Twelve

I need a DVD player to watch all of my movies. With my iPod, I can listen to all my music. In order to play all the video games I own, I have an Atari, an NES, a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, a Sega Saturn, a Nintendo 64, a Playstation 2, an Xbox, a Game Cube, a Game Boy Player, a Nintendo DS, an Xbox 360, and a personal computer.

I’m not a collector. I don’t consider myself to be a “hardcore gamer.” I just like playing older games as much as I like playing newer ones. Why the hell do I need twelve systems? Why can't I play all the games worth playing on the current consoles?

Historically, the video game culture has been very focused on the future, often at the expense of the past. For any given hardware generation, only the largest hits have been kept in print, and once a new generation of systems are cycled into place, the vast majority of the earlier games are never re-released. The few games that do get a reissue are all too often plagued by a hideous need to give the re-released games graphical facelifts or to tweak gameplay, usually making them easier. To make matters worse, backwards compatibility is often unreliable if it is implemented at all.

The bottom line is, as hardware moves forward, older titles are left behind. To play older games legally on a couch, (as opposed to illegally emulated on a computer) one needs to keep and maintain a dozen aging consoles and likewise aging cartridges and discs. That, at least, is the current state of affairs.

However, attitudes have been changing, and things are improving for archivists. The Greatest/Platinum Hits model of republishing hit games for bargain prices has been brilliant for keepings games in print longer. Playstation One games are now being re-released for the PSP. Although poorly implemented, every current system has at least a head nod toward backwards compatibility. And most significantly, all three current home systems have created a means of selling affordable downloads of classic games.

Xbox Live Arcade. Wii Virtual Network. PlayStation Network. All three systems have a structure in place to sell you classic games for a low price point. This model of selling older generation titles is still new and unproven, but I suspect that it will be huge. Hardcore gamers like to have big libraries. Casual gamers like smaller, cheap games like they used to make. Finally, there exists an economically feasible way of maintaining a body of classic video game work.

This is good. Not only will this allow us to have more robust libraries and richer play experiences, it will also strengthen the art form. Gunstar Heroes and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are brilliant games that helped shape the face of gaming. How absurd is it that they have spent years out of print, available only to those hardcore enough to pay collector’s prices? How can one discuss the impact those games have had, or learn better design from them if they aren’t available to anyone who wants a copy? As the video game culture finally adapts into a form where anyone will be able to play classic games on current generation hardware, the whole culture is enriched. A deeper intimacy with the entire history and spectrum of video games can only give the culture greater insight, and the medium greater legitimacy.

I don’t have to keep a record player to listen to The Who Sell Out. I don’t have to keep a VCR to watch The Graduate. Why should I have to keep an NES to play Metroid?