Americans Are Stupid
Mike Meyers
mimyers2@vt.eduIt is a frustrating time to be an intelligent gamer. We are all beating our heads against the walls, frustrated with the corporate screwups that result in poor sales for good games. We constantly bite our nails waiting and hoping for somebody to pick up the endless flow of top notch games from Japan. We can't help but wonder what is wrong with people when games like Guardian Heroes go unnoticed.
Well let me propose an explanation for this mess: American gamers are STUPID. Console gamers especially, although those types are now spilling over into the PC market with games that are easy to pick up and enjoy like Duke Nukem, Quake, and Warcraft 2. When I say American gamers are stupid, I mean 95% of them are. I am not stupid, and if you're actually reading an editorial on a web page for Saturn gamers, you are probably not stupid either. There are basically two divisions of stupid gamers: the old and the young.
The old are what I call 30+ year-old game buyers. They are either parents or casual gamers. Why are parents stupid? Well, have you ever known a parent that had a clue as to what game is good and which one is complete crap? How many of you out there have told your parents that you just want some games for Christmas/birthday, and had them bring back Home Alone 2 "because it was on sale", or a Batman game "because it was a pretty good movie". If parents have little kids, they would buy a Power Rangers game, or a game based on a Disney game (in which case, on rare occasion, they might actually be doing the right thing, since there have been 1 or two decent Disney based games over the years from Capcom). Parents ask the salespeople for advice (ha! salespeople! they don't get paid to care, or tell the truth!). Parents are stupid, okay. Have I established that now? Your parents might be nuclear engineers, but I bet as far as gaming goes, they're stupid. The other group of old stupid gamers aren't parents, but rather "casual gamers". You know, the uncle who bought a next generation system the day it came out, and has two games for it, but that was five years ago and it's been collecting dust under the VCR somewhere since then. The two games? Probably sports games or something.
That leaves the second division of stupid gamers: the young. Everytime I go somewhere public where there is video games (stores, arcades, etc.) I find that I run into stupid little kids. Now, I'm 19, and I have to remind myself that I was once a little kid too, but I was never a stupid little brat, honestly. A couple weeks ago, I was wondering around the local Wal-Mart, and thought I'd fool around with the Mario Kart 64 display. I hadn't finished two tracks when I was approached by a boy, who must have been about two feet tall, and he immediately started to tell me everything about "do this, do that, turn here, look out for that!"...you know those types. He said he knew "everything about Nintendo games", and "all the secrets for all the games" because, get this, he "reads Nintendo Power". Ha ha ha ha! Okay, calm down. So, admiring his confidence, I asked him how you get 30 lives in Contra, or how to do the sound test in Ninja Gaiden, or even how many Mega Man games there were for NES. "Duh, I don't know" was his reply. Okay, so I asked him about Sega. "All the good games are for Nintendo! I don't play Sega games!" was his answer, more or less. Well, no sh-t! I should have expected that--he reads Nintendo Power, the bringer of bias, the propaganda powerhouse! The poor kid hadn't even heard of Nights, Virtua Fighter 2, Dragon Force, Sega Rally, Fighting Vipers, Virtual On, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, etc. Anyway, the reason I am telling this story is because this stupid little kid personifies the young American gamer. 3 years ago, the same type of kid was gloating about his Genesis version of Mortal Kombat because it had blood, or about how fast Sonic was compared to Mario. I don't take the side of one system whole-heartedly. I recognize a good game when I see it. Only stupid people will blindly and loyally follow one brand name, whether it be Sony or Sega or Nintendo. Kids are stupid.
Here are other common examples of stupidity in America:
--kid looking at Street Figher Alpha 2 for Saturn at Toys R Us: "But it looks so flat, so 16 bit!"
--parent buying game at Elec. Boutique, to Salesman: "So, what would you recommend?"
--parent looking for game rental at local Movie King, in reply to my helpful suggestion that she rent this one excellent game in particular, I forget which: "Yea, but is it 2-player? No? Nevermind then."
--games selection at local Blockbuster for Saturn: does not include any RPGs, and is missing 3 or 4 of the must-have titles. What happened to Panzer Zwei? "It was stolen." Meanwhile, Playstation gets about 7 shelves of space, and there are 5 copies of every N64 game, even (blechhhh) Cruisin USA.
That's why we can't convince companies to translate those wonderful RPG's, or keep the original cover art, or stop making sports games. It's because they know that 95% of American gamers are STUPID, and they want to make money, so they will cater to the stupid people. There is no hope. Stupidity is ALL AROUND US. Stores don't know what to stock or what to display. Parents are clueless and believe advertisements. Kids are naive, narrow-minded, and subject to manipulation. Americans are out there buying SPORTS games by the dozen, for crying out loud!! Do you wanna see something really sad? Look at the top ten bestsellers from EB, at the GameFan web site. Enough to make you cry? Good. At least you're not stupid.
(Editorial by Mike Myers--"no not THAT mike myers. jesus christ..." Please email all opinions or counter-opinions to me at mimyers2@vt.edu. I reserve the right to ignore stupid people.)