[Computer Gaming]
Hah! You thought I wasn't coming back to the Games You Should Have Played - but you were wrong! This time we're digging up a time capsule from the year 1984. In Michigan a farmer reported an eggplant shaped like the head of Yoda, Bill Clinton recorded his first hit solo saxophone album, and for five minutes in March the Great Wall of China inexplicably turned a bright duck-egg blue. The console market had become suddenly attractive as game after game started coming out for Nintendo's Famicom system, and some other things happened that no one in their right mind cared about.
The list of games you should have played for this year is long, but let me reiterate again - living in the 80s and not playing these games is the same as living in the 60s and not going to Woodstock. If these games haven't passed under your gaminig thumbs you're living a sad, pointless existence which you should terminate at the earliest opportunity (and restart from a saved game in the 80s).
1) King's Quest I: Quest For The Crown (PC)
This is probably the most important adventure game released until 1990 (when LucasArts produced Loom and Secret of Monkey Island). It's not the best (by a long way), but it's the most important. Why? Because this is the first animated adventure game; it's the first animated adventure game by Sierra (kings of the adventure genre for the next decade); and it's the start of the eventually very good King's Quest franchise. Zork had a better verb parser; King's Quest's graphics would be quickly surpasse;, and it still had the frustrating system where an early error could completely stop you from winning the game. But this is the release that would define how adventure games would look for years to come.
2) Ghostbusters (C64)
I love this game. This is one of the very few examples of a movie license being used to make a really decent videogame. You drive around New York busting ghosts, making money, and upgrading your ghostbusting equipment. After a certain point, you go fight Zuul in some platforming-style action. Classic stuff, and as far as the ghostbusting part of the game it features some truly original (for the time) gameplay.
3) Lords of Midnight (C64)
You've probably heard of most of the other games on the 1984 list; but I expect that many of you will never have heard of Lords of Midnight. And that's a shame, because not only was this a game epic in scope, orginality and ambition when it was released, but there's STILL nothing else like it ever been attempted in gaming. The game presents you with a selection of characters, who can move around independently of each other in a fairly large world, depicted as a series of locations on grid coordinates, each presented as a picture of the terrain. Characters can fight monsters, raise and command armies, and explore for treasure. Against you are arrayed the forces of Lord Doomdark (who also command armies). To win the game you must either find and destroy the Ice Crown, or conquer Doomdark's home city of Ushgarak. Thus the game could be played as an RPG, a wargame, or both. (Yes, it's more than a little inspired by Lord of the Rings.) Fantastically addictive and multi-levelled - get an emulator for the original or check out one of the many remakes (1, 2, 3).
4) Duck Hunt (Famicom)
Yes, you know it better on the NES, but the NES doesn't come out until next year in the US and two years after that for Australia. It's Duck Hunt! Light guns! Shooting birds! Annoying dogs! Yes, it's pretty much the first home light gun game. And Nintendo's recent tendency towards nostalgia fan-service has pretty much canonised it in the annals of classic gaming. So, y'know, check it out.
5) Marble Madness (Arcade)
Navigate a marble through a 3D isometric level! What could possibly be more enthralling? I can't stop using exclamation points! It's sheer MADNESS, I tell you!
6) Karateka (Apple II)
High kick! Punch! High kick! This might be considered the first scrolling brawler; or then again, it might not. But regardless, you can go completely kung fu krazy kicking guys in the head in this game... or, y'know, karate krazy, cos there's not really any kung fu. In retrospect, I am so surprised I ever managed to finish this game, especially at age 6. It's filled with sections designed to do nothing more than frustrate the player, like the stupid falling gate that impales you unless you deal with it just so, or the fact that the girl you're trying to save will kill you if you don't drop out of fighting stance before approaching you. Gah! Damn you, stupid girl!
7) Paperboy (Arcade)
Well, actually, I played the Master System port of Paperboy, but that didn't come along for another, oh, 6 years, so I'd better deal with the arcade original. It's a simple enough game - ride bicycle forward, throw papers at houses, attempt to NOT smash windows of your subscribers, and dodge common roadway obstacles like breakdancers, tornadoes, and the Grim Reaper (??). At the end of each "day" (level), you get to see how many subscribers you kept, and how many got pissed off and cancelled their service; this then carries over to the next day. Very simple gameplay, but the fact that your performance carries over in such a concrete way makes it substantiallly deeper than many other straight action titles of the era.
8) The Ancient Art of War (Apple II)
Early real-time strategy. Not very deep, but fairly successful for its time. You had three types of troops (Knights, Barbarians and Archers) that operated on a kind of rock-paper-scissors (Knight beats Barbarian, Barbarian beats Archer, etc), and you used them to beat your enemy. They moved around in real time. The game tracked hunger, morale, et cetera, and had various options for fighting and moving in formations and travelling at different speeds.
9) Boulder Dash (Apple II)
(Don't worry, you're going to see these Apple titles tapering off soon in favour of the emerging PC and the burgeoning console market. But boy howdy was the Apple the place to be in the early 80s - probably the best thing my parents ever bought me as a child.) Boulder Dash basically takes the gameplay from Lode Runner and Dig Dug, mixes it together, and adds an additional layer of graphical polish and strategic depth. I have memories of this being a better game than either Lode Runner or Dig Dug, but I haven't played any of them for years so it might be just the dementia talking.
10) Spy vs Spy (C64)
(Yes, it was on the Apple as well, but the C64 version is the one I played, because my friend's C64 could support two joysticks whereas my Apple couldn't.) Look, there are better games than this in the honourable mentions below, but Spy vs Spy had some fairly unique gameplay mechanics that make it worth a place in the top 10. Firstly, it had multiplayer. Secondly, and most importantly, the gameplay was split-screen. The two players could be in different places doing different things, which was pretty much a first. Based on the comic strip from MAD Magazine, the two players controlled the Black Spy and the White Spy as they wandered around an embassy setting traps for each other while collecting vital items necessary for victory. As a competitive game, it has a range of design flaws which kept it from ever being truly classic, but it does have a whole heap of "got there first" design cachet.
And that's ten. Thanks for the attention, everyone. As always, I'll conclude with a few honourable mentions:
* Ice Climber: platforming fun for all, including simultaneous co-op play
* Excitebike: another part of Nintendo's classic canon, and decently memorable, but nothing really to make it worth talking about
* Balloon Fight: Nintendo reinvents Joust, only cuter
* Hogan's Alley: more light gun shenanigans, but less well loved than Duck Hunt and otherwise functionally identical.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Thursday, April 20, 2006
You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Ang Lee
[Now Experiencing] [Film]
I just finally got around to watching Hulk, as directed by Ang Lee, and having done that, I'm not even going to dignify it with a review.
I was tricked into watching it by the opinions of this fellow, who generally seems to have good taste in most things. In relation to Hulk, though, he was full of hideous dirty lies. (Sorry I can't provide a link to his review; it was some time ago and now buried somewhere in his blog archives. If anyone turns it up let me know and I'll change the linkage.)
Oh, sure, it makes use of some interesting wipes and frame-in-frame techniques to achieve a fairly authentic comic-book screen layout. But this one unique and good aspect is then buried under:
a) A hideous script that completely misses the point of what makes the Hulk good. Bruce Banner should be an everyman, a scientist who strives to improve the lot of humankind, while at the same time struggling with a terrible anger problem. He's turned into the Hulk when saving a civilian from the effects of the gamma bomb he designed; the monster is born from a simultaneous act of compassion and act of destruction, and remains eternally poised between mankind's capacity to do good and its instinct to destroy. He's a man who's been looking for a fight to pick his entire life, and he finally has no reason not to and the power to win. He's an unstoppable force looking for a wall big enough to beat against. And all this is completely sidestepped by the unfocused and meandering script, with its nanomeds and pre-natal treatments, and hideous pacing and unnecessary characters.
b) Completely wooden acting from Eric Bana in the role of Bruce/the Hulk. For a character so totally driven by his emotions, Eric does a fine job of making sure we never actually see any of said emotions.
c) Horribly visual stylings. The Hulk should live in a world of blacks and whites. Sure, the military may say there's shades of gray, and that sometimes you have to do bad to do good, but the Hulk is there to remind them that no, there's good and there's bad and they're different things. But Ang Lee has chosen to make a grittily realistic world completely unsuited to the bright primary colours inherent in the genre.
d) The soundtrack. Danny Elfman does a great job at making interesting music; unfortunately it's the same interesting music that appeared in the Spider-Man movies, and completely unsuited to the moody claustrophobic rage-driven atmosphere of the Hulk's world.
So, in short, if anyone tries to tell you that this movie is not complete drivel, you should laugh in their face, and then kick them. Not even Jennifer Connelly could make this movie interesting, and... well, that's saying something. Avoid it at all costs.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Infinite Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Bludhaven #1
[Now Experiencing] [Comics]
Were you shocked by the apparently gratuitous devastation of Bludhaven during Infinite Crisis? Were you hpping to find out the fate of characters you'd come to know and love from Nightwing, Robin and Batgirl? Were you eagerly looking forward to the awkwardly titled Infinite Crisis Aftermath: The Battle For Bludhaven miniseries?
Well, don't bother. It's utter garbage. Beginning to end. Nightwing doesn't appear in the series, period. Robin has so far made a brief appearance on the first page of issue #1 with no clear sign he's likely to return in future issues. The story is littered with characters you have no reason to care about, with insulting ridiculous super-hero identities. An example is the resurrection of the supergroup "The Force of July", featuring Major Victory, Lady Liberty, and the Silent Majority (pictured on cover, above). No sign of anyone you'd be the least bit interested in learning more about.
This is another pathetic example of DC attempting to advance its world plot and cash in on a marketing event without giving the slightest attention to actually telling an engaging story. Bah. I wish I'd left it on the shelf. Go pick up the "One Year Later" issues of Teen Titans, Batman, Birds of Prey or Nightwing, and you might actually get some entertainment out of your cash.
Being Healthy Is A Badly Designed Game
[Game Design]
I just read this post over at Clickable Culture today, and you should too. No, really, go read it. I'll wait.
(While I'm waiting, thanks to Raph Koster for highlighting it on his blog.)
...
Oh! Welcome back! You read it, right? About how if airport screening could be more effective by dressing it in the real-life trappings of a successful videogame, there's no good reason not to, no matter how apparently humorous the result? (Well, it wasn't precisely about that, but I extrapolated.)
This is wonderful thinking. There's almost no level of human life this can't be applied to, with outcomes ranging from the sublime to the downright scary, and I say we embrace it with both arms.
I'd benefit from this no end. Filing could be turned into a collection-oriented game; when a file contains a full set of a certain list of prescribed important documents, it could be granted a special shiny sticker, and then go into a trophy case where it could be rotated in three dimensions. Every hundred successful completed files extend my maximum lunch break by one minute; completing enough files will eventually let me upgrade from the horrible files that use wiggly plastic tubes to lock the paper in and start using something with a decent lever-arch system instead. Maybe there could be some sort of filing high-scores board out in reception; man, I'd dominate at that game.
But you know where this kind of thinking is really needed? Healthy eating. No, seriously. Look at my choices. I can get a meal from McDonalds in five minutes, or I can wait half my bloody lunch hour for a salad roll to be ready. Time efficiency would suggest McDonalds; plus I get an instant reward in the form of friendlier, standardised service, and a chemical release reward from the flavour-carrying fat. That's a game system that's designed to encourage me to eat junk.
Take another health food situation. I'm at the supermarket, standing in line. To my right is the fresh produce section, and a bunch of lettuces and bananas and so forth. To my left is a stand of Kinder Surprise. You will notice that the lettuce does not come with a free collectable toy, and does not contain an inherent game-process of eating the fatty chocolate to discover the random reward inside. After eating twenty lettuces, I have found one caterpillar and a mild sense of nausea. After eating twenty Kinder Suprises, I have a toy collection and the illusion of progress (not to mention a significant gut). Lettuces would do a lot better if they came with collectable toys, or at least, you know, made that secret-uncover noise from Legend of Zelda whenever I took a bite. I'd settle for getting to level-up to a tastier brand of lettuce after eating enough of the damn stuff.
A final example. I have a microwavable pizza. Not only does this meal go from stored to eaten in less than a quarter hour, but in the process of making it I get to zap things with lasers. Lasers, people! Admittedly it's all a bit vicarious and happens behind the door of my microwave, but still - lasers! Whereas when I eat a pear there are no lasers involved whatsoever and my fingers end up sticky. If this were any decent sort of game, the clear inference would be that microwave meals are a more advanced food that I have been granted access to thanks to my superior tech level; by dint of requiring more technology to obtain they are inherently more nutritious and have a more positive effect on my game state.
Honestly, if eating a pear required the use of some sort of high tech sonic-scalpel to peel it open before consumption, I'd instantly be willing to eat a lot more of them. True story.
I think the health food industry as a whole could take some clear lessons from game design. I think instead of products displaying their fat content in very small print, they should instead display their "Health Points" (HP) in large colourful fonts on the front of the box. Collecting enough HP allows you to level up and use the internet to request prizes from the makers. Ideally, everyone's HPs would be tracked on some kind of internet high score table, and you could get some sort of a concrete ranking (I'd see myself as a serious contender in the "Intermediate" class). Eating food should probably have some sort of chat functionality, too. You know, where you could beg for chips or form some sort of guild or "family", based largely around sharing meals... that'd be awesome. Whey has no one ever thought of this before?
I just read this post over at Clickable Culture today, and you should too. No, really, go read it. I'll wait.
(While I'm waiting, thanks to Raph Koster for highlighting it on his blog.)
...
Oh! Welcome back! You read it, right? About how if airport screening could be more effective by dressing it in the real-life trappings of a successful videogame, there's no good reason not to, no matter how apparently humorous the result? (Well, it wasn't precisely about that, but I extrapolated.)
This is wonderful thinking. There's almost no level of human life this can't be applied to, with outcomes ranging from the sublime to the downright scary, and I say we embrace it with both arms.
I'd benefit from this no end. Filing could be turned into a collection-oriented game; when a file contains a full set of a certain list of prescribed important documents, it could be granted a special shiny sticker, and then go into a trophy case where it could be rotated in three dimensions. Every hundred successful completed files extend my maximum lunch break by one minute; completing enough files will eventually let me upgrade from the horrible files that use wiggly plastic tubes to lock the paper in and start using something with a decent lever-arch system instead. Maybe there could be some sort of filing high-scores board out in reception; man, I'd dominate at that game.
But you know where this kind of thinking is really needed? Healthy eating. No, seriously. Look at my choices. I can get a meal from McDonalds in five minutes, or I can wait half my bloody lunch hour for a salad roll to be ready. Time efficiency would suggest McDonalds; plus I get an instant reward in the form of friendlier, standardised service, and a chemical release reward from the flavour-carrying fat. That's a game system that's designed to encourage me to eat junk.
Take another health food situation. I'm at the supermarket, standing in line. To my right is the fresh produce section, and a bunch of lettuces and bananas and so forth. To my left is a stand of Kinder Surprise. You will notice that the lettuce does not come with a free collectable toy, and does not contain an inherent game-process of eating the fatty chocolate to discover the random reward inside. After eating twenty lettuces, I have found one caterpillar and a mild sense of nausea. After eating twenty Kinder Suprises, I have a toy collection and the illusion of progress (not to mention a significant gut). Lettuces would do a lot better if they came with collectable toys, or at least, you know, made that secret-uncover noise from Legend of Zelda whenever I took a bite. I'd settle for getting to level-up to a tastier brand of lettuce after eating enough of the damn stuff.
A final example. I have a microwavable pizza. Not only does this meal go from stored to eaten in less than a quarter hour, but in the process of making it I get to zap things with lasers. Lasers, people! Admittedly it's all a bit vicarious and happens behind the door of my microwave, but still - lasers! Whereas when I eat a pear there are no lasers involved whatsoever and my fingers end up sticky. If this were any decent sort of game, the clear inference would be that microwave meals are a more advanced food that I have been granted access to thanks to my superior tech level; by dint of requiring more technology to obtain they are inherently more nutritious and have a more positive effect on my game state.
