The Many Secrets of Smash Bros. Melee

Via Joystiq, N-Philes has an article delving deep into the secrets of Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Gamecube. A Developer Mode is accessible within the game which allows for battle tweaking, setting changes, and access to dozens of otherwise inaccessible battle maps. From the article: "Notice the stage is completely horizontal. Not only that, it's easily the longest fighting arena in Super Smash Bros. history (with the exception of the Home-Run Contest stage). Along the stage lie several moving platforms and multicolored grounds with different amounts of traction when walked across. It's clear that HAL used this area as a virtual playground to experiment with several different aspects of gameplay. Did you take note of the background? Confused? So is everyone else. The background is a giant picture of a pub. If you look closely you can spot several people enjoying tall glasses of beer atop the bar and tables. Despite the fact that it seems a little strange, it somehow adds to the illustrious prestige of Super Smash Bros. We wouldn't have it any other way."

Comments

Time for a rating change!

[niskel]

The ESRB said nothing about alcohol consumption in it's packaging warnings. Now I am offended that I have let my child play such filth. I will see HAL in court!

Re:Time for a rating change!

[Hott of the World]

Hot coffee? Ohh no, its BOOZE! Call Jack at once! Think of the Children!

Re:Time for a rating change!

[SeekerDarksteel]

Yeah, cause if there's one guy who knows his booze it's good ol' Jack.

...wait...you meant Thomson, didn't you? Nevermind....

Drunk People make good games.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its quite obvious to me now.

Re:Drunk People make good games.

[Fr05t]

Yes, but terrible code - don't even get me started on the commenting!

n-sider?

[Gr33nNight]

The link is to n-philes.com not n-sider.

Re:n-sider?

[Runegscentral.org]

Hi. I appreciate that gscentral.com was linked for credit at the end of the article, but that seems to confuse the reader into thinking that N-Philes did the work. This is not true. I hacked the debug mode (amongst other codes for SSBM) in the summer of 2003. I would appreciate it if you could mention this better on Slashdot and tell Joystix to give credit where it is due. From a bystanders' perspective, it appears that they hacked the codes and made these discoveries as to what the debug menu is capable of. Nothing could be further from the truth, as a good few hackers spent a month testing everything years ago. The original source is crucial for credibility of your site, as others were also credited incorrected for the discovery of the Citadel in GoldenEye. To set that matter straight, it was Krijy who found it, and Zoinkity who made it fully playable. (Aside, the fact that I am no longer affiliated with gscentral.com is important, so I'd much rather the link go to gscentral.org, where the site is now being updated regularly.) Thank you for your full cooperation, Rune

Re:n-sider?

[Anonymous Coward]

The original source is crucial for credibility of your site...

Credibility? This is the wrong place for that :) It is now an endangered species :)

Re:n-sider?

[blincoln]

Nothing could be further from the truth, as a good few hackers spent a month testing everything years ago.

I ran into similar lameness when I hacked the debug menus for the PS2 versions of Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance (available on my site, for the curious). As soon as you post something like that, people start cutting and pasting it into forums and websites as if that's the hard part. Some of them even get upset if you challenge them on it, along the lines of "dude i get credit for posting it here first."

Amusingly enough, a friend of mine in the UK took my work and used it to make similar things for the PC versions of the games, and a lot of people assume that *I* had something to do with that other than showing him how it worked on the PS2.

My method now is to make sure that before I tell anyone about a new hack, I post it on my site (which is up permanently), then post it on a couple of forums with timestamps so there's a definite record that can be looked up later.

Nice work on the SSBM codes. I think I'll actually pick up a copy of that so I can try them out =).

Easter Eggs

[turtled]

I love when games add things in, and I just busted this game out yesterday. This'll come in handy tonight.

Re:Easter Eggs

[KDR_11k]

You need an Action Replay to unlock the debug menu.

Re:Easter Eggs

[MrNash]

Hidden debugs are usually pretty fun. I just wish that they were still readily accessible via button combinations on the controller, like during the 16-bit days. Now it seems that more often than not one needs a cheat device to gain access to these sorts of things.

Re:Easter Eggs

[Pxtl]

Of course, what I always wonder is - why hide them? Oh are you afraid your players might, y'know, have fun playing with the game?

PC titles often come with a full devkit. Console titles? If you're lucky, you can pick your character. Yay customisation.

Re:Easter Eggs

[Scuff]

a PC game that ships with an editor has a seperate application for modding, and has the resources of a PC that can get additional content from many sources (keyboard for scripting, scanner for new textures, internet connection to download content created by other users) and has plenty of space to store additional information. Basically, the actual coding and artwork the development team does for these games is done on a PC, and additional tools are often required for some modifications. These games run from a local hard disk and have an easily available place for mods to reside.

On the other hand, on a console, you have limited ways of getting content onto the system, tools that aren't native to the system because the original development work for it all was done on a PC, and space issues (the larger Gamecube memory card released by Nintendo is 16M. It was 4MB when this game was released.) These games can't be patched afterwards, they run unmodified from optical media and only have a very small amount of space to save user data.

Re:Easter Eggs

[Paladin128]

The average console user is a LOT less tech savvy than the average PC gamer. These things are hidden for lots of reasons:

1) lack of time for QA -- some stuff is buggy, and doesn't make the final cut. If it can cause the game to crash, it shouldn't be accessible to end users. Period.

2) Breaking game balance -- if some characters in a fighting game, for example, are simply too good, and make the game not fun to play, they shouldn't be allowed.

3) Flavor -- sometimes some stuff used in early stages is really dumb, or the vision on the project changes. If something doesn't fit, it shouldn't be in.

Re:Easter Eggs

[badasscat]

Of course, what I always wonder is - why hide them? Oh are you afraid your players might, y'know, have fun playing with the game?

The issue is most of these "extras" would *not* be fun for the average person, and would in fact lead to a lot of people questioning whether they got a finished game. (In fact, they'd be right to ask.)

There are 29 complete stages in SSBM, and apparently more than 60 with the developer menu. But that doesn't mean those 30-some odd extra stages are anywhere close to being finished or even very playable. They may be test stages with incomplete graphics, they may be buggy, unbalanced, or just not worthy of being in the game quality-wise.

Some of these customizations were obviously disabled to protect the brand. Dark Link? That's probably something Nintendo just didn't want people to be able to play as at this point in time, anymore than Disney would want you playing a game as "Evil Nemo" or something. Maybe you don't agree with their decision, but you should hopefully be able to understand it.

A lot of these options are also in there to help marketing departments. How do you think publishers get screenshots? It's a combination of actually playing the game (yes, they do actually play!) combined with a bit of manipulation through the developer controls. For example, in a certain actual game I won't name, the publisher might select a particular vehicle to drop in front of the character, then select a rocket launcher and blow it up. They will then put the game in slow-motion, turn the character so he's running away from the explosion, then pause. Then they will unlock and set the camera (with camera controls that mimic those of a real camera, including optical effects) and take a screenshot.

So, there are a combination of reasons why these various things are in the game. Some are just tests. Some are things that were intended to be in the game but either didn't work right or were never finished. Some were intended to help market the game.

But none of them are really worthy of being in anything you might call a "finished game". If Nintendo had released this game with all this stuff unlocked, you'd have been charitable calling it a beta. Closing this stuff off allows users to only see the final, polished product.

Look at it this way. Every filmmaker shoots about 50 hours of film for a feature, or thousands of hours for a documentary. Why not just include all of it in the final film, with no editing? Wouldn't be very interesting or exciting to watch, would it?

Knowing what to edit out is as important as knowing what to put in.

Re:Easter Eggs

[Pxtl]

Yes, but such extra, random footage often ends up on the "Special Features" section of the DVD. I'm not saying that such extra crap should be in the game, proper - but an "extended features" section that requires a little digging to access would be nice.

Yes, I know it's not polished - like the "Special Features" sections, the "director commentary", etc., you don't watch it until you've seen the movie enough times that you're really interested in all the details. But leave it accessible for those of us who don't want to buy this game-genie-like device.

Watch out! here comes ESRB

[Unsus]

ESRB set a strong precedence that if a user can hack the game to allow something, then that content was clearly put in their to deliberately lower the rating while letting children see that filth. Why won't anyone think of the children?

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[Iriel]

I understand your point, but at some point, people will have to realize how stupid it is. With computer generated characters becoming more 'life like', we will soon be seeing characters that are assembled from skeleton, to muscle and tissue with clothing on top. If that stage of polygon count ever arives, the entire Hot Coffee verdict will be overturned because any game that can be hacked against regulations to remove layers to expose nude characters in a game will have to raise the ratings.

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[FLAGGR]

we will soon be seeing characters that are assembled from skeleton, to muscle and tissue with clothing on top.
Erm, what the fuck? We will also have FTL travel to other planets in about ten years, and timetravel will be passe by then. Actually building a model that detailed wouldn't serve any purpose but to slow down whatever super computer (and I mean super-super-duper computer, with a few extra RAM upgrades) is running your game. Bones? Sure, they already do that to some extent (skeletal animation, maybe not what he's thinking but oh well) muscle and tissue? What good does that do? Honestly, that doesn't make the games any more realistic at all. Clothes on top of the models 'skin'? That can be done now, but it's too hard on physics to do in real time, and doesn't really do any good (unless you want clothes blowing in the wind, in which case there are plenty of ways to fake it, or use 'tight' clothes that are just textures over the model)

Most people don't understand how much of video games, especially physics, is faked. As long as the eye can't tell the difference, then who cares if that collision was off by 0.0001 degrees? You'll never ever see anything dumb like models being 'assembled from skeleton to musicle and tissue with clothing on top', because that serves absolutly no purpose for the speed hit it would take on such a supercomputer, and doesn't make any noticable difference to the viewer (except the clothing one)

Now, if by 'assembled' you meant in the literal sense, like taking a dead human body, inserting it into my computer to make bad guys for Doom 147, then you have a sick sick mind :)

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[Unsus]

Well, at this point we can be assured that games will completely take out unintended content when they ship instead of just locking it out. However, the real question is: do the politicians understand how powerful hacking can be? The Sims was in the spot light for their ability to remove the blur around the private areas. Of course, nothing was underneath the blur (like a marquee). But what if a hacker also changed the texture of the characters to show explicit body parts? Hacking a game is changing the contents -- like writing in a book. If I write slurs in a children's book, and then give that children's book to someone, it won't make sense for the author of the book to be held responsible for what I wrote in that book. The ESRB set a strong precedent when they changed GTA's rating due to hack. I won't be to surprised to see game companies spending a lot of their resources to make it difficult for the game to be modded/hacked, but as most of us know, they can only defer it by making it difficult, but there is no way to completely prevent it.

