Opening Daaaaaay

It's opening day! And already the Brewers have hit two home runs off Edinson Volquez, who, by the way, has the look in his team photo like someone totally freaked out.

So Long, Guitar Hero

I predicted that Guitar Hero was going to collapse, and verily, it came to pass.

Here's what a few people are saying:

“You can have an IP that you lovingly care for and release every so often that can last forever, or one you ride hard into the ground.” - Cliffy B

Sing it, Cliff.

Activision sez:

"Although we did well with the core gamer in 2010, we felt the effects of changing consumer demand for peripheral-based and mid-tier titles, which performed well below our expectations.

After two years of steeply declining sales, we’ve made the decision to close our Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on our previously playing Guitar Hero title for 2011.

Despite a remarkable 92 rating on DJ Hero 2, a widely well-regarded Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, as well as the 90-plus rated release from our most direct competitor, demand for peripheral-based music games declined at a dramatic pace."

It appears that Activision learned the wrong lesson here. Instead of placing the blame on peripheral oversaturation, as yours truly talked about back in 2009 and everyone could see coming from a mile away, they said that demand decreased dramatically. In other words, it was completely out of their hands and just a market fluctuation.

When Guitar Hero came out, it was a revelation. It was fun, easy to learn, and just plain brilliant. You could tell that it had a limited shelf life, but there were ways to stretch that shelf life considerably. By metering out carefully the releases, Activision could have kept Guitar Hero viable for several years.

Don't believe me? Think of this: What if they would have ONLY released Guitar Hero 3 and Guitar Hero: World Tour this generation? They could bide their time, wait a a few years, and then release the next Guitar Hero with cool new features. They might even wait a generation for the next one. Can you imagine the demand for the next game? Instead, they pummeled the tar out of Guitar Hero so badly that no one wanted anything to do with it.

They also learned the wrong lesson from Guitar Hero in a different sense. Instead of understanding that the appeal wasn't in the motion or the peripheral but rather the gameplay, they started pounding out peripherals like mad. Here's the thing: No one liked the extra cost involved with the peripherals. They used them because the games they were attached to were fun.

What a concept! Instead of peripherals driving purchases, people actually would buy good games in SPITE of the extra expense BECAUSE they were good! WOW!

I've hammered Activision on this point repeatedly, but don't be surprised if they go the way of 90's Sega. They have no idea what they're doing. So why aren't we having this conversation about Call of Duty instead? We'll discuss that a different time.

Sony's Bad Month

Sony's attempts at stopping their piracy problem has hit a snag: The new firmware they released to stop piracy also stops people from upgrading their hard drives.

They're already fixing the issue, but this has just been a bad month for them. The PSP is totally compromised and the PS3 is compromised. The NGP looks cool, but, to quote Penny Arcade, if it was going to be $249 or less they would have been crowing about it already and screaming "In your FACE, Nintendo!" from the mountaintops.

The sad thing is Sony was really getting momentum gathered. Think about it: If their systems wouldn't have been compromised, they would be sitting on a solid PS3, a PSP that was going to soon be replaced by the really awesome-looking NGP, and they'd be ready to go.

Instead, they have their two flagship systems in tatters, they have to divert funds from R&D over to patching up the screwed-up systems and try and rush both the NGP and possibly the PS4 to market if they want to slow the bleeding.

However, they do have another option. They tried tons of firmware upgrades to the PSP, and it did nothing. They tried releasing PSP revisions, and it did nothing. They wasted valuable company resources on ideas that didn't work and ended up possibly kneecapping the PS3. I mean, think about it: One standard encryption key for EVERYTHING on the PS3? Doesn't that sound like a rush job to you?

I suggest that they take this approach: Put up a bit of a fight. Right now, when  everyone is talking about PS3 hacking, make it a little difficult to hack with these annoying firmware updates. Then, once the furor has died down, stop fighting it and refocus your efforts.

Also, remember that some people are just plain going to try and steal your crap. There's nothing you can do to stop all of them, so just stop the people who are using the most obvious exploits.

