I once had a friend. Let's call him Tony. Tony and I were friends about a decade ago, when we were still in high-school and lived in the same area.
We both loved sports and computer-games, especially anything related to hockey or soccer. Those perticular years we often played NHL 1994 on SNES against eachother.
Actually it wasn't just Tony and me, we were a whole gang of 14-year olds setting up head-to-head NHL 1994-tournaments at my place almost every day after school.
I'm still convinced that NHL 2004 on the SNES is one of the best player-vs-player sportsgame to date, a game that allowed you to easily take control of your goalie and challenge your friend on every breakaway and hopefully make a phenomenal glove-hand save. At that time Tommy Soderberg was the resident goalie in Philadelphia, Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri ruled the LA Kings and Mike Modano, Eric Lindros and Peter Forsberg were fresh outta hockey-college.
A year or so after that Tony got his first computer, a state-of-the-art Pentium (yeah, those days they didn't have numbers) computer with a shocking 90Mhz processor!
One day he invited me over to show me the latest game in the EA-franchise, NHL 1995. He loaded his season with the Blackhawks and showed me a game.
- "This is soo cool, you can actually create your OWN players! And trade players between teams!!!"
- "Wow", I said, "this is awesome!"
- "Yeah, look at this, I've created myself! I named him Tony and gave him a rating of 100 in all his abilities!"
- "Eh.."
It turns out, the new super-Tony in Chicaco Blackhawks lead all scorers by a mile, no, by a HUNDRED miles! The Chicaco Blackhawks super-Tony played with had not lost one of their first 43 games into the season and averaged 9-10 goals each game.
What the hell? What had happened to Tony? He had totally lost it. Had he already forgot all those close and exciting head-to-head games vs. his friends a year ago? Obviously. He now felt satisfaction seeing his Blackhawks crushing all opponents and his super-Tony scoring all twelve goals.
This is a sad story and this is my point;
There are two kinds of gamers, the Tony-kind who does ANYTHING to win. (Maybe the kind who cheats online and gets satisfaction from winning simply by pressing a button?). The kind that gets satisfaction winning unfairly and most important of all, without any sense of EXCITEMENT! Where's the excitement Tony? What's so FUN with winning by 10-12 goals every single game? But he liked it, oddly enough.
Then there's the other kind, my friends and I who LOVED loosing a tight game, rather than win an un-exciting, crushing, david-vs-goliath, victory.
Please EA Sports, please make a game for us, the kind that would rather play a realistic, tight, 0-0 game rather than the super-action-arcade-like 10-8 games that gives no excitement at all. I'll be fair, you've come a long way, but I know you can do better. NHL 1994 was a milestone. FIFA 2001 was too, but in a whole different way.
Please EA Sports, scrap the realistically textured Adidas-boots and give us more depth and longevity in the franchise. Let the Tonys of this world have creation center where they can transfer the entire Real Madrid-team to Manchester United and lower the goalkeepers saving ability. The rest of us just want to relive our youth and the feeling of happiness and excitment when playing fairly against your best mate.
-Snw
PS. Tony and I aren't friend no more.
We both loved sports and computer-games, especially anything related to hockey or soccer. Those perticular years we often played NHL 1994 on SNES against eachother.
Actually it wasn't just Tony and me, we were a whole gang of 14-year olds setting up head-to-head NHL 1994-tournaments at my place almost every day after school.
I'm still convinced that NHL 2004 on the SNES is one of the best player-vs-player sportsgame to date, a game that allowed you to easily take control of your goalie and challenge your friend on every breakaway and hopefully make a phenomenal glove-hand save. At that time Tommy Soderberg was the resident goalie in Philadelphia, Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri ruled the LA Kings and Mike Modano, Eric Lindros and Peter Forsberg were fresh outta hockey-college.
A year or so after that Tony got his first computer, a state-of-the-art Pentium (yeah, those days they didn't have numbers) computer with a shocking 90Mhz processor!
One day he invited me over to show me the latest game in the EA-franchise, NHL 1995. He loaded his season with the Blackhawks and showed me a game.
- "This is soo cool, you can actually create your OWN players! And trade players between teams!!!"
- "Wow", I said, "this is awesome!"
- "Yeah, look at this, I've created myself! I named him Tony and gave him a rating of 100 in all his abilities!"
- "Eh.."
It turns out, the new super-Tony in Chicaco Blackhawks lead all scorers by a mile, no, by a HUNDRED miles! The Chicaco Blackhawks super-Tony played with had not lost one of their first 43 games into the season and averaged 9-10 goals each game.
What the hell? What had happened to Tony? He had totally lost it. Had he already forgot all those close and exciting head-to-head games vs. his friends a year ago? Obviously. He now felt satisfaction seeing his Blackhawks crushing all opponents and his super-Tony scoring all twelve goals.
This is a sad story and this is my point;
There are two kinds of gamers, the Tony-kind who does ANYTHING to win. (Maybe the kind who cheats online and gets satisfaction from winning simply by pressing a button?). The kind that gets satisfaction winning unfairly and most important of all, without any sense of EXCITEMENT! Where's the excitement Tony? What's so FUN with winning by 10-12 goals every single game? But he liked it, oddly enough.
Then there's the other kind, my friends and I who LOVED loosing a tight game, rather than win an un-exciting, crushing, david-vs-goliath, victory.
Please EA Sports, please make a game for us, the kind that would rather play a realistic, tight, 0-0 game rather than the super-action-arcade-like 10-8 games that gives no excitement at all. I'll be fair, you've come a long way, but I know you can do better. NHL 1994 was a milestone. FIFA 2001 was too, but in a whole different way.
Please EA Sports, scrap the realistically textured Adidas-boots and give us more depth and longevity in the franchise. Let the Tonys of this world have creation center where they can transfer the entire Real Madrid-team to Manchester United and lower the goalkeepers saving ability. The rest of us just want to relive our youth and the feeling of happiness and excitment when playing fairly against your best mate.
-Snw
PS. Tony and I aren't friend no more.
Surely your hallucinating. 
