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Considering making a classic gaming site...
Glass.Cannon
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
As someone who still spends more time with my NES, Genesis, and SNES than I do with the current consoles, I often find myself pointing out mistakes or awkward controls in newer games and berating them for screwing something up that someone else did right over ten years ago, only to remember that there's a good chance that none of the designers ever played the older game.
Considering just how many of those older games I own or have played, I've been toying with the idea of starting a classic gaming site with the primary purpose of reviewing old games and taking a closer look at awesome things that many people have forgotten or never experienced. I realize that there are already a ton of sites out there dedicated to classic gaming, but I want to run one that takes itself a little more seriously and specifically focuses on particular design aspects in obscure games that I feel modern game designers should look into.
Just to throw out an example, there was an old NES game called 8 Eyes that was mostly ignored due to it being a sloppy ripoff of the early Castlevania games. However, throughout the game you controlled a guy with a short sword AND his pet hawk. The hawk sits on his shoulder, and you can release it and attack with it while retaining control of the main character. This is often necessary for hitting switches that are out of reach or attacking enemies that the main character would have trouble with. A second player can also take control of the hawk, which makes for an interesting experience.
I always liked the idea of playing a co-op game in which players control completely different characters and fill different roles, but this is very rarely done outside of MMOs or competitive games like Team Fortress. When you do get a game that does this, it's still most likely just going to be the usual selection between tank, mage, or speed. I'd like to see some more games in which the players have completely different body types and controls.
As another quick example of this, there was a Ninja Gaiden clone on the NES called Ninja Crusaders that allowed you to transform into different animals at any time depending on what weapon you were holding. Two people could play simultaneously, and if one opted to remain human while the other decided to be, say, a tiger, the human player could stand on and ride the tiger. This wasn't exactly the smartest thing to do in most cases, but it was awesome.
To wrap this up as quickly as possible, this is the sort of thing I'd like to have a site about, but I have no idea whether anyone else already has a site for this exact purpose or whether people would even be interested. I know there's plenty of other people out there that review old games, but I don't know of any that get into heavy detail about particular design aspects. Most of them seem to review them more for comedic purposes or just to bring them to the attention of the public in a casual "hey, this old game was pretty cool" sort of way. Obviously I'd have to work on my writing skills if I want to start posting articles on a regular basis, but I'd like some feedback on the idea before I seriously consider doing this.
Considering just how many of those older games I own or have played, I've been toying with the idea of starting a classic gaming site with the primary purpose of reviewing old games and taking a closer look at awesome things that many people have forgotten or never experienced. I realize that there are already a ton of sites out there dedicated to classic gaming, but I want to run one that takes itself a little more seriously and specifically focuses on particular design aspects in obscure games that I feel modern game designers should look into.
Just to throw out an example, there was an old NES game called 8 Eyes that was mostly ignored due to it being a sloppy ripoff of the early Castlevania games. However, throughout the game you controlled a guy with a short sword AND his pet hawk. The hawk sits on his shoulder, and you can release it and attack with it while retaining control of the main character. This is often necessary for hitting switches that are out of reach or attacking enemies that the main character would have trouble with. A second player can also take control of the hawk, which makes for an interesting experience.
I always liked the idea of playing a co-op game in which players control completely different characters and fill different roles, but this is very rarely done outside of MMOs or competitive games like Team Fortress. When you do get a game that does this, it's still most likely just going to be the usual selection between tank, mage, or speed. I'd like to see some more games in which the players have completely different body types and controls.
As another quick example of this, there was a Ninja Gaiden clone on the NES called Ninja Crusaders that allowed you to transform into different animals at any time depending on what weapon you were holding. Two people could play simultaneously, and if one opted to remain human while the other decided to be, say, a tiger, the human player could stand on and ride the tiger. This wasn't exactly the smartest thing to do in most cases, but it was awesome.
To wrap this up as quickly as possible, this is the sort of thing I'd like to have a site about, but I have no idea whether anyone else already has a site for this exact purpose or whether people would even be interested. I know there's plenty of other people out there that review old games, but I don't know of any that get into heavy detail about particular design aspects. Most of them seem to review them more for comedic purposes or just to bring them to the attention of the public in a casual "hey, this old game was pretty cool" sort of way. Obviously I'd have to work on my writing skills if I want to start posting articles on a regular basis, but I'd like some feedback on the idea before I seriously consider doing this.
Glass.Cannon on
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I mean we have seven or eight different news sites a piece that are widely used for every aspect of tv, movies, games, etc. and thousands more that get into detail about those topics.
It's easier than ever to make a blog now, you could do it for free through blogger, or for about $100 a year you could get your own domain www.yourname.com and some server space to host a wordpress site on and make your own.