To give you an example, I installed the Wii Homebrew Channel a while ago just because there was an easy way to do it using the BannerBomb exploit. Then they upgraded the firmware, which nuked the exploit for the time being. I haven't tried since. It's just not worth the effort. I suppose I could do it again, but why?

At this point, that's really all Sony can do. Just scare away the people who want to steal things come hell or high water. Don't worry about everyone, since you won't stop everyone. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Then cross your fingers and pray like crazy.

A Warning For Activision

Activision had best watch itself.

I'm not saying this because of recent controversies or even because Bobby Kotick, the current CEO, is a jerk. I'm saying this because of history.


I recently purchased Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, a collection of the Sega Genesis' astounding murderer's row of games. There are 40 games in the collection, mostly released within eight years of each other, between 1988-96, and 8 more unlockable games. Some of the games are great games that I've never played (Bonanza Bros.) and some of them are horrible games that suck (Super Thunder Blade).

However, this got me thinking. 40 games in 8 years? That's nuts! That's at a clip of 5 games per year, and many of them were very solid games! That was some amazing work by Sega! How did they not continue to compete with that sort of capability? What happened?

Let's take a closer look at what they really did. Of the games in this collection, there are 2 Ecco the Dolphin games. There are 5 main Sonic series games (Sonic 1, 2, 3, Knuckles and Sonic 3D Blast), 3 Golden Axe games, 3 Streets of Rage games, 2 Shining Force games, 3 Phantasy Star games, and 2 Vectorman games. They also have Shinobi 3 in this collection, although there are no other Shinobi games. The first sequel in this group was Golden Axe 2 in 1991. The last sequel was Vectorman 2 in 1995.

Let's do the math. In a span of five years, Sega pumped out 15 sequels to their hits, at a clip of three per year. I'm not counting handheld games in this number, as a steady library of games was necessary to attempt to establish a handheld presence.

Are some of these games excellent? You bet! Sonic 2 is the best of the Sonic series, Shining Force 2 is amazing, and the Phantasy Star games were great too. But what did Sega accomplish by making so many sequels in such a short period of time? They watered down their franchises to the point that no one was interested in them anymore, and what's worse, they blew all of their great ideas in such a hurry that no more great ideas existed.

Let's compare this with Nintendo. During this time frame of 1991 to 1995, Nintendo also released sequels. They released 10 of them in Japan, and only 8 in the United States. Of this group, there were three Fire Emblem games, Super Metroid, Super Mario World (in the US it was released in 1991, Japan 1990) and Super Mario World 2, Donkey Kong Country 2 and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past as well as Kirby's Adventure and Star Tropics 2 for the NES. I'm also not counting handheld games in this number, as Nintendo was trying to build up the library of the GameBoy.

In most of these cases, Nintendo went back to the well in order to do things they couldn't do previously. For example, Yoshi was created during the making of Super Mario Bros. 3, but they couldn't include him due to system limitations. Instead, they held on to the idea until they could do it in Super Mario World. Kirby's Adventure built on concepts they couldn't accomplish in Game Boy iterations of the game. Super Metroid became one of the greatest games ever made, and so on. The only series that was really run into the ground by excessive sequels was the Donkey Kong Country series, which started strong with the first two installments and had a miserable third game.

Therein lies Sega's problem. For example, what does Streets of Rage 3 add to Streets of Rage? What did Golden Axe 3 add to the Golden Axe formula? Sure, they added new characters and continued the story, but no one was dying for either of those series to continue. In those cases, the property was run into the ground by repeated trips to the same well.

Take Vectorman. Vectorman was Sega's response to Nintendo's CGI characters in Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario RPG. Vectorman was a fun, if slightly unpolished game. The music was tremendous, and the level design was good. Vectorman 2 looks and plays like a cheap cash-in. It's boring and repetitive.

Sonic also suffered. Sonic 2 was great. Sonic 3 was good. Sonic and Knuckles was OK. Sonic 3D Blast was hideous. The downtick in quality is striking.

Now, let's say that Sega held off on developing these properties. Let's say that they instead waited on Sonic 2, integrating the Sonic 3 save system, the fantastic Angel Island level, and the different elemental shields into Sonic 2. Wouldn't you say that it would make one of the best games ever? Instead, some of the ideas had to wait for the inferior Sonic 3.

