Games cost too much (to make)

Back when the HD Twins were new and shiny, before the economy took a dive in 2008, I said that games had gotten too expensive to make. Making games has gotten more expensive since then and the industry is feeling this in their bones. Video game industry has gone Hollywood, where almost every mainstream title has to make stupid amounts of money to get the publisher and developer into black. Every AAA game needs to be a massive event. The sales must make back all the time and money spent on them, and more often than not, they’re large titles with tons of hot air. Hype is manufactured in order to make these games see big initial sales. PR and sales directly lie to the customer either directly or through omission. Fanatics join this manufactured hype in order to fellate these corporations some more. Often it takes a short while for the common customer to realize that what they have in hand is a mediocre product, a polished turd. A year from the release the media will turn their boat, when they can’t damage the game’s initial sales anymore. A cycle keeps repeating far too often. Sometimes you got games like Starfield, which gets all the hype despite being rather shit game. Sometimes you get things like Suicide Squad, which took too much time and money not to be released and everyone hating it.

What is a company to do when they’ve sunk tons of money? They sink more money next time around, and then ask the same thing again. Monetization of video and computer games is the word of the day, which we can thank all the whales who have dropped millions into mobile games’ gatcha and lootboxes elsewhere. I don’t like it, but sadly, these are an accepted element of games now, and only two things can change them. First is changing the law and making this kind of gambling illegal, but we really don’t want government control in gaming like that. The second would be customers simply making these games inviable, but that won’t happen due to the addicting nature of gatcha. Putting advertisement into games isn’t anything new, though traditionally this has been done via licensed material in-game. However, nowadays publishers are considering putting actively intrusive advertisement into games, where you’d get a pop-up ad somewhere during the game. Imagine having an ad during a load screen about whatever shit you were browsing on Amazon, or pausing the game, the game recognizing this, and then popping a Coke ad. Not only you should be paying for the live-service model, but also your info is being gathered for this targeted advertisement.

Netflix for gaming is something certain section of the industry seem to glamour for, but it’ll never be truly sustainable. Gamepass is already showing that while Microsoft is seeing success with it, most games aren’t seeing profits through it. The model promotes more in-game purchases and lootboxing, forcing developers to turn for the predatory monetization. The only one profiting from Gamepass is Microsoft themselves and nobody who worked on the games offered there. When you have a broken model like this, the games and customers are the ones who will suffer. As much as some people love getting all these games cheap, all this is doing is devaluing games as goods. If games are devalued, the publishers and developers will have to meet those lowered values in the quality of the games. The gaming industry has been playing things stupidly safe for a long while now, so you’ll most likely see them following that and devaluing the games themselves as well.

It’s sad to think gaming as a sort of casino, but that’s already a reality. Nickeling and diming, gatcha and lootboxes are a symptom of the gaming industry being at an unstable sustainability point, teetering being completely unsustainable and absolutely consumer abusing.

I’d say buying games at their standard retail prices would be the most beneficial thing for the hobby as a whole, for both the customers and the industry, if not for the existing micro transactions and constant DLC’ing. Once an industry finds a way to abuse the customer, it won’t stop until something significant causes a some sort of crash that requires rebuilding customer trust and cutting back from excess. The industry won’t crash by itself though, gaming is the most popular form of entertainment on Earth, so something like a massive crash of the global economy might do the trick.

If we rewind back a bit, I’ve written a few times how exclusivity is the lifeline in the console business. That business doesn’t survive unmitigated growth. You can’t dish out an expensive hardware and hope that alone drives business. It’s the job of the first party developers to make that hardware valuable through exclusive games. The less exclusives a console has, the less value it has. This applies doubly to third party software, where exclusive titles further value a console, while multi-platform titles are just an extra as general library additions.

A large section of the core gaming market holds the belief that it is a pro-consumer stance to have as many games on as many platforms as possible in order for the customer to choose on what platform they play games on. I reject this notion. Exclusive games force competition, which forces making games with value as long as they stand as individuals against others. Gamepass does the opposite, putting all the games on the service under one payment umbrella.

This is part of the reason why customers go for older games nowadays more, as they have more value. Remakes are a no-brainer for publishers and developers, as past games with proven track record already have an installed audience. This means less original creations, less remakes of games that could actually use it. The lack of quality in current gaming is also the reason why there is a vocal section of the market demanding older games being playable on newer platforms.

The current gaming industry has failed terribly. Older games should be obsolete, useless relics of the past with much lower value than what the industry is currently delivering. Yet the opposite has happened despite ballooning budgets and increasing staff numbers. As it stands, AAA games can’t possibly meet the fantastic expectations from the publishers, which means studios being closed down and people fired for lack of proper leadership. Gamepass games miss those sales goals by the truckload. Worst of all, Gamepass subscription numbers have slowed down and the latest big names have largely been duds, especially Redfall.

When Bethesda and Activision were bought under the Xbox umbrella, they spent tons of money, in the billions. Microsoft needs to see profits churned out from their gaming section, and hence spending has to be cut down and everything has to be played safe. I still think buying these studios hasn’t changed gaming as media liked to portray it as. The Xbox division’s stupidity though just might if they’re crashing under their own weight. Microsoft can’t have Xbox brand net them no profits now that so much money is tied into these studios. They can’t afford to have the same position as Disney with Lucasfilm.

If Xbox wants to survive properly without hanging too much from their parent’s teat, they might as well kill console business and go full third-party and fulfil their role as Sega’s successor. The whole brand has been mismanaged to badly throughout these years. The worst that could happen is to kill Xbox as a brand wholesale and integrate everything into Windows. Have these studios under Microsoft games label or something like that while publishing games in Sony’s and Nintendo’s consoles.

I really would hate this, as a race between Sony and Nintendo wouldn’t be pretty, if the history of both companies are anything to go by. We need more than two or three consoles on the market in order it to be healthy, but that’s what the status quo has been for a good number of years now. We need more head-to-head competition between first-party developers and hardware providers as well as in third-party software.

The market has to expand to new customers in order to survive, not leech blood out of the existing market with higher cost productions at lowered costs and devalued games. Otherwise, gaming will implode.

If you’re wondering what the hell the top image is about, I implore you to read David Sudnow’s Pilgrim in the Microworld.

Nintendo probably will screw up the transition from Switch to Switch 2

The big question with Nintendo now is how they’ll handle Switch 2’s release. While some are speculating and reading the supposed leaks about the hardware, all that’s more or less secondary for now. What the big question holds is all about the games. Nintendo had to save face and their market after the massive failure that was the Wii U, and hitting both the home and handheld console markets in one swing was a hit. Games followed after, and the Switch has been a rather popular machine across the board. This is why Nintendo is afraid to move to the Switch 2.

Nintendo has a weird thing where they falter about every second console they put out when it comes to games. Transitioning from a generation to another has always been difficult for them, and more often than not it has been the competition that has forced their hand. In the same breath we should remember that there really is no end-date to a console; the provider can support it as long as they want to keep making games for it. In an age where backward compatibility seems to be on everyone’s lips, everybody seems to miss how there’s no reason to keep supporting an old system if it still has an active market. South America’s love with the Sega Master System is a great example of this.

Backwards compatibility is probably a must for Switch 2 though, and an easy way to move from the older system to the new one. We have precedents for this, with the Game Boy Advance supporting the Game Boy library and the DS supporting the Advance library in turn all the while taking extra advantage out of it. 3DS supported the DS library in turn, but these are just extra points in the pot. Switch 2 must have appealing games to justify buying the system. Switch owners who already can play their games won’t be shaken by the new system’s better hardware alone. Nintendo has to deliver a handful of near masterpieces in order to ensure moving onwards with the systems is a good idea.

I’d argue that outside the NES, which was a generational transition from Nintendo’s Pong-clones, the only really good start they’ve seen have been the Game Boy and the Wii. Super Mario World may be loved, but wasn’t a system seller. It was arguably too similar to Super Mario Bros. 3. The Nintendo 64 bombed. 3D Mario, as revolutionary as the media likes to cite it, wasn’t exactly wholly embraced. PlayStation was the 3D platform after all. GameCube made a lot of corrections, but suffered a similar end result as the N64. No Mario game at the start is like having no Sonic game on your console’s launch. The DS tried to be a portable N64 and had a slow start, until Nintendo laxed the necessity to use the touch screen, after which it effectively became a portable Super NES. The Wii had the opposite problem. Big damn start with games people wanted, then a few years later in Nintendo just dropped it. Wii U bombed every which way, something everyone hopes they learned something from. Switch 2 should have a clear, separate name and design, not be confused as an addition to the Switch, like what happened with the Wii and Wii U.

All this is relevant for the Switch 2. Three things can happen; good start, sad end. Sad start, pretty good end. Or the worst, it’ll become Wii U 2.

The history of Nintendo’s consoles hasn’t been linear though. They’ve always had a step on the way, which is the handheld market. As the Switch is both a dedicated home and a handheld console, they’re on empty space now with no backup to rely on. This will put a lot more emphasize on the starting lineup, which most likely will have a Mario game on it. The Switch had the benefit of seeing Wii U titles being ported to the Switch, making the Wii U obsolete in every sense, but Nintendo doesn’t have that leverage here either. If the system is backwards compatible, there’s very little reason to port any game to the new system.

However, Nintendo also has to temper the amount of games for the Switch 2, at least on launch. Carefully picking the best of the bunch and presenting them first would sidestep the issue of current generation of gaming, where the overall quality of titles is on the low side. The very reason you see so many remakes is that even a seven years old title is better than what’s currently offered on the shelves. People yearn for older games because of their quality. Companies afford to sell them at their current higher price points because of the demand, and customers deeming them to be worth more over modern titles. The industry is playing it safe, and it has become very dull because of it.

If we’re completely honest, having a Pokémon at the starting line-up would be decent business decision just to get the whole thing going. Nintendo still has strong IPs they own, and that’s gonna make or break the system. Though that’s a double-edged sword, as these games need to excel. Not every game can be a diamond, chances are most of them will be rough games. Not because of the hardware or the like, but Nintendo has a history of forcing themselves on the player rather than allowing other developers to explore different ways to play games, or letting the consumers play the games the way they want. The high emphasize on the DS’ touch screen early on locked tons of games into a certain paradigm that was a disservice, as mentioned.

Online is a big mystery to me though. Switch Online ties all the retro titles to your subscription. If Nintendo would apply to this to the Switch 2 games, that might kill the console in its crib. Imagine purchasing a game, then needing to purchase Switch 2 online subscription to play that game at all. I don’t think this is going to happen, but the current Switch Online’s retro library is a precedent.

If we take the rumours as valid to some extent, Switch 2 will be a conservative system. Something like a Super Nintendo to the NES. Hardware rarely makes or breaks the system, but at least Nintendo and other developers will have a comfortable time making their games. HDR and HD haven’t really done anything to make games better, just more expensive to produce. Everything’s unoptimized and uncompressed nowadays, nobody seems to play it dangerously and innovate on play. Developers are afraid of consumers missing content, so they’ll put as much as they can out in the open without any play needed for them. Handholding has went from invisible element to in-your-face design so nobody could ever miss a turn on a road or miss how you could climb over a fence. Exploratory element of just playing and seeing what’s out there is vanishing.

With the economy continuing spiralling down slowly but surely, Switch 2 has to justify itself in terms of new games. The system has to be presented with new games that are bold and innovate somehow. These games need to make older games obsolete. Of course, these titles need to be system exclusive.

 The Switch 2 has to be neutral when it comes to how it can be played, just like its predecessor. There’s no time to waddle being a DS at start, or Wii U at all. It can’t afford to be too expensive either, and base itself on mature technology in order to keep general costs down.

The biggest threat to Switch 2 is Nintendo itself. They have no competition on the handheld market at all. There’s no Game Gear or PSP to challenge them. Microsoft has effectively gone third party with Xbox brand, which fulfils their steps as Sega’s sequel. I honestly don’t know what’s Sony’s current plan is with the censorships and Helldivers II fiasco going on, but they still seem keen to let exclusive games to go onto Steam. Sony’s synergy between their Hollywood and gaming sections hasn’t really served either.

What about Nintendo still wanting a walled garden, a closed system? The media really likes to sound this bell, telling the readers that the time of exclusive consoles are over. Microsoft and Sony have failed as first party developers in the console market, as the reason for console is to offer a platform for the provider’s games. The games validate the existence of the console. Nintendo is both hardware and software developer, that is their business. This offers simplicity to the consumers, who simply want to play games without needing anything extra. The PlayStation and Xbox systems aren’t in a direct competition anymore. Apple is like Nintendo. They are a combined hardware and software developer. If their OS, or the ecosystem in general, was freely ported to generic PCs and mobile phones, it’d destroy their business model completely. This applies to any corporation that produces their own software and hardware, including companies like John Deere, who manufacture their own tractors and forestry machinery alongside the software that goes with them.

Just because the Switch 2 is coming out, it won’t stop sales for the Switch. It may end up topping the PlayStation 2 in sales in the end, but that’s still a tall order. God help Nintendo if it does, because that’s when shit hits the fan. Then Nintendo will have a legacy they can’t live up to in their current state.

Playing chores

Dailies and weeklies have really put me off from playing tons of games. You know, I was really into the mobile game UmaMusume when it was new, even if it was stupid hardcore title. I dropped it mostly because I missed a day there, a day here, unable to finish the Log In bonuses and such. I tried getting into Street Fighter 6 recently, using it as a medicine to my block of playing competitive versus games online, but the same thing happened here. I’m looking at other somewhat recent games I’ve played, and all the ones I dropped mid-way through were mostly because of the whole daily grind.

Video and computer game publishers and developers have done a lot to keep players engaged with their games longer than just the base game. An endless content game is a dream, where players would never leave the game and would end up paying more through additional characters, all sorts of items, maps and whatnot. Games as platforms is a term some have used, like Capcom of Street Fighter V. We no longer have editions, expansions or any sort of separate releases. This of course means the original versions of the games are lost and rendered unplayable; you can’t go back playing the first iteration of SFV.

Lootboxes of course are another thing that adds to a game’s grind, which has been under fire due to the whole gambling element behind it. UmaMusume did get some pennies from me, but ultimately it was largely worthless. I don’t own anything about the game, and once it dies, I will never be able access the game again. It would be great if it’d get a raising simulator on the consoles without the gatcha bullshit, but that’s not how these games make their money. Without companies nickelling and diming the players, they wouldn’t see the same amount of revenues. Yet Baldur’s Gate 3 showcased how a complete game without any of the anti-consumers practices can yield both customer love and high sales. After all, nickelling and diming mostly works for a select group called Whales, who put everything they have into these games, mobile or not.

I’d rather see companies making positive emotional connections with the players with single-purchase titles, like the aforementioned Baldur’s Gate 3. On the long term, it’ll yield more fruitful profits than putting off sections of your potential market. Then again, publishers and developers haven’t exactly made themselves friendly to the market with the whole translation bullshit with advisory companies as of late.

Gaming shouldn’t feel like a goddamn chore. You shouldn’t be forced to play a game for any reason. Gaming is different from sports, despite both are at core part of the same overall game culture. The main difference is that games, be it card, tabletop RPGs or whatever form of mechanic or electronic gaming, is for entertainment and fun. Human is a being that requires play, as do most other animals. Play is a universal language between the more intellectual species what play is. An ant probably can’t figure out why you’re rolling a ball at it, but a puppy or a monkey sure can. Species across can discern different kinds of play. Playing is an absolutely important part of life as a tool of teaching and relaxation. Gaming can’t magically become “something greater” or some other grandiose bullshit, because it already is equally as important as storytelling among others as well as part of it.

When I was a wee lad, I kept hearing that playing is for kids. Adults, or teens, don’t play games anymore, they’re serious about things. Of course, this is yet another form of bullcrap people tell say. Later in life these same people build doll houses or with miniature train tracks, the same people spend hours on hours dotting down words into a word puzzle. It’s all a form of play. Only the method is different. Hobbies in general are an action of play. Some hobbies are just more acceptable than others against the tapestry of culture. You won’t find many people who’d see similarities between a Street Fighter player and someone who play hockey. Both are an act of playing, requiring physical and mental training as well as strategizing on different levels. Neither is an act required to live, they’re both about playing a game.

Trophies fall into the same chore-inducing category with dailies and weeklies. Sure, they often pose you a challenge to beat and some find them satisfactory new ways to play games. My old age does come through, but people did do challenge runs and find new ways to play games themselves without devs coming them up. Weeklies and dailies are the same thing, putting up challenges and other chores that ultimately hamper the player’s own way and wishes to play the game. These force a change the way we play games, if we give them any weight. Of course, the game gives these things weight by dishing rewards for a well-done job, turning playing games into a whole new kind of Skinner’s Box. All just to keep players engaged longer and making that lizard brain kick a bit more when shiny thing drops on the screen.

There’s a danger in video and computer games nowadays with all this additional gamification on top of the game itself. Some already find the act of playing boring and not satisfactory enough. Now you have to have a little Ding! going in the corner telling you how you’ve just rescued 50 players in coop mode or how you’ve just parried 40 attacks from your opponents.

I sincerely question the current state of playing games. Rather than expand and explore the market, we’ve seen companies trying to appeal to smaller demographics and going to the source to change how games are made. Instead of expanding the market, they’re doing their best to make as bland and washed out games they can to ultimately appeal to nobody. Games are increasingly less about playing the game and more about the framing devices the developers can built. Players are guided through everything and nothing is left for them to explore through the games’ mechanics themselves. It’s handholding at its finest, as if the devs and publishers are scared to let people use their own head. That said, most will just use an online guide if they get stuck, so there’s that.

The reward for being good at a game has always been the permission to pass further in the game. Now that gaming media wants all games to be beatable without effort, maybe the constant key jangling has its place. If your game can’t be engaging and rewarding on its own rights, you might as well resort for the worse option.

Games are for all, preaching is for believers

How does an industry survive without customers? They concentrate on the very few, who will consume their goods like maniacs. They spend insane amounts of money on trinkets and other little things. There is no real market to speak of; there are only individual customers at this state. With mobile phone game market, these people are known as the whales, individuals who spend obscene amounts money to gain new random rolls.