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[BlackCobra43]

You overestimate the reach of the ESRB's change. To further your analogy: it was found that a pornographic image was hidden under a layer of White-Out inside of a children's book. Said book would no longer be suitable for children as thye can simply use outside tools (i.e. their nail) to uncover the content that was hidden and niot acessed during ordinary use (i.e. reading the book) and that book would then on be sold at adult bookstores.

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[FLAGGR]

Yes, scratching whiteout off with your nail is about the same effort for a child as getting an action replay and the specific codes to go into it to modify the game. Nice comparison.

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[Iriel]

Actually, what you can add into a game and Hot Coffee were two completely different things. The reason for that is because Hot Coffee was already completely assembled: models, responses, sounds and everything. The only part of the game that was actually hacked was a few lined of code in the PC version to allow that part of the game to be accessed. In case anybody needs clarification, think of it like this:

In SSB:Melee, you have to meet certain requirments to 'unlock' features in the game. Hot Coffee was a feature that was already built into GTA:SA, but the requirment to get it was never set, so you could never unlock it. All the 'hackers' did, was fill in that line of code. (It's over simplified, I know)

The reason you can't change the rating for a game that somebody added content to is because the distributor never lisenced that content and never created it to begin with. Users had to have built it and found a way to plug it into the game. GTA:SA's Hot Coffee was already good to go if you changed a few lines of code.

I think it will become too stupid to enforce things like this, though, when hackers could possibly remove a model from the character to leave them exposed, when that would normally violate the terms of use to begin with. Games are always trying to look more realistic and enforcing something like this could only hold them back.

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[skepticult]

The whiteout would also have to have been printed over with graphic depictions of hookers getting beaten down with a baseball bat by a guy wearing a jetpack, which kind of kills the children's book analogy.

It's more like going frame-by-frame on an R rated movie to catch a microsecond glimpse of snatch that wasn't supposed to be there.

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[skyman8081]

Right, which is why Hollywood uses a system just like what the grandparent described for CG rendering today.

Give it two console generations before cloth, bone and muscle animations are part of a convincing model.

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[Meagermanx]

Zombie games would benefit from bones, clothing, and skin.
So would really gory fighting games. Mortal Kombat fatalities with that kind of system would rock.
Since most of the innovation in video games is graphics oriented anyway, I don't see this too far off.

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[rohlfinator]

The ESRB rates the content placed on the game disc and distributed by the publisher. Example: The original version of Half-Life wasn't rated for the content of Counter-Strike (a mod), but when Sierra distributed a retail version of Counter-Strike, it was subject to the ESRB's ratings. In GTA's case, the Hot Coffee game already existed on the disc, and the only "hacking" involved was used to access the minigame. I suppose SSBM could also fall into this category, although none of this secret content would have changed the rating.

In the case of The Sims user-created nude textures (which already exist, by the way), EA couldn't be held responsible for what a third-party added to the game code after the game had already been released. As long as the original game disc didn't contain any nude textures, EA is in the clear, regardless of what nuts like Jack Thompson say.

I imagine the solution to all of this will involve a new disclaimer. The ESRB already uses "Game Experience May Change During Online Play" when online play may introduce additional profanity or inappropriate user-created content. If this situation continues, they'll probably introduce another disclaimer to cover the effects of unrated user-created mods and hacks.

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[Triple Click]

OMG, we might see Yoshi without his boots and saddle! Think of the children!

Re:Watch out! here comes ESRB

[Breakfast Pants]

What if in your children's book you had two pages stuck together and inbetween them there was a porno image. Kid's can't see it unless they "hack the game." Most people would see that as a very different thing than a book having a blank page saying "draw something here" and a kid drawing pornography onto it. That is the difference between downloading a hack that unlocks content and downloading a nude patch that adds the content in.

How do you access?

[Hadlock]

How do you access this developer mode? The article tells how great debug mode can be, but nowhere does it list how it's accessed. Anyone want to let me (us) in on the secret for some easy karma whoring?

Re:How do you access?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look here

Re:How do you access?

[yanos]

Yes, the article itself is pretty low on details on how to access this debug menu, but after some googling, I found this (from http://ssbm.detstar.com/debug/):

If you have an Action Replay, Super Smash Bros. Melee already exists in your list of preset game codes... However, those SSBM codes will only work with SSBM version 1.0.

So, how do you figure out what version you have, to decide which codes to use? Take your Melee disk, and turn it over to the shiny side. Hold it directly in the light, and search for tiny text on the dark ring. You'll have to experiment by holding your disk at different angles in the light, until the text is visible.

Eventually, you should be able to find text that says "DOL-GALE-0-xx".The "xx" will actually be a number, which tells you which version you have. The -Det Erest messing around with textures - version numbers are below:
00: Version 1.0
01: Version 1.1
02: Version 1.2

Here are the codes to access the Debug Menu:

v1.0:
77H8-Y4CD-H4VRY
JR3K-U29H-U6BH

v1.1:
69KC-WJGT-V09F5
P5A0-GP46-M8EB7

v1.2:
VBF7-P9Y6-2788D
TDA5-YA0R-8947W

PAL:
7X1H-THWE-401YB
47K3-GPZC-DBY82

So how do we do this?

[fireduck]

5 pages of all the wonderful things you can do with developer mode. Practically change anything you want in the game, get up to 6 player controlled characters, new levels, new models, new music, whatever you want. And not a single mention of how exactly to access it.

Until you get to the forum link on page 6 and even then, a forum user (not the author) points out that you need action replay and specific codes to do 95% of what the article describes.

All I have to say is...

[Anonymous Coward]

In under a year we played enough Super Smash Brothers to actually break the gamecube. We burned out the optical drive and had to buy a new one. Our save file has close to 2000 hours on it now. Talk about crack in video game form!

Comparing Smash Brothers to other fighters, let alone other video games, is totally unfair. It's like comparing Firefly to other TV shows; you simply do not put professionals on a list full of amateurs, it is not fair to anyone involved.

The real beauty of SSBM is that it is in many ways an invisible game - the simple controls and wide variety of moves allow you to strip away the "game" and simply fight your friends, brain to brain. The exaggerated nature of the combat makes it absolutely HILARIOUS to play as well. If you can watch a Donkey Kong vs Bowser "Giant Melee" with high items set to "Giant Mushrooms only" without laughing, you are a stronger man than I.

When SSB Online comes out on Revolution that will be the end of all of my hobbies and probably my job too. A bittersweet day!

Re:All I have to say is...

[Psiven]

And the DS version should be neat too.

Re:All I have to say is...

[djdanlib]

You're the man.

At RIT... we did that too.

Re:All I have to say is...

[Tofino]

I've only played this for maybe 30-45 minutes with my friend's kid, but to me it seemed like a bunch of button mashing. I must be really missing something, so I'll pick it up again. Keep in mind I'm 34 and therefore suck at all fighting games ;).

Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

"I always believed [Super Smash Bros. Melee] was the deepest fighting game of this gaming generation, but from then on, I was convinced it was the deepest fighting game ever."

I guess this guy's never played a Virtua Fighter game before. Or any of Capcom's later-era 2D fighters. Geez.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Neither. Honest disagreement. I can't imagine why anyone would call Capcom's fighters "deep", and some people insist that Virtua Fighter is just a button masher. They, you, and I are all probably wrong about something. Most of the highly regarded fighters have their own merits. Smash Bros included.

But this guy's taste is given away by the fact that he thinks more levels and character size options makes it deeper.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I will agree with you on Virtua Fighter, but Capcom's late era 2D fighters lacked the depth of their mid-era 2D fighters. Their last offering, Capcom Fighting Evolution was not all that deep because it boiled down to tons of Darkstalker character rushdown. Capcom vs. SNK 2 wasn't all that deep since it devolved into A-Groove Sak, Blanka, Bison, K-Groove Sagat, Blanka, Cammy or C-Groove Sagat teams (stupid Sagat crouching fierce punch).

Capcom's deepest 2-D fighters (IMO) were:
Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike
Vampire Saviour
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
and to a lesser extent, Street Fighter Alpha 3

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is an odd exception because Capcom threw so much in the game that it became deep because of the raw amount of stuff in it, not necessarily on a technical level.

As for Smash Brothers, considering it was designed as a party game, it is surprisingly deep, although nowhere near as deep as the deepest 2D or 3D fighters.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

Those games are deep, sure. And the things shown in this article don't make Super Smash Bros. Melee deep.

But it is astoundingly deep, and it can be argued that it's deeper than those games you mention, if just because:

1. It's not a straight, left-right fighting game. Of course there are 3D fighters like Tekken and SoulCalibur, but they're still essentially about a 2D plane. Smash Bros. provides a lot more territory to make use of, and vertical attacks play a much larger role in the game.

2. Instead of depleting a health bar, Smash Bros' lose condition involves being knocked off the stage. You can even be at maximum damage (999%) and survive an attack. Thus, the direction in which you throw your opinion is as important as the amount of damage you do. Similarly, you can lose with very little damage. Knocking a player out of an area is an inherently deeper play mechanic than getting an arbitrary number high/low enough.

3. Smash has a shield/dodge system that can allow a player to absolutely rule if mastered, but can be played entirely without it. (For my money, SoulCalibur's Guard Impacts are slightly cooler, but it's still neat.)

