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When Videogames Know They're Videogames
An anonymous reader writes "In 'I Never Metagame I Didn't Like', AllRPG.com goes into a discussion of metagaming - what it is and some games which feature it. The piece explains: 'Metagames show awareness of their nature as games. These games ignore all pretense of being a representation of a reality--rather, they know that they're polygons on a screen', and goes on to reference titles such as Earthbound and Metal Gear Solid as examples." Are there other examples of titles which address the player in this awfully postmodern way?
In The Curse of Monkey Island Guybrush Threepwood is buried alive and the credits start scrolling, when suddenly Guybrush starts yelling about how you can't die in these LucasArts games.
Does that count?
I went through that. Boy did I go through that.
The only way I figured out what you had to do was because I went through the game to that poitn so many times that I just got fed up and hit "reset" to get to play it again faster. I hit reset and learned that, no, that button isn't hard-wired, it's actually software controlled! Boy was I angry, and at the same time, horribly amused.. To think, I'd spent hours looking around on the SCREEN for a reset button!
To date I haven't found an emulator that correctly emulates the Reset button to play this game correctly....
"You're in a computer game, Max..."
The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Weapon statistics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. The endless repetition of the act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves, the paranoid feeling of someone controlling my every step...
I was in a computer game.
Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could I think of.
Hmmm... I think I've played a little too much Max.
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
A stage has three walls for real. The fourth one is the invisible one, which you're not supposed to break.
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire