He also created the massive success that was the Gameboy, arguably the most popular thing the company's ever made. Letting him go was a tremendous mistake, period.
Gauntlet, above all other action RPGish hack-and-slash things, deserves a great update. While Romero may or may not have been capable of it, I don't know if Midway can be trusted to do what's best for the series. Remember, they released the awesome Midway Arcade Treasures with a phoned-in interface and multiple sound bugs, waking up to the public's interest in it only when it *actually sold*.
What follows is, in my not-so-humble opinion, what the Gauntlet series needs to remain interesting and relevant in its next incarnation.
* Get rid of some of the sameness that filled the later areas of Legends and Dark Legacy. Hack slash hack slash hack slash. Despite the variety in environment, most of the areas were simply differently-shaped tubes through which the players flowed. * Get the hell rid of the lame collection quests from the home versions of those two games; one in the whole game (runestones) is enough. It's Gauntlet, not Banjo-Kazooie! All home versions of the game other than the Dreamcast one ruined the bonus rounds by having them grant only character unlock credits unstead of gold. * Put back in all the great gimmicks and concepts from Gauntlet II, with some additional clever multiplayer concepts. (GII was the game that gave us the IT Monster.) I've got some ideas for this, give me a call! (The author of this comment then waits by phone anxiously for several months, then walks away, sad, dejected, but wiser.) * Deepen the character development with some hard choices, but don't make it too complicated. This is Gauntlet, not Morrowind. At the same time, it's not Final Fantasy either, so there's no need to putz about with weapon and armor inventories or attempts to put in a "real" story. Gauntlet needs to be kept pure; it's still possible for a hack-and-slash game to do well, if it focuses on what hack-and-slash does best: quick thinking, on-the-fly strategizing, and action action action. * Keep the monster count up, and put back in strategic ways of taking out generators early. The key skills of classic Gauntlet players are the ability to shoot generators just as they come on screen (before they have a chance to produce bullet-soaking enemies), and the quick scouting trip to take out generators before they can produce too much. Both of these tactics are possible in L and GL, but not as useful. Aiming is harder because of the 3D nature of the game (even with auto-aim), and * And most importantly, LEAVE IN TIMED HEALTH LOSS! The fact that, at home, there was no penalty for waiting around waiting for your turbo meter to fill, directly harmed the game. Notice: ALL the (real) home versions of the original Gauntlet and Gauntlet II have timed health loss, while all the home versions of Legends and Dark Legacy had no such thing.
It's easy to forget these days just how groundbreaking the original Gauntlets were, and they're still fondly remembered by many people. And damn it, they're still fun to play now, even the home versions of the arcade updates. Midway is sitting on a gold mine here if they can avoid dropping the ball. (Chances of Midway dropping the ball, especially now that original creator Ed Logg is no longer with them: 85%.)
At first I dismissed the premise out of hand, but reading some of the comments here has changed my mind, a bit.
Ico, sure, but it was made with a sense of art. Most of the games that really seem an emotional response are not the game industry's version of big budget blockbusters. (Which EXCLUDES Final Fantasy, almost in direct proportion to its mainstream popularity. I never cared much about the characters in VII -- what, we're supposed to like Cloud??)
Ico is the best example that comes to mind.
Grandias 1 and 2, although they are victim to some RPG cliches, manage to overcome it with amazingly witty incidental dialogue.
Don't forget: making the player laugh is also an emotional response, so I include the Paper Mario games, and some of the better moments in Mario & Luigi.
My vote's for Kiki's Delivery Service, which works well in a magical-realistic kind of way. Porco Rosso was nifty too.
Hmmm... I just realized, all of Miyazaki's movies have that spirited, willful teenage girl in there somewhere. It even goes back to Castle of Cagliostro! (That was, for those playing along at home, a Lupin the 3rd movie.)
Which is not to imply any kind of Japanese-stereotypical pedophile association, mind you. If anything, his movies are pre-sexual, e.g., "For God's sake Alvy, even Freud spoke of a latency period!"
I was sort of wondering how Nintendo was going to pull this off until I read your article.
The wand would be great for swordfighting, and first person martial arts anything. But best of all would be sports games; the wand makes such a wide variety of sports games possible.
