Summer DS Grab Bag.
by alzabo
Posted on Tuesday, July 29, 2008I bear FFIV no ill will, it was an excellent SNES/SuFami game. While I don't think people who played it in 1991 need to rush out and pick up a copy, if a FFIV veteran does pick up the game they will not experience the nostalgia death marchs that FF IV, FFV & FFVI were on GBA. The game presentation and difficulty level are so different that it honestly feels like a different game, even if the primitive 3D models do feel inappropriate for some of the emotionally heavy situations (kind of like FFVII). If you're interested in playing something a little different this summer you could always import a DS game.
As a child I felt Japan got all the best games, reading gaming mags that endlessly previewed what was hot in Japan every month. Importing games used to give me a giddy little thrill, I felt I was performing an end-run around the domestic companies who usually dictate what the American public can play. How I viewed Japanese games has been summed up neatly by Percy Bysshe Shelly:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' "
There are 3 games that come out within a month of one another in Japan this summer that I'd love to get my hands on. While the majority of DS owners around the world will never play these games, they'll at least have a chance to own one of them this fall. Provided Nintendo doesn't fuck up the localization. Moving on, here's a list of DS games you can import this summer.
1) KORG DS-10 Synthesizer
It's a KORG synth, IN YOUR DS. If you are not immediately rushing out the buy this after reading that you should probably skip ahead to the next section of this article. The Synth is supposedly a super accurate recreation of the real KORG synth and has features such as a touch screen patch panel & a built-in save memory big enough for large drum loops and crap like this:
Sorry 'bout the rickroll. I applaud the concept and exicution of the KORG DS10 Synthesizer software/tool. However, I must admit that I have no desire to fool around partially because it is yet another DS game that requires the use of headphones and mainly because drum loops are about as interesting to me as running a mixing board at a raga concert.
2) Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Kizuna: Dai-Ichi-Kan Tatari
If the Phoenix Wright games and Hotel Dusk are the decendents of the old LucasArts adventure games like Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle, the Higurashi games are the crossbred decendents ofthe most brutal Sierra and Infocom games you ever played.
The basic premise of the Higurashi adventure games is that you fail over and over again. With each failure you crawl towards the ultimate "good ending." The "bad ends" (NWS) are honestly quite disturbing (yet strangely enjoyable) and are as satisfying as the "good endings" that lead to the ultimate solution to the game. I also love the game play element where the perspective of the player changes from one cast member to another as they play through the various scenarios. While a comparison of the Higurashi Games and Sound Novels to the Bill Murry's film Groundhog's Day would be apt, I feel it has just as much in common with the Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
I could bang on about good adventure games like this on the DS for quite a while I must draw a clear line in the sand and say I won't be playing this game because it'll never receive an English localization. Oh well, at least Konami is US localizing their weird time-travel DS adventure game Time Hollow.
3) Rhythm Tengoku Gold
The first Rhythm Tengoku game was a pretty big hit at a time when the GBA was near the end of its production life cycle in Japan. It's simple controls, addictive game play and off-beat sense of humor made it THE GBA game to import for people everywhere.
The sequel will be more of the same, and I can't wait. Nintendo has stated that they're considering bringing the game to North America and maybe Europe. Call me obtuse if you must but I can't bring myself to trust Nintendo to localize the game properly. If I choose to buy Rhythm Tengoku Gold, I'll be importing the Japanese version.
I don't have a good closer for this article. I could write something snide about Nintendo or how "America misses out on the good stuff again." I could write something redundant about how Nintendo's gutsy little platform is home to more than mere children's games. Honestly, this is a wish list that belongs to a person who has become so jaded with mainstream games that he only wants to play with synthesizer simulators, horror novel games with 50+ gory endings and off-beat 1 button rhythm that are difficult to the point of being inaccessible to mainstream gamers. Article Permalink
To Begin Your Adventure, Turn to Paragraph 1
by Tupperwarez
Posted on Monday, May 19, 2008
Have you ever heard of Choose Your Own Adventure books? Those stories that were cut up into sections that you could navigate through, resulting in a story that had multiple endings, mostly involving horrible deaths? Sometime in the early 80's, several publishers got the notion to merge that concept with light RPG elements, like an inventory, simple combat system and player statistics.There were a lot of these 'gamebooks' as they were called, with many series. One of the more successful series were the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf series, both of which got started in the UK. But then computer and video games went on the up-and-up, Nintendo resurrected the home console market, and gamebooks were slowly but surely edged out of the limelight, dying a quiet death in the mid-90s. Some do live on, like the Lone Wolf series, now available for free on Project Aon, but most are only dimly remembered.
