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.

Most people I know, including myself, do not enjoy fan fiction, commonly referred to as “fanfic.” Some fans just can’t get enough of their favorite series or characters, and decide to write their own tales to share with everyone. However, like many things on the Internet, fanfics are poorly written, poorly researched, and often descend into sexual depravity. (Don’t believe me? Look up “slash fanfic,” and prepare to be horrified.)

We all created our own stories in one form or another as children. When playing with action figures and such, we created new adventures for our plastic heroes. The big difference between these and fanfics is that they were our childhood adventures. They were created for our personal enjoyment only when we were kids, and never designed to be shared with anyone else. When you’re an eight-year-old, it’s cool when your Optimus Prime and Darth Vader toys teamed up to take down Cobra Commander. When you’re an adult submitting novels about the characters over the Internet in a vain attempt to gain recognition from other basement dwellers…something’s wrong.

Fanfic writers are not a bunch of little kids engaging in playtime. They’re teens and adults, going off the fanboy deep end and writing godawful stories in which characters often behave nothing like their official selves. I feel this cheapens the source material, and in many cases, downright insults the original stories. The cast of Final Fantasy VII were not fucking each other, just as Archie is not fucking Mr. Weatherbee. Get over it.

As a rule, fan fiction is shit. But what happens when fanfics actually become an official part of the series they spawned from? Then where do we draw the line?

A prominent example is the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds series of anthologies. Technically, the stories within these books can be considered fanfic, as they’re all stories written by fans. But at the same time…they’re officially published by licenseholder Pocket Books, making them legitimate Star Trek tales! A few of the contributors to Strange New Worlds have even gone on to become professional writers in the field.

I think the big difference here is that there’s quality control in place for stuff like Strange New Worlds. If a story is crap, it’s going to get thrown out by an editor or their lackeys. Unfortunately, just like with webcomics, that doesn’t happen with fanfics. Anyone and everyone can post that filth on the Internet at their leisure. Entering a contest in which fan-created stories are specifically called for is one thing; writing them up because you can’t distinguish between fantasy and reality is something else entirely.

The moral of the story is this: friends don’t let friends read fanfics. Do yourself a favor, and stay the hell away from them. Your sanity will thank you for it.

I’d never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I’m starting to grow tired of zombies.

There’s been a huge resurgence in the popularity of the living dead over the past five to ten years, and while we’ve gotten some excellent films, video games, and comic books out of the deal, the shambling corpses’ welcome is being worn out.

Case and point: the upcoming film Zombieland. In it, a mixed band of humans are trying to survive and hunt zombies in a post-apocalyptic near future. That sounds an awful lot like Left 4 Dead, a video game in which a mixed band of humans are trying to survive and hunt zombies in a post-apocalyptic near future. There’s also the game’s sequel, Left 4 Dead 2, in which a mixed band of humans are trying to survive and hunt zombies in a post-apocalyptic near future. In Robert Kirkman’s excellent comic book series The Walking Dead, a mixed band of humans are trying to survive and hunt zombies in a post-apocalyptic near future. Or we can look a bit further back, to the “romantic comedy with zombies” film Shaun of the Dead…where a mixed band of humans are trying to survive and hunt zombies in a post-apocalyptic near future.

I think you get the message.

While some of the zombie media out there is quality stuff, there’s still plenty of dreck, and the problem of oversaturation exists, regardless. The aforementioned Walking Dead is great, but Marvel Zombies got stupid by the second miniseries, and they just keep cranking them out with no end in sight. DC Comics’ big crossover of the moment is Blackest Night, which is also about zombies, but we’ll have to wait until the end to see how that one turns out.