4. Sheer variety of characters. Smash has one "character" that's actually two that play completely differently from each other, Zelda/Sheik, who can be switched between using a special move. There's also a character (Ice Climbers) who's actually two guys you play at the same time, and the "trailing" climber can die independently of the main one. Kirby has a special move that can become completely different depending on who he's fighting against (26 options). Yoshi doesn't have a triple jump, Kirby and Jigglypuff have many jumps. Peach has a move that gives her an item to throw, and can also float in midair and attack from that position. Fox is ultra-fast, but actually falls faster than other characters. Mario/Dr. Mario has a move that reverses an opponent's direction, which is evil to do to someone trying to recover from a fall. And Jigglypuff, of course, has Rest, which screws you over if it misses, but can instantly kill multiple opponents if it hits.

Of course there other fighting games that have some (though not this much) variety, and variety alone doesn't make a game deep. But the thing about Smash Bros. Melee is that it's still balanced despite it all. That takes an amazing amount of play testing, and genius game designers. That's what makes them great.

Hell I know players who swear by the *original*, N64 Smash Bros. And these games came from Nintendo and HAL Labs, neither of which had made a fighting game before. Very cool.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

Before someone mentions Killer Instinct, that was more Rare's baby. (Though I admit I said "Nintendo and HAL Labs," which confuses the issue somewhat.)

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Psykechan]

Capcom's deepest 2-D fighters (IMO) were:
Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike

By the time 3rd strike came out, all of the local arcades had gone bye-bye or decided that they would only carry driving/shooting/fishing/ddr style games. Playing any fighting game on the Dreamcast controller makes my thumbs bleed.

Vampire Saviour

I'd agree with you here except for the lifebar problem; it changed the game too much. I prefer the second one (Vampire Hunter) out of the Vampire games.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo

You are referring to just Street Fighter II Turbo without the super nonsense, right? No one I've known, and I used to play with true SF fanatics, liked either Super Stereotype Fighter games.

and to a lesser extent, Street Fighter Alpha 3

I loved SFA2 and 3. I would probably put Street Fighter Zero 2 ' (please note the ') on the top of the list but no one ever seems to have heard about that one. SFA3 would have to be the fall back for "Best Capcom Fighting Game" but it still has it's flaws; V-ism Cody's dodge makes people scream "imbalance".

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[DeadScreenSky]

Yeah, this part in particular is hilarious:

With almost complete certainty, the "wave dash" was never purposely intended to be in the game. It's exact reasons like this why fans and journalists alike proclaim Melee to be the deepest fighter ever created.

As if SSBM is the first fighting game with this kind of stuff in it! AFAIK the term "wave dashing" is even taken from the Tekken series. The author also mentions the L-cancel, but similar cancels have been an advanced staple of most modern fighting games for at least a decade (the earliest example I am familiar with is the original Virtual On released in 1995, but I am sure there are earlier examples). Finding and taking advantage of gameplay 'glitches' has been a common event in fighting games pretty much from the genre's inception. A lot of times these glitches are a surprise even to the developers, who then adjust and balance the newly found gameplay techniques in a sequel or revision to the game. This is just business as usual.

It's great that the author has found a fighting game that he enjoys so much, but a lot of the claims about SSBM's depth seem to be the observations of somebody who simply doesn't know much about the genre. The vast majority of decent fighting games (VF, DOA, Tekken, SC, Virtual On, KOF, SF, etc.) have enormous amounts of depth that simply isn't readily apparent until you are very experienced with the game, so it isn't a surprise that SSBM features the same kind of thing. You could probably argue the same is true of any reasonably complex game (look at some of the tricks used in Quake1 speed-running, for example).

It still was an interesting article, even if many of its claims were a little inflated.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> it can be argued that it's deeper than those games you mention

Let's see...

> It's not a straight, left-right fighting game. Of course there are 3D fighters like Tekken and SoulCalibur, but they're still essentially about a 2D plane.

Within the context of quasi-realistic fighting, Virtua Fighter 3 made full use of all three dimensions. Battle areas had lots of height variations and some obstacles, and relative positioning in 3-space affected many elements of the battle system. Although VF4 returned to flat rings, you could still move in any direction, and relative positioning still had a major impact on the system. But yes, the vertical part of the game doesn't go much over the 10-foot mark.

> Instead of depleting a health bar, Smash Bros' lose condition involves being knocked off the stage.

The Virtua Fighter series has always been set in rings, so you could win by K.O., Ring Out, or having more health left when time ran out. Beginning with VF3 some walls were introduced, and VF4 added breakable walls to the mix.

> Knocking a player out of an area is an inherently deeper play mechanic than getting an arbitrary number high/low enough.

Having to worry about both at the same time is even deeper.

> Smash has a shield/dodge system that can allow a player to absolutely rule if mastered, but can be played entirely without it.

Virtua Fighter 4 has multi-directional dodges, reversals, and throw escapes that can be stacked in almost arbitrary combinations. This lets expert players defeat a significant subset of the attacks aimed at them, but they still have to predict what their opponent will do and pull off some challenging controller maneuvers to make it happen. That said, novices can still play a pretty deep game without ever touching that part of the system.

> Sheer variety of characters.

SSBM has VF4: Evolution beat (only 16 characters), but Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has 56 characters, and each player controls a team of 3. So SSBM is certainly respectable in this category, but not the king of the hill.

Also, you have to ask how much variety each character provides. The movesets in Virtua Fighter are so expansive that three or four different players could have relatively deep, yet completely different playstyles for the same character with very little move overlap. Could you say the same of SSBM...?

> Of course there other fighting games that have some (though not this much) variety

As we've just seen, SSBM isn't the king of variety.

> But the thing about Smash Bros. Melee is that it's still balanced despite it all. That takes an amazing amount of play testing, and genius game designers.

The Virtua Fighter games are renowned for their balance (since VF2, at least), and the development team goes out of their way to respond to player feedback and tweak any small details that may arise over time. With 15 unique characters whose move lists are all as long as your arm, I'd say that's at least as amazing as SSBM's accomplishment.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Playing any fighting game on the Dreamcast controller makes my thumbs bleed.

Anybody who took fighting games even remotely seriously had a six-button controller or (better yet) a joystick.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

Within the context of quasi-realistic fighting, Virtua Fighter 3 made full use of all three dimensions. Battle areas had lots of height variations and some obstacles, and relative positioning in 3-space affected many elements of the battle system.

There are other fighting games that are sort of like that as well (PowerStone and its sequel, which is a weird system but certainly no weirder than Smash's), which I had forgotten about. I don't know if they're more or less different or deeper than Smash's, I admit that's something that I'd have to think about.

Instead of depleting a health bar, Smash Bros' lose condition involves being knocked off the stage.

The Virtua Fighter series has always been set in rings, so you could win by K.O., Ring Out, or having more health left when time ran out. Beginning with VF3 some walls were introduced, and VF4 added breakable walls to the mix.

But the ONLY way to win a (standard) Smash game is by scoring Ring Outs, scoring damage is merely a means to that end, and that's a lot (but not all) of what's interesting about it. And even VF's movement system can't hold up to Smash in this department -- Smash is essentially a full 2D platforming game that happens to have a fight taking place within it.

Virtua Fighter 4 has multi-directional dodges, reversals, and throw escapes that can be stacked in almost arbitrary combinations.

This is a tricky call to make one way or the other, because Smash's dodges are also part of the game's heavy emphasis on manuevability. Part of what makes it so different from traditional fighting games is that characters are so small compared to the size of the arena. Here, hmm, I'll say that Smash is different, maybe better, maybe not.

SSBM has VF4: Evolution beat (only 16 characters), but Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has 56 characters, and each player controls a team of 3. So SSBM is certainly respectable in this category, but not the king of the hill.

I'm not referring to raw number of characters here (there are also a few Smash characters who are similar to each other, like Mario/Dr Mario, Fox/Falco, Pikachu/Pichu, Marth/Roy, Falcon/Ganondorf, etc), but to the ways in which they are differentiated from each other. While Smash characters have fewer moves per character than some other fighting games (although not as few as it seems at first), they're differentiated in other ways. No other fighting game has anything like the Ice Climbers (two characters at once) or Zelda/Sheik (two characters with opposite styles, switchable at any time - and no, Tag-style games don't count).

The movesets in Virtua Fighter are so expansive that three or four different players could have relatively deep, yet completely different playstyles for the same character with very little move overlap. Could you say the same of SSBM...?

Ah, but that is only one definition of deep, one that naturally favors Virtua Fighter because that's the kind of game VF is. Smash intentionally has fewer moves (though, again, not as few as it seems at first), but since moving around large areas is more a part of the game, there's more room for aerial attacks, escaping, deathsaving, and surprisingly many other tactics, tactics that never come up in more traditional fighters.

And because there are dozens of traditional fighters, but only two Smash Bros. games so far, Smash strategy isn't as played-out as in traditional fighters. Which isn't a measure intrinsic to the game, but still matters for practical purposes.

With 15 unique characters whose move lists are all as long as your arm, I'd say that's at least as amazing as SSBM's accomplishment.

I'm unsure, again because it's harder to definitively balance something like Smash than VF. Smash also has items dropping in, extremely strange levels (like forced-scroll areas), huge and tiny versions of characters, characters with moves that are all but instant kills, suicide throws, spikes (as in volleyball), three- and four-player matches

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why you brought up that 3rd strike point, since it has nothing to do with how deep the game is.

As to which game is better between VS and VH, it really is up to personal preference, since both are incredible games.

As for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, considering that there are still major tournaments held for this game, I doubt most people can consider it shallow (check Shoryuken.com, they just held a SSF2T tournament as part of Evolution 2005).

V-Ism Cody isn't imbalanced. The dodge really isn't as useful as it appears, since strong footsie games destroy it (and his short guard meter). Sure, it means that fireballs suck ass against him, but fireballs suck against a lot of characters (Dhalsim, Guy). If anything imbalances Alpha 3, it is V-ism itself, since it renders almost all X-ism characters useless.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Anonymous Coward]

No other fighting game has anything like the Ice Climbers (two characters at once) or Zelda/Sheik (two characters with opposite styles, switchable at any time - and no, Tag-style games don't count).

