Although not live on a front page update yet, regular forumites were keen to point out that we've reached our 50th entry on Your Weekly Kusoge. I hadn't even been counting! Looking through the staff forum it seems we were discussing the regular feature as far back as 2010, and now it's the 3rd Google result for the word "kusoge". To celebrate I've scanned an interesting article from Electronic Gaming Monthly 159, and I pose a mystery: who is Richard Del Medio?
Showing posts with label magazines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magazines. Show all posts
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Who is Richard Del Medio? (KUSOGE)
Although not live on a front page update yet, regular forumites were keen to point out that we've reached our 50th entry on Your Weekly Kusoge. I hadn't even been counting! Looking through the staff forum it seems we were discussing the regular feature as far back as 2010, and now it's the 3rd Google result for the word "kusoge". To celebrate I've scanned an interesting article from Electronic Gaming Monthly 159, and I pose a mystery: who is Richard Del Medio?
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, November 18, 2011
1UP Presents #3: The Sketch Issue
I recently interviewed Jeremy Blaustein for a top secret article (I'll put scans up in December), and along with some fascinating discussion about various things (such as the potential future of Snatcher), he mentioned he was also featured in the final print issue of 1UP magazine. I didn't actually realise they did a print version, until discovering this final issue, but it seems like a hard-hitting release which tackles a difficult subject: Our final print issue looks at how Japan's earthquake changed developers, the man who created Street Fighter, Fumito Ueda, and more (plus 40+ original sketches from industry artists). I'm especially impressed that they rounded up numerous artists to produce original artwork for earthquake relief - not only will it make a beautiful coffee table, but it's the kind of thing you can feel good supporting. Jeremty's interview is alongside Akira Yamaoka's for a discussion on Silent Hill 2's risky design. Sounds like a fantastic issue.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
GameFAN issue #06
It’s taken a while – in fact page 66 even jokes that it took 6 months to arrive – but GameFAN issue 6 is finally with us. That’s a lot of sixes, isn’t it readers? Clearly the BEAST has willed it to be..
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The first thing that strikes you is the stunning, hand-drawn cover art, which is rarity these days. I collect games mags as much if not more than I collect games these days, and very few magazines do anything other than recycle CG assets handed out by PR people. Very few actually commission artists to create the covers. EDGE almost never does it. GamesTM hasn’t done so for... I can’t even recall when last. EGM when I subscribed didn’t even bother with decent CG (their Halo cover looked like an exploded Ribena box). Leaving only France’s IG, Retro Gamer and GameFAN doing anything of merit. And to be fair, most of the time Retro Gamer’s content is so old that they’re forced to produce their own content for covers.
The man behind GameFAN’s artwork (and a lot of imagery at its predecessor Play) is Rob Duenas. He also does the majority of page layouts, and I think it’s fair to say that his work is the aesthetic soul of the magazine. Having spoken with Rob via email on occasion he proclaims his goals: “The biggest treat for me has been growing the retro coverage and drawing the covers. It’s hard work but worth it to bring back original drawn covers to magazines... Lord knows it’s a rarity, most art is just concept stuff from companies or box art.”
A commendable attitude, I’m sure everyone will agree. In fact this issue he takes us through the creation process for the cover, in connection with his regular podcast Sketchcraft, which details all manner of artistry. As he explained: “The Sketchcraft spread I put together on how I made the covers is also a free podcast I make complete with follow along PDF showing 50+ more of my steps. The cast is like audio commentary, just another GF special. Recording Bloodrayne cast this weekend, but the 3DS is up now.”If you have any interest in GameFAN, magazine design, comics, or creative art in general, it’s well worth checking out the podcasts and associated files. There are two sites:
sketchcraft.com
http://sketchrob.podomatic.com/
Also, I should add I’m not affiliated with the website despite my internet name. My using of Sketcz is 70% the nickname Tim Rogers gave me on InsertCredit, 20% East European spelling convention, and 10% Sega’s phenomenal Mega Drive game Comix Zone.
Highlights this issue include a 3 page interview with NG:DEV.TEAM, creators of Last Hope and the to-be-released GunLord, which is coming out on NeoGeo MVS and Sega’s Dreamcast. Gotta love these teams who keep rockin’ it on old hardware. The group says GunLord will be comparable to Turrican, and as a European and Trenz fan to this I’m going to say: hells yeah!There’s also a ton of 3DS coverage, though being happy with my current handhelds I only skimmed this.
