The Focal Point

  • Reading time:4 mins read

It seems to me that the distinction here between the “big” and the “small” is one of focus. And I think that’s what made me think of B-games.

Silent Hill 2, Ico, and Shenmue are all very small games in the sense that they each consist of really one key theme, or concept — with maybe a related secondary theme, that helps to flesh out and color the primary one.

Further, each game is mechanically, substantially, practically designed so as to illustrate the theme at hand as well as possible. The games don’t always succeed; there are often silly elements present for no good reason. Some of the mechanics aren’t thought-through or implemented as well as they might be. The intent is there, though.

Ico is about Yorda, and the intent to create affection, a protective impulse for her. The game is designed in order to do that, without any distraction. There is no life meter because it’s not about life and death. You can die if you do something retarded, like jump from ten stories up, but that’s just there to keep the player from doing something retarded and to make the world feel more believable. What genius there is in the game is in what it chooses to omit, in order to make its point.

Silent Hill 2 is about James’s emotional state; the entire game is a dive into his subconscious, into his guilt and sorrow and his inability to let go. Everything — well, nearly everything — exists as an ingredient for exploring this: the monsters, the level construction, the imagery. Even the way the game determines the ending is tied into what the player focuses on; how he or she has, intentionally or not, chosen to narrate the game and thereby illustrate the details of James’s condition, through his or her behaviour. There are a bunch of issues with the practical implementation (particularly in the actual moment-to-moment details of gameplay), that threaten to get in the way. Ultimately they don’t occlude the underlying design, though.

Shenmue exists to illustrate the mundane beauty of Being. That life is in the moments, not in the goals. Some people complain that the game is boring; those same people probably wouldn’t think of staying up all night just to watch a sunrise. It’s almost Hitchcockian in the way that, right from the start, implicit in the gameplay, the game lets the player in on something that the main character can’t even see, to try to make its point.  In a way, Ryo himself is kind of a caricature of the average singleminded teenager who would likely play Shenmue, and thereby a perfect tool for the game’s purposes. Everything in the game exists either in attempt to illustrate the simple beauties of life, or to support the plot and characters which wind through this mission — in time, perhaps, to get to the point of seeing what the game has been trying to show the player from the outset, and thereby clearly state its case.

The games feel small in the same sense that a good movie will always be too short, and a bad movie will always be too long.

Same deal with B-games. Often as not, they exist to illustrate one concept. That concept might be philosophical or emotional; mostly it has to do with a unique idea for a play mechanic, or some other gimmick. Anyway, these games don’t mess around; for well or ill, the entire game exists to try to get that central idea across. See Gyromite or Pikmin — which I do consider a B-game. Heck, see Katamari Damacy. It is effective because in the end, its entire being is focused on getting one thing across.

In contrast, games which try to please everyone (like, say, Final Fantasy) try to include something to please everyone. So they come off as unfocused. Expansive. Big. Games which exist solely to reflect some outside idea (like, say, the games based on the Lord of the Rings movies) by nature don’t really have a focal point of their own. So regardless of their craft, they tend to feel empty.

Mega hurt

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Jesus, Megaman 3 is hard.

Despite the uninspiring music and level design, and second-class boss design, I might have a higher estimation of the game were I able to beat a level or two. Maybe once, in fourteen years.

A criticism often levied against the second game — indeed the only frequent one I hear — is that it is too easy. Usually it’s the hardcore assholes who lay the claim, although other, less hardcore, sometimes not-at-all-assholes sometimes agree. I have always found the US version of the game at just the right level: tough enough to hold my attention, while forgiving enough that I can play the damned thing.

As regards the follow-up, I just don’t understand the appeal here. Were the game itself rewarding enough to drive me through the frustration, that would be fine. Megaman III, though, makes me feel even worse than when I play Ninja Gaiden III. At least the latter game is such a bizarre failure that I am compelled by a dark curiosity. Megaman III isn’t so charming as to be poor. It’s just dull. Way too dull to be way too hard. It seems to expect me to bring my own baggage: to play it, and like it, just because I played and liked its predecessor.

Then, I have never enjoyed Streets of Rage II as much as the first game. I feel Sonic 2 loses a lot of the appeal of the original. I don’t enjoy King of Fighters 2000 or ’97 nearly as much as the chapters to which they are mere upgrades. Perhaps the game is just too polished for my tastes. Perhaps the implicit inertia in its design and execution offends me on some level that I cannot justify in rational terms.

