Showing posts with label Zelda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zelda. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
The Nintendo Power Retrospectives - Part 10
This time I'm taking a look at a whole boatload of football games, as well as Zelda II and Metal Gear.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Dale DeSharone - an unspoken legend
Above all though, Dale was a sincere, decent human being, well loved by all those who knew and worked with him. I am always reminded of the memorial comments from James Bach, who explained how Dale had given him a start with his career, taught him to drive and helped him through a family tragedy.
My own experience of Dale was that he went above and beyond when helping with my articles, providing numerous high res scans and always happy to answer my many questions, and I will always remember that.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Adventure, a game released in the year of wedontknow; or: Wikipedia continues to be a danger to video game historiography and should never be used as a source
 Warren Robinett (photo taken from the developer's homepage) also programmed Slot Racers and Basic Programming for Atari, and later founded The Learning Company |
It all started a long time ago, back in 1979... or was it 1978? Or even 1980? We'll see about that; let it for now be said that this is the story of an Atari game called Adventure and its Wikipedia article. Adventure was programmed by Warren Robinett, conceived in 1978 (so the story goes) as a video game adaption to the original text adventure game "Collossal Cave" by William Crowther and Don Woods. Limited to tiny amounts of cartridge space but the Atari VCS' marvelous graphical capabilities, the game eventually had to take a very different shape than its first inspiration. Instead of navigating in turns through parser inputs, the player was to move around in real-time, maneuvering through a maze, searching for the tools to solve it (there was no inventory: the hero could only carry one item at a time), and fighting dragons like in an action game. The game is rightly considered the origin of the action adventure genre, building the foundation for milestones such as Icon: Quest for the Ring, The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. However, it goes beyond being an inspiration for a number of later games. It can be considered as the first step to combine the typical characteristics of both computer games and video games (which then encompassed arcades and home consoles) - we might have mostly the same kinds of games on all platforms now, but back then they were considered entirely different mediums: One where players were supposed to use their intelligence, and another that demanded their dexterity with a joystick. Its most immediate call to fame, however, was what is now called the first Easter Egg in video gaming (but what Robinett himself considered his "signature" at the time) that Robinett, fed up with the way Atari treated its designers, deftly hid to sneak in his name into the game: An object barely recognizable as such, only a pixel in size and colored the same as the floor, would open the passage to a secret room when carried to a certain location under certain conditions.
 The Adventure begins |
Well, but when exactly was the first action-adventure, if not the first video game genre-mix ever, unleashed on Atarimaniacs? The game's Wikipedia article has long bounced back and forth between 1978 and 1980, mostly motivated through conflicting copyright information on the cartridge and manual (a box with the 1978 date hasn't been spotted on the internet so far). We can now say with certainty that the 1978 date has been an obvious error on Atari's side (more about that in a minute), but it doesn't seem to matter, as in October 2007 a four-year-older interview with Robinett (Internet Archive backup as linked on Wikipedia; the site itself has since moved here) had been found, in which the creator states (in answering the question how long it took for the "Easter Egg" to be discovered):
I don't know exactly. About a year, maybe less. I handed over my finished code (with the Easter Egg in it) in June 1979, and quit. The game was released for the christmas season in 1979. I went back to my hometown in Missouri for a while, then traveled around in Europe for a while. When I returned to California in the spring of 1980, I think it was known by then. At least by summer 1980, it was known. I went out with some of the Atari game designers one night for pizza and beer and told them about how I did it. I saw a gleam in Rob Fulop's eye, like he was already planning his own Easter Egg."
