61 Frames Per Second : books

Metal Gear Solid 2: The Novel?

Bob Mackey — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:15:00 GMT

I have a bit of a soft spot for Metal Gear Solid 2; while it certainly has its share of embarrassing flaws, I'm probably one of a dozen people who were pleasantly surprised--instead of enraged--by the protagonist switch from Solid Snake to Raiden so early in the game. But even I have to admit that MGS2's story was mostly unintelligible by the end, though some of this may be due to the content cut from the game because of the September 11th terrorist attacks--or perhaps that mysterious shipment of mushrooms which arrived on the steps of Konami's HQ in early 2001.

Whatever the case, you have to give Kojima some credit for throwing so many baffling, off-the-wall ideas in what was intended to be the Playstation 2's first big blockbuster. And in case the director's unique storytelling style has still has you confused about what the hell happened in Metal Gear Solid 2 a whole eight years later, then you'll be happy to know that publisher Del Ray has a novelization of the game in the works, penned by Raymond Benson, who apparently wrote a novelization of the first Metal Gear Solid in 2008. Not exactly striking while the iron's hot, eh?

According to Game|Life's Earnest Cavalli, Benson is no slouch when it comes to video game novelizations--but I still have to question how this novel could be any more informative than the text dumps and game scripts for MGS2 that have been floating around on the internet for years and years. Though it's possible that Benson's novelization could be worth reading just to see how (or if) the author turns all of that batshit content into a cohesive narrative. My guess is this will be Benson's final project before the inevitable forced institutionalization.

This little bit of news has inspired me to show you a preview of my Metal Gear Solid 3 novelization, which I plan on submitting to Del Ray in 2012:

The Pain, covered in bees, shot a steady stream of bees at Snake, who was not covered in bees. The bees soon reached his bee-less body.

"Agh! Bees! Covered in bees!"

Snake dove underwater and decided to contact HQ for assistance. Perhaps a smoke grenade was in order?

If you would like Solid Snake to use a smoke grenade, turn to page 154.
If you would like to stop reading, close the book.

Related Links:

The 61FPS Review: Metal Gear Solid 4 Part 1
Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojima’s Inability to Show Instead of Tell
C'mon Kojima: Port Metal Gear!

Whatcha Reading: Racing the Beam

Joe Keiser — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

There are a lot ways to think about games—as cultural artifacts, works of art, works of programming craft. Racing the Beam asks you to think about games in a way that is rarely considered: as a negotiation between game developer and hardware platform, between an artist with vision and the constrained tool that must be used to bring that vision to life. It’s a particularly apt metaphor for the platform in question, the Atari 2600, as almost all of that console’s games were made by one-man programmer/artist/designers. The result is a video game history unlike any I’ve ever read.

Racing the Beam is full to the brim with interesting tidbits about the nature of the Atari’s hardware. Cost-cutting measures on the system meant it was designed in a very specific way, to play games like Pong and Combat but little else. That meant that nearly everything that was actually done with the console was an elaborate hack. Getting more than two characters on screen, a la Space Invaders? That was a hack. Getting cars to drive onto screen from the left and off the screen from the right? The Atari was never designed to do anything like that, so that’s a hack too. That beam of brightly colored safety in Yar’s Revenge? That’s an absolutely ingenious hack.

Told in this way the story of the Atari 2600 becomes a story of brilliant renaissance men, twisting to their whims a piece of hardware that turned out to be far more versatile than its creators could heave dreamed. It’s also supposed to be a story about how this weak system with almost no memory tempered the ideas of developers, but this comes off much less well. The way the book is written, even the system’s abominable port of Pac-Man looks like a miraculous work of laudable engineering. By the end, it almost makes you think that the Atari 2600 could run, well, anything, if only you put the right genius in front of it.