Or perhaps I’m just not hardcore enough.

I guess I can live with that.

Altered Sega

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

There was nothing going on at Sega. Perhaps that’s why they decided to hide the booth in a small room off a little-used hallway, apart from the show floor, where no one who found it did so by accident and few who did intend to take a look remembered to do so. Out of sight, out of mind. Yu Suzuki strolled around, gently sipping his bottomless Coca-Cola. Some other high-level Sega staff sat crosslegged on the carpet in the hall outside, chatting. No one paid attention.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Sunder Land, where all is asunder

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I just beat both scenarios of Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams in one day. In one sitting, really. I first had to play to where I left off in the PS2 version, although that took an atom of the time it did the first time. (I notice that James no longer comments, of a map of the United States, “It’s a picture of something. I’m not sure what.”) Perhaps I was in a better mood or perhaps I was just prepared; the goofy world-logic did not distract me as much, today. Instead, I was distracted by the atmosphere and narrative. This really is a sophisticated game, artistically; one of the most-so I have encountered. Although it falls short on the actual game mechanics, that’s okay. Its mind is elsewhere.

I think I actually respect this even more than the first game, although they are rather different in their approaches and intentions. Where Silent Hill 1has its crushing sense of fear, that makes a person think twice to play it in the dark — or even to play it at all, at times — this does something more subtle. It is about all-encompassing, numbing sorrow and guilt — with all of the haziness and tempermental bursts and aimlessness and self-effacement and strange obsession that come with it. It is a portrait of a man willfully falling apart. A trip through his head, as he fights to either self-destruct entirely or to confront his demons and accept what he has been unwilling to accept. Whatever brings an end to the murmur. The entire game is focused around illustrating that picture.

A common enough theme in literature. In videogames, not so much. It’s too adult a depiction of pain. The scope of the game, by which it does illustrate this theme, is far more ambitious than I am used to. The original Silent Hill deserved enough praise just for being bright enough to understand how fear works better than any of its contemporaries. That seemed like a stroke of genius. This… is something else entirely.

Then Silent Hill 3 seems like an attempt to go mainstream with the series. It plays (and, in general, feels) much more like Biohazard than either of the first two games do. It tries to directly follow the plot of the first game, and to provide some more stable answers about just what this “Silent Hill” place is — something that really did not need to be done. It has a sassy, sarcastic lead. The music is more oriented toward pop, over the metal machine of the first game and the drones of the second. It’s just so… polished, and pretty, and palatable. Then The Room is supposed to follow after the second game, in some respects. I… well.

I guess I should reserve comment until I have seen them through. Something just feels a little unnecessary here.

Anyway. I am making progress.

A while ago, Justin Freeman made reference to a list of the top five (or was it “only five”?) significant games in this hardware generation: Metroid Prime, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, ICO, Rez, and Grand Theft Auto III. He said “Maybe Silent Hill 2” — although that would make an unusual five. I’ll throw it in. I will also throw in Ikaruga, Wind Waker, and Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution. These nine games seem, to me, to be the sum of all of note that we have learned this generation. I have yet to find a tenth candidate.

Some will be surprised that I include Wind Waker, given my attitude toward the game. Some who know me better will know that it is precisely that attitude which puts the game on the list. Evolution finally comes through and admits what a meta-fighter Virtua Fighter has always been, as a series. It says some things about fighters, and about videogames, and the way we interact with them in a broader sense, that should do some permanent damage if you think about it too hard. And Ikaruga is, frankly, one of the most perfect and elegant game designs around — one which helps to illustrate on a base level, along with Rez, what videogames are, at their spine — and one which demonstrates the “pure” videogame (that is, videogame-as-design) at its most ideal. There is a level of truth here that, although related to the games of the early ’80s, could not exist in any previous hardware generation.

I might talk about this all in more detail, later.

Or. Maybe not.

Smile, Apollo, Smile.

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I found a copy of Space Channel 5 Special Edition, for the PS2, for twelve dollars. The localization perplexes me a little. Of course, none of the voice actors save Apollo Smile return for Part 2 — so several flashbacks to the first game are redubbed. Yet, the title screens and packaging have been changed to both games. In no obvious place is it stated that discs 1 and 2 are supposed to be two separate games; they are just packaged as discs one and two of a single game. This makes the sudden change in (quality of) voice actors sort of peculiar.

