Saturday 23 August 2014

[A-Z Games] Z: Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner

Videogames can sometimes, often if you play good ones, be the greatest mix of visuals and sound, putting films to shame. I was strongly reminded of Zone of the Enders (often referred to as ZOE) when watching the big budget, well-received Pacific Rim. I heard a lot of positive comment about the design, the feel and the action. It is but a pale shadow of the soaringly designed aesthetic of Zone of the Enders (and especially the second one).

High Speed Robot Action. 
How is that for a subtitle? Zone of Enders was released, famously, with a pack in demo of Metal Gear Solid 2 - the most highly anticipated game of the age and an amazing technical demo doing the rounds at the conferences had made everyone very excited. As a result, I would guess that most buyers of ZOE actually put the demo disc for MGS2[1] into their PS2s first. The nature of the game was of controlling huge, high speed fighting robots. Japan has a tradition of robots called mechs or mecha which has not exported very successfully although there is, of course, a healthy niche interest[2]. The Metal Gear and Kojima connection made the title a relative success on the PlayStation 2 but it was considered a relatively poor game due to its short length, simplicity and irritating main character (was this always a signpost to Raiden[3]?). Although controlling the robot as Leo was quite fun, the cutscenes showed him as a pacifist child that did not want to do it and was always saying things were unfair - as you may expect a whiny kid to do.

The Zone Of Enders sequel – called either “Anubis” or  “The 2nd Runner” depending on location became one of the most memorable games I have ever played. The underwhelming[4] first game meant that the sequel almost passed me by and I only picked it up a year or so after release in its Special Edition guise and was thoroughly impressed at the presentation and opening scenes. What surprised me was that I continued to be impressed with the scenes as they progressed – it starts strongly and goes on from there with some of the very best set-pieces in action games.
But the first thing is presentation – the shallowest of points yet something that often defines a game. The introduction for Zone of Enders 2 (link here) is the thing of legend with an exciting and entirely coherent slice of high-speed robot action. All of those words. I think Kojima could have been a pretty good film director. They were not wrong with the description and so the screen filled with the kind of robots that I could not even have imagined; particle and light effects that made sense of all the flashes and bangs and all interspersed with cel-animation on top of a rousing soundtrack (Beyond the Bounds). 
And then you realise that it is not video, in the main, it is using the in-game engine and that you will be doing most of that stuff as you play.

The game itself starts fairly slowly as you are in a mining robot (similar to the Aliens robot suit) after which you find the orbital frame that allows you to indulge in some high speed robot action - which starts quite soon after the discovery.
One of the joys of the orbital frames is the weight and feel of them - they are light and agile allowing quick strikes and a very attack-minded style - the boost button can be tapped for repeated dodges and direction changes. You have a number of standard weapons which allow shooting from afar and a huge laser sword as you get close enough. A number of sub-weapons are introduced throughout the game such as homing missiles, shields and a rather neat grab ability. The undoubted highlight, however, is the infamous vector cannon - a gun powerful enough to take battleships down. Cannons of that power need quite a lot of charge time and so this was a weapon that needed about 25 seconds to charge up - a time that is inconsistent with high speed robot action. But when you used it, what a thrill! The charge up was excellently designed to build tension and animated in that way so you knew it was a big thing. My personal highlight of the game is a particular mission where you must use the vector cannon to shoot down multiple battleships - but of course you must first clear the defences so that you can mount the battleships and then bring them down. It is superbly done in a wonderful high altitude environment and the rhythm of huge battles with swarms of foes punctuated with restful waiting for the cannon to charge was fantastic.
As you progress through, the abilities are regularly upgraded giving some new toys to play with and enjoy but that is of little use if the playground is not fun. Here, there are huge strides from the first game with varied environments in space, in urban areas and in natural canyons. The light design is dramatic throughout with battles taking place at sunset and in low light conditions where appropriate[5]. Most importantly, however, the enemy attack patterns and styles are massively improved such that they are challenging and you need to use multiple attack patterns yourself.
Towards the end, your abilities are improved so that the bulk of enemies can be swatted away like flies - but that is still insufficient for the final task - Anubis[6]. That requires one more ability - a game changing mechanic to match you with Anubis - Zero Shift. This will allow you to warp short distances and so adds yet more speed to your arsenal and makes you able to dodge most attacks and close in on most enemies. But some other frames also have Zero Shift - and so the final battle begins.
I really loved Zone of Enders: The 2nd Runner and it has stayed with me for a long time. The story may be hackneyed, the plot may be obvious but it is by far and away one of the coolest games I have ever played. Some of the mission design is supreme with the Bahram battleships being my highlight. Others prefer the high-speed train chase through a tunnel or the huge battle over the plains that turns the war - where you provide mere "support". On top of the great environment design and mission based play - the bosses are also consistently interesting from the return of Leo piloting Vic Viper to the fear-inducing Anubis itself which blackens the whole world. The speed of it all is so direct that you have a wonderful feeling of control - and any failure feels like it is of your own doing. Similarly, victories are also of your own skill. And, ultimately, that is what videogames are about for me. That and the high-speed robot action.

I played Zone of Enders and Zone of Enders 2 originally on the Playstation 2 although both have been remastered on PS3 (which I have also played - as a double pack) which is available here: [PSN store link]. The first game is still quite playable and, as it is quite short, you could now see it as a worthy prologue to the fantastic sequel.


3 other Z titles that might be interesting: 
Zaxxon - Isometric shooter from Sega that was groundbreaking with its three-dimensional play.
Zoo Tycoon - The tycoon series of games were more localised “god games” - and zoos are always fun. 
Zool - The Amiga was always trying to compete, this was to be similar to Sonic. It wasn't.