There’s also three pages on Dragon’s Crown, which is excellent. The in-game screens are so exquisite it’s difficult to image them as actual games, as opposed to only static artwork. But that’s Vanillaware for you – taking 2D to new levels. The write up itself is also good, done by new man and Managing Editor James Bacon. It starts with a rundown of Vanillaware history, which is essential for newcomers, and reminds me of the fact that Play before it always used to give the developer the time they deserved in the spotlight, granting front covers to not only Odin Sphere but also Muramasa. Outside of Japan I don’t think any other magazine even entertained such an idea. Those were good times.
Lengthy five page review of the new 2D Bloodrayne by developers WayForward, who are making a name for themselves as one of the few (the only?) Western developer still capable of doing 2D. In fact they’re kinda like a Western version of Vanillaware. And all I can say is thank your deity of choice both companies exist, because gaming would be a lot less interesting without their two-dimensional output.
Three page review of El Shaddai. Well timed too despite the time it took to produce this issue, since the same morning I got my copy of GameFAN I got my copy of GamesTM, and both featured El Shaddai. Both magazines praise it, in fact everyone online also seems to, but I’m still slightly nervous after playing that demo...
Interesting approach to the Journey review – very arty.Having read the reviews, I want to address an issue I noticed on a forum, regarding a lot of the positive coverage the mag gives. Although the lowest review score this issue was 6.5, and it mostly has high scores for its games, the impression I get is that they’re covering the games they like, as opposed to everything possible. A snapshot of staff favourites almost. Which makes sense considering they run less pages, plus I have to be very interested in a game before I read through a review in another mag giving it a low score (like DS shovelware you’ll see being reviewed – I just skip those).
The challenge for GameFAN seems to be growing its audience and recognition, since what I gather from people I know in the US, it’s not always easy to find stores stocking it. Did you know this was out?
Moving on from modern coverage, this issue also marks the creation of a dedicated retro section, 16 pages long. I haven’t read everything but it’s looking good (I’d also not come across the Macross game before, so reckon I might have to give it a try now). The two-page spread listing top Capcom and Saturn games apparently was going to be some kind of special comic, but it didn’t make it in time. A nice trip down memory lane nonetheless. The Saturn coverage is especially poignant for me because it was a great system, with a selection of truly astounding hardcore titles, and yet it never won the console war. I actually received Keio Flying Squadron 2 in the post recently, and must get around to playing it. Yes, I think if I fell through time I’d like to relive the Saturn era, and use my foreknowledge to guarantee its success.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Ultima, Wizardry, and issues of video game historiography
(I know parts of this post sound like a rant or an appeal, but really it isn't. I definitely didn't mean to slander the work of other writers, either. Even though I focus on pointing out factual issues with the cited articles, most of them are actually well written, competent pieces of journalism. Only when the whole world relies on them for a piece of information, the results can be a bit unfortunate. I actually intended this to be more of a reminder, partly to myself, to take care about how we deal with our sources and to document them, and—most importantly— to use good sources in the first place. But most of all, it is the diary of a never quite complete journey on the search for some definite answers.)
On my recent research for an article about the Wizardry series of games, I've come across an annoying issue. The computer RPG market in the Western world was for the better part of the 1980s dominated by the rivalry of two great series, Richard Garriott's Ultima and Wizardry by Robert Woodhead and Andrew Greenberg. Therefore when writing about the one, one cannot but take into account and compare with the other, and it all starts with the first game in each series.
Wikipedia tells us (be quiet already, you badmouthers! I know you all use it, and even the one in a hundred of you that really doesn't has to live in a world full of wikipediots, as the site has long become by far the most used source of "education" around the globe.) that the game that became counted later as Ultima I "was first published in the United States by California Pacific Computer Company, September 2, 1980," while "In 1979, Robert Sirotek and Fred Norman created Sir-tech Software, Inc. to distribute the game, and it was released in 1981." The info box puts the release more precisely at December 31st, 1981, so more than a year later than its rival.
