Zelda

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  • Reading time:3 mins read

I picked up the GBC remake of the SFC remake of Dragon Warrior 1 & 2.

Gosh, the changes are nice.

Gosh, the game is easy now.

Really. I’m not sure what’s up with that. The game used to have the same syndrome as The Legend of Zelda and the first couple of Phantasy Stars, whereby the player was fenced in by impossible odds. Now one is more or less free to stroll at will. Money and experience are everywhere. Red slimes take one hit to kill at level one, where they take several in the original version. Or I seem to recall so, anyway. Not sure what to make of this quality.

However. Everything else is strangely just-right, in its tone and sensibility. I don’t recall much actual story in the original game. I don’t remember the townspeople saying much. Now they’re all miserable and scared and angry, and have halfway-interesting things to say about their own lives and problems. It’s all kind of bleak, yet strangely perfect. Then there are all of the little additions like the girl who finds the hero attractive and follows him around town for no other reason, which well illustrate the heart behind the game.

I thought I’d played this remake before. I don’t remember any of what I see, though.

This is nice.

I got it for eight dollars.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington sure ends abruptly. I haven’t seen a Capra movie since I was aware enough to appreciate one. Looks like I need to go back and take another look at It’s a Wonderful Life and It Happened One Night. Again with the little details, which give the piece life — the expressions and reactions of even the minor characters or the extras.

The Trouble With Harry is gorgeous; it’s one of the few pictures that Hitchcock mostly filmed on location, and it shows. It also shows when the movie jumps to a set, although not as disconcertingly as in, say, The Birds. The cinematography is brilliant. The script is interesting. Herrman’s score — his first, for a Hitchcock picture — is above-average for him. The wardrobe, with its light New England jackets and autumn gear, feels as real and refreshing as the scenery. The acting, save Shirley MacLaine, is terrible.

The script, although interesting, demands a certain degree of shrewdness in its players. It doesn’t work on its own. In the right hands, it could seem like genius. Here, it deflates into so much awkward air. A shame. A shame in general. Maybe it would have been better as a silent film.

On that note, I am almost convinced that the Coens intended Barton Fink to be in Black and White. Just look at the choices in cinematography. The use of light and dark. Then turn down the color dial on your TV. Suddenly, the movie commands about twice the power it did a moment before. there is so much less distraction. The nightmare logic all makes sense. Where before you might furrow your brow and wonder what just happened, now you accept without question. Maybe even nod.

It’s still a perplexing movie. I think I might like it. I’m not sure. I think I have to watch it a few more times. I’m not sure if I want to. I think I might.

So.

Again with the objectivity

  • Reading time:2 mins read

On a certain level, you could argue that Super Mario Bros. signalled one of the most drastic changes to the superficial in the history of videogames.

>That’s only true if you fully accept the maxim that All That Is Important Is Gameplay, defining all other aspects of presentation and style as “superficial”.

No, it isn’t.

Super Mario Bros. introduced a bevy of new(-ish), and useful, gameplay concepts. It introduced little new in terms of character or story, over games that had existed long before.

The most significant problem that the game fleshed-out into the form we see it now, is the one first popularized in Pac-Man: preference for a rigid pre-established world template, to explore and master, over a more complex series of dynamics, as in, say, many of the earlier works of Ed Logg, where the player’s actions determine the nature of the gameworld, and thereby the future of the game.

I’m being simplistic, sure. There are plenty of counter-examples you could find, were you so inclined, of previous games with this structure. There is plenty you could provide to argue that this concrete storybook objectivenesss was the direction that games were moving in anyway, or that this is where they always sat. And for that matter, Super Mario Bros. is not so much a culprit here as is the whole design culture that it insipired. But there you go. Super Mario Bros. more or less shaped the modern videogame. Most of what exists now does because of the concepts in that game.

Of course, this is how games became popular. First Pac-Man, then Super Mario Bros. You give something obvious to latch onto, emotionally. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself. It’s a natural creative impulse. I just kind of wish that games had gotten a little further before this objective quality took over, overriding so much potential for abstract potentiality.

