The Rayman / Wii U thing

This is a fun topic on everyone's mind, so I can't help but mention it. In August 2012, Ubisoft announced that the sequel to the acclaimed Rayman Origins, to be titled Rayman Legends, would be released as a Wii U launch title in November of the same year. Included in this announcement was the claim that it would be a Wii U exclusive. Nintendo and fans championed the game as a system-seller, one of the few third-party exclusives to get excited about. The development team was unable to ready the game in time for launch, and it was delayed to February 2013. Earlier this week, Ubisoft announced that the game was finished and ready for launch, but for business reasons was being withheld from store shelves until September. Oh yeah, and when it hit in September, it would be on Wii U. And Xbox 360. And PS3.

Nintendo loyalists and Wii U early adopters were understandably outraged - how would you feel if you spent $300 for a console just to play an upcoming game, then after the fact found out you didn't need to do so? I try to keep my opinions on the industry toned down on this site because every minute I spend Michael Pachtering, I could be analyzing an actual game. So I'll reserve my thoughts on Wii U (it's a piece of shit, a betrayal by Nintendo of its supporters, and a laughable business model that will be lucky if it only proves to be their Saturn, rather than their Dreamcast). But there's been a lot of outcry about what a terrible business decision (i.e. even if it wasn't costing them fans, it would supposedly be losing them sales) this is on Ubisoft's part, beyond being a slap in the face to consumers.

The primary argument is that releasing early for Wii U can't hurt, because it's not like Ubisoft loses out if they sell more U copies than 360 and PS3. What this suggestion circumvents is that by September, there will surely be more U owners than there are here in February (probably... I don't think Nintendo is tanking so bad as to expect more returns than sales), and it is well known that the majority of software sales are done in the first month after release. So if you've got five million Wii U owners in February, the MOST units you could sell in the first month is five million. For which you would need to achieve a 100% attach. But if by September another ten million Us have been sold, you can sell five million units by achieving a (much more realistic if still high) 33% attach. The only way to sell five million units with a 33% attach if the game is released in February is if you can maintain that rate for all new consoles sold over the next seven months. Not a feasible goal.

Everything Wii should have been in 2006... now a $300 console that feels seven years outdated

So while I'm sure some backroom dealing has gone on with Sony and MS to get themselves a bigger piece of the pie (with perhaps a few bucks slid Ubi's way), it seems to me that the most obvious reason for the delay is simply that the Wii U has not sold to expectations and has an unfavorable market forecast. A dick move my Ubisoft, but the blame is on Nintendo for being unable to get their console into more households. Fuck over the third parties and they'll fuck over you.

Cyborg Justice: Omastar I have not laughed this hard at a game in a while

Because I'm a hip and hoppening d00d (or just because it snowed and my phone GPS wouldn't work), last Saturday I skipped out on a blogmate's party (hi Andrew!) to stay in, play MAME, and watch The Muppet Movie with a different blogmate (hi Greg!) and my girlfriend (you don't get a shout-out). The Muppet Movie remains one of my all-time favorites. It is extremely good. A filmic revelation - no - a filmic expression (a bad enough joke between even the two people that understand it, I thought that one was ripe for publication).

The twist here is that as much as I delighted in Fozzy's terrible jokes and Gonzo's terrible mental and sexual affliction, earlier that very night I laughed almost equally as hard at a peculiar Genesis game upon which Golem and I stumbled. While I'm doing shout-outs, let me give credit to the YouTuber whose list of "Criminally Overlooked Games" led me to Cyborg Justice. While IMO most of the games he lists are minor curiosities rather than forgotten treasures, Cyborg Justice is without a doubt a true gem. And I mean that in the worst way imaginable. You really need to experience this for yourself - words don't do it justice. No - words don't do it... Cyborg Justice.

Here's a potential definition of good control I'm just gonna scrape off the top of my head: the ability to subconsciously recreate a consciously desired outcome. That is, you should never need to think about which buttons to press - optimally, you desire a maneuver, then your hands and the controller automatically do the work. I don't remember whether it was Golem or I who said it, but the agreed upon description of Cyborg Justice was: "I have no idea how to do the move that I just did". This could perhaps serve as a definition of BAD control. Or just bad interfacing in general. Take, for instance, the Talking Heads classic "Once in a Lifetime". Remember the part where David Byrne says:
"And you may ask yourself: 'How do I work this?'
And you may ask yourself: 'How did I just do that move?'
And you may tell yourself: 'This is not my Streets of Rage 2!'
And you may tell yourself: 'This seems to be Cyborg Justice!'"