We’ve seen this happening with console and PC gaming already, with BandaiNamco and Capcom being at the forefront in nickelling and diming the customer to death. While publishers may be still be talking about how the most sales, and most profit, is made during the few first weeks of a game’s release, I think we’re well past sales of units at this point. It’s all about the revenue and it has to be constant. Hence why they suck you dry and use every single element they can justify being two to five dollars on the storefront. Want a second set of clothes to your character? Costs five bucks, for every character. Microtransactions and outright useless DLC costs more than the base game nowadays, yet they seem to sell.

Baldur’s Gate 3 saw a massive success without any of this greedy bullshit. Almost everything surrounding the game was a positive, and people were gladly paying the full price. A great game will convince you that its entertainment value is worth the entrance price. It’ll make more money in the long term after it gets re-released in future platforms or under some sort of remaster banner. It’ll probably outlive many of its contemporaries, as so many ageless games have already done.

That’s assuming games will be sold you in the future. Streaming video games is old news by this point, it’s been tried many times and has failed as many times. Microsoft’s Game Pass is closest to the whole idealized Netflix model of gaming. You pay for a subscription and get all these games, and yet just like with Netflix, you won’t play most of them. All these games you can access and nobody plays. How will the developers get their money out? Microtransactions seem to be the best way. Even then, you have to get the people to subscribe to these services. Whales don’t live forever.

The gaming market is whack. There’s little to no competition between companies anymore, there’s no drive to serve the customer. That’d be for the consumers’ benefit, we can’t have that. Even putting up a group informing customers about something with gaming goods gets hatred from the industry. Developers, publishers and the gaming media hate transparency, as it shows how deeply corrupted and nepotistic their relationships are. A festering wound will heal faster when it gets some sunlight.

I don’t think there is another industry that seems to hate their customers this deeply. They want the money that’s in the market, but they don’t want to cater to it. It’s like with the Wii and DS. Nintendo expanded the gaming market by hitting the Blue Ocean with software that were major hits among people who didn’t buy games normally. Most other developers and publishers saw this, but wanted to cater solely for the hardcore market. The Wii gets a bad rap because of all the shovelware produced for it, yet it shows how little the larger game industry understood how to expand their market and why it expanded. We’re currently in a similar situation now, where the media keeps telling us gaming needs to get more diverse and expand outside its current audience, but keep missing the mark by specifically not catering to the mass market and making red ocean market titles. Electronic gaming is currently the largest entertainment media form we have, surpassing both film and music in terms of sales. There has never been so many people playing games. Grannies play games on YouTube. That’s something completely new. It’s not because there are games that are specifically made for grandmothers, but because there are tons of games that are made to appeal the mass market, are entertaining and well made.

In the mid-90s there was a big hubbub about games for girls. I wrote about it some years back. I should re-write the older one someday, but the core point is rather spot-on still; by trying to appeal to specific sex in the market, the developers and publishers overshot. Most girl-games are trash, but nowadays nobody really tries even to talk with the distinction between boys’ and girls’ games, as the overlap of the sexes with the most successful games is significant.

The major difference between something like Chop Suey and games marketed with inclusivity and diversity were made with passion and intention to produce goods specifically to cater to an audience rather than force The Message into goods that don’t benefit from it.

The gaming customer rejects what doesn’t belong in games. Politicization of gaming has been vehemently rejected as it serves only to ruin the entertainment value of games. Look at something like Forspoken and how the game isn’t just a lousy action game, but also a message dud. Western game developers fear the power the market wields. They hate the pushback the customer can do simply by talking with each other. Customers will always behave in a manner publishers and devs don’t want them to, because that costs them money. Does anyone remember The Order: 1886? The game that was an early PlayStation 4 release, and nobody really remembers it afterwards. It was all about the peak graphics and cinematics with boring and lousy play. One of the devs were vocal how they were sad they had to put play bits between the cinematics. One of the prime examples why modern gaming is so stagnant, when people who don’t even want to make games get into positions of making million dollar products that are supposed to have mass market appeal.

The thing about electronic gaming is that it is anti-establishment. Its roots are in the rebellious pinball halls and penny arcades. The gaming customer doesn’t really care what the developers, publishers or gaming media have to say about the consumer, because just the act of withholding a purchase holds all the power in the market. It doesn’t matter what they call the consumer, by what ideology or side they take to sell their product, because if it’s not entertaining enough, it won’t sell. When the developers are in league with the establishment, the gamers revolt. That’s always been the case. The gaming market’s providers can’t nudge their consumers, because they always get rejected.

Gamer may be a dirty word to some, yet Satoru Iwata used it to describe himself. It read on his business card. He didn’t want to contract the gaming market to small sections of the market or cater to small esoteric groups. He wanted to expand it outwards from the usual circles for everyone. He did it with the Wii and DS. His actions loved the customer and welcomed everyone with opens arms to join. Wii would like to play was a great mantra. It invited everyone to play games.

Switching the market

On an occasion on social media, and elsewhere, I see people mentioning how the Switch isn’t competing with one of the HDR twins. Sometimes it’s that the Switch can’t compete with the HDR twins, but the core message is basically the same, pointing out the hardware between the consoles are far apart. I can’t help but to point out how the weakest console of its generation has constantly come at top, so the hardware argument doesn’t have history to base on. People are fast to note that the SNES had better hardware than the Mega Drive, but of course they’d ignore 32X and Sega CD. The Switch can compete with the HDR twins just fine, but is it?

The first question we have to ask is In what market are these companies in? Out of all the three companies only Nintendo is purely a video game company. Both Microsoft and Sony have their fingers in other electronics and media. However, as long as they put out a box that is intended for playing video games, we can say all three are in business of providing a video game console. Nintendo has an extensive library of games they develop themselves for their console, something that both Microsoft and Sony have historically faltered doing. Microsoft’s acquisition of developers recently is surely to change their consoles lack of recognizable titles outside Halo, with Sony managing to kill their recognized IPs every generation. Nintendo keeps certain core franchises in circulation every generation, so they have arguably better track record with this. However, IPs like StarTropics are essentially dead in the water and go unrecognized.

Nevertheless, we should note one important thing; whatever these businesses think they, produce is worth nothing if it isn’t in line with what the customer thinks. If customers think the Big Three are in business of making consoles and video games, they will not find success if they do something else.

Markets aren’t something that just grow out of nothing. A market forms when business satisfies a need or want a group of customers have. When I started this blog ten plus years ago, video game market had some history we could examine and view critically. I believe the market has matured enough that we have electronic gaming has become mundane. It’s not exiting to anyone, game developers aren’t special rock stars. What we’ve seen is something classical; electronic games market was borne when the business recognized there is potential in selling a box playing games, and thus a customer is created. Business is all about understanding human behaviour. Examine and understand why and how people behave, act and react, and you’ll have much easier time producing successful goods. Ignore your market’s behaviour and you’ll find losses.

If you look at what the function of video games is in its market, you should find that it’s about entertainment, the same as films and music. The point of games is to entertain the people buying them. You could describe this as the job of games. Viewing video games from this point of view, the separate market of electronic games vanishes. Sony’s and Nintendo’s competition in the entertainment market becomes more apparent, as Nintendo produces games and toys. Sony produces music, films and games. Both companies have seen global success as entertainment businesses. Microsoft’s history is very different, and so has their approach with the Xbox. I believe this is the issue why Microsoft constantly fails in Japan. A real example would be the time when Microsoft used one of their E3 presentation talking about music, television and streaming on their console. The more other forms of entertainment you have, the more direct competition you have with your games. In hindsight, we can see why Nintendo didn’t allow other forms of entertainment on their console. People might hate purchasing multiple devices, but when the games are desirable enough, they’ll sell anyway.

Markets and demographics often go hand in hand. This is a terrible mistake, as businesses will always start getting ideas to pander to certain kind of people rather than keeping an eye on the market’s motions. When a market starts getting goods that are defined by its target demographic, you’ll find things like Star Trek getting immature with its showcases of tits and ass because the demographic is mostly younger men. There’s a reason why Enterprise didn’t see much success.  Luckily, the showrunners have admitted they failed with Enterprise, but I doubt we’ll ever see that with nuTrek. When you start hyper-focusing and pandering to certain sect of people, the market you’re producing goods to will continue to diminish until you find some kind of floor-level of demographic, a small group of people the good works for and for nobody else. Star Trek used to entertain more people than just certain niche or particular demographics. Nowadays, we can’t say the same.

Take a look at the 1983 US video game market crash. The main reason why the market crashed in in the US was that the games offered weren’t entertaining. In Europe and Asian markets you could find games that entertained the locals just fine. The NES was absolute magic when it hit the US as games were entertaining again. Super Mario Bros. was supposed to be the ultimate cartridge game and was better than anything the US market had seen. In Europe, the crash never occurred and gaming was in a healthy state. The NES was mishandled across the Old Continent and Nintendo wouldn’t find the pole position until Donkey Kong Country. Japan’s game market never really faltered. I have no real answer why the US market failed where European and Asian gaming markets continued to find success.

Let’s turn back to the original question; Is the Switch competing with either of the HDR twins, or can it even compete with either one? The answer is yes, as the Switch competes in entertaining the market, the customer, with games. That is its first, primary function. Its hybrid console nature makes it more accessible than either of the two HDR consoles, and is alone in offering a new portable video game library. While all the hand held emulator consoles are nice, they’re offering the same games we’ve already played. Steamdeck is an outlier, but its main purpose isn’t to run emulation; it’s a laptop with controller bolted into its face.

When market, the people, become spreadsheet pie-charts and quotas to fulfill according to demographic, you know the developer has lost their touch with the flesh and blood customer. All they see is charts and numbers. If you’re not competing with anyone, your good will end up being lousy. When an entertainer loses their hunger for success, they lose their passion to stride forwards. This applies to any form of entertainment, especially G.R. Martin. He’ll never finish that book series. When all you have is demographic at your table, you generally can say that a thirty-years old guy has this and that taste in games. What about forty-something housewife? As a demographic, they don’t have many targeted games. The function of the game as the entertainer has to something else than a multiplayer war simulator. What kind of job a game should have for this housewife? Look at the Wii and the DS, there’s the answer. It’s not easy to make games for housewives, or in the sense of this point, for everyone. It essentially requires developers to make games they might not want to, abandon the “ultimate game” they dream about.

The Switch is very much competing with the HDR twins. A console doesn’t win with its hardware, that’s just means to an end; to play games, to be entertained.

In search of Cyber-Socky

The hottest thing in the US kids’ television in the early-to-mid 1990s is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Debuting in August 1993 on Fox Children’s Network, Power Rangers pioneered a new genre in television in the Western shores. Power Rangers would be challenged by DiC Entertainment’s Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad in September 1994. The genre of these shows, in May 1994, was known as cyber-socky.

The term failed to stick around. The Internet is empty of search results, no Youtuber mentions it and no hits on Usenet searches. The only news I managed to find are both from 1994, one from Television Business International May 1994 issue pages 52-56 , and Helsingin Sanomat April 27. 1994 issue’s article, freely translated as It’s not wrong to punch a mutant in the head in fiction; Discussion about violence blooms around the globe, but action changes dimensions. The term doesn’t appear in promotional posters, leaflets or videos Saban and Fox were putting out either in 1993 or 1994. Did the term just come and go without anyone taking any note of it?

It’s not too rare for PR people to give something a special name to make it sell better, which might be the case here. Maybe it was someone at Fox, or at Saban, who went to Cannes in 1994 to sell Power Rangers to international markets. Apparently, Saban changed Cybetron into V.R. Troopers because of DiC already using it in Samurai Syber-Squad, though they spelled it with S instead of C. Samurai Syber-Squad was initially named Power Boy before DiC agreed to change the name after Saban claimed the word power was too closely associated with Power Rangers. The aforementioned TV Business International has a claim that it was done out of professional courtesy. Feb. 7 1994 issue of Broadcasting and Cable on page 64 supports this, though in order to avoid a lawsuit. No mention about the show’s genre.

As per mentioned in the Helsingin Sanomat article about the 1994 Marché International des Programmes de Télévision (MIPTV for short), Arto Kivinen of Finnish Commercial Television and Kaisu Isto from National Finnish Broadcast’s Channel 1 Kaisu Isto rejected Power Rangers from their channels, citing that their Danish colleague didn’t have the guts to buy the show for their television either. According to Kivinen, the show had philosophy based on goodness, but it didn’t sit well to Finnish television. They were looking for more action-y shows, but not to the extreme Power Rangers took it. Isto supported this view, stating that while the show has seen success, it is coarse and something he wouldn’t like a television show to go for.

I haven’t found if archived Danish newspapers would have anything similar to mention, but I admit my language skills in Danish are weak.

Perhaps Helsingin Sanomat were right to write that all the TV shows presented at Cannes in 1994 were adaptations, and only cyber-socky was offering something new. Perhaps either one of them should’ve picked up the show, as a year later in 1995 PTV, predecessor for Finnish channel Nelonen, would start airing the show to a massive success. At this point, there is no mention of cyber-socky anywhere in local newspapers or periodical publications.

Looking at American news segments from 1993 to 1995 I can’t find any mention of cyber-socky either. Whatever the news segments were about, they’d always remember to add something about parents questioning whether or not the show is good for their children.

I managed find a mention of Power Rangers in a Dutch paper in their 1993 report on MIPTV, but the term is nowhere to in the article. Maybe cyber-socky wasn’t pitched until 1994. The show was already airing in the Netherlands in 1994, so maybe sensational news about it were out of date. It’s more likely that the term was pitched specifically at MIPTV in 1994.

Where the term even comes from? Perhaps its evident in some sources, or perhaps to someone with a half a decade of American television background. All I have is an educated guess and wager it was derived from chop-socky, often also written as one word. Chop-socky refers to the Hong Kong action and martial arts films, spanning in usage from the late 1960s to early 1980s.

Cyber-socky seems to be a natural growth from this; overblown storylines, special effects and martial arts action is something Power Rangers shares with chop-socky, just with the whole 1990s cyber-future thing in hand. Whether or not the term carries a negative connotation is up you, but seeing how the term was borrowed for Cartoon Network’s Chop Socky Chooks, I don’t think the term in general has a positive fame at this moment. Cyber-socky also being an adaptation of an Asian property, dubbing over the action, is reminiscent of bad kung-fu dubs. A practice that still haunts these Asian movies in the Western markets.

I should note that Contemporary Japanese Film, a book from 1999, uses cyber-socky as one word to describe a Japanese original work with the term, so I guess whether or not a show needs to be cut up and dubbed to qualify as cyber-socky or if its something we could liberally use as an English-language term for all Japanese costumed hero action shows is still up in the air.

The term’s rare usage gives some meager indication that the term did stuck somewhere a little bit, just not in common use. Because of this I can’t hope it to come back into use, but I do see value in re-appropriating the term for any media product that replaces the original language whilst making localised changes of some sorts. Be it graphical changes, introducing new footage or whatnot.

I hate to end this in a disappointment. This post more or less ended up being Hey this term exist and I want to share it with the world. If nothing else, it has kept me entertained for a while. Perhaps someone with better google-fu could find more resources, or I’ll have to ask around from people who were associated with Saban and Fox at the time. We’re about thirty years removed from the ground zero of things though, so this obscure little tidbit probably is lost to memory with most.

Serve the dish the customer would like

While I’m on a deep dive on an old-ass genre name for Japanese live-action shows adapted for American television, Palworld has been distracting me on how I miss playing Pokémon. The two are not in the same ballpark when it comes to their play rules or genre, but what the earlier Pokémon games share with Palworld for me is the sheer feel of adventure.

I gave up on monster collecting years back when Game Freak refused to keep their new systems in their newer titles. Losing things like the day cycle and weather, not to mention seasons, is bullshit. After Pokémon got out of its infancy and got stuck in the quagmire of never-change-it model of games development, they got boring. No experimentation. Some bits followed styles of the time for sure, but holy shit just let me go on an adventure again. Give me massive world just to explore with complex cave systems to struggle through and climb high mountains climb. None of that has been in Pokémon ever since it left the GameBoy. Pokémon doesn’t need a story about creator god or master monsters of time and space. All it needs is a vast world to explore with a loose plot tying things together, and even that is optional.

Palworld scratches that itch. You’ve got a world to explore with your friends. I’m not keen on the survival mechanics, but base building is nice. Combat mechanics are basic, yet functional. Most importantly, they don’t slow down or bog the play. The monsters are lively themselves with nice amount of characterization, sometimes showcasing more expression than Pokémon in the latest games. God I miss how animated the Stadium games were. If an indie dev with a shoestring budget can make a million dollar seller that breaks player records on Steam, what’s keeping Game Freak from doing the same? It’s not the games that are keeping Pokémon afloat though, it’s the merchandise.

When I started writing this post last week, Palworld has 1 280 785 players online, beating Counter-Strike 2 and DOTA 2. It’s top record is 2 101 535 players, second only to PUBG: Battlegounds. Whatever opinions you and me have on the game, like it or hate it, Palworld’s success can’t be denied. Whatever the game has is what people want to play. Most recognize that it is early in the development, lacking in parts and not a full product. Nevertheless it has come out in better condition compared to new titles from established franchises and studios. It’s like Baldur’s Gate 3, where the people who were making the game wanted to make a game people wanted to play, rather than making a game the developers and publishers want the customers to play.

The games industry has always been about serving the customer interests, and if you manage to have a successful arthouse game or something completely out of the left field, that’s great. One in a million hit. Historically games, be it electronic or not, have iterated on previous games to build their rules. What if we could do this? or What if this would go like this? or maybe even What if we do the same thing, but in a new way? have all been ways studios and publishers iterated on themselves and on their competitors.

The lineage I keep mentioning on this blog is from war games meant to train and depict real battlefields to miniature war gaming, which lead to singular character war gaming, that paved way to Dungeons & Dragons and other Role-Playing games. These paved way to Ultima and Wizardry, that Japanese developers use as templates for Hydlide, Dragon Slayer, but would combine into Dragon Quest that spawned the DQ-clones of the late 1980s, like Final Fantasy. The latter two aforementioned would be end up being the cornerstone of console RPGs, driven by a menu system rather than click-and-point computer-RPGs would go for.

Another example would the Fighting game boom of the early-to-mid 1990s. Street Fighter II was bigger than The Beatles. SNK would poach some of the original Street Fighter development staff, who went to make Garou Densetsu/ Fatal Fury. Capcom would sue Data East for their Fighter’s History game, which Capcom lost. World Heroes started out as a clone, but really went to its own deep end. Konami’s Martial Champion was trying to jump the 2D fighting game bandwagon. Similarly, Virtual Fighter revolutionized both the use 3D graphics and fighting games at the same time, after which Namco poached developers from Sega to start their own 3D fighting game called Tekken. Virtua Fighter would also lead into Dead or Alive and whole slew of other 3D fighting games.

