61 Frames Per Second

Browse by Tags

(RSS)

Behold The Half-Assed Review That Steered Me Away From Earthbound

Gather around, ladies and gentlemen. It's time to share my secret shame. Come for the story, stay for the punch, the pie, and a chance to wallow in the lingering stink of failure.

When I was young enough to believe in honesty, I relied on game magazine reviews to tell me whether or not a game was worth a purchase. I've already gone over how many Great Canadian Funbux typically went into the purchase of one cartridge game, so you can probably forgive me for doing my research.

Unfortunately, I kind of put myself at a disadvantage by taking to heart the opinions of only one magazine: Gamepro. To be fair, I have to admit that I wasn't steered wrong too often. If not for the rave review I read in the November 1994 issue of the magazine, I would have bypassed the majesty of Final Fantasy VI.

But it was my faith in Gamepro that made me turn up my nose at Earthbound until just last year. While bypassing Earthbound because of a magazine review was a big mistake on my part, it wasn't like I'd boiled a puppy or cast an unforgivable curse on a baby. Earthbound's genius was snubbed by a lot of SNES owners; that's why the fandom has since been driven half-mad with regret.

No, my problem is that Earthbound Central has scanned and archived the review that kept me away from Itoi's masterpiece...and I can't believe that I was swayed by such an impotent clump of...assumptions.

Posted Mar 09 2009, 11:31 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 4 comment(s)

Filed under: review, snes, rpg, earthbound, retro, super nintendo, 16-bit, writing, gamepro, nadia oxford, games journalism

Dialect In Games: It Don't Come Easy

The rules of writing are as cemented and sacred as the playbook for Calvinball. My favourite authors tend to ignore minor grammatical roadsigns like the period and the quotation mark.

Even so, there are two common pitfalls an aspiring writer should avoid:

1) Don't publish a book called “Hitler Was Awesome!”

2) Don't make your characters speak in any kind of dialect unless you know exactly what you're doing.

Mastering dialect is a like harnessing a Tyrannosaurus Rex to a caravan of tanks: you'll kill millions of you fail (and it is very easy to fail), but if you succeed, holy shit, what power.

Dialect has been slipping into more and more games writing, and results have been mixed at best. A good game localisation—indeed, good writing in general—does not require a bunch of funny voices to laugh at, which points at the main problem with employing dialect: many games writers and localisers treat it as a cheap means of adding depth to a character.

Posted Jan 20 2009, 10:39 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: nintendo ds, chrono trigger, writing, nadia oxford, dragon quest iv, dragon quest viii, dragon quest v, chapters of the chosen, dialect

Best Game Writing of 2008

Simon Parkin at the excellent Chewing Pixels has a roundup of some of the year's best game-related writing. There's some great stuff here, enought to keep me busy for the afternoon. Included is an insightful piece about the oft-reviled Luigi's Mansion, courtesy of Edge Magazine's Time Extend column. David Wong's Cracked article about the coming video game crash is both delightful and chilling. Well, I'll just leave you to it, then.

Posted Dec 19 2008, 03:30 PM by Cole Stryker with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: cole stryker, journalism, writing, lists, 2008, chewing pixels

Does Games Writing Need To Be More Accessible?

Writer Leigh Alexander put together a great piece for Kotaku reminding us that many of the shelf-scanning customers at GameStop are not like you or I. The average gamer doesn't pay attention to reviews. They don't know a Miyamoto from an Igarashi. And they drink blood, but they're capable of walking in the daylight.

It's easy to assume that everyone within the walls of your local game retailer is a kindred spirit who will fire back with "It's-a-me!" as soon as you say, "Mario." Alexander's column reminded me that for every fruitful conversation about games I've had with an EB Games clerk, there have been ten instances of broken eye contact and embarrassed mumblings. "The World Ends With You? N-nah. Not into anime. I like Call of Duty."

Alexander talks about game reviewers' tendency to keep the different tiers of gamers distanced from one another. There's not an intentional push to scare newcomers away from game publications and websites, but Alexander likens the typical video game review to a music review in Pitchfork Magazine. Someone who says, "I dig music and I want to read about music" is going to be scared away by Pitchfork's jargon-heavy breakdown of the album of the moment. Similarly, game reviews tend to reference past titles, past developers and use words and terms that a newcomer (and there are more and more of these lately) isn't going to understand.

Posted Nov 25 2008, 05:10 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 7 comment(s)

Filed under: kotaku, feature, writing, retail, nadia oxford, gamestop, leigh alexander games journalism, casual gamers, hardcore gamers

Yahtzee and the Webcomics Plague

Yahtzee, possibly the only game reviewer capable of out-talking a five-year-old with a new Poekmon game, recently made clear his feelings about gaming webcomics. To give you the five-cent summary, Yahtzee believes that video game webcomics are the putrid nesting grounds of wannabes and hacks.

What do you think, class?

Personally, while I have no love for the webcomic that served as the primary target for Mr Yahtzee's rant (Ctrl+Alt+Del), I bear little ill will to webcomics in general. There's a popular opinion going around this here Internets stating that only kings and God should be allowed to produce creative work because humanity is generally not very good at anything. I don't think that's the case.

Posted Jul 03 2008, 10:35 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: penny arcade, yahtzee, zero punctuation, webcomics, art, rant, writing, creativity, ctrl+alt+del, internet

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.