Life after the Video Game Crash

Check out the rather startling difference between the Atari 2600 title Jet Goblins Attack from 1980 and The Legend of Zelda just seven years later: The yellow block in the first screen is Batman. Now compare Goldeneye (1997) to Red Faction 2 (2004). Same seven-year span: We’re on a technological plateau. The next real leap,…

A Gamer's Manifesto

If the new consoles are built with a graphics-first mentality, how easy is it going to be to make games that stretch the boundaries of game logic and player freedom? And if so, can we at least have our damned adventure games back? But there’s another, less-obvious side of that muffin: if a machine is…