 Fighting dragons |
There are several factors that should alarm any attentive reader about the use of this passage as a source: First, it starts with "I don't know exactly." Admittedly, that is his answer to when the easter egg became known, but it sets the right tone for what follows: Robinett left Atari half a year before his date for release, then left the state, and the country. He doesn't give dates for his geographic departures, but that can only amount to the problems of this passage: The language simply isn't very precise. I feel like I'm regurtitating this simple fact over and over again: Interviews are helpful and valuable, but we cannot write history based on people's 30-year-old memories alone, especially given the indefinite-sounding nature of the statements in this case. After all, there is an even older interview, which seems to contradict certain details in the later account, concerning the time frame between him finishing the game and quitting Atari. When I contacted Warren Robinett, he was so kind as to clarify this perceived conflict from his memories:
I handed over the what-I-thought-was-final code for Adventure at the time that I quit Atari in April 1979. I then went back to my hometown in Springfield, Missouri for a couple months. When I returned to California in June 1979, the two pieces of code which I had handed off in April -- for the VCS cartridges Adventure and Basic Programming -- had been criticized fornot being completely finished, and/or having bugs. So I spent a few days fixing these things, and got paid for it by Atari as a short consulting job. (They were considered not finished because I had not implemented an "attract mode" in which the colors cycled if no user input was received for several minutes.) The bug was that the screen rolled in Basic Programming under certain conditions. My fixes to the code seemed to satisfy everyone. This was June 1979.
He also granted that it was an assumption - however well-reasoned - that brought him to the Christmas 1979 release date:
Soon after that, in late summer 1979, I went to Europe. I was 27 years old. I traveled around and stayed in youth hostels sometimes, cheap hotels other times, and sometimes slept on the train on overnight trips, since I had a Eurail Pass. I stayed for a month in Hannover Germany, where I had friends, Johannes Goebel and Walburg Kicia. I returned to the US in early 1980. I am pretty sure the Adventure cartridge was released during the 1979 Christmas season. But I was in Europe during that time. People were definitely playing Adventure in early 1980. (...)
Anyway, the Adventure cart was definitely out in the world by June 1980, and had been out there for a while. My belief is that it was released during the 1979 Christmas season, but I did not actually see an Adventure cart in a retail store prior to Jan. 1, 1980. So I guess I don't truly know for sure.
 AVAILABLE SOON (1980 catalog) |
For Wikipedia, however, that one interview quote should suffice, and thus Adventure became "a 1979 video game." Since then, more evidence has been brought up to put the "Christmas Season 1979" date in question. Atari has published not one, but two revisions of their software catalog with a 1980 date, both of which build up hype for the game, which would become "available soon." Only in their 1981 catalog (judging from those that are preserved and available at the archives of the awesome AtariAge.com), the label dissapeared.
If one was to sacrifice a lot of time and effort, one could also entertain an extensive sighting of newspaper advertisements and find two ads by Hobbyworld Electronics in InfoWorld issues, which don't list the game by May 1980, but in the June variant. Now it would be naive to assume that every retailer got and advertised the game at the same time, but how much time can pass in between? Unfortunately this approach is crushed immediately by the only other added game: Indy 500, one of the very first games Atari published for the VCS. It should be noted, though, that it seemed impossible to find any advertising samples before June 1980 that have the game, but plenty printed after that, as well as many more earlier ones that don't.
Furthermore, the Magazine Video, one of the first outlets in the US to regularly report about video games thanks to legendary editors Bill "The Game Doctor" Kunkel (RIP) and Arnie Katz, was also the first to give independent awards for video game achievements. Video proclaimed Adventure the most innovative game of the previous year for the 1981 awards. Given the wording as later referenced in Kunkel & Katz' standalone video game magazine Electronic Games (Winter 1981, page 38/39) isn't as specific about the release date as one would hope ("reflects accomplishments during the 12 months of the preceding year"). The 1980 awards were still clearly cut to the end of the year 1979: "The first set of Arkies was announced in February 1980 and covered all hardware and software produced prior to January 1, 1980" which if followed through would have included Adventure had it been put out for Christmas 1979. For the record it should be said that by 1983 the time frame had shifted: "a title must have become available between October 1, 1981 and October 1, 1982 to be eligible this time." The text in the magazines gives no reason to assume that that the same had been applied before, but the 1981 Arkies (so those for 1980 games, bit confusing) do contain other games we think were released for "Chrismas season 1979" (And one Wikipedia still thinks was released in 1978).
