Paul Bellezza Discusses P.B. Winterbottom

The path from independent to retail is a long and selective journey, but given the resources available to aspiring developers today, we are seeing a resurgence in original ideas akin to when computer games could be written by a couple of programmers on a computer in a garage. While the advance in technology has made the “garage studio” model extremely difficult, it certainly isn’t impossible, and today’s up-and-coming developers are finding ways to battle the hardships involved in the process. Tomorrow, gamers will be able to get their hands on the results of the newest rise of the independent game, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom.

P.B. Winterbottom comes from the minds of graduates of the University of Southern California’s Interactive Media MFA program. In 2008, the Odd Gentlemen started off as an independent studio founded by Matt Korba and Paul Bellezza. Now in 2010, they are setting out to expand their mission of making experimental games. The first of these titles is a re-imagining of P.B. Winterbottom, set to be expanded and improved upon thanks to the Xbox 360 hardware and published courtesy of 2K Play. The publisher has taken a recent effort to expand on its portfolio with key downloadable titles on the Xbox LIVE Arcade format and so far, P.B. Winterbottom is looking like a perfect, and surely an original, addition to the service.

Hot off the heels of the development of The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, The Odd Gentlemen co-founder Paul Bellezza took some time out of his schedule to answer some questions in regard to the game and its development, The Odd Gentlemen, what it was like to develop games independently, what the future holds for the company and more. We figured someone whose initials were P.B. would give us the best insight on The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (although we had to lock up all of our pies), so please continue reading as we examine the past, present and future with Paul Bellezza:

DHGF: To set the stage for those not in the know, can you introduce The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom to our readers and describe what makes the title a unique experience?

Paul Bellezza: The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a 2-D side scrolling puzzle platformer starting the nefarious P.B. Winterbottom – pie thief extraordinaire. The game takes place in a macabre silent film inspired universe and involves Winterbottom’s quest to chase the elusive Chronoberry Pie, which has caused P.B. to become unstuck in time. Because of this, Winterbottom receives the ability to record any of his actions and spawn time clones that repeat his previous actions. With the help of these time clones, Winterbottom can stand on his own head to get to higher places, smack himself or his clones with his umbrella, which is a launching mechanism, and can be in multiple places at once. All of these tricks are good for one thing: Nabbing delicious pie.

DHGF: P.B. Winterbottom’s noir motif definitely gives the title a unique identity. What are your concerns in regard to current gamers being “spoiled” on today’s visuals? What kind of challenges did producing the title in this art form produce?

P.B.: In this current generation of consoles, the march over the uncanny valley is expensive, draining and consists of mostly green and brown color palettes. We don’t care about creating visuals that are photo real. We feel we get enough of that in the real world. We’d much rather create stylized worlds that are bent, twisted and fantastical as these are the types of places we dreamed of as children. These are the worlds that suit the games we want to make.

In terms of Winterbottom’s development, we were able to create our aesthetic by modeling all of our assets in 3-D with global illumination, exporting them to 2-D and then painting them over. While we were able to create a one-of-a-kind look, it’s the most inefficient art pipeline ever. In essence, each puzzle scenario has as much detail as a movie set. It was a balancing act trying to keep the bar of high quality up during production. Stylized art is hard work but it tends to age better in the long run. Games from the PlayStation One 3-D era were cutting edge at one point but, by today’s standards, they are unsightly.

Now that’s not to say we don’t appreciate the glitz and glamour of today’s modern games. Uncharted 2 is one of our favorites. We just don’t have an interest in making worlds that utilize that style.

DHGF: Can you expand on the game’s silent movie inspiration? Were there any silent films or actors from the time period that directly inspired P.B. Winterbottom?

P.B.: We’re fans of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. There are several segments in the game that are heavily inspired by Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last and Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. A Trip to the Moon, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis inspired us as well.

DHGF: The original development page for the title shows a number of concepts for the P.B. Winterbottom character. Can you reflect on the evolution and creation of the character? How did you know when you finally had exactly what you wanted in the character?

Paul: Our creative director, Matt Korba, modeled and animated the first version of Winterbottom, which we used in the student version of the game. Even in the student project, Winterbottom went through a few transitions. We knew we wanted him to creep around in a gremlin-like manner while keeping an air of dignity around him. When we started the commercial version of Winterbottom, we set out to revamp the character for HD. With the help of our concept artist, Vincent Perea, we began rethinking him. We added more details to his face and attire and got him re-modeled and running in the game world. Several months later, Matt Clausen, along with Korba, decided we wanted to revamp him a third time. In this final pass, we gave him a new color treatment and added extra details like black shadows around his eyes, while reshaping his head to make for a better platform. We almost didn’t have enough time to get the final version in the game but once we got a set of test frames into the game itself, we knew he was where we wanted him to be.

DHGF: So far, the title seems like a pretty big victory for The Odd Gentlemen. What was your initial reaction to a publisher such as 2K Play being interested in your title? What kind of a process was involved in going from an independent effort to a spotlighted retail release?

P.B.: The whole journey has been an amazing but surreal journey for us. We never had any inclination that this would turn into a full-fledged downloadable console title. As students, we were only interested in making the best game that we could make. The real turning point for us was when the game earned entrance into the Independent Games Festival at GDC 2008. Demoing the game on the show floor at GDC opened up a ton of doors for us. We met every major publisher in the industry and garnered attention from the gaming press. 2K Play was one of the first publishers we spoke with and from the get-go they made it clear that they would support our creative vision for the game. After signing with 2K, they provided us with tools and resources to get our studio up and running. It has been very collaborative, as they’ve worked with us to develop a schedule that would best suit the development of the project. All in all, it’s been a smooth working relationship.

DHGF: Do you think P.B. Winterbottom would have had the same appeal if it would have been built in the suggested Ogre 3D, as a postmortem for the USC thesis build indicated? What is it about the differences between 2-D and 3-D that you feel defines a game and how it is approached and developed?

P.B.:To be frank, we couldn’t have pulled off the look we have achieved with The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom for XBLA if we used Ogre 3D. The type of shading and lighting used to make our models just wouldn’t have been possible to do “live.” Furthermore, we were interested in making a puzzle platformer and a 2-D plane was the way we envisioned the game happening. As a puzzle game, we wanted the player to be able to see the problem they were facing in one shot. Were it in 3-D, the puzzles would have required a different type of design that wouldn’t necessarily work the same way. So the decision to design the game for a 2-D perspective was a deliberate design choice.

DHGF: What aspects of the game were made possible through Xbox development as opposed to the Adobe Flash format utilized originally?

P.B.: Developing the game on the Xbox gave us more raw power than what was available to us in Flash. Therefore, we got more clones on the screen, higher-resolution assets and less slowdown.

DHGF: With the original product, were there any instances or comments that still stick out in your mind when the game was showcased at the Independent Games Festival 2008?

P.B.: The critical response was overwhelming. I don’t think anything else will compare … well, maybe upgrading my 1999 Chevy Prism to a non-broken, smelly car will … but nothing else.

DHGF: What does it mean to you as an independent developer to have the awards and press you’ve been receiving thus far?

Paul: I felt honored by the warm reception we received from the gaming press and industry. When we were at E3 2008 with Indiecade, we received several E3 award nominations. We were flabbergasted that our little student Flash game were uttered in the same sentence as titles such as Mirror’s Edge, Prince of Persia, and Spore. The awards and press help with morale, but we never lose sight of the fact that attention is only as good as the game you are making. We pour our energy into making the best games we can and everything else is just gravy.

DHGF: What is next for The Odd Gentlemen? Would the team rather move on to bigger, disc-based games? What is the ideal genre the team would like to work on and why? How is the company mission statement of being the buffest development team in the world working for you?

P.B.: We have another game baking in the oven right now and it’s just as crazy as Winterbottom is … and it’s in COLOR. As for disc-based games, it’s not out of the question for us in the future but we’re not in a rush to go big. The size of the game we make will be determined by the game design and direction we’re chasing, so if an idea warrants a large scope, then perhaps we’ll end up making a disc-title.

It’s no fun working in genres… we want to shatter them.

Well, we definitely have a lot of muscle under our post-crunch love handles. So in that regard, I’d say it’s going quite well. Making a game about delicious pie was not good for our goal.

DHGF: What are your thoughts on the overall landscape of the independent video game development scene? Is there any advice you would give to someone with aspirations for getting into independent video game development?

P.B.: The indie game scene has a lot of interesting games. Developers take big and very exciting risks. As long as people are passionate about making games their way, then the indie scene will continue to yield more great games. Every year the number of submissions to the IGF and Indiecade increases and this is testament to a new generation of self-guided game developers rising up. It’s awesome!

Advice for anyone passionate enough to going into independent game development, the best tenet we recommend is to make sure the game you’re making is personal to you. When a game is personal to the creator, it shows in the design and is more effective.

2K Marin, Digital Extremes Dish Out Bioshock 2 Details

Fresh off finishing work on the much-anticipated BioShock 2, the teams at 2K Marin and Digital Extremes have surfaced from the depths of Rapture for a quick breath of air. Thankfully, during this time, Jordan Thomas, Zak McClendon and Hoagy De La Plante from 2K Marin and Mat Tremblay and Jesse Attard of Digital Extremes were onhand to field a mob of press questions on Friday in recognition of the finished product, which will be hitting store shelves on Tuesday. After the roaring success of BioShock, these team members have had some pretty big shoes to fill in this sequel, in which the single-player portion of the title takes place following the events of the first. However, after much work on the title, both companies came out confident, spilling a load of details and insight on next week’s big release.

