Retro Gaming

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Policenauts Review & Interview with Marc Laidlaw

November 20, 2009 in Game Industry, Game Writing, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 2 comments

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I’ve been dying to review Policenauts for months, but wanted to try something slightly different since it was an unpaid, unofficial, translation team that took on the job of translating this Japanese cult classic into English. I managed to track down Marc Laidlaw, the lead translator on the project, who was generous in answering some questions I had about the game and the localization process.

The editors and writers of 4colorrebellion were gracious in offering me a space for such a wonderful interview. Specifically, I wish to thank my friend Jamie Love for his hard work in setting me up over at 4CR, and putting together the entire article in its final form. Head over to my 4colorrebellion article to read the entire inter-review.

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Eric Chahi & Jordan Mechner in Conversation

October 19, 2009 in Game History, Game Industry, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 4 comments

mechner_chahiLurking quietly in the background of almost all side-scrolling adventure/puzzle games today, are the two giants of my childhood: Jordan Mechner and Éric Chahi (and I would add a third: David Crane, and a fourth: Paul Cuisset!). Mechner, the auteur of Karateka, Prince of Persia, and The Last Express among others. Chahi, the creator of Another World (Out of this World) and Heart of Darkness. Although it is easy to come up with visual or gameplay similarities between both developers, Dieubussy of the CoreGaming network puts it just right: Jordan Mechner and Eric Chahi’s games are part of the same spiritual nexus that cannot be reduced to a single game element. Anyone who plays the aforementioned games, whether they like them or not, has to be astounded at the highly focussed and concentrated design efforts involved. Rather than depicting (or representing) the narrative and environments through photorealistic visual styles, both authors refined subtler and more suggestive/evocative visual styles. The best adjective that I could use to describe their games is “strong”.

A developer himself, Eric Viennot has interviewed Chahi and Mechner, each answering the same question. It is an interesting opportunity to see how two authors who may share a spiritual style, living on opposite sides of the ocean, come up with different answers. I firmly believe that a game can (and must!) be understood and enjoyed without referring to the life of the artist or their opinion, but for those who have already played their games and admire their artistic styles, the interview is a goldmine. This is part of a series of interviews that Viennot has done of the giants of gaming… a prior interview between Frédérick Raynal (Alone in the Dark) and Paul Cuisset (Flashback: The Quest for Identity) is just as fascinating. I hope that you can read French – if not, try out one of the various translators (Google translate seems to do an okay job)… otherwise, Gamasutra is in the midst of translating the latest interview into english.

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Games You Haven’t Played Yet: The Last Express

October 8, 2009 in Artful Games, Game Art, Retro Gaming | 7 comments

tle2After hearing another writer complain that there haven’t been any new games out there that caught his eye, I realized that many of us are staring in the wrong direction. Why do we spend months (or years!) looking for upcoming releases, when we should be looking in a gigantic library of quality games already at the tips of our fingers? So, in the spirit of offering something new to the current generation of gamers, I’m beginning a series of recommendations for games that bring something new to the gamer’s repertoire… yet were released years ago. And in that spirit, I could imagine no game more appropriate than Jordan Mechner’s masterpiece: The Last Express. Although stylistically different from Planescape: Torment, Day of the Tentacle, or Final Fantasy VII, I consider it one of the finest games ever made. Read the rest of this entry »

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An Expedition into the Lost World of Exploration: ToeJam & Earl

September 23, 2009 in Artful Games, Game Psychology, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 4 comments

Toe_Jam__EarlThe extremely thoughtful and critical comments in response to my previous post got me thinking about the role of exploration in games. In this post I’ll try to do some justice to how gamers can still hang on to a sense of exploration for its own sake, and enjoying games as a form of pure entertainment.

Last night I was sitting with a friend of mine talking about our experiences playing games as kids. We were surprised to learn that we had both owned the cult classic (yet poorly marketed) ToeJam & Earl for the Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive in the 1990’s and brought back some fond memories for each of us.

Its re-appearance on the Wii Virtual Console was a welcome gesture, but I was disappointed with reviewer responses who felt that characters move “lethargically slow”, the gameplay was “unfair”, the funky visual style too “dated” to be enjoyable, and that its 16-bit synth music was too crippled for contemporary gamers. At the same time, most of these reviewers begrudgingly admit that it’s likely a “classic” and enjoys some nostalgic street cred, especially for its two player co-op mode.

After reading those reviews, I realized that ToeJam & Earl - a cult staple of the average SEGA generation child’s household – has become just another brief glint in the endless library of emulated games available for casual play. This is where I want to part ways with the average reviewer out there, and try to show why ToeJam & Earl is still an important game today, and offers something wonderful to the kind of curious, exploration-driven, non-competitive, fun-loving, and non-violent child (or adult!) gamer that we talked about previously. It’s a game that you should be playing with your partner, your child, or a close friend, right now. Nostalgia for its own sake is a very real, and I think very dangerous, part of reflecting on older video games. I think that re-vitalizing them and finding value in them for a new generation is a noble, and difficult task. I’ll do my best.

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Games We Can Dwell Within – What is Interactive Space?

September 4, 2009 in Artful Games, Game Psychology, Retro Gaming | 3 comments

comi-4-full_smallCorvus Elrod’s Blogs of the Round Table for September managed to tempt me out of my self-imposed thesis writing /afk, with one of the most interesting BoRT topics I’ve seen. To boot, the topic is exactly what my PhD dissertation is being written on: how can we conceive of “space” – spatial relationships, objects in space – in video games?  If games are, as Chris Crawford claims (ffwd to 4:32), a “fundamentally spatial” artistic medium – we better understand what the heck the word “spatial” really means for us as gamers. (Thank you to Kimari of Indigo Static for passing along the video.)

When we think of computer and video games, the word “space” is almost automagically translated into “coordinate space” or Cartesian space. After all, almost all games since the late 70’s used some kind of X/Y coordinate system to plot pixels on a screen; in the 90’s that became X/Y/Z space as 3D games took off. This is a technological understanding of space – it envisions space as a kind of empty vacuum in which objects can be arranged in a consistent way – and we perceive those objects according to some kind of spatial formula (ie. 2D or 3D coordinates).