Sega probably thought they were doing the right thing. It would make sense to strike while the characters are hot, right? I mean, Nintendo was taking their sweet time making sequels, so pumping out sequels would distract from what Nintendo was doing and make the Genesis the more viable system, right?

That's almost exactly what happened, too. The Genesis overtook the SNES in Europe and made Nintendo look like out-of-touch old fogeys in the States. They opened the door for a new core audience that wanted more adult games, and if they had been able to keep their momentum going, they could have become the dominant company.

I'm going to bring another thread into this discussion, so keep up. A long time ago, I made a webcomic. Don't bother asking about it: It was awful. I never put it online because I started running out of ideas. Instead of creating situations with the characters I had made, I just started adding more characters to create more situations. It was totally unsustainable, and I'm glad it never came to fruition.

Sega made the same mistake, especially with the Sonic series. They blasted through all their great ideas in the first 5 games they made and ended up sitting on a great character with no gameplay ideas. What to do? Add characters!

They're still doing it, too. Instead of stopping with Sonic games, look what they've done in the last few years. Starting in 2001, we've had Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic the Hedgehog (again), Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic and the Black Knight, and Sonic Colors. That's an average of about one Sonic game on a console per year.

Now compare Mario's main offerings since 2001. We have Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Super Mario Galaxy 2. That's it. Since they spaced out their releases, Mario is still a big deal. Most every Mario game sells quite a few copies because it's still a big deal.

Heck, let's throw Zelda games into the mix. Since 2001, we've had Wind Waker and Twilight Princess on consoles. Once again, that's it. Heck, throwing in handhelds, we have Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks. That's still fewer games than Sonic.

OK, so what does this all mean? Let's look at the facts.

1) Sega watered down their franchises to the point that they are unusable. They can't revive them either, because nobody cares about them (see Golden Axe: Beast Rider).
2) They got some quick gains in their market by creating tons of games based off their franchises, but quickly lost ground to Nintendo, they of the "slow and steady wins the race" attitude.
3) While they did make some poor decisions with their management (i.e. the early termination of the Sega Saturn, among others), a game company is all about the games, and if the quality drops, they can't expect to stay in business for very long.

All right, so let's circle back to Activision. Activision has three major licenses that they keep trying to exploit: Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, and Call of Duty. Blizzard's licenses are independent of Activision, so World of Warcraft and Starcraft remain untouched. Activision has made piles of money off of these, and is one of the most powerful companies in gaming.

However, of the three major licenses that Activision attempts to exploit, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk are almost dead. Guitar Hero has been exploited so often their name is on milk cartons. Tony Hawk has been lapped by other, more superior games that don't require ridiculous and expensive peripherals. Call of Duty is showing signs of collapse, as the latest Call of Duty has been marred with issues, although it still sells mightily.

Activision hasn't really developed any new licenses. They brought in Bungie to work for them recently, but there aren't any projects ready to see the light of day, not for a while.
So, we can see that they're doing something similar to what Sega did in the 90's. They've watered down their franchises so much that they've killed not only their OWN franchise but also OTHER similar franchises, like Rock Band. They've made astounding monetary gains, but at what cost?

If things start going south at Activision, how long would it take for them to start raiding the coffers of Blizzard and demanding more product from them? They could end up not only killing their own franchises, but also Blizzard's venerable franchises too.

Plus, bad management decisions happen every day. When a company is going along fine, these decisions can usually be smoothed over by other departments or solved carefully. When a company is in trouble, those decisions can create a ripple effect throughout the organization, eventually sapping companies of manpower and the ability to innovate. For instance, Sega withstood the poor Sega CD and 32X add-ons because they were healthy. They could not, however, withstand the failure of the Saturn.

So, too, if Activision finds themselves in a dangerous spot, how much faith do you have that they'll make the right decision? Right now they're fine, so when Kotick opens his fat mouth or tries pushing Tony Hawk: Shred on a public that doesn't want anything to do with it, they survive. When, say, Call of Duty collapses, will they have the ability to recover from those poor decisions?

Time will tell. But Activision would be wise to heed the warning of Sega: Over-exploit your properties at your own risk.

