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Areala

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Blog Entries posted by Areala

  1. Areala
    Areala's "What If..." Game Design series is a partially-serious, partially-tongue-in-cheek, completely-hyphen-laden look at what would happen if things that are not currently video games were turned into video games under her supervision.

    Part One


    Our first foray into this strange and uncharted world of would-be game design merges two of Areala's most favorite things: Dungeons & Dragons and adventure games in an effort to create the ultimate player-slaying nastyfest. I speak of none other than porting Gary Gygax's most infamous adventure to the digital realm. I speak of the world of Greyhawk, an isolated location, and a tournament-level adventure module that required brains over brawn and more than a little luck to traverse successfully. I speak of...The Tomb of Horrors.
    A little backstory probably will not go amiss here for those of you who are not familiar with D&D before the introduction of feats, epic-level spells, and 1st-level characters that were more powerful than they had any right to be. But chances are, if you played in a gaming group in the 1970s or the 1980s, you or at least one of the people in your group had played through (or sadistically run other characters through) S1: The Tomb of Horrors. Most of them would never see their beloved characters again, and the module earned itself something of a reputation for being a "killer dungeon". For the author Gary Gygax though, it was no such thing. Yes, it could chop, cut, slice, dice, disintegrate, crush, maim, fold, spindle, mutilate and liquify characters better than any blender ever invented, but it was a cerebral adventure. Players were told going into it that they would have to play at the top of their games in order to best the Tomb and all its traps. In this case, it meant making very liberal use of powers available to their characters and high doses of common sense available to their players. Failure to respect the Tomb and its demilich creator, Acererak, would, at best, result in loss of limbs, and at worst, the loss of a character's very soul. So...why would any self-respecting character go anywhere near this meat grinder? Simple...treasure. And lots of it. Acererak accumulated all kinds of phat loot over the course of his life and unlife, and anybody who finds it could easily retire and live a lifestyle that would be the envy of kings everywhere.
    Dungeons & Dragons has been brought to the digital world literally dozens of times over the years since its creation. DragonLance, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Al-Qadim, and Greyhawk have all been brought to pixellated life on the PC, NES, Super Nintendo, Macintosh, Playstation 2, Xbox, and countless other computers and consoles. The Black Isle-crafted Planescape: Torment is considered by many gamers to be one of the best CRPGs ever created. And the games based on the property have been as varied as the license they are based on itself: Turn-based, real-time strategy, first-person, third-person, action/platformer, MMORPG...the list goes on and on. Some printed adventures have been based on the computer games ("Curse of the Azure Bonds"), while some games have been based on classic adventures that have been around for years ("The Temple of Elemental Evil"). All in all, D&D is ubiquitous in the computer gaming world. So...why no Tomb of Horrors? It's time to ask, instead, "Why not Tomb of Horrors?" And here's my answer.
    The simple fact is, nobody's done Tomb of Horrors because, done the way Gary Gygax wrote the original adventure, it would get reviews that would make the Angry Video Game Nerd's screeds seem like perfect examples of high-court politeness and well-versed etiquette. The closest anybody has come thusfar is probably Eidos's "Deathtrap Dungeon," and have you looked at the review scores for that lately? Players don't like dying, they especially don't like dying repeatedly, and the vast majority of gamers out there simply wouldn't get the concept that Tomb of Horrors was trying to push: common sense and a little preparation work can succeed where the combined might of six major nations would fail. Have you ever watched a hardcore first-person shooter gamer play a survival horror title? Have you actually been able to stop laughing long enough to really watch them? Survival horror has different rules than shooters, like closer health monitoring, puzzle-solving, and resource conservation. In FPS design, not giving the player enough ammo is a game-killing flaw. In survival horror, the reverse is true: providing the player with too many bullets removes the fear that goes along with the need to make every shot count. So the most important question when it comes to designing the "Tomb of Horrors" is what genre of game should it be? Two good concepts for this in my opinion would be third-person 3D (like "Dead Space" or "Tomb Raider"), or first-person point-and-click adventure (like "Scratches"). "Tomb of Horrors" is better suited to the latter approach in many ways, especially because combat isn't a major part of the scenario and the player can take his or her time, and puzzle-solving plays a fairly large part in successfully navigating the dungeon. The former, however, has the ability to put the player directly into the surroundings via his or her avatar and get a better sense of his or her position within the dungeon. Also, when combat occurs, there won't be a need for any jarring transition to a different viewpoint since everything can very seamlessly be handled within the confines of the game engine. An inventory system, for looking closer at objects, reading clues and so forth, could work very much like Resident Evil, with the ability to examine and rotate objects 360-degrees. A map of some kind is essential, so we would need to either assign space on the screen for an automap, or else make it available via button press like Oblivion. A journal section to keep track of information and allow the player to write things down would also be helpful. For these reasons, if I was designing the game, I would go with the third-person 3D perspective with the inventory, journal, map and other options available on a second screen, and perhaps a toggle to let the player decide whether activating the inventory or map happens in real-time or if it pauses the game.
    Now that we've gotten our history lesson and our presentation selection out of the way, we'll pause for the time being and pick up in later installments with ideas concerning player character choices, difficulty settings, puzzles and level design. And as always, your input and comments are very much welcome.
  2. Areala
    We all know Easter Eggs. Not the kind the bunny goes around hiding, but the little hidden things programmers and designers leave in the game for players to find. Most commonly, these are debugging codes that allow you to skip levels, fill your inventory, max your powers, become invulnerable or other tools that let testers whisk quickly from one place to another without having to play the game from the start time after time after time. Less commonly, you'll find things like hidden playable characters, bonus levels, or other sorts of little gifts that could be leftovers cut from the game before they were fully implemented but still buried in the code just waiting to be found. Less common still are entire games hidden within the games themselves, like the version of Pong hidden in Mortal Kombat II.
    But while there are endless varieties of easter eggs and cheat codes, there's one out there that just beats the rest of them all into oblivion. It's hidden on a golf game, of all places, it has nothing at all to do with sports, and it'll take some serious digging to find it, so well was it hidden. And yet, there it sits, waiting for you to see if your copy is blessed with what has to be the most bizarre easter egg in video game history.
    Take your copy of Tiger Woods '99 for the Playstation. Don't put it in your game system. Instead, take it to your PC and stick it into the CD drive. Open the disc, take a look through the files, and look for one named ZZDUMMY.DAT. Open it with Media Player, and marvel at the utter absurdity that is Matt Stone and Trey Parker's five minute original South Park cartoon, "The Spirit of Christmas". On an EA Sports title. Words are not adequate.
    Well...what if you can't find it? That's not terribly surprising. EA pulled the original shipment of CDs that had the file on it and had them returned from stores. The file only shows up on the first batch that they pressed, so unless you bought one of the first, say, 100,000 copies of the game, you're out of luck. If you have it, though, hold on to it, guard it with your life, and show it to all your friends. Because you, my friend, own an absolutely absurd piece of video game history.
  3. Areala
    One of the best things about flipping through old magazines is, of course, the ads. Doesn't matter whether you're looking at EGM or National Geographic, the ads always hold up a mirror to the culture of the time period. Advertisers know that twenty years later, neither anyone's going to care about the way an ad looks, nor will they be mocked for it by future-dwelling homo sapiens.
    Because of the internet, they're also wrong.
    Video game ads don't often approach this level of hilarity, but my lord, just take a look at Captain Mullet here mugging for Gaiares on the Sega Genesis. Nowadays, this sort of thing would be a pre-order bonus from Amazon.com or Gamestop, but back in the day you didn't pre-order games, you just showed up and bought them whenever the hell they came out. Sometimes retailers like Sears or Babbage's would pay to get some promotional content they could give away in the hopes of getting customers into their stores. Sometimes this stuff was neat.
    Other times...well, let's just say wearing this shirt to school would have ensured two things. First, you were definitely not going to get that girl to notice you. Second, you were going to get the mother of all wedgies.
    There's good geek cred and bad geek cred. Good geek cred back then (September of 1991, when this ad ran in GamePro) would have been owning the Genesis. Bad geek cred: wearing this shirt in public. Advertising hint: if you feel the need to explain how to properly pronounce the name of your product (and you aren't a manufacturer of pharmaceuticals), come up with a new name.
    It's probably a collector's item these days (the game's no slouch in that department either). Just...if you're going to wear it, please have the decency to sport a proper hairdo. Oh, and Nair your upper lip too. The dirt 'stache is so 1989...
  4. Areala
    Digging through the collection, I unearthed this gem discussing a really awesome-looking game being developed by Accolade for the Genesis and Super Nintendo. I'm pretty familiar with the bulk of the Super Nintendo library, but I didn't remember ever seeing this title on the market. Was it yet another unreleased game previewed by EGM, this time in their January, 1994 issue?
    A quick trip to GameFaqs confirmed my suspicions: Fireteam Rogue was in development in the mid-90s and then axed before completion. Another quick trip, this time to Google, loaded me down with plenty of information on this gem, making me wish like anything it had been finished.
    At first glance, Fireteam Rogue sounds more like a tech demo than anything else. Using various data and graphical compression algorithms, Accolade was proposing to take a 40MB game and stuff it into a 2MB game cart. Insane? Possibly. But just imagine if they'd managed to pull it off.
    Accolade was promising 100 hours of gameplay experiences, including side-scrolling action levels and Mode 7 shooting stages. Evan G. (with the help of some credited scans from Retromags!) put together a slew of awesome information over at SNES Central that's well worth reading as opposed to having me just rehash it here including a number of screenshots. In addition, he's got two different alpha prototypes of the SNES version available for download, a link to the comic book Accolade put together to support this game, commentary from a couple people involved in its development, and a variety of FAQ sheets, handouts, letters and other goodies for perusal.
    In the end, like so many other unreleased games (and sometimes even ones that do make it to market), it seems like this one came down to too much time and money spent on hype and too little time and energy devoted to development. The important thing is even though it wasn't released, it wasn't forgotten either. And who knows--maybe in the future, we'll see a more complete version and can be better equipped to judge for ourselves just how great a loss the gaming world suffered for its lack.
    Until then? Well, we'll just have to keep digging through the archives. I hope you'll keep searching with me.
  5. Areala