1. Metal Gear Solid 2 ended up being an ambitious, sprawling game that was also pretty divisive and the industry kind of moved on such that the sequel sold about half the copies to a larger installed userbase.
2. Notable examples are the Gundam and Evangelion series in anime which have huge cultural sway. For videogames, the best known is probably the virtual-on series, which is largely considered to be an arcade style one on one beat em up, made by Sega from the mid 90s during the arcade 3D boom. The controls for this game is "twin stick" but unlike modern console controllers, both sticks are like aeroplane joysticks and this unique control system is thought to be one of the reasons that it did not travel so well. Home versions on the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast required special hardware. But even this hardware was nothing compared to the necessary joystick for Tekki/Steel Batallion.
3. Spoiler for MGS2: the main character for much of the game in Metal Gear Solid 2 is not Snake but a weak, green and whiny new recruit called Raiden. He was absolutely hated by the gaming public but made a triumphant return in the fourth game and was resuscitated enough to have the side game "Rising" made all about him by the ever brilliant Platinum Games.
4. You can be underwhelmed and overwhelmed but I do think that it is a real shame there is no “whelmed” as it would be an appropriate word so often.
5. One of the great disappointments of the film Pacific Rim, was that the environments were never dramatic enough - the final scenes really looked set up for a warm, orange battle but ended up in darkness.
6. A lot of videogames bring in ancient folklore from many different sources and this is no exception. Games do not have the best of reputations in terms of their intellectual capacity but I have been introduced to many interesting facets of history by games such as this.

Thursday 21 August 2014

[A-Z Games] Y: Yoshi's Island

5 (Five).
Between 1985 and 1995, Nintendo released five proper, console, Mario games - and Yoshi's Island was the first to not be numbered such. It seems faintly ludicrous that the king of gaming was so infrequently used at that time and that is probably why we all have such fond memories of the games. Super Mario Bros did not really have a proper sequel[1] until, bizarrely, 3 on the NES. Super Mario Bros 3 was, like Super Mario Bros, a genre defining piece and even 25 years later, a lot of the ideas within it are retained in modern games. After this, the numbering method went a little awry - Super Mario 4 is actually the launch title for the Super Famicom, Super Mario World[2] and is called it on the front cover although this seems to have been forgotten by most. Yoshi's Island is subtitled Super Mario World 2 and so, it seems, the practice of giving Mario games on different hardware different names was coined.
Yoshi's Island sees you inhabit a world of Yoshis which is a wonderful, pastel coloured world made up of hand drawn loveliness. This was the first time I really remember a game, a blockbuster game, feeling like a conscious style decision had been made. I know this is not actually true, but the move to realism was definitely afoot - although it was really a move to 3D CG. Just before Yoshi returned, Donkey Kong had also returned in Donkey Kong Country. Rare (who would later create Goldeneye) created a 2D game that looked and felt like it was 3D by using sprites created by 3D computer graphic modelling rather than hand crafted per sprite. It was a popular look and the game itself was a huge success[3] and so there was internal pressure to mimic the look in a true Super Mario game.
That pressure was not enough to actually bear fruit in 1995 and instead, Nintendo stuffed some special Super FX chips[4] into a cartridge to be able to squeeze some more modernity out of the Super Nintendo. The previous, "big" title with a Super FX chip was Starfox which enabled polygons to make a 3D world on a 16-bit console but this was a game that used a 2D engine with effects.
The game itself drew upon the Mario heritage to create a complete platforming package where Yoshi is transporting a baby Mario through the levels but there was a slight variation to the Mario blueprint as there was also a shooting element. Yoshi could eat enemies and then lay an egg which you could then throw at objects. This was used to open switches, collect objects and, of course, attack. It changed the style a little and felt a little impure, to me. At the same time, the collectibles were nice and clear and so there was good reason to revisit levels - something that was more important in an age of saved games meaning that you did not have to replay earlier levels (though warps existed to jump through worlds in even Super Mario Bros).
The mid-90s were a real point of inflexion for the industry though, and this joy of a game - made with love and huge backing sold merely well. Four million sales is not bad at all, but this was after the 9 million selling Donkey Kong Country and the release of the Sony Playstation (with the jaw-dropping Ridge Racer. Change was coming (or had come) - and cartoon graphics were not the future. There were plenty of factors behind those changes, but they would lead to a very different marketplace and, eventually a very different Nintendo[5] - and also a very different Mario lineage. The next true Mario was Super Mario 64 launching on the Nintendo 64 and showcasing almost everything that made Nintendo masters of that craft - and crucially it was in 3D both in visual and gameplay terms. Nintendo would still make 2D Mario games - it is just that they would be much, much closer in style to Donkey Kong Country with a pseudo 3D CG look that was fairly consistent with the real 3D Mario games - even down to the faintly annoying "It'sa me!" voices. The "New Super Mario Bros." series of games, debuting on the Nintendo DS, have been very successful with the 3D look but I do feel that they look a little charmless. The gameplay remains as compelling and charming as ever, and it is gameplay that counts, right?
Yoshi's Island, in the end, pointed to a future that never quite was, but in the post 3D world, it has a look that is still charming and often alluded to in the way that so many games now look - especially in the indie scene.

3 other Y titles that might be interesting:
Ys - A cult series of JRPGs starting in 1987. 
Yoshi's Safari - A shooting game but with cute, cartoon characters. Nintendo all over. 
Yakuza - Sega's love letter to Tokyo and both Shenmue and Virtua Fighter. The split between Japan and the rest in gaming is perfectly embodied here.

