61 Frames Per Second : zelda

You’re Doing it Wrong: Excitebots Should Be Super Smash Bros. Kart

John Constantine — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

I don’t know about you, but I thought Excite Truck was a hell of a game. Not just as a launch game either. Its terrain deformation, ridiculous stunts, enormous jumps, and speed were good fun. It wasn’t as demanding as its grandpappy Excitebike, but that suited its loose motion controls nicely. It flopped hard though, failing to break into the top selling games the month it came out. In fairness, it deserved to flop. Who puts out a racing game at launch and doesn’t include multiplayer? Appalling. More than that though, there was no aesthetic hook to sell Excite Truck to Nintendo’s audience. Its beefy trucks and muddy trails milieu might have played back in 1987, or even ’97, but those days were long gone for Nintendo by the time the Wii released.

Now, Monster Games is back with Excitebots: Trick Racing. It looks like a lot of fun. Excite Truck but with wacky animal-robot-cars, more stunts, power-ups that involve driving into giant sandwiches, and, most importantly, multiplayer. I’m excited to play it. I’m also mystified by Nintendo’s decision to send this poor game out to pasture, just like Excite Truck. Animal-robots or not, there’s nothing here to grab up the massive Nintendo audience. There’s an easy way to make Excitebots into a multi-million seller instead of a ten-thousand seller. You make it a Smash Bros. game.

Watch this trailer. The play hooks are already there since the racing is about impacting your competitors and the environment to pull off big tricks. It’s also a fast-paced “gamer’s” game, which would make it a compliment to the slower-paced Mario Kart rather than a competing product. More than anything, though, it would be one more way to capitalize on Nintendo’s mascot stable and appeal to the broadest swath of Wii owners possible. It would ensure that people actually went out of their way to play a good game on the Wii.

Instead, Nintendo’s going to let yet another racing game from a good developer die on the vine. One day, I’m going to kick that company directly in the metaphysical balls. That, or I’m just going to buy Zelda again. Time will tell.

Related links:

Robot Chicken Torments the Excite Bike Guy
Waiting: Four More Games That Will Be Awesome To Remake In LittleBigPlanet
10 Games Nadia Played In 2008 Instead Of Working: Super Smash Bros Brawl

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Stupidity

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:47:00 GMT

The Legend of Zelda cartoon was one of the more competent game-based television series to foul up the '80s. That's not saying much, I suppose, especially when you recall some of the show's more ridiculous traits. Here's ten minutes of The Legend of Zelda, as collected and sewn together by The Switcher. Guaranteed to make you cringe and say, "Oh Christ above why did I love this? No wonder nobody ever came to my birthday parties."

I don't think I was ever aware that the Zelda cartoon had a considerable amount of innuendo. Dude, Link tried to ambush Zelda on her bed. If I were the king, I'd turn that impish rogue out on his bum and just set down some fly paper around the Triforce of Wisdom.

Related Links:

16-bit Morals: Sonic Warns You About Uncle Ernie
Seth MacFarlane Animates Mario Short
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Why I Let Termina Go Squish

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Why I Let Termina Go Squish

Nadia Oxford — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 23:49:00 GMT

I don't finish a lot of the games I buy, and I can't even say that I've played every single Zelda game. ("Release the hounds.") I can say that I've finished every Zelda game I've ever owned--with the exception of one.

I'll wait until you get the inevitable CD-i jokes out of your system.

Okay. The one Zelda title I've never finished is Majora's Mask for the N64. I let the apocalyptic alter-world of Termina die under the weight of a nightmarish moon because playing through the game made me feel like I was rolling Sisyphus' rock while watching Groundhog Day. It was an emotionally taxing experience and I didn't even get to laugh at Billy Murray driving over a cliff with a large burrowing mammal in his lap.

I suck for not finishing Majora's Mask, I know. It's arguably the most original of the 3D Zeldas, which is an interesting thing to say about a game that purposefully reuses the battle system and character models from Ocarina of Time. The difference is the care Majora's Mask takes with its recycling program. Nintendo could have gotten away with saying, "Oops, Link has to go back to Hyrule!" and we would have been happy enough to explore Ocarina of Time's characters and locales over again. Instead, the residents of the vaguely dreamlike world of Termina adopt new names, new problems and new personalities--changing them considerably from the carefree NPCs we were already familiar with.

Instead of feeling cheap, it's actually very unsettling. Nameless NPCs from Ocarina of Time, like the empty-headed woman in Kakariko who lost her chickens, suddenly inherit emotions and even take on extensive backstories.

There is, in fact, a good deal of emotional investment in Termina's cast. They all have three days to live before that grimacing moon turns them all into paste, and they don't know what to do about it except (attempt to) get on with their daily lives. Quite frankly, they need a hero; unlike RPG townspeople who flail into a panic when a Rabite gets within two screens of their hamlet, Termina's citizens can't stop a moon that took it upon itself to fall. Only little Link can save them by travelling back in time over and over.

This is where Majora's Mask breaks me down. There is some seriously bad shit going down in Termina, and not all of it relates to the moon. The Deku scrubs (adorable) have turned mean and suspicious because their water supply has been poisoned. An icy blast of air coming off the Gorons' mountain is freezing them, and the Goron Prince won't stop screaming because he misses his father (DEAD). A little girl is struggling to hide her hideous zombie father from the public, and Anju (the aforementioned re-cast chicken woman) is desperately looking for her missing (cursed) spouse.

Here's the thing. You can turn the Deku's swamp back into a pure, sparkling lake. You can save the girl's father. You can bring warm weather back to the Gorons and ease the screaming baby Goron with his father's memory (dad stays dead). You can even re-unite Anju with her estranged spouse after an intensive sidequest that takes up all three of the pre-apocalyptic days.

Then you have to play the Song of Time after each major event and everything goes back to exactly the way it was before Link performed heroics.

Of course, the idea is to fix every bad thing one event at a time, even if the fruits of your efforts don't stick around from time jump to time jump. Eventually you earn the right to face off against the jerk causing all the problems. Until you get there though, that Goron postman is going to keep sleeping in the rain because Link took his hotel room.

This is all kind of odd for me to admit because I don't think I've ever said, "No. I can't finish this game. It's breaking my heart." If you slum around the Third Day (Judgement Day), you get to witness a clock counting down the last five minutes of Termina's life, accompanied by some melancholy, defeated music. If you took the special pains to reunite Anju and Kafei, you get to watch them agree to die together. If didn't lift Kafei's curse, you get to watch Anju crying helplessly about the absence of her fiancee. It's win-win!

