GameSpotting Revolution

We've got our dancin' shoes on and our Smile.dk CD on repeat in this week's episode of GameSpotting. When we're not frantically chasing after those scrolling arrows, we're wringing our hands raw in anticipation of Doom 3, celebrating 2D graphics, pondering viral marketing campaigns, and composing Samurai Shodown II-inspired poetry. If you dig this groove, drop us a line in our forums, or get off the wall and on the dance floor and write your own GuestSpotting column.

Cutting Below the Surface
Greg Kasavin/Executive Editor
"If people like getting so caught up with the idea that video games can cause so much harm in the real world, then I'd like to remind them that it's not so cut-and-dried."

Pleasant Surprises
Ricardo Torres/Senior Editor
"A funny thing has happened this year: The spirit of 2D has actually started to show itself again."

A League of Our Own
Alex Navarro/Associate Editor
"ESPN's league system is exactly the kind of thing most any serious football gaming fan has been waiting for since online play was introduced."

It's Done. Now Upgrade.
Jason Ocampo/Associate Editor
"It has me wondering whether we could make the entire system of hardware upgrades any more confusing to the consumer."

They're Like Cats
James Yu/Senior Hardware Editor
"From time to time, I'd catch Brad peeking over his cubicle wall to gaze longingly at whatever Radeon X800 or GeForce 6800 card was running in the test system."

Playing to Byzantium
Avery Score/Games Editor, Mobile
"Trading JAMMA ports for sunbeams, it doesn't look like you could even wield a sword."

Infectious Marketing
Adam Buchen/Data Producer
"Think about it: An Easter egg in a video trailer and a shoddily constructed Web site were all that was needed to create one of the most discussed topics on the Internet."

Stop the Necromancy!
Joshua Tolentino/GuestSpotter
"Is the industry so devoid of new ideas that simply trying something different has become a positive quality in and of itself?"

When I Was Your Age, Two Dimensions Was Plenty!
Old Man Whithers/Old-Timey GuestSpotter
GameSpotting is a feature for young and old alike--if you have fond memories of video games of yore, why not share them with the world with your own GuestSpotting column?

Cutting Below the Surface

By now this seems like beating a dead horse (if you'll pardon the expression)--the notion that a violent video game can be directly responsible for real-life violence and the competing notion that, actually, human beings should be directly accountable for their own actions. As you might expect, I'm a big proponent of the latter and an opponent of the former; I expect you probably feel the same way. So when, recently, a British tabloid sensationalized a tragic murder with the headline "MURDER BY PLAYSTATION," I became incensed--again, not because I believe for one second that the video game Manhunt resulted in one kid killing another kid, as the article and the victim's mother insist, but because this is another heinous example of scapegoating the game industry for society's own wretched problems. Don't misunderstand--my condolences go out to the victim and his family, and I can imagine that the mother would seek to find some sort of plausible explanation for the heinous crime that robbed her of her son. But I find the idea that there was some direct cause-and-effect relationship that this murder occurred as a clear-cut consequence of a session of Manhunt to be summarily crass.

There are too many anecdotal stories about how video games are to blame for this or that. They're an easy scapegoat. They're inanimate objects and cannot defend themselves; at best, their creators or their publishers can try to stick up for their work, but they'll always look biased when forced into a position of having to stick up for their actions. This country's entire legal system is built around the notion that people should never have to be forced into a position to personally defend themselves, and yet, when cases like this murder occur, suddenly there's all this finger-pointing at Rockstar Games, publisher of Manhunt--and of course, Rockstar is pressured into making an apology, when in fact, there's no proof yet that Rockstar's game is responsible for causing anybody any harm. Fortunately for Rockstar, I'm sure that's one company that can afford good legal counsel; they're going to need it, since the family of the deceased apparently intends to sue the company for corporate manslaughter. Meanwhile, Manhunt got pulled off the shelves in the UK, even though the game has a mature rating, which clearly indicates that the game is not to be sold to or played by children under the age of 18; it's an even stricter rating than the M rating here in the United States.

