INT. RUSSIAN HOTEL - DAY
GRIGORI MUSCOVIC, a swarthy Russian Mobster (Udo Kier), stares through his foreign gimlet eyes at BUSHNELL (DiCaprio).
MUSCOVIC
Misterra Bushnell, we demand rights
for your Tetris game.
BUSHNELL
Just a second.
IVAN KARNOV, a portly little fellow in a furry hat (Viggo Mortensen), brings BUSHNELL a phone on one of those silver platters they put phones on in the Seventies, right?
KARNOV
Atelephone forra you, Misterra Bushnell.
INT. ARCADE - DAY
TERRY NASCAR, a sweaty, long-haired arcade proprietor (Philip Seymour Hoffman), holds the phone feverishly to his cauliflower ear.
NASCAR
Nolan?? Nolan, is that you, man?? Listen,
we need answers now! HOW DO WE
REPLACE THE BUCKET FULL OF QUARTERS??
Videogame thoughts, rarely updated
Monday, June 9, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Things Gamers Need to Get Over: Movies
There are movies, and they are the dominant narrative art form of our age. Last night I was at a bar with a friend, and the friend's friend showed up, stoned, wearing one of those German Army jackets that say "I consider marijuana use a way of life", and with a bushy whaler-beard that said "I have no fucking idea how ridiculous I look".
And this gentleman, as a musician (see above) and general dick, was passionately of the opinion that cinema is not the dominant narrative art form of our age. This only served to cement my conviction that anyone who says movies are not the dominant narrative art form of our age is a dick with a dumb neck-beard.
When the fellow on the street - possibly not you or I, because we read Umberto Eco in coffee-houses without a sense of irony, but you know, the common, backbone-of-all-that-we-hold-dear salt-of-the-urban-earth fellow who doesn't see why it's necessary to hold a position on Dan Brown in order to function conversationally in modern society - when he wants to pay a book a compliment, he will say, "It had the cracking pace of a really well-made movie".
When Average Person - not you or I, of course, who can say "I like to listen to Fuck Buttons" with a straight face, but Average Fellow, who likes U2 and liked Oasis when they were big and has no problem with the continued professional existence of Jack Johnson - when he hears something he likes, consciously or unconsciously he very often likes it because it has a cinematic quality to it, a certain depth or grandeur or narrative cohesion such as might be found in a good picture. When Kiss wanted to do something really artistic and pompous and alienating toward their fanbase, what did they do? Release an album they described as "the soundtrack for a movie that hasn't been made yet". Aware of history as far back as Bush 1, Trent Reznor did the exact same thing and described it in exactly the same way a year or so back, but this did better because it turns out Nine Inch Nails fans are marginally less discerning than people who like "Lick it Up".
But nobody takes this pedestal-elevating as far as gamers. The games industry has decided that all gamers really want is games that feel like movies. Lazily-written advertising copy for videogames uses the word "cinematic" more often than movies do. What this means is that the game will feature stupid camera tricks of the kind that, when making atrocious 2-hour cutscene Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis would've discarded as too ostentatious. Games that say they're cinematic aren't wrong, but they're cinematic in the same completely correct sense of the word that Bad Boys 2 is cinematic. Which is to say, totally reactive, hopelessly vogue and dated as soon as they hit the streets, reveling in their lack of interesting use of the library of technique at their disposal, and not even doing at all well what it was they came here to do, which in the case of games is to be fun to play.
Discerning gamers are not sucked in by this. "Discerning", in this case, refers to maybe 10%, at an optimistic estimate, of the total gaming population. Of that 10%, most have got far enough to realise that movies are movies and games are games; they will then proceed to use every debate about the state of the art as an opportunity to launch into a comparison of How Movies Did It with How Games Are Doing It. They will only make very simple comparisons, and they will, if at all possible, bring it back to some cockamamie statistic about how games make more money than movies (so does petrol, that doesn't make it the dominant cultural purveyor of our time).
Basically insecure, gamers of this ilk had a fucking spaz when Roger Ebert expressed his personal and well-informed opinion that games would never be art. How dare he!? What would an old man in a sweater know about art? How could someone who had devoted his life to understanding and elucidating the possible definition of "good cultural product" know more than someone who had finished Halo 3?
If gamers would get over this insecurity, they could admit that movies are a much more mature art form than games, which is natural as they have almost a hundred years head start. They could admit that movies say more interesting things than games, and that it'll be a long time before a game comes along that can stay with you in the same way as Se7en or Collateral or City of God. (Hopefully they'll not even bother trying to bring up games that ape the style of the above - Silent Hill, Grand Theft Auto, Burnout Paradise - but because gamers are largely fairly unworldly teenage boys, they will). But then again, that no movie can have viewers staying up till the wee hours trying to beat someone's time on Mario Circuit 1.