…

This is also, to a certain extent, why I so dislike the Super NES, and why the Zelda series has been a bore to me after the second game. I just wish developers would quit giving me overt toys to play with, within a specific framework — action figures and playsets — rather than a framework where my presence actually makes a difference.

I would like to matter.

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.

dep3D

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

While we bode our time for Zelda time, Brandon and I drifted into the lonely walled-off corridors to the left of the main entrance. Beyond a door and a glass wall, in a far corner, we encountered a low-key display of several otherwise-unmemorable driving games. The only immediate sign of life was in that the place seemed oddly crowded. As we neared, it became evident why: the driving game on the big-screen TV was… blurry. I looked down, and at my feet I saw a bucket full of paper spectacles: 3D glasses. Oh my. It has been a while, hasn’t it. And these were not your old-style red-and-blue glasses; these are the newer type, which provide a clear, untinted picture.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

The Evolution of a Franchise: The Legend of Zelda

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

We arrived late; the conference was already half-over, and the crowd had spilled to standing-room-in-the-hall-outside-the-conference-room-only. An Asian woman with a nervous smile asked us if we wanted headphones — sort of like what people wear during international debates. “Channel two is English” she said. I had no trouble setting my radio to channel two, or turning it on, or even adjusing the volume. Somehow, though, it still refused to work. Being the tall one, Brandon suggested I wedge myself just inside the door. I could see over everyone’s head. Eiji Aonuma stood on-stage, pontificating as if on a PBS special. To his left (and my right) was a large screen, showing a clip of Link, from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, running through the first few scenes of that game.

I turned to Brandon. I pointed toward my radio. Brandon pressed the power button. He adjusted the volume. He fiddled with the antenna. Then he shrugged and began to turn away. A moment later, he grabbed the end of my headphones and plugged them into the radio. My ears began to melt with Hell’s very own translation. I seized the radio and spun the volume dial to half of what it was.

When my senses recovered, Aonuma was talking about all of the little, insignificant details in the Zelda series, and how they bring reality to the game. He spoke of the difference between reality and realism. “To Miyamoto, reality is far more important,” Aonuma explained. This seemed fair enough, if a bit obvious. He then took the time to give several examples of just what reality means in the context of a game like Wind Waker.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Askew

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I just realized that most artists only really have one thing to say. If that. Everything they do is just a refinement of, or another aspect of, that single contribution that they have (that being their own selves).

I suppose this should be obvious. We’re all individuals. The more rounded individuals, perhaps, have more corners of their minds to lay bare.

All the same: Miyamoto has never really varied since his original ideas for Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Those added up into Super Mario Bros., and then Miyamoto took things a step further to hit upon The Legend of Zelda. Since 1987, it’s all just been refinement. He doesn’t have much to say that we haven’t already heard.

Same goes for Rieko Kodama, really (as much as I enjoy her work). She’s still kind of working with the tools she devised a decade and a half ago. BioWare did a lot with their first RPG, but they haven’t done a lot since then.

Hitchcock kept whacking out variations on the same two or three themes. Most of his work involved finding people he enjoyed and allowing them to do whatever they wanted within his vague descriptions. The Beatles had a lot to say by the end, but that comes from the chemistry of five key voices (including George Martin) and all of their experiences.

Miyamoto did his part. He’s done now. Hitchcock did his part. So is he. So are the Beatles. (Really, what of great merit have any of them done since the early ’70s?) They’ve each come out of nowhere with a new perspective and pointed out untapped possibilities within their own respective contexts. And in so doing, they’ve helped the context change.

And the world keeps moving. If they don’t, they’re left as a noble milestone; as a reminder of the need for perspective. Not as a template, however. Anything else is idolatry.

And that’s where all of the problems lie.

I’ve got a headache.

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.

And Tingle is not gay.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

In the most recent EGM (or at least the one handed out at E3), Eiji Aonuma admits that two dungeons were cut from Wind Waker. He claims that the decision was made because game was “just too big” as it was.

