As a result of the PlayStation extended maintenance, which affected every PlayStation user, there has been a big debate on social media once again with “digital vs physical” games. For those who are unaware, there are games on PlayStation 4 and 5 that even if you have them downloaded or own them physically, you still require to connect to the internet in order to play them, even if they are single player experiences. This locked out a good chunk of players out of games such as FC 25, where PS5 users can cross-play with X Box Series X/S players, but because of the issues of the extended maintenance, those who play this game on X Box, were able to thrive and play against rivals of their own console without having to worry about the PlayStation users (which is where most of the pro players play, so this allowed for better transfer market deals, better placement in online matches amongst other features that are related to Ultimate Team)

What I’m getting at is, if you wanted to play a game, offline or online, or even download a game you have purchased, or buy a DLC, you simply couldn’t (for the most part). This has caused a huge ripple effect where consumers are talking about buying in physical medium again just to avoid issues like these happening in the future. Being locked out of using your console’s games for 24 hours, especially when Sony has been unclear if it was a data breach like what they previously experienced in 2011, is leaving users worried with regards on if their data has been stolen as well as their credit card credentials. This is a huge cause for concern, especially with hackers being much more experienced in phishing, it is easy for them to appear to be Sony when you want to change your password, or even remove your card from being linked to your account.

Because of this, I would like to give a debate where I outline what I believe what has been some important features companies have done in the past, but over time have evolved and changed.

I would like to start off by presenting that X Box started off this trend, the X Box 360 required you to have constant connection to Wi-Fi in order to play the console, or even set it up for the first time. even if you purchased physical games, you were required to be constantly connected online to play even single player games. This immediately caused issues, since by the time the 360 came out, in November of 2005, not every home had a Wi-Fi connection. Those house holds that did, would have slow Wi-Fi, since it was still a relatively new concept that not everyone could afford. This would cause games to be laggy, cause awful loading times, and even boot players out of the servers at times. With regards to how this looks in retrospect, especially in 2025, this looks and feels like a step back. Forcing your users to connect to the internet for no reason even if they just want to play single player games isn’t exactly a good selling point for your system that will harm the user experience in the long term.

However, the early 2,000’s was a difficult time for developers. Especially with patching their games. The Nintendo Wii was a prime example of a console that had games for everyone, didn’t require users to have a constant connection, and had great single and multiplayer games. However, in November of 2011, with the release of The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, there were some users that found a game breaking glitch. Near the end of the game, you’re forced to do quests in the different regions of the game; Faron, Eldin and Lanayru. The player was allowed to complete these in any order, but if they specifically chose to start with Eldin, they could complete the quest as intended, but if they decided to talk with an NPC before they departed from the region, this would accidentally start the flag for the quest the player just completed again. However, the player would be unable to progress from that point, as they wouldn’t be able to start the quests in the other regions, nor could they carry on the quest since the flag for the quest was raised unintentionally. When the issue was brought up to Nintendo, they got hard at work for weeks in order to fix the issue, whilst allowing players to send in their physical copies to them so that the soft locking bug could get fix (Since the only way to avoid getting soft locked was to have a save from before you activated the original Eldin quest). This issue was a thing for digital owners since… there weren’t any!, most Wii games came out exclusively on physical and it was only the Wii U where you could finally download these physical games from the Wii shop. Like I mentioned earlier, this console was a difficult one to patch games for, since it was extremely convoluted to do so via the internet. Nintendo’s solution to the problem, was a seperate Wii channel that users could download from the Wii shop known as “Skyward Sword Data Update Channel”, users could download this channel and put their soft locked Skyward Sword save on this programme, which will run the patch and fix the issue. This was not the perfect solution, in fact most players didn’t even know of this bug until years later when it was documented in mass on YouTube. This solution back then, was to ship games out as a “Version 1.1” of the game, with updates already installed and applied onto the game, you may own Wii Sports, and I can guarantee that your version of the game is different to the day 1 release in America for the exact same reason I just mentioned.