I want to affirm a very different understanding of “spatial” than what most gamers and writers think it means. Space, as we experience it playing games, is not a Cartesian coordinate system for representing objects, characters, narrative, or sound… I believe that there is a much deeper understanding of space in video games that we implicitly live as we play them. And I’ll try doing articulating this different theory of space without any kind of techno-jargon — just a bunch of examples from a game that expresses the kind of space I’m talking about. My point is going to be that gamers experience space in a totally different way than mathematicians like Descartes did or programmers do.

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The Poetics of Super Mario World

June 5, 2009 in Artful Games, Game History, Game Psychology, Retro Gaming | 3 comments

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Although I am still living in exile from my beloved blog, I did manage to get an editorial piece published over at Toronto Thumbs. In it I reflect on the problem of “nostalgia” and whether playing old games is a case of wearing rose-coloured glasses, or does it have to do with something something deeper..

Thank you to the Toronto Thumbs staff for giving me this opportunity to write something for them, especially to Sir Jamie Love for the impetus to try writing this in the first place.

Bye for now. Miss y’all!

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Ye olde Sierra Adventure Games go Online!

April 23, 2009 in Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 3 comments

sarien_netJust a short, but exciting, piece of news. GameSetWatch already apparently reported this, but I can’t help pass it along in case you don’t read the major news services.

Although many of you probably did not grow up in the 80s with text-based and graphical adventure games, my sister and I did. We practically grew up on a steady diet of King’s Quest, Quest for Glory, and Space Quest games. The days of huddling in front of the 13″ VGA monitor and solving puzzles together are gone. My sister lives an entire continent away, and we don’t play games together much anymore. Until today, that is.

Which would you prefer more:
A) being able to play your favourite Sierra On-Line adventure games in a web browser?
or
B) being able to play those games in a multiplayer environment?

A + B = Martin Kool’s Sarien.net

Much in the spirit of Jet Set Willy Online, this means that you can now play a handful of Sierra’s old adventure games in a browser-based multiplayer environment. Imagine having 100 Roger Wilco’s walking around, exploring the Arcada. Imagine solving puzzles in The Black Cauldron with a friend 1000 miles away.

And all done by one guy (with the help of a friend). Spectacular.

So head over to Sarien.net if you have a chance and enjoy the ride. The only thing I’d love to see would be names above the avatars (so we can identify each other) and perhaps picking different colors for our characters. It gets tough figuring out who’s who on a screenful of Roger Wilco’s.

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Searching for Imaginative Space? Apply From Within.

April 15, 2009 in Artful Games, Game Psychology, Philosophy, Retro Gaming | 12 comments

infocom_ad1The recent excitement, and subsequent furor, over the new Legends of Zork browser-based online roleplaying game inspired me to think about how much we have changed as a gamer culture since the days of text-based adventure games.

For many of us, Zork hangs among our earliest memories of computer games. In many ways the series’ massive fanbase – in its entire gamut of casual and hardcore and obsessive players – is our miniature equivalent of the Star Wars fanbase: it is rabid.. it demands quality.. it cannot tolerate any deviation from canon.

So designing a new game based on the Zork franchise was a dicey and dangerous decision, especially considering the close ties the series has with the history of video games in general (it was among the first games derived from Colossal Cave Adventure). Stakes were high for everyone involved.

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A Trip to id Software, circa 1993

April 6, 2009 in Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 1 comment

box-doomOn Christmas eve of 1993, I crowded around my uncle’s 17″ monitor as his friend Jeff played a new 3D shooter game on his brand new Pentium PC.

As the game loaded, Jeff said, “This is gonna be the biggest game of the year.”

He cranked up the speakers and blared metal synth midi music; the rest of the family in the other room yelled at us to keep it down. KABOOM! The first panicked shot from the shotgun exploded snargling imps into giblets.

“Over to your right! It’s coming! SHOOT!” we shrieked as another imp advanced on Jeff.

We had never played anything so fast before… all of us broke into a nervous sweat as the man in the hotseat explored the rest of the level. For the first time in our collected lives, we experienced terror playing a computer game.

My uncle picked up the phone and dialed the 1-800 number listed on the exit screen to purchase us a registered copy of the game. We had to have it.

Fast-forward over 16 years.

Yesterday, John Romero edited and posted a video of a trip that Dan Linton (sysop of The Software Creations BBS) took to id Software way back in 1993. The video features composer Bobby Prince giving a demo of some of his work (ie. Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3-D, etc), and John Romero playing an early version of Doom.

What I like the most about the video is that the folks over at id show so much passion and energy for their work. They love what they do, and they’re having fun doing it. There is something very familiar about watch Romero play Doom, as his friends and co-workers crowd around the monitor and express their enthusiasm. That kind of excitement and communal gawking is something I sorely miss now that games have become a much more individualized form of entertainment.

I highly recommend checking out the video for a blast to the past, even if you weren’t a Doom fan.

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The Artful Times, Issue #1

March 19, 2009 in Artful Games, Books, Game History, Game Industry, Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 2 comments

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I’m not much for hyping up news, but I came across quite a few exciting stories this week. Because writing ‘feature articles’ is so darned difficult, I thought that an occasional ‘Artful Times’ newsletter might be a fun way to end the week :)

GDC ‘09

The 2009 GDC begins next monday, and I’ll be there! If you’d like to get together for a lunch or coffee, please drop me a line. This is my first GDC and I plan to document the whole thing as well as do a handful of interviews while I’m there. I’ll post whatever I can here during the week!

Lovin’ Rhythm

parappa_the_rapperJamie Love posted a very enjoyable interview with japanese rhythm master Masaya Matsuura, otherwise recognized for his brilliant PaRappa the Rapper series that initiated the whole ‘rhythm game’ genre. Matsuura does not appear often in interviews, and his insights into Western (and japanese) gaming culture are poignant. In response to the idea that we, as gamers, tend to idolize certain characters and games from our past that are nonetheless exploited commercially in sequel after sequel; sacrificing our personal values for profit, he says:

We should talk about cultural values and proprietary values separately. Nowadays, nobody really has the idea that “Copies” are worse than the “Original” anymore. When I think about that, it is no wonder that new ways of thinking about possession will be eventually spreading and changing. When, for example, we have a million seller game, it is difficult for us to decide if there is only one main character, or a million of them, but for now we should appreciate that both assumptions can be held as valid.

