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Category: Video Games

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05/11/08

15:11:41 FF7, 10 years earlier  

Categories: Video Games, 192 words

I just found out about an unofficial Final Fantasy VII version for the NES. Yes. The NES. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII_(Famicom):

Final Fantasy VII (Chinese: 最终幻想7 ZuiZhongHuanXiang 7) is a China-exclusive unofficial, unlicensed, remake of the 1997 console role playing game Final Fantasy VII, originally developed by Square for the PlayStation. The two-dimensional "port" was developed and published by the Chinese company ShenZhen Nanjing Technology (深圳市南晶科技有限公司 ShenZhenShi NanJing LiKe YouXianGongSi) for the Famicom console.

Shocking. Apparently they developed equivalent systems to account for Materia, items, etc. They retained the whole storyline, except for some side-quests and optional characters. Some songs and graphics are ripped from other games and compressed. This is mind-numbing.

This is closely related to "Demakes" that went over a few months back. My favorite has got to be Shadow of the Colossus on Atari 2600. [UPDATE: A friend just told me this is actually for the TRS-80. That's funny, because I was actually thinking that the game probably transgressed the usual Atari 2600 rule of symmetrical representation, a trick used to save on runtime memory/display.] Hold me closer, Giant Dancer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3fWBQcuplQ

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13/09/08

07:53:31 Save the planet, boycott music games  

Categories: Music, Video Games, 335 words

It should be no secret that I rather like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I thought they were interesting enough to write about. There's one thing that bugs me, though. The instruments. I am well aware of the rationale behind developing a new guitar, new drumkit, etc. for a new iteration of the same game. (Notice how I didn't write "new game"? I take a cue from sports games, such as EA's NFL and NHL series.) Also for the non-compatibility thing with competitors' instruments. It makes good business sense. But it's certainly very ridiculous when you zoom out a bit and look at the big picture.

In 5 or 10 years, what will happen with all our precious Xbox 360s and Playstation 3s? (Well, Sony says our PS3s will still be kicking, perhaps with add-on toaster functionality, but they're Sony, so...) They'll be gathering dust and sitting in our closets. Ditto with the games. And everyone who owns a copy of any Rock Band or Guitar Hero game will have an instrument or two or three that will be rendered completely useless. How will you look upon that pile of plastic then? And when you've decided you've had enough, where are you going to throw them away? Can they be recycled - and even if they can, how much energy and resources will have been spent just to afford 10, 20, 40, 100 hours of play-time? That's not very significant on a larger scale. (I know game discs and booklets take resources too. But I encourage electronic downloads and fancy a bright future with a lot less packaging!)

I personally find that while developing and selling new instruments with added functionality for new iterations of these music games makes sense business-wise, it doesn't make any sense ecologically. I wonder how many energy and resources are spent on every bundle to get the publishers a 5 or 10 extra bucks. To be ecologically responsible, they need to find an alternative way of doing business. Because they won't be getting mine as it is.

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08/08/08

14:15:04 First 8-Bit Metal album released  

Categories: Music, Video Games, Metal, 141 words

08/08/08 seemed the perfect day to release an 8-Bit Metal album covering 8 classic video games. It doesn't get much more cosmic than that. I'll spare you the "official" news release, as readers of my blog are probably either already aware what my 8-Bit Metal is, or not interested in it. It's called RE:Discoveries and can be downloaded for free in the melomania section of my website. The RAR archive contains not only the 14 MP3 tracks, but also a booklet in PDF format with all lyrics and my comments on the games. There's also a print-it-yourself version for those who are still using CDs in the year 200X, though I urge you to think about your real needs before actually printing it. I've thought a lot about how to do this thing and I'll post my next entry on a related subject.

