61 Frames Per Second : dreamcast

Persona 4: Harrowing, True Pre-Order Tales! With Prizes, Prizes, Priz-izes!

John Constantine — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:00:00 GMT

True story the first: way back during the summer of 1999, shortly after graduating from high school, I took the cash moneys I’d been given by my loving family (money intended for college), pooled it in with a dash of my savings account, and marched to my local Electronics Boutique. “Ho, Game Jockey!” I said, full of mirth and good will, “Take these funds and place my name inside your hallowed ledger. I am pre-ordering a Dreamcast in full!” It was going to be awesome. I paid for the system, Sonic Adventure, and a VMU. They gave me a t-shirt and a receipt. I then waited for that sacred day of 9/9/99 to roll around when all that is good would be delivered to me. Turned out Electronics Boutique were filthy liars, in more way than one. First, the midnight sale didn’t start until 1:30am. I am sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for this fact, though none of the shifty nerds in line were let in on it. I was nonplussed but hardly enraged. But then I got to the counter, handed them my receipt, and was handed a bag with a Dreamcast in it. But no VMU. No Sonic Adventure. I then calmly asked the cashier when these items would be forthcoming and he replied, “That is all that’s paid for on this receipt.” Then I murdered him.

Not really, but it was another half an hour before they finally handed over the goods. It was a long night.

True story the second: back in October, I pre-ordered the Persona 4 Social Link Expansion Pack from Amazon.com believing I was getting quite the deal: Persona 4 plus an extra “B-sides” soundtrack, a nifty t-shirt, a Persona calendar, and a stuffed animal of the game’s bizarre anthropomorphic character, Teddy, all for thirty bucks. That is a steal. When a giant box arrived at my work place yesterday, I was pumped and ready for some role-playing. Then I opened it and discovered that I can’t read. You see, this wasn’t an awesome pre-order deal. This was a bunch of stuff you pay for BESIDES the game. Amazon cleverly notes this in the product features section: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 game sold separately.

I am not smart. Pre-ordering is a dangerous business. But my lack of attention is your good fortune! I want to hear your tales of pre-order woe, dear reader. Send your story to johnc at nerve dot com and the most tragic, most infuriating, and/or hilarious yarn will win the delightful Teddy plush I mistakenly purchased believing it came with an awesome videogame. The one in the picture above.

So you know, the plastic bag Teddy is in says, “Warning: Plastic bags can be dangerous. To avoid danger of suffocation keep this bag away from babies and children.” Well that’s all nice and dandy, Mister Bag, but what the hell do we adults do?!

Related links:

Capcom, Street Fighter IV Cluttering My Home With Even More Useless Junk
Whatcha Not Playing: Persona 4
And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Love: Atlus Reprints Persona 2
Persona 2: Innocent Sin Translation Complete
Yeah, But Is It Art?: Persona 3 FES

Saving Shenmue With Toys

Joe Keiser — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Is it possible to save a beloved franchise with one dollar and an envelope?

The Shenmue MySpace Campaign is betting yes. Between Thanksgiving day, which also happens to be the tenth anniversary of the Dreamcast, and December 29th (they claim this is Shenmue’s anniversary, but that’s not how I recall it) they want everyone who fondly reminisces about forklifts and sailors to send Sega a capsule toy and a little prayer. A prayer for Shenmue III.

Now this campaign will probably be good for one or two Sega employees who’ve been struggling to complete their collection of little plastic Pokemon. And it’s great to see that people are still really passionate for what was an innovative and influential game—it’s one of my favorite series, too. But it’s highly unlikely there will ever be another one, no matter what the longtime fans do to encourage it.

The Shenmue MySpace Campaign is comparing this effort to the one the got Jericho back on television, but there’s a couple of differences between that and this. Jericho did come back as a result of fan campaigning, but only as a seven episode mid-season replacement—it’s not like Sega could take that “toe in the water” approach with a game. Jericho did six million viewers on average, which is considered poor for network television but was probably enough to at least break even on the effort—so the network likely only lost an opportunity cost.