Before you tell me to try again, I'd like to say that I did. I own all fifty of the Zelda GameCube collections Nintendo released. I hardened my heart and walked boldly into Termina once again--and was shot down by chronic crashing issues.

Nintendo said: "Yeah, oops. Just have to put up with it, I guess."

So I have a glitchy copy of the only Zelda game that doesn't allow you to save at the drop of a hat. Very nice!

Related Links:

Miyamoto Says "Something Was Missing" From Zelda: Twilight Princess. We Know It, Too.
Brave New Super Mario World
Philosophy? In MY Zelda?

For Love of the Game: Sonic 2 HD

Peter Smith — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:30:00 GMT

As I've said a number of annoying times, I've never cared much for ol' Sonic the Hedgehog, even in his beloved classic form. It's a design thing — I can tell you about any number of specific places in Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Mega Man levels, but Sonic levels seem to blur into a procession of the same compositional elements over and over. If you've seen one loop-the-loop, you've seen 'em all, especially when all it takes to get through them is holding right on the d-pad.

One column in which Sonic cannot be faulted, however, is presentation. Graphics and music have always been the little blue shinbiter's strong suit. That's why this fan project — an HD remake of Sonic 2 — is cool. Probably the most "classic" game in the series, 2 here gets a loving makeover, and you can check out the results in this second tech demo of the project.

One cool feature of the engine, though, almost makes me interested in actually playing Sonic again, and that's the zoomed-out view present in this build. Have you ever noticed how in Sonic games, you're constantly, y'know, running into things that you couldn't possibly have seen coming? That's partly because the sprites are so big — the view so zoomed in. Compared to Mario and co, you're pretty much trying to play a close-up; combine that with the speed and general looseness of Sonic gameplay and you've got a recipe for frustration. But if this remake allows you to play with a zoomed-out view, you'll, A), be able to actually appreciate the architecture of the levels, instead of merely watching it rush by you; and B) you know, play a fun game. Instead of a fun-looking game. Sorry, everyone!

Related posts:
Sonic Bound: After Three Botched Reboots, Sonic the Hedgehog May Finally Get His 3D Due
Do You Hold Any Hope For Sonic Unleashed?
Trailer Review: Sonic Unleashed
Sonic Unleashed Wii: Should Dimps be trying harder?
Sonic the Hedgehog: I'm Just Not that Into You
A Long-Scorned Sonic Fanfic Writer Seeks Redemption

Previous For Love of the Games:
Quest for Glory II
Rockman 7 FC
Outcast 2
Street Fighter One
Metroid II

Oh Crap I'm Thinking Too Hard About Castlevania's Storyline Again

Nadia Oxford — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:45:00 GMT

Someone roll up a newspaper and smack me, quick.

(Harder.)

Too late.

The majority of gamers don't know enough about the Holy Bible to keep straight who fathered whom. Yeah, there was this guy and he conceived some bozo with some chick. Lather, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat until we get to Jesus somewhereabouts. Oh boy, Sunday School's over. So long.

Yet, we obsess about the lineage of our favourite video game characters. Lord knows more than one schpincter has been ruptured in an effort to trace Link's bloodline to wherever it started (Ocarina of Time. No, Minish Cap. No--).

Everyone's a little obsessive about their ancestors' original spawning grounds--I'd like to have words with whichever one of my Irish forebears decided to breed with a leprechaun to bestow upon me my towering height of five feet--so it makes sense that we'd wonder a little about game characters and the loins thereof. For instance, the "Symphony of the Night 2" trailer has me wondering about Alucard.

We know Alucard is a dhampire: a half-human half-vampire angsty hybrid mess. His human mother was mistakenly hung out to dry like a piece of laundry and his father decided the whole human race must pay. We know his bloodline is cursed and he keeps meaning to sink into a deep sleep and all that to "end" it, but he just hasn't gotten around to it, y'know?

Alucard serves as an interesting junction in the Castlevania timeline because there's still so much we don't know about him. You may or may not have played Castlevania Legends for the Game Boy; I'm guessing "not." Despite being an epic mess, it hinted that Alucard fathered Trevor Belmont with his lover, Sonia Belmont, before his first failed attempt at taking a big nap. IGA has since said "No no no" and retconned the whole Belmont "origin" with the far more exciting (Zzz) Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. The speculation was fun while it lasted. Of course, I could be thinking about this way too hard and Trevor's tortured bloodline comes from a union between Sonia and a nice farmer.

Another curious little loose end in the Castlevania again comes courtesy of Dracula's son. Eric LeCarde, a no-name brand vampire hunter who co-starred in Castlevania Bloodlines, weilds the "Alucard Spear," which is a pointy weapon of much reckoning. Is it a family heirloom? Is LeCarde a diet vampire? It's possible, since (PORTRAIT OF RUIN SPOILARZ)his daughters, Stella and Loretta, wield magic.(END SPOILAR). Magic can't be found on the ground in the Castlevania series; if someone can shout "Whee!" and throw fire around it's usually because they're descended from some magic-wielding know-it-all further up the timeline. So how did this happen? Well, if you fill in the map in Symphony of the Night, Maria does run after Alucard after he vows to submerge himself again...and graves are cold, cold places...

After all, he just has to be like, "Check out my gravity boots, yo!" and jump on the ceiling. I'd melt, too.

Related Links:

Watcha Playing: Castlevania Portrait of Ruin
When Good Developers Go Bad: Koji Igarashi
Castlevania: Cruse of the Stupid Red-Headed Kid

Lowering the Standard: Why Nintendo’s Hardcore vs. Casual Commitments Aren’t the Problem

John Constantine — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:00:00 GMT

I tend to sound overly pessimistic when talking about the Wii. I happen to love the system. I think the funky little box has quite a lot going for it and it’s given me a handful of unforgettable gaming experiences, with Wii Sports and No More Heroes chief among them. No, I’m not overly pessimistic about the Wii. I’m overly pessimistic about Nintendo. As much as I want to be excited about a new Punch-Out!, I can’t help but look at the facts: Nintendo has released more traditional, hardcore games in the Wii’s first two years than they did in the Gamecube’s first four and all of them, with the exceptions of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, have been below the gold standard of Nintendo’s internally developed software from generations past. Super Paper Mario was a vicious bore of a game, Metroid Prime 3 had none of the creative spirit of the first two, Zelda: Twilight Princess was a bloated retread in dire need of an editor, and games like Fire Emblem and Super Mario Strikers were competent, but were simply more of the same. Even after this passed July’s E3, I wasn’t disturbed by Nintendo’s lack of support for hardcore gamers. I was disturbed by the apparent lowering of standards in their software. There are many Wii games that I am very excited to play, like MadWorld, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, House of the Dead: Overkill, Oboro Muramasa, and Fragile. But none of these titles come from Nintendo.

