2000-2009: A Decade of gaming in Review

Folks, the 1990s were a great time to be a gamer, regardless if it was SNES, Genesis, N64, Playstation, Saturn, Game Boy, Game Gear, PC, Neo Geo, Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Dreamcast. I mean, why can't we take Glenn Beck's advise and return to a simpler time, back when we didn't know if a game was good or shovelware? Or a time where voice acting in CD-based games would make my ears bleed.

But alas, it's been a rough decade for gaming, regardless who was ahead. How was it rough? Why was it rough? I'll tell you why in my Decade of gaming in Review

1) The Playstation 2: Sony got something right with the Playstation 1: Games that were made with a Japanese audience in mind, which is what the SNES was based around. Unfortunately, when the PS2 came around, they started to appeal to newer audiences. NEWER AUDIENCES! I felt like I was betrayed when people slurped up Grand Theft Auto, Madden, Kingdom Hearts, Katamari Damacy, Splinter Cell, Max Payne, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, Devil May Cry.

Whatever happened to appealing to the Weeaboo audience? I mean real games like C: The Contra Adventure, Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, Spawn the Eternal, The Fifth Element, and Super Bubble Pop. Now those are games.

Of course, this leads to number 2

2) SEGA going 3rd party: SEGA, what happened? I enjoyed your SEGA CD and 32X. Sure they were worthless overall, but I didn't care. They were better ideas than the Saturn or Dreamcast. You started out creating this unnecessary pieces of hardware that you could hook up to the Genesis that had a mediocre array of games. And now you fell and became a 3rd party developer. I was hoping you could create an adaptor to the Dreamcast that would make it rival the PS2.

That's not the only criticism SEGA gets from me

3) 3D Sonic games: No, I'm not talking about how messy the gameplay is. My real beef with 3D Sonic games: It teaches our kids that it is okay to run faster than cars. SEGA, you almost came close to shutting down the car industry with Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2. Sonic Heroes and Secret Rings continued that encouragement to run as fast as the speed of sound. Thankfully, Sonic Next-Gen finally brought the kids back to earth, but when Sonic Unleashed came out, I weeped because it returned to teaching kids to run faster and faster.

SEGA, I don't want to call you out on trying to destroy the auto industry, but if you keep this up, I may have no other choice

4) The Game Boy Advance: When I saw this system, my jaw dropped. A handheld that can mimic the 16-bit era of gaming, minus 2 buttons? And its games library was also no slouch, yet something about it wasn't right. 3 Castlevanias? 3 Sonic games? 4 Mario games? 2 Metroid Games? 3 Mega Man series? 2 of the best Street Fighter games? a Mario and Luigi RPG? Return of Final Fantasy(Which we'll get to it later)? More Pokemon than the GBC era? What were they thinking? Those huge amount of games kicked my wallet to the ground and smashed a table on it. CURSE YOU NINTENDO*Shakes fist*

5) Halo: Referred to as the darling of the X-Box era by many an X-Box fanboy, Halo started a revolution that would change the face of FPS on the consoles, not that Goldeneye or DooM did that. The problem was that this game made cursing at each other in an online game a sport(Back then, Halo 1 had no online, so it was a disappointment). But what was so great about Halo? There were more interesting games on the X-Box like Nightcaster, Blood Wake, Star Wars Obi-Wan, Azurick, and Bruce Lee. Ahh, the games that would make the X-Box suck it.(Source: Maddox's article: Seven Reasons why the Xbox can suck it)

Of course, my hands still hurt because of Microsoft's first controller for the old X-Box

6) Game compilations: Industry, packing in a ton of old games and releasing it on current generation systems is no way to win any respect. I'm taking about Sonic Mega Collection, Namco Museum, Mega Man Anniversary Collection, Midway Arcade Treasures 1-3, Taito Legends, Capcom Classics Collection, Activision Anthology, and Zelda Collector's Edition to name a few.

If I wanted to play these games, I would dig out my old systems, find the missing components, hope they work and play them the way they were meant to be. I don't want to relive my past with these newfangled collections.

7) Resident Evil Remake: Speaking of which, Capcom thought it was fine to recreate Resident Evil on the Gamecube. What happened to the blocky graphics? The bad voice acting? I WANT MY JILL SANDWICH DAMNIT!

