61 Frames Per Second

Are You Buying Final Fantasy IV DS? Huh? Huh? Huh??

2008-07-23T21:24:00Z

(Pant pant pant, eager tail wag.)

Square-Enix's remake of its SNES classic is garnering good reviews, though I've seen more than one make mention about how it's a bit early for yet another Final Fantasy IV remake. For those of you at home keeping count, Final Fantasy IV has been released on the SNES, the PSOne, the Wonderswan (I think?), the GBA and now the Nintendo DS.

I'm going to go ahead and offer myself up for blame: I buy every remake Square-Enix throws at me, except for the WonderSwan remake because that would just be wack. I can't help it; Final Fantasy IV, when it was known as the dumbed-down Final Fantasy II was a cornerstone of my awkward teenage years. I actually played it after getting through Final Fantasy III/VI, but I enjoyed it for its simple story and gorgeous music. I also played it while recovering from major surgery and I was pretty high, so there might be a bit of bias there. I'm pretty sure it's okay to love a game because it reminds you of your youth or the carefree summer days you should've spent outside, but it's less okay to love a game because it reminds you of a codeine daze.

Nevertheless, I'm going to buy Final Fantasy IV DS and I bet I will enjoy it very much. I'm thinking of a good naming scheme for the characters. When I played Final Fantasy IV Advance, everyone was named after South Park characters. If there is a mightier sage than MrHat, I have yet to meet him in any game.

Related Links:

The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes--And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 2
Square-Enix's Coup Bring Back Memories
Chrono Trigger Port: Are You Excited or Disappointed?

Gamepro Feature Mourns The Loss Of Mammaries

2008-07-23T20:28:00Z

"Top __________ Whatevers" lists are the lifeblood of games journalism, so Gamepro's decision to squeeze out a roster of the Eight Worst Game Character Remakes is not surprising.

Some of the entries are pretty expected, too. Maskless Scorpion from Mortal Kombat 3 is a no-brainer, and I'm sure a few psychologists would have a field day analysing Bomberman's re-design for Bomberman: Act Zero.

I'm not as impressed with some of the other selections. In fact, their write-up for Tomb Raider's Lara Croft gave me a big frowny face. I'm afraid I'm going to have to be one of "those" women for a second.

From the feature:

"To prove that Tomb Raider's iconic female archaeologist is more than just a top heavy Englishwoman in hiking boots, the series' developers forced their lovely protagonist to undergo a drastic surgical procedure. In Tomb Raider Legend, Lara emerged equipped with what could be compared to tangerines in place of what was once more akin to honeydews. But the game was good, and that's all that matters... right?"

Oh yeah, of course.

I know games journalists (my lumbering self included) aren't exactly one tier away from writing for the New York Times, but come on. If you'll allow me to sound like a teenager for a second, how juvenile can you possibly get? Lara Croft II, despite her wasp-waist and perfect figure, looks like she might actually pass as a female member of the human race. Do you know what Lara would be doing if she was a real woman with PSOne-era barbell boobs? Not a whole lot, thanks to chronic back pain and shortness of breath.

Maybe I'm a poor judge of girls, but how could anyone find PSOne Lara Croft sexy compared to Tomb Raider Legend Lara? Are that many guys so desperately infatuated with breasts that they can't appreciate a well-rounded package (to say nothing of the fact that Lara II's eyes actually have the expression of a living thing and not a dead fish)? I don't know what to say except keep wishing hard enough and maybe science will genetically engineer a woman who's composed of ten tits protruding from a faceless orb.

I don't ask for much out of other people, but I like folks who try to remember that games are a hobby for both sexes.

Grr, snort, etc.

Related Links:

The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes--And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 1
A Letter to the Industry: How To Destroy the Female Gender Barricade

Game Over, Man: Aliens - Colonial Marines Penned By Battlestar Galactica Writers

2008-07-23T19:00:00Z

They’re still far from release, but Gearbox is saying all the right things about their Aliens game. After revealing Colonial Marines in late 2007, the much loved developer behind Half-Life expansions Blue Shift and Opposing Forces have made it their mission to craft the perfect interactive sequel to James Cameron’s opus, not just another cash-in on the abused Alien franchise. Early screens betray an almost fetishistic love of Aliens, its forbidding environments awash in Cameron’s trademark palette of sterile blues and grays. The proposed gameplay also channels the film’s tense action, with group tactics based more on securing rooms than running and gunning. Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford’s announcement that Colonial Marines is being scripted by Battlestar Galactica’s Bradley Thompson and David Weddle is one more signifier of the game’s potential quality.

Bringing on Thompson and Weddle is more than just bringing on some recognizable talent. Battlestar Galactica’s strength as a dramatic work is its terse, loaded dialogue, character interaction that manages to inform personality as much as it propels the show’s grand narrative forward. The tone they bring to BSG is ideal for the bleak militarism of Aliens, but it remains to be seen if they can adapt their deliberate style to a medium that requires extreme freedom in narrative flow to be successful. Nothing will ruin this game's atmosphere like constant cutscenes.

Personally, I think Colonial Marines is one of the most exciting games coming out in the next year. Thompson, Weddle, and Gearbox just need to remember that they mostly come out at night. Mostly.

Our thanks to Joystiq and Shacknews for spreading the word.

Related links:

Along Came a Gamer: James Patterson and Authors in Games

Are Comic Book Games Going To Get Better? Soon? Please?

2008-07-23T18:30:00Z

All his talk about Superman 64 and the upcoming DC Universe Online got me thinking, just how many truly worthwhile video games based on comic books have there been? Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage was fourteen years ago, and the X-Men arcade game was sixteen years ago. In recent history we've had Activision's surprisingly thorough X-Men Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games. Everything else has been decent at best.