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22/07/08

23:24:33 "Online gaming is a female hobby"  

Categories: Video Games, 992 words

...because, as the marketing mill goes, 62% of American gamers in 2006 were female! But don't take my word for it, do some research. I hate numbers thrown around like this, because I wish gaming was a 50/50 gendered activity. Brandishing half-truths like this around is just twisting the blade a little further. There are a number of problems with an affirmation like this; for instance, the study purportedly measures "those who play video games on a consistent basis". First problem: "consistent" does not mean "often", but "Reliable; steady; regular; constant". Say I have an aunt who happens to play a little game online with her son, who's away from home, when she chats with him over the internet, about once every two weeks. Or once per month, even. That's consistent.

Now what are they playing?

"This percentage is not limited to 3D action games, such as CounterStrike or massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft, but includes all computer and video games that feature an online component."

Oh. I thought by "female gamers" you meant, you know, "gamers of the female sex". The image we have of a "gamer", except female. As it turns out, they're riding on a different notion of "gamer" altogether, namely, "someone who plays games". So my fictive aunt, an office assistant, does not even need to play something special with her son, just a quick game of solitaire. This has nothing to do with the staples of "gamer culture", as in Legend of Zelda, Gears of War, Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, or even the more accessible Guitar Hero and Katamari Damacy. What's a computer or video game? Bejeweled is. Your cellphone bowling game which previously appeared on "interactive entertainment television" at the very beginning of the 1990s. Even better: it doesn't even need to be played online, but just to have "an online component". Professor Layton and the Curious Village can't be played online, but you can download puzzles, so I guess it fits the bill. And so does Brain Age and Cooking Mama, I suppose.

Since my aunt is an office assistant, she has to work with boring people (just kidding). So during her breaks she prefers to play Solitaire instead of talking to them. Now it just happens that Solitaire uploads your best score to your MSN profile so that you can share it with your friends. (I'm sure it doesn't, but any other game might well offer something similar). Ding! Online component. Do you happen to play along to those advertising banners on websites that say "Shoot the monkey to win a FREE PRIZE!" or some such? Ding! You're a gamer. Easy, isn't it?

It's so easy to get to be counted as a "gamer" according to these criteria that it's almost equally easy to forget what a bloated, convoluted idea the simple phrase "62% of online gamers are female" conveys. With similar standards, I could very well be fit into the category of "TV Show enthusiast" for the sole reason that I eat lunch at home and since I am alone, I turn on the TV instead of staring at the wall.

All those thoughts came back to me because of GameFAQs' daily survey. Take a look at it.

"Is there a female gamer in your household?"
1)I am female, so that would be a yes - 6.73% / 6,495
2)Yes, I live with a female who plays regularly - 9.61% / 9,278
3)Yes, I live with a female who plays occasionally - 25.45% / 24,574
4)No, the females I live with don't play games - 44.56% / 43,032
5)No, but there aren't any females in my home - 13.66% / 13,196
Total 100% / 96,575 votes

The GameFAQs crowd is an "elite" crowd, those "hardcore" (and "ludophile" and "gamer", in the typology I presented here a few months back) people. This is simple: gamefaqs is a site you go to when you need help beating a game. Casual games aren't hard to beat, and people who play them either have no trouble spending time on the problems they face because it's their only gaming experience anyway, or play games that really don't offer much problems that would require a guide. This would then appear to be a closer estimate to the "gamer" we all imagine when we hear that "gamers protest against GTA censorship", "gamers line up to buy Halo 3", "gamers are simply looking for escapism", etc. For it seems likely that the gameFAQs users would dismiss their roommates or spouses' activity while playing freecell or checkers when chatting with a friend on MSN Messenger as not "being a gamer".

Please note: since 13,196 people responded they do not live with females, their answer is bogus for my purposes. So that leaves 83,379 total, out of which 51.61% respond "No, the females I live with don't play games". Meaning a household out of two has no female gamer, casual or hardcore. Casual would be embodied in "playing occasionally" and "hardcore" as "playing regularly". Interestingly the answer "I am female so yes" does not touch on the frequency at all, relying on the user's sense of identifying oneself as "a gamer". What this all boils down to, when taking the GameFAQs site visitors as a sample:
- 6.73% of the GameFAQs users are female;
- From 11.12% to 18.91% of households contain a regular gamer who is female;
- From 29.47% to 37.26% of households contain an occasional gamer who is female;
- In all cases, female gamers represent 48,38%% of all females in households visited by gameFAQs members. Conversely, 51,62% of all females in households visited by gameFAQs members do not play games at all.

