Please note that this piece contains spoilers, some of which are significant.
Banjo-Tooie (2000) marks a significant place in 3D platforming history, yet it appears to be somewhat forgotten now, perhaps buried amongst its own brand obscurity. To be fair, the Banjo-Kazooie “brand” doesn’t lend itself to ubiquity in the first place—Banjo began his life as a character in developer Rare’s 1997 racer Diddy Kong Racing, along with other throwaway sentient animals such as Timber the tiger and Drumstick, an overall wearing chicken. The ulterior motive behind DKR, it seems, was to use the game as a vessel to lay the groundwork for future character-specific Rare titles (the only one to succeed was Conker the squirrel, famously), but, really, there doesn’t seem to be anything significantly endearing or memorable about, well, a bear with pants. Granted, sticking clothes on an animal mascot may not be the oldest trick in the book, but it sure seems that way, and I think that’s enough to result in Rare’s IPs getting glossed over with the same kind of dismissal that seems to befall every new Saturday morning cartoon show that isn’t specifically tied to an already popular product. Banjo the bear and his bird sidekick Kazooie had a very, very, very steep hill to climb when their first game, Banjo-Kazooie, was released in 1998—and despite its popularity (popular enough to warrant two sequels, at least), in the face of that OTHER franchise competing for consumer dollars on a Nintendo system, there really was no way that Banjo’s first solo effort would seem like anything other than an ostensible conglomeration of every other non-Mario mascot in existence.
Faded characterizations aside, however, I’m happy that Banjo-Tooie exists as both one of the platforming swan songs of the Nintendo 64 and as a recent re-release on Xbox Live Arcade, because it is a fascinating video game relic, a resolute and finite amalgamation of the N64’s capabilities and Rare’s boldness to address the trappings of a genre that it helped to define, even doing it with an almost parodistic zeal.
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:
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.
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):
Author: Edward Castronova | Publisher: University of Chicago Press | 2006
The internet has reached a point in its evolution where many questions are being raised as to whether or not it’s truly beneficial to society. It could be argued that this is the next logical step in a new technology’s “upbringing,” but the news reports on never-ending spam, network crippling viruses, sexual predators, E-Bay and Craigslist swindles, jihad web-pages, Facebook harassment, etc., are the dominant form of internet education, persuading one to believe there is little hope. Online gaming is no exception; EverQuest (EQ, 1999) and World of Warcraft (WoW, 2004) are titles that the general public is familiar with due to the controversy surrounding them—Avatar relationships leading to player weddings/divorces and “gold farming” sweatshops are still making the rounds on mainstream media—instead of whether or not they’ve actually played the games themselves. But there is a deeper socio-economic layer lurking beneath the sensationalism surrounding these online games that deserves scrutiny. In Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, Edward Castronova presents a thought provoking, well-rounded introduction to online gaming and its far-reaching implications, both good and bad.
The book is written with the non-informed in mind, which is welcome, as acronyms like MMORPG (which, just for the record, is shorthand for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, the official genre for games like EQ and WoW) can be intimidating for those not familiar with the industry or its vernacular. Castronova is kind enough to walk the reader through a “Synthetic World”—the game environment that players spend their time inhabiting and interacting with—and the different gameplay components that make the MMORPG genre unique. What is startling about these game universes, Castronova makes explicit, is that they contain highly complex systems of commerce, trade, governance, and social interaction that both rival and transcend the systems of the “outside,” and they are growing more complex as the technology that builds them keeps expanding. A game like Second Life (2003), for example, allows the player to purchase, in U.S. dollars, acres of virtual “land” that they can construct practically anything on. Being an economist, Castronova has extended chapters on the systems of commerce that are in place within these game universes, containing an exhaustive amount of detail. But he makes an effective point—what appears to be micro-level exchanges of things like gold pieces for in-game tools and weapons is actually influencing the outside world on a macro scale: once the game currency of EQ trades at a rate that rivals and/or surpasses the yen, it’s time to take notice. And it has. In 2001.
The argument that Castronova makes throughout his book is that these synthetic worlds are affecting our real world (and vice-versa), and we should be examining the social and economic structures of these “games” more closely. Tens of millions of people spend their time within these fabricated universes, and the numbers seem to be growing as more and more people are gaining the technology required to visit them (a broadband connection is the highest hurdle in this respect, but as of 2009, that global barrier is being torn down on a daily basis). Consider Korea, the most “wired” country in the world: higher real-world divorce rates due to affairs occurring within game-worlds; people who have not left their physical homes in over two years, preferring to remain online; even stress-induced deaths caused by gaming marathons. Indeed, these events find their place within the mainstream media with disturbing regularity and provide perfect fodder for doomsday predictions, but Castronova does more than simply report these alarming figures in Synthetic Worlds (and yes, the “WoW Sweatshop” issue is present here as well); the author offers an insightful analysis as to what has, and can, be done about them. The connection between real and virtual—the “porous membrane,” in the author’s own words—lies with both users and creators, and it will take an equal effort from all parties involved to ensure that the evolution of these spaces is one that results in a positive stance on the technology, instead of tabloid sound bytes that are designed to instigate rather than invite.
