Monthly Archives: November 2004

One Fist Too Many

  • Reading time:2 mins read

It feels like the “Harmonica” character was inserted into Once Upon a Time in the West after-the-fact. He’s sure unnecessary. He makes the movie longer than it need be, attracts time away from the main plot for no good or interesting reason, and generally clutters the situation. I think he wasn’t supposed to be there; that Cheyenne was the only male protagonist, and that half of Cheyenne was split away to form “Harmonica” (who, note, is an Indian — yet the other guy is named Cheyenne).

Assuming this is the case — well, why? I’ve an idea it has to do with Ennio Morricone. You see, by this point he was no longer writing the music at the last moment. I understand that, after the success of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, where he wrote a number of themes beforehand, he began to work more closely with Leone, working out the music before the movie was set, such that Leone would have something to guide him, conceptually.

From how he’s used, it feels like “Harmonica” was an experiment in tying the music more closely to the material. In other words, he’s an artistic gimmick. He plays harmonica (poorly), which gives an excuse for a harmonica theme to dominate the soundtrack, blurring lines that really don’t need to be blurred.

I feel that’s enough Leone for me, for now.

Under the Skin

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I think everything I’ve really liked has creeped me out just a little.

Western Deconstruction

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Structure of the first half of Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

  1. Title sequence
  2. Showdown #1; The Ugly identified
  3. Showdown #2 (and aftermath); The Bad identified
  4. Showdown #3 (and aftermath); The Good (such as he is) identified
  5. Back to The Bad; he beats a woman, showing how bad he is
  6. Back to The Ugly; the strange gunshop scene, where he displays his strange character traits
  7. (in the restored version) Added scene setting up the logic for the following scene; helps to space things out and show a little more of Tuco’s character
  8. Back to the Good, via Tuco; Blondie shows how sensitive he is, with the gun-cleaning scene; the outside world interferes for the first time, saving Blondie and setting the rest of the movie in motion
  9. (in the restored version) Back to The Bad; Angel Eyes’ eye-opening scene, where he is exposed to the effect of the war; some logic, to help explain why Angel Eyes returns when he does
  10. Back to the Ugly, then the Good; the squabble resolves. Blondie is again saved when the outside world (the stagecoach) again interferes, thus giving a greater goal for the movie and setting the third leg in motion.
  11. (in the restored version) Added scene setting up the logic for the following scene; helps to space things out and show a little more of Tuco’s character
  12. Tuco and Blondie at the mission; Tuco’s eye-opening scene, where he is exposed to the effect of the war; Tuco’s character is fully established, making Blondie more sympathetic to him
  13. Tuco and Blondie get caught up in the prison camp, to finally intersect with Angel Eyes
  14. etc.

I’ll fill the rest in later. It’s all downhill from here. Very… clean.

The removed scenes mostly help with the plot. Only one (aside from the boot thing, which is lovely) strikes me as important to the tone of the movie; that’s the early scene with Angel Eyes. The others are all nice to have, and make the movie feel fuller. More complete. I can see why they were cut, though, if cuts had to be made.

I can feel the walls closing in on me

  • Reading time:4 mins read

So everyone around me kept saying how great the new Zelda was

I don’t know. It struck me as another Zelda game, from what I saw of
it. And. I understand that some of Nintendo’s trends have been worsening. Even though Capcom’s making all of their games, these days.

Zelda used to be a thing of wonder. Now it is a template. Metroid is starting to go the same route, too. The series has been stagnating since the third game. Both series have been. It just gets more obvious, the more often it’s iterated. And the more out-of-touch and patronizing each iteration becomes.

Metroid Prime is a nice exception.

Wind Waker brings a lot of nice things to the series, just as Metroid Fusion does. The problems with them are the same, though. They don’t really succeed because in the end, the template rules. They have to answer to it, so they don’t get away with as much as they might. It’s mechanics, not experience, that Nintendo chooses to deliver these days.

I don’t give a damn about the rules. I want to feel something.

Here’s the part where I’m a wiseguy and ask which series has undergone more substantial changes over the years, Zelda or King of Fighters? I suspect most fans of either would pick the other, which is only natural. Fans of something pay attention to the small but sometimes crucial changes between iterations, while non-fans shrug their shoulders and say that they all sort of look the same.

I adore Zelda and Metroid — or at least, what they once stood for. The series have certainly changed; they’ve regressed. It’s pretty sad when the first two games are the most sophisticated, and everything else has just been about weeding away what made the games stand out from the crowd. A process of prolonged blanding. That’s what distresses me. I have come to be dismissive through one mediocre decision after another.

As far as fighting games go, KOF has evolved more in concept, and covered more ground, than any other series I can think of. If you can even compare it to other games; the series operates on its own terms. It’s more a serial novel than anything. Yet it’s a serial that only becomes richer and more rewarding as it unfurls.

Meanwhile, all of Nintendo’s series become more generalized and mathematical, drawing from the same proven design documents.

Metroid isn’t as far along the decay as Zelda, of course. Nintendo avoided the series for nearly a decade after Yokoi died. And Intelligent Systems isn’t EAD. Now Retro is doing some insightful stuff with the concept, fleshing it out in a way Nintendo never did. Zero Mission gets a lot right, especially where it borrows from Retro rather than from Miyamoto. I like the way it prepares the player for how to deal with Metroids, for instance. It is, however, still mired in the same hyper-safe, inbred theory that Nintendo’s been using since 1991. And with every generation, that theory generates more genetic defects…

If every chapter of KOF were 2002 or NeoWave, I would feel the same as
I do about Zelda. (Conversely, this would probably please a lot of people.) If a game like Wind Waker or Fusion were allowed to follow through on its own ideas, rather than bow to the Miyamoto machine, I would be inclined to care more.

I’ve not really played Majora’s Mask. It’s the only Zelda game aside from Wind Waker to look interesting to me since the NES. I played for about half an hour, and in that time noticed that all of the models were recycled from OoT. That wasn’t too encouraging, though I suppose it doesn’t mean anything on its own.

240 Denarii

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I went through the day in a bizarre, stomach-curdled funk. I had a vague headache, my eyes were blurry, my temper did not exist, and I couldn’t really sleep. I blamed everything and everyone. Sometimes I had to fight back tears. I had intended another odyssey in search of a certain coffee shop. That didn’t happen. Instead, I… sat. I tried to sleep. I read. I gritted my teeth. I forgot to eat. Eventually, set out by a book on Krakatoa that I have been reading, spot in spot, in the bathroom, I began researching things on The Internet.

In that book, I had come to a passage mentioning a claim a few years ago, in a British documentary, that an early explosion of Krakatoa, in 517 or thereabouts (early sixth centry, anyway) was in part responsible for everything from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Dark Ages to the Plague of Justinian.

This got me to wondering about the “Dark Ages”. The implication that the period could have been brought about by environmental factors, such as those that come after such an eruption… well, it perplexed me. So I pulled up Wikipedia and typed in “Dark Ages” — to find nothing terribly illuminating. Since I was up for a refresher on Charlemagne, however, I followed that thread. This brought me to the revelation that Charlemagne’s father, Pepin, was responsible for the revival of a system of coinage in the land formerly covered by the Western Empire. That system, inspired by the original Roman model, was as follows:

1 libra = 20 solidi = 240 denarii

How… oddly familiar. The math was just bizarre enough to force me a double-check on the pre-decimal system for Pounds Sterling. And what do we have here.

The “L” for pound comes from Libra; the “S” for shilling comes from Solidi, and the “D” for Penny comes from Denarii.

It’s the same thing. In at least some form, the original Roman system persisted until 1971, before progress made its blow.

This revelation led me to other topics. Those, to others. Hours later, I feel… fed.

Now, I may sleep.

Postmodernism

  • Reading time:4 mins read

>The logic of the fiction in MGS2 is broken to jarring effect often throughout the game. I understand that Tim’s article states that this is the entire point. However, I would argue that that is not a point at all.

Sure it is. Well, not on its own.

The issue at play here is a kind of a meta-understanding. A defamiliarized awareness of the nature of a particular form, as it were. Or a self-awareness within that form (which is itself a form of defamiliarization). This is exactly the way that we understand our world; by taking it out of context or by summing it up in unexpected, yet somehow logical, ways. This is also how humor works.

