Back in the day, I remember my Christmas tree being surrounded by small mostly-hollow boxes. These boxes were too small for clothes, too big for cassettes (you know, those early CDs) and too light to be a VHS tape (early DVD). These magical boxes contained video game cartridges.
I love cartridges. I love the noticeable label on the front of both the cart and the previously mentioned hollow box. I also love the cartridges shape This made the game immediacy easy to identify what console it was for. In this day and age, you need a logo on the disc to determine what machine the game is for. By looking at the cartridge, you immediately knew if the game was for your SNES or if it was for a Sega Genesis.
There was an identity to a cart sicking out of your console; a motivation to keep playing Donkey Kong because it looked at you as you walked by your SNES. With modern disc trays, it's easy to not think about what game you were last playing.
I'm not the only person who misses cartridges. In September 2008, Capcom sent out Press versions of Mega Man 9 in in jewel cases shaped like NES cartridges with a similar cover design of past Mega Man titles. This proves the nostalgia of cartridges in the American Zeitgeist.
The Grey or Black plastic cases are primitive in almost every way to discs. Their only advantage is the fact that cartridges have no loading times. This was true in the N64/PS1 era, and remains true in the DS/PSP generation. Discs allow for both lengthy/deep cut scenes and vast amounts of data space. A single Blu-Ray disc could easily hold every NES and SNES game ever designed.
I miss a lot of things about video game's past, and I will continue to talk about them in future posts, but for now, please bask in the nostalgia-ridden bliss of gaming before the mid to late nineties.
No comments:
Post a Comment