, most modern gamers seem to find most Shmups repetitive, difficult, passé, and generally unrewarding. Thus, recent Shmups haven’t sold particularly well, and publishers have little interest in appeasing the relatively small, hardcore fan base. 9. Puzzle  Bejeweled, probably the most popular puzzler of recent years. Puzzle games are probably no less popular than they used to be, but there are far fewer commercial releases. Quick, name three puzzle games released for PS2, Xbox, or Gamecube within the past two years. Can you think of any? There aren't many. These days, most gamers are not interested in slapping down $49.95 for a traditional puzzle game when there are plenty of similar things available online for free. And since puzzle games don’t require fancy graphics, so there’s really no need to buy a needlessly complicated Xbox port of Tetris when you can play pretty much exactly the same thing on your Game Boy. 8. Light Gun  Even the first video game system, Ralph Baer's "Brown Box" (demonstrated here) had a light gun game. Light gun games have always been considered somewhat of a novelty, but at least during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras there was a little effort made to support them. Nintendo sold a lot of NES’s bundled with a Zapper and Duck Hunt, for example, and I can remember having at least three other games laying around I could use the gun with. Today, none of the three major consoles have official light guns. GameCube has no light gun games at all. House of The Dead 3, one of the better light gun games of late (which isn’t saying much) plays better with a control pad than with the unofficial Mad Catz Blaster, which kind of defeats the purpose. Sure, any game that requires wacky additional accessories like dance pads, fishing reels, or maracas can be lumped into this category, but light gun games have been around the longest. Maybe the novelty has just worn off? Next: Dot eating » Page: 1 2 3 4 |
Previous Top 10
Most Popular
Video Games
Powered By PriceGrabber
|
||||