Let’s see. Other arbitrary changes. In Part One, the Report Two boss — remember her? There’s a bit where Ulala yells: “Is that a tongue? AAH! It’s so slimy… incredibly… slimy…” — with horror changing to a weird kind of ecstacy, in her voice. That’s been replaced with something like “Ah, get yet mitts offa’ me! It’s so slimy!” In part two (though not in part one), the ability to zoom the characters around in the profile mode has been removed. Or. I think it has. I seem to recall being able to roll the character models around and look under their skirts. Can’t do that anymore. Remember the loading screens? “Now Moloading/Roboading”? No more. Just “Now Loading”. Lots of fun, these Agetec guys. In a similar vein, most of the unimportant characters in the profile section (even returning characters, like Biluba Boriskovsky) now just have generic names — Preschool Student (Green) — rather than specific names. The teacher, Mr. Joely, has been blandly called “Mr. Nervous”. No more effort than required here.

I think one of Evila’s lines was changed, and dubbed over by a wholly different actress. And then they didn’t bother to process the voice as the voice was processed before. Also, Fuse does have voice samples for the first game where he advises you to use the “X” and “O” buttons. I’m not sure whence those came, unless Sega was forward-looking enough to get Dave Nowlin to record those during the original redubbing sessions.

A lot of the charisma of the Japanese versions and of the English dub to Part One is just missing in Part Two. Even Apollo Smile does not seem to have been directed well, or to have been given all that great a script. Or to be having much fun. As superior as Part Two is in just about every way, it is harder to tell in this case. Interesting how much a bored dub can interfere with a game’s momentum and overall energy.

Some of the dubbing even makes the game harder to play. A few commands, particularly in Report 3, are ambiguous to the ear. I swore that it kept telling me to hit “left”, but it meant “chu”. Others are mumbled or a little off-time. Not helpful.

You can save multiple states in Part One, now. I notice that Part One says “Reprogrammed by United Game Artists” — I guess because the game originally was released just before UGA had become a distinct entity. The mpeg compression is now much less terrible — as you might well expect, from a DVD. A bunch of awkward subtitles keep popping up, that I don’t remember, which explain things a bit more than I remember them being explained. I think some of the obvious synchronization issues have been fixed a little.

I also now realize that a lot of items are obtained in Part Two by a scavenger hunt through the character profile section. You talk to characters you have saved, and they tell you to talk to other characters, who tell you to talk to other characters, who give you hints or spatulas.

That’s really about all there is to it. It’s still Space Channel 5 — both parts. It’s just a little more awkward. You can pick up the US Dreamcast version for five bucks, and the Japanese Dreamcast version of Part Two for about fifty still, probably. Or you can get this for maybe around ten to fifteen bucks. Not all that bad a compromise. And all things considered, this isn’t a bad localization or package. It was a great idea to bundle the games together, and it was good of Agetec to get Apollo Smile back again. It’s just. Well, you get what you pay for, to a certain extent.

So there it is.

Monsters known as “Hellspawn”

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Oh, there is a Japanese dub. Was this in the menu before? I don’t recall seeing it. Although still not perfect, the acting here is about the level of a decent-budget anime. Especially given the setting and the subject, the game sounds far less proposterous this way.

Yeah. The only part of the game which is really tough so far is in the jumping. And that is not so much because the jumping itself is poorly-done; it’s just that it can take some trial-and-error to gauge where Hotsuma can leap and where he can’t. The game does not really support this approach: when you fall, you die; when you die, it’s game over. You must start the round again from the beginning. This can be refreshing; in this way, you learn the hard way how to blast through a level without error — as with, say, Castlevania. For platforming sections, and for other areas where you’re just trying to figure out how to progress, it is less refreshing.

Still. This is kind of fun, so far. Although I guess it does have some Shinobi-ish qualities after all — they are just minimized — the game continues to remind me more of Ninja Gaiden. Which in itself is fun, since — as I mentioned a while ago — the new Ninja Gaiden reminds me more of Shinobi than of Ninja Gaiden.

I think I am on the doorstep of a mild sickness. I am doing my best to backpedal.

Eek? Oh.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Today, between not killing myself on a bicycle and not killing myself by running face-first into a tree branch, I went to a used game shop. There, I found… games. I saw a loose cartridge of Dynamite Headdy, and one of Rocket Knight Adventures. I passed both over, as I do not accept Genesis games without cases if I can help it. I saw a copy of The Adventure of Link, gold cart, mostly unblemished, for five dollars. It rattled.