But let's take a look at the sources for both claims. The Wizardry article quotes Swords & Circuitry: a Designer's Guide to Computer Role Playing Games by one Jana Hallford. This was released in 2001, a mere twenty years after the fact. I can't argue much with the reliability of that book, as I don't have it and can't check its sources (which I personally doubt the Wikipedia author did, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt), but it should be noted that the quotation only includes the year 1981, with the December 31 date (which I intend "prove" wrong in just a few minutes) left unreferenced.
The Ultima entry is a bit more fishy: It quotes "'U.S. Copyright Office'. Reg. #PA-317-501. Retrieved 2007-08-08." The site linked apparently has been restructured since and that specific entry isn't searchable, anymore, but either way the quote could only ever have referenced a copyright registration, not a release date.
But this isn't another big rant about the workings and lack of reliability at Wikipedia. Searching the web and various print publications for more accounts, one gets a wild mixture of claims for 1980 or 1981. Wikipedia already beats most of them by actually stating where their date is coming from. The best one only ever gets elsewhere is Garriott's word in interviews, which also favors 1980. Yet I dare anyone who ever printed or posted this to find a single copy of the game with the floppy dated as such. The Museum of Computer Adventure Game History sure doesn't have one.
Then I stumbled upon this gem of an article: Forgotten ruins: The roots of computer role-playing games: Sir-tech. I loved this, not necessarily for its text body (because it happens to obfuscate facts with fancy writing and gets others wrong by merely glossing over the matter), but for its list of sources at the end. Here I learned—not being an US citizen and never having encountered the magazine in its time—that Computer Gaming World would be an excellent source for early home computer game history, and, just as importantly, that it was probably available online somewhere, as the web journalists who have the means and would bother to do actual research on physical old stuff surely can be counted on one's fingers. Turns out it is, indeed (more info to follow below).
Weeding through the early issues of one of the first magazines focused on this form electronic entertainment, I finally hit gold in issue 2.5 (Sep/Oct 1982), page 2: The mag's "List of Top Sellers (as of 30 June 1982)" contained two entries very interesting to my cause:
24,000 Wizardry (Sir-tech Software, Sept. 1981)
20,000 Ultima (California Pacific Computer Co., June 1981)
Not only do we learn that Wizardry outsold Ultima—at least in the beginning— their actual releases apparently were much closer together than Wikipedia & Co. would have one believe. Why does it matter? Well, aside from historic accuracy, it means for one that Wizardry itself could hardly have been influenced by Ultima. Even moreso as it was available in some kind of public beta state earlier that year, as High score!: the illustrated history of electronic games by Rusel DeMaria and Johnny L. Wilson tells us (among others). It also means that whatever common traits Ultima and Wizardry had weren't necessarily "old news" to early players of the latter.
But wait, there's still Akalabeth, isn't it? The supposedly highly influental "Ultima 0," programmed by Garriott in 1979 and also published via California Pacific in 1980. According to 1Up, "Akalabeth sold tens of thousands of copies." To quote the aforementioned book High Score!, this figure stems from a statement made by Lord British himself: "They sold 30,000 units, and my royalty was $5 per unit. Something that had taken four to six weeks to create had earned me $150,000."
Now developer interviews are the most deer and valuable —and often the only— ressource video game journalists/historians can work with, and I wouldn't blame Garriott for intentionally falsifying figures, but the human memory is a fuzzy thing, begging to at least raise the question how much trust we can put on new answers about 20-30 year old questions. For all we know, he could have confused it with Ultima, or something in that manner. After all, the same man has been cited in another book (Dungeons and Dreamers: the rise of computer game culture from geek to chic) with a very different statement regarding the development time: It says: "Akalabeth was two years' worth of programming, but he had never meant it to be a real product," although it conforms with the sales figures.
