I'm having such a crisis at the moment. Simply put, I have no idea who I am going to play the upcoming Super Smash Bros For Wii U (hereafter referred to as Smash 4) with.
A big part of me plans to buy the game along with the Gamecube controller adaptor for my Wii U, and because I've held onto some of my gaming gear over the years I have enough Gamecube controllers to facilitate some party play, but my life is not what it once was and what stage I am at has changed drastically. This conundrum is really making me question whether I really need the game at all.
At face value this game should be a day one purchase, the Smash series has always been like that for me: I rented the N64 Original many times and played the heck out of it - I never owned it though because I was young and permanently owing a game back then was rare; Melee however was another story, I bought it day one and for years it was MY GAME. I love that game so much and it is without question one of the greatest Couch Multiplayer games ever made. Brawl came along afterwards and I never really got into it at all, but I'll get more into that later. See part of loving Melee so much was where my life was at the time: I was in my early 20's, studying and surfing between different friend's flats, and when we got together we got snacks, drank beers, and played Smash. All the time. And it was fucking fantastic.
But inevitably Life changes: friends move away; surfing between flats becomes staying home raising kids; going out for snacks becomes cooking meals and having dinner parties; and playing video games on Couches becomes playing Online and having a chat when you can squeeze it in. Looking back I realise now why my experience with Smash Bros Brawl was so marred; yes some of the combat system tweaks made it unbalanced, yes the Final Smashes are stupid, and yes the SubSpace Emissary is a giant steaming pile of bad game design - but what marred it for me was because it arrived near the beginning of the end.
Those friend groups were starting to break down, we didn't get together to game much anymore, when we did get together we either drank or went to music gigs...and drank. All the fun of Smash was disappearing, on account of life starting to change in the ways I just described, but I just didn't fully realise it at the time, I still expected to get a lot of fun out of Brawl. Flash forward to now, 6 years later, with the feelings I'm having surrounding the impending release of Smash 4, I can finally fully understand why Brawl let me down so much.
The true heart of Super Smash Bros, what makes it so goddamn fun, is Couch based multiplayer. Four or more players, swapping controllers, shooting the shit and talking smack, all in the same room. Smash Bros is, and this a big call I'm about to make, the best local multiplayer game series since Bomberman in it's prime. Yes I realise Smash 4 will have robust online functionality but that has just never been the same for me as playing games with friends and interacting with one another. The developers of the Smash games have made attempts in the past to bolster the single player component - Challenge Mode, All Star Mode, SubSpace Emissary, Smash Run etc - but they've all fallen flat for me, they just aren't what Smash Bros really is all about.
Life has changed greatly for me, I have a wonderful wife and amazing son now, and our friends don't game together. The fact of the matter is that without this element, at this point I can't imagine myself getting much enjoyment from Smash 4 at all.
I love Nintendo and I love Nintendo games. I pretty much only play Nintendo games now, I don't bother with the very limited exclusives and formulaic multi-plats on PS4 and XBONE, and I don't own a functioning gaming PC. In Fact the only consoles I own beside Nintendo consoles are a PS2 and a PS3, and I use those primarily for DVDs and Blurays. I work a part time IT job and at the time I had a baby on the way, but a few months back I forked out the cash for a Wii U, Mario Kart 8, and Super Mario 3D World because I love Nintendo THAT much.
I adore my Wii U; Mario Kart 8 is unbelievable, I've had a lot of fun with Mario 3D World and Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, and almost above all, my Wii U is my Nintendo history box. I love how it upscales Wii games and the Gamepad is one of the best devices I have ever played NES and SNES games on, once the N64 and the long rumoured Gamecube support hits the Virtual Console, man, then I'll be having myself a time. So I love NIntendo and Super Smash Bros is one of Nintendo's premier game franchises, it stands to reason that Smash 4 will be an incredible game and will undoubtedly go on to become one of the Wii U's most loved and long revered games. I know I really want to buy it, but I hate thinking about just how little value I may end up getting out of it. Maybe I should try to bring about a rebirth of Couch Based gaming in my friend circles, a one night a week or month sort of thing - make it a real event...Either that or I could wait until my son is old enough to play with him and his friends, but who really knows what games will even be then and some kid's Dad joining in and playing games with him and his friends sounds...kind of lame.