I walked out of the store (collectively, over two vacancies over five minutes) with Tengen’s version of Sega’s Alien Syndrome, for the NES; Acclaim’s version of Toaplan’s Tiger Heli, for the NES; Capcom’s version of Capcom’s P.N.03, for the Gamecube; and ICO.

I… think the above cost about fourteen dollars, in total.

My only memory card is currently elsewhere. After plummeting twice off one or another high precipice, I have decided not to play too much of ICO until I have something to fall back on. Nevertheless, I will comment on what I have seen thus far:

Damn.

I need juice.

OutRun2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

As we strolled past the Megaking booth on the show floor, I spotted an OutRun2 machine in the distance. Drawing closer, I noticed that it was a feature of the CRI (now a subdivision of SEGA-AM2) booth. A polite elderly Japanese fellow swiped Brandon’s and my ID cards; he handed us pamphlets and old-fashioned Japanese fans with the CRI logo on them. Only two people were before us. The initial plan was, I — being such a fan of the original OutRun — would play the game, and subsequently write up my impressions. Time was short.

As we waited, I read through a bilingual “Naze Nani CRI” comic, which illustrated for kids on both shores the benefits of MPEG SofDec and the ADX compression algorithm. A middle-aged Asian man stood behind me, arms crossed in front of his ID badge. “Do you like the original?” he asked. We nodded and grinned, politely.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

STATEMENT OF INTENT

  • Reading time:6 mins read

That‘s about it. In the original Jet Set Radio, the player had five or six things to think about at any moment. Early on, there were the mechanics to worry about. Then there was a bit of an exploration element. Then there was the goal of the stage — which usually involved finding, accessing, and spraying graffiti on set locations. (The spraying itself was a change of pace, as it involved standing still and entering complex thumbstick gestures — possibly in the midst of an otherwise-chaotic scene.) Then there were the police to worry about. Then there was the strategy of which tags to save for last, to make them easiest to spray on the go while avoiding the cops. Then there were the Graffiti Souls to find and collect — the doing of which was really helpful in teaching the player how the levels were put together. There was the whole performance-scoring mechanic, which encouraged you to complete every level in style, on top of everything else asked of you. Then there was the timer.

The player always had something to think about; it was all about trial-and-error, as one learned how the game thought and how it wanted the player to think — namely, with a fast and ordered chaos. The game was a rush. And if you missed something, you could go back in and play around later.

JSRF reminds me a bit of what JSR is like when it’s beaten; one big city, that you can freely skate around and explore. No danger. No stress. Whatever Graffiti Souls you’ve missed, you now can sort out how to collect. In JSR, that was perhaps the best part of the game — yet part of the reason why that freedom was so rewarding was that I had to earn it. I was fed one piece of the game at a time, and at the end I got to enjoy how everything fit together. Also, the level design was terrific.

The level design in JSRF isn’t as interesting. Beyond that, though, the game… everything’s compartmentalized now. I never have to think. I just wander around through this city, and the game places task after task before me. “Do this”, it says. So I do it. Then I wander. “Now do this”, it tells me. So I do that. Then I wander. “Now you must knock down all of these police” it says. “Now look at this — find a way up to this Graffiti Soul.”

Hell. I…

Did I ever have to fight the police in the first game? They were pretty dangerous. That was kind of the idea, I thought. It was all about running from the cops. They kept the pressure on. Now the only interaction I have is the occasional skit where the game fences me into an arena and I have to defeat a certain number of policemen or tanks or what-have-you to continue.

Now. Come to think of it — since the police aren’t a constant problem, why is the graffiti system so simplified? All one must do now is hit the right trigger, and the graffiti appears. No stopping; no effort. Were the game more action-packed, to the point where it was dangerous to stand still for even a moment, this tradeoff would be helpful. So far, however, that just ain’t the case. Again, all of the game’s elements are now broken up. There’s no timer. There’s no danger. I’m free to wander and spray as I wish. Again, all of the danger is partitioned into these silly skits in between game areas.

Perhaps it is unfair for me to compare this game to its predecessor, as it is clear that it attempts a different dynamic — yet exactly what dynamic is that? It has become a standard exploration-collection platformer, only with even more frustrating wonky controls than the original Jet Set Radio. The only things which seem to really set it apart are its visual and aural style. And even that isn’t up to the standard set by the first game.

