JimmydelaKopin
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Posts posted by JimmydelaKopin
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Sheesh.
Now I know how Todd McFarlane felt when he tried to create a line of toys based on Eclipse's Twisted Tales and Alien Worlds anthologies.
This auction sounds real shady for an auction house with this big a rep to do. It's almost as though Roger "the debt-dodger" Broughton is involved somehow.
Or "cheatin'" Dean Mullaney.
Like someone else pointed out, it seems that all of Acclaim's self-owned games have already been sold by the time the auction first appeared. (Well, I just pointed out they were missing; someone else suggested they were sold prior to the auction.) Whoever the bidders are, they have to know they're bidding on literally nothing.
Though maybe someone considers the documents involved historical....
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You came through in the end. You redeemed yourself.
You even made this crochety old gamer (34 come yesterday) lose a little of his cynicism.
You did well, young man. You did well.
So, as our prodigal son settles back into his digs here at AtariAge, let me help to end this thread with a joke:
Who was most upset at the return of the prodigal son?
The fatted calf.
I know you're reading this. I can hear you groaning!
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Here we go again!...
Listen up[, people. There have been scads of threads about MGA.
Yes, the new shells for the games look cute. That's the point.
Some years ago, MGA picked up a batch of licenses for handhelds. They made cheap LCD games that barely resemble the games in question and packaged them in flat cases, the idea being handhelds that could be slipped with ease into a pocket or backpack.
Those went over like a lead balloon.
Some years pass, and MGA is stuck with a crapload of said games. Then the plug-in game-controllers come out with their retro-looking shells...
...and someone at MGA gets an idea.
They gut the older set of games, toss out the old shells, and make new shells that look like miniature arcade cabinets. They sell these at double the price of the older versions.
These sell somewhat better...but not good enough.
So MGA goes back to the drawing board and come up with new "retro-looking" shells for their games to unload more of these games. These look like the old cheap/knockoff handhelds of days gone by.
These they also sell for twice the price of the older versions at different stores in different parts of the country.
Notice one thing I didn't say.
I didn't say they changed the games within the shells.
That's because they didn't.
Those crappy flat handhelds that had versions of Asteroids and Pac-Man that you might give to a nephew as a cheap gift but would never want yourself?
Yep, that's these games. All they did was change the shell. Hey, they gotta unload those overproduced crappy little games somehow, right?
I hate to be snippy here...but can we get on the same page now?
MGA is the poor man's Tiger. They're trying to unload crappy games whose only real selling points are their licenses. They've now had three shell designs for these games.
And the way this company operates, I expect six more versions are down the road.
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Well, GWAR and Rob Zombie have appeared in videogames...
Maybe a Uwe Boll videogame? Somthing about trying to escape the hordes of movie and videogame fans while also trying to find investors for his next bomb...
I don't know. Should it more like Pac-Man or Heavy Barrel?
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For those trying to put some perspective on Goodwill and thrift stores...
...the main reason why I go to thrift stores is to buy secondhand paperbacks. Cheap good reads, and I help out a charity.
I buy more on occasion (toy collecting magazines, a jacket once, and those 1st Ed. AD&D hardcover manuals I mentioned previously), but I go mostly for the cheap paperbacks.
I don't go into a thrift store expecting to find anything spectacular; after all, the stuff sold in them is secondhand at best. But I also don't go in wondering what kind of five-fingered discounts I can get.
See, that's the problem people here are having. This clown A2600 finds something spectacular (for him) at a thrift store (Goodwill in this case)--and the first thing that comes to his mind is "How can I get away with stealing this?"
As my mom taught me, "If you can't afford it, you can do without. Nothing's worth stealing." It's worse that this was done against a charity.
Maybe not a good charity...but in our day and age, we can use all the charity we can get.
And then to brag about it...as though there's people out there who'd say "Good for you! Goodwill is a crap charity that rips people off! More power to you!"
Yes, none of us here are perfect. I've swiped some things in my time back when I was a kid. Got away with it--but the experience so shook me up that I never did it again. (For the curious: it was Hustlers from my barber shop.)
But this is the first time I've ever mentioned it publicly...and, in my defense, I was a budding boy then all curious about such things.
I certainly didn't grow up into a thief. Too bad you did, A2600.
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Well, that's my point, atarifever.
Did Acclaim sell off the property it truly owns and is now trying to sell off properties they don't own?
Sheesh, that's worse than what Dean Mullaney did when he sold Eclipse to Mcfarlane!
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A2600, I have to thank you.
Really, people, I have to thank him.
I consider myself a collector of sorts. Not concerning games; no, I'm more of a comics aficionado.
One time a collector of old men's magazines was willing to part with three boxes of his collection for $170. He thought he was cheating me, since these were men's magazines before the days of open pornogrpahy; the raciest things in there were the cartoons.
However, I knew that they were collector items since they contained examples of post-Code work of famed wrtiers and artists of preCode comics. But I didn't tell him that until after I got the boxes of magazines. The look of despair on his face when he realized what he sold...sometimes I felt guilty about it.
But, looking at what this little hoodlum did makes me realize I really didn't do anything wrong. If a seller doesn't know what he's selling and I do simply because I know more about his product than he does, that's his problem.
But to rig an item so as to trick the seller into not charging for something the buyer wants...that's downright despicable.
And the fact that he did this to Goodwill...really, stealing from a charity of all things?
Damn, my local Goodwill (where I got replacement 1EdAD&D hardcover manuals to replace ones that I lost real cheap once) still hasn't reopened--and when it does, it probably won't have anything of quality, as locals were dumping their moldy flooded clothes and nonworking electronics in front of the place as if it was a city dump.
And this jerkwad has the nerve to brag about ripping off his local Goodwill?
Some people just aren't grateful for anything...
...selfish turd...
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Hey, yeah, it's strange that most of the titles listed don't belong to Acclaim; even the NFL titles are owned by the NFL.
But, comics fan that I am, I noticed something even more odd.
Where's Turok and X-O Man-o-War? Acclaim OWNS those titles outright, gained those rights when Acclaim took over Voyager Communications (the publishers of Valiant Comics).
Why are those titles absent?!
Something's up here. Are Acclaim's owners trying to pull a Dean Mullaney?
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Wow. I wonder if Serial Experiments: Lain counts as an rpg. I know most people don't even realize it was a game before it was an anime.
And it's never been released in the States.
That's rarity in my book.
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I really should let this one go, but I'm one of those fools that doesn't believe in the idea of "the person who can't be educated"...which is why I'll never be a public school teacher.
First, JJ:
I agree that games--including videogames--need to have some rendering done. And the amount of rendering needed differs from game to game.
But there comes a point when more rendering is merely done for aesthetics, that rendering goes beyond function.
In other words, the rendering becomes irrelevant to the game once it goes beyond the required functional rendering.
For example, the technology exists to remake the old Adventure game today in 3 dimensions instead of 2. Let's say some gamemaker does that--leaves everything else the same, but renders the original graphics in three dimensions.
The new game would be prettier, yes...but it would be the same game!
Your example only reinforces what I'm saying. The graphics in ECCO are functional; they create premise, protagonist, and antagonist. It's irrelevant if they create a setting that can be found in art.
It's no different from the look of the gameboard and gamepieces in Candyland. That's simply a board game where movement of the piece through the gameboard is determined through random element...and how many games are there like that?
No matter that it resembles something from a fairy tale; the rendering is functional...though some of the boards for it as of late are aesthetically excessive in their renderings.
Now, CS27:
It amazes me that you can't see that you're helping bolster my argument while thinking you're opposing it.
Art has always had some degree of interaction to it. But that interaction is different from gameplay in that it remains passive. The audience applauds a play; it can't rewrite a scene more to its liking. That's the difference.
As for the notion that a chef's culinary skills can create art, or a gardener's 'green thumb' can create art...I've been saying that all along.
Don't confuse creation with interaction; they're different things. Anything created can be art, be it a silkscreened T-shirt, a car, or even a ship made from seashells inside a bottle.
Gameplay is the ability for the viewer to actively participate in the things viewed (the 'game') to achieve a goal desired by the viewer within the confines of the thing viewed. You can watch games; indeed, a session of gameplay recorded can be art. But without the interaction called 'gameplay', whatever you're watching remains art.
There is a difference between watching a game of football and playing a game of football, after all.
