Penny Arcade

For his birthday a couple years ago, I bit the bullet and bought Gabe a Tivo.  I did this because, to a very large extent, the parameters of his life were defined by which shows came on at what times.  Certainly being able to manage your stable of programs is a positive, humane development - but the main reason I have it is so I can skip commercials.  Just before I obtained one of the devices myself, I could be expected to scream with all my vigor at the antics which lurk between show segments.  It was essentially a Two Minutes Hate, except where the traitor Goldstein might have been projected I instead railed against Arby’s vile, creatively inert Oven Mitt.

I don’t understand why this is exactly, but he is only interested in the time shifting functionality of the machine:  he will let it record shows, and then watch them later, with the commercials intact!  To what end, sir!  Imagine a futuristic shower stall that would store your rinsed off filth for immediate reapplication, and you have come very near the point.  This isn’t actually the problem, by the way.  If he wants exposed to Oven Mitts and and other toxic stimuli, fucking have at it.

Here’s the issue:  he’ll come in to me and ask me if I’ve seen this or that commercial!  As though there were some virtue in it!  As though he were collecting and arranging small treasures.  As though I had not arranged my life in such a way as to be impervious to their urgent message!  He was telling me about some ridiculous new pizza yesterday and I just Goddamn lost it.  Every minute flap of the pizza industry’s delicate wing I am forced to internalize, all because they have gotten their twisted seed in my compatriot.  On that note, it does seem to me that they are running out of places to put cheese.  For my part, I hope they fucking die in cheese.  I will not have my satisfaction until they are boiled away, only fingernails floating on a sea of bubbling white. 

If you’ve been into EB lately, and call it a hunch but I’d imagine this is the case, you’ve seen that they have modified the Gamecube kiosk to include a set of bongos where the second controller might once have been.  God love ‘em, but I really think they’re asking a lot of the young men that come into an EB if they think they’re going to go over there and touch that thing in plain sight.       

That’s really the trouble.  Donkey Konga is like an experiment I perform on people I know, from the hardcore on down, as I’m of the opinion that the game taps into some pretty fundamental themes.  I have all the shit and four bongos in a box I wheel from place to place like a travelling show.  As long as you can get someone to actually play it, as opposed to just stand there framed in the doorway with their arms folded, you’re in for a pretty good time.  The concept it is based on goes something like this:  “It Is Fun To Clap With Your Friends.”

Now, I know that’s ridiculous.  I know it.  But I swear to you on the plot of unturned earth that will one day be my mother’s grave that it is true and it is good.  It is true and good and incontrovertible that when you clap with your friends you feel joy.  As a raw game, it is highly amusing and can pack an almost demonic challenge you wouldn’t expect from the earlier difficulty levels.  Initially, you might find yourself looking around as you are playing the bongos on the song Bingo.  You are looking around because you are afraid that a girl might see you.  I need you to be strong.     

They had them in Costco when I was there last week, for five bucks cheaper than EB - hopefully they’ll carry the bongos solo for cheaper as well.  If you’re already enthusiastic about rhythm games, the purchase is a no brainer - but I can’t stress enough the tribal unity produced by as little as two and as many as four drums. 

(CW)TB out.

i’d rather see you dead

I keep myself fairly well abreast of things like this, but the fact that Microsoft is finally going to sell the Media Center version of their operating system caught me completely by surprise.  Feel free to hit up this preview of it over at Game PC, if you’re curious - I’ve used the current version, and found it more than pleasant.  Of course, as I mentioned in the “first post,”  I’ve already got a Tivo that does pretty much everything I need in a device like that.  I might consider one of them fancy DVD Tivos, or “TeeVeeDees” as I have heard them called, but that’s about it.

Something else I caught in that Game PC article - I guess I wasn’t aware that the Linux DVR applications Freevo and MythTV were so sophisticated.  Good lord.  I could build one of those out of the shit I have in my closet.   

(CW)TB

Since we live in Seattle we were able to sneak into the Nintendo Gamer’s Summit today. Essentially it’s an event where Nintendo shows off all their new stuff to select members of the media. Tycho and I were both really excited to finally get our hands on a DS. Check back today and tomorrow for our impressions from the summit.

I have to say that I came away from E3 with absolutely no idea what the hell Nintendo was trying to do with the DS. What I saw there made no sense to me. After spending all afternoon with the DS I feel like I understand it a little bit better now. If nothing else I see potential in the device now that I did not see a few months ago.

I feel like the current SP is the perfect size for a portable gaming system. Folded up it fits easily into your pocket. I know Nintendo says the DS isn’t a new Gameboy, but I can’t help comparing it to my current portable game system since that is what it will be replacing, and when I do that the DS just seems too big. I understand that the DS has two screens and all kinds of built in goodies, but gadgets like this are supposed to get smaller not bigger. I honestly think Nintendo sort of blew it by making the SP so fucking perfect. When your business model relies on reselling the same device every few years with slight improvements to its design, you should probably avoid making something as flawless as the SP.

It took me about five minutes of playing before I finally discovered a way of holding the DS that felt good to me. You can grip the DS with your left hand, placing your thumb on the D-Pad and your index finger on the shoulder button just like you would an SP. The problem was trying to use the stylus with your right hand. The DS is significantly bigger and slightly heavier than the SP. I found that trying to write on the touch screen while supporting the device with only my left hand was very awkward. Eventually I started hooking the pinky of my right hand under the right side of the machine while gripping the pen with my thumb and pointer finger. It sounds clumsy but after a few games of Metroid it felt perfectly normal. This gave me the stability I needed to use the D-Pad and the touch screen at the same time. The optimal solution was to rest the machine on the edge of a table but it’s certainly not required.

