He's a technician.

Sometimes life ain' nuffin but pizza and books. That's how that goes, right?

I took these, so I suppose I own them. You can post them wherever you want if you credit me. RC Theodores or Lin Swimmer. Do you kids these days still do that "link trade" thing? With your "web pages?" I like those too. Thanks for looking.

Retro & Indie game special; and a gutted WaMu.

Sort of the post that refused to die, be finished, or mutate into a more malleable form. So, here we go. Let's try to mash this into something coherent.

First, some photos of the stock at Videogamesnewyork at 202 E 6th St. Here is a place where my absolute geekiest game questions (Do you have old school controller USB adapters? Do you have any GBA Micros? Have you got a MSX lying around?) are completely within the bounds of reason. Shooting through glass, with a flash, and the first two at an unwisely high ISO. Have to go back and attempt some better highlights.










More information on the Game & Watch series of pre-Gameboy handhelds can be found in this episode of Game Center CX. Originally I had planned to attempt to analyze what makes GC CX so much more, well, loveable than the majority of game culture media, but frankly, we've got other shit to get to this time around. We'll come back to it some other time.

Looking at these old LCD games reminded me that I actually did own one handheld system that I'd completely erased from memory; Double Dragon from Tiger. These are surprisingly expensive on Ebay, considering how relentlessly unenjoyable they are.


Is it weird that I'm kind of curious about that Coffee House unit sitting there? I wonder what it's going for? (Oh yeah, I've got the full-size images, since I took them. $30. Hmmmm.)




Sweet Home (Family Computer emulation with fan translation)
Started this one last week on my last day of classes while killing a few hours, perhaps a bit randomly, as it wasn't actually on my list of games to check out or come back to. (Actually, it was near Super Mario Brothers 2, the Famicom Disk System version, and I downloaded it on a fleeting whim of curiosity and optimism.) Not sure I still have the ability to play a traditional JRPG. I can see obvious and immediate differences, which would lead me to believe that there may be other emergent differences that could make the random monster encounters worth putting up with. I'm starting to wonder, if I never saw another inventory screen again would it be too soon? It's remarkable to me that the simplest decision of placing an arbitrary cap on the number of items a character can schlep around causes such slowdown and necessary item organization, planning, and even note taking (for example, to note down where you left an object you could no longer carry for later retrieval), to the point that I'm starting to consider the act of managing and maintaining an inventory a form of unadvertised (and undesired) miniature game within a game. A lot of games.


N (Flash Download)
-Who needs a copy of P.N.03 when N is a 400% compression?-
This is one of the areas where the indie game development scene often delivers on this very fundamental act of trimming extraneous elements, and often benefits. I recently surprised myself by coming back to N. I'm not sure why, as I know it will end eventually in my frustration and abandonment, but in the meantime I'm forced to admit that my bitterness over N's difficulty eventually driving me away conceals the fact, just recently relearned, that N is one of my favorite games. N is pure. (This sentence originally read that N was "pure gameplay," and "pure platforming," but this is redundant and a little stupid. N has gameplay, and is a platformer, of sorts. It is also pure. This feels quite profound to me, which means that I need to pull back a little.) N does not need weapons replaced with identical better weapons. N does not need voice-acting, or even, remarkably, music. (Which makes me wonder if I would hurt the experience by adding it, or customize it?) This is N's story:


Which is perfect as it stands, and needs no further enumeration. (Except to say that where it says 100 levels they actually mean 5. Hundred. Christ.) N doesn't even need color, which is, to me, in this day and age, genuinely revolutionary. N almost succeeds in convincing you that it doesn't need graphics, but on a more detailed examination what one sees is a dedication to minimalist graphics using vectors instead of sprites (something the designers are aware of as an identifiable style, judging from talk of their in-the-works follow-up game), with an emphasis on motion, control, speed, and momentum, one of N's golden, near invisible triumphs. N may be cruelly difficult, but it also gives the player one of the most responsive and agile avatars they've ever had.