Last week, before any of this came to pass, I had an idea for this one feel-good article I wanted to write, about how I think video games can legitimately help someone through troubling times. It's a purely anecdotal claim I intended to make, since it was based solely on my personal experience--there's no scientific method to back it up and no far-reaching conclusion to be drawn. Anyway, what happened to me recently was that a surgeon decided that he needed to operate on me in a hurry; he suspected it was my appendix acting up, which is this useless, squiggly little organ in your abdomen that lies dormant, but in some people (like me), one day it decides to act up, and this can be bad. I had never had an operation before, much less an emergency operation, so I frankly wasn't thrilled at the idea of getting knocked out and cut open.

Then again, this isn't brain surgery we're talking about, but rather a "pretty straightforward" procedure, as the surgeon put it; so I wasn't too nervous. I just wanted to get on with my life, and to be quite honest, I didn't want to lose time from work. I had the foresight to bring my Game Boy Advance and a copy of Super Mario World to the hospital and was playing it in the recovery room minutes after I came to after the operation. The game kept me alert, in good spirits, and surprisingly contented considering I was stuck spending a Sunday night in a hospital ward.

I recovered quickly from the operation, to the surprise of the surgeon and his staff. I was back home in less than 24 hours from the moment I checked into the emergency room. The surgeon chalked up my speedy healing process partly to my youth; I chalk it up partly to my, let's call it, dedication to games.

Every moment in the process while at the hospital reminded me of some recent gaming experience. As I lay there on the verge of getting knocked out by the general anesthesia, restrained and flat on my back, I was reminded of that late-game part in The Chronicles of Riddick; if you've played it, you know what I'm talking about. Like tough guy Riddick, I lay there thinking, "I want to do whatever it takes to get out of here as quickly as possible." Then, as mentioned previously, Mario kept me from getting bored once there wasn't anything worth watching on TV anymore. Playing that game again is largely what inspired me to write last week's column. Again: I didn't want to waste any time being sick.

I thought a lot about the healing process itself. Master Chief's recharging shields. Riddick's health boxes. Dungeons & Dragons hit points and constitution scores. Hit points are easily restored, so why not in real life? Mind over matter. I thought a lot about how games rarely simulate the deterioration of health; you're either fully alive or fully dead, but most games (for gameplay reasons) don't make you start limping around or having trouble sitting up and things like that. I thought about this and reaffirmed to myself that, yes, this is a good thing; feeling wounded sucks. I was motivated, almost impatiently motivated, to recover quickly. Video game characters feel no pain and show no signs of poor health, even if they're just one little fleabite's distance between life and death. That's damned inspiring. I'm very serious--these thoughts helped me to get better, fast. Special thanks to my family for all their love and support.

Last week, I chose not to write this story because I felt it was pointlessly personal and overly self-indulgent. But now, given the context of yet another video game blaming incident, I cannot hold it back. If people like getting so caught up with the idea that video games can cause so much harm in the real world, then I'd like to remind them that it's not so cut-and-dried. I've said many times before that, judging from my own experience, a lifetime of playing games has a profound impact on a person's psyche, one way or another. Precisely what this impact is, though, should be the subject of scientific study, rather than baseless speculation. At any rate, while my thoughts often dwell toward games, I know this much--when I got sick recently for the first time in a long time, it wasn't video games that healed me; first it was an experienced surgeon and his team, and then it was my intent to get better.

Pleasant Surprises

So, I've lamented the lack of old-school 2D action on today's generation of consoles once or twice over the years. But a funny thing has happened this year: The spirit of 2D has actually started to show itself again. We've seen flashes of goodness in all of SNK's 2D games on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox and in The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures on the GameCube, all of which have made all seem right in the world. But what's really gotten me excited is the appearance of some games that are doing more than just keeping the 2D home fires burning; they're actually taking up the torch and marching forward, breathing new life into the shooter genre and style of gameplay, which has been treading water for some time. While it would be easy to call out something like Konami's upcoming Gradius V, recently released in Japan and due here in September, or the mighty Metal Slug series, I'm going to throw out two names that may or may not be on your radar: 03 and The Behemoth's Alien Hominid and Acclaim's The Red Star.