- Danny
Welcome to Video Thematic, a series which chronicles the evolution culturally, sonically and technologically of a video game series' Main Theme or signature musical style over its entire lifespan.
In the last 30 or so years music in video games has changed a great deal due to increases in things like processing power, storage space, and sound channels etc - but in so many other ways game music hasn't really changed that much at all. The really amazing, tight composition is still as good as ever and the power and emotional impact that surrounds any game's Main Theme has been there since the beginning and hasn't diminished in the slightest.
Some themes will leave a series but then later return triumphantly, others might change and evolve to the point where they're almost unrecognisable, but there are a special select few who are just too damn iconic to go anywhere. This is Video Thematic: Volume One.
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In this first volume I'll be studying the many frustrating ups and downs of the music of Nintendo's anthropomorphic space fantasy, Star Fox, a series which musically has gone from verging on a sort of rock/techno sound, to going way too military/orchestral, and then thankfully almost getting back again to what it was in the first place. Overall I find it a really difficult series to like musically because it doesn't have a set genre or feel to its sound (as opposed to other Nintendo franchises such as Metroid or Zelda) and it's got such a sonic identity crisis going on right now as a result of so many mis-steps along the way.
The important thing to understand about the Star Fox Team is that they are not a military force and as such they shouldn't be represented thematically with simple pounding drums and a whole big mess of Brass instruments; StarFox are an elite team of space mercenaries so their music should be uplifting and heroic but also have a rocky, kind of badass edge to it. It was like this at the beginning, you just have to listen to the first game's 'Corneria' to see what I mean, and I wanted it to stay like this but I think the sonic direction of the Star Fox series changed in one single defining moment...but I'll get more into that later.
One of the closest parallels to StarFox that I've found in the rest of pop-culture is the short-lived 1990's cartoon Bucky O' Hare and The Toad Wars (in some countries known as ...And The Toad Menace). Firstly, and probably most obviously, there's the fact that they both have animals in space, but they also both include a team of space fighters called in to help out a seemingly inept military force who take on regularly occurring enemies. In Bucky it was the mammal led United Animals Federation and Star Fox had General Pepper's Cornerian Army.
So it stands to reason given the plot similarities that there are a lot more parallels to find here (check 32 seconds into the video to see a really familiar flying sequence complete with a very Andross like 'boss encounter') but as this is Video Thematic let's examine the Bucky O' Hare theme song: first setting aside the 90's rappish lyrics: the tune begins with a lead guitar driven riff which introduces the main melody with a quick orchestral stab of horns. This is classic Star Fox, and by that I don't mean N64 and beyond Star Fox, I mean how the SNES original's score mixes the rock guitar of pieces like 'Meteor' and 'Corneria' with the orchestral elements of something like the 'Intro/Title Screen' or the 'Space Armada' (all of these pieces can be found on this playlist.) Bucky's chorus is all kinds of uplifting and at the same time badass and you can get this same sort of feeling playing Star Fox whenever you complete a stage ('Course Clear - Band Version') and of course from the game's Main Theme.
This Main Theme from 1993's SNES classic, Star Fox/Star Wing is absolutely amazing. It is at all times heroic, evokes everything that's great about a good Space Opera, and really pumps me up every time I hear it, even today. You didn't actually get to hear it properly in the game itself until the end credits, and trust me you need a good boost after getting through this beast of a game. Even after 20 years (wow, this year in fact) this game is still an incredibly difficult, fast and intense shooter which really takes it out of you if you manage to finish it.
Even though the Title Screen was a different piece, Star Fox's soundtrack gave you hints of it's main theme along the way. First early on when you look at the 'Controls', then in the 'Stage Selection Screen' and later in the two excellent 'Course Clear' tracks (both Band and Orchestra versions.) But when you do finally listen to the theme in all its glory you realise just how good it is and probably think you're hearing another Nintendo classic, another 'Hyrule Field Overworld' or 'Brinstar' - a piece that is destined to be revered and celebrated, and then covered and arranged over and over by different composers with more and more complex instruments as the series goes on.
