Is 2D gaming dead?

Is 2D gaming dead? It's a fair question and one I've been pondering lately with the advent of Xbox Live Arcade and the other Next Gen consoles offering "classic" games on their respective download services.

I'm in my late 30's and I played a lot of these games when they were first released, and I'm not talking Mortal Combat or Castlevania:Symphony of the Night...I'm talking PacMan, DigDug and Galaga. I love Geometry Wars, but honestly I'm yearning for Microsoft to bring Asteroids to XBLA.

There is of course a danger in releasing the classics...some of them aren't all that classic. Mike Triggs over at UGO has a great writeup asking the same question about the state of 2D gaming and he points out that often times nostalgia wins out over quality with some of these games. In his story, as an example of the bad of classic gaming, he actually sites one of the games I most regreted buying back in 1982...Atari 2600 Football. For those of you who've never played it...let's just say it was no Madden 07. For instance, your entire football team was represented by 4 blocky characters that looked more like Zamboni machines than athletes...it was a horrendous mess of a game. To make matters worse I paid $50 for it back then. That's $100 in today's dollars...ouch! But you know something, for as bad as it was, I had fun with it for a couple of days before it sunk in just how bad it really was. And if it were released on XBLA tomorrow, I'm not sure I wouldn't be willing to shell out $5 for a chance to relive the experience.

I don't know if that's an indictment against my love of games and gaming, or if it's a testament to the incredible nostalgic pull these "games of our youth" hold for some of us.

Even with all the graphical muscle of these Next Gen consoles with there dual core processors and Cell chips, we still sometimes forego another round of Gears of War to play Joust and Galaga and Pacman and Digdug and newer games like Geometry Wars, which is really just good 'ole Asteroids on crack.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone would release these kind of games as a $40 or more full fledged game...they just wouldn't sell, but I think there is definitely room for 2D games in spaces like XBLA, PSN and Nintendo's Virtual Console.

So, is 2D gaming dead? I would say it's not dead, but it is living in the old-folks home waiting for the last of us who loved it to be lost to the march of time.