There was a time (as I’m sure was the case in many gamers’ lives) when I was forced to decide which hardware system to purchase or receive as a gift for the holidays. As a kid growing up in the late ’80s/early ’90s, it was a no-brainer: Nintendo systems were part of the zeitgeist in American popular culture, so there was almost no way to NOT want an NES or SNES (with due respect to Sega fans, who I know are plentiful in number). Those were the systems I received for my 6th birthday and Christmas 1991, respectively. And while my love for Nintendo proved to be a strong bond (I purchased every hardware system Nintendo has produced since then, with the notable exception of the Virtual Boy since it physically hurt my eyes when I tried out a demo station at a Toys R Us), there was the consumerist zealot inside of me, gently prodding along my envious desire to own a Genesis, a GameGear, a PC (our family computer was a Macintosh, and while Shufflepuck Cafe (1989) and Myst were great, how was I going to play Half-Life and Planescape Torment on that?), a Playstation, etc., etc., even though I knew there was no real way to rationalize and condense such extravagance into a blunt request that my parents could stomach. They were of the mindset that one system per cycle was enough, a perfectly cogent argument and one that even  trickled into my sub-conscious and waylaid me from buying any other hardware on top of the one Nintendo system per generation, although with enough elbow grease I could definitely have worked and saved up enough to afford another system every few years or so.

It was the Summer of 2004 in which I finally plunged into the depths of cross-platform hardware ownership. I had just graduated college and wanted to celebrate…SOMEHOW. I wandered into a Best Buy with the sole intent of picking up a copy of Mega Man Anniversary Collection (2004) for GameCube (yes, THAT one) and somehow managed to walk out of there with a PS2 and a copy of GTA: Vice City (in addition to MMAC for GameCube, I’m sorry to say). I remember just being proud that I had really earned the privilege of owning multiple systems—and rivals to boot! Believe me, being a multiple system owner during a single cycle changes your perspective on things. When you see that two competing platforms can occupy, thrive and then eventually wither and gather dust within the same space on your shelf, you become more aware of their materiality than any consumer report and sales chart can hope to illustrate for you.

This cycle (or generation, or permutation, or however you want to classify it) is particularly different and painful for a cantankerous consumer like myself. The market seems to be divisive between the so-called “core” gamers (oh, how I do hate that word, along with other token game journalism signifiers like “mechanic” that are so broad and nebulous they end up diluting their own meanings completely) and the “casual” audience (”casual” meaning recreation I guess, but…EVERYBODY plays games as a recreation, so what is the point of this word).

(I have to interrupt myself and apologize for my frequent use of parentheticals.)

However, the idea of the multi-platform game and, I think it is safe to say, “parsed down” list of hardware one chooses from is actually resulting in a hobby that’s pretty simple to understand and make pat buying decisions about. A triple-A title that comes out from a third-party publisher is, with a high degree of probability, going to come out for whatever computer box you happen to have in your possession at this very moment. Those that don’t, well, that list isn’t as big as it could be, so either you have the liquidity to pay for these “exclusives” (which encompasses the game and the hardware you need to play it with) or you don’t. We can apply digital distribution to this equation as well.

Here’s a couple formulas which should help put things into perspective:*

An Exclusive purchase is the exclusive Game plus the Hardware needed to play it.

A “normal” Game purchase requires the system but without any Exclusivity factor attached to it.

The purchaser Interest in buying a hardware system is equal to the cost of the system itself, divided by the attached exclusives you want to play for it, minus any multi-platform games that you can get for the current system that you own, which therefore render them superfluous.

“I” MUST be greater than “G”, or the result is negative—or “DF,” which in this case is defined as “Damn Fool.”

I weighed these quick and dirty equations last October when LittleBigPlanet and Valkyria Chronicles came out in rapid fire succession, and I made the somewhat impulsive decision to buy a PS3, figuring that my “I” values juuuuust edged out my G values (in this case, G equals an Xbox360 and Wii).

So, am I proud to be the owner of every console system in this current cycle? No, no, I can’t say that I am. Actually, I have to be SOMEWHAT proud, or else why would I spout meaningless and technically incorrect mathematical formulas and parentheticals—and my word, there are so many parentheticals I’m resorting to em dashes now—on this topic? But really, considering the pile of unplayed, unopened games in my library (and they go back YEARS, folks), the stark realization that my amount of free time has been reduced by about 300% since I bought this stuff, and the rising expenses that are going to accompany the tattered U.S. economy for what will probably be quite some time longer, I think shame is a more appropriate characterization.

But not remorse.

*Equations not proofed.

Links:
Write your own meaningless equations!
Shufflepuck Cafe Redux

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Posted by Kurt Shulenberger on February 17th, 2009 :: Posts :: Tags : Gamecube, LittleBigPlanet, Mega Man, NES, Nintendo, PS2, PS3, SNES, Valkyria Chronicles, Wii, Xbox360
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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.