Sadly this wasn't the case at all, this theme went on to disappear from the series for a long time. In fact I don't think it appeared at all in another video game until is was arranged and included the epic soundtrack for 2008's Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
The often talked about SNES sequel to Star Fox, largely discussed because it was finished but then cancelled before release, sought out to follow the original's lead in terms of audio with excellent pieces like this:
But this is the 'big single defining moment' I was talking about earlier: the cancellation of Star Fox 2 and the subsequent focus and eventual release of Star Fox 64 - which changed the music in the franchise forever, and very much for the worse I would argue. Star Fox 2's title screen and all of the level music included in the dumped ROM (which sadly is most people's only exposure to this excellent game) (*2020 edit* Star Fox 2 is now widely available on SNES classics and the Nintendo Switch's online service) is so, so very good and frankly it's just incredible to hear more music like the style of that in original. It's like hearing some unearthed Basement Tapes, or learning that Josh Homme, from your favourite band Queens of The Stone Age, used to front an also excellent band called Kyuss.
So Star Fox 64, which was according to Nintendo a re-imagining of the original game, was where the sonic style of the series shifted so dramatically and somewhat ironically given the company's original intention. I'm not a huge fan of this particular piece of music at all, but this is Video Thematic and we have to examine everything, so here is the Main Theme of 1997's Star Fox 64 (aka Lylat Wars) for the Nintendo 64:
Where the hell is the Bucky O' Hareness of it all gone? Where is the rocky edge? Where are the leanings towards electronic music so wonderfully mixed with the orchestral heroics? I would go so far as to say that the entire soundtrack in Star Fox 64 is shockingly disappointing, especially coming off the back of the original's masterful score.
Instead of a faithful continuation of the soundscape we were introduced to, what we got was a midi/soundfont heavy mess which sounds nothing like Star Fox should - I've always thought it most sounds like the scrawny little brother of Ocarina of Time's soundtrack. Listen again to the two side by side, they both come from games released at around the same time, and as a result they're way too similar audio wise. In Zelda it fits because it's in tune with the character of the series (pun entirely intended) whereas in Star Fox it comes off as being way to reliant on Orchestra and includes some really sloppy melodies.
Going back to what I was saying in the beginning about the Star Fox team not being a military force, there is far too much driving snare and far too many unnecessary horns in this soundtrack, it all seems out of place and doesn't pump me up in the slightest. Compare the two game's 'Corneria' tracks and you tell me which one makes you really want to get out there and blow some stuff up:
My brother and I used to put on CDs and turn the in-game music off while playing Star Fox 64 because the music was so bad. We both really enjoyed the game but we weren't so interested in having the music plodding along with us while we played. It was usually rock music because that was what we were mostly into at the time, but we discovered that a play-through of Star Fox 64 fits extremely well with Reload by Metallica. Seriously, everyone should try it, provided you play at a competent pace the music will continue to suit the action at any point in the game, even including the ending and credit sequences. 'Low Man's Lyric' playing as you watch the credits roll is truly something special.
Moving back to the Main Theme though, it seems to be a theme (and an accompanying musical style) that Nintendo really latched onto. It went on to be reworked and featured in Star Fox Adventures (GCN, 2002), Star Fox Assault (GCN, 2005), and than later rerecorded by an Orchestra for 2011's Star Fox 64 3D for the 3DS.
Firstly, Adventures' take on the theme reminds me strangely of the start of Predator 2 and what that movie does to its parent movie's theme, which I'll admit isn't an entirely bad thing, but it's best that the music from that game, and indeed the entire game itself, be shelved away and forgotten.