    EGM - A Day In The Life

    By Areala,

    Every so often, the magazines from back in the day would give us a peek behind the scenes so that the rest of us would know (or at least have a vaguely better idea) what those weirdos whose names all appeared on the masthead at the front of the magazine did for the magazine besides the obvious.
    So for their 50th issue, EGM treated us to a four-page spread of insider information, Photoshopped antics, personal photos, and other goodies. In case it's not obvious, this is one of the best reasons to collect and preserve these magazines. Information on the games they covered is ubiquitous today, but this stuff is not.
    If you need a better reason, then how about the fact that Review Crew guru Martin Alessi is a member of none other than these very forums? This guy's been there, done that, and owns several dozen tractor trailer loads of t-shirts to prove it.
    What I wouldn't give for a blog of memories from HIM here (hint, hint, Mr. Alessi, if you're reading...)
    In fact, let's just say that we've got a lot more pictures than the ones posted above (which the gallery decided to run right-to-left instead of left-to-right, because screw me, that's why...*sigh*) featuring the good gentleman. Digging the 'stache yet? There's more where that came from. Threats? Me? Oh no, just reporting the facts, ladies and gents.
    Just reporting the facts.
  6. Areala
    Remember Socks? He was the black and white feline counterpart to former US President Bill Clinton. Children everywhere used to write letters to Socks (and his canine bro, Buddy); the best of these got collected and published in a book entitled, "Dear Socks, Dear Buddy." Everybody loved the First Pets, so what better way to show your appreciation for all their trials and tribulations around the White House than to immortalize one in a video game?
    Er...right.
    So somebody at Kaneko has this bright idea for a video game starring Socks. Upper management does their round table discussion thing, and out of all the other ideas you know were being tossed around, this one was voted 'Most Likely to Succeed' and given the green light. What was it up against, the audio designer's son's idea for a game starring an anthropomorphic popcorn kernel who "puffs up" to fight evil with his extra-buttery powers?
    Wait a minute, that's not a bad idea. Anyway, anyway, where were we? Oh yes, Socks.
    Now if the story ended here, it would be totally understandable. Video game concepts are born, struggle and die slow, horrible deaths every single day. For every game that gets a complete, finalized release, there are probably between five and ten that get cancelled sometime between the concept and initial development phases. And if that's what had happened to Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill, then this would be no more interesting than reading about other games that never made it to the shelves. Think The Cheetahmen II, or...you know, on second thought, don't.
    Here's the thing though. Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill was planned from the start to be a political parody, not just another "me too" cash-in on the 2D platformer market. The First Cat has to dodge shifty politicians and battle bosses designed to look like past political figures like Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and even presidential hopeful Ross Perot so he can get to POTUS in time to warn him about stolen nuclear weapons? Hellfire and damnation, this might have worked!
    Not only did this game get the green light, not only did it get ads in prominent gaming mags of the day (this one's from the January 1994 issue of GamePro), not only did it have completed box artwork, but it was finished. Done. Completed. It went gold. This sucker was locked, cocked and ready to rock, a fully-loaded 16-bit saga waiting to blast off on the Super NES, with reviews in GamePro, EGM and even Nintendo Power which overall gave it a slightly above average rating.
    Then Kaneko said, "Sorry guys, no more USA division." They closed up shop, headed back to Japan, and left poor Socks high and dry. Not surprisingly, no other US publishers stepped in to save the venture leaving US gamers to wonder what happened to that game about the President's cat.
  7. Areala
    Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of Gunpei Yokoi's death.
    Many things we take for granted in the gaming world today can be tracked back to this man, including the cross-shaped directional pad (NES), portable gaming systems (Game Boy), and Metroid (every freakin' Nintendo system except the N64).
    Not bad for a janitor.
    Yokoi was a simple custodial worker and maintenance man at one of Nintendo's hanafuda (playing card) manufacturing plants, where he amused himself in his spare time by tinkering and building gadgets. One of these toys, a sort of extendable grasping claw arm, was seen by Nintendo's president Hiroshi Yamauchi during a visit to the factory. Fascinated with the idea, Yamauchi asked Yokoi if he could develop the idea further into a sellable product. Yokoi agreed, and the Ultra Hand was born.
    It was 1966, and Nintendo sold over a million of them to Japanese children. Impressed with Yokoi's ability to innovate, Yamauchi asked him to create some more toys for Nintendo. He did so, and thus from humble beginnings rose one of the greatest video game innovators of the twentieth century.
    Yokoi came up with the idea for the Game & Watch as a way for bored businessmen to kill some time while waiting between meetings or while riding the trains to and from work. He advised a struggling Shigeru Miyamoto in game design theory to help him develop the game that would eventually become Donkey Kong and the franchise-launching Mario Bros.
    From there, he helped produce the now-legendary Metroid on the NES, followed that up as project director for Kid Icarus, then came up with this little-known doo-dad called the Game Boy. Thanks to Yokoi, Nintendo has dominated the portable console market for more than twenty years, laughing at every would-be challenger who tries to dethrone them.
    In other words, if you've played or enjoyed a video game since 1985, chances are you owe a Mother Brain-sized debt of respect to this man.
    He resigned from Nintendo to start his own company in 1996 following the failure of a Virtual Boy system which was rushed to market too early and priced far too high to appeal to a broad consumer base. While they unveiled the Nintendo 64 at the Shoshinkai Software Exhibition in November of 1995, Yokoi was placed in a far-off corner of the trade show to demo games on the Virtual Boy. Needless to say, he was all but ignored by the attendees who were far more interested in Nintendo's forthcoming "Ultra Famicom". I think at that point, I'd have chosen to retire as well.
    Tragically, Yokoi was killed on October 4, 1997 when he was struck on the highway after getting out of his own vehicle to ascertain damage sustained in a collision with another car. Although rushed to the hospital, he died roughly two hours later. And the world lost a great innovator who in many respects never stopped being that humble custodian from 1966.
    Nintendo's American president, Howard Lincoln, said of Yokoi, "He had a great sense of humor, a great smile...a very generous and outgoing fellow. He made a tremendous amount of creative contributions to Nintendo and the video game business over the years. People play Game Boy all over the world, and that's Mr. Yokoi's." And all you have to do is look at his picture up there to know Lincoln was right.
    Like so many of the people who have inspired me over the years, I never got the opportunity to meet Gunpei Yokoi. Given the above remark by Mr. Lincoln, all I can think is how sorry I am that he's gone. When you can miss somebody whom you've never even met...well, I think that says something.
    Arigato gozaimasu, Yokoi-san. I hope one day we can share tea together.
  8. Areala
    "It's Gotta Be The Shoes." With that five-word tagline, Reebok launched a sneaker fad for the 90's over which people went absolutely apeshit. And just as with every other great product innovation, there had to be cross-promotion. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ate Pizza Hut pizza, Modern Warfare soldiers drank Pepsi, Alan Wake used Energizer batteries in his flashlight, and vampires wore Pumps in that classic NES title, Drac's Night Out.
    What's that? You've never played Drac's Night Out? You've never heard of Drac's Night Out? Eh, doesn't surprise me since Drac decided to stay inside at the last minute (maybe he had a fang-ache). Whatever the reason, the game was never released (though a prototype build eventually found its way onto the Internet years later).
    Consider Drac's Night Out one of the better casualties in the product placement wars. I mean, let's face it, there's no way in Transylvania a game boasting a protagonist clad in the most expensive athletic shoes produced at the time was going to be any good, right?
    Depends on who you ask, I suppose. Opinion on the prototype seems sharply divided: some lambaste it for being crap, others embrace the fact that it's unfinished and consider what might have been. But now, thanks to the magic of Retromags and a copy of GamePro issue #15 from Oct. 1990, you can see why history and preservation is so important. Here's yet another awesome example of why gaming magazines rocked back in the day. The editors got to play works-in-progress, and their requirement of a multi-month lead time on their publication dates meant it was entirely possible for them to review a game only to have that game disappear or re-emerge as something completely different later on.
    In any case, the object of Drac's Night Out is two-fold. First, one must deal with the interlopers who've decided to crash your castle. Once they've been murdered by your exceptional variety of traps, you move on to the next phase which is to take your carriage to town and find your true love Mina for a little midnight snack of the red variety. No, not Twizzlers. If you're really having problems in town though, there's a solution: strap on your Pumps, give them a couple of pumps for good measure, and suddenly you can run faster and jump higher than any vampire in history! Whatever happened to shapeshifting into a bat, transforming into a dog, or assuming mistform? More to the point, who had athletic shoes in 19th Century Europe? Nobody ever said video games were historically accurate.
    So here you can see yet another reason to comb through the annals of gaming yesteryear. I certainly never knew Drac's Night Out was planned for release, and would have had no reason to go searching for information on it had it not been for this article.
    Have you unearthed any long-buried secrets from your time spent browsing through the Retromags archives? Why not tell us about them on the forums! We'd love to hear about your finds.
  9. Areala
    "Hooo boy, Areala, do you really want to go here?"
    Yes, yes, I think I do. Because it's my blog, and it's my opinion, and you're all entitled to it. Besides, what's better than potentially starting a gigantic flame war over music and personal preferences? OK, besides sex. Right, nothing! So here's the deal. I'm going to list some covers that are better than the originals and explain why. You're all going to tell me how correct I am or that I'm going to burn in hell for blasphemy, and either way we'll all have a lot of fun and maybe even learn something!
    01 - Chris Isaak - Only The Lonely
    Don't get me wrong, I love Roy Orbison dearly, but holy cow did he get this one wrong. If you're going to sing a song about how only lonely people understand what you're going through, perhaps you shouldn't do it with backup singers and a poppy, upbeat tune that makes it sound like something you'd want to listen to on the way to a bubblegum beach party.
    Isaak's interpretation strips away all the gloss and performs it the way it should be performed: haunting, personal, and most of all...lonely. Just him and his guitar. And that's what real loneliness sounds like.
    02 - Kenny Chesney - I'm On Fire
    Springsteen's version of this song is perfect in every way, except that he sounds like some sort of creepy stalker intent on doing harm to the object of his desire. Now usually I'm not a fan of the country/rock crossovers, but Chesney has several things going for him. First of all, his voice is incredible (easily one of the greatest male vocalists working today), and secondly he can almost completely ditch the twang of his country voice when he wants to, which he does here to great effect.
    Contrasted with The Boss, Chesney's version sounds innocent and contemplative, more like a guy looking out his window at home and wondering aloud to himself. Back in the day, Chris Hanson would have been on Springsteen's narrator in a heartbeat. Chesney leaves things firmly in the realm of this quiet, unassuming guy who wouldn't hurt a fly just dreaming about a girl he'll probably never have and wishing things were different. Both versions of this song are great, but let's face it, Kenny one-upped Bruce on this one.
    03 - Nirvana - The Man Who Sold The World
    It's often not difficult to tell when someone's covering a song they didn't write, and this is doubly so when anybody covers David Bowie because, let's face it, if you're not an alien from outer space or the Goblin King, you've got no zarking idea what it means to be David Bowie. On the other hand, sometimes someone covers a song so well you wish they'd been the one to write it in the first place, because screw the original writer, it belongs to them.
    Such is the case with Nirvana's take on TMWSTW. Bowie's version is depressing, to be sure, but hearing Cobain belting out these lyrics is nearly soul-crushing especially when you consider that at the time he performed this song he was closing in on his final days on Earth. Nirvana's narrator for the song sounds like he's been dragged through the gutters of life, seen things no man should ever have to see, and depressingly lived to tell the tale. There's just no way to compare the two. Bowie sang it, Nirvana owned it. End of story.
    04 - Rod Stewart - Downtown Train
    Most of the people who read this blog probably have no idea that Rod Stewart didn't write this song (I certainly wasn't aware that Tom Waits penned it back when Stewart's version started getting radio play in the early 90s). But that's beside the point. Stewart may not have written the song, but he certainly gave it a life it never had from Waits who sounds as though he doesn't really care one way or another what happens to himself or the girl he's looking for.
    Stewart's version is much, much lighter than Waits' under-produced, understated one, and for some people that's precisely the reason to hate it, but I'm in the opposite camp. Stewart's version captures that mystery, that youthful sense of joy, where one still believes in the ideal that love can strike between strangers on a cloudy New York evening. Plus, the final minute of Stewart's version, which ends with a solo piano medley playing over some subdued night train sounds, is tranquility to the Nth degree. It's close-your-eyes-and-lay-back-in-bed beautiful.
    05 - Gary Jules - Mad World
    "This is the way the world ends," so goes the saying, "not with a bang, but a whisper." And if that's the case, Gary Jules' cover of Tears For Fears' Mad World is the song that will lull each and every one of us to sleep at the end. There's no reason, no reason at all, for a song about the insanity that is day-to-day life to be so damn relaxing.
    Tears' version has a Britpop sensibility about it, and there's nothing at all technically wrong with it. It's poking fun at the insanity of day-to-day life. But once Gary Jules slowly unfurls his depressing, dramatic rendering of the song, you've completely forgotten how the original version even sounded. Jules finds nothing funny about the fact that the dreams in which he's dying are the best he's ever had: he's resigned to it, and that makes it all the worse. The calming, matter-of-fact way he presents this gives the song a life it never had in its initial incarnation. That he covered it for the film Donnie Darko only makes it that much more powerful.
    06 - A-Ha - Crying in the Rain
    Carol King wrote it, the Everly Brothers made it famous, but A-Ha owns them both with this little-known take on the classic oldies tune.
    Folk rock sensibilities might be the last thing you expect from the group that brought us 'Take On Me,' a tune which almost single-handedly defines the 80's. And yet, somehow, these guys pull it off. Dammit, they pull it off, and I can't help it. It's now the definitive version of the song in my mind. There's really nothing else to say about it.
    07 - Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
    Buckley doesn't really change much of anything up on his cover of Leonard Cohen's original. But his delivery is smoother, more melancholy and (dare I say) a little romantic with just him and a guitar.
    Cohen's version has raw power behind it, what with that chorus backing him up, and there's no denying that whoever's singing it gets the advantage of enough Biblical symbolism in the lyrics to move even an atheist to tears. But for my money, Buckley does it just right, with the perfect mixture of irony and loss.
    08 - Ugly Kid Joe - Cat's in the Cradle
    If anything's going to get me crucified and flamed for this post, it'll be my opinion that UKJ's cover of Harry Chapin's classic is better than the original. But that's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.
    I think the biggest reason is that Ugly Kid Joe injects more emotion into their version. There's nothing technically wrong with the way Chapin sings the song, but the overall emotional rhythm is flat and unwavering. You listen to it and you have the sense that maybe dad doesn't even think there's anything that he could have done differently. UKJ's version, on the other hand, is angry and, at the end, faintly horrified at the way things turned out and are still going. There's a circle here that's going to remain unbroken. Chapin shrugs his shoulders, Joe lashes out in rage and sorrow. Give me the emotion over the neutrality any day.
    09 - Type O Negative - Cinnamon Girl
    Neil Young's original has this ethereal, almost dreamy quality to it, sounding every bit like a guy getting high between shows and fantasizing about how great it's going to be once he's made it in the biz. It's a fun little song, with an upbeat tempo, the sort of tune Neil Young's been turning out for decades.
    Which is why it's such a shock when Type O Negative chucks it in a coffin, lashes it to the trailer hitch of a hearse, and drags it through the mud, only to have it come out sounding like it actually has some soul behind it. Peter Steel's voice is almost the anti-Neil Young: where Young's voice is higher, flightier, and folksier, Steel's is lower, rougher and downright abrasive at times. There are plenty of pop songs you wouldn't have wanted this guy getting anywhere near back when he was alive, but Type O's take on Cinnamon Girl proves that even the weirdest ideas can bear exceptional fruit.
    10 - Mary Elizabeth McGlynn - Always On My Mind
    Brenda Lee's 1972 song of love-gone-astray has been covered by everyone from Elvis to Willie Nelson to the Pet Shop Boys. If you were getting into music in the 1970s or 1980s, there was a darn good chance you knew how to belt this one out when someone requested it in the club. It's a simple tune, with a neat set of lyrics behind it, and it's no wonder everyone fell in love with it.
    Then came "Silent Hill: Shattered Memories" where Akira Yamaoka re-scored it for much darker sensibilities. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn's treatment of this song draws it into the depths of suicidal despair. Elvis and Willie Nelson called you up to let you know they were thinking about you, and the Pet Shop Boys wanted you to dance to their beat. McGlynn is looking at your picture just as she's slashed her wrists, and this song's the last thing on her lips as she's bleeding out; there will be no second chance to get things right. Haunting, otherworldly, vaguely nightmarish, it's everything a song from a Silent Hill game should be, and it utterly demolishes every other version out there to achieve it.
    11 - Johnny Cash - Hurt
    This one's such a gimme it's almost not fair to include it on the list, which is why I gave it the eleven spot. Trent Reznor's version is gothic, angsty, and in great desire of inflicting serious damage on the people who caused him pain when he was younger. It's a dark and brooding song about working through one's anger at the world. You know, like most other Nine Inch Nails pieces.
    But even Reznor agrees that once Cash decided to cover it, that was game over ("It's not mine anymore," Reznor said in reaction to viewing the video). It's Cash's song, through and through, sung from the point of view of an older man looking back on his life and telling the young buck across from him, "Sit down, son, and let me explain a few things to you." When Reznor says he'll make you hurt, you believe him: he's probably carrying a knife or a baseball bat and not afraid to use it. When Cash says it though, it's twice as frightening. He's not going to punch you in the face or knife you in the ribs, he's just going to lay out your whole life before you and show you each and every awful thing you'll do and have done to you in return. You'll be done with Reznor's hurt after a stint in the hospital. Cash's will stay with you until they close the lid of your coffin. That's true power.
  10. Areala

    Teased By An Asylum

    By Areala,

    Are you crazy?
    Well, whether you are or not, you should consider the research. For example, did you know that ten out of every ten people polled by Hanwell Mental Institute's top-rated researchers tested positive for at least one mental illness, and eight out of those ten tested positive for two or more? And that three of those remaining eight were found to have a staggering five or more mental illnesses according to the soon-to-be-released DSM-V?
    Are you sure you're not crazy? Remember: a classic sign of insanity is refusal to accept the possibility that you might, in fact, be insane.
    Hanwell is here to help. While they're not accepting new patients quite yet (doors open in 2013, I'm told), the doctors and staff, as led by the team of completely certified, 100% absolutely sane Senscape developers, are willing to show prospective new inmates...er...patients around the grounds. Perhaps you've read their literature, but you're not sure if Hanwell is right for you. We here at Retrochick's Retroblog (all three of the personalities that have allowed themselves to be identified thusfar, at any rate) want what's best for you. You need help. You need compassion. You need to see why Hanwell makes a difference.



