My Gaming System of Choice

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and will be writing out entries, hopefully I can get all thirty days without any breaks, and if I manage to do that (since August has 31 days) I will think of an additional entry to write about.  I have done a 30-day challenge before, it for movies, but that was a while back, feel free to read those too if you like.

            Today is day 4 and the topic is “My Gaming System of Choice”.

            I currently have a Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360 hooked into my TV; I also use my phone for quick little things like Bejeweled; and I have a Nintendo DS which I have had since 2007.  All of these things together make up about 5% of my gaming activities.  I am very much a PC oriented game player at this point in my life because of one particular goliath of gaming.

Bwaaaah!

            Behold, oh glorious garbage peddling monster.  Soul sucking abomination of the online world.  Shiller of shit I do not need and may never touch again.  Breath deep and feel your lungs burned by the Steam.

            The number of games old and new is ocean deep on this service.  It has allowed me to play dozens of games for dollars that in previous generations of renting shit at Blockbuster would have cost bricks of gold.  Which is fine by me.  I spend less on games every year and yet I still have access to everything I want to play (that my computer can handle, it was top of the line 7 years ago, not so much now).  I have 7 games waiting for me to play them and dozens more that I got in value packs waiting to be downloaded.

            Really at this point I am more starting to just hate the concept of how consoles function.  Individual units with variable power and certain walled off fiefdoms of games that they won’t let the others play with.  Forcing consumers to buy more of these units to gain access to each of the fiefdoms.  WHY IS THIS ALLOWED?

When movie studios began to buy uptheater chains they were hit with antitrust legislation but game companies continue to horde these things.  Imagine a world in which a particular movie wouldn’t play on certain brands of movie player, only on the players of the company who owned the movie as an IP.  Imagine if TV operated that way, only Universal brand TV’s can play NBC and related networks.  People would be pissed (and so would advertising firms) as no one would want to have three screens in their living rooms to watch the three big networks, to say nothing of all the independent content that would have never been produced because of the prohibitive barriers to entering the market.

And esoteric shit like this needs no more prohibitions to entry.  It is hard enough as is.

In eras past they wouldn’t bother producing a video game unless you can guarantee 2 million units sold, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth the shelf space it takes up (this is also true of the music industry and CD’s, independent artists in the music world floundered for so long, and why they are booming now because of PC music, allowing people to sell the music they want without having to put disks on shelves).  Steam removes that.  Sure there is a tidal wave of sewage, but there is also a lot of good content that would have NEVER existed with this means to distribute it.  Could you imagine selling “Papers Please”, “Invisible Inc”, “This War of Mine”, or even something with some horror elements that are unmarketable like “Sunless Sea” or “Darkest Dungeon”?  No, because no one would think they would sell.

Steam, and the PC culture in general has created what is called in marketing “The long tail effect”, that the more esoteric something becomes the thinner the audience for it becomes, so sales drop off to a flat line, or a “Long Tail”.  Things in the long tail would not be catered to because the distribution of hard media is too expensive for something that won’t sell, look back at something like “Psychonauts” and how that game’s strangeness left it sitting on shelves, but now it is considered a classic because it was able to find its part of the long tail, sell to those who wanted it, and then sell to others who grew curious of it, a curiosity spurred by the ease of access and low price.

This blog will better explain the concept.

What is more, Steam and services like it are competing with both each other and piracy, consoles don’t have that difficulty, the cost of buying a console means you are invested, and they have complete control over their market place, no Steam sales for you, this is how much XBLA wants to charge for this game, if you want it that is how much you will have to pay.

I like PC’s because they are so pro consumer, because they are so full of Choice.  (Hey, look at that, I tied this back to my talk about my favorite game genre.  Aren’t I cute?)

           

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Favorite Video Game Developer

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and will be writing out entries, hopefully I can get all thirty days without any breaks, and if I manage to do that (since August has 31 days) I will think of an additional entry to write about.  I have done a 30-day challenge before, it for movies, but that was a while back, feel free to read those too if you like.

