We are now officially done with one-third of our summer, and I couldn’t be feeling more pressure with regards to the videogames that I’m currently playing. It’s not like the old days: Summer slammed into our soft impressionable minds like a freight train of liberation, and the possible configurations of doing everything but anything stretched on for subjective eternities. Videogames were a part of my everyday playscape, as it was for a lot of people, and while the leisure-ness of games also lent itself a little guilt during the school year, summer meant we were free to spent hours and hours—days if some of us wanted to—tackling a game (or two, or twenty) without fear of any harsh parental scoldings other than the occasional “go outside” mantra and, frankly, I was totally fine with that. It all fused together into a tapestry of seasonal freedom and I could shift activity gears seamlessly. The games would always be there, after all, and time was simply a measure of sunlight, not scheduled events.
It’s different now. This is something every gamer realizes when they reach their 20s: our calendars condense closer and closer together (”the circle is closing in,” I think the old saying goes) and free time becomes a commodity as precious as a gemstone. Nothing will bring those carefree days of childhood back. Coincidentally, the gaming industry seems aware of this as much as we do, and exploits our nostalgia to nefarious ends: “Retro” releases tantalize with the possibility of re-living our pre-pubescent periods, and franchise reboots claim to strip a game down to its core appeal, to its “roots,” brewing the feelings we once felt when we first laid eyes on them. The industry didn’t simply abandon our demographic when we aged out; it followed us because we are STILL the demographic, and are doing everything imaginable to persuade us to purchase new merchandise by disguising it as the old. And, for the most part, it’s working.
Yet old habits die hard, and I have a particular summer gaming tradition that I’m currently agonizing over, which is to play a Zelda game from front to back. I’ve been doing it on and off for the better part of twelve years, and while last season was Zelda barren as I tried to settle into a new full time job, this year I plan to ritualistically dive in head first, which is exactly where my conundrum lies. But first things first: why this particular tradition?
Zelda games, to me, exclusively have the summer vibe going on more than any other. One can indirectly channel the feelings that creator Shigeru Miyamoto must have experienced as a youth during his own adventures in the forests and caves around his hometown of Kyoto, the inspiration for the Hyrule universe. The essence of Zelda has remained resolutely intact all of these years, and no matter how ridiculous and off-center the series may spin (for example, Link shredding on a cog), one aspect of gameplay is delightfully ever-present: environmental exploration, the timeless techniques of turning over every rock, bombing every crack and poking through every bush while searching for all manner of hidden treasure, finding your way around more by memory and natural landmarks than by map. Of course, Zelda games do have maps—considering some of the trickier 3-D temples, it would be ridiculous if they didn’t—but do you honestly use them more than sight alone?
Another important and quintessentially summer-like staple of Zelda games is that more than half of Link’s time in Hyrule is spent outdoors, dwarfed by his natural surroundings and forcing the player to simply take a moment and assess their rightful place within that world. Every time you enter a town or dungeon or acreage of land that hasn’t been revealed before, a short panoramic cinema offers a quick geographic survey that both invites and overwhelms, a travelogue of epic proportions, the ultimate vacation. The inevitable warping takes much of the tedium out of travel, but at the start of these games, all that legwork is actually useful in getting a sense of the scope of the Zelda universe, a scope that, with the later 3-D iterations, spans time as well as space. The sheer pleasure of living in Hyrule for dozens of hours isn’t just from Link’s satisfying workout on that gentle Nintendo treadmill—starting as frail and all but written-off forest waif and ultimately arriving at nearly indestructible master swordsman—but from taking part in a narrative that encompasses an entire ecosystem, in which a reward can stem from merely watching that Hyrulian sun rise and set many, many times, a constant in a game constructed around a remarkable transformation. Link’s adventures encompass summer, to be sure, and not just any summer, but ones that we always remember as occurring long ago: fresh, exciting, and endless.