    You'll notice the cafeteria features a state-of-the-art sound system, capable of piping in soothing music through those speakers. A beautiful baroque classical sun dome provides generous amounts of natural light. There's plenty of table space, but not so much that you'll feel ostracized from your fellow patients. And with three daily meals, Hanwell's prepared to offer up everything a growing body needs, with almost all special dietary considerations met!



    The infirmary was established in 1912, and yet feels as timeless and modern as most hospitals built within the last ten years. You know they're serious about medicine when they have dedication plaques hanging above the doors. Hanwell's been there for 100 years--they'll be around for another 100 as long as they have this kind of solid history behind them.



    Hanwell has been featured in all the journals, newspapers, and trade publications as a reputable and noteworthy establishment, with safety and security of both doctors and patients held to the most exacting standards.



    At Hanwell, "[C]omfort is job two (since cures are job one)". Safety and security are provided by heavy locked doors with all glass tempered and covered over with thick, metallic gratings. Staff know where their keys are at all times, and are duly reprimanded for leaving them laying about where inmates could find them. And as you can see, the only thing coming between you and a good night's rest is one of Hanwell's custom-designed bed frames, imported directly from the manufacturers in Germany and Poland. A good night's sleep brings you one step closer to a cure!



    While we're at it, hygiene is job three, and Hanwell is proud to offer the finest in sanitary shower facilities, with full tile floors and cold water sprays. Best of all, these facilities are open for the use of patients and staff alike, with none of that traditional 'residents get the chaff while the nurses get the wheat' value system.



    Sinks, counter tops, even mirrors: all are made of the finest stainless steel, straight from the factories and mills in Indiana, and secured to the floor by industrial-strength bolts, guaranteed to never rust, chip or fade no matter how much abuse they take. Accidents can happen, but Hanwell prides itself on making sure they're as infrequent as a visit from Hally's Comet.
    Well, there you have it: a look at the finest our mental health system has to offer. But if this amazing insider look hasn't got you convinced, why not come down for a self-guided tour? You can see a small part of what Hanwell has to offer at no charge, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Just head on over to http://www.facethehorror.com/teaser and download the interactive Asylum Teaser today!
    Offer expires while you wait. Operators are standing by...



  11. Areala
    Today on Retrochick Retroblog, we're going to remind everyone why grammar is important, even when you're dealing with video games.
    To wit: please open the image on your left. This is the second page of a two-page-spread ad for the PS1 game Fighting Force, developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It comes from the Sept. 1997 issue of GamePro. I'm sure it ran in other magazines, I just happened to be reading this one when I spotted it. The first page contains an image of a guy holding a broken glass bottle, and some screenshots from the game, so it doesn't concern us here.
    But this page does. When ad copy is written incorrectly, you get phrases like "skinny ass arena" which don't mean what the writer thinks they mean because somebody left out one teeny-tiny little important piece of punctuation.
    -
    The hyphen. That blink-and-you-miss-it dash just above.
    What the writer should have written was "skinny-ass arena". Hyphenating "skinny-ass" means we're understanding that the word "ass" is attached to the word "skinny," and in this case is used to indicate the writer believes the arenas depicted in fighting games are not only small but also lame, unworthy, beneath contempt.
    Without the hyphen, things change. We are left with the impression of an unusually narrow, butt-filled arena. An arena of asses that, for whatever reason, is skinny. The shorter side of a stadium at a monster truck rally, I guess? I don't know.
    I'm reasonably sure that everybody who read this ad knew what the writers were intending to say (English grammar being remarkably pliable when it comes to things like this). At the same time, what they meant to say isn't what they actually said. Which made me laugh.
    And then made me cry a little inside.
  12. Areala
    Whether it's for a film, a television show or a video game, I'm a sucker for a great soundtrack. I'm even more of a sucker for soundtracks that don't have lyrics, where it feels more like an organic, singular entity than something that a dozen artists threw one track apiece at and called it a day. And Cliff Martinez reeled me in completely with his absolutely enthralling score for this year's viral outbreak disaster film "Contagion."



    Contagion, as a film, isn't a particularly traditional piece of film-making. Despite a star-studded cast including Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Laurence Fishburn, there's no central protagonist that we're rooting for from the start. Some of the big names even wind up getting killed off halfway through the movie (in one case about ten minutes in). But equally intriguing, there's no antagonist either (unless, of course, you consider the virus itself to be the bad guy). Those expecting a film similar to Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo's "Outbreak" will be sorely disappointed. There's no massive, over-arching government conspiracy involving the World Health Organization, no terrorist-released bacterium, no superbug that the CIA or NSA is willing to kill innocent people over in order to protect the secret. In short, Contagion is more like watching a documentary where you're able to see all sides of the problem, from backwater rural China to the CDC Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
    It's spooky without being horrifying, insidious without being overly dramatic (dying of flu-like symptoms, while awful, isn't exactly as cinematic as bleeding from your eye sockets while crapping out your own intestines and puking up your stomach lining a-la Ebola or Marburgh), and contains a very simple message: if a supervirus of this nature ever did sweep the globe, we (the viewing public) are woefully unprepared for the consequences.
    What gives considerable teeth to the film isn't the actors or the scene set pieces though. It's Martinez's modern-sounding, chill-inducing jazzy techno ambient minimalist score that sets our teeth on edge and causes us to shiver every time someone else in the theatre sneezes. His music doesn't hit you in the head so much as creep up inside your ears and sort of stir itself around in your brain. Where the virus is concerned, his music infiltrates your brain using catchy background rhythms that you'll be hearing long after they've gone silent, and overlays these themes with simple synth work that creeps around corners, sneaks through shadows, and makes you want to spritz yourself once more with the hand sanitizer, just to be on the safe side.
    If you're looking for a comparison, Contagion sounds very similar to what you'd get if you married the musical sound of Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy score with the early style of John Carpenter's work (The Thing and Halloween especially). Creepy, mellow, understated, and absolutely worth the cost, Martinez's soundtrack is the strongest asset the film has, and yet its tracks are equally at home on or off the screen. Its chilling menace stays with you long after you've left the film and its characters behind. This one's a must-buy for sure.
    Looking for a preview? Some enterprising individual has uploaded it to Youtube here:




    Wash your hands. Get your facemask. Stay ten feet or more away from anyone who is coughing or sneezing. And enjoy the music.
  13. Areala
    Continuing our look at magazine editors' predictions for the future, we're going back to the year 2000 and seeing what the GamePro gang saw in their gazing ball for the years to come. Some of them are serious, some of them are silly, and some of them really want to be accurate but just fall short. Let's see what all the fuss was about back when the clocks rolled over and nothing at all came of the Y2K scare!



    Since this magazine is from 2000, we don't have it archived here on Retromags. Those of you interested in acquiring a print copy of your own to read along will probably have some success with eBay. If you own a copy and want to read along, we're looking at pages 48-49, the "1999 GamePro Editors' Choice Awards".
    Starting us off firmly in the "weird" category, we've got The Enforcer's prediction: "The right strings will be pulled and the ultimate video game will be created: Tony Hawk's Pro Wrestling. It'll make a mint." Um...yeah... Why don't you ask ICP about the "fortune" they made from those crappy Backyard Wrestling titles then get back to us on that one.
    I'm not sure about Four-Eyed Dragon's prediction: "Odors will be implemented into video games. You'll be able to smell the roses growing along a path or dquirm to the scent of the pungent perfume worn by one of the characters. GamePro will have an extra rating box labeled 'Smell'--or 'Olfactory Factor.'" Now at first, I was just going to toss this into the silly category beside The Enforcer's, but elsewhere in the magazine there's an actual news piece about a company that was trying to patent this technology by using a mixture of different-scented oils that could be combined and heated to produce a given smell. Obviously this never got past a prototype stage, but now I'm torn: was the Four-Eyed one being facetious, or did he honestly believe this? The world may never know...
    There's something amusingly ironic about editor E. Coli's prediction: "In the future, games will play all by themselves, rendering gamers obsolete." Given the number of people who tune in to watch other people perform speedruns and other gaming challenges, this isn't too far from the truth. When written, this was obviously intended to be silly. Next!
    Air Hendrix provides what seems to be the first serious prediction after the fluff: "Sony and Nintendo will continue to dominate console gaming, while Sega will survive the system wars--but as a Playstation 2 and PC publisher. Set-top box convergence and broadband net access will take gaming to places we're not even thinking about right now." The cool thing is, Hendrix is mostly right: Sega does survive the implosion of its hardware division by becoming a multi-system developer, and the PS2 dominates the console wars from 2000 - 2006. Nintendo's GameCube does wind up playing second-fiddle to Microsoft's Xbox in the end, but Nintendo gets their revenge once they release the Wii. And of course, when it comes to handheld gaming, Nintendo's systems are the only ones worth talking about since nobody else can make a dent in the portable market. Convergence doesn't really happen except in a few minor cases, so maybe that's a prediction that will come true in another 10 years. Good call, Hendrix!
    I'm reasonably certain Dan Elektro was being serious with his prediction as well: "Within three years of its release, the Playstation 2 will shed its console image to become the mythical 'set-top box' the computer industry has been taking about for years--a true home entertainment system for entire families that encompasses games, videos and the Internet." He was on the right track, but about three years too early. It's not until Microsoft and Sony started to offer built-in web browsers and access to services like Netflix, Hulu+ and Qriocity that we saw companies making serious inroads towards this reality.
    Boba Fatt says: "Girth will replace health as the most important commodity in most video games--and there'll be a triumphant return to epic, gorgeous, sprawling, side-scrolling action titles." While I imagine the first part was just him being a dork, I get the impression the second part of his prediction was a bit more serious. Unfortunately as we well know by this point, 2D side-scrolling action titles have pretty much disappeared entirely from the gaming radar with a couple of notable exceptions like Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Sigh. :(
    Brother Buzz's predictions fall equally flat: "The first console-to-PC gaming will finally arrive in 2000. Plus, there will be a bass fishing game to coincide with the U.S. launch of the PlayStation 2." Nope, and...well, we don't see a bass fishing game for the PS2 until 2002. Two years too late. Sorry, Brother.
    The only female to offer a perspective, Miss Spell keeps both feet firmly planted in reality: "We're going to see a lot more games break out of existing genres to create new ones. Innovative, unusual games like Guitar Freaks and The Sims are already leading the way. Also, girl gamers are gonna be heard!" She's right on all counts. You go, girl!
    The problem with making a lot of predictions, as Major Mike illustrates, is that you give yourself more and more chances to be proven wrong. "Sega won't drop off the face of the earth. The company will stick around, but as a third-party software developer for Nintendo's Dolphin and Sony's PlayStation 2." Maybe he was channeling Air Hendrix a bit there, but we'll give it to him anyway. "The Pokemon craze will go the way of the Tamagotchi, but the Game Boy Color will continue to be the handheld gaming system of choice." Well, Pokemon is still going strong eleven years later and is the second-most lucrative franchise in the world bested only by Mario and friends. And while the GBC is a strong, successful system, it is replaced by the stronger, more successful Game Boy Advance in 2001. Ouch! "Fighting games will go into hibernation, but will eventually make a comeback." While it's true that the demise of the arcade put a minor cramp into the body of fighting games, they never go away for a little while. SNK puts out "Capcom vs. SNK" on the Dreamcast in 2000, the PS2 launches in the US with "Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore", "Guilty Gear X" and "Super Smash Bros. Melee" show up in 2001, and franchises like Tekken, Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat (not to mention their various spin-offs like Marvel vs. Capcom or Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe) are continuing strong to this day. Well...one outta four ain't bad I suppose.
    When it comes to playing safe, Extreme Ahab goes with some broad, generalizing predictions instead of more specific ones. Hedging his bets helps a little bit: "Video game companies will realize that, like films, games need professional writers." Considering that a number of professional writers are now penning scripts or at least lending their ideas to game developers, I'll give him this one. "Also, technology is bound to improve so that in the near future, game characters will move as smoothly as those in animated films." Yeah, but that's kind of a no-brainer once we saw what the Dreamcast could do. Claiming that things will get faster or prettier in the future of games is about as generic and obvious as you can get. Try again? "Finally, a game will come out that will capture the attention of the baby-boomer generation--it'll probably feature The Beatles in a hostile takeover of Marlon Brando." Given that the last part of that prediction makes zero sense whatsoever, we'll ignore it and focus on the first half. He's right, in a way, but it comes a bit later than he expects. It'll take the release of the Nintendo DS and the Wii to get baby boomers back into video gaming in a serious way, with Wii Sports and BrainAge leading the way for the over-forty crowd to compete with their younger progeny.
    Last but not least, we come to Dr. Zombie's prediction: "Multiplayer games will meet Hollywood when game companies create real-time, interactive, multiplayer games that play like movies. You'll be assigned a character who interacts with other characters/players as the story line follows a set script--but deviates based on the interactions of all the players. You'll purchase a 'ticket' to participate, and gameplay will be based on each individual." While it's a neat idea, it's a logistical nightmare (and no, MMORPGs like Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft do not count). We're getting a bit closer to this sort of thing in the single-player realm with titles like "Indigo Prophecy" and "Heavy Rain", but once you cross over into multiplayer territory, it's not really gaming any longer, is it?
    I hope you've enjoyed this retrospective of futurecasting by prominent members of the industry. We'll do it again some time and see if anybody manages to improve their averages!
  14. Areala
    Flipping through my ample CD collection for something new, I found something I bought several months ago but hadn't listened to yet. It's a sampler record from Silber Records entitled "drones, loves, honesties, sounds". I'd never heard of Silber Records before. It came in a simple cardboard sleeve, and I got it for a buck as I recall. One of those things I bought on a lark because I was curious, then forgot that I even had it until tonight. Well, I was gonna change that, so I popped it into my computer to give a listen.



