rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

i was too young to remember was a horrible human being Daryl Gates was

i remember the LA Riots and D.A.R.E., had no idea the guy behind all of those was brought in to take over the Police Quest series!

at this point it wouldn't be too hard to draw lines directly from Halo/COD and Microsoft to US military recruitment (and for people failing that, enrolling in police academy)

he claims to have invented SWAT as well. he's like ground zero for paramilitary police propoganda

this article from a couple of years ago is pretty good on the direct and indirect links between gaming and the military: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-02-02-the-military-recruitment-of-gamers

Great story on Police Quest. Game looks super pleasant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BR1u-qT3J4&feature=youtu.be&t=3h18m50s

Oops, link here

thought the article was kind of patchily-written/edited but still well worth reading, thanks! ken williams perpetually coming off worse and worse in my mind. one of the living avatars of how easily west-coast/60s counterculturalism slid into reactionary 80s-mustached business conservatism.

The counter-cultural Sierra stuff was always pretty conservative! Leisure Suit Larry, for obvious reasons. And Space Quest, which I don't think has a female character till the 4th game.

(I never played any of the Roberta Williams stuff till recently - Colonel's Bequest holds up quite well!)

at this point it wouldn't be too hard to draw lines directly from Halo/COD and Microsoft to US military recruitment (and for people failing that, enrolling in police academy)

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, January 19, 2018 5:46 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It sometimes occurs to how non-implausible it is that FPS-es could be employed as a Last Starfighter-esque tool by the military.

drone pilots already use xbox controllers iirc

because hellworld

yeah i posted the article for the content, not the writing. i had a vague memory of the daryl gates police quest but hadn't really thought through the implications, and i didn't know about sierra's conservative underpinnings

I wanted to know more about what happened next (like, did anyone quit/how it changed how people felt about Sierra/etc) but this was the 90s and your work options were "get used to it or quit"

I always looked at the PQ series as a bizarre outlier for Sierra's output. The police code crap was insane, even compared to LSL's stuff

remember lucas arts taking shots at sierra

http://www.eeggs.com/images/items/4266.full.jpg

One of the top Twin Galaxies record holders gets caught cheating multiple times; all his records are still on the site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e-H4sEHB54

pretty good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYjbCJXxWLg

Bennett Foddy, the maker of "Getting Over It" (and QWOP!), plays "Getting Over It" with Tim Rogers.

glad to see Rogers still looks and acts like a tool

i had been holding off on watching speedruns or anything so this is fascinating

—How did the development of Revenge of Shinobi begin?

Ohba: Sega was upgrading their console hardware from the Mark III to the Megadrive, and in tandem with that we were trying to think of something new and exciting to do. At that time in America, the arcade version of Shinobi had become a huge hit. In fact, ninjas in general were all the rage in America then. And so we decided our next game would be ninja-themed.

On the technical side, since this was going to be on the new Megadrive hardware, we wanted to use as much parallax scrolling as we could. We wanted every stage, if possible, to have over 3 layers of background scrolling. Our idea was to come up with a style of gameplay that actually made use of those multiple backgrounds.

--

By the way, as for the title of the game (“The Super Shinobi” in Japan)… at the time, a lot of Sega games had “SUPER” in the title. We didn’t just want to go with plain old “Super Shinobi” though, so we (quite meaninglessly) added “The” in front of it. (laughs) Those were the days!

—By the way, this game is called “Shinobi”, but the hero never does anything stealthy! Why is that?

Ohba: Hmm, it’s probably because we wanted to show how cool and badass ninjas are. They can jump higher than normal people, they’re physically stronger… we wanted to show them off, I guess? (laughs)

--

—The game balance for Revenge of Shinobi is undeniably difficult in places, but it felt like if you practiced, you could clear it.

Ohba: I actually did very extensive simulations—on paper. We imagined a very good player and asked ourselves, how many points could this player get by X stage? How much life would he need to get through X part? I had mapped everything out and knew the item locations—plus, the number of enemies was limited by the hardware, so with all these variables in hand, I could actually simulate and predict a lot of things on paper alone.

--

—I understand you actually had permission to use the copyright for Spiderman; how did that happen?