Thus, the percentage of females who play online games is even lower (given that online games are a subset of games, even with a high ratio meaning that females almost exclusively play online games - which clearly cannot be the case), and is absolutely impossible to surpass 50%. Henceforth, contrary to popular marketing propaganda, cultural justification shenanigans or hype machine piston-oiling, online gaming is not a female hobby. Depending, of course, on what's a "gamer" for you.

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07/09/07

11:29:43 Avoiding the 30-hour introduction: Why short games are better  

Categories: Industry, Video Games, 951 words

30 hours? Does that seem crazy to you? I can assure you it looks a lot more crazy when you're the one who's invested this kind of time in the game. I am referring to Zelda: Twilight Princess. After logging in 30:33 of play time in my save game menu I stumbled upon a cinematic explaining the backstory of the world to me (well, part of it, mind you - they're not too keen on giving me enough juice to completely understand what's going on). I was pleasantly surprised to at last receive some narrative justification for the adventuring and hack n' slashing I had been undertaking for these long preceding hours. I must be fair though and repeat that the gameplay of Twilight Princess itself is pretty good. You can shoot arrows and slash with your sword while on horseback. And you can even hit mounted enemies to project them on the ground and then steal their ride! When you enter "dangerous zones" (I have encountered a handful so far) filled with what I am guessing are Moblins (Goblins would be too generic - or maybe that's a translation mishap dating back to 1987?), there are dozens of guys coming at you non-stop, which makes for some pretty intense swordplay - the kind you were always wishing for in Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker, but never would find.

So when I turned off my Wii that other night, I thought "Well, actually, the game is good once you make it past the first 30 hours". Fatal flaw. If I had not spent 50$ for this game, or if it wasn't branded with the Zelda name, I sure would have quit a long time before reaching the "interesting part". Because of that, I did play it, and cursed the game's creators, and ordered some Voodoo dolls on eBay to punish them. (fact: my built-in spell-checker tells me "ebay" is an error, but recognizes "eBay" as valid. Wow. I'm thinking at one point we will be using eBay as the word for "online auctions", kind of when people say "Kleenex" when they mean any handkerchief, or "Windex" when they mean any glass cleaning product)

What's wrong with these people? 30 hours is way too long for me, and I'm not even sure I'm halfway through the game! The rationale is usually that games cost many dollars, so people want to have enough content to justify that kind of purchase. Well, guess what. Good, short games are replayed because they're good and because they're short. I've been meaning to play again through Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy Tactics for 9 months now. But the time investment that's required to get through these behemoths is such that it dissuades me from doing it - even if they are among the best games ever. This lowers my perceived value of the game over time.

Even if I was thinking in the lines of "Wow, this game took me 60 hours to beat, that makes it better than if I had beaten it in 10 hours" - which I wasn't -, that would have increased my perceived value of the game-experience in the immediate. But over time, say, in the next 3 to 6 years, this massive game would have sat on my library shelf. However, a short game such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night typically gets pulled off my shelf once every two years. Because it's good, yes. But mainly because it's short. Thus while my initial reception of the game back in 1998 (or so) might have been of the value X, playing the game again in 2000 and 2002 increases it by at least X more each time. And usually a little more than X because of nostalgia factors, the fact you already know the game and thus can go deeper in it or try other alternatives, and the feeling of having "your own personal timeless classics". Looking at FF7 from 2007, I can hardly say whether it's such a timeless classic or simply if it was good in 1997. And when I look at that box I had paid 60$, versus looking at Castlevania's box I paid the same price but which gave me pleasure for a good 8 years, I think more highly of the latter. Because it's short, because I replayed it.