How do I even come to question that statement? Well, for that we have to take a look at the complete list from CGW 2.5:
List of Top Sellers (as of 30 June 1982)
35,000 K-RAZY Shoot-Out (K-Byte, Jan. 1982)
32,000 Zork I (Infocom, Feb. 1981)
30,000 Temple of Apshai (Automated Simulations, Aug. 1979)
30,000 Flight Simulator (Sublogic Communications, Dec. 1979)
25,000 Raster Blaster (BudgeCo., April 1981)
25,000 Wizard & the Princess (Sierra On-Line, Aug. 1980)
25,000 Snack Attack (Datamost, Oct. 1981)
24,000 Wizardry (Sir-tech Software, Sept. 1981)
23,000 Ghost Hunter (Arcade Plus, Nov. 1981)
23,000 Gorgon (Sirius Software, June 1981)
20,000 Ultima (California Pacific Computer Co., June 1981)
20,000 Super Invader (Creative Computing Software, Nov. 1979)
20,000 Castle Wolfenstein (Muse, Sept. 1981)
15,000 Apple Panic (Broderbund Software, July 1981)
15,000 Scarfman (The Cornsoft Group, Aug. 1981)
15,000 Pool 1.5 (Innovative Design Software, April 1981)
10,000 Galactic Chase (Spectrum Computers, Sept. 1981)
9,000 Choplifter (Broderbund Software, May 1982)
8,300 Canyon Climber (Datasoft, June 1982)
8,000 The Warp Factor (Strategic Simulations, Feb. 1981)
6,000 Photar (Softape, Feb. 1982)
5,000 Pac Attack (Computerware, Sept. 1981)
5,000 Horizon V (Gebelli Software, Feb. 1982)
5,000 Dragonquest (The Programmer's Guild., Jan. 1981)
5,000 Asylum (Med Systems, Feb. 1981)
4,500 International Gran Prix (Riverbank Software, Aug. 1981)
3,600 Tax-Man (H.A.L. Labs, Oct. 1981)
3,500 Rocket Raiders (Artworx Software, Dec. 1981)
3,500 Apventure to Atlantis (Synergistic Software, March 1982)
3,400 Rear Guard (Adventure International, Dec. 1981)
3,000 Voyage of the Valkyrie (Advanced Operating Systems, Aug. 1981)
2,000 The Game Show (Computer-Advanced Ideas, Oct. 1981)
2,000 Stone's Reversal (Powersoft, Nov. 1981)
1,000 Swordthrust #1 (CE Software, May 1981)
1,000 Hi-Res Computer Golf (Avant-Garde Creations, Nov. 1981)
1,000 ZX81 Classics (Lamo-Lem Laboratories, Jan. 1982)
1,000 Super Stellar Trek (Rainbow Computing, Aug. 1981)
As you can see, the list goes as far back as August 1979, definitely before the commercial release of Akalabeth (but you can factor in the dozen-or-so homemade copies if you want, it doesn't change much). What also sticks out is the yawning absence of Akalabeth. Now this can mean two things: Either the game was omitted from the list for some reason or accident, or it didn't sell much more (maybe even less) than 1,000 copies, at least not until it was bundled with later Ultima games (which happened quite early. The legendary rarity of the original release seems to favor the latter theory. If anyone had ever bothered to ask for and print a copy of Garriot's royalty with California Pacific, we had a case, but as it is there stand his words, formulated decades later, against contemporary statistics. Although there still is no undeniable proof for either possibility, at least we now know that we don't know, and that's good to know, isn't it? At least it reminds to be wary when taking personal statements at face value when it comes to determine hard facts like release dates and sales figures.
Of course, there remains the question to what degree video games journalists are, should and can be video game historians. If you're writing a 4-page restrospective on the Ultima series in a magazine, chances are you're not nearly paid enough to go through the same process I just did. In fact, I "wasted" two free days I should have spent working on my master's thesis for research old computer games. Although the mad historian in me wants to aks if one really should write an article about a game if one can't even get the release date straight, I'm well aware of how unrealistic that claim is. My own article on the history of video gaming in Korea contains more than one hundred footnotes over all its pages, and yet the whole thing is a horrible, shoddyly put-together mess. Some sources are much less trustworthy than others, the founding date of the biggest Korean game developer/publisher for the 1980s might or might not be off by 6 years due to a typo in an old magazine, and release dates are a wild mixture between official sale dates, (contemporary) reported sightings in stores by magazines, probable-but-not-secured announcements, in-game copyrights, even educated guesses. Surely, the proper way of dealing with it would be documenting the sources for all of those dates—but then I'd still be working on part 1 of the article, probably for a few years to come.
Even as it is, that article is an enormous time investment I'm still not sure I actually can afford to make, but who else is gonna do it? There is some great academic and semi-academic work done on the history of video games, but it's much, much to few and far between to really branch out into all relevant subjects, so the area is still totally dependent on the work of crazy nerds with the crave to spend all their free time to get trivial(?) facts straight.
