Invention from adversity

It seems that great things are created when you don't have the tools that you think you need to accomplish them.

Take, for example, the obvious example of Star Wars. Created on a very limited budget, but introducing a whole new vision of science fiction. Then have a look at The Phantom Menace with a, pretty much, unlimited budget and then look away, quickly.
The film Shrek was made by Dreamworks on the brink of bankruptcy driven by a need to parody their previous employers, whereas the sequels were made in financial security and found themselves drifting into diminishing returns.
Citizen Kane was made with a young Orson Welles bound by the limits of the current technology but making something that had never been seen before. The sequel "Son of Rosebud - Ski-mobile of Power" made purely in CGI never reached the same heights despite the modern technology available. Although, thinking back, this might have just been a bad dream after some dodgy fish cakes.
Diverging from sequels, Aliens by James Cameron was made in the adversity of the British tea breaks and 5pm clocking off and a budget limiting him to 6 Aliens for the whole shoot. Skip forward to the financial and chronological extravagance of Titanic, the carbuncle on the backside of cinematic history.

But what of the games? What are you actually trying to put across?

This is simply a long, twisted path to try and work out why the brilliance of some games can never be recreated. Modern versions and rewrites of Battlezone, for example, have never had the impact of, nor been as played as much as, the original - which was written in a few KB of memory but with a real passion to create something that had never been done before.

As another example - take the classic Robotron 2084 that introduced the twin joystick control. An addictive, fast paced and difficult game that is everything a classic should be. Robotron X was created many years later in a 3d environment with more memory available than a very wealthy person of good stock could have bought back in 1982. But it just didn't work particularly well. It wasn't a bad game, but it certainly wasn't a great game.

As a completely different example, the many iterations of Defender (the original game was written, co-coincidently, by the same person as the above Robotron 2084) never captured the feel or playability of the original, despite the advanced technology available in the more modern versions.

3D Monster Maze and Mazogs were written with no colour, sound or pixel graphics available. Deathchase 3D and Jetpac were written with 16KB available (as were the previous two games) and only a 2 colour per character square palette. Knight Lore with the first isometric 3D puzzle game and crammed into 48KB. Or the great Elite written originally in 32KB, containing 8 galaxies of 256 planets each with trading, 3D combat, missions and many late nights trying to get a better rating than Mostly Harmless.

In summary, it appears that it is the limitations placed upon older games that made them as great as they were, or are. Would Tir Na Nog have had any place in a free roaming 3d environment as opposed to the fixed camera and paths? These very restrictions gave the game the puzzles and originality that defined it. Mike Singleton saw a friend playing The Hobbit and decided there was no reason it needed to be that slow drawing the graphics and sat down to create a massive strategy adventure game called Lords of Midnight on the same hardware. The work that went into the C64 music prodded and poked into a small area of memory still manages to surpass the mood and feel of some of the orchestral scores around in some modern AAA titles. Restrictions have to lead to innovation if you want to rise above them; you don't spend time on something unless it is something that needs to be done. To revive a well worn expression, necessity is the mother of invention and conversely if you have everything you need in front of you, you have no need to innovate.

As a final, very deep conclusive thought, if Steven Spielberg had had CGI available and could have put the shark in when the model consistently didn't work; would Jaws have been the major impact in creating the Summer movie blockbuster?

Who'd a thunk it?

One of the great things about the web is that articles that have been published on-line, tend to stay around. This allows people like myself to go hunting for all those ironic things that specialists and experts have said and predicted with confidence that have turned out to be codswallop.

As a bit of background to the non-gaming reader, the Nintendo Wii is the fastest selling games console ever released and is still selling rather well world-wide. It came out around the same time as the Sony Playstation 3 (PS3), which was around a year after the Microsoft Xbox360. The PS3 and Xbox360 are basically powerhouses utilising the same controllers as their previous consoles, whereas the Wii uses less cutting-edge technology and a new controller using physical movement as opposed to directional thumb-sticks. The PS3 is selling the least out of the three consoles.

The time is set back to circa 2006, where the predictions of who will win the next gen console war were generally of the following:
Sony expected to lead despite delays published on 21st March 2006. The figures that the experts had come up with were in lots and lots of articles across the web. Including this one:
XBox 360 will be a loss for Microsoft coincidently published on the same day. My personal favourite line from this article is where they expand past Microsoft and Sony to say,
"These kind of market figures would be very good news for Nintendo, however. A relative midget alongside the Sony and Microsoft behemoths, Nintendo was written off for dead in most quarters after the GameCube missed the mainstream."

The above quote is so ironic due to the 'experts' consistently ignoring the hand-held market that Nintendo have dominated since the introduction of the Gameboy. Even though the Gamecube was a lukewarm seller compared to the massive sales of the PS2 (pretty much alongside the original Xbox in numbers), Nintendo were still making an awful lot of money and had a rather large share of the overall video game market. Still, that's experts for you.