Admittedly, Golem and I made no effort to seek out the manual, but why would we? That would take away all the fun. Cyborg Justice is a game where you have no idea what anything means or does, where you can hardly tell yourself apart from the enemies, and where missiles fly all over the place - at ALL times. It also has a preposterous soundtrack and introduction, and one of the worst heads-up displays I've ever seen. Look at those fucking monotone life bars and the system-font numbers beside them - HomeVresion had better than that (high five guy!). The lack of production value there wildly contrasts with the ridiculous number of animations each cyborg possesses - which probably explains why every sprite in the game is built from the same handful of arm/torso/leg pieces.

Some delusional fans INSIST that this robot from Wreck-It Ralph is a CyboJust reference, though I don't see it

My head wouldn't explode or anything to learn that the game was the work of some experimenting digital artists/animators, though it puzzles me why such a thing would be on a console like Genesis. Even more perplexing is that Sega themselves published the game. I know there was less quality control in the early '90s, but Christ Almighty. The hallmark of this game is the feeling that it was designed by people who either A.) thought they were so far ahead of everyone else that they could completely revolutionize control or B.) had never played a game before in their lives. Why didn't Sega come in and say "hey guys, this is neat and all, but check out this game called Streets of Rage. You might learn something from it.". Why am I acting surprised that Sega made a single bad decision? They made thousands in 1993 alone.

So who the hell are Novotrade, esteemed developers of Cyberg Justice? Without putting on my research pants to watch some credits (viewers at home - PLEASE do not try to watch credits without your research pants), I'll just check out their library on Wikipedia. Assuming they ever did another game. Here we go! They're - yikes - Hungarian, changed names to Appaloosa, and are most famed for... wait a minute. Ecco?! These are the guys who developed Ecco the goddamned Dolphin?! Sure that game makes no sense and isn't any fun to play, but it was still popular and actually has some really cool ideas. Was NOT expecting that - though maybe it explains why they thought they could revolutionize beat-em-ups. No wonder Sega was happy to publish this refuse. Aside from that series, looks like they handled mostly licensed properties, particularly hilarious ports like the Amiga version of Castlevania, the Game Gear Adv. Batman & Robin (a great game on SNES and Genesis), and some depressingly received PSX Contras. Not to mention a holy-shit-I-need-to-play-this-now Magic School Bus game. And, wow, who wouldn't be proud to have their name in the credits of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tails_and_the_Music_Maker

"So we destroyed our brains and made this game"

If you do anything this weekend, be it bar-going, train-hopping, fancy-pantsing, or just plain old American breathing, remember: you could be dispensing Cyborg Justice.

Non-fiction games... Worms ahoy! (wait not the game Worms, I meant this discussion is a can of worms)

Fellow bloggers ought to chime in on this discussion, preferably in posts of your own, or the comment section if you want to be lazy and write something that even less people than already read this site will read. Don't know how readership can number in the negative, but I'm sure that's one thing this blog can accomplish.

Andrew mentioned non-fiction games in his last post because he said reading makes him feel like a genius. My congratulations.

Alright I kinda have to start by saying I don't really care about this topic. I'm more inclined to read about it than write. Then again, I have a blog, and write I must. For ego's sake. Come on though I don't wannnna.

Let's get ourselves into the right mood by listening to a[n] historical song:

Ah, now I'm ready to learn.

Do I even know what non-fiction is? K, Wikipedia clarifies: the assertions made by the author are understood to be factual, according to his knowledge/research. Doesn't that kinda make religious texts non-fiction though? And that's definitely not right. But a book doesn't become non-non-fiction if one of its assertions is disproven at a later date. But let's just skip that weird discrepancy because it doesn't need to apply to this discussion. Non-fiction is a work in which all assertions are understood by the author and audience to be facts, let's leave it at that.

A game contains authorial assertions alongside audience input, the latter not present in other media. Assertions in the form of setting, dialogue, and scripted events can be argued to be factual in a manner identical to books or film. Nothing new there. That alone is enough to establish that a game can contain non-fictional content - content that the player knows is being dictated to them as fact. Assassin's Creed is a widely popular example of this. The game includes dossiers on historical landmarks, personalities, and organizations. Though the plot (and thus the game as a whole) is clearly historical fiction of the Dan Brown variety, the factual matters are well-enough delineated that an audience member can know they are absorbing information about reality.

Semi-fiction, explained

Control is the more difficult matter to assess - without establishing non-fictional player interactivity, the best a game can be is semi-fiction. An argument made elsewhere on this blog that we'll take as an assumption is that any action leading to failure of the game's winning condition is not a part of the narrative*. Meaning that if you're playing as George Washington and accidentally fall off of a cliff, that does not mean the game is asserting that George Washington fell off a cliff and respawned back in town - only that he could have (fallen that is - I don't think historical figures respawned too often). But without establishing a binary pass/fail to every action the player takes, ambiguity is introduced into which is an assertion and which is simply a player freedom. Say, for instance, we were examining a biogame about Miles Davis. Imagine a scene in which the player is presented with the prompt "press X to throw a trumpet at the bigot or press Y to say 'yessuh massah'" If the player knows that making the wrong choice will cause a Game Over, he can assume that the right choice is a factual assertion. If the game continues regardless of selection, it becomes unclear what action Miles Davis actually took, or whether that was a historical situation at all. Even if it is factual, if the player can't tell that it is, it's not nonf, is it? 