This method was certainly not perfect, but it did fix the connectivity issues, or the reliance of having to download something onto your system in order to fix issues. This directly challenges what we see today. Although the Wii method I mentioned is a primitive one in comparison to how things are handled today, there is a point to be made that if I were to buy a Wii alongside Skyward Sword today, I wouldn’t have to worry about pirating the channel to update the game because the Wii servers have been discontinued since April 2024. Whereas today, for example Cyberpunk 2077, if I do not connect to the internet and patch the game, I would have a huge mess of a game that would crash the console, or even make me not enjoy my experience with the game as a whole. Of course I’m comparing two different eras and decades to each other, and I am aware of how easy it is to download updates for games. But this reliance of being constantly online, or having to download patches to fix the game, when issues such as the extended server maintenance happen it’s difficult to not look back and see how companies handled these issues two console generations ago.

Day 1 patches are also a big contributor to issues like these. Companies give users early access to games by paying extra, knowing that their game has been shipped out with bugs, just so that on the release date, when most players will get their game, release a big patch that will solve these issues. This affects both the digital deluxe editions, or even the standard physical editions. Which begs the question, if Day 1 they were going to have a patch readily available, why not release the base game with the patch already applied for a better user experience?

Another company that doesn’t have a good reputation of having a good user experience is Ubisoft. It was recently found out that if you’re using their client shop to play their games, if after 6 or more months of inactivity of your account or playing any Ubisoft title, they will de-list your game(s) from your account and if you want it back you will have to purchase the game again. This is the type of issue that is presented with only digital games, since if you have the game physically, unless you lose it, you will always be able to play that game independent of how many months or years have passed. Ubisoft was able to enforce these decisions because of their terms of service which included strict actions against these sort of circumstances, however when they started to take action, the entire gaming community spoke up against them and tried to revert these decisions made by the company.

If you ask me the question, “Digital or Physical?”, I would have a hard time answering it. On one hand, I like the comfortability that the digital media gives, allowing me to change software without having to worry about taking the cartridge or disk out and then replace it. But I do like the physical media more, especially when I can just stack my games on a shelf and have them as a collection that I will fondly look over for the years to come. This is especially prevalent for me, I own almost every Inazuma Eleven game physically, a series that I grew up with and currently has no way of being bought on any current system unless you rely on second hand vendors to sell you the game physically, so for me already having them, knowing that I wont have to worry about any additional downloads after the discontinuation of the DS and 3DS services, is a huge point in favour for the physical media.

Whilst I was typing this, Sony released a statement about the extended server maintenance, in which they explain that it was caused due to “operational issues”, which is why it took over 24 hours in some countries to use their service again. But I still beg the question of “is it necessary, for physical or digital games to be forced to connect to the PSN service even if they are a single player experience in order to be enjoyed by consumers?”

Research/References:

– https://www.indy100.com/gaming/sony-is-playstation-network-down-why

PlayStation being down, as well as update as to why.

–https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Skyward_Sword_Save_Data_Update_Channel Skyward Sword Update Channel information.

Masuyama:

Pokemon as Japanese Culture:

The information seen below is in reference to a piece of writing by Masuyama in “Pokemon as Japanese Culture?”:

Pokemon’s origins can be traced back to Autumn of 1978, when Space Invaders took over the gaming world. The craze of Space Invaders was so prevalent that nearly every coffee shop in Japan was equipped with an arcade machine. This happened before the economic boom Japan experienced in the 1980’s, while American economy was beginning to decline in the aftermath of the Vietnamese war.

Space Invaders was so popular, that it caused a shortage of 100-yen coins. amongst the die hard fans of Space Invaders was Satoshi Tajiri, whom would become the future creator of Pokemon. He has mentioned that the origins of Pokemon lie in bug collecting, which fascinated him as a child, as well as these “Invaders” which he encountered when he was 13.

From that time on, Tajiri became obsessed with videogames. Not only did he play them, but he would also teach himself how to become a designer, so that he could eventually become a part of the creative process which he enjoyed so much. What set Tajiri apart, was that with his journalistic fervour, he printed his own game strategy guides.

In 1983, when Tajiri was 18, Namco released Xevious. The game was a revelation for him. It was a vertically scrolling shooter and a highly evolved version of Space Invaders. Tajiri became a devoted player, and he created a new magazine called “Indies”, which belonged to the still-new genre of “game strategy mini comics”. Tajiri wrote a magazine himself, ran off copies, stapled them by hand, and took them to bookstores or sent them by mail. (Online selling wasn’t yet an option)

The strategy guide garnered attention alongside Xevious itself, which was rising in popularity, and Tajiri began his professional career writing a column on arcade games in a popular Japanese video game magazine. From the beginning, Tajiri had a clear goal of becoming a games designer, and so while continuing his work as a writer, he would also develop games at “Indies” with his college-student friends.