1. Super Mario Bros 2 as we knew it in Europe/US had a very different feel to the original game with a number of different characters as it was actually a re-skinned version of another game (with slight adjustments, read about it http://www.themushroomkingdom.net/smb2_ddp.shtml) - Doki Doki Panic. Super Mario Bros 2 in Japan was, effectively, a number of different levels using the same basic look and feel of Super Mario Bros - a sort of DLC actually.
2. Super Mario World is probably my favourite Mario game - though there are no real Mario games that are bad - they are all sprinkled with magic dust as far as I can tell.. The A to Z is, however, a harsh method. Many people consider the Super Nintendo/Super Famicom to have been the greatest hardware of gaming (I do not agree with this actually, my favourite console is probably the PlayStation 2 - it was just at the point where art design meant more than polygons. Just.) but almost all of the great games of that time were prefixed with "Super" and so with one fell swoop, an almost entire library was discarded.
3. I checked this, and it was the second best-selling SNES game - which seems quite different to my memory of the time. It sold over 8 million copies, making it more popular than even Super Mario Kart and beaten only by Super Mario World - and that was a pack-in title for many years.
4. Super FX chips were implemented in certain games in order to expand the capability of the Super Nintendo on a per game basis. The SNES and MD had a few games where the game cartridge itself also had features such as a built in multitap on the J-Cart or, for Virtua Racing on the MD, a "Virtua" chipset similar to the Super FX.
5. These changes are not really in scope for this but the N64 era made Nintendo a little more cautious in some ways and even more daring in others. They are still going, and from a developer point of view, they definitely still understand game mechanics better than most.

Tuesday 19 August 2014

[A-Z Games] X: Xenon 2: Megablast

I have not played this for more than twenty years and a little reading around suggests that it has not aged well at all - but that does not stop it being memorable.
In all honesty, I cannot remember much of playing Xenon 2, it was a top-down scrolling vertical shooter.[1] on the Commodore Amiga. The main draw, it seemed, were the graphics and the sound - the game looked great and had a Bomb The Bass song as the soundtrack!
Games of this era were, in hindsight, tiny and coded efficiently to the point where you did not have much memory to play with. I would guess that in many cases, remakes on mobile phones of certain games will have icons that take up more space than the original game did. When I was younger, Street Fighter 2 on the SNES was famously on a massive cartridge and that took up a huge 16Mbits - which is 2MBytes. These games were smaller still so the music and graphics used many repeating elements. As a result, music was meant to be relatively simple and would effectively be coded and played (rather like having sheet music) rather than recorded. This was "chiptune" and meant that hardware had its own sound signature. Even now, there is a quite sizable following for different chipsets of that era and debates over which was better. The Amiga version had, to all intents and purposes, a version of a song that was what you would actually hear on the radio due to the quality of the sound chip (called Paula) and this was a ground-breaking moment. Soundtracks and scores (in both senses or the word) are really important for games as they set the tone of a piece and can add a lot more to games - especially in eras where the graphics were not as immersive. Dance music can sit very well with games (especially in the electronica themed worlds of Wipeout) but it is likely that the sounds of videogames inform the world of dance music quite heavily. I think some still think of "game music" having a distinctive sound but modern equipment, since the 32-bit era, have allowed sound quality indistinguishable from CDs. Music publishers also see the amazing marketing potential of putting music in games and the soundtrack of the latest FIFA games will be heard, constantly, by millions of people all the time.[2].
It was not just the sound that seemed very advanced, the graphics were also very nice with huge levels of destruction shown on screen and a metallic aesthetic that seemed pretty futuristic and classy (and quite different from the Japanese and US videogame aesthetic). With a shop system used to buy weapon upgrades, you could eventually get to the point where the width was basically just your weaponry. The screen filled with enemies and destruction as you powered up, more and more, but, in hindsight, it was not quite the bullet hell which would later take the scene by storm. These kinds of screen filling battles continue to be the draw of shoot em ups today and the classics of the genre fill the screen with bullets and explosions that the player must navigate through.
Xenon 2, as the name suggests, was a sequel and the original Xenon was something I later got on the ZX Spectrum. It was interesting as your "ship" could convert between a ground tank and an air based 'ship. As I got it after Xenon 2 was released, I compared it with games that seemed similar and so it reminded me a lot of Silkworm and its pseudo sequel SWIV. In these games, two players would control two different vehicles - a tank and helicopter - to progress with the pair needing to work together. Silkworm was a great idea and I played it a fair bit with my cousins - co-op games were always fun. I am surprised at how the idea of two different craft has not really come back, not on a single screen anyway. I guess squad based shooters have taken the idea on a little. Convertible ships have kind of fallen out of fashion now too so the game does seem a bit dated. Although maybe that can now be rebranded as retro-appeal.

3 other X titles that might be interesting:
Xenogears - Exemplar of the JRPG in its maddening, and maddeningly brilliant, form. 
X-Wing - I think of this as the start of the Star Wars rebirth from the mid-90s. 
Xevious - Lush green backdrops instead of space made this shooter stand out in 1983.

1. The shoot em up genre, as I consider it, is basically not inclusive of first-person games or the similar "third-person shooters" like Gears of War. At the time, you had vertical or horizontal shooters which were either single screen or scrolling. Xevious, I think, had introduced the third dimension by having air and ground targets and enemies, but many games eschewed it for simplicity. Some games do also scroll in all directions now but the classics usually choose a direction and stick with it.
2. I actually have, as I am now a little older and live in a bubble, no idea about what music is popular in the wider world but when I was more into both games and music, I heard of a few bands and acts on the more "niche" side through games - Adam Freeland in Rez, or Mondo Grosso in Lumines for example. In earlier games, licensed music was pretty rare but it now seems more and more common and I was recommended "Temper Trap" without realising I had heard them on Pro Evo. A colleague of mine told me about an Imagine Dragons song at her own wedding which I thought was also in a videogame. She said it didn't sound like it was from a videogame. It was. Not something she wanted to hear about such a special song for her for reasons that I will leave to your imagination.

Monday 18 August 2014

[A-Z Games] W: Wanda to Kyozou

Wanda to Kyozou
Interestingly, I have already written about this game as I replayed it fairly recently on the PS3 HD remaster. I think that is the best version.
That post is here(click the picture):
To précis:
The "games as art"[1] movement is fairly weak if using the kinds of blockbuster games at the top of sales charts, whether that be at the accessible end with Mario and Pokemon, or at the age restricted end such as Call Of Duty. One of the games regularly mentioned as evidence is Wanda to Kyozou (or Shadow of the Colossus[2] as it is known in the west). It is memorable because of its beauty and evocative atmosphere. And, that you never forget your first kill - along with the guilt that goes with it.