So it seems to me that there is potential to create a non-fictional game experience, though not without limitations. It is first understood that all scripted content must be factual to the greatest degree available to the creators - this includes setting, characters, and plot events. A restriction on interactivity is also necessary to inform the player of what exactly is an assertion and what is a freedom. This can take the form of a binary reward/punish mechanic (an artless means of accomplishing this would be the implementation of a score counter: +1 point for factual actions, -1 for deviation) or a delineation between history lessons and playtime (see Age of Empires II - the battles are clearly free-for-all historically set playgrounds, while the cut-scenes and story progression are informative). 

I always loved how the tiny units lined up for you. It was such a delight. Real-time tiny-unit-lining-up-for-you action!

Dunno, just a day's worth of thought on the subject. Maybe I'm not clambering for non-fiction gaming (personally I find there's as much to learn from fictional narratives), but I will admit that I do feel pretty edified after a session of Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII or AoE II. Actually I never really appreciated how much I learned from New Horizons, but it was chocked full of information about the Age of Discovery. Maybe I'd even make a case for that being a nonf game, on that inevitable day when I expound on how it's one of my all-time favorites.. Regardless, as the Americans say, "it is good enough for me".

*if we do not assume this, the entire argument is fruitless, so we can either take it as fact and argue about it later, or not have this conversation at all

My favorite thing about books: reading them... or TBA

I definitely read more than I play video games.  By a significant margin.  This might have something to do with my current living arrangement; I share a TV with 6 other people and so it's not often that I can take over my living room for a significant amount of time.  But it also fits my lifestyle better in a few other ways.  For example, I can pick a book up and put it down with less hassle than starting and stopping a video game session.  I also read a fair amount of non-fiction, which has the added bonus of making me feel like I'm educating myself, whether or not this is actually the case.

Now there's an interesting thought... has there ever been a truly non-fiction video game?  How could that possibly function successfully?  Would a game based entirely on historical fact be considered fiction instantly when allowing for very minimal levels of player control over action?  Or if someone wanted to publish something academic, to what extent could a thesis or study be successful as an interactive  "video game," ceteris paribus?  I'm guessing the "game" portion of that name might have to be discarded.

Oh yeah I wanted to do some an MMM for some books I recently finished.  Lets call it Tiny Book Assessments.  TBA.  Nailed it.

Miles: The Autobiography

Heroin is a hell of a drug

The "miles" in this case is one Miles Davis, the prolific trumpet player and composer.  It's a vernacular-heavy, no nonsense account of one of America's most interesting musical figures' life from childhood in 1930/1940s St. Louis to the end of his career in the late 1980s.  It does a good job of balancing its tracing of the music with the tracing of his personal life, and the sometimes absurd number of road blocks and bumps in between.  Let's just say it makes you dislike white people even if you happen to be one.  I would definitely recommend with hesitation, however, reading the tome if you're not a jazz head.  The books was often at its best when sharing juicy personal insight into his relationship with other jazz greats (Mingus, Monk, Diz, Bird, Max Roach, Tony Williams, Trane, Wayne Shorter, Marcus Miller, et al) and I can't imagine that being particularly absorbing if you don't know a bit about the other's lives or music.  Here is where I would go off on a tangent about people "not getting jazz" and my thoughts on the matter, but instead of wasting everyone's time let me just leave it at this: if you don't enjoy listening to it, then don't and that's fine.  It just pisses me off when people try to create arguments about why its objectively not good music, when quite obviously its a subjective experience.  In any case, it still might be worth a read for the story alone.

A Sherlock Holmes Graphic Novel: The Sign of the Four
Whoops this is a graphic novel not a book.  Oh well, suck it up.  This is a adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel.  I haven't read the original novel, so my opinion suffices only as applied to the graphic novel.  My understanding is that the writing is almost entirely verbatim from the original, but much was cut to make it readable in the comic format.  This being the case, the story flows quite nicely, though I have to admit that I found myself going back a few times to remind myself of character's relationships with one another, a problem which might have been avoided given the more fleshed-out version of events.  The plot is classic Holmes, full of twists and intrigue, and manages to bring a critique of British imperialism to bare as well.  The art was well done, if a bit cartoon-ish for my liking; other might find it endearing, perhaps.