The visuals are polished; they’re sleek, and ever-so-slightly more Western in style. Yet although interesting, they lack the quirky charm that so characterized JSR. Although still impressive, they feel kind of bland in comparison. Likewise, the soundtrack — well. I’ll get to Cibo Matto in a moment. I’m not going to get into the Latch Brothers’ contributions. Hideki Naganuma must have had an off day when he wrote the music to this game. There are a few excellent tracks (“The Concept of Love”, “Like a Butterfly” (is that its name?)), yet others seem built out of pieces of familiar tracks from the first game or just… don’t have as much power to them as what he contributed before. There’s a lack of energy here.

As for “Birthday Cake”: I like Cibo Matto. I’m really fond of them. I like this album (Viva! La Woman). I like this song. You all are right to criticize the use of this song in this game. Do not, however, let it taint your concept of Cibo Matto. They are very good.

Not only is this perhaps the least appropriate song to choose for the game; it also got mangled along the way. First, someone at Sega decided to censor it; two phrases were edited out (“I don’t give a flying fuck though!”; “You made the war with the Vietnamese.”), making the song play like a gravel driveway. Then — I don’t know what happened with the compression or the EQ. I guess someone tried to make the song sound “fuller” by scrunching all of the levels together. It just sounds awful, though. It’s hard to listen to.

Yes, the song is shrill in its natural state — yet it is charming as well! It is funny! That has been effectively removed; all that remains is noise.

And again: wow, what a bad choice of a song, anyway. Cibo Matto was perfect. Just not this song.

So. There that is. The game is not awful. It is just mediocre, from what I have seen. As I have said elsewhere, however, I think I could better tolerate an all-out failure. Instead, this game feels like a compromise for the benefit of everyone who didn’t get the original Jet Set Radio. The fallacy there is: those people? They’re not going to get it. Jet Set Radio, on its own power, ain’t a mass-appeal concept. You’re playing to the wrong crowd. If you want to bring people in, you convert them through social engineering. You make them see how hip you are (perhaps through smart marketing and PR). You don’t change, or you’ve wasted everything.

Ah me. My foot is asleep.

Out of the frying pan, into the SIMULATED COCAINE BUSINESS

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I have an Xbox. It is huge. I’m using it as a platform for my Dreamcast. The main reason I got it is that it came with a bunch of software that I wanted anyway, and which on its collective own, even at a discount, would have cost about the same as I paid for it AND an Xbox. What I didn’t realize, though, is that I got a SPECIAL BONUS prize not even mentioned in the auction: ten digital tracks of what I assume is the top of the top of contemporary white suburban trash metal. The person from whom I got the Xbox did not bother to name his custom soundtrack, so I have renamed it “NOOOOOOO!” for my further convenience. Somehow I cannot bear to throw things away (especially if they’re free and special, as this soundtrack so clearly is), so it remains on the drive.

Although I have no clue what I’m doing, I begin to understand the appeal of the recent Grand Theft Auto games. I was vaguely familiar with the first two. They were silly and kind of dumb. Mister Lemming And Company really did something else with GTA3, though. It is hard to wrap my brain around how much work went into the most unlikely details. In Vice City (which, from about an hour’s play, I don’t enjoy as much), I spent more time listening to a seemingly-endless parody of public radio than I did running people over. Now that’s entertainment!

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is… reminiscent of a BioWare game. It is, alas, more contrived and a bit less flexible than I expected, yet the portion I have experienced is not without joy. For its part. I wish I could say the same of JSRF. I did not wish to believe what I had heard — as the trailers made the game seem so pretty! And Hideki Naganuma is not a man to argue with. And the soundtrack contains the remix of Guitar Vader’s “I Love Love You”! I mean. How could the game go wrong? By not being fun, I guess. What happened here?

Well, I know what happened. Or I know how the game feels about what happened, whatever it is that happened. I won’t get into that at the moment, however.

Sega GT is a car game. I don’t understand car games. I set it to play Oingo Boingo while I crash my realistic car all over a series of vaguely attractive race tracks, lose money, and slowly crawl into video poverty. I am sure this must entertain someone.

And. That is all I will say on that matter, for the moment.

Wait, no it isn’t. When I first began to play Vice City, I tried to be a nice guy — and yet I did not quite understand the controls. I wound up punching a hooker in the face. This seemed to excite my mother (who had lingered nearby, out of curiosity) to no end. She yelled at me: “Hit her again! Hit her!” When I complied, this still was inadequate. “There’s another one! Hit her!” I planted my character’s foot into the face of a hooker ascending a flight of stairs. The hooker flew in a slow, steep arc and crashed to the landing below, in a pool of blood. Money scattered everywhere. “THINGS!” my mother cried. “GET THE THINGS!”