    And man, this is one of the best examples of a sampler I think I've ever heard . No, every track on it didn't appeal to me, but it's one of the widest, most diverse arrays of music put out by a single label I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. It's got everything: soft ambient, darkwave, drone, shoegazing pop, folk, jazzy rock, and some stuff that I can only really label as experimental guitar. It's a neat experience, and I can see myself buying some of the albums from different artists in the future.
    You too can experience the nifty musical goodness of this sampler for yourself at the Silber Records website. They charge $4 for the physical CD (or $5.50 if you live outside the US), or you can download the full album in digital version for one dollar. That's right, 22 songs for $1. A full album for the price of one iTunes download. It's a hell of a deal even if you only wind up liking 2-3 tracks.
    If you're interested in getting more listens before you commit your dough, the site has a number of other options for you. They offer a crapload of free downloads (seriously, they've got 30 albums, compilations and EPs that don't cost you a cent) as well as a streaming radio service that lets you listen as long as you like.
    So, take a listen and support the indy music scene if that's your thing. If you find an artist you like, nearly all of their albums are available digitally for $5. And if you don't, well, at least you gave something new a try.
  15. Areala
    I'm sure you've watched the videos from Leonard Huntings by now (and if you haven't, shame on you - they can be found right here). Four simple little messages to showcase the happenings at Hanwell Mental Institute. If they didn't whet your appetite for more, then you may want to check your pulse and confirm that you are, in fact, still breathing.
    For a few weeks now, Senscape's website has contained those four videos, a link to an interactive teaser preview which raises far more questions than it answers, and a cryptic message that an announcement is coming.
    On July 9th, we got the message. Oh my God, did we get the message. For the game formerly known as the "Unnamable Project" now has a name. And a new trailer. And new music. And a new 2011 release date. And a coupon to help defray the cost of your soon-to-be-soiled underpants.
    OK, so I'm kidding about the coupon, but Agustín Cordes and his deranged band of merry developers have indeed upped the ante of exposure for "Asylum". The trailer is classic Cordes style, and will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has played Scratches in the past. The press release accompanying the reveal is still scarce on details, but included the revelation that "players will be able to explore at leisure a vast and vivid asylum known as the Hanwell Mental Institute, while diving into a disturbing horror storyline unlike anything that has ever been seen before in the adventure genre."
    In addition, it has emerged that Hanwell, while a fictional locale in and of itself, was designed using the actual blueprints of a number of real-life vintage asylums as reference. This isn't surprising, since Cordes and his team did much the same thing with Scratches, using floorplans of existing Victorian mansions when designing the house, but there's a significant difference in the scope of a project when it comes to designing a simple house versus an entire sprawling complex. The phrase "Scratches on steroids" has been thrown about by some who are in the know.
    Regardless, adventure fans, horror fans, and everyone else in between needs to check out the new trailer for Asylum. A simple visit to Face The Horror will allow you to view it in the web browser of your choice, or it can simply be downloaded from here if you would like a copy to view on-demand.
    Keep watching this space for more goodies and info about Asylum, or if you're that desperate to get checked in, you can always register at the Senscape forums and chat with some fellow nutcases.
    *huggles*
    Areala
  16. Areala
    Readers of the previous entry on Hanwell here on Retrochick are no doubt still wondering just what is going on. Today, I can report that a new chapter has been opened, as it seems that the Institute itself has become aware of the videos being leaked by "Leonard Huntings" and have now issued a statement. I received the following e-mail, which originated from a real person at Hanwell (I check all my sources before reporting), and have their permission to reproduce it in full here.
    You can check the website for yourself if you like; it's a real location, not made-up. Right now, I've no idea what to think. It's either the truth (in which case, Mr. Huntings is making out like a bandit with all of redirected hits to his videos that are partially my responsiblity), or else it's spin of the highest calibre (in which case, the more word of this gets out, the better). I'll reserve judgement to my readers. Either way, it's fascinating, and not a little disturbing.
  17. Areala
    Picture this: it's the middle of the night, you're driving through the countryside by yourself, your only company is the voice of the local radio station's DJ talking at you via your stereo system. You notice you're getting low on gas, so you make a diversion to a service station for a fill-up, and that's when it happens. Everything just stops working.
    You get out of the car to find out what's going on, and a mysterious energy field blocks your passage back the way you came. Now there's nothing you can do except walk along the dark road, all by yourself, listening to the chirping of the crickets, in hopes of finding someone who can help you. The night cannot possibly get any more messed up than this, you tell yourself.
    Oh, how delightfully wrong you are!



    This is the setting of Barrow Hill, a PC adventure game released by Shadow Tor Studios in 2006, and playing it at night with the lights out is a great way to give yourself the creeps. And the reason behind this is simple: atmosphere. Simply put, Barrow Hill has atmosphere coming out of its own jewel case, as designer Matt Clark went to incredible lengths to immerse the player into his fictional world. While you wander about Barrow Hill, you hear the rustle of leaves around you, the quiet chirp of crickets, the shifting of stones, gurgles of water, and the noise your own footsteps make as you tromp across whatever surface you're walking on. The soundtrack itself is masterfully done, with quiet, understated tunes for your exploration, punctuated by a few jarring ones to get your blood pumping. Shadow Tor sells it on their website, and it's well worth the purchase price in my opinion. Several times, the game requires you to light your way through the darkness with nothing more than an old gas-powered lantern that casts a dim circle of light across your surroundings. And something seems to be out there, following you...stalking you...
    Barrow Hill's tagline is "Archaeology Meets Adventure," but there's very little "Indiana Jones" or "Tomb Raider" as this is a graphical adventure game and not an action shooter. You won't be gunning down any of the local Cornish wildlife, and you'll soon discover that what you're facing would shrug off bullets anyway. The name of the game is your brain, and figuring out just what on earth Conrad Morse and his group of archaeologists, along with the student protesters who have converted a nearby barn into their makeshift headquarters, managed to stir up on the old burial mound (and whether or not it's possible for you to set it right).



    The area one can explore within the game may surprise players with how "small" it is and how few locations there are. Not counting the various lengths of road and forest trails one can traverse, there are really only 3 main areas to Barrow Hill: the petrol station with its attached restaurant and nearby three-room motel, the dig site itself, and the swamp from which Emma Harry broadcasts her evening music program on Barrow Hill Radio. Despite this seeming lack of explorable area, there is a surprising amount of exploring and investigation to accomplish, and a number of locations like St. Anneka's Well and the Owl Barn, that are only a few screens in size but offer much in the way of details and occasionally menace. And while Barrow Hill itself is a fictional locale, the architecture itself is based on real locations that can be found in Cornwall. The website itself offers a virtual tour of these areas used for inspiration, which is fun in and of itself to explore both before and after you've completed the game.



    Additional depth is provided by the presence of notebooks, journal entries, photographs, drawings and other bits of ephemera that the player can examine, read, or otherwise interact with in order to get an idea of what has been going on and how to solve the mystery. Once you reach a certain point in the game, you'll get contacted by another character, who needs your assistance and who will henceforth maintain an infrequent level of dialogue with you via your phone (you'll never actually meet face to face). As if that isn't enough, you can flip through the radio stations (and listen to some really outrageous commercials or programs), use both a GPS device and a metal detector to solve puzzles, and manipulate various parts of the environment (such as a blender in a kitchen) in order to create what you need in the game. Barrow Hill very nicely dispenses with a good portion of the pixel hunt that plagues many other games of this type. A cursor over an object will show that a tool can be used to interact with it; in order to do so, it is only necessary to click on the object in your inventory and if it can be used, it will be. It's also possible on occasion to pick up and carry around larger objects such as boxes or ladders to be placed down elsewhere, and again, merely taking them to the right screen and dropping them will result in their proper use.



    Another thing Barrow Hill does very well is keeping your avenues open all the time. If you can't seem to solve a puzzle, just walk away, explore somewhere else, and work out some other things. You very well may find a clue or two that you need which will help you. At the same time, you can solve many of the game's puzzles without finding or reading the clues in the first place, and several items in the game are placed for the sole purpose of making it slightly easier on you without straight-up nailing you over the head with the answers. In short, it's very hard to remain completely stumped in the game, and often going elsewhere and having a look around or coming back later with new equipment will provide you with the answers you need. There are still a few event "triggers" that you'll have to set off in order to advance the plot, but these are few in number, they're all automatically tripped as you follow the storyline, and each one makes sense. There's very little randomness in Barrow Hill's unfolding storyline, and that's a very nice change from linear adventures that block a path up until you perform some action that somehow allows you to progress further.
    Barrow Hill is far from perfect. The voice acting in the game is a mixed bag, with some characters tending to prattle on too long about this, that or the other especially if they happen to be in danger at the time. Emma Harry herself is an absolute delight, though some of the lines she has to perform seem unnecessarily drawn out. Also, I was struck by the fact that even though at one point you are talking on the phone with someone, it seems like you don't have anything to say to them, even when they ask you a specific question. It's just a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless. Also, if you're playing for the first time, it's quite possible to get a good 75% of the way through the game without having a blessed idea of what it is that you are actually striving for. Paying close attention and reading everything will help a lot, but it wasn't until I stumbled upon something by sheer chance that I started to put the pieces together and began looking for the other items I would need. Hint: keep a pen and paper handy, because there are a number of things you'll need to write down; the game doesn't feature a journal or any other sort of device for recording important tidbits of information, and the endgame puzzle is a doozy that requires you to combine a lot of the information you've found in different locales all together to produce a multitude of correct answers. Also, Barrow Hill includes two endings, one good and one not-so-good; it's entirely possible that you'll finish the game with the "not-so-good" one only to scratch your head and wonder if that is all there was to the whole thing. The "good" ending is the one that makes sense, so make sure you do everything and don't take any shortcuts, even if they seem obvious.



