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Cover Story:Can't We All Just Get Along?

By:ZeroTolerance

Well the last few weeks have been spent contemplating the sudden rivalry among gamers today. I have taken it upon myself to deliver an article that lays some of the argument to rest and leaves some of it to ponder. I feel videogames have become just as bad as politics nowadays, this is sad. I know that there are the "faithfuls" out there who refuse to buy products that are not of their favorite companies own making. This is not always a bad thing, nor is it always a good thing. Doing this only hurts yourself, I mean why do we play video games in the first place? Well according to my sources it is to have fun. I could be wrong on this one, but me and my friends enjoy a good game of Gran Turismo just for S&G's.

I am sure there are many other reasons to play games these days, with the advancing technology and all, but I mean come on. Why a gamer would play games solely based on graphics is alien to me. When I was just a wee lad, I sat in front of my TV for hours just playing games like Wizards and Warriors, The Legend of Zelda, and countless numbers of other classics. I could have cared less how many sprites or pixels were there. All I cared about was where to find the damn boomerang, or how to get to the top of the endless mountain. Those are the kind of memories that I want out of my next generation consoles, not memories of arguing with my best buddies about which console had the best games, or how many people bought a certain game. That is just plain nonsense, and frankly I am sick of it.

The whole console war started between Sega and Nintendo back in the glory days of the SNES and the Sega Genesis. These two systems had a virtual battleground of die-hard fans waging war between themselves, thus dividing the gaming public. There were the Sega purists who were ready for a new twist, and then you had the Nintendo freaks who wouldnt change their system if their life depended on it.

Now that the big boys had divided up the gaming public it was time to fight for our hard earned money. With ad campaigns and new products to dazzle gamers with their newly found ways of making money. This continued and to my knowledge no one arose victorious. You still had a divided public of gamers who were either pissed, or just plain frustrated with the antics of both companies.

Then came the 32-bit era....this is where it all began to fall. First off Sega released their "so called" 32-bit wonder in the form of the 32X. This was the first proclaimed true 32-bit machine. After this came other flops such as the Atari Jaguar, the Panasonic 3DO, Phillips CD-i, and other systems solely based on technology and not on games. This is known as the "Ice Age" of video game history.

Months and months passed, the SNES and Genesis were showing their age and companies were hard to produce new games that pushed these systems any further. Arcade conversions of games became more like watered-down versions of their once glorious forms. Then came the Sony Playstation!!

With its Cd-Rom format and arcade stellar graphics the system was a huge hit! It brought new life into the world of video games as we know it. Some people were first skeptical of Sony, a known company for making walkmans and stereo equipment, to make a gaming machine. But with the power of Sony's marketing and the extreme power of the PS gamers soon gave way to the future of gaming.

The PS had now been out for over a year and Nintendo was brewing a pot of its own in the name of the Nintendo 64. The machine Nintendo fans had been waiting for for over three years! The screen shots were popping up and they were absolutely jaw dropping. They looked like CGI quality and the big "N" promised effects like the ones in Jurassic Park, quite alot to live up to if you ask me. Then it happened, one glorious day me and a buddy strolled on over to our local Toys R Us and gave the new machine a whirl. The only game that was playable was Mario 64 and it absolutely blew our minds! The game was like nothing we had ever played, it was in our minds perfection. As the cold Sept. day approached we all anticipated playing Mario and other glorious games on our own TV's and enjoying the happiness of gaming to its full potential.

Surely enough it arrived, and three days early for that matter!! I got my system home and hooked it up and began on a journey that would soon make me realize hype is not a good thing.

As the N64 began to pump out semi-glorious games I became more and more frustrated about buying the system. When my wonderful experience through Mario 64 ended I was left with a poor translation of Killer Instinct and a horrible version of Mortal kombat Trilogy. Being a fighting game junkie this would simply not do!

As my gaming days slowly began to crawl back up into hiding, I soon realized that while I was enjoying being a gamer most other people were simply fighting amongst themselves about whic system was better. I soon came to the conclusion that being a gamer was not about fun, but yet about which system was the most powerful. This saddened me and I went into a state of depression. No longer were my friends talking about how fun a game was, but yet where there was slow down and where you could see pop-up and where blah blah blah!! It began to make me think that gaming was no longer about having fun with your friends, but yet about which system was the most popular.

Now with all of my rambling gone I have only one thing left to say, I am the happiest person in the world to be a gamer!! I hope that all the people still arguing about which system is better just find out what I have learned and stop fighting amongst ourselves. Gamers are a dying breed, and if we remain to fight the end of us will soon arise. Why does there have to be a superior system, why does there have to be a superior game? Why Why Why cant we all just get along and have fun? I want my days to go back to whipping my buddies at Street Fighter and making remarks on who is the better gamer and not the better game.

That is my two cents and I hope everyone reading this can feel what I am trying to say here. Gamers unite and free the world from this horrible tragedy that has become the video game war!! Games make gaming great, lets enjoy that and LONG LIVE GAMERS ACROSS THE WORLD!!!