And this gentleman, as a musician (see above) and general dick, was passionately of the opinion that cinema is not the dominant narrative art form of our age. This only served to cement my conviction that anyone who says movies are not the dominant narrative art form of our age is a dick with a dumb neck-beard.
When the fellow on the street - possibly not you or I, because we read Umberto Eco in coffee-houses without a sense of irony, but you know, the common, backbone-of-all-that-we-hold-dear salt-of-the-urban-earth fellow who doesn't see why it's necessary to hold a position on Dan Brown in order to function conversationally in modern society - when he wants to pay a book a compliment, he will say, "It had the cracking pace of a really well-made movie".
When Average Person - not you or I, of course, who can say "I like to listen to Fuck Buttons" with a straight face, but Average Fellow, who likes U2 and liked Oasis when they were big and has no problem with the continued professional existence of Jack Johnson - when he hears something he likes, consciously or unconsciously he very often likes it because it has a cinematic quality to it, a certain depth or grandeur or narrative cohesion such as might be found in a good picture. When Kiss wanted to do something really artistic and pompous and alienating toward their fanbase, what did they do? Release an album they described as "the soundtrack for a movie that hasn't been made yet". Aware of history as far back as Bush 1, Trent Reznor did the exact same thing and described it in exactly the same way a year or so back, but this did better because it turns out Nine Inch Nails fans are marginally less discerning than people who like "Lick it Up".
But nobody takes this pedestal-elevating as far as gamers. The games industry has decided that all gamers really want is games that feel like movies. Lazily-written advertising copy for videogames uses the word "cinematic" more often than movies do. What this means is that the game will feature stupid camera tricks of the kind that, when making atrocious 2-hour cutscene Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis would've discarded as too ostentatious. Games that say they're cinematic aren't wrong, but they're cinematic in the same completely correct sense of the word that Bad Boys 2 is cinematic. Which is to say, totally reactive, hopelessly vogue and dated as soon as they hit the streets, reveling in their lack of interesting use of the library of technique at their disposal, and not even doing at all well what it was they came here to do, which in the case of games is to be fun to play.
Discerning gamers are not sucked in by this. "Discerning", in this case, refers to maybe 10%, at an optimistic estimate, of the total gaming population. Of that 10%, most have got far enough to realise that movies are movies and games are games; they will then proceed to use every debate about the state of the art as an opportunity to launch into a comparison of How Movies Did It with How Games Are Doing It. They will only make very simple comparisons, and they will, if at all possible, bring it back to some cockamamie statistic about how games make more money than movies (so does petrol, that doesn't make it the dominant cultural purveyor of our time).
Basically insecure, gamers of this ilk had a fucking spaz when Roger Ebert expressed his personal and well-informed opinion that games would never be art. How dare he!? What would an old man in a sweater know about art? How could someone who had devoted his life to understanding and elucidating the possible definition of "good cultural product" know more than someone who had finished Halo 3?
If gamers would get over this insecurity, they could admit that movies are a much more mature art form than games, which is natural as they have almost a hundred years head start. They could admit that movies say more interesting things than games, and that it'll be a long time before a game comes along that can stay with you in the same way as Se7en or Collateral or City of God. (Hopefully they'll not even bother trying to bring up games that ape the style of the above - Silent Hill, Grand Theft Auto, Burnout Paradise - but because gamers are largely fairly unworldly teenage boys, they will). But then again, that no movie can have viewers staying up till the wee hours trying to beat someone's time on Mario Circuit 1.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Things Gamers Need To Get Over: Uwe Boll
Uwe Boll is a man who makes movies based on video games. These movies are invariably based on second-tier video games that nobody really cares about, such as Dungeon Seige or House of the Dead. For fuck's sake, Uwe Boll made a movie based on Bloodrayne, which was basically Turok multiplied by ass in the Games Everyone Inexplicably Gives A Fuck About Before Release Then When They Come Out And Suck Nobody Cares stakes. The games Uwe Boll makes movies of do not have very good stories, and/or the stories aren't the focus of the games, and/or the makers were such doofuses that they made the cutscenes unskippable but this rightly just meant nobody played them rather than everyone watched the cutscenes.
The movies Uwe Boll makes are, invariably, not very good. Nobody working at Video-matic towers here in sunny New Zealand has seen a Uwe Boll movie, but they never get very good press and they always go DTV here and they're full of d-list actors; also if Uwe Boll was any good at making movies, he'd have graduated to something where the story was the main focus by now, instead of continuing to make movies where the primary selling point is "man with axe kills trolls" or "cat used as silencer" or "tits".
