Amid revisiting a few popular games from the late 2000’s and 2010’s, plenty of content that was previously available for download or purchase is now impossible to easily and egally access.
I’ve made it no secret in recent weeks on this site that I’ve taken on quite the fixation for both rhythm video games and the Super Smash Bros. series, both of which have been on-and-off lifelong favorites to a large degree.
Of course a big part of the allure of collecting video games and other physical media is the ability to travel back in time within your own home to when different games and works of art were released, getting either a healthy dose of nostalgia or a novel experience of something you hadn’t played, seen or heard before.
Growing up as a huge fan of both rhythm games and the Super Smash Bros. series, my wife and I have had a blast in recent weeks revisiting the games, trying to get through tour mode on Rock Band games while stacking up dozens of matches across the five Super Smash Bros. titles released for home consoles.
As a completionist, I love being able to experience a game to its fullest extent – whether that means having all possible tracks and accessories unlocked in Guitar Hero and Rock Band or getting to choose from all possible characters and stages in a Super Smash Bros. game.
For the first few decades of video games taking up significant space in the world of mass media, they were centered around completion. Games were often judged by how much replay value they had, and how much there was to do in a specific game before getting too bored or flustered to continue.
This depth expanded from simply having to beat every level in a game like Super Mario Bros. 3 for full completion to complex role-playing games like Final Fantasy VII, including a wide range of items, weapons, cities and dungeons to explore over the course of a playthrough that is likely to take dozens of hours for a first-time player.
That level of depth always felt particularly immersive to me as a kid, playing Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games that included a plethora of collectibles needed for a full clear, along with my own forray into RPGs with Tales of Symphonia, a game that took me approximately 60 hours on my first playthrough as a kid, largely due to how immersed and enamored I was with the scale of what was available.
Yet within just a few years of Tales of Symphonia‘s July 2004 North American release, developers had found a new way to keep players engaged in a game, even well after its release – thanks to the advent of internet-connected consoles, the concept of downloadable content was born.
While the idea began in earnest earlier in the 2000’s with Microsoft adding mostly free additions to games like Halo 2 on its Xbox Live Marketplace, it was one of my favorite games that took the idea and ran with it, inspiring a new generation of microtransactions and video games turning into money pits.
DLC first hit my stream of consciousness in the fall of 2007, not long after Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock was released. While I owned the game on both the PlayStation 2 and Wii as a kid, I always felt (and honestly still do to a degree) that I was missing out on the complete game due to the availability of DLC for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game – the latter adding on to available DLC that was exclusive to the Xbox 360 port of Guitar Hero II.
The DLC most notably included single-player notecharts of the famous guitar battles that are part of Guitar Hero III‘s story mode, with me individually always wanting to take a shot at The Devil Went Down to Georgia and the small handful of Foo Fighters songs that were included.
My initial thoughts on the inclusion of DLC into one of my favorite series’ was mostly that of simply wishing I had the console and money to access it, but a much bigger barrier remains today – with the songs entirely unavailable as support for the tracks was halted by Activision on March 31, 2014 due to licensing issues.
The Guitar Hero series confronted this in an even more extreme example after the 2015 release of Guitar Hero: Live, the most recent game in the series. While players initially were offered hundreds of songs to play thanks to the inclusion of GHTV, a service that featured “channels” including a rotating list of tracks in addition to the 42 songs included on the disc.
The service was rather short-lived however, with GHTV servers shutting down on Dec. 1, 2018 – leaving players with just 42 songs to play and depriving the game of almost all of its replay value.
I’ve experienced much of the same “Damn, well I missed out” sentiment when playing Super Smash Bros. for Wii U recently, more colloquially known as Smash 4.
While I was thankfully in time and purchased the DLC characters for Smash 4 when the Wii U and 3DS servers remained operational, I did not do the same with the additional stages that were available in the game, which included a three-pack of nostalgic stages from the original Smash 64.
With no download before the servers will shut down, I would have to purchase a Wii U with the content already downloaded to experience Dream Land 64 and Hyrule Castle on Smash 4 – a disappointing thought when viewing old tournament matches that took place on the former stage.
My personal grievances with DLC are one thing, but it’s hard to not look at the broader impact the concept has had on the gaming world in the past 15 years. Nowadays, it’s hard to find any high-budget game that doesn’t include tons of DLC – a thought that may be alluring to some that have deep pockets, but quickly becomes disappointing when you remember you’re no longer buying a complete, finished product.
In that way, DLC is simply emblematic of what has taken place across the world of mass media – why let consumers own a product after paying for it once when you can oblige them to pay monthly for products they will never own?
Why actually buy DVDs and Blu-rays to own movies and TV shows when you can stream them on Netflix or Peacock for a monthly price? Why ever buy a physical video game when you can subscribe to Xbox Game Pass? Why would you spend money on vinyl and CDs when you can access essentially all the music in the world for a monthly rate?
In the past 15 years, consumers have gradually, and in many cases subconsciously, moved towards holding the positions expressed above. Physical media is now viewed by many to be obsolete – even though it remains the only way to actually own something and continue enjoying it for years to come.
In the world of gaming, the planned obsolence goes far beyond DLC available for purchase in games that eventually age out – as games that were only released digitally face the fate of being erased from existence entirely when supporting software or marketplaces go down.
Maybe it’s a curmudgeonly take on my part, but I have a hard time understanding what the purpose of pouring hours into some modern games is when the erasure of it all seems like not just a possibility, but an inevitability.
It’s among the reasons why our collection will continue to revolve primarily around older video games – ones that you can put in a system, be playing within 30 seconds and know that you’ll always have as long as you take care of it.
A big part of what makes games so special and fun for me are the lifelong memories I have made with them. I’ve owned the same copy of Super Smash Bros. Melee since January 2004 – and that disc and memory card took me through countless hours of the game in varying stages of my life: event matches that summer with my childhood best friend, casual game nights in high school, intense battles after learning about the competitive scene in college to comfortable evenings playing the game with my wife today, 22 years later.
My love for gaming was ignited by being introduced to it all at a young age, with my father passing down his love for the Super Mario series, which in turn has already been passed down to my 6-year-old nephew.
What’s the point of spending our time on all of this if it won’t even persist for the ensuing few years, let alone the next generation?
Video games will remain fun, immersive and technically impressive for as long as they exist. But how long they exist for is ultimately what truly matters.
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