Considering how small the game is in its current state, and how awkwardly its flow is broken at those points, somehow this explanation doesn’t… exactly ring true. Again, the game was rushed. This doesn’t sound like the kind of thing for a Nintendo director to speak up about, though. Nintendo has enough problems already.

However: Yes.

So was I the only one who really picked up on this, or what?

Riven from the world

  • Reading time:2 mins read

There’s this place on disc 3 of Riven. After one steps off of the maglev and passes through the brief frog cave, there is a long stairway that winds up a rocky hillside. The sun is warm, yet the shadows are deep. The birds are chirping. The gentle ripple of the bay, below, carries on the slight breeze. If one progresses down the stairs, one sees the easily-startled sunners lazing on their rock. Up, meanwhile, leads to a rope bridge stretching toward the forest.

I want to spend all day on that set of stairs. There is a small landing where one first emerges from the cave, about large enough for one or two people to sit, and draw.

To some extent I ache that this location doesn’t really exist, as I would so like to visit — at the very least. I would like to nap there. Curl up in the shadows when the sun became too warm; emerge into the light when a chill came over me.

I believe it is that one small location which makes Riven what it is, for me. Everything else revolves around it. Every time I pass through, I linger. I can never seem to get enough.

There are only a few games which have given me a similar sensation. The Legend of Zelda is one. Shenmue is another. Skies of Arcadia comes darned close at times.

This is how Riven succeeds. It creates a place which feels real; which rings so true that one desires to understand it better. Then, it follows through. Everything makes sense, if one gives it enough time; the only thing holding the player back is his own internal wiring. The more time one spends there, the more one pieces together. The more one understands how the world works, and the more real it becomes.

It is essentially a masterpiece of world design, unlike any other that I’ve seen. That’s all that it is; a fully-conceived world, to enter and interpret as one sees fit.

Have moved some money and files around. Have bought some new pants. Not a lot remaining to do before I leave — which is in… three days.

Oy!

Hey. I should be able to sneak into the secret press-only rooms, seeing as how I’m… y’know, press.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GCN/Nintendo)

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Miyamoto comes from an older school of game design, from a time when we didn’t know as much as we do now — and so we didn’t know what was impossible. We also had little history, so it was up to bards like Miyamoto to create one for us.

With a handful of details, a rough outline, and his whims, Miyamoto spins tales for his audience. With every telling and every audience, his stories go down a slightly different path. No one performance is more accurate than any other; the truth is in the telling. Save the odd sequel, every Zelda game is a new beginning, with a new, yet always familiar, Link and a new Zelda. It’s getting so there are nearly as many interpretations as of Journey to the West or the legend of King Arthur. And for the same reasons.

Legends like these are ancient; they’re from a world before our linear sense of time and our concrete idea of history. Back then, the world moved in cycles. The seasons came and went; life flourished and waned — and then it began again, a little different, mostly familiar. Reality is in the moment and in that faith in the cycle.

The way that videogames age, this cycle has turned into a death spiral. Every five years there’s a new generation of players, with its own collective assumptions and its own built-in innocence to history. For each new wave of gamers, the story must be adapted and retold again.

The problem is this modern concept of progress. Whereas only a few generations ago one year was much the same as the next, technology has now placed us on a non-stop rocket train to anywhere-but-here. So our perception is warped from the speed, and so we are blinded to the cycles that used to define our reality.

Our rhythms have been broken, replaced with the dull whine of progress. The future is our salvation, while the present is a blur and the past is our collective shame. We live in a society that has invented history as a straw man for our pursuit of an illusory perfection.

Wind Waker is a game caught in an unfortunate dilema between these two world models.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Finis.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

g’gnahrnnndje…

Okay. It’s over with.

It’s almost random that I actually beat Ganondorf in his final form; all of my fairies were gone, I only had a few hearts left, and I just happened to hit the right button at the right time — a button I didn’t even intend to press.

Worth noting: There is a second quest of sorts in this game. There are a number of obvious changes that I’ve noted so far, although they’re mostly cosmetic. Some of them were on my wishlist the first time through the game, so — well, good.

I’m not sure how substantially the game is altered, however.

