I Was a Teenage Adventure Gamer
Adventures in Other Genres
Having a weekly column is a good thing. I get to talk about whatever
I want as long as it deals with adventure games or adventure. This week,
we are going to take a little stroll down memory lane. Remember when playing
a sports game was an adventure? What I am really talking about here is
the confusing controller configuration. Way back when we had the NES,
we had two buttons, A and B. That was it. A and B. We also had the D-Pad,
but that doesn’t count. The point is that the gaming scene has changed
for every genre. We used to have two buttons, and it was hard to control
your little basketball players or your hockey players. Playing sports
games in the early 90s was a true adventure.
But now we have all of the newer and cooler sports games, and of course
we have a bigger controller. The keyboard is our new controller for many,
many games. We use the keyboard to move our intrepid hero, Manny Calavera,
in Grim Fandango, we use the keyboard to duck down and ready a
wad of C4 in Soldier of Fortune. These are true adventure games,
but what about the other genres? How does the keyboard fit in?
Well, let’s use my favorite sport, hockey, as the example. In older hockey
games, you only had the two control buttons and many button taps to memorize
so you could score a goal or pass to your other players. But now we have
the keyboard, and we can assign a key for each function. I recently got
my hands on NHL 2001, and I must say, comparing the way we used
to play hockey games and the way we play hockey games now, the true adventure
was back in the late 80s and early 90s. Not that this is a bad thing,
but who would have thought that in the year 2000, we’d have a certain
key on a keyboard to control different functions?
I can remember playing a hockey game on the NES when I was about 6. I
couldn’t do any fancy tricks, let alone score any goals, the controls
were just too confusing, and I pretty much gave up on things. But that
was a true adventure, figuring out those controls. Now we have larger
instruction manuals that tell us every key we need to know to do important
stuff. The C key passes, the space bar lets you shoot, X makes your player
speed up, and Z makes your player deke (for those of you who aren’t into
hockey, a deke is when the player fakes out the goalie).
Now, some of you are wondering, if this is an adventure game website,
why am I talking about a hockey game? Way back in the days when the computer
had a 420K hard drive, we had games where all we had for control was a
whopping two buttons on a small controller. And I gave up on the NES when
I was 8 because I used to have blisters on my thumbs after a half-hour
gaming session. That was a true adventure. Now, the true adventures we
have while playing sports games is figuring out how to use the “Put
Your Face in the Game” editor that came with NHL 2001.
Everyone that comes here is a fan of adventure games, and I m sure that
there are other genres we are interested in. I like sports games and shooters.
I’ve tried out a few flight simulator games, but that just isn’t my cup
o’ tea. This is what this week’s column is all about. Come with me to
the Dark Side, admit that you love other genres as well. I love sports
games. NHL 2001 is the latest sports game I’ve played and I love
it. I’ve had many cool experiences with sports games, strategy games,
shooters and the like, and if I had the chance, I’d try to devote every
week mentioning some of my experiences with other genres in this column.
What do you think of that idea? Drop me a line at [email protected]
with your vote of yea or nay. And maybe include a reason why. Happy gaming!