Finally,Haunted...
So you say that the addition of irrelevant aesthetics to gameplay makes a videogame superior to a movie.
But your example keeps gameplay separate from irrelevant aesthetics. Nice try and good posture, to quote Monty Python.
Fine then: let's go the the best examples we can have of gameplay being a far second to aesthetics: the original laserdisc games. Dragon's Lair, Cliff Hanger; these were interactive cartoons, nothing more--especially the latter, what with it being widely available in noninteractive form. Everyone agreed that they were the prettiest games around...but, once the charm of the graphics wore off, people realized they were really simple games with very little player interaction...and the novelty wore off concerning those games real fast.
The original laserdisc games were doing what you said games should do to be superior to movies...and yet they not only can't hold a candle to movies, they can't hold a candle to standard videogames either. If you add gameplay to a feature film or cartoon, you still haven't replaced its overwhelming aesthetics; all you did was stick a game in it.
Videogames are superior to movies in functionality, yes--because movies aren't supposed to have functionality.
But movies are superior to games in aesthetics, because games aren't supposed to have aesthetic rendering, only functional rendering.
I don't think the Clydesdale is quite dead. Who amongst you will take up the cudgel next?
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So that makes three knock-off plug-in games controllers Wal-Mart sells:
Polaroid
Maxx
...and the generic Kid Connection.
What amazes me is that Wal-Mart still carries so much name-brand merchandise...and yet also carries so much knock-off merchandise.
Then again, when you move as much product as Wal-Mart does, I guess the manufacturers will put up with the chain promoting piracy as long as it generates huge sales for them.
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Here's a Hollywood joke for you:
I knew a starlet that was so dumb...
*HOW DUMB WAS SHE?*
She was so dumb that, to get a part in a movie, she slept with the writer!
What does that have to do with this topic?
Nothing. I just needed a throw in a joke of my own to match some of the other posts put in this thread by others.
If a movie is all about the script, then why are cameras involved?
I was being serious, but I'll be even more serious: movies are a medium of visuals, where gestures, backdrop, and effects conspire with dialogue to form an entertaining whole.
I mean, they have movies without cameras, where only the script is involved.
They're called books.
Movies are a form of art. They entertain through being watched, no different from music entertaining by being heard or a book entertaining by being read.
The entertainment comes passively, not actively.
Put it this way: what if you bought a book, a novel, let's say, by one of your favorite authors...
...and the last 20 pages were blank, leaving the story hanging--and the last four written words were "Write your own ending." Would you be insulted in not being given a finished work, in being made to engage the story actively?
Would you consider that story finished or unfinished?
Would you want to "do the work"?
Now...what if EVERY book you bought from now on was like that? Would you be offended in being forced to do the creator's work for him or her every time?
See...that's what games are. They're unfinished stories...and the gameplay is in getting to the ending considered desireable within the context of the story.
If you really want to have fun with a game...play a videogame--any videogame...and then translate every action done by you and your onscreen antagonists to prose. Make your game session into a prose session, a real story.
Five will get you ten that such a story will be depressing concerning older games...and unintentionally hilarious concerning modern games--because that's how the games are made.
To use a prose example, look at any choose-a-plot story or book, where you make the decision for the protagonists. Those are videogames without the video, my friend. They can be admired as literary constructs in their own right...
...but it misses the point of such books.
An Interplanetary Spy book might not be the same experience as a Hardy Boys book...but that's the point: they're not the same kind of book. You don't read an Interplanetary spy book for its plot twists or its fantastic settings; you read one of those books to get the spy through the challenges to a victorious ending.
Otherwise, you might as well read a Retief story.
I hate to cite your own language, pal...but if a game is being designed to only be viewed and not played...can one truly get away with calling it a game?
A game that one can't play...beats Ellison's ideal of a game where one can't win.
Even Mad Magazine, in its attempts to make "unplayable" games like '43-man squamish' did so by making the terminology complex and requirements esoteric. For one with access to money and a good memory, hardly unplayable.
Then again, Gaines and company didn't believe in cheating on their definitions: if it's a game, then it must have some way of being played.
I know too many people have become caught up in the "collectible game" fad, from games with collectible elements to collectible variants of games.