Honestly, if eating a pear required the use of some sort of high tech sonic-scalpel to peel it open before consumption, I'd instantly be willing to eat a lot more of them. True story.
I think the health food industry as a whole could take some clear lessons from game design. I think instead of products displaying their fat content in very small print, they should instead display their "Health Points" (HP) in large colourful fonts on the front of the box. Collecting enough HP allows you to level up and use the internet to request prizes from the makers. Ideally, everyone's HPs would be tracked on some kind of internet high score table, and you could get some sort of a concrete ranking (I'd see myself as a serious contender in the "Intermediate" class). Eating food should probably have some sort of chat functionality, too. You know, where you could beg for chips or form some sort of guild or "family", based largely around sharing meals... that'd be awesome. Whey has no one ever thought of this before?
Games You Should Have Played - Home Page
[Computer Gaming]
Welcome to Games You Should Have Played! Collected here is my series of posts starting at 1980 and moving inexorably towards the present which details the videogames you should have played in order to have a good grasp of gaming history and the evolution of game design. Why 1980? Because it's the year I was born. I'm as old as Pac-Man, and now you can be too... in some sort of vicarious quasi-mystical way. Enjoy!
1980
Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Ultima, Zork, Rogue, Defender, Mystery House, Wizard of Wor, Tempest, Berzerk
1981
Donkey Kong, Frogger, Ms Pac-Man, Galaga, Asteroids, Wizardry
1982
Q*Bert, Dig Dug, Pitfall, E.T., Joust, David's Midnight Magic, Choplifter, Tron Deadly Discs, Pole Position, The Hobbit
1983
Dragon's Lair, Mario Bros, Star Wars, Ultima III, Mappy, One on One, Impossible Mission, Moria, M.U.L.E, Pinball Construction Set
1984
King's Quest, Ghostbusters, Lords of Midnight, Duck Hunt, Marble Madness, Karateka, Paperboy, The Ancient Art of War, Boulder Dash, Spy vs Spy
1985
Super Mario Bros, Bomberman, Ultima IV, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Little Computer People, Gauntlet, Bard's Tale, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Gradius, King's Quest II
1986
The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Bubble Bobble, Defender of the Crown, Rampage, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Castlevania, Dragon Quest, Wonder Boy, Arkanoid
1987
Phantasy Star, Double Dragon, Dungeon Master, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Maniac Mansion, Final Fantasy, Skate or Die!, Leisure Suit Larry, R-Type, Mega Man
Feel free to berate and insult me for my choice of games. I like a good flame war!
Welcome to Games You Should Have Played! Collected here is my series of posts starting at 1980 and moving inexorably towards the present which details the videogames you should have played in order to have a good grasp of gaming history and the evolution of game design. Why 1980? Because it's the year I was born. I'm as old as Pac-Man, and now you can be too... in some sort of vicarious quasi-mystical way. Enjoy!
1980
Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Ultima, Zork, Rogue, Defender, Mystery House, Wizard of Wor, Tempest, Berzerk
1981
Donkey Kong, Frogger, Ms Pac-Man, Galaga, Asteroids, Wizardry
1982
Q*Bert, Dig Dug, Pitfall, E.T., Joust, David's Midnight Magic, Choplifter, Tron Deadly Discs, Pole Position, The Hobbit
1983
Dragon's Lair, Mario Bros, Star Wars, Ultima III, Mappy, One on One, Impossible Mission, Moria, M.U.L.E, Pinball Construction Set
1984
King's Quest, Ghostbusters, Lords of Midnight, Duck Hunt, Marble Madness, Karateka, Paperboy, The Ancient Art of War, Boulder Dash, Spy vs Spy
1985
Super Mario Bros, Bomberman, Ultima IV, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Little Computer People, Gauntlet, Bard's Tale, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Gradius, King's Quest II
1986
The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Bubble Bobble, Defender of the Crown, Rampage, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Castlevania, Dragon Quest, Wonder Boy, Arkanoid
1987
Phantasy Star, Double Dragon, Dungeon Master, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Maniac Mansion, Final Fantasy, Skate or Die!, Leisure Suit Larry, R-Type, Mega Man
Feel free to berate and insult me for my choice of games. I like a good flame war!
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Games You Should Have Played - 1983
[Computer Gaming]
We once again return to the Gaming Dungeon, from whence come my strange and demented visions of concepts too terrible for mortal minds to grasp. This time we're going to the year 1983. It is an auspicious year for science - Margaret Thatcher invents the chia pet, Jacques Costeau returns from the dead and speaks in tongues to his followers, and the Police invent stalker-pop with their hit single "Every Breath You Take". Commodore 64s are bestowed unto the masses, the trackball mouse is packaged with new computers, and a lucky few in Japan are unwrapping their first taste of a little machine that Nintendo likes to call the "Famicom".
Oh for those simple, innocent days again. As Atari leads the gaming industry into a near-fatal economic nosedive, and gaming executives begin throwing themselves from tall buildings, let's take a look at the stand-out titles of the era.
1) Dragon's Lair (Arcade)
It's a tough call to say that this was the biggest game in a year that also featured the Mario Bros arcade game... but, really, it's just Mario Bros - it's not like it was SUPER Mario Bros. Dragon's Lair is the clear standout in 1983. In an era of the 8-bit sprite, Dragon's Lair featured full motion video (FMV). And not just for cutscenes - the entire game was in animated Don Bluth-created full motion video. Every inch of it. Admittedly, interaction was on the short side - you pressed the right button at the right time, or you died. But you have to give it credit not just for pioneering FMV, but also for a bunch of other terms that are still being treated like buzzwords today - meaningful narrative, context sensitive actions... this was a game that was technically years ahead of its time, and deserves recognition as such.
2) Mario Bros (Arcade)
Unless you're a big fan of Mario or of classic gaming, this probably isn't the Mario Bros you remember - this is the arcade version. Only one screen of gameplay, no scrolling, with the aim of killing everything on screen. There's a good reason why the one we all love added the word "Super" to the start. But hey, two player simultaneous play, Mario gets named at last, the first appearance of Luigi, Koopa Troopas, fireballs, pipes, and the visual style that we've all come to associate with the fat little plumber. If the platformer didn't already exist as a genre, it does now. While everyone else is still trying to copy Donkey Kong, Nintendo have moved the state of gaming forward again.
3) Star Wars (Arcade)
I can't go near this one without making a variety of jokes based around the quote, "Pull out, Wedge! You're no good back there!" Anyway, you've probably seen this around, at least in films if not in real life. The cabinet itself came in a fairly distinctive sit-down version and is probably more memorable than the actual game. Star Wars basically recreates the attack on the Death Star sequence from A New Hope, casting you as Luke Skywalker fighting through waves of TIE Fighters in a vector-graphic starfield and eventually attempting the trench run to fire a photon torpedo down the exhaust port. Kind of pretty for its time, when the "fake 3D" of vector graphics was still a novelty. Certainly a precursor to a range of space flight simulators that were actually rather good.
4) Ultima III (Apple II)
Not my favourite of the Ultimas, but worth noting for its major departure from its two predecessors. Although it still features a lush top-down overworld, and compelling 3-D wireframe dungeons, the adventure is no longer the quest of a single adventurer, but the epic journey of a group of four companions, all of whom are graphically depicted on the battle area during fights. Moreover, the gameworld now had a cohesive design, with each accessible area of the world having a particular significance to progress through the game (as compared to the first two games which featured a wealth of irrelevant towns and dungeons, much like the occasional modern game *cough* Morrowind *cough*). A huge success for designer Richard Garriott and his company Origin, and vastly advanced the style and direction of the RPG genre, in which Ultima was still by far the leading name.
5) Mappy (Arcade)
Mappy, the Police Mouse. Oh, how I hate him. He thinks he's so clever, but one day his furry little ass will be mine. Namco made this, and I can only assume still owns the rights, so I can see no good reason why Mappy shouldn't appear as an unlockable extra character in the next Tekken or SoulCalibur offering, just so I can beat the little prat to within an inch of his authoritarian life. Oh... you want to know about the game? It's another of these Pac-Man style platformers - avoid the mostly indestructible baddies while collecting the loot. In this case the baddies are cats, and the loot is apparently stolen property, and the whole thing's set within a multi-story mansion, with the various floors presented in cut-away on a 2D plane. Can you say "search without warrant"? Enjoy life now, Mappy; yours will be all too short.
6) One on One: Dr J vs Larry Bird (Apple II)
A sports game... featuring licensed sporting personalities... and published by Electronic Arts. And with this one simple game, a market was born which would go on to make lucrative but unimaginative games by the bucketload, year after year, ad infinitum. Actually, the game itself wasn't bad considering the competition at the time. Basketball fun all round.
7) Impossible Mission (Apple II)
Actually this one came out first for the C64, but the version I played was the Apple one, so I'll use that so as to speak from experience. In 1983, Nintendo may have been inventing platforming in the guise of a little plumber called Mario, but a little company called Epyx were picking up the idea and running with it, in directions which Nintendo weren't even considering just yet. Impossible Mission requires you to explore multiple randomly-generated platform-filled rooms, avoiding robots and searching for pieces of a hidden password, all the while racing a fairly punishing time limit. It's been a while since I played this, but I remember the nameless secret agent hero as being a fairly nimble fellow for his time, possessed of a fair degree of skill in the jumping-and-doding department. Never did finish the sucker, though (unsurprising, as my last serious attempt was when I was aged seven).
8) Moria (Apple II)
I covered Rogue back a couple of years ago, and Moria is really only a re-release and update of that classic game, but still... I loved this game so much, I just can't leave it out. I want to hug it and kiss it and call it George. Someday I hope Moria will marry me and we can have little children rendered entirely in ASCII.
9) M.U.L.E. (Atari 400/800)
Fine, fine, I'll include M.U.L.E. I never played the damn thing, but Gamespot seems to think it's pretty hot, and the reasons they cite are compelling. Y'see, there are these Multiple Use Labour Elements (MULEs), which can.... well, it's about supply and demand economics, and.... ah, hell, read what they have to say for yourself.
10) Pinball Construction Set (Apple II)
Make your own game. Such a simple concept, but destined to have such massive impacts on the future of gaming, the most notable of which in the modern context is the very existence of Counter-Strike, the most successful online game of all time. Bill Budge and Electronic Arts got there first with Pinball Construction Set, which basically let the user make their own pinball table layouts, save them, swap them, and play them. Between this and David's Midnight Magic, the 80s saw me in a kind of pinball-themed heaven. And the sad thing is you've probably never even heard of this title.
And of course, I'll round out 1983 with a few honourable mentions - if you've played the ten games above, and you're hankering for more electronic cold-cuts from the best code-butchers around, take a look at my honourable mentions:
* Archon (early version of BattleChess),
* Planetfall (more Infocom interactive fiction, and beginning the tradition of including bonus souvenirs in game packaging)
* Spy Hunter (vertical shooter disguised as a driving combat game)
* Starship Command (because games written for the BBC Micro did matter, dammit)
* Tag Team Wrestling (I've always loved a good wrestling game; this was the first. More importantly, one of the game's wrestling teams, the Strong Bads, became the inspiration for a certain character we all know and love).
And... cut to credits.
What do you mean, we don't have credits? How do I finish the post? Click "Publish Post"? Where's that... oh, I think it's
We once again return to the Gaming Dungeon, from whence come my strange and demented visions of concepts too terrible for mortal minds to grasp. This time we're going to the year 1983. It is an auspicious year for science - Margaret Thatcher invents the chia pet, Jacques Costeau returns from the dead and speaks in tongues to his followers, and the Police invent stalker-pop with their hit single "Every Breath You Take". Commodore 64s are bestowed unto the masses, the trackball mouse is packaged with new computers, and a lucky few in Japan are unwrapping their first taste of a little machine that Nintendo likes to call the "Famicom".
Oh for those simple, innocent days again. As Atari leads the gaming industry into a near-fatal economic nosedive, and gaming executives begin throwing themselves from tall buildings, let's take a look at the stand-out titles of the era.
1) Dragon's Lair (Arcade)
It's a tough call to say that this was the biggest game in a year that also featured the Mario Bros arcade game... but, really, it's just Mario Bros - it's not like it was SUPER Mario Bros. Dragon's Lair is the clear standout in 1983. In an era of the 8-bit sprite, Dragon's Lair featured full motion video (FMV). And not just for cutscenes - the entire game was in animated Don Bluth-created full motion video. Every inch of it. Admittedly, interaction was on the short side - you pressed the right button at the right time, or you died. But you have to give it credit not just for pioneering FMV, but also for a bunch of other terms that are still being treated like buzzwords today - meaningful narrative, context sensitive actions... this was a game that was technically years ahead of its time, and deserves recognition as such.
2) Mario Bros (Arcade)
Unless you're a big fan of Mario or of classic gaming, this probably isn't the Mario Bros you remember - this is the arcade version. Only one screen of gameplay, no scrolling, with the aim of killing everything on screen. There's a good reason why the one we all love added the word "Super" to the start. But hey, two player simultaneous play, Mario gets named at last, the first appearance of Luigi, Koopa Troopas, fireballs, pipes, and the visual style that we've all come to associate with the fat little plumber. If the platformer didn't already exist as a genre, it does now. While everyone else is still trying to copy Donkey Kong, Nintendo have moved the state of gaming forward again.
3) Star Wars (Arcade)
I can't go near this one without making a variety of jokes based around the quote, "Pull out, Wedge! You're no good back there!" Anyway, you've probably seen this around, at least in films if not in real life. The cabinet itself came in a fairly distinctive sit-down version and is probably more memorable than the actual game. Star Wars basically recreates the attack on the Death Star sequence from A New Hope, casting you as Luke Skywalker fighting through waves of TIE Fighters in a vector-graphic starfield and eventually attempting the trench run to fire a photon torpedo down the exhaust port. Kind of pretty for its time, when the "fake 3D" of vector graphics was still a novelty. Certainly a precursor to a range of space flight simulators that were actually rather good.
4) Ultima III (Apple II)
Not my favourite of the Ultimas, but worth noting for its major departure from its two predecessors. Although it still features a lush top-down overworld, and compelling 3-D wireframe dungeons, the adventure is no longer the quest of a single adventurer, but the epic journey of a group of four companions, all of whom are graphically depicted on the battle area during fights. Moreover, the gameworld now had a cohesive design, with each accessible area of the world having a particular significance to progress through the game (as compared to the first two games which featured a wealth of irrelevant towns and dungeons, much like the occasional modern game *cough* Morrowind *cough*). A huge success for designer Richard Garriott and his company Origin, and vastly advanced the style and direction of the RPG genre, in which Ultima was still by far the leading name.
5) Mappy (Arcade)
Mappy, the Police Mouse. Oh, how I hate him. He thinks he's so clever, but one day his furry little ass will be mine. Namco made this, and I can only assume still owns the rights, so I can see no good reason why Mappy shouldn't appear as an unlockable extra character in the next Tekken or SoulCalibur offering, just so I can beat the little prat to within an inch of his authoritarian life. Oh... you want to know about the game? It's another of these Pac-Man style platformers - avoid the mostly indestructible baddies while collecting the loot. In this case the baddies are cats, and the loot is apparently stolen property, and the whole thing's set within a multi-story mansion, with the various floors presented in cut-away on a 2D plane. Can you say "search without warrant"? Enjoy life now, Mappy; yours will be all too short.
6) One on One: Dr J vs Larry Bird (Apple II)
A sports game... featuring licensed sporting personalities... and published by Electronic Arts. And with this one simple game, a market was born which would go on to make lucrative but unimaginative games by the bucketload, year after year, ad infinitum. Actually, the game itself wasn't bad considering the competition at the time. Basketball fun all round.
7) Impossible Mission (Apple II)
Actually this one came out first for the C64, but the version I played was the Apple one, so I'll use that so as to speak from experience. In 1983, Nintendo may have been inventing platforming in the guise of a little plumber called Mario, but a little company called Epyx were picking up the idea and running with it, in directions which Nintendo weren't even considering just yet. Impossible Mission requires you to explore multiple randomly-generated platform-filled rooms, avoiding robots and searching for pieces of a hidden password, all the while racing a fairly punishing time limit. It's been a while since I played this, but I remember the nameless secret agent hero as being a fairly nimble fellow for his time, possessed of a fair degree of skill in the jumping-and-doding department. Never did finish the sucker, though (unsurprising, as my last serious attempt was when I was aged seven).