I guess the bottom line I'm trying to get at is: don't lengthen your games. Most people would not accept that a movie last 4 or 6 hours. Most of the time, when a movie is too long or drawn-out, critics jump on that. Same goes for novels and plays. Heck, even for museum expositions. And - Gasp! ye in horror - even for games. What happens when your Risk! or Monopoly game isn't finished after 4 hours? Sometimes people call it quits. Sometimes they keep playing. Most of the time, they are not that interested in the game anymore. They start chatting about any and all things and the game becomes merely a secondary background object. They don't care if they're winning or not.

Just because your game is "video" doesn't allow you to bend the rules of the human psychology and perception of time. We don't accept useless fill-ins from any medium, yet many video game companies seem to think gamers want them. They even push it in their advertisement, stating for instance "Embark on a massive quest over 100 hours long". Gamers are starting to get tired of these "100-hours epic quests" and they see through the marketing veil of lies. Your quest is most of the time epic in its cut-scenes and in the boss fights. Multiple random encounters with sewer rats while you're looking for the switch to lower the drawbridge is not an "epic quest". That's usually an uninteresting and tedious fill-in.

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15/08/07

18:55:01 New song up  

Categories: Music, Video Games, Metal, 79 words

I would just mention that I completely forgot in the last update to point out that I finished a new song. "Beyond the Mask" is the second part of my Final Fantasy IV trilogy, and is told from Golbez's perspective. (he's the bad guy, if the harsh voice doesn't tip you off). It's available for your listening pleasure in the Melomania section or on MySpace. Stay tuned for part three. I swear it won't have "Mask" in the title.

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29/06/07

13:27:36 Return of the Plumber  

Categories: Video Games, Gaming Log, 928 words

I have been playing New Super Mario Bros for the DS for a healthy amount of time every day for a while now. So how good is it? It's Super Mario Bros. 3-good as regards design and fun factor. But mostly design. That is incredible. Granted, it's not too innovative - although the mini and mega mushrooms are a very organic addition and they do not feel out of place at all. Mostly, they fixed a lot of things that had been lying around in dormance since the early days of Mario. Sure, you could pick up coins in Mario 1 and get extra lives. They were mostly hidden in blocks or secret areas, the idea being that players would be rewarded by coins by exploring. The idea was good. The result was not so good, and only by sheer arithmetics. Since my girlfriend is currently doing a contract for revising translations of math schoolbooks, here is the problem:

Q1: Little Jimmy wants to beat Super Mario Bros 1. He starts the game with 3 extra lives. He knows that he will need at least 10 extra lives to make it past World 8-2, 8-3, and 8-4. Given that it takes 100 coins to get an extra life, that secret places typically contain 20 coins, and that trying to reach a secret place usually carries a 20% chance of losing a life in the process, what are little Jimmy's chances of success?

A: Litte Jimmy is screwed, and should ignore secret places altogether and try to beat World 8-2, 8-3 and 8-4 with less than 10 lives by trying them over and over and memorizing the enemies' patterns.

Coins for extra lives seemed like a very valid concept back in the day, but there seldom was enough coins to warrant the risk taken in obtaining them. New Super Mario Bros fixes that by multiplying coins. There are many more, and they are brilliantly used: instead of appearing most of the time in secret places or in blocks, they are laid all over the place, tracing patterns over pits and effectively suggesting "ideal" paths to the player. The result of this is that you get a glimpse into the level designer's thought process, and how he thinks you should progress through the challenges he laid out. This is brilliant. Any long-time Mario fan will likely be struck by the abundance of glitters in this game. And as a result, you want to collect coins, because they're easy to get and plentiful, and thus you get a lot of extra lives with them. Suddenly, they're worth it, and that adds a dimension to the game that should have been in there all along but was merely a ghostly halo, an unfulfilled promise, a marvel that had never been.