I think companies and/or producers have a tough mission to bring imaginary characters to life both culturally and proprietarily. Also the imaginary character will doubtless become increasingly realistic and tangible in the near future. Then we will be forced to rethink how we treat them once again.

(Apologies for the news image – I couldn’t help myself)

New Bible Unearthed; Church of the Mushroom Cloud Believers Deny Existence

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Over at the IDGA Game Preservation Mailing List, Elliot Davis mentioned that someone has posted a scan of the complete design document for the cancelled Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 game. We all know that Brotherhood of Steel was a terrible followup to Fallout 1 and 2, but apparently BoS was only intended to cover the costs of the game engine. BoS 2 was the game that Interplay wanted to pursue – but filed for bankruptcy before production could begin. The design “Bible” reads like a D&D campaign manual and features a lot of previously unseen sketches and artwork consistent with the Fallout universe. I suggest getting it while it’s hot – who knows how long it’ll be before the nasty C&D letters are fired off.

“Ifnkovhgroghprm” actually means “Nikstlitselpmur”

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AGDInteractive let me know that their amazing re-makes of King’s Quest I and King’s Quest II have been once again remade! The artists have went back to them and redrawn all of the background art at high resolution, and made improvements to the music and speech packs. (Not to mention that their website was re-designed and re-launched by the wonderful Eriq Chang). After investing thousands of hours in these projects, their efforts have finally been ‘rewarded’ and recognized by Activision (the company that swallowed up Vivendi & Sierra On-Line’s properties): in a newsletter AGDI said, “We were informed that Activision would honor our outstanding agreements with Vivendi by allowing us to finish our pending contractual projects, but that we will not be granted permission to start any new Sierra remakes in the future.” Bad news: we won’t see a King’s Quest IV or Quest for Glory remake. Good news: we’ll see Himalaya Studios work on their own original ideas and hopefully see a new adventure game in the next couple of years!

(and if you recognized the title of this news item, you’ve played too much King’s Quest)

A History of LucasArts – Thankfully not written by George Lucas

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Although the book was released in December 08, I somehow missed it! Rob Smith, the editor of PlayStation magazine, writes the history of LucasArts and fills it with amazing (previously unseen!) production artwork and paintings. I have some strong attachments to LucasArts, despite their 10 year dive into obscurity. The years between Maniac Mansion and Grim Fandango punctuated some of the best gaming experiences of my adolescent and post-adolescent life. Even now, when I load up Loom and Sam and Max Hit the Road on my Nintendo DS (thank you ScummVM!) I am reminded that true mastery involves insight and constant revision. I’m looking forward to reading this book; if you have read it, please chime in with your (dis)recommendation. This seems like a nice coffee table book, especially with the glossy photos inside.

Home of the Underdogs Revived After Being Euthanized

hotuAnd I wasn’t planning on announcing this for at least another two weeks, but my good friend gnome das Gnome’s Lair beat me to it ;) After Sarinee, the old curator and creator of Home of the Underdogs (a site devoted to posting ye olde abandoned games) lost HoTU due to a mixture of disinterest and her web host dying, a few folks from the community decided to lend a hand and get it back up to speed. There are several ongoing revitalization projects, but the one that has caught my attention the most is HOTUD.org – a complete revision of the site using Joomla and community-driven content. The site is currently in an ‘alpha’ stage and you should not yet start posting reviews/content, but if you’re as excited as I am about the project, head over to the forum to keep an eye on the site development. We’ll let everyone know there when it’s ready to rock’n'roll.

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Retro Luvin’ Goodness

February 22, 2009 in Game Writing, Retro Gaming | 4 comments

racover0001Although I’m a bit slow on the trigger, I’d like to pass along the news that the talented folks over at Retroaction Magazine have put together their inaugural issue of RETROACTION. If you are at all familiar with the fantastic print mag “Retro Gamer”, you’ll find Retroaction a comparable mag with the extra dosage of love that comes with a free publication wrought from the keyboards and minds of dedicated retro gaming fans.

According to the authors (one of which is our very own gnome of The Gnome’s Lair!), Retroaction will be issued one per season; four times a year. The first issue is roughly separated into four parts – a main feature on The Legend of Wukong (a new Sega MD/Genesis title), pretty darned in-depth coverage of the 2008 Retro Remakes Competition, a small feature on the UK-based television show “GamesMaster”, and a wonderful assortment of articles that focus on games for (mostly European) systems like the ZX ‘Speccy’ Spectrum, BBC ‘Beeb’ Micro, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, etc. Like any good retro gaming publication, the types of articles vary so much that I think anyone should find something they like in it.

Interested yet? Head on over to Retroaction and download the first issue (in Adobe PDF format). If you like what these dedicated authors and publishers have done, be sure to drop them a line over at their forums and let them know!

If you’re interested in what I think about Issue #1, read onwards…

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A Poetic Text… Adventure?

January 11, 2009 in Artful Games, Retro Gaming | 12 comments

robert_frost1Although I try not to post links, this little piece of BASIC poetry written by Matthew Sewell caught my eye. On the SWCollect mailing list, Matt wrote of his jeering poesy:

It struck me that the first line of the Frost poem was like the start of a Colossal Cave type of game (“You are standing at the end of a road…”). So I took it from there, adding a snarky Infocom voice to a poem that I consider over-serious. The code is primitive to be sure (though it does work), but both the editor and I were concerned about accessibility. Actually he’s the one who encouraged me to expand the frame of reference to several other games — he figured that if we’re doing this, we might as well commit to it. Anyway, you all are just about the only people I know who will consider it too obvious rather than too obscure…

Hardcore retro-gaming, text adventure, and BASIC-coding enthusiasts might be able to parse the program just using their imagination, but I needed some help. I copied and pasted the program (from Lines 10 to 490) into Joshua Bell’s Applesoft BASIC Interpreter, clicked Run, and enjoyed 45 seconds of pretentious smirking. Does anyone else find this ingeniously funny?

