Even if movies were made, they'd still be games based on books.
And actually, there were elements of the games that didn't seem to jive with the books. I remember thinking they got Lord Vetinari wrong. The puzzles were a bit obtuse, too. However, the games were certainly better than they could have been.
Note that I'm only talking about the first two games here -- I've never seen Discworld Noir.
Think about it. You have your brain-twisting story. (times ten), that despite seeming cliche at first manages to avoid most of the common anime traps. You have your extremely likable trio of protagonists (Roger, R. Dorothy and Norman). And you have a good number of varied opponents: Beck, Schwartzwald, Vera, a number of the early enemies-of-the-week, and eventually Alex Rosewater.
But best of all... GIANT ROBOT FIGHTING! Giant Robot Fighting that feels heavy and real! Look at how they designed Big O's controls in the show, with the big, sliding arm levers. Imagine a controller like that! We're not talking about MechWarrior-style giant fighting. We're talking about a completely serious version of the giant robot fighting in the N64 Goemon games. I'm of the opinion that the rockage quotient of that game would be very high.
Come to think of it, I've heard this usage. Damn it, that's four meanings now!
Actually, since it determines if you win or lose the "primary" game, in a rock-scissors-paper kind of way, it could be argued that it is actually part of it.
I don't know if that would be argued *by me*, though. It's 4 in the morning as I write this and I'm not entirely sure I exist right now.
I can't help but consider this to be one version of an "ultimate" modding environment, where the real point isn't the main adventure at all, but the tools and the whole general-purpose D&D environment that goes with them.
Of course, you can't change the game's actual code, but you can change a lot using the supplied editing tools, and even more (including new classes, adding new models, etc) using hak packs.
I know that I had more fun with the Aurora toolset trying to piece modules together and scripting them than I ever did with the Official Campaign.
This is another example of the tech-elitist approach to UI design, that you don't "deserve" to make something cool unless you first learn to navigate around our crappy interface and learn to do all these arbitrary things.
It's recognized that most of these programs are not the main selling point of the game they're made for, and that any time put towards sanding the rough edges off of the editor is time taken away from developing the actual game. But that still doesn't mean these editing tools are not lacking.
Actually, many games have NPCs that tell the player to use controller buttons to do things, where the buttons are not considered in any sort of game context (like on a control panel). Nintendo's games are full of this, and are probably where it started, where some of the little elf people in Kokiri Forest keep telling you how to perform moves, and the signs outside of Peach's castle refer to pushing control sticks around.
Earthbound's been mentioned before, but really, it probably the most meta (in the writer's sense) of all, even more than Metal Geal Solid. There's a character named Ruffini the Dog who becomes possessed by the spirit of the game designer. One character lends you money at some point, and if you forget to pay it back, he calls you up after the credits. And after you beat the last boss, during the infamous everyone-has-something-new-to-say bit before the "real" ending, Ruffini the Dog gets possessed again, and *gives you the address of Nintendo in Japan*, to which you can send your opinion of the game!
And let's not forget about Animal Crossing. How could we leave out Mr. Resetti?
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was *full* of it. Try typing through all the footnotes sometime and see what messages the game has in store for you. The tea/no tea puzzle also smacks of convention flaunting.
And let us never forget the wonderful, abrupt, arbitrary ending, in which the player is told that the most wonderful adventure is about to happen, but unfortunately you'll have to buy the next game to find out what it is.
Unfortunately, they never made a next game. Infocom is basically a wadded up piece of tissue paper in the back of Activison's attic right now, and Douglas Adams is taking the dirt nap.
Man, what a bummer. Before I wrote this replay, you know, I was happy. CURSE YOU WEIRDOFREAK!!
God I couldn't get into that thing, and I'm more willing than most people to give an anime with a weird premise a chance. (Hey, I've stuck with Big-O through two seasons, and still think it's great, even though they bury the needle on the strange meter towards the end.) hack-random-punctuation-sign is just *dull*. Dull and angsty, in that special way that people only accept if it's anime. Anything like that that keeps me from glorious, shining Bebop is beyond forgiveness.
Actually, neither you nor the article have the definition I'm aware of. I've always understood metagaming to be the "game around the game." Like in a tournament, the metagame is the tournament structure. A series of little games of chess, football, SoulCalibur, etc., determine the winner in the big game.