Even though computer hardware rarely crossed borders, computer software proved to be much more flexible. A large number of Western games were ported to Japanese computer systems, with companies like Starcraft, Infinity, and Pony Canyon focusing almost exclusively on localizing English games. It was a rare time when large numbers of Japanese gamers were actively interested in Western games, an interest which has only just rekindled in the last few years. A little game called Dragon Quest famously arose out of a friendly argument over two Western games. As Koichi Nakamura has stated in an interview, "A game that I have fond memories of is Wizardry, which was popular in our office, but a co-worker of mine named Yuji Horii was hooked on Ultima at the time. Yuji kept saying we should make an RPG, but while I wanted to make a game like Wizardry, he wanted it to be like Ultima. We said to ourselves that we'd combine the interesting parts from both, and what we ended up with was Dragon Quest. So if it wasn't for Wizardry and Ultima, Dragon Quest wouldn't exist -- either in Japan or in the world."
For now it seems we have underestimated the influence of the Apple II hardware in Japan, as clearly Ultima, as well as almost certainly Wizardry, did have a significant impact on the Japanese programmer scene well before they were officially published on Japanese computers. But let's explore this thread further:
THE MAKING OF... Japan's First RPG by Edge magazine, which functions here as Black Onyx designer Henk Rogers' mouthpiece. The article states:
"Voted game of the year by the readers of Login magazine (the best-selling Japanese gaming magazine at that time), Black Onyx sold around 150,000 copies, not counting huge numbers of rentals. The game’s gigantic success paved the way for the other Japanese developers to bring their own RPG titles to market. The first Dragon Quest team went on the record praising Black Onyx as the influence for them investigating other western titles in the genre (specifically Wizardry). And so the RPG hacked and slashed its way into the Japanese videogame industry and consciousness.
Thus it attributes the sole agency in bringing RPGs to Japan to BulletProof Software. But this wouldn't be the history of video games, if we didn't have conflicting reports. Wikipedai on Dragon Quest: "In 1982, Enix sponsored a video game programming contest in Japan which brought much of the Dragon Quest team together, including creator Yuji Horii. The prize was a trip to the United States and a visit to AppleFest '83 in San Francisco, where Horii discovered the Wizardry video game series."
The quote this time goe to an (old? you can't tell with Gamasutra) article by HG101's own editor-in-chief, which... doesn't deal with that episode at all. Great, wrong citation. Hitting google brought me hundreds of regurgitations of the same story, but so far no hint at a possible source. On the other hand, it doesn't exactly sound like something someone would just make up, either. This is, however, possibly the most important question of JRPG history—as it would ultimately determine The Black Onyx' importance as a mediator of the genre.
Panorama Island
Either way, the Enix guys certainly weren't the only ones who already had got wind of the new trend. The case doesn't look as good for BulletProof when looking at Japanese Proto-RPGs like Koei's Ken to Mahou (剣と魔法) and Dungeon (ダンジョン) (warning, link contains NSFW images) or Falcom's Panorama Island (ぱのらま島), all released prior to The Black Onyx and already clearly drawing inspiration from established Western RPGs. Falcom's game even boldly claimed its title as a "Fantasy role-playing game"), taking a bit of wind out of the sails for Roberts' statement: "The word had not got out; nobody knew what an RPG was and we were on the brink of collapse."
This is not to abnegate all importance of The Black Onyx: As the first hit RPG in Japanese, it certainly did a lot for the popularity of the genre in the far east, but judging by the clues, we very likely would have gotten Dragon Quest, anyway.
It's quite baffling how many essential facts can get muddled and misinterpreted so much in only 30 years. Makes me not want to know what it means to stand in the shoes of a "traditional" historian. Oh, wait, I do. Back to my master's thesis...
To make this post more useful for those interested in the preservation and documentation of video games history, here are a few invaluable contemporaries to the events they're dealing with:
Computer Gaming World Museum preserves the whole back catalogue of CGW issues, from 1981 to 2006, but also smaller collections of other early magazines. Please don't go overboard with the downloading, though, as bandwith limits are a concern. Everyone needs to read "Come Cast A Spell With Me" by Roe R. Adams III in issue 5.4, page 21.
The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers is basically a huge compendium of really old computer game credits.
The Museum of Computer Adventure Game History showcases original boxes, manual samples and even storage media.