I’ve got… about a quarter of my review written. It should be done reasonably soon.

And…

yes.

Those a’ nae the jaws of which I speak, lass.

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I still taste the bread from a submarine sandwich that I ate over twelve hours ago. Talk about value for your dollar!

My toy symphony, as it were, is beginning to find some kind of direction for itself. I’ve come to the conclusion, however, that I need a good sample or two which comfortably sit in the bass range. As one might anticipate, were one to pay attention to such spectral issues, all of these dinky instruments and knicknacks tend to be pretty strong on the high end, but they generally cut off somewhere within the midrange.

Maybe I can fudge a bit by introducing a couple of pure waves; square and triangle, say. They’ll sound cheesy, and yet honest and warm enough that they might not clash as an overly synthetic addition.

Plus, they can be cleanly downsampled as much as I care to do so.

I really am not fond of square waves when used in the mid-range; I’ve known this for a long while. They just sound hollow. But my word, do they make good bass patches. They even have some neat uses in the higher registers, as a chirpy kind of seasoning.

Wind Waker is sitting in my Gamecube, very close to completion (as it has been for a few days) — but I return to it joylessly at this point. I suppose I might as well just get the darned thing over with. If I didn’t have a review to write, I don’t think I’d have the motivation to finish.

Today has been a day of crankiness. Perhaps repeating another three or four boss battles is just the cap that I need.

What does a genius need with pants?

  • Reading time:10 mins read

The Metroid 2 score really gets a bad rap. Actually, Metroid 2 seems to be the whipping child of the series in general.

I think it’s worth pointing out that when the music is good, it’s really good in this game. The main tunnel theme, the Metroid battle theme, the revamped Samus and Item themes.

Where it begins to get a little controversial is in the various ruins. Once the player wanders out of the central tunnel and into any of the larger playfields, the music switches to an atmospheric pattern of bleeps. Not a lot of melody. Not a lot of rhythm in particular.

If you’re looking for Hip Tanaka’s tuneful power-ballads, I can see how it should be easy to feel let down. But the music serves a different purpose here.

Metroid 2 is by far the creepiest, most clautrophobic game in the series. It’s lonely, unnerving, frustrating, almost trance-inducing. It has a tangible atmosphere which I think is wholly fitting to the game’s setting and general purpose. (This atmosphere is most obvious when the game is played in full black-and-white, as originally intended, rather than with the upgraded Gameboy Color palette.)

The music is an important element of that formula. It exists to create and sustain a particular mood. I feel it was composed very deliberately; Ryohji Yoshitomi could have written anything, after all. But he chose to go the avant garde route.

There is a method to the music, as you can tell if you listen closely enough. It’s not random, and it’s not careless. It’s an attempt at an unsettling ambient soundscape.

The problem that Yoshitomi faces in this instance is the limited sound capacity of the original Gameboy. Melodic fare is easy. More experimental music is a bit tricker to pull off convincingly with only a few triangle and square waves at a person’s disposal.

Whether Yoshitomi succeeds in his goal or not is up to the listener. But for what it is, I think his score works very well.

Combined with the excellent quality of the more melodic portions of the soundtrack, I’d easily rank the Metroid 2 score up there amongst my favourite original Gameboy soundtracks — somewhere in the neighborhood of Gargoyle’s Quest.

On the other hand, it’s worth noting that Yoshitomi was never asked back for the future games.

The music in Prime does something odd to my head.

It all began with the theme which plays behind the game-select screen. For whatever reason it might be, that theme moves me pretty strongly.

The last time I felt this way about a videogame theme was in 1986, when I first slotted my copy of Legend of Zelda into my NES. At the time, I was struck with a profound awe and wonder. I knew that I was seeing and hearing something important. And my whole body reacted.

The Metroid Prime theme (from it’s use later in the game, I’m assuming that this is intended as the main theme to the game) has a similar, if somewhat more muted, effect on me. And the deeper I crawl into the game proper, the more impressed I am with the music in general.