Metagaming can also be used to refer to the interactions of the players around the game. Like playing a game as part of a bar bet. The bet is the metagame. While I don't have a source document handy, I'm fairly sure that this is common usage in the game design community -- I've read this in multiple places.
The prefix meta- is often vague due to the sheer number of situations to which it can be applied. I'm willing to let the author make his point, which I think is insightful, without tearing him down over the use or misuse of a term.
Arguably better than the movie, of course, was the Nintendo 64 game Goldeneye.
What did it do right? Well, it was a great game in its own right -- I enjoyed it, even though shooters usually leave me cold.
But what I think Goldeneye did right more than anything else was be a generic James Bond game. Everything about the game just screamed "James Bond!" Other developers have since tried to do the same thing, with varying results.
Basing a game on a specific movie is bad -- since movies are usually less than two hours long, and a successful game has to hold the player's attention for much longer, it's very difficult to stay true to the movie without adding a bunch of extra material. Too much, and you're unfaithful. Too little, and people leave. Better to base your game off a franchise, as then you can draw in elements throughout the series.
Also, let's face it, most games are based on action movies, and action movies are particularly known for verisimilitude. (Not that most games are abounding in that quality.) I guess what I'm trying to say here is: most action movies suck. Most games suck. And remember, suckiness grows not linearly, but exponentially.
Oh man. That could so work. It's a shame that movies based on video games are chosen based more for whatever social juice the producers can suck out of the franchise more than its suitability for the big screen.
Generally, but not essentially. If you perform the move for a Guard Impact, but aren't getting hit, nothing happens. But since buttons are probably being pressed by both sides at that moment, it wouldn't be obvious which side performed the GI just from looking at the controller data stream.
Also... the hack doesn't seem as cool if you need to jury-rig special hardware to do it. One of the great things about this is that you *only* need a capture card to do it. That's swell.
Since the program has no idea who accomplished the GI until damage is scored, you actually wouldn't have to worry about consecutive GIs, since only the last one really matters. You could have a special commentary for GI-fests, but it wouldn't be able to know who initiated it until damage is scored -- *if* it's scored.
The thing about the GI sound is that it's distinctive -- nothing else in the game sounds remotely like it -- and its really loud. Since all the sounds are mixed with the music and other sound effects in the game there'd have to be a little processing. But it could be worse.
I'm certain it *can* be done, the questions are, how, and can it be done without imposing too so strain on the processor that it affects the quality of the video capturing. Maybe you could have an option to give the capture process and detector a priority bump?
That wouldn't work, because control inputs are too vague without being able to tell what's happening on the screen. Also, since Guard Impacts happen in response to attacks, both players would have buttons pressed and control directions going at the same time.
If you could find any non-vague visual element, something that's part of the basic interface and not the 3D engine, that corresponds to performing a GI, then it could be attributed to the performing player. Otherwise, it gets much harder to do anything except tell if a GI has happened.
On the plus side, the GI sound effect so *so* distinctive that I imagine that it wouldn't take a lot of audio processing to detect it.
Or..... hey this may be a solution. After a guard impact, only the player who performed it is able to attack during a small time window. The software should be able to figure out one's happened infallibly. Then, if either player takes damage during that period, then the other player, logically, must have been the player who performed the parry!
At least one exception: during "Extra" battle, players may be using weapons that grant them extra powers or drawbacks, and some of them do damage, either through constant drain, or in response to attacking, or maybe even blocking. So for extra games, the program would have to ignore damage below a certain amount, corresponding to the greatest special weapon penalty damage.
An interesting problem. I'm sure if there a practical solution the developers can find it, they've already come amazingly far.
I was thinking about that myself, but the hardest part would be figuring out which player performed the Guard Impact. There could probably be special commentary lines for them (it'd be cool if they could interrupt whatever was being said at the moment, shouting and yelling like a wrestling announcer), but you wouldn't be able to refer to the player who performed it.
It's really, really cool. We need something like this for our games!
It's too bad it doesn't look like it can detect Guard Impacts, which can turn a fight around. (A Guard Impact is when you press toward or away from the opponent and press the block button the instant a hit would strike, causing you to parry or sidestep the attack and basically giving you a free hit on your opponent -- unless *he* Guard Impacts, that is.)