After reading through many gamebooks, I started to wonder if maybe they were one of the many precursors to video games. Not a direct ancestor like pinball tables and slot machines, but more a distant ancestor, like pen-and-paper RPGs. They started out as interactive novels, and then gradually evolved into what amounted to be solo role-playing game modules. Consider, you have a self-contained story with a concrete beginning and end, and a few differing paths that lead you to the end. Each adventure follows a core set of rules, but individual adventures may have additional, unique rules of their own.What we're talking about here is some basic video game anatomy, I'd say. Only, instead of graphics, sound, and a computer processor, it's the prose and the player's imagination that help generate the game world. Additionally, writing a gamebook also requires design considerations that are similar to those of a video game. It demands efficiency, balance, and flow.
Because of these reasons, I think writing a gamebook would make for an interesting exercise in game design. In order to make it halfway decent, you're going to need a compelling plot. The plot needs to be alterable based on the player's choices, but it should also loosely follow a set path. Combat and other hazards need to be spaced out and balanced so as to not frustrate the player. And then you will need various 'error checking' devices, to check the state of the game and the player. Oh, and you have 350 to 400 'nodes' to use in order to accomplish this. The folks at the Fighting Fantasy Project also think that making a gamebook is an interesting notion, and have several home-brew Fighting Fantasy gamebooks up for your perusal.
While gamebooks are pretty much a forgotten medium, I find the 'what-if' scenarios amusing to think about. Would gamebooks have survived if computer and video games had not taken off like they did? I think they would have. I imagine various publishing companies competing with various rule systems. Pen-and-paper RPG companies getting in on the game with solo campaigns in gamebook form. Bootleg books made by home-brew writers, hastily xeroxed and stapled together. Open Gaming License analogues allowing independent writers to create, publish, and sell their own books that use existing rule sets.But inevitably someone would figure out that you can add video and audio to electronic gamebooks, and then we'd be back on the path to video games again. This outcome is not too far off from what happened in reality, actually. Not that gamebooks birthed video games, but rather that gamebooks evolved and merged with video games, living on in spirit in text adventures, visual novels, and other forms of interactive fiction. Seems inevitable, I guess, that the limitations of a medium would force the craft to either evolve or stagnate.
Hopefully I've at least piqued your curiosity regarding this near-forgotten type of interactive fiction. You can find a positively encyclopedic listing of gamebooks at Demian's Gamebook Web Page if you've exhausted the other links I've provided. Article Permalink
Five developers that I want to give money to
by K1
Posted on Thursday, February 28, 2008
As much as I loathe when a gaming site does the list thing, this topic came up in conversation and I felt that it was something worth writing about. I do want to avoid crap like "Top 100 games with hats in them and if you disagree then screw you" though, so I just want to express that this list is, like, my opinion man, so just chill if you think I am in the wrong.Five Developers I want to give money to (but I can't, within reason):
#5 - Shigesato Itoi (Earthbound / Mother series):This one is the biggest stretch since technically I can import Japanese versions of Mother 3 and Mother 1+2, but his games are ones I want to play in English to get the maximum amount of enjoyment out of them. Unfortunately, Nintendo seems to have a secret agenda to keep the Mother series from ever returning to the states. They have even gone so far as to remove the Earthbound Virtual Console demo from the U.S. version of Smash Bros. Brawl (or so I hear). At least Ness is still in Smah Bros., so they can't deny the existence of Mother completely. Sad.
#4 - Clover Studio (Okami, God Hand, Viewtiful Joe):While it's true that the talent and management behind Clover Studio are still around and making games inside and out of Capcom, what's nice about buying games from a particular studio is how you can vote with your gaming dollar on what developers you want to see games from again. The biggest slap in the face with this one is how Okami is getting ported to the Wii, but in buying it none of the money or credit is really going to Clover Studio proper. Again, cry.