We put the spotlight on Alien Hominid earlier this week with an exclusive first look at the game, so I won't go on about the game too much in the wake of my big fat love letter to it. I will say that it feels good to get behind this game because it's a blast to play and because the crew behind it is a thinkin' bunch of gamers who have a lot of potential. While I'm a fan of the established game development houses that make the stuff I enjoy devoting my time to, much like any red-blooded gamer should be, I've always had a soft spot for new blood. Let's face it, folks, the developers we dig won't be around forever, so it never hurts to look into and support up-and-comers with talent, which Team Hominid certainly seems to have. Now the game isn't done yet, so I can't bust out the Krusty Brand Seal of Approval and utter the definitive proclamation of "best game ever," but it's looking good and is going in a positive direction.

Acclaim's The Red Star is the higher profile of the two games because of its comic roots: The game is based on a critically acclaimed comic series from Christian Gossett and a talented team. The richly drawn and well-written series is a good, meaty comic that has wound up becoming a good, meaty shooter. While the game sports a shiny 3D exterior and polygonal characters and environments, if you strip all the polygons away you have a tight little 2D shooter. What's especially noteworthy about the game is that it's being developed here in the US by Acclaim's Austin Studios. Why is that noteworthy? Sit down and play the game for a bit, and you'll swear the bullet-heavy mayhem came out of some crazed Japanese studio. While it's tough, it's the kind of tough where when you die--and you will--you'll invariably be kicking yourself because you'll know what you did wrong. From what we've played so far, The Red Star is a game about bullet patterns, and it forces you to be quick on your toes to identify them or wind up dead.

I'll toss in a general disclaimer and say that I haven't been playing the final versions of either game and that there's always the chance that something could go horribly wrong, but let's cross our fingers that nothing goes wrong. As games continue to evolve, we're going to need new ideas. Games that offer completely original concepts or just put a new twist on something tried and true are what will inspire the next generation of developers.

A League of Our Own

For all the process and professionalism we pride ourselves with when it comes to our reviews here at GameSpot, the fact is, no system is absolutely perfect. I'm not talking about our scoring system, or even our basic review methodologies. Inherently, there are just going to be some games that cannot be covered 100 percent upon their respective launches. Case in point: online games. Most online games can be properly tested before a review goes live, but from time to time, certain online features, for whatever reason, just aren't ready for prime time when the game hits store shelves. A perfect example of this is the recently reviewed (by yours truly) ESPN NFL 2K5. While we were able to test out all the essential head-to-head stuff, as well as all the other little silly bells and whistles like friends-related features and such, the one thing we weren't able to test out was leagues. This year's ESPN NFL title features full tournament and season leagues complete with live rosters. As of now, they're up and running (albeit with a couple of kinks still being worked out), and I felt like I ought to take this opportunity to gush like a giddy schoolgirl about how utterly awesome this league system is.

As a longtime football nerd (yes, just like anything else, you can get obscenely geeky over something as stereotypically macho as football), one of the things I've always wanted to see in a football game was an online franchise mode. Part of my football nerddom is an inexplicable obsession with stats, numbers, and the management aspects of football, which has often parlayed into my need to compete in fantasy football year after year. While I'm sure I'll be getting my fantasy football game on again this year, much of my desire this time around is being satiated by these new ESPN leagues. They aren't quite up to franchise mode status, but they're damn close.

Now then, of course I realize that ESPN NFL Football had leagues last year as well. However, there are two distinct differences that make this year's leagues superior. One difference is that this year they're available on the Xbox as well as on the PS2 (whereas last year, only the PS2 had leagues), and then there is the addition of the live rosters. The ability to alter, shift, and play with your rosters is a big part of what makes things like fantasy football enjoyable. Being able to make trades and have realistic injuries in ESPN leagues is a pretty big deal, especially when you have as deep a defensive roster as my beloved Patriots do, and you can dangle pretty well-rated linebackers up as trade bait without any detriment to your starting lineup. Insert pseudo-maniacal laughter here.

Aside from the roster stuff, another big part of what makes ESPN's league system so cool is the presentation of it all. Aside from being able to track league stats and transactions from within the game, you can also visit the ESPN Video Games Web site, and from there, you can read it just like any NFL stat-tracking site. Sections for box scores, injuries, trades, message boards, and even full play-by-plays of each game are scattered throughout the site, as well as little bits of coolness, such as highlighted players from recent games and league news that can be posted by the administration. It's actually kind of creepy how well the site mimics a realistic NFL stat-tracking site. The play-by-plays are exceptionally detailed, and all the stat stuff is just cool as all hell to a football dork like me.