What’s vexing me isn’t the issue of whether or not to play through a Zelda game: considering the unusually cool and damp June that the East Coast has gone through, it’s high time for some sun and adrenaline. The question, rather, is WHICH game to play? I held off on finishing Twilight Princess because I purchased it with my Wii in January ‘07 and, snowboarding section or not, it just didn’t feel right to be playing it in the winter. I wouldn’t mind revisiting Wind Waker again, and Majora’s Mask recently made its way onto Virtual Console (never mind that the game is a masterpiece of dread; that’s a topic for another article). Oh, and the handheld games! I can actually play those outside, in the open air, maybe sitting on a park bench or walking The Ramble. What a Mobius strip that would be! I have been meaning to play through Link’s Awakening again after being swaddled in fuzzy Game Boy memories this year. Or maybe Ocarina of Time? Or A Link to the Past? Or The Adventure of Link? Argh!
Now that there are only a little less than two months left, time is running out for my Summer Zelda playthrough, and I’m a little panicky. Maybe the only way to settle this is through a marathon series session. Hmmm. What do you think? And more importantly, what were your summer gaming traditions, and do you still observe them today?
I decided a short time ago to “dust off” some video games I remember sniffling through as a kid, partly to satiate my desire to weave some kind of internal magnum opus about my personal gaming history, but also because I’ll use any excuse that I can to revisit an old title and scrutinize whether they hold steadfast today or knock my rose-tinted glasses clean off my face. Unfortunately, most of the time they are the latter, but sometimes you get a nice a surprise. Case in point: Gumshoe (1986) for the NES.
I know that my horrible dime-store Hammett post title indicates that the game isn’t very accessible, and trust me, I certainly don’t like it by any means. Gumshoe is a “zapper” light-gun controlled game that also happens to be a platformer, and that is every bit as oblique and frustrating as it sounds. You actually have to shoot the main character—hard-nosed and scraggly bearded FBI agent turned detective Mr. Stevenson—to make him jump as he automatically moves from left to right through four stages of various locales. Enemies like dive-bombing crows, moths and, uh, liquor bottles impede your path; cars try to furtively sneak up behind you and run you over (too bad their horns seem to be stuck); and there are glowing instant-death boxes EVERYWHERE, complete with skull and crossbones plastered on the outside of them. Considering that you only have a limited supply of ammo (although there is a constant stream of red balloons that replenish bullets and shooting your character does not deplete their number, fortunately) and that the poor sleuth cannot keep his perpetual motion in check, this game can be brutally difficult. There’s just no way to stop Stevenson, unless you run him into a ledge or wall at juuuust the right angle. Even then, that’s a fruitless technique, as all it does is briefly change his direction; as soon as Stevenson hits the ground, he promptly continues his suicide march. Not even the attract mode can save him, since without any light gun input from the player, the first obstacle encountered on-screen will end the demo.
Let’s go back to those death boxes for a minute. When I say they are everywhere, they literally are, peppering the sky and forcing Stevenson to clumsily pick his way through this mine-field, often in mid-air. Imagine my surprise when, in the second level, I accessed a secret area in which there were skyscrapers made up entirely of these boxes…and you could walk on them without taking any damage! Was this some sort of practical joke on Nintendo’s part? Were they trying to frighten you into thinking that you now couldn’t touch ANYTHING for the rest of the game, only to pull the rug out from under you and force you to question what actually qualified as a “death brick” and what wasn’t? Playing through this area in Gumshoe is one of the more surreal moments in a videogame that I’ve ever experienced, as it was a sort of self-referential jab at the very confines of game semiotics: “Death boxes don’t necessarily mean death…but you sure thought they did, didn’t you? Also, this next box will kill you. Think about that.”
So yes, Gumshoe is a maddening game, relentless with its auto-scrolling construct and failing miserably to marry a 2D platformer with twitch shooting, especially since you have to be keeping track of both genre mechanics SIMULTANEOUSLY. That wasn’t the pleasant surprise that I discovered.
The soundtrack, though, is a different story.
