My only opinion is that I really love reading Time Extension. They're a really cool website that aligns with a lot of my interests, and I wish them the best of luck out there.
This. Them and Sega, honestlyI feel like we've actually had the reverse start to happen where people overcorrected and started to downplay Nintendo in gaming history.
Don't mind me at all...it's all good. Enjoy your posting!the important part is that the Saturn was no one's 1st exposure to 3D to begin with.
Virtual boy has literally nothing to do in its released form with any iteration of VRDisagree heavily, as whilst I actually would give the Virtual Boy credit towards modern VR, it is so clearly many many more steps removed in vision and implementation than either of the Sega examples provided above. Hell, Xbox Live is practically directly born out of SegaNet's ashes, and is literally one step removed in terms of evolution, existing in literally the same generation. That's nothing like the million micro-steps and decades between Virtual Boy and current day VR.
Statistically speaking Saturn was barely present compared to the overwhelming playstation that released at a lower price with a better product.
I think the project of this article is kinda flawed.
Yes, there are parts of video game history that aren't as widely remembered. It's because those parts of history were impactful on a relatively niche scale. And it's because many of the games in those conversations also aren't that popular or widely played today...if they're even commercially available at all.
Nintendo being so ubiquitous in cultural memory is the proof of their bigger impact.
However, this article is literally just rambling about some scattered tweets.
I think I get why that argument doesn't really fly to me.The issue though is some of these aren't impactful on a niche level. They're the basis of stuff like World Of Warcraft, or every space sim you'll ever play. But the combined influence of various Nintendo titles become larger than the sum of their relative parts, because they can all be attributed to a still currently prominent juggernaut. Many of the individual historic games that influence countless games from their time onwards, could be the exact same game but would be far more historically cited if they weren't developed by a software house that either no longer exists, or is otherwise less publicly known today. Origin, Westwood, Core, etc contributed games that are acknowledged far less than their influential merits warrant.
Don't mind me, I'm adding this context for the Super A'CanWhen people say this, I think of the fact that this post is I believe the 5th(!) mention of the Super A'Can on this site. And how it can be boiled down by most as a footnote of "it had a sonic ripoff and a bomberman clone" to a lot who cover it.
I feel like we've actually had the reverse start to happen where people overcorrected and started to downplay Nintendo in gaming history.
No... this isn't how being influential works. You don't just get to say "3D fighters would've happened regardless" to dismiss a game's influence. You could make such ridiculously dismissive arguments about any aspect of any game, and that would include anything you'd credit Mortal Kombat for introducing. Mortal Kombat is hugely popular, but within the fighting game genre the fact that it itself is based on Street Fighter, and Street Fighter still to this day remains the most influential 2D fighter in existence, means Mortal Kombat quite frankly doesn't have enough oxygen left in the room to be as influential to the genre, unless it were able to de-establish much of what Street Fighter had ingrained into the genre. Additional modes, and story presentation are definitely worthy of praise.. but when talking genre influence, stuff like that sits well below fundamental mechanics that establish how a game itself plays. Street Fighter is the undisputed king when it comes to establishing the legacy of how a 2D fighter plays. There is a very clear pre/post line for before and after Street Fighter (especially Street Fighter 2). For 3D, Virtua Fighter is that game.. and here's why:
I actually don't disagree with you that a 3D polygonal fighter was going go happen sooner rather than later regardless of if Virtua Fighter existed or not. But that's unimportant, because being a fighter with 3D graphics never automatically would have meant being a fighter with any similarity to Virtua Fighter. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, King of Fighters, Marvel vs Capcom, etc... all of these are now using 3D graphics, but they are still classed as being 2D fighters despite that. Why is that?... It's because their gameplay mechanics are still derived directly from Street Fighter's 2D heritage, just with a 3D presentation layer on top. And that is actually the safest, most logical progression for what an early 3D fighting game would be back in 1993 at the height of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat's popularity. But what we refer to as 3D fighters today DON'T look or play anything like that. They look and play like Virtua Fighter, because rather than just be a traditional fighting game of the time, but this time with 3D polygons, Virtua Fighter instead redefined what it meant to be a fighting game entirely, along with bringing 3D graphics to the table.