Finally, the database of the US Copyright Office, which professes to contain all filed records from 1978 to the present, contains only one entry by Atari for Adventure, registrated years after the fact on May 14th, 1985, with the registration number TX0001344614. It lists the date of creation as just "1979", but the date of publication as June 29th, 1980. It is not exactly knowable what exactly had been copyrighted here; the type of work is listed as "Computer File," but Atari had only submitted a printout, as opposed to the audiovisual material that would usually go with registrating a video game, but it lines up in the long row of sources that don't know of any kind of publication before 1980.
 Screenshot from Electronic Games |
We've arrived at an impasse similar to the one Frank Cifaldi found himself at when trying to establish a definite date for the US release of Super Mario Bros.. Although we have several clues that hint at different dates, we're left with no solid proof for either of them. All we can say for sure that Adventure was available by June 1980, as evidenced in advertisements and supported by the point in time Warren Robinett is confident to attribute absolute certainty to, as well as the only available copyright notice with that name filed by Atari.
I'm by no means dead-set on establishing that Adventure was published in 1980 - what's there to gain? It's not like there have been any games like it in the meantime, and it stands as a groundbreaking achievement either way. In the best case it'd make only a difference of a couple of weeks, and certainly no more than six months. It's still entirely possible that 1979 is correct - but if it is, it's so by chance and not by method. We have no facts whatsoever to support the assumption. I've tried adding Template:Refimprove to the article, indicating that "there are some, but insufficient, inline citations," but Wikipedia brass (this isn't a figure of speech, Wikipeda actually likes to award virtual medals to its editors for being editors, as if it were a little despotic military regime) quickly jumped in to fiercely defend the 1979 date. (Turns out the better label would actually have been Template:Disputed, although the argument for deleting the Refimprove shows a lack of comprehension of the site's own rules as they're defined, and the editor in question didn't bother to replace it with the correct and necessary Disputed, either.)
And by Wikipedia brass, I actually mean the one guy who dug out the interview for its citation in the first place, and who shows an unhealthy clinging to the version he has personally promoted in the past, including its listing in several print articles. And the defense he's bringing up to support the weak (by historiographic standards) original source? A long list of new "sources" attached to the release date. I've gotten used to the frequent misuse/abuse of false and invalid sources on Wikipedia by now, but this is too hilarious to not count them up one by one:
- The first one is 1UP's entry for Adventure in their The Essential 50 series. If the iffy dating of 1UP's articles is to be relied on in this case, it was posted on January 31st, 2004 - before the date was adopted by Wikipedia, but after the interview with Robinett that popularized the Christmas 1979 date. Being a strictly journalist venture, 1UP of course simply lists the release date, without elaborating how they ended up with it.
- Next up is the current Atari's official site for the game, where it can be played inside the browser. The page itself is not dated - only the Atari homepage as a whole is decorated with a 2012 (it was 2009-2011 about the time it was added) copyright. That doesn't matter at all, though, as anyone whose ability to read is complemented with the rare skill to actually comprehend a written sentence, the site doesn't even say the game was published in 1979, merely that Robin Warinett created it that year, which by all accounts has to be assumed as correct.
- Now things are getting really funny. Or really sad, I'm not sure yet. The editor actually had the nerve to quote The Video Game Theory Reader 2 and Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time. They have both been published in 2009. Which without further insight should give them about a 90% chance that such a minute, seemingly trivial detail as the game's release date was either taken directly from Wikipedia in the first place or directly from statements by Warren Robinett himself - especially since neither work goes out of its way to cite its sources in detail (Robinett contributed the foreword for the first volume of The Video Game Theory Reader, so the authors are more than very likely to have gotten their information from him; Vintage Games does put a couple citations, though its very spotty about it; the passage my antagonist is likely to have abused has none). What the editor has done here can be likened to just having missed seeing a coin thrown into the water, and declaring the amount of money lying on the ground based on the number of ripples it caused.