I’m not sure I have a comment for that.

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (GameCube/SEGA)

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Billy Hatcher is not a bad game, on a mathematical scale; merely unremarkable. Even its bugs and annoyances are, in effect, boring. If the game were more novel and ambitious in its problems, then it would give me some grotesque passion to carry forward. As it is, the game gives me nothing to work with.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Everyone does (what Nintendon’t!)

  • Reading time:3 mins read

What Nintendo really needs to do is pay more attention to third parties. The current impression in the development community — and it’s been this case almost since the beginning — is that it’s kind of a waste of money and effort to pay too much attention to Nintendo’s box. Sony has the marketshare, so put all of your money on Sony and you don’t have to think; you don’t have to worry.

Nintendo needs to conduct some psychology experiments. Figure out what it’ll take to change that impression — to give third-part developers confidence that they’ll be on at least an equal level with Sony, that there aren’t any demographic problems, that Nintendo intends to listen to and to help developers even more than Sony will. Lower licencing fees. Get a few key secret blockbuster third-party games contracted for launch — and get all of this ready before they unveil their next system.

Then they have to go to the public — convince them that Sony is the old guard, and is no longer hip. Go a bit more in-your-face about Sony’s weak spots (the fact that their systems break if you breathe on them, for instance). Make people think “hey, they’re right. Sony’s become kind of boring now. Maybe I’ve been missing something over here…” Position themselves as the mythological kings of old, revitalized, reborn, and ready to reclaim their throne from those who have been keeping it warm for the last decade or so.

This is what has to be done, in a nutshell. People won’t care enough otherwise, to make a huge difference over the performance of the previous two consoles. If Nintendo doesn’t have the constant and substantial software support, and if they’re still seen as kind of dismissable and fuddy-duddy by the mainstream, they’ll not be in a good position.

It’s all about relations; public and private. Nintendo doesn’t like to talk to people. They need to change that, fast. Make everyone really, REALLY believe that they’ve got a winner this time — as Sega did during the first few months of the Dreamcast. Only more so. And keep that momentum. Don’t let go. They need to pace themselves, and plan ahead to always have a next card to slap into place. Make sure the public and press never come too far off the launch high. Don’t just make it, then lean back and expect things will work out (as Nintendo has been wont to do). That people and games will come. It won’t. They won’t.

Another thing that’s important is to beware of potential sabotage from Sony. Try to anticipate what weird tricks they might pull, and build in some safeguards. Always have something better stashed away, to counter a weird claim from the other side.

So I guess there are two themes. Communication and planning.

If they can accomplish all of the above, Nintendo will have a winner. In theory they have got more weight and substance as a videogame company; if they’re just smart enough to bend and use that fact in a comparative, qualitative sense — and if they’ve enough developers on their side to back it up with — people will be attracted.

Around the cluck

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Wow. It’s only quarter of ten?

Playing Billy Hatcher sure makes time pass slowly.

Game Artists’ Manifesto

  • Reading time:10 mins read

Skies of Arcadia — there’s little I did in that game that didn’t result in something rather wondrous. And little that didn’t feel important in some way. Everything about Arcadia, it’s set up to build anticipation and wonder. Even just the dungeon and town design.

Take that ruin near the beginning; the tower where the moonstone lands, just after the intro events. There’s this long walkway, above water. The camera follows behind Vyse’s shoulders. There’s a fish-eye effect, which seems to make the path stretch on forever. And way on the other end is the dungeon. As Vyse runs toward it, his feet and elbows flail back toward the camera. He seems eager to get where he’s going. And we’re following him, seeing what he sees. It’s not really that far, but there’s this buildup of tension as you approach. And — inside, it’s one of the first real 3D dungeon environments I’d encountered in a console RPG.

That is to say: it takes its third dimension into account. As it it’s a real space, with is own logic. As you progress, you begin to understand the importance of features that you didn’t more than notice before; elements of the dungeon’s structure. And eventually, you solve it like a Rubick’s cube of sorts. You’ve unlocked its secrets, and mastered some skills, and begun to own some space.

It leads you on, but it does so by trusting you to follow your intuition. And when you do that, you’re rewarded. That is what is glorious about the game. It is built to reward curiosity, and gut instinct. And it does a great job at creating that curiosity to begin with. That is its genius. Then there’s the fact that most of the elements that are required to understand are in plain view through most of the game — it’s just that you need to play the game, to understand the significance of everything in the world well enough to put it all together. It’s a real place, and you get to know it by living there.

