h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Video Games - A1018135
Author: Blauthecow - U224448

I noticed that the other Guide Entry on the subject of Video Games was very strange, so I wrote this one as an entry into the world of video games for the curious observer.

Wow, you're really, really great!

Hi, I changed it to GuideML now.

Hi, I changed it to GuideML now.

if you want some ideas for an addition to it with ps1 and ps2 games just ask me

I'm not sure which other entry you're talking about -- I don't think the Edited Guide currently has an entry on Video Games in general. There are probably several entries out there on video games that people have written, but I don't think they are in the Edited Guide. It's an important distinction, because the way this works, there can only be one entry in the Edited Guide on a topic -- if you came along later and wanted to improve it, there would be a different process to go through.

Also, have you had a chance to look at the Writing Guidelines for the Edited Guide? While your entry is quite thorough, there are some things about the writing style that would need to be changed to make it more in line with the Edited Guide style if you want it to be accepted via Peer Review. For example, there are a lot of places where you use first person (referring to yourself), which should be avoided in an entry like this. Check out -- Writing-Guidelines if you want to take a look.


Mikey

Yes, I fixed the 'I's. Thanks!

Looking better.

There's still a place in the beginning where you say "my personal feelings", though -- that counts as first person.

And the last line would need to be removed -- the Writing Guidelines are pretty firm on needing to remove gratuitious references to Douglas Adams books.

Looking good!

Mikey

God, you reply fast! OK, what do you think now? And the nickname? Hmm?

God, you reply fast! OK, what do you think now? And the nickname? Hmm?

My next suggestion would be that you try and minimize the degree to which this entry overlaps with the entry on 2nd generation console wars -- A996979.

Most of the info in your entry is not in that one, and vice versa -- but there is a pretty decent amount of info that is in both. And since that one is already *in* the edited guide, I wouldn't think the information would need to be in your entry as well. If that makes sense.

ah.

I'd recommend renaming it, as it concentrates mostly on Nintendo systems. Either that or add more about the other consoles, the console wars and possibly the "dead-ends" that consoles took, like the Dreamcast, which never really took off.

Here are two entries to which you might link:

A169346 A History of Computer Games

A996979 Console Wars of the Second Generation

However, I agree that you should rename the entry. After all if the article was about video games, a bit of history would be in order no?

Pong, Atari, Com 64, PC games, Sega genesis, sega satrun, Dreamcast (which had a VASTLY SUPERIOR version of Ocarina of Time than the N64). Also, in the description of popular games, try to refrain from giving your opinion. Most gamers I know liked Ocarina of Time, but few have it was one of the best games ever.

I think a review of Nintendo would be a greta article. You should get a little more history about them first. It's easyto reserach them, just do a google search for history of nintendo or somesuch and read a few pages. Very easy, and it'll give your article a great fact base.

Finally you write very well. Your style is conversation, which makes it easy to read and understand. Thta's probably why we want you to write more info into this article.

Good work so far!

Friar

Hmm. Where to start...

This is a partisan entry, which isn't necessarily a problem for a first draft, but the title must change. "Nintendo Consoles" would be a more accurate title, but even that might make people think this covered Game Boy (and Pocket, and Color, and Advance, and the latest fliptop beauty... which it doesn't - yet. (hint hint)).

There are some unnecessary digs in here which don't fit the tone for the Edited Guide:

"Playstation 2 games have been known to kill at 900 yards with their almost total lack of quality."

Yeah, right. And "Terminator 2" on the SNES was a classic of quality gaming, was it? (Hint: no.)



"Video Games are, on the whole, very good though."

I disagree. They're not. There are some good ones, but the vast majority are utter c**p. But then, the vast majority of TV shows, books and films are utter c**p. Video games are an entertainment art form like any other, and when they're good, they're very very good, and when they're bad...

"For those unfamiliar with the concept--and believe me, there are a few--video games are lines upon lines of code to make pictures and sound come out of a TV."

Rule 1 in writing - consider your audience. You're writing for h2g2, an online guide to everything. By definition, for the foreseeable future, your audience is sitting in front of some form of computing device. Do you really think ANY of them don't know what a video game is?

"the Playstation 2, which is so far the longest running and has mutltitudes of games, many of which are quite good and most of which are copied to the other consoles."

OK, the "longest running" was the PSOne, which is still going, officially. The PS2 is merely the first of the three you mention to have been released. Most of its games are NOT copied to other consoles, actually.

"It also has better graphics than the PS2, and a very good controller."

I don't like the controller, to be honest - I find the PS2 to be the best one going (it's no coincidence that it's almost unaltered from the original PSOne Dual Shock design, itself only a slight refinement on the original PSX controller - if it ain't broke, don't fix it)

You say the XBox " is wildly succesful right now", but it's not selling as many units as the PS2, and the bestselling PS2 games outsell the bestselling XBox games. Successful, certainly, but not wildly so.

"Sega is another company, whcih recently went out of the console business and only makes games. "

So why mention them?

" PC, or personal computer"

Does ANYONE reading this not know what PC stands for?

"games are also a major segment, but they involve having your own computer"

Well, yeah...

"which can be better or worse for gaming, depending on what you spend--and have more limited games"



"Another whole area of gaming is hand-held gaming."

Try either covering this, or not mentioning it.

"This is when games are played on a small, portable, battery-powered device."