The number of mechanics Virtua Fighter lays claim to is basically impossible to list out, because it started from ground zero and established pretty much all of them. The new ground game that is standard to 3D fighters, with rising kicks, ground pounds, rolls, etc... none of this was part of the established fighting game template prior. The move away from "special moves" and jump ins, to instead have an entire command list of moves that were considered hierarchically even and situational to create a fully developed ground game. Your physical position in the arena carrying more weight beyond the old "trapped in the corner", with stuff like ring out potentially costing you a round regardless of current health. Feigning an attack by cancelling it after it's initiation. Strings executing regardless of if contact is made with the opponent or if you're just whiffing the entire string. String mixups where the command list is full of strings with branching paths. Running based on distance from opponent (as opposed to just forward and back dashes). Back facing attacks (and a turn around game in general). Throws being height specific. End of round replays from different angles.
If I were to sit here for longer I'd probably just continue coming up with stuff that's considered entirely standard today in a 3D fighter, that cannot be automatically assumed would have been the case regardless if a team with less creative vision had instead made "Street Fighter 2 but in 3D" and become a worldwide phenomenon with that game instead. Virtua Fighter influences EVERY game in the 3D fighter subgenre, because it literally created that subgenre and all the base rules it operates on. And unlike something like Karate Champ, it did it with such incredible competency right out of the gate, that the blueprint didn't need to be significantly redefined by any other game afterwards. But you know... that's not even where it's influence ends. We can also look at some of the more miscellaneous aspects of the genre that it impacted in ways we accept as standard today.
- You know how in 2D fighters, when you pick the same character, and the 2nd player is a palette swapped version of the 1st player? Yea... well Virtua Fighter didn't do that. It gave the 2nd player a different outfit entirely. Thus bringing alternate outfits to fighters
- Virtua Fighter 4 introduced the card system and VF.Net, which basically introduced everything we accept as the standard for fighters in todays online landscape... including:
- Character customisations. Taking alternate costumes a step further, you could now win items to decorate and personalise your character with
- Ranking battle and titles. Ranks, promotion matches, etc... yup, this is where they're from... EVEN IN THE SINGLEPLAYER QUEST MODE... So yea, singleplayer content indeed
- In depth training mode. Not just a mode where you beat up a dummy whilst checking your command list. A real training mode, that covers the various gameplay mechanics from a beginner to intermediate level, with trials and such.
Each Virtua Fighter innovated the genre in ways that many other 3D fighters would learn from. VF2 with its unique throw escape animations for every breakable throw and the addition of secondary "kata" intros. Virtua Fighter 3 for realistic fully 3D arenas and a dedicated dodge mechanic (later refined to more resemble Tekken's take on it). But Virtua Fighter 4... Virtua Fighter 4 with VF.Net established basically everything online fighters now do as standard. So yes, Virtua Fighter is still influencing games today. It's impossible for it not to, because to be a 3D fighter and not be influenced by Virtua Fighter is like being a 3D action game without being influenced by Ocarina of Time. It's basically not possible.
Now I don't wanna read any more Virtua Fighter disrespect in this thread. Thank you for your time.
Virtual boy has literally nothing to do in its released form with any iteration of VR
We had VR in the 90s btw and it looked like this
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It didn't play well (oh lord it really didn't)
it looked butt ugly but it was still VR.
Virtual Boy is closer to table top Switch than VR.
I think I get why that argument doesn't really fly to me.
Like sure let's take at face value that Nintendo is less impactful because of prior examples existing.
Why would you choose to pick World of Warcraft when you have other earlier games that do most of what that game do but worse.
Like if Mario 64 isn't important because Battle Command on Atari exists,
it stand to reason to not pick something like WoW when you have the Ultima Onlines of the world that predate WoW by decades in some case.
Why is Croc even important when we have earlier games that were more popular even?
But that's exactly what I'm saying: there is relatively less cultural memory of many of these games *because* they are not as widely played today. *Because* there is a relatively smaller effort to keep them relevant. They are considered a smaller part of history because their history has not been kept alive, and that's happening partly because there is not a publisher pushing them out on all modern platforms or a fanbase that's still super active today. But those are also signs of a smaller impact, not necessarily a small influence on other games but definitely a smaller one on the people playing those games.The issue though is some of these aren't impactful on a niche level. They're the basis of stuff like World Of Warcraft, or every space sim you'll ever play. But the combined influence of various Nintendo titles become larger than the sum of their relative parts, because they can all be attributed to a still currently prominent juggernaut. Many of the individual historic games that influence countless games from their time onwards, could be the exact same game but would be far more historically cited if they weren't developed by a software house that either no longer exists, or is otherwise less publicly known today. Origin, Westwood, Core, etc contributed games that are acknowledged far less than their influential merits warrant.