Six years after Xevious, their endeavours bore fruit. Quinty was released in 1989 by Namco on the Famicom platform. The success of this game allowed Tajiri to create a new company by the name of GameFreak. This is also the year that Nintendo released the Game Boy. As soon as Tajiri saw the Game Boy’s “communication cable”, he began conceptualising “Pokemon”. At Game Freak, the design code for Pokemon was #002, next in line after Quinty. Pokemon took six years to make, starting in 1990.

Different games achieved different levels of popularity inside and outside Japan. For example the biggest global hit in the 1980’s was Namco’s Pac Man. Other examples include Space Invaders and Xevious, the two games that inspired and influenced Tajiri Which would also become a cultural sensation comparable to rock music.

A part of Tajiri’s idea for trading monsters came from his experience with the JRPG Dragon Quest. He tells us that when players found unusual items, they often wished they could trade them with friends.

Dragon Quest was a best seller in Japan, shifting millions of copies, but outside Japan, it attracted little attention. Making it three games that influenced Tajiri’s creation of pokemon huge hits only in Japan.

Pokemon is a standard RPG, however it has a unique feature that allows players to trade monsters through the use of cable connecting game machines. When the Game Boy was first released, Terri’s was a global hit, and the Game Boys were connected to allow real time battles. Despite this, Tajiri noticed that the name of the cable wasn’t “battle” but “communication” cable. Pokemon allowed for more than metaphorical communication, it made use of a system that created actual communication, a network game. The amazing success of Pokemon happened to coincide with the rapid spread of Internet growth in Japan, however its communication system differed vastly from games that had come before it and even from the internet itself.

Peer to Peer Communication:

After the web browser, the internet device that had the greatest impact was the music trading software Napster, which came onto the scene in 1999. Users connected to Napster would be able to upload music tracks from their hard drives onto the Internet and other users would be able to download them into their hard drive for free without any of the users losing the data. This differed a lot from what the world was used to with CD rentals. This method of transfer is generally referred to as “Peer to Peer P2P) communication”

P2P In Pokemon:

In Pokemon’s case, the P2P communication consisted only of two people who were standing in front of each other with two game boys linked by a cable, meaning that this was a primitive version of Napsters’s P2P. However, in Pokemon’s case, the data isn’t copied and pasted from one machine to the other. Rather it is Cut then Pasted onto the other machine, meaning that in this metaphorical relay the data is lost once passed.

One of the goals for pokemon is to complete the in-game Monster Encyclopedia, which requires the collection of every single creature in the game. Preserving the rarity of the creatures in the game is crucial to this. The uncommonness of some of the monsters Excited the interests in the players, extending the duration of enjoyment of the game, and encouraging the new type of P2P communication amongst players. The game’s producer Tsunekazu Ishihara, describes this marvelously designed communication as “not closed”.

Pokemon being a “not closed” game sets it apart from a majority of entertainment Media. For example, with films we see a beginning and end. While this is true for Pokemon, in which we see the credits, the game encourages you to seek out the encyclopedia by catching every Pokemon and trading the monsters with your friends, creating a circle of “communication friends.”

This is significant because games that came before Pokemon had never entailed such a laborious process. In fact, one of the pluses of videogames was the very fact that you could enjoy them without any interpersonal communication. But when we set out to make hand-held games into communication tools the software itself could no longer be “closed” 

The “not closed” communication model of both the games and cards is the single largest reason why Pokemon became such a mega-hit worldwide. The fact that the designers refrained from using the word “open” suggests that it is fundamentally different from the “open system” of the internet.

The writer doesn’t intend to suggest that this communication model is exclusively Japanese. However, there is a connection between the three games that have influenced Tajiri and the “not closed” system. Space Invaders and Xevious can both be enjoyed on three different levels.