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Posted by Kurt Shulenberger on February 10th, 2009 :: Features :: Tags : Cinema Studies, Interactivity, Mega Man, NES, Wii
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While I can begin by writing about who I am, why I’ve started this blog and what I hope to achieve through its existence (you can check out the About section for all of that relevant information), I think it would be better to raise the curtain on the small excursion we’re about to take by describing Bubble Man’s stage from Mega Man II (1988). I hope that you can get an idea of what Bliterations is or will attempt to be through my personal recounting of the level. And if not, then I hope that maybe you’ll give me a second chance down the line, as sincere introductions can be very difficult to convey in our culture of ever-increasing cynicism.

First, some background: Mega Man II, Keiji Inafune’s pet project at Capcom that would go on to be hailed as the best game in the Mega Man series (if not one of the best 8-bit video games period) was the first Mega Man game that I played, and one of the first Nintendo Entertainment System games that I ever owned, as 1988 was the year that I received a Nintendo for my birthday (I had just turned six). Mega Man games, on the whole, can be brutally difficult, but serve as the perfect example of “treadmill” gameplay done successfully—try, fail, and fail again, but eventually, through sheer muscle memory grinding and good old fashioned practice, you reach a plateau of accomplishment and begin to relish each and every robot boss window that darkens on the level select screen with their defeat, one by one. The robust weapon upgrading system plays a huge part in alleviating the early frustrations and encouraging your progression, giving you more and more tools to experiment with as you get farther and farther into the game, culminating in the eventual multi-stage symphony of weapon switching that is Dr. Wiley’s fortress, a veritable kaleidoscope of costume changes and select screen manipulation that one executes with instinctual precision after so many hours of having to maneuver around its somewhat clunky interface from the second section onward.

The individual levels are more or less the same in their construction and objectives, but Bubble Man’s level seemed different for me as a kid than, say, Crash Man or Metal Man. Everything about the level design was a pleasure to play through—and I really do mean that. While most of the other stages seem to revel in their own cartoonish futurism, cold and mechanical (as is the case with Air Man, cluttering the sky with artificial clouds stuck in some kind of materialization and movement loop, proving that not even the skies are safe from technology), Bubble Man seems to retain a warm, organic aesthetic that’s lacking in the others—even Wood Man, where nature and flora make up practically the entire layout…I mean, you traverse through a tree, for goodness’ sake.

No, there’s something about Bubble Man that’s special, that feels more alive and exciting. For one, water is EVERYWHERE, shimmering with animation and even turning otherwise gray scrap metal into a mildly relaxing emerald obstacle course. The enemies also have a kind of life to them that imitates fauna: Robotic frogs birth smaller frogs that rest before their jumps (I remember positioning myself between their gaps and just watching them act like frogs), mechanized shrimp slowly sink between propulsions, and crabs clack their claws as they bounce towards you.

So from the moment you touch down in front of a waterfall, you’re instantly drawn into this location. Not a factory, or a plant, or scaffolding, but a PLACE that’s pleasing to look at. Aurally, the Bubble Man track is one of my favorites in all of game music. An instantly up-beat, exotic and inviting soundtrack seems to subliminally encourage you to keep going, as it has a driving rhythm and repetition that promote forward movement, in the way that any good tempo-driven music leaves you with the desire to do anything but sit still. The loop that connects end to beginning is virtually seamless, since the track ends with one of those hypnotic arpeggios that can keep going and going, until your expectations become so great that there is no other way the song can conclude except by starting all over again with the same kind of unmitigated resolve.

Download Bubble Man Mp3

There’s a natural and forward driving design that underlies Bubble Man’s stage as well. Mega Man begins at a high elevation, on a platform by a waterfall, but eventually must travel downward, beneath the surface of the water and amongst the robot enemies that lurk there (always just out of sight before springing themselves on you in full force, as Mega Man games tend to do). You can’t help but feel that your ultimate goal is to get out of that blue vastness and back onto dry land. The physics in this section help promote this—by having a reduced sense of gravity, you’re able to jump twice as high, and you must handle those walls and ceilings of spiked orbs just a tad more carefully. And while Mega Man never technically reaches the same elevation that he began at, the moment you leap out of water and are on dry platforms amidst glistening waterfalls again, dodging falling clacky crabs, there’s a sense of relief, a feeling that, yes, you made it, water is still flowing and you must press on. No need to worry about rust.

It’s an incredibly optimistic section of Mega Man II, a break from the normal dystopian foundry firefights that make up the rest of the game. And I guess that through this overly romantic description of a level in a video game, I’m giving you, Dear Reader, an introduction to what these kinds of games can be: a form of entertainment that invites both artistry for the creator and meaningful reflection for the player. While our discussions on this site may become theoretical, overly analytical, even a tad elitist, that’s not due to any forced act of didactic snobbery on my part. It’s just that, when you love a creative expression so much, you can’t help but try to reciprocate that expression as eloquent and thoughtfully as you possibly can.

This is what Bubble Man means to me.

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Posted by Kurt Shulenberger on January 22nd, 2009 :: Posts :: Tags : Introduction, Mega Man, Music, NES
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