- Finally we have The Medium of the Video Game, originally published in 2001 and thus the only source that predates the fated interview during which Warren Robinett has first (it seems) spoken out about his assumption for the game's publishing date, but equally indifferent to sourcing as most of its new neighbours on the article page. My suggestion to correct the many other newfound pieces of knowledge this book blesses us with to improve Wikipedia in the same manner, has been hypocritically ignored by the editor. To commit the indecency of quoting myself:
(...) then it also has to be used to "correct" the release dates of the Atari 2600 games Haunted House (1981 instead of 1982), Superman (1979 instead of 1978) and the name of the hero in the original Donkey Kong as "Mario Mario" instead of "Jumpman". And that are only the cited + the following page. No doubt if you'd READ the whole book, you'd find at least a couple hundred new facts that obviously need to fix other, now obvious falsehoods in Wikipedia all along.
(Not to go on any more tangents here, but Wikipedia's 1978 for Superman is indeed most definitely wrong. Might elaborate in the comments in case someone's dying to know more.)
 The bridge should feel familiar to first-hour Zelda fans. |
To complete the package, all those new citations are now attached to a cell reading "Christmas 1979," while neither of them even mentions the season. As long as the very people that reign over Wikipedia's coverage on games history keep demonstrating this utter lack of the most basic principles of modern historiography, falsehoods and rumors will continue to run rampant throughout its pages. The shoddy methodology applied here is nothing short of outrageous, any real historian would have a field day tearing apart a bachelor's thesis with this kind of sourcing.
Now I'm not one to quickly call out people by their names for their failings, but in this case the sheer magnitude of influence this man exerts over game historiography makes it necessary that people know who he is. Besides being a member of WikiProject Video Games and the "Atari task force," as well as a "recent changes patroller" (the icon for that is very fitting for someone who likes to act as a self-proclaimed sherriff) at Wikipedia, Martin "Marty" Goldberg was for a long time in charge of classicgaming.com, where he used to run a site called "Electronic Entertainment Museum", is the current admin of atarihq.com, a member of the International Game Development Association's (IGDA) Game Preservation SIG, and calls himself a "fact checker" for the British magazine Retro Gamer. He will soon publish a book on the history of Atari. The book is Kickstarter-funded, which means people have given more than ten thousand US$ to this man to produce and publish a book on the history of our hobby.
To be fair, Goldberg is known to have done some decent journalist work on other occasions. For his articles and the book he conducted tons of interviews, and he appears to have access to a sizeable archive of actual "Atari documents" in the possession of his partner for the book, Curt Vendel. Vendel is also the admin of www.atarimuseum.com, where he indeed showcases a number of documents (though none pertaining to data that would be of use in this case). Goldberg's claim to belong on a higher plane than authors like Steven Kent, to be a "video games historian," and the lack of fulfillment to that claim, is what's really the problem here. He has demonstrated a tendency to accuse others of relying too much on mere interviews instead of "actual facts," yet his proposed remedy mostly consists of interviewing other people - Dare I propose those he personally admires more - to "clear up the issues," practically elevating their statements to dogma status. The promotion of his book also strongly relies upon this practice, claiming to be the "TRUE, unvarnished accounting" of history. Former Atari-employee Steve Woita spurs, quoted on the book's homepage: "I've yet to read a book about what really went on inside of Atari, by the actual people who worked there." Well, that only attests of a lack of knowledge of the more noteworthy books on video game history, as Steve Bloom, Dave Kent and even David Sheff, who had a strong focus on an entirely different company to begin with, all gave plenty of quotes from "actual people who worked there." Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun might turn out a great collection of memories and opinions. The available sample looks promising enough - for a journalist accounting. He has written a number of articles for Retro Gamer that claim to come "From the Archives," but that so far has manifested mostly in some fancy vintage photos (which are, it should be admitted, awesome) to decorate the actual article, which itself is carried by interviews. Business as usual. The greatest secret stash of original documents is useless if you bury it under a mountain of subjectively retold stories without providing for means to distinguish between the sources. It is important to recognize that this is not a historian's work, but a journalist one.