Maybe I’m getting old.

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Ancient Artifacts of the Origin Museum, Part I

October 14, 2008 in Artful Games, Game History, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 8 comments

For the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting a three-part series of articles based on several conversations I’ve had with Mr. Joe Garrity, curator of the The Origin Museum. You might remember Joe as the mastermind behind the scenes of a massive video game archival operation that took place earlier this summer at Mythic Studios, where 1 Terabyte of artifacts, source code, artwork, FMV, and design documents were salvaged from Electronic Arts’ archives of the defunct Origin Systems Inc. In this series of articles Joe tells us some of the stories behind artifacts recovered from Origin Systems (the creators of the Ultima and Wing Commander series). In our first part of the series, Joe reveals some (until now) unseen artwork by Dan Bourbonnais – an artist that worked during Origin’s “Age of Enlightenment”, and shows us some of the painstaking artistic work that goes into game production.

 

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Staying out of Never-Never Land

October 7, 2008 in Game Psychology, Retro Gaming | 12 comments

Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer has me thinking again. His latest two provocative posts concern how we think about games – a child’s fancy or an adult’s pursuit. Ultimately, Michael and the great majority of commenters seem to side with the ‘games are serious business’ camp.. which I am no doubt sympathetic towards (why else would I write here!). After all, every morning for the last month I’ve spent 30 minutes on the train playing the original Final Fantasy VII on my PSP, nervously avoiding the glances of curious riders. It does feel exposing playing games in front of other adults.

For me, however, something’s missing. I don’t play games because they’re serious business. Sure, I can defend why they’re serious to other adults – but when I play them that’s not what I have in mind. And I even research games (ie. follow it through and record some observations, do background reading, etc) … but that’s not playing the games. Playing a game involves something else – a suspension of desire, a willingness to invest oneself in the world and accept it at its face value. In this very short article I want to explore the idea that in order for games to move or grip us, they must remain toys or forms of childish entertainment. Seems counterintuitive?

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Pier Solar: A Brilliant Indie-developed Console RPG

September 23, 2008 in Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 6 comments

Just when we were beginning to fear that Japanese-style console RPGs (JRPGs) were going to go the way of the dodo, Water Melon studio has opened up pre-orders for the best console RPG I’ve played since Chrono Trigger for the SNES: Pier Solar and the Great Architects.

I first got wind of this game in issue #49 of Retro Gamer mag which had an impressive two-page feature on it. The game began as a fan-based project by a handful of folks from Eidolon’s Inn message board (a Sega forum with a long history). The project has been in active development for around 4 years, with the assistance of a dedicated eleven member team that’s passionate about the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive).

So what’s so impressive about this game? First, the entire game has been developed for the Sega Genesis/CD using a fan-developed SDK – that means that the game is truly a console RPG! It is going to be released for the Genesis on cartridge and in CD-format for those with a Sega CD. (At this point I’m unclear if buyers will receive a ROM image of the game to play on their PC, however.) Second, the team released a working beta demo of the game to give us a taste of the final game. Third, this is one of the few JRPGs with a fantastic script/dialogue – it’s witty and charming, and has a way of pulling you right into the game. Finally, I’ve never seen a fan-developed project of this calibre. Even though the demo is a beta (with some bugs), you can see the love and sweat that went into making the game, and the final product looks like it will rival some of the ‘big indie’ commercial releases like Braid.

Normally I avoid raving about new games, but this one has me pretty excited. Is it just me, or is anyone else into the idea of breaking out their Genesis and popping in an old-school Chrono Trigger-esque RPG? If so, head on over to the official Pier Solar web site and download the ROM (playable in any Genesis/Mega Drive emulator). And let us know what you think of it!

Update (Sept. 30th): One of the Pier Solar developers replied officially that the final version of the game will *not* come with a ROM image:

Don´t worry, the game will be well [copy-] protected; that is absolutely possible on MD.
And about releasing a ROM….no, sorry. Just like Zebbe said it would spread and I doubt people would buy the game for a ROM image they can get for free. Also, there will be no emulator being able to play the game even if someone does manage to dump it. We really think that a Mega Drive/ Genesis is so cheap everywhere that it is no big issue getting one if you really want to play the game.

A Virtual Console release would be nice at some point, but the chances we are allowed to do that are rather slim I´m afraid.

Unfortunately that means that if you don’t have a Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive you won’t be playing the full version, nor is it likely to make an appearance on the Wii VC. Bummer. Guess that means I’ll be hauling my Sega CD/Genesis duo from the basement and hooking it up in a few months for some gaming goodness!

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Ultima VII: The Black Gate & Serpent Isle, now working on the PSP Slim!

September 9, 2008 in Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | No comments

This is one of those projects that I love to keep up with, because like many fan-based projects it’s kept running purely by the collective steam of its dedicated crew and fans. Last year “The Food Sucks” team managed to get the impressive Ultima VII: The Black Gate running on the older PSP ‘phat’ using the Exult game engine.

A week ago, the team announced that both The Black Gate and its sequel Serpent Isle are now both playable on the PSP Slim! According to the comments section of their page, load times have improved and the game runs solidly on the Slim. It looks like there will be a patch coming soon because Phat owners have been experiencing some random crashes with the new release, but that shouldn’t stop you from giving it a go. Given that Ultima VII: The Black Gate, and Ultima VII: Serpent Isle are renown high points of RPG history, I highly suggest giving it a go. If you don’t have a PSP, you can always head over to the Exult game engine page and download a package for one of many operating systems.

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The Lost Art of Game Packaging, and the Digital-only Turning Point

September 2, 2008 in Artful Games, Game History, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 13 comments

Michael’s post over at The Brainy Gamer looks at how digital download services have begun to carry serious momentum and surely can only pick up even more as Microsoft’s XBLA and Sony’s PSN release more content. Many folks over at the Brainy Gamer are just as excited as Michael with the prospect of ‘no more plastic’, but I found myself less excited about the prospect of a future without physical packaging.