Suddenly, Nintendo's licensing of their characters to EA Sports games and steady popularization of their Mario Sports games seem less cheesy and more incredibly canny. The EA Sports licensing were to make sure relations with the biggest sports developer are sunny, the Mario Sports stuff are to build a core audience which will jump on new games when they are released using the wand.
Damn... if Nintendo releases a treadmill, even big, physical games like football and basketball could be covered.
Almost makes me interested in sports games for the first time in my life, really.
Okayokay just kidding. Truth be told, actually, it'd be nice if the "basic" model package (which was 50mb+) came with anything other than a female figure, a fairy dress and accessories, and a forest scene. It can be as free as anything, but it sounds like, to get any use out of it at all besides sylvan fantasy scenes, you have to pay for more "content." That's weak.
I actually hate the Dual Shock for some games. For Katamari Damacy they work great... until you try to do a charge move (alternate the sticks as fast as you can) and accidently do a 180-degree reverse (press "in" on both sticks at the same time).
And for games that require super-precise control, Dual Shock sucks even more. Super Monkey Ball played great on a Gamecube (the game even featured a controller calibration option on that platform), but the PS2 version is almost unplayable on some levels.
However, the placement of the sticks on a Dual Shock is nice. Ah well, I can't complain about everything, I guess.
Meteos does feel a little more gimmicky with the block-launching play, but it's also more different because of it.
Tetris Attack has versions for GB (so you say, I'm not familiar with that version), SNES and (as Pokemon Puzzle League) N64. Plus, in Japan the SNES game (under the name Panel De Pon and with cutsy fairy graphics) was released as part of Nintendo Puzzle Collection for Gamecube.
Weboggle: weboggle.shackworks.com. Essentially, it's a browser-based version of Boggle. You find words in a grid and type them in. No blocks disappear or anything. You find as many words as you can in three minutes, and then you're told how you scored compared to everyone else who's playing at that moment. Then you do it again. And again, until you get sick of it and close the window.
There's no cost, it's ad free, and it has none of that lame, glitzy, console-wanna-be chintz. It's just a solid, pure Javascript + DHTML implementation, little graphics, and a solid game engine.
Well Meteos is great, but there are other puzzle games with that attribute.
My favorite (god I'm going to mention it again, aren't I) is Rampart, which has a random element but one that can be planned for, and must be for skilled play. It's also very different in execution from traditional puzzlers, which generally means that people who have practiced up on tradiional falling-block and matching-color puzzle games won't have their typical advantages.
I and a friend played a fair amount of Tetris Attack, though you should know its original name, in Japan, was Panel De Pon. Before Nintendo could release the game under that name now, they'd probably have to clear it with the Tetris company (which I don't think is their exact name, but is close to it). There's been a GC game called Nintendo Puzzle Collection, that's been out in Japan for a while but has yet to make it over here, that contains that game and two others. That's probably our best chance for a further update.
I've read up a little on the game as well as played it a while. Yes, it's an interesting concept, and better than the average class of puzzler. High-level play consists on finding quick matches and setting up future matches. But it also involves keeping the STOP counter going as long as possible, and that feels a little artificial.
By the way, it shares more than a little in common with Meteos; Panel De Pon only allows you to swap pieces horizontally, Meteos lets you swap vertically (and very rapidly, with the stylus), but the idea of manipulating pieces to create rows and columns of matching blocks remains.
I agree with you on Ocarina of Time and GTA 3. I'd also vouch for The Sims, although geek circles have largely turned against the game, it really was truly original.
The rest of the article's list doesn't measure up to the intro given it. As games, none of the others really changed gaming all that much; they may have made it more popular, but they didn't *change* it. Three of the ten games are first-person shooters....
Ah, I think I remember that one... in the Expert levels, in the teens, isn't it? The start to the level is on a small, suspended platform with a few bananas on it, and below that is a big 45-degree slope made up of large, square platforms connected on the diagonal. The goal is on the furtherest, bottom-most square. The official way to finish it is to fall off the left edge of the platform onto the nearest square, hold the stick hard against the slope to make it less harsh, then weave across the diagonal connections to get to the goal square.