Ohba: Sega had already acquired copyright permission for the Spiderman arcade game they were developing. We were actually asked by Sega to include Spiderman as part of the promotional effort for that game. In that case we were actually told to make him look more like Spiderman. (laughs) That’s also why he doesn’t die when you beat him, he just runs off.

http://shmuplations.com/shinobi/

discovered this via Metafilter and have only skimmed it so far but kudos on the work involved. a fanmade history of the CRPG:

https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/

is this a crpg addict project or totally unrelated?

i think it's a different set of people - started at a site called RPG Codex. the reviews aren't all earth-shatteringly insightful but the scope of it and the design are really nice

i automatically read rpgcodex on whatever i'm playing because the people there have played everything and play v critically and have a whole conflicting assortment of furious dogmas that makes for good discourse, but a lot of posters there have more or less the political profile you might expect fyi (dunno who did the book tho)

have been meaning to start a thread about GRIMOIRE, the retro blobber developed by a megalomaniacal rightwing gen-x codex guy, which was vaporware for like decades but was "finally" "released" on steam last year, at premium prices, undocumented, and half-functioning-- well not about the game, which i have not played, but about the codex thread where he screams about how it's not priced for lazy millennials and sjws while a small coterie of fans adores him (and adores the game for being broken) and a furious nemesis (who also seems to be pretty rw) sets himself to cracking each new updated executable out of spite

soon to be a major motion picture

https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-really-like-ac-1822930057

https://www.filfre.net/2018/02/adventure-game-rock-stars-live-in-conference/

that Atari article was really good, esp in light of Bushnell recently getting dissed

I enjoyed both of those, thanks Nhex. Lot of good Sierra reading-up to do on that filfre website.

yeah, the atari piece was great

i've just finished reading john markoff's what the dormouse said, about the intersection of california counterculture and the early development of personal computing in the 60s and 70s, which covers some similar ground to the kotaku piece

it feels like there's a lot of potential for a mad men-style sprawlingly ambitious tv show about that whole era, something like halt and catch fire but with a different focus

^i love that book! it is as if the 60's hippie dream of no country boundaries where everything was free and shared was somehow made flesh by all those acid-dropping engineers.

yeah, it's great! been on my list for ages so i'm glad i finally got around to reading it

everything on jimmy maher's blog (filfre.net) is super worth reading, he's great

having now read quite of few of jimmy maher's articles i can confirm that he is indeed great

this one, on the utterly bizarre story behind the neuromancer videogame, is particularly good: https://www.filfre.net/2016/11/turning-on-booting-up-and-jacking-into-neuromancer/

was reading the good ol' sermon on the mount today and realized that jesus was talking about roguelikes in Matthew 6:19-21

“19 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

jesus is basically pioneering the structure of a roguelike, where you always start back from level 0 but you can spend accumulated treasure to increase permanent attribute bonuses or to purchase starting items or whatever. heaven is HQ, life on earth is the temporary attempt

he's saying "spend some of that gold on this store here on the 4th floor, but don't forget to reserve most of it for after you die, where the bonuses are permanent. we should cut INT and boost CON"

i believe i am finally ready to accept jesus christ as my saviour

(massive bonus in exchange for in-game purchase)

Revelations is like some surreal text adventure

 After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.
> up

2 And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.
>examine throne

3 And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.
4 And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.
>touch throne with scepter

5 And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.
> extinguish lamps

6 And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.
> examine beasts

7 And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

>examine him on throne

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.
2 And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?

>look at book

3 And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.

>open the book

4 And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.

>give lion to elder

5 And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

>feed seals to lion

6 And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.

>administer field sobriety test

7 And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne.

>give poison to elders

8 And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.

>sit on throne of god
>there’s someone sitting there!

>ask god to get up
>you can’t do that!

>craft throne
>you can’t do that!

>ask god to dance
>you can’t do that!

Man, revelations the game sucks, come on

Now that's something you don't often hear about Goldeneye. pic.twitter.com/WLMG4MnVv0

— Kat Bailey (@The_Katbot) March 10, 2018

Miyamoto otm

it is true that james bond kills at least 700 people in the course of a typical goldeneye playthrough

i made that stat up, but the number is high

that's a lot of handshaking. just impractical.

if only you could talk to sean bean and famke janssen, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances... now that would be interesting

maybe he could just shake the hands of the doctors that just saved hundreds of lives and tell them to pass on his well wishes to victims

you know within 5 minutes of the patch coming out, someone would be repeatedly crouching behind sean bean's butt and triggering the handshake animation and over again

xxp, and I’ve said this before, the Book of Judges is totally a warhammer / RTS setting waiting to happen

someone should also consider an Old Testament inspired MOBA at some point imo

good piece on the increasingly prophetic metal gear solid 2 in the era of cambridge analytica: https://www.gamesradar.com/how-metal-gear-solid-manipulated-its-players-warning-us-of-an-age-of-fake-news-cambridge-analytica-and-data-surveillance/

i've been meaning to replay mgs2 for a while, i really need to get around to it soon