I shouldn’t even need to mention 2D action-games. From Donkey Kong to Mario Bros., from Mario Bros. to Super Mario Bros. and then the whole mascot war exploded wide open. Hell, Crash Bandicoot was called Sonic’ Ass Game in development because of its sources of inspiration.

Iteration is the name of the game. Be it your own company’s games or your competitors, doing something that’s popular, with your own twist or way of making things, is generally accepted.

Of course, that doesn’t mean jack shit if the game doesn’t sell. Corporations and companies make games to sell, and if their products don’t sell, there’s no real point in having a game market. Of course, something selling like hotcakes doesn’t mean it’s high quality or well made, but it does represent what people value in a product.

To use films as a comparative example, Marvel’s Endgame is criticized of being rather lacklustre movie. The writing may be trite, but that’s not Endgame’s value. It’s value is in being the end point of Marvel movies up to that point. As it tends to be with film series, its quality affected future films in the series, and if the falling box office is of any indication, customers aren’t finding value in Marvel movies to the same extent any more. The same applies to Disney’s Star Wars, but we’ve beaten that dead horse long enough.

Palworld is extremely interesting as a case study how industry insiders, some developers and commentators want to paint the game as bad and “not-good.” Developers of course have their professional pride, and it is clear that within the industry there are set conventions, and accepted methods and views how to make a game and what makes game worthwhile. Palworld is not disruptive to the industry because it copies and combines elements and mechanics from other titles, but because it clearly has delivered play people enjoy and have been yearning for. Maybe it’s the different approaches the players can have in the game, be either cruel to your Pals or soft-hearted, or simply not to use any of the guns.  Options are many, and while some are more encouraged than others, the game really doesn’t force them on you.

My unfavoured take really is that it doesn’t matter of a product is objectively good. What matters whether or not it delivers according to the wants and needs to the customers. You can have the worst kind of film or game, but if people find it enjoyable or fun, it doesn’t matter if you’ve thrown millions to polish it with your thousand-head workforce. The effort and resources poured into a product amount to nothing if it the customers don’t embrace it. The age old thing about things needing to be good enough to succeed holds true. Naturally, this doesn’t mean developers and publishers should abandon whatever they’re doing for mid-tier schlock. Rather, take Palworld as an example on execution and delivery, where things jell together well enough to fulfill yearnings and delivers fun.

These survival games often have an open-ended play, where the game stops when you decide to stop playing them. Minecraft is still the best example of this, and one of the most successful games of all time. As many have pointed out, Palworld is more comparable to these open-world games than Pokémon in most senses, as the monster collecting and battling has been largely bolted on as an extra, with some nice welds to hold things together.

Hell, games like Cassette Beasts and TemTem have been a more direct clones of Pokémon and haven’t seen the same amount if vitriol. I guess everybody loves an underdog until the underdog sees massive success.

Other forms or reactions are fascinating as well. Apparently, now Japanese talent agencies have instructed their talents not to talk about Palworld openly on social media or during interviews. This is to prevent a backlash from the Pokémon Company, if they ever chose to react that way. As of writing, Nintendo, Game Freak and the Pokémon Company haven’t really reacted directly to Palworld outside a notice about inquiries about legality of “another studio’s game’s” designs and such. While I don’t know if the talent agencies have been told not to mention Palworld in order not to lose contracts with Pokémon and other Nintendo related IPs, Nintendo themselves have Voldemort’d Palworld. I’m sure Yo-Kai Watch scared the shit out of The Pokémon Company, and now someone in there has crunched some numbers. Game Freak is a reactive company in that sense, and whatever the future of Pokémon holds, it just might have been influenced by this massive indie success. They’ve upped their social media presence after Palworld‘s release, if nothing else.

Palworld is going strong for now. The game’s initial boom period is ending as early adopters have spent the game’s content. A new thing will come along and sweep away people who either are waiting for a new patch or don’t find anything else to do in the game anymore. The most enthusiast players have exhausted the current content, while others will drop off after seeing what’s the hubbub about. Not even the highest budgeted games have long retention these days though, so I wouldn’t expect what essentially amounts to a public alpha to stay its welcome longer. This week we will see drop in player numbers, sales will slow down and whatever bait articles news sites will dwindle. The cycle of these things is so fast nowadays.

I feel like this post is becoming increasingly repetitive and spiraling into incoherence. I could wait for another week for things to pop up, new posts to turn up just to add to the whole thing, but we’ve seen more than enough.

One thing though I think I must put my own dots on is whether or not the game has “warmth” or if you can grow attached to your Pals. Of course you can, with fans of Palworld already testifying how Gorirat or Ragnahawk is their favourite Pal. Pokémon may sugarcoat Pokémon training by saying how strongest trainers have strongest ties with their pocket monsters, but seeing how hard people work to optimize their teams, kicking weakest links off, breeding them them for hours to get the best stats and natures just to kick them off the team when the meta changes shows that it is ultimately a very utilitarian regiment building first and foremost. Sure, you can completely disregard this in normal play if you don’t intend to compete or play multiplayer, but nothing really prevents the same sugarcoating from applying to Palworld.

After all, in order to get the strongest Pals out there, you need to train them in battles against evil organizations and other Pals all the while taking care of their injuries. Bringing them back to your homebase, where a warm meal awaits you and your Pals awaits you, made by other Pals you’ve befriended on your survival trip to the island. Or all that’s just automated slavery. You can pick and choose whichever angle you want.

Palworld’s too new for people to have formed solid emotional links yet. You don’t have anything else but the gam to go by. There are no combined market forces pushing a cartoon and toys for you to fall in love with. Only a cold soul would treat Pals are merely extensions of their function.

People are enjoying a game. It has made is mark in terms of sales and as a chart breaker, and with bit of controversy helping to boost its visibility. People have found value in it, and the core of the game is seemingly fun across the board. I hope the staff at PocketPair will put their big boy pants on and get to work. There’s a promising future in this game as long as they don’t squander this opening of theirs. While we’re hoping for the heaven and stars, I hope this’ll sow a seed that’ll make other companies think a bit what kind of games they’re making, and why.

Monomania isn’t good for your health, or how source hunting kept me awake during night shift

Palworld is stirring some old sandbox arguments again, with kids going on about how their favourite monster battling and raising series is better than the other. Some find monsters in their pockets better, some would rather venture on the File Island. Then again, some like making monsters out of music CD data, so everyone has their own kinks. However, a strange argument about Digimon predating Pokémon pops up surprisingly often, but when asked no source is provided.

To look at the history of things, let’s start with Pokémon. If Bulbapedia and Helix Chamber are anything to go by as sources, Game Freak pitched Capsule Monsters at Nintendo in 1990. The main source of inspiration has been Satoshi Tajiri’s own childhood, with bug collecting and Ultraseven’s Capsule Monsters probably being the main points. Helix Chamber’s research on how Pokémon’s attacks were developed seem to indicate that the game was first inspired by how team member monsters battled in the first SaGa game. Somewhere down the like more elements were introduced and how attacks worked went under renovation, something the game did multiple times before it was split into Red and Green versions and released on 27^th of February 1996.

I admit, I’m not versed on the developmental history of Tamagotchi. Aki Maita and Akihiro Yokoi are the two people coined to have developed the concept for Bandai. However, Yokoi seems to be the originator of the concept, as he was the founder of WiZ, a company that handled toy development and planning. According to a 1997 New York Times article, he was inspired by an ad where a kid couldn’t bring his pet turtle on a vacation. Hence, a virtual pet. The original proposal for Tamagotchi seems to have been made in 1995, which was about a mobile pet in the form of a wrist watch rather than a keychain creature raising simulator.

Aki Maita worked at Bandai and helped to solidify Tamagotchi’s concepts into its final form. At its release in 23^rd of November 1996, Maita was cited as the creator of Tamagotchi for PR reasons, though Yokoi as the brains behind the original pitch was publicized with the release of the first Digital Monster V-Pet in 26^th of June 1997.

The names associated with Digital Monster are Makoto Kitagawa and Kenji Watanabe. While the two WiZ employees were working on the spec documents for the second generation of Tamagotchi, they had discussed about the concept for a raising simulator for boys. WiZ would then pitch Digimon to Bandai in 1996.

All this can be skimmed for various wikis and such, but as we know, anyone can edit wikis and hey don’t necessarily have factual info. As it was with Digital Monster article, which had it stating that the Digimon franchise started in 1993, despite even the cited source putting it into 1997. This was very recently changed, so somebody noticed and changed it. You can still see the typo being mentioned in the History page. So, at some point someone had put 1993 instead of 1997 into the article, which probably was the source of many people citing Digimon as the older franchise.

If you’re taking anything out of this post, let it be never to trust Wikipedia. Hell, the original typo for 1993 seems be based on a citation for a PlayStation Life article, that is citing Gematsu’s article that was linking to the original source; Premium Bandai webstore page for the 20^th anniversary release of the original V-pet. These things trigger my monomania, making me want to find something else I can put more trust on.

So, let’s disregard all those wikis and my tangents. We can find the original release date for Pocket Red and Green at the official Japanese site for the series, which supports the 1996.27.2 date. It was Tuesday.

TBS News’ story from 2021, dates the original Tamagotchi release to 1996.11.23. I’ll have to use this as a supplementary, as Bandai’s official history page for Tamagotchi doesn’t mention the day. Their history page for Digimon does have the original release date of 1997.06.26.

Now that we’ve stablished the original Japanese release dates, going back to the original argument what came first is now solved with one reason why some people might’ve been citing Digimon as a 1993 release. There are few more reasons I can think why people could make this mistake, but the dates discussed here are the original Japanese releases.

For the North American market, both Tamagotchi and Digital Monster both arrived before Pokémon. Bandai’s 1998 press release cites Tamagotchi’s US release date to be December 1^st, 1997 and states the nationwide release of DigiMon happening on 10^th of February 1998. Toys R Us got to pre-sell them in December 5^th 1997. The press release is adamant on calling both the first virtual pet and virtual monster, which seems a pre-emptive tactic against Pokémon’s future arrival.

Pokémon Red and Blue wouldn’t hit the NA market until September 28^th, 1998. We can nab the European release date for Red and Blue from the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console store page, with the date being May 10^th, 1999.

Trying to pin down the original release dates for the European version of Tamagotchi and Digital Monster is a bit more challenging, as Bandai or fans don’t seem to care about the Old World. However, based on news articles I’ve seen tonight, Tamagotchi hit European markets in 1997 and DigiMon followed after it in 1998. Nintendo didn’t handle the European markets all that well in the 1980s and 1990s, so Bandai could easily take advantage of the three-year period it took for the original Pokémon to arrive. I distinctly remember reading a newspaper article about the monster collecting wars from a tabloid, which stated that Bandai had more years under its belt as the maker of monster raising simulators. Might be a false memory though.

So, inferring from this I’ll say that some people are correct that Tamagotchi and Digital Monster are older than Pokémon in terms of release dates in North America and Europe. Kids don’t really go to look for original Japanese release years of their games and toys, and most adults don’t give a shit. If you never go look into the history of things, it’s understandable that personal recollection might conflict with factuality. Naturally this would also lead YouTubers and podcaster people using their personal recollections rather than double-checking facts, which perpetuate the misunderstanding.

An element that pops up with the bitching which one came first almost always comes with some arguments about Digimon being a ripoff of Pokémon or vice versa. Some people throw Tamagotchi in there as a catch-all to predate it further, but as we’ve seen from the dates, all three are a bit too close to be directly inspired by the competitor/ sister series.

Pokémon’s six-years long development cycle didn’t coincide with Digimon in no manner, and Tamagotchi was pitched at Bandai the same year Pocket Monsters was revealed to the public in Japan, with the trademark filing date being September 11^th, 1995. Pokémon would have a later filing date of August 9^th, 1996. You can find these on J-Plat Pat with Registration numbers 4245696 and 4097791 respectively. All this is to illustrate that neither Tamagotchi nor Digimon had any effect on how the original Pokémon games were forming up. However, I can’t say the same about Digital Monster taking a thing from Pokémon, but entertaining these ifs is iffy at best, and a useless exercise at worst. However, the scopes between the three were completely different in 1997. Pokémon offered an extensive world and 150 monsters to collect and train while both Tamagotchi and Digital Monster had a smaller scale experience with emphasize on pet care. Frankly, Bandai’s virtual pets were steamrolled by the Pocket Monsters in the end.

However, I am going to entertain the idea that Bandai wanted their product on the world stage first and took advantage of the longer localization process Pokémon demanded.

I haven’t appeased my original source of my momentary monomania though. I haven’t found articles that maintain Digimon as the older franchise. Maybe all it took was that one Wikipedia article’s typo to mislead people. Though I’m sure if I looked harder into old newspaper articles I’d find a bunch of them. However, as I mentioned, I’ve read these articles myself, but that might be something I’m misremembering. I did find one market salesmen mentioning how Tamagotchi was a passed fad with the arrival of Pokémon from a 2000 news article, but that’s not scratching the itch.

Though it’s funny how I can find a lot of new articles in one newspaper about Tamagotchi being a useless toy, and then selling out nationwide in the same month from 1997, only to be followed by a news article a couple of months later Marion Caspers-Merk from Germany stating how Tamagotchi was becoming a little devil and an environmental danger. Unsurprisingly, the first news regarding Pokémon is about the shock episode Electric Soldier Porygon caused. One of the best ways to describe Digital Monster I saw about digital Darwinism. Pokémon, at least as a game, seems to have made Bandai’s two raising sims obsolete as they landed in the Western shores. Market realities rarely care which series we find personally preferable.

I may not have satisfied myself about finding any source that would’ve claimed Digimon predating Pokémon. It feels anti-climatic if all it takes is one typo. At least I learned that Japanese costumed hero live-action shows had a genre name in the US in the wake of Power Rangers circa 1994; cyber-socky.

Pay for what you find valuable

Ubisoft’s Philippe Tremblay wants you, the customer, to get comfortable with not owning their games. Seems like he missed that people who use Steam as their main driver more or less already are.

Tremblay wants to push for the subscription model for video and computer games as that has been somewhat a success as a continuation of television. The whole streaming wars thing might disagree with this view, even when Disney+ seems to be bleeding customers. People seem to prefer when everything is in one place rather than multiple services each popping here and there with worse options than the last. These services are going fast the way of the cable TV.

Ubisoft has been the proponent for sub-based products, with them launching Uplay+ in 2019, rechristened as Ubisoft+ the year later. Now the service has been split between Ubisoft+ Premium and Classic, both at different price points. Rebranding away from Uplay was a good move, as the name has been marred in negative connotations and implications ever since Ubisoft launched their original Game Launcher to compete with Steam. Not that Ubisoft’s own name isn’t controversial in itself, with some marking the company being worse than EA.

Customers have multiple types of behaviours, as Tremblay states. Some come in for one game, which they later purchase. He mentions how Ubisoft is fine with a customer coming in, subscribing, then later buying that game and ending the subscription. If they were fine with this model, they wouldn’t have a need to find a way to stop this sort of customer stopping their subscription. That’s a loss of revenue for Ubisoft.

Multiple sub tiers splits these games, if this interview is anything to go by. Earlier access to upcoming games, different editions with different amount of content and some rewards that go unmentioned. This business model shatters whole games into bits and pieces; no Ubisoft game is whole anymore. Whatever you think about games being art or not, Ubisoft clearly makes a stance of them being a corporate product and them needing to service the corporate interest by any means necessary even if it means screwing the customer from their ownership.

Once you give an inch to gaming subscription, it’ll take the whole yard. While Tremblay says, there’s no reason to force things, just give people options. Certainly, there is a customer section that doesn’t give a toss about ownership and simply wish to consume games momentarily and then move on, but the lack of ownership and games being tied to service model always means they’ll become obsoletely as product at some point. When the service ends, so does the access to these games. Even with games you own, if they have an online-only component that relies on servers, it’s already a dying thing. There’s really no way to resurrect a dead service-model game without hacks and mods, and no game publisher is keen on giving instructions how to recreate custom servers or enable local play. Games like Elite Dangerous will end up waste of digital space once the servers die despite nothing really stopping the developers from making a genuine single-player mode for it.

Despite streaming service adoption, physical media, DVDs and BDs, hasn’t gone anywhere. Probably one of the main reasons why game consumers still buy physical media is that we know how badly gaming companies tend to screw us over. Streaming services get shit thrown at them every time a show or a movie license expires and vanishes from their library, but the games consumer usually is aware when companies try to screw them over for some reason. Like trying to prevent mods, or selling mods. Having a physical copy is a means to ensure future access to that title. There’s also the classic idea of building a library of games, which is something Steam encourages with constant sales.

While subscription based gaming probably is the dark and depressing future we’re going to get, the worse is streaming games. Cloud gaming would be other name for this. If Google couldn’t make it work, neither will Ubisoft. Tremblay streaming Ubisoft’s new games for couple of minutes shows how out of touch he is with the issues regarding cloud gaming. These range from standard performance issues to horribly downgraded graphics and input lag. Latency will be an issue Ubisoft won’t be able to solve.

However, Tremblay saying game customers have to get used to not owning games has a ring of truth to it. There’s an upcoming generation that has lived with subscription model as a standard, and that easily translates to the whole You will not own anything and be happy. This generation will rent things easier and give away their freedom to do anything with the things they spend their money on, as well as have no responsibility over them outside what the service provider demands of them. That’s where future is screwed, as then we won’t have any say on the things we put out money in. Subscription to Netflix gives you a small library of titles to choose from, and even if you are paying for the service, they’ll choke the bitrate for their own reasons. They have licenses that come and go. If a thing sits on your shelf, these issues no longer exist.

While older generations have to acclimate to upcoming changes with how media is available, we also don’t need accept it wholesale. We can champion on personal ownership for the copies and other items we put money into and have the say on the things we have at hand. We can have the best of both worlds, but that requires voting with your wallet.