Full archive of Sega Force, Sega Master Force and Sega Force Mega posted on the SMS Power forums.
The Wayback Machine I bet you all know already. Doesn't go back farther than late 1996 for obvious reasons and doesn't always work, but it's a great tool to scavenge through old ruins of former company homepages and the like.
Kultpower is a German magazine archive that doesn't offer full scans, but a number of single articles and tons of review scans.
Google Books is more useful than one would think, although it is often a real pain in the ass to get to the information you want due to copyright sillyness.
(Feel free to post more in the comments, of course. These are very focused on Western sources, would be interesting if there were any Japanese magazine archives worth mentioning.)
Finally, I'd like to close with a question: While most old Western games have similarly elusive release dates as described above, for Japanese games at least since the late 80s, most release dates are known to the exact day. Gamefaqs is full of them, so is Wikipedia. But how do we know them? I'm really curious were they are coming from. Is there a reliable database somewhere, or is it all just from the Japanese Wikipedia?
Monday, May 16, 2011
Retro Gamer 88 and 89
Guess which ground breaking, vanguard pushing, demon-general-in-training journalist has written earth-shatteringly incredible articles for an award-winning magazine this month. Yes readers, that’s right, it’s me – your very own Lord Humongous. Articles for Retro Gamer magazine, which means complimentary issues. And guess who is placing scans from this magazine online – right again, it’s ME. And for those who recently posted in comments, arguing I came across as arrogant and pretentious, TOO BAD. You are tuned to radio Sketcz and there is nothing that can change the dial. I hope you’ll stay awhile and enjoy the scans anyway.
Included are full size scans of the 6 page article with shmup developer Cave – it’s so good I thought everyone should see it.
Now, let me explain what we have here, and we can all get along in peace. I'm just here for the magazaline.
Contents to issue 88, hopefully large enough after you click on it to read what's in the issue. My favourite issue in a while, mainly because of the epic Cave article. You don't often get interviews with Japanese developers in games mags, and RG seems to be getting a lot recently.
Minority report is a new series of articles looking at obscure games on obscure systems. Pretty good this one, with lots of niche shmups. There's another in issue 89, which I didn't scan, and it's good, but some of the choices are pretty known in my opinion (Baku Baku is pretty common, right?)
Another in RG's ongoing obscura machina series. This alternates with their collector's guide series, so we get one really obscure piece of hardware and then an in-depth guide on something common like the N64 or C64. This is a good idea, since it's not always easy to recover systems already looked at. My only gripe is this particular article must have mentioned shooters for the system 2 or 3 times, and what games do they showcase? Cards, a recent homebrew Pacman game, and noughts and bloody crosses! The Pacman game is OK, but I'm sure the Fairchild had more interesting games that the other two.It doesn't mention it, but the creator of the system died recently. Now that was in April according to Wires, so it happened after the magazine came out. Sadly ironic the timing of things.
Good feature by Stuart Campbell. Looks at early 1980s clones of well known games from that time. It's a simple idea, simply executed, but I had a lot of enjoyment seeing just how many crappy Donkey Kong clones they made around the time. Heck, that along could have made a feature - 101 Donkey Kong clones over the decades. Fun read.
Missile Command making of. 6 pages. Apparently been in the works by Darran for years now.
Don't read my words, golden and fantastic as they may be, click the images and read this article for yourself. Full of great trivia, good flow, nicely written prose, plus an interview with the guys at Cave. Top design too. The perfect article.
Contents from issue 89.
The collector's guide for the C64. I like it because it covers a lot of niche stuff about the system, and I'm all about the weird and unusual. Good photos of some rarities too. It doesn't credit the author, but I have a feeling freelancer Matt wrote the piece, in which case he interviewed himself on the last page. Maybe not thought.
Has it really been 20 years? Seems like yesterday I was visiting my mate Paul and a group of us were having mini tournaments. Jeez, I'm turning into old man. :(
Ridge Racer making of. They seem to have gotten answers from Namco staff, so quite a coup. 6 pages.FUN TRIVIA: I don't like Ridge Racer. In fact I dislike it immensely. I also dislike Virtua Racer and Sega Rally immensely. How many tracks and cars do each of these have? 3 or 4 cars and as many tracks. Now, take Mario Kart or F-Zero and count how many cars and tracks they have. Back in the day I never understood why people paid money for the home version of something which had so little content. I still don't today. I don't even find them fun to play. It's not like you can shoot a turtle shell out of the bonnet of a rally car, now can you?