Nerds all have a huge hate on for Uwe Boll because (as far as I can tell) he is alone in making their hobby seem less respectable. When a mediocre man makes a mediocre movie from mediocre source material, the usual response is to say, "does anyone want to watch No Country for Old Men instead?"; but when a mediocre man makes a mediocre movie from mediocre source material that has an option screen, nerds suddenly decide that (a) they really gave a fuck whether the video game of House of the Dead would accurately document the struggles of Thomas and "G" against the evil of Dr Curien; and (2) they are sure that given this patchy-at-best subject material, any filmmaker working today (possibly including themselves) would have done a fine job, but Uwe Boll has fucked it all up against all odds and made a bad movie.
This hatred for mediocre filmmaker Uwe Boll manifests itself in nerds making lame references whenever any videogame movie has been announced. If it is by Uwe Boll, the nerds will clamber from their nerd-holes to list all the good things about the game that Uwe Boll will be ruining (paying no attention to whether these are things that could ever conceivably work in a movie, a distinction about which nerds know nothing); if it is not by Uwe Boll, the nerds will make snide references to Uwe Boll's lack of talent, safe in the knowledge that the movie will be joining the hallowed ranks of Mortal Kombat Annihilation, Street Fighter, Super Mario Brothers, Wing Commander, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Doom.
The movies Uwe Boll makes are, invariably, not very good. Nobody working at Video-matic towers here in sunny New Zealand has seen a Uwe Boll movie, but they never get very good press and they always go DTV here and they're full of d-list actors; also if Uwe Boll was any good at making movies, he'd have graduated to something where the story was the main focus by now, instead of continuing to make movies where the primary selling point is "man with axe kills trolls" or "cat used as silencer" or "tits".
Nerds all have a huge hate on for Uwe Boll because (as far as I can tell) he is alone in making their hobby seem less respectable. When a mediocre man makes a mediocre movie from mediocre source material, the usual response is to say, "does anyone want to watch No Country for Old Men instead?"; but when a mediocre man makes a mediocre movie from mediocre source material that has an option screen, nerds suddenly decide that (a) they really gave a fuck whether the video game of House of the Dead would accurately document the struggles of Thomas and "G" against the evil of Dr Curien; and (2) they are sure that given this patchy-at-best subject material, any filmmaker working today (possibly including themselves) would have done a fine job, but Uwe Boll has fucked it all up against all odds and made a bad movie.
This hatred for mediocre filmmaker Uwe Boll manifests itself in nerds making lame references whenever any videogame movie has been announced. If it is by Uwe Boll, the nerds will clamber from their nerd-holes to list all the good things about the game that Uwe Boll will be ruining (paying no attention to whether these are things that could ever conceivably work in a movie, a distinction about which nerds know nothing); if it is not by Uwe Boll, the nerds will make snide references to Uwe Boll's lack of talent, safe in the knowledge that the movie will be joining the hallowed ranks of Mortal Kombat Annihilation, Street Fighter, Super Mario Brothers, Wing Commander, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Doom.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Video picks of the week
Not updated every week.
It may not be the best topic in the world but be like me, trust in the in-house creative team of Gametrailers.com, they can make just about anything interesting. March 15 saw the start of...
For almost two years now, starting with a six part look at Zelda, Gametrailers have been making awesome Retrospective-multi-part epics and this one is no exception: according to the trailer the Star Wars Retro' will finally rank in with 10 parts. Now I think I could do this in one episode; after you've talked about The Super Star Wars games Shadows of the Empire, Dark Forces, and the Rogue ... Factor 5 games really what else is there? I was a little to young to be impressed by Vector Graphics. I wasn't blown away by Battlezone when I first played it, and so I never I really got into Star Wars' impact on the Arcade scene. I played and loved some of Star Wars Arcade's spiritual successors, the Starfox games are the only example I can think of right now, so I should like it but it's hard to put this properly other than to say the Wireframe style does weird things to my head. My eyes fucking hurt, and normally I don't equate that with having fun.
Now that I think about it, other than Shadows of the Empire and Rogue Leader I can't remember actually ever enjoying a Star Wars game. The key here is that the two games I've mentioned here are off-shoots/spin-offs from the main Star Wars plot, so therefore they aren't strictly movie adaptations, which as a rule generally suck ass.
I said at the beginning that it's a weird choice for a topic but really it's just offbeat enough to make sense. After excellent Metroid and Zelda series' I was for a time pushing the GT forums for a take on the Mario mythos but I've realised after further thought that as interesting as some aspects would undoubtedly be, I don't really need to hear about Nintendo's real-life landlord Mario or the American downfall of Radar Scope ever again.
