Dear Readers,
As I have made clear many times within this virtual realm of GameCola, I am absolutely terrible at video games. This has been confirmed again recently when I combed through the list of games I own, and created a new list of games I own and beaten, and games I own and have not beaten. The results are shocking (to someone who would expect the Editor-in-Chief if a video game webazine to actually be good at video games, anyway). Out of the 331 unique games in my collection, 267 remain unbeaten, meaning I have completed a completely unimpressive 19% of my video games. This is sad. Granted, some of the games are for systems I don’t even own, and some of the games I got nearly to the end but was then distracted by something newer and shinier; but the vast majority of games I own I have not completed just because I got stuck at some point and called it quits. So this, my readers, leads me to my latest life goal: to have more games in my collection beaten than I have not beaten. Send all letters of encouragement, sympathy, and bemusement to pfranzen@gamecola.net.
In a completely unrelated editorial, is anyone else fed up with the number of games these days which feature colonated titles instead of numbers to denote sequels? The idea is to avoid letting the customer know that the game is indeed a sequel, and thus not scaring off anyone who didn’t play the original; but it serves to confuse gamers by not making it obvious in what order the games should be played. Rather than guess and mess up by starting the series in the middle, many gamers may just brush the entire series aside and play a less confusingly titled game, such as Super Mario Land. As for games without sequels that are colonated, what is the need for a subtitle? Would Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes suffer without the “Heroes”? Would WarioWare Inc.: Mega MicroGame$ sell less without it’s superfluous sub header? Game titles shouldn’t be a mouthful; they should succinctly describe what the game is all about. Titles such as Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 should not exist when Super Mario Bros. 3 would suffice (and would arguably sell better). Game publishers need to put a stop to this annoyingly wordy trend before it gets more out of hand than it already is.
Love,
Paul Franzen
Editor-in-Chief
e-mail: pfranzen@gamecola.net
P.S. The phrase “old-school” is officially overused. Let it be stricken from your vocabulary and never be uttered by anyone again.