8) Moria (Apple II)
I covered Rogue back a couple of years ago, and Moria is really only a re-release and update of that classic game, but still... I loved this game so much, I just can't leave it out. I want to hug it and kiss it and call it George. Someday I hope Moria will marry me and we can have little children rendered entirely in ASCII.
9) M.U.L.E. (Atari 400/800)
Fine, fine, I'll include M.U.L.E. I never played the damn thing, but Gamespot seems to think it's pretty hot, and the reasons they cite are compelling. Y'see, there are these Multiple Use Labour Elements (MULEs), which can.... well, it's about supply and demand economics, and.... ah, hell, read what they have to say for yourself.
10) Pinball Construction Set (Apple II)
Make your own game. Such a simple concept, but destined to have such massive impacts on the future of gaming, the most notable of which in the modern context is the very existence of Counter-Strike, the most successful online game of all time. Bill Budge and Electronic Arts got there first with Pinball Construction Set, which basically let the user make their own pinball table layouts, save them, swap them, and play them. Between this and David's Midnight Magic, the 80s saw me in a kind of pinball-themed heaven. And the sad thing is you've probably never even heard of this title.
And of course, I'll round out 1983 with a few honourable mentions - if you've played the ten games above, and you're hankering for more electronic cold-cuts from the best code-butchers around, take a look at my honourable mentions:
* Archon (early version of BattleChess),
* Planetfall (more Infocom interactive fiction, and beginning the tradition of including bonus souvenirs in game packaging)
* Spy Hunter (vertical shooter disguised as a driving combat game)
* Starship Command (because games written for the BBC Micro did matter, dammit)
* Tag Team Wrestling (I've always loved a good wrestling game; this was the first. More importantly, one of the game's wrestling teams, the Strong Bads, became the inspiration for a certain character we all know and love).
And... cut to credits.
What do you mean, we don't have credits? How do I finish the post? Click "Publish Post"? Where's that... oh, I think it's
Games You Should Have Played - 1982
[Computer Gaming]
Fear not for the unholy speed at which I'm concocting these posts, dread readers. There's going to be some kind of compilation post in the works sometime soon, which will ensconce this entire project neatly within my sidebar to ensure its continued consumption down through the ages. So you won't miss a year of the fun, no matter how hard you try.
This time around, we're navigating our way to the year 1982, wherein popcorn grows on trees and puppies and kittens run wild in the streets. The Smurfs formed a hit wig band, Winston Churchill's corpse was made the star of its own reality TV show, the Colecovision and the Atari 5200 hit store shelves, and somewhere in the stars intelligences greater than man's and yet mortal as his own regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly but surely drew their plans against us.
As with most of the 80s, the big news in gaming was the arcade hits coming home to the average lounge room, but in amongst all the console-porting madness some genuine pearls of gaming were cast before the swine. Let's take a look at someof them now....
1) Q*Bert (Arcade)
It's just startling how few games today get away with having an asterisk as a crucial element of their name. Q*Bert, however, pulls it off with flair. He's a little orange furball, and I have to say I hate the little tyke with a passion. But look at what he accomplished - making real-time puzzle/action gaming a viable arcade genre. He jumped around a bunch of cubes, trying to get them to change to the same colour (they change whenever he jumps on them), while avoiding a collection of nasty opponents and other dangers. If you look back at the other "Arcade" titles I've talked about in the last couple of years, you'll see that this is taking the basic Pac-Man formula... and moving it into a whole new and unique realm. It's one of those titles I can simultaneously appreciate the genius of while absolutely detesting the act of playing it.
2) Dig Dug (Arcade)
Help! Monsters! Underground monsters! .... I'm really not sure how to make this funny, right now. You dig tunnels on a 2-D plane representing the underground, and inflate monsters till they pop or drop rocks on their heads. Another example of the Pac-Man formula mutating into puzzle/action gaming. It's a bit of theme for 1982, I guess. This, by the way, is the forerunner of the series that you'll occasionally see today under the name Mr Driller.
3) Pitfall (Atari 2600)
You know what the wonderful thing about Pitfall was? You'd start a game... and then 20 minutes later, it was over. 20 minutes. That's the maximum time the entire game took. You'd say, "20 minutes? No way!" and the game would say "Yes way!", and display this clock counting down the 20 minutes up in the corner. You had only 20 minutes to finish the entire game. And you know what you had to do in that 20 minutes? Find 32 treasures! In this crazy jungle maze full of alligators and... pits.... and stuff. 20 minutes. That's focused gaming. Blizzard, take some notes, dammit.
4) E.T: The Game (Atari 2600)
Ha! No, just kidding you, you don't have to play this game. It's mostly just leading E.T. round in circles so he doesn't fall into pits. Awful doesn't even begin to describe it. But the game has what you might call historical value, mostly as the game which murdered Atari. Would you believe Atari manufactured more copies of this game than there were people who owned the Atatri 2600? That's right, Atari were apparently expecting that every last 2600 owner would buy a copy, and some of them would buy two for no reason whatsoever. This in an era when the words "successful game on home system" meant more or less the same thing as "ported from the successful arcade cabinet" and no one had ever even played this train wreck before. To the say that the game was unsuccessful would be like saying the Gizmondo was mildly unprofitable. Check out more over at Snopes.
5) Joust (Arcade)
Flying. Jousting. Together at last.
6) David's Midnight Magic (Apple II)
I'm not really sure that this game was hugely influential, but hey, I owned a copy and played it to death. Lots of fond memories here. Basically, it's a pinball simulator. Sure, back in the 80s you could walk down to a strange little place called an "arcade" and play a machine that actually had real pinballs and was operated mechanically, but for the terminally lazy you could buy a copy of this game and have all the fun on your home workstation. It started a fine tradition of simulating gaming systems on other gaming systems, which continues today... emulation, anyone?
7) Choplifter (Apple II)
Hey! I owned this one, too! Faced with the choice between firing this up or taking another round on Dave's Midnight Magic... I'd play Ultima. (Stay tuned for real historical footage of me having sex with the Ultima packaging.) But, you know, this wasn't bad for a third choice. You're a helicopter pilot, tasked with rescuing people from prisoner of war camps. There's tanks and stuff. Whatever.
8) Tron Deadly Discs (Intellivision)
At pretty much the same time that Tron Deadly Discs was appearing on the Intellivision, the Tron arcade game was hitting the public. They're both pretty interesting games, but I'm going to go with the home version featuring the discs game, mostly because it's the version that people still seem to have the visual images of today. Another *cough* "triumph" of vector graphics. Watch out or your head may a splode.
9) Pole Position (Arcade)
Here it is, people - the dawn of the racing game. And... it's functionally identical to every other racing game, ever. You have to achieve a certain lap time, and then beat other cars in a race. No other genre has come such a short distance in the last two decades. And I still don't like playing the damn things.
10) The Hobbit (Sinclair ZX Spectrum)
Actually more widely known on the Commodore 64, but as the C64 wouldn't be released until 1983 for now you'll have to make do with the Spectrum. Look, it was tough to pick a candidate for position 10, but I'm going to go with the Hobbit text-adventure, because a) it implemented a really good parser, b) it had a dynamic world filled with characters with their own agendas whose behaviours could not be predicted, and c) it had items that had "real-world" properties like weight, durability, and size. And the whole thing was written and published by Australians.
Alright, I'm done. That's 10, and I could probably have gone to 15. 1983 is a year full of quality games, so it's just a shame that it's also the year that the whole industry burst in flames and began running around like a horrible flaming corpse that doesn't know it's dead yet. Thanks for that, Atari - I blame you. (Spoiler warning: The industry later recovered.)
Honorable mentions: Sinistar (for the cool voice effects), Zaxxon (first isometric viewpoint), River Raid (quality top scrolling shooter, female developer), Xevious (even better top scrolling shooter), Ultima II (bug-ridden and confusing and yet still the best RPG franchise around), and Robotron: 2084 (twin joystick two-player madness).
That's it, web-enabled rodents, it's over for today. Check back soon for the 1983 edition, in which I vent about how much I hate Mappy.
Fear not for the unholy speed at which I'm concocting these posts, dread readers. There's going to be some kind of compilation post in the works sometime soon, which will ensconce this entire project neatly within my sidebar to ensure its continued consumption down through the ages. So you won't miss a year of the fun, no matter how hard you try.
This time around, we're navigating our way to the year 1982, wherein popcorn grows on trees and puppies and kittens run wild in the streets. The Smurfs formed a hit wig band, Winston Churchill's corpse was made the star of its own reality TV show, the Colecovision and the Atari 5200 hit store shelves, and somewhere in the stars intelligences greater than man's and yet mortal as his own regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly but surely drew their plans against us.
As with most of the 80s, the big news in gaming was the arcade hits coming home to the average lounge room, but in amongst all the console-porting madness some genuine pearls of gaming were cast before the swine. Let's take a look at someof them now....
1) Q*Bert (Arcade)
It's just startling how few games today get away with having an asterisk as a crucial element of their name. Q*Bert, however, pulls it off with flair. He's a little orange furball, and I have to say I hate the little tyke with a passion. But look at what he accomplished - making real-time puzzle/action gaming a viable arcade genre. He jumped around a bunch of cubes, trying to get them to change to the same colour (they change whenever he jumps on them), while avoiding a collection of nasty opponents and other dangers. If you look back at the other "Arcade" titles I've talked about in the last couple of years, you'll see that this is taking the basic Pac-Man formula... and moving it into a whole new and unique realm. It's one of those titles I can simultaneously appreciate the genius of while absolutely detesting the act of playing it.
2) Dig Dug (Arcade)
Help! Monsters! Underground monsters! .... I'm really not sure how to make this funny, right now. You dig tunnels on a 2-D plane representing the underground, and inflate monsters till they pop or drop rocks on their heads. Another example of the Pac-Man formula mutating into puzzle/action gaming. It's a bit of theme for 1982, I guess. This, by the way, is the forerunner of the series that you'll occasionally see today under the name Mr Driller.
3) Pitfall (Atari 2600)
You know what the wonderful thing about Pitfall was? You'd start a game... and then 20 minutes later, it was over. 20 minutes. That's the maximum time the entire game took. You'd say, "20 minutes? No way!" and the game would say "Yes way!", and display this clock counting down the 20 minutes up in the corner. You had only 20 minutes to finish the entire game. And you know what you had to do in that 20 minutes? Find 32 treasures! In this crazy jungle maze full of alligators and... pits.... and stuff. 20 minutes. That's focused gaming. Blizzard, take some notes, dammit.
4) E.T: The Game (Atari 2600)
Ha! No, just kidding you, you don't have to play this game. It's mostly just leading E.T. round in circles so he doesn't fall into pits. Awful doesn't even begin to describe it. But the game has what you might call historical value, mostly as the game which murdered Atari. Would you believe Atari manufactured more copies of this game than there were people who owned the Atatri 2600? That's right, Atari were apparently expecting that every last 2600 owner would buy a copy, and some of them would buy two for no reason whatsoever. This in an era when the words "successful game on home system" meant more or less the same thing as "ported from the successful arcade cabinet" and no one had ever even played this train wreck before. To the say that the game was unsuccessful would be like saying the Gizmondo was mildly unprofitable. Check out more over at Snopes.
5) Joust (Arcade)
Flying. Jousting. Together at last.
6) David's Midnight Magic (Apple II)
I'm not really sure that this game was hugely influential, but hey, I owned a copy and played it to death. Lots of fond memories here. Basically, it's a pinball simulator. Sure, back in the 80s you could walk down to a strange little place called an "arcade" and play a machine that actually had real pinballs and was operated mechanically, but for the terminally lazy you could buy a copy of this game and have all the fun on your home workstation. It started a fine tradition of simulating gaming systems on other gaming systems, which continues today... emulation, anyone?
7) Choplifter (Apple II)
Hey! I owned this one, too! Faced with the choice between firing this up or taking another round on Dave's Midnight Magic... I'd play Ultima. (Stay tuned for real historical footage of me having sex with the Ultima packaging.) But, you know, this wasn't bad for a third choice. You're a helicopter pilot, tasked with rescuing people from prisoner of war camps. There's tanks and stuff. Whatever.
8) Tron Deadly Discs (Intellivision)
At pretty much the same time that Tron Deadly Discs was appearing on the Intellivision, the Tron arcade game was hitting the public. They're both pretty interesting games, but I'm going to go with the home version featuring the discs game, mostly because it's the version that people still seem to have the visual images of today. Another *cough* "triumph" of vector graphics. Watch out or your head may a splode.
9) Pole Position (Arcade)
Here it is, people - the dawn of the racing game. And... it's functionally identical to every other racing game, ever. You have to achieve a certain lap time, and then beat other cars in a race. No other genre has come such a short distance in the last two decades. And I still don't like playing the damn things.
10) The Hobbit (Sinclair ZX Spectrum)
Actually more widely known on the Commodore 64, but as the C64 wouldn't be released until 1983 for now you'll have to make do with the Spectrum. Look, it was tough to pick a candidate for position 10, but I'm going to go with the Hobbit text-adventure, because a) it implemented a really good parser, b) it had a dynamic world filled with characters with their own agendas whose behaviours could not be predicted, and c) it had items that had "real-world" properties like weight, durability, and size. And the whole thing was written and published by Australians.
Alright, I'm done. That's 10, and I could probably have gone to 15. 1983 is a year full of quality games, so it's just a shame that it's also the year that the whole industry burst in flames and began running around like a horrible flaming corpse that doesn't know it's dead yet. Thanks for that, Atari - I blame you. (Spoiler warning: The industry later recovered.)
Honorable mentions: Sinistar (for the cool voice effects), Zaxxon (first isometric viewpoint), River Raid (quality top scrolling shooter, female developer), Xevious (even better top scrolling shooter), Ultima II (bug-ridden and confusing and yet still the best RPG franchise around), and Robotron: 2084 (twin joystick two-player madness).
That's it, web-enabled rodents, it's over for today. Check back soon for the 1983 edition, in which I vent about how much I hate Mappy.
The People's Mario
[Computer Gaming] [Web Stuff]
In between classic gaming diatribes, and seeing as I've just inducted Donkey Kong into the Games You Should Have Played, it may well be worth your while to apply your mighty web-engines to The People's Mario, wherein the adventures of our favourite plumber are revealed to be a riveting tale of class struggle and the overcoming of bourgeoisie oppression. Great stuff.
In between classic gaming diatribes, and seeing as I've just inducted Donkey Kong into the Games You Should Have Played, it may well be worth your while to apply your mighty web-engines to The People's Mario, wherein the adventures of our favourite plumber are revealed to be a riveting tale of class struggle and the overcoming of bourgeoisie oppression. Great stuff.
Games You Should Have Played - 1981
[Computer Gaming]
Welcome back, ugly and maladapted peons! We're here once more for another round of Games You Should Have Played. These are the games that you can use to measure your personal worth as a human, and almost certainly find yourself lacking.
I'll clear up a couple of points. These aren't the best games ever made. (Tempest? Sweet Jeebers, Tempest?) They're not the best selling games, or the most popular. They're the ones that you should have played in order to talk games. I can safely say that if you've played my full list of Games You Should Have Played, you'll be able to geek out on pretty much any games discussion talk you care to name. And if you haven't played the list, then your life is shallow and meaningless. But more of that later.
So we're jumping once more in our time-travelling police box and riding the time vortex back to the year 1981. It's a year marked by a worldwide shortage of sherbert, a year when Mr T set the world land speed record in a jet-fuelled go-kart, and a year when magical fairies were sighted my millions in the sky above Tokyo. Shigeru Miyamoto duelled Roberta Williams in a steel-cage grudge match on live TV, and in an underground bunker somewhere in Japan a colourful little Italian plumber was grown in a vat with a life-long mission to fight giant apes and evil tortoises.
So... let's get down to the games.
