YEAH!

This game’s good! The demo’s been out for a couple of days and, despite a few issues concerning lag and the availability of dedicated servers, I’ve been having a blast shooting things with other people online. I won’t write much more – there are dozens of previews online, plus you can download the demo yourself and find out how you like it – but I’d like to briefly mention a thing or two.

The game is meant to be played cooperatively with other people. Forget those dumb bots. Also! Go for the advanced or expert difficulty to experience a relatively challenging levell of resistance from the mindless undead. Harder games are much more interesting, as tactics and co-op coordination really come into play.

The whole “Director” thing kind of reminds me of crazy Blast Processing-like marketing talk. In practice, you do notice differences from one game to the next. The AI controls the sound effects, music and visual effects to set the mood. It also rearranges the placement of health items and weapon caches and manages the flow of enemies. It works well (and by that I mean unobtrusively), if a bit cruelly sometimes, but doesn’t deserve its own special name.

Things absent from the demo  that I expect to find in the full version are: a) branching paths through the levels (the couple of levels on the demo were linear) and b) the ability to play as the Infected, which should be tons of fun.

I’m glad this game turned out well.

PS: I watched Ice Age 1 and 2 yesterday. They were fun! I stole the picture above from the second movie.

Time for another one of those posts where I jump from one thing to the next, ranting about meaningless, mostly personal matters that don’t interest you. Broken down in categories for your reading convenience!

Blog

First of all, I pushed the Zombie Week back a couple of weeks, because there was no way I could’ve written all those reviews in time. I haven’t even watched all those movies yet. I mean, I have watched each of them more than once before, but I haven’t watched all of them again for the purpose of reviewing them. I kind of like how this event will coincide with the release of Left 4 Dead.

Secondly, I have removed the tag cloud from the sidebar. As the number of tags rises, it becomes a hassle to browse them via a huge, messy cloud. I might start using sub-categories to make things a bit easier to find. The tags are still there, obviously. Just not accessible from the sidebar.

Getting older

I turned twenty a few days ago and I’d like to dedicate a few words to this. I don’t really mind birthdays; it’s one or two days before that it really dawns upon me that I’m getting old. This particular birthday came and went rather painlessly and I’m now in my 20s. Most of the people I expected to remember it, remembered. Some even surprised me by sending wishes I didn’t expect at all. So thanks! You’re awesome.

I also fed a stray dog that was sleeping on my doorstep in the evening of my 20th birthday. I felt better about myself and about the world.

Reading books or even manga

My reading list for the past week was birthday-themed. I read Birthday Stories, an anthology of short stories selected by none other than Haruki Murakami. I was a bit suspicious about this at first. I thought the inclusion of a popular novelist’s name was nothing more than a good way to sell more copies. But the selection is very interesting and Haruki contributes a foreword, as well as a short story. [Incidentally, that short story is about a girl turning twenty.]

Then I began reading 20th century boys, which I find oddly compelling. It’s your standard Japanese pop narrative: a bittersweet, melancholic story about growing up, which is, of course, mixed with a pretty ridiculous fantasy story about, erm, psychic powers and robots(?).

I don’t really know yet, because I haven’t read the whole thing (it’s huge!). I plan to, though. I haven’t really finished any manga series before, yet this seems to captivate my interest. Also, if it sounds dangerously similar to Evangelion, believe me, it’s not. This one has a human, personal quality to the narrative that Eva lacks. Not to mention that the ZOMG ROBOTS parts are, so far, much less pronounced.

Oh, and the image used in this post is from the manga.

Playing video games

Last week I finished Mother 3. It was awesome. In fact, I think I may have spent the exact moment I turned twenty playing the game.

The thing is so perfectly made and with such attention to detail, that I can’t think of anything I would remove from or add to the game to improve it. Or anything I’d change, for that matter. Itoi’s story ties together magnificently. Not a line of dialogue is wasted, out of place or otherwise unnecessary. The story sequences are fantastic. The graphics are beautiful and stunningly animated. The soundtrack is a worthy successor to that of EarthBound, which was one of the best SNES soundtracks (and that’s a real testament to its quality).

Yes, the game a bit short and more linear than the previous entries to the series, but I prefer it to both Mother 1 and 2 (or EarthBound Zero and EarthBound). If EB was a brilliant, deconstructivist take on the JRPG genre, this one is a much more standard JRPG and excels at it. One of the best games I’ve ever played! Give it a try, or disappoint every Mr. Saturn in existence.

