When Videogames Become Interactive Entertainment

     As a kid in the heyday of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, I remember being amazed by the simple feat of my controller inputs being reflected on a TV screen in such a precise way. That the second I hit that button Mario would jump over the pit. Link would slay another skeleton guard. Bo Jackson would zig zag his way to another Tecmo Bowl TD....you get the point.

    Videogames were truly GAMES back in these days. While fun...they didn't challenge other forms of entertainment like cinema and television in terms of pure scale and wow factor from a visual standpoint. Even the next generation of consoles(the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis) did not begin to change this either. Despite obviously taking a step forward with production and visual flair these videogames were still GAMES.

    That all began to change in the mid-late 90s when the original Playstation and Nintendo 64 took center stage. Suddenly everything was rendered in 3D(in the game not in the eyes of the player like the new 3D trend nowadays). Instead of two dimensional flat "sprites" as they were called...characters were now made of geometrical polygons with realistic(for the time) "texture maps" over them to create lifelike characters and environments thought to be a fantasy as little as 5 years before that.

     Ironically "Fantasy" was a flag bearer for innovation during this time. Final Fantasy VII that is. This is the game that really raised the bar for cinematic gameplay on home consoles. When it was released in September 1997 no game in history had caused such a buzz in mainstream adult media. It was truly groudbreaking. What were inhumanly short 2D sprites on older systems suddenly became fully fleshed out 3D characters with dynamic emotions and reactions on screen. While it may seem dated now...this scene when I first saw it contributed to be staying up until 8 AM on a school "night"....faking sick...and playing it the entire next day while faking sick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DivER5tgVzc


     My point of speaking on this in my first post is to explain why I do not consider videogames to be GAMES anymore. Yes...more simplistic true GAMES are still released. They always will be and always should be. But the more in depth contemporary "games" are NOT games. They are interactive entertainment.

 I debated for a few minutes in my head when writing the description for this blog whether to say "videogames" or not...because I fully realize that that word is much more recognizable to the casual fan. But I want to help change that. Because the video below goes way beyond what anyone had in mind when they coined the term "videogames". If I were still in school I would have skipped after seeing this too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rteUvbKFbnw