Hold the phone, those good ones were all based on Marvel comics, not DC, Image, Dark Horse or even Oni (though we all want that Scott Pilgrim adventure game to come true)! While Marvel is responsible for their own share of far-from-fantastic games as well, there's been a solid amount of buzz building for them recently. This coming weekend's San Diego Comic-Con promises to bring a lot more info regarding the upcoming Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion. Prolific scribe Brian Michael Bendis was recently quoted about the cancelled Marvel MMO he was working on:

I have my laptop here, and on it I have the "X-Mansion" level fully completed that only I and five other people have access to play. It's gorgeous and fantastic and no one will ever see it. So I feel bad, because I think that MMO was a phenomenal idea that was extremely well executed and it went away because some guy at Microsoft who we'll never know pulled the plug on it before it even got underway.

But most interestingly, Variety's Ben Fritz wrote yesterday about a discussion with Marvel's EVP global digital media Ira Rubenstein and walked away with these notes:

    -He thinks Marvel should start making more games based on its heroes without necessarily tying and timing them to a movie

    -When there is a movie, he wants to get to work earlier, even before a script is final. He said he's telling Sega to get started on the "Thor" and "Avengers" games (based on the movies coming out in 2010) now.

    -He thinks Marvel should consider making more downloadable and casual videogames based on its properties.

This all sounds great to me. People always love Spider-Man, Captain America and the Fantastic Four, regardless of whether big name Hollywood talent is attached. In fact, all four of the great Marvel game franchises I mentioned above were big commercial and critical successes that had nothing to do with movies (well...maybe X-Men Legends, though the game resembled the comics much more closely). While I'm not too keen on game tie-ins for Thor and Avengers being worked on before the script and cast are set, longer production time means better games than the recent Incredible Hulk and Iron Man messes. As for casual games, I can already see "Fastball Special," an X-Men pinball action game where Colossus hurls a rolled-up Wolverine into the sky as he bounces off of Sentinels and frees captured teammates Jubilee, Cannonball, and Kitty Pryde to use their special bonus point techniques!

Hey, Metroid Prime Pinball worked with a whole lot less!

Related articles:
DC Universe Online and the Console MMO Conundrum
Where Is Joe Madureira?
Wow, Superman 64 Really Was Terrible
Up All Night: Ex-Mutants

E3 Opinion: Because It's Cool To Complain...

2008-07-23T15:30:00Z

Totally Possible Things The Big Three Could Have Done To Make Me Happy With Their E3 Conferences:

Sony: Without a doubt, the one PS3 game that people are most excited about is LittleBigPlanet, and its use for a fiscal presentation in Sony's Conference was charming and delightful. Wouldn't it have been great if they'd done just a little more? Picture this: The lights go down on stage, and up on screen we see a recreation of the stage built out of popsicle sticks and yarn. Sackboy, in Jack's choice of Boston Celtics garb, walks in, lip-syncing perfectly with Tretton's voice (via PlaystationEye, which they've announced will be a feature of the game) and welcoming other Sackboys dressed as if from Resistance 2, Ratchet & Clank, and DC Universe Online, each lip-synched to their own guest as the cardboard frame behind them cycles through string-suspended images of each of those games. Totally possible based on what we've seen so far. For that matter, if LittleBigPlanet can easily utilize photographs, graphics and music from your hard drive, odds are good you can also paste videos onto little styrofoam movie screens. Just a couple of presentations in that alternate arena, then snap back out to reality. Would have made one hell of an impression without slighting any of the games involved. LittleBigPlanet should be to all Sony presentations from now on what Keynote is to all Apple presentations.

Nintendo: Rhythm games are popular right now, irreverent mini-game collections are the biggest sellers on Wii right now, the DS is the only gaming platform outselling the Wii, and Nintendo is just sitting on a game that perfectly ties all of that together, a game that they actually had playable at their booth! Just talk about Rhythm Heaven, Nintendo! No, it probably wouldn't have won over most of the crowd that was upset by the lack of a true "hardcore" title on display, but it definitely would have attracted a lot of positive attention to a buzzworthy game that may very well be ignored in the marketplace. Why bother showing WiiSports Resort, a game guaranteed to sell like Pabst Blue Ribbon at a college bar? With the insane design team from WarioWare and maliciously addictive rhythm gameplay, Rhythm Heaven may very well have stolen the show, if only given the opportunity.

Microsoft: While they arguably had the most crowd-pleasing conference of the big three, there were two things that would have made me giddy with Microsoft's show. First, more details on Lips! I know its just a karaoke game, but it stole my heart! I need more! Second – and this one's stretching a bit – confirming that long-rumored motion controller, preferably with a trailer/demo of an HD Boom Blox. Man, that would've been sweet!

Related articles:
So I Hear Folks Are Upset With Nintendo...
Penny Arcade Sums Up E3
E3 Day Two: Spin, Malaise, Sony's Clothes, and Nintendo's True Disruption
E3 Day One: Microsoft, Sony, Final Fantasy, and For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ain't No Party Like A Motion-Control Party!
Make The Music With Your Games, Kids!
SCEE Playstation Day 2K8 Roundup: Killzone 2, Home, LittleBigPlanet Dated

So I hear folks are upset with Nintendo...

2008-07-23T15:00:00Z

E3 came and went with a whimper this year. None of the big three had a strong showing but since I'm a Nintendo fan, most of the whining I listen to is from other Nintendo fans. I have heard the wailing, the accusations, the proclamations of swearing off Nintendo forever more, and I can only wonder if anyone pays attention to industry history.

I've been around long enough to have seen this all before.

All across the intarwebz where game geeks gather I see similar discussions about Nintendo “turning casual” and how poor their E3 showing was and how core games are a dying breed and it's the end of the world as we know it. I think some people might be indulging in histrionics here. My own view is decidedly more mellow, let me break it down.