#3 - Ben Croshaw / Yahtzee ( 5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, 1213):Why yes, I am referring to that Yahtzee, the one that talks really fast about games and it's funny. As it turns out, he can make a mean game as well as he can bitch about them. Ben's adventure games are some of the most well-written adventure games I've had the pleasure of playing. So much in fact, that I feel he deserves money for a game that he offers for free. If his games were offered on say Steam or Xbox Live Arcade I would pony up the cash for 'em on the spot. Better yet, if I could get a hard copy on disc that would be quite nice.
(Note: As I was typing this and linking to his games, I noticed that he has a donation page set up for each game, and if you donate 5 bucks you get a special edition version. I think I might just take him up on that.)
#2 - Garry Newman / Facepunch Studios (Garry's Mod, Facewound):Now before someone gets fresh and says something like "well just buy Garry's Mod off of Steam, you mingebag," I just want to point out that I HAVE purchased Garry's Mod, and in fact I even paid for Gold Membership at the gmod forums to get early access to beta versions of Garry's Mod. I'm that hardcore, alright? It's just that I want to give him more money. I *heart* Garry.
#1 - Daisuke Amaya / Pixel (Doukutsu Monogatari / Cave Story)Man, this guy. How is it one of the best games I've played in the past couple years is a freeware game made by one person? This guy deserves my money so much it's a crime. I want to pay to own a copy of this game. I want to own it on multiple consoles, including at least one handheld. I want to buy all kinds of crazy Cave Story merchandise, like t-shirts, plushes, and action figures. I want there to be a sequel, I would wait in line until midnight to buy it.
But I can't. Article Permalink
Rise from your grave
by alzabo
Posted on Monday, February 11, 2008
A decade ago,
Adventure Games died.
A good place to look for examples of the genre's death this is LucasArts. After Grim Fandango performed poorly in 1998, the lackluster sales of Escape from Monkey Island caused LucasArts to abandon every project that didn’t have “Star Wars” in the title. Other companies were having the similar problems, Westwood Studio’s Blade Runner did poorly the previous year and Sierra Entertainment had stopped producing adventure games. In a round of layoffs Sierra fired a quarter of their workforce; including Al Lowe and Scott Murphy, who created Leisure Suit Larry and Space Quest respectively. It was a sad time to be a PC adventure game enthusiast, some say 3D games in general and the proliferation of First Person Shooters specifically killed the adventure game genre. There are other theories about what killed the genre, but I’m not writing this to mark the 10th anniversary of Adventure Gaming’s death, I’m celebrating its return.
The Nintendo DS has become the new home for this timeless Genre. The first time I realized this was when I picked up Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in the Fall of 2005, the game is a classic point & click adventure that gained popularity via word of mouth and has had multiple repressing by Capcom. Phoenix Wright’s two sequels in 2006 and 2007 did equally well and I can say that the ending of the 3rd game ties all three together into a fun and memorable trilogy that I enjoyed more than most adventure games I played on PC. Even though Phoenix Wright is an adventure game with some mature themes (almost all the cases revolve around murders that are somewhat grisly), the game has an “animu” flavor that is impossible to ignore. Luckly, there are alternatives made by the developer Cing.
After Cing’s first forgettable DS adventure game Trace Memory they developed the mesmerizing Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Hotel Dusk has the gameplay of a adventure game, a classic point & click interface with a FPS navigation twist, visuals that are mature and seem fitting (I love the whole “Take On Me” look) and a story that is right up there with the best PC games of yester-year. When I started playing, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was playing Icom’s Déjà Vu. The atmosphere of Hotel Dusk is so spectacular that I want to go back and play it for the first time all over again. I cannot stress the following enough: If you love adventure games you need to play Hotel Dusk.
Most people probably never expected Adventure games to make a comeback, the best part of all of this is that most of the people picking up these new games have never played a Adventure game before. It’s unlikely that they’ll go dig up old PC games to play on their PC, but the classics are available to them via another channel. One of the programs available to people who choose to hack their Nintendo DS handheld is ScummVM, a emulator designed to play adventure games by LucasArts, Sierra and other developers.
The reason I’m writing this today is because I finished Phoenix Wright 3 last night to clear up some of my game back-log to make room for both Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (a.k.a. Phoenix Wright 4) and Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village. While I know exactly what PW4 is going to be, I approach Prof. Layton with high expectations, the game is very popular in Japan and spawned two sequels. The visuals of Prof. Layton reminds me of the excellent 2003 French animated film The Triplets of Belleville. I’m quite excited about these new Adventure games, their arrival is another sign of the Adventure genre’s return to popularity.