Try Hard...

so i found a couple of interesting JPN PSone games to check out: UMIHARA KAWASE SHUN and GUNNER'S HEAVEN. The former is a follow up to a Super Famicon title where you control this little girl with a Bionic Commando-style grappling hook in order to maneuver around levels- this one is more of a puzzle game than then "kill the futuristic Nazis" as it's inspiration was. I only played the SFC game briefly but this always struck me as one of those weird little cool games with a nice level of polish. Gunner's is pretty much an unapologetic rip-off of the old Sega Genesis favorite Gunstar Heroes, minus the 2-Player Co-op mode as well as the novelty. It looks like a pretty direct rip-off but honestly, is Gunstar a game that SHOULDN'T be ripped off? It's a little surprising that the Run 'n Gun genre is among the simplest as they come, yet it's never been terribly exploited. Here and there, but not so much as your typical platformer fare has. Anyway this game looks fun, with appropriate 2D love (both games are 2D actually) and I think it's a safe bet for both.

At this stage, I am not gonna ever pick up a videogame out of duty or brand loyalty or any of that - is f it is necessary reference for a project I am working on, then that is obvious, but otherwise I am not really into gaming for leisure anymore. So if I do pick up a game, it's gonna be pretty much for the other value it could give me; that is, what I can glean from it. There's so many knock-offs and sequels and all sorts of yawny bullshit littering the landscape nowadays, but there's also still a fairly healthy back-catalogue of just.. weird, interestingly designed games. Maybe the majority of those won't have the polish and finesse that more market-driven games would have received, but there are often enough cool little elements to make them worth one's time "oh, why didn't I think of making a game like that!" I have a whole rant about the Forgotten and Ignored Conventions of Gaming, but that's going to be more of an undertaking than I wish to sandwich in over here..

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I consider myself to be somewhat savvy of Game-History related matters. I am not a whiz, but I have my share of knowledge. Yet every so often I will come across some morsel of info that will even have me scratching my head. The latest case - while cruising around on wikipedia, I stumbled onto the colorful history of a little company known as America Online (AOL). A minute of reading and I learned that the mega-corporation which helped shape the face of the Internet, began life as a humble obscure videogame download service?! No lie, apparently it was a special service for the Atari 2600 called "Gameline" - a special cartidge you'd plug into the console, which linked up to your phone jack. You could download games on a pay-to-play basis, something like a nickel per play - or something like that. Very bizarre. Anyway the thing debuted too close to the video game crash, and so it never really got too far - but the company which developed it (service and tech) went on to slowly morph into a pre-Internet Service (think of a low-level Prodigy or GEnie or whatever). Then time passed and some weird shady operations occured (don't they always) and it eventually reached mammoth status.. pretty strange.

news you can't use

Man. I go outta town for one week and the world turns upside down, game-news-world-wise. Okay, well maybe not upside-down, but it's definitely as hectic as ever. Honestly, while I was away at my folks' for some family business, I tended to shy away from the internet unless absolutely necessary (that is, other than keeping tabs on the junkmail buildup in my email account, i kept pretty far away besides). Already a workaholic, I have become something of a newsaholic in recent years (more specifically a neogaf-aholic) - any of my friends who will give me a moment to chew their ear off will hear me raving rather rabidly about "ohhhh crap have you been watching the gaf lately?" And so, yeah, outta sight -> outta mind and it was nice to get away, if at least for a couple of days. Unplug, disconnect, think about some stuff other than game craziness.

But of course it goes on anyway. "GTA IV delayed? Whazzis?? Another WOW expansion to take over the world? Blizzcon and Quakecon? id speech?" etc etc. Man. I still haven't even looked at the last released Mass Effect and Heavenly Sword vids, I just haven't got the time for all of this stuff! Playing catch-up is always burdensome.. exciting, though, if tiring.

