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Warshaw Awards Celebrate 2003's Gaming Missteps
Thanks to Shacknews for their feature revealing The Warshaw Awards for 2003, celebrating "some of the worst missteps of the year" in videogaming. The awards are named after Howard Scott Warshaw, creator of the famously poor E.T. for the Atari 2600, and victors include Namco for R: Racing Evolution, which "eschews virtually everything that Ridge Racer fans had come to expect", David Duchovny for "quite possibly the worst [voice acting] I've ever heard from a mainstream actor" in Ubisoft's XIII, and the IGN gaming website for their "obscene McDonald's advertising campaign."
I don't know whether enough people knew about if for it to get an award, but a company has been claiming to be producing a new console called the "Phantom". Apparently their production facilities were investigated and found to be a very large, empty office with a single desk in it. Let the vapourware jokes begin:).
Alphanos
Penny Arcade comic here.
Seriously! Enough! It was a bad game. But was it the greatest pile of crap in history? No. I saw my friend beat it recently, and it actually wasn't that bad when I got to see someone play who knew what he was doing. Just my $0.02, it's just getting old is all...
I think the author is being a little hard on Duchovny. When have we ever seen him as animated as Michael Ironside? Lacking the subtle clues of minute physical gesture, generated characters in videogames need to put a lot of variation in tone and pacing. Duchnovy traditionally relies upon eye and minor head movements. That's not to say he isn't a great actor, but he's far too subtle and visual to be a great voice actor. He has less intonation than Ben Stein. Thinking that would translate well to an audio-only role is Ubi Soft's fault.
The ______ Agenda
A lot of what this guy says is just duh hay kind of stuff. And while I'll agree Nintendo's press releases were not as funny as intended. Mario Party still freakin' rules. If you don't like Mario Party its probably because you don't have 3 friends 3 controllers and a freakin' party.
The rest of the article is like "The N-Gage sucks". Not even close to news.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I feel bad for Howard Scott Warshaw every time I hear his name mentioned in connection with the E.T. Atari game. It wasn't really his fault it was so terrible... they told him they had to have it on the shelves in time for the Christmas shopping season, and gave him about a month and a half to work on it. At least, that's what he said in this interview. A way overhyped game for one of the most successful movies of all time, and they give one programmer six weeks to do it? Even in 1982 that was suicide, no matter how brilliant the one programmer might have been.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
Honestly, that was better than "A Boy and His Blob." At least you could see the hole in E.T. "A Boy and His Blob" consisted of walking around, throwing unmarked colored jellybeans at your blob. Eventually you would map out what every one did. From then on, you had to walk up to every wall, floor, ceiling and other surface in the game, feed the blob the appropriate jellybean, walk through blindly, and see if you fell to your death. This task wasn't made any easier by the limited number of jellybeans... As if someone was going to cheat and use 3 ladders from "ketchup" instead of two.
In this case, "fall in hole, die, reset" wasn't just a mistake, it was the gameplay. The only merciful thing about the game was that it was one level long, and the second half of that level was a series of copout, easy training screens that should have come first. Why Nintendo Power hailed it as the second coming of your deity of choice is anyone's guess, but I'm guessing money.
The ______ Agenda
He's also being too hard on Namco and Nintendo. Racing Evolution was no terrible game, it was just "different." In a series known for being identical to the way it flagshipped the PS1, it was time for a risk. They took the risk, they alienated some fans, and now they are in a much better position in the market. Would he have preferred another Ridge Racer 5? It was a failure, true, but a noble one.
Likewise, saying Nintendo's head is buried in the sand ignores the fact that nintendo has testmarketed an online adapter, the Bulky Drive. Japan doesn't have very high broadband penetration. If the decision were based on Japan alone, there just isn't enough households for all of the extra work required in porting games to online multiplayer. The X-Box online is a no-brainier, and the PS2 has to keep up, but the 'Cube? Would Mario Party be better if 10% of the 10% of households with broadband decided to play online? Except to the extremely hardcore, not releasing an online adapter shouldn't count as a blunder. The whole N64 cartridge thing... That was a blunder. No Mario Kart Online yet? Don't be foolish.
The ______ Agenda
Wtf when I read "obscene McDonald ad" I expect to see Hamburglar raping Grimace or something, not tacky commercialism.