The E3 Presentation – For the core gamer Nintendo offered up pretty slim pickings. There was certainly nothing that sparked my interest. This really doesn't bother me, in fact, it was rather predictable. When Nintendo launched the Wii they pretty much fired off both barrels during its first year. As pointed out here, from launch to present, Nintendo has released 27 games. Compare that to the 24 games they released from 2001 to 2003 for the Gamecube. The core VS casual titles aren't much different on both line ups. Simply stated, Nintendo put out a hell of a lot of product at the beginning of the Wii's life and hit just about every one of their primary franchises. It takes time to develop major games (and less time to develop your typical casual title). I figure it's simply going to take Nintendo time to reload.

Casual Games – I see the present allure of casual gaming as a phase. I feel it's a phase because I've seen it before. When Tetris took the world by storm the flood gates opened on puzzle games (and there was a second surge for puzzle casual games after the first Bejeweled). Then everybody did first person shooters, then everybody did WWII games. All those genre rushes came, stayed, and faded; melting back into the the multi-genre crowd. Right now expanded audience games are the big thing and Nintendo is riding the wavefront. It only makes sense they'd focus on it while it has momentum. I sincerely doubt that means they'll neglect the sorts of games they have always released though. Casual games are here to stay, but only to join the crowd. I'll be quite surprised if I'm wrong.

Shoddy Games are the Real Evil – If there is any one complaint I can make about the Wii's line up, it's about third parties phoning their efforts in. However, this too is hardly new and far from unique to Nintendo's little white box. There's really nothing to say here other than the obvious: publishers will only stop pushing crap onto the market when consumers stop buying it.

There are some Heroes though – I'd like to end on an upbeat note. There are still third party developers out there who care enough to make a damned fine effort on the Wii and take pride in their work. I'm speaking of course of High Voltage's sci-fi FPS The Conduit.

The game is looking sharp, the developer's attitude resonates with core games, and there's still a lot of development time to go. We may have a winner folks, but as ever, only if it sells.

Trailer Review: The Conduit

Death of the Gamer

Wii MotionPlus

Wii MotionPlus a Surprise to Dev's

2008-07-23T04:00:00Z

Game Informer reports that the new Wii MotionPlus add-on, to be bundled with Wii Sports Resort, is largely news to the third party development community:

We asked several third-party Wii developers about the Wii MotionPlus, and the general feeling was one of annoyance and betrayal. None of them said they had any advance notice about the peripheral, and we were told that they were as surprised as everyone else when Nintendo revealed its existence on stage. That lack of prior notice means that, aside from Nintendo’s own roster of games, users won’t likely see any support for the device for at least six to nine months. The developers we spoke to said they hadn’t received any information from Nintendo about how to implement Wii MotionPlus into their upcoming projects, and they also expressed doubt that they would be able to incorporate it into games that are currently deep in development.

What gives, Nintendo? Before this announcement, I felt torn between excitement about the possibilities of the new peripheral and annoyance that this wasn't built into the original Wii Remote. But now I'm going to have to wait six to nine months to experience the new technology outside another Wii Sports title in which I'm not interested? I don't understand the logic behind keeping this one a secret. The reception among the press has been "lol awesome, lightsabers ftw" across the board, but this move isn't going to win Nintendo any friends.

Also, if I wanted to upgrade my console hardware every few months, I'd buy an Xbox.

Ragnarok Online Reminds Me Why I Don't Like MMORPGs

2008-07-23T00:36:00Z

I've recently re-entered the hyper-colourful world of Rangarok Online because I must play it for work purposes (honest). I say "re-entered" because I've been down this road before.

It didn't take me a whole lot of time to remember why I left Midgard to its fate in the first place. Lots of people are capable of playing massive multiplayer online RPGs casually, but others can become hooked for life, even abandoning work and family for the sake of riding on a tiger. I'm not one of the latter. Sure, MMORPGs are a fun distraction, but I can't concieve of why anyone wouldn't tire of it after a few hours of grinding.

I'm playing as an archer named Fuzzy Stone and I've been killing bugs and rabbits for hours upon hours just so I can get strong enough to safely beat up differently-coloured bugs and rabbits. If I stick with it, I can blend in with hundreds of other generic mid-level warriors as we band together to fight the menace of--what are we fighting against, exactly?

There are a chosen few who Lord over the rest, who stride through the n00b fields, literally radiant with power while we collect ten-zenny clover dropped by catepillars. Some might aspire to have their name echo through the servers. I don't. I remember when I initially played, I was so proud when I gained enough levels to ride a pecopeco, a sort of Chocobo ripoff. When I rented my ride, what was around me? Dozens of other riders who looked just like me, except I was wearing a jaunty hat.

I once talked to 1UP's Solid Sharkey about the appeal of the vague goals MMORPGs dole out and he more or less agreed that there's little to keep you going after a certain point. When he got his pecopeco, he said, "I can ride Big Bird now, so does this mean I won?"

My disdain for MMORPGs is partially the fault of my own quirks: I have no interest in cooperating and forming a party. I kind of like doing that sort of thing with my friends, but they all inevitably lose interest and leave me with fifteen-year-old acolytes who beg me to join the Sephie x Cloud Yaoi guild.

Forming a party in Ragnarok Online is difficult, besides. Since there are about twenty million free servers available all over the Interweb, Gravity's original game is Deadsville. The NPCs in town stand isolated and as stiff as statues and it's all a bit Silent Hill-ish.

Then there's the biggest roadblock: Gravity wants a monthly fee and I'm kind of cheap.

That's that. Good night, Fuzzy Stone.

Related Links:

Night Elves Anonymous: MMORPG Addicts Seek Psychotherapy
Brainy Gamer Asks the Ever Present Question: Can't We All Just Get Along?
NSFW: The Top Five Game Based Pornos

The Nerd Needs You!