OK, with all of that said, perhaps I am getting a tad overexuberant about all this. I mean, yeah, it's just online football with stat tracking. But, hey, I am the target audience of stuff like this, AKA an armchair quarterback with an unhealthy obsession with statistics. So, of course I'm exuberant. ESPN's league system is exactly the kind of thing most any serious football gaming fan has been waiting for since online play was introduced, and if you've gotten yourself a copy of the game by now, I highly recommend you get a league going.

And on a slightly different note: How about that Ricky Williams story, eh? Retiring after five seasons? Has anyone else made the connection yet that he was on the cover of NFL Street? The EA cover curse strikes again! But, then, that's a subject for another GameSpotting...

It's Done. Now Upgrade.

For the past couple of years, my brother-in-law has resisted upgrading his computer. Not that he's a neophyte when it comes to computers; he's a programmer. It's just that he doesn't want to spend a lot of money on computer components until Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 ships. He really wants to make sure he has the best hardware to play them, and if he had listened to my advice last year, he would have bought last year's expensive video card only to see both games be delayed a full year. But with Doom 3 now officially done, I sent him a message recently with the cheery news that he can now blow hundreds of dollars on his computer. (Though I'm sure he probably wishes Doom 3 had finished a few months earlier, before he bought a house.)

Meanwhile, my roommate finally bit the bullet last weekend and bought a new motherboard, memory, and a powerful 2.8GHz Pentium IV to replace his decrepit 750MHz Pentium III system that he's been using for years now. The catalyst for his upgrade is Doom 3 as well. (This is spurring some of my competitive nature, as I feel like upgrading my still-formidable rig even more. But right now I'm torn between buying a new processor, blowing it all on one of the next-generation video cards, or waiting just a tad bit longer for one of the 512MB video cards that you'll need if you really want to play Doom 3 at full detail.)

I can't help but feel Doom 3 is exactly what the PC industry needed, and it couldn't have come sooner. We haven't seen a PC game of this magnitude for a while now. More importantly, Doom 3 is probably going to spur a huge amount of hardware upgrading, if my brother-in-law and roommate are any examples. I can only imagine that a lot of gamers are taking a hard look at their systems and figuring that it's time to finally buy a new video card, especially now that we have a game that will take the latest cards to their limits rather than just run Quake III benchmarks faster.

It's not just Doom 3, though. We have two blockbuster titles due out before year's end: Half-Life 2, assuming Valve actually finishes the game as expected, and The Sims 2, which will ship in September, come hell or high water. Either one of those games should also spur hardware upgrades. The Sims 2 is a particularly interesting case, mainly because it will extend to a much broader audience than Doom 3. After all, most serious gamers probably already had relatively solid systems, but causal gamers--the kind who make up the vast audience for The Sims--don't put that much focus on their hardware. The Sims is the biggest thing to a truly mainstream PC game on the market. Having seen The Sims 2, I can't help but be impressed by the game's potential. I'm sure that EA and Maxis are going to bend over backward to ensure that the game will run on as many machines as possible (if, for no other reason, to maximize sales), but you're still going to need a decent system if you want the game to look its best and run smoothly. I imagine a lot of folks who almost never upgrade will look into either upgrading components or figure that it's time to buy a new system anyway.

It also has me wondering whether we could make the entire system of hardware upgrades any more confusing to the consumer. I play games for a living, and I get confused at times over the arcane branding system used to describe all the different video cards out there. There's a mess of different kinds of chipsets, including the Radeon 9200s, 9600s, 9800s, x600s, and x800s, and the GeForce 4s, the GeForce FXs, and the GeForce 6800s. And then there are different versions of each chip, including MX, SE, GT, plain vanilla, Pro, and Ultra. Throw in the number of rendering pipes on each card, the speed of the memory and the memory bus, whether a card takes up one or two slots, how much power a card needs, and more. Needless to say, buying a card can be a nightmare of choices. Thankfully, I can pester GameSpot senior hardware editor James Yu all the time about video cards (to his amusement and consternation), but obviously most people don't have that option. (You can check out James' excellent hardware coverage on the site, though.)

There has got to be a simpler method of branding hardware without turning it into an alphabet soup of letters and numbers. To me, it seems like a system designed by marketing people for marketing people. Perhaps this is one of those rare instances when Apple gets something right by simplifying its naming convention. You've got iPod and iPod Mini, but never the iPod FX 5950 SE. Of course, the iPod is a consumer electronics product aimed at the mainstream, but if we really want PC gaming to grow, shouldn't we make everything about PC gaming simpler?

They're Like Cats

I didn't notice until another GameSpot editor mentioned it.

"They're like cats."
"What?"
"Whenever you get new packages, they come running--my friend's cat runs straight to the kitchen just like that whenever it hears the can opener."

I guess it never occurred to me as unusual. As a hardware editor, I receive all the new hardware samples for testing and review. I think it's perfectly natural for the other editors to be curious about the packages that arrive at my desk. It's been quite a while since they've had new hardware in the office. I often walk around the editorial area to check out all the new games that are being previewed or reviewed, so who am I to hoard all the hardware?

Once in a while, whenever someone asks about a box on my desk, I'll open the package, briefly explain the product in the box, and answer any questions that come up. It helps me figure out which features to highlight and what issues to explain when it's time to write about the product.

The GameSpot editors located in close proximity to my desk have shown great interest in new video cards, and, with the recent Nvidia and ATI graphics card launches this summer, there has literally been a parade of new cards coming into the office. For several months, from April through June, I had a test system set up in the adjacent cubicle running benchmarks on whatever new video card had arrived that week. From time to time, I'd catch Brad peeking over his cubicle wall to gaze longingly at whatever Radeon X800 or GeForce 6800 card was running in the test system.

The game editors are, of course, always willing to pitch new video card story ideas and often volunteer to run the necessary tests themselves. Just yesterday Jason offered to take home an ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition to see "how it stands up to dust in the average American apartment... It's an extended test, you understand." I commended Jason on his desire to raise awareness about the ever-growing dust menace, but politely declined his offer.

Ryan Davis was actually the first editor to score a next-gen loaner card from the hardware lab. I was trying to track down a Radeon 9800 Pro and a GeForce 4 MX for an upcoming system upgrade article, and Ryan happened to have both cards in his possession. We currently have a number of ATI Radeon X800 Pro cards in the office right now, so I offered to let him use one while we used his cards for benchmarking. Since then Alex has let it be known that he has a spare 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 at home, and Brad has asked on numerous occasions if we need a GeForce4 Ti. He says he can pull the video card out of his system "in under 30 seconds, lickety-split." Apparently, he's watched "a lot of NASCAR."

I'm starting to worry a little about Brad. Whenever we talk about Doom 3 and video card upgrades, he steeples his fingers, and the conversation eventually ends with him looking at nothing in particular with a pensive expression on his face. I'm beginning to suspect that our recent Quake revival is all part of a master plan for him to get his hands on one of the new video cards in the hardware lab. We started playing Quake again about a week ago--a few one-on-one deathmatch games for nostalgia's sake. I think he's been sandbagging our DM6 matches, hoping that I'll be open to a friendly wager involving a GeForce 6800 Ultra or a similar caliber video card. Sorry, Brad. It's not going to happen.

Don't think I didn't notice when you ran that perfectly timed "mega health to red armor" route.

Playing to Byzantium

Would I recognize you
Without that pied polychrome,
If your face weren't stained glass
Ignited by 65,536 ever-shifting panes--
Fueled only by whimsy,
And by the occasional clink of metal?

I approach you,
Deliberate, territorial.
De Niro swagger,
Danza delivery.

Right now I'm thanking
The busted bulb above me.
Kombat chiaroscuro--
Maybe you can't see me sweat.

It's just a jump to the left,
And I am called to arms
By dusty balefire,
Optatus of phantasmal finger.

The Calling of St. Matthew--
I'm told
There's more to life
Than collecting quarters.

So I place one on the machine,
Gingerly, but deliberately--
Like scolding a willful child.

I size you up,
Though I can only see your eyes
And your fingertips--
Incidentally, that's all you'll need.

Mutually stricken
By chimerical cramps--
We stretch and massage
The most remote of muscles.
Splash-screen sacrament.
Pre-pugilistic protocol.

