When discussing videogames with my extended family, I usually have to use a lot of different language than I would when talking with a casual game fan or writing for 61 FPS. Certain words and acronyms go straight out the window. You can’t say platformer or RTS. You can’t say Capcom and expect it to carry the same contextual weight it would when chatting with someone who can name multiple Street Fighters. My grandparents in particular are mystified by my obsession and so I usually have to rely on the power of metaphor. When it comes to describing what blogging about videogames entails, I tend to fall back on sports coverage. Just like following the NFL or NBA, a lot of excitement can come from following trades (corporate mergers), defeats (marquee creators leaving publishers), and scandal (Hot Coffee). Following videogames isn’t just about the games themselves, but following the people who make them, the industry that publishes them, and, most importantly, the delectable drama that results. And rumors. Oh, rumors are the best.
A Wii remake of Resident Evil 2 really doesn’t seem that implausible. It’s one of the best selling games ever made and Capcom’s already building a new game on the Resident Evil 4 engine. It’s a little disappointing that the rumor about it (originating at the always reliable 2chan) turned out to not be true, but it was fun just debating the validity of the rumor when it first popped up. The other “confirmed announcements” from the same source were even better. Soul Blazer 2? Shadow Hearts 3? The teams behind those series don’t even exist anymore. But for a brief while, we got to entertain the notion of the impossible, that something absurd would happen and we’d have fun when it did. Like anything else worth loving, imagining the what might happen is one of the greatest joys in gaming.
Our many thanks to Siliconera’s help with constructing this piece.
Related links:
Turnabout Animation
Street Fighter IV: Maybe Hitting an Appropriate (and Tragic) Number of Arcades
NSFW: The Top Five Game-Based Pornos
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History
OST: Soul Blazer