I don't think it's possible to overstate Virtua Fighter's influence on the landscape.They're not wrong though. Even remotely attributing games like Virtua Fighter to the Saturn's relative popularity is exactly the sort of thing that causes the influence of the titles to be underrepresented. How many people played the Saturn version means nothing. The game could have existed as only an arcade title at all and it's influence would be tremendous. In one single game the entire foundations that still apply to every traditional fighting game was formulated. And that game was a phenomenon regardless of Sega console space woes. The over-attribution of the console market in gaming history because it is the current surviving standard is arguably the root cause of many of the most (still) influential games of all time not being given their proper due.
I've spoken at length regarding Virtua Fighter's individual influence in the past, and so will just copy in from a previous post rather than type out again from scratch.
I mean if you are going to talk about Virtua Fighter's influence, the Saturn's part of it is a footnote more than anything.Bringing Saturn's popularity into the discussion when talking about Virtua Fighter's influence implies a fundamental misunderstanding about game being "influential" as opposed to just "popular".
To be fair Virtual Boy was godawful at most things, it didn't even release in Europe(and believe me with how long they delayed n64, they really had a window to market it).Virtual Boy represents one of the first attempts at consumer level VR at home. That it was fucking awful at it, and a complete failure does not eliminate it from the VR history timeline. It just lessens it's impact and placement within it.
But this is basically my point. Virtual Boy does not resemble today's modern VR because it was far too primitive an implementation to. Comparatively Sega Channel and SegaNet are far more representative of what both gaming subscription services and online gaming services of the current day would be. They were relatively close to the final solution.
I see what you mean but then why forget Ultima at all.You may want to reread. I said the "basis" of games like World Of Warcraft. I used a modern game to demonstrate how the influence on gaming today is not "niche" or small. Roguelikes are hardly a niche or small segment of modern gaming, but the historical representation for Rogue absolutely is. Were it not for the name of the game being part of the subgenre label there's a very real chance that I myself would not know what Rogue is, because for all the gaming media I consume, and all the gaming discussion communities I've been a part of over the years, essentially nobody would have ever passed this historical knowledge down onto me without me actively going to search for it. Conversely I never have to search for any of Nintendo's historical impacts, because they're all repeatedly reinforced within any discussion remotely connected to gaming history. This is the point I'm trying to make, and I hope I've made it more understandable in this post and less likely to be misinterpreted.
This isn't simply about what came first. It's about how much influence some games have carried, and how infrequently they are credited for that influence relative to similar influences in Nintendo titles.
I feel like a big part of it is that Nintendo is still extremely prevalent as a developer today, arguably more prevalent than they were when they were releasing all their most influential games, and have never really stopped shining a light on those older games, both on the actual games themselves in directs or in their other games like Odyssey having a 64 costume. Case in point, do you even know who developed Rogue? I didn't until I just googled it, it was Epyx who went out of business in 1993. I think we see this in other areas as well, like I'd say Sega and Square Enix still get more recognition than even someone like Konami does these days as they are far more prevalent in the industry, I'd also say there is a pretty direct correlation between the decrease in shout outs Konami gets for the influence their classic titles had in the industry and them kind of self destructing a a little over a decade ago.You may want to reread. I said the "basis" of games like World Of Warcraft. I used a modern game to demonstrate how the influence on gaming today is not "niche" or small. Roguelikes are hardly a niche or small segment of modern gaming, but the historical representation for Rogue absolutely is. Were it not for the name of the game being part of the subgenre label there's a very real chance that I myself would not know what Rogue is, because for all the gaming media I consume, and all the gaming discussion communities I've been a part of over the years, essentially nobody would have ever passed this historical knowledge down onto me without me actively going to search for it. Conversely I never have to search for any of Nintendo's historical impacts, because they're all repeatedly reinforced within any discussion remotely connected to gaming history. This is the point I'm trying to make, and I hope I've made it more understandable in this post and less likely to be misinterpreted.
This isn't simply about what came first. It's about how much influence some games have carried, and how infrequently they are credited for that influence relative to similar influences in Nintendo titles.
