Moving into more modern times, we'll look into the saga of "Grand Theft Auto III/Vice City," a series of games I find myself writing about far too often. Here is a game that screams at players during the advertisements: "Go anywhere! Do anything!" Really? Even if it were possible with this generation of hardware, would you even want to be able to do "anything?" Would it even be a "game" anymore?

The sheer definition of a "game" has limitations. Would Monopoly be fun without the brilliantly designed rule set? No. So, if you could walk into a high school gym (in the game) while playing "GTA", pull out one of those blue mats and start doing gymnastics on them, would you really be having fun? No. There's also a reason other cities are unavailable from the start. It gives the game a purpose, a reason to keep playing.

Most players today (especially most of the younger ones I believe ) don't realize that this is why classic gamers and games are still around. Designing a game and making it more expansive only needlessly complicates things. Sure, some games pull it off, but then why is "Tetris" said to the video game most played in the history of the industry? In the end however, I probably can't say it any better than Eugene Jarvis (the creator of "Defender" and the "Crusin" series) did in a 1996 interview:

Question: So too much freedom is a bad thing?

Answer: "Yeah. We forget that games are about limitations. Limitations are what really make games. Take the game of Chess - possibly the greatest game of all. You're on this stupid board and you've got 64 squares, you can't move in three dimensions, you can't move off the board, and the pieces only move in certain, really horrible ways that are totally stifling to your creativity. Yet, here is this incredibly rich game."

Sounds like "Samurai Shodown II" to me.