    When all is said and done, though, Barrow Hill is a tremendous treat for adventure gamers who enjoy their stories well-plotted, their puzzles (mostly) logical, and their atmosphere thick enough to drown in. Fans who have played the game already will no doubt be delighted to know that work on another game in the series, Bracken Tor, is currently in the works. Matt Clark offers up a nice take on the idea of stone circles and burial mounds, mixing the real world and the fantasy world in a well-plotted story. It's always nice to play an adventure game that takes place in the real world, which is what I loved about Scratches, and Barrow Hill is happy to provide. In the end, you're in for a spooky time, and if that's what you're looking for, then you'll find it with Barrow Hill. People looking to shoot zombies or fight off aliens need not apply, but those who like thinking their way through to a solution will feel right at home. Two very big thumbs up, grade A all the way.
  18. Areala
    Let's Read: Nintendo Power #3




    I've always thought that every so often Nintendo chose some odd titles to give cover treatment to with their magazine, and this issue's focus on Track & Field II is probably the first time I thought this. Granted, I've never been into sports games, so that probably explains some of it. But did they really think that anybody in their right mind would list this game alongside the likes of classics such as Super Mario Bros., Metroid, or Legend of Zelda? Track & Field II? Really...?
    I gotta say, the cover art on this one goes far beyond bizarre. A pair of empty athletic shoes with what appear to be afterburners hauling ass down a racetrack with a post-apocalyptic sunset in the background and silhouettes of a runner, a hurdler, and a discus thrower in the upper-right corner just below the title...there just aren't words. At least there wasn't anything for parents to object to on this cover, unlike last issue...
    Nintendo Power #3 - Nov/Dec. 1988 - 105 pages - $3.50
    Track & Field II - Well, unlike last issue where the cover shows "Castlevania II" but we lead off with a story about "Bionic Commando", T&F II gets the royal treatment right off the bat, with complete descriptions of all twelve events (though the article claims there are 15...) and a list of strategies applicable to each one. It's like a complete Olympics package for your NES, and an awful lot of these events, like Fencing, have yet to be seen again in an Olympic video game compilation. Note that this is an attempt to simulate the events in a real-life fashion; the inspired comic absurdity of "Crash 'n the Boyz Street Challenge" is still a few years off.
    Mickey Mousecapade - An early Disney foray onto the NES. A four-page write-up that offers some strategies but nothing terribly important. This was a game aimed at younger players, though, so it's not like it required the puzzle-solving skills of, say, Zelda.
    Howard & NESTER - A much better comic than the last two have been, this is when the comic starts adopting a format that it will carry out for pretty much its entire run. Nester is challenged by his friends to locate one of the mansions in Castlevania II, only to screw it up and get lost. Howard shows up to set things right, but Nester's exuberance results in some unexpected consequences in a nod to actual gaming content from Simon's Quest. It's not gut-bustingly funny or anything, but it's a much better direction, and nowhere near as painful to read as the last two have been.
    Following Nester's misfortune, we get a write-up on Blaster Master. This was one of my favorite games growing up, even though it is hard as hell. Full maps for stages 1 and 2 are provided, including the overhead-view areas where the boss fights take place. It's a great start, but a game like Blaster Master can always use more info.
    You can tell it's the holiday season, because this issue gets a special Nintendo-themed gift section on the front of this issue's Poster. For the gamer who eats, sleeps and breathes Nintendo, this would be a one-stop shop. Games, hardware, clothing, and accessories are all listed, along with the phone numbers of the companies that manufacture them so that you can place an order. Blaster Master gets the honours of the obverse side of the poster, with a photographic showcase of a model of the tank built in real life. The detail on the model is awesome, and the pictures of the tank hovering and firing are pretty darn cool. Much better than the artwork on the last two posters.
    Role Playing Games - "What's an R.P.G.?" asks Nintendo Power, and then proceeds to answer the question by featuring write-ups on "Ultima III: Exodus" and "Legacy of the Wizard". While I'm not entirely certain that I'd classify the latter as an RPG, the former certainly qualifies, and it's nice to see NP introducing the idea of the roleplaying game to readers.
    Counselors' Corner - "Metal Gear" gets a ton of coverage here, with maps of the maze zone and Building 2, the steps required to earn more stars, and the locations of Card #7, the Compass, and the Rocket Launcher. "Rambo", "Double Dragon", and "Gauntlet" get the rest of the article. Also in this issue, we meet the first two female game counselors to be featured in the magazine, giving yet more proof that Nintendo isn't just for boys.
    Classified Information starts off a bit sour by reprinting information that was already available in the Official Nintendo Player's Guide for "Gradius", but then redeems itself by throwing in cheats for "Seicross", "Zanac", "Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road", "Deadly Towers", and the infamous Minus World from "Super Mario Bros." Word is that the game counselors got more calls about the Minus World than any other secret or hint from any other game. Clearly printing the trick to it here didn't do anything to cut down on the requests for this little glitch.
    These Are My Secret Weapons - A hardware-themed article showcasing the NES Advantage, NES MAX, and Acclaim Remote Controller, and explaining how the features like Slow-Motion and Turbo were handled. Brilliant idea, because nobody who read that article would want to play without one of those suckers. Once I got my Advantage, I never touched a regular control pad again.
    Now Playing - The "Win, Lose, or Draw" clone "Anticipation" gets its own feature next, which seems entirely too much for a game like this. Six pages for a game about guessing what the NES is drawing on the screen? Guess they needed some filler. Blades of Steel skates in for a four-page summary. "Cobra Command" gets a really neat layout in the form of top secret blueprints for the helicopter. "Racket Attack" rounds out the article with a look at the strengths and weaknesses of every player, both male and female, in the game.
    Video Shorts - "Bubble Bobble", "Paperboy", "Ghostbusters", "Tecmo Baseball", "Challenge Pebble Beach", "Dr. Chaos", "Tecmo Bowl", "Platoon", and "Milon's Secret Castle" all get the ad copy + screenshot treatment.
    Pak Watch - Sports games, get yer sports games here! "NFL Football", "John Elway's Quarterback", "Touchdown Fever", "WWF Wrestlemania", "World Class Track Meet", "Super Team Games", "Dance Aerobics", "California Games", and "Skate or Die" all get a mention. "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde", "Hollywood Squares", and "Operation Wolf" are the only non-sports-related titles on the list.
    Hot News - I wasn't sure if I should file this under Pak Watch as well, but it seems to be a separate article, confined to only one page. The word on the street is that two games based on "Spy vs. Spy", the wacky Mad Magazine comic of one-upsmanship between two rival agents, will be arriving on the NES before too long. Of the two games mentioned, though, the US only gets the first one. "Spy vs. Spy: The Island Caper" is released in Japan, but US development is cancelled for some reason. Such is the risk of printing news about games coming from far-off lands.
    And now, the moment I have been dreading for the entire blog...Captain Nintendo. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time: write a story in which the NES becomes a pivotal part of saving the world. I'm not sure there is any way in the world this had a chance in Hades of succeeding, but it's rare to see such an idea fail so utterly spectacularly outside the realm of fanfiction (mostly because no professional publishing house would accept the bloody thing to begin with). Captain Nintendo is a roving disaster of a story revolving around a guy named Max Powers and his buddy Brett Randalls who, as it turns out, are employed by Nintendo of America in Washington state at their Research and Development Special Projects Department. Apparently, they play Metroid all day, and engage in their own special brand of geek-speak humour. "Have you two interfaced yet?" asks Max of their co-worker Tara. "No," Brett replies, "but I've been trying to boot up my courage files to ask her out all day." Seriously, I could devote an entire blog to this. Brett, naturally, winds up getting special powers when a box of microchips explodes and interfaces with the Metroid game, and they all bury themselves in his skin. The NES acquires an AI routine of its very own, and begins to talk in 80's slang that wasn't even cool in the 80's, much less 20 years later. The worst part of all? It's continued next issue. Plot absurdities abound. I can't wait...
    Player's Poll this issue has a crap-ton of freebies up for grabs as prizes. Wish I would have entered.
    NES Journal - Take a trip to WOOZ, a giant maze park in California. Yashuhisa Tsuruta beats Mike Klug in the RBI Baseball tournament. Dr. Power offers you a Cosmo-esque quiz to find out what sort of a gamer you are. Hrm...
    Celebrity Profile - Jay Leno. Unfortunately, this is a story written about Jay Leno, and not by Jay Leno, which means it's not funny at all, but it does explain when he plays his NES and how he wound up with it. A nifty little story, even if it is all fluff.
    Nintendo also sponsors a contest in this issue to Invent the Ultimate Video Game. You don't have to program, just write something creative about the game you would design, and the winners will get some Nintendo swag. Churning through all those entries had to have been a chore and a half.
    Mail Box - Looks like the new title stuck. Tricking your parents into letting you play Nintendo, a possible sequel to the Official Nintendo Player's Guide, where do you get the tricks that you publish, and who created Mario? The absurd lengths one family goes to in order to get a copy of Nintendo's "Ice Hockey" and 5 tips for solving adventure games.
    NES Achievers - The girls strike back! "Duck Hunt", "Kid Icarus", "Super Mario Bros." (three times), "Solomon's Key", "Stinger", "T & C Surf Designs", and "Wizards and Warriors" all get rocked by the fairer sex. Represent!
    Video Spotlight - More kids who probably rue the day they appeared in the magazine now. We get our first female Power Player though (go Diane Supowit)!
    Top 30 is all over the place. Zelda is still on top, but "Metroid" goes from #3 to #2, and "Metal Gear" shows up from out of nowhere to kick Tyson down into 4th place, while "Gauntlet", "Super Mario Bros. 2", "Bases Loaded", "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link" and "Double Dragon" all team up to bitch-slap "Kid Icarus" down into 10th place. It's a jungle out there!
    We end with Howard Phillips' reminder about the invent-your-own-game contest, that you can give NP subscriptions as gift certificates, and that giving the gift of your own time to your family members by playing Nintendo with them is one of the best gifts you could give anybody. Man, did they know how to market, or what?
    Until next time...
  19. Areala
    Let's Read: Nintendo Power #2