I hate sounding like the disgruntled misanthrope. But I refuse to ask less of a development house that strove for nothing short of perfection in the past.

Related links:

WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Isn’t Working Out
Disaster: Day of Crisis Comes Out in October. Right. Sure.
E3 Day Two: Spin, Malaise, Sony’s New Clothes, and Nintendo’s True Disruption
Christmas in Nintendoland: The Tokyo Conference

The Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack - An Inside Look

Peter Smith — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

In this exclusive follow-up to our interview with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix soundtrack producers David "djpretzel" Lloyd and Larry "Liontamer" Oji, djpretzel himself gives us a breakdown of four tracks from the game:

E. Honda 'Dosu-Koi'
djpretzel

"This was the track that I set my sights on early in the process. McVaffe has had an excellent mix of this track on OCR for a long while, modeled after Madonna's song 'Music,' but Capcom weren't feeling it for in-game usage, so I decided to take a shot. My initial version was way too aggressive, and got the hundred-hand slapdown itself, but I went back to the drawing board and did something mellower, with more of an emphasis on Asian instrumentation. There's shamisen, koto, shakuhachi, AND taiko in there, so it's got the 'big four' of Japanese instruments (more or less) and is more appropriate to the sumo bath house setting."

Guile 'Combat and Service'
Big Giant Circles, Justin R. Coleman

"Jimmy Hinson, alias Big Giant Circles, put together a really kicking take on Guile's theme, which is definitely one of the classics off the soundtrack. Capcom generally dug what he was doing, but were iffy on the lead synthesizer sound, and wanted something different. Jimmy got Justin to lay down an electric guitar lead that added some rock edge to the more electronic backdrop, achieving a good blend that Capcom gave the green light."

Ken / Online Menu 'Clamato Fever'
AE, Prozax

"While Sixto Sounds did the version of Ken's stage that's actually used in the game, Capcom wanted something special just for the online menus and the title screen, since users spend a good amount of time setting up matches, checking rankings, and tweaking options. Alex Esquivel (AE) and Dan Orosz (Prozax) put together an alternate take on the Ken theme that works perfectly for this context. The first time I fired up the beta and heard it, I just smiled — they nailed it! As an interesting side note, AE learned about the game through other channels and contacted Capcom directly, and was a little surprised to be redirected to Shael, Malcos and I to coordinate his involvement. Everything worked out, though, and I'm glad Alex and Dan were included in the long lineup of OC ReMix artists."

Zangief 'Red Cyclone'
The Grammar Club

"Shael Riley's been mixing humor, VGM, rock, and anything else he cares to throw in for a long time now, and his latest project is The Grammar Club, a band that's been making waves with their album Bremelanotide. The fellows put together a rock arrangement of Zangief's theme that's unique on the soundtrack for being a little less refined and more in-your-face, New York garage style. When I think Zangief, I certainly don't think 'refined,' so this ballsier type of production worked really well."

61FPS Q&A: David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OC ReMix on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack (Part 2)

Peter Smith — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

What are some of your favorite game soundtracks? Favorite composers?
djpretzel: Yuzo Koshiro, Dave Wise, Yasunori Mitsuda, Tokuhiko Uwabo, and Koji Kondo are all amazing... Super Castlevania IV, Revenge of Shinobi, Lunar (Sega CD version!!), Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy VI , Mega Man II, and Super Mario Galaxy are my favorite game scores at the moment.

Larry Oji: Favorite soundtracks and composers tend to go hand in hand. I'm a big fan of Koji Kondo's work on the Super Mario series, Masato Nakamura's on the Sonic the Hedgehog series (Sonic 3 & Knuckles, though not his, was excellent too), Alph Lyra for the Street Fighter II series, David Wise for Donkey Kong Country and Battletoads, Kazunaka Yamane for the Double Dragon series, and Yuzo Koshiro for the Streets of Rage series. That covers a lot of the games I played as a kid. Since learning more about the history of game music, I love so much stuff now, I can't even rattle it off. But my second-favorite composer, little known in the States, is Yasuhisa "Yack" Watanabe. His stuff is a lot more known in Japan, including as a member of Taito's Zuntata group, but almost no one tries to arrange his material; it's pretty far out there, so I can understand why. Sometimes his stuff doesn't resonate with me, but he's put out some incredible compositions. Then my personal favorite is British composer Tim Follin, whose nearly two-decade career composing for games was unparalleled, as far as what I've personally enjoyed. Check out his compositions for Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Solstice, Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge and Silver Surfer. He always strove for creative techniques and cool textures with his chiptunes. Plus, his modern soundtracks like Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future and Lemmings for the PSP were equally impressive. I've been slowly plugging away at a small OC ReMix album project paying tribute to his work, so before the end of this year, Dirge for the Follin should finally be out there, lamenting the fact that he retired from the industry.

Do you prefer the old-school chiptune style, or are you more into the CD-audio present?
djpretzel: I prefer the melodies and compositional approach of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras coupled with more modern production aesthetics; in other words, I like slick production, but only when it's paired up with a great melody. Which is not to say that game composers of today aren't writing great melodies, just that the limitations of earlier consoles meant that almost every piece needed to survive on compositional strength as opposed to production values.

Larry Oji: I've got no major preference. The only bias I have is that I grew up with chiptunes, so there's going to be some nostalgia pushing me to those. But modern stuff holds up a lot better to active listening. Either way. [pauses] Was that a cop out? ... All right, let's go with modern stuff. I actually prefer the melodies that were written in the chiptune days. But modern music has the potential for great writing as well, combined with higher quality sounds. Some fans feel there's an inherent compositional quality trade-off in newer videogame music compared to the older stuff, but I believe the best of the modern stuff is simply more elusive. Besides, people tend to gloss over the fact that not every chiptune was amazing back then either.