After failing to run Corpse Killer (see previous post), I decided to play Snatcher instead. I’ve devoted some hours to Earthbound Zero as well. No time for huge games, so an adventure game and a primitive RPG will have to do.

Speaking or RPGs, I got a collector’s edition of Fallout 3, mainly because that Vault Boy bobblehead is so awesome. And looks great on my desk. It’s surprisingly well-made, too (I’m looking at you, Big Daddy statuette from Bioshock!). Keeps me company while studying. I’ll probably post my impressions of the game once I’ve actually played a bit of it.

Bonus content

For those of you who have read this far: I was walking to the bus stop yesterday morning, when I notice a van parked somewhere near my house with a radiation warning sign on it. I immediately went closer (ha!) and discovered it was a vehicle used for the transportation of radioactive material. I might have been irradiated.

That’s all.

FMV games: A sad chapter in the history of video games. The advent of the CD-ROM led not so much to improved graphics or sound, but to crappy and compressed full motion video and games so ridiculous that they can easily be included in most “worst of all time” lists. You know these kind of games, you used to play them back in the mid-90s and while thinking how awesome they were.

In any case, FMV games became synonymous with CD games in the early days of the medium and were known for shitty acting, lousy gameplay and money you could’ve instead spent on a quality SNES game. On consoles they were mostly rail shooters. On the PC side of things, FMV was used extensively in adventure games, up until the end of the decade and, in some cases, beyond.

An example from my own troubled childhood would be Black Dahlia for the PC, released I believe in ‘98, which came in 7 or 8 CDs. Can’t really remember. But stay away from it, unless you’re in the mood for some frustrating adventure game puzzles and a Dennis Hopper desperately in need for a career resurgence.

Note: NEC’s PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 was the exception to all this. Not only was the CD-ROM add-on put to good use most of the time, but many of those games wouldn’t have been as good in HUCard format. I also have a greater tolerance for 600MB used for a decent CD-quality soundtrack rather than choppy low-res cutscenes.

Sega CD and Sega 32X: An even sadder case. Sega CD was an add-on released for the Genesis (aka Mega-CD and Mega Drive, respectively, outside the US). It played shitty FMV games. Most of them were so laughably bad they were actually enjoyable. Some, such as Night Trap, became cult hits for reasons unknown. Others, such as Hideo Kojima’s Snatcher, were surprisingly good compared to the rest (altough the game was a port of the PC Engine version, and so not really made for Sega-CD).

The 32X was a mistake. It latched on top of your Genesis and let you play “32-bit” games. Erm, whatever. Most people decided to wait for the PlayStation/Saturn/N64 instead. Perhaps the most outrageous thing about this system were “Sega CD 32X” games, which required both add-ons to work.

Corpse Killer is one of those games. A remarkable product of this forgettable era of video games. Remarkable not because it’s good, which it probably isn’t, but because you shoot fucking zombies. From what little footage I’ve seen of the game – I haven’t played it yet – it looks as if the video is actually of higher quality than its contemporary FMV games, which unfortunately doesn’t say much.

This game seems to have that unmistakable low-budget-zombie-movie feel to it, which makes it all the more enjoyable to people like me. I expect a campy plot with outrageous characters and even more outrageous zombies. I don’t really care about the actual gameplay, so I shouldn’t be terribly disappointed.

I’ll let you know what I thought of it when I’m done playing it.

The team from Starmen.net have finally released their labour of love: an English translation of the much-anticipated but never-released-outside-Japan sequel to 1995’s Earthbound. That would be Mother 3. You can find the patch here and should really play this game.

I’ve been following the translation project closely for the past year or so and the work these people have put behind this is phenomenal. Surely enough, the first chapter of the game, which is all I’ve had time for yesterday, plays almost exactly like a professional localised version would. Minus the censorhip, of course.

I’m going back to Mother 3 now, but before I go, I feel like I should thank the team for their time and effort and congratulate them on their excellent work.

8bit killer is a freeware indie first person shooter. It can be described as a the love child of early Wolfenstein 3D clones and the collective unconscious of NES gamers. And if this dialectical process doesn’t result in the synthesis of awesome then I don’t know what does.