This is one of the greatest April Fool's pranks this year, probably not the greatest game-related one (WOW: BARD LOL CHOCOLATE RAIN ROFL) but definitely one of the best thought out and from the looks of it one of the most expensive pranks of all the bunch. I wasn't for a moment sucked in but if the world flipped out and everything announced on April 1st was true I'd buy a Vintage edition Xbox 360, play Lego Halo on it all the live long day, and then when I got bored of that I'd fucking go to this movie! That Gohma and those spiky things in the desert kicked ass! My advice, don't watch the trailer multiple times. Subsequent viewings with an analytical mind make the trailer's production faults really easy to pick: the "video" quality footage in Hyrule Castle town, the ridiculously poor light level in most of the shots, the lack of an independent Musical score or any actual film industry talent (be it actors or otherwise) etc etc. Imagine what might of been, and then leave it at that.
I couldn't place the spark of familiarity I had with April Fools/Zelda until my bro Joe bought up this what some dudes did last year:
I forgot how good that was! That concept art is actually very impressive. I love the whole "hardc0re gamerz" tone of the video. You get the feeling the Podcaster's chatting about it after the trailer is shown are saying "it's good to see Zelda done right! I can't wait to get up in there Gears of War styles."
I found this kid today in my most recent search for Youtube awesome guitar techniques: http://www.youtube.com/user/ZackKim
Now speaking as someone who has had a passing affiliation with the Guitar over the years: despite what the Youtube comments may say, that shit is nothing like playing the piano.
- Danny
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Is a "Classic" sometimes just "old"
So I was doing my weekly thing at work of going through games getting them ready for sale and I came across this:
Naturally me and my 18-20 something student workmates got talking about this:
Being 18-20 this means in 1996 they were roughly 7-9, approaching the perfect age to discover videogames. Almost in unison they all chimed in with "Wow, that is a classic!" Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was a good game but far from a great one. I'll admit though, before Goldeneye 007 any console FPS that was playable stood out immediately and was highly praised, I hate to use such a worn phrase but anything before Goldeneye broke new ground.
Turok did do some great things, and some awfully frustrating things for the genre, with jumping between platforms. Also It's music and overall atmosphere, helped along by the game's creative use of the N64's volumetric fog, was very engaging for the time. When you eventually got to it's hub and then started going off to crazy levels the game started to crumble, but still today I think the journey to the hub ruins is one of the greatest first levels/game experiences of my life.
But my point here is that Turok is far from a classic, it won't appear on anybody's "lists" anytime soon. In the world of videogames Nostalgia is powerful force. In fact it could be argued that Nostalgia has a greater hold over Gamers than actual Creativity/Quality. Usually when a movie achieves what they call "classic status", or long after its release becomes a classic, it's because it is a great work of great creative merit. Whether it be directed well, acted well, written well, or shot well. Casablanca falls into all these categories.
I believe these 18-20 something kids call Turok a classic just because they played it when they were young, and we all have games like that and most of us are probably guilty of calling them classics. Is gaming even an old enough medium to have actual "classics?"
Discuss.
- Danny
P.S - This post is not really that long, my copy of The King of Kong arrived today. I'm gonna do some watching.Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Professional Games Bloggers: A Mixed Bag
The latest 1up Yours, while managing to shoehorn in a neat little quote from VM's little brother Monkey King, also runs the gamut from insightful discourse re: review scores to videogame violence (dropping the usual crap and examining the issue as a creative device). Both make some trenchant new points, and the only ball they drop is to neglect the obvious elephant in the room of videogame reviewing.
Fellas, I'll tell you right now why Roger Ebert can review anything but you have to find "an FPS guy" to review Halo 3; why it's not so easy to just say "this is one person's opinion and take from it what you will". It's because professional videogame reviewers, by their very nature, are reviewing games as a product to consider investment in, whereas professional film critics are able to review movies as a creative work with an afterthought as to whether the man on the street should consider the picture worth the price of admission. A film critic's job is to stimulate discourse on the creative merits of her subject; a game critic's job is to tell the kids where to spend a week's wages.
There are exceptions here, and of course an exceptional critic (like, say, 1up's own Jeremy Parish) is able to evaluate creative worth without losing sight of the work as product, but by and large, this is the bed games reviewers make for themselves, and for the most part consumers wouldn't have it any other way. But this is why the best part of an enjoyable, professional website like 1up is often the retrospectives, genre roundups etc: because this where informed columnists are able to evaluate games in an openly subjective format, freed from the mandate of having to rate a product's financial worth from one to ten.