3 other W titles that might be interesting:
Wipeout 3: Special Edition - Fast, stylish and coherent - not sure zero-G got better than this. 
Wonderboy - It always felt like a pre-Sonic rival to Mario. Platform games on Sega. 
Wii Sports - Waggle-o-mania, but wirelessly.


1. What art represents is hugely open to interpretation anyway. If art is meant to make you feel, or be moved, then what hasn't done that? And the idea that games cannot be art because of certain games is as nonsensical as saying paintings cannot be art as some rubbish drawings have been produced. Isn't it? And, anyway, my favourite art exhibition  - Digital Revolution at the Barbican drew so heavily from games that it would be nonsense to take them out. As we all know though, conservatism can be a strange thing - blind to reason and thought sometimes, just protecting themselves.
2. W is the correct letter for this and is not a cheeky way of getting away from S as the Bare Knuckle entry may have been. I was in Japan when this was released and I always knew it by this name which means Wanda and the Colossus (although Japanese, linguistically,  has no "the" and is ambiguous as to whether there is one or many).

Sunday 17 August 2014

[A-Z Games] V: Valkyria Chronicles

Sometimes a striking aesthetic is enough, sometimes it is just distracting. 
Valkyria Chronicles first caught my eye in the preview stage purely through the visuals. A generation after Jet Set Radio scattered hip-hop graffiti themed cel-shading into the world of gaming, Sega created the CANVAS engine which made the world look like it had been drawn with colouring pencils. In between those two games, the most lush vision of the world had already been created, by Clover, with the beautiful, inky imagery of Okami. That was based on Japanese ink illustrations but, at the time in 2006[1], there was a more and more obvious hard edge to gaming visuals with greys, browns and earthy colours which had become more and more prevalent by 2008 as Japanese developers fell from the ascendancy to be replaced by gaming's version of “mature”. Valkyria Chronicles managed to bridge this with a more serious feel to the look and it was stunning - just the type of aesthetic that appeals. It didn't hurt that it also reminded me of one of my favourite TV programmes ever, FullMetal Alchemist. I watched the trailer many, many times.
Now the better games bring a coherent world into play and the visuals of Valkyria Chronicles, striking as they were, matched perfectly with the world which was based on a slightly old fashioned “steampunk” vision of the past. The lightness of the pencil strokes and the colouring gave it a perfect, aged look that allowed the story to take hold. In a scenario based pretty heavily on WW2, you were playing as Welkin, a slightly soft looking army cadet, returning to a home town about to be attacked. Would he, with his merry band of soldiers, be able to turn the tide of the Gallian War? 
If you were good enough, yes, yes he would. But what did you have to be good at, the initial draw of he graphical style gives no idea of the game itself. Valkyria Chronicles sees you take charge of a team of soldiers in a turn based strategy game. 
Turn based games can be a bit of an acquired taste as they seem counter to much of the excitement of what gaming can give and the immediacy of the medium. Action, or “real time” games are a lot more common where your input timing is also of great importance - the timing of when you jump on a goomba affects what will happen. Turn based games, such as chess, wait for you to make your move before continuing but they are usually board games. The most familiar turn based games are RPGs which are effectively computerised versions of card or board based role playing games. It can be quite tricky to sell the idea of turn based videogames and even RPGs are now rarely purely turn based with timing elements introduced to battle engines decades previously. 
In Valkyria Chronicles, the action element happens when you start a turn and the camera swoops from a hand drawn battlefield map into the action behind the person you have chosen to act. As you now move, the enemy is “live” and can see and shoot you, rooted to their positions so you can avoid their sight by approaching from appropriate angles. Once you stop moving and choose to act, the game effectively pushes you into a first person view and lets you attack (which will be met with a counter attack if possible). It is an interesting mixture which lets you think about what to do but also expects a little twitch skill. Each level, or mission, starts with the placement of your troops and ends depending on the objective - usually capture of an enemy base.
One thing that marks out Valkyria Chronicles as different from other games within the genre is character. My personal view on the Japanese school of game design and the Western one is that characters are generally more important in Eastern games. This has changed over time but I feel that Western games usually have you as the star (and this may be because the character is not so clearly defined and is a bit of an everyman) but Japanese games often see you controlling a distinctive person, with often less customisation. In Valkyria, each member of your squad was unique. They all had their own backgrounds and motivations and that affected their talents, abilities and affinities. And, again being that type of Japanese game, some of them had magical abilities (sort of). 
As the game progresses, more is learnt about the characters in your squad and added to your book. 
Welkin, as the slightly soppy and earnest main character, has an affinity with nature and those that are discriminated against[2]. As a result, he gains stat boosts in combat when he is near his friends and also when near “nature” such as forest. As the characters progress and gain experience, you can choose how they develop and what weaponry they get training for. Two, apparently, similarly skilled troopers may act very differently depending on the rest of the team or environment they are placed in. This extra layer of complexity make a balanced squad much more useful and effectively makes you use and learn about your squad and their development. It might be more useful for friends to work in groups together and developing lone wolves into sniper wolves. And trying to avoid the problems of racism... The story develops to deal with the racism and the motivations people have for war and the motivations of being a soldier - although the majority of the enemy are not developed as characters. 
The other thing is, common to Cannon Fodder, death means death rather than videogame death. They are not coming back. 
The basics of the game are classic wargame strategies with reading the terrain and the enemy being of paramount importance but the world created is fantastic and allows a few slight variations. Magic is the deus ex machina to end them all, and one that gives a further layer of strategy on top of the game. 
The characters were seen as strong enough to base a fairly successful TV series off which retells the story of the game (but without the CANVAS engine - meaning the animation actually did not look as good as the game, in my opinion). There were also two sequels which had similar themes although the third was released in Japan only. Times have changed and it seems that the gaming public have moved on such that the budgets for these games, games which are now considered niche, cannot be risked on Japanese turn based games. It is a real shame and both sequels, as a result, were found on the Playstation Portable and the striking aesthetic did of course suffer a little at the lower resolution.
Memorable for the graphics at the time, the game itself more than held its own. I'd highly recommend checking it out. 

