Day 11: Mobile Gaming

Simple, yet addictive.

Nintendo's success in the mobile market began with the Game and Watch games, like the one above.  These games are 100% classic, but as game graphics improved on consoles, so too did they improve for gaming on the go.  Never did we think that we could play console quality games while flying, but we've hit that point and much, much more.  With a goal in mind of dominating the mobile gaming market, as neither Sega nor Atari had a piece of the pie at the time, Nintendo continued to develop and experiment until they hit it big with the Game Boy.

Good 'ol Mean Green.

Of course this beast was the next logical step up from the Game and Watch series.  It's not exactly a giant leap for the graphics, but the ability to use interchangeable games was a huge improvement.  When I got my first Game Boy one of my thoughts was, "What the hell just threw up in my game?"  The games are clear enough, but whose idea was it to have the games be in black and greenish-yellow?  I mean, just take a look at the Atari Lynx the visuals alone make the Game Boy look like shit.  Not that the Lynx is perfect either.  The piece of crap drained batteries like nothing else and you need to angle the screen perfectly to see without any type of glare or blurriness.  Some of the same issues plagued the Game Gear and both machines would see a similar failing against the Game Boy's battery life and third party support as many peripherals would make up for it's lack of a backlit screen and other shortcomings.  Nintendo's success should also be partially attributed to their prior mobile device experience from Game and Watch games.

Nintendo keeps the config simple.

After the release of the SNES, Nintendo came out with a unique concept: Super Game Boy.  Essentially the idea was to play your old Game Boy games on a giant TV screen using the Super Nintendo and a special cartridge that you plugged smaller cartridges into.  At the same time, Sega came out with an actual mobile gaming unit known as the Nomad.  The Sega Nomad was essentially your Genesis on the go.  So while Sega tried to redefine the mobile market with a handheld system that played console games, Nintendo seemed to be going in the opposite direction.  That is, of course, until the company once again released a Game Boy.  This time it was in color.  The Game Boy Color had it's own library of games, along with being backwards compatible with your old green and black games.  Even with the Nomad's powerful capabilities, Sega lost out again when the newest Nintendo mobile hit the scene.

Steaming pile.

During this period, all of the remaining gaming companies, Nintendo, Sony, and Sega, were all gearing up for the next generation systems to hit the scene.  To fill the time, Nintendo attempted to release a system that would take advantage of the newer technologies that they were going to implement on their later Nintendo 64 system.  A pseudo-3d effect was added to a pair of goggles thrown together with a batch of shitty games and you got the piece of shit Virtual Boy.  I'm not even going to add a link here it's so bad.  I just want to forget about it.  When I was a kid, this thing looked like the shit, but it turned out to be just shit.  Ugh, let's just skip a few years.


The next gen consoles were released and so was Nintendo's next accomplishment in the handheld world.  The Game Boy Advance took the Game Boy Color and kicked it up a few notches, as it were.  The games got better, the graphics were sharper, and the system was still backwards compatible.  Several adaptations of the Advance would come out, most notably the fold-able SP.  Nintendo was still dominating the handheld market, especially since Sega's bust with their Dreamcast gamble.  Not until the DS and it's successors were released did Sony finally enter the market with the PSP and give Nintendo some competition.  That struggle for market share continues today with no other game companies wanting to step into the ring with the heavyweight champion and the up and comer.

Ugh, just... What the hell?

Now I'm sure you're wondering, "What the hell?  This isn't funny and everything's out of chronological order dumbass."  While that may be true, it all brings me to the shorter topic of the tablet or phone gaming craze.  Yes, the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and other mobile devices that aren't handheld systems may be cool and come with a seemingly limitless supply of "really awesome games," they suck ass as gaming platforms and do not make someone a gamer if used prolifically.  That's right, no matter how many shitty clones of Tetris you have, you still do not equal someone who experienced the original on that black and green screen while using an attached light to see in the dark at 4 AM.  I do have to admit some of the ports, Sim City in particular, do well on the iPad and iPhone, but they are side dishes to my actual gaming activities and systems, not the main course.  You can't have a three course meal with only soup and salad, you'd be perpetually stuck on the first course. 

The reason for all of this?  While driving the other day I passed a car full of teenage/early college-aged kids that had an Angry Birds pillow sitting in the back window for everyone to see.  It's as if the kid that owned the car was explaining that he's the shit because he's a hardcore Angry Birds fan.  The game can be addicting and certainly fun to waste time with, but memorabilia and attitudes like that demean what it means to be a real "gamer."  A gamer dedicates time and effort to a game, not for the satisfaction of being a dick or showing off, but for the rich experience that a good game can bring, the completion of a story, the rewarding ending you worked for, or the defeat of that impossible endgame boss.  Real gamers don't waste their time.