By:Geoff Trainor

     From Pong to Metal Gear Solid. games have come a long way since the days of the Atari 2800. Now I know some people might be thinking " Didn't you do an editorial on this subject already?". Well the answer is no, in this editorial I will talk about how the graphics, gameplay, and sound have changed and not the hardware itself.

     First of all graphics, this is probably the most obvious. In the early days of gaming people would play Pong, a game that consisted of two rectangular blocks as paddles. and a smaller more square block as a ball. Since then we have gone to the fully 3d games with in game FMVs that have the look of a animated

     As for sounds, this has made just as much progress as the graphics department. We have gone from beeps and whistles, and other little noises that did not sound all that great, to midis which made a bigger step and even still have been used very recently, to now CD quality sounds with full tracks by people like Rob Zombie, making the sound better than it can ever get. Well I don't think it can get better, but that what people thought 10 years ago, so it will probably happen. (Dragula would have been cool, were it in Twisted Metal 3).

     In the Gameplay area, the changes are quite the same. I feel that gameplay was just as good, or even better back then. In fact it had to be, to keep people buying the games. Without sound, and graphics the gameplay had to be top of the line. I think that is what is happening today, with games like Twisted Metal 3, and yes Syphon Filter. They are relying too much on the others areas and keeping the gameplay quality down. Not all games are like this only a few, but the ones that are, usually end up wasting our money anyway because of the hype they receive.

     So basically what I trying to say, that if we were still back in the days of the Atari 2800, and NES, we would still have the high quality games that we remember from those days. And in my opinion if the graphics and sound qualities are gonna take away from the gameplay of an otherwise cool game then they (the developers) should learn to tone things down a bit. And this is the last time I will say that but the N64 relies too much on graphics, and if it doesn't get some games with some solid gameplay in there(Zelda was a boost in the field) it will suffer greatly.

In retrospest, graphics, sound, and well, kinda gameplay, change with every new system that is released, and it will always be this way, nothin will stop the evolution of games. Somehow we will break all barriers to bring us the flashiest games with the best music and sound effects in history. But will these games actually be better, or will it cut down on gameplay? We'll just have to wait until these future systems are released. Lets just hope the developers realize that gamers (except maybe newbies) want more than just eye candy, and want a real punch in the games they play.