People from the NES/famicon/SNES but also from US or Japan.I wonder if this sentiment is more common now that there are so many gamers who weren't around for the NES/Famicom or SNES era?
The early years of console gaming were industry defining and if you weren't around for it, maybe you underestimate the importance of that time period and the big players at that time.
But that's exactly what I'm saying: there is relatively less cultural memory of many of these games *because* they are not as widely played today. *Because* there is a relatively smaller effort to keep them relevant. They are considered a smaller part of history because their history has not been kept alive, and that's happening partly because there is not a publisher pushing them out on all modern platforms or a fanbase that's still super active today. But those are also signs of a smaller impact, not necessarily a small influence on other games but definitely a smaller one on the people playing those games.
Virtual Boy represents one of the first attempts at consumer level VR at home. That it was fucking awful at it, and a complete failure does not eliminate it from the VR history timeline. It just lessens it's impact and placement within it.
This article isn't arguing that Virtua Fighter had a huge influence over 3D fighters, though. It's instead making the argument that it's fair to think the influence of Mario 64 on 3D games *in general* overstated because other 3D games (including Virtua Fighter) came earlier (and existed as its contemporaries), and those games usually aren't discussed.I understand what you're saying but quite heavily disagree. History isn't defined by current popularity. History can be forgotten due to neglect, but that isn't a measure of its actual impact.
Virtua Fighter isn't less impactful today because people don't shout about it with the same frequency of the average Nintendo classic. It's impossible today to create a 3D fighter without VF's impact directly influencing it, and it is not unknown by anyone who ever creates such a title. However, mainstream popularity obviously belongs to Tekken today... but Tekken's relative historical impact is microscopic in comparison to VF, and it literally always will be. But the way WE talk about games historically misattributed historical impact and importance, and replaces it with mere popularity.
We have some very true gaps in gaming history simply because we lacked the required preservation to preserve the knowledge of their existence correctly. This is especially true for genre that were born more from computers as opposed to arcades and consoles. There are games that established the very foundations of genres that are entirely lost to time, but yet their existence is why we have the genres we do today. To argue that their historical impact is now zero, because their public knowledge is now zero would strike me as being incredibly disrespectful of some of gaming history most important creations.
If for some reason we all had collective and selective amnesia tomorrow, and all forgot Virtua Fighter existed. If we still had all the 3D fighters derived from its legacy, it's importance and impact wouldn't become zero. However, the argument you're essentially putting forth is that it would, because historical impact would only be equal to how many people would still talk about it.
I don't think it's possible to overstate Virtua Fighter's influence on the landscape.
I would however make the claim that the Saturn could have been entirely scrapped and not much would have changed in that regard.
Also it's weird that Virtua Fighter is part of a discussion about Nintendo's influence on the industry when Virtua Fighter and Nintendo's output at the time couldn't be farther if you tried.
Like Nintendo never even tried making a 3D fighter till rather recently to begin with,
while fighters were unfathomably huge at the time.
And I mean like you have movies about video games and the only thing they show is basically a Tekken clone.
this tells that 3D fighters were so mainstream that you could convince a rando producer to finance a movie length project about it no question asked.
In short VF was hugely influential, Saturn was not.
Same with Virtua Racing and all the other racing endeavor Sega made.
I mean if you are going to talk about Virtua Fighter's influence, the Saturn's part of it is a footnote more than anything.
Arcades were big back then to the point that arcade accurate port of games was a legit selling point for people to invest in a whole platform for it.
No one buying VF on Saturn would have done so without the huge impact of the arcade og.
And make no mistake while VF was influential it was also extremely popular because I don't want to even hint at the fact that these games were influential but not popular.
To be fair Virtual Boy was godawful at most things, it didn't even release in Europe(and believe me with how long they delayed n64, they really had a window to market it).
I entirely disagree because VR already existed back then and wasn't anything like that.
It was more of an arcade experience but it was there.
VB is basically gluing a game boy screen on your head to play some game in 3D, it's really closer to 3DS than anything else.
VR history loses nothing by disregarding VB (especially when you have alternatives that were really way closer to what we think of VR).
I see what you mean but then why forget Ultima at all.
It's a whole branch of role playing that is largely ignored that is deeply influential (and it was also really popular, with rare exceptions we don't remember unpopular games at all).
Heck in that regard Nintendo basically made a few Dragon quest clones, Zelda and that's about it for their role playing endeavors.