2008-07-22T23:33:00Z

If you thought the Angry Video Game Nerd probably pulled something or lost some vital part of his soul while reviewing the truly wretched Superman 64...you'd be right. That's why he needs us all to chip in, ease him onto his crutches and help him review another digital terror: Deadly Towers for the NES.

How does a mortal gamer even begin to describe Prince Myer's wack adventure? Let's turn to Seanbaby. Seanbaby is not a mortal, but actually a demigod and the all-purpose warrior that arts and crafts booklets are referring to when they tell you not to turn on the oven or use scissors without an adult present. Because Seanbaby's intestines are lined with lead, he was able to play Deadly Towers and place it at its deserved #1 spot in his list of The 20 Worst NES Games Of All Time:

"Deadly Towers. This game was originally called, "Shitty Towers," but when seventeen play testers went on a homicidal rampage, its name was changed to remind us all of that cold, bloody morning.

"Don't try to make sense of it. Just do everything in your power to not play this game."

How does the Angry Video Game Nerd plan to take on that is accursed in the sight of God? One thing's for sure: it'll be a pretty big project and the Nerd is asking everyone for their best swears. He's stocking up for the event like an '80s family hoarding tinned food for the Apocalypse.

For the record, I have played Shitty Towers. I can't properly relay the experience because my brain is still trying to purge the poison. I can liken it to this much, though: have you ever read volume two of Brian Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim? Do you remember when started having screaming flashbacks brought on by the sheer weirdness of Honest Ed's Department Store? It was a bit like that, except a gremlin also popped out of my stomach and asked me why I had breath while his daughter lay stone dead in my colon.

Related Links:

Periphery: Angry Video Game Nerd Edition
Wow, Superman 64 Really Was Terrible
Up All Night: Trojan

DC Universe Online and the Console MMO Conundrum

2008-07-22T19:00:00Z

You’d think that people would be more excited about the reveal of Sony Online’s DC Universe given that it premiered a mere three days before The Dark Knight, but reactions have been decidedly mixed. It not too surprising to me. SOE doesn’t exactly have the best track record. The Untold Legends series is crap, they’ve been unable to recapture Everquest’s initial success, and Star Wars Galaxies was a complete nightmare. But even beyond SOE’s reputation and the wonky looking DC Universe trailer, there’s never been a truly successful MMO on home consoles. The traditional role-playing MMO model doesn’t exactly work given consoles’ controller interface (just look at the pain playing Final Fantasy XI with a DualShock is.) What should an MMO even play like on a console? Is twitchy, frenetic gameplay, as in SOE’s The Agency, the answer? Is it keeping the player base limited, allowing only a handful of users to engage in missions, etc?

Screen Test: Fragile

2008-07-22T18:00:00Z

I’m as bad as every other slavering fanboy on the internet when it comes to Wii software, ranting about the garbage publishers have vomited onto the system, games that would have been visual embarrassments on the Dreamcast with gameplay that makes Tamagotchis seem like the most sophisticated machines on earth. Instead of a new 2D adventure, Konami makes a Castlevania fighting game. Instead of a brand new Rygar game, Tecmo ports over a six year-old PS2 title. Instead of a fresh Resident Evil, Capcom makes a glorified light gun game.

The worst part is that some people are making very promising titles for the Wii, yet no one knows about them. Case in point: Namco’s Fragile.

All anyone knows about Fragile at this point (some eighteen months after its announcement) is that it takes place after the end of the world. You play as a young man named Seto and you explore an abandoned earth. It’s developed by tri-Crescendo and Namco says it’s an RPG. It is also absolutely gorgeous.

If more games on Wii looks like Fragile, I probably wouldn’t spend so much time ranting about it.

Many thanks to NeoGAF user Stormbringer for pointing us to these new screens. Check out the rest right here.

Previous Screen Tests:

Fallout 3
Final Fantasy Versus XIII
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Alone in the Dark
Silent Hill Homecoming

Remote Controlled Military Drones: The Only Winning Move is Not to Play

2008-07-22T17:00:00Z

Remember that movie WarGames with Matthew Broderick? It turns out we didn't learn from his mistakes.

The guy in the knit shirt leans back in his leather chair, his hand wrapped around the joystick. On the console display, two plane-shaped icons show the available ammo. As the target vehicle crosses his screen, he squeezes the red button. The car vanishes in a fireball.

I'm watching this scene in a demonstration video on my home PC. My seven-year-old son, who's watching it with me, knows all about computer games. "It went down on this car, and it made a big explosion!" he tells my wife. "It was really cool."

But this is no game. This is the real thing. It's called the Universal Control System. It directs aerial military drones. Raytheon, a high-tech defense contractor, exhibited the system last week at an air show in Britain. It looks and feels like a video game. But it kills real people.

So begins Slate's creepy article about the US military's attempt to minimize casualties and reduce the costs of war by introducing remote controlled drones in the battlefield. What's insane is that the drones are powered with repurposed Xbox technology.

Raytheon, a defense contractor, hired top-level brains from the gaming industry to make their technology more user friendly, replacing awkward keyboard/mouse controls with sexy ergonomic thumb joysticks. Between this and the popularity of America's Army, you'd think that we are training a generation of supersoldiers. Ha!

For more on this phenomenon, check out last week's Guardian piece amazingly-titled, "War really has now become a video game."

Alternate Soundtrack: Mighty Final Fight vs. Radio 4

2008-07-22T14:30:00Z

Conceived as a sequel to the original Street Fighter, Capcom's Final Fight was an admitted take-off of Technos' Double Dragon side-scrolling beat 'em ups. Already a hit in the arcades and 16-bit consoles, Capcom took the next logical step with its new gang violence franchise: rebuilding it with super-deformed style anime graphics for the 8-bit and obsolete Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993.