Let's assume though, for a moment, that Goldberg actually has access to the evidence needed to establish the 1979 release date - then why wouldn't he bring it up? Does he want to keep it for his book, actively damaging the integrity of Wikipedia for selfish ends? Well, that are just fancy conspiracy theories; as long as Martin Goldberg doesn't show any actual evidence that supports his clinging to the 1979 release date, it's all just juggling of personal retellings and random google results - be it unreflected or malignous. A good number of the entries he "significantly contributed" to at Wikipedia appear quite well-sourced, at least at first sight. (I'm not going in there to count which sources were added by whom.) He has shown on multiple occasions that he actually knows methods to do decent research (as in this snippet from the latest issue of Retro Gamer), and him doing the opposite in this case cannot possibly be but an act of choice for whatever reason, be it the inability to accept the idea that his hero(?) just might have erred or something else entirely. But even if he acts as irresponsible as he did with Adventure maybe only 1% of the time or less, maybe only for articles he personally doesn't care about too much - what does that say about credibility as a fact checker for an encyclopedia?
We don't know for sure when Adventure was first released, Warren Robinett doesn't know for sure, and if Martin Goldberg beliefs he has valid proof, he'd better produce it, or else admit that he doesn't. In the meantime, I can only repeat myself: Never use Wikipedia as a source, instead check their citations and see if those hold up, then cite from the original sources.
Friday, November 25, 2011
GamesTM 116 – History of Metroidvania
I take a look at the latest issue of GamesTM, which includes a 6 page feature on Metroidvania games.
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This month’s issue of GamesTM features the following (copied from NTSC-uk, courtesy of PrinnySquad).
Reviews
Skyrim - 9
Battlefield 3 - 7
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary - 8
Uncharted 3 - 9
Assassin's Creed Revelations - 8
Batman: Arkham City - 9
Dance Central - 360 - 8
Shinobi - 3DS - 4
Kinect Sports: Season 2 - 360 - 5
Modern Warfare 3 - 8
Saints Row: The Third - 7
Rayman Origins - 7
Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 - 7
Kirby Mass Attack - DS - 8
Sonic Generations - 7
Real Steel - 360 - 6
The Adventures of TinTin - 6
Raving Rabbids Alive and Kicking - 6
King of Fighters XIII - 8
Disney Universe - 3
Features
2012 Preview Special
Chat With Naughty Dog about the past, present and future
A Look at the new SSX
A look at the trend for remakes, reboots and rebirths
Discuss
GTA V
Operation Raccoon City
Backstage with the people behind Zelda's 25th Anniversary Concerts.
Chat with Tood McFarlane about work on Kingdoms of Amalur
Tim Schafer on his new thing and the merit of Kinect
thatgamecompany talk about Journey.
Retro
Behind the Scenes: Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver
Year In Review 1985
Conversion Catastrophe - Kung Fu Master on Speccy
The History of Metroidvania - the forerunners to the genre.
My main reason for posting though is my 6 page article on Metroidvania games. No credit as usual for the writer of said piece – though I was technically asked to write it as a favour, so I don’t begrudge this too much. The first dps is hi-res enough to read, though seeing as I’m getting paid for the article (at least I hope I get paid!) I don’t think I can get away with making the entire article free to read online – at least not until they put it on their website or the next issue is out. Of course if someone else, somewhere, has put hi-res scans up, by all means read it and pass the links around.
With it being the 25th anniversaries of Metroid and Castlevania, it seemed time to cover the portmanteau they went on to create later with Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. Ironically most entries predate these two titles, showing that the genre classification is erroneous. But it’s still fun. There’s 24 entries, one for each year of the anniversary, with the 25th title to be voted for on GamesTM’s forum, or discussed here. I also quote Jeremy Parish, which I’m sure he is not pleased about! Sorry Jez, but at least you got credit whereas I did not. I also included interview quotes from several key people.The list (year of release, then alphabetically):
Pharaoh’s Curse (Atari 8-bit, C64)
Below the Root (C64, DOS, Apple)
Brain Breaker (Sharp X1)
CrossBlaim (MSX)
Sacred Armour of Antiriad (Spectrum, C64, Amstrad)
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES)
Codename: Droid (BBC)
Legacy of the Wizard (NES)
Zeliard (DOS, PC88)
Zillion (SMS)
Blaster Master (NES)
Euphory (Sharp X1)
Exile (BBC)
Predator (MSX)
The Scheme (PC88)
Wonderyboy III: DT (SMS)
TMNTIII: RR (GB)
Takahashi Meijin Boukenjima IV (Famicom)
The Divide: Enemies Within (PS1)
Vigilance on Talos V (DOS)
Cave Story (PC)
La Mulana (PC)
Aquaria (PC)
Treasure Adventure Game (PC)
It’s not perfect, but I had around 80 titles on a rough list covering anything even remotely similar, which I whittled down to about 50 series entries, then 40, then 35, and then it got tricky requiring many redrafts.My goal: differentiate the list from everyone else’s.