Right off the bat, 2K Marin foresaw its biggest challenge: Creating a new experience that surpassed the original without stepping on the toes of the original release or the BioShock’s rabid fan base. While the members of 2K Marin and Digital Extremes agreed the biggest challenge was implementing multiplayer in a game built as a single-player experience, the developers of the single-player campaign noted pulling off the sequel effectively was still no easy chore. With a small core of members having a hand in the original title, creative director Jordan Thomas stated a team was built from scratch.

On the subject of the pressures of matching the success of the original title, Thomas stated the fact the original was so well received was perhaps the biggest pressure of producing the sequel. It was noted members of the Friday panel did have experience on previous games with titles such as Deus Ex, Deus Ex 2, Thief III and Project Snowblind being mentioned, but instead of focusing purely on the past, the two teams had a lot of work and expectations on their shoulders. “We built a team from scratch and it was mentally challenging because we were going against the weight of our own expectiations,” he noted. “Everyone was a fan of the first game and the pressure led to a lot of second-guessing and aiming to please everyone.”

Before moving on to all of the new additions to be pumped into the title, the teams had to take a step back and see what worked in the original title. Two of the biggest premises to return included the mystery-driven story along with the moral choices. “We wanted to keep the player’s choices … while growing the ecology of the world,” said McClendon, the lead designer of the project. “We wanted to expand upon the idea of the world being self-sufficent and keep everything acceptable and friendly to a wide audience. We wanted to respect anything the player decided on in the original game.”

It was stated that neither ending, based on the ethical choices of the player in the first game, was considered as “canon” for the story. Instead, the hope is that players will carry their morality from the first game over to the second. However the teams still treated the path of events very seriously and the game’s lineage unfolds in a manner that does the first entry justice.

“BioShock had an extremely full mythos,” stated Thomas. “Adding new history into that canon was a huge challenge. It was something we took very seriously. The writing team had to become painfully familiar with the first game in order to prevent contradictions.”

The goal in the sequel was painted out be surpsing to the player without removing what happened in the original entry, which is what the team would have referred to as a “simple-minded reboot.” Once again, the Little Sisters are running rampant in Rapture and moral decisions lie in your relationships with these ADAM-infused entities. “We wanted to focus on choice,” noted Jordan. “The player is granted freedom and can make a number of ethical decisions that shape the plot and how the story unfolds.” One of the main goals of story progression this time around, however, was in shaping the game well before the end, as it was carried out in the original title.

Not everything is new with the mythos, though, as De La Plante did indicate a small handful of characters and themes will be returning to the sequel, including Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum, along with the very obvious inclusions of the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. The one certainty De La Plante did spell out was the fact Andrew Ryan is dead.

“Through Rapture, you can see Ryan’s legacy and see his messages and ideals around the game.” he noted. “In this way, Rapture is a character of its own. (Ryan’s) story ended in a satisfying way. The player ended the game with conquest or redemption and we needed to allow the story to conclude and not interfere with that.”

After Jack Ryan leaves the “utopia,” the opening of the massive tower vacuum has allowed Rapture to evolve and feature the story elements introduced in the sequel. Fast forwarding to 1970, Rapture is now under the guidance of Sofia Lamb, who operates under the reverse philosophies of Andrew Ryan. Instead of focusing on the individual, Lamb stresses collectiveness in society, implementing vibes of Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill into the game’s philosophical tones, which still reflects writings such as those seen by George Orwell and Peter Watts. While a lot has essentially remained the same in BioShock 2’s premise and themes, though, the gameplay has been retooled to take the sequel beyond the original.

The most dramatic departure is obviously in the shift of the player’s role. Instead of Jack Ryan, players are placed directly under the mask of a prototype Big Daddy, a mechanic that 2K Marin admitted was one of the very first items decided upon for the sequel.

“Making this game was challenging and we felt changing the protagonist was the best focus,” said Thomas. “It provided a fresh perspective and it was hugely requested by fans. Most importantly, though, he has a purpose: He’s out in search of his original Little Sister.”

As a prototype, this Big Daddy does differ from those seen in the original entry. “In the original single player game, the Big Daddy was powerful, but slow,” recalled Thomas. “We just couldn’t do a game at such a slow, trudging pace – (the prototype) is more agile than the classic daddies and he can utilize the plasmids. He also has free will. The encounters with Big Daddies are still as rewarding as they were before, though. The ‘rumbler’ is a new type and the Big Sister is more challenging. The game’s situations are not always meant to be an even battle.”

Big Sisters, implemented as a new face of terror in the sequel, are Little Sisters that have matured physically based on an overabundance of ADAM. They embody an awkward transition into adolescence and feature a softer edge (detailed by items such as ribbons on their baskets or innocent drawings), but still carry quite the mean streak. However, this doesn’t mean the Little Sisters have been pushed out of the title. In fact, they are crucial element to BioShock 2. When a player encounters a Little Sister, not only can they be harvested for personal ADAM, but the player can adopt them in their search for more dead bodies full of the material. If the player allows the Little Sister to harvest from a body, it will be up to the player to defend her from incoming dangers. If players really sink low into morality, they can adopt, allow a Little Sister to absorb ADAM and then harvest a double dose of the precious entity. Such decisions are what really shapes the game, according to McClendon.

“It really undermines the moral value to force players into a specific morality choice,” he commented. “(BioShock 2) makes the choices around them a little more gray. It can be a little more rewarding to harvest in BioShock 2. You can be starved for ADAM if you do not adopt and you will have tons if you adopt then harvest. We’re hoping the choices are a little more reflective of the choices that go on in your head with such complex moral choices.”

Outside of the big baddies, the 2K Marin also noted even the general enemies have received a boost in performance thanks to reworked AI and players will be encountering these battles with more frequency. It was noted players will see some ambushes and the enemies are just a lot smarter overall, using cover, throwing grenades and effectively traversing ledges. Diversity also allows the enemies to be more threatening against your Big Daddy, with brute splicers throwing large blocks of concrete and being able to go toe-to-toe with you and other splicers that can climb walls and ceilings. The team even admitted the final boss from BioShock was something the original didn’t do very well so BioShock 2, without throwing out any spoilers, is “taking a different approach.”

However, thanks to being a Big Daddy, players will find they have more tools at their disposal to counter these threats. A lot more character growth has been implemented into the sequel with three upgrade levels to every single weapon, the ability to “dual-wield” plasmids and weapons and, of course, the trademark Big Daddy drill. The dual-wielding was admitted to being one of the very first mechanics the team implemented when doing early work with the BioShock toolset and the final results have the teams pleased.

“The Big Daddy really worked to our advantage.” noted Thomas. “Jack could go down quickly and by people’s expectations, (it) would be more durable, so there is more survivability. There are fewer stumbling block to your tools and with varying difficulty levels and internal play testing, we have made sure the levels are balanced. Everyone asked for the drill and that was something we put in, but it needed to be robust. We worked on upgrades and it became a core tool that was rewarding and visceral to use. With the way tools combine in defensive scenarios, we’re pretty happy with the end results.”

As mentioned, every weapon has three upgradable levels, which gives players something to work for and each changes up the game style a little bit. For example, reaching level three with the drill adds a magnetic coil, which can be used to reflect projectiles. Also, new plasmids have been worked into the experience for both the single-player and multiplayer modes with new single-player skills including a scout ability to leave your body and explore ahead for a short time. It was noted the single-player plasmids are meant for the players to use to have fun at the expense of punishing the AI while multiplayer plasmids need to be, “fun to use on others as well as fun to have them used on yourself.” Jesse Attard lead multiplayer programmer for the project at Digital Extremes stated the mode will feature a plasmid that allows players to move at extremely fast speeds and tackle enemies, one that allows players to become invisible and another that will freeze enemies into blocks that can be thrown around for more damage.

The combinations of attacks between plasmids and weapons is the goal of the teams involved, creating tactical and defensive gameplay. Other small tweaks to the gameplay include a simpler hacking system integrated into the core gameplay, forcing players to balance combat and hacking as simultaneous actions. Also, the research camera has been changed into a video camera that not only records subjects, but also judges how the player combats it and rewards the player accordingly. The vita chamber issue from the first game has been looked at as well, giving players the option to turn them off and while combating a Big Daddy, if the player dies, the enemy’s Little Sister will heal them to eliminate the cheap tactic of respawning to whittle down the Big Daddy’s health bit by bit.

Perhaps the biggest departure from the original title is in the fact players will get to explore a little more of Rapture by being able to traverse more of its outside environments. All of the environments are brand new, presented with improvements to shading and rendering and implementing areas the team imagined “players didn’t see the first time around.” 2K Marin did toy with possibilities such as implementing a flooded Port Frolic, but the team didn’t feel it worked out; however, the multiplayer mode will feature some familiar environments exclusive to that mode.

“(BioShock 2) is the same style in art with new environments and more art,” said De La Plante. “We created new manifestations of that style as reinvention was contrary to our goal. We played on an environment that was already strong and tooled with them a little bit. The setting of Rapture will never be new, but changing that wouldn’t work.”

Seeing Rapture from the outside will also allow players to not feel confined as the team noted the enclosed areas of the original made the title never feel safe so, perhaps, players couldn’t fully explore the beauty of the surroundings. The player will also encounter characters that are normal human inhabitants and these characters help progress the narrative.

The multplayer portion of the game was developed externally by Digital Extremes and actually takes place in a civil war storyline preceding the original title. The civil war explains the transition from utopia to dystopia and Attard felt utilizing the story in multiplayer as opposed to creating a full-fledged prequel was a perfect fit for the series.

“An honest prequel would be a very different game.” he explained. “We felt it didn’t speak directly to the values of the first game. The civil war and going from utopia to dystopia, translating those events into multiplayer was extremely honest and the competition over ADAM was compelling to us.”

