I remember when I used to play Super Mario 64 when I was a kid. It was, to put it bluntly, a great game. Somehow, Nintendo managed to take the adventures of the infamous Italian plumber from a 2-D realm and into 3-D Realms, but without the guns and strippers…
get it…cause of 3-d Realms the guys that made Duke Nu-? never mind.
The point is, Nintendo made a successful 2d game into a successful 3-d game. This is not as easy as it sounds. Franchises like Megaman, Sonic the Hedgehog, and the ever so beloved Bubsy the Bobcat have had their hardships when being translated into the 3rd Dimension.
Some very broken games have been spawned from the transition from 2d to 3d and it’s no wonder why gamers could be so fascinated with Nintendo’s success when it came to 3D conversions of popular 2d tittles.
The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and DonkeyKong series demonstrated how well a 2d to 3d conversion could work, and set the ground work for 3d platforming ever since… but, how?
How did Nintendo so elegantly manage to succeed were many others had failed?: They made a good game first and made a Nintendo game last. When comparing a game like Super Mario 64 to Sonic Adventure DX Director’s cut (two games I have greatly enjoyed growing up) you’ll be able to see what I mean.
Mario 64 developers put most of their time and effort into two things: The movement and the camera. With these two components fleshed out, the rest of the game would be easier to create. Mario’s movement is complex, weighty, intuitive, but is most of all consistent. The Camera compliments Mario flexible movement by staying flexible itself, with the ability to turn it around (almost) freely.
With movement that is simple to grasp, yet challenging to master, and a camera that allows you to get full bearings and accurately plan out a strategy, the only thing that the developers needed to do was create open levels to even better compliment the character controls and they’d have excellence in their hands.
Now with a game like Sonic DX, the story (although not as tragic as Sonic 06 or Sonic Boom) is much less excellent. Sonic DX was designed around the idea of sonic, which meant they’d center the game around speed which would make for a pretty awesome game… if done correctly. Sonic’s in game speed isn’t the thing that causes problems, it’s the entire world around the blue blur that creates conundrums.
Sonic ends up running against walls and complex rocks and geometry in tight spaces within Sonic DX, making for some very troublesome navigation as the player often gets stuck on things, and may also loose momentum when running, which is devastating in a game centered around speed. None of the problems with movement were alleviated by the utterly wonky camera. Often locking in place when going into particular areas like small rooms and speed loops and sometimes completely bug out, when on jump pads or scripted jumping sequences.
Things in Sonic DX didn’t flow well, with Sonic’s speed being the prime culprit. If Sonic were a little slower, the game may have been smoother, even though it would go against the very Sonic the Hedgehog formula.
Sonic’ speed was a problem because it wasn’t in an environment that was made for speed and the camera was so unwieldy because it wasn’t consistently tailored to the game.
Sonic Team (The developers of Sonic the Hedgehog) threw the basics of Sonic (The speed, the power-ups, the tracks) into a game but didn’t think how all of those components would need to be tweaked when in the Third Dimension.
Now, (with the arrival of the Oculus Rift and Morpheus) we have virtual reality on the way, and an almost guaranteed omen of garbage games flooding the VR market.
Virtual reality is huge jump for gaming, comparable to the jump from 2D to 3D. The danger may not be a dimensional one, necessarily, but rather a danger of translation. How will developers translate games that were meant to be seen in one specific way into games with a level of immersion never before seen by gamers?
What I’m trying to say is, What will be the Mario 64 of Virtual reality, and what will be the Sonic DX?
Chunks of gaming 