Part of those feelings can be chalked up to old fashioned nostalgia – it’s hard to give up fond memories of gingerly tearing the plastic off of a brand new game as a kid, reveling in the pungent odor of freshly printed manuals and carefully unfurling cloth maps of lands a’far. Closely linked to that is another aspect of physical packaging that I think is really important, and we’ve forgotten it in our unquestioned haste to deliver games cheaper and faster. That is, we’ve lost our appreciation of the game packaging as a craft and an art unto itself that provides a tactile engagement with games we otherwise lack.

The chronology of game packaging that Ryan Scott and Scott Sharkey present in their article Shrink Wrapped: A history of PC game packaging trends, from awesome to awful, is a good taste of how packaging progressed from the early years to the present. Unfortunately, a chronology is just that – it doesn’t bring to the forefront why packaging matters might matter so much to us. In this article I do my best to highlight one game with interesting game packaging – feelies, artwork, manuals, etc – and try to show how (for some people) physical interaction with the packaging can transform the nature of the game.  I should note that some of the things I say later in the article could be construed as spoilers, so ye have been warned!

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Origin Systems Treasures Unearthed

August 11, 2008 in Game History, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 8 comments

I’ve been keeping my eye on this project for a while now, and I’m excited to pass along the news that a team of dedicated Wing Commander fans and Origin Museum curator Joe Garrity, recently completed their 7-day archiving grind of almost 1 Terabyte of data at Mythic Studios. If you’re not familiar with Origin Systems, it’s the studio that produced the Ultima and Wing Commander games of the 80’s and 90’s, which was purchased by EA and went defunct in the early 2000’s.

Thankfully, EA did not toss out decades worth of artifacts, source code, artwork, design documents, and other archivists treasures that the folks at Origin produced. Months ago, the people over at the Wing Commander News site discovered that several boxes of Origin artifacts were shipped to EA Mythic, and quickly got to work on getting permission to archive all of the materials. All of that work paid off, when the team of dedicated archivists spent a week at Mythic photographing, digitizing, and copying, the tons of materials left from the Origin days.

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The Joy of Role-Playing

June 29, 2008 in Game History, Game Research, Game Writing, Philosophy, Retro Gaming | 11 comments

Sketching out dungeon maps on graph paper, marveling at the trinkets or “feelies” in Infocom and Ultima games, vigilantly reading every manual and printed material in the box, and writing pages of quest notes. Whenever my girlfriend sees me meticulously doing any of these kinds of things I get the same befuddled smirk my parents gave me when I played games as a 10-year-old: only another nerd could truly appreciate this. Yet, these are exactly the kinds of things that draw me closer to games and give me a sense of intimacy that allows me to appreciate them not just as works of art, but as worlds.

Recently, Michael of the Brainy Gamer wrote a brilliant (yet terribly misunderstood) exploration of the phenomenology of keeping a scorecard at a baseball game. Sounds a little boring eh? You bet… until you understand the level of intimacy that he creates just by writing down a few numbers and thinking through the game. In this post I’ll try to do justice to just what Michael might have meant by the word “engagement” by talking a little bit about what people do when they “engage” themselves with a game. Before you read this, it’s critical to read Michael’s post first… because I’ll be referring to it throughout. Trust me, it’s worth it.

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Some Canadian Bacon: Carrington Vanston’s 1 MHz Podcast

June 12, 2008 in Blogroll, Game History, Game Writing, Retro Gaming | 3 comments

Although I recognize that the readership here is international, I do owe some amount of recognition for Canadian writers, gamers, and fellow agent provocateurs. That being said, Carrington Vanston has continually impressed me with his 1 MHz Apple ][ podcast. I’m equally impressed by some of his writing on video games. Critical yet fair, the insights he has into video games always provide me with the kinds of creative inspiration necessary to think deeper about gaming.

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Treasures from the Tickle Trunk: Day of the Tentacle

May 24, 2008 in Artful Games, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 3 comments

This article is part of a new series of articles that I call “Treasures from the Tickle Trunk” where I pull a game from my basement game library and take a deeper look at what it achieves. This style of article is deeply influenced by Corvus’s Narrative of the Moment series.

As I played through the demo of Penny Arcade Adventures this morning, I kept reminding myself that writing comedy is difficult – and writing interactive comedy well is nigh impossible. Not only is quick wit, rich satire, and goofy slapstick necessary, but it has to be reflected in gameplay in such a way as to play funny. With so few adventure games, and even fewer games with a sense of humor, I thought I would take a fresh look at one of the bright highlights of gaming humor in the 90s – Day of the Tentacle.

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So You Want to be a Hero: Have Gun. Save World?

May 20, 2008 in Artful Games, Philosophy, Retro Gaming | 9 comments

Cover art from Quest for Glory I, courtesy of Mobygames.Mario and Luigi. Indiana Jones. Princess Peach. Samus. Lara Croft. The Avatar. Cloud. Link. April Ryan. Bubblun and Bobblun. Jade. Bonk. A Boy (and his Blob). Wonder Boy. E.T.

Whether cavemen, plumbers, femme fatales, cutesy dinosaurs or aliens – they’re all bound to save the world by the end, or die trying.

Although taken tacitly as the standard for the vast majority of character-based video/computers, the Hero protagonist is the ubiquitous yet completely understudied workhorse in the history of video games. In this article I explore the uses of the hero in video game narratives, and how an over-reliance upon certain kinds of hero characters has limited the kinds of stories being told in video/computer games.

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Revitalizing Dead Culture: Why Game History Matters

April 22, 2008 in Artful Games, Game History, Game Writing, Philosophy, Retro Gaming | 19 comments

One of my guilty pleasures is in retro gaming and retro computing. My basement storage room is filled with arcane devices and hundreds of games: a venerable Commodore 64, an Apple ][e rescued from a garage sale, a local family's Apple ][gs that was donated to me, a MAME arcade cabinet, a Mattel Intellivision II - the list goes on indefinitely. I just can't bear to see these things tossed out. Lately I've found myself playing Ultima VII: Serpent Isle on my 486 DX2/66 (now with a Roland MT-32!), and my 360 has sat untended for months.

