And yet deep within he harbored a dark potentiality…
15 years later:
The 21st century comes at you fast.
The 21st century comes at you fast.
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How the Mario games I’m personally most enthusiastic/nostalgic about are all among the black sheep in the series:
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SMB2US: This game can be so creepy. Sometimes you dig up a plant and it’s a bubbling potion for some reason. Then when you throw the potion it creates a door to the “backside world”. And when you pick up a key, some kind of cursed floating mask starts chasing you in big swooping motions, and it’s not contained to the room it spawned in
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World: Half the levels have a secret exit somewhere and that causes the overworld to branch out and interconnect in so many clever ways. Yoshi abilities depend on the color of the Yoshi and the color of the shell they’ve holding in their mouth, and if you find a blue shell you can fly anywhere with full control, but Yoshi can’t resist swallowing it after a while. My mind was blown when I used a blue yoshi to reach the extra secret world beyond the main secret world.
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3d World (Wii U version): Despite the “world” in the title, this is closer to SMB3 (or obviously 3d Land) in basic philosophy. It’s one of my favorites just because it’s a delightful modern-but-back-to-basics challenge platformer. It varies up the pacing a lot with Captain Toad levels, WarioWare-ish chains of 10-second micro-levels, and returning to previous levels with different characters/powerups to get more starcoins. It also has “having fun using new graphics tech for the first time” energy, with gimmicks like the transparent pipe networks, and the “Shogun’s castle” level where Mario becomes a silhouette when he’s behind a paper wall. Last but not least you can play as Princess Peach in a catsuit
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probably the first game i distinctly remember playing in my life and its still underrated…
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one of the things i think about is that arcade games and console games are like targeting different markets, like the former are for the “amusements industry” and the latter are for the consumer market… and i guess i think about how i keep returning to mostly like 80s and 90s arcade games because they’re often so good at being like amusing and charming in this like less strained less mediated way than other kinds of games. for a while recently i was playing a bunch of flicky… mappy is a great time, bubble bobble is a great time, idk.
i love that the average late 90s / early 2000s shmup is designed around pressing buttons that make crazy animated graphics shit happen all over the screen lmao… i feel like i find something delightful in all kinds of arcade games like just loading roms on emulators, there’s a really good hitrate there i think
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There’s a kind of manic pacing to certain arcade games that I really enjoy when compared to your average console game too. Things often move at such a speedy clip, there can be these very sudden scene changes, blaring announcers informing you of something happening but divorced of any context, things tend to be so grandiose and camp and theatrical to a dizzying degree… It’s often like the total opposite extreme of the more sludgy/clunky approach of a lot of console games…
Part of me wishes that style of arcade pacing was inherited more by console games, only without the coin-munching difficulty. You could maybe point to some of the set-piecey stuff during the 360/PS3 era, but those sections were often wedged between more standard, slower-paced, monotonous “collect the things/explore the space/push the box over here” type stuff.
I wish more games leaned into the sorta destabilising quality of some arcade games where you inadvertently find yourself placed in new contexts at a rapid clip and you’re just kinda scrambling at getting through it all, not knowing where you’ll end up next… I find that effect really intoxicating and also very, very funny when done right!
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Yeah I absolutely recognize this as the ur-aesthetic of arcade games. It’s also why I hate most arcade games lol
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I think about how those appealing characteristics of arcade games are almost like a basic human need, given that they go back to things like electromechnical games, pinball and its predecessors, carnival games, and other toys that require manual coordination and provide tactile or visual feedback like cup-and-ball, in a way that transcends technology. I think that kind of stuff will continue to exist in one way or another. and console games will just be like a weird blip in history, especially given how things are going with the industry lately
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I mean maybe but at some point it gets boring to describe everything you were around for and inaugurated into — guitar rock, console games, democracy — as historical aberrations. may as well enjoy them while you have them at that point
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I just like arcade games and it makes me wanna trash talk other games
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Fair, haha… Arcade games have a lot of things about them that also infuriate me but the more it feels like you’ve been dropped into some kind of altered state, rather than just participating in rote busywork, the more I like 'em!!
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I don’t think it’s an objectively correct position, in fact I think probably it makes way more sense to locate videogames’ essential qualities in gonzo arcadeism. And I can get down with it in a purely aesthetic sense. Like loading up random MAME roms and letting them wash over me is great. But actually learning to play these games is, to me, excruciating. Ponderous, simulationist, contemplative… these are among my favorite vidcon adjectives.
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Agreed. I might even extend that to all videogames, personally. The parts that appeal to me aren’t really about the mastering of a specific skillset but instead the fumbling part at the beginning. I like that feeling of not really understanding what it is you’re interfacing with and being surprised when you push a button and something unexpected happens. I think most arcade games do also eventually devolve into the more boring repetition of most other games but I like the initial immediacy of them, they seem much more willing to just drop you in it with limited explanation…
Edit: just an example that popped into my head right now. I really like playing Crazy Taxi badly. It’s so fast and chaotic, constantly crashing into the other cars is weirdly exhilarating and in some ways I think the game feels less fun when you are being proficient at it…
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In Suikoden 1 and 2 the Headquarters that the protagonists build up over the course of the game remains significant populated locations into the future.
In Suikoden 3 the HQ is kind of built up alongside the actions of the protagonists, unrelated to their goals.
In Suikoden 4 the protagonist borrows the HQ, and never actually owns it.
In Suikoden 5 the HQ at the end of the story is vacated, and disappears under the lake again.
少不读水浒, 老不读三国
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At Qing Of Posters Bumpass we had a category to identify a song (from a video game) and among the 30 or so lovely posters present me and @boojiboy7 sat dumbfounded no one knew
Dreams Come True " Sweet Sweet" ( s’up @sleepysmiles )
Chihiro Onitsuka’s “Castle Imitation” (ending theme of Dragon Quarter)
Robert Zomb’s “Dragula” (okay people got this one at least)
I think we also did a Tony Hawk song I don’t remember.
I listen to Chihiro Onitsuka constantly and should talk about how much I love her first album more. And then she made a goth rock album that I’m sure a few you would like more than I do.
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how the pole position 3 short beeps 1 long beep is probably the most influential video game sound effect/tune of all time
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remarkable, really. in 2018, F1 added beeping sounds to the starting lights…
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a tweet i saw probably like a decade ago at this point that said something like “selling your ps4 is the working class version of bankruptcy”
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If the heirs of real-life CIA chief John McCone are aware that he is portrayed in MGS3 Subsistence passionately open-mouthed kissing Big Boss
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