For Shenmue to tell its long story in a detailed world while maintaining the franchise’s integrity as a technical showcase, tens of millions of dollars would easily have to be spent on the project, and millions would have to be sold for such a game to turn a profit as a result. The first Shenmue sold 1.2 million copies worldwide, but that was a different Sega that had the money and vim to push the game as hard as it could. Remember that even at that level of sales Shenmue was a disastrous money pit for the company.

So at best, Sega would be taking a significant financial risk on a franchise that burned it badly before. It’s doubtful that any number of capsule toys can make that sound like a good idea. I love the sentiment, but maybe we should all focus on getting the company to do something that actually has a chance of happening? Let’s ask for a new, real Phantasy Star, or for Yakuza: Kenzan to come to the US.

Where Is the PSP?

John Constantine — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:00:00 GMT

I am a superstitious man. I throw salt over my shoulder and knock on wood. I refuse to cross paths with black cats, something that is difficult when you share an apartment with one. When wandering about Manhattan, with its many scaffolding-covered building fronts, I am occasionally paralyzed by an all-consuming fear of the literal hundreds of ladders I pass beneath every day! I also know to not buy videogame consoles on launch day. If I do, I know that I will never play that many games for that device that looked so tempting before I actually had it. It all started with the Dreamcast, a system I adored, but I maybe owned a total of ten games for before its ignoble death (almost all of them published by Sega themselves). Two years out from its release, and it looks like the same is happening with Wii, a system that I turn on to play Gamecube games for more often than actual Wii discs. And then there’s the PSP. Oh, I was excited by that little monster when it came out back in early 2005. So excited, I decided it was a good idea to wake up at 6 AM on release day to pick one up, along with copies of Lumines and Ridge Racer. I played both pretty extensively for a month and then didn’t turn on the machine again until December of 2006.

Now I’m not saying there aren’t good games for the PSP. One of the six games I’ve ever purchased, Zoe Mode’s absolutely astounding Crush would make my top fifty games ever made. But it’s hard to deny that the handheld takes up almost zero space in the collective consciousness of gaming broadly. In the six months since 61FPS launched, we’ve run a total of four posts specifically about PSP games. For a team of writers who are more or less obsessed with games of any stripe and for any console, this is pretty telling. The PSP does continue to sell reasonably well, and it’s been enjoying something of a banner year in Japan (it sold two million units in the first half of ’08, doubling its 2007 sales.) I’m just curious what the hell people are using it for, because they sure as heck aren’t buying a ton of games.

Actually, come to think of it, I can only name five PSP games slated for future release. The 3rd Birthday (Parasite Eve 3), Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, Patapon 2, Locoroco 2, and that Disgaea spin-off, Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero.

What is going on with this system?

More Where Is?:

Oh Wait, Hydrophobia’s Right Here!
Prototype
Where is Shuichi Sakurazaki, Creator of Ninja Gaiden?
Yasunori Mitsuda
Landstalker PSP
Joe Madureira
Wii’s Disaster: Day of Crisis
Yu Suzuki
The City of Metronome
New Indiana Jones
Doug TenNapel
Victor Ireland

Sega "Gets" the Wii

Derrick Sanskrit — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

As previously stated, the Nintendo Wii is just about two years old now, well enough into its life cycle to no longer forgive developers for unfamiliar hardware restrictions and lazy ports (yes, I'm looking at you, Harmonix and Rock Band). Most people still look at the Wii as home of the goofy mini-game collection despite its having also hosted some truly unique and wonderful unloved gems like EA's Boom Blox, Ubisoft's No More Heroes, Capcom's Zack & Wiki and THQ's de Blob. There is one major game publisher, though, who seems hard-pressed to make the Wii completely awesome with a wide range of aggressive titles, and that publisher is (believe it or not) Sega. That's right, longtime Nintendo rival Sega. Kinda makes you wonder why the Dreamcast flopped...

Yeah, it seems like the kids over at Sega have really taken a shine to their former direct competitor this generation. The system launched with another entry in the ever-popular Super Monkey Ball franchise, soon followed by the Wii-exclusive Sonic & the Secret Rings (which garnered much more of a positive reaction than the current-gen Sonic The Hedgehog on XBox 360 Playstation 3). Then, of course, came the history-making Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games and the long-anticipated Saturn sequel NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams and a follow-up to the Dreamcast's Samba de Amigo (not to mention multi-platform titles like Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Sega Superstar Tennis and well-received hardcore niche titles like Ghost Squad and Bleach). What do those games have in common that No More Heroes and Zack & Wiki didn't? Oh, that's right, you might have actually heard of them! That's because Sega actually markets their games aggressively with that marvelous innovation called advertising.