Comically playing through the story of a city under siege by roving street gangs and the three dudes who fight it (including the burly bodybuilder mayor), Mighty Final Fight plays wonderfully with Radio 4's 2002 sophomore LP, Gotham!, a post-punk opus to a ravaged and dilapidated New York City. From the virulent guitar slashes of "Start A Fire" to the echoed fallout of "Pipe Bombs," the deafening pounds of "Dance to the Underground" to the screeching distortion of "New Disco," Gotham! crafts the tale of a post-disaster metropolis and the squalor of youth culture that fills its freshly exposed cracks. Produced by an as-yet unknown DFA (The Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, Hercules & Love Affair and many others), the album is considered one of the early building blocks of the NYC dance-punk scene.

In one of my favorite moments in 8-bit gaming, the first boss in Mighty Final Fight actually gives you the opportunity to acknowledge his rule. I've made a special call out of that in the video below. Please enjoy, and let us know what your alternate soundtracks are in the comments!

Related articles:
Alternate Soundtrack Redux: Super Street Fighter II vs. The Go! Team
Alternate Soundtrack: Streets of Rage 2 vs. Test Icicles
For Love of the Game: Street Fighter One
It's Official: Capcom Has Been Taken Over By Nerds

"Honus Wagner Card Man?!"

2008-07-22T01:42:00Z

The Internet is more or less a traffic jam (some might liken it more to a pile-up) of videos dedicated to gaming culture. Most of these videos are testosterone-driven frenzies with bad picture quality and fuzzy sound that rattles like a drowning man's lungs. They're vital contributions, though: who else is going to declare "hahaha miyamoto did sooo many drugs before he made Super Mario Bros--there's, like, mushrooms everywhere!"

Still, it's nice when game fans take the time to dedicate themselves to something truly funny and worth watching. I will now direct you to The Last Days of Doctor Wily, an Old Rich People tribute to Mega Man's evil nemesis.

The ending more or less sums up the thoughts of anyone who's ever played a Mega Man game.

Related Links:

For Love Of the Game: Rockman 7 FC
Mega Man 9 Trailer: I'm Drowning in my Childhood
Don't Call It Retro: Mega Man 9 and Design Resurrection

FMV Hell: Sonic CD

2008-07-22T00:40:00Z

I'm pretty sure most original prints of Sega CD games were long ago ground up into dog food, but the resurrection of Vay on the iPhone got me nostalgic for the anime cutscenes that used to preced certain Sega CD games. Each scene employed about sixteen on-screen colours and had about thirty frames of animation, but there was something charming about those florescent marionettes. They were like figures drawn in an Autistic kid's painting: clumsy, but admirable for the attempt.

(And vasty preferable to the grainy live-action FMV that usually gummed up the games in the Sega CD library.)

The Sega CD is largely considered a failure, but every failed system has its must-own games. Sonic CD was certainly a gem, easily the highlight of Sonic the Hedgehog's up-and-down career. Sonic CD began with the standard Sega CD animated intro.

It's interesting to note that there are a few versions of the anime. Most obviously, there's a Japanese intro and an American one. The animation in both is more or less the same, but wars have been fought over which country has the better intro song. America long ago became familiar with Spencer Nilsen's "Sonic Boom, Sonic Boom, Sonic Boooooom" whereas Japanese children got to hear a song about leather and lace and what might possibly be a chorus that begins with "Toot toot Sonic Warrior."

Here's the Japanese intro stacked up against the American one. Engage comparison.

Either way, the Sonic CD intro is garish and choppy thanks to technical limitations (watch the PC version for a far smoother ride), but it's strangely compelling to watch. Sonic darts across Mobius, racing towards Eggman's latest threat--he's all business, but at the same time it's obvious he enjoys the thrill of simply cutting loose and running. And with no people or vehicles or annoying tag-along friends to slow him down, he can just do what he was born to do: race. It's a bit of well-choreographed simplicity that's absent from games today and Lord knows that especially applies to Sonic games.

By the way, the title of this little "series" is a tribute to AMV Hell. Before I thought of it, my husband and I had a little discussion about what the series name should be.

Him: "How about 'Seedy CD?'"

Me: "Nah, you can't really tell that it's a Sega CD feature."

"All right, what about 'Sega Seedy CD?'"

"That's no good."

"How about, 'My Wife is an Uppity Bitch Who Doesn't Like My Ideas?'"

"How about, 'My Husband's Ideas Are Not Funny?'"

It sounds like the beginning of an epic nerd fight, but we were laughing too hard to take a swing at each other.

Related Links:

Where Is Yu Suzuki?
Sega CD on iPhone: I Like Where This Is Going
Do You Hold Any Hope For Sonic Unleashed?

Yeah, But Is It Art?: Oh, wait, it’s already art.

2008-07-21T20:00:00Z

You might think it’s pathetic, but I still buy cds. Yes, I am that guy. I go to record stores and I pay four dollars more than I would on iTunes for a bulky jewel case and a booklet that most likely won’t even have the lyrics in it. The experience of an album isn’t just the music but the entire artifact, the tactile feel of the case, the layout of the booklet, the art, the everything. Games are a little different. Artwork on games hasn’t exactly been incredible in the United States over the past decade, certainly not living up to the halcyon days of cartridge based games, when art almost always grossly misrepresented the play and was absolutely awesome. The Japanese artists behind 2008’s Famicase exhibition remember the days of the epic physical artifact. Each case is made for an imaginary Famicom game as envisioned by the artist. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Check out the rest of them here. Many thanks to Kotaku for pointing out the exhibition for us.

More Yeah, But Is It Art?

Pac-man Championship Edition
Persona 3: FES

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone

2008-07-21T19:00:00Z

Some scant meditations on the nature of travel, the common language of games, and life imitating art written on Friday, July 18th.

I’m sitting in Penn Station and the pedestrian traveler traffic is unusually heavy for 2:30pm on a non-holiday weekend. There’s a strange thing that starts to happen to you if you’ve lived in this town for long enough, particularly if you spend the majority of your time in Manhattan. You start walking like Sonic the damn hedgehog, moving just a little too fast alongside other people moving just a little too fast, dodging left and right, always looking three steps ahead, finding the quickest path. Living in New York is like playing an RPG; you’re always holding down the run button.

