Video Games Abroad (in India at least)
This article is going to be part game-review, part anecdote. I recently returned from a three-week vacation in India. A week or so before I left, I bought a Nintendo DS Lite with New Super Mario Bros. and Pokemon Emerald and started playing both so that I would be familiar with the game play and wouldn't have to look things up online after leaving. My sister bought Super Princess Peach and seems to be enjoying it, but I haven't actually played it yet. So I'll save that for a future article.
New Super Mario Bros. is great. The new power-ups are creative, although they aren't always necessary or even useful in the regular game play. However, I like how the game is designed to make sure they aren't completely ignored, since the power-ups are crucial to getting all the star coins and getting to some of the levels. Beyond that and the one or two other twists, it's just great, classic Mario fun.
Pokemon Emerald is also quite good. It takes the storyline from Ruby/Sapphire and changes it around a tiny bit and also adds a few other tiny details to Ruby/Sapphire. But that's not what makes the game worth buying, it's the addition of the Battle Frontier that makes this game unique and quite hard. Yes, I said hard. The opponents in the Battle Frontier have strategies that put all other in-game opponents, and many human opponents, to shame. To beat the entire Frontier, you need to obtain all seven symbols, at the gold level. I currently only have two at the silver level.
One of the first things I noticed about video games in India is that apparently gaming systems haven't had much success in the past 20 years or so. Some of my cousins are addicted to computer games but haven't played many 'system' games beyond the classic NES and SNES ones. This, of course, means they love Mario. In fact, Mario seems to be so well known that when my uncle asked what I was playing, I simply replied "Mario" and soon we were playing the two-player game. They also got a kick out of Super Princess Peach when we described it as Mario, but in reverse. Pictochat was a hit as well, and we spent at least an hour passing our DS's around, insulting each other and drawing random pictures. That much I had expected and was part of the reason I decided to take a DS with Mario with me. What really surprised me though was the popularity of Pokemon. Right now, Pokemon in India seems to be about as popular as it was in the U.S. around 1999. Four years ago, when I last visited, no one knew anything about Pokemon except that it was a video game that my sister and I played. Now the cartoon airs at least once a day (in Hindi, which made it quite entertaining), and Pokemon merchandise is about as common as Mickey Mouse merchandise. The most ironic thing though, no one seems to have played the video game that started it all, even though two of my cousins were actually so interested in the game that they sat and watched for almost 30 minutes as I played.
The other interesting thing that I noticed was extremely surprising because it was a small experiment on my part that succeeded much better than I expected it to. We took a train from the south to the north to visit relatives who lived there and quite naturally, I resorted to my DS and GBA to pass some time on the 30-hour journey. I had just eaten and was going to read for a bit when I noticed a kid in the neighboring compartment had a GBA out. Hoping to see the kid's reaction, I took out my DS instead and started playing it. Soon enough he looks up from his game and instantly sees the DS. What surprised me was that he actually came over and started talking to me. Apparently he had made the same assumption I had when I saw him with his GBA since the first thing he asked me was, "are you American?" He then saw that I had Emerald in the GBA slot and asked if I wanted any help with the game. I found it quite hilarious that this little kid (I think he was ten years old) was offering me help, but I politely thanked him for his offer. To make things even funnier, he then asked if I could help him with his Sapphire version. I was more than happy to help since it would pass some time and ended up tutoring him in Pokemon until his family told him to their stop had arrived.
I now find it rather odd that until this kid came up to me and asked if I was American, I had never really thought about how clearly a Gameboy, a DS, or even a PSP can mark someone as being a foreigner. Again, I suppose this reflects the low popularity of gaming systems in India. I now wonder if this, in turn, is just a reflection of modern Indian culture, which emphasizes academics far more than it emphasizes entertainment. Computer games seem to have gained popularity only by exploiting the home PC loophole since PCs can't be hidden, kept turned off, or thrown away without affecting other family members. I think the spread of broadband internet in India will help boost the popularity of computer games, but I can't picture gaming systems having much success without some considerable changes in opinion and marketing.
New Super Mario Bros. is great. The new power-ups are creative, although they aren't always necessary or even useful in the regular game play. However, I like how the game is designed to make sure they aren't completely ignored, since the power-ups are crucial to getting all the star coins and getting to some of the levels. Beyond that and the one or two other twists, it's just great, classic Mario fun.
Pokemon Emerald is also quite good. It takes the storyline from Ruby/Sapphire and changes it around a tiny bit and also adds a few other tiny details to Ruby/Sapphire. But that's not what makes the game worth buying, it's the addition of the Battle Frontier that makes this game unique and quite hard. Yes, I said hard. The opponents in the Battle Frontier have strategies that put all other in-game opponents, and many human opponents, to shame. To beat the entire Frontier, you need to obtain all seven symbols, at the gold level. I currently only have two at the silver level.
One of the first things I noticed about video games in India is that apparently gaming systems haven't had much success in the past 20 years or so. Some of my cousins are addicted to computer games but haven't played many 'system' games beyond the classic NES and SNES ones. This, of course, means they love Mario. In fact, Mario seems to be so well known that when my uncle asked what I was playing, I simply replied "Mario" and soon we were playing the two-player game. They also got a kick out of Super Princess Peach when we described it as Mario, but in reverse. Pictochat was a hit as well, and we spent at least an hour passing our DS's around, insulting each other and drawing random pictures. That much I had expected and was part of the reason I decided to take a DS with Mario with me. What really surprised me though was the popularity of Pokemon. Right now, Pokemon in India seems to be about as popular as it was in the U.S. around 1999. Four years ago, when I last visited, no one knew anything about Pokemon except that it was a video game that my sister and I played. Now the cartoon airs at least once a day (in Hindi, which made it quite entertaining), and Pokemon merchandise is about as common as Mickey Mouse merchandise. The most ironic thing though, no one seems to have played the video game that started it all, even though two of my cousins were actually so interested in the game that they sat and watched for almost 30 minutes as I played.
The other interesting thing that I noticed was extremely surprising because it was a small experiment on my part that succeeded much better than I expected it to. We took a train from the south to the north to visit relatives who lived there and quite naturally, I resorted to my DS and GBA to pass some time on the 30-hour journey. I had just eaten and was going to read for a bit when I noticed a kid in the neighboring compartment had a GBA out. Hoping to see the kid's reaction, I took out my DS instead and started playing it. Soon enough he looks up from his game and instantly sees the DS. What surprised me was that he actually came over and started talking to me. Apparently he had made the same assumption I had when I saw him with his GBA since the first thing he asked me was, "are you American?" He then saw that I had Emerald in the GBA slot and asked if I wanted any help with the game. I found it quite hilarious that this little kid (I think he was ten years old) was offering me help, but I politely thanked him for his offer. To make things even funnier, he then asked if I could help him with his Sapphire version. I was more than happy to help since it would pass some time and ended up tutoring him in Pokemon until his family told him to their stop had arrived.
I now find it rather odd that until this kid came up to me and asked if I was American, I had never really thought about how clearly a Gameboy, a DS, or even a PSP can mark someone as being a foreigner. Again, I suppose this reflects the low popularity of gaming systems in India. I now wonder if this, in turn, is just a reflection of modern Indian culture, which emphasizes academics far more than it emphasizes entertainment. Computer games seem to have gained popularity only by exploiting the home PC loophole since PCs can't be hidden, kept turned off, or thrown away without affecting other family members. I think the spread of broadband internet in India will help boost the popularity of computer games, but I can't picture gaming systems having much success without some considerable changes in opinion and marketing.
Note: views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and are not necessarily those of Wolverine Soft.