No seriously, it's a hell of a drug

Darkness at Noon
Arthur Koestler was a Hungarian author and journalist writing over a great swath of the 20th Century.  His Darkness at Noon was published in 1940.  It is an account of Rubashov, a fictionalized member of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, and his struggle as an old-guard Bolshevik after Stalin's consolidation of power.  A little background knowledge of the Stalin's purge, Trotsky, and the show trials will help with historical context when reading this gem, but the novel does a good job of putting the battling ideas up front, without too much contextual baggage.  The issue being confronted, at the heart of book, is what you do when your ideas don't align with your conscious.  It examines one man's psychological transformation as he is confronted by a brutal government he helped install.  I can't recommend it highly enough to anyone with a functioning brain.

Next batch of these will most likely include Boomerang, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Last Lecture and Homage to Catalonia.

Darksiders totally ripped off Gargoyle's Quest

After all the whining about Darksiders being a copypants and then me whining about people whining about Darksiders being a copypants, there's one thing we've all forgotten to mention. The main villain is called The Destroyer. That is a terrible and highly stupid name for a character, especially because it's apparently not even a nickname or anything. Wait, nickname isn't the right word. You know what I mean, like an alias or come on I know there's a better word that's escaping me. Kenning? I just looked up some kennings and "destroyer of eagle's hunger" meaning "warrior" is uh... well... maybe that's this Destroyer's full name.

Anyway, it's the type of name that so blatantly and artlessly characterizes a villain that you would expect it to appear in, oh I dunno, an old NES or Game Child game. Wait a tek! Game Child? That reminds me of Game Girl... which reminds me of Game Genie... which reminds me of Game Boy... which reminds me of Game Boy Color... which reminds of Game Boy... which reminds me of 3DS Virtual Console Game Boy... which reminds me of a classic recently on my tongue's tip: Gargoyle's Quest! The first Fire Brandy game; spinoff of Ghosts n' Goblins, precursor to Demon's Crest, agitator of RPG and platformer stereotypes. And whatcha-no, the villain of GarQ (gark) is none other than The Destroyer! Is this a crossover? Some type of veiled future reference to the connection between Darksiders and another GnG spinoff, Maximo? What could this mean. It can't be coincidence. Maybe it's a message from the baby Jesus? Take the letters of "Destoyer", order them phonetically (?), translate to ancient Greek, translate the ancient Greek to modern Greek, and translate that back to English. The resultant phrase may shock you: "Obama did 9/11"?! And that's just what I got from making up the answers! Think of what could happen if you actually did all the translations!

 

Did I cover my thesis already? I'm gonna assume yes and move on. The number of lines above looks pretty small, but that's probably a welcome change from my recent thousand-word standard. If I knew at age 16 that in just seven years time I'd happily write a thousand-word paper every single day, I'd have built a rocketship instead of getting older. Time [takes slow pull from cigarette]; she is a cruel mattress. Cruel buttress? Well she's at least a good name for a song. Pink Floyd's best song is called "Time", and so is Richard Hell and the Voidoids'! Look how your reaction to that sentence went from "yeah boy!" to ":(((" in less that one word. Apparently having a short and crappy premise allows for me to spend extra paragraphs doing this.

GarQ has the typically minimal (and not-that-fantastically-translated) dialogue familiar from its era, but what the hell is this:
Baron: Firebrand, you are too late, they took the candle. It's in the Desert of Destitution to the east of here.
Firebrand: [Choose Yes or No - turns out you can only progress by choosing no? Of course!]

Maybe it's just me, but playing 3DS VC, I miss the old green palette. Feel like it at least coulda been an option, since every free GB emulator on the planet provides it 

Now I will review the name of each item in the game:
Blockbuster - Good start, I like a descriptive name. 3/5
Claw - Hmm, we're getting vaguer. 2/5
Darkfire - Moving in the wrong direction - did a six-year-old name this? 1/5

Armor of the Dragon - Wonder Boy III reference! AWESOME. 5/5
Armor of Guile - Street Fighter II crossover! Now I'm imagining Firebrand in camo pants. 4/5

Candle of the Poltergeist - Kinda meaningless. 2/5
Candle of Darkness - Oh, irony, I get it. 3/5
Eternal Candle - More candle irony? What? 3/5
Falcon Wings - Utilitarian. 3/5
Fingernail of the Spectre - Why would a ghost have fingernails? And why would they be magic??? 5/5
Gremlin Stick - More word salad but I laughed that having a Gremlin Stick allows one to see the future. 4/5
Vial - Not even worth scoring.
Essence of the Soulstream - Whatever. 2/5
Talisman of the Cyclone - This item is a one-up - did you get that from the name? 1/5

I have this problem CONSTANTLY