Just a quick note: I wrote about Super Mario Galaxy 2 for The House Next Door. SPOILER ALERT: It’s a very good video game.
I’m disappointed that the editors didn’t use my original title (although I also completely understand), so I’m shamelessly using it for this post!
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?
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, from a business point of view, Nintendo’s recent strategy of giving select GameCube games a second wind as Wii titles with remote-centric controls makes absolute sense (a new, millions strong install base of Wii owners who never owned a GameCube—or any game system, for that matter—are probably hungry for any type of good game that doesn’t involve throwing darts or brushing hair), I can’t help but feel like this also may simply be a knee-jerk reaction to the “core” demographic that are complaining about the lugubrious state of first party titles.
I’m bringing this up because I’m extremely worried that Nintendo has just given up on any sort of originality or frequency for their games developed in-house, and are instead focusing their corporate energy in designing (or, as in the case of the new Wii Play Control titles, half-hearted re-packaging) software that directly applies their new futuristic and sterile aesthetic. If you’ve ever seen any of those “world of tomorrow” reels and exhibits from the 50’s and 60’s, then you know what I’m talking about: The family of the future, enjoying sanitary autonomous meals being served from spotless machines. Safe, reliable and clean create an environment that exudes the comforts of home without the inherent danger. Kids, remember to finish your Veggpak, or you won’t get any Yogurt Pump!
While Nintendo has seemed to nudge us in that direction with things like the Apple influenced DS Lite and the benignly communal atmosphere of Wii Sports (2006), I feel like Mario Kart Wii (2008) has proven to be the ultimate perpetrator/offender in this regard. Let’s look at the box art:
To me, this box is the absolute epitome of Nintendo shedding their old “electronic toy” image. Everything that characterizes the classic, colorful, rubber-burning weapon-throwing appeal of the previous games has been erased. And I mean that literally. THE ENTIRE KART OF MARIO KART has been removed (save for some vague shadows on the ground), leaving only strange floating aberrations of Mario and Luigi holding their pristine white wheel controllers against an equally stark background that evokes the prison in THX1138 (1971) more than the Mushroom Kingdom. The future is here, and there’s no need to worry about crashing your kart or getting hurt. Just make sure to wrap your controller in silicon, so No One Gets Hurt!
But this sanitizing doesn’t stop with the box art. The title screen of the game matches the box art exactly—has this ever happened in a video game? Likewise, the in-game menu and option screens look and sound more like the touch screen at an airline ticketing kiosk than a rollicking mascot-filled chaotic kart racer that defines the very genre that Mario Kart itself defined. I know that there are perfectly cogent arguments for the actual gameplay, the tracks and online play, and trust me, I’m not trying to downplay the true meat and bones of Mario Kart games. But it would be very naive to not admit that first impressions are very important, and for a tried and true Nintendo fan myself, I felt the pangs of skepticism travel up my spine as soon as I saw the box.
Showing characters of a video game actually holding their own means of interaction is a little disturbing to me as well. I was going to write that it’s sort of like a puppet holding up its own strings and pointing out the artifice of it all, but I think it’s instead more akin to a puppet holding their strings steady and sliding the entire stage underneath their feet around to make themselves dance—they’re not only bringing to light their lack of control over their own world, but they’re undermining the entire construct of that world as well. I don’t know what wall/s that’s breaking, but it’s at least a few. Mario and Luigi are not only fictional totems of a fictional universe but, as Mario Kart Wii implies, they are aware of that in some devastating way, and they’re letting us know that they know by using their own controllers to play themselves. Is Mario actually controlling himself in Mario Kart, or is he the one responsible for Luigi’s gasp of horror as they edge their anti-karts over a phantom cliff that no one will ever be aware of, not even themselves? Are they driving each other’s souls perhaps?
I suppose I shouldn’t be too critical of a game’s box art. At least Mario Kart Wii HAS art. I snapped a few blurry cell-phone pictures while browsing one of the local game purveyors, and came across this:
The game we’re looking for is Puzzler Collection (2008), published by Zoo Games:
Hopefully you can make out when I saw, but if not, I’ll break it down for you: A third party Wii title WITHOUT A LABEL ON THE SPINE. If you were to line your games up on the shelf, it would be a mystery game, a flaming grab bag if you’ll indulge me. I know that the Seal of Quality has been a tad lax lately, but I mean, Nintendo! *wags finger* Are there no standards for disc packaging now as well? Can I publish a game with no original content and NO LABEL and get away with it, as long as it adheres to your neutered corporate vision of family entertainment?
May I interest you in some Yogurt Pump? With hot fudge dust?
Meta-Explanatory
Collision Detection
The Short, Happy Lives of Reika Kirishima
Collision Detection
Stars Down Deep
Vieo Gams!
VGM of the Week
VGM of the Week
Games/New York
Hi there! Someone in my Facebook group shared this site with us so I came to loo...
I got tense looking at the Ninja Gaiden mountain. It still makes me nervous!...
Haggar, the mayor of metro city, destroys randomly parked cars. "oh, my god!"...
If I recall correctly, Final Fight was first. It actually makes more sense conte...
Who had the bonus round of beating up a car first, Final Fight or Street Fighter...
Dear Kurt,
I largely agree with your review.
I really like how the (3D) Ma...
HAHA!!! World Famo S dancing and tic tac toe. oh the craziness...
Nice to see that you didn't vanish into the internet. can't wait for more podcas...