Oddly enough, I really like the original Gran Tourismo. Lots of content there. Hours and hours of stuff to tinker with and do. How many tracks? Thousands probably.
Broderbund! Big feature. Haven't read it yet.
My article! Fantastic! Somebody give this man the Nobel Peace Prize.If you want hi-res scans visit the Biohaze forum.In the article I speak with 4 members from the dev team and document some very interesting things about the game. My only concern is that the Biohaze forum has commented on the game being of poor quality - and the implication of their posts is that my claims of it being a gem were somehow spurious. Due to all the developer info I had, there was very little space to explain why the game is great. I managed to compare it to Die Hard and that was it.
I want to emphasise this: I didn't make claims of the game's excellence in order to facilitate the interview. I tried the game, and loved it so much that I was determined, absolutely determined, to document it. Every time I read someone criticise it I feel myself lost for words because I utterly cannot understand why. It's a lengthy adventure, it's got challenge, creepiness, and interesting story, absolutely beautiful visuals, and it works so well as a handheld title. I sincerely loved it from start to finish.It holds equal place with MGS Ghost Babel on GBC for me. I'm not making this up. Gaiden is golden.
Interview with Raff. I've only ever played one game of his (Last Samurai on SNES), so this didn't interest me much.
Daz old boy appears to be getting into old PC games and especially DOS. The original Half Life (Windows obviously), Jill of the Jungle, Diehard (the PC game), plus Jetpack here. This is great, because there is an incredible world of overlooked gems for DOS. The ease of publishing on PC compared to consoles resulted in a lot of cool stuff. Hope this coverage continues (hinthint: do the English DOS version of Princess Maker 2 next).Monday, April 25, 2011
GamesTM 108
The latest issue of GTM which, as per usual, I received for free. So I am totally biased here as a non-paying reader, plus they send me cash monies every month for writing stuff. Even so, I think the quality stands for itself. Infinitely better than that utterly worthless garbage that was the relaunched EGM (I paid for my 6 issues – I’ve earned the right to bitch until hell freezes over). GTM still doesn’t credit their writers, which is both stupid and unforgivable, but that doesn’t detract from the anonymous people who write this. (I would have put an entry up for 107, but my inside contact was very busy and couldn't post it until recently)
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The cover is an in-game screenshot from Epic’s new Next Generation hype nonsense everyone is talking about. I know they’re very proud of their cover, but I inherently dislike CG renders, even if it is in-game and therefore real-time, and I’ve never quite understood the obsession over increasing graphical muscle. I’m still happy playing my retro consoles – which has led to me being viewed as a Mr Retro figure among the gaming press, but I like to think of myself as more all-encompassing, able to play Perfect Dark on the N64 in the morning before playing Metro 2033 on my killer PC rig in the evening. FUN FACT: both aforementioned first-person shooters are excellent, despite the disparity in their graphics.
Taken from Twitter, posted by alialsawaf, another mag cover with in-game screen.
Also, as for the names of the authors, I managed to get the truth out of a mole I have at the publisher of GamesTM. So now we can really know who wrote all these. Bolded for convenience.