What a glorious score this game has! For a 1986 NES title, the music has an amazing amount of depth and verisimilitude. In fact, the game’s dirty jazz tunes (which, admittedly, only make up a fraction of the score) are the only ligature holding the game’s gritty detective narrative together. Without it, it’s just a fever dream hodgepodge of raining boulders, giant armadillos, jumping swordfish, and other mid-80’s videogame idioms designed to kill you as quickly as possible instead of fleshing out the environment. Take, for example, the music at the beginning of the game, when you receive a ransom note detailing how to save Jennifer, Stevenson’s kidnapped daughter. Or the moments when you receive hints via anonymous phone calls at booths placed throughout the game. Even the music that accompanies the death animation has a Henry Mancini big band feel to it, with slippery horns that punctuate Stevenson’s horrific open-mouthed death yawn. Believe it or not, but Gumshoe, at times, successfully draws me into the seedy world of the private eye, and it’s all thanks to the thoroughly engaging chip-tunes. You listen to these sloppy traps and try to tell me otherwise:
Click here to download Ransom Note.mp3
Click here to download Phone Booth.mp3
Click here to download Death Cue.mp3
But, while these gnarly vamps are brilliant in their own way, the rest of the score also rises above standard NES fare. Complex in their harmonies but rhythmically inviting, these pieces make Gumshoe almost worth playing through. Almost. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much information on who may have composed it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka had a hand in its creation, as there are definitely some “Tanakisms” present, like the persistent lack of an overarching melody or main theme, the stark minimalism, the incorporation of strange sound effects, even the use of bongos (or “bongo-like” sounds at least), which eventually found its way into the beboppin’ battle music of Earthbound (1995), which Tanaka collaborated on with Keiichi Suzuki.
Click here to download Gumshoe Level 1.mp3
Click here to download Gumshoe Level 2.mp3
Click here to download Gumshoe Level 4.mp3
It’s pretty clear that whomever composed the music for Gumshoe appreciated the nuances of jazz and knew how to create simple yet precise compositions with the NES sound chip, which is why I’ve got my money on Tanaka, but if anyone out there has the knowledge and is willing to share, please do so. In any event, it’s a fantastic score for a wholly unique but flawed 8-bit game, and it deserves your ears’ attention.
*Hard to get into but sounds great. I apologize retroactively.
Gameplay Footage (skip to 5:30 in the second clip to see the hidden “death-skyscraper” section):
I remember acquiring Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990) at a Sears shortly after the game was released. I think I simply stumbled onto its giant display area by chance: I don’t recall being too keyed into what new games were coming out and when, although I did have a subscription to Nintendo Power at the time so I’m sure I knew of the game at least. The best thing about Mario games is that, as a kid, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have your parents buy you one, because EVERYONE knows about Mario and that having his name plastered on a video game means the game is going to be, above all else, familiar and non-threatening (and, not to mention, of a relatively high quality too, third-party licensed garbage aside).
So, home we went, and I had a brand new shrink wrapped Mario Bros. game in my possession. I remember twisting the yellow box in my hot little hands and being VERY EXCITED about the cover. Mario had raccoon ears! And a tail! It was going to be a totally different game than the ones that came before it!
And man oh man, was it ever. The sheer variety of stuff to see and do and have done to you was immense at the time. I dare say that almost every single level in the game is different, and I don’t mean merely in the layout of the levels or “theme” of the world, but significantly different in terms of gameplay, enemy type, and objective. Remember that stage with the Angry Sun following your every move and then actually swooping down in an attempt to sear through Mario’s very flesh? At least, that’s how I remember it, and it frightened the hell out of me. I also remember thinking that riding in Kuribo’s Shoe during certain levels was a nice addition…it was essentially a vehicular control segment, but when translated into the Mario universe of hopping along, jumping and being able to traverse over obstacles—like spikes and Munchers—that would otherwise kill you, it didn’t feel like you were just in a tank-like object ; you were utilizing a tool in a very fleshed out and breathing world, carving your own destiny out among all the other creatures that share the same habitat.
