5 Cool Aspects About Gaming That Are Fading Away

Gaming is a hobby that involves a lot of cool things that that enhance your enjoyment as a gamer be it by yourself or with a bunch of friends. It all seems awesome until you realize that many of those enhancers have been lost in this day and age due to an ever changing market and society. Today we are going to see 5 of them so without further ado, lets get to them.

1) Epic long term collective gaming campaigns:

Most of us are probably able to remember the times when a group of friends got hooked with a game and spent a very long time religiously playing and basically making it part of their lives. You may be thinking about mmorpgs, but it doesn't have to be limited to those kinds of games. For example, back in the 16 bit era, all the kids in the neighborhood where I live (myself as a kid included) got hooked with several games through very long time periods. Games like Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Phantasy Star IV, Zombies Ate My Neighbors were some of those titles that managed to keep everybody playing and sharing ideas, all with the goal of beating the game and/or unlocking its secrets. At the time it was sort of special to receive a visit from one of your friends early on a Saturday morning because they finally figured out how to beat a stage or where to find that secret treasure, a special experience that later on was well converted into online gaming. Of course we weren't stuck with playing the same game 100% of our time, but our main one always remained at the top of our list for months and months.

Nowadays it is all different. Ask yourself when was the last time you and your friends (or contacts) dedicated themselves to a certain game for a period longer than let's say 3 weeks. In this day and age, games are released so close to one another that just when you started to get hooked to one game, everybody changes to another, breaking all cohesion in a matter of hours. This happens because when we see a bunch of new games all released at once (especially since they chose Tuesday to be standard day for game releases) we tend to want to try them all and in the end choose one to keep on playing. What happens after that is that in all the commotion of who is playing what, there is a great chance that you and your friends will end up hooked to different games so that means that you will not be sharing so much play time as you used to. This is unless you can convince others to come play the same game with you, but that seems sort of unnatural because playing one game while been hooked with another is not that fun.

This is Juste Belmont from Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (2002). At that time
everybody saw him as an awesome looking character, but this same character today may be
labeled as "weird", "unrealistic" or "pale dude that looks like a woman".

2) Content Relativity

Another thing to remember were the times when anything in a game was plausible. There were no boundaries between what looked "too much like a cartoon" and what looked "realistic". A long time ago, a game character or game world could be cool in whatever form they used to show it and things like surrealism, emotion and even wackiness were welcomed with open arms. Things were so simple back then, that characters and game worlds came in just two flavors, awesome or lame.

Nowadays is all about nitpicking. The mainstream gaming community has too many people that have big prejudices against certain types of game content. For them anime style characters are "weird",  a skinny hero with long hair is "emo" and other times they classify characters and environments as "not having enough realism". It is also worth noting how characters now are labeled as if they were real human beings. Stuff like "that character looks too (insert race, nationality or physical characteristic)" or the occasional "omg that is so prejudiced" are the kind of attitudes that are dominant right now, even though they are a sign of disrespect for the artists who are behind a game, especially when the vision behind the art is justified by either the story or game elements. We have to once again learn to see fiction for what it is and not mix it up with reality in such a negative way. This changes the whole ball game for those of us who see that aspect of gaming as something simple and makes us feel left out when gaming companies decide to appeal to the nitpickers.

3) Convenient Releases
Once upon a time, games were released on different days without a specific pattern. At some times they would coincide, but in most cases game releases used to be all over and such randomness was good for us gamers. There was also a trend of favoring weekend game releases (a thing that Nintendo still does) which was perfect for anybody who had responsibilities like school, college or work. Had you even been through the experience of been at college/school and finding out that some game you were interested about has released that very same day? Most of the time that piece of information turned a normal routine afternoon into a road trip and that was part of the beauty within all the chaos of the game release schedules of old.

In our present day we as gamers are plagued by a game release standard that is good for retailers, but horrible for us consumers. Most games and updates are released on Tuesdays while a very small group of new releases are unleashed to the public on other days (like Nintendo releasing their games on Fridays and some companies that release on Sundays in special occasions). This puts a lot of pressure on us and makes the whole world of gaming a lot less comfortable.