    Powering on (bad pun, bad pun) from our last [Let's Read] brings us to Nintendo Power #2, which has probably the most infamous cover art of any Nintendo-produced magazine in the company's history. Yes, that is Simon Belmont of Castlevania fame holding Dracula's severed head by the hair. A closer inspection of the image reveals Dracula's heart, ring, fingernail, and eyeball laid out on the cloak where the evil one has fallen, and a bloody hand reaching up out of the fog in a death rattle as a grinning skull looks on from the lower-right corner. Naturally, Nintendo's censors took one look at this, thought it was perfectly natural and wasn't likely to cause nightmares in the young children in their demographic, and promptly caught all sorts of hell from parents for it. The lesson we take away is that killing vampires and burning their body parts in 8-bit video games is perfectly acceptable, but putting together a cover showcasing what it might look like in real life is so totally non-non-non-non-heinous. Who could have guessed?
    Nintendo Power #2 - Sept/Oct. 1989 - 110 Pages - $3.50
    New subscribers to Nintendo Power after issue #1 got a nice little bonus this issue with the Insider's Calendar, a not-quite-one-year date planner showing when all the upcoming NES titles from September of 1988 to June of 1989 were being released. In addition, the calendar featured a number of historic and not-so-historic dates. Mario's birthday being October 11th is pretty cool to know...the fact that King Hippo is starting a diet on November 29th? Not so much. Amusing note: World Poetry Day falls on the same day as National Grouch Day (Oct. 15th). Coincidence? You be the judge.
    If you weren't cool enough to subscribe and get the calendar, then you wound up at the Table of Contents. Pretty much the same staff roll, and a subscription is still $15, which is a six dollar savings off the cover price. Nice!
    Headlining the issue is a write-up on Bionic Commando, which gets an extremely generous twelve pages to show off the game, but is kinda spoiler-riffic, going so far as to show you artwork from the ending of the freakin' game in two different places. A few screenshots also show off the spotty translation job that was still quite common in the late-80s ("Maybe we can find good weapon we can use," indeed...) In a couple decades, GRIN will have a field day using this lovely Engrish as the basis for a number of jokes in Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Until then, we have to hide the pictures from our parents so they don't think the NES is rotting our brains. One of the nice things about Nintendo Power in-depth articles is that you can often use them as a replacement instruction manual, which was very nice when you rented a game that didn't come with the booklet. The article does a great job of explaining how to use your bionic arm to swing around, and provides some nice maps and tips for the first few areas.
    Konami gets some face time next, with a full write-up on Life Force that starts off with a showcase of all six of the game's bosses ("Tutankhamanattack" is the best boss name ever; Nintendo is likely still pissed at Konami for taking this name and preventing them from turning it into an Egyptian-style Pokemon), then offers up the strategies you need to conquer the first two of the game's stages. Not as in-depth as the Bionic Commando article, but still useful to anybody new to the side-scrolling shooter genre.
    Castlevania II: Simon's Quest gets the spotlight next, with an eleven-page-and-one-foldout-map review that could be a lot more helpful than it actually is. The outside area maps are good, but it's extremely confusing as to how they connect one area to another; the mansion maps are far more helpful. Unfortunately, the fold-out map is basically worthless as it shows the topography of Transylvania, and the relative locations of the towns, mansions and other areas, but because of the 2D scrolling aspect of the game, it's pretty much impossible to make any use of the map when you're playing. An A for effort, but a D+ in terms of usefulness. The other side of the poster isn't much better, as it's simply a Kaz Aizawa piece of fan-art for Bionic Commando. Don't really see anybody hanging this one up on his or her wall, but it takes all kinds I suppose.
    Presumably, twenty pages worth of Super Mario Bros. 2 information last issue wasn't enough, as the writers recap some stuff like character abilities, then provide an additional 9 pages of content walking you through all of World 3. They continue the mix-up of Birdo/Ostro here as well, but otherwise everything is sound advice.
    Renegade manages to absolutely get the shaft in its mini write-up, with only 3 pages of info, a few screenshots, some flavour text as opposed to anything approaching actual strategy that could be useful to a player, and a list of moves your character can do. Even Nintendo must have realized how badly this game stank. It's a miracle Taito was allowed to make a sequel, and an even bigger miracle that it turned out to be "River City Ransom," a game that is seventy-five times more playable and two hundred billion times as entertaining than its precursor.
    R.C. Pro-Am is next in line, with a nifty little six pages to its credit. The only problem I have with this is that it virtually duplicates everything they already told us about the game back in Nintendo Fun Club News #5, so chances are you already knew almost all of this stuff. Still, the top-down perspective on seven of the tracks is very useful for beginners and pros alike.
    Everybody's favorite department, Classified Information returns in this issue, though for some reason Nintendo has done away with the Agent number system it employed in issue #1, and is instead just printing hints and secrets. It's also much shorter, being only 3 pages long this issue, and it only covers "Kid Niki - Radical Ninja", "Renegade", and "Kid Icarus" but the KI information is worth its weight in gold, as it's a step-by-step procedure for how to avoid the God of Poverty in the treasure rooms so as to reap the maximum benefit. Earning the credit card just got a whole lot easier.
    Howard and NESTER basically replays the same joke as last issue: Howard knows everything about Zelda, and Nester needs the help of Nintendo Power to wow his audience. Could we at least get a new game in here for Howard to blast Nester with, please?
    Counselors' Corner - This time, the pros at Nintendo are saving you from spending money on phone calls to help you with "The Legend of Zelda", "Super Mario Bros.", "Metroid" and "Kid Icarus". The Kid Icarus tip could have been replaced entirely, as Classified Information basically answered this question a few pages ago. I guess there could be some people out there who haven't found the Warp Zones in Super Mario Bros. by now, and the tactics given in Metroid for beating Kraid and Ridley are basically little more than "shoot them a lot of times". The Zelda hints are at least plausible phone call material, especially the location of the Raft in the second quest which was hidden in a secret room in the 4th Dungeon above the Triforce room. Further proof that Shigeru Miyamoto plays dirty and isn't afraid to flaunt it.
    Now Playing! - "Golgo 13 - Top Secret Mission" starts the gaming roll-call in this feature, followed by "Blaster Master". Much shorter than last issue, but considering the larger in-depth looks we got at the beginning of the issue, I guess this is to be expected. This is quite the upgrade for Golgo 13, as last issue, he was relegated to "Pak Watch" status. What a difference 2 months makes.
    Video Shorts - Following the same format as last issue, with basic back-of-the-box copy and 1-2 screenshots, we get previews for "Xenophobe", "Seicross", "Superman", "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", "Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf" (Beavis & Butthead would have had a field day with the line about practicing your favorite (or most ornery) hole...), "1943", "Jackal", "Hudson's Adventure Island", and "Magmax". We already saw 1943 in last month's "Pak Watch", but everything else is new.
    The Classics - A new column for this issue, showcasing NES games that are ports of classic arcade titles. "Donkey Kong", Pac-Man", "Defender II", "Millipede", "Joust", "Xevious", and "Galaga" get some ad-copy writeup and cursory screenshot treatment.
    Pak Watch returns with a heartfelt, teary-eyed apology from Link to all his fans since he's not going to be available except in limited quantities until after the holidays due to a lack of computer chips. It's not the last time Nintendo will pull this trick on its loyal fans. Then we get to the actual previews. Things are working out better for the games this issue, as more than 2 get more than text this time around. "Ghostbusters", "Mickey Mouse", "WWF Wrestlemania", "Track & Field II", "Anticipation", and "Bubble Bobble" get actual screenshots (one apiece). "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Robocop" get simple artwork. "Paperboy", "Tecmo Bowl", "Star Trek", "Racket Attack", "Friday the 13th", "Nightmare on Elm Street" (which gets the preview totally wrong, as you don't wind up playing Freddy at all, but rather one of the Elm Street kids instead), "California Games", "Skate or Die", "Sesame Street 1-2-3", "Sesame Street A-B-C", and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" don't get anything but text.
    The Players Poll contest this issue is for a grand prize of 10 NES games of your choice. Failing that, you could always win one of five radio-controlled racecars, one of ten copies of R.C. Pro-Am, or one of 50 Nintendo Power jerseys. Howard Phillips makes for a goofy model, but for some reason I find it "cool goofy" as opposed to "nerdy goofy".
    NES Journal - Check out Nintendo's new, never-before-seen accessory, the Power Pad! Oh, wait...we actually bought the idea from Bandai, who produced this little cartridge called "Stadium Events" that in two decades will make some people on the internet spend enough money to buy a new car to own what is basically a copy of "World Class Track Meet" with a different title screen. Once again, hindsight makes an otherwise run-of-the-mill article into something a bit more interesting.
    Rare Ltd. - A pretty cool article about Chris and Tim Stamper, the brains behind Rare, the company that would come to produce some of the biggest hits for Nintendo in the future. Right now, they're just starting out, but that hasn't kept them from releasing "Wizards & Warriors" and "R.C. Pro-Am" for Nintendo which are both very good games. This is the kind of thing that probably bored most kids reading in 1988, but is something that readers today would love to see expanded upon; one page isn't nearly enough, especially when that page is shared with ads for the "Official Nintendo Player's Guide" and "How to Win At Super Mario Bros.". I can only assume that the "new boardgame concept" the brothers are working on at the time of this writing is what will eventually wind up becoming "Taboo: The Sixth Sense," but I could be entirely wrong.
    If there's one section that Nintendo Power truly could have done without this issue, it's their Fall Television Preview. TV Guide was in circulation at supermarkets everywhere, so whoever suggested this idea should have been laughed out of the meeting room, especially given the shows that are presented on this page. Unless you were glued to broadcast TV 24/7 in 1988, you won't even remember the likes of TV 101 (which lasted a whole 13 episodes despite starring a pre-Friends Matt LeBlanc), Knightwatch (which could only manage 9 episodes before getting the axe, despite having Benjamin Bratt in the cast), or Dirty Dancing (which was yanked from the air after only two episodes). Sometimes, a *facepalm* just isn't enough...
    Eric Dickerson of the Indianapolis Colts, Ron Morris of the Chicago Bears, and Sean Jones of the Houston Oilers all get their names in the magazine as part of NP's Celebrity Profiles article. I'm not a sports fan, so colour me unimpressed, but fans of any of the three teams would probably get a kick out of reading about these players' experiences with the NES back in the day.
    Mail Box is the new Mail Bag from last issue. Right off the bat, four would-be designers get their hearts broken by Nintendo's policy of not accepting unsolicited game submissions. We also get a lesson on the correct way to pronounce "Icarus", another letter from a pair of gaming grandparents, an explanation that NES games are actually cartridges and not tapes, and an observation that Howard Phillips kinda looks like Little Mac. I have a much easier time believing these are real letters as opposed to the gushing praise-filled ramblings from last issue. Much better selection this time around.
    Player's Forum - A third grader gets his name in the paper with a video game-related survey, a kid uses the power of Nintendo to cheer his mom out of a depressive funk, and we get doggerel printed about "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!". I'll let you digest that for a minute; doubtless, your conclusion of the relative sanity of the letter writers this issue will be the same as mine.
    NES Achievers - Their masculinity challenged by a girl last issue, three guys come out of the woodwork to smash Heidi's score on "Kung Fu". Ulysses Gines throws down a nearly eleven-million-point gauntlet in Zanac. Kathleen Sims is the lone female left to represent in the whole column, with a 650,000 point score in "Pinball". Where are you, female gamers? I know you had to be out there...I was one of you, after all!
    Video Spotlight - The pain never stops, but at least we get our first female Power Player in Donna Saxton of Midland, Michigan. No "Ace Ebb" moments here, but we do get a letter of effusive praise to "Radical Richard" Yu who has doubtlessly been trying to live that down ever since. Pete "The Natural" Brin is likewise probably wishing he'd never sent in that picture immortalizing him as a seventeen year old with an Anthrax t-shirt and a mullet.
    Top 30 - Nothing changes from the last issue, as Zelda, Punch-Out, Metroid, Super Mario Bros., and Kid Icarus still comprise the top 5. "Double Dragon" shows up at number 6 though, which is pretty darn good for a debut. Also, judging by the points, an awful lot more people sent it votes for this issue. Even the lowest-scoring games ("Zanac" and "Pinball") got 76 points apiece, while the lowest scores last issue were measured in the single-digits.
    Alas, all good things must come to an end, and so it is with issue 2. Howard Phillips relates some short anecdotes involving staying up until 4am working on the magazine, then taking a break and going to Disneyland the next day, as well as squabbles over who got stuck paying a $200 taxi fare, and an argument over whether or not all the game tips were presented correctly. It's not easy being the President of Nintendo of America, after all...
  20. Areala
    Let's Read : GamePro #1





    Phillyman requested that I do this one next, so that's where I'm going. If this isn't where you wanted me to go, then you've only yourself to blame as nobody else spoke up. So tell me what you want me to do next with a PM or a comment, otherwise I'll start picking things myself and you'll just have to suffer anyway. Make it easy on yourselves.
    GamePro #1, May/June 1989 - 60 pages - $3.50
    So it's been roughly a year since Nintendo Power launched, and someone else out there decided it was time for another console gaming mag to enter the fray. Welcome GamePro, which is not a house organ like the big NP but rather an independant third-party devoted to coverage of Nintendo plus Sega and Atari, Nintendo's two closest "competitors". Even at this early date, GamePro's reviews and content are almost all written by people using pseudonyms; some choose actual code-names like "The Eliminator" while others simply go by initials like "B.A.J.". Growing pains are a long-time coming; at this point, they're just trying to see if they can survive side-by-side with Nintendo Power.
    Amusingly, the first thing one sees upon opening the cover is an ad for another magazine: The Atarian. For a mere $15, you can get a six-issue subscription to the magazine, a t-shirt, a sew-on patch, and a laminated ID card. If you've thrown your weight behind Atari in the console "war" this generation and were a die-hard supporter of the 7800, this ad was for you. Everyone else just chuckled and turned the page...
    ...to see another ad. To someone who had read Nintendo Power exclusively for the last year, this was positively shocking because Nintendo Power didn't feature ads (mostly because it was nothing more than one enormous 100+ page ad itself). GamePro, however, wasn't backed by Nintendo's financial might and thus required revenue from outside sources. Not only is GamePro's page count smaller than Nintendo Power, but it has less content overall thanks to all the ad space. A subscription to GamePro is $19.00 for six issues (if you live outside the US, add another $6.00), which is only $2 less than paying the full cover price for a full year. Nintendo Power is a better deal at this point unless you're a die-hard Sega Master System owner.
    Welcome to GamePro! crows Editor-in-Chief Don Ferrell. Don claims that their approach is "not to bore you" with long-winded articles about stuff players aren't interested in, which is likely a vague poke at Nintendo Power and it's Player Profiles, Top 30, and other non-game-related stuff, but follows this up by saying that, oh yeah, occasionally we'll write a long article about something too, but it's OK because we'll be cool about it. Pick a side of the fence and sit on it, Don.
    The Cutting Edge - Right off the bat, it's Nintendo lovin' as GamePro takes a look at the Power Glove and U-Force peripherals, touting them as the future of video game interaction. "Say goodbye to button pushing," it says of the Power Glove, "and say hello to the future!" I think we all know how that turned out...
    Then, we get a reminder that you too can Subscribe to GamePro Magazine. Get a friend to subscribe too, and we'll toss in this Super Poster, a $4.95 value. Anybody here have this to scan for the site?
    Despite Don's promise in the opening editorial, the very next section is Personality ProFile, a two-page spread introducing Alan Fetzer, and what he does for Taito Software up in Vancouver. They're gearing up to release "Operation: Wolf" on the home computer and the NES, they're working on a sequel to "Renegade" (this will wind up being "River City Ransom," one of my favorite NES games of all time), and they're watching Atari to see how they fare against Nintendo with their lawsuit (Nintendo wins in 1992). The "still untitled" adventure game mentioned in the article is probably "Demon Sword" for the NES, which released in 1990. Not a bad article, especially considering it's interesting to read some twenty years later. I didn't know who this guy was prior to this...did anybody else?
    Hot at the Arcades - We've got mini-reviews with one screenshot each of "Double Dragon II", "N.A.R.C.", and "Power Drift". Nothing groundbreaking here, and if you were into arcade games, you were probably already aware that these games existed because you saw them at...wait for it...your local arcade. Amusing side-note - check the snapshots for N.A.R.C. and Double Dragon II and look at the screens. 0 Credits on DD2, and Insert Coin on N.A.R.C. Really...? You couldn't have donated a quarter to actually play the games instead of just taking pictures of hands posed on the controls while the demo looped? We'll see how long this section lasts, as arcades are already starting to decline, and will get hit even harder over the next few years.
    Nintendo ProView starts off with a look at the newly-released "Operation: Wolf" for the NES. Tears well up in your eyes as you read GamePro's very first ProTip: "Never attack a group of enemies when there's a hostage among them...you might injure yourself!" *sigh* You know, there's a reason people still make fun of these to this day... At least GP is consistent with the level of mediocrity of their ProTips through the life-cycle of the magazine. One day, I'll collect every single ProTip ever published in GamePro and release them on the Internet as a reference for when you need a good chuckle. We follow this with a look at "Adventures of Lolo", "Bubble Bobble", and "Adventure Island".
    We move on to Sega ProView, which reviews "Shinobi" and "R-Type" for the Master System. While the R-Type ProTips at least make sense mostly, the ones for Shinobi are of the Captain Obvious variety, and somebody fails as an editor for not catching what is either an atrocious usage of grammar or else just a couple of missing words, but it's the premiere issue, so slack is warranted.
    Atari ProView discusses "Desert Falcon" and "Mario Bros.", both for the 7800. Premiere issue or not, the author of the "Mario Bros." article deserves to have his gaming bits violently torn off and burnt in a public spectacle for claiming Mario and Luigi are carpenters ("Paging Captain Obvious from the ProTips, please...").
    Ah, GamePro's answer to Nintendo Power's "Classified Information" column follows the reviews, with Secret Weapons. While I applaud them for giving some hints to a bunch of games, I still have to dock them a few points for pulling many of their NES tips directly from the first issue of Nintendo Power. Looted are the Konami code for "Contra", the second world circuit password for "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!", the ZELDA code for "Legend of Zelda", and the no-goalies code from "Ice Hockey". Also, a screenshot for "Jackal" winds up in the "Contra" section for reasons that we cannot fathom, as the Konami Code doesn't work on it. Plenty of other tips, passwords and secrets for the three systems, though, so they're at least not just playing cut-and-paste.
    Overseas ProSpects debuts, with a look at what is probably the most anticipated video game in the world (outside of Japan, where they were already playing it), Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES. A really good article, though a bit jarring to read since they use the Japanese spelling of "Kuppa" instead of the Americanized "Koopa" that I'm more used to seeing (both are pronounced virtually the same way, so it's just a style thing; GamePro isn't wrong).
    ProNews Report is next, with a look at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), now known as E3 in this day and age. Note: it's "Atari" not "Atarii", guys. Some good pictures, news that Nintendo is planning to release 40 new games next year, Sega's got 20 coming, and Atari is...unaccounted for. Not surprising, considering at this point, Jack Tramiel is focusing all his energy on the computer market and completely missing the boat where home consoles are concerned.
    Short ProShots is a preview section of sorts giving readers a look at upcoming games for their systems. There are too many to name off, but highlights include "Megaman II", "The Guardian Legend", "Bad Dudes", "Shadowgate", "Guerilla War", and "Ninja Gaiden" for the NES, and "After Burner", "Altered Beast", and "Galaxy Force" from Sega.
    ProArtist Series - A contest for budding artists to showcase their talent by sending in pictures based on a theme. This time, it's "Villains." Prizes are $100, $50, and a Super Poster. Not a bad way to earn some moolah if you can draw a straight line.
    ProChallenge Board - Because what magazine is complete without some way of boasting of your accomplishments? This month, it's nearly all challenges set down by GamePro or scores achieved by staff themselves. Submit your scores via photograph or videotape. Hilariously, they allow secret power-ups, but warn that using slow motion while playing is discouraged (because you can tell it was used from the photo of a high score, right...?).
    We close the magazine with a look at what's coming next month. For my money, the look at "Super Dodge Ball" alone would have made it worth buying. All in all, not a bad run for the first issue of what would go on to become one of the biggest names in gaming magazines within the next decade. Still some glitches to iron out, but you can see the potential is right there for the tapping. No better time to be alive in gaming history than right here, ladies and gentlemen, and that's the truth.
  21. Areala
    "It's time to kick ass and chew
    bubblegum. And I'm all outta gum."
    -- Duke Nukem