FIGHT! FIRST HIT! POW! IPPON!
I vow to retrench,
To study Sun Tzu
To study your style--
Above all, to return.

Would I recognize you
On the outside,
Diurnal fulgor
Exposing once-hidden features?
Trading JAMMA ports for sunbeams,
It doesn't look like you
Could even wield a sword.

No.
Outside, you don't exist.
I don't recognize you;
I never met you--
A fighting game fugue.

Tonight, I'll jog my memory,
Pounding yours to pieces.

When I can't tell you from Haomaru,
And, ostensibly, I am Shun-Di
We'll feud anew.

...best two out of three?

Infectious Marketing

In mid-July Microsoft announced that as part of its marketing campaign for November's Halo 2 it was going to release a theatrical trailer for the game at a select number of Loews movie theaters. Indeed, starting July 16, the trailer was shown before a number of movies, along with the other standard advertisements for Coca-Cola C2, Amex, and Ashen for the N-Gage. You'd think with all these commercials we have to watch, ticket prices would start to go down, but alas, that is a topic best saved for another day.

As expected, a week later, Microsoft released this trailer on the Internet, and it was, of course, downloaded in very large numbers. If you were paying attention, you might have noticed the URL that flashes at the end of the trailer for just a split second. The address that appears is www.ilovebees.com--and the Web site that it takes you to is truly bizarre. At first glance it appears to be a poorly constructed personal Web site about beekeeping, but that notion is quickly dispelled when you receive your first discomforting message, with several countdowns until "network throttle erodes" and "medium metastasizes" and finally a countdown to August 24, on which something called "wide awake and physical" happens.

There's no doubt that Halo 2 is an incredibly anticipated game--more so than any Xbox release before it. The Halo universe has spawned several novels and action figures and various other marketing opportunities, as well as a huge audience of diehard fans. Any rumor or tidbit from Bungie or Microsoft about the game is immediately disseminated by the game's thousands of fans, so just imagine the intense speculation that ilovebees.com brought about across the Internet. On the Bungie forums, there are thousands of posts related to this mystery, and they're not alone. Even our own forums have evoked some of this brow-furrowing discussion and puzzle-solving. Many people claim to have figured out the solution, but problematically no one even really knows what question they're actually trying to answer.

So what do the random quotes from literature, biblical texts, and mythology all have to do with Halo 2? Some people suggest that perhaps it has to do with the story. Maybe Captain Keyes somehow manages to return to Earth, for instance. Or maybe there's a new race of spiderlike creatures that humans and the Covenant will have to deal with, like the Flood. Or maybe it has to do with a demo release. Some people have even gone on to suggest that it might indicate a surprise early release date, even though Microsoft has built up a huge campaign to promote its November 9 release and would potentially lose thousands of preorders by moving the release date forward. Yeah, I severely doubt that last one would happen.

But it is fun to try to guess what any of it means. It's full of text like this:

"marks down the readings in the tiny thing that passes in her for a mind. I guess I should be grateful but -

Whoa. Not CP ancestor packets. This is something different.

Quick quick quick quick - parse this protocol and find some kind of eyeball out. Sister you just made a mistake because this is my *meat* this is what I do and you are -

GOT IT.

I'm not asleep this time"

Hard to figure out where to start, isn't it? Nonetheless, some very clever people out there have begun to piece together the seemingly discordant clues and continue to work at it. Will it ever be truly solved? I don't know. With my luck, it will have been solved or revealed by the time this goes to press, making this article appear rather passé.

Nonetheless, when taking into account the "big picture," my interpretation of all this is that Microsoft and/or Bungie has created an amazingly effective viral marketing campaign. Think about it: an Easter egg in a video trailer and a shoddily constructed Web site were all that was necessary to create one of the most discussed topics on the Internet. I was first sent the link by a friend, and after becoming thoroughly puzzled and nonetheless engrossed by it, I let several other friends know about it. They in turn passed the word around to their friends, and so on. It's all kinds of cheap publicity, and it's effective in generating customer loyalty. People are actually grateful to Bungie for forcing them to figure out how the writings of Jonathan Swift relate to the social structure of insects, and how that all relates to Halo.

