Out of the blue, I remembered a conversation I had with a friend of mine a while back about a regional comic book/scifi/fantasy/gaming convention she had attended. (No, it wasn’t the Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con.) I asked her how the show went upon her return, and she replied that it was mediocre; there weren’t many dealers or booths, and the crowd was mainly “lower-caste geeks.” I wasn’t quite sure what that term meant, so I asked for more details. She told me this group was composed of stereotypically overweight anime fangirls and World of Warcraft obsessives.

Now, this post is not meant to claim that my friend is somehow an elitist for placing one group of geeks below another; her “lower-caste” term was clearly meant as a joke, as she was just fishing for a funny term to describe the crowd. (She’s a comic book cosplay nerd herself, so she didn’t really “fit in” with most of the other patrons.) Instead, I want to examine an interesting trend that’s been growing exponentially in geek circles over the past decade: subdivision of the overall geek crowd into smaller groups (a caste system, if you will), the game of one-upmanship that accompanies this behavior, and the absolute irony of the entire process.

Heated debates between geeks is nothing new; you could trace ‘em all the way back to Star Trek versus Star Wars arguments in the late 1970s, and I’m sure there were Flash Gordon diehards who disliked John Carter of Mars even further back. However, what bound everyone together was their love of the source material, and in the end, that was all that was important. In recent years, that common bond has been eroding, and the geeks have no one to blame but themselves.

With growing frequency, geeks are cramming one another into a caste system of their own making. My friend’s joke nonwithstanding, this is a very real and serious situation: geeks in one group are demonizing the other, but not out of the good-natured rivalry seen in the past. Geek subcultures literally hate each other now, and often consider certain groups “beneath” them as far as the nerdy social strata are concerned.

This is the colossal irony I spoke of. Geeks and nerds have always complained that they’re a misunderstood and maligned social group, shunned by the rest of the world. Well, look at what they’re doing with this caste system: the exact same thing! So, not only are they maligned as a whole, they’re actively pushing some of their own peers even lower down the social scale, making the entire problem even worse. How fucked up is that?

The Internet has certainly contributed to the caste system in a big way; just as it has brought nerds together, it also drives mountainous wedges between them. Case and point: video game console flame wars, which have gotten far uglier than even the famous Sega and Nintendo rivalry in the early 1990s. Now, we’ve got entire sites and forums devoted to elevating one nerdy hobby while bashing another. All this truly accomplishes is making geeks look even worse in the eyes of everyone else!

I’ve always been of the mind that you shouldn’t hate an entire group; just specific people inside said group that personally piss you off. For example, I can’t stand all of that Twilight shit, and I think the fan fervor over it is incredibly annoying…but I have friends who are into it, and I’d never consider myself “better” than them as a result.

Having said that, if a Twilight diehard nearly knocks me down at the bookstore in their frenzy to score yet another generic young adult novel, they’re going to get an earful of rage.

No, I don’t have some inside scoop on one of the most demanded sequels in existence. What I do have is my grumbling about why we need this game now.

I’ll make this clear right off the bat: Mega Man Legends 3 tops the list of my “most wanted games ever.” Yes, I’d even take that over a game that bridges the gap between the original Mega Man series and Mega Man X! The story in Legends was arguably the best out of all of the Mega Man series, but it’s been left without a conclusion.

For the uneducated, I give you a bit of history. Mega Man Legends was released for the PlayStation in 1997 (a year later in the US), and was the second spinoff of the original Mega Man series (the first being Mega Man X). Aside from being the first Mega Man game in 3D, Legends also was radically different than any Mega Man game that had come before it. Gone were the selectable levels, themed bosses, and weapon stealing: in their place, we had a sprawling adventure featuring huge interconnected dungeons, adaptable weapons, and a cast of interesting and eminently likable characters. Even the “bad guys” were awesome!

Instead of being a robot constructed by a benevolent scientist, our hero this time was Mega Man Volnutt, a teenaged treasure hunter exploring the underground ruins on Kattelox Island. Why “Mega Man”? Well, he was found in the ruins as a baby, and named after his adoptive sister Roll’s favorite video game hero. (“Volnutt” is his last name, kids.) Still confused? Play the game, and it’ll all make sense. Suffice it to say that there’s a lot more to Mega Man, his world, and his backstory that it seems.

The ending of Mega Man Legends (don’t worry, I won’t spoil it for you) was a massive cliffhanger, and by design, it made no sense. Fortunately, the sequel Mega Man Legends 2 came out in 2000 to address these plot threads. Unlike most sequels, however, it actually explained everything, and all of the missing pieces and questions fans had fell neatly into place. Of course, that game ended on a cliffhanger as well, but it was more of a “What will happen to our intrepid heroes next?” ending rather than a “GOD DAMN IT WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?!” ending.

A spinoff/prequel starring the Bonne family, aptly titled The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, came out between the two main series games in 1999 (again, the US release came a year later). This game mixed overworld action with puzzle solving, as well as some light RPG elements: you could “level up” the lovable Servbots to make them more useful. While it didn’t add much to the story of Mega Man himself, it’s another game where the focus on characters really shines, and it helps explain the Bonne family’s motivations a bit more.

So, we’ve got fantastic characters, a great plot, coupled with a solid game engine…but whatever happened to a third game that could potentially wrap up the entire series? The PlayStation 2 was (and still is) hugely popular, so it would’ve seemed a natural fit for Mega Man Legends 3. But…it never happened. Here we are in the post-PS2 era, and still no sequel! You’d think the Wii or even the DS would be a perfect fit, considering the platforms’ immense popularity…especially in Japan, where Mega Man is practically a national hero!