Author: Ed Halter | Publisher: Thunder’s Mouth Press,PublicAffairs | 2006
In From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Videogames, Ed Halter presents a sweeping historical narrative of the different connections between war and gaming. Some of these are brazenly explicit (i.e., America’s Army (2002), a highly successful downloadable computer game that was developed by the military as a promotional and recruitment tool), while others are eked out through Halter’s extensive historical research (the most morbid being Airfight, a late 1970’s computer game produced for the government developed PLATO network—a precursor to the present day Internet and the main inspiration for the first Microsoft Flight Simulator, a game now infamous for training 9-11 hijackers), but all reveal a startling relationship between the real horrors of war and the simulated battles that take place in games’ virtual spaces. Halter’s book, in his words, is “a history of warfare told through videogames, or a history of videogames told through war…It is about how videogames are products of war, but have in turn become ways to think about war.” In the course of telling this history, Halter not only offers a fresh perspective on the military’s driving force behind advancements in technology, but provides a close socio-political and cultural study of electronic gaming that most serious writing on ludology neglects to mention.
The title of the book indicates the chronology that Halter traces in his exploration of war and gaming, beginning with early board games such as Go and Chess, games created for entertainment that subsequently simulate “an idealized drama of war.” Sun Tzu’s The Art of War even doubles as a guidebook for Go strategy, which reinforces the concept of strategy shaping the way modern wars are fought and won. The emphasis on strategy eventually resulted in the ultimate “analog” war game, the ‘Kriegspiel,’ which proved to be both entertaining and educational as it was used as a training device in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The interest that military institutions took to games and their ability to train recruits under the guise of entertainment is a historical vein that runs throughout Halter’s book, from the first ‘Kriegspiels‘ to the U.S. Army’s commission of a prototype tank trainer from the Atari Corporation in 1980 (which was actually a Battlezone arcade game modified to the exact specifications of a Bradley tank), to the recent Full Spectrum Warrior console game developed with soldier training in mind. As modern warfare evolved into what Halter describes as the “pushbutton” battles that were fought in the Gulf War—the “Nintendo War” as some media journalists dubbed it—the need for more advanced technology in war simulations became apparent, resulting in the government funding and resources that eventually led to the present day Internet and realistic CGI graphics that both videogame developers and players currently enjoy. The idea that the hardware and software “wars” raging between videogame companies are not only triggered by the military’s need for more advanced simulation and training methods, but are also indirectly sponsored and funded by these institutions, is a startling one. Halter, however, offers compelling evidence in favor of his argument that “the technologies that shape our culture have always been pushed forward by war.”
If Halter’s book offers a history of videogames in war, then it also produces an equally rich history of war in videogames. As gaming technology evolved over the past three decades, so did the portrayal of battle, ranging from the abstract blocks and colors of games like Missile Command and the thinly veiled ranks and files of alien “troops” in Space Invaders to the realistic first person shooters that dominate the market today. Now, Halter writes, there is a commercial factor in pushing the boundries of war in videogames—“no subsidies” necessary. September 11th effectively created a deluge of war-themed games that saturated the household market from 2001-2004, when anger and fierce patriotism fueled the need for a catharsis. Although most of these games—by their manner of being quickly and cheaply produced in order to keep up with current trends and maximize profit—were universally panned by critics, their popularity lies in their ability to give gamers at least some manner of control over current events, albeit a simulated, fleeting one. Halter singles out Kuma/War (2004) as an example of this; at a time when viewers were scrambling for any sort of information on the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Kuma/War uses actual news reports to create online “missions” that gamers can recreate through the perspective of a participating soldier. Other games that Halter mention, like one of the many Flash-based computer animations featuring the torturing and killing of a digitized Osama bin Laden, simply “satisfy the urge to deal symbolic harm by defacing someone’s image,” and are marketed as a type of war-time therapy. As more war themed titles choose to depict combat through a specific socio-historical context—not just 9-11, but the Great War, the Gulf War and even the Vietnam War—an interesting paradox is revealed: although technology has advanced greatly since the emergence of the first videogames and current titles are more realistic than ever before, the actual ‘game’ of war remains unchanged, and continues to feed society’s desire to ‘play’ from a safe distance. “War is hell,” Halter writes as an encapsulation of software companies’ ideology, “but in videogame form, it’s also fun as hell.”
Although Halter’s occasional references to cinema studies scholars and art films can be somewhat jarring (cinema, no doubt, is another interest of his), no passage is tangential and many are eloquently written. As a historical text, From Sun Tzu to Xbox succeeds as a thoroughly researched yet accessible account of the relationship between the military and software developers, the warmakers and the gamemakers. But Halter aims higher than simply a straightforward description of these events; through the book’s socio-political and cultural commentary, war itself is seen as a game, a game that has been played symbolically for centuries, and continues to exist today in the advanced simulations being carried out in millions of homes. As videogames continue to grow in popularity, and become increasingly advanced and equally ambitious in scope, three conflicts are destined to continue: the war raging in living rooms, the war between the game developers for consumer dollars, and the “real” war—be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere—that drives them all.
