Category Archives: video games

Well My Parents Don’t Drive Awesome Flying Cars

Posted on by

For the most part, video games have advanced in a positive direction in terms of artistic progression. Though I don’t agree entirely on how our newfangled advanced realistic graphics are being used or certain trends in storytelling or interaction, I can say that we’re doing okay. At the same time though, I’ve come to realize that when video games look this good and have fully elaborated stories and such, it often leaves less room for creative, off-the-wall adaptations in fiction.

At this point with games looking and feeling closer to the realm of film and animation and other storytelling mediums with characters having concrete personalities, there  are fewer opportunities to make great leaps in interpretation. Yes, I understand that products like the Super Mario Bros. movie are exactly the kinds of disaster that comes from being too “loose” an interpretations, but I believe there is a definite charm.

This applies not just to storytelling but also visuals as well. Although the Tekken OVA of the 90s was awful, could you imagine a Tekken anime today, given the fact that it would be 2-D interpretations of such detailed 3-D characters? Good looking or not, you could see the move from blocky polygons anime designs to make some sort of sense.

Basically, I’d like to still be in a world where a racing game with a normal setting could be interpreted as a futuristic setting with talking computers inside my motor vehicles.

Is that too much to ask, I wonder?

Praying Towards Castle Grayskull

Posted on by

When it comes to the international phenomenon that is Pokemon, producer Ishihara Tsunekazu had the following to say:

石原： 北米ではけっこうクラシカルに伝説系のポケモンの人気があるんですけど、リザードンのような見た目か ら強そうなタイプのポケモンが好まれています。それとミュウツーでしょうか。

Ishihara: In North America, classical-style Legendary Pokemon are popular, but Pokemon who look strong like Charizard are also preferred. Mewtwo as well.


Charizard and Mewtwo

While Ishihara then goes on to say that  universally speaking, Pokemon like Pikachu are popular everywhere, I want to to focus mainly on this unique bit of difference North America has.

While I can’t speak for Canada, Mexico, or Central America, I think it’s very well-known that America likes powerful characters. More broadly, America likes the hero who rises above all, the larger-than-life figure. He may have a humble background, but the end result is still strong. It speaks to our culture of individualism, and it is reflected in the popularity of action movies as well as in the existence of iconic heroic figures in cartoons and comics such as Superman, Captain America, He-Man and Flash Gordon. When the US encounters the creative output of another nation such as Japan, it very profoundly reflects this ideal.

This is also partly why I think many of the anime that have been popular in the US are or were popular. Compared to the less popular One Piece, Naruto and Bleach exude seriousness and power in their aesthetics, doubly so for something like Dragon Ball Z. The hyper violence of MD Geist and its contemporaries in the 80s and 90s felt new and fresh to some extent, but that level of violence is I think something comfortably American, animated cousins of action movies.

I think it’s very easy to take one’s own cultural upbringing for granted, to think that the ideals of your own culture are the ideals of everyone else’s. It’s not small-minded or biggoted so much as it is a fairly natural progression if there is nothing to jar you out of it. In an article from 1987, Frederik Schodt, author of Manga! Manga!, points out that American superhero comics do not do well in Japan. Back then, they were considered too plain and too wordy, and today I can tell you that superheroes are better known through their movies than anything else. When I was studying in Japan, I had a conversation with a Japanese classmate, where I tried to explain the Flash to him. I told him he was “red and very fast,” to which he responded, “Daredevil?”

That said, there are a number of manga artists influenced by Americann superhero comics, such as Nightow Yasuhiro (Trigun) and Takahashi Kazuki (Yu-Gi-Oh!). In anime, it goes at least as far back as Gatchaman. Still, you will find that just as we have taken anime and said, “This is what we like in our anime,” they have said, “This is what we like in superheroes” and transformed it into something more in-line with their culture.

Cultural exchange, as they call it.

One last thing to dwell on is the way Europe has approached anime and manga. Taniguchi Jiro, who is influenced by the French comic artist Moebius, is much more popular in Moebius’s home country than he is in the US. His style is very European, incorporating complex and detailed backgrounds and placing a great visual emphasis on environment (not to be confused with “the environment”). But as I said before, I’m no expert on European comics, so I’ll leave someone else to fill in that blank until I catch up.

Good Ol’ Rock Fighter, Nuthin’ Beats That!