The multiplayer aspect will feature modes such as the “civil war” team deathmatch, “capture the Sister” (similar to capture the flag) and a free-for-all “survival of the fittest.” Some of the modes will allow the player to become a Big Daddy, which comes with its additional strengths (a rivet gun, stomps and proximity mines) and weaknesses (doesn’t regenerate health, bigger and slower target). Unfortunately, there is no support for system link or LAN, but online, the game will accommodate for up to ten players. Taking place prior to the events of either game, the multiplayer mode will feature unique characters and players can learn more about them by unlocking diaries.

Obviously, taking the foundations of a single-player title and crafting a multiplayer experience from that was quite a task for Digital Extremes. Attard noted the team not only had to contend with a proper networking code and making sure the game was accessible, all the while not sacrificing the feel of the game’s universe. For example, he felt it would be out of place if an announcer called out a headshot; instead, a headshot may do something such as shooting a player’s mask off their face. Balance was another concern and Digital Extremes has noted many focus groups and interview have helped them identify areas to improve the mode and make it more fun. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the mode for fans, though, is in the familiar Rapture environments that have yet to be ravaged by the civil war and the events of the two single-player games.

“Rapture is rich with narrative elements,” said Temblay, the art director of multiplayer at Digital Extremes. “With the experience of the single player, there is so much to look at and experience and that’s what made Rapture. Rapture is pristine and new before the fall and the single-player mode freed us up to go back with multiplayer while the other mode drove the story of Rapture forward.

Looking at the sequel, 2K Marin did comment on the direction the team had to take in developing for all three platforms – Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC – simultaneously. The original title landed on the PS3 much later than the other formats and the teams shared the goal of compromising with the strengths and weaknesses of each format.

“We had a goal to make each format an identical experience,” said McClendon. “We don’t want to reward or punish someone based on their system.”

Commenting on the delay into 2010 for the title, both companies stated the extra time allowed for more balance and polish and Digital Extremes noted the delay allowed it to place in four more multiplayer modes that weren’t originally going to make it in the original 2009 release. Giving the title more time allowed 2K Marin to take a long look at the early moments of the game in order to bring forward the best impression for new and veteran BioShock players.

As a wrap-up to the panel, on an aside, even though Thomas did not jump on board the development of BioShock during its planning stages, he shared one of the proposed premises of the original title focused on World War II, with Nazis having a secret lab underwater for use in inhumane experiments. Also, 2K Marin commented on the collector’s edition, stating the pressed soundtrack vinyl was felt to be a more meaningful collector’s item and better sets the tone of the game.

Gaming B.I.: It's So Real

It's been a while since I've been able to tap into my Gaming B.I. (Before Internet) series, but I struck a little bit of pay dirt recently when my local import shop had a small stack of gaming publications for me to sink my teeth into. Most of this stack was filled with old strategy guides (hey, old strategy guides make for great toilet reading material) but the first book out of the bunch I dove into was Random House's Official SEGA Genesis & Game Gear Strategies, more specifically, the 1994 edition by Corey Sandler and Tom Badgett.

This publication is decent enough and it falls within the same perimeters I've talked about with vague descriptions of each game and such great pointers as not having Pac-Man eat power pellets when he doesn't need to, but this book is one of the more solid entries I've read recently, devoting a lot of space to passwords, cheats and Game Genie codes, which would have been a godsend before the Internet made all of this commonly-accessible knowledge. What blew me away, though, was this comment, made in regard to the Electronic Arts' SEGA Genesis title Mutant League Football and I quote it word for word:

"Looks like the real thing to us."

Now I won't pretend to know what the authors are thinking here and they may just be referring to the football itself and the passing and running plays contained within, but I can think of numerous other comments that would be far more suitable to describe Mutant League Football. In fact, that is perhaps the worst comment you could make in reflection to the game's target demographic. The reason I still pick up the game every now and again is because it wasn't just some cookie cutter football game. Sure, it hasn't aged well at all, but it can be mindless fun for about fifteen minutes until you decide to move on to something like Streets of Rage 2.

Do you remember during Super Bowl XLIV when the Indianapolis Colts bribed the referee and the New Orleans Saints had to kill him so he would stop calling five-yard penalties for nose picking? Or how about in Super Bowl XIX where Joe Montana lobbed a horrible pass, but in reality, it was actually a live explosive that he purposely threw at a Miami Dolphin defender? Evidently, we're supposed to believe the events of this game are rooted in reality. Perhaps in the future, we will be playing football on distant planets with aliens and skeletons, but to claim Mutant League Football has any resemblance of reality is a bit of a stretch, especially considering the obvious cartoon artwork used in the game.

It's been at least 15 years since I've been asked the awkward question of "how many bits would be real life?" as if reality was governed by something out of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream or The Matrix, but it appears the answer is 16. Watching Mutant League Football is identical to turning on a television on Sunday afternoon during football season according to this statement, but I will ease off of this soap box for now as, of course, this publication is far from the first to ever call reality into play in regard to video gaming. Even though advertising tried to lead me to believe 8-bit graphics were realistic, I knew better, especially since arcade games would be running at double to triple the power. People can believe what they want about what is and isn't reality, but being based on reality doesn't necessitate a claim something is, in fact, realistic. Even as technology progresses to this day, there is a strive to be "real," but, I have to ask, how real can video games become before they are not even games anymore and, more importantly, they aren't fun?

I always seem to be on that opposing end of the spectrum where I want my games to be fantasy, an escape from what I live through from 8-6 p.m. The never-ending push for realism has cut away a little bit of this creativity, but, thankfully, it still exists. We're definitely catching up to realistic looks, which is a far cry from the sprites and jagged polygons we used to be fed as real. As a matter of fact, the title of this Gaming B.I. comes from this legendary gem of an advertisement:

You can still be rooted in reality and present a fantasy as well; take Madden for example. The aspect of football is a reality, however, for a majority of people, assuming the role of their favorite player/team, playing in the big leagues, being in front of a roaring crowd, being in full control of the league and more are fantasy elements. There becomes a point where reality is no longer video game material: Do you want a game where you have to spend half the year not even playing during the offseason? Do you want to do full-scale workouts, training and deal with personal matters on a real-time daily schedule?

Of course, this is all subjective in nature. The boundaries of reality are going to differ from person to person and their tolerance for it will be dynamic as well. How far are you willing to go with realism in video games? What is the point where you feel realism would ruin the video gaming experience?

This morning wasn’t the most splendid way to start off the work week, but, at least I’m still alive and earning a paycheck. Just shy of 8 a.m., I was using an apple corer and slicer and I would have to imagine this particular one was of the cheap Wal-Mart variety. Upon using my amazing strength to push down on the apple, the plastic completely broke from the blades and the downward force sent my hands crashing down to the table. The blades, of course, stuck in the apple, sticking out and giving me small gashes on the outside of both of my hands as physics took over and brushed my hands across them. It’s a trivial, mostly annoying injury for sure, but it got me thinking today, how it could have been worse and how I would cope with not having opposable digits. Obviously, not having thumbs would be the bane of any console gamer’s existence, so would you be inclined to agree the gift of thumbs is something we tend to take for granted?

Perhaps the only thing I’ve ever experienced in being “disabled,” was fracturing my arm, very near the growth plate in my right shoulder. Since it was high on my arm, my mobility in my wrist and such was never in any jeopardy. Still, I remember looking pretty goofy going to arcades in a coat in colder weather with my forearm protruding out through the gaps of my coat’s buttons. I received a few questions about my setup while playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it was understandable – I wasn’t going to let a crack in my bone stop me from enjoying video games.

However, given where video games are heading, are thumbs still going to play a part in our hobby? I could obviously get by using a joystick and button setup without a pair of thumbs, but you really aren’t going to need them, it seems, with items such as Project Natal. Given the evolution of controllers and gaming, I’ve also noticed you really don’t see as many mentions of “numb thumb” or hand calamities that saw the release of specialized accessories and even gloves that aimed to relieve these ailments. I’m sure there are some people who don’t know when to quit and waggle their appendages down to the bone (I’m pretty sure we took a look at one such instance on the forum here one time), but you just don’t see magazine print ads selling such items anymore. Although, I do wish I had a pair of those gloves for the original Mario Party on the Nintendo 64 – winding up the toy Shy Guy burned a friction hole in a few members of my childhood gaming group and remains as one of my most crippling gaming injuries.

Obviously, I’ll survive, but, perhaps the injury leads me to take another look at the many things in gaming we have taken for granted over our time. What would gaming controllers look like if we didn’t have thumbs? It would have been quite the interesting evolution and, who knows, maybe we would have still arrived at the same point as Project Natal. Thumbless gaming just seems foreign to me as even the wagglacious Nintendo Wii still banks on people having thumbs for the most part and the Playstation 3 motion wand would be a whole new ball game if we didn’t have thumbs. I have nearly 30 years of gaming experience in these two bad boys and I know I’ve got many more in me – hopefully thumb-based gaming won’t go the way of the dodo, but that would be hard to believe for this generation. As it is, I’m amused at the premise of today’s children not knowing what cassette and VHS tapes are, but I suppose I better start thinking of ways to explain a time where video games didn’t synchronize directly with your brain.

I was surfing through my old computer yesterday and I came across a bunch of files for articles I had previously written for other gaming sites. Among them were a group of articles I did after attending the East Coast Gaming Expo in 2006 and amid that batch of articles was a piece based on one of the few 1990 Nintendo World Championship carts in existence being present at the show. It's owner: None other than Ed Fleming, founder of VGXPO, which will be taking place this year from Oct. 9-11 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. The event is recognizing its fifth anniversary, which is definitely commendable. VGXPO has had its share of ups and downs it seems, stemming from articles I tend to read about it online, but my only personal experience with anything regard the show stems from the following article I printed three years ago:

Many gamers have heard of it, but only a select few can claim ownership of the highly coveted Nintendo World Championship 1990 competition cartridge. One such gamer, Ed Fleming, was on hand at the East Coast Video Game Expo to proudly display what is commonly known as the “Holy Grail of NES collecting.”