Not true. Gen in Street Fighter Alpha 2 (and 3) had 2 unique fighting styles that were switchable at any time.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

Gen in Street Fighter Alpha 2 (and 3) had 2 unique fighting styles that were switchable at any time.

But Zelda/Sheik are two different characters that switch places. I know, that sounds like me proclaiming "But this goes to eleven," but it's true. Not only are their moves entirely different, but they have different movement characteristics, which matters quite a lot in Smash's movement-heavy gameplay.

To some extent here, it feels like I'm having to defend Super Smash Bros. Melee against the entire elaborate pagent of fighting games. But the reason that I personally like Smash better than those isn't because of the ways that it's like them, but the ways that it's different. And it is, really, very different. It's possible to argue, with some justice, that Smash Bros, isn't a fighting game at all. It is in that it's a game-that-has-a-fight-in-it, but it largely discards the debt to Street Fighter (and earlier games - don't write me on this) that fighting games have had to deal with since the genre's origins.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> But the ONLY way to win a (standard) Smash game is by scoring Ring Outs, scoring damage is merely a means to that end, and that's a lot (but not all) of what's interesting about it.

But your argument was that it made the game deeper. How does being more limited create depth? Isn't it a tougher problem if you have the opportunity to make a move that will K.O. your opponent if you succeed, but leave yourself open to a Ring Out if you fail? Similarly, from the defensive side, you could intentionally take damage from someone who's only thinking about beating you down, then sidestep at the last minute and knock them out of the ring for the win, even though your health is nearly gone. Multiple win conditions automatically make the game more complex.

> And even VF's movement system can't hold up to Smash in this department -- Smash is essentially a full 2D platforming game that happens to have a fight taking place within it.

Quite true. Though the Power Stone games are very much in the same vein as SSBM.

> I'm not referring to raw number of characters here [...] but to the ways in which they are differentiated from each other.

Remove the similar characters from MvC2 and you still have well over 40 very distinct fighters -- everything from screen-filling monstrosities to tiny football-sized robots -- and they can be lumped together in arbitrary teams of 3, giving you a pretty insane arsenal of swap-in combos and simultaneous multi-character attacks.

Or go back to Virtua Fighter 4, where most characters have multiple fighting stances (at least one character has 4 of them) that completely change the way they approach combat. Start working fighting stance changes into your combos and the number of possibilities becomes ridiculous.

> No other fighting game has anything like the Ice Climbers (two characters at once)

Guardian Heroes on the Saturn had the magician Randy with his little rabbit Nando who would attack semi-independently, even though they were controlled by the same player. I believe that Servbot in MvC2 can also call in hordes of similar robots to attack simultaneously. And I'm sure there are other examples.

> or Zelda/Sheik (two characters with opposite styles, switchable at any time - and no, Tag-style games don't count).

There's prior art going at least as far back as Altered Beast for that one. And VF's multiple fighting stances would arguably qualify, too. Also, I don't think it's fair to exclude tag-style games from that dynamic when you can incorporate tags into combo strings, since that's functionally the same thing that you're describing. And in a game like MvC2, that amounts to any character being able to switch to 3 different states out of 56 at any time.

> Smash intentionally has fewer moves (though, again, not as few as it seems at first), but since moving around large areas is more a part of the game, there's more room for aerial attacks, escaping, deathsaving, and surprisingly many other tactics, tactics that never come up in more traditional fighters.

True. Though again, we've seen this sort of thing in the Power Stone series too.

> I'm unsure, again because it's harder to definitively balance something like Smash than VF.

Well, random item drops automatically debalance a game. That's their entire purpose, after all. But leaving that aside, balance is really a matter of making sure that the risk/reward ratio is basically equal for all moves across all characters, and ideally making sure that all characters have the ability to somehow evade, defend, or counter most of the things that can be thrown at them. The less complicated a game is, and the fewer moves each character has, the easier it is to balance.

In fairness, MvC2 isn't even close to being a balanced game -- you team up Cable, Iron Man, and Juggernaut and it's all over for

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously never played with Gen since his entire normal move, special move set, super move set, movement and even his stance changes when he switches styles. Gen is effectively two characters in one in the same way that Zelda/Sheik are the same characters. The only difference is that Zelda/Sheik's sprite changes. Gen could have easily have been two characters if Capcom decided to have a separate sprite for his second style.

You're defending Smash Brothers on all the wrong premises. I'm not denying it is a great game, but to deny that it has pulled a lot from fighting games (or other games in general) is a disservice to all of the games that came before it.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

But your argument was that it made the game deeper. How does being more limited create depth? Isn't it a tougher problem if you have the opportunity to make a move that will K.O. your opponent if you succeed, but leave yourself open to a Ring Out if you fail?

Replace the words "K.O. your opponent" with "Ring out your opponent" in the sentence. Your scenario is possible under both systems. Ring Outs require that players worry more about positioning, and less about just tearing down (or up) a number. But it's difficult to explain, like more things concerning game design than people will admit, exactly *why* a Ring Out only system is deeper.

Multiple win conditions automatically make the game more complex.

This is not always true. People tend to go for the easiest condition. Further, more complex is not the same thing as deeper. Sometimes, added complexity makes a game more shallow!

Quite true. Though the Power Stone games are very much in the same vein as SSBM.

I believe I mentioned PowerStone, if memory serves....

Remove the similar characters from MvC2 and you still have well over 40 very distinct fighters -- everything from screen-filling monstrosities to tiny football-sized robots -- and they can be lumped together in arbitrary teams of 3, giving you a pretty insane arsenal of swap-in combos and simultaneous multi-character attacks.

Well that's more of a judgement call. More options doesn't always make a game deeper. Restricting options based on the individual selections made can add depth, because the individual parts aren't interchangable.

Guardian Heroes on the Saturn had the magician Randy with his little rabbit Nando who would attack semi-independently, even though they were controlled by the same player.

Guardian Heroes isn't the same kind of game, however, it's a side-scrolling Beat-em-up in the vein of Double Dragon and Final Fight. Of course, neither is Smash the same kind of game. But its closer, to the sake of this argument, than Guardian Heroes is.

Or go back to Virtua Fighter 4, where most characters have multiple fighting stances (at least one character has 4 of them) that completely change the way they approach combat. Start working fighting stance changes into your combos and the number of possibilities becomes ridiculous.

Once again, sheer number of possibilities doesn't necessarily make a game deeper. Number of *useable* possibilites is closer, but even then not always.

I mentioned so many (though not all) of Smash's elements because of the way they all work together during a game. Look at it this way: in almost all fighting games, sure you can move around in a 3D area, you can move around a bit, but the most important directions, almost exclusively, are "towards the opponent" and "anywhere except towards the opponent." Many fighting games (although not all) implicitly acknowledge this by keeping the camera oriented so it looks like a Street Fighter-style fighting game. Smash has a lot of coolness in it, but maybe its best innovation is that other directions mean a lot more, like "away from the gaping pit" -- even though, ultimately, the game isn't really 3D.

There's prior art going at least as far back as Altered Beast for that one.

Well if you're going to go to Altered Beast, then the gloves are off: Rampart is twice the game that Smash Bros. Melee could ever hope to be. So is Katamari Damacy. So is Ocarina of Time. So is A.P.B. (Atari Games).

My original point was that Smash compares favorably to fighting games, not all-other-games. (And for the record, I hated Altered Beast. Lame Genesis pack-in, grrrr!)

Well, random item drops automatically debalance a game. That's their entire purpose, after all.

I'm not sure. Nethack is composed of almost entirely random items, and yet it's exquisitely balanced....

But leaving that aside, balance is really a matter of making sure that the risk/reward ra

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

You obviously never played with Gen since his entire normal move, special move set, super move set, movement and even his stance changes when he switches styles.

Well, I may have to bow to superior knowledge on that one. But Zelda/Sheik's different forms also have different physics. Can the same be said of Gen? If so, then you're right, and this one character concept in this one game may have been done before.

You're defending Smash Brothers on all the wrong premises.

But that would only be true if you had countered *all* the points I had made. You have not, sir.

I'm not denying it is a great game, but to deny that it has pulled a lot from fighting games (or other games in general) is a disservice to all of the games that came before it.

Of course Smash pulled from other games. All games do, unavoidably.

Of course Smash pulls from fighting games. The whole style of the game is based around that.

But in other areas, I'm less certain if Smash takes elements of other games, or just devises them from the ground up anew, and ironically, this may be because of one of Nintendo's greatest flaws: they have a severe case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome. They don't look outside the company much, and historically, those times when the company does innovate in outside genres, the game's from one of their subsiderary companies, like HAL Labs, Intelligent Designs or Retro Studios.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> Replace the words "K.O. your opponent" with "Ring out your opponent" in the sentence. Your scenario is possible under both systems.

No, because being near a boundary automatically creates a Ring Out risk for both players, though not necessarily an equal one. I'm pointing out the extra dimension that having to worry about two different win conditions creates. If health is off the table, you're only concerned about position. But if you have to concern yourself with both position and health (and time, for that matter), it adds a lot more texture to the risk/reward tradeoff. I don't see why you would dispute this.

> This is not always true. People tend to go for the easiest condition.

And those people are novices who will be destroyed by anyone who sees the larger picture.

> Sometimes, added complexity makes a game more shallow!

Only if the complexity introduces imbalances that point you toward a specific subset of exploitable tactics. That's not the case with VF.

> Restricting options based on the individual selections made can add depth, because the individual parts aren't interchangable.

I really don't see what you're trying to say here.

> Guardian Heroes isn't the same kind of game, however, it's a side-scrolling Beat-em-up in the vein of Double Dragon and Final Fight.

Control-wise, it actually has more in common with 2D fighting games than with the brawlers you mentioned. All fighting takes place on one of 3 2D planes, and the controls and special moves resemble Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat much more than Double Dragon or Final Fight. You just happen to be fighting multiple opponents simultaneously.

> Once again, sheer number of possibilities doesn't necessarily make a game deeper. Number of *useable* possibilites is closer, but even then not always.

When a game is about offense, defense, counters, and meta-counters, the number of unique gameplay situations does in fact make the game deeper. Exponentially so.

