I’m a self-proclaimed Mega Man fan (my first post was about a specific level in Mega Man 2 (1988), after all), and I think that stems mostly from the simplicity of action that the game provides. Move, jump, shoot, the occasional slide or simple vehicle segment—that pretty much covers the entire control set of the series (please note that I am going to be restricting these thoughts to the main numbered titles, and also please note that I have sampled them all but have also not completed them all), with the obvious and brilliant variations on what you can actually shoot and when, and why. A simple tool set, amidst an incredibly challenging and ever-changing environment, multiplied with the semi non-linear fashion with which you can tackle those environments and use your tool set as it becomes more varied, equals fantastic game design. I played Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3 (1990) to death when they were released, and even backtracked to the first game, just because I enjoyed the formula so much. 

But I’m not here to wax nostalgic about those games or the series in general. There is enough material out in the world already to do it for me. What I wanted to write about is actually my experience with the newest game, Mega Man 9 (2008), and, more importantly, the way in which I interacted with it—specifically, the way that I related to the game world through the controller I had in my hands.

In playing MM9 on Wii (mostly due to the fact that I would get a pure, non-blurry video approximation of the 8-bit visual style the game is intentionally trying to evoke), I had a few controller options. I naturally gravitated towards the Classic Controller, because, hey, it’s “classic,” right? It would have the right “feel” to it, have an appropriately sized directional pad, and have the bulk and weight that would remind me of the original heftiness of the original NES pad that I wrapped my little hands around when playing the first games. However, something happened during the course of a few levels: I wasn’t doing very well, and realized that it wasn’t so much because of the difficulty of the levels or any other sort of built-in trickery (but trust me, I experienced a LOT of that, like everyone else who is quickly humiliated by the sheer brutality of the enemy and level design), but rather because I wasn’t operating the game quite right. My right thumb wasn’t properly aligned against the shoot and jump buttons, so my button presses required slightly more movement and exertion on my part than the old NES days, when the A and B buttons were lined up horizontally, and I could just lay my thumb parallel across them and rock it back and forth. The buttons on the Classic Controller have a diagonal layout akin to the SNES pad, so my thumb has to be perpendicular to the buttons instead of parallel in order for me to lay it across both simultaneously. In short, I just couldn’t shake that muscle memory that was built into my hands from all those hours playing Mega Man games as a kid. And there’s no doubt in my mind that the retro-minded style of the gameplay actually reinforced that connection between the controls of the game and myself, the player, enabling those controls.

It reminded me of the phenomenology branch of cinema studies, pioneered by media theorist and author Vivian Sobchack, who argues that we do have an actual physical investment in and interaction with the different media that we take in as an audience. In Sobchack’s book Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (2004, University of California Press) she offers an excellent example by describing how we can invariably “feel” language through the resistance of our writing utensil on the paper when we write letters to form words; thus, an “l” definitely has a different feel to it than an “a,” dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s evoke a kind of self-aware finality to our statements, and so on. Perhaps, then, we’re able to interact within our game worlds on a much more involved level than we may be inclined to think, as my frustration with not being able to lay my thumb down across two buttons at the same time means that I was, essentially, not becoming Mega Man (or at least playing that role) in the manner that I was used to before. I couldn’t make that crucial invested jump into the game’s reality, since there was a literal block with my own muscle memory. And we can go back 18 or 19 years since I sat down and played a Mega Man game from start to finish properly, so that is some true staying power.

Eventually, after not being able to shake this detachment from the game, I changed my control setup to having the remote turned sideways, and of course, this is a much better way for me to play MM9, since I can now lay my thumb sideways across the 1 and 2 buttons and deploy my “rock-thumb” technique of being able to switch from jumping to shooting easily without changing my relative hand position.

As controllers have gotten more advanced and require more extensive and involved physical movement (going from simple “on/off” buttons to analog sticks to analog buttons to motion-sensing), it’s interesting how the increased human interaction doesn’t necessarily result in an equally enhanced immersion into the game itself. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really pretend that I’m bowling in a bowling alley when I play Wii Sports (2006) any more than I’m pretending to be a blue mechanical robot blasting my way through a mad scientist’s fortress in Mega Man 2. I’m just going through the motions in a less abstract manner. Of course, comparing an evening at the bowling alley with a robotic battle from the future isn’t very fair, as abstractions and stretches of the imagination HAVE to be made just for a science fiction series like Mega Man to even be possible in the first place. My point is that I can just as easily escape into that world using two buttons and a cross-pad as I can recreate with surprising accuracy the experience of sitting around waiting for a chance to swing my arm and be disappointed that bowling provides.

If we consider the controller as our link into the virtual world, the manner with which we can “feel” our video games and create distinct phenomenological networks of our own, then every small detail of that link is going to have some sort of conscious or sub-conscious impact, whether it’s “seeing how it feels to feel what we see,” as Nintendo of America PR proclaimed when rumble technology was first revealed, or 1:1 motion sensitivity, or dual analog sticks, or, in the case of myself, having two buttons line up side-by-side. There can be no interactivity without action, and in the case of electronic games, our action must include a physical component of some sort; there’s no way around it (yet). So the controller you hold and the way you hold it may have more implications on your overall experience and enjoyment with a game than you may think at first. At least, that’s what I came to realize during the first dozen lives or so that I lost in Mega Man 9.

The next dozen? That was entirely my fault.

Links:
Kotaku article on Daniel Lopez’s Controller Evolution schematic
Video Game Controller Family Tree
The Quixotic Engineer’s Brief History of A and B
Great Brainy Gamer post on the hand/controller link
Vivian Sobchack piece on cinematic phenomenology

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Posted by Kurt Shulenberger on February 10th, 2009 :: Filed under Features
Tags :: Cinema Studies, Interactivity, Mega Man, NES, Wii
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