That’s why I’ve got silly stuff like the MSX release of Predator, and lots of obscure games. The trend? Metroidvania style games are predominantly on computers, followed by the NES. A reflection on the perception that console titles need to be simpler? Could be why console Metroidvanias are so well loved – they filled a desperately empty gap. Because admit it – how many other games like Super Metroid are on the SNES? Very few.
As for omissions, I left out some popular titles because I just can’t stand them. I absolutely hate Tombi for example – the jumping, where your guy flails forward in an uncontrollable belly flop, is unbearable. How can anyone stand playing that? It feels broken and uncomfortable. Metroidvanias are all about the jumping, and with Tombi every time I press the jump button I want to break the controller. Another omission was Shantae. I don’t care what anyone says, it looks great but the level design is dull, linear and really not much fun. Shadow Complex was on the list, but then I thought: that’s a little obvious. Why waste space on something people know and are enjoying, when something like Treasure Adventure Game can do with the publicity instead?
My big regret?
I never included Link: Faces of Evil, or Zelda: Wand of Gamelon, for the CDi. They just slipped my mind, but they actually follow the Metroidvania template quite nicely. And I love them dearly. For starters, for all the complaints about the controls, when using a wired controller (as opposed to the crappy infra-red remote) the jumping is more comfortable than the jumping in Tombi. I can actually dictate the direction for Link and Zelda, and they don’t lunge forwards with that moronic belly flop.
The rest of the world continues to spout vitriolic hatred for the Link/Zelda games, and people on various Zelda forum boards openly state that they 1) absolutely hate the games for existing and 2) will never, ever play them because they’re not true Zelda games. Their kind of passionate, blinkered, refusal to accept any other-point-of-view mentality, is something I’ve mainly seen with religious extremists. You know, the kind who claim dinosaur bones were put in the earth by the devil to deceive humanity.
How can you claim to hate something, and then refuse to examine it on the grounds that it’s inauthentic, when in that same sentence you admit that you have no idea what it’s even like? That’s like me saying: I hate apples, I’ve never eaten apples and I never will eat apples or even think about what apples are because I know that apples aren’t really fruit and so don’t even need to know what they are because I already know what they are not (ie: not fruit).Really?
Bottom line: obsessive Zelda fans who claim to hate the CDi titles while simultaneously refusing to play them are retarded. To form an educated opinion on something you need to understand it first. Otherwise it’s just a mob mentality, no better than those crowds who wanted to burn women for witchcraft.
I suppose I would have removed Below the Root to fit Link/Zelda in. Interestingly, they were both by the same man, the late great Dale DeSharone. May he rest in peace.Friday, April 30, 2010
Random images – some very rare
When clearing out an old laptop, I came across several game related images I thought I’d share (CLICK them to see the original full-sized versions), and I ask the question: what emulated games do you give to a non-gamer?.
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We were sipping batidas in the guest lounge of the Zurich hotel, when my dad asked me for my old laptop. It was Windows XP and overheated when you ran anything more advanced than a SNES emulator, resulting in impromptu and frightening shutdowns, but it was better than a Vista laptop we agreed.
When deleting my old files from said laptop, in preparation for the hand-over, I came across several images – some I’d never made use of, others deserved more exposure.
The most significant, for me, are scans of original artwork from the first two CDi Zelda games. When interviewing Dale DeSharone on the development of the games, he explained how he’d dug around in his attic to find his old CDi player and copies of the games (to play them again with his children), and also I believe this original concept art for the games. He sent me scans from all his old games, and proved extremely helpful when writing the feature.