> in almost all fighting games, sure you can move around in a 3D area, you can move around a bit, but the most important directions, almost exclusively, are "towards the opponent" and "anywhere except towards the opponent."

That's true.

> Smash has a lot of coolness in it, but maybe its best innovation is that other directions mean a lot more, like "away from the gaping pit"

Though not an exclusive innovation, since the first SSB and Power Stone came out around the same time.

> Well if you're going to go to Altered Beast, then the gloves are off

I was simply citing an early reference for swapping out a character with a completely different one -- I wasn't making any comment beyond that.

> Here's a slightly better working definition of balance: that which avoids making one character (or set of characters) more desirable than another, given all possible situations.

And how is that different from the definition I offered? How can a given character be more desirable unless the risk/reward ratio for some of their maneuvers is wildly out of sync with those of the other characters? Highly damaging moves should be proportionately harder to connect with (which can be achieved through tougher timing, more difficult button manipulation, or greater ease of countering). Faster characters should have weaker health or defense. For every benefit there should be a countering drawback, and then you achieve overall balance.

> Nintendo... well, they probably wouldn't have as many fanboys if they didn't do a lot of things right surprisingly often.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I don't begrudge Nintendo any of their success -- they've obviously made quite a few great games over the years, and they've built a lot of brand loyalty as a result. But if you polled the Nintendo fanbo

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

No, because being near a boundary automatically creates a Ring Out risk for both players, though not necessarily an equal one. I'm pointing out the extra dimension that having to worry about two different win conditions creates.

And yet, having multiple win conditions is always a case of having a weaker design than having a single win condition, because more arbitrary factors are added to the game.

Sure, there *can* be situations where you can go after a health or positioning win, but there also can be situations where you get a similar (though likely not identical) effect in a Ring Out only system.

> This is not always true. People tend to go for the easiest condition.

And those people are novices who will be destroyed by anyone who sees the larger picture.

Not necessarily. But we're moving into wholly theoretical realms here, where it's difficult to see how one could convince the other without demonstrations.

Restricting options based on the individual selections made can add depth, because the individual parts aren't interchangable.

I really don't see what you're trying to say here.

It's not really a Smash-oriented comment. And it could be seen to go against my prior comment about increased arbitrariness in a game producing weaker designs. But there's a lot of things about game design that are like this, the best ones tend to come way out of left field. To some extent, I suspect both of us are full of crap.

When a game is about offense, defense, counters, and meta-counters, the number of unique gameplay situations does in fact make the game deeper. Exponentially so.

But I tend to not be fond of games that are essentially about just these things. A game that isn't *just* about these things, thus, has the potential to be greater than a game that is just about them. Which is why I think Smash is better, in some respects, because there are other factors there that come from its platformer nature.

Fighting games benefit from the fact that there's been so many of them, because there's an established language for discussing and creating them, and a wide library of ideas that have been tried before. But they also suffer for that, fighting games are almost as insular a genre as FPSes. Smash also suffers from that, but to a lesser degree.

But if you polled the Nintendo fanboys, I'd venture a guess that the overwhelming majority of them just happened to have an NES or SNES as their first video game system, and that's why they're such die-hard Nintendo fans.

Yeah, I can see that. I kind of think it's cool to have a romantic notion of a game system, but yeah, it's also important not to be blinded by that.

I was simply citing an early reference for swapping out a character with a completely different one -- I wasn't making any comment beyond that.

Well there are other instances of this concept in gaming from far before Altered Beast. It's just another version of Super Mario's mushrooms and flowers, and even that's not the origin of the idea.

Though not an exclusive innovation, since the first SSB and Power Stone came out around the same time.

Well that gets us to the question of what is innovation. It's one of those "All things are X/No things are X" situations. PS and SSB are sufficently different from each other than dying from falling out the stage doesn't mean quite the same thing in each game. I'd say that Nintendo probably came up with their idea independently, since they have a bit of a "not invented here" policy (which sometimes works to their detriment).

(Also, I seem to remember Smash being out a little before Power Stone, but my memory could be faulty here. It's not a big point.)

Me, I'm an old coot from the Atari / Intellivision days, so I don't have anyone to be blindly loyal to anymore. I personally don't care for Nintendo's approach to things most of the time -- it's too cutesy and childish for my taste. But that does

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> And yet, having multiple win conditions is always a case of having a weaker design than having a single win condition, because more arbitrary factors are added to the game.

I don't see any rational basis for that statement at all.

> Sure, there *can* be situations where you can go after a health or positioning win, but there also can be situations where you get a similar (though likely not identical) effect in a Ring Out only system.

No, because in the second case the only actual threat is being knocked out of the ring. If your offensive attempt fails, but you weren't in danger of being knocked out yourself, then it's not a dilemma.

> Not necessarily. But we're moving into wholly theoretical realms here, where it's difficult to see how one could convince the other without demonstrations.

If the game is balanced, then each character should have a roughly equal chance of achieving one of the win conditions when used properly. Yes, some characters may be better suited to forcing Ring Outs than to achieving KOs, and vice-versa -- but that doesn't remove the other condition from the picture. If the guy using the bruiser character only concerns himself with health and isn't paying attention to his position, a decent opponent is going to make him pay for that oversight.

> there's a lot of things about game design that are like this, the best ones tend to come way out of left field. To some extent, I suspect both of us are full of crap.

Well, I don't think I'm full of crap, and you still haven't explained that "restricting options" comment...

> A game that isn't *just* about these things, thus, has the potential to be greater than a game that is just about them.

Sure, but that isn't a response to my point at all.

> fighting games are almost as insular a genre as FPSes

This is true. Though it's pretty much impossible to make a competitive game that's satisfying to both button-mashers and tactical players, because the button-mashers want to be 100% effective without a learning curve, while the tactical players won't settle for a system that allows button-mashing to win the day.

> Well there are other instances of this concept in gaming from far before Altered Beast.

Which is why I said the prior art goes back "at least as far as Altered Beast."

> I seem to remember Smash being out a little before Power Stone

I think it came out a month or two earlier, so the development had to be concurrent.

> Their games [...] are closer to the secret soul of gaming than are the rigidly genre-fied games that are everywhere in the industry right now

I'd agree with that to a point (they tend to put gameplay first and try to do new and different things with it), but that's hardly exclusive to Nintendo. The "soul of gaming" was more apparent in the early days partly because the whole thing was new, and partly because the graphics were so primitive that gameplay was the thing that really set titles apart.

And honestly, I think the best Atari and Intellivision games completely trash the best NES games, because they weren't stuck in that Nintendo house style of cutesy graphics, red hearts for health, and an overemphasis on platforming. And the NES's 8-way thumbpad with two buttons was a huge step backward from the Intellivision and Atari 5200 controllers, which had at least 14 buttons and registered 32+ directions. Gaming controllers didn't bounce back from that oversimplified NES style until the Dual Shock appeared.

> I think you're more likely to find a truly inventive game with simple, abstract elements than one that takes pains to look, for example, exactly like a military base on Mars being attacked by demons...

Probably true.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

And yet, having multiple win conditions is always a case of having a weaker design than having a single win condition, because more arbitrary factors are added to the game.

I don't see any rational basis for that statement at all.

It's true because the design is more elegant. To some degree, game design is an exercise of communication to and from the player. Make the game more complex, and the game will need that much stronger a play experience for the player to accept it. That's not just learning a game, but also has to do with which the player processes it. All games are essentially arbitrary processes, but they also seek to convince the player that they are not. Multiple win conditions are one way that a game becomes less "pure."

No, because in the second case the only actual threat is being knocked out of the ring. If your offensive attempt fails, but you weren't in danger of being knocked out yourself, then it's not a dilemma.

But the issue here is the *potential existance* of a class of threat. By making damage less important, Smash shifts that type of peril into another area. Less things to worry about (even if the total worry is quantitively the same) mean a purer play experience.

If the game is balanced, then each character should have a roughly equal chance of achieving one of the win conditions when used properly.

I find myself wondering about this more and more these days, that part of what is percieved a "balance" exists in the social sphere that surrounds the games. Like when a reputation builds up around Character X because he's "cheap," when really he's just easier to learn, or he looks cooler so people naturally put more effort into learning him, or the antidotes to that character are part of the more esoteric aspects of the fighting system. But that's an issue for a different discussion I think.

Well, I don't think I'm full of crap, and you still haven't explained that "restricting options" comment...

Oh for the....

I think to some extent we're both full of crap because some of the most interesting games that I see are the ones that are obviously *not* the result of debating about them. Katamari Damacy could only have been designed by someone *not* steeped in the history and lore of gaming. The insulariry of FPSes and fighting games is just a specific case of the insularity that infests video games as a whole. Does that explain things?

Restricting options making a game more interesting, hmmm... well, to take an example, take Rock, Scissors, Paper. There are exactly as many choices as you need. Add more choices and something is lost. If you put in, say, a throw that wins over two choices, then it gets picked more often, so it wrecks the game. (Or more accurately, it DOESN'T wreck the game, it means it gets picked more often, which means Paper is picked more often as a counter to it, which means Scissors is picked more often as a counter to *that*, and it all evens out eventually. But only eventually, and it loses the entire focus of the game.)

But even in well-designed variants like Rock, Scissors, Paper, Spock, Lizard, in which all the choices still have equal power, it's essentially more complex than it needs to be. The soul of the game is in the equality of the choices, everything else is superfluous and should be edited out. Take that concept and generalize it to the case of video games, and that's a fair bit of what I'm talking about.

This is true. Though it's pretty much impossible to make a competitive game that's satisfying to both button-mashers and tactical players, because the button-mashers want to be 100% effective without a learning curve, while the tactical players won't settle for a system that allows button-mashing to win the day.

I don't buy this, someone just hasn't come up with the right approach yet, but that could just be my optimism about the potential of video gaming talking. (And there are some people who claim Smash is such a game. A

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> It's true because the design is more elegant.

Elegance and simplicity don't automatically translate into strength of design. It would be extremely "elegant" to have a game where no matter what you did, you always wound up losing. It just wouldn't be very much fun. It might also be "elegant" to have a flight game that didn't concern itself with wind shear and G forces and the like, but that certainly wouldn't make it a stronger design than a more complex flight simulator.