One bit I find interesting is Tremblay mentioning how their older titles from the subscription service finds constant consumptions. Considering how bad rap Ubisoft’s modern games get, that shouldn’t be surprising. People loved the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy and outside Thief, Splinter Cell was considered the only legitimate challenger to Metal Gear Solid, sometimes cited as the better game series to boot. I can’t fault a company or a corporation wanting to make money, that’s their reason to exist in the first place. However, Ubisoft shouldn’t screw with their paying customers, as it’s very easy to simply pirate a game. Locked behind a subscription means very little if the other option is being free from the shackles that bind you.

Steam has made certain kind of DRM palatable for consumers. No game is owned on Steam, and it has been a successful venture for Valve. Even the older generations are mostly fine with Steam. It has become an industry standard for the most part. Tremblay putting it in so many words and making it clear how customers will not own Ubisoft products in the future is a PR stumble. The response was similar to Sony pulling some of the movies from PSN due to licenses expiring. Of course, when you use the term Buy, the general understanding is that you buy things to own. I don’t buy the argument that because somewhere in the eighty page EULA companies change the meaning of the word is applicable. To quote Rossmann, that’s rapist mentality. Companies aren’t straight with the customer what they are actually doing and what kind of transaction it really is. Valve got into trouble with EU about this some years back and had to change description.

The relevance here is that if the customer has spent his money to access product, they have all the rights to access that product even if it means via piracy. For example, if you’ve paid a streaming service some extra to have 4K quality video, and they decide, for whatever reason, not to deliver that, you have the moral right to find it wherever you can, piracy or not. If customers have found your service and products worthwhile enough to pay for them and you screw them over, nobody should be surprised when they pirate the piece. When people stop pirating your product, then you’ve got a problem in your hand as that means your product is no longer desired. Companies screwing customers justifies the use of piracy. Hence, if buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.

Ubisoft’s corporate evolution isn’t about making better games or more games. It’s about how much they can screw the customers until they hit the wall. Sycophantic publisher/developer fans will always stick with them. Arguably, access to hundreds of titles for measly coupla ten bucks sounds good, but the lack of any control over the titles themselves and how easily you will be screwed over really stains the whole thing. Paying what you find valuable encourages that sort of thing more.

This also applies to Microsoft’s PC Game Pass, but that’s a whole another deal and already shows that Ubisoft is chasing the torchbearer with a smaller library. That, and Microsoft hasn’t come out to cause a small uproar like Tremblay by saying you’ll have to get used to not owning the stuff you buy.

Service model gaming probably will be the future for big publishers. However, that’s where all the smaller companies and developers can find a fitting niche by putting their games out in a more traditional fashion. Hell, I’d be rather excited if some indie developer would publish their game and include an .ISO file with some labels and artwork so you could burn and print your own legit copy and put it on your shelf.

The Capsule Computers Enigma

You have probably heard about the Enigma Protector by now. It’s the thing Capcom is using on the side with Denuvo. It’s raised a bit of a hell, with Capcom’s games on Steam that got it getting review bombed into negativity. While things aren’t exactly as clickbait articles want to put it, it’s an interesting thing nevertheless. If nothing else, Capcom has a PR trash fire in their hands, and seems like there’s not much they can do about it.

To rewind back a bit, Capcom has shown anti-mod behaviour for good couple of years now. This shouldn’t be surprising, as mods became illegal in Japan in 2018. According to the Unfair Competition Prevention Act amendment, you may not sell tools or programs that alter the save or unauthorized products keys as standalones on the Internet auctions or otherwise. You may also not act as the modder, be it data or hardware. This may lead to civil measures, which include both injunction and claim for damages, but may also result in criminal penalties; imprisonment up to five years, a fine up to five million yen, or both. Things like Datel’s Action Replay and save editor devices went extinct fast there. Similarly, while adding new games to miniconsoles is prohibited under this law. It comes with no surprise that a corporation would tow, if not even enforce, a law they wholly agree with.

Not that the law is necessary for Capcom to want protect their IPs and brand. The nude Chun-li mod during Corner2Corner Street Fighter 6 tournament was largely met with amusement by all, but just as Tifa porn during Italian parliament meeting, the main parties involved weren’t amused. Capcom soon put out messages about mods breaking public morals, putting general visual mods into same category as cheating. To quote the exact phrasing, for the purposes of anti-cheat and anti-piracy, all mods are defined as cheats. Largely because they can’t tell a difference from a cheat mod and a general mod. Whether or not Capcom defines this through morals or technical issues is left ambiguous, I’d wager its bit of both. Otherwise, mention of public morals wouldn’t be there. Capcom has taken down nude mods and vids with them from YouTube since 2019, which would coincide then-new law amendment. Maybe I’m latching too hard on this, but I can’t help but to feel Capcom sees themselves being more justified to go after mods after the amendment than before.

Should probably note that the Enigma Protector was implemented in Resident Evil Revelations, and possibly leading to breaking the game and tons of mods. While Enigma was cited a probable cause, there is yet to be any solid evidence for it. It’s just as possible Capcom just screwed the update themselves, and they had to roll things back. Resident Evil 5 had it added last year too and there’s yet to be any hubbub about that. Enigma has been place in Capcom products at least since 2022 with Capcom Arcade Stadium, with some reports mentioning stuttering, though supposedly this happens on console versions too. Perhaps an indication of emulation issues or something else as there have been issues ranging from missing sound to crashing on launch. Resident Evil Village had stutters whenever a weapon was used at some point. Seems like the issues are somewhere else, in the end.Thus, the nude Chun-li fiasco incident just threw more coal to the fire rather than acted as an instigator.

The loss of money from Street Fighter 6 costumes probably isn’t high on the list though. While Capcom’s pricing for their costumes in SF6 is stupidly expensive, it seems very weak reason to ban character appearance modding. After all, pretty much every Capcom fighting game on PC since Street Fighter IV has seen extensive visual modding, and in case of Marvel VS Capcom 3, extensive character modding. Though considering the abovementioned law, it might be reason enough as that would arguably put Capcom in a worse competitive position.

FluffyQuack, one of the more high-profile modders, had his say on Patreon, and I largely agree with his final take; Enigma is more or less just another layer of protection Capcom puts on their games to prevent piracy and cheating, not against mods. I’d wager Enigma is a much cheaper option to Denuvo, so it’d make sense they’d want to change between the two after a certain period has passed.

What the ‘net is whispering is that whole thing with Enigma Protector is ran by a single Russian guy in or near Moscow. Back in 2020, Security Intelligence had an article about EnigmaSpark, a malware packed with Enigma Protector. The malware likely aimed for entities and organizations who had interest to have peace in the Middle East. The official website has effectively no information on the authors or on the location of the business, and WHOIS is being hidden. Their site is served from Russia, so the word that they’re using COMODO certificate circumvent sanctions seems to have something to it. The author’s phone number according to ICANN lookup also puts the region into Moscow with +7495 area code. The more I try to look into this, the fishier it smells. Enigma originating from Russia in itself isn’t the issue, but the lack of information and everything else surrounding is.

Though I like the rumour that the version Capcom is using can be found on Russian torrent sites, and the source code is out there in the wild for anyone to nab who finds the proper magnet link.  

Capcom’s priority with Enigma Protector isn’t preventing cheating or modding, but preventing piracy. What Enigma Protector isn’t is DRM. It’s a Virtual Machine implementation, which aims to obfuscate the execution from outside view, and is just one dime in the dozen. Enigma Protector isn’t intended to work to prevent modding, but its VM implementation may cause some issues how the mods run, but this can be circumvented by modders easily from the looks of it. Enigma Protector isn’t malware either, but seems like it was packed with one at some point in the past.

Capcom doing business with a Russian entrepreneur doesn’t really jell well in the current state of the world. While they’ve used this particular protection for years now, they’ve never been open about it either. Things blew up now because of Capcom’s anti-mod stance being reiterated in a very anti-consumer fashion in recent weeks. Considering Street Fighter V effectively worked as a root-kit at one point, consumers are very much on the trigger whenever they manage fuck up somehow with their protection schemes. Who would’ve thought their anti-cheat method would open a full-blown local backdoor.

Capcom’s standard action seems to be removing Denuvo and replacing it with Enigma Protector, as they did with the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection. Retroactively adding weird protection to games should be frowned upon, but the ultimately, the whole thing has been less dramatic than initially presented, something I got swept in too. However, the Enigma Protector itself rather than its consequences should be more in the spotlight and I’m the wrong guy to look deeper into this. I’ve got no idea where to begin to dig up who is behind the program.

If Capcom is to grow bigger than what they are now, anti-piracy and anti–cheating measures will probably increase to some extent in the future. They want to protect their bottom line, brand and IPs, which ultimately punishes the legitimate customers rather than prevents piracy. While Capcom has all the rights to protect their products, it should not end up in the customer getting screwed. Nevertheless, it would do them good to gain some customer trust by looking into things and make a clear statement whether or not the accused Enigma Protector is an issue or not.

Top 5 Games of 2023

I don’t feel 2023 was exactly a stellar year when it comes to games. Not too many games caught my eye, though one of them ended up on these lists. Last year I mourned how retro games are getting higher and higher in price, but now it’s standard for games to go for 80 bucks or so. Maybe I’m getting burned out on games finally, and need to find something else.

The rules for the Top 5; the game must have been on a physical media to count, 2023 must have been the year I’ve first time have had a copy of the said game, and the year of production doesn’t matter. There’s no particular order. In fact, I intentionally shuffled the order these titles just for the sake of it. I truly hope 2024 will net me overall better games, though none of these are slouches.

• Section Z 1987 Famicom Disc System, NES

When it comes to canonically great NES games, Section Z often gets overlooked. It was released in the same year as Mega Man and was followed by numerous other titles that are often cited as the best of the console. Nowadays Capcom gets some bad rap for not doing proper ports of their arcade titles to home systems, but most forget that arcade games don’t work at home consoles and home console games don’t work in arcades without some serious modification in how they work. Section Z is a consolized interpretation of the arcade’s core design, where the player travels through zones to destroy the final boss. In the arcades the player goes through a square from A to Z, hence the game’s name, but in the NES port, there are 60 of these zones. Hence, it would be more appropriate to talk about a version rather than a port, and the title is mostly a vestige.

What makes Section Z stand out then? The sheer size of it. Those 60 zones form a maze. Each zone ends with exit choices, outside a few key zones that serve as boss zones or have locked exits. The Western version has no save function either, so playing the game through from start to finish takes a small while. The game was originally on the Famicom Disc System in Japan. Just like most other FDS games that got a cartridge release in the West, some of the more advanced sound capabilities were cut down, and saving functionality was nixed. Thus the Western release of the game forces you to play in an unintended way. It has some infamy as being a hard-as-nails title, one of the titles that got the Nintendo Hard at some point. Still, I don’t recommend playing it with save states if you want to emulate the game.

Despite the game’s age, there’s nothing to complain about the controls. Sure it loses in terms of visual and sound flavour to some of the later NES games, but among its peers in ’87, it stands strong and largely unique title. It might share the labyrinthine nature with Space Hunter from a few years back, but most of the things it does are still unique to this day and a nice challenge for anyone. Section Z is the middle child of Capcom’s Jet-Pack shooter trilogy, preceded by Side Arms: Hyper Dyne and succeeded by Forgotten Worlds. Later down the line, the genre would be perfected by Battle Mania Daiginjou in 1993. Section Z is a game with a strong core design that hasn’t gone out of date.

• Burnout Revenge 2005 PlayStation 2, Xbox, 2006 Xbox 360

Burnout Revenge might not be the best game in the series, with the third game probably still being at the top of review lists. Not sure, that was a decade or so ago at this point. Nevertheless, there’s something in Revenge that’s lacking in most current racing games that I’ve given a go and that’s the sheer raging speed. It’s all about the dopamine kick; the flaming boost bar, the speed-blur effect, and the roar of the soundscape.

Of course, the game has to build itself properly. Challenges and races are peppered around just fine and mix up the play constantly. The racing would suck if the controls weren’t on-point, and ultimately that’s what makes the game so enjoyable. The racing is the meat of the whole thing. Everything in the game’s design comes together in these races, and only other Burnout games can deliver a similar experience. The Need for Speed series hits a different spot in the whole furious racing thing. Still, It was a joy to play a Burnout game I missed back in the day with a fresh set of eyes and just play a game that’s all about joy. Don’t seem to get that in any of the modern racing games per se, just Online-Only Services.

• Gigantic Drive / RAD: Robot Alchemic Drive 2002 PlayStation 2

We don’t get remote-controlled robot games often enough. They’re effectively a dead genre, mainly shared only by four games, all of which were more or less developed by the same people in the now-defunct studio Human, from which Sandlot would form from. The idea is simple but hard to replicate in video game form; you control the player character that has a remote control for a giant robot. You’re not the pilot of it, but a guy standing outside holding a controller for a massive hunk of steel.

The tension is on a whole different level compared to other robot games. When you’re in a cockpit, you don’t really care about the environment all that much, but when you’re the one standing in the middle of the fight, seeing buildings crumbling around you and finding a need to brave yourself into better positions to fight, it’s a whole different world. The scale of these fights becomes more apparent as you gaze up at these giant things. Robot Alchemic Drive makes you feel small and vulnerable, even when you’re standing on the shoulder of your giant robot. The player has to make the choice of either controlling their robot or controlling the player character. When you’re controlling the character, the robot is always inert, waiting for your command.

While each level has the same core play of mashing the giant enemy to bits, how you go about it matters more in some stages. You’re there to protect, not to destroy. Down the line protecting certain buildings becomes more important, and you might want to let other buildings be destroyed just to piss off your corporate rival. Still, nothing hits harder than ending a level with a tight victory, only to get a cutscene where one of the supporting characters says their apartment building got destroyed and she’s now homeless, trying to look for a new apartment and living in the office for the time being. You go back on your save and try that level again, trying to save as much of the city as possible.

The controls are like no other and dated at the same time. You don’t have camera control on the second stick, the camera always sticks to behind the player character. It’s almost by half-intention too as limited camera controls is a major part of the whole game. When controlling the mecha, you’ve got options for Easy and Normal controls. On Easy, the robots walk with the D-Pad and overall movement is easy. On Normal things get interesting, as D-Pad is used to move the robots’ upper torsos, twisting and bending like a boxer dodging punches. Shoulder buttons are for walking back and forth. Left buttons for the left leg, Right for the right leg. The sticks are for different kind of punches while face buttons are for weapons. Once you get into the game’s rhythm how to walk and when to attack with Normal controls, things click in place. The jank is still there, yet that jank serves a damn good purpose that modern gaming would not dare even think about in order not to inconvenience the player.

For a game that was made on a tight budget, there’s tons of attention to these things. RAD also runs for fifty or so levels, so the game does take a while to beat. Multiple playthroughs are also awarded due to different endings you can receive depending on actions in certain stages. They’re not exactly obscure actions either, but easily misseable.

The game became a small cult classic in the US. Sandlot’s other remote control robot games, Remote Controller Dandy SF and Tetsujin # 28 also came out for the PS2, largely reusing the same engine, slightly more refined. A lot fo the assets from RAD would be recycled into the first Earth Defense Force game they developed, and finding success in refining that series bit by bit. Should probably mention that RAD, or rather, Gigantic Drive is based on a cancelled Tekkouki Mikazuki game. It’s demo was included with the show’s soundtrack.

Sandlot and the ex-Human employees had a lot of love for the classical Giant Robot and it shows. Gigantic Drive is full of their particular kind of humour, but not for a second the delivery tries to be cheap. However, the American release Robot Alchemic Drive goes for a different effect with its intentionally shit dub. It might be fun for a scene or two, but it’s a massive negative on the game. Get the de-dub edition that’s floating around the Internet, it’s a superior version. Sandlot’s particular straight-laced humour would be served better down the line by dubs in Earth Defense Force, where some of the games don’t go through the enshittification via forced bad dub. Yes, these games are referencing the old monster and robot movies and shows, yet only the American dubs make fun of them.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles Sega Mega Drive 1994, Windows 1997

I missed Sonic the Hedgehog 3 back in the day. I picked that game up a few years back and kept it form the yearly lists as I waited a good deal to come up with Sonic & Knuckles. Still, I found myself agreeing that Sonic 3 probably is the best of the Mega Drive Sonic games even though the first game is a personal favourite due to lack of increased elements that would prop up later. I prefer three stages per Zone structure, for one. Locking Sonic & Knuckles to Sonic 3 of course creates the full intended game, and it’s a monster of a game. Massive in size of the locked-on cartridges and content.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles may put me off on how goddamn long some of the stages are, but at the same time that’s nothing short of impressive, and there’s only one stage that actually feels overly long. None of the rest are uninteresting, always offering something new and engaging a bit differently. The combined game is the culmination of everything learned from previous Sonic games put into action in a marvelous manner. I don’t think I need to say much about the combined game. It is a legendary thing in itself, and it being one of the best games of 2023 is a no-brainer.

• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith PlayStation 2 2005

I wrote about Episode III a few months back, so it’s still fresh on my mind. While I haven’t really played it any since beating it and unlocking all the stuff, something in the back of my mind is niggling me to replay the game. It’d be too soon to get into it again, I’d just frustrate myself. However, jank as it may be in few places, after experiencing what some of the Triple A games 2023 had to offer, all that went away and I’m still left with a game that has an underrated fighting mode.

Among Star Wars games, there’s really nothing else like it. Sure, 3D action is bread and butter of the IP from the era, yet Episode III lands in the perfect middle of not being stupidly over-the-top like Force Unleashed but still mixing the play more than the previous titles. It sits in a perfect position between things. Nothing mind-blowing, but quality mostly across the board. An absolute gem worth adding to any library.

The Top 5 games that didn’t make the list

• Crazy Taxi 1999 Dreamcast, 2001 GameCube, PlayStation 2, 2002 Windows

I had to cut something out from the Top 5. I’ve played Craxy Taxi in the arcades and have spent countless of hours with the second game on the Dreamcast. After picking up Burnout Revenge, Crazy Taxi just didn’t cut it. It still offers one of the best driving game plays out there, but it has been outclassed. That’s not a shame, speed demon racing wouldn’t be the same without Crazy Taxi and it’s still a goddamn joy to play. However, just as I noted how some games don’t work so well at home, Crazy Taxi really works the best in the arcades. In the home console front, Burnout takes the lead. Maybe I need to build an arcade cabinet for my Dreamcast and have the control panel contain options for different controllers.