Still, maybe this is the best way to look at that time period. The people involved in the programming of the 2600 were wizards. All too often they were tasked with impossible projects, like converting a graphically rich arcade game to a console that couldn’t even hold an entire screen’s worth of data at once. The stories of how they succeeded and failed paint an important historical picture about the relationship between the system and the people who made art come alive on it.

Racing the Beam paints that picture well, but it’s still in many ways a book about a computer and some programmers. It will occasionally become dense with technical speak and it even sometimes boxes out esoteric machine code, so if you don’t have any technical knowledge you can expect to re-read some pages many times before your understanding becomes complete. It’s still worth it to try, though. Watching Atari's wheezing beast get tamed by the intellect of this industry’s forefathers is a great and necessary journey for anyone who cares about games.

Pick it up here: Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (Platform Studies)

Related Links:

Whatcha Reading: 20 Years of Nintendo Power
The Videogame Ages, part 1
Death of the Gamer, Redefinition of the Audience

Is a Game Based on Twilight Even Possible?

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:38:00 GMT

I've read all of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books—no, really, all of them—and my soul's been attempting to rebuild since then. Being dead inside has its advantages, though. I only felt a small twinge where my heart used to be when I heard the news about the possibility of an upcoming Twilight anime.

As Topless Robot points out, Twilight and weepy shojo anime might actually be a match made in the fluffier, frillier circle of Hell reserved for pretty, pretty vampires:

”Unlike so many anime adaptations of American material, anime's oft-tortuously slow storytelling style and focus on relationships and repetition matches Twilight perfectly; there are already half a dozen vampire series out there which could practically be re-dubbed to be Twilight sequels anyways. What I'm saying is that it would be seriously hard to make a shitty Twilight anime, at least according to the franchise's screaming fans, and thus it would be incredibly successful.”

So, we know that anime and Twilight will be very happy together if this comes to pass. The question on my mind is, would Edward Cullen and Bella Swan the idiot child be compatible with a video game?

Any kind of video game?

Offhand, I want to say Twilight would make a good pseudo-JRPG. What's good for anime tends to be good for role-playing games, and God knows Twilight isn't lacking in the required walls of text and dollar-store religious cliches.

But for all their flaws, JRPGs at least have, y'know, events. Things happen. People go places, talk to other people, and save the world. You can't make an RPG out of long car rides and Edward's maddening, endless denial about being a Servant of the Night.

Oh wait, maybe you can.

“Bella, you must believe me when I say I am not a vampire.”

>No

“But thou must.”

>Yes

“I'm so happy!” o/~

Related Links:

Worlds of Power: Books that Worried Your Parents and Pissed Off Your Teachers
The Nintendo Literary Canon
There Is Nothing Funny About Bionic Commando Funny Books

Watch Out, Kids! Video Games Can Hurt You

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

San Diego's CBS 8 News ran a story this week about a woman who claims her five year-old Michael's "Nintendo" gave him a panic attack. While I don't doubt that this actually happened, it's hard not to hate on the story's presentation.

For one, they never tell you what game freaked the kid out. The game shown in the clip is Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, arguably the most intense, violent, and bloody game released on the DS in the past quarter, but the kid playing that has had no such problems and is clearly there just to show you what a violent DS game looks like (they also never confirm that Michael was playing a DS, only that he "ended up having a panic attack after playing Nintendo for just a half-hour").

Second, their resident expert Dr. Grisolia references an infamous episode of the Pokémon cartoon that induced seizures in hundreds of Japanese children, which would be all well and good if we were dispelling the evils of watching television, but we're supposed to be villifying video games here, right?

"The most important health effects from video games are obesity from not getting outside and playing, failing to socialize with other kids and getting exposed to a high level of violence in some of the more violent games."

Again, valid – if obvious – concerns, doctor, but I know more people who've suffered those effects from reading books and watching movies than from playing video games.

Third, every clip in the video trying to show you just what a "Nintendo" (DS) looks like is taken from the DS Lite vs. DS Phat videos on Panic software developer Cable's blog (which tells me that some production assistant googled "nintendo" and "panic" and found that... hilarious).