            Today is day 3 and the topic is “Favorite Game Developer”.

            After yesterday many people are probably guessing that my favorite developer is either Firaxis (makers of “X-Com” and other TBS style games) or Bethesda (makers of the current Fallout franchise and the Elder Scrolls franchise which is massively successful) with possibly a bet on Obsidian (who are big into RPG’s and whose content will be mentioned down the line).  All of these are good guesses and I commend you for knowing enough about video games to know those companies and to have remembered my blog yesterday well enough to make a guess at all with my tastes in mind.  Strangely, it is none of those, and this is going to be weird.

Alright!  Everybody!  1-2-3-Vogue.

            My favorite developer is Nintendo.  Yes, the publisher of Pokemon, a game I damned with faint praise and basically dismissed just yesterday.  But there is a reason for that which runs a little deeper and I can explain why.

            You might be saying, “It is not hard to guess, it is nostalgia.  Nintendo was often a person’s first video game system of choice as it is aimed at younger people, and Nintendo was so synonymous with gaming that many older people don’t even think of Nintendo as a company so much as another word for Video Game.  They saved the home gaming industry in America after Atari’s collapse.  Nintendo is what idiots and losers sputter when they have nothing else to say.”

            Maybe each of those things are a factor.  I am a bit of an idiot who often says the first thing that pops into my head when I have nothing important to say.  And I am getting old.

For a while a NES was my primary system along with a Gameboy, but I owned a Sega Genesis before I got a Super NES (and never owned a lot of games for it).  And I later owned an N64, but I have more memories of Xbox than Game Cube, and Xbox 360 than I do of the Wii.  And I currently don’t own a WiiU, though I would really like to.  Is that enough to be nostalgic?  Maybe my not-constant contact with the company has led me to look on them more favorably than I should.

            But if it is not Nostalgia, why am I picking Nintendo?  Because I know what they are about.  Nintendo is about playing (and milking people’s nostalgia for money with products that could be considered lacking).  They do not allow themselves to get bogged down in the constant one-upmanship of better and better graphics, instead they allow their timeless art design to carry the weight.  They do not allow themselves to get bogged down in dreary story telling trying to illicit a shocked or controversial reaction from the audience, they want to illicite smiles and feeling of accomplishment for having bested a task to fun and lighthearted music.  When they do have cut scenes they don’t go on and on and on.

Nintendo is an entertainment company that makes silly games about cartoon characters.  I like that and I wish they made more games with the GAMEPLAY I am drawn to (though I have no idea what a Fallout game by Nintendo would look like… they are Japanese, which has a complex history with the Atomic Bomb and Nuclear Power; and they do have a zany sense of humor, love of quirky robots, and rarely hesitate to lovingly poke fun at Americana… So maybe it would be the best thing ever.  It is not like they haven’t been able to handle silent protagonists with the fate of the world in the balance before).

They could give the Pip-Boy a grey skin and liquid crystal display so it looks like a classic Gameboy.

From what I can gleam, they do have a single game series that fits my tastes, the “Fire Emblem” franchise looks like just the thing for me, but I do not have money for a 3DS right now, and since there is more of a preset story with premade characters maybe it would not be my thing entirely, but I would still like to give it a go.

So there it is, my favorite game developer is the single most iconic video game company in existence, sort of the Disney of the industry.  Hopefully they stick around for another hundred years trying new things in an attempt to be fun and inviting, even if they do produce mountains of fetid shit in the process.  The game industry needs to be accessible to new people and Nintendo has taken that job and done their best with it.

Feel free to share your favorite developer in the comments.  I would like that.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

My Favorite Game Genre

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and will be writing out entries, hopefully I can get all thirty days without any breaks, and if I manage to do that (since August has 31 days) I will think of an additional entry to write about.  I have done a 30-day challenge before, it for movies, but that was a while back, feel free to read those too if you like.

            Today is day 2, “My Favorite Genre”.