What do you think of the recent trend towards contextual music? In old Zelda, you'd just have a melody looping for the whole time you were in a dungeon. Now, you often just have ambient effects and then an "action" motif when you approach an enemy.
djpretzel: Well, I think most good game music, even very old stuff, is still contextual on some level — it still makes sense for the environment. But more recently the focus/buzz has been on making that contextuality of a more real-time, responsive nature, as opposed to the loops you mention. In essence, this makes the experience more cinematic, with the score reacting to players' actions just like a well-cued Hollywood soundtrack would. For FMV sequences in games, obviously, this is nothing new and has been the standard for years. The challenge is in maintaining that very polished interactivity once a user's actions become unpredictable. There are different ways of accomplishing this, including triggered motifs like you mention. I think it's all very interesting and exciting, but I also think we need to take a step back once in awhile and remember that games are a different medium from movies, and that emulating them is an option, but not the only option. Who's to say that looped melodies a la Zelda and older 8-bit titles don't make complete sense for certain games or genres? Game creators are creating interactive worlds... those worlds can resemble a film experience, and if that's the goal, then responsive, interactive scores are perfect. But the true art of game creation, to me, is remembering that there aren't any limits, that conventions of all other mediums can and should be bent or broken, and thus I think too much emphasis on targeting a cinematic experience could be dangerous. In essence, I think this trend is very positive, so long as it expands the arsenal of approaches to music in games, rather than narrows it.

How about the shift from short melodies to more expanded or moodier compositions? The difference between, y'know, Zelda II's Palace theme and Ocarina of Time's Forest Temple theme?
djpretzel: This is totally natural; audio and music have progressed alongside graphics and other technical aspects of console hardware and gaming, and more ornate and varied compositions flow from those progressions. With Ocarina, you've no longer got a limited palette of bright colors on screen, you've got a fully 3D world, and it'd be odd if the music didn't match. This sometimes means the number of "hummable" tracks on a game soundtrack is reduced in favor of more ambient, atmospheric fare, but it's usually right for the game, and composers like Koji Kondo in particular can almost always hit a balance between "song" or theme tracks and more environmental, BGM stuff.

How did you meet up with Capcom on Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix?
djpretzel: OCR is mostly about individual mixes, but every once in awhile we release album projects, where artists get together and focus on a specific game, composer, etc. We've released albums for Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country and most notably Final Fantasy VII with our Voices of the Lifestream album in 2007. Shael Riley and Stephen Malcom-Howell (a.k.a. Malcos), two veteran OC ReMixers, put together an album of Super Street Fighter II Turbo mixes called Blood on the Asphalt back in 2006. Capcom found the album online and contacted Shael, who in turn referred them to me. At first we were actually suspicious of being Punk'd or something, since it was such an amazing opportunity, but once we confirmed it was legit, we obviously jumped at the chance.

The HD Remix soundtrack is based on Blood on the Asphalt, but it's not exactly the same. What are some of the changes?
Larry Oji: Firstly, I definitely need to stress that the remixers didn't do any mere drag-and-drop jobs on these. A lot of the pre-existing arrangements selected for inclusion on HD Remix were full-on, four-to-five-minute arrangements with original sections, solos and so forth, which doesn't fly in Street Fighter II. So everything's been edited down to a more standard sixty-to-ninety seconds and looped, focusing on the core of each theme to work like the old-school themes did. Dave had to handle relaying all of the desired modifications handed down by Capcom to the artists and got a variety of requests. This is where he gets music-nerdy!

djpretzel: In addition to length and formatting requirements, Capcom had some very specific feedback, and some comments that were more general in nature. In certain instances they wanted individual instruments changed out, tempo increased by a few beats per minute, or other modifications to production that were very easy for artists to implement. Other times, they were looking more for a different feel, or more subjective changes to texture, which were more challenging. We were blessed with a pretty long development cycle, so we had a lot of time to present different versions/permutations of each track and go through an iterative process.

Where are you getting the themes that aren't originally from the album? Are these all new remixes?
Larry Oji: Along with eight edits of mixes from Blood on the Asphalt, three of the seventeen character themes are modified versions of other OC ReMixes. That left six themes with all-new takes, as well as nearly all new material for the fast versions of all the character themes, character endings and other assorted themes, with everything provided by our crew of remixers. Gotta give props to José E. Felix (a.k.a. José the Bronx Rican) for coming through in a big way with nearly every ending theme besides providing both the Dee Jay and Vega themes!

What've your production duties been like on the soundtrack?
Larry Oji: I'm a detail-oriented person, more behind the scenes. Dave functioned as the lead producer and director for the soundtrack, serving as the point of contact with game producer Rey Jimenez and Capcom to keep things streamlined on the communications side. He handled the legal stuff, as well as ensuring Capcom had all of the remixers' latest work as things progressed. I handled contacting remixers that were difficult to get a hold of in order to secure some pre-existing tracks, recruited and provided critique for some of the new music, and helped keep track of smaller details with all of our personnel. Even stuff like preparing our credits list for the game and getting new track titles for all of the remixed themes, I enjoy making sure the finer things are in place at the ground level, while Dave works with the big picture. If you had told me back when I played Street Fighter II in my friend's basement that I'd be in the credits of a game in the series nearly two decades later, I wouldn't believe it. It's an honor to help coordinate something that will always be a part of a historic franchise, especially Street Fighter, the one that truly pulled me into game music beyond being a casual fan.

djpretzel: Working with Capcom was truly awesome. We brought our fandom — the way we express ourselves through mixing/arrangement — full circle, right back to a commercial product that is itself a remix of an absolutely classic game... it's very meta, when you think about it. I think it's something that could only have happened in a post-internet environment, with a company that was groovy enough to realize their fans could play a meaningful role. Mods, user-generated content, etc. have been around awhile, but I think there's often an artificial wall — "this is the official content, this is the fan stuff" — that segregates things. This project tears down that wall, at least for game music, and integrates the two, without emphasizing the distinction. I think that's a fantastic precedent to be setting, and I'm proud OverClocked ReMix was involved!

Click here for Part 1! And check back tomorrow for a detailed look at the four all-new themes on the SSF2THD soundtrack!

61FPS Q&A: David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OC ReMix on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack (Part 1)

Peter Smith — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Here at 61FPS, we couldn't be more excited about the upcoming Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. So it's with great pleasure that we present our in-depth Q&A with David "djpretzel" Lloyd and Larry "Liontamer" Oji, of the definitive game-music remix site, OC ReMix. In a deliciously fan-friendly turn of events, OC ReMix was tapped to produce the music for SSF2THD — and we've got the inside scoop on this glorious reimagining of one of the greatest game soundtracks ever. We also took the opportunity to chat with these gurus on a wide range of game-music-related topics. Enjoy!