I went in today hoping I’d see a game that would make me need a DS. Unfortunately that killer app was not present. There were some cool ports and a few interesting new titles but I didn’t see a game that I had to have at all costs or someone would die. I think the best game at the summit today was Metroid Hunters. It’s funny because coming out of E3 I felt like Metroid Hunters was the weakest thing they showed. They’ve really polished it though and now it’s a solid FPS on a portable system, something that I don’t think has ever been done before. The combination Stylus and D-Pd control actually reproduces the feeling of a mouse and keyboard really well. The game has all kinds of different control options to satisfy just about anyone but the default setup is the one I found most comfortable. You use your thumb on the D-Pad like WASD with your index finger on the shoulder button to fire.  You use the stylus on the bottom screen to look around and double tap it to jump. In just a few minutes I was pulling off classic FPS maneuvers like jumping, spinning around and shooting Tycho in the fucking face.

I played a couple four player death match games and I gotta say, they were pretty damn cool. Getting into a multiplayer game was a breeze thanks to the built in wireless networking capabilities of the DS. Someone at the table would simply create a game and it would show up in the multiplayer menu on the rest of the units at the table. Joining a game was essentially instantaneous and once we were all in, the host would start the game. Down on the bottom screen you have a large map and icons for switching into ball mode and selecting weapons. You use the stylus over the map portion of the screen and tapping the icon for missiles or ball mode is quick and easy.

Besides multiplayer, the game has single player training missions that will have you blasting your way through levels full of vile Metroids. You can also play through a Morph Ball mode that’s kind of like Super Monkey Ball, if Super Monkey ball didn’t have cool puzzles and was really boring. Over all I’d say the Multiplayer is the real reason to play Hunters, but it was sweet of them to try and throw in some content for people without any friends.

The really cool thing is that the demo we saw today actually comes with the unit. Right out of the box you’ll be able to get your Metroid on. It had three different multiplayer levels which should be enough to hold you over until the full game ships early next year. It’s kind of cool that one of the best games available at launch is actually free.

I’ll be back later with my thoughts on Mario 64 DS, Picto Chat and a few others.

-Gabe out

I didn’t know how Gabe was going to introduce his bit, but we were indeed able to scam our way into this event.  It was accompanied by a rich torrent of media that you have probably been availing yourself of at news sites.  The event itself is local, I mean, it’s literally about ten minutes from my apartment, so their investment getting us there really is low to nonexistant.  I drove my own car.  I wonder if, upon reading what I have to say, they’ll feel like they got their money’s worth.

My relationship with the DS thus far has been complex.  It hasn’t helped matters that - outside of general assurances that the device would spur innovation, and a few tech demos which gestured vaguely at potentially tedious new modes of play - there hasn’t been enough substance to really hang an opinion on.  I’m not opposed in some visceral way to two screens, nor do I find microphones despicable, nor does the prospect of wireless play alter my humours.  If I saw any of those features on the sidewalk, I wouldn’t cross the street.  Any potentially productive dialogue on the DS is typically obfuscated by the PSP, and the prick-waving these two systems inevitably inspire.  That is a subject somewhat beyond the charter of this post.  Suffice it to say, the devices seem to be envisioned for different market segments altogether. 

You might know that after using the hardware at E3, I came away convinced that the system had potential, but that this potential was not made manifest by the software in attendance, and that there was some philosophy behind it that wasn’t coherent to me.  Since then, the hardware has been altered to include housing for the (supposedly critical) stylus, in addition to a more general purpose “sexiness” pass that has to my eye improved the aesthetic appeal.  These are things you knew already from images available online.  There are two things you might not already know, however:  the first being that although the hardware is compatible with Gameboy Advance titles, it can’t link up to other systems via the cable, nor is it compatible with the new wireless adapter - so the multiplayer features of your current games don’t appear to be intact.  Here’s the second thing:  we had a chance to see an odd little carrying strap today that doubles as a kind of stylus.  When Robert Nintendo (I’m spacing on his name) tried to demo it for us, it wasn’t working properly - but that’s not the strap’s fault.  Essentially, it has loop you can cinch around your thumb, with a tiny plastic nubbin on one side that acts as a focus point for the touch screen.  The case they were trying to make for it was in Super Mario DS, where it could be used in lieu of the d-pad as a kind of analog controller.  It may sound odd, but there will be control scenarios where you might take a liking to it.  For me, the motion recalls using a fingerpick.   

Now that I have had a chance to play a handful of the titles, I’ve come to another odd impasse:  I am now a firm believer in the philosophy of the device, and subscribe to the notion that new modes of interaction and inbuilt wireless networking will, like twisting an ominous jewelled monkey in a forbidden temple, reveal a heretofore obscured cavern of glittering treasure.

That is Proposition One. 

Proposition Two is that we won’t see much of that treasure at launch.

The treasure is there, though, or will be - of this I’m quite certain.  Where E3 was primarily a series of extremely early tech demos, inscrutable cave art, just something to show on the screen, what I’m looking at today is much farther along and points to some really, really interesting implementations.  I’m only too happy to discuss my favorites:

My own GBA bag is full of RPGs and Tactical games, the genres that leap most readily to mind when I think of raw data density beyond the capacity of a single screen.  Outside of The Urbz, which has survived the transition to the DS quite well indeed, there isn’t anything approaching the traditional RPG experiences anywhere on the US launch list.  They’re coming, be certain of that - take note of Japan’s list, also released today.  Some of that stuff is shit hot, but instead of invigorating me it really just throws the launch selection into greater relief.

The final analysis:  I am overjoyed that Nintendo isn’t completely nuts, which was my fear initially.  This is a pretty cool little machine.  But the opening salvo is a little soft in the genres I prize most, and there’s no stand-out title that forces my hand on the system.  Believe me, I wish that there were. I always feel like an asshole when I go to these things and don’t put out.

(CW)TB