I could go on and on about how great the music is (seriously, using Latin percussion samples was a stroke of genius at the time); how the Koopa Airships and Super Tanks evoke the white knuckle difficulty of Bowser’s castles in the first Super Mario Bros.; how the card and “line the pictures up” mini-games help to break up the otherwise relentless flow of levels, right before the feeling of fatigue and frustration sets in (you cannot save in this game, after all)…but unfortunately, this story isn’t about how I grew to love Mario Bros. 3. It’s about how I lost my copy of it.
There was only one other family on my street that had an NES, and they would come over on a regular basis to borrow games from me (the mother of this particular household did day-care as well, so there were always new “clientele” dropping by). They would want to borrow Mario games mostly, but occasionally they would ask for other titles like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 or Adventure Island or Double Dribble. I could always take a game in trade, but there wasn’t much that they had that I actually wanted to play…maybe Ikari Warriors, but that’s about it. In any event, I was happy to do it—I mean, this is MARIO we’re talking about. I couldn’t imagine a house with a Nintendo system that didn’t also have more than one Mario game. Mario games are the BEST.
One day, I remember going over to their house to get my copy of Mario 3 back, and on the way back home a few other friends rode up on their bikes (baseball cards clothes-pinned to the spokes, naturally) and we chatted about something or another for a while in my driveway. Whatever nine year old boys in 1991 talked about. The Oakland Athletics, I guess?
Later that evening, the family (Mom, Dad, and older brother) piled into our beige Jeep Cherokee to go visit my Grandmother, who lived maybe 45 minutes away from us. As our Jeep turned onto the main road that would feed into the freeway (680 North, for all you Bay Area readers), I heard a pretty prominent scraping sound coming from behind my seat. I turned around and, out the back window, I saw my copy of SMB3 slide off the roof of our car and onto the road. Earlier, while I was talking with my friends in our driveway, I placed the cartridge on the roof of our car, so nobody would make a grab for it (yeah, nine year old boys in 1991 thought like that).
“OHNOMYGAME!” I shouted as the rest of my family looked at me, confused. I furiously tried to explain what happened and my Dad pulled over and jumped out of the car, thinking that maybe he could recover the game before someone else ran it over. He made it about four steps into the road before another car barreled past. No sound. It was still safe!
Another car hurdled by.
KA-FWOP.
My Dad turned on his heels and, without breaking stride, returned to the car, where I was witnessing all of this transpire, horrified. He put the car into drive and, without looking back at me, said (in that matter-of-fact tone that all Dads are able to conjure up when they need to):
“Well, that’s the end of that.”
Say what you will about the sorry state of Virtual Console, digital distribution, and how Nintendo seems to be milking every dollar out of every game that comes out of their pipeline—having Super Mario Bros. 3 available for an eight dollar download is one of the best things that company has ever done. Now I’m able to finally tell my story of childhood heartbreak with a miraculously happy ending. And I can discover the joys of platform gaming all over again.
Have your own Mario 3 memory? Please share in the comments!
Links:
Bob Mackey on Nintendo Power’s SMB3 strategy guide (which contained meticulously hand-drawn maps!!)
The Retronauts‘ podcast on the NES Mario games, in which they share their own fond personal memories/perverted fantasies
The Angry Sun
The Sun
The Sun
Screenshots courtesy of VGMuseum. Thanks also to the Mario Wiki for jogging my memory on the more esoteric enemy names. The amount of detail in that thing is frightening. Seriously, they have separate articles for the Sun as a character, the Sun as an enemy, and the Sun as a cosmic entity in the Mushroom Kingdom. That alone demands respect (?).
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
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.
Read more »
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.
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.
Some Banjo-Tooie Picking
Collision Detection
Games/New York
Yorda’s Elbow
Collision Detection
My Summer Conundrum
Pipelines, Spirals, and Betweeness
Collision Detection
Prelude to Pixelation: Norman McLaren and Early Video Games
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