Posted on by

I was thinking about my early experiences with the Super Robot Wars series when I remembered the first SRW game I bought, Super Robot Wars R for the Game Boy Advance. The animations at this point were still very much “paper cutouts sliding against a background,” but I was stoked whenever I could land a finishing move on a boss, especially one of the crossover attacks. However, I think what characterized my play experience for R more than anything else was the fact that I could not read Japanese too well at the time, and so for the first 70% of the game I did not realize that your units had the option to “defend” or to “dodge,” rather than just trading hits with the enemy.

I think it’s very possible that if that game were more difficult, I would have gotten fed up with it a lot more quickly, trying to wonder how I could overcome those seemingly insurmountable odds. Perhaps ignorance was bliss for just the right amount of time.

He’s So Dreamy

Posted on by

Hold Right to Move Forward

Posted on by

I’m a little late to the party, but I’d like to put down my own thoughts on whether or not video games could be consituted as “art.” My answer to that question is that video games already are art, and have been so for a very long time.

Before I start to elaborate though, I want to point out that disagreeing on one thing does not mean you have to disagree with someone about everything. I really like the way Roger Ebert writes, and just because I think he’s wrong in this respect doesn’t mean that it invalidates the rest of his opinions. He’s still very much someone I respect, and I think we on the internet could stand to remember that.

While I cannot tell you when exactly video games “became” art, I can trace back the history of video games and point out any number of instances where art has sprung forth in video games. When Space Invaders was released to arcades, it was one of the first video games to feature “characters,” creating an identifiable adversary to overcome. When Miyamoto Shigeru created Donkey Kong, he created an entire story told with simple animations over multiple “scenes.” Mario himself was a fusion of practicality and creativity, created from the desire to have a distinct hero whose lively animations would still be understandable given the limited technology.When  Pitfall debuted, it was not only a technical achievement, but also challenged players to revisit the game repeatedly, to identify with the characters in a way beyond the creator’s intent. When the Famicom was released in Japan, video game music legend Hip Tanaka took on the challenge of learning how to program in Assembly so that he could have finer control on the composition of his scores. When Kojima Hideo was told to make an action game on a system that couldn’t even handle having more than three moving objects on the screen, he created Metal Gear and laid the foundations for “stealth” in video games.

And that’s not even getting into the 16-bit era, or RPGs, or the modern advances we have today, with global communication between players working towards common goals, increasing levels of interactivity,

Art is created from the conflict between imagination and reality, when men are given a set of limitations and must find a way to work within their confines or to break from them, and that is the constant struggle of video game developers. Art is created when people are moved by what is front of them, and you will find a whole generation of people who can recall when video games brought them some of their greatest moments of joy and sorrow. Art is created when people are inspired, and I will tell you personally, video games have inspired me in innumerable ways.

Are video games art? Why, I can’t see why they wouldn’t be.

A Brief History of Pokemon Battling

Posted on by

Pokemon’s been a big part of my life, and I can’t count the number of hours I devoted to playing it and formulating teams to engage my friends both online and off in vicious combat. And pretty much just as I and everyone else bought Heart Gold and/or Soul Silver, a new series is coming out in the form of Pokemon Black and White.

As with every new Pokemon game, people will come out to complain that the game “is pretty much the same thing,” and while I can see where they’re coming from, I always engage this question first from the perspective of multiplayer battling. There, despite the fact that only a handful of changes and new moves get made from generation to generation, and the numbers themselves don’t change that much, those additions result in fundamental, sweeping changes to the metagame.

So, I’m going to briefly summarize each generation’s trends in terms of 1v1 (2v2 might be for another day).

The original generation, Red, Blue, and Yellow, was characterized by an almost frightening level of luck vs skill. Double damage-dealing critical hits were plentiful, speed ruled, and even the most well-thought-out plans could be laid to waste within a few turns. Here, out of 15 Pokemon types, Psychic was by far the most dominant, and everything worked towards either using Psychics or using Pokemon that could potentially defeat them. In a way it was the most frightening generation of games to play.

With Gold, Silver, and Crystal, the addition of the concept of “held items” which could do things like heal status ailments one-time or recover a bit of Hp every turn, a host of techniques that could repair or prevent damage, and two new typings with lots of immunities and resistances, the game became a lot more defensive. This was also the first and last time the games would actually modify the base stats of Pokemon compared to a previous game, which also contributed to the emphasis on defense. Games lasted many, many turns longer than the typical RBY match, and the path towards victory was gradually chipping away at the opponent’s team in just the right way.

Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Fire Red, and Leaf Green is noted for both its extreme offense and its extreme defense, with the attacker slightly favored. The reason this was the case was because the way leveling up and gaining experience worked now, a Pokemon could not be completely offense-oriented without sacrificing defense or vice versa, and so overall Pokemon were either a lot more frail or a lot less powerful. The game also introduced the concept of “abilities,” constant effects which would apply to the Pokemon regardless of their actions, things such as the ability to levitate and avoid ground-based moves and creating weather effects upon entry, which would add subtle, yet profound changes to how Pokemon worked with the other members of their team. All in all, complex plans leading to overwhelming victory were common here.

Now we’re at the current generation, Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Heart Gold, Soul Silver. I haven’t played this one nearly as much as the others, so my observations are not as keen, but I’d say the biggest change here was the complete revamping of the concept of “Physical” and “Special” attacks. Where once these designations were inherent to the Pokemon type of the attack, resulting in the existence of  “physical” Fire moves and “special” Fighting moves, for example. So because the defensive side of Pokemon did not receive a similar reworking, it became a lot more difficult to actually use defensive Pokemon, predicting when and where to send them in and when to withdraw them. That said, however, stalling and playing defense can still work, and work well. This is probably the most “balanced” generation in terms of strategies.

And all through this, I had a ton of fun exploiting holes and weaknesses, both technical ones and psychological ones, and trying out every Pokemon I could. I was never anywhere close to the best player, and probably have no chance, as my desire to learn and experiment tend to override my desire to win.

So there you have the path of evolution for Pokemon Battling. Who knows where it’ll go next?

The Elite Fourdinators: Pokemon Contest and What Could Have Been

Posted on by

Ever since the first games, the Pokemon franchise has tried to include side quests and activities, things that change the game from the classic “beat 8 gym leaders and fight the Elite Four.” There’s the “end of game” content that only happens once you become champion. There have been ideas like the Safari Zone and the Bug-Catching Contest, which were alternative methods of catching Pokemon, as well as alternate venues for battling such as the Battle Tower and Battle Frontier, both of which function as a sort of arena for “advanced” players. But it was in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald that they introduced a concept which came the closest to being a true alternative from the gym badge system: Pokemon Contests.

In Pokemon Contests, elemental types don’t really matter. Nor do things like attack power and hit points. Unlike the Safari Zone, the Battle Frontier, and all of those other extra features, the Pokemon Contest system is the only competitive activity which was so different from the rest of the game that almost none of the traditional rules applied to the way contests worked.

The goal of a Pokemon Contest is to win the votes of a panel of judges in a specific category, such as “Beauty” or “Intelligence,” and in order to do so you must have your Pokemon be more appealing than the others. To this end, every attack has its own unique features and functions entirely separate from battling and trying to KO your opponent. For instance, the attack “Flamethrower,” which is a Fire-type attack in battles, is a move which shows off “Beauty” in a Pokemon Contest. Contest Pokemon have to be fed strict diets and be groomed properly to win the visual portion of the competitions. They eventually even included dancing.

It might sound pretty boring compared to the intensity of taking on your rival in a flurry of lightning and sandstorms, and this might even be the reason that Pokemon Contests are non-existent in Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver, but the big thing that Contests had that previous side games in Pokemon didn’t was 1) rewards and 2) increasing levels of difficulty. Instead of getting Gym Badges, you get Contest Ribbons, and as you go from city to city, the Contests get more challenging. In a way, it could be seen as an alternate path to the Gym system, something that wasn’t so much a game within a game as it was another activity entirely. It might even be perceived as something on par with battling. In fact, the anime tried to push this idea, by having characters like Haruka (May) and Hikari (Dawn) decide to forego the path of collecting Gym Badges and have them focus on obtaining Ribbons. The only problem is that in the anime, Contests resemble battling with a somewhat different flair, and the games themselves don’t give any rewards other than the Ribbons, essentially meaning that it’s still considered “inferior” to hitting the Gyms.

I think that Pokemon Contests could have become a really viable alternative to Gym Battles, and that it should be an option at the start of games to go on the path of a “Pokemon Coordinator,” the term the series uses to denote people who have devoted themselves to Pokemon Contests. There should be personalities you get to know and the opportunity to practice against opponents. Perhaps winning should net you TMs that are rare and powerful within the context of Contests. There should be an equivalent of the Elite Four to take down, and when you win over them, there should be an ending. Most importantly, you should be able to play against your friends.