8) Kingdom Hearts: The only game I believed was the best last gen was Final Fantasy X, a game starring a beach bum and his quest to save the world. I thought that redeemed SquareSoft, but then this came. A Disney game? AN ACTUAL DISNEY GAME THAT WAS GOOD? That's ridiculous. There was no such thing as a good Disney game, even if it was Rescue Rangers, Duck Tales, Magical Quest or Mickey Mania(OR Aladdin on the Genesis). That's as obscure as the RE Remake

9) Metroid Prime: From 2002 to 2007, I had to endure the ultimate abomination of the Metroid series. My beef? I couldn't see Samus when everything I saw was everything that Samus saw. If I wanted a First Person Shooter, I would play Goldeneye or something more obscure. Plus, you take one good look at those Metroids, and you'll be half-scared for weeks.

10) Zelda: Wind Waker: A Zelda game that makes me travel the seas on a boat? What were they thinking? And Cel-shaded graphics? I thought the Zelda series was suppose to be realistic like the first Zelda game.(Gets a call) What? You mean the first Zelda games were cartoonish? So, only Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask counts as real Zelda games.

11) Soul Calibur 2: The problem with these games wasn't the change to their controls with each new version. Oh no, the problem were console exclusives. The PS2 version had an old, balding Geriatric from Tekken. The XBox version had this ugly looking hero called...Spawn. The GCN version? It ripped Link out of Ocarina of Time. This game taught us that its okay to have more than one console on the market when one console is what we should aim for, regardless of how many monopoly laws that would violate.

12) SquareSoft: Nation, Square jumped the Shark when it merged with Enix, creator of Dragon Quest. The Shark Jumping went further when SquareEnix developed games for the GBA(Plus one for the GCN). 5 of the 6 old Final Fantasy games, a new Final Fantasy Advance game, a new Mana game that was a remake of the first, a Kingdom Hearts game. Personally, those games can't hold a candle to Final Fantasy VII, which featured a Mama's boy for a villain

13) Star Wars: This decade is the result of what happens when you overuse the Star Wars license. The big offenders include Battlefront, Jedi Outcast, Galactic Battlegrounds, LEGO Star Wars, Republic Commando and Empire at War. But the worst offender? Knights of the Old Republic. A Star Wars RPG with good story and gameplay? If I wanted to play an RPG, I'll play Persona thank you very much.

14) The DS: When I saw this system, my jaw dropped. It wasn't the 2 screens or that the 2nd screen is touch based. The fact was: The system was made for casuals. That's right, the same people who ruined the PS2 wanted a piece of the handheld pie. The end result? It sells a 100 million units, but at the same time destroys whats left of Nintendo's Handheld dignity by appealing to more than the hardcore.

15) Metal Gear: If there was one PS1 game I opposed, it was the original Metal Gear Solid. But Konami, Silicon Knights and Nintendo decided to reopen that wound with Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes on Gamecube. To make matters worse, Konami released Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater on PS2. It's bad enough I had bad memories of Metal Gear on PS1. That last thing I need is Kojima's Snake Venom in my systems

16) Steam: With the release of Half-Life 2 came Steam, a revolutionary new way to buy games by simply downloading them to your hard drive. Unfortunately, it spawned many copycats(Including WiiWare, XBLA, and PSN) creating a nightmare that could be the bane of retail. If I wanted to buy a game, I drive over to my nearest retail store and buy it from there. If they didn't have it, then I had to play the waiting game. What's so wrong with being patience?

17) World of Warcraft: In a desperate plead to be number one, Blizzard took one of its IPs and created World of Warcraft: A Massive Multiplayer Online game with 11 million suckers and growing. This kind of game took kids away from the Playstation and onto this magnet. The worst part? 2 expansion packs released and 3rd is on its way. And the biggest confessions? I'm one of those suckers.

18) The Playstation Portable: In an effort to combat Nintendo in the handheld market, Sony released the Playstation Portable or PSP for short. Everything about this system screamed Ipod, plus the fact that they use a new Disc format: Universal Media Discs. Why this handheld didn't sell as well is beyond me. It had the games, it forced you to buy the movies. The PSP Go was a step up, but we'll talk about that later

19) The Hot Coffee scandal: Back in July of 2005, Rockstar was under fire for a secret that only professional hackers could uncover a minigame involving your main and a girl. I was outraged by this, but only because the girl model looked horrible. It was an insult to women everywhere, and that was why Hillary Clinton lashed out at that scandal.