            Genre to me has a lot of different connotations.  It can evoke a style (Found Footage), a place of origin (Foreign Language), subject matter (Historical), setting (Western), or mood (Horror) that the work in question is.  This varies with Books and Movies but one thing neither of those mediums have is the element of Gameplay.

            Video Games can have Strategy, both Turn Based and Real Time; they can have Platforming, which can include a means to move from platform to platform in space via jumping, swinging, or teleporting; they can be Action games, with action based around a third person perspective, first person perspective, or even a far distant camera hooked up to some unseen ceiling.  Games can have guns, magic, or tools to build.

            When I was thinking about this I realized that there are two genres that battle for my affection here, the first is Turn Based Strategy, TBS and the other is Role Playing Game, RPG.  Each have their own strengths and weakness, but often start from a similar point, you are dropped into the world with very little skill and few abilities and gradually grow in power to win the game thru the acquiring of new abilities… I realize that is try of lots of games power ups are kind of important in lots of games that would not be described as RPG or TBS… Batman and Samus both get various flavors of mobility and offensive powers as they go along.  So what are the things about each that I really like apart from that slow gaining of power?  Choice.

            Let’s look at TBS with “X-Com: Enemy Within” a game I played about 130 hours of (and have talked about before).  In that game I am given a small team for each mission, I choose the members.  Each of those team members gains new abilities as they gain levels, I chose the abilities.  Everybody gets new gear, new weapons, and carries new equipment, all of which I chose to research and prioritize at some point in the game.  When I get the laser weapons is not pre-set by the game, what abilities my snipers’ choices are not preset by the game (though there are certain abilities that are so much better than others that there isn’t a “real” choice in some cases, I mean come on, who doesn’t pick squad sight?)  These things all happen because I chose those things to happen.  And sometimes those choices kneecap me like a mob enforcer.

I chose to have a soldier cut their limbs off so as to better fight aliens as a cyborg mecha.

            Let’s look at RPG with “Fallout 3”.  What does my character look like?  I get to choose.  Am I smart?  My choice.  Am I strong?  My choice.  Am I lucky, charismatic, or perceptive?  My choice.  What weapons do I like to use, be they bombs, knives, guns or lasers that can turn a gunman to dust.  Where do I go?  Wherever I want.  There is a story but it can simmer on the back burner till I get around to it.  (What is funny, is that while I am using it as an example of what I like here, I do not like Fallout 3 nearly as much as many people do, and precisely because it lacks a lot of the more nuanced choices I want in a story of this setting.  Many of the choices are too binary and often done with too little motivation.)  What I make of the world is shaped by my decisions and who I chose to work with.

I chose to let a lot of narrative problems go in order to enjoy the setting.

            I will talk about one last game while I am here that kind of strides the two of these categories that is fine but never really grabbed me deeply (so I won’t mention it too often for the rest of these blogs), “Pokemon”.  Pokemon has both an RPG element, in that you can choose what monsters you catch and train, what items you use on them, what moves you choose to teach them (which I find painfully thin on the ground), and contains a multitude of color and variety and drips with personality and consistent tone (even when it steps outside of those elements it doesn’t do so in a way that is not immediately reversible, so yeah there is a graveyard and a group of terrorists, but they are silly ghosts and goofy terrorists, just don’t think too hard about any of it).

            Pokemon has turn based combat, and this is where it differs from my tastes in a small but important way.  Where as in “X-Com” you would deploy a team of soldiers to the field, explore the area and engage the enemies, making placement and group tactics a much needed element to deepen and enrich the experience, Pokemon doesn’t.  Pokemon is a turn based combat game, which has very little strategy beyond picking the monster whose type trumps the enemy’s type, and they stand at the opposite end of an empty screen and shoot energy blasts at one another.  I am not a fan of that.

I think we can all agree that they have some of the best theme tunes of all time right?

            Here is where this blog will take a strange digression to talk about some broader things.  There are lots of fandoms that I have never got into, “Harry Potter” is perhaps the biggest pop culture thing that left me by, and Pokemon is close to that.  While I did enjoy two and a half of the games released over the last 20+ years it is not something that cuts deep (never played the card game, only saw one of the movies, never collected any toys, posters, or clothes) even though it has things I do like.