Secondly, I'm going to put this out there and say that I really love the whole soundtrack to Star Fox Assault. I know I shouldn't because it largely consists of re-workings of tunes from Star Fox 64 but these are the themes as they should have sounded (make sure to listen to Assault's excellent version of the Star Wolf theme) and some of the new compositions do in some part bring back the rougher, edgier spirit of the SNES originals (yes, I am saying there were two games because the ROM dump of Starfox 2 is for all intents and purposes a complete game and you should play it as soon as you've finished reading this, if you haven't already.)
Anyway, put aside some time to listen to this playlist, Assault's score made me feel good about the music of Star Fox again and it is still today a really good example of a return to form sonically speaking. When compared with 64, game to game, Assault is by no means the better of the two but it does have a much better musical score.
Lastly, I'm skipping ahead of the series' chronology by including Star Fox 64 3D here, so first I need to go back to 2006's Star Fox Command for the Nintendo DS.
On the whole, Star Fox Command has a very interesting soundtrack. Its' levels are scored with a combination of very traditional arrangements and techno re-workings of those same pieces serving as their alternate music when the action in the game ramps up. Command is also a game of many themes; in its OST there is a Main Theme listed for all the game's main characters, I've included Fox's theme here because I think it's just pure Star Fox and I'm glad music like this can still come from this series. But man oh man that theme, the Main Theme of Command is a refreshing and glorious version of that first underwhelming piece of music introduced back in 1997. It sounds like Marco Beltrami got together with Trevor Rabin, played some 64, and then sat down together to jam. It sounds in a way almost groovy but still in every possible way, completely badass.
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So where are we now? Two years ago Star Fox 64 3D happened, and being an almost straight remake of the 64 game it didn't include any more new music for the series, so nothing much has moved forward sonically in recent times.
I talked before about 2008 when Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out and gave the series back its' original theme; well that incredible game also included new arrangements of Star Fox's 'Space Armada' and 'Corneria' themes. So it seemed back then that the music of Star Fox was beginning to come full circle. However it all cycles back to what I was saying earlier about the cancellation of Star Fox 2 being that one defining moment for the music of the series. I believe that if Star Fox 2 was finished and released to the world then the music in each of the subsequently released Star Fox games would be very different to what it is today. Star Fox 2 retained all the character and nuance of the original's score but that game was of course pushed aside in favour of Star Fox 64 and born out of that was an entirely different style of music that unfortunately became known as the series' signature sound.
So I think it's fitting to end with how it began and how I think it should of stayed. This is the Main Theme of 1993's Star Fox for the Super Nintendo, performed by the Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra and included on the CD, Orchestral Game Concert Vol 3. Good bye and...umm...do a barrel roll!
(*2020 edit* Star Fox Zero on the Wii U uses an almost note-for-note orchestral version of 64's main theme for it's theme............Meh.)
Created by me on Microsoft Excel using online source material.
Firstly, I'm really surprised with how tall Samus is compared to the others. But I suppose her relative sprite size on the game screen does indicate this.
I think I did quite well with the colours I used, I was originally going to match the skin tones of Link and Mario but this exercise made me realise how the different colours used in their respective sprites help to convey their ethnicity.
Overall I'm most proud of how Mario's sprite turned out but I think that's just because it's easily the most iconic image of the three.
The following is a list of what power-ups I’ve come across so far while playing this highly original and completely groundbreaking game.
I began the game with a Flashlight that shows up secrets and displays structural weaknesses and their colour which corresponds with what weapon can destroy them. Sort of like the X-Ray visor (Super Metroid) and Scan Visor (Metroid Prime) in one. Since then I have found these items:
* A backpack with climbing gear so I can grab onto ledges, kinda like in Metroid Fusion.
* Grenades which can be placed or thrown. They blow up green doors and surfaces.
* Multiple Health Packs which increase my maximum health in blocks of 100.
* Bionic Armour Suit. Hi-tech thermal gear that decreases damage taken from enemies and can be upgraded with Armour boost pickups.
* Suit Part: Air boost back-mounted jet – a sort of mini jet pack that can be used in mid air to extend the height of a leap, y’know like a Space Jump.