David, can you tell us about founding OC ReMix?
David W. Lloyd (djpretzel): Way back in 1999, I was making a 3D comic strip dedicated to the emulation scene called "OverClocked" — a few episodes were actually pretty funny, and it played a part in popularizing the whole "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" craze, but it was also a way for me to get better at Photoshop and 3D Studio MAX. I wanted something I could work on for music as well, to get better at composing, arranging and producing; I had this idea to do videogame arrangements of my own, but also to open it up to others. At the time, there were sites which were specific to Commodore 64 games, and which focused on techno mixes, but nothing that was more open-ended. I wanted a website that encouraged jazz, classical, rap, rock and anything else, in addition to electronica genres, and which allowed arrangements from computer games, console games, handheld games and arcade games alike. There was nothing like that in existence, so I figured I'd start something myself. "OverClocked ReMix" started as a side-project to "OverClocked" the comic strip, but eventually became a hundred times bigger. In the early days, I was like a door-to-door salesman, emailing people asking for their permission to post their mixes on the site, but once it grew large enough, people started sending us stuff. Eventually there were so many submissions that we needed to create a judges panel and more official guidelines/standards, which really helped clarify what we're all about — interpretive arrangements, not just the original with drum loops on top. The rest, as they say, is history!

Larry, how did you get involved with the OC ReMix community?
Larry Oji (Liontamer): I love hearing stories on how people have found the site, and I share mine when I can in order to encourage people to check out everything OCR has. I did college radio at Emory University 's WMRE in Atlanta, where I loved playing video game music on my shows alongside mainstream music, mostly Britpop stuff. A friend of mind as well as a casual gamer and fellow DJ, Matt Kertz, saw that I played videogame music and recommended that I check out what was then remix.overclocked.org in early 2002. That was my first exposure to the site. The site was only two years old at the time and had more than 500 mixes by that point; I downloaded about thirty, sticking only with the few games I grew up with, and was extremely happy. But I didn't follow the site closely or try anything from games I had no history with, which was a huge mistake.

Luckily for me, I told my best friend Joe Mauri about the site and he downloaded everything OC ReMix had. If he hadn't done that, I wouldn't be where I am today. That summer, I sat down at his computer, listened to all the free remixes one by one over three days, and was simply amazed at how creative everything was. Even the games I wasn't familiar with had some amazing themes that were being remixed, and I ended up doing the research and downloading chiptunes of the original tracks to better understand what inspired the remixes. So it was a great crash course in the history of videogame music, and from that point on I was hooked. I shifted my radio show's format to videogame music exclusively, and volunteered for the site by filling in the database with info on remixers, composers and songs. I also grew as a music critic to the point where I was invited to join the site's judges panel in July 2004, where I help evaluate submitted material. Listening to music and spreading the word on OCR is one of the most enjoyable jobs I can think of.

Let's talk about game music in general. What got you into game music?
djpretzel: My earliest VGM memory would be the happy little tunes in Smurfs for the Colecovision and Dream House for the C64. The use of the Peter Gunn theme in Spy Hunter, also for the C64, was pretty classic as well. But it was really the Sega Master System that got me hooked — I loved the music from Alex Kidd, Shinobi and Space Harrier so much that I recorded the output of the console to tape and, sadly, did my own lame seven-year-old's version of DJing between tracks. To the best of my knowledge, those tapes are long gone, which I'm more than okay with from a human-dignity perspective, but they nevertheless represented my first steps into actually interacting with VGM.

Larry Oji: My earliest days of gaming were with the NES with a tiny bit of Master System. The SNES and Sega Genesis came a little later, so all of those systems planted the seeds. I didn't own too many titles, but I loved a lot of the soundtracks I heard. Super Mario Bros. 3 was the epitome of an excellent game and Koji Kondo's music from it was no exception. The first Donkey Kong Country on the SNES was amazing to me as well, and I loved the Streets of Rage and Sonic the Hedgehog series on the Genesis side. I can't forget Street Fighter II either. That was first in a long line of Street Fighter games that stuck with me, even when I didn't realize how immersed in game music I'd be down the line. It goes without saying, but the best games truly have a synergy going on between the gameplay and soundtrack that provides the total package.

What do you love about game music?
Larry Oji: The music from the games I grew up with had some of the best melodies and hooks imaginable. And the tunes had such range in terms of genres. As a kid, I obviously didn't think about it on a scholarly level, but I subconsciously latched onto the depth that videogame music possessed. Think about the range when you compare the soundtracks of Super Mario Bros. to Double Dragon to Road Rash. The 16-bit era, especially the SNES, was a big step up in realizing game music's potential, thanks to the wider array of sounds and more complex textures. The best composers really didn't put those extra resources to waste. The thing I love most is that game music is a medium and not a genre; game music can, and often does, involve any and all genres, so you get a flavor for all sorts of styles if you keep your ears and mind open. The fact that many game themes are malleable and can be reinterpreted makes me love game music that much more. Every time I hear an OC ReMixer take a theme and transform it into something fresh that I wouldn't expect, it validates being a fan of the medium.

djpretzel: ...what he said. It's worth mentioning that I'm a big fan of soundtracks in general — film, television, anime, etc. — and that contextual music that's part of a larger work always has a certain appeal for me. With almost all other mediums, though, it's a linear, non-interactive experience, so you only hear certain themes once or twice. With game music, because it's interactive, and because you can end up hearing the same piece ad infinitum, I think there's a much stronger mental association between the music and what it represents. A classic example for me would be the first town theme from Lunar for the Sega CD — every time I hear it, I can envision the town layout in great detail and feel like I'm there. You can get that type of strong association with film scores and even non-soundtrack material, sure, but I find it happens more often with VGM. This of course requires that you've actually played the game the music is from, though, which isn't necessary at all just to enjoy the music at face value!

Click here for Part 2!

Where Is Landstalker PSP?

John Constantine — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

The Zelda-clone, once a staple of console gaming, is a dying breed. It’s been replaced by story-centric, puzzle-free action RPGs like Kingdom Hearts and linear action-platformers a la Tomb Raider and Uncharted. The recently resurrected Okami might be the form’s swansong, a final tribute to the halcyon days of Golden Axe Warrior, Neutopia, and Beyond Oasis. While most clones have been base imitations, Quintet’s Heaven and Earth Trilogy and Climax Entertainment’s loosely connected series of games beginning with Landstalker were notable variations on Zelda’s exploration and puzzle tropes. Landstalker and its semi-sequels Lady Stalker (far less creepy than it sounds), Alundra (developed by ex-Climax-ers Matrix Software), and Time Stalkers (a traditional turn-based RPG instead of action) were characterized by difficult platforming in addition to swordplay.