From enjoyable banter to embarrassing reactionary blather: Should I just start running a "spectacularly dumb Kotaku post of the week" feature or something? How many times can I write "siege-mentality, intellectually-stunted, perpetually cottaged nerds" before I break my keyboard? Here's the Shame of the Gawker Network on Barack Obama:
Look, fellas, here's the deal. If you bleat nonstop about all the reasons your hobby should be let into the mainstream media, you then look really stupid if you appoint yourself official apologist and defender against every single charge ever levelled against said hobby. Because in the real world, guy, people utilise all sorts of things as part of the discourse all the time, and it's not always "oh thank goodness for the shiny-eyed gamer and his playful abandon tempered with creative genius".
Kotaku's older, real-blogger cousins at Defamer and Idolator don't feel the need to run how-dare-they posts every time anyone says anything about movies or music. It's this kind of they're-out-to-get-us crap that stops me reading about games on the Internet, which may be why I'm so woefully uninformed about same.
Fellas, I'll tell you right now why Roger Ebert can review anything but you have to find "an FPS guy" to review Halo 3; why it's not so easy to just say "this is one person's opinion and take from it what you will". It's because professional videogame reviewers, by their very nature, are reviewing games as a product to consider investment in, whereas professional film critics are able to review movies as a creative work with an afterthought as to whether the man on the street should consider the picture worth the price of admission. A film critic's job is to stimulate discourse on the creative merits of her subject; a game critic's job is to tell the kids where to spend a week's wages.
There are exceptions here, and of course an exceptional critic (like, say, 1up's own Jeremy Parish) is able to evaluate creative worth without losing sight of the work as product, but by and large, this is the bed games reviewers make for themselves, and for the most part consumers wouldn't have it any other way. But this is why the best part of an enjoyable, professional website like 1up is often the retrospectives, genre roundups etc: because this where informed columnists are able to evaluate games in an openly subjective format, freed from the mandate of having to rate a product's financial worth from one to ten.
From enjoyable banter to embarrassing reactionary blather: Should I just start running a "spectacularly dumb Kotaku post of the week" feature or something? How many times can I write "siege-mentality, intellectually-stunted, perpetually cottaged nerds" before I break my keyboard? Here's the Shame of the Gawker Network on Barack Obama:
'Obama's been using video games as a metaphor for underachievement throughout his campaign speeches... Many of his campaign speeches have contained advice for parents to get kids to "put away the video games." This isn't anything new, either. ... But it's scary when a potential leader of a country so passively attributes video games with failure. It sounds like yet another instance of a politician not fully understanding what he's talking about, and jumping on the bandwagon, proliferating the popular sentiment that "video games are evil."'
Look, fellas, here's the deal. If you bleat nonstop about all the reasons your hobby should be let into the mainstream media, you then look really stupid if you appoint yourself official apologist and defender against every single charge ever levelled against said hobby. Because in the real world, guy, people utilise all sorts of things as part of the discourse all the time, and it's not always "oh thank goodness for the shiny-eyed gamer and his playful abandon tempered with creative genius".
Kotaku's older, real-blogger cousins at Defamer and Idolator don't feel the need to run how-dare-they posts every time anyone says anything about movies or music. It's this kind of they're-out-to-get-us crap that stops me reading about games on the Internet, which may be why I'm so woefully uninformed about same.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Games do Irony: 3 examples
This is the fourth game in an established series of Xbox exclusives combining elements of Dynasty Warriors with the basic structure of Western RPG's (Ultima, Diablo and the like). The series has never really done that well with critics or players, but whoever decided to call it's latest installment Circle of Doom on the Xbox 360 took whatever credibility the series had, knocked it out, and then kicked it when it was down. Taken at face value just looking at the box of a 360 game called Circle of Doom is inherantly humourous regardless of whatever game content is inside the box.
I just hope the final boss of sorts is a huge fire-breathing dragon who's powers, if inflicted upon the hero, manage to heat up your 360's core cpu until the system in the real world shuts down, in the process creating true immersion. That should be the ultimate way to die in Circle of Doom: the dragon catching you with his deadly breath, making you call the helpline again, and be without your xbox for 2 weeks to a month because those pesky Three Rings of Doom are back.
I was dummying/gutting games the other day at work and I got to this. When I dummy/gut something I have to put it's code and a description (ie the game's name) on the paper sleeve that houses the cd so that the other staff can easily find the game when everythings all filed away in draws. Now in an effort to be humourous/possibly offensive I was going to write Colin Mcrae: Dead, because Dirt and Dead are both four letter words that start with D, it's so punny! I thought about it for a while and realised that the use of the word Dirt in the context of someone being dead is just as funny.
