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While I love a good 'ol romp through many of gaming's past triumphs and tribulations, there are undeniably some things that are an ever present menace to enjoyment. They are things that were once - for whatever reason - the mainstay of ancient video gaming, but have now thankfully been consigned to the eternal Bin of Rubbish Design™.
Of what do I speak? A classic example of one such annoyance is the once mandatory use of up as the jump button in platform games. Since the advent of the multi-button controller this has become a thing of past, but some systems (namely computers such as the Amiga) had games that used this technique well into the 90's. It should have died a sorry death, as many players do when using this god-awful control method, with the introduction of Nintendo's two button NES controller. Although the technique was gradually phased out over time, Mortal Kombat Mythologies on the N64 briefly and irritatingly brought it back, only to be bludgeoned to death with bad reviews.
This was a mere blip on the landscape, though. I bring this up because I've recently been playing Fantasy World Dizzy on the Amiga. It's a good game - a great game, even - but it was forced, by the fact that only single button joysticks were available for the Amiga, to use the up-button technique. Dizzy also has two other incredibly annoying traits of old games, and more specifically old platform games.
The first of these goes hand in hand with up-button to provide maximum annoyance. Pixel perfect platform jumping. This requires the player to jump at the last possible nano seccond to reach a platform, or face one of two options - falling to your death or falling to the floor several hundred times before accomplishing this slight task. This is not fun. Never was, never will be. Many platform games of the 2D era emplyed this. It should quite rightly be forgotten.
The second fatal design floor wasn't so common, but still appeared across the generations several times too many. It is the dying-by-touching-a-flame tequnique (or other seemingly innocuous objects). I'm not talking about falling into a flaming volcano, here. Oh no. In Dizzy's world, merely jumping past a torch on the castle wall fries you. In this case I suppose it's just about justified by the fact that the main character is an egg. But only just. What makes it all the more annoying is the pixel precise collision detection that allows death to occur if Dizzy's hat touches a flame, which is just a little ridiculous.
Put all of these things together in one game and you have a smelting pot of potentially exhasperating gaming. The only place the up-button jump is used nowadays is in 2D fighters, and in this instance it works well, largely because you won't end up falling down a bottomless pit if you slip on the controller.
2D platformers tend to live on now only on handheld devices or the odd web browser game. Which I have to say I think is a shame. While there were plenty of rubbish design priciples, there were many excellent moments to be had exploring a side scrolling landscape.
So, there you have it. 2D platform games, while being all well and good and perhaps an underused genre in todays gaming landscape, had their fair share of shoddy design principles. All in all, then, it's a good job these things are gone for good.
Total Carnage on Jaguar!
I've just discovered that Total Carnage, an arcade game from the mid 90's which was converted to the SNES and - I think - the Megadrive, has been released for the Atari Jaguar.
I love it when lost games get found!
The person responsible for this little wonder is Carl Forham of Songbird Productions. For several years now, he's been going around and finding Jaguar and Lynx games that were more or less finished and either polishing them up himself, or releasing them as they were found. Total Carnage is the latest in this line. According to Carl the game is pretty much complete, and it's possible to get to the ending screen. There's just a few menu options that don't work.
I'll get my hands on a copy as soon as possible, though at $89.95 it ain't cheap - works out at about £60 I think, though this is likely to change over time. Of course the high price reflects the fact that demand for this title will be relatively small, and that parts for the cartridges aren't cheap either. With a bit of luck, Telegames here in the UK will get it in stock some time in the future (although the price will still be high).
I have managed to get my hands on lost games before, namely Road Riot 4WD for the Lynx. This cart was never finished and the version I have is a green PCB with the ROM chip strapped to the top. It works pretty well, though there are still bugs in it and there's no ending screen. Total Carnage has been released with full box art, a glossy manual and a full colour label. Now, this may not sound impressive to most, but it's pretty special considering that this is a game that was not only scrapped, but that had to be liscenced from its parent company, Midway.
There are plenty of other Jaguar games that were listed as being ready to go at the time the console was pulled back in 1996, so fingers crossed that they make and appearance at some point in the not too distant future. They may be slow coming, but there are still Jaguar games out there waiting to be played for the first time.
There's a lot of nostalgia tied up with retro gaming, perhaps moreso than in other mediums (such as literature). The reason for this is perhaps that gaming is an interactive medium, whereas films, television and books are not. In fact, it could be argued that retro gaming exists entirely to fulfill the nostalgia of the games players from years past.
I say this because while many films from decades ago can be enjoyed by an entirely new audience, born after the actors in the films are dead, and the same can be said for books, it seems much less likely that a modern games player will be dying to play Space Invaders or Pacman. The strange thing about games is that they evolve much more than films or books do. Today, books are printed in essentially the same way they have been for hundreds of years. Films are still experienced in the same passive way as they always have been.