Wing Commander's already a movie, and a bad one at that.
I hate to say it, but the odds are against Woo making a good Metroid movie. The odds are against anyone famous and Hollywood-respected enough to make a Metroid movie, and also willing enough to make one, making it any good.
But there is a real danger here. Ask a random guy on the street, "What is Pokemon?" First thing that will jump into their head is that annoying cartoon. Nevermind that the core GBA games are all brilliant designs, and that each tier of the series has introduced so many astounding cool ideas that I have trouble categorizing them all. The same thing is happening to Kirby, which is a shame because roughly one-in-three "traditional" Kirby games (for the record: Kirby's Dream Land, Kirby's Adventure/Nightmare in Dreamland and Kirby Super Star) are actually quite decent action games.
Movies and TV shows have a way of displacing things they're based on in the popular culture. It's happened to countless books and plays, and it could very well happen to Metroid. It didn't happen with Super Mario Bros. because the movie flopped and SMB was *the* game that revived video gaming, it probably won't happen to Resident Evil or Tomb Raider because those games are popular enough to be somewhat known to random Joe X. Average, but Metroid... as far as popular games go, a lot of people who don't play games have never heard of it This could harm the franchise.
They are not novelisations of potential film scripts and if the Tomb Raider & Mortal Kombat films are anything to go by, the Metroid movie will be another dire game adapation to be a quick money generating scheme from the teenage masses. (I've not seen Resident Evil so I can't comment on that one.)
I sold a few games to a disk magazine (still proud of some of 'em, in fact), and in one I shaved a few milliseconds off the main loop by taking advantage of how BASIC searched for the next line of code after a GOTO or GOSUB: from that line forwatd if the line number's greater than the current line, and from the beginning of the program if less than.
Also, anyplace where you would use a literal number in the program, you could get extra time by defining a variable as that number ahead of time and using that. But fastest of all, if you were using a literal zero, was just entering a single period instead; BASIC interpreted that as a zero.
Of course, it got disheartening that you couldn't get any kind of real speed without using assembly. Or worse: my first machine code program was before I got an assembler, so I had to laboriously look up each instruction opcode in the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide! I still remember: RTS is 96, LDA immediate is 169. And um... I think STA was 141. It's because I remember those things that I don't have brain room for verb tenses in my Spanish class!
Ah, the Programmer's Reference Guide. I still got mine, though it's in bad shape these days....
Wow, I hadn't even thought of that. That's the thing I think most people find hard about VJ, there are lots of places that seem hard until you know the trick to them. Charles the 3rd can be defeated very quickly with Voomerangs and/or the Dragon Kick, Hulk Davidson is a pussycat if you use a simple pattern on him, Gran Bruce goes down *much* faster if you manage to pummel him out of the water. Another Joe is a bit trickier, but I've beaten Alastor (who is usually difficult for me) in less than a minute, without taking damage.
Anyway, a really cool game, and with an extremely tongue-in-cheek storyline. A world better of a Gamecube exclusive than any of those Resident Evil things, I'm thinking.
Not true, other games did it first. Zelda II for the NES, bastard stepchild of the Zelda series, for example.
and moderately independent computer-controlled allies (familiars),
Maybe.
as well as demonstrating how a wide range of playstyles, including dozens of very different weapons, fighting game-style magic attacks, and even multiple different character transformations could work well together.
I agree that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, that it isn't the individual features in the game but the inclusion of ALL of them that makes the games great. But each or these things were seen in other games: transformations in Mario 3, weapons (in a way) in Mega Man and even the original Castlevania (subweapons), magic attacks controlled like fighters... well, I don't remember right now, but it was somewhere. Probably something by Capcom or something.
SotN and AoS still impressed through sheer scale, however. You can bet it took a damn flexible engine to have all those possibilities in it, and that's what no other game has really accomplished. (Though really, most of those weapons and souls go unused most of the time in that kind of game. Who really uses the curry-slinging Waiter Skeleton attack that often in Aria of Sorrow?)
It not only introduced a lot of new things to the 2D sidescroller, but is arguably still ahead of its time, because even the new Castlevania GBA games haven't demonstrated the same depth and wide range of play styles that Symphony of the Night did.
I disagree, I think AoS matches it, although it had a smaller castle.
Not only should SotN have been in that list, but it should've been displayed very prominently. The creators of modern 2D sidescrollers still haven't learned many of the lessons that it had to offer, nor have they created anything that's half as ambitious.
I agree there's nothing else like them (for AoS is similar), but maintain that most of its elements come from Metroid and the original Castlevania. Which it's perfectly allowed to borrow from, mind you, and it wouldn't have been out of place if it had appeared on the list.
But lots of NES games did this, c'mon. Anyway, I'm not an NES developer, but I'm *pretty* sure that the NES used hardware sprites, not a framebuffer, so "writing directly to the screen" has no meaning. The flickering is a symptom of the system being asked to put too many sprites (which are only 8x8 anyway - most game elements consist of multiple sprites next to each other) on the same horizontal line, which it only supported eight without flicker.
As for putting a lot on the screen at once, well, to do almost anything interesting on the NES you had to live with it. At least flickering was better than the alternative, and the hardware didn't just drop sprites.
Interestingly enough, the emulation of the original NES Metroid included with Metroid: Zero Mission *emulates the flickering*. You can either call that attention to detail or honesty above and beyond the call. Either way, I think it rocks.
Er, how was Super Mario Bros. not revolutionary? If it's not the first scrolling platformer then it's certainly the earliest I can name. It also pioneered what I'm suddenly going to call "casual secrets," with almost every level having *something* cool hidden away somewhere, ranging from warp zones to six extra coins on world 1-4.
For the record, Lost Levels *was* too hard. Period. One of the most frustrating things I've ever seen Nintendo produce.
Mario 2's very good, but not as interesting to me now as Mario 3.
Mario 3's great innovations were the incredible, even by today's standards, variety of powerups and the way that a level can be a completely difference experience depending on what you have going in, the sheer variety to the levels, and how all the different aspects came together as a whole.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if movies were made, they'd still be games based on books.
And actually, there were elements of the games that didn't seem to jive with the books. I remember thinking they got Lord Vetinari wrong. The puzzles were a bit obtuse, too. However, the games were certainly better than they could have been.
Note that I'm only talking about the first two games here -- I've never seen Discworld Noir.
Think about it. You have your brain-twisting story. (times ten), that despite seeming cliche at first manages to avoid most of the common anime traps. You have your extremely likable trio of protagonists (Roger, R. Dorothy and Norman). And you have a good number of varied opponents: Beck, Schwartzwald, Vera, a number of the early enemies-of-the-week, and eventually Alex Rosewater.
But best of all... GIANT ROBOT FIGHTING! Giant Robot Fighting that feels heavy and real! Look at how they designed Big O's controls in the show, with the big, sliding arm levers. Imagine a controller like that! We're not talking about MechWarrior-style giant fighting. We're talking about a completely serious version of the giant robot fighting in the N64 Goemon games. I'm of the opinion that the rockage quotient of that game would be very high.
Come to think of it, I've heard this usage. Damn it, that's four meanings now!
Actually, since it determines if you win or lose the "primary" game, in a rock-scissors-paper kind of way, it could be argued that it is actually part of it.
I don't know if that would be argued *by me*, though. It's 4 in the morning as I write this and I'm not entirely sure I exist right now.
Allow me to correct myself: and action movies are NOT particularly known for verisimilitude.
I can't help but consider this to be one version of an "ultimate" modding environment, where the real point isn't the main adventure at all, but the tools and the whole general-purpose D&D environment that goes with them.
Of course, you can't change the game's actual code, but you can change a lot using the supplied editing tools, and even more (including new classes, adding new models, etc) using hak packs.
I know that I had more fun with the Aurora toolset trying to piece modules together and scripting them than I ever did with the Official Campaign.
Oh for the love of pete.
This is another example of the tech-elitist approach to UI design, that you don't "deserve" to make something cool unless you first learn to navigate around our crappy interface and learn to do all these arbitrary things.
It's recognized that most of these programs are not the main selling point of the game they're made for, and that any time put towards sanding the rough edges off of the editor is time taken away from developing the actual game. But that still doesn't mean these editing tools are not lacking.