• Cyberpunk 2077 2020 Steam, GOG, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Stadia, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

After playing Starfield some twenty hours and becoming increasingly bored, I wanted to turn my attention to the other RPG that got maligned, but supposedly largely fixed with patches. Cyberpunk 2077 started out strong, and I found myself invested in Night City in general. If I had a physical copy of the game and not a GOG installer, the game would be in proper Top 5.

I have to say that I did like the Skills and Perks system better before 2.0 patch. The updated system requires min-maxing and sticking to one style of play, whereas previously I could make a character that was a jack-of-all-trades. I’m not fond of min-maxing in general or gaming the systems themselves. I like the variety of being able to most thing competently in CRPGs like this, and now having to stick single builds per playthrough is a personal issue.

Nevertheless, Cyberpunk 2077 ticked all the boxes I wanted from a CRPG. Generally a game for the ages and gets the ass-slap seal of approval.

• Gunhed 1989 PC Engine

Gunhed is based on a movie with a same name. There’s also Gunhed on the Famicom, which is a strategy game. PC Engine Gunhed, or Blazing Lazerz if you’re so inclined, is all about what PC Engine does best; shooting. It’s also one of the games that sold people on the system back in the day and has been cited as one of the shooting games out there. I don’t really agree, but that’s only because there’s so much competition in this era for that title.

Gunhed‘s biggest flaw is in its pacing. The first few stages don’t exactly grab you, making it a blasé introduction. In those two stages the chunky graphics become unwieldy to the eye and the music feels lacking in energy. It’s like a half-polished gemstone. Section Z still stands rather unique game, but whenever I played Gunhed I found myself wanting to pop Super Aleste into my SNES. When you’re picking a SNES shooting game over a PC Engine one, there’s some serious trouble in paradise. A classic game, overshadowed by everything else the developers did after.

• Robocop: Rogue City 2023 Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

As Sony is making PlayStation obsolete with constant ports and lacklustre service, and Microsoft has effectively given Windows users access to Xbox titles, I haven’t found myself in any need to get their latest consoles. Thus, Robocop: Rogue City shares the same fate as Cyberpunk 2077 and as digital download gets a spot in the recommended-but-not-top-5 games.

All the hubbub surrounding the game, from its accurate portrayal of Robocop‘s setting to surprisingly satisfying shows that you don’t need multimillion dollar budget to net what is one of the best games of 2023. Even the mundane shit you need to do during investigations feels substantive as you’re doing it. It’s part of what Robocop would do as a police officer in the field.

The writing hits the nail with the tone of the first movie. While the material is good, Peter Weller elevates it. He understands what make Robo, or Murphy tick, and his delivery is not sold short. This is where licensed games usually have failed, but Rogue City just does it right.

A great game worth picking up if you’re feeling like turning some perps into bloody mess, or just want a worthwhile Robocop sequel.

• Earth Defense Force 5 2017 PlayStation 4, Steam

After beating the game three times, I think I prefer 4.1 more. Cosmonaut variants and the Rollers just take the enjoyment out of it. Otherwise yes, each EDF game builds on the previous one and is marginally better, and if you’re thinking of picking one of these games up, just go for EDF5 or wait for the sequel to launch in the West sometime later this year.

Still, the game’s a joy to play. Easy to pick, infuriating to beat on harder difficulties. The DNA inherited from Robot Alchemic Drive is still visible everywhere in the game, especially when you get to pilot Barga, the giant robot of the game. I swear some of the attack animations look like they’ve been recycled from RAD.

Earth Defense Force 5 gets better with friends though. Single-player is fun and all, but getting the living reactions out of people and helping your mate out of a pinch is the sort of salt a massive game like EDF5 needs. While the story of a rookie soldier becoming one of last standing humans and defeating the creator of mankind is nice, its the stories you make with your companion players online or split-screen where the game shines the best.

The framing story of the game is told via NPC radio chat, and paints a world filled with desperation against the alien threat. The English dub is overall decent and doesn’t veer too much from the Japanese original, more often than not retaining Sandlot’s peculiar dry and straight humour. Some of dubbing sounds like it is intentionally bad, but at the same time the voice actor might just be someone from the office.

The bigger the hype, the harder the fall

I don’t particularly like Starfield, but I don’t have passionate hate towards the game either. However, Bethesda has never made games that were for me. The way they design their games to how they play holds no appeal to me. I’ve never played Skyrim and I have no plans to do so. Generic fantasy like that isn’t my cup of tea. I’m a soft-fan of the first two Fallout games, but I ignored the series after Bethesda bought the rights to the IP. It’s all really about not caring and not paying much attention to what the developer does or publishes because I like to have my tomato sauce slightly chunky, something to bite into.

Starfield was an insanely hyped game. It shoved itself into my view just by being a topic by the talking heads everywhere. Its long planning, designing, and development was itself some sort of legendary thing. Whole personalities were built on cataloging everything about the game, with Bethesda fans digging deep into what could be from myriad throwaway lines. I can’t help but feel bad for these personalities who spend years making videos about the game only for Starfield to end up as a dud.

I got the game for free with my new computer’s parts. Twice, in fact. Gifted the other to a friend. At the hour mark, I put the game down and uninstalled. Starfield had committed the worst thing a computer game can do; it’s boring. Its design is almost fifteen years old, it’s clunky, slow, and fills the playtime with cutscenes where you don’t need any. Possibilities for roleplaying are extremely limited and the game doesn’t allow you to make changes to the setting. For example, you can’t kill major NPCs and deal with a whole faction’s wrath for the rest of the game. 

This isn’t a review of the game, mind you. Just thought it might be good to clean the table what’s my bias here. The game was hyped to high heavens, and it ended up sucking. Excusing its shortcomings won’t help anyone. People at Bethesda better take all the negativity Starfield is bringing in their direction, map out every single message and review they get what’s wrong with their game, and see what they can do to fix things. They need to take the No Man’s Sky route, effectively.

However, despite the mixed reception Starfield got after its release, most consumers don’t buy games on launch. That’s reserved for true fans and adjacents. Now that the game became more affordable during the Winter sales, more people bought the game or were gifted with a code. Hence all those new reviews on Steam. Currently, we’re seeing the general consumers entering the review ring and what the real value of the game is. Early reviews, and reviews from major publications, all have a similar slant when it comes to these big titles. It’s biting back in some cases, but in the long-term, it seems you can write however positively a bullshit review with a semi-high rating and you’ll get a pass.

There’s that initial hype review period that dies down, and slowly things level out.

Reviews of the masses reflect the societies at large better than reviews by individuals, and what values are held high at what particular point. Generally, desirable traits net success and positive word of mouth. The opposite holds true, where undesirable traits net losses and word of mouth turn into several hours-long videos on faults of a product. A major disappointment in a hyped product increases this two-fold if not more. A scorned fan probably will never let go, until something significant is done. The old song still holds true; it’s easier to lose customers and the get new ones.

Starfield getting negative reviews, or reviews that reflect the game’s actual quality as deemed by general consumers, wouldn’t be news in itself if this wasn’t one of the most hyped games in recent memory. Starfield is sadly a game by a studio that is known to hype the living shit out of their products. Bethesda hyperbole is the butt of jokes across the board. However, it’s also from a developer that has been through numerous PR disasters throughout their years, with their recent ones being about responding to Steam reviews, and this isn’t the first time they’ve tried to appease or twist consumer reviews. While a company has the right to defend its product, trying to downplay customer dissatisfaction often ends up worsening the PR situation.

Bethesda doesn’t really have all that much room to maneuver currently. They can either just wait for the situation to blow over and manage the situation through corporate moves or do the aforementioned No Man’s Sky route. I’m guessing they’re not going to fix the flaws people are pointing out in Starfield, but then again Bethesda has a long history of waiting for modders to fix their games.

No company likes to see spiraling reviews like this. It’s bad for business, though it ends up worse if the company takes it personally. Games that have enjoyed the spotlight for extended periods like Starfield will end up being analyzed for a much longer time. Some games will be re-reviewed time and time again. Starfield will probably be one of those games, but with that old Was it really that bad? sort of take.

Hype is bad for your health and wallet. Give a game at least half a year to mature, see how things turn out first. It’s now somewhat fashionable to kick Starfield around, but I too would’ve wanted this game much better action-y roleplaying experience than it ended up being. Well, I found what I wanted in Cyberpunk 2077, a game that supposedly does Bethesda stuff better. Bethesda took a hit to the chin, and now they can either lie down and wait, or up their game.

What’s in a robot (genre)?

What makes a series Mecha in genre is something that seems to be contested within fan circles from time to time, with people who are discussing often ending in general agreement with differences here and there. To some, having powered armours in your work is enough to move it from general science fiction to Mecha. Other might see giant robots in show just fine, but call with other terms because the mechanics aren’t in the spotlight.

What I’ve seen to be the most agreed upon qualification is If it has giant robots, then its Mecha. Everything else down the stream is a matter of contest and personal opinion.

All this is natural though, as Mecha as a genre is not exactly the most defined one. The clearest examples are overt with their nature, pushing the mechanical characters of the work to the forefront of the story, while some use them as if they’re a side dish complementing the main point of the story.

Looking at definitions online it seems that the first defining element is to have a giant humanoid robot is the first step. Being a vehicle doesn’t qualify. Of course, the term is a loanword of a loanword, taking how Japanese media has described everything from guns and computers to cars and giant excavation machines. Thus, the use of the term is different and shouldn’t be directly equated between regions.

I was on the side that Wh40k and Kamen Rider were not /m/, but toku was welcomed anyway because of its media adjacency

This is why you more often saw the use of Robot animation, comics and games in Japan when referring to titles that would be referred as mecha in the Western world by the fans. The term has slipped into mainstream as well. There is also a mindset that Mecha refers only Japanese products, where the giant robots in .e.g. BattleTech aren’t mechas, but mechs. I don’t contest this, this is a meaningless flavor point, but I do understand the point of having the stereotypic image of Japanese robots being only kinds of Gurren Lagann or Gundam. This distinction is meaningless though, and is more often than not used to boost egos. They’re all giant robots in the end of the day.

I’ll drop my own coin in the game, and would argue that because of the undefined nature of the genre, we need to accept fuzziness in the genre’s boundaries. I would also ditch super robot and real robot distinction, as they’re largely bullshit terms for marketing outside Super Robot Wars.

Though first I’ll argue that Mecha genre is a descendant of Giant Robot. While we’ve always had some sort of constructs under human control in fiction, sometimes under human control, giant robot arguably, descents from the giant monster and giant hero boom that took over Japan prior to 1970s. (Giant) robot anime is a natural growth and exploration of both genres, but where rather than a monster or a transforming giant hero fighting for mankind, the hero is in a machine doing the fighting himself. Naturally, as children was the target audience, it’s easy to see a child putting himself into the position of the pilot. I’m making a distinction between just Robot Anime and Giant Robot Anime, thought the former is the classical term.

While Mazinger Z in 1972 is often cited as the grandpa of Mecha anime, Go Nagai himself has argued that he simply added to an existing genre. Tetsujin #28 from 1956 is often mentioned as a major predecessor, but we should also remember Mazinger Z had a contemporary with Astronganger, which aired two months earlier.

The 1970s was the golden era of Japanese animation, when the medium saw rapid expansion and exploration of genres and themes. Most of the shows followed the usual template set by Mazinger Z and its predecessors, while changing the formula to build something unique on top. Everything modern Mecha is stems from this era. Anyone who advertises a robot anime or mecha by saying that show is unique due to concentrating on characters rather than the robots hasn’t exactly watched any of the shows from this decade. There is no Mecha that isn’t about the characters. Are these people somehow missing how the robots themselves are designed to be characters as well?

Giant Robot as a genre was formed with the popularity of Mazinger Z, I’d argue. This gives a nice popular start point, but we can extend this to its predecessors too. I don’t think there’s a need to make a difference whether or not the robot is piloted and remote controlled, but piloted robots is a major reason why the genre exploded with Mazinger Z. It’s a dream, a man’s romance.

What made Mazinger Z a Super Robot was that it wasn’t like all the other robots; it was super. It created the archetype, but at its time and in its own setting, it was different how it approached the waking genre

Mecha on the other hand came to be in the 1980s when a new generation entered the industry, and the toy market for giant robots having seen a major decline. Robots started going from very small to bionic, and with the OVA boom starting in 1985, we suddenly started to see animated robots that weren’t driven by toy companies.

Toys and robot animation will always go hand in hand. While some robots, likes the ones found in Muv-Luv or Neon Genesis Evangelion, weren’t designed for toys, vast majority of the genre is toy sales driven. That could be said about anime in general, where cross-media projects always have a merchandise component to them. The Transformers, Voltron, Goldrake and other shows have been claimed to be advertisement for toys, and that’s probably valid argument due to the sponsors’ connections. However, that often ignores the quality of the show itself. Some aimed to take concepts and characters further, with Toei’s Robot Romance Trilogy, consisting of Super Electromagnetic Robot Combattler V, Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V and Fighting General Daimos, being an example where the production team wanted to introduce more complex situations and interactions between characters. Voltes V would be influential on its own in the Philippines, where the show was banned by president Ferdinand Marcos alongside other shows for being too harmful for children, but considering Voltes V has strong themes of rebellion and revolution, it’s not too farfetched to say Marcos wanted to curb stomp any of these notions. He did go after pinball machines and arcades as well, known places where youth would gather and exchange ideas.

Giant Robot as a genre is what reads on the box; the robots are giant and more often than not fight either other giant robots or monsters. Humanoid shape is more or less required. I consider this the classical form of Mecha, from which modern depictions stem from. Giant Robot has become the archetypical form of Mecha when it comes to pop-culture and is probably the most mainstream depiction.

Giant Robot Anime as a genre might get confused with Giant Robo The Animation though. However, Giant Robo is a great example of a classical Giant Robot, where the control is external and the robot is an actual robot

Giant Robot itself doesn’t require the robot to me pilotable or even mechanical. The Transformers and the Brave series both have extensive use of fully sentient robots that don’t require a human pilot. Both shows are a variation on the traditional Giant Robot with their own unique twist. The Transformers is probably the most well-known, if not the most popular, Giant Robot series in the United States and colours how the mainstream audience sees Mecha in general. Hence a need to have it as the umbrella term and whatever you want as sub-genres.

I’d wager this is the reason why genre variations make people question if something is Mecha or story that has robots in it. Is Neon Genesis Evangelion Mecha? is a question that pops up frequently. It’s a valid question. The show itself intentionally obtuse with its world building and overall story, which leads viewers grasping unto things they know. Especially in the Western world, the show’s Christian and Jewish imagery is something people grasp unto even if they’re intended to sound cool and exotic to its native audience. The whole psychological aspect of the show also stemmed from popularity of the topic at the time, and the show was intended to have imperfect characters that were closer to the viewer. Instead of hero characters from numerous previous shows, Evangelion’s characterization would stem from Mobile Suit Gundam and other shows that had main characters hesitant to take up to the role of piloting a giant war machine. The robots, the Evanglion units, were described as robots with helmets and gloves in Proposal sent to sponsors and stations for consideration.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a sort of ultimate otaku anime. If you’ve only been exposed to Giant Robot in the Mecha genre, Evangelion comes across as weird, as if it were breaking genre the genre. However, just as much Evangelion is based on popular and exotic things of the era, so it is based on Hideaki Anno’s love for animation, comics and live action shows like Devilman, Mobile Suit Gundam, the Ultraman series and Gerry Anderson’s UFO.

While some bits can be debated, tokusatsu around the world has been a long influencer on Anno, and on Japanese animation in general

However, it still possible to see how all that history amalgamates in Evangelion. Rather than taking at the series at face value, the intention of the series is to depict the Evangelion units as the last line of defense against an alien menace; giant biomechanical pilotable robots. The show can only be called deconstruction if the viewer isn’t aware of the author’s intentions, or worse yet, haven’t much else in the genre.

Unlike with Giant Robot, I can’t argue that Mecha as a genre has a defining starting point. It started with Mobile Suit Gundam, where fans would often argue that the robots in the show weren’t robots, but Mobile Suits as per series’ in-universe terminology. With the compilation movies, anime in general would step into larger mainstream and some would begin to treat the medium seriously on par with literature and films. Super Dimensional Fortress Macross follows the path laid out by Gundam, which lead the animation and toy industry exploring grass-level war stories with giant robots, sometimes with an emphasize on realism. The boiling point ended up producing shows and comics that don’t fit the traditional heroic Giant Robot genre, or in ways with each other, thus the birth of umbrella genre Mecha.

However, as said, there are no real hard rules what makes Mecha. If Neon Genesis Evangelion is a contested issue, series like Medarot seem to follow close behind. Medarot, at its core, is about collecting child-sized robots and battling them. It’s very much Pokémon with robots. This does not fit the whole giant robot image. However, it is innate to what I’d argue is essential to Mecha; exploring robots in wide forms and settings and their relationship with the rest of the cast. These robots are not necessarily humanoid or the main thing, but an essential element without which the story would either dramatically change or not work.

Pokémon didn’t mecha a Mecha show despite Team Rocket had mechanical things all the time. Robots and mecha weren’t the point.

However, not all stories with robots are inherently Mecha in genre. Some genres have robots and other mechanical things as innate elements to their genre, like cyberpunk and other sub-genres of science fiction. Ghost in the Shell has robots, but they’re largely an extension when it comes to discussing larger themes of cyberpunk. Power Armours is contested as well, some claiming if their inclusion alone defines work Mecha. However, that’s shortsighted. It is necessary to look at the work as a whole. The two grand works of power armours, Starship Trooper and The Forever War have power armours at the forefront, but the works aren’t about the power armours. They are, first and foremost, military science fiction. In the broadest sense of Mecha we could include them simply because they exist in the stories.

This is an issue with the fuzziness of the term. Mecha in general had implied that the robotics is external or piloted. With time, he fuzzy region acceptance now covers a lot what the Japanese original mechanics holds, which ranges everything from guns to computer, cars to space stations. Accepting, or in some cases demanding it is used widely for anything that has mechanics, dilutes the definition from spicy special to bland beige. Series like Captain Harlock and Space Battleship Yamato are sometimes included in discussion what is Mecha, which are prime examples of shows that dilute the meaning of the term. I don’t consider their inclusion into Super Robot Wars as a valid argument, but do consider that argument as an example how diluted the term has ultimately become. One of definitions for both Giant Robot and Mecha was the necessity of humanoid robots that are separate from vehicles, and at least one of these shows is very much about a space ship vehicle.