This is a sumptuous opening spread detailing all 108 Suikoden characters, because, you know, this is issue 108 of the magazine. In a way I hate this spread, since I many times pitched something similar for Retro Gamer's double pages, but was always shot down because Suikoden is apparently too obscure. So in a way, seeing this is like seeing someone else fulfil my artistic vision. Still, it's a bit goregous, innit?GTM Author: Tori Black
This 4 page feature on Catherine is reason enough to buy this issue. It's an in-depth, extremely intelligent feature (it could be the most intelligent thing I've read in a games magazine this year), and not only is it fascinating, but it moves beyond mere games. It looks at Japanese cultural trends, their "elevator society", norms and values for the young and older generations, Japan's declining birth rate, the fact that young Japanese are less interested in getting married or having kids, and a decline in people taking adult responsibility. It's also a preview and review for the Catherine game - my god, it is such a forward thinking feature, that it's almost beyond the vanguard of description. I'm going to incur the ire of my superiors, but since it's not on their website, I've included hi-res scans for you to read. It reminds me of my Japanese sociology classes at university, which looked at various aspects of Japanese culture and society - but don't let my academic comparisons put you off. It's woven into the fabric of the Catherine game and the current Japanese game industry. It even draws attention to Haruki Murakami's 1988 novel Dance, Dance, Dance. Bloody fantastic. Best article of the year?GTM Author: Lexi Belle
A good feature on El Shaddai which reveals fascinating info from the developers, along with a serious and level headed discussion of the religious source material. I'm expecting a lot of other mags to dismiss the religious subtexts, and I think this is wrong, because whether you're an atheist or not, I expect my writers to try to understand what the games they critique are covering. Which is why I was especially pleased with mags that reviewed Okami and made the effort to research Japanese myths and legends.GTM Author: Ashlynn Brooke (aka Ash)
I haven't read this, but the design is nice and I'm pleased with how GTM continues to cover the niche and obscure.GTM Author: Dana DeArmond
The showcase section is ace, since it gives you a bite sized chunk of lots and lots of little games which might not get coverage in other magazines which only grant single-page coverage to titles but not less. This is great, because right now, if I hadn't read about these on websites or forums already, I would totally be psyched for: Gungnir, Akiba's Trip, Unchainable Rexx, Rochard, Fancy pants Adventures, A Valley Without Wind (hole bloody hell this looks FANTASTIC), Red Johnson's Chronicles, Fallen Frontier, Yakuza of the End, Amy (by Flashback guy Paul Cuisset, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes YES), Robotics;Notes, Nin2-Junp, Akai Katana Shin, and Earth Seeker.GTM Author: Chayse Evans
Feature on the next generation of graphics. I read it, and I was a bit depressed by it. Rather like last month's article on independent consultants. It all points to an ever greater bloating of games, with hundreds of people slaving away to make something which lacks soul or creativity. I miss the cottage industry days of 4 guys in a house making games. Still, if you like your graphics PUMPED, then this is a nerdcore article which - to me - appears to revel in geek love for the technology.GTM Author: Jenna Haze
An article on games which can be played as a family. I didn't read it, and I won't, because I don't care for this. Still, at least they're not afraid to look at unconventional subjects.GTM Author: Kayden Kross
An excellent feature on the perceived value of games. I can't be bothered to scan it hi-res like the Catherine article, but it's a topical and important subject/feature. The AppStore has let the genie out of the bottle with regards to a better pricing model, and no one is going to be able to get him back in. We're growing accustomed to cheap and free games, which is the way it should be. I hear people still pay $60 for console games? What for? I've recently bought several new PS3 games for $15 each, because I waited a couple of weeks and looked for bargains. The DEATH of expensive games starts NOW.GTM Author: Jesse Jane
Review of Gemini Rue. A good score for a good game. Glad to see someone on staff like adventure games. I can't wait for GTM's review of HG101's Guide to Adventure Games!GTM Author: Amber Rayne
A 6 page making of Guilty Gear, complete with photos and concept art from the guy behind it. Nikki clearly likes some one on one 2D action!GTM Author: Nikki Rhodes
A retro feature on compilations. Sadly it's not very good, and I'm saying this purely because the author doesn't heavily condemn Backbone Entertainment for the utterly shoddy and dreadful emulation work they did on the Genesis collections. Hideous filters, nowhere near as good as what I can get on PC emulators or even the emulators put out by Sega's AM2 division, and no ability to play Sonic 2 or 3 locked on to Sonic and Knuckles. Unlike Sonic Jam, which allowed this. Backbone, aka Digital Eclipse, appear to be utterly insipid and pathetic in their way of handling compilations, and any article which fails to condemn them to the 7th level of damnation, just doesn't pass muster in my book. The rest of the feature was OK, I guess, but I wanted - no, I NEEDED - to see more Backbone vitriol. Those Genesis compilations on PS3 and Xbox 360 were TERRIBLE.GTM Author: Ann Marie Rios
And finally, I leave you with a letter praising GTM's review of Deadly Premonition. Nay, praising the reviewer, whoever that dashing genius may be. I don't know who it is, but clearly said reviewer is a writer worth his salt, one to watch and lavish praise on (as this letter writer did). Some might even call said reviewer a god amongst demigods, and they would be right. They would be so right. If only we could know who this Messiah of men really is. Such a good review.
SPARTACUS!
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