And Sega ain't stopping there. In addition to the multiplatform Sonic Unleashed, they're also bringing Wii exclusives MadWorld, House of the Dead: Overkill, Sonic and the Black Knight (a sequel to the aforementioned Secret Rings) and the just-announced newly-aquired much-hyped The Conduit. These are decidedly "hardcore" games, two of which involve over-the-top violence and gore, one is billed as a revolution in first-person-shooter controls and graphics on Wii (see screenshot to the left, yes, those are in-game graphics on the Wii), and the other gives Sonic the Hedgehog a frickin' sword. These are games that fans, analysts, and Sega reps continue to insist people want – nay, crave – and based on the number of ads I've seen in the past year for NiGHTS, Mario & Sonic and Samba de Amigo, they will be marketed well. People will know that these games exist, that these games are awesome, and that these games are available for a Wii near you, which is more than can be said about my poor pirate buddies Zack and Wiki.

Related articles:

Independent at a Price: Sega and Platinum Games

Trailer Review: The Conduit

Gaga for Segagaga

Trailer Review: House of the Dead – Overkill

9/9/99 9 Years Later

Sonic Bound: After Three Botched Reboots, Sonic the Hedgehog May Finally Get His 3D Due

9/9/99 9 Years Later

Bob Mackey — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Numerology fans take note; what was once purported to be the biggest day in entertainment history took place exactly 9 years ago. Plagiarism fans also take note: I got this idea from the latest episode of Retronauts.

Yes, we're nearly a decade from the launch of Sega's little-console-that-could-but-didn't, and aside from making me feel incredibly old, this anniversary of sorts had me thinking about just where I was on 9/9/1999. My most distinct memory of that time period--which is mostly fuzzy and inexplicably filled with Pokemon--is being madly in love with a high school girl. Luckily for her, I was also in high school; but even with us having that much in common, it was never meant to be. So did I console myself by splurging and then weeping on Sega's newest system? Fittingly, Final Fantasy VIII absorbed most of my pain in telling the story of an emotional cripple that made me look much more stable by comparison.

I eventually got a Dreamcast a whole year later, but my relationship with it was just as sordid and artificial as my high school fling. I used it.

For me, a Nintendo fanboy who had recently switched brands to Sony due to a troubling JRPG addiction, there was no way I was getting a Dreamcast. No friggin' way. My tone soon changed after the launch of the PS2, when I had spent $300 on a system that could play DVDs, or a snowboarding game. In that first year of the PS2, there was a 10-month stretch between launch and the next game worth playing, Klonoa 2. So, having quite a bit of disposable income at the time, and not thinking to send this money 8 years into the future when I actually need it, I got a Dreamcast just as it was on its first of many price cuts.

Getting the system on the threshold of 2000/2001 meant I had access to nearly all of the best games; and I played the hell out of them while my PS2 collected dust in the background--it later broke down on what I assumed to be dust-related issues. Up until the fall of 2001 I was all about the Dreamcast--even with the announcement of the system's death happening so early in the year--but when games like Ico and Grand Theft Auto 3 started coming out on the PS2, I quickly ditched my new friend and later sold it on eBay like the monster I am.

I should feel bad--and I kind of do--but to this day I don't have any fond memories for the Dreamcast. To me, it was just a diversion until the PS2/XBox/GameCube era could really start taking off; and I assume this was the same situation for many others. The only thing that really gets to me is that Sega now has about an electron of the creativity it was known for during the Dreamcast days--oh, and that Sonic the Hedgehog still exists.

Now would be a good time to share your Dreamcast memories, because I just made myself feel bad.

Related Links:

Gaga for Segagaga
Yeah, But Is It Art?: Crazy Taxi
Sonic is for Porn

Ports That Need To Be Made: iTouchRez

Derrick Sanskrit — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The news last week that Q Entertainment would be bringing its popular handheld titles Meteos to XBox Live Arcade and Lumines to Playstation Network got me to thinking about what other Q titles could use ports to new platforms. Far and away, the best idea to come out of this meandering train of thought was this:

Rez, for the iPhone and iPod Touch, or as I like to call it iTouchRez.

Haptic feedback with variable control for vibration on/off.

Touch screen shooting. There's no need to ever move the character, just the aiming reticule, perfect for fingertips.

Sega of America President Simon Jeffery has already stated that the current iPhone is as powerful as the Dreamcast, Rez's original platform.

The iPhone is already a widescreen hi-def video/audio player, perfect for the intense and immersive audiovisual experience of Rez.

Rez was rereleased earlier this year in an HD update on XBox Live Arcade to wide critical acclaim, so the interest is definitely still there. I think this portable port would quite possibly be the easiest way to lose an entire train ride in a trance. Tetsuta Mizuguchi, make this happen!

Related articles:
The Long and Winding Road: Rez's Journey From Proof-of-Concept to Game
Kenichi Nishi and Kenji Eno's Newtonica Brings iPhone Gaming Into The Realm of Awesome
The iPhone as Your "Dark Passenger"
Sega CD on iPhone: I Like Where This Is Going

Tales of The Focus Group: Peter Moore Takes No Guff

John Constantine — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:00:00 GMT

I get latching onto game designers as personalities. It’s no different than the cult of personality that sprouts up around musicians, writers, and film directors. Gaming’s rich with characters too: from the robot-building eccentrics like Will Wright, frothing madmen like David Jaffe, and mean drunks like Tomonobu Itagaki. What mystifies me is the way gamers latch onto publishing executives and marketers. Seriously, who cares about Reggie Fils-Aime? The guy doesn’t make Nintendo’s games, he just makes sure they’re profitable. Or how about Peter Moore? When that wily Brit was in charge of Microsoft’s games division, there was no end of fanboy chatter about his antics. Oh, Peter Moore got a Grand Theft Auto IV tattoo! Take that, Sony! Once he moved on to EA Sports, the guy disappeared from the limelight, no longer a face for console war jibber-jabber.

Well, after today, I am forced to admit that I am interested in Peter Moore. Not because he’s starting some wild new business initiative to ramp up EA’s creative output or anything of the sort. No, I want to know more about Peter Moore because one of his last actions as president of Sega of America was to tell Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, to fuck off. Games Radar’s running a story that, during the Dreamcast’s final days, Moore ran a focus group that resulted in young consumers labeling Sega a "granddad with dementia who used to be cool but you couldn't remember why." Burn. When Moore had recordings of the focus group translated into Japanese for a meeting with Sega Japan, Naka accused Moore of doctoring the recordings. Moore’s response?

"I lost it. I turned to the interpreter and said, ‘Tell him, fuck you.’” Although the translator refused to convey Moore's feelings, he was pretty sure that his message got across. "Naka had lived in the US for three years, so I knew he understood. I walked out and never returned."

Why does this make Peter Moore interesting? Yuji Naka is responsible for Sonic’s shitty friends. Fuck that guy.

(Link: Games Radar, via NeoGAF)

Related links:

FMV Hell: Sonic CD
Trailer Review: Sonic Unleashed
Do You Hold Any Hope For Sonic Unleashed?
Alternate Soundtrack: Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Ratatat
Sonic is for Porn

Yeah, But Is It Art?: Crazy Taxi

John Constantine — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Time is both the best friend and worst enemy of art. Culture shifts and morphs daily into new language and new modes of expression, and the voice of the past either becomes timeless or unintelligible in tandem. Author David Lindsay was no one in the 1920s while he was still publishing. He was thirty years dead by the time his hallucinatory novel A Voyage to Arcturus was celebrated by academia. Alternatively, Our American Cousin was considered great comedy and great theater a century and a half back. Today, you’d be hard pressed to understand what the damn script even means. Enduring works persist for a number of reasons. They speak to an unchanging facet of human experience (love, loss, etc.) or they stay durable through sheer architectural integrity, perfect examples of their medium (I can find no other reason why people continue to read Melville.) Sometimes, though, art survives as a time capsule, something that takes a place and a time, no matter how insignificant, and preserves it.