Shoot. I was all set to make this a strictly retro-games post, but indies aren't providing enough dissatisfaction and frustration to push me in that direction. I do think that there are a lot of interesting classic games that are worthy of exploring, analyzing, collecting, etc, but... the indie scene tends to seem so much more engaging and idiosyncratic.

Let's look at another Flash game that, like N, is available for download. This is such a promising and exciting method of design and distribution. Downloadable Flash games are fantastic in so many ways. They're ad-free, will work on Windows, OSX, and Linux, they're small in file-size, they essentially never crash, and will run on any piece of shit computer.


Following a series of links lead me back to PixelJam's website. Some readers may remember them from my poor attempts at doing justice to their previous browser-based Flash game, Dino Run. They have a very distinctive style of art and design that I really respond to. They're good animators and programmers, and really understand how to make a character model that somehow just clicks instantly. You like them the moment you get control of them.



Gamma Bros. (Flash Download, and Browser)
Space shooter. Smash TV and Galaga. Fast and challenging. I've made it to the boss three times. Each was intense and enjoyable. Each ended in failure. There are two endings that are contextual based on results of play. There are cheat codes [Ship1, Ship2], and level skip codes provided. There are no lives to be lost. When your ship explodes you float free, and are near death. You can be tagged in by the second character. When both have their ships destroyed, they're dead. You are two astronauts named Buzz and Zap. Here they are.


Its probably the best shooter I've ever played. The explosions and bullets don't block your vision and accuracy. It's fast, and hard, and you get better quickly. It's so painfully good.









Underworld Trip (Browser)
Easy to dismiss. Eight levels. Short, sometimes very devious challenges, but absolutely nothing unfair. Beating it gives you a still picture. There are six endings, two of which involve runs of limited or no deaths, which is a fairly serious commitment. You either like the game and its mood enough to play and collect these pictures, or you don't. I do. So might you. (I have half at this point. Maybe I'll post all six when and if I can manage to get them, spoilers be damned.)



Fathom (Browser)
This one is a bit tricky to write about without giving too much away. I suggest you give it a try (it will take roughly 10-20 minutes if you don't get frustrated immediately and quit), and come back after you've played it, seen the ending, and formulated your own opinion. Advice to avoid frustration: companions give oblique directions. Also, this is in the vein of Maverick and You Have to Burn the Rope, so if you often complain of some games being too "arty," or "pointless," you're not going to enjoy this, even though it may look like you will.

Break time. Go play it!




Alright. Done? I hope so. Well... how about it? Interesting, right? Two games dealing with the afterlife, although whether they're both Hell or one is purgatory is up to you. I really love Flash games that are comfortable with fiddling with expectations, which Fathom does in a very clever way. I'm also rather fond of the slow process of realizing that the apparently directionless meandering one is doing in a game is the point (or a point), instead of leading to the point, providing that that naturally forming "point" is the game asking a simple philosophical question. In this case, "What do you suppose happens to your cute, savage little sprite when it gets killed?" We all know the answer to this question. It gets replaced by an identical copy of itself, which can be understood and observed in a number 3 changing to a number 2. Fathom responds with, "Right. Obviously. But what happened to that first guy? The number 3. Where is he? What is he doing?"

The only wrong answer is, "This shit sucks," or "Boring, lame, pretentious." I'm not sure why there are people out there with an investment in playing experimental, fringe games, and knocking them for not delivering conventionality. It's like, guys... you're doing this wrong. (Of course, I suppose you could say Fathom effectively antagonizes those players by being, temporarily and perhaps tantalizingly, utterly conventional.)



This is a pretty fair representation of why I try to just avoid the whole endeavor of criticizing indies. I spent about an hour fiddling with the N level editor this morning. The first time I've looked at something like that, ever. I guess it's an old-hat statement that if you want to appreciate something, look at what goes into its creation. This shit is really hard.