That was a level that caught me off-guard when I first played it, and indeed the first time I did it, I used a "non-traditional" solution that involved plunging off the start platform at full speed, controlling the bounce off a middle square, and popping through the goal on the rebound.
It's a lot more random, but lots of fun! I can't do it every time that way, of course.
This is interesting, because I always thought the single-player mode was much better than all except one or two games (Bowling, Flight). It's really simple at first, but surprisingly complex later on in levels where you have to control bounces (possible because, again, you move the floor, not the ball), other objects that are affected by the tilt, levels where you have to jump gaps and manipulate teeter-totters, keep up speed so centrifugal force keeps you on slopes, navigate across diagonal gaps, and more. Yet none of these things (in the first game at least) feels gimmicky, all these situations are created by elegant mixtures of the physics engine and the brilliant level design.
Admittedly, however, the game does get quite challenging later on. Hmm.
The original control style for Marble Madness was *not* a control pad, or even a joystick. It was a trackball, of course - a touchscreen would make a good replacement, but that's already been done in Pac 'N' Roll.
I mean, of course a compelling way to prove a point is by example, but writing an essay is an attempt at persuasion. And it takes a lot more effort to make a good game, especially by today's standards, than to write an essay.
Heh, my problem is that I see it both ways: I can see how English professor-types can find value in video games, but I also see how they largely ignore things like gameplay, design and essential coolness.
I can even hold both of these concepts in my head at once, but it requires that I thunk down to real mode....
Slashdot Mirror
They're targeting children of developing nations?!
Sell me one!
He also created the massive success that was the Gameboy, arguably the most popular thing the company's ever made. Letting him go was a tremendous mistake, period.
Gauntlet, above all other action RPGish hack-and-slash things, deserves a great update. While Romero may or may not have been capable of it, I don't know if Midway can be trusted to do what's best for the series. Remember, they released the awesome Midway Arcade Treasures with a phoned-in interface and multiple sound bugs, waking up to the public's interest in it only when it *actually sold*.
What follows is, in my not-so-humble opinion, what the Gauntlet series needs to remain interesting and relevant in its next incarnation.
* Get rid of some of the sameness that filled the later areas of Legends and Dark Legacy. Hack slash hack slash hack slash. Despite the variety in environment, most of the areas were simply differently-shaped tubes through which the players flowed.
* Get the hell rid of the lame collection quests from the home versions of those two games; one in the whole game (runestones) is enough. It's Gauntlet, not Banjo-Kazooie! All home versions of the game other than the Dreamcast one ruined the bonus rounds by having them grant only character unlock credits unstead of gold.
* Put back in all the great gimmicks and concepts from Gauntlet II, with some additional clever multiplayer concepts. (GII was the game that gave us the IT Monster.) I've got some ideas for this, give me a call! (The author of this comment then waits by phone anxiously for several months, then walks away, sad, dejected, but wiser.)
* Deepen the character development with some hard choices, but don't make it too complicated. This is Gauntlet, not Morrowind. At the same time, it's not Final Fantasy either, so there's no need to putz about with weapon and armor inventories or attempts to put in a "real" story. Gauntlet needs to be kept pure; it's still possible for a hack-and-slash game to do well, if it focuses on what hack-and-slash does best: quick thinking, on-the-fly strategizing, and action action action.
* Keep the monster count up, and put back in strategic ways of taking out generators early. The key skills of classic Gauntlet players are the ability to shoot generators just as they come on screen (before they have a chance to produce bullet-soaking enemies), and the quick scouting trip to take out generators before they can produce too much. Both of these tactics are possible in L and GL, but not as useful. Aiming is harder because of the 3D nature of the game (even with auto-aim), and
* And most importantly, LEAVE IN TIMED HEALTH LOSS! The fact that, at home, there was no penalty for waiting around waiting for your turbo meter to fill, directly harmed the game. Notice: ALL the (real) home versions of the original Gauntlet and Gauntlet II have timed health loss, while all the home versions of Legends and Dark Legacy had no such thing.