I did manage to jump on the MGS4 bandwagon for a second (well, that is, I watched the gameplay demo). Yeah, the thing looks pretty. But whew - okay, I will throw a dart into my foot right here and say that I've only played MGS 1 for a few hours and that's the extent of my familiarity with the thing. It's always been a good-looking, idiosyncratic game that's got "a whole room to itself" and the latest looks no different, but really - does it actually look FUN to play? Considering my recent posts, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise to hear such words out of me ("I like Burgertime and Columns!") but while the first MGS was novel and just fun and atmospheric, definitely boundary-pushing.. watching the new demo looked kind of yawn-worthy to me. I am of course a harsh critique of that style of game, simply because I prefer faster-action games - though of course stealth can be rewarding when done properly - I just don't like my games to be work more than play. Toys are nice but I don't need gimmicks over substance. Anyway I am sure the rest of the world will be pleased with the title.. Anyway I'lll end this rant with "Remember Portable Ops?" Does anyone?

So i got my hands on a PS2 Test unit recently. I won't expose my source (let's say I know a certain recently-retired Father of the Playstation Line.. not really, but that would make for an interesting story moreso than the truth). Anyway the thing can play JPN PS1/PS2 software, and I have a short list of games I'd like to check out for it - chief among which is a Compile game called "Zanac X Zanac," and I am not so sure I really wanna shell out $100+ for the damned thing. Though I'd likely enjoy it more than enough to get my money's worth. Ah so long as I am still working in 6 months, I'll shell out - deal? Anyway If anyone out there in BlogreaderLand has any weird Japan-only PS1/2 suggestions, I'd love to hear them - gaijin-friendly only please. I am thinking there's gotta be, also, some decent Simple 2000 games - and I might finally settle down with a port of Galaxy Force that is suitably rockin' (I should check to see if it's on the modded Xbox first, I suppose).

Anyway a week of catching up is ahead of me, so that will be some late-night pixel-pushing as it were.. stay tuned, and keep flippin' those Lynxes for Right-Handed Play...

16-bit atrocity

Geez so it's already my third post in, and I am at a loss as to what i should write. Never mind that A. I am 3,000 miles away from home, in my Home City of Boston for a funeral and B. There's a ferociously-squeaking doggie toy making lots of noise in the room beside me. C. I am preparing to meet my old homeys for some drinks in a couple of hours and catch up on "the good old days," and last but not least D. I am trying to type this on a Mac. Most people love their macs unapologetically - personally I count myself among those who prefer their Mac in iPod form, good for listening to music on and little else. But then I am always good to whine about some arbitrary thing or other.

Lounging in my hometown no doubt brings back many found memories of the gaming days of years past.... ahh, my adolesence. About 4 miles up the street from the den I am sitting in right now is housed one of the favorite locations of my youth, the arcade known as Fun & Games. Natick or Framingham, (the latter I believe) but it was just on the town line either way.. Pretty much the typical higher-level slum arcade of back in the days, they'd obviously lay out the dough to get the latest uprights and cabs in and out of that place like it was nobody's business (well, I guess then it would be EVERYBODY's business). Yeah they had Baby Pac-man, Kangaroo, Pac-Man Jr... Cobra Command and M.A.C.H.3 (laser machines!) and of course the little kickass disco passageway (lit blinking ceilings and floors.. ohh man i gotta find a modern version of that thing!) As the years passed they brought in Hang-On (sitdown), Outrun (... same). APB, Vindicators, E-SWAT, Robocop, Rampart, ok ok ok you get the point by now. They had crazy tracks on the ceilings with the crazy spaceship contraptions passing back and forth, the whole thing had this junk-space-age setting, as if designed by some futuristic whiz-kid stoner. Yeah, yeah.. I miss the 80s version of the future, what do you want me to tell ya. Anyway, I drive by there now and I don't even wanna set my foot inside. I have in the recent years, and I should say I am amazed at all that it is still there - but right up there on the marquee, and surprised that they kept the same logo, it's heralded as a Lazer Tag Arena. Wait isn't that shit from the 80s too?

I have a lot more to say about the arcades from back in the day. but for now I must meet the old heads for a couple black & tans. Hey I am in Boston, what did you expect me to say.