20) The X-Box 360: Released in 2005, the 360 was well known for one thing: Red Ring of Death. You turn on a game, you play it, BAM! RROD! Now apply this to real life situations. A bus comes by, you get on, the bus takes off, BAM! RROD! You open a book, with the intention of reading Chapter 5, BAM! RROD! You and a friend want to play Super Soaker. You fill your soaker, charge it up, and when you press the trigger, BAM! RROD!

See, the RROD is bigger than you may think.

21) Resident Evil 4: Now this is an abomination. 3rd person gameplay? A different story? Items easier to get? What were they thinking? I liked it from a 2nd person perspective, where the controls are awkward. I don't want percised aiming in my Resident Evil. Not even in Resident Evil 5.

I just hope Resident Evil 6 returns back to the stale gameplay of RE 1-3 and Code Veronica

22) The failure of the Gamecube: Perhaps the darling of last generation, the Gamecube came up short. What happened? It had the games like the PS2 and X-Box and it was cheaper. So why didn't people pick it up? Many responded that it was because GCN was kiddie. But that's what made it great. I wanted that cheesiness that the PS2 not the X-Box didn't have. Unfortunately, this leads to our next event

23) The Wii: If the PS2 was an abomination, the Wii was the spawn of Satan as it reintroduced Motion Controls to the console world. The reason why I hated this was because it introduces a new wave of gamers into the fray. Now old people can play video games? I don't want old people to play video games. Heck, gaming was fine before even the PS2. But that's not the only thing I'm miffed about it

24) Virtual Console: Believe it or not, the Wii also comes with a Virtual Console service that lets you download classic games from the NES, SNES, and N64. But Nintendo took it a step further and allowed players to download SEGA Genesis, Master System, Turbo Grafix, Neo Geo, Commodore and Arcade titles. Didn't anyone read my post on Game Compilations? No? Well no wonder we have this and the fact that other services are also re-releasing old games. Old games are to remain on old systems where kids will forget them, not bastardized on new systems while maintaining everything that was originally there

25) The Playstation 3: It was the perfect system. The price point, the Blu-Ray, the Cell processor, the games. So why did the PS3 take last place? This system is suppose to introduce to us the future of gaming. Instead, it gets tossed in a dumpster while the 360 and Wii hog the spotlight.

26) The Angry Video Game Nerd: From the mind of James Rolfe comes the Angry Video Game Nerd, who reviews old games and tears them apart. Now not that I wouldn't mind, except I liked every one of those games. They were character building as they taught us how to endure frustration no matter how bad the control or the graphics were. Nerd, you have been condemned for violating a sacred place in my childhood, even if they were bad.

27) New Super Mario Bros: If I wanted a 2D Mario game, I would plug in Super Mario Bros 1-4(4 being World) or one of the Game boy Mario games. What was Nintendo thinking with this? I don't need a new 2D Mario game to remind me how good the 2D Mario games are. And they're doing a Wii version with the 7 Koopalings? I like the Koopalings as much as the last guy, but please. Them and Bowser Jr are overused.

28) Zelda: Twilight Princess: I say this with honor, but there hasn't been a good Zelda game since Ocarina of Time. Majora's Mask was a collect-a-thon and Wind Waker had you traveling the seas. Twilight Princess is an obvious remake of Ocarina of Time, minus kid Link, the Ocarina, and a good layout of the areas involved. The worst of it was that this game also came out on Wii and sold more than 4 million across both systems. CURSE YOU NINTENDO*Shakes fist*

29) Devil May Cry on the 360: Continuing my PS3 rant, Capcom decided to port Devil May Cry 4 to the 360. That alone made me NOT want to buy it even though it was still on the PS3. It deserved to be a PS3 exclusive so the PS3 can come out ahead and prove that expensive systems are the future of gaming. And I won't rest until that is a proven fact.

30) Bioshock: When I think FPS, I usually think battling an epic army with epic multiplayer. Bioshock violated both of those with a Single player-focused game inside Rapture. I don't want a FPS where I go inside an aquatic city to weed out its ruler. I want a game that has me battling an army of aliens who want to eat my brains out. And I demand Multiplayer damnit.

31) Super Mario Galaxy: Actually, this was a worse idea than New Super Mario Bros Wii. Why? The fact that one can travel on small planets and that it teaches us that it's a Small Universe after all. The sad thing about this is that its getting a sequel. Whoopie. What's next, Wario with the keen ability to fart?

32) Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games: I thought Wii Sports was bad enough. But when Nintendo and SEGA collaborated on Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, the end result was 8 million+ suckers who took 16 characters from both universes and sent them clashing for Olympic gold. 2 years later, the Winter games released on both Wii and DS, with the DS version having an adventure mode. Of course, that was the tip of the iceberg of Nintendo and SEGA since we also have

33) Smash Bros Brawl: That's right. If you liked Smash Bros Melee, you're gonna hate this game. 35 charaters, 2 of which aren't Nintendo's property, Online gameplay, more items, more stages, a Subspace Emissary mode, and more trophies and stickers to get. Real Smash Bros gamers prefer to play as Fox and spam his down B ability, but even that got nerfed.

34) Soul Calibur 4: As if Soul Calibur 2 was bad enough, this took the SC2 idea and used nothing but Star Wars characters for the guest: Yoda, Darth Vader, and Zinedine Zidane. Plus they let you create your own characters and pit them online. The last thing I need is to dual someone that looks like a familar white-haired Mama's Boy.

35) Final Fantasy XIII announcement for the 360: The game hasn't been out yet, but after a recent announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would be on the 360 in addition to the PS3, I went nuts. I was one of those who cried crocodile tears over this *Fake Crying* And that isn't fair. How dare anyone backstab Sony in the back. They provided 3rd parties with a safety net and freedom to develop more games. LEAVE SONY ALONE!

36) The Wii Fit: Perhaps, another nail in the coffin for gaming was the success of Wii Fit, which includes a balance board and a set of mini-games that takes advantage of this. This requires the player to stand up and be more active than the Wiimote alone. And what worries me is that it will reduce my belly fat. I'm proud of this belly fat thank you very much

37) The DSi: In an effort to combat the iPod, Nintendo has created the DSi. Gone is the GBA slot, but that's not my concern. What they added was a WiiWare service to this new incarnation of the DS that includes software that are free. FREE. Like FlipNote Studio that lets me draw, doodle, sketch and even take notes. Since when do Video Games lets you do that? I don't see Mario Paint do that

38) The PSP Go: It's everything the PSP is suppose to be: Less battery life, no UMDs, downloadables only, a more mudane setting up than the iPhone and much more. What's this? You have this size of a game collection? Too bad, go rebuy your games you bums.

39) Motion Controls X3: Early this year, Nintendo released the Wii Motion plus, allowing 1:1 Motion Controls. Great, that means more waggle and my arm getting more tired. As if that wasn't the biggest insult, Microsoft and Sony have announced their own Motion controls: The 360 with the Natal Camera and the PS3 with the Wand. Let's just hope there aren't any Motion Controls for the PC or we are in big trouble.

40) Street Fighter IV And Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Let's face it. Smash Bros wasn't a real fighting game. These however, are much less. Street Fighter IV returns Street Fighter to its roots while expanding on the graphics, when Street Fighter III was more than perfect. Tatsunoko vs Capcom took Marvel vs Capcom, swapped Marvel for Tatsunoko(Makers of Gatchaman, Yatterman, Ippasuman and Tekkaman) and used more obscure Capcom characters(Ex: Viewtiful Joe, Frank West, Morrigan, Zero, Roll, and PTX-40A). This isn't Marvel vs Capcom 2 because that had mostly Street Fighter characters for fighters. And it will never be as good because my fanboyism says so

41) Project Needlemouse: When I heard about this, I was shocked. A new 2D Sonic game that continues to teach kids that's it okay to run fast? The problem is that hedgehog obviously drank too much coffee and ate too much sugar. Sooner or later, kids will do what he does and that will lead to problems. Parents, just say no to Project Needlemouse and get your kids another Spongebob game

42) Batman: Arkham Asylum: What's this? A good Batman game? That's obscene like Kingdom Hearts. And what else? Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as the Joker? It's like my childhood is coming back to haunt me. And what a scary childhood it was to see Batman in action.

43) Epic Mickey: And to top it off, a game that makes Kingdom Hearts look like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Epic Mickey. A game where Mickey must battle against the Phantom Blot and his evil twin brother: Oswald. Wait, you're telling me Oswald is a rabbit? He looks like a mouse to me.

So there you go. From 2000 to 2009, gaming went down the drain all while raking in big bucks off of us poor fools. Here's hoping the next decade in gaming is a much better one. Nah, who am I kidding? I'd say we go back to simpler times even if they were cheesy.