Also installed some of this collection of Knytt Stories user levels collected by Ancil Anthropy, and Glum Buster on my workplace lunch-break PC. This was exactly what I'd always wanted to find to flesh out and finish my Knytt experience, so we'll see how those go. (So far Station 07 was a good level of the variety that I'm fond of, and the source of these screenshots.) Glum Buster is rather lovely. I'm actually getting more obsessed with it as I play, which is a welcome change from encroaching boredom or frustration. Glum Buster is deceptively charming on extended play. It's got some pretty brilliant puzzles, which is coincidental because I've now got Braid running perfectly on my Mac. A completely unsurprising first premium indie purchase. My second impression after being swept up in its immaculate presentation and mood; I wonder if I'm smart enough to solve some of these puzzles? I don't suppose I'm going to collect a trinket and get a double-jump ability, will I? (I can't even imagine what designing these levels must have been like.)

I'm not sure I like metalheads.

We make all our possible to shorten your wait; or the longbow beats the crossbow.

Episodes of Star Trek: Original Series, Season One that are personally recommended, with summaries that I wrote just now. I am funny.


Arena
Captain Kirk uses rudimentary chemistry to fashion a primitive shotgun to murder a lizard captain.


The Galileo Seven
Mr. Spock irritates stranded crewmen to the point of near murder. Also murderous neanderthals and phasers as a shuttle-craft power source.


Balance of Terror
The Enterprise murders uppity Romulans; also, Mr. Spock stoically endures low-key racism with an irritating absence of official Starfleet support. If someone puts a dog on you, kill that dog.


The Corbomite Maneuver
Clint Howard is a disturbing inhuman dwarf. The Enterprise is nearly destroyed by a giant honeycomb.


The Enemy Within
Captain Kirk is caught in a transporter malfunction that splits him into an indecisive, pussified version of himself and a macho rapist douchebag. The two Kirks wrestle without homosexual overtones, and then fuse, again asexually.


A Taste of Armageddon
A society founded on a love of computerized Turn Based Strategy Games informs the crew of the Enterprise that they have been p'wned and are out of hit-points. Captain Kirk consults Player's Manual and a fierce rules debate ends in phaser duel.

All of these are streaming at the CBS website, or without commercials if you have a Netflix account.

Star Trek movie. Boring. Not that reviews or box-office gross will reflect that. There's plenty of shit flying around, punches are thrown, utterly generic pointy-eared facially tattooed villains will grumble once and briefly of their "pain," and will then proceed to attempt to implode the universe before being pretty casually dispatched. Boring! CGI is boring. The uniforms are boring. The bland prime-time TV actor handsomeness and hotness are each respectively boring. The transparent and ugly attempts to "modernize" these characters for a contemporary audience is annoying. The fact that Kirk's introduction was set to Sabotage was bizarre and, after you accept that it's actually playing, fucking annoying! (Actually Kirk got under my skin from that scene forward, and not in the smarmy good Shatner way, either. Look, I know this is an annoying, nerdy thing to point out, but I wouldn't feel comfortable having the fraternity president as my starship captain.) Do you care about spoilers? You shouldn't, in this case. So there's this time travel thing, the long and short of which is that it establishes that, while familiar, the events of the film are deviating from series canon. Fair enough. Then why not kill some fucking characters? Or at least pretend that you might. There were scenes of risk, I suppose, but only a small child would mistake them for actual tension. Example? Kirk is walking on some ice planet at one point, and gets chased by a gigantic CGI monster, which is then eaten by a bigger CGI monster that then chases Kirk some more. That is how good this movie is. As in not at fucking all. Please, Reverse Shot, Village Voice... will anyone back me up on this? I need this movie shredded by someone with credentials (and standards).

I Love Being Strong; or Radio Wada.

What is the point of an adult content warning click-through without some form of adult content?

Holy crap. This was probably one of the most draining gaming experiences I've ever seen. As tempted as I am, I'm going to refrain from giving away the ending. But... man. The final moments of the last match are equal to the final moments of any Rocky film you care to name, which for those who don't know me is almost the highest praise I can lavish on something. (Warning: you need an hour of free time, and won't be able to multi-task very effectively due to subtitles. With that in mind I demand that you enjoy.)

Topic to come back to: Game Center CX. (At least I've finally seen some! So happy and grateful!)


A bit of gaming lately, but not all that much for obvious reasons. The demo of Doom is now available in your browser. (Notes for optimal performance. Less tabs plus opening in separate window equals smoother running.) Downsides: no music, first episode only, no persistent save. Upsides: it's fucking Doom.