3 other V titles that might be interesting: 
Virtual On - The slightly niche Mecha genre made into a 1 on 1 battle arena. Hugely popular in Japan, here, not so much.
Vib Ribbon - The pseudo sequel to Parappa with more mental graphics. Yes, more mental.
Virtue's Last Reward - Visual novels with a time skipping mechanic. A strange take on the puzzles and novel combination.


1. 2006 was very close to the end of the generation of the PS2 and Xbox which meant that the astonishing graphics of Okami were a little overshadowed by the new machines, and their capabilities. It eventually came out on the Wii, with some effects removed but the HD version on the PS3 is spectacular.
2. The world, being based on old world Europe, has rampant discrimination against those of a certain extraction - with nonsensical backstory and justification. I was never sure that it was satirical, but probably.

Saturday 16 August 2014

[A-Z Games] U: Um Jammer Lammy

"Simon says everybody lay down on the floor, right away, right away..."
"Simon Says" is a child's playground game where the leader, Simon, gives orders and everyone else does those actions unquestioningly. It sounds pretty authoritarian and was invented by the National Socialist Party in Germany for the training of concentration camp officers and car park attendants[1] and was eventually monetised with the invention of "Simon", an electronic game popular in the 1980s (you can play a version here). With a very simple memorise and repeat mechanic, it was ideal for those that had short attention spans.
In many ways, the music genre within videogames is pretty similar as you theoretically do not need to memorise very far down the line.
My first sighting of the lesser spotted Parappa was on a magazine cover mount demo disc. It was one of about 10 demos or whatever, and was not something that really caught my eye but I eventually gave it a go. I had never played anything like it and it barely felt fleshed out enough to even be a game. Pressing buttons in time to on-screen prompts? This is effectively the building block of all action games but so deconstructed, it felt like a joke. A pretty fun joke, but a joke nonetheless. And a joke that I kept playing too, which made little sense as it was just one level, one song but fun enough to keep playing and replaying. Before long, I realised that I had played it through more times than was normal.
“kick, punch, its all in the mind”
I remember showing it (you can check out some video here) to a few people at the time, in the days when PlayStations easily went into bags, and everyone enjoying it but saying that they thought it was a waste. But then enjoying it again. In hindsight, it is clearly a compelling game but at the time, it was a curio more than anything else. It was way too simple..... but very replayable. I think I rented it from a shop and played through Parappa with some friends.
And with that, was born a new gaming genre. Has there been one since?
Soon, Konami made the earth shattering Beatmania (and this would later become "BeMani" as a stable of games) which, along with its sister games, seemed to keep the arcade scene afloat in Japan for years with the many variations of music game possible. Beatmania, Guitar Freaks, Drummania, Dance Dance Revolution and the frankly insane Pop 'n Music all come from this same stable[2]
Um Jammer Lammy was the sequel, of sorts, to Parappa The Rapper and changed it up by putting you in control of a guitarist rather than a rapper. Lammy used her guitar skills to get her out of a few scrapes, such as helping put out a fire and helping a mother give birth, through the story of trying to make it to a gig. Um Jammer Lammy retained the joyous musical style of Parappa the Rapper and gave it a bit of a rock twist. The way the game was represented as a set of paper cut outs (also seen in the style of Paper Mario) was also retained with all characters showing no depth at all. Visually at least.
Um Jammer Lammy added some freestyle elements and the analogue sticks could be used as effects pedals which gave you a little more leeway to bring your own sound in but it was still basically "Simon". Music games may have become more technical, more complicated and more musical, but I do not think they have ever been anywhere near as charming. Well, I have never been as charmed, anyway.



3 other U titles that might be interesting: 
Unfinished Swan - A short, storybook world, and a striking game. 
Uncharted - Tomb Raider but with a man. Or just Indiana Jones. 
Under Defeat - Helicopters are not used in shooters enough, as this proves.

2. I returned to the UK from a stint living in Japan from 2003 to 2006 to find a fundamental change in how music games were perceived by people. I was always terrible at music games, but it now seemed that everybody except me had plastic guitars for the now amazingly popular Guitar Hero. What the Western developers had managed to do was make the music within the games well known, now it was about playing along to famous tracks by Black Sabbath etc. Rock Band even had a Beatles version which was released to coincide with the remasters. things had changed....

Friday 15 August 2014

[A-Z Games] T: Tetris

"Do androids dream of electric sheep?"[1]
Tetris is a beautifully simple game that takes seconds to understand as it is built from such simple rule set. Blocks made of four square bricks fall into a bucket and you must place them into the bucket. If you can make a connected line, horizontally, spanning from one wall to the other, that line will disappear. And that is that.
Making blocks and lines disappear is surprisingly compelling and the "clear up" mechanic is one that is common in many games actually - it makes you feel victorious. But that is not really enough to sustain a game of this magnitude and so you need a risk/reward mechanic that provides a bit more. And Tetris has that bit more to make compelling into compulsive.
Each line disappearing gives you some points, and as you clear more and more lines, the speed at which new blocks fall increases - though each line at this higher level is now worth more points. The more lines you can make disappear in one action (or "drop") will give you more points so removing the most lines in one go - four - will get you the most points[2] but to do that, you needed to set the board up to be ready for the "stick" block. This would make your blocks taller than they would otherwise need to be so you had to balance it off.
4 square blocks gives 7 combinations so, using the simplest of probability calculations, there was a 1 in 7 chance (assuming random distribution) that you would get the stick. It was a bit risky at higher levels to go for that but at lower speeds, there was plenty of time to organise carefully. Tetris is all about numbers but, like Sudoku, it is not so much about numbers as mental dexterity.