If i am lucky, with a bit of searching I might be able to dig up some vintage pics of game rooms in the old days..

retroness

Well, I should get this out of the way pretty early - I am definitely what one would refer to as a retrogamer. Whereas my peers are excited to waggle their wii's and get intimate with the 14 or so switches on their bluetooth xbox controllers, I am more than happy to limit myself to UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT BABABA SELECT START. Not just for Contra, or Lifeforce, but pretty much in general when it comes to videogaming. Hell even if it's just a joystick and an action button, I can make do pretty well. Like most folks in my age range who do this for a living, I grew up during the Golden Age of Gaming; unlike most of them, I seem to have gotten myself quite stuck there.

When I was quite young, I got introduced to Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Atari 2600. I am not sure which caught my fancy first (hey, I was like 5 yrs old, whad'ya want) but I was pretty hooked right off the bat. It took a couple of years of nagging but finally my folks broke down and bought me an Atari 400 (yeah, that's right.. the one with the membrane keyboard!) I was kinda disappointed that it wasn't the Colecovision I had long been drooling over, but it won me over pretty quickly. Anyway, as I got older, things like the NES came into fashion and I was right at the front of that war. I was making maps for Super Mario Bros. when most kids still thought that stuff was terribly dorky.. Gluing my eyes to the Black and White kitchen television to save the princess in Legend of Zelda. Yeah, all the usual "80's Gaming cliche's" that you've heard thousands of times, I was just another example of the same story. But yeah, I was pretty fulfilled! Then, yeah, graduation to 16-Bit with the High Definition Graphics of Sega Genesis and SNES.. and well.. I dunno. I went to art school and discovered girls and beer, what can I say? My sheltered social life of adolescence finally gave way to finding something different to do with my hours (toiling away in the studio or rampaging thru campus) and I guess I started getting tired of sequel after sequel of the same ol' business.

And of course, halfway through college, I stumbled into my calling. Originally a Fine Arts student (but hey.. I had originally planned to draw comic books, in my innocence), I found my way into the mysterious young 3D Graphics department in our school. Jurassic Park was the new Hot Shit film, Terminator 2, and then the first Toy Story by Pixar.. 3D was always this beautiful novelty but now it was starting to pop up here and there for more than 14 seconds in a film (The Abyss). The time was right, I somehow slipped into it, and I was hooked immediately (I'll never forget the first time when someone showed me how to make a Sphere Bounce in front of a .TGA of a house on his Mac, and it only took 1 minute to render!) So yeah, I was hooked with the new captivation... I put down my charcoal and graphite and started laboring inthe lab, in front of Infini-D, in front of D-Paint, in front of Alias Poweranimator V7 on the SGI. Yeah, all the stuff I made was... CRAP.. but being in the middle of it was damn fun. It felt, strangely, like being a little kid fascinated with Legos, all over again.

But video games? Okay, I loved Sega but their CDrom system disappointed me and their 32X add-on was just malarkey. SNES was always very pretty but I never caught the RPG train and all the SFII ripoffs were making me yawn for years.. Saturn was on the horizon but (ouch) $400 for .. Clockwork Knight and Bug! (Yeah people look back at those games fondly, but looking at the box covers at the time, not terribly impressive). And then, we had the Playstation.. and of course Project Ultra, I mean N64. Okay, I was still paying attention, but I looked at the graphics on these things and then I looked at the 3D capabilities of the machines I was playing with at school. It was hard looking at these games with these super-simplified characters with blocks for hands and heads. It just looked ugly and gross. Virtua Fighter was pretty fresh when it launched but it didn't age well even back then. So basically, gaming lost me back there.. for awhile.

Yeah, it's a shallow thing to say. "I lost interest in games 'cause the graphics sucked" I know it's all about gamelay, and I knew this as well back then, but something about the rules of playing a 2D game never properly translated into those early 3D titles in a way that captivated me. Of course, things have changed in the years since - games are BEAUTIFUL now, even I have to admit it - but something else got lost that in there that has never completely been recaptured for me. That's not to say I haven't found games to enjoy since, not by a longshot. But things have definitely changed - I have changed - and working on the other side of the screen affects things as well.