4) Gaming been something separate from real life and society.
It may be a little difficult for some gamers (especially younger generations) to believe, but there was a point in time where gaming had nothing to do with real life problems. Censors existed back then just like they do now and extremely violent games were indeed a topic of discussion, but there was no real emphasis in things like political correctness or protesting because some aspect of a game resembles a social flaw from real life. Back then, a game was just a completely fictional world, an escape from our daily routines and not something to judge based on your opinion on how society should be. People enjoyed games without mixing it up all with things like sexism, misogyny, racism, profiling and bad stuff like that. Things were a lot simple because we as gamers didn't need any of those complications and we were a lot happier without all the unnecessary controversy.

Nowadays the whole gaming world has become a social battlefield where every game is heavily scrutinized in the search for anything that might "offend" someone. This has gone so far, that even when a game is just announced and still months from been released, if it has even one "offensive" indication (regardless of how dull the argument is) the outrage starts and heads begin to roll as the so called "activists" start spreading the same hate they so much claim to be against.

5) Fun fan boy wars
Fanboyism is something that is hated now, but it used to be quite fun in the past. The reason for this is that fan boys of the past battled with facts rather than just saying "boo hoo your platform sucks". From the 16 bit wars up to the Dreamcast vs PS2 showdown, battles were fought, won and lost, but they were very far from been a whine-fest. When 2 gamers started an argument about two or more different platforms most of the people who were witnessing it actually learned something because facts and strong arguments were used in the crossfire and each side understood which were their strengths and weaknesses. There was no "meh" attitude and best of all, there were no labels or personal insults, making a "fan boy" discussion to be just a smart discussion between two or more people with a biased opinion.

Nowadays the closest we will get to those smart discussions is seen pictures comparing a game between two platforms without even taking into account the technicalities that can cause those difficulties and the hurdles that the developers had to go through in order to make the game. It almost seems as if the gaming media itself is helping cause these whine-fests in order to receive more visits and clicks. Sadly no matter how heated a modern fan boy conversation gets, it is very unlikely to learn anything other than clever ways to whine or how to ruin a sarcastic remark by been a poor snub.

The Gamertologist Bottom Line:
These 5 gaming aspects are just a few of the whole lot of things that we are slowly losing as gamers. You may see all this as a nostalgic mind trip, but believe me when I tell you that this is more about how comfortable, simple and convenient the gaming world used to be in the past, supported by facts rather than by nostalgic thoughts. Do we have a chance to stop all this and get back the things that we have lost? I leave that for you to judge.

5 Awesome vintage video game sweepstakes you would had loved to win

Doing a little "Throwback Thursday" here, we are going to see 5 vintage video game related sweepstakes that were sort of a dream come true on their day, especially if you were a kid. Back into the retro era of gaming, there were no such thing as digital downloads, easy access gift cards or redeemable codes, you could either go to the store and buy it or win it on a sweepstakes and get it handed to you. By seen these contests today, you may think that they were simple and naive considering how we live today, but imagine that you are a kid on the 80's and 90's and you see one of these on a game magazine page or on television.You would had flipped and instantly fall into a day dreaming state, thinking about how would it be if you were the one to win that prize. So, now with that mental picture in mind let's begin.

1) Pandemonium Puzzle Contest 

The Concept:
On some gaming magazines of the day, there was a page like the one on the picture where you could enter a puzzle solving competition. If you managed to win that competition you would get all the stuff that is shown in the picture. It was all simple enough, but it was also super hype-inducing.

The Rules:
You had to complete the crossword puzzle shown on each page and send it to the corresponding address. Each one you sent was ranked by how fast you solved it and how many words you managed to decipher. The ones with the highest points went up to a knockout stage and so on to the big finale where a final winner would emerge.

The Prizes:
Everything you see on the picture which varied between contests and could have a collection of all the existing consoles at the time, a big screen TV with a cutting edge sound system, gaming peripherals and so on.

2) Shadowrun SNES Sweepstakes

The Concept:
Play the game, answer some questions related to it and send it along with an entry form to Data East. Remember that at the time, there was limited internet access at best, so answering the questions really required you to play the game or at least know somebody who did and was willing to share.

The Rules:
Simple rules, just answer the questions about the game and mail them in with the official entry form. This meant that is wall all an relatively easy process with a high chance of winning because not everybody had the game.

The Prizes:
The grand prize was a shopping spree at Electronics Boutique (later EB Games before been merged with GameStop) where for a limited amount of time you could just run through the store, get anything you liked and have it all for free. Other prices included Shadowrun jackets, shirts and posters which were also cool.

3) Nintendo Power Battletech Sweepstakes

The Concept:
Have you ever received an advert claiming that they will give you a prize or pay you for filling a survey? Well, this was one of the few occasions where that actually worked, if you were selected.