Fleming prominently displays the cartridge while promoting America’s Video Game Expo, which he founded. However, what may be the best part of the display for gamers is the chance to actually play the cart.

Used only in the Nintendo World Championship tour in 1990, the cartridge is a special challenge combination of Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer and Tetris. When a judge starts the competition with the second controller, gamers are then cued to get ready and prepare for about five minutes (depending on the dip switch setting) of high-pressure gaming.

While anyone can just play the games as intended, the addition of scoring as high as you possibly can in just a few minutes in multiple games adds quite an edge for gamers looking to test their mettle. Challenge one requires players to tally 50 coins as fast as they can in Super Mario Bros., then challenge two pits them against stage two of Rad Racer. Once the exhaust settles from Rad Racer, the competitor uses any time left over to score as high as they can in standard type-A Tetris.

Once the time is up, the game tallies your total score, which was used as the competition scores during the time of the 1990 tour. A total of 116 cartridges were printed during the tour – 90 were given away to the NWC finalists and 26 special gold-version cartridges were awarded as Nintendo Power prizes. Given the extremely limited print run, it’s no surprise the cart sells for thousands of dollars.

“On Ebay it currently goes for about $9,000,” said Fleming. “I’ve even been offered $9,000 today (at the East Coast Gaming Expo). It’s said in about 15 years the value will rise to about $100,000. It’s like the Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle rookie card for (video game) collectors.”

Fortunately for Fleming, his price tag was a lot lower – free.

“I received it from a friend who worked at Tengen at the time,” he said. “He was a finalist in the competition.”

Fleming told him about another competition in China which he could not attend and his friend gave him the cart. Even though Fleming keeps an eye on what value the game carries, money is no object to him.

“I always get offers,” he said, “but I just can’t sell it. I love this stuff. We go out (to events) and try to evangelize it and just let people know that it does exist. I hope when kids see this they get interested in collecting as well and it lets them know that someday they too could have something like this. It’s a great initiative to grow the industry.”

Honestly, I kind of dig the crazy Ben Franklin promotion thing he had going on for 2006 ...

Thinking back, it was kind of amusing because the whole time I talked to Mr. Fleming, he wanted nothing more than to promote his show and, in complete, 100 percent honesty, at that time I was infinitely more interested in checking out the NWC cart. That cart is the lore of legends and it is pretty much presumed you will never be able to see, let alone, play an NWC competition cartridge. Thus, the game embraced me with its legacy, luring me over like a siren leads a sailor into the abyss, and when you pile on the fact Ed graciously let me play the cart, for the next 15 or so minutes, nothing else in the world existed in my mind. Not only that, I had just driven eight hours and spent hundreds of dollars attending the East Coast Gaming Expo - turning around in just one month and adding 16 more driving hours and spending even more money wasn't a logical thought in my mind at the time.

Three years have passed and I still haven't attended a VGXPO event. Hopefully, this year will be a little different as long as the planets align and luck is with me - Philadelphia isn't exactly a jog around the block for me and freelance journalism hasn't been the kindest to my wallet the past couple of years. However, the people involved and the retro show sound too good to pass up. Maybe this year I'll be able to pay more attention to VGXPO instead of ogling off past Mr. Fleming and salivating over what is the publicly declared the most valuable video game in the world.

My Gaming Story

Surprisingly, through a MySpace contact, I was approached by a friend addition, that asked me if I would be willing to take the time to submit a short story to their site, based on my gaming story. I obliged and now Nintendo Guy & Mrs. Peach have my story posted on their site. You know, it's always bugged me that I have no memory of what my very first video game was, but in retrospect, my fifth birthday is my clearest memory of anything I had ever done up to that point in my life (sans maybe the dream I mention in the story). It's always interesting when I think back to the simpler times and the fact that I have stuck with gaming for almost 24 years now is a badge I wear proudly. Even more interesting is the fact that very few people have ever asked me how I got into gaming and after all of those years my own parents haven't even, to my knowledge, questioned how I got into the hobby. Well, if anyone is still curious, here is my gaming story:

My gaming story originates while my memories are fuzzy, thanks to the inevitable reality of infantile amnesia, but even though I couldn't tell you exactly what my first video game was at the age of four, I was birthed into the world during the very awkward transition to the NES, amid the famed video game crash. Before the NES hit the market in the United States, while my parents weren't huge into video gaming, my father loved simulation games, especially those that simulated World War II flight, and my mother had a real heart for Space Invaders, thus, I know I started playing on the Commadore 64 or the VCS, even though I couldn't even tell you what my first game was.

My first real memories of gaming, however, come from an arcade we had at a local mall, where the location had a prominently-featured Versus cabinet that housed Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt in a side-jointed stand-up cabinet. While having Super Mario Bros. being the game that launched my interest in video gaming might be a cliche for someone my age, I was able to experience it in its true arcade form. The game was so much different than ones I had previously played - the sprite work and arcade graphics made the game seem like more of a cartoon in my child mind, the screen scrolled with expansive and varying environments with plenty of secrets to make the game seem like an adventure compared to the static screens of Space Invaders and other arcade titles of the time and the simple concept of jumping was easy for me to grasp even at age four. Even though at that age, I could never foil that damn Lakitu in stage 4-1, I still pumped plenty of my parents' hard-earned quarters into the machine through the year. Super Mario Bros. most certainly made an impression on me as it is probably the only thing I remember from my earliest years aside from this dream I had where I could fly and I flew down a flight of stairs to the basement and my father freaked out, but that's probably more than you needed to know about me.

We never traveled to that mall with any real frequency, so I maybe only got to play in the arcade a handful of times through the year. You could imagine my surprise when one of my earliest childhood friends introduced me to something called the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986. To my surprise, the unit could play Super Mario Bros. right in your very home. Needless to say, I spent a few months vying for any excuse I could come up with to go over to his house and play Nintendo, but my fifth birthday party serves as my clearest memory of my first five years, where my parents invested in the NES Action Set as my present. My father helped me deck out my gaming setup, pipping the video through our Commadore 64 monitor so I didn't tie up the television and he even bought two small, portable speakers that spliced the audio so I could enjoy better sound. Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt served me for many months, but as the NES gained traction, my mother, who worked as a high-end manager for a regional rental chain, soon pointed out I could rent other games for the system. In all honesty, I can probably barely tell you what I did yesterday, but without hesitation, I can tell you the first game I ever bought was The Legend of Zelda and the first game I ever rented was Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! Funny enough, at first I didn't understand the concept of rental as my mom took care of everything after I picked out the game, so I freaked when my mom went to take the game and return it to the store. After many rentals, I came to be known as the go-to kid for NES problems and information as the store often let me take carts home for a day that people returned as defective so I could test the validity of the claims and when the chain had a newsletter that featured a strip of gaming news, I submitted a few tips and tricks that were printed in the publication.

From that time, everything has been a wondrous blur, jumping from one system to the next as time progressed. I would say nearly every friendship I treasure today originally stemmed from some facet of gaming. I even shared a "Kunkel-Katz relationship" with some of my childhood friends with myself usually siding with Nintendo and others siding with SEGA - we would just visit each other to play the other system and keep up with what was going on in gaming (and thinking back, it always annoyed me that my SEGA friends would just yank the carts out of my SNES instead of using the eject button). To this day, I own nearly every mainstream U.S. system that has released since the NES along with a myriad of games and novelties and in 2000 I decided to attempt to take gaming up as a career. I've only had mild success, but the thing about gaming is, even through the ups and downs, the hobby is flat-out fun and the industry is fascinating. Even though video game journalism has arguably turned for the worse, I can always fall back on the games themselves to forget about what ails the world and video gaming has given me so many memories, opportunities and friendships, I would even admit they have shaped who I am as a person.

Great Strides in Marketing

The status of the arcade in the United States is debatable – on one hand there are some who believe arcades have been dead since the turn of the decade and we are starting to berth generations of young gamers that have never been to an arcade and can’t understand the concept behind them; over on the other hand, you have folks that acknowledge the business is still huge worldwide due to new arcades and machines popping up all over the Eastern hemisphere, strong U.S. arcades that feature new cabinets from Japan and classic arcades still garnering much interest from trade shows, events and collector groups. No matter what your stance is, one thing is painfully evident – arcades in the present day sure aren’t what they were 20years ago, 10 years ago or, hell, even five years ago.

Just in the past five years I can’t even count on my fingers and toes how many arcades have folded in my region and up until 2006, arcades were almost a daily routine for me. Today, I have to travel an hour and a half just to visit an arcade and that travel turns into four to five hours if I want to visit a serious, up-to-date or well-kept classic arcade. Amid the GameWorks and Dave & Buster crowd, there is still the flame of entrepreneurship and you see it in the eyes of those who lost their local arcade and have the passion to create their own location and this is seemingly becoming the next evolution of arcades in the United States. In the past couple of years, perhaps these gamers finally realized since the industry wasn’t evolving, it was up to the arcade operators to do so. In this time, arcades have almost become a “grassroots campaign” in gaming – the majority won’t be bothered to take notice when they have Call of Duty 4 to play 20 hours a day, but those of us who were there when arcades were a staple of gaming have come together to make people notice the heart of arcades are still ticking and within the past year, I would say I’ve seen more arcade news online and in print than I have in any year since 2005, probably longer.

With that being said, it was brought to my attention yesterday Stride Gum is trying to appeal to gamers once again by launching a “Save the Arcades” campaign. In a simple concept, four U.S. private arcades of notable stature were selected to take part in a contest – anyone with the Internet can visit the site and play a painfully generic sh’mup title and donate the points earned in the game to the arcade of their choice. Whichever arcade has the highest point total by the end of the contest will be given $25,000. It’s a noble gesture, for sure, but when I look past the initial award, all I see is a marketing scheme that is trying to once again muscle into minds of gamers by jumping onto the “It’s the cool thing to do” bandwagon.