It's easy to forget these days just how groundbreaking the original Gauntlets were, and they're still fondly remembered by many people. And damn it, they're still fun to play now, even the home versions of the arcade updates. Midway is sitting on a gold mine here if they can avoid dropping the ball. (Chances of Midway dropping the ball, especially now that original creator Ed Logg is no longer with them: 85%.)
At first I dismissed the premise out of hand, but reading some of the comments here has changed my mind, a bit.
Ico, sure, but it was made with a sense of art. Most of the games that really seem an emotional response are not the game industry's version of big budget blockbusters. (Which EXCLUDES Final Fantasy, almost in direct proportion to its mainstream popularity. I never cared much about the characters in VII -- what, we're supposed to like Cloud??)
Ico is the best example that comes to mind.
Grandias 1 and 2, although they are victim to some RPG cliches, manage to overcome it with amazingly witty incidental dialogue.
Don't forget: making the player laugh is also an emotional response, so I include the Paper Mario games, and some of the better moments in Mario & Luigi.
My vote's for Kiki's Delivery Service, which works well in a magical-realistic kind of way. Porco Rosso was nifty too.
Hmmm... I just realized, all of Miyazaki's movies have that spirited, willful teenage girl in there somewhere. It even goes back to Castle of Cagliostro! (That was, for those playing along at home, a Lupin the 3rd movie.)
Which is not to imply any kind of Japanese-stereotypical pedophile association, mind you. If anything, his movies are pre-sexual, e.g., "For God's sake Alvy, even Freud spoke of a latency period!"
I want to go home and play it right now.
Psst! Hey Bud, rumor has it that the DS is a portable system.
Advance Wars DS certainly has taken the edge off my daily bus ride to the university.
I was sort of wondering how Nintendo was going to pull this off until I read your article.
The wand would be great for swordfighting, and first person martial arts anything. But best of all would be sports games; the wand makes such a wide variety of sports games possible.
Suddenly, Nintendo's licensing of their characters to EA Sports games and steady popularization of their Mario Sports games seem less cheesy and more incredibly canny. The EA Sports licensing were to make sure relations with the biggest sports developer are sunny, the Mario Sports stuff are to build a core audience which will jump on new games when they are released using the wand.
Damn... if Nintendo releases a treadmill, even big, physical games like football and basketball could be covered.
Almost makes me interested in sports games for the first time in my life, really.
You say this as if there something wrong with it.
Okayokay just kidding. Truth be told, actually, it'd be nice if the "basic" model package (which was 50mb+) came with anything other than a female figure, a fairy dress and accessories, and a forest scene. It can be as free as anything, but it sounds like, to get any use out of it at all besides sylvan fantasy scenes, you have to pay for more "content." That's weak.
Aaah, interesting. Maybe I was mistaken, then.
Holy jumping mother o'God in a side-car with chocolate jimmies and a lobster bib!
I actually hate the Dual Shock for some games. For Katamari Damacy they work great... until you try to do a charge move (alternate the sticks as fast as you can) and accidently do a 180-degree reverse (press "in" on both sticks at the same time).
And for games that require super-precise control, Dual Shock sucks even more. Super Monkey Ball played great on a Gamecube (the game even featured a controller calibration option on that platform), but the PS2 version is almost unplayable on some levels.
However, the placement of the sticks on a Dual Shock is nice. Ah well, I can't complain about everything, I guess.
Meteos does feel a little more gimmicky with the block-launching play, but it's also more different because of it.
Tetris Attack has versions for GB (so you say, I'm not familiar with that version), SNES and (as Pokemon Puzzle League) N64. Plus, in Japan the SNES game (under the name Panel De Pon and with cutsy fairy graphics) was released as part of Nintendo Puzzle Collection for Gamecube.
Weboggle: weboggle.shackworks.com. Essentially, it's a browser-based version of Boggle. You find words in a grid and type them in. No blocks disappear or anything. You find as many words as you can in three minutes, and then you're told how you scored compared to everyone else who's playing at that moment. Then you do it again. And again, until you get sick of it and close the window.
There's no cost, it's ad free, and it has none of that lame, glitzy, console-wanna-be chintz. It's just a solid, pure Javascript + DHTML implementation, little graphics, and a solid game engine.