Firstly, they can be played as ordinary games. Secondly, there are game secrets. In Space Invaders, the score for shooting invaders changed depending upon the number of shots used “(from our present perspective, a primitive secret indeed- and yet the designers were sure that it would not be discovered!)”. In Xevious, a hidden character was intentionally designed into the game. When the player shot into a certain pattern, one that bore no relation to the game itself, a hidden “flag” appeared, and the player relieved an extra fighter ship.

Thirdly, players can search for bugs.

They revel in making the game behave in ways that were not intended by the designers, and the knowledge of such bugs spreads within the community. This happened with both these games. These three levels of play include aspects that are “not closed”, as well as, in fact, “not intended”

Remember the rare items from Dragon Quest. The die hard players will continue playing even after the story has ended in order to find such items. Recent RPGs are specially designed so that players do not easily lose interest, but in the rudimentary RPGs of the 1980’s, there was plenty of fun to be had in the search for rare items.

These games were in a sense “un closed”, but we’re also too tight to allow cross communication.

Space Invaders, Xevious and Dragon Quest all present some aspects of the “not closed” concept of Pokemon. And all three were huge hits in Japan.

The writer suggests that perhaps the striking worldwide success of Pokemon should not be considered the result of the adoption of “Japanese Culture” on a global level as with sushi), but should be seen as two cultures meeting halfway in the 1990s, as Japan became more Westernized and the West became more open to foreign culture. Gone were the days when, in the realm of entertainment, globalisation was exclusively referred to as Americanization.

-Masuyama (Pokemon as japanese Culture)

Intro:

Over the weekend, whilst I went back home I remembered a game I used to play on the PSP. The game was titled Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X, which is a faithful 1:1 remake of the original Mega Man X (1994) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

I desperately wanted to be the original, as I remember absolutely loving the remake.

I already had a version of the game for the SNES, and I also found out that there was a “Legacy Collection” on Nintendo Switch, I have played both and there aren’t any differences between the versions, so everything I say will apply to both versions of this game! (And technically the PSP remake, but I’m talking exclusively about the 1994 version/the switch port!, also the date is from the English release of the game, not the original Japanese one!)

The SNES:

The fourth generation of consoles in the late 80’s saw the transition of 16-bit microprocessors, which allowed for better graphics and audio. Additionally, there was a wider selection of colour as well as the ability to have Multi-Layer scrolling backgrounds (removing the necessity of having pitch black backgrounds to mask the boss being a part of the background instead of the stage), the SNES marked the first major console leap in the history of videogames. This also market the “standard” of consumers having to buy a new console every couple of years (since technology was advancing that much), this also sprouted the “technological knowledge” consumers would gain, being forced to choose which would be better between the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and the SNES.

I believe that Capcom’s Mega Man X makes a wonderful usage of the wider availability of colour as well as the overall power to develop smaller stories for their players. Which I will go into deeper in my following points.

The Tutorial Level:

The introduction of the game shows you a small but important detail of the main character, the specifics on how he was created, his purpose (Which I’ll talk about later), and the specification of his model. Which just shows the amount of detail Capcom put into creating this world and their attempt to make it connect with the player from the get-go.

The second you boot up “New Game”, you’re greeted with X spawning into a destroyed city.

As you progress, you will learn the core mechanics of the game:

-Shoot

-Walk forward

-Jump.

These mechanics may be quite simple, but the first level makes sure you learn them all. For example, early on it teaches you that enemies take multiple shots to be defeated. These shots can be charged up to deal more damage and have a wider surface area, the game also ensures that you jump over the enemies/projectiles in order to not have your HP drained. There are also sections where there are multiple enemies trying to attack you, which really puts the player to the test! (especially those who don’t want to get attacked!)

There are also sections in which the game teaches the player the maximum jump that X can do, by placing platforms at a distance from each other which may look like X will fall. Additionally, there’s a section in which you fight a giant robot wasp. Once defeated, the wasp will impact on the floor making it and the player fall to a lower platform. This leaves the player wondering what to do next, since all they have are pillars and the wasp to work with. It’s at this point that the new mechanic is introduced to the player, X can do small wall jumps that allow him to project himself upwards, something that later levels will expand upon (allowing you to uncover secrets, different ways of fighting bosses and abilities!)

(Image of the wasp section!)