If you’ll recall in May 2008, Stride attempted to win the hearts of gamers by offering a free pack of gum to anyone that would sign the online petition to stray Uwe Boll from producing video game-based movies. Fortunately, I learned back in 1997 that online petitions have a one percent chance of accomplishing anything, so it was no surprise when the petition failed to accomplish anything (if you believe the petition stopped his line of video game-based movies, sorry, it was actually Germany closing the tax loophole Boll was using for years). Also, through the benefit of actually being relatively instructed in journalism before I, you know, became a gaming journalist, I understand the basics of public relations – the only facets that came out of the whole ordeal was publicity for both Stride and Uwe Boll. People had one week to fill the petition to the suggested one million signature mark and after nine days, there were barely one-quarter of that amount on register, meaning no gum was distributed and the company received recognition to what amounted as free advertising on an epic scale and the gamer demographic was successfully tapped. If you’re familiar with anything P.T. Barnum accomplished in his career, I shouldn’t have to explain how this helped Uwe Boll, who interestingly enough had almost 10,000 signatures on a support petition at that same time, making the whole gum campaign a bit counterproductive. Then again, this further shows Stride wholly succeeded where its supposed premise failed.

Moving back to the current scenario, Stride just seems to be showing off a mixed message with its Save the Arcades campaign – the cause is noble, but the way it is execute is so contrived, it seems to be doing little to actually save arcades all the while, the marketing aspect of the campaign makes Stride look like a million bucks. Let’s look at the setup here: U.S. arcades are “on their deathbed” and only four arcades stem to benefit from this campaign; only one of these arcades in the end will benefit from Stride’s campaign (unless the recognition really brings more customers into the arcades, which is a gamble we can’t really bank on); these arcades are in such dire need, yet the winner will have to wait until “early 2010” to receive the money; and the whole campaign revolves around herding gamers to a Stride-owned site where players’ information is recorded for marketing purposes. I won’t even go into the financial aspects of the campaign, but this all sounds like a win-win situation for Stride. I actually give this company kudos as they seem to have a damn good PR and marketing team … as if that weren’t evident in the company’s commercials.

It’s awesome that an arcade is going to receive $25,000, but my point is, this is hardly going to save arcades - it’s a well-done marketing campaign that taps a very lucrative demographic. It would be nice if the campaign ran repeatedly, but, most likely, once this initial run is through, we’ll most likely never see another Save the Arcades campaign from Stride seeing as we haven’t heard a peep from the company in regard to Uwe Boll since early May 2008. I am one million percent behind saving and supporting arcades, but there is just better ways of doing it. Imagine this scenario: A company states there are children all across the United States that do not have food to eat and decide to run a contest where four children are detailed and the company will give food to only the one child who Internet users choose. It’s a little more extreme, yes, but does that make any sense to you? Does that really solve the problem of children not having enough nourishment? This is the logic I am applying to this arcade campaign – I’m not trying knock the purpose, I’m questioning its execution.

Not only this, we see another matter of counter-productivity in this Stride marketing: Instead of supporting arcades by, you know, getting off your ass and dropping quarters into their machines, people are glued to a computer at home, mashing away for points that will grant an arcade potentially 2,500 miles away from me enough money to maybe pay its bills for a year. As of this moment, Arcade UFO is smoking the competition, leaving the other three arcades with a glimmer of hope for financial breathing room and that just downright depresses me. If anything, I’m hoping this does ignite a little more interest in arcades and perhaps give arcade owners a little more faith that there are people out there that do support arcades, it’s just a shame the only time we hear about arcades anymore is in a doom and gloom situation. If you really want to support arcades, the process is really easy: If you don’t know where your closest arcade is, use a service such as Aurcade.com; go to your local arcade; play the games. It doesn’t matter that new games aren’t trickling in left and right to U.S. arcades – you can’t tell me that after playing Final Fantasy, Halo, etc., for the millionth time that you wouldn’t be able to give Asteroids, Final Fight or Street Fighter an occasional go in the arcades. I pump a quarter into Killer Instinct every day I’m at work. Trust me; it won’t kill you.

Good luck to the arcades involved in the contest and I hope this sparks some more interest in genuine efforts to salvage our arcade system. Let's just not forget to save the arcades after this marketing ends in October.

Dusting Off the Ring Rust

Perhaps one of the most appealing things about holding on to a fighting game for an extended period of time is the competition. You see, when a game intially releases, even the most casual player buys into the buzz and for seasoned fighting game vets, it's quite easy to blow through the common competition. However, when you give the game a couple of months, the people who don't want to stick with the fighter no longer log online, leaving only the serious competition or the aforementioned commoners who have put in the time and trained to become a legitimate competitor. Such is the case with Street Fighter IV, where, I found out this past weekend, I have some serious, serious rust.

After spending a weekend watching EVO, I thought I would give the game a little more playtime, influenced by the performances of my favorite Street Fighter player Daigo - mostly fueled by his usage of Ryu, who I like to use as well. However, Honda, Blanka, Boxer - it didn't matter who it was - they all kicked my ass. As a supporter of competitive play, yes, I can admit that. I even gave most of my opponents three matches and I could barely win one round in each, if any at all. It was evident that my habits of moving quickly on to a next game thanks to my journalistic endeavors had severely "f'd" me over in my Street Fighter IV bouts. After that, I knew a little more training was definitely in order.

Street Fighter IV was also a victim of my quick-bursting achievement method of spanning multiple games quickly to gain a variety of achievement points instead of buckling down with a game and scoring higher amounts of points per game. I noticed a large number of achievements that would just come naturally with dedication, so I've been firing the title up with the intentions of bettering my game. Last night I cleared out the hardest difficulty of arcade mode and, surprisingly, it only took about 45 minutes to accomplish. There was a rough matchup with Fei Long at first, but I could manage most of the others with little difficulty until I got to Seth. I probably spent a half-an-hour of that time figuring out this beast. I quickly found that I could punish his low fierce with a shoryuken, but his constant teleporting made it difficult to do much once you were knocked down. I still managed it by playing a mid-range game, though, and I did it all with Ryu.

One thing I keep going back to while playing last night, though, is the time I wasted giving my Mad Catz stick another try. Seeing that thing just reminds me of how I really need to do the review of it like I've promised all these month. A square joystick well? Seriously?!?

But I suppose all of this is where the pride of a fighter comes from - win or lose we fight just to become the best we can possibly be. I know there are people who just can't understand the subtle differences found in every fighting game, but, believe me, they are there and there are reasons why professional champions train endlessly. The game will only hold your hand for so long - after that, it's up to you to know how things such as kara throws, ticking and meaty attacks can improve your game. It goes beyond what magazines and strategy guides will explain to you and while you can read as much as you want, much like anything else people do in life, it boils down to experience. Sure you fight to win, but, mostly, you fight to learn.

Congratulations to everyone that handed my ass to me. It only serves as a motivation to wake up and find out what is wrong with my game plan. Fighting game fans are truly a noble breed and it's no surprise why events like EVO are treasured by the gamers who take it seriously. I suppose that's why, even after more than 15 years, the fighting genre has been among my favorites in all of video gaming.

Look at Me! I'm Special!

Over at J2Games, we’ve already put many Internet video game writers through the wringer when it comes to the subject of being a journalist. Supposedly, being a video games journalist today merely consists of having a news site where one just points out what other sites say about video games – "this site has an interview, that site said this rumor, some site dug up this news" – all in one blog roll with cute, Photoshopped photos that attempt to be funny. Honestly, though, the adage goes that you have to stick with what sells and I can live with this if this is how video games journalism has evolved to what people really want. There is, however, one thing some of these sites do that annoys me beyond belief. Usually, the offense looks something like this:

Guitar Hero 9,435,283 Arrives at HQ
By nestlekwik

UPS just stopped by, dropping off an advanced copy of Guitar Hero 9,435,283 before it is available in stores. We’re going to go and play it right now and let you know what we think later.

Okay. We get it. You’re a video game publication outlet and you get games earlier than most other people. But, honestly, what journalistic good does an entry like this provide? There is no good and this only serves to stroke the ego of the writers who feel the need to think they are above every one else. If you understand video game journalism, you already know that these outlets receive advance copies in order to convince readers to buy the game. Be a journalist and skip the part where UPS came to your door so you could gloat that you’re playing a game before most of the civilized world and get on to sharing news and views about the game so readers can be informed.

This doesn’t stem from jealousy, either. Even though I am, at face value, a “video game industry nobody,” I still receive a fair amount of games prior to their retail release date and this has included key titles from companies such as Nintendo and Sony. With that being said, I never felt the need to rub it in people’s faces that I was in possession of a game early – I just appreciated the opportunity and reported news and views as I saw fit.

The being said, while I can’t speak for myself, I’m sure this facet of egotism has always existed among video game journalists. I mean, when you do get to play games in advance, have a voice that is heard by many gamers and talk to some high-profile people, I’m sure there is a natural chip that forms on your shoulder. Even so, I think most of these writers had the common sense (and journalism training) to not put such an attitude in their print. I can’t recall magazines telling me that UPS showed up with the hot new Super Mario Bros. 2 or writers blatantly telling me they were going to go and play Super Mario Kart before I could instead of using the space to report valid information. Again, I’m sure the egotism was there in some aspects, but it appeared to be a lot more behind the scenes.

At least with this editorial, I can get the dubious honor of being the first person to mention Guitar Hero 9,435,283 before it is announced sometime next year.