1) Donkey Kong (Arcade)
"It's-a me, Jumpman!" Yes, that's right, he wasn't always known as Mario. Back in 1981, everyone's favourite mushroom-fixated plumber made his first appearance under the inauspicious name of Jumpman. And he wasn't a plumber yet, he was a carpenter. And it wasn't all wine and roses out of the gate, either. Before he'd even had time to become an offensive ethnic stereotype, Jumpman was beset with problems. You see, Jumpman's pet giant ape (I'm confused too) had escaped! And what's worse, the hairy fiend, who went by the name Donkey Kong, had kidnapped Jumpman's girlfriend (who, dressed in pink and constantly screaming "HELP!", was a clear credit to her gender). Much madness ensued, with Kong rolling barrels at the hapless Jumpman as Jumpman attempted to scale a construction site to defeat the evil ape and rescue his helpless girl. The game's worth noting for having a clear narrative to the story, advanced by cutscenes between levels, which was pretty much the first time this had been attempted in an action game. It's also for pretty much all intents and purposes the birth of the platformer.
2) Frogger (Arcade)
I still find it a little hard to believe that this comes from the same game studio eventually responsible for Metal Gear Solid. Or, then again, maybe not. You can see this game as a kind of Metal Gear Zero, or, if you like, Metal Gear Frogger. Tactical Stealth Espionage Action, in a setting ripped straight from the freeways of today. Only you can guide Solid Frog across five lanes of traffic and a raging river to reach the top of the screen (where, presumably, an offscreen battle against a Metal Gear occurs). Hey, now I want to go back and play this game again! "Frogger... FROGGER!"
3) Ms Pac-Man (Arcade)
From the people who brought you Mortal Kombat. I'd go into the whole joke about how whenever you eat a ghost you can yell "Fatality!" but I just did that for Frogger, so... I suppose you could see this game as some sort of feminist statement. I mean, the protagonist is a woman! (You can tell cos she has eyeliner, lipstick, a bow and a beauty spot; she's still a yellow ball with a big mouth, though.) In a way, Ms Pac-Man is the direct ancestor of Lara Croft, another success for women's lib... uh, I'm just going to stop talking now.
4) Galaga (Arcade)
It's the sequel to Galaxian, and it's pretty much the same game as Space Invaders, except fun to play. Of all the early vertical shooters, this is one of the few that's still a whole bunch of fun today. You can occasionally still find a Galaga cabinet in old pubs; if you spot one, fill it full of coins and have yourself a blast.
5) Asteroids (Arcade)
Actually, I've found varying reports listing Asteroids as coming out anywhere between 1979 and 1981. I don't really care when the damn thing came out; just play it. It's such a simple game, and yet so addictive. You see, you're this little ship, and you can rotate, and there's these asteroids moving around, and when you shoot the asteroids they turn into smaller asteroids and you get points. And then you shoot the smaller asteroids... and, um, it uses vector graphics. So maybe they're not ALL bad...
6) Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (Apple II)
Why would you play this game when you could be playing Ultima or Zork? Why? And yet, enough people DID play it that it ended up with sequel after horrible, horrible sequel. It's bug ridden, it's confusing, it's got a punishing difficulty curve, it's largely pointless, and it looks really, really ugly. I can't stress enough, people, don't play any more of this game than you have to in order to understand why you shouldn't play it. Really, I'm only just including it here because 1981 was such an abysmally slow year for gaming.
And... you know what? That's it. There weren't any other important games. Oh sure, there was Crazy Kong (Donkey Kong in a funny hat), Castle Wolfenstein (eventual 3-D version notwithstanding, a very non-special game), Zork II (funtionally identical to the first installment in the series), but you can really get away with not playing any of them.
Six measly worthwhile games. Poor show, 1981. So stay tuned for Games You Should Have Played - 1982, wherein we discuss Q*Bert, and some other games too.
Welcome back, ugly and maladapted peons! We're here once more for another round of Games You Should Have Played. These are the games that you can use to measure your personal worth as a human, and almost certainly find yourself lacking.
I'll clear up a couple of points. These aren't the best games ever made. (Tempest? Sweet Jeebers, Tempest?) They're not the best selling games, or the most popular. They're the ones that you should have played in order to talk games. I can safely say that if you've played my full list of Games You Should Have Played, you'll be able to geek out on pretty much any games discussion talk you care to name. And if you haven't played the list, then your life is shallow and meaningless. But more of that later.
So we're jumping once more in our time-travelling police box and riding the time vortex back to the year 1981. It's a year marked by a worldwide shortage of sherbert, a year when Mr T set the world land speed record in a jet-fuelled go-kart, and a year when magical fairies were sighted my millions in the sky above Tokyo. Shigeru Miyamoto duelled Roberta Williams in a steel-cage grudge match on live TV, and in an underground bunker somewhere in Japan a colourful little Italian plumber was grown in a vat with a life-long mission to fight giant apes and evil tortoises.
So... let's get down to the games.
1) Donkey Kong (Arcade)
"It's-a me, Jumpman!" Yes, that's right, he wasn't always known as Mario. Back in 1981, everyone's favourite mushroom-fixated plumber made his first appearance under the inauspicious name of Jumpman. And he wasn't a plumber yet, he was a carpenter. And it wasn't all wine and roses out of the gate, either. Before he'd even had time to become an offensive ethnic stereotype, Jumpman was beset with problems. You see, Jumpman's pet giant ape (I'm confused too) had escaped! And what's worse, the hairy fiend, who went by the name Donkey Kong, had kidnapped Jumpman's girlfriend (who, dressed in pink and constantly screaming "HELP!", was a clear credit to her gender). Much madness ensued, with Kong rolling barrels at the hapless Jumpman as Jumpman attempted to scale a construction site to defeat the evil ape and rescue his helpless girl. The game's worth noting for having a clear narrative to the story, advanced by cutscenes between levels, which was pretty much the first time this had been attempted in an action game. It's also for pretty much all intents and purposes the birth of the platformer.
2) Frogger (Arcade)
I still find it a little hard to believe that this comes from the same game studio eventually responsible for Metal Gear Solid. Or, then again, maybe not. You can see this game as a kind of Metal Gear Zero, or, if you like, Metal Gear Frogger. Tactical Stealth Espionage Action, in a setting ripped straight from the freeways of today. Only you can guide Solid Frog across five lanes of traffic and a raging river to reach the top of the screen (where, presumably, an offscreen battle against a Metal Gear occurs). Hey, now I want to go back and play this game again! "Frogger... FROGGER!"
3) Ms Pac-Man (Arcade)
From the people who brought you Mortal Kombat. I'd go into the whole joke about how whenever you eat a ghost you can yell "Fatality!" but I just did that for Frogger, so... I suppose you could see this game as some sort of feminist statement. I mean, the protagonist is a woman! (You can tell cos she has eyeliner, lipstick, a bow and a beauty spot; she's still a yellow ball with a big mouth, though.) In a way, Ms Pac-Man is the direct ancestor of Lara Croft, another success for women's lib... uh, I'm just going to stop talking now.
4) Galaga (Arcade)
It's the sequel to Galaxian, and it's pretty much the same game as Space Invaders, except fun to play. Of all the early vertical shooters, this is one of the few that's still a whole bunch of fun today. You can occasionally still find a Galaga cabinet in old pubs; if you spot one, fill it full of coins and have yourself a blast.
5) Asteroids (Arcade)
Actually, I've found varying reports listing Asteroids as coming out anywhere between 1979 and 1981. I don't really care when the damn thing came out; just play it. It's such a simple game, and yet so addictive. You see, you're this little ship, and you can rotate, and there's these asteroids moving around, and when you shoot the asteroids they turn into smaller asteroids and you get points. And then you shoot the smaller asteroids... and, um, it uses vector graphics. So maybe they're not ALL bad...
6) Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (Apple II)
Why would you play this game when you could be playing Ultima or Zork? Why? And yet, enough people DID play it that it ended up with sequel after horrible, horrible sequel. It's bug ridden, it's confusing, it's got a punishing difficulty curve, it's largely pointless, and it looks really, really ugly. I can't stress enough, people, don't play any more of this game than you have to in order to understand why you shouldn't play it. Really, I'm only just including it here because 1981 was such an abysmally slow year for gaming.
And... you know what? That's it. There weren't any other important games. Oh sure, there was Crazy Kong (Donkey Kong in a funny hat), Castle Wolfenstein (eventual 3-D version notwithstanding, a very non-special game), Zork II (funtionally identical to the first installment in the series), but you can really get away with not playing any of them.
Six measly worthwhile games. Poor show, 1981. So stay tuned for Games You Should Have Played - 1982, wherein we discuss Q*Bert, and some other games too.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Games You Should Have Played - 1980
[Computer Gaming]
Greetings, sub-human reader-monkeys! I see you out there, waiting at your screens and repeatedly clicking "refresh" in the pathetic hope of an update! I am here, to answer your prayers and fulfil such pitiful hopes and dreams as you possess. Wipe the drool from your chins, and prepare to bestow upon me your unadulterated love and attention.
Today (or, more accurately, tonight) I'm going to begin to stimulate your brain cavities with the first of a series of articles that I'd like to name "Games You Should Have Played". Each article will focus on one year in the history of video gaming, and list out a series of games that I think are worthy of your personal time and consideration. Make no mistake - I'm making the clear implication that if you haven't played these games, you're just not as worthwhile as the people who have. The people who have played these games are laughing at you. That's them now, outside. Laughing.
I'm going year by year, but I'll warn you, this isn't a research piece. I am going to get release years wrong. I'm going to lavish attention on home console releases while overlooking their superior arcade origins. I'm going to mention facts that are inaccurate, or in some cases just plain fictitious. It's not that I'm not aware of the truth - it's just that I like to include these lapses to frustrate you, because it entertains me to do so. Really, it's all your fault.
We're going to get in the Wayback Machine and take a trip to 1980, a year when cherry blossoms filled the streets and human linked hands with human to promote a unanimous message of world peace. Scientists discovered Atlantis, Stephen Spielberg became the first man on the moon, He-Man was elected President of the United States, and the two greatest people in the history of civilisation were born - myself, and Pac-Man.
Sound familiar? I thought so.... let's fight our way through the crowds clamouring for the release of the Intellivision home gaming console, and check out the stand-out titles of this year.
1) Pac-Man (Arcade)
He's got a big mouth, he's always worried about mysterious threats that may or may not exist, and his entire life is the philosophy of consumerism. No, it's not George Bush Jnr, it's our lovable hero Pac-Man. 1980 saw the arrival of the first Pac-Man arcade cabinets in locations worldwide. Bewildered gamers at first had no idea who the circular yellow ragamuffin was, but before long Pac-Man was laying claim to the disputable title of "Most Successful Videogame of All Time". Players were challenged to guide the unstoppable ball of death around a neon maze, attempting to collect a set of dots scattered around the screen. Their efforts were frustrated by four ghosts (later given the names Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde) who chased Pac-Man around the maze - contact with any of the four meant death! Luckily Pac-Man could temporarily turn the tables on his pursuers by chomping one of four Pac Pellets located at the corners of the map, which allowed our butter-coloured hero to consume ghosts of all types and send their disembodied eyeballs back to the ghost-jail in the centre of the level. Gamers competed to see who could earn the best score, until eventually in 1999 Billy Mitchell answered the question by obtaining the highest score possible and making all further play of the game redundant.
2) Space Invaders (Atari 2600)
Yes, yes, Space Invaders came out in 1978, not 1980. But I'm not at this stage planning to cover anything before 1980, so I'm taking this opportunity to talk about the release of Space Invaders for players at home on the Atari 2600 (at the time known as the Atari VCS). Space Invaders is arguably the most important game of all time, being the first game to introduce a clear goal, by means of letting the player collect points and compete against a high score. The game challenged players to pilot a small spaceship located at the bottom of the screen against an oncoming wave of aliens which descended from the top. The player needed to fire projectile blasts at the aliens and eliminate the entire wave before the aliens reached the bottom of the screen and destroyed the player's spacecraft. The aliens, meanwhile, would rain laser blasts and bombs down on the hapless pilot. The further through the game the player progressed, the faster the aliens would move, and the harder the game became. Popular legend suggests the arcade version of this game caused a coinage supply in Japan until the Yen supply was quadrupled, and hey, a story that good HAS to be true, right?
3) Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Apple II)
I take eternal pride in having played and completed this game on its native system in an age before online walkthroughs and FAQs. Sure, I may have done it some 8 or 9 years after it was first released, but what does that matter? This game came out in the same year as seminal text-adventure Zork (see below). Both games offered a richly detailed world, featuring an epic quest with a punishing difficulty. At the time Zork was probably better received, but considering that Ultima I featured a sprawling illustrated overworld, vaguely real-time combat, 3-D dungeon-crawling, and an open-ended quest, whereas Zork had... text... I think I'm justified in declaring Ultima to have been the more historically important game. Created entirely by Richard Garriott, under the pseudonym Lord British, and incorporating elements of his earlier game of the same year Akalabeth, it's still amazing just how far ahead of its time this game was. It still stands as a momentous achievement in gaming and would not be outdone for influence on the future of RPGs until a full decade later with the first installment of the Final Fantasy franchise.
4) Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (Apple II)
Actually, Zork came out on pretty much every system that supported a keyboard, but I played it first on an Apple, so hence the system tag above. This is really the birth of interactive fiction, right here. Zork was published by Infocom, and would become the franchise that Infocom were best known for. The game appeared entirely in text, featuring a description of the player's surroundings, and presenting a prompt for the player to input commands, such as "GO NORTH". Beginning outside an inauspicious white house, the adventure soon dragged the player into a vast network of underground locations on a search for the Twenty Treasures of Zork. In the course of your adventure you were forced to puzzle out a baffling array of near-identical rooms, face an endless number of situations which would instantly end your adventures, and always, always, keep in the light to avoid the franchise's trademark under-described bogeymen, the grues. Stirring stuff - and by "stirring", I mean incredibly frustrating. It's amazing what passed for fun back in 1980.
5) Rogue (Unix)
Actually, as it turns out, all this Pac-Man and Space Invaders foolishness aside, in 1980 consoles were for chumps. Your PC-equivalents were where the action was at, and if you were lucky enough to have one you could buy in to the birth of the electronic RPG genre. While Ultima may have had the graphics, and Zork may have had the style, if gameplay was what you were after it was bursting out all over the place in the form of a little bit of home-brew coding called Rogue. Originally written in Unix but ultimately ported to everything that had a keyboard, Rogue cast the player as a generic adventurer looking for his or her fortune in a randomly generated dungeon of infinite depth. You fought monsters, found loot, and gained levels - and the entire graphical interface was presented through the clever positioning of ASCII characters! The game ended up birthing an entire mini-genre called "Rogue-like games" which includes such gems as Hack and Moria and continues today through the excellent freeware ADOM.
6) Defender (Arcade)
Aw, come, on - Defender! What's not to like? Get this - when the rest of the spaceship-gaming genre is locked into the Space Invaders style of vertical flight, Defender throws the whole genre for a spin... by flying horizontally! Why don't we get innovation like THAT any more? No, wait, there's more! Not only are you shooting down metric tonnes of alien bad guys, but ALSO there's these little humans walking around. The aliens are trying to capture them, so you have to shoot down the capture-ships - but if you shoot one that's abducting a human when it's too high above the ground, the human starts to fall to his or her doom, and it's up to you to catch the little tyke and return him safely to the ground. Levels and levels of gameplay, right at your fingertips. Um.... actually, I hated this game. Those humans really annoyed me. I could never save the little buggers from going splat. But, you know, we still know the name 20 years on, so it must have been doing something right.
7) Mystery House (Apple II)
The Apple II, baby, it was the system to have. I've mentioned above the marvel that was Zork, and how Ultima repeatedly kicked it in the sensitive bits and laughed. Well, there was actually a mid-point between these two interface extremes (being "text" and "something that didn't make your eyes bleed"). The mid-point was called Mystery House. It was created by the Williams Wonder Twins, Roberta and Ken (actually, they probably weren't twins, because that would be... wrong), and it made a bunch of waves by being the first text adventure to... well, not be a text adventure. Simply put, it had pictures. Really bad pictures, but nevertheless, pictures. Roberta Williams drew them herself. Hey, not only can the woman nearly single-handedly pilot the adventure genre for years until LucasArts showed her how to do it right, but she can also draw! Give her a round of applause, everyone!