(An edited paragraph of mediocre commentary on 8bit Killer, with the only thing of substance being my statement that it would be nice if indie game makers could give we, their players, an extremely broad estimation of the amount of time that it may take us to complete their game, in hours, if it's linear like that. Although with the presence of any kind of save system it becomes less relevant. But would still be nice. Also, though I wasn't blown away by 8bit Killer, the creators' pending Hydorah certainly looks promising.)

I've been obsessing over a particular Flash game, very casual, difficult and supremely addictive. I've been trying to do something funny with it. We'll see how it goes.


Aw, what the hell. Why would I try to tease you guys while I work on my little nonsense fan homage? It's Too Many Ninjas. While the term "casual game" is pretty fiercely debated amongst the professional dork elite, I hold up TMN as a perfect specimen of same. (Actually, it's more a battle between gaming's thinkers and its marketing people.) With anything this seemingly simple, the love is in the details. Your samurai's interstitial animations, the almost imperceptible lag in striking, the dignity of his poses, the beauty of the background, the audio cue of level advancement, the fairness of the hit detection, the soft -swish swish- as the ninjas jump around (which took me quite a while to even notice and identify), the satisfying clang of katana against hira-shuriken, the sense of quiet elation when you deflect two simultaneously incoming shaken, and, though it has nothing at all to do with anything, the pedigree of the creator's doctoral career in bioethics at Princeton. Dr. Foddy, my thanks to you.



Top score so far is 106. That, by the way, for those who missed it, is what we call an, ahem, challenge. (The actual online top score is 180, far out of my range, but this is a local competition.)

A short and favorite Kotonoha scanlation of a strip, The IT Revolution, from Radio Wada, a manga artist about whom I know very little other than that I like what he does, and he's cool in that heta uma (bad 'n nice) way that I've been digging this past year and still haven't written about. This is the full strip, to be read from right to left.



Star Trek observations: is a yeoman just a female space chick? Ship combat pre Next Generation is without shield percentages, which eliminates a back and forth exchange of barrages and turns it into a slower, more methodical rock paper scissors affair, often with hours of deadlock and then split second resolution in the form of near instant death (I say near instant only because the other ship has to survive long enough for the enemy captain to tell Kirk how much he admires him). Different, and kind of cool. Of course, in TNG phasers can't be set to overload, and you can't nearly destroy the Enterprise by pushing it into Warp 8 for too long, in effect increased mechanical fragility, also sometimes rather cool. Another TNG feature missing from TOS is the Enterprise's low, droning CPU-cooling-fan-underwater hum, nearly never not present. I imagine that if you could go in and just strip out that audio track there would be a palpable sense of something amiss even if you weren't able to identify what was different.



Digging those short skirts, of course. Uhura's got some stems, man... damn.

(I'm going to say this in the way that Joe would if he were the one relaying it to me.)

Oh my God, [eyes widening] Oooh my God.
Via (what else) Wikipedia:
"Nichelle Nichols planned to leave Star Trek in 1967 after its first season, but Martin Luther King, Jr. persuaded her to stay, stating that she was a role model for the black community."

I will resist the urge to make terrible, "I have a dream... of Uhura," jokes and just say: that is dope.






Ah, so torn. New banner time? Screen-grabbing is my new favorite pastime, and a wonderful source of post imagery that I feel some sense of accomplishment over, but am I updating faster than visitors can see them? Still have to make my mega banner reprise post at some point, which will help alleviate my guilt, so... new banner! (Take that, Sexy Videogameland, with your annual banner updates! I'm so fresh my three readers are actually missing content!)

Exclamation overload!!! ... !!!

Deep breath. Okay, we're good.

Lastly. So readers may be wondering, "My god. Is it true? Does Lin Swimmer actually -gasp- prefer Kirk to Picard?" Oh, readers. Do we know one another so tangentially? My heart can never truly be led astray. (I feel like a very silly writer right now. Where is my gravitas? Please don't find me, Dr. Foddy.)