I’ve been playing a lot of Shiren the Wanderer. It’s the first time I’ve ever played a “roguelike”. Rogue was new to me about a year ago, a tiny little hole in my gaming history, and one more brutally difficult classic from the days when playing a videogame was akin to learning an entire new language as opposed to an alphabet. Shiren’s a little bit more palatable to a modern gamer than Rogue, its large, expressive sprites and detailed random dungeons make the game’s vicious learning curve more inviting than its inspiration’s forbidding abstraction. Its repetitive play and variable environments make playing it while traveling feel almost farcical. You don’t know exactly how the trip is going to go, so you prepare as much as you can and bring only a select number of support items. I have a bag with me and it’s full of clothing (equipment), this computer (the menu, options?), a bottle of water (hunger is a stat in Shiren), and books (tutorial).

My life’s imitating art, my art’s imitating life, but there’s no in-game corollary for the actual game device. Shiren doesn’t carry a Nintendo DS and it’s a shame because I think it might make the journey a little easier on him. Personally, I’ve never found meeting people on the road an easy endeavor, the usual small talk of where-you-going-and-why makes me want to take a nap more than hold a conversation. You’d think that playing videogames would exacerbate the problem, but I’ve found the DS to be the quickest route to meeting people nowadays. People ask what you’re playing, they ask you if you want to race, have a match, trade pokemon, etc. A guy, about thirty years-old and wearing headphones, is playing Tetris slightly down the hall in the New Jersey Transit waiting area and I’m already hoping he’s on the same train I am so I can ask him if he wants to play. A few weeks back, I spotted a young woman playing Phoenix Wright in the 30th street train station in Philadelphia and I’m still lamenting that I had a ride to catch; I really wanted to ask her where she was in the story, what she thought of the characters.

My 3 o’clock train is going to be boarding soon and I’ve got a long trip ahead of me. One of my earliest gaming memories was the old man in Zelda, offering up a wooden sword for protection. It’s dangerous to go alone. I’m equipped and slowing down, finger off the run button, ready to cross paths. Wish me luck, dear reader.

Death of the Gamer, Redefinition of the Audience

2008-07-21T18:00:00Z

Ian Bogost, he of the ever-progressive Persuasive Games, has an essay up on Edge Online (formerly Next-Gen) entitled “The End of Gamers”. Bogost proposes that the true hurdle preventing videogames from being broadly acknowledged as a mature medium is not that they are viewed as children’s toys or puerile entertainment but that they are not given a wide enough contextual berth.

Videogames suffer under the weight of many misconceptions. Some of these are all too familiar: questions about whether games promote violent action or whether they make us fat through inactivity.

One that some people have tried to overturn is the idea that games are only for entertainment. So-called “serious games” claim to offer an alternative: games that can be used for serious purposes like education, healthcare, or corporate training.

But games, like photography, like writing, like any medium, shouldn’t be shoehorned into one of two kinds of uses alone. Neither entertainment nor seriousness nor the two together should be a satisfactory account for what videogames are capable of. After all, we don’t distinguish between serious and entertainment books, or music, or photography, or film. Rather, we know intuitively that writing, sound, images, and moving images can all be put to many different uses.

Bogost goes on to cite numerous creations that use games as a model of experience beyond entertainment or raw utility, many of them popular titles played by a mass audience. He also doesn’t point the finger at any one party for being responsible for these misconceptions (though the title of the piece could be interpreted as an indictment of gaming’s rabid enthusiast base.) Gamers are resistant to game types that don’t suit their typically rigid palette and the mainstream is guilty of generalization.

What is implicit in Bogost’s piece is that viewing these opposing sides of gaming’s potential audience is as limiting their conception videogames’ purpose and function. In 2008, the videogames’ audience is becoming as rich and diverse as the games Bogost mentions. The gamer isn’t dying. The gamer is finally being born.

Read the whole essay here at Edge Online and then get a look at gaming’s exciting potential at Bogost’s Persuasive Games.

Parenting.com Wants You to Pwn Your Parents

2008-07-21T17:00:00Z

Parenting.com has included "Play videogames with your kids" in a recent piece of link-bait.

With her oldest, the distraction of the game allows them to have revealing conversations that might prove too uncomfortable face-to-face. With her middle son, she uses video games as a way to help him work on social skills. And her youngest son enjoys teaching her how to play new games, so it gives them a common interest.

Adorable.

When I was a kid, I had to sneak video games. I would get up at 4:00 am on Saturday mornings just to squeeze in a few extra hours before my dad made me help him out in the fields. I'd play late into the night with the volume down. My mom was convinced that my brain was turning to mush and my dad thought I should be out in the garage working on cars. I can remember one single time that my dad played video games with me. He played Mariokart 64 with the controller upside down, stalking off in disgust after a single race.

But those bygone days of parental derision are gone, now that a new generation of tatooed hipster moms and dads are popping out babies, dressing them in Ramones onesies and taking them to yoga. Today, Gamerdad shows us how to indulge in our love of gaming without letting our kids die of starvation. You kids today have it too good.

The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 1
Fire and Brimstone: Pastor Advocates Game Burning

Where is Joe Madureira?

2008-07-18T23:30:00Z

If you read mainstream American comics in the 1990s, odds are you have an opinion on Joe Madureira. Controversially named by Wizard magazine as one of the ten most influential comic artists of all time (others on the list included Jack Kirby, Osamu Tezuka and Will Eisner), Joe's work on Marvel's Uncanny X-Men and his creator-owned Battle Chasers single-handedly launched the American manga craze that is still being felt today. He abruptly quit comics in 2001 to follow his dream of working in the video game industry. Not a whole lot has been seen of him since.