* Suit Part - water breathing apparatus. Allows full movement under water and fits over my head obscuring my face and eyes. (Hell, I’m even becoming more aesthetically similar to Samus.)
* A Foam gun that shoots purple Foam which disrupts electrical equipment. Can be used to open purple doors. Also incapacitates enemies for a short amount of time that can then be used as platforms. So it’s the Wave Beam with a bit of Ice Beam thrown in, I assume in order to plagiarise that too.
COMING SOON:
Missiles that can be used to open red doors.
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Still though, damn good game.
Passenger 57 and Speed are good movies because Die Hard is a great movie. The Magician is a good book because Lord of the Rings is too. So following this logic: Shadow Complex is a good game because Super Metroid is one of the best games ever.
When I was playing Shadow Complex (Epic Games, XBLA, 2009) last night I found myself thinking less “this is a huge waste of time, I could be playing Super Metroid (Nintendo, SNES/Wii, 2004,2007)” but rather more “this borrows A LOT from Metroid games but you know what, it’s making me really geared up for Other M!”
(Left – Shadow Complex / Right – Metroid: Other M)
In fact, if Metroid: Other M (Nintendo, Wii, 2010) manages to succeed in the areas where Shadow Complex fails then I’m on the one hand looking forward to and on the other hand apprehensive about what will probably be one damn fine game. What little gameplay elements I can decipher from Other M’s E3 trailer indicate that it looks as if it shares the 2.5d shooting on different planes aspect of Shadow Complex, and the real positive thing here is that in Shadow Complexit all works. Complex, as has been said rather well in other places, plays very much like Super but the whole while you’re operating your controller and shooting your weapons like you would in a 1st person shooter on account of the free aim with the right stick feature. At the outset it all seems as if the world and your head will explode, but this feeling, or the actual event doesn’t look or feel like happening at any point. Instead, it all gels, it’s gripping, and it all works. It’s such a relief in a way; this was my biggest concern about Other M, in other words the primary source of my apprehension, and to see it work so well and be so fun in another game is a massive source of excitement.
Now, let’s talk about Other M briefly, well namely what we’ve seen of it so far:
Firstly, as I eluded to before, between say about 1:35 and 2:00 is the only real sense of how the game actually plays I can find and even that doesn’t give me a very good idea. In roughly 25 seconds of footage I can see Prime like 1st person snippets, God Of War like quick time events, I can see Tomb Raider like running and jumping, and I can see Super Metroid like shooting complete with similar enemies. This jumbled mess of content does not a picture of a cohesive action game make. Now of course the questions and thoughts and ruminations I have about how this will play based on what I’ve seen in an E3 trailer could all be rendered moot and unfounded if you consider this as a point of reference:
What little gameplay this Metroid Prime (Nintendo, GC/Wii, 2002) trailer almost but not quite shows bears just about no resemblance to what the game finally turned out to be. But that being said I prefer this trailer a great deal, and there’s a big fat massive reason why. Whereas Prime’s trailer is largely concept art based with a lesser focus on gameplay; Other M’s trailer is primarily cut scene based and gives me the impression that the game relies heavily on story, and you know my feelings on story mixed with Metroid. Metroid for me is about discovery and exploration, if there has to be cut scenes or story in my game I want it to be found in computer logs I have to search for and investigate like in Prime, or during Elevator/loading sequences like in Fusion, or, in the case of older games in the series, in the frikkin’ instruction manual.
The other thing I just can’t abide and don’t in a million years want is a noticeable graphical difference between FMV and gameplay which I hate because it’s lazy and it’s un-immersive. It immediately begins to fundamentally make me feel like the game and it’s story are two different things which should never be the case. The Metroid Prime series shares it’s excellent storytelling technique with Half-Life (Valve, PC, 1998), in that both of them never try to break the action or the flow of the game on account of their story. Now don’t get me wrong here, I know the Prime series is over, I know it’s a new developer and all that so maybe I should just accept that it will be completely different. However I won’t be overly pleased if this aspect of the trailer is a huge part of the final product.