But, as I said, if they're opened and used in a game, they stop being art for the players until the end of the game.
Let me tell yall:
I think that Missile Command is a poignant work of art on the madness of mutually-assured destruction and the futility of a nuclear arms race.
I also think it's a kick-ass game, especially when I'm trying to protect the cities.
I think that videogames are works of art, many just as good as any sci-fi movie or book. From the aliens trying to land here in Space Invaders to the ones using our people as meth in Defender (I like to think of the landers as aliens instead of alien ships) to even the duel of mind-control in Galaga/Gaplus (from the aliens controlling you to you controlling the aliens), I like sci-fi videogames and use them as inspiration for my own creations.
Maybe I should have said that from the beginning.
My point is that I consider them games first. If I can appreciate a videogame on its artistic merits, that's a bonus--but an irrelevant bonus when I'm playing the game.
And the primary purpose of a game should be how enjoyable it is to play.
After all...show of hands, people: who here loves to buy games they hate to play just because they look pretty?
...that's what I thought. Me neither.
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to quote Charlie Brown:
"AAAUUUUGGGGHHHHH!!!!!"
Sheesh...it's like I'm having a debate with Chico Marx!
I've already addressed this. Sure, games can look pretty...
...but if you focus too much on the looks, you'll be easily trounced when playing the game.
And if the best thing one can say about a game is that it looks pretty, then it's failed as a game.
Sure, there has to be some rendering; one has to be able to distinguish what is going on in the game, what one's ingame representative is, and what one's goals are. That's all a given.
But the rendering is supposed to be functional, not aesthetic.
Sure, Star Trek 3D chess is great as a conversation piece...but it's also a pretty spiffy game!
You can look at a game...
...or you can play a game.
YOU CANNOT DO BOTH SIMULTANEOUSLY!!!!!
Rendering gameplay as a faux-movie doesn't turn a videogame into a movie; it only turns the gamemaker into a wannabe filmmaker.
Can videogames be art? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
But...if all you want to do when you go to an arcade is just look at the videogames...you're missing the point of the arcade. The coin slots and controls are there for a reason.
For crying out loud, the Swordquest series is merely a Codebreaker game with sword-and-sorcery graphics. Does that make it better than regular Codebreaker?
Head over to handheldmuseum.com and do a search of Pac-man. You'll see a half-dozen versions, each with different graphics. Does the change in graphics between them make one better than another?
I once saw a knock-off Super Mario Bros. game that used Shrek instead of Mario; everything else was the same. So which is the better game--or does it matter what your ingame representative looks like?
Videogames come with all kinds of graphics for different versions of the same game. Have people complained that a game has had a poor translation?
--all, right, I'll give you the 2600 Pac-Man. But my point is that such complaints are few and far between. More complain about something being lost in gameplay than in graphics--which is why gamemakers do their best to include all the elements in the original game that they can in its translations.
It's not that hard, people.
Games are meant to be played, not viewed.
Now, can we end this joke?
Please?
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Excuse me...I seem to have warped into a parallel dimension in which people think that games need aesthetics instead of gameplay to be games.
Well, back in what I jokingly refer to as the real world, there are plenty of games on the shelves throughout the toy stores--all sorts, not just videogames--that are "designed to appeal to children"...which is PR-BS for "licensed from something someone thinks is supposed to appeal to kids".
They look pretty, they have popular (or hopefully popular) characters as game protagonists...and they sit and collect dust more often than not.
Meanwhile, games that have great gameplay, usually selling cheap, sell so well that every family has at least a half-dozen of them.
Sure, Scrabble might not be as pretty as some Pokewanne-based tie-in game...but people love to play Scrabble. Go figure.
Magic: the Gathering has had for many years ho-hum sword-and-sorcery art. AniMayhem used still from popular animes for its art. Yet...which game continues on? The one with the less obtuse gameplay. Funny that.
And concerning videogames...funny that companies that haven't had a new game in a long time make money simply by releasing their not-so-pretty older games on one disc. A mystery, to be sure.
So the knuckleheads at Next Generation don't understand that games are supposed to be things you play instead of things you view. I guess it is true: the only thing more common than hydrogen is stupidity.
Or maybe I'm being mistaken. Has the word "videogame" become an Aesopian term, referring to anything else but a game in which the elements are virtual and to be seen on a TV screen or monitor?