But does playing these old games matter? Does writing about them matter? What value is there in sweatin’ to the oldies? Is it only for reminiscence or nostalgia? In this article I make a few arguments about retro gaming/computing that outline the meaningfulness of tying together the past and the future in the present..

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The Making of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

April 20, 2008 in Game History, Game Writing, Retro Gaming | No comments

Microscopic Space Fleet

“Not being a games designer, Douglas was still thinking linearly,” says Steve [Meretzky]. “As we got more comfortable working together, and I began to assert myself, and Douglas got more familiar with the possibilities of non-linear storytelling, that changed – the majority of the game has the most fiercely non-linear structure of any adventure title I’ve ever worked on.” 

As a followup to friday’s link to Andy Baio’s archeology of Milliway’s (which incidentally made Slashdot), I remembered an excellent article posted in issue #45 of Retro Gamer magazine. Since this is a rather obscure magazine I decided to scan in the entire article because getting back-issues of the U.K. based magazine is rather difficult. You will notice that several of the Infocom folks who contributed to the article also commented on Andy Baio’s page, which gives a sense of interconnectedness to the situation. The article gives a quick look into the creative forces behind the games as well as a sense for the creative environment engendered at the time.

Warning: each page image is over 500kb. It may take you less time to order it from the U.K. than wait for it to download via 28.8k modem.

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4

Edit: I forgot to include a link to the publisher’s web site! If you’d like to order a copy of, or subscribe to, Retro Gamer – which comes with my highest recommendations – head on over to Imagine’s eShop to order it online.

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Infocom’s Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: A Look From the Inside

April 18, 2008 in Game History, Game Industry, Game Research, Game Writing, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 3 comments

It has been a long time since I had something worth posting here, so I hope I don’t disappoint with what I think is an utterly fascinating story. Yesterday, Andy Baio of Waxy.org posted a story reminiscent of a game archaeologist’s dream that he pieced together from internal e-mails, design docs, and prototype builds all culled from a network drive image of Infocom’s shared network hard drive. Yes, someone made an image of the “Infocom Drive” before splitting from the company in 1989 and has kept it safe for all these years. Revealed on the hard drive are (quoting Andy):

design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made.

So why does this matter? Because he went through the drive and weaved together the tale of why Milliway’s: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe was never completed nor released. If you have not played the excellent Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy IF game (designed and created by Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams) you’re missing out on a crucial piece of computer game history and a damned fun (difficult!) game. I’ll let Andy tell the story, except for two points:

  1. It tells the story of a venerable game company in decline; crisis even. Being 1989, Infocom had already merged with Activision and Milliway’s had been languishing since its inception in ‘85. The company closes with not a bang…
  2. It comes with a playable prototype of Milliway’s (!!)

Comments from the ex-Infocom folks on the story seem to agree with some of Andy’s story, however it is quite clear that there is more to this than meets the eye. It will be interesting to see what comes of this in the following weeks, as it quite clearly has ruffled a few feathers – and for good reasons.

Thankfully Jason Scott’s new documentary, Get Lamp, is scheduled for release some time this year. I suspect that his own exploration into the world of interactive fiction, complete with interviews of major designers and programmers, should be just as utterly fascinating just as his epic BBS: The Documentary was.

 

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A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Periscopic’s ‘The Thule Trail’

February 25, 2008 in Artful Games, Game Industry, Retro Gaming | 1 comment

oregon trail
Image courtesy of gaygamer.net

Although I initially reported on Periscopic’s excellent re-envisioning of the Oregon Trail some time ago, the game managed to garner nearly universal acclaim from gamers and critics alike, most notably indiegames.com who ranked it #19 in the top 20 freeware adventure games of 2007.

It took me a little while, but I managed to get a hold of Periscopic’s co-founder and Head of Conceptual Design (not to be confused with the Head of Impressionistic Design) – Kim Rees. Kim ever so kindly rounded up the crew to give us a peek at how Thule Trail was built from concept to finished product. Much thanks goes to Dino Citraro – Periscopic’s other co-founder – who invited me to ask a few questions about the game in the first place. The sheer craftsmanship put into this game is stunning and is a testament to how the right kinds of collaborative relationships in game development can lead to great things – but I’ll let our Oregonian friends over at Periscopic describe how that works… Read the rest of this entry »

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Return to Dark Castle Trailer Released

February 4, 2008 in Artful Games, Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 3 comments

Return to Dark Castle Screenshot

Normally I avoid posting news, but I found this bit o’ information a little too tasty to keep to myself. First reported at the Dark Castle News blog, a Return to Dark Castle trailer video (Youtube version here) has been posted over at the publisher’s web site. The gameplay looks hilarious, and definitely captures the spirit of the original. I can’t wait for this classic to hit the Super Happy Fun Fun online store.

If you missed my earlier coverage of Return to Dark Castle you might want to take a peek at the article.

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Dramatic Genius: LucasArts and iMUSE

January 31, 2008 in Artful Games, Game Research, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 5 comments

secret of monkey islandWhen I was 12 years old I received $25 for my birthday from my aunt. With the $5 I had saved from the previous weeks worth of allowance, I had a whopping $30 to blow on something frivolous. I convinced my mother to drive my sister and I to the largest computer store in the city (40 miles away) so I could buy myself a new computer game. After searching through the racks for almost an hour, I gave up – the games I really wanted were over $60, and the games selling for $30 or less looked unappetizing. I had given up and was ready to leave when my sister grabbed a copy of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge off of the shelf and handed it to me: “Buy this one! It has monkeys!” At first glance I wasn’t interested, but the screenshots on the back of the box reminded me a little of my other adventure games like King’s Quest IV and Police Quest II. I reluctantly agreed to allow my sister to chip-in $20 to buy it, and pouted the hour-long ride home as my sister opened the box and pawed through the ‘feelies’ inside. Sitting in the den in front of our 286 I unenthusiastically installed the game, and loaded it up. Within minutes my sister and I were transfixed upon the monitor and practically rolling on the floor laughing at the ridiculous conversations and character expressions. Monkey Island 2 quickly became one of our favorite PC games and was the gateway to a larger world of cinematic adventure games. Within weeks, I convinced my parents to buy me an AdLib sound card for christmas so I could hear the glorious midi music. In this article I look at LucasArts’s seminal iMUSE system – the Interactive Musical Scoring Engine that was used in every LucasArts adventure game from 1991-2000.
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Writing Worth Reading: Write the Game

January 27, 2008 in Blogroll, Game Writing, Retro Gaming | No comments

Bubble Bobble EndingAlthough Keira posted a comment several months ago in response to the rather dystopian sketch I scribbled of the BioWare sale, I accidentally overlooked her blog, Write the Game, until recently. A writer, musician, composer, and seasoned gamer among other things, Keira Peney has the uncanny ability of consistently writing thoughtful and organized articles.