The Plustech walking forrester from the 1990s is not a giant, but technically counts as a “mecha” by the wider definition

By that extension we should put Space Knight Tekkaman Blade and Detonator Orgun on the podium and put the issue about power armours under the spotlight again. Similar to Starship Troopers and The Forever War, the series’ main gimmicks are stylish power armours. However, I’d argue that instead of Mecha, these two shows are examples of Transforming hero, the boys’ equivalent of magical girl shows. Instead of pretty clothes and magical tools to transform, both Tekkaman Blade and Orgun use technological equivalent, and instead of cute mascot characters you have mascot robots in case of Pegas in Tekkaman Blade. Both of these shows are in Super Robot Wars, though as with Battleship slot in XVT trilogy, this doesn’t define the shows’ genre itself. Similarly we could argue whether or not Fight!! Iczer-1 counts as Mecha, but I’d argue that it does as its one of the example of expanding exploration of the Giant Robot genre.

Admittedly, this post isn’t full of pin-point explanation on the nuances and differences within Giant Robot and Mecha genres, and that’s just because of the fuzzy nature of the latter. If you think about the genres otherwise, or disagree with my supposition about Giant Robot as a genre, that just shows the discussion is ongoing.

However, we can’t accept a narrow definition of Robot anime itself, because the nature of the genre has been expanded beyond its initial scope. This is also the reason why I dismiss Super Robot and Real Robot distinction, as there are clear examples of series that fit neither. Some have coined the term Hybrid, but that never caught any wind. Thus using existing terms, like Military Mecha, would describe numerous works more accurately. Most Gundam entries would fall into the aforementioned category, whereas Mazinger Z is the best example of classic Giant robot.

At the same time, we shouldn’t allow its variances, especially Mecha, to become like a widespread net that catches anything with mechanics. Robocop should not be considered Mecha despite having a cyborg main character and robots, as its main emphasis is on the cyberpunk elements within cop drama.

Le Deus is another example of a show that has very little mecha per se, but the mecha is the point, despite being fully a fantasy setting

I should probably note that all Mecha is based on entertainment aimed at boys. This colours the expectations and how things are delivered. This is partially because Giant Robot Anime itself comes from media primarily aimed at boys. This is why the genre was deemed to have met a dead-end by the late 1970s, as you can replicate something only so long. Mobile Suit Gundam appealed to the female audience as well due to its “home drama” in the White Base. While not exactly the first show to have drama between characters, Gundam had exceptional presentation and focus for its time on drama for a Giant Robot Anime. Similarly, 1981’s Six God Combination God Mars had a strong female following, though for a bit more superficial reasons.

Giant Robot Anime is masculine and serves to cater to the men’s romance about machines. Arguably the genre also is a sort of knight’s tale, where men go to war. At least on its base. That’s how Mecha is largely seen as well by the general audience, as those are more or less the most common type of story Mecha has, at least on the surface. It’s easy to start wondering if something is Mecha when its story has a different base in the world building, like a character that doesn’t want to become pilot due to personal issues, or the shining armour turns out to be life-eating monstrosity. Nothing prevents Robot Anime or Mecha in general from being about sweet romance or mind-boggling horror. Psychological drama has become a stepping stone in the genres, but how many people will spend that extra time watching, or even reading up on the past shows?

Much like with many other things like this, I don’t find it necessary to overthink if something is X. However, at the same time slapping Mecha on everything that even has a passing bit of mechanics or robots in the show is diluting the term.

Understanding the source material

It’s a positive criticism for anyone who takes one kind of media and has attempted to translate it into another. While taking a book and making it a film, or vice versa, has been difficult at best, turning either of the aforementioned into a game has been less successful. The same goes for turning a game into a film or a book applies just as much. Video and computer games have the whole thing about player participation and control that’s completely lacking in their adaptations, but arguably games can give an extra dimension when a source from another media is being adapted. It just might not make the best game.

The Polish developer Teyon understands the source material, sings the reviews for both Terminator: Resistance and the more recent Robocop: Rogue City. Their games aren’t cutting edge, have the highest of production values or are bug-free, but what they have nailed down with these two titles are the atmospheres the two movie franchises originally had going for them. Teyon has a history being a shovelware developer, but somebody had to take the job, gotta start somewhere, and they’ve learned quite a lot during those years.

Terminator or Robocop don’t adapt into games from the get go. You might have ideas how to do it, like how to use extended action set pieces from the movies or create increased content via deleted scenes or pathways. Good ideas in of themselves, but lacking in making the game stand out. You could go the classic method of adapting movies into games and make everything about the action, but nowadays people expect to have some lettuce on their meat too.

This lettuce is how the game frames the play. The best way is to frame things is to tie it into the play itself. In this Rogue City is pretty much a spiritual sequel to Resistance. Player role as Robocop extends as OCP police officer sees the player functioning directly as one. Sure, FMV are there to convey the overall story of the game, tough they’re there to frame things rather than force the player’s hand outside few exceptions. Funny enough, all the dialogue options Rogue City has are more interesting and have more effect on the game than those in Starfield. This system is a hand-me-down from Resistance, and already done in multitude of games past, like Fallout.

All that’s largely generic. What makes these two games stand out is the atmosphere and how the source material is treated. Nothing that’s unpresented in the movies isn’t added for the sake of Teyon’s own ego, but for the sake of play and variety. You could argue about the plot being shoved in, but that’s the nature of the beast. At least neither games’ plots fuck around with the established storylines in the movies, something that can’t be said about all other adaptions, or later Terminator movies.

Their Terminator picks and chooses and bits and bobs from everywhere to make the game a fuller game, but all the lock picking and item crafting are nothing new or special unto themselves. Adaptations always have to gamify things at least a little bit, or otherwise they’ll end up just giants walls of text, or nine hours of FMVs broken by short pieces of game.

Context matters and Teyon nails the context of these two games. This naturally limits the kind of games they can do based on these two IPs. Limitations are the drive for creativity, and while they didn’t have the budget or the time to polish everything up, these two games show how much we need these mid-road B-tier games. Both of them are competent and enjoyable games that replicate a piece of their IPs in a way that has fumbled before. Both use settings that we’ve seen Terminator and Robocop games before, but there has been no competency or attention to details.

To talk more about Robocop: Rogue City, Teyon understands Robocop can’t be made into a straight up shooting or action. That’s not what the first movie was about. The action is to make a point. Murphy’s murder sequence is treated seriously with no glorification. You’re shown every bit of excessive detail until he is finally given the mercy shot in the head. ED-209 shooting Kenny in the OCP boardroom lasts good forty-something seconds. Again, not to glorify violence, but make fun out of it, to blow it out of proportions. It turns into bloody comedy. Rogue City does this across the board. There’s even an upgrade option to increase the amount of gore in the game, but that’s also where the game has to meet the movie. Effectively, all the shooting stages, sequences, whatever you want to call them, use the factory shootout as its template. That means you can’t make Robocop functions like any other modern FPS with fast and slick action. No, Robocop’s a slow and meticulous walking tank with a burst-fire hand cannon. He’s always against superior numbers with a variety of weapons, most of Robo’s armor shrugs off and with upgrades can ricochet shots back. He can grab and throw thugs without any issues, and only the heaviest melee weapon works on him.

That’s a limitation for the game’s action play. Nailing that feeling of the player being almost invulnerable and having massive gunfights is just the first step. The rest is about making it satisfying elsewhere. Stages need to be planned out to work within the framework, secondary weapons to fit both the movie’s era and player needs. Enemies need to have variety of caliber guns and other weapons, and tactics, to depict the movie properly while offering the player varieties of challenges. If you’d be adapting Robocop the movie, it’d be a bitch to make the rest about Robot Jesus’ resurrection fit in. However, when you’re adapting the idea and overall IP, then you’re creating more room in this strict box to explore and perhaps even expand on both how well Robo shoots criminals and explore the humanity of the work. It’s easy to step outside the box and invent your own shit from the air, and very few can make that work. A look at the recent Star Trek shows how badly wrong you can go without limitations.

Limitations and understanding the work go hand in hand. However, just like Teyon’s two examples here, often its better to adapt and translate the core idea of the IP rather than try force a square peg into a round hole. Jurassic Park tends to have a terrible track record when it comes to games. The recent park builder games have been the best out of the lot alongside Operation Genesis, but they’re lacking the brainier side of the IP. Granted, so are all the sequel movies, but that’s neither here or there. None of the Jurassic Park games have really even attempted that, just given the whole thing some lip service. However, I must give Ocean some credit with their JP games, they didn’t really have the best cards to play with.

Though we have to consider the other side of the coin as well; what does the customer get out of it a game being accurate to the IP? If they’re fans or in-the-know about things, they get a good time with a competent game. It’s a factor the squares the enjoyment.

Opposite of this would be a player who gets a competent game, but would miss the referential nature of the game even if it manages to nail the atmosphere and tone. Take how Robocop’s gunplay works from above. A person who has never seen the game can infer from the game why the game is how it is, but without the context of the movie, it’s very easy to assume its nothing but unfriendly design and going against the mainstream trends. As an example, there’s a sub-quests in Rogue City, where the player has to scan shelves of cassettes in a rental store and discuss the nature of films with one of the characters. For general public, this most likely is just filler, busywork to pad out the game’s runtime. For fans of Robocop this is rather blatant discussion about the franchise in general, referencing e.g. how Paul Verhoeven threw Robocop’s script into the trash after a first read, but his wife read it through to pass the time and convinced her husband that the movie had more to it than just what’s on the surface. It might be filler still, but it’s still filler than engages certain people more.

The best way to adapt something to another media? Don’t. Take a look at how the new Super Mario Bros. movie did it. It didn’t even attempt to adapt any of the Mario games, but rather the whole franchise overall. There is no way to translate the direct control of Mario into a passive media. Some of the older TV shows tried to replicate the action of the games into choreography or depicted the characters from a certain angle. This is more or less turning how Teyon worked to make their games work, but you can’t take action from games and expect it to be as entertaining or engaging in a passive medium. Seeing Mario jump in a Goomba the Nth time when you’re in control is not the same as seeing in on the screen in a cartoon.

I heard this example from somewhere, source is lost to time; a man walking through a desert for one hour without any cuts is boring to watch. A player controlling that man walking through that desert is riveting. An experienced film director would beg to differ, trying to make it interesting and probably would succeed. At the same time, a game that creates its walking mechanic and its desert a challenge to the player engages on a different level. The player becomes the walker as the controller, and each player would have their own version of the desert walking story.

I’m not sure if Teyon, or any other developer for the matter, conceptualized how a game’s story always revolved around the play of the player. Dialogue trees a crude but very easy example of player options that are apparent and easy to explain and showcase how the player has influenced the story. Less so when you’re asked something like What’s the canon method Mario defeated Bowser in SMB1?

Understanding that games require organic options under a set of rules makes adapting IP form another medium easier. However, adaptions that adhere strongly to their source materials suffer because they don’t have those options to give to the player. The current trendy term seems to be emergent gameplay and player expression, but both are just fancy words for options and choices. Some are realizing that playing a game is more or less the same thing as smashing two figures together in a directed play session under a framing device. That’s what games at their core are; Here’s the scene, how will you play it? Most people seem to follow the guidance games give closely, while others seem to aim to break the games as much as they can. Sometimes games reward this, like how Nier: Automata has those multiple little endings for certain little actions the player can allowed to do.

The worst of movie-to-game adaptions follow the leadline too closely while trying to gamefy what little they can work with. It’s easy to end up with a product that doesn’t really reflect the source material. We could argue that at one point that was a given either due to limitations of the technology or because of lack of experience in the industry in general. I don’t believe neither of this though. Ever since films and literature have adapted each other back and forth, the paradigm has been to adhere as close to the source material as possible. The dimension of choice games adds of course throws a monkey wrench to Hollywood’s gears as they can’t adapt that. Thus, glorifying games’ stories and industry elevating those that make the best use of film method of storytelling over how games can do it. Books suffer as well, though it would be interesting to see a well-versed author trying to gamefy a video game adaptation by making a choose-your-adventure book instead of a linear story.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. Perhaps the film and literature industries could do the same thing to games, and simply take the overall spirit of a game and build a whole story around that they could tell. That would demand the adapters would need to respect and understand these games, and seeing the track record adapting games into other media is about as spotty as vice versa, I’m not holding my breath.

Revenge of the Sith on the PS2 is pretty damn neat

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on the PS2 (and Xbox if you’re so inclined) has an interesting legacy. Initially reviewed as a somewhat mediocre game at its release in 2005, the game got a better rap from word of mouth. Back in the day, one of the more pronounced aspects of the game was how it offered an alternative ending to the final battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan, where Anakin manages to avoid Obi-Wan’s cut and stabs him. The game has a lot of stabbing, probably partially because of rating reasons, as bloodless stabs with a lightsabre are more child friendly than using the same weapon for decapitation. The game was out about the same time as the movie it adapts, so it’s rather faithful in its adaptation. Some parts are made out of cut sequences from the movie. Some are missing to keep the movie less spoiled. It’s an extended but condensed version of the film, with all the major action sets getting extended while most of the talkie bits got cut. This is a fine adaptation, as the medium requires player action. It’s more interesting to mow down Jedis in their temple as newly-turned Darth Vader rather than just see a snippet of it and see the aftermath.

The meat of the game is in its combat system though. At first, it seems like a standard action game with the usual Light, Medium, and Heavy buttons with Block. These are what the player most likely ends up mashing, as it takes you most of the way of the game. Opening the manuals shows that the game indeed has three levels of attacks, there are tons of other maneuvers the player has access to. Your usual Force powers are there, but also launchers, counters, air tech escapes, perfect deflections… it’s a game very much inspired by Soul Calibur and the devs cited this in old interviews. However, if we’re frank, a lot of this goes unused in the main campaign, as moving down the generic mob enemies doesn’t really require mastery over the mechanics. The occasional grab and twist do the job, but most of the skill the player has is locked behind an experience points system, with Health and Force gauges having hidden upgrades in most of the levels. It’s an uneven design, and the developers seem to have known this, as the game has an emphasis on 1-on-1 fights as it goes on. The stages don’t really lend themselves to exploration, which is a bit of a shame. Yet at the same time, this is a blessing as the game has very little to no fat. It concentrates on being a damn fine license game and does that very well.

The mechanics may be a bit wasted in the single-player mode, where you mostly cut down enemies in one or two strokes, but they get a chance to shine in multiplayer. The co-op mode allows either Versus or Cooperative, and the surprising amount of choices the player can make in a battle has extended the game’s life. There still are people playing the Versus mode because the game has such a well-developed combat system.

Of course, the game is played online via emulation, so your mileage may vary how well it plays and even looks. The lighting effects just ain’t right on an emulator

While I wouldn’t call the single-player mode a glorified fighting game, it is very much in the spirit of classic belt-scrolling action games like Final Fight and Streets of Rage. The Versus mode is a fighting game through and through though. Was there a split in design among the developers at some point, or did they want to make the best lightsabre combat game of the era in lieu of fighting games, but didn’t find a way to incorporate their desired mechanics into single-player mode? Star Wars doesn’t really have strong mob enemies per se, and the movies made it very clear that the Droid army could be cut down rather fast. Even the Clones go down fast and are about as accurate as the meme version of their Imperial Stormtrooper successors. The Boss battles are a break from the in-setting monotony of the general stages in that, which makes me question if mechanics clearly designed to work best in multiplayer would work in single-player, generally speaking.

Fighting games generally don’t veer off their course; it doesn’t matter who the opponent is, AI or human. Shooting games’ single-player mode tends to put the player into a heroic role, whereas in multiplayer everyone’s more or less a generic soldier of the army. Core mechanics stay the same, but rules are revised for balance. This balance is the key, of course. Single-player can be as unbalanced as it wants to be, either for or against the player, but that doesn’t roll with multiplayer. Games like Phantasy Star Online and Monster Hunter share the exact same core rules and mechanics both online and offline, but whereas MonHun is fun alone still, Phantasy Star alone is dull. Yet I spend several hours playing it on the Dreamcast.

So, a game should share its single-player aspects within the multi-player, where the opponent can be either AI or human, or work in the same or similar role in a cooperative role. Revenge of the Sith sadly doesn’t do this outside Boss battles, which is why the game is just mediocre. It damns the game. The stage designs and the flow of them are well-realized and offer a nice, straightforward action to play through, but the mechanics or the secret upgrades don’t really support them. You have a Versus mode that makes the best out of the mechanics but went largely unnoted by the larger group of reviewers. The game probably should’ve been split into two projects. One becoming one of the best license games to date, and the other would’ve been one of the best fighting games of 2005.

To use another game as an example like this, Mega Man Battle Network is something similar. The main game and the enemies you fight are all very much their own thing, while the multiplayer Versus mode is effectively always a mirror match. What you can have, your opponent can as well, version-exclusive Battle Chips aside. Many fans to this day would want to see a game set in Battle Network‘s setting, but with the human character serving as the player’s own avatar and a customizable NetNavi. With this, the player could create their own unique NetNavi for competitive play, effectively offering the same asymmetrical Versus play the main game offers. Just with both players have access to unique strategies and elements unavailable in normal play. Sure, later games in the series allow you to play with other Navis in limited quantity, and the Japanese-only 4.5 offered multiple readily-made Navis to play with, but 4.5 is more or less a gimmick as a calendar and such. Capcom could still print loads of money with this concept, but Mega Man as a whole is less the main dish nowadays. It’s more akin to a can of strawberry jam from a few years ago that’s still tasty, but can’t beat the fresher fruits. We can only wish Capcom decides to revive the series, again, sometime in the future. They could do more of these classical games with lower budgets and higher returns.

Star Trek doing a horror-like game? More likely than you think

The Collective, the game developer behind Revenge of the Sith, did have a varied background in games. While their first game, Men in Black: The Game is garbage, they sure got better. Star Trek DS9; The Fallen is a rare, solid Star Trek game, which doesn’t get talked about all that much nowadays. Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb netted The Collective history with Lucasarts, and this is probably the game that got them the Star Wars gig. Emperor’s Tomb may have the usual camera issues, but honestly plays rather well overall. The weirdest thing is, The Collective was merged with Shiny Entertainment of Earthworm Jim fame in 2007 to form Double Helix Games. Their best games were the 2014 Strider game, and 2013’s Killer Instinct reboot. Iron Galaxies had to carry KI after the first season of the game, because they got bought out by Amazon and were merged into Amazon Games, which have produced nothing worth of note.