You see games made by Climax Entertainment as often as you see Zelda-clones nowadays. They have released only two titles since 2000, 2005’s Kingdom of Paradise on PSP (a middling martial-arts action RPG) and the just released Steal Princess on DS. Steal Princess, at first blush, looks like a return to Landstalker’s isometric platforming (albeit uglier.) It’s distressing to see their output reduced to a trickle, especially since they announced a complete remake Landstalker for the PSP back in 2005 and, so far, have yet to deliver it. The art at the top of this post, dug up by Game Kult and brought to us by Insert Credit, is the first time anyone’s seen anything related to the remake in over two years. It’s never been officially cancelled, though, so here’s hoping that Climax turns their attention back to Landstalker now that Steal Princess has shipped in Japan. The world could use a decent Zelda-clone now that Link’s busy catering to the casual.

This video, a demonstration of Landstalker PSP’s new 3D environments, is the only game media ever shown for the game. Sadness.

More Where Is?:

Joe Madureira
Disaster: Day of Crisis
Yu Suzuki
The City of Metronome
New Indiana Jones
Doug TenNapel
Victor Ireland

Related links:

OST: Soul Blazer

Yahtzee On E3: Are We Gaming in an Age of Uncreativity?

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:54:00 GMT

Like clockwork, the latest Zero Punctuation showed up on Wednesday afternoon. I think the gaming world shall go mad if Yahtzee misses a week. How are we ever to know that it's Wednesday?

Australia's grumpiest gamer weighed in on this year's E3 with a pretty hilarious ejaculation(!) of mild outrage: seeing as E3 2008 was as exciting as discount hamburger, Yahtzee had the right to punch the event in the solar plexus. He did bring up one point I've been thinking about: with the surge of sequels we've been seeing for established franchises, it almost seems as if no one's had an original game idea for a long time. Yahtzee makes mention of crazy old NES games that starred French chefs "riding on stickbugs and armed with guns that shot velociraptors."

It's a common complaint and it seems as if we're hearing it more than ever these days. It's not like there's reason to dismiss it as hyperbole, either. When the most unusual title at a big name trade show is a Mega Man title, it's time to descend into Hell and thaw out poor Satan.

I haven't decided if I'm totally in agreement with Yahtzee. I remember the NES very well, especially my family's weekend trips to rent games. My two brothers and I took turns with the weekly rentals. Pity the fool who picked up a second-rate platformer game because s/he wasn't renting anything else for three weeks. I quickly learned how not to become a victim. It was a painful journey full of disappointment, floaty controls and terrible tinny music because boy howdy, there was a lot of crap on the shelves of those Mom n Pop video stores.

I will admit that developers were more eager to try new ideas in gaming's infancy. Imagine if Miyamoto announced that he was turning the Zelda series into a sidescroller in this fertile age of fandom and Internet rage. The fandom popped a collective hernia when Link returned to his cartoon roots on the Gamecube--even though the gameplay for Wind Waker was not changed dramatically from Ocarina of Time.

We have comfortable formulas now and developers aren't eager to fix what ain't broke. Still, I don't believe gaming will stagnate. Yahtzee himself admits that Mirror's Edge looks fantastic and Fat Princess looks like a riot, overblown controversy aside.

If I can play a Mario Galaxy in between a batch of solid titles, I'm happy. Yeah, don't call on me to lead a rebellion against a corrupt Government or anything. I'll disappoint you like crazy.

Related Links:

Yahtzee and the Webcomics Plague
Yahtzee Rolls With the Big Dogs, Takes the Piss Out of GTA4
Sweaty, Oily Barbarian Men Are Waiting For Your Purchase

For Love of the Game: Zelda Jams Re-appropriated

John Constantine — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

I’m not even sure what you classify this as: are they just fan remixes? Fan-fiction remixes? I just don’t know! NeoGAFfer cicerone posted up this bizarre nugget of internet detritus yesterday and, for the nostalgically inclined and Nintendo fanatic alike, it’s quite a treat. These are Koji Kondo’s songs from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time re-orchestrated using the instrumentation from Kirby, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Country, Momotaro Dentetsu, and Mario Galaxy. Not only that, but they’re also re-imagined to suit the tone of those games as well.

Some folks plain have too much time on their hands. Good thing they spend it being awesome.

More For Love of the Game:

Rockman 7 FC
Outcast 2 (sorta)
Street Fighter One
Metroid II Remakes

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone

John Constantine — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

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.

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 3

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:45:00 GMT

Sonic the Hedgehog - Green Hill Zone

By the time the original Sonic the Hedgehog came out, Super Mario World had been out for six months in Japan. In almost every way, Mario had the edge on Sonic — more levels, more power-ups, more variety, more gaming. But there was one thing you couldn't take away from Sonic, and that was the sheer dazzle of starting up the game and entering Green Hill Zone. To this day, Green Hill Zone looks spectacular, with its sparkling ocean, lush vegetation and abstract geometry — not to mention Masato Nakamura's unforgettable music. Mario had a lot to offer, but in terms of pure physicality, most of Dinosaur Land seems awfully drab next to Green Hill Zone. (Plus, it was 1991 — "zones" were just cooler than "lands", for Chrissakes.) — PS

Shadow of the Colossus - Valus

Shadow of the Colossus’s opening moments are less mysterious, and therefore less grand, than the opening moments of Ico. As players, we are given exposition and context through narration (however vague it may be) and the game’s protagonist Wander states a clear goal while an evil god tells him how to achieve it. This is a far cry from the confounding and almost entirely silent internment of a horned boy in a decaying castle. But Shadow of the Colossus’ first level, toppling the colossus Valus, is a singular moment in gaming history. Valus stands at one end of an enclosed valley opposite you and, at first, it doesn’t seem that big. Then you run towards it, feeling the ground shake through your controller, the music swells, and you jump on its enormous leg, searching for a handhold. It is, in the truest sense of the word, epic. Even God of War 1 and 2’s opening battles against the hydra and the Colossus of Rhodes seem miniscule in comparison. — JC

Metroid Prime - Space Pirate Frigate

To fully appreciate the beginning of Metroid Prime, play through the beginning of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Both openings teach you how to play the game, but Twilight Princess teaches you like you're in the remedial class, instead of someone who (knowing Nintendo's fan base) probably has a doctorate in Zelda. It takes hours of cat-placating, monkey-placating and goat-herding to even get a sword. Prime takes it easy on you, but you never feel condescended to. Its tutorials are thoroughly skippable; expert players can finish the Space Pirate Frigate in five minutes flat. But beyond that, it's a beautiful, self-contained introduction to the game's spooky atmosphere. Every console Zelda after A Link to the Past has started you out in a village full of whiners you have to coddle before you get to adventure. Prime throws you into a dark, eerie spacecraft where something horrible has happened. Get in and get out before its orbit decays and you die. Chills. — PS