I’ve spent the last few days reading her impressive back-catalogue of posts and while I think all of them are certainly worth your time, her six-part composition on the history of video games stood out for me. These articles demonstrate Keira’s intimate knowledge of retro games, a keen eye for details, and impeccable research skills. For someone born in 1984 (the year of King’s Quest I, Championship Lode Runner, and Seven Cities of Gold) she sure as hell knows her Dune II and Command and Conquer – two games that I spent countless hours playing and subsequently debating about with my junior high school friends. If you’re at all interested in reading a thoughtful piece on the history of video games (and their developers) with some interesting analyses, be sure to read the entire series of articles (start at the bottom).

Edit: Keira posted a reply to the lively ongoing discussion started by Michael over the Brainy Gamer on “photorealism” in video games. I’m hoping to continue the discussion in my next post, and attempt to outline some new ideas on the subject.

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Indie Luvin’ Double Feature: ChipWits II & Return to Dark Castle

January 22, 2008 in Artful Games, Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 11 comments

When I was 10 years old, we moved to another province. One of the first friends I made in our new community was a kid named Fraser. In a far corner of Fraser’s basement, his parents had a Macintosh 128k covered in a protective plastic sheet. Although it was strictly taboo (the Mac was only to be used for word processing!), when his parents were busy upstairs Fraser and I would sneak into the room and quietly load up a few games he had copied from our school’s library. Two of the games that we secretly giggled over in front of that monochrome screen remain burned into my childlike mind to this day: ChipWits and Dark Castle.

ChipWitsChipWits was an edutainment game that was released in the early days of the Macintosh. One part puzzler and one part GUI-based programming teacher, ChipWits used an icon-driven programming language (IBOL) to command a miniature robot on rollerskates around a room. Through combinations of operators and arguments, the robot would traverse the room picking up, eating, or frying objects at your maniacal whim. I don’t doubt that games such as The Incredible Machine, and more recently Chibi-Robo, gained much of their inspiration from this classic.

Dark Castle screenyDark Castle was a mixed action/puzzler/platformer that put you in the shoes of the bumbling adventurer Duncan in his quest to defeat the Black Knight. The game featured eery waveform sound effects and wonderful character animation reminiscent of later ‘rotoscoped’ animation. (Interesting side note: Co-developer Jonathan Gay later came to pioneer the now-ubiquitous Flash animation software. The designer and illustrator Mark Pierce later became the co-founder of software giant Macromedia. Holy jebus!) Full of slapstick humor and frustrating puzzles, Dark Castle is probably one of the least known indie masterpieces of the 1980’s.

Unfortunately, neither of these games have been playable on modern systems without frustratingly clunky emulation software. That is, until now! I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out that both have been remade into modern sequels by indie developers:

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Donate Your Money to Torture Gamers for a Good Cause

November 24, 2007 in Non-Profit, Retro Gaming | No comments

This has to be one of the most original fundraising ideas I’ve ever seen. Do you remember the ill-conceived and unpublished classic, Penn and Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors? No? Perhaps you’ll remember the infamous Desert Bus – one of the three mini-games packed into the Penn and Teller game for the Sega CD.

From Wikipedia:

The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused.The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other cars on the road. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it is impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, they will score exactly one point. The player then gets the option to make the return trip to Tucson—for another point (a decision they must make in a few seconds or the game ends). Players may continue to make trips and score points as long as their endurance holds out.Some players who have completed the trip have also noted that, although the scenery never changes, a bug splats on the windscreen about five hours through the first trip, and on the return trip the light does fade, with differences at dusk, and later a pitch black road where the player is guided only with headlights. 

I played it last year on my Sega CD (after downloading it here) and the description that Wikipedia gave it is absolutely accurate. It is truly the worst, funniest, game that I’ve ever played in my life. After the initial laughs wear off, the tedium sets in and the next 7.8 hours of your life will be among the worst.So, LoadingReadyRun.com is hosting their first annual Desert Bus For Hope marathon for the children’s charity Child’s Play. The Canadian comedy group is self-inflicting the worst kind of torture I’ve ever seen: sponsors pay them to play Desert Bus, hour by torturous hour, until the clock (or the money) runs out. If you’ve got $5 to spare, head on over to the Desert Bus web site and prolong their suffering.


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Indie Luvin’ Double Feature: Privateer – Ascii Sector and Privateer Gemini Gold

November 14, 2007 in Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 2 comments

I thought I’d create a new regular feature that highlights new or budding indie projects that may not have reached audiences through the regular news sources. This week I bring you two very impressive freeware indie projects, both remakes of the 1993 space-sim/rpg Wing Commander: Privateer.

Privateer: Ascii SectorThe first, Privateer: Ascii Sector, is an impressive ascii-based interpretation of the original. The graphics are colorful and almost completely faithful to the gameplay of the original … minus one dimension of course. While the interface shares many similarities with roguelikes, there are many interesting enhancements that give the game a completely unique style. Most of the time I was absolutely stunned that a single developer – Christian Knudsen – built the entire game – ascii art, gigantic maps, fluid and colorful animations, and in-game economy algorithms – his work is absolutely polished. The game is currently at v0.2, and Christian is hard at work at bringing v0.3 to completion. If you play the game, please send Christian some encouragement, either over at his forums or at his Great Games Experiment page – I’d love to see a final release candidate of the game get released some day. Download it here.

