Ah well. Hindsight."
That said, even if I hadn't enjoyed it, I would welcome the chance for them to improve on the series in the future... and I'm not entirely certain why even if I hadn't, that should mean the series should no longer exist. The bottom line here is money; if a publisher thinks they can make money off it, they'll make it. My input shouldn't influence their decision to try something out, or not try something out. Their sales should, and generally do."
Educated guess? The world where the parent was the one who bought the toys in the first place. Looking back, honestly, I'm surprised my dad didn't smash more of my crap growing up; as it turned out, taking the power cords away was a MUCH less messy way of disabling my enjoyment of them, but I could definitely see where a frustrated parent would be coming from should they chose to go down that path.
They paid for something, and maybe the kid's being an unruly brat. Maybe the kid wants to play games more than do schoolwork, or play outside. MAYBE the kid is completely out of line, and whereas getting spanked back in the day did the trick, this is now considered child abuse, so they went for the console instead.
Point being, if the child is upset at the destruction of "their" Nintendo, where words have failed, action may make the kid sit up and take notice. "Oh man, he smashed it. WHAT did I do to make this happen, and HOW should I avoid this in the future?" I can guarantee you, a parent who smashes something they paid good money for isn't doing it for shits and giggles, and it's most assuredly not a first response for corrective action.
Some of these kids are EVIL, and I think soft parenting's given birth to a new breed of "invincible" kids who are allowed to get away with anything and say/do whatever they want because parents APPEAR to be afraid of reprecussions of their actions... So, yes. If my kid was being completely unreasonable, and taking their Xbox away wasn't accomplishing anything, I would certainly threaten to destroy it... and if need be, back up words with action. Not because I get a thrill out of breaking the shit out of videogames, but because sometimes being a parent means being the bad guy, if it means your kid has a better understanding of action/reaction.
...Eat my yogurt, I blow up the Wii. Home Terrorism has never been so fun."
It's not right to boil down paragraphs and pages of words, phrases, supporting details and experiences into three characters or less. Metacritic is, at its core, an evil tool targeted at lazy readers for instant gratification, and the fact that this aggregate scoring mechanism is held to such a serious light as to make it a REQUIREMENT for employment in certain studios isn't just wrong... it's disgusting, and insulting to all critics AND developers. If Metacritic stopped trying to affix numbers, and just became a critic hub, I think that would go a LONG way to making it a legitimately useful tool, something people could reference to actually learn about a game.
But they only deserve a bit of the blame... The real criminals are the people who popularize it and use it as a serious measure of a game's worth. I speak, of course, about you."
Smart owner-sellers will do the same. If you get lucky on Craigslist or Ebay you might find someone who didn't format it before selling it and you could get access to a few games. MOST sellers wouldn't leave that sort of stuff sitting around when they decided to sell it though."











I guess my write-up was more of a wistful longing for the simpler days of soundtracks, where you didn't have to rely on <insert generic symphonic score> to fill the awkward silences present in many modern games; it was there, and it set the pace for the game, by and large.
Again, not sure what happened with the title, as this was meant to be a personal recounting of one of my first JRPG soundtracks, but it's fairly close to my feelings regardless. Good music, I mean GOOD music, that makes a connection with me as someone experiencing a tale, seems to be the exception instead of the rule. OCRemix(ers) get to break up the monotony of the two-step orchestral hit background noises prevalent in many of today's titles, which I am thankful for... It just seems like much of modern game music wasn't designed with the source in mind.
Did I listen to FF6 music out of the game? Absolutely. Duke Nukem Forever or Warhammer 40K: Space Marine? Er..."