In the case of the main theme, I think a large part of it is the uncommonly synchopated rhythmic pattern. Short-long, short-long, long, long, long. Another part of it is the weird, theramin-like lead instrument. But it’s just the overall weight of decisions made in the tune’s composition, arrangement, and production that make it so strange and so captivating to me.

The rest of the score seems a bit more tame — although there are more touches of experimentation, the deeper I crawl.

In my view, Kenji Yamamoto makes some very tasteful and wise decisions in terms of references to earlier themes. I particularly like his restructured Metroid and Brinstar themes.

Some of the earlier, more traditional soundtrack fare (particularly during the pre-Tallon introduction sequence) isn’t altogether interesting. And the planet-side music does take a while to build up to anything. But I’m beginning to sense a sort of a method behind the score’s evolution.

If it keeps going where it looks to me like it’s headed, this is going to be a pretty darned sensitive and impressive work. I don’t really know that it has much comparison in terms of what else is out there at the moment.

The Prime soundtrack is, so far, perhaps the most original and generally satisfying one for my tastes.

However: as for the soundtrack which I find the most memorable, well-written for its time, and which I personally enjoy the most — I’d have to go with Hip Tanaka’s original Metroid soundtrack.

There’s not a dud in the bunch. It consists of some of the best themes ever written for any videogame. And it made the game far more interesting to play than it really should have been.

I do quite like the Metroid 2 score, for what it is. Super Metroid’s music was… functional, to my mind. It was very Metroidy. To my mind Yamamoto has improved greatly since 1994, however. I don’t have much comment on the Fusion score. It, too, was Metroidy — though in a way which fit Fusion.

Return of Samus is really what comes to mind when I think of Metroid.

The first game was a bit of a fluke; the elements which make up the game don’t really cohere as well as they might. There doesn’t seem to be much of an overall vision. It was done on a pretty low budget. It seems rather random to me that it turned out to be as memorable as it was.

Metroid II was the first game where all of the elements really came together. Samus was retooled to look more or less as she does now. Her ship was introduced. The game upped the creepiness level several notches, along with a deep sense of disorientation and paranoia.

It’s perhaps the loneliest game in the series. The grainiest. And also the most wonderful.

More so than in any of the recent games, there is a sense of nigh-unlimited possibility in Return of Samus. You just don’t know what’s out there. Anything could be important. Anything could be a threat or a relief. You just don’t know where a new item will turn up. Or where the end is. Or where you’ll unexpectedly blunder into another Metroid.

I think the most important factor in so establishing RoS in my mind has to be the spider ball. The way it’s been retooled in Prime is interesting, but the item was far more flexible in RoS. (It was also probably a nightmare for the level designers, so I can see why it’s mostly been left out since then.) The way it was implemented in that game opened up a wealth of possibilities for exploration.

Super Metroid was certainly enjoyable. But it was a bit over-polished and conservative for my tastes. It was engineered to please as wide an audience as possible, while feeding fans exactly what they wanted (rather than what they didn’t *know* they wanted). Sort of like Phantasy Star: End of the Millennium. It didn’t really do very much new; all it did was take the best of the first two games and make it all a lot more palatable.

Basically — the first game establishes the concept of Metroid. The second game begins with that template, and then goes on an introspective search for identity. The third game takes most of the new ground blazed in the second game, combines it with the charm and trappings of the first game, and puts as much shine on it as the SNES can muster.

Fusion tries to be a very different kind of a game, and I respect it for that. What’s more, I think it succeeds quite well in its attempts to reinvent Metroid as a tense action-oriented game. I feel the level design is severely lacking, though; I’m not all that fond of some of its lazy logistical constructs. The game comes off almost feeling like Super Mario World in terms of how special moves and blocks are used.

Prime, I really like a lot so far. I didn’t honestly expect it to be as good as it is. I can’t comment very well on it until I’ve finished the game, though — as it seems there’s still a lot of odd stuff coming up that could effect my evaluation.

I think it could be interesting if the next game were set somewhere after Fusion. That game sets up a ton of change for the Metroid universe, and it would be intersting to see how Retro might follow through on it.