Fourth, the focus seems to be on making parents aware of health risks, directing one to the health & safety information on Nintendo's website. You know, the same health & safety warning that appears on screen every time a Nintendo DS or Wii are turned on. The only excuse for not being aware of these concerns is willful ignorance. Every game on a Nintendo platform tells me I might have a seizure and should take a break while playing, whereas every game I play on my Sony Playstation only tells me that it's going to save information to the hard drive regularly (and seriously, that's a warning I only need the first time, not every play session).

And, of course, fifth, the mother's final statement. "I can't recommend this game to any parent... it's not a substitute for reading a book or doing an outdoor activity with your child." She can't recommend that game, whatever that game was, so please allow me to recommend a few DS-compatable games that ARE substitutes for reading a book or doing an outdoor activity:

100 Classic Book Collection
Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hands (you physically have to go outside and play in the sunlight)
My Weight Loss Coach

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that everyone involved in the production of this news segment is an uninformed fear monger (with the possible exception of the first kid, but he's too young to be playing Order of Ecclesia and his parents should be scolded for letting him get a T-rated game like that). Still, I can't help but empathise with poor Michael just a little. Two years ago I played through Trauma Center on the DS and found one operation so intense and nerve-wracking that my arm started spasming incontrollably. I had to turn off the game and go calm down for a while. It freaked me out so much that I didn't play Trauma Center again for weeks, turning instead to literary games like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Hotel Dusk: Room 215. My thoughts are with you, little buddy.

Related Articles:
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Worlds of Power: Books That Worried Your Parents and Pissed Off Your Teachers

Nadia Oxford — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:45:00 GMT

My weekend sojourn with Bionic Commando Rearmed's Mr Rad Spencer reminded me of all things good, pure and 8-bit. I even remembered that my husband owns most of the Worlds of Power books, novel "adaptations" of popular Nintendo games from Back in the Day™. He transferred them over to our new basement apartment home after we were married; it's a dowry my parents are proud of, I'm sure.

Alas, I cannot find the Bionic Commando adaptation, but if I were to guess, I'd say Rad Spencer wasn't allowed to shoot anyone with his awesome guns. I did find Ninja Gaiden, which is dedicated to "the Ninja in everyone's dad." Holy shit, I thought my dad just sold alarm systems. This is awesome news.

I don't know if you kids today have book fairs, but they were a staple of my school days. My generation was not in love with the printed word and teachers did their best to make sure we didn't fall into any affairs. They policed our book fair purchases, declaring comic books to be verboten "trash," especially comic books about the Ninja Turtles or that rude Bart Simpson. The cutting-edge Nintendo Entertainment System was the worst enemy of my grade school marms, so F.X. Nine's Worlds of Power was book fair contraband, too.

I think any teacher who discourages a kid from reading material aimed at him is missing the point of their job, but I have to admit that Worlds of Power is junk food for the mind. The characterisation is bad, the writing is overly-simple and the transparent attempts to avoid references to violence are laughable and even insulting. Everyone knows that Ryu's father dies at the start of Ninja Gaiden; it was console gaming's first vault into storytelling beyond Mario staggering across eight kingdoms in a heart-breaking search for his princess. The Worlds of Power books, desperate to win the approval of adult authorities (not bloody likely), minimised human deaths in its pages and in fact brought Ryu's father back to life.

No. Bad. Jesus brings forth the dead, not F.X. Nine.

I'm going to search very hard for our Bionic Commando book. If I fail, I'm sure I can find some substitutes and we'll all go on a G-rated literary journey. In the meantime, enjoy 8-Bit Lit, an excellent 1UP feature that will learn you some game novel history and is dedicated to the bionic soldier in everyone's mom.

Related Links:

Watcha Playing: Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword
Gone Vertical: Hands-On Bionic Commando
There Is Nothing Funny About Bionic Commando Funny Books