To put it another way: Pong vs. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Which game has the purer design? Now which one is more engaging? Which is deeper? Which is the better experience?

> Less things to worry about [...] mean a purer play experience.

Purer, yes. Deeper, no. Better? Debatable.

> I find myself wondering about this more and more these days, that part of what is percieved a "balance" exists in the social sphere that surrounds the games.

Probably, though the more vibrant and hardcore gaming scenes tend to weed the subjectivity out of that. Someone will only think that a character stinks until they see someone use them like an expert.

> Katamari Damacy could only have been designed by someone *not* steeped in the history and lore of gaming.

Baloney. KD is a great game, and a breath of fresh air in these days of genre rigidity -- but when it comes right down to it, it's just Marble Madness with tank controls and ever-increasing scale.

> Does that explain things?

Not really. :)

> take Rock, Scissors, Paper. There are exactly as many choices as you need. Add more choices and something is lost.

Yes, within that particular continuum, since the only possible results are win, loss, or tie.

> If you put in, say, a throw that wins over two choices, then it gets picked more often, so it wrecks the game. (Or more accurately, it DOESN'T wreck the game ...)

No, it does wreck the game statistically. There's no way to counterbalance it completely in a game that shallow (or should I say "pure"?). Shoving the response proportions around could only mitigate it somewhat -- it'd still be in your interest to pick that choice most of the time.

> But even in well-designed variants like Rock, Scissors, Paper, Spock, Lizard, in which all the choices still have equal power, it's essentially more complex than it needs to be. The soul of the game is in the equality of the choices, everything else is superfluous and should be edited out.

Though in that case a new continuum isn't really being added -- it's just adding extra points on the same win/loss scale. Instead of beating one sign, losing to another, and tying itself, it just beats 2, loses to 2, and still ties itself. That's why the complexity is mostly empty -- there's not really a new dimension added, there's just more noise in the current one.

Now look at games like Set or Quarto which play with variations in shape, color, and texture (and size, in Quarto's case). All of the elements are distinct, yet all are equally important to winning. Is this "impure"? Is this "needlessly complex"? Not at all, because each dimension of the game is pure, and those dimensions interlock in a pure way.

If Paper, Rock, and Scissors is a square, then Set is a cube and Quarto is a hypercube. They're all elegant, but the higher-order structures are a lot more interesting.

> Take that concept and generalize it to the case of video games, and that's a fair bit of what I'm talking about.

It's becoming obvious why you like Nintendo so much. And why I don't.

> I'm still confused why you brought [Altered Beast] up in the first place.

Because it was a clear example of one player avatar being swapped out for a completely different one during the course of

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

Elegance and simplicity don't automatically translate into strength of design. It would be extremely "elegant" to have a game where no matter what you did, you always wound up losing. It just wouldn't be very much fun.

False! Many arcade games have followed this pattern.

To put it another way: Pong vs. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Which game has the purer design? Now which one is more engaging? Which is deeper? Which is the better experience?

You think this is a slam-dunk argument, but it is not! Both games have their own strengths. Pong is still playable today, and since it is a versus game, it's actually a way of testing the players against each other, rather than against a scripted set of missions, which means it's *possible* get tired of GTA:SA before Pong. And I know people who would never play a game like GTA:SA, but would love Pong.

> Less things to worry about [...] mean a purer play experience.

Purer, yes. Deeper, no. Better? Debatable.

**All other things being equal,** then fewer game elements do automatically make for a better game, for the same reason movies should not contain unnecessary characters, or novels unnecessary plot threads. While it is not always easy to tell what's essential and what is not (things on the outside of the core mechanic, like extra modes, are given more of a pass here), a designer should strive to keep a game free of spurious aspects.

Probably, though the more vibrant and hardcore gaming scenes tend to weed the subjectivity out of that.

I see that, eventually, this indeed becomes the case, although it could be difficult to say when the process is ever truly finished.

Baloney. KD is a great game, and a breath of fresh air in these days of genre rigidity -- but when it comes right down to it, it's just Marble Madness with tank controls and ever-increasing scale.

And that's what makes it great, and why it could only be designed by an outsider! Do not underestimate the importance of those words "with tank control and ever-increasing scale." Just because it's obvious in hindsight doesn't mean it was so while the game was in development.

Further, the game has a little more going on than just Marble Madness, though I think you summed up the core of it nicely. There's a certain something in KD that's difficult to put into words. In a way, if you don't already see it, I can't tell you.

Shoving the response proportions around could only mitigate it somewhat -- it'd still be in your interest to pick that choice most of the time.

No, because you'd also know that your opponent would be more likely to pick the more powerful throw as well. R,P,S has always been about trying to predict what your opponent would pick, the example I gave would move it out of the pure social dimension and put more actual game strategy into it, but eventually the social dimension still wins out. (My specific example is deficient, however, in that it does leave Rock in the lurch.)

Now look at games like Set or Quarto which play with variations in shape, color, and texture (and size, in Quarto's case). All of the elements are distinct, yet all are equally important to winning.

(After researching those games....)

Those are very cool and elegant games and now I'm just itching to try them (thanks btw), and it's obvious that, just like Rock, Scissors, Paper, they are devoid of extraneous elements. But my Rock, Scissors, Paper example was to point out that *extraneous* elements can wreck a game.

I guess the discussion is really about whether fighting games contain extraneous elements, and how many. I won't say that Smash doesn't; it's very difficult to make a game of the complexity of a fighting game (or Smash, I'm not sure it's even the same kind of game) and keep it pared down. Honestly, you're probably a better judge of fighting games in this regard than I am.

It wasn't just their visual language -- they imposed it on 3rd-party d

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> False! Many arcade games have followed this pattern.

Touché. Though I meant losing in the local, situational sense, not in the overall sense.

> Pong is still playable today, and since it is a versus game, it's actually a way of testing the players against each other, rather than against a scripted set of missions, which means it's *possible* get tired of GTA:SA before Pong.

Ah, but GTA:SA has 2-player free-roaming co-op play, as well as 2-player rampages. And its open-ended design allows you to roll your own mayhem for theoretically endless enjoyment. And don't forget that GTA:SA also has several embedded old-school video games, including a Gyruss clone and a game that's an interesting mixture of Asteroids and Ikaruga. They keep high score lists and everything.

There's even an entire subculture of people who create stunt videos using the GTA games -- a subculture which I just joined, as a matter of fact. You can check out my very first stunt video here, if you're interested.

> I know people who would never play a game like GTA:SA, but would love Pong.

True, though you must admit that there are a lot more people who feel exactly the opposite.

> **All other things being equal,** then fewer game elements do automatically make for a better game, for the same reason movies should not contain unnecessary characters, or novels unnecessary plot threads.

I completely disagree with this. The stripping of extraneous elements from movies makes most of them completely predictable. If a character makes a reference to something that doesn't seem to apply to the plot, you know it's going to be important later. If a minor character appears and doesn't seem to play much of a role, you know that's going to change later on. It's especially problematic in thrillers where the identity of the bad guy is supposed to be a mystery, because it almost always screams out the identity of the guy before the actual reveal if you haven't turned your brain off.

Extraneous elements that don't interfere with what you're conveying are perfectly fine, and perhaps even desirable. Back to GTA:SA, the extraneous stuff is part of what makes the game so great. The random comments and responses from pedestrians. The out-of-the-blue plane and car crashes. The spontaneous NPC police chases. Many times you just bear witness to them, but sometimes you get caught in the middle of them, and that's when the really interesting things start to happen. A "pure" game design would never allow for that sort of thing.

> And that's [...] why it could only be designed by an outsider!

Again, I completely disagree. It couldn't be designed by a bean counter or someone with tunnel vision, but it could absolutely be designed by an "insider". In fact, I'd say that's even more likely, because it borrows heavily from two very iconic pieces of video gaming lore.

> There's a certain something in KD that's difficult to put into words.

Well, it has a very bizarre and consistent style to both the music and the visual presentation that gives it extra charm. And working the scope-changing into the gameplay mechanics borders on the revelatory, as things that used to be obstacles or even gameplay areas later become fodder for your ball. That final level is absolutely awe-inspiring.

> No, because you'd also know that your opponent would be more likely to pick the more powerful throw as well.

But you'd know that your opponent would know that, so he'd have to worry about you predicting that he'd try to counter the more powerful choice with the only option that would beat it. And that would raise the importance of the sign that beat the sign that beat the powerful choice, but that one would be beaten by the powerful choice, so when the

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

Ah, but GTA:SA has 2-player free-roaming co-op play, as well as 2-player rampages. And its open-ended design allows you to roll your own mayhem for theoretically endless enjoyment.

I suppose. I like the free-roamingness of GTA, but using it just to smash up whatever you can, because you can, doesn't greatly appeal to me. It's a case of a series that, maybe similar to your feelings about Nintendo, I can respect from a design standpoint but will probably never play much of.

And I also disagree that more people would enjoy Pong over GTA:SA. The gang-banger theme of SA really turned me and my friends off when we rented it. Meanwhile Pong got the game industry off the ground in earnest, so it's already proven it can be interesting to many non-gamers.

I completely disagree with this. The stripping of extraneous elements from movies makes most of them completely predictable.

Ah, that's false too. It only makes them completely predictable if they were already intellectually sterile. Annie Hall (movie, directed by Woody Allen) is an example of a movie that's not sterile, and even looks like it's filled with extraneous material, but is actually pretty sharp.

If a character makes a reference to something that doesn't seem to apply to the plot, you know it's going to be important later.

Unless that thing is not important to the plot, but instead speaks something about the story in a different way, or is used instead to modulate the viewer's expectations, or is included as a purposeful red herring (like how the opening of Psycho misleads the audience into thinking the movie'll be about someone it's not). None of these things are extraneous.

Extraneous elements that don't interfere with what you're conveying are perfectly fine, and perhaps even desirable.