Due to this excessive popularity, we’ve also got creators trying to break the zombie mold, as it were. The problem is that it often doesn’t work; while many cite the film 28 Days Later as a reinvigoration of the zombie film, there’s one colossal problem: the “zombies” in the film aren’t zombies. They were never dead, and they never rose from their graves in order to chew upon the flesh of the living. Therefore, they’re not zombies. Period. (Note: I know zombies originally came from voodoo legends, where they were not necessarily dead, but that’s not the popularized version of the zombie in modern culture, which is the definition I’m sticking with here.)

While media exposure can truly bring out some quality work in a genre, oversaturation is the surest way to kill it. Ironically, characters in zombie media always seem to have trouble disposing of the undead hordes…so perhaps oversaturation will actually do the job for them? Vampires (the wimpy, emo kind, not the dangerous kind) are beginning to eclipse zombies on the current pop culture landscape, and who knows what’ll come next. In the meantime, though, I’d like to see the dead stay in their graves for a while.

Of course, if a film was made where a slew of zombies dismembered those fruity vampires, I’d be in line opening night.

(This entry has been crossposted, no pun intended, to Nine Panel Nerds. All must know the majesty that is Dreamcast.)

One of the greatest video game systems of all time celebrates its tenth birthday today…yet it’s been dead and buried for most of the past decade.

Yes, I’m talking about the almighty Sega Dreamcast. I was a senior in college way back in September of 1999, and I knew one person who bought a Dreamcast on launch day. Everyone else was a bunch of pathetic fools. (Or, being in college, just broke.) Regardless, we played a hell of a lot of Sonic Adventure, Jet Grind Radio, Soul Calibur, Power Stone, and other mold-breaking titles that Sega saw fit to unleash upon us. Sadly, the hugely successful launch of the PlayStation 2 a year later essentially killed the Dreamcast. The gaming masses’ dismissal of the Dreamcast at that point infuriated many a Sega fan, myself included. They never even gave the system a chance!

Aside from the phenomenal games library, look at all of the forward-thinking technology Sega crammed into the Dreamcast. For starters, it had a built-in modem, making it the only console that supported free online play out of the box until the release of the PS2 Slim in 2004; the Xbox (released in 2001) had an Ethernet port, but online play was not free. (It still isn’t!) The Dreamcast also had a web browser, support for an optional Ethernet adapter, VGA/480p output capability, multiple memory card slots in the controllers, an offset analog stick, memory cards that doubled as handheld gaming systems…the list goes on. Some games even linked up with the NeoGeo Pocket!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the Dreamcast is the most underrated video game system ever made. There was a boatload of fantastic titles produced for it, many of which are still ahead of their time today…but people practically ignored the console in favor of the PS2. That isn’t to say that the PS2 didn’t deserve the praise; far from it. (The damned thing is still going strong almost ten years after its release!) It’s just that too many fanboys had blinders on: PS2 was the only thing that existed in their field of vision after the success of the original PlayStation, and they weren’t going to give anything else a second look. Sure, Sega’s massive mistakes with the Saturn didn’t help the gaming public’s perception of their upcoming system, but plenty of blame does still lie with the consumer. The games released over the Dreamcast’s lifespan can easily go toe-to-toe with its competitors. Proof of this is the fact that many Dreamcast titles were later ported to the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox!

I maintain that if Sega had waited and released the Dreamcast alongside the PS2 in the fall of 2000, it would’ve been considerably more successful. Even if more people still wanted the PS2, that console had severe shortages. With another brand-new console sharing shelf space, what do you think they would’ve gone for, especially during the Christmas rush? Even though the Dreamcast launched only a year prior to the PS2, it was considered “old” by the time Sony’s console hit the shelves. (C’mon, even some Nintendo fanboys considered the PS2 “out of date” when the GameCube launched in 2001.) A final testament to the Dreamcast’s rabid fanbase was that Japanese developers kept releasing games years after the system’s demise!

The Dreamcast may be no more, but fortunately, it’s obtainable very easily and inexpensively. You’re doing yourself a great service if you pick one up, as there’s so many cheap, great games out there that will keep you entertained for a very long time. SEGA!