| May 2009
Chasing the moment John Peel once said that the single most defining moment in music, as far as he was concerned, was when he first heard Elvis on the radio. It was as if the world had changed overnight from being largely dull and uninspiring to sexy and full of excitement. Rock and Roll shook up the establishment and created the teenager. From then on, music got better and more diverse, right up to today where we have an enormous choice of things to listen to and whole array of ways in which to listen to it.
Elvis can perhaps be credited with changing the face of music in the 20th century, but there have been many more paradigm shifts; the introduction of percussion, orchestras, recordings, stereo, too many influential artists to mention, CD’s and, more recently, mp3 technology. However, most of these radical changes in the way we enjoy music happened over protracted periods in time. That’s why Elvis meant more to John Peel than anything else – he had no frame of reference or had experienced such a massive change in something he had a passion for. For many, CD’s are still quite a new thing, but it’s nearly 30 years since Tomorrows World smeared jam all over a shiny new disc and we watched in dumbfounded silence as it still played. The only real advancement in musical terms since then is the introduction of digital distribution, and even that hasn’t revolutionised things so much. The point to this rambling introduction is that in just about any area of human or technological advancement the major and significant changes have occurred so infrequently that when they do happen, they appear all the more significant and noteworthy. And of course, you already know the exception to this rule. I’m talking of course, about videogames. In terms of achievement (and without using one of those twee ‘when the universe was a day old, humanity would have been around for half a second’ analogies) video and computer gaming has evolved faster than a speeding bullet, which is a problem when it comes to being impressed by the ‘next big thing’. For what it’s worth, I’ll share with you my particular highlights in gaming and what I consider to be the huge leaps that have changed the way I/we game, including my own personal Elvis moment. I’m sure you all have one. I’m not talking about a particular game that you loved, it’s more like that moment when you first meet ‘the one’ person – suddenly the world changes and it’s never going to be the same again. - Grandstand Console. This was the first game I ever played in someone’s house actually on a TV. Simple, but it stuck in my mind as a particular point where toys and games were moving from the toybox to the living room.
- Atari 2600. Many fond memories for many people, but the granddaddy of them all showed the potential and the future. Games on cartridge and joysticks like the arcade, it didn’t get much better than that in the late 70’s.
- Sinclair Spectrum. The small plastic box with rubber buttons entered the national consciousness and it wasn’t long before all playground chatter stopped being about football and making dens to who had the most games and whether it was actually possible to complete Jet Set Willy without pokes.
- Elite. The BBC B game that has still never been surpassed in terms of open gameplay and atmosphere. Even today, most game developers would give their right arms to come up with a design and execution as flawless as Elite. I played the game again under emulation recently and thoroughly enjoyed the experience of not being limited by the technology or the game. I could appreciate it for what it was and lose myself in the process. And, unlike the first time around, I managed to become Elite rank!
- Commodore Amiga. For me, this is when the home computing revolution really started (with a nod to Atari ST owners, it’s just that I had an A500, but I know essentially they were two sides of the same coin). Proper keyboard, disc based and with a real operating system, the Amiga gave a sneaky glimpse into a future where there might be a computer in every house...
- 3DO. The first CD based system I played and I still remember the awesome rendered graphics. A machine that played CD games was the stuff of fantasy and when they announced Dragons Lair, I was sold.
- Mario 64. Simply jaw-dropping. The way it all came together for Nintendo for the N64 was almost too perfect. Mario 64 was a game that even my dad (“Bloody computers”) was impressed by, and my 8 year old is currently enjoying on Virtual Console. As history recalls though, the cartridge lost out to the disc in the long term.
- Xbox Live. The way Microsoft has entered the games market has left many gamers cold, where others have embraced the 360 as the saviour of modern gaming. Love or hate the company or the hardware, nobody can argue with the Live experience, a fantastic community of gamers all playing, talking and interacting easily and without barriers. I don’t think anybody can forget their first experience on Live talking to a like-minded gamer from some distant country as they fought or raced together.