In 1989, Nintendo released the Gameboy which allowed games to be played on the go[3], away from the TV screen, and revolutionised toilet time for evermore. And Tetris was an absolutely perfect match for the machine with its ability to be played in monochrome and the nature of its compulsion. There have been many more versions of Tetris on almost all machines that are capable of playing games but this is the default classic. It had a great soundtrack which fit perfectly the repetitive and compulsive nature of the game using chiptune renditions of Russian songs. There is not a lot you can change in Tetris but changes have been applied again and again in terms of the graphics, the speed, the sound, some extra features but everything feels right on the Gameboy from the single "next" tile to the drop speed when you push down (later instant drops just did not feel right for me) and most importantly the slight delay when a line disappears to give you a split second to reappraise your situation.
There were a spate of single screen puzzle games in the wake of Tetris' success that seemed to do very well from major manufacturers. Nintendo themselves had Dr Mario on the Gameboy, Sega tried with Columns (for the Game Gear), Taito were pretty successful with the Puzzle Bobble series [4] and then, eventually there was some form of completeness with the release of Lumines on the Playstation Portable. This was also made up of blocks, music and a clear up mechanic but a much more modern take on it with the ability to have high fidelity music and more colours than I can even comprehend and beat-matched timing which has gone on to spawn multiple sequels. It is probably my second most played puzzle game and the Tetris feel is very strong in it.

Tetris is famously addictive and is said to affect even our dreams. I don't dream much, but even I can admit that I have seen those blocks and heard the music in my sleep.

3 other T titles that might be interesting:
Tekken 2 -  Street Fighter accessibility for the PlayStation era made this easy and fun to play for everyone.
Time Crisis - Namco, and PlayStation, could match Sega for a while and the light gun for this was just superb. 
Tomb Raider - A pop culture phenomenon from the Sega Saturn, originally. Ended up being a PlayStation poster girl.

1. This was the title of a book that was eventually made into the film Blade Runner.
2. I always knew this as "a tetris", as did most people I knew at the time but this may not have been official. Did everyone know it as that?
3. The Gameboy was by far the most successful of a few handheld devices to be released at a similar time - the Sega Game Gear, the Atari Lynx and the PC Engine GT. The Gameboy should not have been the winner, per the analysis of the time, as it was the only handheld to be non-colour (green and grey) but the benefit of that was that it was also the only one that was portable both in terms of size and battery life. And as everyone knows, gameplay is king. Later handhelds came and went such as the Neo Geo Pocket and the Bandai Wonderswan but it was not until the Playstation Portable in 2004 that Nintendo had any real competition in the handheld space.
4. Puzzle Bobble was so named as it was a puzzle game featuring the characters, Bub and Bob, from the Taito legend, Bubble Bobble. Puzzle Bobble was inexplicably called Bust-A-Move in the UK which in turn meant that the early music/dance game classic Bust-A-Move had to be retitled to Bust-A-Groove. I have strong, and good, memories of both games. Bust-A-Groove had a brilliant two player dance off mode which, although I was terrible at it, was superb fun and was one of the first music games around (along with Parappa the Rapper and Beatmania). It also had a very fun cast of characters and music selection - at a time when music games, and games in general, had original music. Puzzle Bobble was something I had on the PS1 while I was at university and in my first year, we had a communal kitchen area (shared amongst ten) that was at the front of the halls so people would see it as they walked past. For a while, I had set my PlayStation up downstairs and a girl, a stranger, came in to start playing. I think she was Japanese but I cannot be sure. She came in, destroyed everyone whilst wearing a constant smile and then we never saw her again.

Thursday 14 August 2014

[A-Z Games] S: Sensible World Of Soccer

Were there football games before Sensible Soccer?
Yes, there were - before Sensible Soccer, there was Kick Off 2 [video] and all other football games. Football games of the time were simple affairs - a far cry from the games that are so popular now with (in the case of later Pro Evo games) twelve separate buttons in use along with both control sticks. Each game then was a simple case of getting the ball to your best player who would, hopefully be able to sprint away and get a shot off and then we would rinse and repeat (Interesting how things repeat themselves, isn't it? This is a regular complaint I have with some modern football games.). In many ways, this was a great approximation of football before football got good - before the Scots got involved.

Kick Off 2 (I genuinely have no recollection of Kick Off) was different as the ball was not tethered to the players but was a separate entity - you effectively ran behind the ball and nudged it forward whenever you touched it. You were never running in control of the ball - you touched and ran after it. When you were near enough the ball again, you could either shoot or hold the button down to trap the ball under your feet and stop running to change direction. While the ball was trapped, you could then pass the ball to a team mate too. This use of "physics" was absolutely amazing for the time and meant that user skill counted for more as it was not just a case of a stats battle. Kick Off 2 was untouchable.

Even Sensible Soccer did not touch Kick Off 2, it just blew it away and made it redundant in one swoop.

Sensible Software were quite well known for being a pretty idiosyncratic software house that had made Wizball and Mega-Lo-Mania and they had no track record in sports games. They took the sprites and aesthetic from Mega-Lo-Mania and applied it to a comprehensive reworking of the Kick-Off template. Comprehensive enough to be unrelated if you were not there at the time. Now the sprites in Mega-Lo-mania were tiny things, with barely any animation frames, and so the graphics were not as detailed as other games - in fact this was counter to the prevailing winds of making sprites bigger and bigger as technical showcases. Instead, we had small sprites giving a zoomed out pitch and a tactical view on it all. A tactical view meant that passing was now a feasible option and running with the ball was more considered as you could see where you were going! Passing? In football? What merry hell was this?

