Dorked Out, Fascinated By the Text, Believing the Hype
My god, this place is a barren wasteland of no posting! Someone ought to really do something about that and frankly Godzilla would be my chief nominee. However, that gigantic bastard does seem to have a penchanct for breaking keyboards with his massive rubber and latex claws so I suppose the burden will rest squarely on my shoulders.
Where to start, where to start. Let's open it up with stuff about games, then move into actual games, and then we'll get ten shades of ponderous about the future of games. Allez cuisine!
I just finished reading two books recently, one filled with a bunch of things I already happened to know and another filled with really neat stories that I had never even fathomed. The first is Chris Kholer's Power Up: How Japanese Games Gave the World an Extra Life and the other is Smartbomb by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby. Kholer's book is a ton of fun if you are a fanboy who's yet to learn the ins and outs of 80's/90's glory days gaming lore. In the year 2029, when Videogames 101 is an elective for every incoming freshman at every university across the land, this is going to be a great primer for them. It should be noted though that Kohler is a Nintendo zealot in the truest sense and this guy devoted at least 20 pages of his text to sucking Shigeru Miyamoto's dick with the intensity of a blackhole. Then again, who the hell can blame him? Smartbomb is downright fascinating for anyone who plain enjoys interesting stories. It is for the most part a creative nonfiction telling of the history of videogames, from Higinbotham's Tennis for Two all the way to the 2005 GDC. Half of every chapter is devoted to deeply personal reported passages that are subtle, deftly written, and occassionally moving. This one's worth your time.
So much games man. So much games. As of late I've been devoting far too much time to Final Fantasy 4 on the GBA, Animal Crossing DS, Elektroplankton and a few other odds and ends like Pikmin 2, which I've only just now gotten around to checking out. But even though these are the things I've been playing and spending my time with, they aren't the games that are occupying most of my mind. Like a god damn midnight epiphany that led to a morning walk at dawn coupled with a hot cup of coffee, Dragon Quest 8 has spread like the hanta virus throughout every cleft of my brain and shows no signs of leaving.
I finished Dragon Quest 8 well over a month ago after pouring 90 hours into a single play through. This has never happened to me before. Without getting overly verbose, I'm going to tell you the single reason you should play this game regardless of whatever type of entertainment you're into: Dragon Quest imparts a sense of adventure, a desire to wander and discover and search throughout every inch of the digitally rendered playground that it is that I haven't experienced since the first time I played a Zelda game. Dragon Quest is so pretty your eyes will hurt. The fights are fast and fun. The soundtrack is parasitically memorable. Dragon Quest is sweet. Dragon Quest kicks ass. If you don't play it, you don't know what fun is and you probably have sex with dogs.
Not to shit whimsy on y'all but I've got to say, 2006 is exciting stuff. People are actually discussing at large whether or not videogames are art. Just take a look at the whole Roger Ebert debacle this past fall. People got fired up when that bespectacled gossamer said videogames couldn't have an emotional impact akin to film. They got in the discussion. They cared. And he hashed it out with them. NPR just reviewed Katamari Damacy. People are talking. Get pumped.
Where to start, where to start. Let's open it up with stuff about games, then move into actual games, and then we'll get ten shades of ponderous about the future of games. Allez cuisine!
I just finished reading two books recently, one filled with a bunch of things I already happened to know and another filled with really neat stories that I had never even fathomed. The first is Chris Kholer's Power Up: How Japanese Games Gave the World an Extra Life and the other is Smartbomb by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby. Kholer's book is a ton of fun if you are a fanboy who's yet to learn the ins and outs of 80's/90's glory days gaming lore. In the year 2029, when Videogames 101 is an elective for every incoming freshman at every university across the land, this is going to be a great primer for them. It should be noted though that Kohler is a Nintendo zealot in the truest sense and this guy devoted at least 20 pages of his text to sucking Shigeru Miyamoto's dick with the intensity of a blackhole. Then again, who the hell can blame him? Smartbomb is downright fascinating for anyone who plain enjoys interesting stories. It is for the most part a creative nonfiction telling of the history of videogames, from Higinbotham's Tennis for Two all the way to the 2005 GDC. Half of every chapter is devoted to deeply personal reported passages that are subtle, deftly written, and occassionally moving. This one's worth your time.
So much games man. So much games. As of late I've been devoting far too much time to Final Fantasy 4 on the GBA, Animal Crossing DS, Elektroplankton and a few other odds and ends like Pikmin 2, which I've only just now gotten around to checking out. But even though these are the things I've been playing and spending my time with, they aren't the games that are occupying most of my mind. Like a god damn midnight epiphany that led to a morning walk at dawn coupled with a hot cup of coffee, Dragon Quest 8 has spread like the hanta virus throughout every cleft of my brain and shows no signs of leaving.
I finished Dragon Quest 8 well over a month ago after pouring 90 hours into a single play through. This has never happened to me before. Without getting overly verbose, I'm going to tell you the single reason you should play this game regardless of whatever type of entertainment you're into: Dragon Quest imparts a sense of adventure, a desire to wander and discover and search throughout every inch of the digitally rendered playground that it is that I haven't experienced since the first time I played a Zelda game. Dragon Quest is so pretty your eyes will hurt. The fights are fast and fun. The soundtrack is parasitically memorable. Dragon Quest is sweet. Dragon Quest kicks ass. If you don't play it, you don't know what fun is and you probably have sex with dogs.
Not to shit whimsy on y'all but I've got to say, 2006 is exciting stuff. People are actually discussing at large whether or not videogames are art. Just take a look at the whole Roger Ebert debacle this past fall. People got fired up when that bespectacled gossamer said videogames couldn't have an emotional impact akin to film. They got in the discussion. They cared. And he hashed it out with them. NPR just reviewed Katamari Damacy. People are talking. Get pumped.
posted by seaandthebells at 10:57 AM
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