Having played this for eight days almost without stop, I’ve got a lot of thoughts on it, but posting one huge post would be hard to read so I’ll break it up. This one’s just about system releases.
Some of it might be this way for gameplay reasons and it’s not meant to be an exact representation of the real life timeline but since I can’t see a specific reason right now why it should be this way and not another I’ll go ahead and complain about some of the game industry history. I was born in the early 80’s by the way so I know of what I speak. These were times of great legends and I remember them well. Like Homer knew The Odyssey and The Illiad.
First, the Gameling seems to hang on for a little too long. Maybe it would be too crowded to have all three of the (functionally) different Gameboys in there, but half the Gamelings lifespan should be taken by either the Gameling Color or Gameling Advance. It just seems unreal to have the black and white (green) Gameling around the same time as the PPS. The Gameboy Color would fit around the half way point of the Gameling, but the Advance was a more significant upgrade. At least one of them should be represented in the game. Also I saw from the Wiki that the Gameling has the same ‘tech level’ as the Super TES. It definately wasn’t on par with the SNES or even the NES in capabilities but it shouldn’t be more that lech level 1. That also makes room for either color or advance at tech level 2.
And, what’s with the GameSphere being so short lived that it doesn’t even outlast the TES 64? That’s just weird.
In general Nintendo was known for still supporting old systems even after they had a new one out. It was Sega that moved on quickly and stopped making games for old systems. So the Master V, which crazily lasts into the fourth console generation shouldn’t even outlast the TES. It should end soon after the Oasis is out, and the TES persist longer although not as far as the Master V does now. I noticed the Sega Saturn is not represented. I almost forgot it myself because it was a bit of a blip due to competition from the Playstation, which caused Sega to want to get the next generation started as soon as possible, thus the Dreamcast.
Lastly, although the backwards compatibility of some systems is mentioned it doesn’t seem to mean anything in gameplay terms. If it had an effect it would be that the previous system remains available to make games for but with a much smaller market share. The Playstation 2 especially was popular long past the release of the PS3, although that’s more due to their not being enough release games for the PS3 to get people to move up. A reviewer once said God of War 2 was the best game to play on your PS3. It was a PS2 game released after the PS3 was out so you get what they were saying about the PS3.
If you only change one thing it should be the lifespan of the early Sega and Nintendo systems. The TES should last longer than the Master V, and the Master V should be like 1/3rd the lifespan. It’s totes cray cray how long it lasts now. Redonculous even.