So where does this leave me today, then? I mean, do I have any right to even try to write a game industry-themed blog when I say something like "I don't like video games anymore?" Well, honestly, I do like video games, and more than anything else, I can say I am profoundly excited about where games are going. I think anyone can agree that right now, we are stuck in kind of a rut of "bigger and better" where every game tries to outshine it's competitors with this gimmick or that, or throw some money at the proven dev team and let them crank out a sequel or inspired knock-off. And sure, a lot of the games come out well, with fun gameplay, multiplayer goodness, never mind the gorgeous audiovisuals. But for guys like me, the days of wonder are gone.. or at least, changed.

I have a lot to say about what retrogames I believe have held up, and what captivates me today. In spite of my tone, I still spend several hours a week cranking away at some of my favorites which time has otherwise forgot. More than mere nostalgia, there are a lot of titles which never received proper attention and slipped by the wayside, but due to the whole "retroscene" many have enjoyed sleeper status, a second chance. Some I have been lucky to get my hands on - so many, I still don't even know exist. The fun part is makinng those discoveries.. Anyway, those particulars are to be explored in other entries. For now, I must sign off..

Greetings!

Welcome to my first post! I have been meaning to start a videogame industry-themed
blog for some time now. For various reasons, I have held off, but I must say that now is as good a time as any to get of the ground with this thing. So I might as well get started and introduce myself.

I am not one for long drawn-out introductions, so I will keep this relatively short and sweet.
My name is Ron, and I am a level artist for a major game developer working in Orange County, California. I live in Hollywood, and I have 10 years of professional game art experience to my credit. Like many of my peers, I have been all over the map studio-wise, and I have been fortunate enough to have worked on a good few well-known games in my day. A quick glance at my resume should give any industry vet an idea of who I've been working alongside during my tenure in the business, and what type of work I prefer to do.

Born and raised in Boston, I was lucky to get my foot in the door with a relatively small Sierra outfit shortly after I wrapped up art school, and it wasn't long before I'd set my sights on the land of milk and honey (Los Angeles) and packed up to see what success I could pursue out here. Well, it's been a long and exhausting, yet rewarding path - and it's a long way to go, yet.

Anyway, I sure didn't start up this journal to gush on and on about the trials and tribulations of working in the field.. that is bound to come out, but in due time. For now, I would prefer to address the matter of "why create another game developer blog?" This is simple, really - i haven't seen much of them online! For the armies of devs out there, I have only passed by a handful of honest-to-goodness gamedev blogs in my day, and of those, many are mixed in with a bunch of personal stuff. That's all well and good, but perhaps it is better to keep things straight and to the point without going on about the stuff no one cares about. At least, that's what I'd like to read from a dev's blog (anyway, I have another blog where I can ramble on about partying in LA and what's the point of life and all of that, but it won't be rearing it's head within here.. at least, unless it's pertinant to the subject matter).

And further, why is a guy like ME writing a blog like this? Again, it's simple.. sure I have a decent amount of experience, but I am really just another grunt in the game industry at the end of the day. Outside of my circle, I don't think anyone would know my name, and that gives me the perfect anonymity to tackle something like this. No one in particular cares what the everyman has to say, but they can at least relate to it, and in that vein appreciate it.

Lastly, I will be honest and say that my purpose is absolutely to raise my visibility in this field. I have been a behind-the-scenes guy for awhile, and that's fine with me.. but for my future plans, it would definitely suit me well to get a move-on with developing some kind of a voice. This is asbsolutely an easy way for me to do this. So long as I don't mess it up too badly, it ougt to serve me well.. at least provide me with an interesting experience, to say the least.

So there you have it. I have a lot more to say, but for now I will sign off and call it a night. If you're starting out with me, I am glad to have you along for the ride. If you decide that you enjoy what you're reading, please pass the website aong to your buddies and help me get some exposure. Likewise if you think I am completely full of it, you can let me know if you feel like it. Anything in between is cool too.

Until next time, then...

- Ron
ralp99@hotmail.com