This whole change thing could be a good thing though. The whole lose all your powers and slowly gain them as a result of heavy exploration on a large and varied but unusually very well connected set of locales nature of Super, Fusion, and the Prime series is after so many years getting a little stale. For instance, does the announcement this week that Retro Studios may one day return to the Metroid Universe, despite previously saying they had moved on, mean that one day we’ll get a 4th game that is behind the shell of it’s mere changes essentially again the same game? Look at Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Nintendo, GC/Wii, 2004) for example: it’s two biggest innovations were a dark world and the Screw Attack, and those were nabbed from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Nintendo, SNES/GC/Wii/GBA, 1991) and past Metroid games. So maybe if someone like Epic Games can come along and make Shadow Complex and get away with it (at this juncture I want you to know I think it is a very good game by the way) maybe that means it is high time for something new.
But really truly, thanks Shadow Complex, you’re lack of innovation coupled with new elements and actual real fun has made me more excited about Metroid: Other M. Now I just need more videos or another game completely out of nowhere to make me more excited about Super Mario Galaxy 2 (working title) (Nintendo, Wii, 2010).
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??
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.
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.
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."
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
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 Goldeneyebroke 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.
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:
'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.
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.
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!
Super Mario Galaxy is the New Nintendo. It's a landmark in Nintendo's history, like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time a couple of generations ago or Super Mario Bros. 3 way before it. The DS Lite is New Nintendo, the Wii is unquestionably New Nintendo, so it's unbelievably exciting to see that in an era when Nintendo has released arguably the greatest hardware of its' entire games developing career, they still have the ability to make software to match. Twilight Princess showed some promise at the beginning but ultimately ran out of juice and suffered from being lost in replicating the experience, look and feel of Ocarina of Time rather than being a new game – some speculate this was due to fan pressure after 2003's incredibly innovative but highly divisive Wind Waker*. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption started out fantastic but as you may have previously read turned into a garbled, chaotic, overly western-influenced, escort mission having mess.
So because of what had come before I never expected as much as I've got out of Super Mario Galaxy. Plenty of people before me have said this already but it is a good way of describing this game: if you look at Mario's 3D games as a trilogy, in relation to the NES trilogy that came before it, then Galaxy is really the Super Mario Bros. 3 of the bunch. Aside from the obvious, it being the third one and all, Mario 64 first set the tone, Sunshine was then interesting with an emphasis on experimentation (and also unfairly somewhat badly received**), and then finally Galaxy refined everything that had come before while harking back to the spirit of the original, like say Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Galaxy is without a doubt the one of the three that will be the most revered in later years. Super Mario Bros. is still a classic but today is incredibly clunky to play, suffers from limited level design, and has almost no concept of a difficulty curve. Super Mario Bros 3. recently got re-released on the Wii's Virtual Console amongst great fervour and got many people enjoying it all over again, and for good reason: because it's still a damn fucking good game. Super Mario Galaxy has a style and overall polish about it that I haven't seen since something like Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. This New Nintendo gives me great hope for a Starfox Wii title done right, or Super Smash Bros: Brawl being so much more than just a rehash of Melee. Finally Settling In One big part of the experience of Galaxy for me was that it feels like Mario is finally comfortable in the third dimension. Mario is synonymous with Platform games, so Galaxy is easily the best 3D platformer I've ever played because it feels like that by extension the genre itself is at last comfortable in the new dimension. Of course it took a Mario game to finally get us to this point.
In Mario's previous 3D adventures it broke down kind of like this:
Super Mario 64 Going in Mario didn't seem so entirely sure about this whole going 8 directions thing, and he had just recently entered the world of Acrobatics (back-flips, somersaults and the like), so he decided to do the whole adventure excruciatingly slowly. Seriously, go back and play that game and you'll find yourself long-jumping and belly-sliding everywhere just to get around at a decent pace. It's mind-numbing. Before 64 Mario mustn't have really been working out quite as much as he used to, he felt a great deal weaker. For instance when Mario would hit a wall, or even just run into one, this would cause quite a jolt and would often cause unnecessary deaths because of the reverb involved. In Mario's 2D adventures he'd just hit a wall and fall straight down it. The injection of quote unquote real world physics into the mix shouldn't turn a formidable action hero into such a lightweight.