Why The Super Mario Bros. Collection Makes Me Angry

The Onion’s AV Club reviewed the 25th Anniversary Super Mario Bros. Collection today. Spoiler warning: They gave it an F.

This is where you would expect the Nintendo fanboy in me to start screaming and howling about how the AV Club is not being fair to Nintendo, and they’re forgetting about the BEAUTY of these games. If that’s what you came here to read, I’m sorry to have wasted your time.

The fact of the matter is, Nintendo has dropped the ball with regards to the Anniversary Collection. I can’t even begin to describe how badly Nintendo dropped the ball. They didn’t just drop the ball, they dropped it down a storm drain and then drowned trying to go get it back, and then badgers ate the body.

Here’s what you get when you drop $30 on this anniversary collection:

1. A warmed-over ROM of Super Mario All-Stars
2. A booklet
3. A music CD
4. Regret

First of all, Super Mario All-Stars was a really fun game... in 1993 when no one EVER released games for the previous system on the new system. It was amazing to be able to play Mario 1, 2, 3 and the Lost Levels for the first time in glorious 16-bit color and sound. Those of us in the US had never even played the Lost Levels, so it was an extra treat. Plus, you could save your game! Rock ON!

That was 17 years ago. These things are now passe. For example, we’ve seen Super Mario 1 redone so many times that we’re bored by it. We’ve seen Super Mario Advance and Super Mario Advance 4, which redid Mario 2 & 3 with way more enhancements. The Lost Levels, having now been “found,” are no longer a huge draw.

On top of that, you can purchase all of these games via the Virtual Console service for $21 total. Twenty-one dollars! Let’s do the math:

$21 < $30

Via this complex mathematical formula, I have extrapolated that $21 is, in fact, LESS than their asking price for the Anniversary Collection.

“But, Mr. Blogger Nerd Rage Man, these are ENHANCED GRAPHICS! SAVE SLOTS! Not only that, but there’s a booklet and music CD! That has to be worth $9 more, right?”

You could make the argument that those additions add up to $9 worth of extras, except for two things:

1. Nobody really likes the enhanced graphics or music. What will draw a bigger crowd, the original Super Mario Brothers music, or the “improved” Super Nintendo music? What about the “improved” graphics? What’s the bigger nostalgia trip? Essentially, Nintendo is charging you extra for something you don’t want, didn’t ask for, and don’t really like.
2. Save slots aren’t that important anymore. Using the Virtual Console, you can easily stop your in-progress game and move on to a different game. In the NES and Super Nintendo days, there was no way to do so. Your only option was leaving the system on overnight, which could damage it or cause it to overheat. It was a Big Deal to have save slots. Now, not so much.
3. The booklet and music CD are flimsy at best. Quick, where can you find information on the making of Super Mario Brothers? TRY EVERYWHERE. Where can you listen to the original music of the game? HEY LOOK, YOUTUBE. There is absolutely nothing here that you can’t find free elsewhere, and in many cases, better quality.
4. Where the &#$^ is Super Mario World? For a time, they were releasing cartridges with Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario World together. What happened? Why did they decide not to include it?

Here’s what really gets me. What did Nintendo do with this collection? They quite literally slapped a Mario All-Stars ROM on a disc and sent it off to printing. The ROM itself is maybe 8 megabytes large. What did they fill up the rest of the disc with? Pictures of their moms and dads? Vacation memories? The unabridged Oxford Dictionary? It’s quite possibly the laziest collection I have ever seen.

Let’s compare this collection to the Mega Man Anniversary Collections. The Mega Man Anniversary Collection has 8 Mega Man games on it, two unlockable Mega Man arcade games, unlockable galleries and more. The Mega Man X Anniversary Collection has 6 Mega Man games on it, an unlockable kart-racing game, and galleries. This is from Capcom, a company that has far less money than Nintendo.

Now, imagine if Nintendo had gone that extra mile. Imagine if this collection had Mario 1, 2, 3, the Lost Levels AND Super Mario World AND allowed you to unlock, say, Super Mario Land 1 and 2 and maybe Donkey Kong. I would have been happy with that. That would have been amazing. As it is, they handed out poop in a box.