The Econonmics of Pay-Per-Play

Recently, it was announced that Japanese Playstation 3s had a new version of Gomibako (released stateside as Trash Panic), which actually charged gamers on an installment format similar to what is found in arcades. By paying out 100 Yen (about $1.06 right now), the title gives players three full cracks at the game, after which, players would have to pony up another 100 Yen. The format even further entices players by offering unlockables if they are able to clear modes that the pay-per-play game offers. It is very clear the company is testing the waters to see who bites on this, but reports of this are already attracting its fair share of neigh sayers.

Of course, I’ve had to deal with similar claims this previous year with the advent of Guitar Hero: Arcade. Why would people want to lay down $1-2 a song for something they can purchase for keeps for $15 or less? While in the United States, it seems Trash Panic can now be purchased for a meager $4.99 as opposed to its original $9.99 asking price, further cheapening the $0.99 per three plays format if it were to ever arrive in the U.S. But what if this were to take off? Could we be entering a phase where instead of Microsoft Points, Wii Points and Sony Wallets come stuffed with “virtual quarters” as avatars roam the digital midway looking for a hungry machine to stuff them in? Just imagine paying $0.25 to jump into an online Street Fighter match as people fight for the right to not have to pay again (just like in my interview with Capcom’s Seth Killian about getting into fighting games at the arcade – “I didn’t have that much money, so I had to win if I wanted to keep playing”). All of this just begs us to answer, “is there really an advantage to paying less to receive less?”

Let us go back to my Guitar Hero example. In actuality, the game is doing very well. In my experience with the arcade machine, my specific location had no shortage of players and I’ve seen the great arcade news site Arcade Heroes report on solid numbers the game is receiving in cabinet sales. Even though the typical Internet game site user scoffed at the idea of limited game play, the end result reflects those projected by the economic concept of marginal utility per dollar.

Understanding consumer behavior can be tricky and, in fact, in my microeconomics book (Microeconomics by R. Glenn Hubbard/Anthony Patrick O’Brien, published by Pearson Prentice Hall in 2008), there is an entire chapter dedicated to it. Obviously, the reason for this is everyone acts, thinks and behaves differently, but even so, economists still assume consumers will use their limited resources to buy goods and services that satisfy them the most. No one buys things they do not want – even if you think you have made a purchase and didn’t want it, there was indeed an underlying factor of self interest. You might not have personally wanted that action figure you bought for your son, but the interest of satisfying your son fueled the decision purchase the product. You can later regret purchases you made at the spur of the moment, but at the point of purchase, you were acting on the impulse of self interest.

No matter the situation, economists have a term known as “utility,” which is the subjective satisfaction ones derives from consuming a good. Furthermore, people experience marginal utility as they consume more of the same product, the marginal difference stemming from the change in utility one receives by consuming more – you’re going to enjoy slices of pizza less and less as you become full, for example.

In order to stop sounding like a rambling professor, let’s put all of this onto a video game track of thought. Obviously, we buy video games because we enjoy them (or like the action figure example, we buy them in the interest of satisfying someone else). The varying degrees of the best decision to make for a game – purchase outright, rent or pay-per-play – all stems from the person’s desire to repeatedly pay for a game. While the initial costs of renting or paying to play are much lower than spending the full amount of the game, eventually, there comes a point where repeatedly paying becomes less advantageous to consumer. Think about it – a one-month Xbox LIVE card, when still carried in stores, was $9.99, yet a 12-month card is $49.99. If you were to buy 12 one-month cards, you would be paying $119.88 for the same service a mere $49.99 provides for you. However, again, budget constraint sets in – our limited resources sometimes doesn’t make the initial $49.99 available to us.

What you have to remember is, economically, satisfaction is determined by the purchase – sure, when you buy a $60 game, you can play it whenever you want to, versus only one time if you pop 50 cents into an arcade machine – thus, replayability has no function from an economic standpoint and proving per-per-play as a feasible model. Going back to pay-to-play versus purchasing a game, we have to consider the rule of equal marginal utility per dollar spent (marginal utility divided by cost). While consumers tend to receive more enjoyment from the initial purchase of an expensive item, most often than naught, purchasing inexpensive items provides us with a higher favorable ratio between utility and cost.

Again, utility is subjective, but let’s just say the utility one receives from playing a song in Guitar Hero is 20. Purchasing Guitar Hero II at GameStop is $14.99, giving this option a utility per dollar of 1.33, while popping $1.00 into a Guitar Hero: Arcade cabinet, results in a utility per dollar of 20. In economics, there is a law of diminishing marginal utility that states in nearly every case, the difference seen by marginal utility is negative. When someone makes another purchasing decision, let’s just say the utility has diminished to 16 – the novelty has worn off for each version: You’re picking up Guitar Hero III, also $14.99 at GameStop, for new songs even though the game play hasn’t changed and in Arcade, you played your favorite song already, so you choose a less favorite song or repeat your favorite song. Now, the second utility derived from the home version is 1.07, while the arcade version drops to 16. In an economic utility cycle, the marginal utility (enjoyment) eventually hits zero or drops into the negative, signifying the point at which the consumer no longer sees the purchase as being viable. However, you can start to see how pay-per-play becomes a viable device – short-term satisfaction comes at a much lower price.

Just think about it – when you see an arcade game you really enjoy, your usual first reaction is to probably thrust your hand into your pocket to see if you have a quarter. On the other hand, even though purchasing a console title is a long-term purchase, a lot of people can wait until the price drops or they would rather rent the title. In economic terms, these people are seeking a higher marginal utility per dollar and whether people know it or not, consumers unconsciously run the formula, marginal utility divided by cost, through their head every time they are confronted with a purchasing decision.

Going back to Gomibako, offering a demo to people to decide whether or not they want to purchase the full version isn’t the point anymore, which seems to be the basis of many arguments I see online. The fact that the pay-per-play version can offer up goods that have nothing to do with the game itself is further indication that such a structure doesn’t have the goal of “forcing gamers to pay for a demo.” Business-wise, the aim of offering such as service goes back to a person’s desire to seek a high marginal utility per dollar. If a person decides they will not be satisfied with three gameplays for a dollar, they won’t use the service – again, when utility is zero or less, the person does not purchase the product. However, on the other hand some people will pay the single dollar and not do so again, some will pay multiple dollars to enjoy the game or receive Home unlockables and others will pay once and decide to pay again to purchase the full game. Pay-per-play basically laid the groundwork for video games ever since Nolan Bushnell and his colleagues released Computer Space and Pong and I would imagine it will be seen in some form or fashion as long as video games remain relevant to our culture. If you don’t like it, do what consumers with that same distaste have done since 1971 – don’t pay and don't play.

Guitar Hero: Arcade and Arcades

Considering I was the first person to break the exclusive news that an official Guitar Hero cabinet was being developed by Raw Thrills, you would probably expect that I’ve had a go or two on the towering rock coin-op. Judging by my choice of words, though, you’ve probably figured out by now that isn’t the case. My vacation to the Grand Rapids over the weekend brought me to the nearby entertainment center Craig’s Cruisers, where I finally decided to start on the personal cabinet catalog I’d wanted to start for quite some time now. Firmly tucked away in the rear of the building, across from the DanceDanceRevolution SuperNOVA cabinet, was the embodiment of what many deemed as questionable speculation when I first reported it. It seems kind of timely that I recently did a piece on “Arcade Envy,” games that used to splash arcades only to come home on the earlier home systems in crappy fashion. Perhaps, now, though, the tables have turned as, really, with multitudes of versions available at home (such as Aerosmith, which you can buy, to keep and play endlessly, from some online outlets at the price of playing three songs on GH: Arcade), is anyone really interested in paying a dollar to play one song from a version of the game that is going on two years old?

I suppose it is understandable, really. Today, the U.S. arcade industry is a gamble no matter how you look at things. Crafting an arcade version of a home game that has proved its worth in sales creates a little bit of a safety net for companies who can bank on the fact that there are some players who will buckle down and drop some change every time they see familiar names such as Guitar Hero or Madden. It certainly makes business sense, but at the same time, it fails to evolve arcades (although, potentially, it’s what keeps them in business right now) and it certainly overshadows upcoming original efforts such as Will Brierly’s Get Outta My Face and Galloping Ghost’s Dark Presence.

People would run up to Guitar Hero: Arcade like it was a celebrity, having no qualm pumping in a dollar to play one meager song when classic games such as Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, NBA Fastbreak (pinball), The Ocean Hunter, Time Crisis and more offered potentially longer game play at 25-50% of Guitar Hero’s price of admission.

I don’t blame Raw Thrills, though, as the team took what they had to work with and tapped it to 100% of its potential with heavy, durable guitars, an excellent high-definition screen, eye-catching lighting and thunderous speakers. The cabinet design is everything you could ask for from a music title even though the team was handed over a crusty, two-year-old software to work with. I hear the title is selling quite well, however, with Raw Thrills openly reporting the cab has pushed more than 2,000 units at the beginning of June and who am I to argue with the college campuses having a ball with weekly competitions? I suppose that is the one grace I have, though – even though I don’t think Guitar Hero: Arcade is necessary at all, people are having fun with it and it gives arcade owners a little bit of hope that they can actually score a little bit of money. That’s what video games are all about. You can talk about crashes and recessions all you want, but it won't be until the day that video games lose their fun and community that the medium truly dies.

Aaron McCray on Independent Video Game Development

As expected of its infancy and surge of apps, hidden in the corner of your Xbox 360 Dashboard, there is a potential trove of quality games, hidden away in the unmarketed Community Games section of the Xbox LIVE service. Even though the state of the service is questionable, if you dig deep enough, you will find quality Xbox 360 Community Games titles for a fraction of the price of most Xbox LIVE Arcade titles, as our very own Matt Yeager has pointed out for us a couple of times.