PrivateerThe second project, Privateer Gemini Gold, is a 3d platform-independent remake of the game for Windows, Linux and OS X using the Vega Strike game engine. If you’re looking for a way of playing the original Privateer with high-res 3d graphics without running Dosbox – this project is definitely the way to go. A very large team of 3d artists, programmers, designers, playtesters and audio engineers have created a truly faithful reproduction of the original game. The development team is die-hard dedicated to the project, and respond to suggestions and comments on the forums regularly. If you were a fan of the original game, you will be immediately at home with this remake – it is probably the most detailed remake of a 3d game I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t played this classic, I strongly suggest heading over to the download page and giving it a shot.

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Halloween Contest Winner

November 6, 2007 in Retro Gaming, Site-related | 5 comments

Halloween ‘07

Contest

Defcon
Congratulations to Petri, of Kloonigames fame! He correctly guessed that the pumpkins I carved (in order) were: Day of the Tentacle, Katamari Damacy, and The Legend of Zelda. Petri’s prize choice was a copy of Defcon. There were only 2 entrants in the contest – was it really that tough? :)

Defcon, like all of Introversion’s games, stands out as an impressive indie effort. The game succeeds precisely in its focused effort: the play map is small, the player has only a few different options in battle, and the battle interface is simple and clear. With that simplicity comes the polish of balanced gameplay, a very Cold War era-esque aesthetic, and chilling soundtrack. I hope Petri enjoys it as much as I did!

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Previews of Dragon’s Lair DS

November 1, 2007 in Indie Games, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 2 comments

Dragon’s Lair DS screenshotI don’t usually post news, but I thought this was a nice little surprise. One of the artists and developers for the DS port of Dragon’s Lair has posted some insider sneak peeks (videos and screenshots) of an alpha release of the game. The game is being developed by United Coders and published by Conspiracy Entertainment. According to Gamespot, Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp, and Space Ace will both also be ported to the DS at a later date.

Dragon’s Lair has always drawn serious polarities from gamers – some people (like me) have fond memories of dumping $20 worth of quarters into it at the local arcade; others find the game unforgiving or simply unrewarding. According to the source of this news clip, the game has both a “classic” 1983 mode that is identical to the original game, and a new mode that makes use of the DS’s stylus and microphone.

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Hitch up the SUVs! It’s the Thule Trail.

October 24, 2007 in Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 2 comments

Thule Trail 2As reported earlier this month over at Wired’s Game|Life blog (yet somehow glossed over by other blogs!), Swedish car rack maker Thule has released an online flash game called The Thule Trail. The game is a genuinely hilarious re-take on the Apple/DOS classic The Oregon Trail. The developers over at Periscopic obviously dedicated themselves to creating an authentic Oregon Trail experience – this time with a car or SUV instead of wagons, and road junk food instead of buffalo meat. And not a single blatant advertisement throughout the game that I could see, other than the car rack on top of your SUV.

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Ultima creator Richard Garriott Preparing to go to Space, possibly to destroy Minax

October 1, 2007 in Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 4 comments

Ultima II screenshotPictured above: Spaceflight in Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress.

This news has been covered by plenty of other news organizations, but I thought I’d mention it here for anyone that came by to read my interview with Stephen Emond. Furthermore, I am reviewing a copy of the book, Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture, from Geek to Chic – the book features Richard Garriott quite prominently throughout (the review should be posted in a week or two).

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Interview with Stephen Emond, author of Ultima: The Ultimate Collector’s Guide

September 25, 2007 in Artful Games, Books, Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 4 comments

Ultima: The Ultimate Collector’s GuideOn September 4th, the University of Texas Videogame Archive held a fundraising event to both raise money and promote the development of the new museum collection. An article over at GameSetWatch listed some of the memorabilia that were auctioned off at the fundraiser; one of those items was a pre-release copy of Emond’s book, “Ultima: The Ultimate Collector’s Guide”. A web search yielded few results, and I was compelled to contact Stephen regarding his soon-to-be-published book. He told me that not only was his book auctioned-off at the fundraiser, but he was an invited guest for the entire affair. I asked Stephen a few questions about his experiences at the fundraiser, his interests in the Ultima series, and (of course) his upcoming book.

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John Watson, famed game designer, passes away

September 13, 2007 in Artful Games, Retro Gaming | No comments

Interring Lothian
Above: Screenshot from Lothian’s burial in Ultima VIII: Pagan.
 (with respect and admiration)

I was saddened to read, courtesy of Raph Koster’s blog, that John Watson – a respected and well-liked designer/programmer/writer for many Ultima and Wing Commander games (among many others since) – passed away on September 9, 2007. After reading through the memorial page that has been set up by the Wing Commander CIC, it is obvious that his unexpected death has been grievous for his friends, family, and co-workers; I offer my deepest condolences to those who knew him.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Ultima series has always held a special place in my heart. I can imagine no better time than to write a full review of Ultima VIII: Pagan in light of this sorrowing news, and attempt to redeem what I think was one of the most underrated RPGs of the 1990’s (to which John is listed as the co-designer and a co-writer of). I will post the review and analysis in the coming weeks.

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Sierra’s “The ImagiNation Network” Revived!

September 6, 2007 in Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 14 comments

In some more oldie gaming news, thanks to the Boring Beige Box podcast I recently found out that Sierra On-Line’s visionary (yet financially doomed) massively multiplayer online service of 1991, The ImagiNation Network, has been given new life thanks to the ImagiNation Network Revival Project!

If you’re not familiar with the INN, or (like myself) didn’t have the chance to sample the service during its relatively short tenure of 5 years, here’s a short history lesson. And if, like me, you thought that MMORPGs began with the advent of Ultima Online – you’re in for a big surprise.

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Ultima VII finally comes to the PSP

September 2, 2007 in Artful Games, Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 7 comments

When I was in junior high school, there were only a handful of kids with computers. Most ofUltima VII Box (small) those who were fortunate enough to have a computer in their home weren’t interested in learning how to use them, and even fewer used them to play computer games. Except for a couple of kids that were in my grade. One of those kids, Willy, found out that I liked role-playing games and handed me an old creased black box while my social studies teacher’s back was turned. I looked up at him, wondering what I’d have to trade for the rather austere black box with the words “Ultima VII” on the front.
He shrugged and whispered, “Here. You can have it. I can’t figure out how to play it.”

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