Games, on the other hand, have changed drastically since the days of blasting two-dimensional blocks of pixels from your location at the bottom of the screen. Virtually every game released today has 3D graphics, which are now starting to mimic reality with unnerving accuracy - even handheld consoles are catching up fast with current home console technology. Of course, the input methods for playing games has remained largely the same - a joypad, keyboard or mouse - with some notable exceptions. The EyeToy is one, offering a more direct and non-gamer friendly way of interacting with a game. Also many arcade machine inputs that are tailored for their specific purpose. Do the young gamers of today know where many of the ideas and genres floating around in the ether of the gaming universe came from?
More to the point, do they care? I wonder if the PlayStation generation would gawp at the idea of playing a game with less graphical capability than their phones. Maybe not, but I bet the ones who've played games from the days of the SNES, or NES, or Atari 2600 would perhaps be more willing.
Of course there are still 2D iterations of 3D blockbuster titles (on mobile phones, mainly), and these prove popular. So perhaps there is a willing to try older style games. Perhaps 3D doesn't have the strangle-hold over the gaming world that it seems to.
I raise the point simply because video games of old are passed over and forgotten, unlike the oft mentioned books and films (and yes, there are many many books and films that have been forgotten). They occasionally reappear in the form of best of style collections (Namco Museum et al), but I wonder how many of those who by them are old gamers looking to rekindle their gaming youth? The word 'retro' is never mentioned when you pick up a copy of a Jane Austen novel, or a film from the early 1940's or whatever, yet it is applied to games that are only just 25 years old or less.
Perhaps this is simply because games are so closely tied in with technology. As the march of the silicon chips increases, so newer and more impressive looking (though not necessarily good to play) games are released. And when the next generation comes round, you can forget all the games you played a year ago.
I will go on playing and collecting retro games, of course, because I have played games from an early age and their is a certain nostalgic pang when I see an old favourite again. Though it is equally disappointing when that old favourite turns out to have been a pile of cack all this time.
Maybe with the advent of the X-Box Live arcade, games from the past - or game styles from the past - will become more readily available to the new generation of gamers. I sincerely hope so.
Living my dream, at least. And it's not the only dream I've had. There are plenty of others that I have yet to fulfill, and many of them will never be written about here or anywhere else, I should imagine.
The dream in question here is that of owning an arcade machine. Ever since I had seen an advert in a games mag (I forget which one) from a company that supplied arcade machines to home users I had wanted one. The machine in the add was a two player cabinet with three buttons per player, and was priced at about £400. I thought that this was a very reasonable price, but I had a sneaking suspicion that my parents wouldn't so I never asked.
It wasn't until the advent of eBay that I even considered seriously looking into owning a machine of my own. It was the run up to Christmas a couple of years ago, and I'd been watching some cabinets and game boards to see what sort of prices they went for. It was much less than the £400 that had been asked by that add all those years back. Fantastic! I managed to win an auction at the very reasonable price of £104. I also picked up a game board (Section Z, a side scrolling shoot 'em up by Capcom) for £30.
At this point the first of many complications had to be overcome. The cabinet itself was in Newport in South Wales. This wasn't too big a problem as I have relatives who live reasonably close to Newport. All that needed to be done was to hire a van, which my dad did and we headed off to collect the machine.
Getting it back was easy. But the next small complication was about to occur. The cabinet itself weighed a ton (I haven't actually weighed it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this estimate isn't far off) and it was to be placed in my bedroom - which is of course up stairs. It took myself, my dad and my brother an extreme amount of effort to haul the cabinet into my room, and I'm sure that in years to come we'll all develop some sort of back problem as a result. This particular complication could have been avoided if I'd had the keys for the cabinet, but the seller had lost them. If I'd been able to open the back I could have got the monitor out of the cabinet, which would have drastically reduced the weight. Still, I now had an arcade machine in my room! How fantastic is that?!
However, the arcade machine had some more surprises up it's sleeve. Three days after I got it I turned it on. Instead of the high pitched ping of the monitor (which is an old CRT model from the 80's) bursting into life, the machine emitted a strange humming sound and smoke began to fill the room. There's nothing like the smell of an electrical fire, is there? It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I found that the transformer supplying the power to the monitor had blown (I was still new to all this stuff).
So, I needed a new transformer. I had to drill the lock of the back door of the cabinet to get the old transformer out. Luckily, I found a mail order company that supplies all sorts of parts for arcade machines, and they had a transformer in stock for my type of monitor. Lovely. The new transformer was installed and the power was switched on. But, instead of the monitor springing to life, the new transformer started to overload. Bugger. The power was switched off:-(
It transpired that it wasn't the transformer's fault but the monitor itself. Something had blown on the monitor and the power wasn't getting to it. Instead, the high voltage was being retained by the transformer and causing it to overload. I now had to find someone to repair the monitor.