Crazy Taxi, in its American Dreamcast release, is the millennial turn preserved in digital amber. More than even the early editions of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Crazy Taxi’s character models, its Offspring-laden mall-punk soundtrack, the growling “extreme” announcer and its pigeon-LA and San Francisco are a pitch-perfect distillation of pop-consumer culture in 2000. Its presentation is complimented by manic arcade-style driving, a kinetic representation of pre-war American tastes at the end of the ‘90s. It holds up too, fun despite comparing poorly to more dynamic contemporaries like Burnout Paradise; if you drive into a wall, you bounce off of it instead of watching a complex physics engine realistically crumple your taxicab. Burnout is a fitting counterpoint; while Crazy Taxi is concerned only with driving at top speed and bright colors, Burnout’s most visceral moments are during crashes, when everything is slowed to a stop, color becomes washed out, and the game halts to focus on destruction.

Of course, that’s just one argument. What do you say, reader?

More Yeah, But Is It Art?:

It Will Never Be the Same
Oh, wait, it’s already art.
Pac-man Championship Edition
Persona 3 FES

Related links:

Top Ten Date Games

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

Revenge of the Port: Dead Rising Shuffles, Moans on Wii

John Constantine — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:00:00 GMT

The true death of the arcade came at the beginning of this decade. It wasn’t when gamers started opting for the comfort and value of playing at home; it was when home consoles finally started equaling (and surpassing) the technological heft of the arcade cabinets themselves. Sega, one of the only surviving arcade giants, signed the death warrant themselves when developing the Dreamcast and its arcade-motherboard-twin, Naomi. Games at home and games in the arcade, identical for the first time. The move may have had the negative effect of killing off the already declining amusement center population across the Western world, but it also had a significant silver lining: the death of the shoddy arcade port. Approximations of more technologically demanding games have been a staple of gaming in the home since the 1970s, but, with the exception of stray PC-based ports, downgraded game experiences have largely disappeared since 2000. Today, in 2008, the fracturing of the console space seems to be bringing them back in force.

Just recently, Koei announced they’d be bringing Dynasty Warriors 6 — built from the ground up for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, they said — to Playstation 2, a move no doubt meant to make an actual profit on their development investment. Today, Capcom announced that they’d be porting Dead Rising, the Xbox 360 Dawn of the Dead-style zombie game, to Nintendo’s Wii. Dead Rising was one of the 360’s first great games, a weird mixture of Grand Theft Auto, Pokemon Snap, and Resident Evil, the game put the player in a mall overflowing with hundreds of zombies in a number of substantially-sized environments. It’s strange, then, that Capcom is making Dead Rising Wii a port instead of an actual sequel or side story. The Wii hardware simply cannot put that many moving, AI-controlled objects on screen at the same time. But more Japanese gamers, and very soon more North American and European gamers, own Wiis than Xbox 360s, so bringing a version to that system will surely bring Capcom even more coin from an already successful creation.

It’s one more facet of the diversifying platform space. As I mentioned just a couple of days ago, we’re not heading to a one console future, but a more diverse console selection. Game makers will always want more people to play their games and, so, the days of the port are returning. Hopefully we’ll see more Bionic-Commando-arcade-turned-into-Bionic-Commando-NES than Street-Fighter-2-turned-into-Street-Fighter-2-PC.

Gaga for Segagaga

Cole Stryker — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

You suckers in America won't get to read it for a while, but this month's Edge features a great interview with Tez Okano, creator of an odd little Japan-only Dreamcast RPG called SGGG (pronounced Segagaga). The object of the game is to save Sega from financial collapse, and was ironically released around the time of Sega's collapse (2001), in the console arena, at least.

Segagaga is a plan formulated to save Sega from DOGMA, an evil corporation intended to portray Sony. From there it goes totally meta. You talk to a down on his luck Alex Kidd and go up against a flying, sentient Genesis console in a schmup segment. Insane.

When you begin working for Sega, you find that the employees are violent, caged subhumans who have lost their humanity due to the stressful development lifestyle. In combat, you hurl insults a la Monkey Island instead of fighting. There are also business sim elements, wherein you choose between making a bunch of crappy games or throw all your eggs into one basket for a landmark innovative title. You analyze market trends and delegate labor to design, music, marketing, etc. Upon completing the game you are fired.