(Image of full length jump)

And lastly, the boss of the first level descends from a ship and is presented in a big mechanical suit, leaving his head exposed. The player will have to shoot projectiles towards the boss’ head to deal damage to him, though since the boss takes up so much space on the screen, he’s easily catching up to you and dealing damage to you. He will eventually chip your HP, making the player feel like you’ve lost and you’re witnessing what the boss does to you once defeated whilst delivering a victorious speech. He gets cut off by a blast that looks similar to the ones the player would use, followed by a red character. This red character is quickly shown to the player as an ally as X shouts “Zero!”, The boss, who’s revealed to be named Vile flees in the same ship he came from. Its then revealed that Zero is looking for a character named Sigma (the main villain!), and that he’ll wait for the player once they reach their full strength.

This introduction level is (in my opinion) a perfect way to introduce a game, especially with the technology presented with the SNES. Every mechanic introduction I pointed earlier wasn’t told to the player explicitly on screen (I am unsure if it was said on the manual as I don’t have one) which is a difference we see nowadays where games can have long extensive tutorials where its the basic controls we are used to in most games of the same console. I believe Capcom’s genius approach to how they presented the mechanics is honestly something worth noting, especially since they show in the first level how mechanically deep focused the gameplay and combat is!

They also made a wonderful usage of presenting their story in the opening minutes of the game, the SNES didn’t allow for an extensive 20+ hour story like we’re used to today, the technology of the time wouldn’t have allowed that, so I believe that the story moments and beats are cleverly placed to keep the players intrigued and engaged with it.

Sprite Work:

Despite the SNES being the most powerful console of its time, the colour pallet still suffered quite a lot. However, thanks to the technology offered by the SNES, developers were now able to mix different assets into their backgrounds, which allowed for immersivity for the player making the game feel like its own living, breathing world. You could definitely tell that the developers put much thought into what would be effective to transmit this feeling towards the player!

Thanks to the new technology, you were also able to create rooms that would create a feeling of fear towards the player. For example, here we can see a variety of techniques such as the usage of the various background layering that the SNES provided, as well as the technology that allowed for the bosses to be significantly bigger than the player at play. We see two versions of the same fight, both of which are quite intense in both boss pattern as well as the design of the boss. Being stranded alone in a room with the final boss whilst they tower over the character directly challenges the player to want to defeat this boss.

I believe Capcom also did wonderfully in the artistic department, Mega Man X has a distinct, recognizable art style which is consistent throughout, creating an immersive experience in which the player can resonate with further.

World Building:

Once the player exits the level, they’re presented with 8 different icons of the different bosses:

-Launch Octopus

-Chill Penguin

-Flame Mammoth

-Boomer Kuwanger

-Sting Chameleon

-Storm Eagle

-Armored Armadillo

-Spark Mandrill

The bosses are simple. Pick their stage, clear the level, fight the boss at the end of the level. Surely they don’t have a specific order, or intertwine right?

So if you fight chill penguin first, whilst clearing the level you’ll see a capsule, when the player gets closer to it, a person introducing themselves as Dr. Light explains how X has to find capsules that he’s left throughout the different stages, which will grant X different abilities, such as faster charging, reduced damage, boosting, and a head piece that stops X from taking damage from falling rocks. This links back to Zero telling X that he’s incomplete and can get stronger, as strong as him. Furthermore, if you defeat Chill Penguin the ice environment of his level will actually expand onto the nearby volcano, freezing it in the process. This volcano is Flame Mammoth’s level, which usually has a layer of lava on the floor, which will challenge the player’s platforming skills. Luckily, if you defeated chill penguin that layer of lava will now be a walkable layer of snow!

(Capsule at Chill Penguin stage)

(Comparison of before and after you defeat Chill Penguin’s stage and how it affects Flame Mammoth’s stage)

There’s other examples, if you defeat Storm Eagle on his ship and then go onto Spark Mandrill’s level, the electricity that will usually be an annoyance to the player will be out since the ship would have crashed onto Spark Mandrill’s layer (you can also see Storm Eagle’s ship at the beginning of the level once it has crashed!)

Additionally, if you defeat Launch Octopus, the water from his level will partially flood Sting Chameleon’s level!