On the other hand, I tend to see the main linear series as Intelligent Systems’ duty. If there’s to be an out-and-out Metroid 5, it would make more sense to me if it came from the original Metroid team.

What seems to be Retro’s duty is to fill in the cracks and to attempt to explain all of the peculiarities introduced in the main series. To dig deeper into the groundwork set by Intelligent Systems.

And on that note, I think a Metroid Zero of sorts (as someone mentioned above) would make a lot of sense.

In early interviews, it was suggested that Prime was going to be set before the original Metroid. I think they chose wisely, in their decision to instead make it a direct follow-up to the first game — but that still leaves the backstory concept to fulfill.

In terms of bonuses, I agree that it would be keen to include Super Metroid — and for exactly this reason:

That way, every single Metroid game would be playable on the Gamecube.

Metroid 1 is included with Prime.
Metroid 2, you can play with the Gamecube Gameboy Player.
Metroid 3 would be included with this sequel to Prime.
Metroid 4 would again work with the Gameboy Player.

Kind of keen to have everything in one place, y’know?

I would also like to see the ability to turn power-ups on and off, as in Super Metroid.

Honestly, I’d just like to be able to take the Varia suit off every now and then. Those oversized shoulderpads just keey getting more ridiculous with every game; I much prefer how her raw Power Suit looks.

Also, it would be nice to be able to combine the various beam weapons (as in the third and fourth games).

I’d like to see young Samus, somehow. As a child, in a flashback, perhaps.

I want those Chozo statues back again, for holding power-ups.

And I want Retro to feel free to try out some more radical, experimental ideas that I would probably never think of on my own. I want to be surprised, above all else.

* * *

Regarding the spiky, butch hairdo from the concept art: Yes. That impressed the hell out of me. And it seems to match my interpretation of Samus’ personality, really well.

And honestly, doesn’t it make a lot more sense to have short hair if you’re going to be wearing a suit like that? Imagine it getting caught in the helmet. Yowtch.

Storytelling as a craft

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Wind Waker just came today.

Jesus. I had no idea how right I was about the whole legend/storybook aspect. That’s precisely what this game is. The introduction sequence lays it all out.

Link has a lobster on his shirt!

In terms of gameplay and general structure, Wind Waker is almost identical to OoT. The controls are much more polished, mroe responsive, and generally nicer-feeling than in OoT. We’ve still got the god-damned fetch quests. (In fact, I think we’ve got more than in OoT.) Dungeons and towns and shops are generally laid out in the same way as before.

So, yeah. Basically imagine a really buttery OoT, with just about all of the interface problems removed, and you’ve got a good starting point.

At least in the first few hours, the game seems oddly linear. The player is given a boat right near the outset, and free roam of the ocean (which now covers almost the entire world) — but if the player decides to head off on his own whims, the boat begins to complain.

Yes, I know I’m not going in the right direction. Thank you. I don’t care if I’m not ready for that island yet; I want to visit it anyway.

There are more natural contraints for the player than simply not allowing him to go where he pleases.

Honestly, I’m starting to get tired of the post-Adventure of Link Zelda gameplay style. I wasn’t fond of most of the changes in Link to The Past, but one of the things which most irritated me was the way that items came to be used.

I’m not going to elaborate right now on exactly what the distinction is, but OoT backpeddled a bit in this regard; its item system — the items available; the manner in which they, the player, the environment, and enemies interacted; the manner, timing, and order with which the items were acquired — reminds me far more of the way things worked in the NES games than in LttP.

Wind Waker feels more like LttP, as far as items go.

Take that as you will.

Actually, given how integral the whole item collection system is to the game structure (as in Metroid), this has a pretty big effect on the general tone of the game.

In Wind Waker, I feel like I’m just collecting random doodads. Some of them are useful; some aren’t. But the only reason the game is giving them to me is to enable me to progress. At the point I’m at now — around five hours into the game — I’m ceasing to be thrilled when I find a new inventory item.

What’s worse is that about half of the items in the game so far seem to serve no purpose other than as keys in fetch quests. Argh. I don’t care! This is an adventure game convention which needs to die. Soon.