By the end of the game, there’s this sense of great enlightenment. So that’s why the world is the way it is. And — there’s still more left to discover. It leaves one with the feeling of possibility. Like anything could be out there, if one just were to work hard enough to find it. It’s incredibly inspirational. And this is all… intentional. Maybe not fully conscious, but it’s part of the game’s design.

Part of this comes from the protagonist, Vyse. There aren’t a lot of positive models in modern videogames. Not a lot of hope. After all of this cynical angsty Squareish teenage punk nonsense, it’s refreshing to see a lead who is actually a hero. Who has some spirit. It makes me feel like… I can do things. It’s all about attitude. That is to say, what you make of your situation. I feel that he’s the condensed center of Kodama’s message to her audience: Never give up. Never look down. Be proud. There’s always a way.

It’s not just the actual events within the game — it’s the strength of the conceptual significance behind them. I mean. It’s fiction. But fiction illustrates a lot about normal life. One of the best traits of fiction is the capacity to illustrate possibiliy. Whether this is tangible possibility, or just the emotional sense for where it comes from and what it means.

This isn’t something that you honestly get from most videogames. I’ve only gotten it from a handful. The original Zelda. Phantasy Star II. Riven. Skies of Arcadia. They all have made me look at the world differently. They’ve strengthened me, personally, in one way or another. That’s a sign of pretty good literature, I’d say.

I find it really interesting that Kodama is responsible for two of the games on that list. She… well. There’s a reason why I cite her as my favourite game creator. Shenmue has a bit of that, although its clunky (if endearing) AM2-ish edges keep it at a bit of an emotional distance.

The reason why I cite these games as amongst the best I’ve played is because they aren’t content with just being videogames, as such. They carry a deeper meaning. And not a contrived one, just for the purpose of being “deep”. They… stretch outside the boundaries of their medium and do something, emotionally. They actually speak some pretty inspiring messages to their audience, if the audience is willing to listen.

Most games are too calculated. Most games are designed by programmers. Or worse, by people who want to make videogames. Kodama and Miyamoto are both artists, foremost. Miyamoto has become… entrenched in Miyamoto in recent years, unfortunately. Still, he started as a slacker art school kid who didn’t even know that the company he was joining made videogames. Kodama didn’t exactly know what Sega did either, from what she says.

Rand and Robyn Miller, behind Myst — well. They certainly didn’t set out to be game designers. And by the time they’d gone through their first rough draft (that being Myst itself), they had amassed a pretty huge trove of mythology. They just… wanted to make their own world, with its own history and logic. And all of that work came to fruition in their second game.

This stuff, you can’t teach it. Being taught means being told “this is how to do things”. Generally speaking. Learning, on the other hand, means coming to recognize the organic patterns behind things and how to relate with them. It’s about communication. This isn’t something that can ever be pressed into you. It’s something you have to have the will to seek out on your own. The most someone can do is to set all of the right pieces before you, and to illustrate what they might mean. But it’s up to you to approach, and to add those pieces to what you’ve already collected. And to pick up the hints as to what else they might imply about you and your world.

It’s just like how you can’t tell a person how to write a novel. Or else you’ll get… a bunch of form-feed novels. The best way to learn is to simply have the right environment. To have the right materials around. To be given enough context and enough carrots to inspire you to look for meaning on your own — to care about the world, and about life. And to have someone or something you can use to reorient you, whenever you’re lost. And this is why art is so very important. That’s part of what it does — it provides some of that context. It helps to hint you in the right direction to finding your own meaning in life.

Art is actually a strange term. It’s rarely used correctly. Even I misuse it. Art is a process, more than a thing. A thing cannot Be art, in and of itself. Art comes in the process of interpretation of that thing, by the individual. It’s a way of looking at the world, really. As is science. Hamlet is not art, unto itself. It is art To Me, because I appreciate it as such. Because its meanings are strong enough, and I’m able to find something within them that has relevancy to my life. There is no objective Art. By its very nature, art is subjective. It’s when people try to put art on a pedestal that it gets… well, pretentious.

Something to think about: the only way you know the world is through your own senses, and your own understanding of the world. Whether the world really exists, you can’t know. The only basis for verification that you have is your own self. Objectivity — removal of one’s self from the picture at hand — is useful for understanding the inner workings of a system within the world that you perceive. However — whether or not thost things really exist, that you choose to be objective about, really comes down to a subjective decision. Therefore: in order to gain understanding of the world, the first step should be to search for what the world means to you. Through that, you can do anything else. You can play with your subsets of objectivity all you like. Of course — once objective understanding is established, that automatically gets kneaded back into your overall subjective understanding of life, your world, and what sense it all makes.