I understand that it might be virtually impossible to try and balance two completely disparate systems running off the same basics in the same game. I also think the concept of the Pokemon Contest could stand to have some tweaking, such as making Type matter more, or perhaps even taking a cue from the anime and having it come down to battles where you’re judged on not only your ability to take down your opponent but to look good doing so. But I really believe that, done properly, Pokemon Contests could truly add another layer to the world of Pokemon by giving kids a different kind of opportunity to go off on an adventure.

Here’s hoping to their return in Generation V.

Pokemon types don’t really matter. Nor do things like attack power and hit points.

Crayola Couldn’t Come Up With These: Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver Tomorrow

Posted on by

So I don’t know about you, but I am pretty psyched about tomorrow’s release of Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver. A remake of the second generation of Pokemon games, playing through my copies of Gold and Silver in high school was a memorable experience which I’m eager to revisit all these years later.

You might be asking, “Why would you play a game that’s just a retread of a game you’ve played previously?” And the answer to that is: Pokemon.

I’m serious, there’s something about the games which has people coming back to it over and over, whether it’s the cute/awesome critters, the nice character designs, the fun of battling, or even peer pressure, there’s a ton of reasons Pokemon has endured, though probably the most prominent one is that it is easy for anyone to pick up and play, and yet also deep enough that those of us who want to get into it with a more competitive mindset can do so.

I do wonder what my team will be like this time around. I’ve always had a fondness for Furret, and it is Gold and Silver, so there’s a good chance I’ll be taking one on and then bringing it into battle against my peers.

I don’t know what big changes HGSS brings to the table in terms of changing the metagame of multiplayer Pokemon, and in fact I’m not even sure I’ll be jumping back into that world. Still, I get the feeling that I’ll start to gravitate towards it anyway. It’s practically in my bones which hit twice and are good for attacking through Substitutes.

Impatience and Experience and Competitive Gaming Sequels

Posted on by

I am, perhaps by nature, not the most competitive person around. I like to win for sure, and I like to improve my chances of winning when in competition, but I have never had that win-at-all-costs attitude which defines the most successful players in any game or activity. Still, I have spent time in and observing many communities, particularly in the area of video games, and I’ve come to notice a number of trends which all seem to stem from the same fountain of human behavior and irrationality.

When it comes to “professional gaming,” there is no example more prominent than the Korean Starcraft scene. It is by far the most refined and successful example of video game as competition. Finally however, Starcraft 2 is right on the horizon, with a beta version out. I have not had the fortune of playing this game, and in fact I have not played the original Starcraft in well over six years. But as much as I am inexperienced in the scene itself, I am still fascinated by its growth. To that end, I have been listening to podcasts about the SC2 beta, particularly the “Team Liquid Beta Podcast,” recorded by Sean “Day[9]” Plott and his friend Tristan. Sean Plott is a very famous American player who is known not only for his skills behind a keyboard, but his incredibly analytical mind. In episode 3 of the podcast, he addresses an idea which has been floating around, the idea that Starcraft 2 is less suited for competition than its predecessor, and makes too many concessions to neophytes. And it very well might, but as Sean points out, it’s rather curious that people would be so quick to jump to conclusions on a game which isn’t even officially out yet, a prototype which can very well experience drastic changes. Herein lies the logical irrationality I spoke of.

Through the hours of effort put into it by players in Korea as well as in every other country which houses competitive spirit for Starcraft, many discoveries have been made over a decade that have pushed the game to points that would seem unbelievable to fans of the past. It took time and effort and I think everybody who likes this game is likely grateful for a number of these progressions, if not all of them. But the mistake that the players of the beta make here, and it’s a mistake I can point out despite never having played the game, is sheer impatience. The error of reasoning in this situation is the idea that just because the community is so experienced with its predecessor and the process of discovering concepts and techniques to foster and push competition, that the same progress not only could happen in the sequel at an accelerated rate, but that it should happen.

This is not the only time I have seen this impatience in action. For years I was and still am a big fan of the Super Smash Bros. series, and have played every incarnation of the game. I pride myself on being fairly good at Smash, albeit not at the highest levels of competition, but I have a keen understanding of the whole deal.

While the original Nintendo 64 Super Smash Bros. did well enough, it was with its Gamecube sequel, Super Smash Bros. Melee, that a competitive community truly began to form. Like Starcraft, the players, full of desire to win, created and discovered new techniques which pushed the game to unforeseeable levels. And just like Starcraft, when a sequel in the form of Super Smash Bros. Brawl appeared, people were quick to compare it to its predecessor (as one could only expect), and just as quickly pass judgment on it, decrying it as lacking the “advanced techniques” and overall suitability for a competitive game, and making big and bold declarations after the game had only been out mere weeks. Again, the same flawed reasoning appeared. “With all of our experience in Melee, advanced techniques should be getting discovered at a fraction of the time it took originally! We have more people and we don’t have that period where people were just messing around!” In addition, players were quick to establish a set of “tournament rules” at blinding speed, stifling the idea of discovery for discovery’s sake with the desire to simply win at “legitimate” competitive venues.