I suspect we have slightly differing definitions of extraneous. Since part of GTA's appeal is that the game world must feel like a real city, then random pedestrian comments logically would have a place, to maintain that illusion. (Hopefully, by the time that illusion expires, the gameplay has engaged the player enough that it's not needed anymore.)

But you'd know that your opponent would know that, so he'd have to worry about you predicting that he'd try to counter the more powerful choice with the only option that would beat it. And that would raise the importance of the sign that beat the sign that beat the powerful choice, but that one would be beaten by the powerful choice, so when the dust settled you'd be right back to raw statistics again. It would still be in your interest to choose the more powerful sign more often than the others.

This is why I said Rock was left in the lurch. The game would come down to determining whether your opponent had played much of the variant before -- unless you observe that he also noticed there was an unbalanced throw, which would make him more likely to pick the new one. Unless you observe that he might observe that. Unless you observe that he might observe that you'd observe....

In terms of strict responsibility, yes. But Nintendo promoted a culture and house style that led to that sort of thing.

Well that's a matter of opinion, though there is obviously some truth to it. Nintendo was the hot kid on the block when it came to games at the time, after all, and game companies tend to follow what's successful at that time.

I still don't quite see what adding hearts does to ruin a game. You could see the use of hearts, for example, in Zelda was kind of grim; you've just killed an enemy, and although its corpse vanished in a splash of pixel dust, what's left on the ground is its heart. In the original game, it was still beating! And you collect it to get health back!!

But ultimately, hearts-as-pickups is just a game metaphor, serving to obscure the fact that there's really nothing inherent in killing a monster that makes you healthier. (If you really want to get sickened by a game that

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> And I also disagree that more people would enjoy Pong over GTA:SA.

I assume you meant "GTA:SA over Pong". Since GTA:SA is the #1 selling video game of all time, I don't think the raw numbers are on your side. Yes, Pong is still fun...for about 10 minutes. But after experiencing evolutionary games like Warlords or Arkanoid, Pong just doesn't cut it anymore for long-term enjoyment.

> The gang-banger theme of SA really turned me and my friends off when we rented it.

A rental just can't do that game justice. New gameplay elements are steadily introduced pretty much all the way through the main narrative, and the tone of the game changes considerably once you get beyond Los Santos.

> Unless that thing is not important to the plot, but instead speaks something about the story in a different way, or is used instead to modulate the viewer's expectations [...]

But that justification could be applied to just about anything that someone might label as extraneous -- so really, you're just backing up my position.

> I still don't quite see what adding hearts does to ruin a game.

It's a matter of tone. It's fine for cutesy games, but it's a hammer to the forehead when it's used in games that are intended to be darker or more serious. Can you imagine how absurd it would look if heart icons were used in Splinter Cell?

> I don't think we've seen many great examples of storytelling in games yet

Nothing that's been pitch-perfect yet, but there have been some really strong ones. I'm no big Kojima fan (I thought MGS2 sucked after leaving the tanker), but I have to say that despite the sporadic goofiness, Metal Gear Solid 3 really worked as a story. You actually cared about the characters, and the game was able to elicit emotional responses from you.

I also enjoyed how Guardian Heroes took on religion and genre conventions in its multiple story branches, showing the dark side of the ostensible "good guys" and the sympathetic aspects of the supposed "bad guys". And it let you choose which side to back, or just go your own way.

God Of War had a pretty decent story too, albeit a predictable one.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

I assume you meant "GTA:SA over Pong".

Argh... I wrote that at around 8:30 in the morning after a night that might as well have been sleepless. No fun.

Since GTA:SA is the #1 selling video game of all time,

Hmm, this sounds suspecious to me, though it has been very popular. Do you have some numbers to back this up? Wikipedia's list, at least, identifies two games that sold more as of June 2005, Super Mario 64 and GTA: Vice City. And that list doesn't include NES games, which I imagine would blow both of those figures out of the water.

I don't think the raw numbers are on your side. Yes, Pong is still fun...for about 10 minutes. But after experiencing evolutionary games like Warlords or Arkanoid, Pong just doesn't cut it anymore for long-term enjoyment.

Watch the words, "doesn't cut it anymore." For its time, and for an arcade-only machine, Pong was quite a hit. I was speaking out of a general sense of the raw fun value of a game, which is of course only a theoretical concept.

But the fact remains that Pong is more accessable to people who've never played a video game before than GTA games, and there are still many more such people than gamers.

A rental just can't do that game justice. New gameplay elements are steadily introduced pretty much all the way through the main narrative, and the tone of the game changes considerably once you get beyond Los Santos.

Hmmm. I will give it another chance. I really wanted to like GTA:SA due to the free-roaming gameplay (and because I like the taxi missions from the prior games).

Can you imagine how absurd it would look if heart icons were used in Splinter Cell?

Well, it could still be done I think without wrecking the tone. Hearts have a certain iconic value now (partly because of all those NES games that used them). Sure, it'd make less sense than those omnipresent First Aid Kits... but those kits aren't exactly realistic either, though in a different way.

Nothing that's been pitch-perfect yet, but there have been some really strong ones. I'm no big Kojima fan (I thought MGS2 sucked after leaving the tanker), but I have to say that despite the sporadic goofiness, Metal Gear Solid 3 really worked as a story. You actually cared about the characters, and the game was able to elicit emotional responses from you.

I got some serious recommendations about MGS3 from the guy who runs Curmudgeon Gamer, I'll probably have to play it before long.

I also enjoyed how Guardian Heroes took on religion and genre conventions in its multiple story branches, showing the dark side of the ostensible "good guys" and the sympathetic aspects of the supposed "bad guys". And it let you choose which side to back, or just go your own way.

But recently there have been a lot of games that have done exactly that, many of them Japanese RPGs, and the Japanese have far less of a vested interest in Western religion than we have so it's not as great a matter. In the years since Guardian Heroes' release, it's become its own full-fledged cliche. And most of these games don't tackle details of real-world religions, but idealized, abstracted representations of them. Nothing that could actually challenge someone's beliefs. And usually organized, specifically-Catholic-style religion is what gets knocked in those, when these days it's other groups that are causing far more harm in the world.

But my vote for the best stories I've seen in a game, after a cursory examination of the inventory of my brain, is that of the Grandia games, even though the second one is guilty of the problem I just described, even though they have their fair share of cliches, just because the dialogue is written with such energy and wit. Roger Ebert says of movies, that quality isn't decided by what the movie is about, but how it is about it. Maybe that could be said of game storytelling, too?

I have to admit, when I look at screenshots or movies of God of War, I am overcome with a profound weariness. Care to elaborate upon the storytelling in the game?

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> Do you have some numbers to back this up?

Couldn't find any cumulative numbers, though I did find this story which casts the Wikipedia numbers in severe doubt, since GTA:SA sold 5.1 million units in 2004 alone, and I think that's only a domestic figure.

Google yields plenty of stories citing the game as the fastest-selling game of all time, plus a couple from the UK and Australia talking about moving 1 million units in both places in the first week or so.

I admit that I've just heard the "#1 selling game of all time" line tossed around so much that I simply assumed it was true. It's possible that it's not.

> Watch the words, "doesn't cut it anymore." For its time, and for an arcade-only machine, Pong was quite a hit.

As a novelty. But Pong doesn't have the lasting appeal of something like Space War, which I believe came out even earlier.

> But the fact remains that Pong is more accessable to people who've never played a video game before than GTA games, and there are still many more such people than gamers.

More accessible, yes. More appreciable to the masses on either merits or aesthetics? I doubt it.

> Well, it could still be done I think without wrecking the tone.

I really don't see how.

> those kits aren't exactly realistic either, though in a different way.

Quite true.

> Care to elaborate upon the storytelling in [God Of War]?

Well, the spoiler-free answer is that in their particular spin on Greek mythology, Ares is leading a massive assault on Athens, but the gods are forbidden to directly interfere with the affairs of other gods, so Athena and others are forced to recruit an extremely evil human being (your character) with former ties to Ares and guide him toward how to grant himself the power to kill Ares outright. There are some interesting turns to the story, despite the fact that many of them are predictable -- and in that respect it's much like the rest of the game, which is a collection of extremely well-polished and well-executed clichés.

Oh, I enjoyed the story in Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, too. A fantastic game with characters that you actually cared about.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

This article, apparently published around April '91, lists 7 million copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 sold. This one (analysis) lists sales of 18M overall (and 8.5M for GTA:VC). SMB3 has, for a while now, been the canonical best selling game of all time.

NPD numbers are tricky in that they don't cover all stores, and the precise numbers themselves cannot be used publically without getting charged up the yang. And of course, they don't cover the Japanese market, where GTA games don't do nearly as well. (Media Create, however, produces free stats for hardware and software sales in Japan.)

As a novelty. But Pong doesn't have the lasting appeal of something like Space War, which I believe came out even earlier.

The original Space War was played in university tech labs only. Before releasing Pong, Nolan Bushnell & company produced Computer Space, the first arcade video game and somewhat similar (I think I heard) to Space War, but it was not popular, probably because it was too complex.

My gut tells me you're right about Space War being more interesting than Pong (which I picked as an extreme example to test against GTA:SA). But honestly, alas, by this point I've lost almost all track of the GTA:SA vs Pong argument.

> Well, it could still be done I think without wrecking the tone.

I really don't see how.

What were we talking about here, again? We started this discussion so long ago I'm getting fuzzy on it.

There are some interesting turns to the story, despite the fact that many of them are predictable -- and in that respect it's much like the rest of the game, which is a collection of extremely well-polished and well-executed clichés.

I dunno, it still hasn't broken through my apathy filter yet. Gameplay footage looks mostly like yet another "guy slays bunches of monsters in 3D using combos and special moves through a series of linear levels" game. But maybe that's just the lack of sleep talking....

Oh, I enjoyed the story in Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, too. A fantastic game with characters that you actually cared about.

I've also heard PoP:SoT had a good story, but I probably won't get around to playing it. Not that I have anything against it... just that there's such a lot of games to play that I'll probably never be able to find time for. Sometimes I wonder if I'm not moving away from video games altogether these days. I played Katamari Damacy for weeks, but before that there was a good drought of gaming interest. Ah well.