The gameplay itself sounds halfbaked, but it's amazing that a company would actually produce something so self-deprecating. Check out Hardcore Gaming 101 for more.

The Long and Winding Road: Rez’s Journey From Proof-of-Concept to Game

John Constantine — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Tetsuya Mizuguchi was already a respected game designer when the Dreamcast released in 1998, thanks in large part to his expert work on the home conversion of Sega Rally in the mid-90s, but it wasn’t until he began working on Sega’s ill-fated final system that he expressed his true creative voice. Mizuguchi’s reputation is built on his designs blending gameplay and music (as in Derrick’s fav Gunpey). Dreamcast’s Rez, Mizuguchi’s minimalist synesthesia masterpiece, is arguably the purest meeting between traditional play and music generation ever made. Rez wasn’t born whole into the world however. As you can see from this early footage, Rez started out as Project K, and the changes it underwent could not be more dramatic.

Though the music and visuals used in this video of Project K #1 are clearly only meant to demonstrate Rez's beat creation play, you can already see the seeds of Mizuguchi’s aesthetic goals musically. Visually, Rez still had a long way to go. Mizuguchi had not yet decided on its abstract presentation. The human figure running along the ground and muddy polygonal forest are far less attractive than the final game’s wireframe character and environments. Perhaps he turned away from the more realistic presentation seen here because it distracted from the aural experience?

While still different, Project K #2 starts to take on more of Rez’s ultimate characteristics. Its presentation is more bombastic and psychedelic and it employs “videogamey” sound effects for shots when they would ultimately be used as one more aspect of music generation in the final game.

Rez is emerging from its chrysalis in Project K #3. The player character isn’t quite there yet but the game itself is coming together.

And here is Rez as it is today, enjoying it's third release on Xbox Live.

Related links:

Make the Music With Your Games, Kids!

The 61FPS Review: Ninja Gaiden 2 Part 1

John Constantine — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:00:00 GMT

When Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden finally released, it was mind-altering. No three-dimensional action game played as well, looked as good, or had its raw scope, and no one in the world was expecting it to deliver as it did. After all, the game had been vaporware for half a decade. Remember when Tecmo announced it as a game for Sega’s Project Katana (the development codename for Dreamcast)? How about when it was supposed to be a Playstation 2 launch title? By the time Team Ninja announced that they’d be releasing it as an Xbox title, I was starting to wonder if the game existed at all. When no screens or video of the game materialized for another three years, it was fair to assume that Gaiden was destined to be little more than trivia fodder. But then February 2004 rolled around and there it was. That month will, in my mind, always be a benchmark in the history of action games. Ninja Gaiden has aged well in four years, its multiple revisions and expansions right through the Playstation 3 remake Ninja Gaiden Sigma proving its foundation to be sturdy and engaging. 3D action games broadly, however, have surpassed it. God of War brought bigger, more exciting environments and enemy confrontations while improving accessibility and even Ninja Gaiden’s immediate forebear Devil May Cry added more depth in its third and fourth entries. Even the lackluster Heavenly Sword took away Ninja Gaiden’s crown as the genre’s most visceral visual spectacle.

I’ve been lukewarm on Ninja Gaiden II since it was announced last year. I couldn’t tell what was wrong. Something about it just seemed so sterile, so rote in comparison to everything else hitting the new wave of consoles. Dynamic limb removal is the big innovation? Really? This is Ninja Gaiden II! Time to redefine 3D action a second time! I realize that’s an unfair expectation to put on a game but it isn’t unfair to expect a modicum of refinement, some change to the established formula that utilizes both hindsight and the power of new technology.

That’s why Ninja Gaiden II is, initially, so disappointing. Everything seems far too familiar. The environments are little more than pretty, simplistic window dressing, corridors to run down but never to interact with. The combat and opponent AI is as fine as ever but outside of having to contend with legless suicide bombers, little has changed. Even the camera that follows the character, too low on the screen and obscuring the action right when a hoard of enemies attack, is seemingly identical to the one in Ninja Gaiden 1. Where have you gone Ninja Gaiden? Is the king dead? I’ve played one-fifth of the full game, leaving eleven full levels of punishing difficulty to work through and a plethora of weapons to discover. But I’m wondering if more combat is all I have to expect. More importantly, should I even expect more than that?