Actually, many games have NPCs that tell the player to use controller buttons to do things, where the buttons are not considered in any sort of game context (like on a control panel). Nintendo's games are full of this, and are probably where it started, where some of the little elf people in Kokiri Forest keep telling you how to perform moves, and the signs outside of Peach's castle refer to pushing control sticks around.
Earthbound's been mentioned before, but really, it probably the most meta (in the writer's sense) of all, even more than Metal Geal Solid. There's a character named Ruffini the Dog who becomes possessed by the spirit of the game designer. One character lends you money at some point, and if you forget to pay it back, he calls you up after the credits. And after you beat the last boss, during the infamous everyone-has-something-new-to-say bit before the "real" ending, Ruffini the Dog gets possessed again, and *gives you the address of Nintendo in Japan*, to which you can send your opinion of the game!
And let's not forget about Animal Crossing. How could we leave out Mr. Resetti?
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was *full* of it. Try typing through all the footnotes sometime and see what messages the game has in store for you. The tea/no tea puzzle also smacks of convention flaunting.
And let us never forget the wonderful, abrupt, arbitrary ending, in which the player is told that the most wonderful adventure is about to happen, but unfortunately you'll have to buy the next game to find out what it is.
Unfortunately, they never made a next game. Infocom is basically a wadded up piece of tissue paper in the back of Activison's attic right now, and Douglas Adams is taking the dirt nap.
Man, what a bummer. Before I wrote this replay, you know, I was happy. CURSE YOU WEIRDOFREAK!!
Yea verily, ye speak truth.
God I couldn't get into that thing, and I'm more willing than most people to give an anime with a weird premise a chance. (Hey, I've stuck with Big-O through two seasons, and still think it's great, even though they bury the needle on the strange meter towards the end.) hack-random-punctuation-sign is just *dull*. Dull and angsty, in that special way that people only accept if it's anime. Anything like that that keeps me from glorious, shining Bebop is beyond forgiveness.
Actually, neither you nor the article have the definition I'm aware of. I've always understood metagaming to be the "game around the game." Like in a tournament, the metagame is the tournament structure. A series of little games of chess, football, SoulCalibur, etc., determine the winner in the big game.
Metagaming can also be used to refer to the interactions of the players around the game. Like playing a game as part of a bar bet. The bet is the metagame. While I don't have a source document handy, I'm fairly sure that this is common usage in the game design community -- I've read this in multiple places.
The prefix meta- is often vague due to the sheer number of situations to which it can be applied. I'm willing to let the author make his point, which I think is insightful, without tearing him down over the use or misuse of a term.
Arguably better than the movie, of course, was the Nintendo 64 game Goldeneye.
What did it do right? Well, it was a great game in its own right -- I enjoyed it, even though shooters usually leave me cold.
But what I think Goldeneye did right more than anything else was be a generic James Bond game. Everything about the game just screamed "James Bond!" Other developers have since tried to do the same thing, with varying results.
Basing a game on a specific movie is bad -- since movies are usually less than two hours long, and a successful game has to hold the player's attention for much longer, it's very difficult to stay true to the movie without adding a bunch of extra material. Too much, and you're unfaithful. Too little, and people leave. Better to base your game off a franchise, as then you can draw in elements throughout the series.
Also, let's face it, most games are based on action movies, and action movies are particularly known for verisimilitude. (Not that most games are abounding in that quality.) I guess what I'm trying to say here is: most action movies suck. Most games suck. And remember, suckiness grows not linearly, but exponentially.
Oh man. That could so work. It's a shame that movies based on video games are chosen based more for whatever social juice the producers can suck out of the franchise more than its suitability for the big screen.
Generally, but not essentially. If you perform the move for a Guard Impact, but aren't getting hit, nothing happens. But since buttons are probably being pressed by both sides at that moment, it wouldn't be obvious which side performed the GI just from looking at the controller data stream.
Also... the hack doesn't seem as cool if you need to jury-rig special hardware to do it. One of the great things about this is that you *only* need a capture card to do it. That's swell.
Since the program has no idea who accomplished the GI until damage is scored, you actually wouldn't have to worry about consecutive GIs, since only the last one really matters. You could have a special commentary for GI-fests, but it wouldn't be able to know who initiated it until damage is scored -- *if* it's scored.