Help me out here. Is the term videogame meaning something other than things like Pac-Man, Star Wars: Battlefront, Twisted Metal, Space Invaders, and the like? Has it somehow evolved beyond its original meaning?
Or has it always meant something else over here in this parallel dimension which only seems to utilize the language of the real world?
Next post I'll see in this thread at this rate, someone will want to know what the definition of "is" is.
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Reminds me of a case I saw recently on "Judge Judy" (a guilty pleasure
).Woman bought what she thought was a Ms. Pac-Man machine off of e-bay...but it was a Ms. Pac-Man board (probably a pcb) installed into another machine.
The seller said that he bought thirty machines found in a barn and was selling off 27 of them through e-bay. (He kept 3 for his pizza parlor.) Thing is, all he did was a board swap for the Ms. Pac-Man machine. He painted the sides white and stenciled in the words "Ms. Pac-Man" in yellow, then did the same stenciling in yellow on a piece of white corrugated cardboard--which he then cut to size and put over the actual marquee. He then cling-wrapped the entire machine (with the wrap holding the cardboard over the marquee) and shipped it like that.
What some people won't do for money, huh?
(Oh yeah, the woman was buying it for her husband; she got her money back. Apparently the seller didn't want the machine back, so the woman is going to give it to a local charity. The machine works...it's simply lacking the appropriate Ms. Pac-Man artwork.)
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I have Capcom Vol. 1--bought it for the Street Fighter tunes--music from the original videogame!
I also have a disc featuring all the music, sound effects and voices from the first Samurai Shodown.
But mainly I use my PS1 discs as CDs:
Twisted Metal 1-4 ("He writes the songs! He writes the songs!")
Vigilante 8 1&2 (the Tocata&Fugue on the second disc is great)
Star Wars Demolition (the variants on classic John Williams music is great!)
Rogue Trip (featuring the Mighty Mighty Bosstones!)
Pro Pinball Fantastic Journey (has a feel of 50's sci-fi to it).
...I also have the SFII image album, which is a disc of one musician's interpretations of SF music: the demo screen, each eight locations, and a medley of the four boss locations.
Generally I check out anime conventions for game music--specifically Street Fighter music.
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Galaga '88
Alien Syndrome
Heavy Barrel
Front Line
Mercs
...for a few more to add to the list...though I'd have to go with Midway's bastard child of Taito's Space Invaders and Namco's Galaxian and say that Gorf is the first.
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Well, that's my point, LocalH.
An ornately-carved medieval-themed chess set, with dragons and wizards and and knights and boggies of all sorts, can be art. However, once a game is played using said pieces on said board...the artistic detail becomes irrelevant, and gameplay takes importance.
Games can be artistic...but, once they are, the stop being games.
In short, you can either look at a game or play it. If you play it, it's a game.
But if you only look at it, it becomes art instead.
I would never think to deny anyone the right to just look at a gamer, or to decry their simply looking at one.
I just say that, for me, just looking at a game misses the point of the game. I prefer my art to not have a functional value aside from its aesthetic value.
The debate here is whether or not videogames with cinematic cut-scenes and premises and endings are as good as movies...and, simply put, they're not, because they lack the things that make movies movies.
But that's a good thing, because said videogames aren't movies; they're games.
They can be artistic in and of themselves, but, given that the requirements for admiring art and admiring games are completely different, for such games one must choose whether to admire them as games or as art when admiring them.
One really can't do both at the same time.
It's just that some fans of videogames (moreso at joystiq than here) don't understand that.
Yes, I too can marvel at the eye-candy of a good videogame...but I won't do that too long if it'll end the game for me.
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Hey, don't forget Tuff-E-Nuff (great little fighting game, and the code for using the computer characters are in plenty of old magazines) and Shanghai (Activision made a great puzzle game--and the music is to die for!).
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cs27, you're missing my point.
Yes, games and movies are both forms of escapism...but a movie--or book or painting or sculpture, or TV show even--has functional value through its aesthetic value. It entertains only through "sitting and looking at it".
Games aren't supposed to be like that, be they board games, card games, dice games, rpg's, or videogames. Their functional value is supposed to come through playing them, through gameplay, not aesthetics.