    Laugh if you must, but I was one of the gamers who was utterly heartbroken to hear the long-time-coming announcement that Duke Nukem Forever was to be no more. I had long ago accepted the fact that I had been jilted, and that Duke was long gone, probably too busy off kicking alien pseudopods to bother with the likes of starring in another video game. But still inside me, there was a part, a tiny little part, that hoped and prayed fervently that one day, one day the man who thought the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was a convenience store, the man who cleaned up L.A.'s red-light district with an RPG, the man who is the only person in videogame history to make good on a promise to rip off an enemy's head and shit down his neck, would return for round two of mayhem and carnage. 3D Realms made a believer out of me in 1996, because while everyone else was giddy to death over Quake and its blocky 3D enemies and dull level design, George Broussard and Co. were busy reminding everyone else that the first-person shooter genre should be fun, first and foremost. Duke Nukem might have been a slapdash parody of a number of pop culture icons which dared you not to laugh as it went out of its way to earn every measure of that M 17+ rating the ESRB gave it, but despite the constant tongue-in-cheek references, in-jokes, and fourth-wall-breaking moments, DN3D was a masterpiece of design and prowess in the FPS world which has yet to be topped in my mind. Technologically, there are plenty of games superior to DN3D. Designwise, though, there's Duke and then there's everybody else.



    Duke didn't originally grab my attention very much at all. After all, once you've played three incarnations of Doom, seen the Quake demo, played Rise of the Triad, and every other so-called "Doom killer" on the market, what was one more FPS featuring a muscle-bound meathead of a lead going to do for me? As it turned out, plenty. Somehow, Duke managed to walk the fine line between great design and great gameplay like a professional circus acrobat, showcasing all kinds of things that we had never seen before in a first-person shooter. Levels in Duke3D weren't static, but could change in all manner of ways: buildings could collapse, walls could be blown open, sectors could fill up with water or be drained of slime, subway cars could carry you from one destination to another, conveyor belts could drive you around an area, and teleporters could whisk you capriciously from one side of the map to the other. As Duke himself (voiced by noted disc jockey and voice actor Jon St. John) put it, "I ain't afraid of no Quake," a not-so-subtle dig at what would wind up being his biggest competitor of the day.



    Part of what set Duke apart from the rest of his contemporaries in the FPS genre was that Duke could do something most other titles could only fantasize about: build levels with true sector-over-sector placement. Technobabble translation: this meant that, unlike Doom, Duke Nukem 3D could actually produce a level where you could run across a bridge, jump off the side, and then run under it as well. Sometimes you could even blow up that bridge, which was especially hilarious when enemies (or your friends) were standing on it at the time. The Build engine made this possible, and was subsequently licensed to a slew of other companies for use in such games as 3D Realms' own Shadow Warrior, Xatrix Entertainment's Redneck Rampage, and Monolith Productions' Blood.
    "I'm an equal-opportunity ass kicker!"
    -- Duke Nukem"

    Another thing that set Duke apart was the insanely useful weapon selection available to the player. Sure, Duke had the same pistol, shotgun and rocket launcher that the Doom guy had been toting around for years, but Duke's arsenal went far beyond the standard and actually managed to include a variety of weapons that were all more than just gimmicks or variations on a standard theme. During his vengeance-fueled rampage through Los Angeles and, eventually, outer space, Duke could find pipe bombs that could be remote-detonated for a nasty surprise, laser trip mines that could be used to set booby traps (especially fun in multiplayer deathmatch), a Shrinker that reduced its target down to mini proportions that could then be dispatched with a quick stomp, a Microwave gun that made enemies expand until they exploded, the Devastator (an aptly-named prototype military weapon that rapid-fires small explosive packets with lethal results) and the Freezethrower that could turn an enemy into an icicle with a few judicious shots, ripe for shattering with a well-aimed kick or pistol round. Making weapons fun in addition to functional was a Duke trademark. As if that wasn't enough, Duke also featured an array of useful items he could snap up and deploy later, including scuba gear for underwater exploration, a pair of protective boots which kept him from taking damage while trudging through alien hell slime or lava, the HoloDuke which projected a decoy image of the man himself to distract foes while he got the drop on them, and Night Vision Goggles which allowed Duke to overcome the limitations of darkness by turning everything a lovely day-glo hue until the batteries ran out. And when health kits weren't enough, Duke could always turn to his trusty bottle of Steroids to give him the boost he needed to survive when the chips were down.

    "Damn! Those alien bastards are gonna
    pay for shooting up my ride!"
    -- Duke Nukem


    Of course, the biggest downside to Duke's gameplay was the fact that while iD's monster new game, Quake, was rendered in full 3D, Duke was struggling to do his best within the limits of the Build engine which, despite the 3D in the game's title, was more accurately described as a 2.5D engine. Enemies were sprite-based like Doom, not polygon models as Quake had. Duke made up for this by having plenty of ways to travel on the virtual Z-axis, including the famous jetpack which allowed him to fly without a cheat code (watch that fuel gauge...it's a long way down), not to mention the ability to jump around and use whatever he could find for steps to get on top of many places. And while Quake might have had the backing of Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, Duke had his own special music weapon in Robert Prince, the same man who scored all the music for the Doom series, and Lee Jackson who provided music for "Rise of the Triad". Have a listen, and you'll agree that they knew what they were doing.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-7118ocSFg


    And that's just the main title theme. You're ready to kick some alien butt too now, right?



    Perhaps what set Duke ahead of the pack more than anything else though was the high level of interactivity allowed to the player. Duke didn't just run around destroying everything he saw (well, he could, but that wasn't nearly as much fun). There was a lovely array of options available to Mr. Nukem, from spying on enemies through security cameras, usable toilets and drinking fountains, strippers that flashed their tassels for a tip, and Duke had many comments about his environment, from an awe-struck "Damn!" or "What a mess!" when an enemy bit it in a particularly gory or spectacular explosive fashion on down to an annoyed "Where is it...?" when hunting for a secret door. "I don't have time to play with myself," he muses upon seeing the Duke Nukem arcade game. And in a nod to Trekkies everywhere, Duke reports, "Hmmm...looks like I have the Con," upon taking a seat in the commander's chair.
    "We're gonna fry your ass, Nukem!"
    -- Unnamed Pig Cop
    3D Realms released the source code to Duke Nukem 3D several years ago, and since then, people have been going absolutely insane with making it look and sound better than ever. There are a number of complete source ports and high-resolution packs that turn DN3D into a raging behemoth of a game, kicking the sprites to the curb and replacing them with high-resolution models, updating the music out of the 8-bit MIDI era, and updating the old textures to four times their original clarity. If you've never experienced Duke, this is the way to go; check out Planet Duke for details, tutorials and links. All you need is a registered copy of the game and you're good to go.
    "Let God sort 'em out..."
    -- Duke Nukem

    But where can you buy a copy of a DOS game that was released thirteen years ago? Glad you asked. Good Old Games will be happy to supply you with a brand spanking perfect version of the Atomic Edition of the game (which is the 3 original episodes plus the fourth from the Plutonium Pak) with no DRM that works just fine under Windows Vista and XP, along with the manual, some nice high-res wallpapers, SMS tones for your phone, and other assorted bits of artwork for a mere $5.99 US. This is fully legal and authorized by 3D Realms, and it's probably the best way to get the game if you own a newer system. GOG.com has much more than Duke Nukem 3D available as well, so if you like classic PC games and need your fix, they've got a catalog that has to be seen to be believed. If you prefer, you can also download a graphically-enhanced version of the original for Xbox Live Arcade on your 360 for 800 MS Points. It comes fully equipped with eight-player Co-Op or Deathmatch, achievements to unlock, the ability to post videos of your own playthroughs for other people to marvel at, and other fun goodies. Read more about it here.




    As if all that wasn't enough, there are plenty of add-ons and expansions that were released for Duke, including "Duke It Out In D.C." which puts our hero at the heart of a plot to rescue the President of the United States from his alien abductors, "Duke Caribbean" which finds our protagonist's vacation rudely interrupted by the alien horde who cannot get enough of Earth's women, and "Nuclear Winter" which sends Duke on a mission to the North Pole to straighten out a seemingly insane Santa Claus so that the children of the world will not wake up without presents on Christmas morning. Duke was heavily supported in the user-map community as well, with thousands of maps and total conversions (I recommend the Priss Nukem and Nene Nukem Bubblegum Crisis-themed TCs) developed by people all over the world for your obsessive downloading pleasure. And if that isn't enough for you, Duke comes with the Build editor itself to allow you to make levels for everyone else to muck about in if you're up to the task.







    So take yourself a trip back in time to 1996, when DOS was still king of the Operating Systems, and Duke was the king of the PC shooters. DOS may have gone the way of the dodo, but Duke is still there, wearing his crown, even if Duke Nukem Forever never releases. Now, if you'll excuse me, there are babes to be rescued, aliens to be shotgunned, and space stations to be wrecked. Hail to the King, baby.
  22. Areala
    As the saying goes, better late than never. In this case, it's just because I found out about it, it's on Friday the 23rd, and thus I have way, way less than 24 hours to write this post about why you wish that you lived in Minnesota right now.
    "Be excellent to each other." It was good advice when Bill S. Preson, Esq. & Ted Theodore Logan gave it to us back in 1989, and it's especially good advice today. Because in this case, being excellent means kicking out the jams and pulling out all the stops for a major charity event that combines rock music, video games, raffle give-aways and some killer prizes the likes of which any gamer worth his or her Achievement Points would sell one or more insignificant body parts to win.
    The full story can be read at the event's website, Be Most Excellent.org. The charity event, being held in Minnesota, is a double-benefit which goes to help Child's Play Charity and Children's Hospital of Minnesota. Everything is set to go down at the 501 Club in Minneapolis from 7pm to 2am, and anybody who is local (and who is over the age of 21) is urged to go and check it out. Again, my apologies for the complete and total lack of advanced notice...I just learned about this about an hour ago (Lisa Mason, if you're reading this, thank you again for letting me bother you!)



    OK, so what's going to happen besides there being an awful lot of drinking and partying? Well...can you say...ROCK BAND? I knew you could. You play it in your living room, right (or maybe your basement for those who are more conscious of their lack of volume control)? Well, just imagine what it would be like to play Rock Band on an enormously-epic stage, in front of a bunch of other gamers who don't even know you and will probably have great fun laughing at your expense every time you botch a riff or completely fail to hit that high note. Wouldn't that be...well...excellent?
    You're damn right it would be.
    Now...in case you needed any other reason to show up or just send money, you should know that some seriously heavy hitters in the gaming industry are throwing their wares into the mix. Maybe you'd like to win some EPIC Square Enix swag? What about a Kill Audio figure signed by Claudio Sanchez? Or maybe Prince of Persia is more your cup of tea? Maybe you just like lots of really sharp pointy things. What about some fully-inked comic book artwork, free movie passes, Sega games, or some excellent pizza? I mean, for crying out loud, what's not to like here?
    The point is, whether you go or not, whether you win or not, this is an amazingly awesome event, put on by gamers, rockers, and other uber-geeks looking to send a little video game love (and some cold, hard cash) to two excellent and deserving charities. So tell your friends about it, especially if you live in the Minneapolis area or know people who do.
    The tagline for BEtEO '09 is, "We rock, the kids win. And if we do it right, they'll win big." And this year, when the economy still has a long way to go towards recovery, and there are children who are stuck in the hospital (which is about the most boring place in the world outside of Moab, Utah no matter which hospital you're stuck in), why not do something that will ultimately go towards helping them pass the time while they are there? Imagine a Halloween without video games...now that's scary.
    Think of it as earning a Platinum trophy or Achievement in life this October. And even if you can't make it, go to their website and send them a comment just to let them know what a great job they're doing (tell 'em Areala sent you...who knows, that might be their secret passphrase or something).
  23. Areala

    Areala Goes Up A Level!