Breaking onto the Community Games’ Most Popular blade of releases recently has been the arcade-style brawler Angry Barry, the second XBox Live Community Games effort from Arrogancy Games. Taking obvious cues from Data East’s classic Bad Dudes, Angry Barry is traditional romp through levels full of enemies to punch in, all influenced by people and events stemming from the 2008 presidential election campaign. Classic arcade buffs should find the two-player brawler a steal for a meager 400 Microsoft Points, but fans of classic, old-school gaming should keep an eye on the name Arrogancy Games, as according to one of its members, the studio is just warming up.

Aaron McCray is one-half of the duo responsible for most of what players see in an Arrogancy Games title. McCray works as an artist, designer, musician and writer for the studio and has teamed up with Alex Welch, who is listed as a programmer and designer, to bring gamers the three titles available on the studio’s official Web page. In the wake of Angry Barry’s release, McCray was kind enough to accept an interview with us to detail the past of Arrogancy Games, and perhaps most importantly, its future.

DHGF: First of all, can you explain Arrogancy Games for everyone? How did the team originally form and what message is the team trying to put out to players with its games?

Aaron: I used to create embarrassingly horrible anime-inspired Flash animations in the early days of Flash and post them on Newgrounds.com. In that time period, the Newgrounds creator/owner, Tom Fulp (you may know him better as the co-creator of Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers as part of The Behemoth) was programming Flash games with various animators, and I began work on a game project with him. That fell through, so I found another awesome programmer, Alex Welch, to work with, and we began working on game projects together. The Arrogancy name comes from the horribly animated series I was working on and known for at the time, and I kind of got stuck with it.

Our message, if you can call it one, is one of many independent developers - that games can go beyond the typical nature of what mainstream games are normally created as. Games can be comedies, they can be political satire, they can be nostalgic throwbacks, they can be social commentary. You can express ideas in games similar to what is found in any other creative medium, and we focus on doing that.

DHGF: The company produces titles in both Adobe Flash for the PC as well as Community Games for the Xbox 360. Was this a case of originally developing titles in Flash and moving on to the XNA format? What was it about XNA and the Community Games services that attracted Arrogancy Games to the format?

Aaron: Unfortunately, as Alex and I got older, more and more bills piled up and it became … not feasible for us to continue making games for free. So, we started looking into options to actually earn some money back from our games and that’s when XBLA started really taking off, so we looked into that. We started working on an XNA title and attempted to win Dream Build Play with it for a free ride to XBLA, similar to The Dishwasher or Blazing Birds and to cover the 6 months or so of added development we would need to finish it. Well, we ended up being a runner-up (possibly because our title was a bit more unfinished than the winners – no way to know, though), meaning we had to put it on the backburner until we got enough cash on hand to cover additional development.

Two months into development on that title, Microsoft announced its Community Games service, and we thought we’d try out making some smaller projects for that as well. We created Adventurer Pets to kind of try to test the water and see how things worked, and then created Angry Barry, which had more of our “personal touch” put on it. We really do love the idea of making whatever we want and putting it on thousands of consoles around the world – it’s very similar to what we were doing in Flash, just on a different system, and that’s what we love doing. Entertaining people.

DHGF: It’s evident the team loves games of old-school nature. Adventurer Pets is openly billed as an “homage/update” to the C64 title Floyd of the Jungle and Angry Barry has a mass of Bad Dudes influence to it. Is the team’s goal to cater to those looking for challenging, arcade-like experiences seen in classic titles? What other classic titles have inspired the team over the years? Are there any other classic series you’re looking to update or pay homage to?

Aaron: I started with a Commodore 64 and from there was pretty much a Sega kid (although my friends all had Nintendos – they just didn’t know that Genesis did what Nintendon’t-didn’t) that went back and got his hands on all of the Nintendo systems in middle-high school. Alex is from the UK and grew up with Amigas, which I guess he played on his tea breaks or whatever.

The “secret” to our XNA development is that we’re doing one title inspired by something we loved playing as a child, going from system to system chronologically. We started with Commodore, moved to arcade/NES … our next title will be a dating sim that pays homage to the perverted games Alex played alone in his room on his Amiga and then we’re moving to the SNES with something that will be suspiciously similar to A Link to the Past (without copyright infringement!).

DHGF: What was the feedback like for Adventurer Pets? Does it annoy you that, currently, there is no way for users to currently rate a game on the service or does the team thrive on the grassroots, word-of-mouth hype seen around the Internet?

Aaron: A lot of people didn’t like Adventurer Pets, which was to be expected; it was kind of slow and floaty like Floyd originally was, and we didn’t really want to modernize the gameplay more than we already did because, to us, it missed the point of what made Floyd so fun. That was a quick, personal project, so I don’t mind; if we could have made that one free, we could have. And, hey, some people did like it quite a bit, so I’m glad that we could entertain some, at least.

We need ratings and exposure desperately. Most people visit Community Games once, see a bunch of massagers, applications or glorified tech demos in the most popular section, assume that’s what it has to offer and never come back. The organization of the service has scared away gamers, making a place where applications thrive while ruining any chance to make enough of a profit to justify six-plus months of development time for a mid-sized game. Hopefully, the user ratings will help to bring some of the actual gamers back to our service so that they can actually find the good games on there.

And, just for your readers – you get to Community Games by going on your 360 dashboard, going to ‘Game Marketplace,’ and then going to ‘Community Games’ to find us!

DHGF: Angry Barry has recently released on the Community Games service and it is already among the most popular titles. How successful has the game been so far and what was the team’s original motivation behind developing an arcade-style brawler?

Aaron: For a Community Game, it’s rather successful, and for an actual GAME on the service, even more so. It’s not getting quite enough to really fund making a living off of, but, so far, I can pay some rent and some bills and it gives me just enough financial leeway to make our next title.

I decided to make the game because I was looking at random stuff on Youtube and watched a Bad Dudes speed run right around election time and got a “wacky idea.” That kind of random coincidence is pretty much where all of my ideas come from. Well as much as I’d be willing to admit publicly, at least.

DHGF: What fueled the political themes found in Angry Barry? Is this a play on the Ronald Reagan character from Bad Dudes or was there another agenda on hand for the decision?

Aaron: Yeah, the Ronald Reagan character was a giant part of the idea behind it. I mean, come on, “Let’s have a burger?” Also, there was just a ton of ridiculous stuff that was going on in the election season that I found hilarious; the ridiculous ACORN meme, where people somehow turned it from what it was into this nefarious vote-stealing conspiracy James Bond villain organization, gaffes being blown up so ridiculously, Sarah Palin in general … it just gave us tons of material to satirize in a game. I got some ideas from some people on the Something Awful forums, and then we just ran with it.

DHGF : With two games now up and available for players to purchase, what are the team’s thoughts on the XNA platform? Has Microsoft and the Community Games service been easy for the team to work with? Does the team have any aspirations to “move up,” if you will, to the level of producing games for the Xbox LIVE Arcade service?

Aaron: We have a love/complaint relationship with Community Games. We absolutely love the opportunity Microsoft has given us and others. At the same time, we’re one of the biggest complainers about every little thing with Microsoft and with the community, in an effort to try and chip away at the flaws and make the service the best that it can be. What we, and a lot of the other devs want, is for it to be a place where both the kid who wants to make “My First Breakout Clone,” and the small business owner that wants to carve out a living for himself, can achieve their goals, and, unfortunately, at the moment, it favors the hobby side a bit too much.

We’d definitely like to make full fledged XBLA games in the future. In fact, that was our goal at the start – we just got a bit … sidetracked … but we’ll get back to it.

DHGF: The team has already announced a new game heading to the Xbox LIVE Community Games for the third quarter of this year entitled AAG, or in its entirety - An Awesome Game Where You Shoot Stuff and It Blows Up and Then You Win the Game: The Game. It’s clear from promotional materials that the game is striving to be an adventure/shooter hybrid. How far along is the game? The trailers seem to indicate AAG is the team’s most ambitious game yet. What prompted the change from arcade-style gameplay to more of an exploration format and is there anything else you would like to share about the upcoming title?

Aaron: Actually, I’d better change the date of that game on the site. AAG is around 25% done at the moment and we need around 3-6 months of pure development time to finish it. To try to fund that game, we’re releasing two more games this year in the meantime – firstly, our dating sim that tries to do more than just be a game where you try to see some badly drawn boobs, but instead explores the actual nature of dating/relationships (while being funny), and then our 2D Zelda type game that takes place in Detroit after aliens took all of the cars away and it turns into a post apocalyptic wasteland.

AAG is hugely inspired by Metroid, with a few influences from Flashback and Contra, and is better than most games on XBLA itself, in my not-so-humble opinion, backed up by a lot of the people in the XNA Community that have played it. It’s pretty huge, though, which is why it’s taking so long to come out.

DHGF: Of course, the team also has games available on the Adobe Flash format, such as Beeku’s Big Adventure, which can played right on Arrogancy Game’s Web page. Has the XNA format drawn the team away from Flash for the time being? What are some of the things XNA can offer you that Flash can’t and vice versa when you are developing your games?

Aaron: I actually want to get back into Flash development; we’re probably going to make a “Mini-Barry” and toss it up on Newgrounds for our old supporters on there and we had a few pretty expansive Flash titles that we never finished that we’d like to get back to. Yeah, XBox development is taking a lot of our time away from that, but we do plan on getting back to it.

DHGF: We thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Is there anything you would like to say to gamers and, perhaps, even some of the up and coming XNA developers?

Aaron: To gamers, I’d like to say, please, please don’t write off Community Games just yet. It’s a young service and great games take time to make; if the service gets viewership and support, more and more great games will come to it. There are already good games on there like Halfbrick Echoes, Weapon of Choice, Trino, and others; and games like Duality ZF with six month plus dev times are about to come out on it soon. Give it a chance and more and more great stuff will come, made by gamers just like me and you as opposed to the big faceless corporations that create “soulless” titles via focus groups that you complain about all of the time. Give us a little support and we’ll entertain you in return.