8) Wizard of Wor (Arcade)
Okay, it's a little like Pac-Man. No, wait, it's a lot like Pac-Man, except with guns. Heck, I'm sold already. But it gets better. You see, this was a two player game. "Pac-Man was a two player game!" I can hear you shout. Well, yes, I suppose it was. But as we're all aware, in Pac-Man you took turns, which largely consisted of a lot of back-seat driving while your friend lost all their lives. Wizard of Wor let you play at the same time. And you could interact! You could take your little guns (I think they were meant to be wands or bows or something), point them at your opponent, and let rip! You'd get extra points, they'd lose a life! Hours of fun for the whole family, assuming that your family is amused by killing their friends and laughing. Oh, the memories.
9) Tempest (Arcade)
Vector graphics. Is there any word more wholly irrelevant to today's gaming world? Back then in 1980 it was a big deal; if 3-D wireframes were your thing you were happy as a pig in mud. I'm forced to ask myself now whether anyone cares, and as I believe the answer is no, I'm going to treat the whole tech genre with the contempt it deserves by not talking about Tempest at all. In fact, I'm going to tell you what I got for Easter, which was a big chocolate egg full of M&M-style chocolate beans, and an egg-shaped container full of Ferrero Rocher choccies. Yum.
10) Berzerk (Arcade)
A guy DIED playing this. Died. One minute he was running through the maze, avoiding robots, going toe to electronic toe with Evil Otto, and the next he was 80kg of meat that we are prevented by social taboos from making appropriate use of. Also, the robots talk. Yes, with actual voices. "The humanoid must not escape!" That's... really all I have to say about Berzerk.
Well, as it turns out 1980 was in many ways a pretty slow year for games. Five top-quality games that will be remembered forever, and then I'm pretty much just killing time to get to number 10. Tempest? I mean, really, Tempest? *sigh*
Stay tuned for Games You Should Have Played - 1981, which I promise will be even more personally and morally insulting on every level. That's a cast-iron guarantee, people.
Greetings, sub-human reader-monkeys! I see you out there, waiting at your screens and repeatedly clicking "refresh" in the pathetic hope of an update! I am here, to answer your prayers and fulfil such pitiful hopes and dreams as you possess. Wipe the drool from your chins, and prepare to bestow upon me your unadulterated love and attention.
Today (or, more accurately, tonight) I'm going to begin to stimulate your brain cavities with the first of a series of articles that I'd like to name "Games You Should Have Played". Each article will focus on one year in the history of video gaming, and list out a series of games that I think are worthy of your personal time and consideration. Make no mistake - I'm making the clear implication that if you haven't played these games, you're just not as worthwhile as the people who have. The people who have played these games are laughing at you. That's them now, outside. Laughing.
I'm going year by year, but I'll warn you, this isn't a research piece. I am going to get release years wrong. I'm going to lavish attention on home console releases while overlooking their superior arcade origins. I'm going to mention facts that are inaccurate, or in some cases just plain fictitious. It's not that I'm not aware of the truth - it's just that I like to include these lapses to frustrate you, because it entertains me to do so. Really, it's all your fault.
We're going to get in the Wayback Machine and take a trip to 1980, a year when cherry blossoms filled the streets and human linked hands with human to promote a unanimous message of world peace. Scientists discovered Atlantis, Stephen Spielberg became the first man on the moon, He-Man was elected President of the United States, and the two greatest people in the history of civilisation were born - myself, and Pac-Man.
Sound familiar? I thought so.... let's fight our way through the crowds clamouring for the release of the Intellivision home gaming console, and check out the stand-out titles of this year.
1) Pac-Man (Arcade)
He's got a big mouth, he's always worried about mysterious threats that may or may not exist, and his entire life is the philosophy of consumerism. No, it's not George Bush Jnr, it's our lovable hero Pac-Man. 1980 saw the arrival of the first Pac-Man arcade cabinets in locations worldwide. Bewildered gamers at first had no idea who the circular yellow ragamuffin was, but before long Pac-Man was laying claim to the disputable title of "Most Successful Videogame of All Time". Players were challenged to guide the unstoppable ball of death around a neon maze, attempting to collect a set of dots scattered around the screen. Their efforts were frustrated by four ghosts (later given the names Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde) who chased Pac-Man around the maze - contact with any of the four meant death! Luckily Pac-Man could temporarily turn the tables on his pursuers by chomping one of four Pac Pellets located at the corners of the map, which allowed our butter-coloured hero to consume ghosts of all types and send their disembodied eyeballs back to the ghost-jail in the centre of the level. Gamers competed to see who could earn the best score, until eventually in 1999 Billy Mitchell answered the question by obtaining the highest score possible and making all further play of the game redundant.
2) Space Invaders (Atari 2600)
Yes, yes, Space Invaders came out in 1978, not 1980. But I'm not at this stage planning to cover anything before 1980, so I'm taking this opportunity to talk about the release of Space Invaders for players at home on the Atari 2600 (at the time known as the Atari VCS). Space Invaders is arguably the most important game of all time, being the first game to introduce a clear goal, by means of letting the player collect points and compete against a high score. The game challenged players to pilot a small spaceship located at the bottom of the screen against an oncoming wave of aliens which descended from the top. The player needed to fire projectile blasts at the aliens and eliminate the entire wave before the aliens reached the bottom of the screen and destroyed the player's spacecraft. The aliens, meanwhile, would rain laser blasts and bombs down on the hapless pilot. The further through the game the player progressed, the faster the aliens would move, and the harder the game became. Popular legend suggests the arcade version of this game caused a coinage supply in Japan until the Yen supply was quadrupled, and hey, a story that good HAS to be true, right?
3) Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Apple II)
I take eternal pride in having played and completed this game on its native system in an age before online walkthroughs and FAQs. Sure, I may have done it some 8 or 9 years after it was first released, but what does that matter? This game came out in the same year as seminal text-adventure Zork (see below). Both games offered a richly detailed world, featuring an epic quest with a punishing difficulty. At the time Zork was probably better received, but considering that Ultima I featured a sprawling illustrated overworld, vaguely real-time combat, 3-D dungeon-crawling, and an open-ended quest, whereas Zork had... text... I think I'm justified in declaring Ultima to have been the more historically important game. Created entirely by Richard Garriott, under the pseudonym Lord British, and incorporating elements of his earlier game of the same year Akalabeth, it's still amazing just how far ahead of its time this game was. It still stands as a momentous achievement in gaming and would not be outdone for influence on the future of RPGs until a full decade later with the first installment of the Final Fantasy franchise.
4) Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (Apple II)
Actually, Zork came out on pretty much every system that supported a keyboard, but I played it first on an Apple, so hence the system tag above. This is really the birth of interactive fiction, right here. Zork was published by Infocom, and would become the franchise that Infocom were best known for. The game appeared entirely in text, featuring a description of the player's surroundings, and presenting a prompt for the player to input commands, such as "GO NORTH". Beginning outside an inauspicious white house, the adventure soon dragged the player into a vast network of underground locations on a search for the Twenty Treasures of Zork. In the course of your adventure you were forced to puzzle out a baffling array of near-identical rooms, face an endless number of situations which would instantly end your adventures, and always, always, keep in the light to avoid the franchise's trademark under-described bogeymen, the grues. Stirring stuff - and by "stirring", I mean incredibly frustrating. It's amazing what passed for fun back in 1980.
5) Rogue (Unix)
Actually, as it turns out, all this Pac-Man and Space Invaders foolishness aside, in 1980 consoles were for chumps. Your PC-equivalents were where the action was at, and if you were lucky enough to have one you could buy in to the birth of the electronic RPG genre. While Ultima may have had the graphics, and Zork may have had the style, if gameplay was what you were after it was bursting out all over the place in the form of a little bit of home-brew coding called Rogue. Originally written in Unix but ultimately ported to everything that had a keyboard, Rogue cast the player as a generic adventurer looking for his or her fortune in a randomly generated dungeon of infinite depth. You fought monsters, found loot, and gained levels - and the entire graphical interface was presented through the clever positioning of ASCII characters! The game ended up birthing an entire mini-genre called "Rogue-like games" which includes such gems as Hack and Moria and continues today through the excellent freeware ADOM.
6) Defender (Arcade)
Aw, come, on - Defender! What's not to like? Get this - when the rest of the spaceship-gaming genre is locked into the Space Invaders style of vertical flight, Defender throws the whole genre for a spin... by flying horizontally! Why don't we get innovation like THAT any more? No, wait, there's more! Not only are you shooting down metric tonnes of alien bad guys, but ALSO there's these little humans walking around. The aliens are trying to capture them, so you have to shoot down the capture-ships - but if you shoot one that's abducting a human when it's too high above the ground, the human starts to fall to his or her doom, and it's up to you to catch the little tyke and return him safely to the ground. Levels and levels of gameplay, right at your fingertips. Um.... actually, I hated this game. Those humans really annoyed me. I could never save the little buggers from going splat. But, you know, we still know the name 20 years on, so it must have been doing something right.
7) Mystery House (Apple II)
The Apple II, baby, it was the system to have. I've mentioned above the marvel that was Zork, and how Ultima repeatedly kicked it in the sensitive bits and laughed. Well, there was actually a mid-point between these two interface extremes (being "text" and "something that didn't make your eyes bleed"). The mid-point was called Mystery House. It was created by the Williams Wonder Twins, Roberta and Ken (actually, they probably weren't twins, because that would be... wrong), and it made a bunch of waves by being the first text adventure to... well, not be a text adventure. Simply put, it had pictures. Really bad pictures, but nevertheless, pictures. Roberta Williams drew them herself. Hey, not only can the woman nearly single-handedly pilot the adventure genre for years until LucasArts showed her how to do it right, but she can also draw! Give her a round of applause, everyone!
8) Wizard of Wor (Arcade)
Okay, it's a little like Pac-Man. No, wait, it's a lot like Pac-Man, except with guns. Heck, I'm sold already. But it gets better. You see, this was a two player game. "Pac-Man was a two player game!" I can hear you shout. Well, yes, I suppose it was. But as we're all aware, in Pac-Man you took turns, which largely consisted of a lot of back-seat driving while your friend lost all their lives. Wizard of Wor let you play at the same time. And you could interact! You could take your little guns (I think they were meant to be wands or bows or something), point them at your opponent, and let rip! You'd get extra points, they'd lose a life! Hours of fun for the whole family, assuming that your family is amused by killing their friends and laughing. Oh, the memories.
9) Tempest (Arcade)
Vector graphics. Is there any word more wholly irrelevant to today's gaming world? Back then in 1980 it was a big deal; if 3-D wireframes were your thing you were happy as a pig in mud. I'm forced to ask myself now whether anyone cares, and as I believe the answer is no, I'm going to treat the whole tech genre with the contempt it deserves by not talking about Tempest at all. In fact, I'm going to tell you what I got for Easter, which was a big chocolate egg full of M&M-style chocolate beans, and an egg-shaped container full of Ferrero Rocher choccies. Yum.
10) Berzerk (Arcade)
A guy DIED playing this. Died. One minute he was running through the maze, avoiding robots, going toe to electronic toe with Evil Otto, and the next he was 80kg of meat that we are prevented by social taboos from making appropriate use of. Also, the robots talk. Yes, with actual voices. "The humanoid must not escape!" That's... really all I have to say about Berzerk.
Well, as it turns out 1980 was in many ways a pretty slow year for games. Five top-quality games that will be remembered forever, and then I'm pretty much just killing time to get to number 10. Tempest? I mean, really, Tempest? *sigh*
Stay tuned for Games You Should Have Played - 1981, which I promise will be even more personally and morally insulting on every level. That's a cast-iron guarantee, people.
People Besides Me Are Funny And Insightful
[Comics]
It's true! The evidence is here!
(I know you feel hurt and betrayed by the revelation that other minds share my mighty creative peak, but it was better that you learned now rather than hold it against me later.)
It's true! The evidence is here!
(I know you feel hurt and betrayed by the revelation that other minds share my mighty creative peak, but it was better that you learned now rather than hold it against me later.)
On Completing Morrowind
[Now Experiencing] [Computer Gaming]
(Minor spoilers for the end of Morrowind follow; but it's an old game, and you probably could have predicted a lot of this anyway.)
Well, I've just finished the main quest in Morrowind (finally) and I have to confess to a certain sense of "Is that it?" After the epic buildup to the final battle, the end just all seemed to go by a little quickly.
Emerging from Red Mountain and seeing the storms gone and the Ghostfence deactivated was kind of cool, but then having every man and his dog assure me that the world is still full of evil and I'll have lots to keep me entertained was... annoying. Don't tell me that everything's still a mess, guys! Let me bask in having saved civilisation for at least a couple of days! I don't want to be reminded that killing the big scary Dark Lord hasn't solved poverty and racial hatred when I've just worked my butt off to save you all from imminent apocalypse.
Sheesh ... I was intending to dive into the two expansions next, but it all feels a little anticlimactic ... I think I need to go play some Japanese RPG that treats me like a god every time I help out the slightest whiny orphan ...
(Minor spoilers for the end of Morrowind follow; but it's an old game, and you probably could have predicted a lot of this anyway.)
Well, I've just finished the main quest in Morrowind (finally) and I have to confess to a certain sense of "Is that it?" After the epic buildup to the final battle, the end just all seemed to go by a little quickly.
Emerging from Red Mountain and seeing the storms gone and the Ghostfence deactivated was kind of cool, but then having every man and his dog assure me that the world is still full of evil and I'll have lots to keep me entertained was... annoying. Don't tell me that everything's still a mess, guys! Let me bask in having saved civilisation for at least a couple of days! I don't want to be reminded that killing the big scary Dark Lord hasn't solved poverty and racial hatred when I've just worked my butt off to save you all from imminent apocalypse.
Sheesh ... I was intending to dive into the two expansions next, but it all feels a little anticlimactic ... I think I need to go play some Japanese RPG that treats me like a god every time I help out the slightest whiny orphan ...
Sunday, April 16, 2006
How To Marry A Millionaire [1953]
[Now Experiencing] [Film]
Last week I covered confronting political philosophy shallowly disguised as a science-fiction film. This week, I'm taking a trip back in time to visit with Marilyn Monroe.
Picture this - the year is 1953. Perry Como's at the top of the charts with a string of hits. In Australia, Liberal Prime Minister Robert Menzies is serving out the fourth year of a term of office that would not end until 1966, while overseas the United States has overwhelmingly declared that "They Like Ike" with a landslide electoral win for new Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. A certain Senator Joseph McCarthy has the western world hunting for Communists under their beds. Shows like Dragnet and The Lone Ranger are captivating audiences through the new medium of TV, and an enterprising toy producer has just created the world's first plastic toy soldiers.
In film, Audrey Hepburn is taking a Roman Holiday, Vincent Price appears in House of Wax (the world's first 3-D film), and the star of centerfold actress Marilyn Monroe continues its meteoric rise with How To Marry A Millionaire - presented in 20th Century Fox's dramatic new technology, CinemaScope.
How to Marry a Millionaire stars Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, and Marilyn Monroe as a trio of young models determined to do whatever it takes to snag a millionaire husband and fulfil their highest worldly aspirations. To this end, the "intelligent" one of the three (and I speak comparitively), a Ms Schatze (Bacall: The Big Sleep, Key Largo), has rented an expensive fully-furnished high-class apartment for a year. Selling the apartment's furniture to provide capital for top-class clothes and comforts, the three intend to use the apartment as bait in a "millionaire-trap", with the intention that at least one of them will land a wealthy husband to retrospectively cover the costs of their scheme.
The plan is complicated however, by the fact that Loco (Grable: Down Argentine Way, Sweet Rosie O'Grady) is spoiled and stupid, and can't seem to stop getting involved with men without a penny to their name; whereas Pola (Monroe: Monkey Business, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) is almost blind without spectacles, but rarely wears them because she thinks they make her look ugly.
The three fall in and out of relationships with a range of unlikely men, ranging from park rangers to oil tycoons to a genuine multi-millionaire, before (predictably) finding happiness and each winding up married.