Further, even the interesting items — such as the grappling hook — are often hindered a bit by needless irritation. Every single time the grapple wraps around a post, for instance, the game halts to show me a four-second cutscene. I don’t need this more than once ever, thank you.

The good parts so far: the atmosphere and general graphic design are just fantastic, now that I’ve got some context for all of their elements. Link actually has a lot of personality; his facial expressions add a bunch to the game. Almost every object in the environemnt is interactive in some vague way or another. The water and fire and smoke and heat effects are very well-executed.

There’s this one kid on the first island who has a perpetual, enormous drip of snot hanging from his nose. I don’t know if that was really necessary.

I have a feeling I know who Zelda is. I’ve had this feeling since about half an hour into the game.

Where the atmosphere is original, it’s great. Where it’s not, it’s tiring — at least for me. All of the forced OoT-ish trappings quickly began to wear on me — but in the cases where the game takes a full left turn into its own universe, there’s a ton of life to be found. These moments tend to evidence themselves when the player is either left free to explore and bond with the environment, or when the game locks the player into a tightly-scripted plot sequence. Where I begin to lose patience is where the game tries to yank me around and force me to do things for it for no other reason than the fact that it’s a videogame.

I’m not fond of manipulation. I don’t mind wasting time of my own accord, but I don’t like my time to be wasted for me.

To be fair, I’m still only a few hours into the game. The plot hasn’t fully picked up yet, and I’m not yet as free to wander — so perhaps things will become less annoying in the future.

As far as sailing goes — it’s a mildly interesting mechanic, for a few minutes. The problem is that it takes so long to get anywhere. And once you set your coordinates, you don’t… really do anything. If you try, you’ll probably end up stopping the boat. The best thing to do when travelling is just to put the controller down and get a sandwich.

Again — maybe something else happens with this later. Right now, though, I’m perplexed. There are a lot of really good ideas in this system — so why did they combine them in such an obviously tedious manner?

I hope there’s more use for the telescope in the near future. About an hour in, I found a camera of sorts which has exactly the same functionality, except with the added benefit of enabling me to take pictures. I don’t see what I need the telescope for, if I’ve got this other item sitting around. I hope this isn’t just an oversight. We’ll see.

So — to boil it down:

The good — the graphical style; the atmosphere; the expressiveness of the characters (similar to Skies of Arcadia in this respect (among many)); the smooth controls; the non-annoying menu system; some interesting potential with a few of the new items; the self-reflective sense of humor of the dialogue; the Koji Kondo score; the introductory sequence.

The bad — how manipulative and needlessly annoying the actual game tends to be so far; THE FUCKING FETCH QUESTS; the overall structure of the item system so far.

Again — in its best places, this game has a different atmosphere from any previous Zelda game. I hope the game takes more advantage of its advantages than it seems content to thus far. It feels like a real shame to me that with all of these great new ideas, Eiji Aonuma felt compelled to make a Zelda game out of the pieces.

So. We’ll see, we’ll see…

I’ve yet to pay for a Gamecube game.

  • Reading time:6 mins read

I’ve got the OoT disc now. It’s… a decent port.

At the point I’m at now, I just beat Gohma and hit Hyrule Field again. Golly, it was a lot quicker this time around. The first time I played this portion of the game, I think it took me several hours to get as far as this. Now it’s taken me only around half an hour. Of course I did poke around quite a lot, before.

There are a lot of ads included for Wind Waker (both on the disc and in the packaging), which seems superfluous considering that the only way to get this disc is as a pre-order bonus with that game.

This compilation disc is apparently labeled, officially, as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Master Quest is called “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Master Quest” Which… makes sense. It’s not really a novel game in its own right so much as it is a second quest of OoT. (The instruction booklet doesn’t even bother to distinguish between the games.)

So collectively this disc kind forms the complete version of OoT. OoT DX, as it were.

The actual presentation of this package, I’m not sure about. It was thrown together pretty quickly.