            It is important to know, that not all things are for all people.  That many things exist outside of one’s own tastes and experiences and that is okay.  In fact, it is great.  Having lots of different ideas contributes greatly to the strange mutations in fiction and games that allow them to grow and change to serve the needs of new people.  I see a lot of vile things online about certain movies, shows, and books, and while I do not like many of them, and see others as containing questionable messages, they are not harmful, and they serve a point.

If you find yourself looking at a game that doesn’t fit in with your world view, maybe instead of saying that you hate it, you just shrug and move on.  And the same goes for movies and TV you do not like.  Because you spewing hate at something might ruin the fun of someone who did like it and would like more of it.  Instead, maybe pay attention to things that are a lot more real and hurtful that you can do something about, and focus your energy there.

So yeah, after that long sidetrack because I have felt kind of sickened by the nerd culture’s treatment of certain things lately (and for a while).  I will just go ahead and repeat that I like RPG’s and TBS games the most as far as mechanics are concerned.  I would say that my tastes vary wildly in other areas though, and I will talk about those this month too.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

My Very First Video Game

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and will be writing out entries, hopefully I can get all thirty days without any breaks, and if I manage to do that (since August has 31 days) I will think of an additional entry to write about.  I have done a 30-day challenge before, it for movies, but that was a while back, feel free to read those too if you like.

            Today is day 1, and the topic is fittingly, “My very first Video Game”.

            When I was four years old my family moved from Ohio to Florida, my father got a job and he and my mom got the money together to build the house I grew up in.  While that house was being built we were lucky enough to stay in my grandparents’ mobile home which was in a neighboring county (they were not living there at that time, it was more like a spring and fall vacation spot with the mobile home part being long ago built into a larger house).

            In that mobile home, in the winter of 1989 my family pulled out the 16-inch crank-this-switch-with-pliers-to-set-the-channel TV and attached to it was my uncle’s old Atari 2600 and some assorted games, something I was not at all familiar with but my uncle showed me how to use it when he and my grandparents came to visit for Christmas.

            The only game I remember from it was “Mouse Trap”.  I managed to find game footage of it for the Arcade, and some for the home version I remember…. OH Boy, does that suck the shine of my nostalgia googles.  The colors are simple, the sprites are rough drawings, and the music sounds like the caterwauling of digital watches who were damned to electronic hell.

At least something like this is more conducive to a cartoon, which might have led to it being a little more successful had it gotten off the ground initially.
 

            The game was a Pac-Man clone.  You are a mouse gathering cheese in a maze, hunted by cats instead of ghosts, and when you get a power up (a bone) you turn into a dog and are able to eat the cats.  There was one twist on the classic that did set it apart, the maze had a series of trap doors that you could activate with the press of a button, allowing you to duck away from the cats closing in on you.  Another difference was the presence of a hawk that would swoop into the maze and attack you, but I forgot that existed as an element of play till I started researching for this blog because they took it out of the home version for being pointless.

            And I had to research this.  The game is not iconic and because it was “just another maze game” it did not do well in arcades at the time.  What I do find funny is how this sort of generic knock off thing has always been a part of video games.

While creativity was of the charts in the early days of console gaming (plumber takes magic mushrooms to fight king murder turtle) the limitations of the hardware led to certain game types (platformers and mazes for instance) being super prevalent.  And I could almost understand this game's existence as a competitor to Pac Man, because the trap door mechanic is dynamic and the animal motif is relatable, not so much for Pac Man whose motif is often debated.

One of many possible interpretations of what was going on.

 

What this game needed to survive was a rival system to be released on to compete with Pac Man.  Seriously, if there is anything that makes a mediocre game standout it is being the underdog rival to a much more iconic game.  That is the only reason “Sonic the Hedgehog” is so remembered now, having not made a good game in 20 years.

"Mouse Trap" was my first video game long before I got a NES or Genesis or N64.