The Commodore Amiga was, along with the Atari ST, the 16-bit home computer of choice in the early 90s and both used, as standard, joysticks with only one button. One 8-way stick, one digital button. This compares with, for the PS3 at the moment, two analogue sticks and twelve analogue buttons. This meant that you had to tap the button for pass and hold it down for shooting: one button, two functions[1]. This was not quite as revelatory as being the first game to do it, but it meant that you could pass without stopping. In fact, you couldn't stop with the ball. This made all games relatively quick as the ball was in constant motion[2].
Like Kick Off 2 before it, the ball was separate from the player but there was a little bit of adhesion so you could change direction for a few milliseconds when you received the ball (better players had longer adhesion). It may have been possible to time your direction changes to run with the ball but I never saw it and I never could. The passing was relatively accurate and was not stuck on an 8-way track so you could pass at all angles and that tiny adhesion meant you could change the angle of your pass a little from the way you were facing. But, and this always held, you could not turn around so if you were facing the wrong way defensively you had to play your way out (or hoof it out of course)[3].
So, tapping it opened the game up but you could not really beat the keeper with a pass, for that you had to hold the button down a little longer to "shoot" the ball. Shooting would kick the ball straight in front of you and then we were back to an 8 direction world so in came the variety of "aftertouch". Aftertouch, which was a way of curling the ball by changing the direction on your joystick after the shot, was not unique to Sensible Soccer and was in a few games before and after it. Microprose Soccer had banana shots with outrageous curl, such that they could curl in, and then back out of, the goal, and Striker had the ability to curl it twice in a shot. In Sensible Soccer, however, it was weighted with greatness you could centre the stick to get a bit more height, pull it back for a lob and curl it left or right. The "shots" were also used to flight crosses into the box too and the cross followed by a diving header (all headers were diving in Sensible land) was always a joyous goal.
So the gameplay was superb, the graphics were remarkably full of character so what else was there? The final piece of the puzzle, and seen as so important to football games now (and basically the only reason anybody bought FIFA Soccer for decades, surely?) was the use of likenesses. Kick Off and its ilk had a few teams that were similar to some existing teams but not really. Sensible Soccer had teams that were the teams in real life (There were about 64 club teams and 32 international teams) and had the appropriate players (and each team had three star players with better abilities). There was a team editor so you could change/update them yourself and change the kits (though I do not think you could edit the stats). As the pitch view was so zoomed out and there was no way of seeing more detail, this was a great way of having likenesses. You could only change the skin colour and the hair colour - everything else was the same but the effect on the immersion was huge. The national teams were updated and the players were in the right positions and stuff. These are little things now but a huge step forward at the time. On top of the real teams, there were also "Custom teams" where you could just make any kind of team you wanted with defaults such as Speling Mistaiks and Serious Illnesses[4]. I mean all of the team names and colours were editable but it was fun to just have a whole section of them.
And so, at a time when football was not as dominant in the world as it is now, and was seen as a little unfashionable, at a time when English teams did not play in Europe and we were not exposed to football from beyond the UK at all, here was a game that exposed me to teams and players around the world - and this has stood me in good stead (conversationally) at a lot of times. Before globalisation, there was Sensible Soccer.
The later sequel, Sensible World Of Soccer, took the original (which was updated a few times with tweaks to the 92/93 and International versions which were probably better again) and turbocharged it by adding in a full world of football - and it was not lying. Thousands of teams and tens of thousands of players all playing full seasons with promotion, relegation and trophies throughout a twenty year career was phenomenal. There were some tweaks to the dribbling and passing models in order to improve the game and it did so with greater variation in player abilities and a new aftertouch model on the passing to enable passes around the corner. It was a football education and a great game.

The simplicity of the 2D graphics could not last onto the PlayStation era and gamers wanted greater complexity which arrived in the form of the major console franchises from Konami and EA. EA used their might to buy up licences for teams and leagues around the world in order to keep the money coming in and eventually started to try and compete on gameplay too (starting from about 2008). Sensible Soccer may not have been a particularly accurate approximation of the beautiful game, but it was the beautiful game.

3 other S titles that might be interesting:
Super Mario World - Nintendo knew how to launch the Super era.
Street Fighter 2 - 6 buttons to vary power seemed overkill – it wasn't. A legend was born.
Sonic 2 - I think the point when Sonic went hyperspeed with worldwide release on Sonic 2sday.

1. More recently, the Neo Geo Pocket Color versions of the SNK fighting games let you have hard and soft attacks in a similar way - it feels quite instinctive but it does not offer the control of discrete buttons.
2. The Premiership and English football, generally, was quite unsophisticated at this time and the lack of European football had partially contributed to a more parochial vision of the game. It was seen as more exciting though.
3. I think this has had a big effect on my enjoyment of football and how I watch it, which has stayed with me throughout my lifetime. I have preferred passing build up to speed and power for as long as I can remember and the joy of a well crafted pass out of defence always raises my spirits. Goals are overrated.
4. I used the list of serious illnesses for a school homework once in Science/Biology.

Wednesday 13 August 2014

[A-Z Games] R: Ridge Racer

Ridge Racer
In terms of gaming, I think I have seen the future twice - Ridge Racer on the Sony Playstation, and Ridge Racers on the Playstation Portable. Both launch titles for their respective hardware platforms and both so massively different to what was considered normal that they changed the whole landscape of gaming. Well, for me anyway.
The original Ridge Racer was a simple, bold and colourful game with no pretensions of simulation in terms of the physics but a ludicrously fun feel. As an arcade game, there was just one circuit which was tightly designed to provide enough turns and introduce you to the joy of the drift. Coming up to a turn that is obviously too sharp for your speed?  A quick release of the accelerator, turn and the step on the power and suddenly, you were pointing into the turn and sliding around it at incredible speeds like some kind of crazy ride. As you were playing, the soundtrack was provided by the engines, some 90s techno and a really excitable commentator using choice phrases like
"Wow! That was a great corner".

