After getting the Hammer Bros. theme stuck in my head while trying to read something earlier today, I decided the only way to restore my sanity was to boot up the ol' ZSNES and play SMB3 in Super Mario All-Stars, because that version is totally superior no matter what you've heard. And that got me thinking...
Of course the levels of World 1 fell before my mighty boot like they have since I was a kid. Hit the left side of the block so the mushroom falls to the right, fly up and get the "3" made of coins, grab the star in the last note block, get the warp whistle... until I hit 1-4 and was suddenly very lost and confused.
Uhh... what the hell is all this?
I'm... in the sky? Autoscrolling? With a bunch of slow-moving platforms and Ls made of bricks coming my way? I... oh no! I don't know what's coming next! This... this is difficult suddenly! And that's because in all my years of playing SMB3 since I was a little Kazmo I can't have played 1-4 more than a handful of times. And why the hell would I? The far more familiar 1-3 is the only one you need to beat to reach the first mushroom house, and then you can just go back the way you came, skipping all those stupid floating autoscrolling platforms, on to the castle, and to glory!
Later, you dumb wooden suckers!
My young mind grasped it perfectly. Why waste time and potential lives on a level that doesn't get you any closer to the end of the game? We're not here to sightsee, sparky, we're here to beat this sumbitch! But it seems somehow in these intervening years I've changed without realizing it and I reckon a lot of other people have too. Now, I just can't play through SMB3 skipping all the levels and making a beeline for the end. I have to visit every one because, for whatever reason, experiencing them all is more important to me than actually beating the game. If I lose because of my stubborn refusal to skip anything, so be it.
I put forth a couple of theories to Hutch on why this is. Have I played SMB3 so much and become so confident in my ability to finish it that I instead try to wring as much out of the experience as possible? Do I feel some kind of duty to the creators to play everything they put into the product, like a Let's Play-er trying out a community hack project? Or have all these 360 games finally broken me down and made me into an achievement whore, only able to feel pleasure by jumping through hoops and completing arbitrary challenges?
I really don't know. Hutch replied that he thinks it's more of a consequence of the way games are designed now, and pointed out that, hey, once upon a time, people didn't even have a goal they were trying to reach, they just played for the sheer fun and challenge of surviving, setting and beating high scores. And he's right. As the complexity of games has increased exponentially and the budgets have more than increased to match, almost nobody designs a game nowadays that they expect to be truly difficult to at least finish on SOME level. And for the love of God, when it costs so much and takes so many people to design and model and playtest a level, why would you include content that you're not going to force the player to experience?!
"This took 100,000 dollars and two months of our artists' lives to make
and you're going to look at it until I tell you to stop!"
So maybe that's it. And maybe that explains why some folks are so enamored with achievements, as well (I won't lie, I try to get them if they're not too far out of the way, just for the satisfaction). Us folks who cut our teeth on old-school games, where you had to practice and suffer and make a real concerted effort to finish the game, unable to find that same challenge we once craved, turn to self-imposed challenges and completionist-ism-ing to wring that last little bit of satisfaction and exclusivity out of games that are now all too happy to roll over and flash the goods to anyone with a pulse. Not that giving people the full experience they paid 60 dollars for is such a bad thing. And I guess I've gotten so used to doing it, I even do it when I go back in time to games I've played a hundred times.
But that's a cynical way of looking at it. I think what Hutch really meant to imply was that, on some level, we're all still just in it for the sheer joy of the game, even if what we think we're seeking has changed. As kids, beating the game was the way we wanted to find our fun. Now that endings are a pleasure that are not so regularly denied us we can really stop and smell the virtual roses and experience the levels - and if you're going to do that, why not do them all? Perhaps the real reason I can't stop myself from playing through every level in SMB3 is that I just love the damn game, even more than fresh-faced little me did.
Or maybe I was just drunk and didn't realize I could back out and go around level 1-4. I dunno, I'm trying to cover the full spectrum of possibility here - I don't want to generalize. I'm sure tons of folks loved to play all the levels back in the day, and some would just shoot straight for the end if they picked it up today. But I know I'm not alone in this change, whatever brought it on.
So... I guess my point is that games are easier now. Oh, did you think I was building up to some kind of interesting revelation or observation? Sorry about that. But I'd love to hear what you think.