Of course all of this is ironic because this was Colin Mcrae's last 'named' game before his tragic helicopter crash, which in itself is ironic seeing as he was a championship Rally Driver. Kind of like how what finished off Steve Irwin wasn't a Crocodile.
Okay maybe it's not all that Ironic but it is mighty strange that the Mario games got a fully orchestrated soundtrack before Zelda. Ever since the very beginning Mario soundwise has been all about the beeps and bloops and Zelda's style has been rousing scores. Super Mario Brothers in 1985 has one of the greatest pure midi sounding scores of all time, it has been said to have opened up a new world for developers in terms of what you could do with Midi. Then in 1987 with The Legend of Zelda Koji Kondo and his sound team attempted, with the many limitations the NES's sound capabilities presented, to create a rousing heroic main theme worthy of a hollywood film* and opened up the world all over again.
In Mario's teenage years (SNES, N64) the game series' soundscape took on a kind of reggae tone with carribean instrumentation and also briefly experimented with latin american instruments. In other words, not exactly what you'd find in a standard orchestra. All of this of course was done in Midi soundfonts. In later years, 2002 to be exact, Super Mario Sunshine played more with the Carribean tone, obviously inspired by it's setting.
1992's Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past expanded on the sweeping rousing idea, especially with the introduction of melodies like the peaceful Kakariko Villiage theme and the heroic ending theme. In 1998, hot on the heels of his John Willliams inspired score for Lylat Wars (Starfox 64), Koji Kondo and co. released The Ocarina of Time with a score heavy soundtrack that at the time rivalled some of the CD based soundtracks of around the same era.
For the purposes of background: In 2001 Super Smash Bros. Melee was released with a fully orchestrated soundtrack and an unbelievable amount of in-game content, so Orchestral Soundtracks turned out not be the space-guzzler they were once thought to be.
In about 2005/06 the real trailer (the one after the teaser) for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess came out using an original fully orchestrated composition and in doing so hinted that Zelda's soundscape might finally be getting what Final Fantasy fans had had since 1997. Sadly Miyamoto's fear of CD quality music interrupting game immersion, with a pinch of Zelda's good old friend time constraints, meant that in late 2006 Twilight Princess was released with a Soundtrack again generated by synthesizers. At the time this was largely criticised. General consensus among reviewers was that the score was Nostalgic, but not in the good way you usually associate with Nostalgia.
Then in 2007, the musicians behind Super Mario Galaxy argued with Miyamoto and created something that was both epic in nature and also uniquely Mario, and all the Zelda fans were like "wtf man, this is bogus" or words to that effect. Super Mario Galaxy's music sometimes feels the smallest, tiniest, slightest bit out of place, but never as out of place as the weird ambient pieces we got in Ocarina of Time's dungeons.
IN OTHER NEWS:
The next 'Iwata Asks' is up at Wii.com and this time the subject is Super Smash Bros: Brawl. Make sure to read the Galaxy and Twilight Princess interviews as well if you haven't already.
The Jeff Gertsmann thing is Videogame's equivalent of Zidane headbutting a dude in the chest. 1up editor Sam Kennedy's blog post on the subject is brilliant.
- Danny
* John Williams is often credited for doing a live arrangement of the theme, this is widely regarded as false. Many people think the track's ID3 tag and subsequent popularity is purely peer-to-peer created: ie one misinformed western user came upon a performance of the theme by a Japanese orchestra, picked up on the heavy references to Williams' music and made a wildly uneducated guess.
I just hope the final boss of sorts is a huge fire-breathing dragon who's powers, if inflicted upon the hero, manage to heat up your 360's core cpu until the system in the real world shuts down, in the process creating true immersion. That should be the ultimate way to die in Circle of Doom: the dragon catching you with his deadly breath, making you call the helpline again, and be without your xbox for 2 weeks to a month because those pesky Three Rings of Doom are back.
I was dummying/gutting games the other day at work and I got to this. When I dummy/gut something I have to put it's code and a description (ie the game's name) on the paper sleeve that houses the cd so that the other staff can easily find the game when everythings all filed away in draws. Now in an effort to be humourous/possibly offensive I was going to write Colin Mcrae: Dead, because Dirt and Dead are both four letter words that start with D, it's so punny! I thought about it for a while and realised that the use of the word Dirt in the context of someone being dead is just as funny.
Of course all of this is ironic because this was Colin Mcrae's last 'named' game before his tragic helicopter crash, which in itself is ironic seeing as he was a championship Rally Driver. Kind of like how what finished off Steve Irwin wasn't a Crocodile.