The arcade machine came in a number of different models but there was one famous version which used a full size Mazda MX-5 as the cabinet which could be found in the London Trocadero. The normal sit down cabinet was more common and a friend of mine played it a lot on a school trip at around about that time (maybe '94). At that point, the PlayStation had been announced and the most impressive of impressive arcade games would soon be playable (in 1994 in Japan) in your home. A portable 14" screen would not be enough for these games.
The Ridge Racer series developed but retained much of the feel and joy with the addition of new tracks and cars. That it did so in spite of the massive changes in the racing genre was both risky and conservative and, up to a point, successful. Ridge Racer Revolution was a small upgrade to the series with a new track but Rage Racer turned out a career mode. In this you could create a team, upgrade your car and race around 4 different, and I mean very different tracks. It also introduced a grittier new look and  selection of cards and drift models with a drum and bass soundtrack that compares to some of the best CDs of the age. Ridge Racer Type 4 was released after Gran Turismo and added a beautiful and evocative sheen to all racing with a great lighting engine and, most importantly, great art direction. It attempted to create a dreamlike world a world away from the realism and technical brilliance of Gran Turismo. Rage Racer (Lightning Luge was superb, in particular) and Ridge Racer Type 4 had some musical elements in common but Ridge Racer Type 4 added a little more melody and stands as one of the best game soundtracks of all time. it also prompted me to search out other, similar music and can probably be in some way connected to my love of Squarepusher. One games forum I frequent had a comment to say that the soundtrack was the finest thing Namco had ever done. High praise indeed.
I remember playing a launch demo of the PS2 in London and giving Ridge Racer V a quick spin and being relatively underwhelmed as I started and then some stranger came up to me:
"It isn't as good as Gran Turismo is it? That is what we are all waiting for."
And he said it in such a received wisdom sort of way, as if it was just fact and I was ready to agree. And then the first corner came. The drift was initiated and the smile returned to my face.
When the launch of the PlayStation Portable.[1] came about, Namco were again ready for the launch and they made Ridge Racers as a sort of compilation of the previous games in the series (Revolution, Rage, type 4 and V) along with new cars and tracks. And to compare it to any other handheld driving game was very unfair on the competition, the bright, bold colours on the sensational PSP screen was truly a futuristic feeling experience. And in my pocket!
The soundtrack was also immense with a few classics in amongst some great new songs and the game was absolutely perfect for my journeys at the time being short enough to play in chunks and with a real sense of progression.
Arcades had come full circle - we would no longer travel to arcades play games, we would play arcade style games while travelling. Ten years after the PlayStation changed the living room, it could do the same for the train home[2].

3 other R titles that might be interesting:
Rez - As immersive a music game as I have played.
R-Type - The classic horizontal shooter. 
Rodland - In the style of Bubble Bobble, brightly coloured and very Japanese and cute.


1. The Playstation Portable is, I think, the only games console that I have bought truly at launch - going to a late night opening at my local games store in 2004. I did not even want one until TGS 2004 which completely turned my view on the machine with a very strong showing by Sony.
2. And the train home was kind of needed for this. This meant that portable gaming really exploded in Japan and elsewhere, not so much. Commuting created that market.

[A-Z Games] Q: Q*bert

This is definitely the first game I think of for "Q" but I cannot say I remember playing it when young. Or even when older, but it has a very strong visual style that has stayed with me.
An isometric[1] view in this game gave the illusion of depth using 2D and sprites as ever. With no perspective being used, the isometric view was very clean and easy to see but the bright colours were eye-catching. It still looks pretty cool now. The character, Q*bert, was actually pretty popular and that is what I remember more than the game.
The game itself is a simple case of colouring all of the tiles by walking over them and I would be lying if I had said I had played it much. Does not stop it being memorable for me though!


3 other Q titles that might be interesting:
Quantum Redshift - Microsoft needed to battle Sony with the Xbox project – this was to take on the Wipeout series. Very fast but it felt like a knock-off.
Quake, Doom may have started this, but Quake changed it to be basically modern as even now we would see it.
Quell Memento - Hypnotic and simple puzzler. An example of the time wasting future?


1. Games were bringing a new, technical language to my world and I doubt that I would be using similar words at such a young age had it not been for these games. The main other word I think of like that is parallax which was a magical word in the late 80s/early 90s but means nothing to most people. Parallax scrolling, which is the creation of the illusion of depth by scrolling different background tiles at different speeds was amazing when I was young. Genuinely amazing. Here is an example from Silhouette Mirage [link].

[A-Z Games] P: Pang

“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
The progression of arcade games has seen them become flashier and flashier as a way of extracting money but it used to be about the purest of gameplay before, with compulsion rather than attraction seen as the way to keep the coins coming in. Pang.[1] was one of a set of classic single screen games where two players would try to clear the screen, somehow. Others of the era included classics like Rodland, Parasol Stars and Rainbow Islands. In the case of Pang, the “enemy” was a series of bubbles (oh, we lived in such innocent times) and you travelled around the world to clear it all. In order to do so, the only weapon you had was a harpoon gun. The harpoon gun would fire only vertically up  It was simple and fun with a compulsive desire to clean awoken in all (also harnessed in Tetris) with a great teamwork mechanic. I remember playing it a lot as a child. The stages also took place around the world with backdrops showcasing landscapes and architecture around the world - but overall it was never short of cute.
The interesting thing about the game, I felt, was that as the bubbles got smaller, they bounced less and became harder to dodge on top of becoming more plentiful so you really had to be careful and plan a strategy. Something I enjoyed as a child, rather bizarrely.
There have been a few sequels but I've not really played them. In fact, I might search them out.

3 other P titles that might be interesting:
Pop 'n' Music - An insane mixture of bubblegum pop graphics and the most technical of musical games - the most impressive feats I have seen in arcades are on this. 
Persona 4, - The utility of friendships - or networking - is how you get along in life.
Pitfighter - Digitised graphics! It was enough at the time.

1. This was, unbeknownst me until this piece, also called Buster Bros in the US and Pomping World in Japan.