Periphery: The Coolest Homebrew Project Device Ever

John Constantine — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:00:00 GMT

My understanding is that Niagara Falls is something of an awe-inspiring sightseeing opportunity as far as natural formations go and it’s a tacky extravaganza of shoddy, moldering love hotels as a tourist destination. You go to gamble, eat at buffets, and look at some fast water, right? I honestly don’t know. I haven’t been there in eighteen years, and my child’s-memory is fuzzy at best. It’s a cluttered jumble of images and familial inside jokes, things like eating pickle chips and weighing the odds of my survival if I jumped the railing. My clearest memory, though, is the preponderance of freak museums. Every corner boasted its own hall of mismatched curiosities, from replicas of barrels that made the falls’ descent to stuffed polar bears and any number of imaginary anthropological curiosities. I fear going back because I prefer my memory of the city’s institutionalized theater-of-the-absurd.

I check the website GameSniped on a weekly basis because, while it is intangible, it is very much a gaming freak museum. Prototype NES carts, complete Master System collections, strange promotional materials from bygone eras. It is a literal island of lost games, the detritus of the medium’s collective subconscious, interesting to collectors and freaks only. And me of course. Today’s spotlight is especially alluring, as both a historical find and as an opportunity. Some intrepid Ebayer is selling off a boxed M2 development kit. The M2 was Panasonic’s finished but never commercially released follow-up to the 3DO, meant to compete with the Playstation and Saturn. Back at the end of August, I linked to some bonafide footage of Kenji Eno’s first version of D2 running on the M2 hardware and, man, is it ugly. While Panasonic never released the M2 as a gaming console, the hardware actually powers some mundane devices these days, including ATMS and Japanese coffee vending machines. At least that’s what Wikipedia says so, you know, take that with a teensy grain of salt.

Why should you, the intrepid gamer, care about this M2 development kit? Why, think of what you could do with it! You could be the first person in the 21st century to actually make an M2 game. Talk about nerd cred! They’d give you a symposium at GDC for that kind of nonsense. That, or five people on a message board would hail you as a visionary. You could also make your own Japanese coffee vending machine. Awesome? Yes.

Related links:

Games We Will Never Get to Play: Kenji Eno’s D2 for M2
Periphery: Archaic N64 Paraphernalia is The Best
Periphery: Emotiv's EPOC is Strong in the Force
Periphery: Angry Video Game Nerd Edition

Kenji Eno Is a Mule of Epic Proportions

John Constantine — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Mule [myool] – noun – an individual, male or female, who exhibits qualities of sweetness, silliness, generosity, enthusiasm, exuberance, exaggerated sexuality and adventurousness simultaneously.

Some things just pass you by. Sometimes you turn on the radio and hear a song that makes you perk up and when you find out who it was, turns out it’s your all-time favorite band. You never heard that song before and it baffles you that something like that could escape your attention. I felt that way after checking out the unedited Kenji Eno interview put together by Shane Bettenhausen and James Mielke over at 1up. Not only have I never played a single game by the maverick designer, but up until today I didn’t even know who he was. Which, I have to admit, is frustrating the ever loving hell out of me. Eno is responsible for some of gaming’s most infamous cult creations (shooter/point-and-click adventures D, D2, and Enemy Zero) and other oddities that I have trouble believing are even real (off-the-wall minigame collection Short Warp came packed with a condom. It was for the 3DO. I shit you not.) The man is downright fascinating, his powerful creativity coming through in every one of his answers in the interview. I just wish I knew about him earlier, especially last week when I was writing Easy Access. As one of our esteemed commenters mentioned, Eno created a Saturn game called Real Sound that was actually a mystery game free of visuals. Even more interesting is that he actually made it specifically for blind players.

1UP: After D, you surprised Warp's fans by creating an offbeat Sega Saturn adventure game, Real Sound.

KE: Oh, that's a funky game.

1UP: Yeah, not only was it funky, it was also a game without any visuals. What inspired it, and how did you get Sega to publish it?

KE: After I released D, people were always expecting more CG graphics from me, and I got tired of that. I didn't want people to think that they could predict what Warp would do next. Also, I had a chance to visit people who are visually disabled, and I learned that there are blind people who play action games. Of course, they're not able to have the full experience, and they're kind of trying to force themselves to be able to play, but they're making the effort. So I thought that if you turn off the monitor, both of you are just hearing the game. So after you finish the game, you can have an equal conversation about it with a blind person. That's an inspiration behind this game as well.

The man is an absolute, total mule.

Head over to 1up and read the whole thing. If anyone out there is a Kenji Eno fan, please point me in the right direction for what to play.

Related links:

Easy Access
Raised on the Stuff
Far Out, Man

61 Frames Per Second : d2

Periphery: The Coolest Homebrew Project Device Ever

Kenji Eno Is a Mule of Epic Proportions