Video game fanatics unite at Friend to compete

I remember when selecting a video game system used to be pretty much a choice between Sega and Nintendo; and it was a meaningful choice. It meant committing to an ideology that one would have to defend in long arguments with school friends over whether Mario or Sonic was better.

I was always a Nintendo man — I genuinely believed it contributed something to my identity. The first console I owned was a Super Nintendo, and I was loyal thereafter. Its 16 bit graphics and 256 colors made it more than a match for the comparable (and I use comparable very loosely here) Sega Megadrive (known as the Genesis here in the States). Most critics would agree that Sega lost that war, but Nintendo proven to be the winner either.

Sony's Playstation 2 is far and away the leader in console sales, followed by Microsoft's X-Box and Nintendo's Gamecube. In light of this, I was surprised to see that at this past weekend's Video Game Festival — held Friday night at Friend Center — the Gamecube was the apparent system of choice. Clearly some people's love for Nintendo has remained strong.

Lee Aarons GS was the man charged with running the event and thusly also with answering my questions. On the subject of the primacy of Gamecube at the festival he responded: "It's really a question of which system has the best games, and that has always been Nintendo."

A man after my own heart.

Aarons has significant experience with the holding of Video Game events, having organised eight or nine while an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins. He handled last year's event, but said it was much smaller due to technical difficulties that limited their ability to advertise in advance.

The Festival was sponsored by Anime Manga Princeton (AMP) — Princeton's only student organization devoted to the Japanese art. Nintendo, Sega and Sony are all Japanese companies, so I've always been aware of the obvious connection between video games and manga that exists on account of this simple geographical analysis. But I was still curious as to whether there was anything more to it.

Peter Landwehr '06 is President of AMP, founded in the fall of 2000 to cater to those members of the campus community with an interest in anime.

"We have a very large mailing list, but obviously much fewer turn out for the weekly screenings," he said.

The organization shows movies every week in 113 Jones and has also organized field trips in the past — notably to see "Spirited Away" last spring. AMP has an arrangement with Knightdreams, a local Princeton store that allows the group free use of the movies.

Aarons organized the festival in conjunction with Landwehr and selected four games from the host available to contest in tournaments. I'm a veteran of Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 from the SNES and N64, respectively, but had never played the Gamecube continuation of the franchise: Mario Kart: Double Dash.

"When we discussed what games we ought to have at the festival, most people said that Double Dash was the game to have" he said.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

The Gamecube, although it hasn't been a huge success, is clearly popular amongst the organizers of the event. Aarons suggested that the technological superiority of the X-Box was not enough to trump the popularity of the well-loved tradition of Nintendo games. He believes that Gamecube suffered from a late release date into a market already saturated with high performing popular consoles. The days of Nintendo's dominance in the marketplace seems to be over.

However, it was impossible to completely turn the clock back, so there was a Playstation 2 up and running at the festival. There were four rooms devoted to game playing in Friend: 2 Gamecube rooms, one for an N64 and a PS2 room.

EA Sports is the most successful genre in gaming history, and PS2 is well known for its constant stream of sports titles. However, Dance Dance Revolution was the tournament choice for the PS2 at the festival; Aarons said it's "very popular, a real crowd gatherer." It was, originally, a peculiarly Japanese phenomenon, but is now gaining popularity in the United States. "Console gamers are usually more easygoing and fun whereas PC gamers tend to be a little hardcore" Aarons said.

As a member of an 11-man suite, I am well-aware of the social benefits of video games. In their infancy, PC games were for one player and often considered antisocial. Consoles were able to move to multi-player capability with much greater ease and flexibility and thus quickly became associated with the social aspects of gaming.

Internet gaming provided a possible way to remove this antisocial stigma attached to PCs. However, Aarons thinks that it's "overrated," and that "the sociability factor is low."

The PS2 and X-Box both have Internet connectivity, but "there is always the possibility of whoever you're playing just signing off and leaving you" Aarons said.

Having people in the same room together definitely has its benefits. Perhaps faceless internet gaming is just like playing against a differently programmed opponent.

The Gamecube system has the technological capability to play internet games, but no compatible games have been released yet.

Console games seem to be considered better at bringing groups together, but I no longer believe—as I did many years ago—that a console choice is a lifestyle choice. Preferences are one thing, but system choice is not something revealing about an individual. Popularity is more important than technology, and the system, be it a PS2 or a Gamecube, is only a means to an end — fun.