Why is there such impatience when it comes to competitive sequels? I understand well the idea that a follow-up to a popular competitive game will be compared to the original. It’s all but inevitable. And I also understand that people want to make sure their skills translate from one game to the next. But still, I can’t help but feel that this impatience can only hurt a competitive scene. Discovery happens not only when you cut away the fat, but also when you expand and explore, and such things take time, even if you have years and years of experience.

There is actually a game in which I have devoted myself to competition before, and that is Pokemon. I have played Pokemon more than perhaps any other game series, participating in tournaments and discussions and spending days and nights thinking of possible teams and avenues of victory. And though my main focus is on exploration and discovery and trying to find holes in the “metagame,” I have seen the state of competition as it applies to the Pokemon series, from the early days of Red and Blue all the way up to the recent generation starting with Diamond and Pearl, and two things are always clearly inevitable as the scene transitions from one version of the game to the next. First, we bring with us all of our old ideas about what makes a team strong, and what we predict will be the vanguards of victory and competition. Second, those theories are smashed and obliterated as we realize that, as similar as the games are to each other, subtle differences can have wide-reaching effects in the most unpredictable of ways. And it’s going to happen again and again and again.

There is no specific point at which you can officially decide if a game is worthwhile for competition or not, and it is very possible that initial reactions will be validated. Still, impatience brought on by the “pride of experience” is an incredibly dangerous thing to any competitive scene, and the sooner people realize this, the better.

Easy Doesn’t Mean Boring

Posted on by

After having beaten and reviewed Megaman 10 on its Normal difficulty, today I revisited the game on Easy Mode, playing alongside someone who doesn’t have quite as much experience with the series and so doesn’t quite have the same tolerance for abuse built in. What I discovered was that even for someone who had already finished the game on a more difficult setting, Megaman 10 is still a very fun game and having my mind somewhat at ease (though not entirely of course!) let me more fully appreciate the finer aspects of the gameplay, particularly the controls. It just really reminded me how Megaman is known for good controls despite the titular character’s sub-par leaping abilities.

I think it’s very easy to make the mistake of thinking that the fun of Megaman games is in its challenge when the NES-hard style only plays a partial role in the overall experience. It might be the one you remember the most, but it’s the rest of the game which keeps you coming back.

The fact that easy mode is fun to play with multiple people has gotten me to thinking about other games which have tried to encourage people of varying skill levels to play together without fear of reprisal, be it from those same friends or from the computer. A recent popular example is New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which allows for 4-player simultaneous action and a unique system which allows players to “skip” sections while other players handle a particularly troublesome area should they choose to do so. It’s not perfect, but it keeps things moving along, and you can tell that they put a lot of consideration into this mechanic. A more classic example is introducing luck into a game. With just the right amount, it can make things exciting, and cries of “unfair!” can sometimes just entice those same complainers to play even more. I should know, mahjong can have that effect.

One really good example of a game that fosters play between beginners and experts is the Smash Bros. series. With its 4-player simultaneous action, you can get a lot of people in on it at once. More importantly though, its “Time” setting, which has everyone fight until a preset time limit, allows everyone, win or lose, to play the same amount per match. Contrast this with “Stock,” where once you lose all of your lives you are unable to play anymore. For a new player, this can be very boring as you watch the better players continue to have fun while you just sit there unable to participate in any manner except verbally (or blocking the TV and knocking away controllers if you want your ass kicked).

What’s kind of funny though is that a good deal of people, particularly overly competitive individuals, seem to have trouble understanding this idea of having games and game modes which allow everyone to derive enjoyment in roughly equal portions, as if they don’t comprehend enjoying the game as anything but a bloody battle to the top. While there are games which take the balancing factor too far (recent Mario Kart games are kind of notorious for this), I think overall games can benefit from just having things everyone can enjoy, even if it’s having both COMPETITIVE PRO KOREA MAPS and BIG GAME HUNTERS for Starcraft.

Speaking of competitive gamers and such, it seems like almost every community makes the same mistakes, but I’ll leave that topic for another time.