The thing about the GI sound is that it's distinctive -- nothing else in the game sounds remotely like it -- and its really loud. Since all the sounds are mixed with the music and other sound effects in the game there'd have to be a little processing. But it could be worse.
I'm certain it *can* be done, the questions are, how, and can it be done without imposing too so strain on the processor that it affects the quality of the video capturing. Maybe you could have an option to give the capture process and detector a priority bump?
That wouldn't work, because control inputs are too vague without being able to tell what's happening on the screen. Also, since Guard Impacts happen in response to attacks, both players would have buttons pressed and control directions going at the same time.
If you could find any non-vague visual element, something that's part of the basic interface and not the 3D engine, that corresponds to performing a GI, then it could be attributed to the performing player. Otherwise, it gets much harder to do anything except tell if a GI has happened.
On the plus side, the GI sound effect so *so* distinctive that I imagine that it wouldn't take a lot of audio processing to detect it.
Or..... hey this may be a solution. After a guard impact, only the player who performed it is able to attack during a small time window. The software should be able to figure out one's happened infallibly. Then, if either player takes damage during that period, then the other player, logically, must have been the player who performed the parry!
At least one exception: during "Extra" battle, players may be using weapons that grant them extra powers or drawbacks, and some of them do damage, either through constant drain, or in response to attacking, or maybe even blocking. So for extra games, the program would have to ignore damage below a certain amount, corresponding to the greatest special weapon penalty damage.
An interesting problem. I'm sure if there a practical solution the developers can find it, they've already come amazingly far.
I was thinking about that myself, but the hardest part would be figuring out which player performed the Guard Impact. There could probably be special commentary lines for them (it'd be cool if they could interrupt whatever was being said at the moment, shouting and yelling like a wrestling announcer), but you wouldn't be able to refer to the player who performed it.
It's really, really cool. We need something like this for our games!
It's too bad it doesn't look like it can detect Guard Impacts, which can turn a fight around. (A Guard Impact is when you press toward or away from the opponent and press the block button the instant a hit would strike, causing you to parry or sidestep the attack and basically giving you a free hit on your opponent -- unless *he* Guard Impacts, that is.)
Wing Commander's already a movie, and a bad one at that.
I hate to say it, but the odds are against Woo making a good Metroid movie. The odds are against anyone famous and Hollywood-respected enough to make a Metroid movie, and also willing enough to make one, making it any good.
But there is a real danger here. Ask a random guy on the street, "What is Pokemon?" First thing that will jump into their head is that annoying cartoon. Nevermind that the core GBA games are all brilliant designs, and that each tier of the series has introduced so many astounding cool ideas that I have trouble categorizing them all. The same thing is happening to Kirby, which is a shame because roughly one-in-three "traditional" Kirby games (for the record: Kirby's Dream Land, Kirby's Adventure/Nightmare in Dreamland and Kirby Super Star) are actually quite decent action games.
Movies and TV shows have a way of displacing things they're based on in the popular culture. It's happened to countless books and plays, and it could very well happen to Metroid. It didn't happen with Super Mario Bros. because the movie flopped and SMB was *the* game that revived video gaming, it probably won't happen to Resident Evil or Tomb Raider because those games are popular enough to be somewhat known to random Joe X. Average, but Metroid... as far as popular games go, a lot of people who don't play games have never heard of it This could harm the franchise.
They are not novelisations of potential film scripts and if the Tomb Raider & Mortal Kombat films are anything to go by, the Metroid movie will be another dire game adapation to be a quick money generating scheme from the teenage masses. (I've not seen Resident Evil so I can't comment on that one.)
Don't. You've just described it perfectly.
Oh wow, this brings back the memories.
I sold a few games to a disk magazine (still proud of some of 'em, in fact), and in one I shaved a few milliseconds off the main loop by taking advantage of how BASIC searched for the next line of code after a GOTO or GOSUB: from that line forwatd if the line number's greater than the current line, and from the beginning of the program if less than.
Also, anyplace where you would use a literal number in the program, you could get extra time by defining a variable as that number ahead of time and using that. But fastest of all, if you were using a literal zero, was just entering a single period instead; BASIC interpreted that as a zero.
Of course, it got disheartening that you couldn't get any kind of real speed without using assembly. Or worse: my first machine code program was before I got an assembler, so I had to laboriously look up each instruction opcode in the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide! I still remember: RTS is 96, LDA immediate is 169. And um... I think STA was 141. It's because I remember those things that I don't have brain room for verb tenses in my Spanish class!