The moral message of the movie continues to be relevant to this day: the highest thing a woman can dream of is to be married, and occasionally a man turns out to be vaguely worthwhile despite not being overwhelmingly wealthy. I think there's something in that for all of us. Er... I mean, turn off your braincells, reset your moral clock to 1953, and don't use this movie to educate your children.
Of the three female leads, Grable (a relic of an earlier age of silent and black and white films) comes across as whiny and annoying; furthermore most of her scenes are almost wholly unrelated to the rest of the plot and are filmed in the absence of the other lead actresses. Indeed, this film comes at the end of Grable's career - in two more years she was to retire from cinema altogether.
Bacall plays what is arguably the protagonist of the movie; certainly the script seems to consider Schatze central to the story, and Bacall plays her world-weary goldminer alter-ego admirably. The "I never want to see you again" montage near the end of the movie will remain a memorable gem of cinema long after the rest of the film is forgotten, and she manages to invest the totally shallow character she is given with a considerable personality and dignity.
But ultimately, whatever the script may have had in mind, Monroe steals the show as the sweet-hearted but ditzy Pola, and the director knows it. Monroe's entire acting career may be limited to playing a series of seductive ingenues, but arguably that's because she does it so well. The camera lingers lovingly on Monroe in every scene, and she invests even the dull moments of the film with an energy that carries the viewer through till the closing credits.
Visually, the movie is fascinating. The CinemaScope technique, which operates to compress panoramic images onto standard film stock, is a stark contrast to the standard fare of the 1950s. The DVD I was watching the film on was a restored version, containing full widescreen to take advantage of the medium, and presented a great opportunity to see the film close to the way it was intended. An incidental effect of Cinemascope is to cause an illusion of three-dimensions in the visual image, which goes to great effect in the few scenes in which a painted backdrop is used to give the effect of a New York skyline.
There's nothing special to comment on in the directing; director Jean Negulesco does a competent but uninspiring job. The script careers from brilliance to dullness and back again, largely made watchable by the high production values and the work of the actors. It's not roaringly funny by today's standards (at least so far as it intends to be funny), but it does have its moments.
Made notable more for its historic place in the careers of the three lead actresses and for its technical achievements than for any inherent quality, How To Marry A Millionaire still made for an enjoyable and unchallenging night's entertainment, and I'm glad I had the chance to see it.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Beekeepers of the Old Republic
[News] [Game Design]
From the people who brought you Need For Speed: Underhill and Hannibal Crossing, and courtesy of serious game journalism site Gamasutra, comes the following article, which should be read by anyone who's ever wanted to pitch a game idea to a publisher, or, indeed, enjoyed a good laugh.
With Friends Like These
[Game Design]Today I'm sticking my foot into the murky waters that is Corvus' Blogs of the Round Table. The April topic is Your Friendship Is A Game To Me, and invites bloggers to explore the topic of friendships within games. I'd like to take this excuse to talk about a topic very dear to the hearts of a great many gamers of my acquaintance, and that's the electronic friends that we'd all rather not have.
In the wide world of characters that the advent of electronic gaming has exposed us to, there's been a great many examples of virtual friends implemented really well. Paladin from Wing Commander, Iolo from Ultima, pretty much the entire cast of characters from Animal Crossing. But in amongst those gems of empathy and familiarity, there have been a bunch of not so successful attempts.
You know them - the characters that turn up out of the blue and instantly expect to be your life-long pal. They've got annoying, high-pitched voices. They offer you hints about game mechanics you've already mastered, or give you completely useless advice when you're genuinely stumped. They move too slowly, they can't hold their own in combat for three seconds without dieing, and they walk into walls and get stuck in doorways. They get you involved in frustrating sidequests, they live way out in the middle of nowhere, they endlessly insist on exposing you to long boring monologues, and as a final insult they expect you to actually care when they die.
I've added a picture of the Big Brother of all electronic non-friends to the top corner of the post. Intended to be an intelligent and character-filled help interface, intuitively working out what problems you were having and suggesting solutions, Clippy instead instantly became the intelligent and character-filled face of a Microsoft that clearly existed only to do Satan's bidding on Earth.
Where do game designers go so wrong? Is it so hard to create a genuinely friendly character? Why do so many virtual friends end up as little more than another obstacle between you and fun?
I think the answer lies in what a lot of designers expect a friendship to contain.
Think about your real life friendships. Do you really expect your friends to constantly advise you how to perform simple tasks without being asked? No. Sure, friends can be a lot of help, but if you want that help, you'll ask for it.
When you're hanging out with your friends, do you constantly worry that your friends will be beaten to death by thugs / goblins / fighter craft if you leave them alone for three seconds? No. You have a fairly reasonable expectation that you can not see your friends for weeks at a time, and find them pretty much in the same state of health as you left them when you come back.
If you're walking somewhere with a friend, does that consist of a long, silent trip, wherein you have to constantly keep an eye on them to make sure they don't get stuck on a tree and cause your current quest to bug out? No; you have a reasonable expectation that your friend can avoid simple obstacles, and in the event of getting separated from you can find a way to catch up with you at a later stage. Also, while you may have to slow down a little to find a comfortable pace, you expect that there may be the occasional bite of conversation to lighten the journey.
And finally, do you see your friends as glorified toolboxes, that are really only a collection of databases, inventories, and fighting abilities crammed behind an animated face? Is that the purpose of spending time with friends? No. Friendship is about shared experiences and shared perspectives. Any experience shared with a friend should be qualitatively and exponentially different to the experience undertaken alone. In any given situation, a friend should point out aspects of the situation you may have overlooked, should be able to comment qualitatively on what they feel about the situation, and should be willing to remark in some way on your actions and achievements (or lack of them).
In playing, as far as in-game friends go, the player should be constantly thinking, "I wonder what my (in-game) friends would have to say about THIS!" or "I wonder what my (in-game) friend would do here!" And that's precisely where the games that have done it well have gone right.
When you're losing the war against the Kilrathi, you can count on Paladin to tell you that he's worried, maybe a little something about his past that the current situation has made him think of, and possibly a few words of hope - all free of strings, no obligations imposed, and notably different from what he says when you're winning the war.
In Animal Crossing, the various inhabitants of your town will remark on anything - your house, your appearance, other residents, your shared interests, and even what time of day it is. You feeel like they're actually paying attention to your shared environment. You can notice something cool (like that today is an in-game holiday), and expect to be able to have a meaningful conversation about it with someone nearby.
When you bump into Iolo in Ultima 7 or Ultima 9, he remembers you. He remembers your previous adventures (when almost no-one else does), he knows where you come from and what your first priorities on arriving in Britannia are likely to be (see Lord Britain, get equipped, fight evil). Here the trick is not so much that Iolo is particularly close to you, but that he's so much closer than any of the other extremely well-realised characters in the land. In a milieu of characters constantly giving you quests, he's willing to just stop and chat about old times.
Just think - when was the last time Clippy ever stopped and reminisced about how things used to be so much better under DOS?
Thursday, April 13, 2006
V for Vendetta [2006]
[Now Experiencing] [Film]
My girlfriend and I went to see V for Vendetta last night, and were glad to find that it met and exceeded all our expectations.
V for Vendetta is based on the graphic novel/comic series of Alan Moore, also known as the creator of the groundbreaking Watchmen, the excellent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (horrible film adaptation notwithstanding), and a 30-odd issue run of Swamp Thing that remains among the best comics I've ever read.
The story of V for Vendetta postulates a dystopian United Kingdom of the near future, where in the wake of terrorism, war, and pandemic, a dictatorial government has risen to power. The media is strictly controlled, the population are routinely surveilled through taps and security sweeps, and the line between difference and crime is increasingly hard to find. Homosexuality is outlawed, possession of the Koran is a criminal offence, protestors are arrested by police, and the offenders invariably vanish into the system, arrested and held without charge.
In the midst of this, a figure calling itself "V" (Hugo Weaving: The Matrix, Priscilla Queen of the Desert), its face hidden by a Guy Fawkes mask, begins a campaign of political violence. On November 5, V blows up the London court buildings, and then seizes control of the emergency TV network to advise the people of the United Kingdom that something is terribly wrong with their country, and that if they wish to do something about their future, they should meet him in one year's time on the grounds of the Houses of Parliament to forge a new country.
Into all this is swept Evy Hammond (Natalie Portman: The Professional, Star Wars Episodes I-III), a television intern whose family of political activists have become victims of the current regime. In the course of the year, from November 5 to November 5, she meets V in a variety of places and circumstances and learns some of the background behind this revolutionary's crusade.
I should say that as at writing this I have not read the comic; it's on my shelf, but I've delayed opening it until after I'd seen the film. In the event that the film was only average, I didn't want my enjoyment of what there was of it to be tarnished by the superior original version. Also, my fears were raised when Alan Moore chose to remove his name from the film. Granted, by all accounts Alan Moore doesn't quite live on the same plane of existence as the rest of humanity, but surely he had some reason? As it turns out, though, neither he nor I had cause to worry. The film is fantastic.
With a screenplay written by the Wachowksi brothers (Bound, The Matrix) you may have expected something along the lines of their earlier films - and indeed, V for Vendetta does have the Wachowskis' keen feel for the structure and pacing of the media of both comics and films. A clever eye can spot the original breaks between issues, whether or not you've read the source material. Much like the Matrix movies, the Wakowskis have broken down the story into a series of seamless vignettes, each possessing their own pacing and atmosphere, yet connected as a coherent whole almost unnoticaby to the casual viewer. Thus the action moves from vigilante violence in the backstreets to a morally ambiguous tale of kidnapping and terrorism to a tense conspiracy thriller and finally to an epic tale of revolution without at any stage lOing its grip on the viewer.
However, the film is directed by Australian James McTeigue, and bears little resemblance to the Wachowskis' normal kinetic hyperlucid visual style. It instead takes on a claustrophobic and submerged feel accentuated by diffused lighting, tight framing, and intercutting taken or based upon modern political news footage. This is McTeigue's first solo directorial outing, having previously worked as a first assistant director on such films as the Matrix Trilogy, Star Wars Episode II, and Looking for Alibrandi.
The actors are worth commenting on. Natalie Portman returns to top form after her unfortunate experiences with the Star Wars prequels. Hugo Weaving's physical acting is underused behind V's cloak and mask, but his voice fits the role perfectly, rendering V's quote-filled dialogue highly memorable. A strong supporting cast including Stephen Fry, Stepehn Rea and John Hurt round out the performance. They collectively lend a convincing and engrossing air to material that would otherwise occasionally threaten to stray into melodrama or diatribe. Stepen Rea in particular does wonders to elevate beleagured detective Finch above his role as a narrative device by injecting the character with a wonderful mix of sadness, humanity, and dry humour.
This is a political film. No, more strongly than that - it's a very political film. And nor is it safe politics - it espouses a philosophy which is familiar in neither modern Western conservative nor liberal thought. It is a film that says that violence can be a legitimate tool of political expression, that suggests that acts of civil terrorism can not be condemned out of hand, and urges immediate and specific revolutionary acts in the context of our very real society. But behind and above these, it is a film about ideas - about the consequences of having ideas you are afraid to think, about possibilities you are scared to articulate, about philosophies that are not open to debate. It is a film that will make you think about the state of modern politics, no matter what your political creed, and the mark of its success is that if you are like me, at about the 20 minute mark of the film you'll be thinking, "I can't believe this film got past the censors."
It may not be a film you'll want to see twice - but it's not a film that needs to be seen twice, such is its immediate impact. A great movie and a great adaptation, and whether you decide you like it or loathe it it's one you should at least make the effort to see.
My girlfriend and I went to see V for Vendetta last night, and were glad to find that it met and exceeded all our expectations.
V for Vendetta is based on the graphic novel/comic series of Alan Moore, also known as the creator of the groundbreaking Watchmen, the excellent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (horrible film adaptation notwithstanding), and a 30-odd issue run of Swamp Thing that remains among the best comics I've ever read.
The story of V for Vendetta postulates a dystopian United Kingdom of the near future, where in the wake of terrorism, war, and pandemic, a dictatorial government has risen to power. The media is strictly controlled, the population are routinely surveilled through taps and security sweeps, and the line between difference and crime is increasingly hard to find. Homosexuality is outlawed, possession of the Koran is a criminal offence, protestors are arrested by police, and the offenders invariably vanish into the system, arrested and held without charge.
In the midst of this, a figure calling itself "V" (Hugo Weaving: The Matrix, Priscilla Queen of the Desert), its face hidden by a Guy Fawkes mask, begins a campaign of political violence. On November 5, V blows up the London court buildings, and then seizes control of the emergency TV network to advise the people of the United Kingdom that something is terribly wrong with their country, and that if they wish to do something about their future, they should meet him in one year's time on the grounds of the Houses of Parliament to forge a new country.
Into all this is swept Evy Hammond (Natalie Portman: The Professional, Star Wars Episodes I-III), a television intern whose family of political activists have become victims of the current regime. In the course of the year, from November 5 to November 5, she meets V in a variety of places and circumstances and learns some of the background behind this revolutionary's crusade.
I should say that as at writing this I have not read the comic; it's on my shelf, but I've delayed opening it until after I'd seen the film. In the event that the film was only average, I didn't want my enjoyment of what there was of it to be tarnished by the superior original version. Also, my fears were raised when Alan Moore chose to remove his name from the film. Granted, by all accounts Alan Moore doesn't quite live on the same plane of existence as the rest of humanity, but surely he had some reason? As it turns out, though, neither he nor I had cause to worry. The film is fantastic.
With a screenplay written by the Wachowksi brothers (Bound, The Matrix) you may have expected something along the lines of their earlier films - and indeed, V for Vendetta does have the Wachowskis' keen feel for the structure and pacing of the media of both comics and films. A clever eye can spot the original breaks between issues, whether or not you've read the source material. Much like the Matrix movies, the Wakowskis have broken down the story into a series of seamless vignettes, each possessing their own pacing and atmosphere, yet connected as a coherent whole almost unnoticaby to the casual viewer. Thus the action moves from vigilante violence in the backstreets to a morally ambiguous tale of kidnapping and terrorism to a tense conspiracy thriller and finally to an epic tale of revolution without at any stage lOing its grip on the viewer.
However, the film is directed by Australian James McTeigue, and bears little resemblance to the Wachowskis' normal kinetic hyperlucid visual style. It instead takes on a claustrophobic and submerged feel accentuated by diffused lighting, tight framing, and intercutting taken or based upon modern political news footage. This is McTeigue's first solo directorial outing, having previously worked as a first assistant director on such films as the Matrix Trilogy, Star Wars Episode II, and Looking for Alibrandi.
The actors are worth commenting on. Natalie Portman returns to top form after her unfortunate experiences with the Star Wars prequels. Hugo Weaving's physical acting is underused behind V's cloak and mask, but his voice fits the role perfectly, rendering V's quote-filled dialogue highly memorable. A strong supporting cast including Stephen Fry, Stepehn Rea and John Hurt round out the performance. They collectively lend a convincing and engrossing air to material that would otherwise occasionally threaten to stray into melodrama or diatribe. Stepen Rea in particular does wonders to elevate beleagured detective Finch above his role as a narrative device by injecting the character with a wonderful mix of sadness, humanity, and dry humour.
This is a political film. No, more strongly than that - it's a very political film. And nor is it safe politics - it espouses a philosophy which is familiar in neither modern Western conservative nor liberal thought. It is a film that says that violence can be a legitimate tool of political expression, that suggests that acts of civil terrorism can not be condemned out of hand, and urges immediate and specific revolutionary acts in the context of our very real society. But behind and above these, it is a film about ideas - about the consequences of having ideas you are afraid to think, about possibilities you are scared to articulate, about philosophies that are not open to debate. It is a film that will make you think about the state of modern politics, no matter what your political creed, and the mark of its success is that if you are like me, at about the 20 minute mark of the film you'll be thinking, "I can't believe this film got past the censors."
It may not be a film you'll want to see twice - but it's not a film that needs to be seen twice, such is its immediate impact. A great movie and a great adaptation, and whether you decide you like it or loathe it it's one you should at least make the effort to see.
Saturday, April 08, 2006
What Is Infinite Crisis?