Here’s the sad part: If they would have released this five years ago as a 20-year anniversary collection, it would have been amazing. Playing the Mario games on your Gamecube and using the music CD at a time when we still used CDs would have been awesome. As it is, the Super Mario Bros. Anniversary Collection was a giant missed opportunity and one of the most pathetic collections I’ve ever seen.

Our New Mission Statement

You may have seen that our new mission statement is “Analysis without the hype cycle.” You may wonder what we mean by that. Here’s the explanation.


You may remember this article, where I talked about the problems plaguing game reviews. One of the problems with game reviews and reviewers is this: They’re too close to the industry. They depend on exclusives and advertising from the industry to fuel their own traffic and give them something to write about.

I’m not saying this in a conspiratorial, us-versus-them manner. It’s the God’s honest truth. For example, looking at IGN right at this instant, there are ads for Mafia II from Direct2Drive, Adventure Quest, Tron Evolution, and OnLive. Gamespot is skinned with Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Maple Story, Kinect Joy Ride, and EA’s iPhone games.

I’m not criticizing these publications by any means. I mean, it makes sense to advertise games on a gaming website. A lot of journalists are great, fine, upstanding individuals and I would never state that their journalistic credibility is suspect. But when your salary is literally paid for by the companies that you sometimes need to tell people to avoid, it adds an extra dimension to your already-taxing job.

However, that’s not where the largest part of where game journalism fails, since most reviewers try and be honest. It’s actually a little bit deeper of a problem.

Above all else, what does every gaming company wan? They want you to buy the latest game, system or accessory that they’re producing. If you stop buying their products, they’ll go out of business. If they go out of business, the game sites and magazines close up too. So what’s a game site to do?

You’ll notice that a lot of game sites focus on what’s coming up, what’s new and what the best games are of this year. They don’t spend much time looking into the past or putting games in historical context. They also have a tendency to hyperbolize newer games at the expense of older ones. Every new game is one of the Best Ever, so you can throw out your old copies of game X, or, even better, trade them in.

It seems that a lot of the sites get involved in the hype cycle, which is kind of like this:

1. “What game is next?”

2. “Ooh, can’t wait for this new game!”

3. “It’s out! Quick play it!”

4. “Good, huh?”

5. “What game is next?”

6. Go to step 2.

Once again, I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m not saying that all game reviewers are immoral and purposely trying to get you to waste your money. However, with all sorts of sites all around the globe talking about what’s new and coming up next, very few discuss what’s happened and how it matters to what’s going on today.

There’s a problem with this approach. One, many games are meant to be savored and enjoyed. If you blast through them without glancing to your left and right every once in a while, you miss out on some really cool stuff.

Two, the only people that can legitimately keep up with this approach are teenagers or adults with no responsibilities. As you get older and approach middle age, like most of the gaming audience is doing, you can’t keep up. You end up in a very frustrating position while the rest of the world passes you by and your backlog mounts.

Three, it creates an economic strain and beefs up the power of places like Gamestop. In order to keep up, you have to sell Game X that you just finished QUICKLY before it loses value, and eBay and Glyde take too long. Gamestop’s just down the street and they’ll give you something for it. Go! Go! Go!

Downwards Compatible has always been about avoiding the games that are hyped out of control and focusing on what’s enjoyable to play right now. We’ve never formally made it our mission statement, though, and that’s what we’re doing today.

Downwards Compatible: Analysis without the hype cycle.

It means that you’ll be able to talk about what’s already come out instead of what’s coming out. We’ll focus on new technologies, sure. We’ll talk about interesting things that we see happening in the world of gaming, most definitely. However, we’re not going to go chasing after rainbows and trying to find that elusive game that will somehow make us happy. We’re going to take our time, chew thoroughly games that we like, and figure out why we like them.

Hopefully, you’ll stick along with us for the ride. Thanks for reading.

Major Redesign

Exciting things are afoot at ↓C! We've just replaced the main page with all the goodies that Google rolled out in the last year, and we're contemplating a FULL redesign to go along with all the fun! We've also got a new mission statement, as you can see above.

What does it mean? We'll explain in a different article.