Going back a little bit further leads to our video game experts stating that Nintendo had already conceded the next generation console battle on the introduction of the then-called Revolution (later to become the Wii):
Nintendo unveils Revolution published on 17th May 2005. A great, obviously non-inflammatory, quote on this page is,
"... opens the gateway to the company's entire pre-Cube back catalogue on NES, SNES and N64 via a broadband service governed by a proprietary Digital Rights Management system."

Unlike the Open Source, free swapping mechanisms used on the games that Microsoft and Sony will let you download.

Most of the articles a few months later followed the lines of this one:
Blu-ray a player in PlayStation Pricing published on May 9th 2006. It was by this time that our specialist gaming media had written off the Nintendo Wii as underpowered and a fad, which is why most of the articles around this time didn't even mention it.

An interesting blip on the radar was from the Sydney Morning Herald, where a non-gaming specific blog Mashup predicted the following at the end of 2006 for Top Tech Trends To Watch In 2007:
"Wii wins next-gen console war

With its far-reaching mainstream appeal and unique gameplay experience, the Wii should comfortably snatch first place in the console wars. Its sales have already broken records, and holiday sales figures are expected to be just as impressive.

The Playstation 3 will no doubt be stiff competition for Nintendo, but its late launch in March and high price tag should give the Wii a comfortable victory."

As with all media reporting to this day, no-one seems to be able to grasp the idea that Sony will not be dominating the market as they have for pretty much the last 10 years. The same way newspaper journalists have been continually telling us that Second Life is the next big thing. To stretch the elastic band of irony even further, Sony of all people should be aware of what can befall arrogance in the video game market; it was Nintendo's arrogance that gave them the entry into the market in the first place.

Saving the best to last:
Playstation3 Defeats Xbox 360 published on May 27th 2005 is an excellent example of the fine folk that engage in intense debate around the subject of console branding. Given that at this point, neither console had been released, the following comments certainly display their own charm:
"playstation 3 won and im happy because it is the best look at the games."

"i like the xbox 360 more than a ps3 because it small and if u dont like the xbox 360 fuck u"

"u bastars stop thinking that the xbox 360 is gonna win because it is clearly at state that the the PS3 is going to win one reason is that its 2x's more powerful then the xbox 360 because my cousins works at sony and works with the PS3."

"if u think the 360 is going to completly replace the ps3 than ur fucking retarded. u should get kicked in the balls for posting this bullshit on the internet. PS3 is going to rule the world one day i swear its that good." (Actually posted in 2007, must have taken a long time to get the grammar just right)

More delicacies from our concise and charming video gaming community. Maybe I should trademark the work sic and license it out to people who quote from game forums.

Someone is not thinking of the children...

I hesitate to raise this issue as there has been so much discussed about it already; but I did see something today that exemplified the ridiculousness of the whole affair.

In Australia there is not a restricted 18 certificate for games. "Think of the children," comes the cry from the Attorney General who has decided that we cannot have one.

I happened to look at the case of the game Stranglehold today. Ironically, in Europe it has been given an R18 certificate (restricted to over 18s only), but due to the lack of this rating in Australia, it is MA15+. This entails that it can pretty much be bought by anyone without restriction.

That's politicians for you.

Old school to the next generation in one afternoon

Finding myself at a loose end on a Sunday afternoon I decided to find something to play and found myself unable to find anything out of several hundred console games, many consoles, a few PCs with its games including quite a few emulators making a few thousand more games available or the arcade machine with several thousand games of its own. And lets not count the hand-helds... or the retro games.

It is hard to fathom on human nature but it reminded me of being back in my school days when I had literally thousands of ZX Spectrum games to play (on hundreds of C90s) and couldn't find any particular one to play. I am willing to concede that this could just be me.

So it was time to reel in the past. First up was Robotron 2084 on the arcade machine and was pleasantly surprised to pass the 110,000 mark on the first go and the few after that, couldn't reach the 135,000 high score though. Then I ran through the game list to Battle Zone which I played until I passed the high score; I even ran it with the bezel and found it a pretty good addition. Feeling good with vectors it led me onto Asteroids, which I also played until I beat the high score, which to be honest, was not that high to begin with. I noticed that there was a Asteroids Deluxe and gave that a go, once again with the bezel. This wasn't so good with a rather distracting background drawing, although I did enjoy the game.

It was like a warm-up giving a taste for something more expansive, so it was onto the PS2. I remembered playing Ecco the Dolphin a few years ago and picking it up again it was a game I really want to enjoy playing. I found myself really enjoying the control of the dolphin but that is really where the enjoyment ended; I could never tell the coach dolphin from the others during the training (does that make me a dolphin racist?) and found myself wandering around trying to solve rather obtuse puzzles in the game proper, with little direction and little satisfaction. By the second hour into it I'd solved little of consequence to give any sense of progression with the exception of a few 'songs', which are all awfully alike and involve pressing the same button, regardless of the song. The final straw was a massive leap backwards to a previous restart point when I died and I really couldn't face going through it all again.

