PSPgo or PSPno?

On October first SCEA launched the PSPgo and with it the damnable future of gaming. Upon first hearing about the PSPgo, on the big glowing box in my living room, I instantly dismissed it. DLC(downloadable content) only! "Come on, that will never work" grumbled the cantankerous old man of a gamer in my head.

Let me be blunt here, The Game Ronin loathes the Idea of exclusive DLC. I believe it takes away part of the experience of gaming. I love pouring over a game manual, and coming from a large family of gamers it was often my first interaction with a game. Reading the manual from cover to cover and examining the art on the box would really get my game juices flowing in anticipation of finally getting to play. Eventually I noticed that this had added to my overall gaming experience because where games usually only stimulated 2 or 3 senses(if you count touch) I was experiencing the stimulation of a fourth sense, smell. I love the smell of a new game manual, or am I just addicted to the chemicals and inks used in the process of creating one? How dare Sony take away an integral part of game experience, and not only that but also begin to pave the way for other companies to do the same.

Sacrilege or the merciful amputation of a dying limb?

DLC is not a new thing at all, and I have always opposed it, but with the arrival of the PSPgo something changed. While I was pondering how stupid the PSPgo is, and how much money Sony was going to loose(something I still believe), and how they were ripping gamers off, a small timid voice in my head spoke.

"But this is the future" it said. I dismissed that thought immediately, and went on viciously attacking the PSPgo on my mental battlefield, but the thought kept creeping back up. It was then I began to realize that I was just resisting the inevitable. As adaptive of a species as humans are, we tend to resist change. I realized that I was thinking like an old man stuck in his ways, but instead of resisting "rock and roll" it was DLC, and the cold hard truth began to sink in.

As much as I love game manuals and box art their time is waning. Manuals have been thin and dull for years now(as always there are exceptions), but this really has more to do with the way games are made now. You needed a good imagination to get into most of the games of the past and the manuals acted as tools providing back story and pictures which helped to tie everything together. Games today are much bigger and ambitious than they were at the pinnacle of manual and box art. Their stories and backstories are seamlessly integrated into the whole of the game, and they deliver a much deeper experience than a couple of paragraphs or pages could(Oblivion intro). When you factor in a companies bottom line and the ever growing concern about the environment DLC seems to be the natural next step in the evolution of the gaming industry.

There are a healthy amount of pros and cons for exclusive DLC, and I still have some concerns and reservations, but most can be chalked up to paranoia and prejudice. Sure my hard drive could crash and I could loose all of my downloaded games but at the same time my house could burn down or be flooded and I could loose all my physical games. Sure it sucks not having a full color one hundred page manual/hint book and map/poster, but it would be nice to not have to worry about wanton, destructive, gremlin, children gnawing on and clawing your game disks to iridescent, plastic ribbons.

In the end I don't think exclusive DLC will completely replace its store bought predecessor at least not in the next 20 years. It does however have the potential to save companies millions of dollars which could translate into direct savings for us, or more realistically into the survival of our favorite companies. The best part of DLC so far in my opinion has been the emergence of smaller independent developers who inject bold, fresh, new ideas into the mainstream. As for the PSPgo I predict it will fail, it is ahead of it's time and at $249.99(msrp) it is the second most expensive system on the market trailing only the PS3 by $50.00.

In the meantime I will keep all my manuals, maps, and boxes and when I get a whiff of a new game book I will let the flood of nostalgia engulf me, and once again I will be sitting on my living room floor on a cold winters night letting my imagination take control as I wait impatiently for my turn to save the princess and the world.

My Genesis(no not the Sega)

It is a memory forever etched into my mind. A small boy just barely four walks down a narrow hallway. The bright midday sun explodes through the window ahead, the hard wood floor is cool and smooth on his bare little feet. He looks up at his mother, there is something she wants to show him. They both enter a small room lit by the sun, but the light is soft here, it trickles in through white curtains. Neither the boy or his mother could know how pivotal this moment would be for the boy.

It rests on the center of a desk, a black, blank portal. It is a gateway, a link to distant worlds, alternate realities, and the distorted crevices of imagination. The little boy is sat upon a wooden chair, his mother slips an odd gray thing into his hands. The boy looks down at it, it has numbers on it, he doesn't know them all but he recognizes them, and he likes the way they feel when he runs his fingers over them. The gray thing also has some buttons on its side that the boy can push in, and near the top, a big knob. The boy's mother presses a button and the portal glows, the boy smiles, his life forever changed.

This is how I was born into the world of Video Games, the system was the Coleco Adam computer, the game was Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, and yes I was so scared at one point that I cried. I would soon get over my fear of the game and began to play it more, at some point however I stopped altogether(it would be 25 years before I would play Planet Zoom again) and I entered a short hiatus from Video Games. This hiatus would last until December 25th 1988.

My Rebirth into the world of Video Games was through the womb of an NES, on one of the greatest Christmas mornings of my life. It is a sacred memory, and I won't go into detail about it at this time. It is my goal however that you are reliving your own memory of the same or similar event, taking in once again the colors, smells and texture of that glorious day.

"What Is Geemudo"?

My Goal with this blog is to bring you along on an adventure as I relive the past, explore the future, and enjoy the present of the world of gaming. I will deliver news that will encompass all aspects of the gaming world as it unfolds, everything from upcoming titles, to legal issues. I will give unbiased reviews based solely on a game's merits(or lack of). I will listen and I will share. I will strive to add another dimension to your gaming experience, in the hopes of becoming an awesome add on and not another "Powerglove". If it has to do with games, you will find it here.

"Why do you call yourself The Game Ronin"?

My love for the individual games themselves has always and will always transcend the enslaving bonds and boundaries of any given system. I choose to claim no console, system, or platform as my master. I travel alone and with no allegiance through the exciting unknown world of gaming. In other words I am not a "fanboy".

Questions or comments? Contact me at TheGameRonin@gmail.com.

You can also track what I'm currently playing on Twitter, check out TheGameRonin.