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Violence. Lack of Religion? Or Shift from Nintendo to Sony?

By Pengwin21a

I was thinking about the recent events, especially after my school was closed for Friday, the 30th. I was thinking, Everyone is pointing to lack of religion, Goths, AD:D, lack of supervision, everything. But I thought of something much simpler. Kids are more violent because they are switching to Sony over Nintendo.

Let’s face it, PlayStation is a kid’s dream. A large variety of games, cheaper games, and easier to store games ("Clean up around your console, or no video games for the week!") But with games very easily accessible such as the increasingly violent games, games like Resident Evil, Syphon Filter, and even with it’s Chocobo’s, Final Fantasy is very suggestive. Now, have you ever seen excessive blood in a Nintendo game? No. That is because they American moviemakers and media are obsessed with blood and gore, but more abstract things are popular in Nintendo’s native Japan.

Those different games come to the United States, whereas PlayStation tries to sell EVERYTHING so that any game, original or not, will be seen on a shelf. This is why I think that almost all of Nintendo’s products are worth buying-- not every game will make it, and the weak products are usually weeded out. Oftentimes, you’ll find violent games are weeded out of Nintendo’s "system."

Now I’m going to sound one hundred years old, but I remember the days when everyone was content just jumping on a Goomba, and getting 200 points (up to 1000 if you bounced off one onto another.) If you landed on a spike you were not impaled, but just kind of sat there. Now, we need tazers, and automatic guns galore. Now I’ll tell you the truth: I am not one of those kids who sunk millions of quarters into Mortal Kombat. I usually avoid very violent games, because I’d rather play a good RPG/strategy game instead. But I’ve played them, and I really haven’t gotten anything out of them. I also am nota "sportsman," someone who hunts for sport, and therefore, I have never fired a gun. But now, just buy playing an arcade game, I can fire a gun. Hell, I remember you could go into rent a game, and you didn’t need to worry about not being able to get a game because it might be rated "MA." What the hell is wrong with America if we have to say a game is too awful to be played by children?

Now to summarize my point. During the late eighties, mass school shootings were very rare. Those kids had Nintendos, playing Exite-a-Bike, Mario, and at the most violent, Contra or Castlevania. But none depicted horribly violent scenes, as Sony does presently, when violence is blazing. Now tell me, was Nintendo less violent because of lack of technology and graphics? Or mass production of violent games for mass profit?

Note: I hope you now see my point of view. I had many ideas going into this editorial, and that left me jumping from place to in my paragraphs. I started to ramble, but I believe I said most of what I felt needed to be said. If you are at all confused by what I said, please e-mail me @: pengy21@hotmail.com

Staff Comments:

Crysaler: You're right, Nintendo has never made anything as close to as violent as Resident Evil. But they're changing a little bit as shown by a N64 port of Resident Evil 2.