Science can, in a very real sense, be considered an art — inasmuch as it is a subset of the same methodology of understanding, with its own unique behaviors — just as philosophy differs from painting, differs from film direction, yet all are the same thing in the end. It’s all life, really. It’s all about understanding, and communication.

Videogames, too often, are held as objects; as important for their own sake. It’s easy to be fetishistic about them. I certainly am, at times. This is a problem of interpretation, all across the board — on the part of the “consumer” (read: the audience), as well as the critics as well as those who actually produce the games. The average videogame is no more important, artistically, than the average Hollywood explode-a-thon. Or romantic comedy, or whatever other tired formula you like. All the same.

Now. There’s something to learn from that as it is! You know what they say: there’s more to learn from bad art, than from good; from carelessness, compared to compassion. Provided that you’re willing to put in the effort to find it. However: something needs to change.

If this medium is ever going to become respectable, and to come unto its own as a form of expression — we need more people communicating through it. And using it as a medium to inspire understaning. We need to change our expectations, and stop considering videogames as important for their own sake, rather than for the the sake of the meaning they contain for us personally. And for the sake of the life which goes into them as an outlet for their creators.

Comfort is a dead end. Life is change. The moment you stop, you die. Either inside or outside. The body itself is ever changing; it’s different from one day to the next. All of the matter in your body now will be gone in seven years. You’ll technically be a completely different person. The moment that’s no longer true – it’s the same thing. It’s just the nature of life. Stasis doesn’t fit into that.

Gradually, I’m allowing more and more change into my life. And the more I let in (within my tolerance levels), the more I indeed feel that life. The more I learn to appreciate it, simply for what it is.

Videogames have the potential to convey so much meaning. And it’s not really a medium that’s been tapped well, on either end of the divide. Maybe I can help bridge the gap a bit. I don’t know. Help to give people one more outlet, to gain and express meaning for their lives. I guess… I’m pretty much doing the same thing.

Myau Mix

  • Reading time:3 mins read

So. I’ve got Phantasy Star – Generation: 1. I still have no PS2, let alone one ready for Japanese games.

However: I can make some assessments based upon the packaging.

Like, well — the packaging is rather classy.

The whole “SEGA AGES” stripe on the left makes it look like a “best of PS2” re-release of some sort. The manual is oddly thin. Aside from that, this seems… more or less real.

The book is in full-colour. Inside rests a cardboard leaflet, to stick into that SEGA AGES binder which you might recall. This contains a fair bit of rudimentary information about Phantasy Star, and a recent photo of Kodama and Naka, holding the Mark III version of the game. Naka’s head is much bigger than Kodama’s. It seems a little odd to see them together, after so long.

I wonder who’s pictured in the “creator” box for Monaco GP, or Fantasy Zone. Hm.

The front of the manual is a full-page image of the cover illustrator by that PSO artist from Sonic Team. This picture is actually larger than the version on the front cover of the DVD case, given that it doesn’t have to account for either the PS2 ID border at the top or the SEGA AGES border on the side.

It’s — well, it’s what the cover would look like if it weren’t smooshed over. And it looks very nice. The new version of the Phantasy Star logo — again, the word that comes to me is “classy”. It’s a softer and icier redraw of the original logo, with the PSO-style three-planet Algol swoop in the background and the “generation” number as a misty underline. It works well.

The disc art is typical; blue and black. Looks like a Dreamcast game. The back cover shows an illustration of Lutz without his robe. His underlying outfit looks like something that Legolas might dorn. It’s got… leaves. It’s green and blue.

The packaging points out, from every corner, that this release is the first in the SEGA-AGES series (including a stripe on the spine — meant to cause the game to stand out and match the rest of the set, if you display your DVD cases on a shelf) yet somehow this doesn’t seem obtrusive, or annoying — as undoubtedly it will, if this series comes to the West. The game retains its own identity and dignity as a self-contained entity, while it suggests a new format for both of its sequels and stands as the test case for the larger SEGA AGES line.

A lot of care seems to have gone into this, particularly for a budget release. That’s really the overall feeling that I get. This is obviously geared for the Sega aficionado, even with the casual browser price.

More impressions when I actually play the darned thing.