The Collective was about to find its voice as developers right after Revenge of the Sith. A lot of things from their previous games were coming together here, and in a game or two they might’ve struck bigger gold than anticipated, with or without a license.

I’m sure you’re wondering what’s the point of this post, and the point is that I am very much fascinated by Revenge of the Sith because it’s a schizophrenic game. It doesn’t shine in either of its modes, as separates they’re a bit awkward, but at the same time, the game has so many good points that its mediocrity has a very nice and long-lasting sheen on it. They don’t make games like this anymore, and that’s honestly a bit sad. Revenge of the Sith stands the test of time by being fun and doesn’t waste your time with endless time-wasting details that hamper the play of the game. There’s something cathartic in using menus that are quick and responsive without extra animation to cover unoptimized load times.

Revenge of the Sith is a game that’s very easy to like, but equally, someone could consider it trash. I can’t even say that the Versus mode is its saving grace as the rest of the game is competent. The Versus mode just happens to be the one that clearly has a place in the fans’ hearts, and it is rather sad to see all of this going to waste in history as the Star Wars game that’s just neat. Just a little bit more, and this game could’ve been a bonafide classic broader audience would also talk about. It’s fast to boot-up, fast to get in, fast to get out. You can spend a few hours beating the story and the additional stages, and you can pop it in to play Versus or Co-op with your friend. It’s the perfect kind of library-filler game that’s almost lost nowadays. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, yet leaves such a nice impression that you want to come back sometime later just to play the best bits again. I don’t remember the last time a visibly imperfect game like this shines this brightly almost twenty years after its release.

I really do wish Star Wars would see a straight Fighting game again, but rather than devs trying to model it after Mortal Kombat or whatever would be popular at a given time, would embrace the unique aspects of the movies and make something stand out. Revenge of the Sith was almost there.

It’s not about the cheesecake, it’s about having the right to own what you’ve bought

Recently, the fighting game Skullgirls, the Encore 2nd version, was censored the second time around. No new version of the game is intended to be published. As per usual, this censoring is done via an update patch. Furthermore, the censorship doesn’t only affect the game, but also art book that can be purchased as an add-on, and was a Kickstarter stretch goal.

Whatever you think about a company censoring a game isn’t the exact issue here. While most of talk seems to be about whether or not panty shots and imagery evoking either Nazis or North Korea is necessary, what is being censored isn’t the main issue. The main issue here is Hidden Variable removing content from an over ten years old game without the customer having control over their purchase.

Video and computer games aren’t strangers to version censorship. Regional versions have seen censorship depending on the legislation and rules, with China probably being the worst offender in this. Naturally, you could always access the original version by importing the game from elsewhere, so the comparison isn’t exact. However, they are a precedent. Change of content, or removal of it, via an update is an uncommon practice. The main difference is that before the modern online era, you could always access the previous version via purchasing the older game. Easiest comparison, albeit not wholly exact either, would be how Street Fighter II had updates that rebalanced and changed characters, while adding speed options and such. Despite newer version of Street Fighter II, Super Turbo is still the tournament-defining version of the game. It’s still played to this day over other newer versions.

Sometimes the censorship is something small, and often for stupid reasons. Battlefield 2042 had a skin named Little Green Man, but was changed via an update because people thought it was referencing Russian-Ukrainian war. The name of course is a classic name given to aliens, often from Mars. DayZ had cannabis in the game, which lead the game being banned in Australia. It would later have a new release that removed the drug. Destiny 2 saw removal of the Kek armour, because it supposedly looked like a terrible Internet meme flag. Turned out this was a coincidence, but got removed anyway. Genshin Impact has seen toning down character’s raciness via patches. Outlast II had a scene with sexual assault, which was removed due to being banned in Australia. Street Fighter V patched out nipple outlines on costumes, modified Rainbow Mika’s butt slap during her Super and later on costume censorship covering thighs and cleavage came with the Champion Edition.

These are just a very small pool of examples. To most people they probably seem insignificant, as they don’t affect the play. Examples like Senran Kagura Burst ReNewal’s Intimacy Mode being removed from Western PlayStation 4 versions is rarer. Similarly, German version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare saw Arcade Mode removed. Just Dance series if full of censorship in the songs, sometimes using radio edits to get around lyrics, sometimes just cutting out the words if a censored version doesn’t already exist. For a music game, censoring songs is pretty harsh. Naturally, the game’s rating was the issue, and getting it as low as possible for the mass markets was the reason here. Different versions of the same game also saw songs changes depending the region, and publication date. Chinese Just Dance 2020 saw a few songs removed via updates.

To emphasize, what has been censored, or removed, is beside the point, even in Skullgirls’ case. We can’t argue against the property owner having the right to change the game. They own it. However, due to digitalization of games and services, the customers have lost the ownership of their games. We can discuss whether you buy games or purchase a license to games, but that’s slightly beside the point. It does shine more light how anti-consumer purchasing games digitally has become and how little control the consumer over what they have purchased for themselves.

That lack of control should be challenged. This particular update for Skullgirls is visual. There is no reason why the players should keep an earlier version of the game intact for online play. Hidden Variable has George Lucas’d their game, in effect. The difference of course being that Lucas didn’t walk into everyone’s house and destroyed all existing copies of Star Wars and replaced them with Special Editions. However, that’s what Hidden Variable has done, something the gaming industry has been doing for a long time now, and something that will continue to happen to older games via either patches or re-releases, remasters and whatnot.

This is a symptom of the consumers losing the right to own the goods they have legally purchased. That’s the underlying issue and why people are getting upset about. You, as the buying customer, should have the final word what happens to physical items, firmware and software you purchase. Currently, the digitalized media is against you and the corporations don’t want you to have power over the things you should have ownership over. That’d mean losing control over the goods you have, thus having control over you. Right to Repair is part of this equation, something that should apply to games as well, especially to always-online game. I guess the only thing the players can do now is to install mods that revert these changes the developers and publishers are forcing on players, and if that doesn’t help, they are driving customers to the high seas.

Further musings on electronic games technology

The technological advancements in video games seem to have come to a natural point of refinement. New hardware doesn’t exactly break new ground, as there doesn’t seem to be a new frontier to go towards for. Ever since Pong, electronic gaming had to invent and reinvent its hardware to do new things. Some things we take self-evident, like a screen able to scroll in any direction, required both the proper hardware and know-how to make, and take advantage of. Sega pioneered tons of gaming hardware in the arcades, and was one of the names that were pushing technology forwards. From Super Sprite Scaler to Model-1 board with Virtua Racing, not to forget their full-body interfaces, the hardware used to be something that limited what you can do with games on a fundamental level. It wasn’t a question of how many polygons you could push, it was a question if you could do 3D at all.

Nowadays the question is the other way around. The way hardware is used has become homogenous and common across the board, requiring very little change between HDR Twins and PC. Nintendo sticking it’s their mature technology mind-set of course gives them a lead, but they’re not exactly pushing the boundary in this sense. However, their approach to the hybrid home /portable console was a cornerstone of their success. It was a somewhat new way to interface and play games, based on existing tech that they could make use of. Game design isn’t exactly tied to the hardware anymore. The question if something can be done has been replaced with how well something can be done. Not that many developers are keen to explore that all that well, as the usage of pre-developed game engines has made tons of games look the same, largely have the same play feel, and even share common problems nobody really found a need to fix.

Virtual Reality has been in development for good thirty decades before it became a viable technology, but it also shows the biggest issue with modern game development. Nobody really knows what to do when you can do anything. Games like Beat Saber are great examples of well thought and designed VR games, but getting to the nitty gritty, it could be argued the game could’ve been realised either on the Wii or in the arcades with custom controllers. As a game, it is worth giving a shot at a friend’s place, and a must-buy if you get VR goggles for some reason. Though looking at some of the Top VR games lists, most of them are games that can be played without VR or aren’t exactly trying to push the envelope, making the point largely moot

Limitations breed creativity, but when you have to create your own technology to fulfill that creativity, the results more often than not seem to be watershed moments. Often game history bits mention Starfox, Mario 64, Tomb Raider, and Quake when talking about the line of 3D games, sometimes mentioning Doom and Ultima Underworld, but ignoring the arcades. Perhaps the arcades get pushed away, or don’t warrant a mention because these were designed-for-purpose machines rather than generic hardware you could buy off the store shelves. Sega was breaking the ground like nobody else in the arcades and home markets wouldn’t be able to compete with the same level of fidelity for some time. Games like Virtua Cop did get great homeports, arguably even better than the arcade in some ways, but lacked the same higher resolution. Sony made the right call to buy out Psygnosis, as they ended up doing the initial 3D drivers and manuals for the developers. Nevertheless, arcade hardware was pushing 3D harder and harder, until the millennium.

Arguably, 3D was the last true cornerstone of electronic gaming. It took about a decade to become mature. Sure, by 1997 all the platforms had their major 3D games, but very few of them controlled well. In terms of aesthetics, this era is riddled with games that make great use of the lower polygon count, while others look like brown, dark shit 3D doesn’t age as well as sprite graphics, though we should re-evaluate this due to modern sprite graphics being far removed from their dot-pattern parents. It’s easy to take what’s already there and improve on it; Namco’s Time Crisis was directly inspired by Virtua Cop and would show how much the technologies of the era could improve in a very short time. Sega and Namco were fierce rivals in the arcades, competing like no other. However, while Namco may have Pac-Man and Xevious under their belts, the sheer amount of innovation Sega was doing with their hardware and games puts any current gaming companies to shame.

The question this rambling post comes back with is about if there are further technological mountains to be conquered. More polygons, higher clock speeds, better colour, better blacks, and shading are all nice, but these aren’t making new kinds of games possible. When we reach a point where only your imagination and skills as a programmer become the limiting factors, why do so many modern games, especially the more costly Triple-A titles, become so homogenous and ultimately boring? Is it because they aim to cater to a larger audience? That can’t really be the point, because electronic games already are the most mainstream form of entertainment on this planet, well past the film and music industries. Do the publishers think the players are unable to understand how these games are played and developers cater to their closed circle mates? Highly possible if not wholly probable. Kids aren’t any more dumber than they used to be. It’s the teenagers and adults who seem to have completely missed how children were able to beat complex games just fine with just the manual helping them. Underestimating the consumer seems to be a modern trend.

Perhaps it’s the lack of real-world experiences that have got games stuck into this rut. To use Sega as yet another example, Yu Suzuki made his team practice martial arts to understand how to throw a punch properly during the development of Virtua Fighter. His interest in motorsports yielded Hang-On! years earlier, which necessitated the creation of Super Scaler technology. Shigeru Miyamoto cited his childhood adventures in forests and caves as a source of inspiration for the The Legend of Zelda. Satoshi Tajiri was a bug collector and an Ultraman fan, both of which combined into Pokémon in the end. The more these veterans talk about the games they’ve made, the more they talk about real-world experiences they’ve gone through and how they were inspired by them. Even Richard Garriot cites his Dungeons and Dragons inspiring Ultima, but without a doubt, his background in fencing and being part of the Society for Creative Anachronism played massively important parts as well.

I don’t think people who have video or computer games, as their main hobby should go into making games themselves. Their worldview is too narrow, too much into the mechanics and systems of things. They probably would make good games, but every major watershed title has been poured out from personal experiences apart from video games. It’s a bubble, where you take what’s on the table and see how far you can push things. More often than not, nobody seems to turn around and add another table to the mix, or change the table to a new one.

Another reason is that video games as a technology were something completely new for the latter part of the 1900s. At least since the seventies, if not earlier, new ground was broken with each new innovation. Things like Fairchild Channel F innovating in creating games as separate media from the console itself to creating technology that would allow driving enough polygons on screen for 3D games to be a thing. Each new year would push something new in terms of technology. If you read or listen to interviews of old game programmers, they will tell how they had to do something completely new to make their visions true. Nowadays things have been standardised to a point, with large amounts of games using the same engines across platforms. One more reason to dislike the homogenisation of computer and video games into one big lump. Games have become inefficient, and I have a hunch very few know how to properly code in C. The table has been set for at least two game developer generations for now. It’s nice to see something in this world being standardised to some extent, but that seems to have killed a certain drive to push games as games. Exploration of what an electronic game is has largely been left to individuals and small studios as bigger names. Nothing has been ventured, nothing has been gained. I’ve been rather sick of seeing the same game > plot sequence > game plot sequence etc. repeated ad nauseum. 

One of the reasons why Dark Souls or Metroid Prime are considered to be gems when it comes to storytelling via whatever the current equivalent buzzword for environmental storytelling. For video games, this hasn’t been anything new per se, because it’s mainly visual world-building and well-designed environments. Create a setting and then populate it with details, and add further tidbits and legends into pieces of text or discussions with characters, if applicable. Not every game can or has to use this method. Giving the Souls games the title of pioneering this shit is barking at the wrong tree. Pick a game that has an explorable world, and you see it used everywhere. However, that’s a method of using the technology, not innovating the technology itself. It’s still recycling the same thing in different boxers. Though Nintendo has showcased that it’s not necessarily new technology that’s needed, but the way to innovate with mature technology, and that the industry will follow in to copy whatever new shit is pushed out. 

The evermore-growing amount of sequels and remakes is part of the problem or a symptom of things. Original properties are left for the smaller studios and independents, while the big guns churn out the same shit in different boxers. I’ve seen discussions about how originality has died, but perhaps the issue is that in order to have originality, you first have to have tons of life experiences and interests to source that originality. With technology offering very few, if any new avenues to make an actual impact on how games can be made and designed, making what’s found most selling seems to be the spot publishers want to hit the most. Nobody is pushing new frontiers, probably because nobody knows what the new frontier is. Even VR has languished without mass support from consumers; both because of the investment needed and the lack of killer appeal games.

Maybe the Holodeck will be the next true step in electronic gaming. That’ll kill all interest to further humanity for sure, and Holodeck artists will probably complain about how AI is making it too easy to generate whole worlds. I don’t know what’s the next step in gaming technology. However, I would guess it isn’t about peripherals or an interface; it’s not a new way to control a game or new VR goggle tech. It won’t be how portable something will end up being or how vast a world can be. Procedural generation is old and new, even if it’s being improved upon all the time. Artificial Intelligence will help in making games in the future, both in generating assets and game code, but that’s a tool of production in itself. That’s similar to common game engines nowadays in that it’ll streamline development. None of these are, or will be, Virtua Racing-like moments. 

I don’t believe electronic gaming has found its final place in this. Lucasfilm revolutionized special effects on film with Star Wars, but with games, it won’t be something like that. The two mediums are too different. Books are ultimately limited to words, and the media’s technology has matured to an end-point. Music can renew itself with new ways to make music under new genres, with new instruments probably being closest to watershed technologies in gaming. Perhaps video and computer games will find their next step whenever we manage to step beyond electronics. Maybe AI will revolutionize gaming in a way, where players are able to generate their own games without any knowledge of design or programming. At worst, we just have to wait for the Holodecks for a complete and total revolution of entertainment. That would be the last form of entertainment humanity would ever need to devise.

Thirty Years of Dino DNA

Amuse me for a moment here. This summer Jurassic Park, the movie, turns 30 years. This Sunday, June 11th, to be exact. Before it became a massive runaway success, a globe-shaking earthquake that never really ceased, it wasn’t considered a contender against Last Action Hero. If anything, it was seen yet another project of a somewhat has-been director doing his passion again. Spielberg wasn’t really having much success with films at the time. Though in many ways him being forced a bit hands-off from the movie’s post-production probably helped it to find a particular tone that’s completely gone in any of the sequels.

Jurassic Park sequels, including the World soft-reboot ones, could never hold the candle against the original movie, or the book. It’s a one-time deal, albeit I admit the Lost World novel is a personal favorite. You can’t repeat Jurassic Park, which is why for the longest time then-future Jurassic Park projects tried their best to expand outside Isla Nublar, the original island. Takes on the Raptors being used as intelligent SWAT members was something I heard being thrown around and after the third movie through the grapevine, while World would take the equally stupid route of taking the dinosaurs off the islands and make them inhabit the modern ecosystem.

A friend argued that this made sense, as Lost World saw these animals thriving despite their built-in lysine dependency. That’s where the movie and the film differ in a major way; the movie is a 1990s celebration of nature in the worst possible way, making eco-terrorists supposed heroes while childishly making businessmen and hunters caricature evil. The book, on the other hand, emphasized on how these animals, millions of years removed from their time and never being natural, were doomed. These creatures didn’t know how to parent; it was always the survival of the fittest in the most extreme case. The ratio of predators and prey was completely off, and the spread of prion-based disease named DX was the final nail in the coffin. Raptors would spread it across the island via bites, as would the Compys as scavengers and waste disposal animals.

Of course, death of Dinosaurs doesn’t really make a good franchise, even though the last movie did that even after shoveling a few new bottoms, they could still dig themselves deeper. As it is, Jurassic Park isn’t really going anywhere with its story in any media, and whatever attempts have been made to make the series worthwhile have bombed worse than my jokes.

So, the next step would be to cash on the original. I can see either Poltergeist or Jurassic Park being the first Spielberg movies to be remade. Here’s where I muse.

Jurassic Park could see a worthwhile remake if it did end up standing on its own two legs. By this, I mean a masterful writer can take both the movie and the book and combine them as part-remake of the film, partly newly adapting the book. The Internet is pages full of comparisons between the two works, and using this as a springboard a writer could pick up the best and the most functioning bits from both of the sources and mix them into something new. For example, this remix-make could be more after the original work and have John Hammond a man after money first and most, but give him shades and colours of the grandfatherly entertainer he is in the movie. Keep the dinner discussion scene from the movie in, while adding an element or two from the books. Everyone wanted the raft scene from the book included into the movie, so maybe add that bit of fanservice in there, despite it already appearing in most of the games (which, in fact, were a mix of the book and the movie) and was a direct source for the third movie’s river scene.

Naturally, this imagined remuxmake should make the best use of the Jurassic Park effect. Change the science, re-imagine the dinosaurs as accurately as possible with a modern understanding of whys and hows. In 1980s and early 1990s dinosaurs were just becoming the more intelligent animals we see in these movies within the sciences themselves as understanding was expanding. The name Velociraptor itself was valid for some six months for a particular animal while Michel Crichton was writing the novel. When the name was changed, the movie staff decided to stick with the name they initially got, because it sounds better and is arguably easier to pronounce by your layman. In effect, part marketing, part sheer convenience.

