Demo Play announced by Nintendo

June 29, 7:08 PMNewark MMORPG ExaminerLacy Wilson

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Prepare for EZ Mode.

My guildmate Pantone pointed out an interesting thing to me the other day, and suggested that I write about it.  So today, it was either discuss how all MMO companies just seem to be conglomerating together (like when the T-1000 in Terminator 2 gets frozen by nitroglycerin, and then Arnold shatters him with a shotgun blast, but the heat from the nearby molten metal melts the T-1000, and he pools together from all over the place into a shiny puddle—yeah, like that), or talk about how Nintendo is patenting something called Demo Play.

Demo Play isn’t what you see when you walk into a Game Stop and whatever game is displayed on the monitors is running on its own.  Or, it sort of is.  The difference is that Demo Play is going to be used when a player is playing a game, then hits a spot of difficulty that they can’t surpass.  They can then select the Demo Play option, and the game is taken over by the console and played for them. It’s like the equivalent of being on video game life support; having a machine that does all the work for you.  Demo Play stops once you want to resume control yourself.

Obviously, this cheapens the game experience.  It might be handy sometimes (I can remember a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles PC game I played when I was about ten or so that had an underwater level that was impossible to surpass), but I sincerely doubt that Demo Play will have a real benefit to any game.  It’s comparable to botting in MMOs, which is frowned upon by almost all developers.  Letting a machine do all the work for you will never catch on with the makers of the MMO genre.  Or, at least, I hope it won’t.  Thankfully, Demo Play won’t let you save if you enable it for any length of time.  This is a relief, because surely, coasting through a game on autopilot and still being able to save at all designated checkpoints would be a ton of crap.  I’d promptly get up from my computer, dump Mountain Dew all over the game disks, and go outside to get a tan out of spite.