I feel like a big part of it is that Nintendo is still extremely prevalent as a developer today, arguably more prevalent than they were when they were releasing all their most influential games, and have never really stopped shining a light on those older games, both on the actual games themselves in directs or in their other games like Odyssey having a 64 costume. Case in point, do you even know who developed Rogue? I didn't until I just googled it, it was Epyx who went out of business in 1993. I think we see this in other areas as well, like I'd say Sega and Square Enix still get more recognition than even someone like Konami does these days as they are far more prevalent in the industry, I'd also say there is a pretty direct correlation between the decrease in shout outs Konami gets for the influence their classic titles had in the industry and them kind of self destructing a a little over a decade ago.
That is to say, I get where the article is coming from but I disagree with it's assumption that people know them because of "Nintendo youtubers" or whatever, I think it's just because Nintendo still exists, is bigger than ever, and makes a ton of effort shining a spotlight on its back catalog.
sega definitely gets downplayed at the expense of Nintendo because Nintendo "won". I think they were equally important from the late 80s until the death of the Dreamcast.
I wonder if this sentiment is more common now that there are so many gamers who weren't around for the NES/Famicom or SNES era?
The early years of console gaming were industry defining and if you weren't around for it, maybe you underestimate the importance of that time period and the big players at that time.
Virtual Boy was an awful 3DS that you stuck your face in, not early consumer VR
and I mean the author doesn't mention Gex even once. if they were serious, you'd think they wouldn't leave out gaming's most enduring cultural touchstone, relevant to this day for everything that it does
When other video game console makers, developers, & publishers have reached the level of innovation & quality that Nintendo has maintained since the 1980s, well, then we can talk about Nintendo being overrepresented.
This is exactly what I'm also getting at, but I feel you've both worded it in a way that's more easily understood.
This is very much a case of history being written by the victors. If Sega were the biggest console platform owner today (let's say they replace PlayStation), they would be able to more easily reinforce the knowledge of their historically important titles, and as a result those games would remain more popular in the modern landscape.
The historical impacts of certain companies are being retroactively diminished, because they have less ability to reinforce their image on the current market. Nintendo still being around and innovative should rightfully mean they're credited with a longer lineage of historically important titles. But it shouldn't be diminishing the importance of all their competitors so that two games released in the same year that were 50:50 in terms of impact on a genre are instead portrayed more like 85:15.
And Switch VR was effectively a less awful 3DS that you held to your face with a gyro. It being BAD doesn't change it's category.
The project name for the thing was literally VR-32.
It was the first (awful) attempt at consumer level VR at home.
The device's name isn't an accident.
Famous American company Nintendo.There is and it's mostly to blame on how American centric retro game youtubers and tastemakers tend to be.
This article isn't arguing that Virtua Fighter had a huge influence over 3D fighters, though. It's instead making the argument that it's fair to think the influence of Mario 64 on 3D games *in general* overstated because other 3D games (including Virtua Fighter) came earlier (and existed as its contemporaries), and those games usually aren't discussed.
I think that's silly for reasons I already stated. Virtua Fighter may be extremely impactful but Mario 64's impact is felt and acknowledged by more people, which makes it a better reference point for questions as broad as the ones examined in the article. And so I'm questioning the project of the article. I'm not questioning the idea that large parts of gaming history (including many actual influences on the trajectory of game development) aren't acknowledged enough.
I also want to say that I think the other reason why maybe sega doesn't get as much credit as they deserve is that such a huge part of their legacy is in arcade games and arcade games just aren't relevant anymore so it's hard to see the "influence" so to speak. You can download outrun on your switch or whatever but that's still not the way it was intended to be played and you are just not getting all of the context. Nintendo obviously has an arcade history too but it's much smaller and they turned most of their prominent arcade franchises into console franchises so they are more prominent in the post arcade era.
It was an attempt, sure. Saying the Virtual Boy was the first consumer level VR is like saying tap water is the first soda pop, you are missing every defining feature of what makes VR what it is except one thing, 3D. You can't look around, there was no motion tracking whatsoever, no sense of presence, you can't interact with anything, etc. At least Labo VR had head tracking like Cardboard, that alone puts it 100x closer than Virtual Boy.
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????like for example I think GTA3 should be up there with Mario 64 and OoT in terms of perception but it's not