So it was time to pick up something more action orientated and decided it was time to open up Shinobi X on the Saturn. Having never fired it up before, I was immediately impressed by the shonky, quite badly acted video cut scenes of Japanese actors dressed in plastic ninja armour; you gotta love the early CD 'multi-media' games. It did lead to a rather good example of action platforming though which controlled well and was as forgiving as Beelzebub with a hangover. I did notice, as I always do when I use it, that the Saturn doesn't have any way of saving the progress which is a bit disheartening. But Shinobi followed Ecco onto the pile when a restart point placed me back at the very start of a level having worked my way through a maze of tree branches and a Boss battle and then stupidly getting hit by a simple knife afterwards. It is something that never fails to give me the biggest cause to dump a game.

It was a jump to the Xbox 360 next, firing up Stranglehold, which I had found for sale in Game for less than $30 a few weeks ago. It was very enjoyable, although I do have bias as I rather enjoyed the film this game is a sequel to; I stumbled across Hard Boiled during a particularly pretentious foreign movie phase during my younger years. In the game, the main character gets hit by a bizarrely large number of bullets and it doesn't even try to explain why your 'Tequila Bomb' meter heals you if you shoot enough people. Great stuff. The whole game is based around shooting people in the most stylish way possible, including throwing yourself on a food trolley and shooting as many people as possible while rolling across a floor. Pretty much like the film. And pretty much like all of John Woo's other Hong Kong films.

It was, all-in-all, an interesting afternoon.

What? Really?

The blog has been a bit dearthy (sic) recently as I've actually been spending time playing some games; given that this is a gaming blog, it seemed appropriate.

The biggest bantam

I was recently given a PSP by a friend - which is, by any criteria, a rather splendid gift. The PSP itself is an excellent piece of technology, especially the screen, and it looks the biz. There were a few things that put me off purchasing one though when it came out. The first thing was that I already had a Nintendo DS which I was using rather a lot at the time, especially having purchased Meteos (and later, Mario Kart). The second thing was the disappointment of finding out it had an analogue 'stick', but one that required a disjointed thumb to use comfortably. The third was the price - that was a biggie; the result of my wife finding the receipt was more than my medical insurance would be able to cover. The fourth was the battery life, thanks to the rather splendid screen it was sporting. The fifth was the battery life, thanks to the use of discs to play games.

This was all pretty much swept away when the PSP fired up (with a larger battery at the ready) to play something. Burnout Legends was the first game and it looks magnificent, the sound was also snuggling up close to the graphics in the magnificent category. The only doubts that remained were from the pain in my left thumb after playing it for an hour; but, you know, tendons can stretch.

One of the benefits of getting a console that has been out for a while is the host of budget, traded-in and generally cheaper games. I headed out for a search and picked up Echochrome ($38) and God of War: Chains of Olympus ($25). Starting with Echochrome for the train journey to work, the time flew by as my brain tried to kick in. It turns out to be a rather original game that occupied my mind in pretty much the way puzzle games should. There were minor flaws, with my brain capacity being the main one; but in any original concept I don't see the flaws as a show-stopper - unlike most of the reviews I read later that day. Giving my brain a well-deserved rest, I kicked in God of War the next day and was very, very impressed indeed. Although I had completed God of War and its sequel on the PS2 a while ago, I wasn't sure what to expect from the hand-held incarnation. But from the get-go, it plays smoothly with the same grandeur and impact that the console games had.

I guess that the games and the console itself belie one of the biggest problems it has had since release. It is more like carrying a full living room console around, with proper living room console games and the suite of media options that you would expect from such a machine. Whereas the DS really feels like a hand-held with cut-down games, quick games and nothing apart from games.

When you buy a Tomb Raider game for the DS, it is generally a sprite driven, top-down or side-scrolling affair - it feels like a hand-held game. You get the game for the PSP and it is the full monty - not a proper hand-held game at all. You have to invest yourself in a full game much more to learn the controls, follow the story line, sit through the cut scenes, etc, etc. I can pick up Meteos and play far quicker than I can get to grips with Echochrome; I can't even remember the last game I played on a DS that had a tutorial to work through. So I guess that maybe for the PSP, perception is reality and it is not perceived as a hand-held. Which is very much a shame.

Anyway, I'm forcing myself to put God of War down for enough time to write this and will be back to it before I get home; but as someone who has to use hand cream, I do have some issues with finger prints. This PSP would be CSI's most easily solved case...

As a final point, I've never actually had any problems with the battery life.

Decrying the missing

I am more and more finding myself missing something that everything points to being really important; the media, the adverts and the games themselves...

Why is it than when I complete the Resident Evil remake on the Gamecube I get the option to play through exactly the same game again with the main character wearing a different costume? What? Why would I want to do that? Why would anyone want to do that?

Why would I be interested in playing a beat-em-up with the character wearing a different pair of trousers? Why would I want to paint an in-game car a different colour? Do go-faster stripes actually make the car faster? On the subject, why would I want a new Nintendo DS because the plastic is a new colour? What did a platinum Gamecube or Silver PS2 provide that the others didn't? If it did have anything useful that the others didn't then it would be incompatible with the standard unit; it makes no sense.

What is it with all these things that add nothing to the game, but are given as some kind of bonus? Never once have I played a game and thought, "I can't wait to get to the end and play all this again with the character wearing a new hat."