If it's something you're passionate about, there's no reason not to do it.
Want to try it out? Well, blogging's free. I'm a fan of wordpress, at www.wordpress.com, and it's free, and very useable. One thing I use that I find makes blogging easier, if you have a Windows machine, you should check out Windows Live Writer. It's basically a WYSIWYG blogging client, so it's easier to get every post looking just like you want, and uploaded to Wordpress.
I know this is easy enough to do by hyperlinking them in the posts somewhere, but can you set up a nice index that would let someone look through posts by either game or mechanic? I'd also need to be constantly editing old posts, since any post about a specific mechanic would be updated whenever I play or post about something new that used it. I'm sure I sound like I'm completely new to the internet now, but I rarely use it socially and I don't visit blogs often, so I know nothing about how they're set up or what their limitations are.
sure, you can use tags for your posts to do just that thing.
You can even use your custom domain name (10 bucks a year) with blogger.
Now, does anyone know of any sites out there that are doing what I've described? I'm not saying that their existence would stop me from running my own, but I'd like to know what I'm going to be compared to. As I said, the only big sites for retro games I've seen are ones that are trying to be funny, are reviewing games casually, or are just informative. I don't know of any that try to pick apart a game's design in detail unless they're fan sites for a specific game. Particularly, I've never seen a site that has focused on discussing individual mechanics on their own and comparing their uses in various games. If there's a good one out there, I'd like to find it and involve myself with its community anyway.
I'd do a blog, or site, where you play old games, and then equate them to new ones, or elements from old games that had evolved, or were the first to implement a feature.
For example, what was the first game with Autosave?
A customizable Character?
Cover Based Shooting?
Swearing?
And so on.
And what's nice, is that these games wouldn't even have to be good, but you'd still have to play, and beat, them.
Facebook: MeekinOnMovies
Twitter: Twitter.com/MeekinOnMovies
My 10 commandments of game reviewing
7 Great Games Playing Watch_Dogs will remind you of/url]
Far Cry 4: 10 Essential Features it Must Have
10 Videogames Ruined By The Hype
Honestly, I wouldn't stress out about it. You have something you know you want to write about. The internet is a big place; if what you write isn't utter shit, somebody is going to want to read it.
Trying to "compete" with other blogs is just going to stress you out and make writing that much more difficult. Write what you want to write, when you want to write it, and the rest will take care of itself (with some well chosen link drops here and there).
Also remember that formatting and presentation are almost as important as the content itself. If it looks like shit and is difficult to read, nobody's going to read it.
PS your idea sounds good and you should feel good (please no video content though)
if you have text, some video, some more text, you got yourself a pretty decent setup like IGN. they wouldn't be links, you'd embed them, and they'd correspond exactly to what you're speaking about.
If you tell me there was a ninja gaiden clone where I get to ride a tiger, the best thing that's going to happen to your article is that I stop reading and go play the game somehow. Probably not what you want.
if you have video as your main content, maybe playing the game, or heck, maybe even beating the game sped up to like, 300 percent speed, with text and such as supplemental material, I'd watch. Release weekly, or bi weekly "episodes" or "Articles" the video is much more likely to keep my attention for 2-3 minutes, and I'd certainly come back for more.
Facebook: MeekinOnMovies
Twitter: Twitter.com/MeekinOnMovies
My 10 commandments of game reviewing
7 Great Games Playing Watch_Dogs will remind you of/url]
Far Cry 4: 10 Essential Features it Must Have
10 Videogames Ruined By The Hype
if you can get video of the gameplay and just talk over it, which is really cheap and easy to do, (minus the cost of the games) that would be much better than gifs.
HOWEVER,
Don't worry about that in the beginning. AT ALL. Just focus on writing interesting, funny stories and in depth reviews that you put your heart into, add a few screenshots or some youtube gameplay footage that you give full credit and reference to, and when you've got a few hundred or even a thousand readers, a year or two down the road, then you can look at a video blog.
It's a great idea, but like all great ideas, it takes time and practice.
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/the-secrets-of-donkey-kong-country-2.html
is very much like what I'm talking about. He's writing about a game in a popular series that most gamers should already know about, and wouldn't really need to read a general review of. Instead, he picked out one thing it did REALLY well (hiding secrets) and explained how and why it worked, while comparing it to the way secrets are hidden in other games.
I'd like to do almost exactly that, except I'd generally pick obscure or outright bad games that still managed to do at least one thing right, or did something cool that few other games tried. More pics would have been nice there, as I would have liked to see where some of those coins were hiding, but I don't need to watch him play through a level or two to get what he was saying. If he had video, I wouldn't have been able to read and enjoy that just now while on my lunch break.