We know how dated the science in Jurassic Park is because of the movie inspired dozens of people to get into the fields that the novel and film touch upon. This has been these works’ lasting legacy; improving our knowledge on these animals in ways people couldn’t even dream of thirty years ago. This is the aforementioned Jurassic Park effect; something that inspires so much research and change, that the original work that was hard in science at the time becomes wholly outdated.

We could of course claim that the whole cloning bit is the reason why these aren’t dinosaurs, just cloned monsters. They shouldn’t be treated as such and nobody should expect them to look or behave like their ancestral counterparts. I’d argue this approach is largely stupid and invalidates these creatures as animals and gives the creative license sequels took advantage of and rather than have these creations act like animals, they became slasher villains with near-human motives. This is best seen in World movies, where they fail to grasp why cloning was the hot topic of the era. Nowadays it’s A.I. and how well we’ll manage to abuse that while the sour tongues preach about a Skynet future.

Yes, I know there’s a discussion between Wu and Hammond about taking the dinosaurs to a later version 4 point something. This shows that their cloning process, and the patchwork it needs to make fully viable living creatures, required tons of iterations to gain the current population. Hammond, of course, wants authenticity and wants these animals to be as real as possible, or as real as we think or understand they were.

The science is one of the fundamental pillars of Jurassic Park. While it is surface for most people, it is largely consistent and makes sense even in the real-world settings of the era of the late 1980s. However, this would require extensive research of how we could revive dinosaurs to our era. Cloning isn’t possible. Not because of cloning itself, but because the complete half-life of DNA is 6.8 million years. All Dino DNA we could find is amber is already gone.

So, what’s the next crackpot theory that we could utilize and see if it held water for the next decade? The most probable method would be the often-discussed reversal of evolution. In 2009, scientists at the University of Wisconsin mutated chicken embryos to grow dinosaur-like teeth. The very basic idea is that certain sections in the genome mark evolution and certain traits are suppressed while others are allowed to function. By turning these points on and off, we can take steps back n evolution in terms of how things would grow. However, a chicken that would look like a Tyrannosaurus Rex would still be a chicken, would eat like a chicken, and probably would try to mate like a chicken. It’s not a straight reversal. Another similar paper about mucking with nature was about growing chickens with dinosaur legs. Modern birds have splinter-like fibula that are shorter than the tibia, while with dinosaurs these were equally long. To re-enable the genetic code that would make these bones grow as if they were with dinosaurs, birthing chickens with dino legs.

Paleontology is an immensely valuable resource with this, as scientists do need some kind of guideline on what to gun for and what sort of results they should be expecting. Going blindly in and mutating bird embryos to see what ancestral traits pop up is gruesome to think, but would make InGen, Jurassic Park’s in-universe company running the genetics and the park, that much more uncaring and profit-driven.

I do think that by simply updating the science of Jurassic Park, and all the implications that carries with it while tackling the weaknesses both the book and the movie had, we could create a worthwhile new entry. Arguably, it would be less a remake at this point, but the term fits it the best.

I used the term hard science previously as a provocation. Of course, this wouldn’t be hard science per se, as we’ve only managed to scratch the surface of reversing evolution in this manner. However, there is a time and place for everything, and if Jurassic Park itself has shown, anything about this, taking what is known now and taking, it a step forwards has to be taken. Bewilder the audience and have them enticed with further questions they can find answers to either from books or as future scientists and researchers.

Of course, Jurassic Park will see another revival of some sort down the line, but a full-blown remake, highly unlikely. Better that way, for the moment at least. I would love to see someone tackling this idea in a whole new franchise in a new way, but there’s not much room to wiggle in general sense in the high concept of dinosaurs in an entertainment park run amuck.

In the nitty gritty sure, but such a work would have a massive mountain in front of it not to be called just another JP clone. Lost World was a great, challenging idea, but only Crichton made it work.

Stuck in (crowdfunding) eternity

So, the guys at âge are intending to put up another crowdfunding to remake Kimi ga Nozomu Eien: Latest Edition to current Windows, and probably consoles down the line. This is a fully standalone fare and has nothing to do with the Muv-Luv Kickstarter. As such, we need to take a deep breath of this fresh air and consider whether or not there are any reason to back it.

At first glance, the plan seems to be solid, but very one-sided. As it stands, the crowdfunding will be for Japanese version development only. An English version might have another round of crowdfunding. It is only a possibility, so if you are an English speaking fan with no Japanese language skills, your incentive to support the first round of crowdfunding would be for the merch âge might put down, and for the possibility of another crowdfunding for the English version. This very unfair for Western fans, especially now that the economy is tanking hard worldwide and everything is getting more expensive each day.

While I can’t say anything solid, my guess why âge would want to proceed with this sort of path, for now, is that the Muv-Luv Kickstarter ended up being a net monetary loss overall for all. The production of goods cost more than initially anticipated and shipping stuff out took longer than expected, which in most cases leads to extra storage costs. Seeing how âge wants to approach this Kimi ga Nozomu Eien remake crowdfunding, they probably want to play it close to home. Crowdfunding is full of potholes a first-time runner won’t know about, and the amount of stuff people could get as backers was somewhat insane in hindsight. Kouki has been going on and off about the Kickstarter and the staff in a backhanded way in his vids, and while he hasn’t named any names, seems to carry ill will towards some of them. If I’m being frank, his ego is showing in a negative way, and its apparent how âge has approached KGNE remake’s crowdfunding.

Another issue is that due to market reasons and nuances, this remake will be all-ages. No R18 material will be included or patched. There are a few ways to describe it. Seems like the Japanese side tends to use PS2-version as the main descriptor, some use All-Ages like yours truly, and then there’s the straight up and blatant censorship. I get why all three have their reasons. Though I admit I will call this case censorship as well, as Latest Edition has erotica, and its Remake won’t. I stand by my old argument that these scenes are important to the story and characterization, as they reveal important weaknesses and strengths with each character. Some are rather in your face for sure, but some really are a crux. Losing them lessens the story itself. You can dance around them and depict their effects in different ways, like what the how the TV anime adaptation did, but more often than not, that’s less effective.

Kouki himself has begrudged the attitude difference between the domestic and the Overseas fans. Apparently, the Japanese fans are more understanding and see the little nuances that prevent these scenes from being included, while the Overseas fans are more ready to drop criticism and ask demand full R18 version to be made.

Of course, the market is the thing that is cited to be reason why Latest Edition’s remake will be All-Ages. You won’t get on Steam if your game has porn in it, the reason why indie developer Shimenawan is also pulling the plug Lorena and the land of Ruins’ adult content in Japan as well. While there are other platforms that would freely allow fully adult versions of games being sold, and with someone like Mangagamer a physical copy in form a USB drive would be possible too, âge has no real incentive do develop another version. In principle, they might see more sales from fans who double dip in both ponds, but considering how omnipresent Valve seems to be in the digital PC games market, someone during the approval process might pull brake the process to halt if there’s another version that has “questionable content.”

Things get a bit more complex when take into notion that âge hasn’t been in charge of the ship since Avex came into the picture. It’s a bit of a mess how the companies are connected. Let me correct one thing that I constantly say but don’t really intent; âge wasn’t in charge of the Muv-Luv crowdfunding. Degica licensed Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Alternative from ixtl, which was an entity that managed ACID’s copyrights and did development too, but was replaced with aNCHOR after Avex bought ixtl. âge’s just one of the brand names ACID owns, but any of the works produced by âge until 2020 are owned by aNCHOR, which is owned by Avex. âge, in effect is now jointly ran by both ACID and aNCHOR. I wonder why Kouki has tried to establish the distinction between the companies and projects recently.

While this upcoming Kimi ga Nozomu Eien Remake crowdfunding is ACID’s plan, they are allowed to do it with the permission from aNCHOR, and ultimately with Avex’s blessing. âge, or rather ACID, is no longer in position to freely develop and create products like those that they did before ixtl was established in 2011.

We can make a not-too farfetched guess that it’s not just the market forces that would prevent a full R18 version of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien remake from being made, but also corporate pressure from above. All the works that carries âge branding have become increasingly more cleaned up for general consumption. While I’m glad to see the more people enjoying Muv-Luv, I must admit that the necessary changes the developers and publishers have made to the IP has been a disappointment all around. Muv-Luv has changed, and so have the people in charge and the fans themselves.

I feel the franchise left me. Don’t mind that most of the post-Muv-Luv Alternative productions have been largely low quality or just generic garbage, but with all the changes and in-fighting, I’m still holding my original VNs and other pieces and wondering what really went wrong. While I can always say that, everything that goes mainstream is always ruined and trying to cater to the mainstream audience ruined the franchise, that’s not cutting it or even properly true. There’s been a more fundamental change, with Kouki having the dream of seeing Muv-Luv animated as the driving force. Has all the changes and projects been all about making that final deal with the devil?

I dropped the MLA after the first episode, and haven’t picked it back up since. From what I’ve heard, the show’s polarizing to a rather extreme extent.

So, I’m stuck. I’m not interested in a clean-up version of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien Visual Novel that lacks content its previous version had, which makes Latest Edition the de-facto most complete edition of the work. Kimi ga Nozomu Eien Reboot is still under the wraps and is a wholly different product, in which I have no interest. Make something new instead, a new Kimi ga VN for example. Muv-Luv Alternative sequels are in the works and coming, alongside all those side projects, so there are plenty of pieces to visit and see, but ultimately, it doesn’t work for me.

Is that all âge brand is now? Remaking and rebooting, making sequels and spin-offs? It’s all so terribly dull. With the KGNE Remake crowdfunding, intending to produce for Japanese market only in its first round, it’s as if there’s an underlying hostility towards the Overseas audiences. This seems to extend to the translators they employ roundabout ways too, if those streams are hearsays are anything to go by.

In all honesty, I do think remaking Latest Edition is a mistake, especially through a crowdfunding. That may be their only way to get it funded, but budget should never be an issue thrown at your fans like this. When the Muv-Luv Kickstarter was finished and rumours about Kimi ga Nozomu Eien being the next thing, people expected more or less a straight updated engine with a translation and nothing more. They could’ve gotten translation for that easily and cheaply at the time, but now things aren’t as rosy anymore. I hate corporate politics and what they do to people.

I have no incentive to support this crowdfunding. All I really ever wanted from âge, or ACID or whatever company owns the rights this Friday, to put Kimi ga Nozomu Eien out in English without any cuts made. So, at least during the first round of things, why bother putting down any money? I don’t like funding possibilities in this sort of economy. All this is out of my hands in every regard, so I’m not sweating over it. It can’t be helped.

There’s a large amount of new fans out there too. It’s a joy to see people loving something and being passionate about. If the franchise, and the people heading the franchise, had to change to ensure the longevity of the whole shebang, then that’s the nature of the beast I guess. The original works aren’t going anywhere from my shelf, and I can always dig deeper into them and further explore what makes them tick. Nowadays there are so many options to use AI and auto-translation tools that weren’t available before, making things a bit easier too. Seeing how fans have changed throughout these years does make me feel like an âgeing relic.

Modding Sega Saturn Virtual-On Twin Stick for PC, PS4 and more

With all the Twin Sticks out there, the cheapest and most available one happens to be the Sega Saturn Twin Stick. While it’s not as desirable as the Dreamcast stick due to cheaper parts, it’s not as desirable as the Hori controllers, and it’s not nearly as expensive as the Tanita stick. What it is then? It’s an easy target for modifications, since it offers a solid base where you can either scratch-build Twin Sticks or just mod the existing innards to function on PC or PS4. Why these two? Because the PS3 emulator RPCS3 now supports all ports of Sega Model 2 games, including Virtua Fighter 2, and their online functions. The easiest and best way for you to access the arcade-accurate port of the original Cyber Trooper Virtual-On, and get your friends to try the series out (either because they’re cheap or don’t own a PS4.) PS4 is also the other target machine, as it has the Masterpiece collection, offering you the best legal way to access the three main Virtual-On games with no compatibility issues whatsoever. Sadly, this will not work on A Certain Magical Virtual-On, because it has no proper controller option to enable compatibility. The only Twin Stick that works on the game is Tanita’s.

The principle of this modification is as follows: Using Brook’s Universal Fighting Board we are able to use the Twin Sick on multiple platforms. We ditch the Saturn controller PCB for dead-simplicity. We could accommodate both PCBs and have a switch that retains the original Saturn compatibility, but we don’t. By wiring the controller’s cables to the right positions, we have a ready controller dedicated to Virtual-On as the games offer multiple controller setups, one of which uses the face buttons as Right Stick.

I’ve tried to make this as down-to-earth and simple as possible. However, due to possible variations in the Saturn Twin Stick cabling, I strongly recommend using a multimeter to check out what cable does what.

What you need for this mod is;

• HSS- 0151 Sega Saturn Virtual-On Twin Stick
• Brook Universal Fighting Board PCB with Pin connectors
• Some cable wire, e.g. Sanwa button harness cables
• A few jumper cables or a 4-pin button harness 
• USB-A to USB-B cable
• Some extra momentary switch buttons. If you intend to play FORCE, it is recommended to get six pieces. I have installed four in these example pics.
• Screwdrivers, something to cut with, and other tools you might need

The setup shown here is a mess and should not be used as a direct reference. Please try out your own setup how you put down the Brook PCB and how you get each wire to its proper place.

Where to connect the Twin Stick’s wires, here’s a clear picture of the PCB from Brook’s own site.

Note that due to the Pin/Connectors being installed, L3 and R3 spots are covered.

Some preparations need to be done before starting with the wiring, however. Detach the original Saturn controller PCB from the casing, and cut the wires from the connectors, so you have the maximum length of wire from the stick bottoms. You can either discard the PCB and the Saturn cable or save them for a later project. You can use the existing Start buttonhole for a button, or glue it shut. Create some kind of base for the PCB, so it doesn’t touch the metal plate.

Wires from the right side stick on the photo go to the following slots on the PCB;

• The five wires next to each other (Equals to L-Stick directions)
  • Red to Left
  • Orange to Right
  • Brown to Up
  • Black to Down
  • Yellow to Ground

• The three wires coming from the bottom side of the right stick (These are the wires for the buttons on the Stick)
  • Red to P3
  • Brown to 4K
  • Black to Ground

Wires from the left side of the photo go to the following slots on the PCB;

• The five wires next to each other (Equals to the Action buttons)
  • Red to 4P
  • Orange to 2K
  • Brown to 2P
  • Black to 1K
  • Yellow to Ground

• The three wires coming from the bottom of the left stick
  • Red to 4P
  • Brown to 3K
  • Black to Ground

You need to drill holes for the extra buttons on the controller case. I’ve chosen the top for aesthetics, and because I didn’t want to drill the steel plate the sticks sit in. Try what place works best for you. I’ve used four momentary switches with 12mm installation diameter for each. I’ve lined the buttons in a similar fashion as they appear on a PS4 controller. From Right to Left, they’re Start, Touch Panel, Select, and L3. I need to add two more for Home and R3 at some point. In the above photo of the insides, they’re of course reversed. Each of the buttons has its own place on the PCB.

However, L3 and R3 are the spots where you need to use those Jumper cables or the 4-button harness. This is why you need the Pin/Connector version, so you’ll avoid soldering. The rest of the buttons need those cables, like the linked Sanwa harness for easy installation. Use the legend below to check properly to which point to attach the jumper cables/ 4-pin harness.

See L3 and R3 there? Use the Jumper cables with these, or if you can, solder.

Using the harness with its clip heads makes it easier to attach the cables to the buttons, but you need to find the proper buttons for that. You can use one common Ground for these buttons. If you look at the photo, I’ve daisy-chained them together.

When attaching the USB cable, be sure to loop it properly via the existing cable slot. Use some extra material to pad the hole, as the bottom metal plate may begin to chafe on the cable in the long run. Having some extra material around the cable here helps with this.

After you’ve finished with the wires and managed to test that all buttons work in your PC’s USB controller test suite, it’s time to boot up Cyber Trooper Virtual-On on either your PS3 or RPCS3 and set it up there. If you’re testing this on the emulator, change the controller setting as follows; Input Start, Select, and L3 as normal. For your left-hand stick, set it up as a normal L-Stick. The right-hand stick on the other has to be set up as follows; Up is Triangle, Left is Square, Down is Cross and Right is Circle. You can also assign it R-Stick. As for the triggers and thumb buttons; Right Trigger is R2, Left Trigger is L2, the Right thumb button is R1, and the Left thumb button is L1.

Whether or not you are running the game on real consoles or on an emulator, you need to change the control options as follows in the games’ menus for Twin Stick Type B. Here’s pictures for all three games and their setups for reference.

For Operation Moon Gate;

Twin Stick Type B. It allows using both Sticks and Face Buttons as directional inputs. L2 is Left Weapon, R2 is Right Weapon Button, L1 and R1 are Dashes.

For Oratorio Tangram;

The Touch Pad is used as Special in Oratorio Tangram, which only applies to Fei-Yen players. Using the Special button at the start of the round will cost you about 2/3 of your Energy meter, but you’ll kick straight into Hyper Mode

For FORCE, the controls need to be set up while in Practice mode or in Arcade mode, pause the game and access controls there;

The L3 and R3 buttons are needed for FORCE, as you can map Rescue Button and Friendly Instructions for them. These aren’t much needed, if you’re just letting the AI whatever the hell it wants to manage to go online to play 2v2 battles. 

Because the Brook PCB recognizes on what platform it is being used, it puts itself directly into PS3 or PS4 controller mode when used with those consoles. No need to worry whether or not the PCB goes into the right controller mode.

You can further modify your controller by taking the sticks apart and changing the actuators at the bottom for a pair of new arcade stick bases while using the existing shaft. You can also modify the thumb sticks to use tactile switches, but that would require a bit of soldering. In hindsight, you can modify the controller wholly with Brook’s own harness, but I had already started doing everything by soldering and cutting wires, so in my haste, I missed that point altogether. I’ll try to see if I can pick up a new Twin Stick down the line in some years and make a Version 2 with said harnesses.

The mod isn’t difficult, just takes a bit of time and is fiddly. You can also keep the Saturn side functioning, but that would require attaching switches that would change the ground and where the power in the system would be flowing. To keep things simple, I’ve decided to sidestep that altogether and make this a fully PC/PS3/PS4 compatible controller. You can also attach the expansion Brook offers to make it PS5 compatible.