I won't go into detail on this, but it turns out that when you phone most TV/monitor repair shops and say "I have an arcade machine monitor that I need fixed" they simply won't do it. They won't, generally, even offer to look at it. I finally found a place that would fix it, though (this after buying a spare monitor from eBay that turned out not to work either - my fault really as it was listed as untested). All I had to do was get the parts for it - from the same company that supplied the new transformer - and they were fitted and the monitor now worked!
I've since had many months of happy use out of the machine. Earlier this year I fitted a PC to it and installed MAME - the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator. Although now the hard drive has decideddoesn't want to work any more, which sucks.
The game boards that I acquired have all since either stopped working or developed various problems that I have no idea how to fix. Hence the switch to PC. If anyone reading this does want to have their own arcade machine it is worth noting that it is a continuing project. Like an old car (or any old equipment, really) things will break down with disheartening regularity. Unless you are very technically minded and like fiddling around with huge game boards (they are computers in there own rights as there are no actual electronics inside the cabs - besides the monitor) go for a cabinet with a PC in it. This has it's own complications, of course (you need adapters and possibly new graphics cards to make the image appear properly on an arcade monitor) but it's far more enjoyable once it's up and running. The other massive (literally) problem with game PCB's is that they are generally very large. If you have more than one you have to be able to store them away somewhere when they're not in the cab.
There's plenty I can do to the cab now if I feel inclined, such as adding more player buttons or putting flashing led's all over the place, or loads of other customisations. It just keeps going. But it is very satisfying doing it, and it's great getting reactions from your friends when they see you have an arcade machine sitting in your bedroom.
Finally, Sony have seen fit to release it's much hyped PSP handheld in Europe. We've been waiting to get out sweaty hands on one of these for months now.
But, of course, PSP's are new. I'm not writing about new stuff, really. What is great about the PSP is that hundreds of hackers and bedroom coders around the world have found a way to get homebrew software running on the console.
Sony have naturally tried to counter this by updating the console's firmware, but so far to no avail. Each time a new way has been found. And the people who benefit most from this are those that love old console games, because emulation seems to be the name of the game in the homebrew community at the moment.
My brother had the good sense (and money) to import a PSP some months ago, so I've had a chance to check out some of the emulators available. Consoles such as the Megadrive (Genesis), Master System, Wonderswan, SNES, NES and Gameboy are already emulated to very accurate degrees, with the software being improved upon all the time. The Megadrive emulator DGen has gone from something that could barely run a game to almost perfection in the space of two months. And there's very little that can be compared to seeing Road Rash 2 running on your shiny new handheld - surely a game that oozes quality even today.
The main benefit of having emulators running on a console such as the PSP (there are other handhelds, such as the GP32, that have had their own emulators for some time) is that you no longer need to have a PC close to hand to play emulated games. In the case of the PSP, you just need a suitably large memory card - though even this isn't absolutely necesarry if you're mainly emulating consoles like the Master System. Even a laptop PC pales in comparrison to having your emulator slip (relatively) easily into your pocket. Now you can grab a quick game of Sonic The Hedgehog on your bus journeys, or Zelda: A Link to the Past while on your lunch break.
And once the upcoming PSP version of MAME is running full pelt (and you can bet that won't be far off), there'll be no turning back for the PSP emulation scene.
So, it seems that new technology is allowing gaming to come full circle. It would be interesting if it's the draw of playing old games in new ways that keeps the current generation of handhelds high on people's shopping lists.
Second post in and already off topic...
I thought this would happen at some point. Just not this quickly. Being in two bands I do spend some considerable time doing music based things. Therefore, sometimes I'll end up writing about them. It's just the way it goes, man.
Last night (Sunday 28th August) the Pirate Ship Quintet played Mister Smiths in Bournemouth. I've been with the band about five months (although yesterday I overestimated that by some considerable margin) and we've played four gigs together. Last night's was by far the shoddiest I have ever played. It was the shoddiest any of us have ever played. We're a post rock band, and as such our songs tend to be quite long. Although we only played six, we filled an hour. In each of the songs, one if not more of the band made a compete cock up.
The first song was the biggest shambles, as no sound was coming from my keyboards. It's strange, though, how few people actually noticed. It wasn't until the end of the song that I discovered it hadn't been plugged back into the DI box (a device that connects the keyboard to the sound system) after the previous band had finished. I have a nasty feeling this is my fault. I should have checked the bloody thing.
We did gradually get better as the evening went on, finishing with two songs that were actually quite well played. The best song of the evening turned out to be one that was not only the most complicated to play, but one that we hadn't played live before. I have a suspicion that concentration has a large part to play here. We were, perhaps, a little too casual about the whole thing.