    By Areala,

    On my PS3, that is. It's been a long, hard battle, but I have finally achieved Level 7 in terms of my trophy score.
    I've put a lot of hours into getting those suckers, and I'm quite happy to see that it is paying off. My proudest achievement is still earning the Platinum trophy for Dead Space; beating that game on Impossible mode was hell on earth, but I slogged through it and earned my just reward. So far, it's the only game I have managed to get a Platinum for, though I am close with Fallout 3, needed just a mere 3 more trophies in order to receive it.
    Most of the rest of my game stats showcase the kind of gamer I am: I play through stuff mostly for the story as opposed to anything else. It's not that I can't play on higher difficulty levels (Dead Space's Platinum proves that I can), it's just that I'd much rather experience the game's storyline without having to constantly worry about getting snuffed out. If I had more time, I'd worry about higher difficulty level playthroughs, but it takes a special kind of game to make me want to put the work into a Platinum. Dead Space and Fallout 3 are quite worthy of it. Bioshock might be...we'll have to see. Uncharted would be too, but I managed to beat that game and unlock all the goodies before it got trophy support, and the idea of going through it all over again is more than a little annoying.
    I would certainly have made an exception for Resistance: Fall of Man, but they only gave trophy support to the sequel which I didn't feel is quite as good.
    I'm very happy to see some other titles getting trophy support built in though; I was quite happy to see the update to Bionic Commando: Rearmed that supplied it with trophies, and in fact it was getting one of those trophies that took me to Level 7 earlier today.
    Now...onward and upward. Level 8 is waiting...
  24. Areala
    Areala's "What If..." Game Design series is a partially-serious, partially-tongue-in-cheek, completely-hyphen-laden look at what would happen if things that are not currently video games were turned into video games under her supervision.

    Part Three

    In part two of this series, we looked at the problem of difficulty, and the pros and cons of a straight-up room-for-room conversion of the original Tomb of Horrors module. This part will look at the persona that the player will take on when he or she attempts to best our digital version of the Tomb, as well as what happens and what considerations must be made if additional players are allowed to join in the adventure.
    The primary thought to keep in mind is that the Tomb of Horrors is an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons product, and as such was meant to be played by characters who were somewhere between levels 10 and 14 and created under those rules. First- and second-level characters would have no chance taking on this kind of dungeon, and only a truly sick game master would subject low-level player characters to such a thing. In addition, the fact that it is a Dungeons & Dragons property means that it was meant to be tackled by a party composed of multiple characters, all of whom were specialists in some field or another (fighting, thievery, healing, offensive magic and so forth), and were meant to work as a cohesive unit instead of taking an "every man for himself" approach. Keeping faithful to the original source materials, then, would dictate that the Tomb of Horrors should be a multi-player only game, as no single character class in D&D exists as a jack-of-all-trades, especially under 1st edition rules. On the other hand, Gary Gygax himself has written (in the Introduction to its sequel/offshoot product, Return to the Tomb of Horrors) that he personally took two single characters through it on two occcasions, both of whom worked without the help of a party, and both of whom managed to best everything he threw at them. In light of this revelation, it seems that maybe the Tomb would work just as well as a single-player experience, provided that the player was of sufficient level and skill (as a player and not just as a character) to crack it.
    In addition to this, the Tomb of Horrors as it was originally conceived was a one-shot adventure and did not function as the lynchpin dungeon of an entire campaign. For this reason, the traditional CRPG trope of starting characters at level 1 and having them work their way up won't really work for this adventure. A Fallout 3 or Oblivion style of character development that relies on the character being in a living, breathing world and growing with it then is completely out. At the same time, players of role-playing games (and D&D especially) truly enjoy watching their characters grow and change; denying this in a product based on the D&D license would be a terrible mistake. So, how can we merge the action/adventure aspect of Tomb Raider (where our protagonist knows everything she can do right from the start of the game) and the slow advancement of traditional D&D via level gain and selection of new powers? In addition, how would we deal with a single-player game where the player may very well need to be a jack-of-all-trades in order to advance?
    To answer the first question, we can look to any action/adventure title where the protagonist gains additional weapons, armour, treasure and the like simply through exploration. Deathtrap Dungeon, while a terrible game in many respects, gave players a character with a fixed moveset but the ability to find different melee and ranged weapons, magic items, and spells that could be read off of scrolls. By its very nature, the Tomb of Horrors would be a very limited scope video game, and this system would serve to keep that in place. After all, the Tomb isn't a 30-level underground dungeon under a large city, it's a large but mostly single-floor crypt built out of the way of civilization housing one major nasty and a few lower-level adversaries. There aren't going to be mountains of orcs, clusters of goblins, or legions of skeletons sweeping out the corridors, because combat isn't the point of the game, puzzle solving is. Any given character with a means of defending himself or herself will be able to best the normal baddies who serve more to wear down a party than to serve as a means to their complete demise. Only Acererak the demilich poses that level of a threat, and direct combat with him is a difficult-to-impossible proposition at best. Giving the player the resources, then, to power-up without dealing with levels and stat points is a simple way of handling this issue.
    The second question is, in a way, answered by the first, but not completely. Class in D&D, if we are sticking to the rules, is imperative to observe and monitor. Thieves may not be able to cast healing spells or throw fireballs, but they can disarm traps, backstab enemies, climb walls, and disappear into the shadows. Mages might not be able to stand toe-to-toe with a troll, but they can bake an entire group of them with a couple of well-placed Fireballs. One way to handle this is to tailor the game to a single-player profession, and have the items discussed above drawn from tables specific to that player's character. In other words, Fighters won't benefit from clerical scrolls, but they can benefit from a cache of healing potion. Mages, by contrast, won't be able to do much with that magical longsword, but a nice Ring of Protection or a wand of Magic Missiles would go a long way. Providing a balance while helping the character make up for deficiencies through limited-use items (a potion of Spider Climbing would allow anybody to climb walls like a thief, but they could only do it once while a thief could attempt it multiple times) will permit any character a more solid chance to meet success in the Tomb. It will also force strategy via the use of objects to solve puzzles instead of just relying on a Fighter being able to hack his way out of every situation. That Ring of Invisibility only has 2 charges; is it worth burning one off to slip by something undetected, or should he rely on his force of arms and save the ring for something later? In this way, we can remain true to the spirit of D&D while allowing the player to customize his or her character and know that their dwarven thief has just as much a chance of getting through the Tomb as a half-elven cleric, a human paladin, or a gnomish wizard.
    Actually creating the character should be similar to the rules for character creation in D&D. These were well-implemented in the early SSI games such as Dungeon Hack, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Eye of the Beholder and the like. Rolling up a character, then picking a race, class, alignment, starting equipment, and spells is a simple matter of checking a few boxes, fiddling with the stats to your liking, and hitting "Go" when ready. Players could be offered a "Favorites" menu as well, so that if they enjoy playing an elvish mage every time, they can very quickly load their favorite template and go without having to roll a character every time. Alternately, each class could be given a flat set of stats so that all Fighters have 17 Strength, for instance, much the way that Diablo II does it, and have the equipment found and treasures looted through the game come to define how that fighter grows out of the mold he was grown in.
    What of multi-player though? Most games these days offer it as an incentive to increase replay value or a means to make the game more social. Diablo II is fun, but the real meat of the game is found in pulling seven of your friends into the game, representing all the major character types, and going to town on enemies that are now 8 times more difficult than they were when it was just you alone. The Tomb of Horrors was meant as a multi-player game to begin with, so denying that would be a serious mistake. I believe the way forward is to treat difficulty the way Diablo II does: the more people you have along, the easier it may be to overcome obstacles and monsters, and so the deadlier the encounters will wind up being. A four- or six-player game will allow every major class to be represented, but it will also present four or six times as many targets and opportunities for the players to fall victim to something evil. A pit trap, for example, can catch four characters just as easily as it does one. So implementing a scaling system of difficulty for multi-player games is of paramount importance. If the game goes from a serious challenge for one player but turns into a cakewalk with four, it isn't any fun. In addition, a multi-player system of play eliminates a key single-player advantage: the save-and-reload-until-I-get-it-right strategy. In a single-player game of Diablo, if you get killed, you can reload your last save and try it again. In a multi-player game, you have to respawn and hope somebody is guarding your body. In a multi-player Tomb of Horrors experience, the group might have to pay a price in terms of gold, magic item charges, or loss of a bonus somewhere in order to resurrect that player. In D&D, if your character died, you were out of the session temporarily until the means could be found for your group to bring you back to life. This isn't fully acceptable in the gaming world, but free respawns aren't the answer. If part of the strategy of the game is deciding whether it's worth making the sacrifice to bring back Player 3, then it makes the game that much more real and forces each player to consider his or her role carefully. A party with three fighters can probably get by with just two, but a party that just lost their only cleric is going to be far more apt to make the sacrifice to get their primary source of healing returned to them.
    That's all for this entry. Come back next time and see what else Areala has in store for our poor, unfortunate souls who seek to defeat Acererak (the fools...)!
  25. Areala
    Areala's "What If..." Game Design series is a partially-serious, partially-tongue-in-cheek, completely-hyphen-laden look at what would happen if things that are not currently video games were turned into video games under her supervision.

    Part Two


    In Part One of this series, we talked about the history of the Tomb of Horrors adventure and we picked our perspective choice. If you haven't read it, please start there. All others, ignore that "Abandon All Hope..." sign hanging in front of the tomb entrance and walk with me. Hope you brought a torch or something, it's dark inside.
    In this post, we'll take a look at the difficulty of the adventure and discuss the pros and cons of something so nasty and why players would want to play it. Knowing what you're going up against as a player is important; as a game designer, it's even more important than that and can be the difference between your game getting branded with a "Greatest Hits" moniker or urinated on by the gaming press.
    The most important part of converting the tomb is to decide whether or not we want to blindly copy everything in a picture-perfect fashion from the original module into our pretend game. Something with a history as grand as the Tomb will no doubt have been played, read, and experienced by tens of thousands of people over the years, and each and every last one of them is going to have an idea of what our version of the Tomb should be like. A straight conversion, while perhaps the simplest way to go, would really serve only one important point: absolute compliance with the source materials. This will satisfy any gamer with an encyclopedic knowledge of the adventure, but satisfying them may not be the best choice. To be sure, a foot-for-foot conversion of the map will be the simplest task for our intrepid team of mappers and room designers, but it will then put our game at the mercy of anyone who has ever set foot in the Tomb outside of our game. If all that is required to walk through the Tomb is a copy of the original adventure to refer to, any gamer would be capable of besting the Tomb in under an hour by avoiding all the traps, pitfalls and decoys that make Acererak's lair so dangerous. Without that thrill, the game will become little more than a chore and replay value would be virtually nil.
    For these reasons, I believe we can look to another dungeon crawler adventure for inspiration: the original Rogue (or, for those of you who are too young to remember that, we can pick on its 1990s graphical retread, Diablo). Rogue takes a set of simple rules and randomly generates content, ensuring that the game changes each and every time you start your quest. Diablo likewise follows this route, only it utilizes certain internal sets to ensure that given areas are always laid out in a similar fashion. What this means is that major areas of the Tomb could be mapped out, but those rooms, all the corridors, treasure, and traps in other locations could be randomized. While a given room might always have a weapons rack on the wall, the item it contained could change from game to game, and in one version it might be guarded by a ghost, in another version it has no guard at all, and in a third version the room can only be found by discovering a secret door. This has the advantage of staying true to the spirit of the original source materials while allowing the letter of those materials to be changed from game to game. Traps won't always be in the same places, corridors and doors will not always face the same way or open into the same rooms, and some treasures may not be in the same locations, but everything an explorer needs to survive and win would appear within each game.
    If nothing else, a minor change to the source materials would be necessary just to ensure that the game was playable from the start. In the original adventure, the player characters (PCs) arrive at the location of the tomb to find nothing more than a rather desolate-looking, weed-encrusted flattop hill with some large black boulders and shrubs as the lone points of interest. In order to even get into the tomb, the characters must probe into the ground deeply enough and high enough on the hill itself to dislodge significant amounts of dirt and sand to uncover an opening that can then be expanded into a crawlspace or a full entryway with enough digging. And while this may seem bad enough, there are actually 3 different entrances to the Tomb, only one of which is the proper way in. The other two are trapped in such fashions that it is possible to suffer a total party kill before anyone even steps foot inside the dungeon. Asking modern-day video gamers to accept this sort of start is a recipe for disaster, so at the very least, the player should be started off at the entrance to the tomb proper. There are plenty of ways he can go about getting dismembered once inside, but let's at least play somewhat fair, eh?
    Or not. Suppose that we offered some options for our game? What if, instead of hand-holding players, we embraced the idea of players who wanted a serious challenge (with a suitable merit reward at the end) for those who attempted the Tomb with no holds barred? The gloves come off, anything goes, and just like the Rogue-like games of old or a Hardcore game of Diablo II, if your character bites it, that's it: no save game, no tapbacks, it's just like real life: mess up, and you die. Offering levels of play that cater to beginner and expert gamers alike will increase the playability of the game within our community, and ensure that nobody feels the game isn't playing fair enough, or is using kid gloves. We'll do it, then: a hardcore option for players who think they are bad enough to handle it. On the PS3 or 360, completing the game in this fashion would grant a trophy or achievement showing the world what you had done, a true badge of honour any hardcore gamer would be powerless to resist, but one that could be safely ignored by more casual gamers without dilluting the final product in any way.
    That's all for this entry. Tune in next time when we look at character creation options, playable characters, and discuss the mechanics of single character vs. multiple characters playing through the Tomb all at the same time!
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