aaron c beals

i figured that since today is a holiday manufactured by the greeting card industry to line their pockets with the cash we’re obligated to spend buying overpriced trinkets for the loved ones whom we should really be showering love each and every day of the year … whew, sorry, my rant got away from me there … i would talk about another type of love: the platonic love between a man and a video game system.

i honestly cannot believe that i haven’t yet used my website to sing the praises of my favorite video game system of all time. or perhaps i have, but have forgotten. either way, i was incredibly excited to see the Super Nintendo get props on Don Reisinger’s CNET blog.

he makes some solid points in the SNES’ favor. howevr, one he didn’t cover and what really cements the SNES in my mind as the pinnacle of quality gaming is that it was the last of the 2D systems. (sure, there were a few games using Mode 7, but the majority of games were 2D.)

game developers for the systems which followed (N64, Playstation, etc) were so giddy about 3D that they spent all their development effort on graphics and forgot completely about plot, playability, and sound. the SNES, on the other hand, perfected the qualities of the 2D games we grew up loving, focusing squarely on plot, gameplay, etc, and what we ended up with was an extensive library of games that are still fun to play today. Contra? Classic. Contra III? Epic.