C’mon, we get copious amounts of violent action games, FPSes in varying shades of brown and gray, and other generic bullshit, but we can’t get one last Legends game?! Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune has admitted in the past that development costs were a big stumbling block against making a new game, and that’s understandable. However, Inafune’s been rising faster up the ranks at Capcom due to hit games like Lost Planet and Dead Rising, and it’s a matter of public record that he still wants to make a Legends 3. He’s definitely got a lot more clout now. Well, get on it, Inafune-sama!

Aside from the creator’s obvious love for the series, there’s another glimmer of hope. Even though it’s been a decade since the last Legends game, Mega Man Volnutt and his pals have still remained popular. There’s been Mega Man action figures, and Roll, Data, Tron Bonne, and the Servbots have been immortalized as various figurines and statues. Tron also made a notable appearance in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, where she did battle in her walking tank, the Gustaff, with her Servbot lackeys providing support. Tron, Mega Man, and others (can’t say who without spoiling things) also appeared in Namco X Capcom. Both Legends games were ported to the PSP in Japan, and more recently, Mega Man Volnutt was a combatant in the fighting game Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. A few of the stages in that game even take place on the hangar deck of the Gesellschaft, the Bonne family’s mighty airship. (And yes, there are Servbots!) For someone who hasn’t had his own damned game in a decade, the Mega Man with the funky surname sure has some staying power.

See? The interest is there. The passion is there. And the fans have always been there. So just make the fucking game, already!

Practice makes perfect, right? Then can someone please explain to me why even though I play chess every day, I keep getting worse?

I don’t often get to engage in realtime games with opponents over an actual chessboard; instead, I play over the ‘net via Chess.com. At any given time, I’m involved in three to four games: two against friends, and one or two against strangers at or around my Elo rating (skill level). Each player has up to three days to make a move; on average, I move once per day (either during lunch, or after dinner). I also use the site’s Tactics Trainer to work on puzzles and learn new tricks.

None of this seems to be helping. I lose more games than I win, and my tactics rating fluctuates more often than New England weather. Granted, mistakes in the Tactics Trainer are generally punished more severely than correct moves are rewarded, but that’s not the point. I must be missing something, somewhere; I don’t live and breathe chess, but the fact that I play every day should at least count for something. My grasp of spatial relationships and whatnot isn’t the best, but damn it, I’m trying, though it feels like I’m swimming upstream.

I enjoy video games from throughout the medium’s history, but all of my favorites lie in the 8- and 16-bit eras. Gamers of all walks of life will argue which generation of video games had the best titles, with arguments of varying weight. However, one Sherman tank of a talking point that’s firmly on the retrogamers’ side is this: back in our day, we didn’t have to worry about “patches” or “updates.” Our games were done right the first time!

There were plenty of crappy games, to be sure, but we identified them and stopped playing them; simple as that. High-quality games, on the other hand, were much more polished worked perfectly the first time. There was no developer laziness, wherein problems were fixed later. If there was a bug, they found and fixed it before the game shipped! If, heaven forbid, some game-ruining glitches did find their way into a finished product, the game was often derided for a lack of quality control, as well it should be.

The overly complicated nature of modern video game consoles has caused bugs and glitches to multiply rapidly. Newer consoles are harder to program for, so naturally, more problems are going to rear their ugly heads. Still, that’s no excuse for poor quality control. Don’t let the issues that make running programs on a personal computer such a hassle sometimes interfere with a dedicated unit like a video game console! The whole point of owning a console is that it’s not a computer. Convergence may be coming quickly, but that doesn’t mean we need to inherit the computer gaming world’s problems as well as its strengths.

I’m really getting sick of bundled reissues of recent video games. I understand that not everyone can acquire downloadable content (DLC), but this has gone far beyond convenience or value. It’s just scummy marketing now.

In the past, we’d sometimes see the release of a “special edition” of a game many years after its initial release, often when the platform the game originally appeared on was no longer viable. These special editions were usually full-fledged remakes, complete with updated graphics, sound, and other goodies. While remakes can get out of hand as well, at least you’re still getting a lot of new content not found elsewhere.

Special editions that bundle an original game with its expansions and the like have been a staple of the computer gaming world for years, but they’ve begun to infect console games at a rapid pace. Recently, we’ve seen so-called Game of the Year editions of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, LittleBigPlanet, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, plus Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition and Super Street Fighter IV, just to name a few. (The Street Fighter franchise has seriously abused the reissue market over the years. Cripes, how many versions of Street Fighter II have there been?!)

These special editions are undoubtedly a good value to gamers who never picked up the original games, but they’re a slap in the face to early adopters. I understand that this can come with the territory when it comes to high-end electronics and associated media, but the problem lately is that these special editions are coming out only a year (or less!) after the original title! It’s almost reached the saturation point. Why bother buying a hotly-anticipated title on day one, when it’s going to be reissued at a cheaper price point months down the line with additional content? Furthermore, early adopters who buy the game on day one and grab the various DLC as its released really get screwed.

For example, you buy a game for $60, plus three expansions for $5 each. Now, your total cost for that game has become $75. Eight months later, the game is reissued, including those expansions plus some new stuff, for $40. Same game, more content…for nearly half of the price! And if there’s unique stuff in the reissue, then in order to get it, you’d have to buy the game all over again! Doesn’t that piss you off?

The logical response to this is to quit buying these super-hyped games when they’re released…but we all know the gaming hobby and logic are arch enemies. Furthermore, it’s impossible to know for certain if a game will get reissued, so it’s a crapshoot either way.