I am getting old.

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Classic Movie of “Child and Big Thing”

Earlier this year we had “The BFG”.  Later this year we will get “Pete’s Dragon”.  And later still we will get “A Monster Calls”.  I do not know why this is the year of “Child and Big Thing” but for whatever reason, here we are.

In honor of that I am going to talk about a classic iteration of that sub-sub-genre.

 

This movie poster is just rad.

“The Iron Giant” came out when I was 14, massively under performed in cinemas, and then went on to become a classic that was underappreciated in its time… and arguably still is.

I actually find this movie hard to talk about because there are only so many ways to say, “It’s really good.”  Or the other thing that is often said, “It is really touching.”  Or, “You know how Groot was so endearing in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’?  Yeah, that was the voice of Vin Diesel.  Guess who voices the titular Giant?  Vin Diesel.”

Adorable.

The movie is a period piece that intentionally evokes the strange paranoia against communist agents that nearly resulted in the end of the world.  What is odd is the movie was released in 1999, and much like the movie “The Siege” (which is in a totally different genre, and has a different cast, and is not animated) these movies seem to be ahead of their time evoking the post-9/11 paranoia as a thing to ruminate on.  In fact, that might be why the movie picked up so much steam years later as it spoke to such feelings while evoking the better angels of Americana (Superman is directly referenced in the movie, and the Iron Giant also has the Christ like bit of self-sacrifice during the climax).

Overall, the animation is top notch as it was directed by Brad Bird, who is the modern Prometheus of animation.  The humor is great and has been gif-ed numerous times (though I do wonder how many people know that this is the origin of some of those).  And the action at the climax evokes the 1950’s B-movie alien attack perfectly, so much so that I wonder if this movie could have been made in live action during that era using stop motion, forced perspective, and other methods that allowed “THEM!” to be made.

If you enjoyed “The BFG” or think that “The Monster Calls” or “Pete’s Dragon” look interesting I would encourage finding this movie.  “The Iron Giant” is great fun and should be enjoyed by people who like fun things with a science fiction twist rather than the fantasy spin this year’s movies are offering.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

My Thoughts on the "Ghostbusters" Franchise

            Let me talk a bit about one of my favorite things ever: Ghostbusters.

            The original film holds a special place in my heart as the movie I have seen the most in my life.  My estimates are inexact (as most of the times I saw it were prior to my turning 5) but I think a guess of 100+ times would not be out of the question.  I could quote whole tracts of the movie’s dialogue before I even knew what they meant.  My father brings up wistfully the numerous times I would talk to strangers at the grocery store introducing myself as, “Hello, my name is Ray Stanz, I’m a Ghostbuster” which I pronounced “Gose-Busser”.

More than that, I am a big fan of the cartoons.  I own the gigantic premium box set of “The Real Ghostbusters” and I feel the biggest misstep of the marketing of “Ghostbusters (2016)” is that they have not released “Extreme Ghostbusters” on DVD (it is the most underrated cartoon of the 1990’s).  I watched “RGB” to the point of destroying the VHS tapes of it my grandparents had at their house.

I owned and played with dozens of the toys, to the point where they fell apart, with bits snapping off, pieces going missing, and paint flaking off.  More than “Masters of the Universe”, more than “Transformers”, more than “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” this was the toy line that dominated my childhood (till Lego showed up and took over completely).

I even liked the sister(?)… knock-off(?)… rival?  We’ll go with rival.  I even liked the rival show “Filmation’s Ghostbusters”.  Which had two guys and a gorilla fighting ghosts and monsters sent back in time from the undead hellscape of the future.  It was mostly garbage, but still entertaining, if for no other reason than the music had a lot of get up and go.

The Gorilla Invented all of their equipment.
This used to be a live action series.

If I had the resources I do now (the internet) I would have collected and read the comics which for some reason only ever saw success in the UK.  I have a collection of the first 25 (thank you IDW) and will maybe get others in the future (honestly, the stories are freaking bananas and include an Ecto-4 which is a god damn rocket ship, and the first adventure includes the ghost of an intelligent alien slug monster).