Ah, the Programmer's Reference Guide. I still got mine, though it's in bad shape these days....
Can this kind of game design vision be formally taught?
Yes, fool! Whaddaya think a Liberal Arts degree is for? We be all up in the subtle human experience biz.
Now if you'll excuse me, I must really be getting back to my unemployment.
Wow, I hadn't even thought of that. That's the thing I think most people find hard about VJ, there are lots of places that seem hard until you know the trick to them. Charles the 3rd can be defeated very quickly with Voomerangs and/or the Dragon Kick, Hulk Davidson is a pussycat if you use a simple pattern on him, Gran Bruce goes down *much* faster if you manage to pummel him out of the water. Another Joe is a bit trickier, but I've beaten Alastor (who is usually difficult for me) in less than a minute, without taking damage.
Anyway, a really cool game, and with an extremely tongue-in-cheek storyline. A world better of a Gamecube exclusive than any of those Resident Evil things, I'm thinking.
Castlevania introduced on-the-fly variable difficulty (RPG-style levelling system)
Not true, other games did it first. Zelda II for the NES, bastard stepchild of the Zelda series, for example.
and moderately independent computer-controlled allies (familiars),
Maybe.
as well as demonstrating how a wide range of playstyles, including dozens of very different weapons, fighting game-style magic attacks, and even multiple different character transformations could work well together.
I agree that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, that it isn't the individual features in the game but the inclusion of ALL of them that makes the games great. But each or these things were seen in other games: transformations in Mario 3, weapons (in a way) in Mega Man and even the original Castlevania (subweapons), magic attacks controlled like fighters... well, I don't remember right now, but it was somewhere. Probably something by Capcom or something.
SotN and AoS still impressed through sheer scale, however. You can bet it took a damn flexible engine to have all those possibilities in it, and that's what no other game has really accomplished. (Though really, most of those weapons and souls go unused most of the time in that kind of game. Who really uses the curry-slinging Waiter Skeleton attack that often in Aria of Sorrow?)
It not only introduced a lot of new things to the 2D sidescroller, but is arguably still ahead of its time, because even the new Castlevania GBA games haven't demonstrated the same depth and wide range of play styles that Symphony of the Night did.
I disagree, I think AoS matches it, although it had a smaller castle.
Not only should SotN have been in that list, but it should've been displayed very prominently. The creators of modern 2D sidescrollers still haven't learned many of the lessons that it had to offer, nor have they created anything that's half as ambitious.
I agree there's nothing else like them (for AoS is similar), but maintain that most of its elements come from Metroid and the original Castlevania. Which it's perfectly allowed to borrow from, mind you, and it wouldn't have been out of place if it had appeared on the list.
But lots of NES games did this, c'mon. Anyway, I'm not an NES developer, but I'm *pretty* sure that the NES used hardware sprites, not a framebuffer, so "writing directly to the screen" has no meaning. The flickering is a symptom of the system being asked to put too many sprites (which are only 8x8 anyway - most game elements consist of multiple sprites next to each other) on the same horizontal line, which it only supported eight without flicker.
As for putting a lot on the screen at once, well, to do almost anything interesting on the NES you had to live with it. At least flickering was better than the alternative, and the hardware didn't just drop sprites.
Interestingly enough, the emulation of the original NES Metroid included with Metroid: Zero Mission *emulates the flickering*. You can either call that attention to detail or honesty above and beyond the call. Either way, I think it rocks.
Er, how was Super Mario Bros. not revolutionary? If it's not the first scrolling platformer then it's certainly the earliest I can name. It also pioneered what I'm suddenly going to call "casual secrets," with almost every level having *something* cool hidden away somewhere, ranging from warp zones to six extra coins on world 1-4.
For the record, Lost Levels *was* too hard. Period. One of the most frustrating things I've ever seen Nintendo produce.
Mario 2's very good, but not as interesting to me now as Mario 3.
Mario 3's great innovations were the incredible, even by today's standards, variety of powerups and the way that a level can be a completely difference experience depending on what you have going in, the sheer variety to the levels, and how all the different aspects came together as a whole.