Puzzle Games : A Dying Legacy

Tetris. A simple game played by almost everyone. And by everyone I don’t mean most gamers but everyone. Heck, even my Grandfather has played it. This game has brought so much joy to so many people; a game that may never die. Its recent homes in everything from iPods to cell phones will make this game keep ticking for many years to come. But where are the new puzzle games? I know there are games that incorporate puzzles in their game play, but where are the “real” puzzle games?

This makes me think back to when I was younger. My brother and I would play all kinds of games. Fighting games, racing games, top down shooters, platformers; you name it we had it. But more importantly, to us, we had puzzle games. These were the games that we came back to time and time again. When we beat the other games, unlocked all the characters and found all of the secret places we knew that we had the fun of competing against one another just a cartridge change away, including Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, Tetris Attack, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Chu-Chu Rocket!, and plenty more. The types of games that either we could play against each other in or join up in and try to solve the intricate puzzles together. I know that these are long standing memories in my head, but what will the youth of today remember about gaming?

Today’s youth will remember violent games, or scoring the winning touchdown against his friend who lives in Germany or perhaps winning the race against a kid in Tokyo. Or they could blow the trash talker from France away in a death match game. Mostly, playing games online with hardly any real social interaction. No, I’m not going to go into a big discussion about today’s gaming, because I play them all, and I know that today’s games are awesome. What I’m just asking is this:  are the kids of today going to be able and look back like I can and remember the satisfying feeling of using their minds to beat someone else at another challenging puzzle game? What about the real face to face social interactions of someone sitting next to him or her rather than sitting 3500 miles away? They won’t; the games of today, while still being great, don’t offer the same warm-hearted memories that games of yester-year still provide to this day.

All in all I would love to see some kids these days dust off a few of those classic puzzle games and really sit down with some friends, in person mind you, and see what kind of awesome memories they can form, and without help from PSN or XBL. See if they don’t feel good about themselves when they beat that really hard puzzle or see if they don’t have more social interactions because Jimmy down the street beat him in Puzzle Fighter and he has to get his revenge. I think this may be the key to an influx in the social scene for gamers, with a bit of gaming thrown in there too.