I translate – freely, since I don’t speak Spanish – from the homepage of creator Locomalito:

8bit killer is a first person shooter with the appearance of an 8-bit Nintendo game.

Textures of 32×32 pixels, palette of 64 colours and 1-bit sounds in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by a creature from space. The music has been created by the brilliant RushJet1. The story, characters and scenery have been inspired by movies such as Mad Max and Escape from L.A. and games such as Contra, Megaman, Bionic Commando, Metroid, Wolfenstein 3D and many others…

What’s remarkable about this game, apart from its beautifully retro graphics and energetic chiptune music, is the fact that, despite the nods to a whole lot of things from the 80s, it still manages to be a work of its own in the end. This is a tribute to retro games done right.

You can download the game here.

If you’re interested in indie games then chances are you’ve played Cave Story. Then again, even if you’re not into indie games, you’ve probably seen it mentioned somewhere. The masterful, one-man project that took its creator, Pixel, years to complete. So famous is the game that it outshines all of Pixel’s work, which includes a few more quirky games, as well as a couple of programs.

One of those games is Ikachan, an underwater exploration game that I guess qualifies as a platform game. The player is in control of a young squid (as the title implies) and explores a sea kingdom contained in an underground cave. Along the way, Ikachan interacts with sea creatures and discovers that one Ironhead, the ruler of this cave, is a reactionary overlord, two, the food is quickly running out and, three, it would be wise to get the hell out of there ASAP.

What follows is your standard Pixel game; Ikachan moves in an open environment, battling enemies, obtaining power-ups, or a power-up to be exact, finishing quests and ultimately facing Ironhead. The controls are handled very well: the Z button will propel Ikachan through the water, while the left and right keys will change the direction the character is facing. The power-up allows Ikachan to smash through barriers and explore previously inaccessible parts of the cave. The game is also a bit of an RPG: by collecting fish you gain levels and by gaining levels you move faster and get more hit points to help battle those evil fish. Oh, there’s an inventory screen to help manage those items you collect.

When seen in context, however, this game is not exactly “standard”. Ikachan was released in 2000, four years before Cave Story. Many of the design elements that were standardised by the release of Pixel’s magnum opus were introduced in Ikachan, which I see as a spiritual prequel to Cave Story. Ikachan might be short – it takes less than an hour to complete – but it is a complete, substantial experience that serves as insight to the creative world of its creator and promotes better understanding of his body of work, as it allows for a retrospective look on the development of his game-crafting skills. Think of if as a short story by a well-known novelist, written right before a major novel.

And the creator seems to have a special place in his heart for this game, as evidenced by Ikachan and Ironhead’s cameo appearance in Cave Story and Ikachan’s cameo in Guxt, a recent vertical shooter.

Pixel has the ability to craft magnificent experiences and completely pull you into the mini-world he creates using his signature lo-fi, cutesy pixel art, his awesome ambient music and the usual excellent game design. A short, sweet, but memorable adventure.

You can download an English version here.

REFORMAT THE PLANET is a feature length documentary which delves into the movement known as chip tunes, a vibrant underground scene based around creating new, original music using old video game hardware. Familiar devices such as the Nintendo Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System are pushed in new directions with startling results. 

Using New York as a microcosm for a larger global movement, “Reformat the Planet” maps out the genesis of the first annual Blip Festival, a four day celebration of over 30 international artists exploring the untapped potential of low-bit video game consoles. With floor-stomping rhythms and fist-waving melodies, trailblazers of the chip tune idiom descend upon Manhattan to pen a new chapter in the history of electronic music.

The trailer features music by Nullsleep (“Salvation for a Broken Heart”, “On Target”), Martin Galway (“The Neverending Story”), and Random (“Micawber’s Moan”), all composed on classic video game consoles.

The documentary by 2playerproductions serves as a very informative introduction to the lo-fi world of chiptune music for the uninitiated. It features interviews with prominent members of the scene and videos of live performances from the 2006 Blip Festival. The film explores the relationship between chiptune music and video games, provides insight on the fusion between visuals and music and ultimately demonstrates the adaptiveness of electronic music and the ability of musicians to use bits of technology completely unrelated to music as a medium of expression. A must-see if you ever liked the sound that used to come out of your video game console or home computer.