Joe contributed to the all-around meh Playstation brawler Gekido, then worked on Tri-Lunar's Dragonkind, which vanished when the company went out of business. After several years of delays, Joe finally saw the release of a game with his direct influence in the 2007 PC MMORPG Dungeon Runners. Ever heard of any of those games? No, I didn't think so.

Well, things are finally looking up for Joe Mad's gaming career, because THQ has been showing off the 3D Action Adventure Darksiders from Vigil Games, of which Joe Mad is both founder and Creative Director. Scheduled for an early '09 release on Playstation 3 and XBox 360, the game has already drawn numerous comparisons to both The Legend of Zelda and Gears of War. Following War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Darksiders looks to have players clear the horseman's name when a premature armageddon is called. What is probably most shocking about Darksiders is that so far it looks good! Check out this trailer from E3:

Oh yeah, he also recently started doing some comics again in the form of Marvel's Ultimates volume 3.

Above artwork, Joe Mad's take on Metal Gear Solid.

Related articles:
There is Nothing Funny About Bionic Commando Funny Books
Where is Wii's Disaster: Day of Crisis?
Where is Yu Suziki?
Where is The City of Metronome?
Where is the New Indiana Jones?
Where is Doug TanNapel?
Where is Victor Ireland?
Up All Night: Ex-Mutants

Sega CD on iPhone: I Like Where This Is Going

2008-07-18T23:10:00Z

The iPhone is new and exciting. Sega CD games are pretty old, but still kind of exciting. What happens when you put the two together?

I often wish I could go back in time and torment my younger self. I think we'd have some really cool conversations about video games. I mean, who cares about the fact that we've made major medical advancements or that we can travel in space buses (oh shit wait no we can't)? I want my younger self to hear all about how we can play the coveted games of our childhood on our telephones.

Not that I have an iPhone. It's totally because I'm not into that useless capitalist waste. It's not like my mom's the only person who ever calls me.

Sniff.

You know I've never played a Lunar game? I know what I want to see next in the iPhone, thank you. Oh and it must retain the bizarre Working Designs "translation."

Related Links:

Will Song Summoner Be the First Good iPod Game?
RPGs: Turn Based versus Real Time - FIGHT!
Gaga for Segaga

Games to Movies: Why Is It So Gad-Danged Hard?

2008-07-18T22:10:00Z

Pardon me, but might I bother you to turn your head while I spew vulgarities? The live-action Castlevania movie by Paul W.S. Anderson is going to be as stinking and putrid as a zombie's testicles. Yeah, as rotten as zombie testicles stewing like dumplings in a pool of sweat collected in the crotch of a pair of leather pants. And...the testicles are dangling. By, like, one scrap of skin.

One scrap of maggot-chewed skin.

We're used to this, right? It's the curse of video game-based movies to be absolutely no good. A friend of mine who's a huge Silent Hill fan convinced a non-gaming friend of mine to see the Silent Hill movie. Second friend saw the movie and still insists that first friend owes her eight bucks for making her see the stupidest film in the world.

But it's not as if the Silent Hill series is incapable of keeping even hardcore horror fans up all night. Why do games translate so badly into movies? Is it because directors (we're not even counting Uwe Boll) have no qualms about taking creative liberties with the source material--the lack of a whip for Simon Belmont's film being a perfect example?

That certainly can't be helping the problem. On the other hand, there are game-to-movie adaptations, mostly of Japanese origin, that are easily recognisable as their inspirations...but they still suck.

When Final Fantasy: Spirits Within soiled itself and died at the box office, Final Fantasy fans were so sure the reason lay in the butchering of the source material. Final Fantasy is about swords and monsters and chocobos; here was something with the name Final Fantasy that was little more than a generic science fiction flick.

Flash forward a handful of years to Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. It has Cloud! It has Tifa and Red XIII and Midgar! It's essentially a Final Fantasy VII movie!

Is it any good? Not really.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is the whipped and delicious fanservice every Final Fantasy fan craved, but it's an awkward piece of work with a jumbled plotline and boring battles. Final Fantasy VII ended mysteriously: we're not supposed to know if humankind survived Lifestream's onslaught or not. Looks like we did. Boy oh boy. Let's kung-fu fight.

Moreover (and admittedly through no fault of its own), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children suffers from a terrible case of Know-It-All Fandom. That is to say, Final Fantasy VII has such a huge and significant fanbase that literally tens of thousands of fanfics exist for the game; fanfics written by authors who are convinced that they know what's best for the characters and get furiously angry if anything counters their "fanon" (canon+fandom). Cloud isn't supposed to be a loner emo who remains distant from Tifa. They're supposed to be married. They're supposed to have a million spiky-haired babies.

(Or Cloud is supposed to be up on Vincent, one or the other.)

Interestingly, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children came with a shorter animated film called Last Order. It was a little bit like Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core for the PSP in that it followed the life of Zack, Cloud's "shadow." It was also far better than Advent Children, possibly because it didn't go to strange and fabulous new places; it took an already-interesting part of Final Fantasy VII's story and expanded upon it.

In the same vein, I hold hope for Warren Ellis' animated Castlevania III: Dracual's Curse adaptation because it's a further telling of events from an established game. Nobody's going to make up their own continuity. Ellis is merely working with material that's already there and expanding upon it.

Further hope: The Dark Knight, a movie based on a comic book, is being taken very seriously and recieving excellent critiques. Not that long ago, a big budget movie based on nah-nah-nah-nah BAT-MAN or any comic book character would have been laughed at. If we stop farming out video game properties to directors who suck, we might see the same treatment for our digital favourites.