I thought the sequel was fine, bit too much of a rehash of the first movie (kind of a lazy script when you get down to it) but harmless.

The video game was also fine and served as a good unofficial “Ghostbusters 3”, the game play was fun, and the writing (while hampered because there are clearly roles meant for Louis Tully and Dana Barret) is ultimately comparable to “Ghostbusters 2”.

I plan to see the new one this weekend.

That all being said I feel that I disagree with something that a lot of people list as the reason they like the original movie.  A lot of people seem to think that “Ghostbusters” only works because of Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Bill Murray.  That their singular chemistry allowed it all to come together.

I disagree.

The idea of “Funny guys fighting monsters/ghosts” has been around a while.  It is a simple premise, and while the execution of that premise varies WILDLY in both how it is done, and how well it is done.  The idea of “comedians fighting ghosts/monsters/aliens” is too broad a concept to be fenced in to just those three actors plus the extended cast (this is not to cast shade at Ernie Hudson, who I feel is underrated both in the franchise and as an actor in general, but he is a supporting character in the story).  Dan Aykroyd did not invent the idea.

Though, back in Mickey's day of fighting "Lonesome Ghosts" they didn't have proton packs.
They had to make due with a shotgun and a deerstalker cap.

The biggest issue I have with Ghostbusters (and I say this keeping in mind all of the positive things I have said above) is that they did not grow the concept.  The 1980’s was filled to the brim with talented comedic actors and special effects that got better every year.  The first “Ghostbusters” was set in New York and used several well-known comedians (and considering Eddie Murphy and John Candy were both originally in it, they didn’t even get their original picks), WHY THEN WAS THE SECOND ONE DOING THE SAME THING?

"Ghostbusters: Mardi Gras", "Ghostbusters: Liberty Bell", "Ghostbusters: Bambino's Curse". Just take a city, and throw comedians at it.  Lily Tomlin, Phil Hartman, Jane Curtin, George Carlin, Chris Rock, and anybody else.  Seriously now, do you think that Bill Murray invented being snide?  There are 100 cities in America that could all have their own ghost stories.  Voodoo zombie hordes, the Jersey Devil, HALF THE STUFF THEY DO ON “SUPERNATURAL” could all have been done with John Lithgow and Jeff Goldblum wearing proton packs.

A Trillion nerds on the internet and this is the only image of an alternate 80's cast.
Really wish I had Adobe Suite on this computer I would have put more into this effort.

“The Real Ghostbusters” cartoon had 140 episodes.  And while they all had different problems (they seemed to face a Gozer level world ending threat every episode) clearly there are stories that exist with people fighting ghosts.

            The reason I saw fit to write this is because I have seen a lot of people online arguing things like, “It is a big part of my childhood, they shouldn’t remake it”.  And I feel that is just stupid.  While I would prefer a movie in which the Ghostbusters already existed, and did the stuff from the movies and video game and then just had Ray and Winston showing up to hand the keys of the New York offices off to new people… That would have been better.  But, that is over with.  You can’t fence off the best iteration of a good idea.  The execution was too good not to run with in various permutations.

Just like Batman has been rebooted 10,000 times, and James Bond has looked like a half dozen people, Ghostbusters is starting fresh and hopefully is good enough to do what I wanted the series to do all along: GO PLACES.

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Poem, "The Preserver"

The Preserver

In the lands of oak and pine

the black earth mountains climbed high

into the mists and fog and cloaking clouds.

The mountain valleys wove

like wind thru branches

to an ancient marble quarry

yielding the glorious white stone

from which chapels

glimmering in the light of day

reflecting off snow topped peaks

the glorious harmonies

of their divine choirs

carried high

to ears of angels.

The love of the Preserver

for the people

could be carried by echo

off cliff’ sides and down valleys

to the ears of those near

that the richness of the world

and the beauty of life

filled all those who heard

and urged them

to carry with them

a song in their hearts

and a kindness in their deeds.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.