Well Meteos is great, but there are other puzzle games with that attribute.
My favorite (god I'm going to mention it again, aren't I) is Rampart, which has a random element but one that can be planned for, and must be for skilled play. It's also very different in execution from traditional puzzlers, which generally means that people who have practiced up on tradiional falling-block and matching-color puzzle games won't have their typical advantages.
I and a friend played a fair amount of Tetris Attack, though you should know its original name, in Japan, was Panel De Pon. Before Nintendo could release the game under that name now, they'd probably have to clear it with the Tetris company (which I don't think is their exact name, but is close to it). There's been a GC game called Nintendo Puzzle Collection, that's been out in Japan for a while but has yet to make it over here, that contains that game and two others. That's probably our best chance for a further update.
I've read up a little on the game as well as played it a while. Yes, it's an interesting concept, and better than the average class of puzzler. High-level play consists on finding quick matches and setting up future matches. But it also involves keeping the STOP counter going as long as possible, and that feels a little artificial.
By the way, it shares more than a little in common with Meteos; Panel De Pon only allows you to swap pieces horizontally, Meteos lets you swap vertically (and very rapidly, with the stylus), but the idea of manipulating pieces to create rows and columns of matching blocks remains.
Jumping Flash was a 3D platformer PS1 title that, apparently, predated Super Mario 64.
It may technically have been first, and also not a bad game in general, but I'd say it's been overshadowed by Mario 64 for good reasons.
I agree with you on Ocarina of Time and GTA 3. I'd also vouch for The Sims, although geek circles have largely turned against the game, it really was truly original.
The rest of the article's list doesn't measure up to the intro given it. As games, none of the others really changed gaming all that much; they may have made it more popular, but they didn't *change* it. Three of the ten games are first-person shooters....
Actually, I believe it'll be celebrating its 20th birthday next year....
Hey, maybe we'll even get a new version then!
Ah, I think I remember that one... in the Expert levels, in the teens, isn't it? The start to the level is on a small, suspended platform with a few bananas on it, and below that is a big 45-degree slope made up of large, square platforms connected on the diagonal. The goal is on the furtherest, bottom-most square. The official way to finish it is to fall off the left edge of the platform onto the nearest square, hold the stick hard against the slope to make it less harsh, then weave across the diagonal connections to get to the goal square.
That was a level that caught me off-guard when I first played it, and indeed the first time I did it, I used a "non-traditional" solution that involved plunging off the start platform at full speed, controlling the bounce off a middle square, and popping through the goal on the rebound.
It's a lot more random, but lots of fun! I can't do it every time that way, of course.
It may not be a masterpiece, but it sure will sell out. Cause, like, it's fifty cents a game! You could get two with a buck!
(Yes, I'm joking.)
This is interesting, because I always thought the single-player mode was much better than all except one or two games (Bowling, Flight). It's really simple at first, but surprisingly complex later on in levels where you have to control bounces (possible because, again, you move the floor, not the ball), other objects that are affected by the tilt, levels where you have to jump gaps and manipulate teeter-totters, keep up speed so centrifugal force keeps you on slopes, navigate across diagonal gaps, and more. Yet none of these things (in the first game at least) feels gimmicky, all these situations are created by elegant mixtures of the physics engine and the brilliant level design.
Admittedly, however, the game does get quite challenging later on. Hmm.
An error in the article:
The original control style for Marble Madness was *not* a control pad, or even a joystick. It was a trackball, of course - a touchscreen would make a good replacement, but that's already been done in Pac 'N' Roll.
1. Isn't Advent Children just a movie? (Legitimate question here, although if it *is* just a movie, feel free to interpret it as snark.)
2. Even if it is a game, the only thing on this list I'm at all interested in is GTA.
Well I'm not sure that's texactly true.
I mean, of course a compelling way to prove a point is by example, but writing an essay is an attempt at persuasion. And it takes a lot more effort to make a good game, especially by today's standards, than to write an essay.
Heh, my problem is that I see it both ways: I can see how English professor-types can find value in video games, but I also see how they largely ignore things like gameplay, design and essential coolness.
I can even hold both of these concepts in my head at once, but it requires that I thunk down to real mode....