There is Nothing Funny About Bionic Commando Funny Books

2008-07-18T18:00:00Z

Have you ever been disappointed with your geek kung-fu? You go through life thinking, “Why, yes, I am a gigantic nerd. My nerd knowledge-base is vast and potent. No one can challenge the veritable wealth of useless knowledge I possess, the sheer brain real estate that I have devoted to media instead of human experience. Why, I could have been a physicist! Instead I know about Mega Man continuity.” And then something slips by you and you entire world comes crashing down!

There’s a Bionic Commando webcomic that’s been running since March. How in the holy hell did I miss this?!

Twenty pages of the thirty-two page Bionic Commando: Chain of Command (insert Michael Bay movie score here) have run already and it is, if nothing else, shockingly nerdy in its own right. The story does an entertaining job of linking the original game and its upcoming sequel, bringing back familiar faces like Super Joe and protagonist Nathan Spencer. Wait wait wait. Forgive me. RADD Specner. It’s a little disorienting though. There’s more dialogue on the first page of this thing than there is in the entire original game. Also, Radd Spencer’s hair is markedly less rad. Check out this profile from the original NES instruction booklet.

That is a ragin’ doo. Now look at new Radd Spencer:

What is this space marine horse shit! For shame Ben Judd.

Head over to the Bionic Commando homepage to read the whole shebang. It’s written by Andy Diggle. Diggle also happens to write some comic book about some British magician who looks like Sting and has an awesome name.

Related links:

Gone Vertical: Hands-on Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando: Rearmed Delayed, 61FPS Breaks Stuff, Is Happy About Soundtrack
Going Vertical: How Capcom’s Developers Are Changing the Landscape of 3D Games
It’s Official: Capcom Has Been Taken Over By Nerds

CHIPTUNE FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY with TRUCKASAURAS!!!

2008-07-18T17:00:00Z

It's been a week of DISAPPOINTMENT and EMPTY PROMISES from the Big 3 at E3, but here at 61 FRAMES PER SECOND things are JUST HEATING UP!

Get ready to have your EARS BLOWN OUT because THIS WEEKEND only at 61 FRAMES PER SECOND SECOND SECOND we've got the legendary TRUCKASAURAS-AURAS-AURAS!!!

These BAD BOYS from SEATTLE craft their WHITE HOT CLICKS, BLEEPS AND DOOTS using V-V-V-VINTAGE Roland drum machines and synths and sequence them all through AN OLD-SCHOOL GAME BOY GAME BOY GAME BOY!!!

TRUCKASAURAS bring such HEAVY HITS to the arena as "Super Copter," "Fak!!!," "Up, Up, Down, Down, L, R, L, R," and "Porkwich," on their FACE-MELTING debut LP TEA PARTIES, GUNS & VALOR.

For downloadable tickets to this MONSTROUS show of BRUTE TECHNOLOGICAL FORCE, visit your nearest Necodo.com or hear the full album below! Thanks, Necodo!

Related articles:
Chiptune Friday: IndepenDANCE Day Weekend: Nullsleep vs. Depeche Mode
Chiptune Friday: Crystal Castles
Chiptune Friday: Reformat the Planet
Chiptune Friday: Helix Nebula
Chiptune Friday: Taste the Rainbow

Developer Journal part 6: Beat Me Up Too Progress Report

2008-07-18T15:00:00Z

Friday already? Yeesh, you know you've been busy when you can't remember Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday passing by. No interview or art to post this week, just a short and sweet progress report.

The word from Will is that everything is looking good. He's icing the proverbial cake at this point and just waiting for me to feed him art. We did have some drama this week as we stomped some weird bugs that prevented me from running the game on my computer. It's a Flash Game for Pit's sake. Strange server related stuff that only seemed to affect my freakish home computer. All is fixed anyway.

On my end I've been fighting with unwanted transparent pixels on the edges of the character skins. I think it's finally dealt with now and I've seen some characters tested out in game. So far so good. I just want to get all of the characters done and out of my way so I can pour out more items and do the backgrounds. Getting the characters finalized is my one stumbling block at this point. Every time I think I'm done with them... Freaking transparent pixels! Ahh well, this weekend should find the characters done and a pile of items too. I'm eager to see them in the game.

The only thing not touched yet is sound. The original game had a limited number of horrific screams. This time around we will be adding a lot more variety to the yelling that should also reflect the expanded cast of ragdoll dummies. I've got some script suggestions to pass off to Will which includes classics like “Not the face!”, “My spleen!”, and the Wilhelm scream.

There's not much more to say at this point but I'm sure I'll come up with more for next week anyway. The end of development is near.

Developer Journal part 1

Developer Journal part 2

Developer Journal part 3

Developer Journal part 4

Developer Journal part 5

Toys are "Better than Video Games"?

2008-07-18T04:00:00Z

"Who put this thing together? Me, that's who! Who do I trust? Me!" - Tony Montana

That's what I thought of when I read the following:

Since Wii Music has no discernible scoring system, no goals and little in the way of those squishy innards that makes a game a "game," isn't it just a "musical toy"? That was the question posed by one European journo.

"Yes, that's right," Miyamoto curtly replied "And that's why it's better than a video game."

OK, Miyamoto, you've used up your last "Get out of Jail Free" card with this one. I stuck with you through the turbulent N64/Gamecube years, and I was happy to see you take it to the top with the Wii. But the above quote is so screechingly wrong, so not what I wanted to hear from E3. This quote sounds like the kind of giddy king-of-the-world arrogance that precedes a spectacular fall from grace. I'm not predicting that Wii Music will flop, I just think Miyamoto's burning up a lot of the goodwill he's managed to re-earn. Meanwhile, most of the quirky titles that don't depend on hardware (Flock, N+, Braid) that would be perfect for the Wii are still getting snapped up by XBLA and PSN Network. This is where you're supposed to shine, and yet we're stuck with Epic Fail!

Not a good long-term strategy. Serious gamers are faithful. Casual gamers are fickle. Don't forget where you came from, Miyamoto.

via Kotaku