Okay maybe it's not all that Ironic but it is mighty strange that the Mario games got a fully orchestrated soundtrack before Zelda. Ever since the very beginning Mario soundwise has been all about the beeps and bloops and Zelda's style has been rousing scores. Super Mario Brothers in 1985 has one of the greatest pure midi sounding scores of all time, it has been said to have opened up a new world for developers in terms of what you could do with Midi. Then in 1987 with The Legend of Zelda Koji Kondo and his sound team attempted, with the many limitations the NES's sound capabilities presented, to create a rousing heroic main theme worthy of a hollywood film* and opened up the world all over again.
In Mario's teenage years (SNES, N64) the game series' soundscape took on a kind of reggae tone with carribean instrumentation and also briefly experimented with latin american instruments. In other words, not exactly what you'd find in a standard orchestra. All of this of course was done in Midi soundfonts. In later years, 2002 to be exact, Super Mario Sunshine played more with the Carribean tone, obviously inspired by it's setting.
1992's Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past expanded on the sweeping rousing idea, especially with the introduction of melodies like the peaceful Kakariko Villiage theme and the heroic ending theme. In 1998, hot on the heels of his John Willliams inspired score for Lylat Wars (Starfox 64), Koji Kondo and co. released The Ocarina of Time with a score heavy soundtrack that at the time rivalled some of the CD based soundtracks of around the same era.
For the purposes of background: In 2001 Super Smash Bros. Melee was released with a fully orchestrated soundtrack and an unbelievable amount of in-game content, so Orchestral Soundtracks turned out not be the space-guzzler they were once thought to be.
In about 2005/06 the real trailer (the one after the teaser) for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess came out using an original fully orchestrated composition and in doing so hinted that Zelda's soundscape might finally be getting what Final Fantasy fans had had since 1997. Sadly Miyamoto's fear of CD quality music interrupting game immersion, with a pinch of Zelda's good old friend time constraints, meant that in late 2006 Twilight Princess was released with a Soundtrack again generated by synthesizers. At the time this was largely criticised. General consensus among reviewers was that the score was Nostalgic, but not in the good way you usually associate with Nostalgia.
Then in 2007, the musicians behind Super Mario Galaxy argued with Miyamoto and created something that was both epic in nature and also uniquely Mario, and all the Zelda fans were like "wtf man, this is bogus" or words to that effect. Super Mario Galaxy's music sometimes feels the smallest, tiniest, slightest bit out of place, but never as out of place as the weird ambient pieces we got in Ocarina of Time's dungeons.
IN OTHER NEWS:
The next 'Iwata Asks' is up at Wii.com and this time the subject is Super Smash Bros: Brawl. Make sure to read the Galaxy and Twilight Princess interviews as well if you haven't already.
The Jeff Gertsmann thing is Videogame's equivalent of Zidane headbutting a dude in the chest. 1up editor Sam Kennedy's blog post on the subject is brilliant.
- Danny
* John Williams is often credited for doing a live arrangement of the theme, this is widely regarded as false. Many people think the track's ID3 tag and subsequent popularity is purely peer-to-peer created: ie one misinformed western user came upon a performance of the theme by a Japanese orchestra, picked up on the heavy references to Williams' music and made a wildly uneducated guess.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Welcome to Video Game Webpage!
Hey there and welcome to Video Game Webpage, the hardcore gamer's FRESHEST source for industry news and gossip, as well as RELIABLE opinions and reviews! Let's dive right on in and have a look at what's in store this week.
First up on VGW, we've got some news that's gonna blow you away! Can you say... firmware update?! That's right, Home Console has been patched for 08, and in our update of updates, we go under the hood to see how the changes will impact your ProGaming. Hardcore gamers look no further!
We're hardcore gamers here at VGW, and we're not afraid to say when a game stinks. That's why you'll love our feature, Game Package Art Through The Ages - you'll never guess what kind of medical curiosity the Blue Bomber started out life as! And is that a minotaur in your pants, or... wait, let us start that one over.
In From Russia With FUN, part VII of our retrospective look at all things Tetris, we lift the lid on one of gaming's deepest secrets - how Alex Patchevsky's masterpiece was almost co-opted by the Russian Mob! That's right - if it weren't for a well-timed phonecall for Nolan Bushnell asking how to empty the change buckets, you might be playing Tetris with Viggo Mortenstern in Eastern Promise! We guarantee, no matter how hardcore, you've never seen ANYTHING like this!
If you're a hardcore gamer, you won't want to miss our feature on great flops through the ages. You'll never guess where 5000 copies of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial wound up buried - or how John Romero managed to savage his own reputation in a brutal self-raping with Daikatana! And who could forget the Nokia N-Gage? Not John Romero, that's who! If only people remembered John Romero...
