Gamer Blast

It’s very difficult to compare the today’s video game industry with the video game industry of ten or twenty years ago, as so many things have changed.  Latest generation consoles, with their hi-speed online connectivity and impressive graphics power are much more advanced than the old school ones like Sega Channel, but what about certain popular genres that have never quite been able to make the jump to this generation of consoles?

To be specific, I am talking about classic beat em’ up games, you know those old school favorite side scrolling arcade brawler games. Games such as Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, X-Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Golden Axe. These classic 2D beat em’ up games are still providing great gameplay, even if the technology behind these games is quite antiquated.

Side scrolling games have recently enjoyed a small resurgence with the Metroid games for Gameboy Advance, Contra 4, the New Super Mario Bros games, and the more recently Shadow Complex. The success of these games has demonstrated that the two-dimensional side scrolling games can still provide some supurb gameplay without having to rely on heavy graphics power.

What will the future bring? Who knows. But I’m sure we’ll see more realistic graphics, better social interaction and many more new and exciting features as gaming technology evolves to the next level. As far as beat em’ up game go, maybe the genre is just too damn outdated in this age of high end graphics, to really make much sense for game developers to pursue commercial development of such games. Who knows, perhaps a well developed beat em’ up game could end up being a surprise hit. All it would take is an indie developer to give the genre a complete makeover with 3D graphics or stylized graphics on a two-dimensional viewing plane and the addition of some cool new features to the old school gameplay to breathe some badly needed new life into this genre which has been neglected for years. Perhaps that could be a big success or maybe classic beat em’ up games are just far too simplistic for modern gamers to fully enjoy. Only time will tell.

Popularity: 2% [?]