Super Mario Sunshine When it came time to have a vacation Mario decided to take things a little easier. So he quickly found Videogame's equivalent of Crutches, or even better Training Wheels, The F.L.U.U.D, and put it to great use, taking the place of many of his established and well renowned jumping skills. Being so excited at the prospect of his new water spouting safety-net Mario decided to run and jump around Isle Delfino almost as fast as Sonic on a bad day. When the Training Wheels came off (the Secret Stages***) his newfound love for speed resulted in many cut, scrapes, and booboos (deaths). Mario forgot how to jump in this game and relied too heavily on the power of his pack. He forgot probably the greatest jump in Platform Game history: The Long Jump.
Some of the jumps I could pull off in Sunshine using a combination of somersault, hover-nozzle, and belly slide I could just as easily pull off in Galaxy with the power of being awesome because the best designed piece of jumping in jumping history is back...and now it lets you orbit around planets.
Ever since the release of Super Mario 64 fanboys thought it was cool to say things like "Mario's really at home in 2D" and "when are we going to get another true Mario Game?" The most embarrassing thing for me is that I did agree with that line of thinking to a certain degree and I'm sure I've spouted similar phrases in the past. In 2006, ten years after Mario 64, the Fanboys got their wish with the DS's New Super Mario Bros**** which was very well received by critics and fans, however I was severely underwhelmed. The game felt somehow unlike a true Mario game despite trying so hard to be one. It was far too short and in some respects (namely music and animation) had decidedly poor production values. I believe New Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess both fall in a period where Nintendo were trying so hard to echo their former success and glory, most likely brought about by the decline of the N64 and then ultimate failure of the Gamecube, instead of actually designing a future software-wise. As I said at the beginning Super Mario Galaxy is New Nintendo so therefore it is also New Mario. I'm proud to say that now I feel like I don't need any more 2D Mario games, Galaxy is better than 'New' was in every way.
Welcome to the Galaxy In terms of presentation Galaxy looks and sounds perfect. It all fits in with that sense of overall polish. The Graphics don't need to be any better than they are. They're flashy when they can be but ultimately they just serve the gameplay perfectly, which is all graphics should ever really do. It is somewhat odd that the Mario Franchise was the first of Nintendo's to receive a fully orchestrated soundtrack***** but after hearing the results the decision was a great one. It seems as if Miyamoto's philosophy of CD quality music having a poor technical relationship with the action in the game (on a midi level) and thus creating a lack of immersion for the player has been challenged. Maybe now I won't feel like I'm listening to a Portishead record when I go into a dungeon in the next Zelda game.
This is the hardest part of my review to explain, stuff in my head is rarely in proper written form you see: Super Mario Galaxy feels...well...different. I had been playing it for about an hour or so, adjusting to its changes after coming right off the back of freshly playing and finishing 64 and Sunshine in the lead up to its release, and I got to the first star in the Battlerock Galaxy. When I first went underneath and then on the side of the moving saucer to dodge an electric fence I got an unbelievably powerful sense that I was doing something new.
You'll see what I mean.
Danny
* I don't really side with this idea but that debate is for a whole different article.
**Super Mario Sunshine is a great example of vg critics contradicting themselves when the 'next big thing' comes out. When reviews for Galaxy started rolling in many made a habit of comparing its strengths against Sunshine's weaknesses. However, many of the strengths they mentioned were very similar, sometimes almost word for word, to what those same reviewers had said about Sunshine at the time of its release. I feel sorry for Sunshine, it was received very well at the time, and deservedly so, but in recent years has developed a reputation as a bad game. It's not a bad game. It's a very, very, very, very good game. But there is definitely something missing. It's just not a great game. Galaxy is though.
***That now look like Galaxy beta levels.
****And to a lesser extent the year after with Super Paper Mario.
*****Super Smash Bros. Melee doesn't really count because it involves second party developers.