Again, duh.

"Although there have been attempts to overthrow it"

Names? Dates? (hints - Atari Lynx, Sega GameGear, WonderSwan, NeoGeo Pocket, GamePark GP32...)

" Nintendo's line of Game Boys reign supreme in this catagory."

Names, details, dates? See above for hints...

" and are considerably more diverse than, say, salami,"

Don't try to hard to be funny.

"so this entry will not bore you with the specifics of each type of game"

No, go on, bore us just a LITTLE, please.

"Coupled with a mediocre game called Duck Hunt, this game defined the platformer genre for many years. "

Umm... "Duck Hunt" in no way defined the platformer genre, being as it was not a platform game. It was a light gun shooter. So this sentence doesn't make sense.

"Mega Man and Metroid These two games were among the best"

In your opinion, and then only on Nintendo...

"and in Mega Man's case most sequeled, games of their time."

Again, only on Nintendo...

"They introduced things like upgrades (which make your character better)."

No, they didn't. Power ups were first featured in Konami's "Nemesis".

"The Legend of Zelda This is Nintendo's other famous line of games. "

Erm... "other"? Other than what? Metroid? Mario? Donkey Kong? You haven't said...

"The Legend of Zelda...started a whole genre of video games, called adventures. One's character became better as one completed quests and collected items."

Oh good heavens how wrong can this be? Let's not get bogged down with a history lesson, other than to say that this is simply wrong, and adventure games on computers and even consoles had a LONG history before ever Nintendo released a single video game.

"An RPG, or Role Playing Game, is when one controls a character normally around a world, but fights are turn based"

Not true, necessarily. OK, most Japanese RPGs go for turnbased combat, but there have been several with realtime combat (damn, can't think of one right now...). Also, what does "control a character normally around a world" *mean*?

"Super Mario 64 was a absolutelly amazing 3-Dimentional platformer--in fact, the first one. "

Not true - Tomb Raider predated it, and at its heart and in almost all of its game mechanics, the original Lara Croft outing was "Prince of Persia" in 3D.

"However, and more importantly, this game demonstrated the power of the N64 compared to what had come before it."

True. An even handed commentary might lament that it's a shame that one of the games available on launch day remains to this day probably one of the best games ever produced for the N64...

" Many did, and do, get angry when fools say that it wasn't as great as rubbish like Banjo-Kazooie."

Unnecessarily partisan. Try to be balanced...

Re: Goldeneye - a true classic. Worth mentioning that it was produced by Rare, a British company responsible for Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, Solar Jetman on the NES, and Jetpac and Knightlore on the ZX Spectrum...

The whole paragraph on SSBM is packed with jargon. Bear in mind that a few paragraphs back you were explaining gently to your readers that "PC" stands for "Personal Computer" and telling them what video games are. Now you're using words like "fighter", "combo" and "hardcore" - make your mind up. Either write an explanation that your gran could understand, OR drop the pretense and admit upfront that the only people who will understand this entry at all are people who most likely know most of the content already... (see how important it is to consider who you're writing for?)

"Like so many great games, Prime is hard to define. Putting Prime in a catagory is not like putting a square peg in a round hole. It is like putting a truncated tetrahedron in a round hole. It is a first-person adventure platformer shooter, to be specific."

So, not that hard to define then. And by the sounds of it, it's like a sort of first person Tomb Raider. Or like... Half Life. And if it's not, don't blame me - that's what your description sounds like, to me.



There's a start here, but some summary points:

-- lose all the digs and personalised comments. If you want to write an amusing retrospective of Nintendo video games, in a personal, jokey style, the h2g2 Post is an ideal place for it. The Edited Guide tends to go for more sober, factual descriptive pieces. It's about what YOU want to write, and then deciding where the appropriate place is to submit it. At the moment, this reads like it would fit well in the Post.
- think hard about who you want to read this. What do they know? What DON'T they know?
- change the title. This is a Nintendo entry, not a "Video Games" entry.
- either cover the Game Boy line, or make clear from the title that you're omitting it.

Good luck with it...

H.

hoo-

I didn't know you played games?!?

Friar, snickering to himself politely. . .

Sorry, H., but I've kinda stopped caring who likes my article I took 8.6 minutes to write--and I particularly don't care about the oppinion of someone who gets so enraged over these little 'articles.' But a couple things...

-PS2 sucks. You suck. And do you know why? It's because you're british (with a lowercase b). You think your oppinions matter. You don't realise how stupid you are. Well, they don't and you are. The three good things to come out of England were Monty Python, THHGG, and the Private Eye (hell, I get it shipped to the US!). You're not on the list.

-About the whole Duck-hunt thing. Sorry I confused your tiny excuse for a brain, but I was obviously talking about the Mario Brothers half.

-Rare hasn't made a good game SINCE Goldeneye. I'm terribly sorry, I misspoke (-typed?)--Europe hasn't made a good game since Goldeneye.

-I'm getting bored.

Hey there Link. I'm guessing from your comments that you don't want this entry to be in Peer Review any more. That's fine -- it's your call. If that's the case, could you please click on this link to move this thread from Peer Review back to the entry for us?

<./>SubmitReviewForum?action=removethread&rfid=1&h2g2id=1018135</.>

Thanks!

Err, it doesn't work.

And I like England. Just not that guy. Who was that?