However, something that will bother me for months to come is the way in which I managed to utterly murder Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, surely one of the finest pieces of music ever committed to paper. Our version of the piece involves me playing the opening two minutes or so, before going back to the beginning where everyone else gradually joins in and we build to a suitably dramatic climax.
But I managed to make some horrendous mistakes. In the end I just had to play up to them each time I made one, because after the first couple my confidence was bruised somewhat. I have to say in my defense that the lighting system, which reacts to the music on stage, decided to set itself to the 'off' position while I was playing. This meant that I couldn't actually see what I was doing, which isn't ideal when playing a solo in front of a room full of strangers.
So I apologize. Profusely. I will try again, though, and it will one day sound fantastic on stage.
Fingers crossed. Maybe.
The most annoying thing about playing as poorly as we did last night is that we all know we can do far better. It has to be said, though, that the only people who noticed that we sucked were the ones who has seen us before, which luckily was only a small portion of the audience. I'm sure that every band has nights like this. In fact I know they do, having been in other bands previously and experiencing exactly the same thing.
We'll carry on, of course. I think having a crap gig is needed sometimes, just to keep your feet firmly on terra firma.
And we didn't get paid, either.
Well, actually, it's 11 years out of date. When it was released in 1994 Tempest 2000 was the best reason to own an Atari Jaguar.
It still is.
Criminally, I hadn't played this game for years before last Thursday when, out of sheer boredom with just about every other game in the house, I sat down for some good 'ol shoot 'em up action. This post is not actually a review (that would be more or less pointless now, anyway). However I was inspired to write about T2K, in fact start a blog in the first place, by how utterly fantastic this game is.
What struck me first is that the game is still so visually arresting, despite being run on a machine that is now out classed by most - if not all - mobile phones. Most of the graphics in the game are treated with patented 'Melt-O-Vision' (it's from the back of the box, I didn't make it up - honest), which makes them swell and fade out of the screen in hypnotic fashion. The main menus make ample use of this effect, as do pretty much all the power-ups and bonus games littered throughout the game.
The music is perhaps the only thing about this game that has dated a little - some tunes more than others. In one such piece a sample of someone saying 'bring the beat back' is used, which today would almost certainly - and quite rightly - result in the mob lynching of the offending composer. Most of the music is techno-dance themed, and will only ever have catered to those who liked it. Nowadays, though, it palls a little more than it did. This is especially evident if you happen to own, as I do, the sound track CD that was bundled with the Jaguar CD addon. It really is a cheese-fest, if you like that kind of thing (and I'm not adverse to it, I have to say).
The rest of Tempest 2000 has survived intact, though. Each of the levels is set on a grid-based shape of some kind, These range from simple circles, squares and flat plains to more esoteric shapes, some of which will cause problems in themselves. There are four game modes on the cart; Traditional, Tempest Plus, Tempest 2000 and Tempest Duel. It's Tempest 2000 that I'm concerned with, though. It starts off relatively tame, and remains that way for some twenty or so levels. However, the difficulty is ramped up steadily all the while. Though seasoned players will be able to finish the first two sectors with many lives remaining, the following onslaught will have you finished off in no time at all.
And yet you'll come back. Again and again. However, while the game is certainly hypnotic - as all great games are - I don't think I've ever managed to reach the stage where nothing else around me exists any more. This is a state that some gamers claim to get into when deeply involved in a game - shoot 'em ups especially. I'm not sure Tempest ever quite lets you as it's pace is so frantic. Your eyes are constantly darting around the screen, looking for the next power-up, trying to find where it's safe to leave your ship for a moment while you figure out your next move. All of this has to be done in a split second. And then your blasted off the grid and you have to ready yourself for the next try.
Jeff Minter is the man responsible for the Jaguar version of Tempest 2000. Most gamers of a certain age will know who he is. Suffice it to say that he has engraved himself in video game history, not just with this game. But that's for another post:-)
Tempest 2000 was ported to other platforms (Saturn, PlayStation and PC), but those versions never had the raw energy or potency of the original Jaguar remake.
Of course, the Atari Jaguar was axed a long time ago. However, those still keen to take up the Tempest 2000 gauntlet will find that searching eBay will yield some good results. You may even be able to buy a new and sealed copy of the game!
There is of course emulation for the more technically minded. Jaguar emulation has progressed at a somewhat slow rate compared to some systems, but there are working emulators that will happily run Tempest at full whack on a suitably powered PC.
Take a peek at the game by heading to www.atariarge.com and checking out the Jaguar section. There's plenty of other information about the Jaguar and other Atari platforms on the other side of that link. Enjoy.
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