The Rules:
Filling a survey about the Nintendo Power magazine's content and submitting it on time. After that, you just had to wait and hope that you were one of the winners.

The Prizes:
Prizes mostly included games and guides, but on this particular one, the grand prize was a trip for four people to the Battletech Center in Chicago. This virtual reality center doesn't exist anymore, but at the time of these sweepstakes it was a place to dream of.  

Discovery Channel's Beyond 2000 - Battletech Center 1992

4) El Rescate del Talisman (The Talisman's Rescue) 

The Concept:
This was a Spanish t.v show sponsored by Sega which was an adaptation of another popular program called "Knightmare". On the Talisman's Rescue, a group of 4 people embarked on a magical journey (sort of like playing a physical version of dungeons and dragons, but without all the dice and math). If at least one of your team members survive to the end of the game, you would all go to a treasure room and loot whatever prizes it had. The program never had public openings for participants, so it is rumored that most of the kids who participated were relatives or friends of relatives of the people working on the t.v station. This meant that your only chance to play the game seemed to be sheer luck.

The Rules:
One player at a time would play as the others just watched him and served as guides. The playing persons would wear a knight horned helmet that left them blind so they really needed their partners help as they moved through "pre-rendered" chroma key based fantasy-based places while the other members of the team (as well as the audiences at home) could see it all. The thing was that if the player fell on a hazard (like pits, traps, enemies attacking) or fails a life saving riddle, he/she would be trapped by the enemy and one of the remaining players had to continue from that point on. If all the players failed then the villain would win and they would get no prizes.

The Prizes:
If the team manages to get to the end of the "chronicle" they got access to the treasure room and there have a little free for all looting of Sega products including home consoles like the Sega Master System and Sega Genesis, handhelds like the Game Gear and lots of games and peripherals to choose from. Video games were awarded on the first season, but this was changed to home computers on later ones.

An example of one episode of "El Rescate del Talisman" (In Spanish)

5) SwordQuest

The Concept:
SwordQuest was a series of games released for the Atari 2600 console that were part of a big contest. The game was sort of the equivalent to modern adventure games, which featured cryptic puzzles that you needed to solve in order to compete. The game also included a comic book that was also a tool used to solve the game's main puzzle. There were supposed to be 4 games with worlds based on the elements (Earth, Fire, Water and Air) and each of those worlds would be separate competitions that would end up in a final fifth one after Airworld. Sadly, only the first 2 of them happened as the final Waterworld competition was not held and Airworld was never released.

The Rules:
First you had to get a complete copy of the game (with the comic book and all), play it and solve the puzzle by finding the hidden 5 clues that made the "puzzle sentence" so you could mail that sentence to Atari. Then Atari proceeded to select some of the players who gave the correct answer and they would go to a new live competition in which they would compete for the grand prize of that "world".

The Prizes:
The prizes featured in the SwordQuest competitions were extreme:

• For Earthworld, the prize consisted of a talisman made of 18k gold, having 12 diamonds and the stones for each of the signs of the zodiac. This prize was valued in $25,000 dollars of the time.
• For Fireworld, the prize consisted of a chalice made of gold and platinum, embedded with citrines, diamonds, green jades, rubies and sapphires. The chalice was also valued at $25,000
• For Waterworld, the prize was supposed to be a crown made of gold and embedded with aquamarines, diamonds, green tourmalines, rubies and sapphires. This one was valued at the same value as the previous prizes and was never awarded because although the game was released, the final competition never happened.

If the Waterworld final competition had gone through, the next and final installment would had been Airworld.  On this one, the prize was going to be a "Philosopher's Stone" which was made of gold and embedded with diamonds, emeralds, citrines and rubies and was also valued at $25,000.

The final showdown of the SwordQuest series would had been a final competition between all the previous winners for a final prize which would had been a sword with its handle made of gold, embedded with various jewels and its blade made of pure silver, all with a value of $50,000. This of course never happened as the contest was cancelled before it got that far.

Wrapping it up

Be it some cool consoles and games, a visit to awesome gaming related places, or even prizes worth several thousand dollars, vintage sweepstakes and contests were something worth dreaming for back in the day. These kinds of things just doesn't happen that often anymore, especially because most of the contest systems would be broken by things like the internet, but they remain as a good memory for those who lived through them and a cool thing to think about for those who didn't.