The game disc is printed with the logo and the game title in red and black. The side of the case again simply lists the game as OoT. The back of the case actually goes into a fair amount of detail, considering that this isn’t intended for direct sale. The front is graced with a disappointing excuse for cover art (even more so than usual for Gamecube games). heh. It’s just the two logos against a gradiant background, with a few blurbs.

Just the logos would have been fine, if they were presented elegantly. Not so here. It’s not terrible; it’s just not… amazing.

When you boot up the system, tou’re presented with a screen that’s got an ocarina in the background and then logos (with corresponding pictures of link) in the upper-left and upper-right, for each of the two quests. Then down at the bottom is an option to allow you to view trailers to several other Gamecube and GBA games.

A new mix of Hyrule Field/the original Zelda theme plays in the background.

Below the logos, some… rather loud, overly large text explains the current selection in greater detail; a one-sentence synopsis which honestly seems a little condescending to me.

When you choose either quest, it gives you a splash screen that illustrates the controls for you and asks you if you want to use the rumble feature. Seems again kind of superfluous; they could have just thrown that into the options menu. And the game already teaches you how to play, and the instruction booklet is quite thorough.

The game takes a good while to load once you select one of the two quests. I understand why, of course. But you just get a black screen with a progress bar and a bit of related clip-art pasted above. That could have been more seamless.

The only changes are that it’s in a higher resolution now (and there’s no more of that palette dithering), and the issues with the controls. Any text and icons in the game have been altered to reflect the Gamecube pad a little more closely. The button colors at the top of the screen, for instance.

It’s strange. Not even the frame rate has been brought up. It’s just as choppy as on the N64. Draw distance seems the same.

It’s basically a perfect port. It emulates the positive and the negative of the original game. Including all of the text that you can’t skip and Navi’s over…Naviness. Even the small issues which could have been repaired, generally aren’t. Or they don’t seem to be; all of the graphical and camera engine peculiaries.

The controls are fine. They feel as natural as possible considering the differences between the N64 and Gamecube pads. I think the L trigger, being analog, is a little mushier than what we had before with the Z trigger.

The secondary items work okay. Right now I have slingshot on Y (the missile button in Metroid). Deku nut is X. And I’ve the ocarina set to Z.

It’s a little annoying to have to reach for the C-stick every time Navi starts to whine, though. And I’m not sure yet how it’s going to work once one has to start playing melodies on the ocarina (that’s the only place to access one of the notes).

So that should be… interesting.

The music stutters slightly when one brings up the menu screen.

The game takes a lot of memory for saving — fifteen blocks, to compare to Metroid’s two. This accounts for both the normal game and Master Quest, though.

It also takes a while to save. And as with the loading sequence, the method isn’t as polished as it could be. The screen just goes black, and a clumsy message appears to instruct you NOT to touch the memory card or the power button. Then it says the game has saved, and requires the player to hit “okay” to continue. And it drops back into the game.

Again, that could have been more seamless.

I also… Hmm.

The demo movies are interesting, but I think they’re kind of out-of-place here. They take down the tone of the disc in general. If it were just the two quests, with an elegant selection interface, I think that would take up the respectability several notches. As it is, this feels like… a free bonus disc.

Oddly, Sega’s name doesn’t appear anywhere on the F-Zero trailers. Nor does that of Amusement Vision. I’m not as surprised that Treasure isn’t mentioned in relation to Wario World.

In a big, edited sequence that shows off most of the big games which have been released since the Gamecube’s launch (all the way back to SSBM), PSOep1&2 and Super Monkey Ball 2 are amongst the last two or three items shown.

And there are some odd ones in there. A random James Bond game from EA. Timesplitters 2. Some other things which have little specifically to do with the Gamecube.

It’s more like “we’ve got this too!” than “look at what we’ve got that no one else does!”.

There’s nothing really wrong with the disc, and it’s certainly worth having around. It’s just — I’m surprised that it wasn’t handled with more care than it was. It wouldn’t have been at all difficult to have made things feel a little less cheap.

The games themselves are basically fine, from what I’ve seen so far. It just feels like an N64 perfectly emulated on my Gamecube.

Things To Do!