So it was with much sadness that I discovered he’d passed away a few years ago. While these images have appeared in print, I don’t think they’ve ever been available in digital format before, and they’re so nice it would be a shame to have them languish on an old forgotten hard drive of mine.
A lot of people unfairly criticise the Zelda CDi titles because of the cinematics, but I’ve played the hell out of them over the years and they’re still a blast to complete. The artwork, as shown, is also quite nice. As the only person to have interviewed him on his work, I feel it’s my duty to share these images.
Next from my archives are some rare photos regarding Sega and TecToy. The first must be over 20 years old now, the second from 1997, and both were scanned from old prints. They’re a record from a seldom documented aspect of gaming history.
Stefano Arnhold (Tec Toy President) with Mr David Rosen (founder of Sega) and Mr Sakurai (Executive Director of Sega), making history by joining forces.Stefano Arnhold with Mr. Nakayama (Sega´s President), when Tec Toy gave him a large amethyst to celebrate ten years of working together (1987-1997).
Not everything I found was of importance. Here are several shots from Final Fantasy Adventure on the monochrome Game Boy, for a Seiken Desnetsu/Secret of Mana feature I ended up never writing.
I actually replayed and completed Secret of Mana recently, and I might have to change my view on it being the best of Square’s Chrono Trigger/Final Fantasy 6/Secret of Mana trio.
It was good fun, but there was a lot more dungeon crawling and fighting than I remember. It was almost like a Final Fight/Streets of Rage game, albeit with magic and levelling, and only a handful of villages.
I think finishing it over two days, as opposed to over most of a year when I was a kid, changed my perception of its pacing. Too much combat and not enough exploration.
And the grinding, good lord there was a lot of grinding, especially for magic spells, which if you don’t level up renders some later bosses impossible. Great music though. Getting back to Final Fantasy Adventure, I recall it being excellent, though I don’t know how I’d fare if I played it again today. I also don’t feel like playing the remake.
What stood out in my mind, is that there’s a sub-quest where you need to get hold of some Medusa’s teeth in order to cure the brother of a woman called Amanda. In the end you slay medusa before you can get her teeth, and Amanda ends up getting bitten and turning into Medusa herself. The only solution, in order to save her brother and continue the game, is the kill her and take HER teeth. Her death at your hands saves her brother. I paused for a long time on this screen, reluctant to do the deed. The death of this NPC was profoundly moving, despite the small size of the screen – perhaps more so because of how intimate playing a GB game can be.
The rest of game took on a melancholy note after this, a tone reminiscent of its sequel Secret of Mana where, as Jeremy Parish pointed out, concludes with none of the characters in a happy situation.
The early Secret of Mana games are just depressing – which I’d say makes them worth playing more than a lot of the emotionally stunted RPGs out there.
Other Game Boy imagery I found was this map of Gargoyle’s Quest I made for a freelance article. Alongside it were maps for other games. It’s pretty redundant actually, since these past two days I’ve been playing Gargoyle’s Quest on the original Game Boy, and in doing so I discovered the VGMaps website. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it before, or if I have, I forgot soon after. But it’s pretty amazing – some people have put a lot of effort into making maps for hundreds of games. Going through my folders, I found maps for other games.
Snake’s Revenge is one of my all-time favourite NES games. Not because it was an early title I played, which might give it a degree of nostalgia based faux-quality, but because I think it represents a high mark in NES game design. I first played it sometime around 2002, having heard plenty of scorn poured on it, but desiring something – anything – Metal Gear related to play. I’ve played a lot of NES games over the years, and frankly it blew me away. I’d rate it somewhere after MGS3, MG2SS (MSX), MGS and Ghost Babel in terms of my favourite Metal Gear games. This puts it above the first MG title (MSX and NES port), plus MGS2 and MGS4. Which isn’t to say it’s better than a PS3 game – just that I had more fun with it.