These days, I find think about homebrew game creation is starting to pull ahead of actual game playing in my interests list. Which is a recipe for further gaming angst, I know....

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> Before releasing Pong, Nolan Bushnell & company produced Computer Space, the first arcade video game and somewhat similar (I think I heard) to Space War, but it was not popular, probably because it was too complex.

That's probably what they had at the arcade when I was a kid, then. It was basically 2-player Asteroids minus the asteroids, plus the option of having a variable-strength gravity well in the middle of the screen either with or without an accompanying planet that would destroy you on contact. The controls were all buttons -- rotation, thrust, firing, and I think a shield.

> What were we talking about here, again?

The idea of using a heart icon for health restoration in a realistic-toned game like Splinter Cell. I felt that was basically impossible without ruining the tone of the game, and you disagreed, but hadn't really explained how it could be pulled off inoffensively.

> Gameplay footage looks mostly like yet another "guy slays bunches of monsters in 3D using combos and special moves through a series of linear levels" game.

And that's basically spot-on, though the linear paths are all seamlessly connected in a non-linear way, so you can backtrack or take shortcuts at will. The thing about God Of War, both in terms of gameplay and of story, is that it's not even remotely innovative -- it's just incredibly well-executed.

> I've also heard PoP:SoT had a good story, but I probably won't get around to playing it. Not that I have anything against it... just that there's such a lot of games to play that I'll probably never be able to find time for.

It's a pretty short game, actually. Probably 8-12 hours the first time through, though it can be completed in as little as 2.5 hours if you know exactly what you're doing. It's a very satisfying story with a great ending, and the game looks and plays like a dream. Well worth the investment.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

That's probably what they had at the arcade when I was a kid, then. It was basically 2-player Asteroids minus the asteroids, plus the option of having a variable-strength gravity well in the middle of the screen either with or without an accompanying planet that would destroy you on contact. The controls were all buttons -- rotation, thrust, firing, and I think a shield.

That sounds like the arcade version of Space War that got released early on in the original arcade boom. BTW, there is an Atari 2600 port with many options intact: http://www.atariguide.com/1/171.htm

The idea of using a heart icon for health restoration in a realistic-toned game like Splinter Cell. I felt that was basically impossible without ruining the tone of the game, and you disagreed, but hadn't really explained how it could be pulled off inoffensively.

I guess I disagree because I don't consider its use to be offensive. I don't think you've proven your point there sufficently.

I mean, if the game had frilly lace everywhere, and cupids shooting arrows, and shepherds shyly catching glances of dancing nymphs wandering around grassy hillsides, and young centaurs playing tag throughout the halls of the terrorist base, then I'd say you'd have a point. (Not that there's anything wrong with that imagery overall, in a Romanticist kind of way -- but there aren't an awful lot of Romanticist video games these days.) These days, hearts have been denuded of much of their Valentinesque import in the realm of video games.

I mean, it's not even as if they are an important part of a game's imagery. If it is, as in the aforementioned Kingdom Hearts, it invariably comes across as trite and forced, true. But beyond the eternal hunt for Pieces of Heart in Zelda games, I have a hard time naming another game in which they matter all that much that isn't pink, frilly, and have the words "Disney," "Barbie," or "Mary Kate & Ashley" somewhere on the cover.

And that's basically spot-on, though the linear paths are all seamlessly connected in a non-linear way, so you can backtrack or take shortcuts at will. The thing about God Of War, both in terms of gameplay and of story, is that it's not even remotely innovative -- it's just incredibly well-executed.

Yeah, that's what I mean -- if a game is obviously innovative, you can kind of feel it from a description of it. If it's just an extraordinarily well-developed example of the breed, however, it's difficult to get that through to someone who's never seen it. And what I hear of the story turns me off, just another random badass sent off against a procession of harder and harder bosses until he faces the Big Baddie at the end.

If he *wasn't* a random badass then maybe it'd be easier to get with. I mean, take a look at Link. He doesn't have much of a personality. There's not much to distinguish the character except a sword, elf ears, and a Peter Pan outfit. And yet since the NES days he's been one of the most popular characters in gaming, perhaps because of an understated acknowledgement that he's not Dirk Squarejaw, that he actually does look vulnerable when compared to one of those gigantic bosses, and so it feels a lot better when he takes one down without uttering so much as a catchphrase or even a condescending gesture to the defeated foe.

It's a pretty short game, actually. Probably 8-12 hours the first time through, though it can be completed in as little as 2.5 hours if you know exactly what you're doing. It's a very satisfying story with a great ending, and the game looks and plays like a dream. Well worth the investment.

I'll consider it. Odd that the *lack* of length in a game, for once, is a deciding factor in playing it....

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> I guess I disagree because I don't consider its use to be offensive. I don't think you've proven your point there sufficently.

To me, some cute icon that's jarringly out of place completely shatters the illusion of the experience. Even the medical kits in Splinter Cell nearly break the experience, because the idea of instant health regeneration in that environment is patently absurd.

> If he *wasn't* a random badass then maybe it'd be easier to get with.

I actually like the fact that he's unapologetically evil. It's rare to have a main character that isn't given at least some kind of rogueish charm or hidden nobility. Kratos isn't a traditional "badass" -- he's a genuine bastard. He doesn't care if Athens burns or not, and he'll cut down anyone who gets in his way, even if they're innocent. He just wants revenge against Ares. But that desire for vengeance is misplaced, because Kratos was an enthusiastic participant in the very things he wound up holding against Ares. And even the one aspect of Kratos's past that's superficially sympathetic is completely negated by the character's own choices, so he's totally irredeemable. I think that's a lot more interesting than yet another hero setting out to save the world...

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

To me, some cute icon that's jarringly out of place completely shatters the illusion of the experience. Even the medical kits in Splinter Cell nearly break the experience, because the idea of instant health regeneration in that environment is patently absurd.

Well, the very idea of powerups is like that. It might actually be cool to play a game in which all powerups and damage were handled very realistically, where if you lost an arm, you'd have to go through the rest of the game without it. For various reasons, however, that's unlikely to happen, mostly because a mere torso can't expect to get very far on a quest to save even his lunch money.

But that desire for vengeance is misplaced, because Kratos was an enthusiastic participant in the very things he wound up holding against Ares.

Hmmm... what does the game seem to think of that attribute? Thing about a complete bastard doing things we don't approve of at our behest... I think a lot of games don't do that because they raise the question: "Why are we helping this guy slaughter innocent people?"

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[Intellectual Elitist]

> It might actually be cool to play a game in which all powerups and damage were handled very realistically, where if you lost an arm, you'd have to go through the rest of the game without it.

I'd love to see it, personally. But the gaming public at large just won't accept that sort of lack of forgiveness in a game anymore. For example, look at the uproar over the lack of an in-level save in Aliens vs. Predator 2 (an intentional design choice to heighten tension and force you to legitimately survive) -- I think they had a quicksave patch out within a month or two.

And have we ever seen a fighting game where you could break limbs and they'd stay broken for the rest of the fight? The closest thing I can think of is Time Killers, where you could hack off one or both arms and the other player could keep going without them. The game stunk, though.

> Hmmm... what does the game seem to think of that attribute? Thing about a complete bastard doing things we don't approve of at our behest...

Kratos was chosen partly because of certain enhancements he'd received from his former association with Ares, but mainly because his desire for vengeance was so single-mindedly strong that the other gods felt he was the only human who could actually do what was necessary to take down the god of war. And there was another significant reason, but I can't say what it is without spoiling the story.

> I think a lot of games don't do that because they raise the question: "Why are we helping this guy slaughter innocent people?"

Yes, though that's not the focus of the game. Much like Manhunt, this is an evil person being pitted against forces that are just as evil, if not slightly moreso. Someone committing horrible acts in the service of something ostensibly good, even though they couldn't care less about doing the right thing. I think that's an interesting dynamic.

Re:Hyperbole or ignorance?

[MilenCent]

I'd love to see it, personally. But the gaming public at large just won't accept that sort of lack of forgiveness in a game anymore. For example, look at the uproar over the lack of an in-level save in Aliens vs. Predator 2 (an intentional design choice to heighten tension and force you to legitimately survive) -- I think they had a quicksave patch out within a month or two.

Ah, that's one of the things that prevents more people from trying out Roguelikes, which as a rule contain some form of permadeath.

And have we ever seen a fighting game where you could break limbs and they'd stay broken for the rest of the fight? The closest thing I can think of is Time Killers, where you could hack off one or both arms and the other player could keep going without them. The game stunk, though.

A fighting game is over in a few minutes no matter what happens. If you lost a limb to an early boss in your typical 50-hour action-adventure-hack-n-slash extravaganza, it'd be a lot more dire.

I do like the idea, from a design standpoint, that there's permanent bad things that can happen to you, but the way people expect games to progress these days, the moment something like that happened they'd reach for the reset button. (And I'll admit I've done it myself in the past -- like those rooms in the original Zelda's second quest with the mean old man demanding you give him 50 rupees or give up a heart container....)

Someone committing horrible acts in the service of something ostensibly good, even though they couldn't care less about doing the right thing. I think that's an interesting dynamic.

Typically in those cases, despite that the player (or other characters referring to that character) say, player-evil isn't presented as being nearly as bad as enemy-evil. You likely won't ever see a protagonist setting up a death camp or behaving in a racist manner. They may talk a good game, but usually you can't actually *do* it. (Not that I'm arguing with that policy....)

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker has something similar.

[pnice]

There are 14 test rooms you can access if you use an Action Replay on Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. You can find them at codejunkies.com

Screenshots of the test rooms can be viewed here:
http://www.zeldavortex.com/index.php?do=viewarticl e&id=18

Master Hand

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing about the master hand comment. Master hand could be controled by controler in the original ssb also. So clearly it was for debugging purposes. But why the sandbag can jump and move is beyond me.

Why do I hate this article?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it asks too many rhetorical questions!

The article was written like it was intended for Nintendo Power or something. Just get to the point, man!

Anybody else notice?

[gameboyhippo]

That if you select Developer mode and press up while playing a female character, their dress disappears?