If the best experience one can get out of a game that it's pretty to look at, then the game has failed as a game.
I'm being serious here. Heck, let's toss this question to anyone who wants to post here:
Would you "play" a game that is only pretty to look at but has little to no gameplay?
I can see the future...and everyone who answers will say some variation of "there's no point to such a game, so no".
Which is my point: a game that can't really be played has no point calling itself a game.
As cs27's example shows, for a videogame to be successful entertainment, it must have lots of gameplay. Its aesthetic value is irrelevant. If it's not fun to play, it's not functioning as entertainment.
Games are games, art is art, and never the twain shall meet. For if they do, either the game will lack what the art possesses, or the art will foist upon the game what the game doesn't need.
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Once again, I see the emphasis on the "video" of videogames.
Maybe an example from another genre...
We've all seen ornately-designed chess sets, with each piece a fine miniature sculpture.
Are such sets art? Only if they're not being used as a chess set. Once they are, the sculpting becomes mere ornamental dross, secondary to the purpose of the sculpture while the primary purpose of the sculpture becomes 'distinguishing the piece from the other pieces so it can be used properly in the game'.
In other words, an ornately-carved pawn is art--but once it's a pawn, the detail becomes irrelevant. Art doesn't have functional value, only aesthetic value.
Now, if a game, even a videogame, develops aesthetic value that overwhelms its functional value, it ceases being a game.
Take the game Myst. Here's how its makers described it on Dateline when it first came out: "It's peaceful. You can just look at it. No rush, no need to do anything."
And I said to myself, "What is it, a game or virtual art?"
Myst is pretty, sure...but as a game, I've seen plenty of reviews that say it's pretty to look at.
My point is that videogames have a functional value, not an aesthetic value. That's the point of them being games.In plenty of other threads in this forum, people talk about how current games have lots of eye-candy but little gameplay, while the older, more addictive games (and that's in a good sense) have great gameplay and poor details. Everyone agrees that the older games are better.
It's the same point Ebert is making; he's just saying it from the other side. Videogames are GAMES; gameplay should be their first and foremost feature! Current gamemakers are trying to become the poor man's moviemaker--but if they succeed, they're no longer making games!
His point is that games can't be made like movies and remain games--and he's 100% correct! Games must be made as games--or they are games no longer!
He also says that more movies are being made using so little material that they start to resemble games: no aesthetic value, and no qualms about lacking such.
He's right there too.
Ultimately Ebert laments that people are too busy playing games to be creative...and that's a complaint that dates back centuries...given that creativity is a form of work. People are too busy playing games to work--especially to work at creating new things. Hey, he's not the first to say it, and--as long as we have gambling and sports--he won't be the last to say it.
Games are entertaining...but in moderation. Too much of any entertainment is never good. Again, he's right about that too.
So let's stop this false comparison. movies and videogames may resemble one another in detail, but they're nothing alike.
And that's the way it's supposed to be. We have art, and we have games. Let's stop complaining about our new games not being considered artistic...
...and go back to complaining that our new games not being fun.
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I think that the posters at that joystiq thread...and some of them here...miss the point altogether.
One really can't compare movies and videogames...because no matter how much "video" we put into them...they're still games.
Games are entertainment; things to be enjoyed, not experienced. there's nothing at all wrong with that.
Sure, they can be experienced...but that goes beyond playing the game to understanding the creator's influences, his motivations, and so on. But this is secondary to the creation; they're made to be played, not watched, read, etc.
His main criticism is that movies are becoming more and more like videogames; things to be "played", not experienced. As licensing becomes a bigger tick on the backside of movies, more and more movies are written with sappiness or heartwrench...what's called "melodrama"...in mind, if only so when the game comes out, the player can change the outcome to something more his liking.
In short, moviemakers are using too many shortcuts in plot and premise and character in order to 'port them to games.
Think I'm joking about this phenomenon? Fine; look at it turned around. Let's talk about some games turned into movies.
Everyone remembers the god-awful Street Fighter movie. But...how many remember the plot to the videogame?
If you said "there isn't one", you're correct. You're given a set of martial artists and a competition in which they fight one another. If you win with your chosen character, you get that character's ending--the end of that character's story...which you were told nothing about throughout the game, and also is not affected by how many times you get defeated.
