Have video games peaked?
The Thursday letters page celebrates the music of the Commodore 64, as on reader discusses his love of retro lightgun games.
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The gathering storm
More than 2,000 people losing their job in just a couple of games is tragic. Just as you predicted, the layoffs are continuing into 2024 and getting even worse. Between this and the general way developers are treated, the cost of making and buying games, the constant billion dollar acquisitions, the implosion at Sony, and the talk of Microsoft going third party the video games industry does not seem healthy at the moment.
The story that caught my eye the other day was about how for the first time in a decade gaming was not the biggest source of entertainment in the UK, which is kind of worrying really. People have been talking about a video game crash for a while now and it seems like it’s actually happening. The reason for the last one is that people just lost faith with the whole concept, and games stopped selling. We might not be there yet but it no longer seems like something that’s impossible.
Add in the cost of living crisis, and this year’s so far lacklustre line-up of new titles, and it really seems like games are in a very bad place right now. I’m sure people will reply by saying they played a game the other day and enjoyed it, so that must mean the whole industry is fine, but clearly it’s not.
I hope the Switch 2 and PlayStation’s new boss are what they need to be, or I really fear what things are going to look like by the end of the year. To me it seems like games are becoming less popular in the general mindset and I can kind of understand why.
Cacti
Time travel
Please can you tell me the frame rate of Monty on the Run?
Seriously though, it’s surreal seeing your review of the Monty Mole games nearly four decades after I first played them on the Commodore 64. Even though Monty On The Run received a coveted Zzap!64 Sizzler back in the day I’ve no doubt that all the games have aged badly since then. Good to see legendary composers Rob Hubbard and Ben Daglish get a mention too. So what next? A Magic Knight game collection to appear on the eShop?
Keep up the excellent work.
Thelric
PS: Currently playing Time Pilot (Switch). Yes, really!
GC: We’re sure you’re aware, but since it first came out in 1982 that’s even older than Monty Mole.
Nintendo logic
Logically speaking there should be a chance that Nintendo will announce the Switch 2 in the first Nintendo Direct of the year but I can’t see it. Their line-up this year might be low-key but they’ve still got a lot of games that they want to sell, and they haven’t really explained what Princess Peach: Showcase! yet, so I think they’ll concentrate on all that.
I guess there’s a small chance they might hint at the Switch 2 but I think when they announce it the decks will be clear, in terms of other games, and they’ll concentrate on just that. Since that should be right around E3 time (RIP) it all seems to fit into place. I agree with GC that it almost seems too straightforward, which Nintendo never are, but I can’t see any other logical guess that makes sense.
Toshi
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Not for profit
Twitch hasn’t made any money in nine years? I mean, I can think of a way to cut costs and it’s not by sacking 35% of your workforce. The top streamers are paid tens of millions of dollars every year an the really successful ones are usually the really awful and obnoxious ones, with terrible views. I think cutting their ‘pay’ by 50% would do everyone involved a favour.
Twitch has become an important part of the gaming world but if it were to implode that would create a huge hole in the industry, that people have got used to. I assume the other streaming service are no better off so maybe this whole thing needs to be rethought from the ground up?
Taylor Moon
Feels good
A couple of times I’ve noticed you refer to frame rate in games being something you ‘feel, but don’t see’. This is simply not true, and I could tell you in a split second whether a game is running at 30fps or 60fps just by looking at it, as could many.
I agree that when you start to go above 60fps the difference to the human eye is much harder to distinguish and more about how responsive a game feels. But when talking about the difference between 30fps and 60fps this is clearly distinguishable on a visual level. Think about it, why would anyone upload 60fps YouTube videos/trailers if the difference couldn’t be seen? You can’t play a YouTube video, can you!
Adzz1986 (PSN ID)
GC: For games, the visual difference between 30fps and higher isn’t impossible to see but it is trivial. The real benefit is in the controls and gameplay. For a first person shooter or Devil May Cry style actioner, for example, 60fps is essential and the difference between 30fps feels like night and day.
Last man standing
After my recent obsession with lightgun games, and the difficulties that brings, I’ve been looking into modern solutions. There’s currently two reasonably good options. Sinden lightguns and the retro shooter box. Now, with both of these available I’d really like Capcom to make more of Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. I’d be happy with remakes of the originals and continuing with versions of 4 onwards. An all-encompassing bundle would be top. They could even do a Dino Crisis compilation, as it would work especially well as a rail shooter.
Is any company planning something like this or are lightgun games a complete non-starter money wise?
I tried a few in PlayStation VR but apart from American Dream and a few more, the accuracy wasn’t great and the face sweats got to me after a while. I am looking into the Meta Quest 3 as it has Arizona Sunshine 2 (reviewing it?). The £400 price tag has set me back a bit, but I’ll save for it and wait till the cyber sales come on again.
Are there any other light shooter fans about any more or am I a man alone?
Bobwallett
GC: The only recent non-VR example we can think of is the lacklustre The House Of The Dead remake. We reviewed Arizona Sunshine 2 last year. And Dino Crisis did have a lightgun game, called Dino Stalker, on the PlayStation 2.
‘Nuff said
I enjoyed your Monty Mole review and the part I most liked was you didn’t give it a score. I could tell enough from the review itself what the games consisted of, if I would enjoy them, and it was refreshing not to have a score to agree or disagree with.
I’ve never really seen the point of a review score especially when the review itself is well written, as yours almost always are.
The Mark Matthews
GC: Thanks. We generally feel scores have a useful purpose but not when it comes to dumping on 39-year-old former classics.
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The sound of nostalgia
Lovely piece on Monty Mole, and the lost UK 8-bit gaming scene.
Absolutely agree, such a product of their time and abstractly terrible today, but that music… just took me back 40 years in an instant.
I realise so much of my fond nostalgia for 80s C64 gaming is tied in with those legendary composers (and the power of that SID chip).
I count those times absolutely as some of my most formative and most important gaming experiences but, like you mention, it is such a travesty that so much is lost or forgotten.
I despise those cheap Gadget Shop 8-bit game machines, filed with what would have been seen as dross/shovelware even at the time. They aren’t what it was like kids, honestly!
Uridium, Paradroid, Raid Over Moscow (yeah that’s political), Beach Head 2, Kikstart 2, Thrust, The Last Ninja, Sanxion, IK+, and many more played so well, were pushing technical and gameplay boundaries, and paved the way for all the greatness to come. I realise these were not all UK-developed though.
Heck, even coin-op conversions had quality when done right: Buggy Boy, Commando, Bomb Jack, etc. Loved them all. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s all tied in to my general middle-aged man nostalgia for childhood and simpler times (let’s not forget the gaming magazines of the era… wow) and rose-tinted spectacles, but such special times.
Thank you. I read you every day. Stay away from my bins!
Tim
Inbox also-rans
A Sony State Of Play being disappointing is the most believable rumour I’ve ever heard.
Marz
So the future of AI has turned out to be a lot less exciting than I was hoping. No sexbots or terminators, just copycat artists stealing people’s jobs. The future sucks.
Ishi
This week’s Hot Topic
Since this is the first Hot Topic of the new year the subject is obvious: what new games are you most looking forward to in 2024?
We’ve already put together a list of expected games here, but feel free to suggest anything that has a good chance of being released this year – just don’t make up titles that are unlikely or which are known to be out next year or later.
What are your expectations for the year in general and what new hardware do you expect to be launched – and do you intend to buy it?
E-mail your comments to: [email protected]
The small print
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The Thursday letters page celebrates the music of the Commodore 64, as on reader discusses his love of retro lightgun games.
