A-lister Video Games That Are Still Relevant

You may think that video games are retro or old-school, but there are more adaptations of video games now than there were 30 years ago! When you think of video games you may think of Pac Man, Super Mario, or The Legend of Zelda, but did you know there is more than just one game to these game series? Living up to its title, all three of these game series are still relevant today. Millions of people all around the world still play Pac Man, Super Mario, and Legend of Zelda. And they don’t just play just the original game. There are multiple games in each series. Pac Man, for example, has over 10 different adaptations, the Legend of Zelda has over 25 and Super Mario has 250 plus! So still relevant means, more installments? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. More installments do mean a continuation of the series, thus gaining more players but it does not necessarily mean it’s relevant. Relevant means still used as of today, still known. Hundreds of thousands of people are still interested in these franchises but not just for the original game; which is ok because for the newer installments, people are still interested. If the original game never got a sequel or new installment, the game most likely would have only been successful for a short time. Classmate Lennon Beckman says, “It really depends on the audience and the game. The Sonic franchise, for example, is known for adding new ideas but keeping the same style, which happened to lose a lot of its audience.”

Nowadays it’s hard to find games that have come out recently that have their own title and aren’t a part of an already existing franchise. The good ideas must already be taken. The games that have their own name with no other installments are most likely not well-known because it doesn’t have any other installments. Perhaps it’s because it’s not out in the open yet. The only way to fix this problem is to make more installments! Another part of this problem is the “getting out” of these new installments. Game companies work on making new installments every day, but depending on the original game it can be very difficult to come up with ideas. Companies like Nintendo or Sega make new installments quite frequently. For example, Nintendo had come out with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario: Odyssey last year and are gaining great success with these games. These are only two of the most recent games that they have produced in the last year alone.

For certain games, making character designs can be difficult, especially if it’s a fictional based game rather than a realistic style like Call of Duty. The Zelda franchise is known for its fictional character style. Link, for example, is a Hylian human, which obviously isn’t real but he was created to give off a more fictional style. He is not considered fully human. It’s especially difficult to produce games more frequently if a company decides to use a more fictional style to create the game. Every detail is made originally from scratch and usually drawn before putting it on a computer, and there’s still more work from there! After the brainstorming and drawing process, the original work must be animated and edited on the big screen, and then produced to what you see today. For example, according to Nintendo Today, it took Breath of the Wild over four years to produce; but that didn’t stop Nintendo from producing more games in the meantime. While still in the creation process for Breath of the Wild, Nintendo has come out with more games such as: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (2016), Star Fox Zero (2016), Pokémon Sun and Moon (2016), and many more, and there are still more to come in the near future. There’s no doubt that future installments and past installments will continue to make money as long as the new titles keep rolling in.