I've read choose-a-path books that were more moving.
Hey, I like SF...but I have the honesty to admit it has no storyline, only a premise of "go out there and fight until you have no one left to defeat".
And the Mario Bros. movie? Hey, what's the plot to the Super Mario Bros. games? "Save the princess--who somehow keeps getting kidnapped--by jumping on every enemy that gets in your way".
Yeah, I can see the Oscars roll in for that screenplay.
And that's just two examples. The only movies that come close to their games ultimately fail because movies require a plot (Warhol notwithstanding) and games usually have no plot and very little drama.
---I'm not talking about the drama of playing the game; I'm talking about within the game. Just clarifying.
In fact, reading what Ebert has to say gives me hope. If one of the most well-known critics says that successful art has to adhere to some basics to even be art...perhaps the avant-garde are in their death throes.
Don't deny me my right to fantasize!And before anyone gets too bent out of shape (just wait until after reading this), I agree as well that there really is a lack of authorial control in videogames.
Of course there is: they're GAMES! The only authorial control is done by the designers who come up with the rules of the game.
Why can't I fly over the walls of the maze in Super Pac-man? The rules of the game say that I can't.
Why can't I fly Darth Vader's TIE fighter in SW:Battlefront? The rules of the game say it's not available as a vehicle.
Why can I do those things in stories I write or games that I may make one day? Because there I make the rules.
To compare videogames to movies is an unfair comparison. Games lack things that movies require, and Ebert knows this. Indeed, he only makes the comparison to show that certain movies are lacking the things movies require.
My online friend TandemSpoony did a review of the movie Doom, and he sums up its failure in four words: "It has a plot." Of course it does; movies are supposed to have plots.
Actually, Ebert shows his charitable side when he suggests that videogames can one day become art. Maybe they can...but can the game Mousetrap compare to the Rube Goldberg's comic strips (since the game is inspired by them)?
If anything they can become art...but not by being played, only observed and studied and admired.
And any game only worth observing, studying, and admiring is not worth being called a game.
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Sony PS2 for me.
What can I say? Between the retro discs and Gauntlet: Dark Legacy and the TM games, when I get the chance to game, I do it on the PS2.
It's all about the fun, right?
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I remember the game. It's even listed at klov.com and vgmuseum.com. It's a boot' of Pac-Man, but with some significant changes (and not just through changing into a nautical theme). No, there's a y-axis tunnel as well as an x-axis tunnel, and there is no maze, just some "islands" that provide minor obstacles.
It's like a "free-range" Pac-Man. Fun game on its own. If it works, and you have a chance to get it, go for it.
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Gamers getting blame for lack of original games
in Modern Console Discussion
Posted
Technically speaking, there is no "indie" market for console games for the newer consoles.
That was shut down when the NES arrived on American shores. Nintendo lawyers insisted that the code involved that let a game load on their consoles and let the player play said game on their consoles belonged to them. Anyone wanted to make an NES game need to get their permission to gain access to said code.
Atari/Tengen tried making a real indie game for the NES (Tetris), an NES game using the NES code without Nintendo's permission.
And Nintendo slapped the money out of Tengen for such a brazen act.
That's why these games all come with a "license" in the manuals. Sony/Nintendo/Sega/whoever is licensing the operating code to the gamemaker for the game...meaning that the console manufacturer can veto any game they don't want for their systems.
You want to improve the market? Make the codes free for all takers. Let anyone and everyone make games for the systems to their hearts' and wallets' content.
The good games will sell and sell well, while the bad ones...won't.
It's not the gamer's fault the console manufacturer uses copyright law to set himself up as de facto censor for his console.
Look at what happened when Sony decided to stop the censoring a little (mostly to prevent games better than Sony-made games from being released for the PS1) and allow retro-gaming discs to be made.
Now we gamers can enjoy virtual arcades on any system...and all it took was one console-maker to relax the stranglehold on creativity.
Seriously, Gameinformer is a "house organ" for the videogame companies. Doesn't surprise me that said companies release dozens upon dozens of awful games each year and then blame the gamer when they lose money every year.
Not everyone has the decency to admit he made an "Edsel", after all.