It's true.

I hate to say it, but I don't think there will ever be a time in modern or future gaming that can match the era of awesome unforgettable titles like FFVII, Zelda OoT, Metal Gear Solid, Mario 64, CastleVania: SOTN, Perfect Dark, Tony Hawk Pro Skater (The good ones), and many other fantastic and unbeatable titles I may be forgetting. This was the era when I was in complete gaming bliss, doodling pictures of my pixelated heroes on my homework, losing sleep to play the latest big Squaresoft RPG, and commiting myself to find out about all the latest news and games as soon as it hit the press.

The modern market however, once you get past the shiny bells and whistles of new GTA games, Slasher Beat-em-ups, Button Mashing fighters, needless cash-crop EA sports games, and an innumerable amount of WWII and Futuristic First Person Shooters, somewhere along the lines, gaming just gets a bit stale. Thank God for the few truly quirky and innovative titles that actually stirred up gaming a bit. Games like Mr. Mosquito, WarioWare, Super Smash Brothers Melee, Katamary Damacy, Pikmin, Gitaroo Man, Metroid Prime, Super Monkey Ball, and Various Eyetoy titles. Don't get me wrong, there are a few gems this generation has handed out to the gaming public, but it is nothing to the calibur of last gen's legendary line-up.

I guess the problem here is that, once everythings been done before, how long is it until that particlar title or franchise becomes old and unprofitable? I agree Nintendo may be taking it too far with their Mario games but in the long run, people still buy it and enjoy it. Unfortunately, other popular titles like Metal Gear Solid, Tekken, Tony Hawk, Final Fantasy, Megaman, and many many others can and possbly will suffer the same cold fate of rusted gameplay, or just the exhaustion of seeing the same old familiar faces for too long. It's something we've seen many times before in cases like Syphon Filter, Bust A Move, Tomb Raider, Army Men, and Recently, Spyro the Dragon. In an ever changing market, it's getting increasingly difficult to make something new and unique, and to make it last long to boot. It's as if the Earth is running low on fossil fuels, and good games are the oil.

I guess we can all blame the prior generations in all their excellence for claiming dibs on all the good and original ideas, but lets just hope there is more gaming goodness to come. I don't think gaming can continue this way much longer...