To the creators, I’d say, please, please, stop filling the service with nonsense if you can at all help it – you’re only hurting all of us. It’s fine to make personal projects, it’s fine to attempt making your first Tetris or Breakout clone – the service is set up to let anyone and everyone of differing levels to make games and that’s awesome – no one should be held back. However, the creators making the lazy cash-ins to try to ride the app wave when they know they can do better – that kind of stuff needs to stop or no one will ever want to come as you’ll drown everyone else out. And hey, even if you are making a one-week project, try to make it different or interesting or funny, or something. Barry was only a two-month project, but we at least attempted to put some thought into making it funny for gamers to play as well as putting some different ideas in it. We’re independent game designers who can make anything we please – let’s start doing so.

The Unfamiliar Gamer

It’s hard to believe it’s already been about three weeks since I ran my very first convention – a culmination of eight months of planning and four straight days of labor, capping off an extremely busy spring semester for me. While the convention was of the anime nature, of course, tucked away in the corner of the building, there was a room filled with every anime fan’s second-best friend … well, wait … that might be Pocky, so we’ll just say video games are an anime fan’s third-best friend.

While most of the gamers attempted to hijack all six televisions with Super Smash Bros., I was stunned to see the convention’s college advisor to bring in a Playstation game I haven’t seen in probably 10 years. In 1997, Konami’s Tokyo development studio released a quirky, four-player arena battle game under the title Poitter’s Point. It was a bizarre game filled with crazy characters, environments and concepts and to boil it down, the object of the game was to run around the arena, picking up any item players can find and throwing them at the other players until they were knocked unconscious. The wackiness of the game made many believe the title would never be destined to release in the United States, but a mere three months after the Japanese release, Konami proved us wrong by releasing the title under the name Poy Poy. However, North America seemed to be the only “big three” territory that didn’t appreciate the thought with a purchase as only Europe and Japan received the game’s updated Poitter’s Point 2.

Upon seeing my friend’s copy, I was immediately impressed with his span of games appreciation, but it seemed I was the only person at the entire convention who had even heard of the game before, let alone played it. At this time, this is when I noticed that the Gamecubes were full of players going to town in the same game they had played a million times over, while the Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation and the import games on the Playstation 2 were virtual ghost towns. Are people really that uninterested in playing something new and original? In reality, this convention could be the first and only chance in a lifetime people would be able to experience some of the games we had running, but I suppose flexing their multiplayer muscle in a game they play on a daily basis was personally more appealing. As we live in an age of “sequel-itis ,” I suppose it’s time to accept the fact originality and unique game play experiences are a dying breed.

While in today’s world developers don’t want to take risks and are making mad money off players who are content in playing the same thing over and over, I remember the NES being a bit of a different breed. By now, the mystery of Super Mario Bros. 2 has long been solved by anyone who has the Internet or a friend in the know. While Japan received direct sequels for its Mario and Zelda games that aimed to challenge fans of the original games, America’s Nintendo felt U.S. gamers wouldn’t appreciate being challenged so much and stated players would want sequels that provided radically new game play experiences. Thus, Doki Doki Panic got stripped of its Arabian storybook theme and the Famicom Disc System’s remixed Zelda game completely missed the U.S. (that probably had something to do with the fact the disc system never released in the U.S., though). Even though the changes baffled many gamers, we still ate it up.

But, perhaps, this leads back to the fact that gamers in the VCS and Atari eras had a lot fewer choices than gamers do today. I can remember as a kid being desperate to play any new game I could find, regardless of its genre, publisher, developer or system. Also, perhaps, with the shift in culture, the “cool” video game kids only stick with the proven titles in order to show people that they “get it.” Whatever the reason, what baffles me is why in today’s world, when there are so few barriers around video games anymore, that people aren’t willing to reach out and grab something they’ve never seen or played before. I could only dream of importing games as a kid and back then, I wouldn’t even begin to know how to tell someone how they could get a game from Japan. Today, even a five-year old can ship a game from Japan with the click of a mouse. If I didn’t know what a game was as child, I had to ask a friend, look at the back of the box or hope a magazine covered it. Today, that same mouse click will bring up reviews, screenshots, videos, release dates, publisher information and more about any game that ever existed, period. So just why do people still insist on unfamiliarity as a means to shun away games they don’t know about?

I won’t let it bug me too much, though. People can still claim ignorance and lack interest in Poy Poy. That just meant I could walk up and play it whenever I wanted to during the convention.

Mini Tangent: Garbage Can Food

From working on Rithum News, I vividly recall a Smash Dojo update which detailed Diddy Kong’s final smash - a maneuver which allows him to make full use of his rocket barrel while dual wielding his peanut popguns. In final smash mode, Diddy’s bullets cause explosions and when it ends, his rocket barrel causes a big explosion.

Most interestingly, though (this should really show how bizarre my mind is), is following the final smash, the popguns leave behind peanuts on the ground that can be eaten to recover health. It’s good to see this long-running and now-forgotten about video game legacy live on. In games today, if we see a barrel, we expect to shoot it and make it explode. However, in the games of old, when we saw a barrel, we expected to punch it open and eat the steaming steak dinner we found inside. It is a known fact that hidden steak dinners replenish a warrior’s health by nearly, if not, 100 percent. Imagine our disappointment when we smashed open a trash can and found the five percent replenishing grape vine.

But it’s not that disgusting if you think about the five-second rule. Sure, the food is conveniently the only item inside of that dumpster you just punched, but it isn’t touching the ground/floor until the dumpster tips over and fades away into oblivion. From that moment, it’s on. Five seconds. And that, my friends, is how we finally make sense of the age-old trend of trash can chickens and eating food you randomly find on the ground. It isn’t on the ground until you force it to the ground, so, thus, it is safe and we can stop making Hot Topic T-shirts about this video game facet.

This doesn't even take into account the games that place your meal on its very own plate for you, keeping it off of the ground. But I would like to see garbage can food make a comeback! When we shoot those red barrels in a first-person shooter, the resulting explosion could cook up a tasty turducken for the player to chow down on. Ok, so maybe not, but at least games like Castle Crashers are bringing ground food back into the limelight. Any game that lets me eat bananas found inside blades of tall grass is a winner in my book.

Gaming B.I. (Before Internet): The Hot Games

As stated in my previous Gaming B.I. column, the How To series of books have been among my favorite for quite some time. Even though it could get quite hokey at times, such as the classic Nyntendough bit, it actually did have information that was actually useful for players unfamiliar with a game or just starting it out. Also, whether or not you agreed with the Rovin stance on a game's review, he wasn't afraid to lay his opinion on the table. Most importantly, though, when I pick up a How To book for my hard-earned $3, I don't expect vague ramblings. This brings me to a great little tome from 1989 - The Hot Games by Randi Hacker.

To bring back an example from my original post, to slap together a video games book back in the '80s, seemingly all you had to do was point out the obvious. For example, the title of the book alludes me at the moment right now since my collection is spread over four different places, but this is seriously a tip given to players that they spent money for:

"Q: Are there any codes in this game?

A: No."

See, it's easy. However, The Hot Games takes it one step further with complete ambiguity:

"BONUS SEGA EASTER EGG TIP: Play around with the buttons. Press them in the right combination and in certain games you'll become invincible."

"BONUS SEGA EASTER EGG TIP: By pressing the right combination of buttons on the control pad, you can listen to the music from all levels of the game you're playing."

And you also get game-changing secrets for games such as Zelda II: The Adventure of Link like "Don't let the Octarods get you!" and let's not forget that in Castlevania, "Don't worry about Frankstein. He's harmless."

Accuracy comes in to play here as well as the book states that Kirk Cameron said "he's rescued the princess in Super Mario Brothers 2 'a million times'!" I suppose saving the princess in that title is pretty easy, though, considering she is a selectable character that follows the cast around for the entire game. On the next page, someone also claims to have a near 10-million score in Super Mario Brothers 2, a game that has no scoring.

But let's not hark too much on the annoyances of this book, as there are some merits to found in this publication. First and foremost, the book does have an interesting comparison of hardware between the NES and Master System and gives readers an "advanced" look at upcoming hardware and peripherals. The games strategies do provide some decent passwords and codes that would be a hot commodity in a world before GameFAQs and in actuality, I don't recall seeing too many books back during that time, which dared to combine the topics of Nintendo and Sega. And while it seems cheesy today, there is a chapter dedicated to social gaming and game exchange clubs - the stuff of dreams way back when.

The book even dares to go behind the scenes and look at the industry from the standpoint of the developers and publishers themselves, leading us to an interview with this trio:

One of those gentlemen looks pretty familiar ...

The book catches up with Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz as part of Subway Software while they work on the NES title Ringling Brothers' Circus Games.

"Q: What goes into designing a video game?

BILL: Well, first there's the brainstorming session. That's great. We, at Subway Software, all just sit around and think up ideas. We just let our minds go wild. We say "What if ..." and try to come up with situations that might make fun video games.

Q: What else goes into designing a game?

BILL: Well, we have to draw storyboards. A storyboard is a series of detailed drawings that show exactly what each screen will look like. The drawings that show exactly what each screen will look like. The drawings show the position of objects in a screen and how the characters will move. The storyboard shows the programmer what action to program."

The chapter has a bunch of interesting items about Subway Software such as developing for Beverly Hills Cop, Bill's time working on comics and more.

Overall, the book is 79 pages of '80s gaming goodness and even though the tips and secrets might be quite lame, the book takes people into the industry a little more than most books of its time that consist of nothing more than strategy and cheat codes. Here's hoping for some good stories from Bill on this one ....