Another thing that really struck me is what they did with the end-of-level flagposts. You remember them from SMB1, and perhaps from SMB2J ("The Lost Levels" that appeared on the Super NES Mario All-Stars cartridge, not the Doki Doki panic edited for the US market as "Super Mario Bros 2"). In SMB2, you could use a spring to fly over the flagpost in a level, and, congratulating your genius in finding such a secret, you continued to walk past the end fortress, only to come face-to-face with a warp pipe that would take you back to level 2. ("Who's the genius now?", I could almost hear as the devilish pixels on the screen grinned at me) Well, these flagposts were giving you more points the higher you touched them. Big deal. Points. I never understood points. It's one thing when they give you extra lives, but when they're useless, they need to go. They're unnecessarily cluttering the screen, and giving fel armaments to these braggarts who used to take photos of their high scores - back when taking pictures meant spending money on film, let me add in passing - and then pride themselves in their "0867454" points. At least Capcom understood and took out scores from Mega Man 2 onward.

So New Super Mario Bros fixes this by offering the player increasing points the higher he touches the flagpost, and an extra life if he gets his feet over the flagpost (Mario still comes down, no secret backwards pipe this time). Okay, it's not totally fixed (you still have *gasp* points! Want to know what my score is? Why would you care anyway?)

I must end this review by stating how they tackled the problem of audience. Mario is a long-timer. I've been playing Mario for about 20 years now. How can they offer me something new and interesting and still be able to hook up the 14-year old that got a DS last Christmas? "The ages-old saying, "Easy to beat, difficult to master", which is so overused it says next to nothing, can be mentioned. The stages in New Super Mario Bros are easy to beat, but finding all three Koopa coins is difficult and requires thorough exploration and puzzle-solving. I'm pretty sure I could have been done with the game already if I just wanted to beat it, but the fun for me comes in finding all the Koopa coins in each level. The challenges are built on the old rules of Mario (jumping, throwing shells, hitting switches and running, entering pipes, etc.), but the new elements (mini mario can jump higher and float in the air, you can ground-pound to knock blocks below you, you can wallkick-jump off walls) introduce many new permutations on these old familiars, and tax my comprehension of the game mechanics. My hat off to Nintendo!

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18/02/07

13:38:13 8-Bit  

Categories: Music, Video Games, 276 words

I'm not posting often these days because in addition to my coursework and duties for the Ludiciné research project, I'm translating my thesis into English. I should be done in early March if all goes well (I am currently at page 65 of 100).

Yesterday I went to the grand premiere screening of 8Bit: A documentary on arts and videogames (or some such title, exact wording differs). I'm glad I did, it was pretty interesting, altough a bit too focused for my tastes. It was fun to hear all the stuff about 8-bit music. The event was, from what I gather, a big success. A very polite and good-natured doorman informed the person behind me, when queried, that there had been 150 paying entries. I am guesstimating there was a dozen people helping out, so that makes quite a crowd for such a niche event. I didn't stay for the Q&A with the filmmakers and DJ night afterward, so I can't comment on that, but I did enjoy my evening at the SAT (Société des Arts Technologiques), and I'm going back there Tuesday for Clint Hocking's talk.

[UPDATE: Apparently Mary Flanagan was there to join in the Q&A with the filmmakers - well according to the program of the evening posted at the SAT website. Too bad I didn't know, it might have been interesting. Also I'd like to send out a huge OMG THX U ROCK !LOLKTHXBYE, l33t-style, to Cindy for giving me a Nintendo "Know Your Roots" sticker. WOW. I'm saving it for when I change my guitar sometime this year, and then I'll plaster it preeminently on there. Totally rad!]

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21/01/07

15:48:53 Nintendo VS Sega VS Blood Elves  

Categories: Video Games, 159 words

According to ScrewAttack.com, there's a new hero in town:Captain S. At first I was very happy to see some sort of play on one of my heroic figures from childhood whom today attained cult status, Captain N The Game Master. The first few images of Captain S' inaugural video had me filled with expectation. The blue jacket, straight hair, and general feel of the actor was dead on, promising lots of good things to come.

But I'm glad I haven't popped out the pop-corn. This adaptation is just too successful. Captain S is to Captain N what Sega is to Nintendo. After a few minutes, you just skim through the surface and leave in boredom. I'm having more fun hearing my girlfriend take on some Blood Elves, routinely punctuating the silence during my reading with a few "Take that you anorexic punk!" or "Call yourself a man? I have bigger muscles than you do!" here and there.

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