It's really one of the most effective types of marketing there is. I myself became so intrigued by the Halo mythos I was reading about that I ordered the first of the Halo books. Of course it doesn't hurt that people were dying to get Halo 2 in the first place, but this kind of advertising has worked for less popular products in all kinds of markets in the past. I suppose maybe when you exploit the natural curiosity that's in most of us, an enigmatic viral campaign can work wonders. I honestly wouldn't mind seeing this kind of thing in the future, if future attempts were half as creative as ilovebees.com.

Stop the Necromancy!

We all joke about it. They'll be there when our kids drag home their new PlayStation 5s in 2014, and they'll keep making 'em and remaking 'em long after the rest of the world has fallen to giant invading armies of radioactive cockroaches. They're the classic games and the franchise games, the flow of sequels and remakes that keeps on going and going, further even than that pink bunny.

I'm pretty much of the opinion that there are far too many classic game revivals and sequels coming out these days. E3 2004 was a mess of sequels and remakes, with true innovation scarce and commercialism filling the industry to the seams. It seems publishers can think of little to do these next two years but sell your good ole days back to you, porting ancient NES titles like Excitebike and Ice Climbers to the GBA and carting out the latest game graphics engine draped in the royal raiment of a 7-year-old (but still quite good) landmark first-person shooter. We've seen unique games shoehorned into old brands "as insurance." And, if rumors are to be believed, our big console companies once rejected perfectly original and serviceable game concepts on the basis of whether the graphics are 3D or not.

Everywhere you look the past comes screaming back into your face, from last year's World War II games to next month's Vietnam games to last month's Tom Clancy's Wet Dream Pseudo Near Future But Actually Just Cold War Rehash Scenario. What happened to putting trust in a new title? Really, would a bad game be any better if you placed a famous title next to it? I'll concede that The Chronicles of Riddick and Spider-Man 2 rock, but these are the exceptions rather than the rule. And the mere fact that such coasters as Charlie's Angels exist proves that a title can't make a game.

Ask yourselves: Would the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time still totally rule if he was, say, Prince of a fictional Middle-Eastern nation? The answer: Yes. He would still totally run on those walls like we all wish we could. The way I see it, the new Ninja Gaiden would be just as kickin' if it were called something else. Sure we couldn't fantasize about Hayabusa-san anymore, but we'd still be killing like a hundred guys like that. I'm not saying that classic game revivals or seminal series suck. In fact, I'm reaffirming that good games can often get sequels or remakes that are just as good or better. I can recognize that Metroid Prime ruled, despite my having no GameCube, and Doom 3 will hopefully provide us with a wonderful new game engine that developers can use to make other, better games on top of. Half-Life 2 will make the little hobby we spend our free cash on into an even more stuponfucious extravagance to love and cherish.

It's not that we shouldn't have sequels or try to relive the old glories that gave us the lovin', but we should be more open to the "weird" game concepts cooking up in some idealistic developer's heads. I mean, the Japanese just made a Yoshinoya game (which conveniently holds its own GameSpace on this very site). A game about serving beef bowls. Beef bowls. What I implore our industry to do is to feel safer dropping the 2's and 3's and wacky subtitles (Pandora Tomorrow? Athena Sword? What's next? Snarky Pickle Zeus?) and childhood reminiscences. On the other hand, we, the players, also owe something to the industry by demanding that the industry focus less on feeding our nostalgia back to us and more on giving us a new reason to wonder. Old pizza might still taste good, but one day we'll find out the hard way that we waited too long to throw it out.

Games like Incredible Crisis, Mister Mosquito, and WarioWare Inc.: Mega MicroGame$ are now lauded simply for trying something different. Is the industry so devoid of new ideas that simply trying something different has become a positive quality in and of itself? Review scores get boosted simply for bunking the formula, regardless of the game's actual playability. Such great and unique experiences as the romance-simulation/tactical strategy mixtures that are the Sakura Taisen games remain on Japanese shelves and in the minds of planners at Sega Japan thanks to our famous aversion to risk.

But for all my talk about championing new and original concepts, our industry would not be so profitable now, or even nearly as prominent as the present, without the ranks of high-profile, classic titles and franchise releases that modern game companies are built on the backs of. Which is why I eagerly await the release of Final Fantasy XII and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.