The game also encourages you as a player to replay some of the stages a couple of times. For example, theres a destructible object in Chill Penguin’s layer that’s out of the way of the normal player route which requires the fire ability gained from defeating Flame Mammoth, once you destroy it you will gain a container that will expand X’s HP. There’s also a hidden secret in Armored Armadillo’s layer where you have to defeat an enemy before it reaches a certain area, if you do so the enemy won’t destroy a specific wall which is just tall enough for X to reach with a jump and get another HP container.

(Area from Chill Penguin that you destroy with Flame Mammoth’s ability)

(Armored Armadillo comparison of when you defeat and don’t defeat the boss)

There are also certain abilities that are “stronger” against the other bosses. For example, you can infinitely freeze Spark Mandrill if you use the ability gained from Chill Penguin. Sure they make the bosses “easy”, but it also ties back to the actual lore of the game. All major enemies that X fights were once in the same team/side as him, fighting off robots that went maverick. It wasn’t until Sigma, the lead commander of the Maverick hunters, decided to go maverick (because he’s big bad evil!) and start to overrule the world. What I’m getting at is, the major bosses followed Sigma because they were either loyal to him, he convinced them, or they didn’t know they were rebelling (Spark Mandrill), this gives the bosses a sense of “humanization” in the sense that they have their own weaknesses and strengths. Which is why I believe it was a good call to have gimmicks within the mechanics of the game that allow you to easily defeat the boss without X appearing to be too powerful, since if you want to defeat each boss without the abilities from other bosses you will struggle, so having that choice of “do I want to make it easy?” is an amazing choice by Capcom.

Narrative:

I’m keeping this section under world building since I already spoke about the story a bit there!

The story I mentioned earlier does sadly not get explained in Mega Man X’s game, but it is something I brought up anyway because it was relevant to the point I was making. However, the little story that is present in the game is not something to look over either. We get introduced to two characters at the beginning, Zero and Vile, Vile being introduced as an evil entity and Zero being shown as an “older brother” that X looks up to. It’s revealed right off the bat that X can get stronger, as strong or stronger than Zero, which encourages him to seek out information about Sigma. While he ventures, he will see capsules left by Dr Light, his creator, who’s left these capsules that will provide X with the abilities necessary to become stronger. Eventually, X will reach Sigma’s layer, in which he will find a familiar face. Zero would be laying on the floor. With the vital areas of his body destroyed, he says that he entrusts X with defeating Sigma (And if you haven’t unlocked the blaster, Zero will give you his, there isn’t a difference between the one he gives you and the one you can obtain by exploring!)

Once Sigma is defeated, his layer is destroyed. And as both X and the player watch the layer get destroyed on a far away cliff the following text appears:

“The war has ended for now and peace has been restored. But those who sacrificed themselves for the victory will never return.

Exhausted, X gazes at the destruction he helped cause and wonders why he chose to fight. Was there another way?

Standing on the cliff, the answers seem to escape him. He only knows that he’ll fight the mavericks again before he finds his answer.

How long will he keep on fighting? How long will his pain last? Maybe only the X-Buster on his hand knows for sure…”

This short, yet sweet narrative is an amazing example of an experience in which both the player as well as the character grow. X was forced to fight, and at the end he wonders “why?”, despite seemingly defeating the main villain, he’s taken many lives and seemingly seen his best friend die in front of him. This bittersweet ending is certainly not what the traditional “hero” story ends, as its always them saving the day and everyone being happy. However, X ponders if what he did was the right thing, building his character as a whole while making reference to Dr Light saying that “the world wasn’t ready for a robot with his free thinking capacity”

 

Conclusion:

As you may have guessed, I absolutely love this game, especially when I revisited it after all these years. I believe that despite the hardware limitations of the SNES, Mega Man X stands as one of the best games on the library of the console, even to this day I believe it holds up quite well. The platforming is different to your standard Mario title, so if you’re looking to make a platform game, Mega Man X should be considered as an industry standard for an “Outstanding platformer”, if you have access to a SNES, or a Switch, or even a PSP to play the remake, I would really recommend you pick up Mega Man X!

I think Capcom did an absolutely amazing job to utilize the availability of the console’s power to create a game that’s astonishing aesthetically, mechanically challenging as well as a game that will withstand the test of time because of how masterfully it was done!