Half-Life 2 – City 17

“Wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up, and smell the ashes.” As Gordon Freeman, your journey through the bleak streets of City 17 begins a mere sixty seconds after the game’s title has faded to black. The mundane environment tells you everything you need to know about how life works in a world where civilization has crumbled; tired and scared citizens mutter in the corners of a train terminal, Combine soldiers threaten and abuse, and rare familiar faces urge you to escape immediately. Half-Life’s greatest success has always been keeping the player in constant control of the action while still herding them along a set path. Half-Life 2’s opening level, Freeman’s arrival in City 17 and his flight from the Combine across the city’s rooftops, engages and informs in equal measure while providing an immediate thrill through play. It’s remarkable that a first-person shooter’s most memorable level is its first, a level where not a single shot is fired. — JC

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2

Previous Top Tens:
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 2

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:30:00 GMT

Metal Gear Solid 2 – The U.S.S. Discovery

The opening level of Metal Gear Solid 2 is the finest Metal Gear game ever made in-and-of itself. Forget Hideo Kojima’s cinematic pretensions for just a moment and think about the raw play available in this self-contained prologue scenario. The tools of MGS’ trade may not be available to Snake in their totality here, but every inch of the tanker acts as a playground for the series' most fundamental mechanics. You can sneak through without ever being seen or you can kill every Russian soldier you come across. There is an expertly paced boss fight. There is skin-mag related humor. It’s all here. Now layer Kojima’s cinematic pretensions back on top of all that considering they are at their best (read: most restrained) here and you have a beginning that is, arguably, superior to anything the follows or precedes it in the entire series. — JC

Mega Man X - Awakening Road

This is not your father's Mega Man, says the opening stage of Mega Man X. Or it would, if it had a voice — but instead, it's got a brutal snare roll leading into a heavy rock instrumental. It's got a crumbling highway, complete with fleeing commuters (the latter of which ground the action in a more inhabited world than the NES Mega Man games ever featured.) And it ends with X almost getting scrapped by a mech-riding Boba Fett ripoff. Whatever our love for the classic Mega Man series, it never had this kind of drama. — PS

Einhander – Imperial Capital

Shoot ‘em ups, both vertical and horizontal, are usually gradual experiences. Gradius set the standard: an opening level that acclimates you to both the game’s challenge and its setting, you are the aggressor, going into a place to reach its center where defenses will be strongest. Also, excluding rare exceptions like 1942, shmups are fairly fanciful in scenario. More often than not, you’re fighting aliens, robots, monsters, etc. Einhander doesn’t start slow. Your ship flies into the middle of a bustling metropolis, literally crashing through neon billboards before racing through its ruined foundation. It is a human place and you are fleeing it, your first enemies police in pursuit. There’s a lot about Einhander that’s memorable, from Kenichiro Fukui’s techno soundtrack to its genius weapons system. But nothing sticks with you like the Imperial Capital. — JC

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 3

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 1

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:15:00 GMT

First impressions are important, in videogames as they are in life. The first moments you spend with any art can define your experience of it. They compel you to dig deeper, to more carefully consider the work or the hand that crafted it. Other times, they can be so startling that everything that follows is diminished. This week, 61 Frames Per Second looks at the ten greatest opening levels in gaming history. Stick with us past the first one though. They’re all great. — John Constantine

Prince of Persia 2 - Rooftop Chase

The original Prince of Persia was a unique and wonderful game, but it wasn't much for setting. Half the game takes place in a monochromatic dungeon, and the other in a monochromatic palace. 2 quickly makes up for it; about to be executed by the Vizier's goons, the Prince leaps through a window, and from there it's up to you to guide him across the palace rooftops, into the marketplace below, down a long pier, finally leaping into the hold of a departing merchant ship — all with those guards on your tail. The stage is a real nail-biter, and all the more memorable because the rest of the game is comparatively subdued. — Peter Smith

Strider – Saint Petersburg

I won’t lie. There was a time that I watched that glider fly low over terrible Slavic church spires to a brief fanfare of synthetic horns and I believed, for a moment, that I would never leave Eurasia alive. Then I realized that Strider Hiryu’s sword was practically the length of the screen and it could literally make people explode. Strider, as a game, has not aged well in the past twenty years; the control is wonky, you can’t really tell when you’re even hitting something, and there are times when stuff in its stages blows up for seemingly no reason. But that first level remains an incredible spectacle, coated in color and character, a place where robot tigers will scale towers and entire Russian parliaments will turn into hammer-and-sickle wielding robot dragons. Fighting robot apes and hordes of half-naked amazons a few levels later just seems pedestrian after that. — John Constantine

Final Fantasy VII - Assault on Mako Reactor #1

Presumably your retinas have just detached as a result of your vigorous eye-rolling. Re-attach those suckers and hear me out here: no matter how bloated, overrated and over-fanboyed Final Fantasy VII might be in retrospect, its opening is masterful. Up until that game, RPGs never started fast. You loaded up your neophyte warriors with whatever cloth armor and rusty dinner knives you could afford on your starting wage of ten gold pieces, and then you sent them out to the local forest to get their asses handed to them by killer squirrels until they could upgrade to some new silverware. Final Fantasy VI was a step in the right direction, with its haunting approach to a frozen, gloomy northern town. But VII's opening is still a dramatic highlight of the series, segueing from a lyrical vision of a flower girl in the streets, to a full view of a vast futuristic city, to a tense assault on a huge power reactor, all to the strains of the Blade Runner-esque suite that is Nobuo Uematsu's immortal "Opening/Bombing Mission." Put that jackass with the Sephiroth tattoo out of your mind, and take a minute to appreciate the scope and excitement of this sequence. — PS

Click here for Part 2
Click here for Part 3

The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History, Part 3

Peter Smith — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:32:00 GMT

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker — Dragon Roost Cavern

Generally speaking, I have as much disdain for the 3D Zelda games as I have love for their 2D predecessors. With some exceptions, they're tedious slogs of fetch questing, hand holding, and unskippable, unbearably patronizing prattle. ("You got a key! You can use it to open a door!") This subject tends to be a bone of contention between me and my esteemed colleague here at 61FPS, but one thing I have to concede to him is that the dungeon design in these games is usually pretty swell. For all of Wind Waker's faults, it has the virtue of being visually gorgeous, which is why its fire dungeon, Dragon Roost Cavern, beats out the dreary Fire Temple from Ocarina of Time. (Don't even get me started on Twilight Princess.) The dungeon's architecture and mood are admirably cohesive, too — you can almost feel the breezy air outside the volcano give way to a brutal dry heat within. And the boss is — no argument here — spectacular. You win this round, 3D Zelda. . . grumble, grumble. . . — PS

Silent Hill 2 — The Lakeview Hotel

Note: Spoilers. Not kidding.

