Why One-minute?

[loser]

I think one-minute reviews are a valuable and interesting addition to
the site. Thanks for taking the initiative.

Regarding the belief that a one-minute review may do injustice to a
good game, I can imagine two underlying concerns for thinking it
might: respect for the game and accuracy of the review. I personally
think trying out the concept anyway was the right thing to do so that
the matter can be settled empirically. Now that the first batch of
reviews is up, I don't see any problems in these respects. If the
review doesn't have as much detail as one would like, one can always
look elsewhere for a detailed review.

A minor nit is that system naming is inconsistent: sometimes Mega
Drive, sometimes Genesis; sometimes Super Famicom, sometimes Super
NES. Is the name of the system chosen for each game according to the
country of origin of the game, rather than the country of origin of
the system? This seems counterintuitive to me; I'm curious as to the
reasoning behind this choice.

As a minor improvement, richer linkage to the rest of the site would
be a useful addition. Some of the games have received full length
reviews on this site in addition to their one-minute reviews. In this
case, it would be nice if the one-minute review linked to the full
review to bring it to the attention of readers who haven't perused the
review archive. It would also be useful to have links to reviews
and/or forum threads of "all games from this developer", "all games
for this system" and "all games in this genre". I don't think this is
urgent, since all of this information is currently available to
motivated readers with a bit of detective work.

In the scheme of things, I believe the best value mini-reviews can
offer is to give the reader a birds-eye view on a certain developer,
genre, era, system, or some combination thereof. I can't discern any
such underlying theme in the first batch of reviews posted on
2007-11-10. While the random reviews are useful and interesting as
they are, I assume themed reviews would be even more so, especially as
a way of amassing the "decades of experience in gaming" that the
reviewers are claimed to possess.

An experienced observer can discern general directions in which games
are developing. It might be interesting to highlight in mini-reviews
how landmark games grasped the vital concepts driving these
developments and where bad games went wrong. One might want to add an
introductory paragraph similar to some of the full reviews on this
site to relate the category under review to games in general.

In the end, it's up to the reviewers to judge whether such efforts are
worth their time. I assume it would entail more work than the random
reviews, and the reviewers may be limited in available time and
interest. Ideally this could give them an occasional change of pace
from writing full reviews, and offer a way of distilling the knowledge
they have accumulated over the years into a form that less experienced
gamers can use to quickly develop some sense of perspective in
unfamiliar territory.

[MAXCHAIN]

I loved the reviews.

Macaw, I bought ActRaiser 2. Awesome, thanks for the tip!

[JoshF]

Cyborg Justice wasn't released in Japan but it was released in Europe. I don't think you can make a case for inconsistency because I reviewed the Genesis version. Can you imagine how I would have rated it if I was playing a slower version? :lol:

[icycalm]

A minor nit is that system naming is inconsistent: sometimes Mega
Drive, sometimes Genesis; sometimes Super Famicom, sometimes Super
NES. Is the name of the system chosen for each game according to the
country of origin of the game, rather than the country of origin of
the system? This seems counterintuitive to me; I'm curious as to the
reasoning behind this choice.

There's no inconsistency; indeed, the console-naming system was chosen exactly because it is consistent. Zombies Ate My Neighbors is a game developed for the Genesis and the Super NES, Shadow Dancer is a game developed for the Japanese Mega Drive, Holy Striker is a game developed for the Super Famicom, etc. etc. Bear in mind that a Japanese Mega Drive, a European Mega Drive, and a Genesis, are not even the same exact consoles.

Of course there are games that fall in gray areas, and for which we have to make the call on a case-by-case basis. Cyborg Justice is one such game. It was developed by a Hungarian company and published by Sega in Europe and America, but not in Japan. So should we list the system as the European Mega Drive or as the Genesis? In this case I went with the Genesis because for 16-bit consoles we pretty much pretend Europe doesn't exist, because of the PAL tragicomedy. Like Josh said, if we were reviewing the PAL versions of games every review would start and end with giant WTFs about the black borders and slower speed.

As for the rest of your suggestions, trust me, I am aware of how beneficial they would be to the site and I am working on all of them. If you go back to the first batch of one-minute reviews you'll see that there are now links pointing towards the full-length reviews of games that have received them. There's more to come in the near future, including whole new sections of the site, so stay tuned.

[CosMind]

icycalm - good shot with your one minutes.
your full reviews have always been fantastic reads and more informative than nearly any reviews i come across elsewhere. to think, a reviewer discussing game systems and mechanics in his review! how odd! i honestly really do appreciate that. and, now, you still manage to discuss these most important facets of a game within your tiny o-m reviews. keep rocking, good sir.

[icycalm]

Thanks for your nice comments! That's why I love this forum. I can keep the nice comments and delete the bad ones.