While hardcore gamers like to have their fun, there are serious issues in videogaming, an art form now more profitable, respected, financially viable and high-stakes than the film industry. We lift the lid to go under the hood of one of gaming's hot-button issues: discrimination in games. Are we making room for the honeys? Jayde Raymond speaks out on being a honey in gaming - and wait'll you see the pictorial! Prejudice is so yesterday! And hardcore gamers, don't miss our featured preview of the new Def Jam game, which features your favourite urban ballers going head to head and getting sweaty. Sounds a little bit gay to us - but you didn't hear it here!
Every hardcore gamer knows you can always trust our reviews, because we say exactly what we think. If a game's not worth your time out of the box, we'll be the first to let you know. That's not an issue for DeathCon, the hot new sandbox free-roaming crime thriller that's like a Scorsese movie on your Home Console! Check out our 9.5 rating if you don't believe us. Also hot is DragonSword, the sandbox hack-n-slash rpg that's a must for fans of BloodSun or EtherGate! We give it a 9.7 - check our review!
Not all this week's games are winners, though - the eagerly-awaited SandCrash suffers in conversion. Still - such eye-candy! Pretty - we want! Check out our 9.3 review! And hardcore gamers only need apply to FrostSlash Academy - this one's plagued with near-unplayable bugs! Talk about broken - read our 8.7-rated review if you don't believe us!
Finally check our GamerBlogs, where we dish on what adventures your hardcore compadres have been getting into this month. And check Sbuppy HoonPants, our irreverent webcomic that's not afraid to shatter a few of hardcore gaming's sacred cows!
Until next time, VGW readers - stay hardcore!
First up on VGW, we've got some news that's gonna blow you away! Can you say... firmware update?! That's right, Home Console has been patched for 08, and in our update of updates, we go under the hood to see how the changes will impact your ProGaming. Hardcore gamers look no further!
We're hardcore gamers here at VGW, and we're not afraid to say when a game stinks. That's why you'll love our feature, Game Package Art Through The Ages - you'll never guess what kind of medical curiosity the Blue Bomber started out life as! And is that a minotaur in your pants, or... wait, let us start that one over.
In From Russia With FUN, part VII of our retrospective look at all things Tetris, we lift the lid on one of gaming's deepest secrets - how Alex Patchevsky's masterpiece was almost co-opted by the Russian Mob! That's right - if it weren't for a well-timed phonecall for Nolan Bushnell asking how to empty the change buckets, you might be playing Tetris with Viggo Mortenstern in Eastern Promise! We guarantee, no matter how hardcore, you've never seen ANYTHING like this!
If you're a hardcore gamer, you won't want to miss our feature on great flops through the ages. You'll never guess where 5000 copies of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial wound up buried - or how John Romero managed to savage his own reputation in a brutal self-raping with Daikatana! And who could forget the Nokia N-Gage? Not John Romero, that's who! If only people remembered John Romero...
While hardcore gamers like to have their fun, there are serious issues in videogaming, an art form now more profitable, respected, financially viable and high-stakes than the film industry. We lift the lid to go under the hood of one of gaming's hot-button issues: discrimination in games. Are we making room for the honeys? Jayde Raymond speaks out on being a honey in gaming - and wait'll you see the pictorial! Prejudice is so yesterday! And hardcore gamers, don't miss our featured preview of the new Def Jam game, which features your favourite urban ballers going head to head and getting sweaty. Sounds a little bit gay to us - but you didn't hear it here!
Every hardcore gamer knows you can always trust our reviews, because we say exactly what we think. If a game's not worth your time out of the box, we'll be the first to let you know. That's not an issue for DeathCon, the hot new sandbox free-roaming crime thriller that's like a Scorsese movie on your Home Console! Check out our 9.5 rating if you don't believe us. Also hot is DragonSword, the sandbox hack-n-slash rpg that's a must for fans of BloodSun or EtherGate! We give it a 9.7 - check our review!
Not all this week's games are winners, though - the eagerly-awaited SandCrash suffers in conversion. Still - such eye-candy! Pretty - we want! Check out our 9.3 review! And hardcore gamers only need apply to FrostSlash Academy - this one's plagued with near-unplayable bugs! Talk about broken - read our 8.7-rated review if you don't believe us!
Finally check our GamerBlogs, where we dish on what adventures your hardcore compadres have been getting into this month. And check Sbuppy HoonPants, our irreverent webcomic that's not afraid to shatter a few of hardcore gaming's sacred cows!
Until next time, VGW readers - stay hardcore!
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