The fire that destroys James and Mary Sunderland's "special place", the Lakeview Hotel, in Silent Hill 2 is seen for only the brief minutes in this clip. But that fire, burning between journeys through the hotel, pristine but abandoned, and later, charred and desiccated, is the conceptual core of Silent Hill 2's psychological quest for reconciliation. The game's world is not so much a tangible place but a physical manifestation of James Sunderland's trauma and guilt over euthanizing his cancer-stricken wife. This fire level, as it were, provides not only the compelling dual-environment the series is known for, but a startling visual metaphor to simultaneously represent the protagonist's inability to forgive himself and a purifying destruction on his road to peace. "It's hot," says James to Angela — who is, possibly, another facet of James' psyche — on the staircase. Her haunting reply: "You see it too. For me, it's always like this." James Sunderland burns, and you, his guide, burn with him in the Lakeview Hotel. — JC

Final Fantasy VI — The Burning House

Fire is omnipresent in role-playing games. Maybe it's the fantasist's fetish for elemental powers, but you can't spit without hitting something that casts fire spells, wields a flaming sword, is a fire demon, or by way of some curse or malady, happens to be on fire. For years, RPG fire environments tended towards volcanoes, towns burnt to the ground by angry villains, or caves of salamanders. Final Fantasy VI was one of the first RPGs to feature more expansive, scripted narrative scenarios — one of which used fire to create drama and urgency. In the middle of the night, your characters are woken to save a young girl from a burning house. The fire itself is alive, eating the house and taking the form of maniacally grinning jack-o-lantern bombs. The spectacle doesn't look like much fifteen years after it was made; the fire creatures are little more than orange blobs, the house is plain, and the flames licking the sides of the wall don't seem particularly threatening. But the scene itself subverts expectation and demands strategic gameplay. It's a perfect storm of aesthetics and mechanics, story and setting. — JC

Thunderforce III — Gorgon

For a shmup fire level, we could've gone with the opening area of Gradius II, or the impressive Stage 5 of Axelay. But true diehards know there's only one contender: the explosive Gorgon stage of cult Genesis shooter Thunderforce III. With an energizing soundtrack of catchy J-rock, and a dazzling wall of animated flame in the background, Gorgon throws the works at you as soon as you come in the door. Meteors, fireballs and plumes of lava — the stage is a pyrotechnic extravaganza and a showoffy highlight of this unsung classic. If you really want to admire Thunderforce III's design, revel in Gorgon's over-the-top spectacle, then proceed to the water stage, Seiren, and note how, without stepping down the difficulty, it suggests a vast, oceanic calm. But that's a subject for another list. — PS

Click here for Part 1.
Click here for Part 2.

What'd we miss? Tell us in the comments section.

Whatcha Playing: Keeping the Beat, Drum Master Style

John Constantine — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Written by Derrick Sanskrit

This hip urban lifestyle is killing me. Even though I walk a couple miles each day going to and from various places, I spend at least three hours a day sitting in place on trains as they scuttle my person between points A and R. Three hours! I'd probably go crazy or fall asleep and get mugged if it weren't for portable games. The problem is carrying games that can hold my interest for an extended period of time. Almost all of the most compelling DS games have little to no replay value (the Ace Attorney series, Hotel Dusk: Room 215) and many of the other better games require such precise stylus control that a simple jostle of the train car can ruin the entire experience (Elite Beat Agents, Zelda: Phantom Hourglass). What am I supposed to play?

Thanks to importers and the region-free DS, I have found my answer: Taiko no Tatsujin DS: Touch de Dokodon!, aka "Taiko Drum Master DS". It keeps all the familiar elements of the popular arcade and home console Taiko Drum Master games (J-pop and classical songs play, cute cartoon characters dance, you beat the shit out of a big-ass drum) and makes it portable. Is there a story? Damned if I know, I just know that I get a more visceral thrill out of pounding a cartoon drum than I do shooting an AK-47 at Nazis.

If I'm waiting at the station, it's fun to rest the DS in my lap and pull out the twin styli (included with the game) to tap out beats on the touch screen. When the train's in motion and I'm shoulder-to-shoulder with disgruntled strangers, I switch to the buttons (face buttons for the drum skin, shoulders for the drum edge). It takes some getting used to the two control schemes, but it’s still a very satisfying, if mindless, experience. For all I know, all these J-Pop songs could be about sodomy, but as long as I don't understand the words and I can dress my cartoon drum up as a punk rocker, circus clown, geisha, or Santa Claus, I'm going to keep my headphones on and a smile on my face, continuing to freak out the old lady in the opposite seat.

Whatcha Playing: BS Zelda

Peter Smith — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Let's say, hypothetically, it's Monday evening and you wake up at midnight after passing out on the couch for a couple hours. You're too restless, headachy, drunk and sexually frustrated to go back to sleep. Hypothetically. And you've beaten The Legend of Zelda so many times in the past month, in an attempt to push your completion time under fifty minutes (final score: 49:58.13) that it doesn't have much to offer in the way of comforting distraction.

For a cosy mix of the familiar and new, do what I did and start up BS Zelda no Densetsu, the Zelda remake (or remix, more accurately) released in 1995 for Nintendo's Japan-only SNES-based modem system, the Satellaview. In its original incarnation, BS Zelda was played in four weekly "episodes"; you had to be in front of your TV at the right time to play it. Periodically, the game would pause and play narration offering tips. At certain set times, you'd get a special effect — a fairy would appear, all the enemies on the screen would freeze or die, your sword would be temporarily powered up.

The unique system made BS Zelda unplayable after its initial run, but in recent years, clever hackers have patched the game to remove some of its quirks. So basically what you get is a smaller, graphically tarted-up version of Zelda 1 with completely new maps. It's as delightful as its hallowed source game. I also should tip my hat to the sound effects. The original Zelda's sounds were a huge part of the fun; they helped make it extremely satisfying to fire your sword-laser-thing, throw a boomerang, or vaporize a roaming Darknut. BS Zelda's sounds are different and equally delicious. And as a whole, the game is sure to soothe your alcohol-roasted neurons.