There is, therefore, a certain built-in level of humor. There is a certain built-in level of insight about the nature of everything that is happening, as it happens. If it all serves to make some interesting observations, then the project is a success.

If you will, that subjectivity is the whole damned idea here. It’s a big part of the process of defamiliarization. It’s a big part of deconstruction. Understanding the nature of that subjectivity, on (of course) a subjective basis.

A game like MGS2 works because of the questions it raises about the nature of the videogame, about our interaction with the videogame, about our expectations of a videogame. On its own, you might consider this obnoxious. On the long term, these are questions that need to be asked — because there aren’t a lot of people asking them. Asking us to look at what our assumptions are.

If all you want to do is be entertained (that is, to have your expectations met), then you’ll have a problem with this. If you are really interested in the medium, its nature and its potential, you will greet questions like these with a certain level of delight.

I, for one, didn’t care at all about Metal Gear until a bit of MGS2 was spoiled for me. Until I began to hear about to what degree Kojima went out of his way to fuck with his audience. Then, suddenly, I was transfixed. I had a new level of respect for the game, and for Kojima. Because he’s using his established power to force his audience to think. It would be one thing if the game were some little-known release with no media attention. Kojima had the limelight, however. So rather than just cash in, he decided to do something useful with that power. That, right there, is a part of the game. It’s not just the code, or even the game’s relationship with the player. It’s the wealth of expecations the player already has, going into the game.

If the game pisses people off, or confuses them — good! Frankly. It should. That means it’s doing part of its job. And that just adds to the experience for anyone who is in a position to giggle at what Kojima has done. To see the implicit humor on all of its levels; to see just what Kojima was trying to comment on; to think about what that might imply about videogames, and our relationship with them, in a broader sense. Some of those people might go on to make other games. Or at least to greet future games with a more critical eye.

It’s games (and stunts) like this which help to expand what videogames Can Be, simply by forcing us to look where we never would have thought to look otherwise. Some of us are annoyed because there’s nothing but a blank wall and a stagehand where we’re looking. Some of us are intrigued for the same reasons. It’s the latter who are targeted, and it’s the former who help to illustrate the idea for the latter. It’s just as well. They serve a purpose, too — in furthering that understanding and in heightening that humor. They just serve to make the joke, as it were, all the bigger and more profound.

It’s the sheer, high-level irreverence that gets me fired up. I get the same sensation out of observing MGS2, and the reaction to it, that I get out of a Marx Bros. movie.

If you know me, you will know that this is one of the greater compliments I can give.

The Gathering

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Someone asked why videogames — that is to say, console games — tend to be so sought-after by collectors, when PC games more often just fade away when their time passes. I’ve covered this before, in some form. Here it is again, though.

PC games are ephemeral. Console games are not. The latter feel real; concrete. The former are kind of disposable. You install them, you uninstall them. You’ll never have a standard experience. In a few years they’ll never work again. Magnetic media decay, and quickly. Cartridges, not so much. Now that everything’s on CD, the lines are blurred a bit.

I think it’s a similar question as to why VHS isn’t as collectable as DVD and cassettes aren’t as collectable as LPs or DVDs. They don’t feel as permanent. They aren’t an investment in the same way, because you don’t know if you will be able to rely on them when you feel you need them.

The whole idea of the collector is to amass trinkets which he will be able to refer to at whim. Often they are kept in as pure a condition as possible, just to preserve them for the future. Every addition is sort of like an addition to one’s extended being. One more exterior node to the mind, or personality. One more anchor to stability. One more reminder that one exists, that there is a certain order to life.

We collect because we want to capture life. Hold onto it forever. It comes from a deep inner need. Anything which can decay is a problem, from this mindset.

Of course, videogames themselves are an ephemeral phenomenon. If anything really does exist in the way we perceive it, videogames fail to do so except in the electrical space between hardware and the player’s mind. Once the electricity is gone, once the infrastructure that supports them is gone, videogames will also be gone. What physical remains remain wil be irrelevant.

Still. We all play our little games in life.