[Comics]
Yesterday I rambled on about issue #6 of Infinite Crisis. Regular reader Jey left me a commment on that post, asking in part "what per se is the infinite crisis?"
Seeing as I'm probably going to review (read "rant about") some other Infinite Crisis titles in the future, I'll quickly answer that with a full post.
Basically, there are two main "key figure" publishers in the field of superhero comics. One is Marvel Comics, which features a stable of characters including Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. The other is DC Comics (the DC originally stood for Detective Comics) who plays home to Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and the Justice League of America, among many others.
There has been a longstanding tradition in superhero comics, dating back to the appearance of the Justice Society of America in All Star Comics back in the 40s, for superheros owned by the same company to exist in the same world, or "universe" as each other. The economic benefits of this are that the publisher can prop up new or faltering comics with an appearance by a more popular character (like Superman or Batman), and also (unfortunately) that a large stable of established characters can be used as supporting characters and villains without having to be fully introduced, thus saving on the page count for already quite short issues. Thus, the comics "crossover".
However, despite this intention of a single coherent universe, DC found in the late 70s and early 80s that it had achieved anything but. In addition to the regular "DC Universe", it had acquired a number of properties from a variety of other publishers who had gone out of business over the preceding decades, including the once popular Shazam and Blue Beetle. What was more, even within its main DC Universe it had created the precedent of a variety of "alternate Earths". Begun as a way of trying to bring its Golden Age (40s and 50s) era characters into regular guest appearances during the 60s and 70s, this had rapidly spun out into a seemingly never-ending parade of alternate dimension stories and "imaginary stories", to the point where a ridiculously small amount of action in some of its core titles was actually happening in the "real world".
In the early to mid 1980s, DC Comics launched a crossover event on a scale never before tried. They would do a 12 issue series, featuring virtually every character from the DC Universe past or present, plus some surprise guests, publishing over the course of a year, that would fundamentally reinvent the nature of the universe. This story was called the Crisis on Infinite Earths. In a plot that still makes very little sense more than 20 years after the event, the "multiverse" of alternate Earths was condensed into (allegedly) one single Earth, incorporating elements from all the others. The Golden Age JSA now co-existed alongside their modern namesakes; the Marvel Family and the Wizard Shazam joined the DC Universe, along with a host of other "refugee" characters; and a variety of characters were "relaunched" with important "improvements" to their backstory (most notably Batman, who benefited very strongly from his new darker image).
In addition, the Crisis was meant to straighten out a bunch of lingering continuity problems relating to some characters. It killed off or wrote out of existence the extended "Superman Family", including the Bottled City of Kandor, the League of Super-Pets, and Superman's cousin Supergirl, leaving Superman once again the last son of Krypton. The Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, was killed, and his former sidekick Wally West took on the name and mantle. And the Golden Age version of several characters, including Superman, Wonder Woman, and Superboy vanished into the narrative gulf. The series was a massive success, breaking all sorts of sales records, selling by the truckload.
Much has passed under the bridge since then. It quickly became apparent that the Crisis had caused more continuity problems than it had fixed. In particular there were severe problems relating to the identity of Hawkman, and the relationship of Superboy to the Legion of Super-Heroes (issues too complex to discuss here). A series of mini-crisis events attempted to address this (Zero Hour, Final Night) with little success.
Supergirl was returned to comics various times with mixed results - we've seen her as an angel, as a protoplasmic being, and recently as a new version of "Superman's cousin". In addition, there's a character called Power Girl, who's variously claimed to be a hero from the past sent through time by an Atlantean wizard, or possibly also another survivor from Krypton.
Superboy, Krypto the Wonderdog, and the Bottled City of Kandor have also all returned (although thankfully still no sign of Supergirl's Super-Horse). The situation regarding Hawkman's identity has just got more and more confusing, and now apparently there's some issues with continuity of the cult favourite Doom Patrol that need attention.
So now DC have, over the last couple of years, been running this big "Infinite Crisis" thing. Almost everything in the DC Universe recently has been leading into this. It turns out that the Golden Age Superman (also known as the Earth-2 Superman) did not vanish during the original Crisis, but has instead been hanging out in an extradimensional prison along with several other Crisis survivors, including the Earth-2 Lois Lane, the Earth Prime Superboy, and the Earth-3 Lex "Alex" Luthor (who was originally a kind of hero introduced during the first Crisis).
Having been watching the DC Universe all these years, these survivors have finally decided that the wrong Earth was saved during the Crisis. Earth's heroes have been getting progressively darker and grittier of late, culminating in Wonder Woman murdering villain Maxwell Lord to prevent him from doing further harm. Superman et al want to re-instigate the Crisis and this time save the "Golden Age" world, returning us all to a time of sunshine and buttercups where good was good and bad was bad and you could tell the difference between right and wrong, dammit.
This is all complicated by revelations that some members of the Justice League of America have been mindwiping villains for years; a rogue satellite with a knowledge of the real identities of all metahumans on Earth and an army of killer robots at its command; the Spectre (the spirit of vengeance) engaging in a pogram against all magic; and an interplanetary war.
During the course of events so far, we've seen the Blue Beetle killed, we've discovered Power Girl is the original Supergirl, we've seen Earth Prime Superboy go mad and literally rip apart a bunch of Teen Titans, we've seen Jade killed and Kyle Rayner transformed into a being called Ion, we've seen Sasha Bordeaux turn into a new cyber-thing that it's hard to care about... and I think Hawkgirl may be dead. The Spectre has a new host, Deathstroke is suddenly cool, Bludhaven got nuked, the Wizard Shazam died, there's a new Blue Beetle, a new magical superteam called Shadowpact has formed, Jason Todd's returned to life, Superboy and Wonder Girl had sex, and all kinds of hell has broken loose.
The outcome is a vast money-spinner for DC with the potential for them to make some continuity quick-fixes to a bunch of titles that didn't really need it, and relaunch some deathly dull titles with an all-new all-exciting deathly dull continuity.
I hope this has been instructive; stand by for further news.
Yesterday I rambled on about issue #6 of Infinite Crisis. Regular reader Jey left me a commment on that post, asking in part "what per se is the infinite crisis?"
Seeing as I'm probably going to review (read "rant about") some other Infinite Crisis titles in the future, I'll quickly answer that with a full post.
Basically, there are two main "key figure" publishers in the field of superhero comics. One is Marvel Comics, which features a stable of characters including Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. The other is DC Comics (the DC originally stood for Detective Comics) who plays home to Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and the Justice League of America, among many others.
There has been a longstanding tradition in superhero comics, dating back to the appearance of the Justice Society of America in All Star Comics back in the 40s, for superheros owned by the same company to exist in the same world, or "universe" as each other. The economic benefits of this are that the publisher can prop up new or faltering comics with an appearance by a more popular character (like Superman or Batman), and also (unfortunately) that a large stable of established characters can be used as supporting characters and villains without having to be fully introduced, thus saving on the page count for already quite short issues. Thus, the comics "crossover".
However, despite this intention of a single coherent universe, DC found in the late 70s and early 80s that it had achieved anything but. In addition to the regular "DC Universe", it had acquired a number of properties from a variety of other publishers who had gone out of business over the preceding decades, including the once popular Shazam and Blue Beetle. What was more, even within its main DC Universe it had created the precedent of a variety of "alternate Earths". Begun as a way of trying to bring its Golden Age (40s and 50s) era characters into regular guest appearances during the 60s and 70s, this had rapidly spun out into a seemingly never-ending parade of alternate dimension stories and "imaginary stories", to the point where a ridiculously small amount of action in some of its core titles was actually happening in the "real world".
In the early to mid 1980s, DC Comics launched a crossover event on a scale never before tried. They would do a 12 issue series, featuring virtually every character from the DC Universe past or present, plus some surprise guests, publishing over the course of a year, that would fundamentally reinvent the nature of the universe. This story was called the Crisis on Infinite Earths. In a plot that still makes very little sense more than 20 years after the event, the "multiverse" of alternate Earths was condensed into (allegedly) one single Earth, incorporating elements from all the others. The Golden Age JSA now co-existed alongside their modern namesakes; the Marvel Family and the Wizard Shazam joined the DC Universe, along with a host of other "refugee" characters; and a variety of characters were "relaunched" with important "improvements" to their backstory (most notably Batman, who benefited very strongly from his new darker image).
In addition, the Crisis was meant to straighten out a bunch of lingering continuity problems relating to some characters. It killed off or wrote out of existence the extended "Superman Family", including the Bottled City of Kandor, the League of Super-Pets, and Superman's cousin Supergirl, leaving Superman once again the last son of Krypton. The Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, was killed, and his former sidekick Wally West took on the name and mantle. And the Golden Age version of several characters, including Superman, Wonder Woman, and Superboy vanished into the narrative gulf. The series was a massive success, breaking all sorts of sales records, selling by the truckload.
Much has passed under the bridge since then. It quickly became apparent that the Crisis had caused more continuity problems than it had fixed. In particular there were severe problems relating to the identity of Hawkman, and the relationship of Superboy to the Legion of Super-Heroes (issues too complex to discuss here). A series of mini-crisis events attempted to address this (Zero Hour, Final Night) with little success.
Supergirl was returned to comics various times with mixed results - we've seen her as an angel, as a protoplasmic being, and recently as a new version of "Superman's cousin". In addition, there's a character called Power Girl, who's variously claimed to be a hero from the past sent through time by an Atlantean wizard, or possibly also another survivor from Krypton.
Superboy, Krypto the Wonderdog, and the Bottled City of Kandor have also all returned (although thankfully still no sign of Supergirl's Super-Horse). The situation regarding Hawkman's identity has just got more and more confusing, and now apparently there's some issues with continuity of the cult favourite Doom Patrol that need attention.
So now DC have, over the last couple of years, been running this big "Infinite Crisis" thing. Almost everything in the DC Universe recently has been leading into this. It turns out that the Golden Age Superman (also known as the Earth-2 Superman) did not vanish during the original Crisis, but has instead been hanging out in an extradimensional prison along with several other Crisis survivors, including the Earth-2 Lois Lane, the Earth Prime Superboy, and the Earth-3 Lex "Alex" Luthor (who was originally a kind of hero introduced during the first Crisis).
Having been watching the DC Universe all these years, these survivors have finally decided that the wrong Earth was saved during the Crisis. Earth's heroes have been getting progressively darker and grittier of late, culminating in Wonder Woman murdering villain Maxwell Lord to prevent him from doing further harm. Superman et al want to re-instigate the Crisis and this time save the "Golden Age" world, returning us all to a time of sunshine and buttercups where good was good and bad was bad and you could tell the difference between right and wrong, dammit.
This is all complicated by revelations that some members of the Justice League of America have been mindwiping villains for years; a rogue satellite with a knowledge of the real identities of all metahumans on Earth and an army of killer robots at its command; the Spectre (the spirit of vengeance) engaging in a pogram against all magic; and an interplanetary war.
During the course of events so far, we've seen the Blue Beetle killed, we've discovered Power Girl is the original Supergirl, we've seen Earth Prime Superboy go mad and literally rip apart a bunch of Teen Titans, we've seen Jade killed and Kyle Rayner transformed into a being called Ion, we've seen Sasha Bordeaux turn into a new cyber-thing that it's hard to care about... and I think Hawkgirl may be dead. The Spectre has a new host, Deathstroke is suddenly cool, Bludhaven got nuked, the Wizard Shazam died, there's a new Blue Beetle, a new magical superteam called Shadowpact has formed, Jason Todd's returned to life, Superboy and Wonder Girl had sex, and all kinds of hell has broken loose.
The outcome is a vast money-spinner for DC with the potential for them to make some continuity quick-fixes to a bunch of titles that didn't really need it, and relaunch some deathly dull titles with an all-new all-exciting deathly dull continuity.
I hope this has been instructive; stand by for further news.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Infinite Crisis #6
[Now Experiencing] [Comics]
WARNING: Extreme spoilers. Those who care about such things should smash their computer monitors before reading on to protect their childlike innocence.
Well, I picked up my copy of Infinite Crisis issue 6. Once again my curses flow to DC for making me actually interested in a direct sequel to my least favourite crossover event of all time (except for maybe that Maxx/Gen-13 thing... *shudder*).
Good things about issue 6:
* Mr Terrific's sole power, being "completely invisible to all technology", after being almost totally ignored through the entire run of JSA, finally becomes crucially relevant during the assault on Brother Eye.
*Black Adam pokes Psycho Pirate's eyes out.
*Hal Jordan gets some opening lines on the first page that almost justify bringing him back from the dead.
Confusing things about issue 6:
* Brother Eye appears to recognise Batman as a metahuman ("subject alpha") although is able to tell that Nightwing is a normal human ("subject beta").
* Alex Luthor has apparently melded one or more of the versions of Superman with one or more versions of Lex Luthor.
Things about issue 6 that I haven't made my mind up about yet:
* The "real" Superboy (Conner) appears to be dead (presumably to pave the way for the big Superboy continuity changes - see below).
And... well, as you probably guessed was coming, the entire DC continuity has been reforged again. The second last page of the issue features a bunch of the "continuity shards" from Superboy et al's glass prison - I'm not sure if these are meant to be things that DID happen now or DIDN'T happen.... but two noteworthy appearances in the pictures are a newspaper headline showing that (as per Batman Begins), the murderer of Thomas and Martha Wayne was caught and arrested - one Joe Chill. And a picture of Superboy growing up in Smallville (as per the TV show). It looks like DC are trying to get their comics back in line with the currently more successful media versions. You can bet that the new changes to Superman are going to gel perfectly with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns movie.
Once again, I'm mostly very annoyed at Infinite Crisis. Some of its plotlines have been kind of cool (Identity Crisis/Crisis of Conscience), some have been interesting (the new prominence of Deathstroke, for example), but some have done nothing but potentially ruin some titles that were doing perfectly fine, like Batman and the Teen Titans. Sigh. At least it doesn't suck as much as the original Crisis on Infinite Earths (although maybe that's just because I'm more up on the current state of continuity going into Infinite Crisis than I was for the original).
As I write, I'm looking glumly at the Omac Project Infinite Crisis special, which takes place immediately after IC #6. Will it be any better? It's got Greg Rucka's name on the cover -that's a good sign, right? I'll read it a bit later, I think.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Not Playing Oblivion
[Now Experiencing] [Computer Gaming]
Nope. Nu-uh. Not playing Oblivion. It's too darn popular for its own good. Someone has to take a stand and NOT play this gaming powerhouse. A line must be drawn, and in my case that line has been drawn at buying Oblivion, looking at the box very closely, checking out the free collector's edition extras, feeling the wonderful texture on the DVD, speculating on the meaning of the screenshots, and then putting it on a shelf and replaying Morrowind.
What I am is a hero for our age. Some sort of inspirational book may be forthcoming.
Nope. Nu-uh. Not playing Oblivion. It's too darn popular for its own good. Someone has to take a stand and NOT play this gaming powerhouse. A line must be drawn, and in my case that line has been drawn at buying Oblivion, looking at the box very closely, checking out the free collector's edition extras, feeling the wonderful texture on the DVD, speculating on the meaning of the screenshots, and then putting it on a shelf and replaying Morrowind.
What I am is a hero for our age. Some sort of inspirational book may be forthcoming.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Cyberthings I Wish To Cyberattend
[News] [Game Design]
As if I needed more reasons to be in Perth in December, I've just discovered that Murdoch Uni will be playing host to the 2006 Joint International Conference on Cybergames and Interactive Entertainment.
And if that isn't a name that smacks of "made up by a government department" then I don't know what is. Come on, "Cybergames"? Phone message: William Gibson called; he wants the 1980s back.
It's completely unclear at this stage (to me) whether it's industry invitational, meaning that I'd need to put on an outrageous Norwegian accent to get a press pass, or whether I can saunter in as an "academic". It's also unclear whether it's a serious conference with serious people, or just an excuse for Western Australia to trot out whatever homebrew companies it has growing in the bottom of its fridge. I'll send them an email and ask.
Further details to follow; or, alternatively, a lack of interest and complete apathy to follow - stay tuned to discover which!