In the context of NES games, it’s fairly sophisticated. Entry into the enemy base requires reaching an area with guards while staying undetected, then radioing your comrade who will come into the open and get captured, causing the guards to unlock the door, thereby allowing you inside. Another game might have just had you blasting stuff to get inside (Mission Impossible is also sophisticated in places, but Snake’s Revenge is easier to control I find). It also features a lot of things found in later MG games: spotlights, directional microphone, interrogating superior officers, truth serum, orange camo, a shotgun, starting the game with a knife, enemies on flying vehicles, a ship full of Metal Gear units. Of the entire NES’ library, Snake’s Revenge is one of only a handful I can still tolerate playing on the original hardware, as opposed to with emulation and save states.
Another map I found was for Jurassic Park, also done for a freelance article years ago. Though technically not really a map, since it doesn’t cover the whole level. I recall when the world was in Jurassic Park fever, and numerous games for it came out. I always liked the first Genesis game more, despite its technical shortcomings. I can still play it today and find praise for it. There are no lethal weapons for the dinosaurs, you can only temporarily stun them, meaning a raptor may later awaken and hunt you down. The AI is pretty good in places, especially the raptors in the visitor centre. Oh, and you can actually play as the raptor! The Rampage Edition sequel screwed up the digitised graphics to make them cartoony, and suddenly you had lethal weapons. The level design was also long and fairly awful, compared to the original was short enough not to outstay its welcome.
In my PC98 folder on the laptop I found old images of Tato from Popful Mail, and it reminded me that they’d drawn each standing frame for him independently. One thing which annoys me is lazy pixel artists who mirror the left and right images to make ambidextrous characters who switch weapon hands when you turn around. Note how Tato keeps his staff in his right hand at all times. Curiously, the PC-Engine port of the PC98 game lost this and instead mirrored all the sprites, while the Sega remake for the Sega CD redrew all the characters in an ambidextrous fashion. Reflecting on the higher quality of the PC98 version, I noted with irony that Tato is actually the Polish word for “dad” – and in my mental wanderings through my archive of images I’d totally forgotten to update the laptop.
He wanted all my junk removed, but didn’t ask for anything extra besides the usual staples, things like Windows Media Player and a PDF reader. Want any games, I asked? No, just Pinball and Othello for the NES, he replied. These were two titles I got with my system two decades ago, and it’s all he’s had any interest in playing. And suddenly, I was hit with a quandary I’d read about before: what do you get a non-gamer to play when introducing them to games? I’d read a similar thing on the old Insert Credit forums, a poster who worked in a game store encountered a middle-aged woman who showed a recent interest in gaming and wanted to know what was worth playing. He admitted that his mind froze at that moment and, despite discussing numerous non-mainstream and quality games on the IC forums, despite having the background to champion the medium, couldn’t think of what to recommend. Indie games? A SNES emulator and some classic? A current system?
It’s a worthy question, since you want something easily accessible and also free of a lot of the technical bullshit found in a lot of games – but at the same time, you want something gamey, because I personally wouldn’t want a non-gamer to have their entire collective knowledge revolve around something as derivative like Heavy Rain. Pole’s Big Adventure is good, because it covers a lot of known gaming tropes in an easy and fun manner (which is different to Heavy Rain’s ripping off of other games and calling it the Emperor’s New Clothes). But maybe PBA doesn’t have enough story... Non-gamers always seem to want to compare games to things like books and films, though I feel racquetball mixed with music and paintings would be a better introductory description. Stories then... A Square SNES RPG? The trio I mentioned previously have a little too much repetitive battling for a newcomer to the medium. I want to say Valkyria Chronicles, because it has a good story and is similar enough to chess to make comparisons, but now I’ve moved WAY beyond the means of my laptop. My dad likes Pinball and Othello because they’re based on pre-existing things he’s familiar with, and neither has a story. Maybe I’ll give him Snake’s Revenge and see how he gets on.
And the last image I dug out of this dying laptop? A logo I’d made for Greg Costikyan’s Manifesto Games. He had expressly said no communist imagery, so that's precisely what I went and made.I didn't win the competition, I think the winner did a logo about Tiananmen Square.
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