You can see the whole thing online over at Pitchfork.tv for a limited time only. There’s also a ton of videos from Blip and other live shows on 2playerproductions.com. Enjoy!

Katamari Damacy is! This is the best embedded video you’re ever going to watch:

I’m a fashionable(?) four years late to the party. However!…

I haven’t been so excited by a video related to a game since I watched that Shenmue trailer eight years ago. But the intro to Damacy blows it away. The best part of the video is when the double set of quadraphonic ducks chime in. And, of course, the spandex-clad King of All Cosmos, as he emerges from the shadows, the lights on his head dancing to the rhythm of the music.

This game is the most intriguing piece of game/art design I’ve come across lately. I must have it. I must interact with it and enjoy the radness. Sadly, it hasn’t been released in Europe, because it seems we’re too conservative to handle it and would rather play fucking FIFA instead. It’s only come out in Japan and the US.

You might also want to know that I downloaded the soundtrack and listened to it. Repeatedly. It was a religious experience. I’m actually crying tears of revelation while typing this entry.

I’m so importing an NTSC PlayStation 2 to play this game.

If you’re following any of the major video game blogs, then you’ve probably read about My Famicase, an exhibition of NES cartridge art for games that don’t exist. This annual event is organised by METEOR, a Japanese retro game store. The group of illustrators, game designers, writers, etc. create a label for the cart, a company logo and also a concept for the fictional game.

Famicom cartridges come in different (mostly vibrant, mostly pastel) colours and sport an iconic design that makes them prime pop art material. I won’t even bother mentioning the grey, dull, ugly design of NES carts, because that would be sad.

I first found out about My Famicase Exhibition and the related Fami-mode (“a retro game-themed post-New Years party”) event while watching an episode of Points, an amazingly awesome webshow about video game culture that centers around Japan and Tokyo’s many retro game stores. I was mesmerised by the different cart designs and developed a strong interest in chiptunes, particularly those by KPLECRAFT, an outstanding electro-acoustic group with strong chiptune elements. You can watch them perform along with several other chiptune artists if you watch the episode I’ve linked to below.

So here’s a small list of goodness I’ve compiled for your viewing pleasure:

• My Famicase Exhibition 2008 (official site)
• My Famicase Exhibition 2006/2007 (hosted by Mushroom-Kingdom.com)
• Points Episode 01+ (show on video game culture – this particular episode covers My Famicase 2007 and Fami-Mode 2007; includes interviews with the owner of METEOR and various exhibitors)

That’s right, I finally post an entry after more than a month of inactivity and it’s about Tetris. Deal with it.

Item number one on my checklist is Tetris DS. I finally managed to locate a copy and have put quite a few hours into it. It took a while to incorporate the new features into my game, but as I made use of the “hard drop” move (it basically makes a piece drop immediately) and the “ghost piece” option (which allows you to see where the piece will land and position it accordingly), I found the game more and more enjoyable. Also new to me was the ability to rotate and slide a piece infinitely after it’s landed and before it locks into position. Tetris DS is clearly geared towards fast play. I enjoyed the variety of modes and a little bit of multiplayer, but could’ve done without the Nintendo branding. It’s done tastefully, but I could’ve used an option for alternative “skins” or, better yet, music. I still can’t recommend this enough if you like Tetris and have a DS. I’ve read it can be pretty hard to find though- took me a lot of searching myself – so good luck.

While looking around for info on Tetris DS, I came across Tetris: The Grand Master, a series similar to Tetris DS in gameplay. (Although saying two Tetris games are similar to one another is as obvious as observing that Mario is a fat fuck with a mustache who gets high on shrooms.) I even managed to download a fan-made version of Tetris that emulates some of the TGM arcade versions, called Heboris. I use an unstable version for Mac, but plan to get more into it once I have access to a proper keyboard (the one on my laptop wasn’t really made for Tetris).

Here’s a video of someone who’s clearly very good at Tetris: The Grand Master. Things become really crazy 5 minutes into the session when the pieces turn invisible. Oh yes.

After that I can’t really see how my new record at Tetris for the Game Boy will make any sort of impact, but here it is: 307898. I’m improving slowly but steadily. I wanted a score over 300k so that I can focus more on Tetris DS or Heboris from now on. I’ll keep you posted on any new scores, of course.

*Edit* 9/8/08: New personal best: 335806. Yay!