As if I needed more reasons to be in Perth in December, I've just discovered that Murdoch Uni will be playing host to the 2006 Joint International Conference on Cybergames and Interactive Entertainment.
And if that isn't a name that smacks of "made up by a government department" then I don't know what is. Come on, "Cybergames"? Phone message: William Gibson called; he wants the 1980s back.
It's completely unclear at this stage (to me) whether it's industry invitational, meaning that I'd need to put on an outrageous Norwegian accent to get a press pass, or whether I can saunter in as an "academic". It's also unclear whether it's a serious conference with serious people, or just an excuse for Western Australia to trot out whatever homebrew companies it has growing in the bottom of its fridge. I'll send them an email and ask.
Further details to follow; or, alternatively, a lack of interest and complete apathy to follow - stay tuned to discover which!
My Little +1 Pony Of Wounding
[News] [RPG]
Best April Fool's Day gag of the year. It turns out that Wizards of the Coast are good for something after all.
Best April Fool's Day gag of the year. It turns out that Wizards of the Coast are good for something after all.
12 Monkeys [1995]
[Now Experiencing] [Film]
This is another re-watching of an old favourite; I think this was my third viewing of 12 Monkeys, but it was my girlfriend's first. I've been trying to get her to watch it for ages but she'd been holding off because she'd heard it was "too depressing". Hopefully she has now been cured of this madness.
For those not aware, 12 Monkeys is a time travel story. In 1997, Earth is struck overnight by a devastating plague which kills 5 billion people. The survivors flee underground; their only clues to the source of the disaster are graffiti left by the mysterious Army of the Twelve Monkeys, bearing the legend, "We Did It". James Cole (Bruce Willis: Die Hard, The Sixth Sense) is a recidivist criminal in this post-apocalyptic world. Because of his photographic memory, he is selected to undergo an experimental procedure to travel back to 1996 to find the source of the plague to help the scientists of his time find a cure.
Unfortunately, the procedure does not go according to plan, and instead of reaching 1996 he passes through a series of incorrect eras, including Philadelphia in 1990 and France in World War I. Along the way he meets psychiatric patient Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt: Seven, Fight Club) and psychiatrist Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe: The Last of the Mohicans, Bad Girls).
While the movie does not manage to avoid the obligatory time travel paradox, it does pull it off well. More importantly, though, the film finds depth by exploring the reactions of Willis and Stowe to the upcoming apocalypse - faced with the immutability of time, how do they deal with the oncoming unavertable tragedy?
This is easily Madeleine Stowe's best performance (although that's not hard). It's also the first glimmers of the "serious actor" that Bruce Willis was about to become with films such as The Sixth Sense, and it's Brad Pitt at the height of his career during the period that produced Interview With The Vampire, Seven, and Fight Club, delivering a beautifully realised performance as the jittery manic Goines. (IMDB cites a story that director Terry Gilliam induced this performance by depriving Pitt of cigarrettes for the duration of filming.)
Speaking of Terry Gilliam, you always have to be a little on guard approaching a Gilliam film. On the one hand, he created the excellent Brazil and The Fisher King. On the other hand, his name is on the credits of The Brothers Grimm. Luckily 12 Monkeys is more like the first two than the latter. Gilliam excels in reinforcing Willis' disorientation and alienation in the world of the past by continually transforming familiar urban evironments into bewildering mazes of angles seen from bizarre perspectives. A manor estate becomes a series of disjointed rooms and looming spiralling staircases; an airport becomes at once claustrophobic and agoraphobic with high angle shots of jostling crowds and tight constrained close-ups of key figures. This is excellent and distinctive direction and largely is what elevates the movie from generic science-fiction into an engaging and compelling narrative.
Well worth your watching; the mid to late 90s were blessed with an embarassment of riches in quality science fiction and this easily stands among the most noteworthy.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Class Struggle
[Game Design]
Corvus over at Man Bytes Blog has been on something of a crusade of late against the concept of "classes" in game design. Now, he probably doesn't know me from Adam, but this is a subject I've happily discussed before in detail, so I'm going to wade in and bare my thoughts on the topic.
What are "character classes"? Well, basically, they're a way of taking what would otherwise be a generic blank-template character in a game and very quickly assigning it a bunch of characteristics, including some or all of the following: aptitudes, abilities, fighting style, appearance, social status, motivation, normal approach to problem solving, starting equipment, political affiliations, and home town.
When we're talking about class in game design, we're really talking class in RPG design, as other genres are yet to really make use of this design element. If you're familiar with many traditional RPGs, you'll probably have encountered the four basic classes as laid down all those years ago by D&D:
* the fighter (mostly close range melee specialist, able to take lots of damage and deal medium damage)
* the mage (versatile spellcaster, able to deal lots of damage very quickly but unable to receive much damage or sustain their output)
* the cleric (healing and support character, whose job is largely to keep their teammates alive and apply positive "buffs" or blessings to improve the abilities of teammates)
* the thief (a stealth specialist, whose prime skills include scouting, theft, lockpicking, and sometimes fast-talking)
Some RPGs also make use of the idea of "races". These mostly act as a secondary layer of class, performing the same functions, so I won't deal with them separately.
Classes really perform two functions. Firstly, in a game that actually allows real roleplaying (very rare in computer gaming, though games like Fallout and the Elder Scrolls series have come very close) anyone who's ever picked up someone who's never roleplayed before and dunked them into a new game will quickly discover an interesting truth - that most people are, by and large, very bad roleplayers. A game is, at its heart, a system of limits, and people will instictively try and interact with a game in terms of those limits. If you give them an avatar that has power without purpose, they will exercise that power fully until they find its limits.
This can have funny results; I'm sure anyone who's tabletop RPGed will have seen a session of "peasant-burning" or similar atrocities; they will have seen creative uses of powers that are totally not in the spirit of the game, such as boiling an anthill to gain a level (because if all kills have an XP value then ants must be worth a tiny, tiny amount of XP - luckily there's hundreds and thousands of the suckers down there in that hill...); and the list goes on.
Or there's the other problem, of an avatar with means but no motivation. New players attempting to roleplay quickly come to the problem of, "Well, why am I hanging around with you jerks? My character has better things to do." That is, they've done enough thinking to see a lack of motivation for their character, but they're not experienced enough storytellers to fill that gap by themselves.
In this situation classes are a godsend. In a system of limits, they are just another limit. Telling someone they're a "fighter class" solves a barrel of problems. It implies a place in the world (normally that of a wandering sellsword). It implies a motivation (money and glory). It implies a favoured approach to problem solving (the use of force) and a few hints about ways they can implement that (feats of strength, skills such as "disarm"). The novice roleplayer is immediately on their way to a meaningful game.
Now, I'm not saying that every implementation of class systems achieves this. Some are, in fact, very bad at achieving this (I'm looking at D&D as a whole, for example). But that's the potential gain you can achieve with an intelligent class system.
Now, in electronic games, there's not nearly so much capacity for roleplaying. But you'll notice above when I listed out the old D&D classes that I defined them in terms of their abilities. And that's really the key to them in an electronic game. In a single player game, they act in much the same way as a difficulty selector - to allow the player to customise their experience. The class selection screen is really asking the player how they like to approach games - do they want an experience filled with fighting, or with versatile problem solving, or with helping others to achieve their goals, or with talking and outwitting? (In fact, this is starting to sound a lot like a variety of game audience modelling studies...)
Again, in order to gain the benefits of this system, you need to support it. If you want the choice to be meaningful, then you have to have just as many problems that you can solve through the thief set of skills that you can with the fighter set of skills. If you want to look at a near-perfect implementation of this, check out the very first Quest for Glory game (also known as Hero's Quest). Here there are three classes (fighter, mage, thief) and the game is fully solvable as each class, requiring not only different solutions to puzzles but a completely different approach to playing. And yet it still feels like the same cohesive game, rather than a different game for each class. (The sequels also did alright at this.) Today, Fallout and the Elder Scrolls games are doing a fairly decent job (although not perfect).
In an online RPG, the classes have yet another element to them, and this is in terms of team building. I may have thought people are inherently bad at roleplaying, but that's nothing compared with their ability to form an efficient team with complete strangers - they, to put it simply, suck at it. Classes are a very quick and simple way to make teams. You identify each role that you think a team in your game will require to function, and make it a class. Then building a team is easy (you need X amount of each class for a perfect team), and each person in that team knows in rough terms what their role will be. You quicky overcome the problem of "too many chefs". Your class system may even provide some guidance as to who should lead, in the absence of someone having clear expertise.
Again (and I'll keep saying this), if you want this benefit, you need to do it well. If you have six classes, then a standard team should be six people that needs one of each class. You DON'T want the situation where they need, say, two fighters, but they only want a thief if they can't find anything better. (I'm looking at you, World of Warcraft.)
Finally, no matter what your gaming medium, classes have a single inescapable benefit, and this is the benefit that has been realised most thoroughly by White Wolf in their World of Darkness RPGs. Classes provide an entry point, via market segmentation. If you look at your potential market, and divide it into groups (by whatever modelling system), and then create one class specifically to please each group, then anyone from your market who approaches the game will immediately be able to see where they fit within the game and the way in which they can enjoy it. I'd suggest basing this on what it is about your game that each market segment will enjoy and identify with. In the RPG Vampire: The Masquerade, White Wolf identified a market segment that wanted to play vampires as hideous monsters lurking in the shadows, and wanted that kind of pacing and atmosphere -so they created the Nosferatu clan. Then they saw a group that saw vampires as ruthless feral killers - so they created the Gangrel. Here, choosing a class effectively lets you set what type of game you are playing, both in mood and atmosphere, to the sort that you enjoy. In choosing a class you immediately feel like you've made it "your game", and gained a feeling that you're at least starting on ground that feels comfortable.
So in summary, sure, I think there's a lot of great things that can be done with classless games, but the concept of character classes hasn't endured for the last four decades entirely by accident - it's continued because it offers real, tangible benefits to your game design. It continues to be an excellent way to offer players individuality and expression in a narrative game, and to offer them direction and purpose in a game filled with complex mechanics.
Corvus over at Man Bytes Blog has been on something of a crusade of late against the concept of "classes" in game design. Now, he probably doesn't know me from Adam, but this is a subject I've happily discussed before in detail, so I'm going to wade in and bare my thoughts on the topic.
What are "character classes"? Well, basically, they're a way of taking what would otherwise be a generic blank-template character in a game and very quickly assigning it a bunch of characteristics, including some or all of the following: aptitudes, abilities, fighting style, appearance, social status, motivation, normal approach to problem solving, starting equipment, political affiliations, and home town.
When we're talking about class in game design, we're really talking class in RPG design, as other genres are yet to really make use of this design element. If you're familiar with many traditional RPGs, you'll probably have encountered the four basic classes as laid down all those years ago by D&D:
* the fighter (mostly close range melee specialist, able to take lots of damage and deal medium damage)
* the mage (versatile spellcaster, able to deal lots of damage very quickly but unable to receive much damage or sustain their output)
* the cleric (healing and support character, whose job is largely to keep their teammates alive and apply positive "buffs" or blessings to improve the abilities of teammates)
* the thief (a stealth specialist, whose prime skills include scouting, theft, lockpicking, and sometimes fast-talking)
Some RPGs also make use of the idea of "races". These mostly act as a secondary layer of class, performing the same functions, so I won't deal with them separately.
Classes really perform two functions. Firstly, in a game that actually allows real roleplaying (very rare in computer gaming, though games like Fallout and the Elder Scrolls series have come very close) anyone who's ever picked up someone who's never roleplayed before and dunked them into a new game will quickly discover an interesting truth - that most people are, by and large, very bad roleplayers. A game is, at its heart, a system of limits, and people will instictively try and interact with a game in terms of those limits. If you give them an avatar that has power without purpose, they will exercise that power fully until they find its limits.
This can have funny results; I'm sure anyone who's tabletop RPGed will have seen a session of "peasant-burning" or similar atrocities; they will have seen creative uses of powers that are totally not in the spirit of the game, such as boiling an anthill to gain a level (because if all kills have an XP value then ants must be worth a tiny, tiny amount of XP - luckily there's hundreds and thousands of the suckers down there in that hill...); and the list goes on.
Or there's the other problem, of an avatar with means but no motivation. New players attempting to roleplay quickly come to the problem of, "Well, why am I hanging around with you jerks? My character has better things to do." That is, they've done enough thinking to see a lack of motivation for their character, but they're not experienced enough storytellers to fill that gap by themselves.
In this situation classes are a godsend. In a system of limits, they are just another limit. Telling someone they're a "fighter class" solves a barrel of problems. It implies a place in the world (normally that of a wandering sellsword). It implies a motivation (money and glory). It implies a favoured approach to problem solving (the use of force) and a few hints about ways they can implement that (feats of strength, skills such as "disarm"). The novice roleplayer is immediately on their way to a meaningful game.
Now, I'm not saying that every implementation of class systems achieves this. Some are, in fact, very bad at achieving this (I'm looking at D&D as a whole, for example). But that's the potential gain you can achieve with an intelligent class system.
Now, in electronic games, there's not nearly so much capacity for roleplaying. But you'll notice above when I listed out the old D&D classes that I defined them in terms of their abilities. And that's really the key to them in an electronic game. In a single player game, they act in much the same way as a difficulty selector - to allow the player to customise their experience. The class selection screen is really asking the player how they like to approach games - do they want an experience filled with fighting, or with versatile problem solving, or with helping others to achieve their goals, or with talking and outwitting? (In fact, this is starting to sound a lot like a variety of game audience modelling studies...)
Again, in order to gain the benefits of this system, you need to support it. If you want the choice to be meaningful, then you have to have just as many problems that you can solve through the thief set of skills that you can with the fighter set of skills. If you want to look at a near-perfect implementation of this, check out the very first Quest for Glory game (also known as Hero's Quest). Here there are three classes (fighter, mage, thief) and the game is fully solvable as each class, requiring not only different solutions to puzzles but a completely different approach to playing. And yet it still feels like the same cohesive game, rather than a different game for each class. (The sequels also did alright at this.) Today, Fallout and the Elder Scrolls games are doing a fairly decent job (although not perfect).
In an online RPG, the classes have yet another element to them, and this is in terms of team building. I may have thought people are inherently bad at roleplaying, but that's nothing compared with their ability to form an efficient team with complete strangers - they, to put it simply, suck at it. Classes are a very quick and simple way to make teams. You identify each role that you think a team in your game will require to function, and make it a class. Then building a team is easy (you need X amount of each class for a perfect team), and each person in that team knows in rough terms what their role will be. You quicky overcome the problem of "too many chefs". Your class system may even provide some guidance as to who should lead, in the absence of someone having clear expertise.
Again (and I'll keep saying this), if you want this benefit, you need to do it well. If you have six classes, then a standard team should be six people that needs one of each class. You DON'T want the situation where they need, say, two fighters, but they only want a thief if they can't find anything better. (I'm looking at you, World of Warcraft.)
Finally, no matter what your gaming medium, classes have a single inescapable benefit, and this is the benefit that has been realised most thoroughly by White Wolf in their World of Darkness RPGs. Classes provide an entry point, via market segmentation. If you look at your potential market, and divide it into groups (by whatever modelling system), and then create one class specifically to please each group, then anyone from your market who approaches the game will immediately be able to see where they fit within the game and the way in which they can enjoy it. I'd suggest basing this on what it is about your game that each market segment will enjoy and identify with. In the RPG Vampire: The Masquerade, White Wolf identified a market segment that wanted to play vampires as hideous monsters lurking in the shadows, and wanted that kind of pacing and atmosphere -so they created the Nosferatu clan. Then they saw a group that saw vampires as ruthless feral killers - so they created the Gangrel. Here, choosing a class effectively lets you set what type of game you are playing, both in mood and atmosphere, to the sort that you enjoy. In choosing a class you immediately feel like you've made it "your game", and gained a feeling that you're at least starting on ground that feels comfortable.
So in summary, sure, I think there's a lot of great things that can be done with classless games, but the concept of character classes hasn't endured for the last four decades entirely by accident - it's continued because it offers real, tangible benefits to your game design. It continues to be an excellent way to offer players individuality and expression in a narrative game, and to offer them direction and purpose in a game filled with complex mechanics.
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