In a nutshell, these are my most vivid and meaningful gaming highlights. It’s not meant to be a list of favourite games or consoles, but more a homage to those seminal moments in gaming. I never owned a 3DO, but the fact that someone had made it and put it out there was a very big deal in terms of gaming. Yes, I’ve played Ocarina of Time and yes, it probably is one of the best games ever made, but it was a 3D adventure on a middle-aged console. A great gaming experience, but not something that changed the way I thought about the games universe. And my Elvis moment? Well, it surprised me to be honest. I went through the above list but one thing kept coming back to me again and again. An event that I can remember very vividly as the one thing that changed gaming from being merely an electronic plaything to a mainstream activity. It was at this moment that I realised that my days of lying to stay in and play videogames instead of going to the pub were numbered. Soon everybody would be into games and I could hold my head high, boasting of how I was into it before anyone else. Admittedly, it’s taken a little longer than anticipated but now I don’t know anyone who HASN’T got some sort of games machine, whether its a NDS, Wii or PS3. My Elvis moment happened whilst watching the Gamesmaster TV show hosted by Dominik Diamond. Gamesmaster was a regular watch for anyone into videogames. The format was usually the same, with a series of challenges, hints and tips and games reviews. Every so often the programme would feature a preview of up-and-coming technology or forthcoming game but invariably we had seen it all before in the games mags. One day though, they featured a Japanese TV advert that changed my gaming world. I’d seen screenshots of new ‘Playstation’ games and yes they looked nice, but I was an old Amiga gamer and some of those vintage games looked the part but didn’t perform so well in action. Anyway, the feature began with a video of Ridge Racer. In my local arcade there was a large RR machine and I absolutely loved it. The 3D graphics were simply stunning and highly realistic; everything had a texture, it all moved at an incredible speed and it seemed to be the game I had been waiting for all these years. After a few seconds of the video Dominik Diamonds’ voiceover cut in to say that what we were watching wasn’t a arcade machine costing several thousand pounds, but a home games machine that would be on sale and soon. For me, It all changed right there and then I know this is a highly personalised view of the gaming world but my point is the same, regardless of the choices. Other than Xbox Live, which, being honest, is simply an extension of an online community, there have been no seminal changes in the games industry in the last ten years and I can’t see where the next one is coming from. There have been some incredible games, don’t get me wrong, but all variations on a theme. The Wii and its motion sensor technology is good and it has opened up the market, but that in itself could ultimately lead to the end of creative games. The industry is fabulously wealthy, bucking economic trends and continuing to grow. To keep the cash rolling in though, the big developers know that they must protect their sacred (cash)cows which in turn means sequels and lots of ‘em. Great if you are an avid fan of Fifa 07/08/09/10/World Cup and so on, but what if you want something else? At the moment we are quite well catered for and there is a decent choice, but the day is coming where the shelves and charts will simply be awash with updates and homogenous genre games. So where is the next big thing coming from? True 3D? Virtual Reality? Ultra-hyper realism? We can wait with eager anticipation but I won’t be holding my breath. __________________________________________________________________________
March 2009
Banjo Kazooie: The shape of things to come?
I read an article recently where a current gaming luminary expressed no small amount of disdain for the way Microsoft treats its first-party developers. The reason given had more to do with the (mainly) American corporate obsession with focus groups, opinion polls and fan forums than an actual dig at the evil empire per se. It might sound a little naive, but I hadn’t really thought about games in a corporate sense before; more as neat little packages of entertainment, each lovingly hand-crafted and laboured over by fans, for fans. But now I know what he meant. Before we get to that though, a spot of personal gaming history. In the Summer of 1996 I saw an ad in a local paper for someone selling a new imported Japanese N64. Giddy and cash rich having just sold a PC, I could think of no reason not to buy it. The seller was asking £600 for the machine, Mario 64, Pilotwings 64 and a scart converter cable. Bargain. Having owned an NES and SNES, I was a big Nintendo fan and couldn’t wait to get my hands on this new wonder machine. I wasn’t disappointed. I played both games constantly and through adversity. The first scart cable I got wouldn’t work properly so for the first week everything was in black and white. I wrestled with the Japanese text. I scoured magazines for new game release dates and I explored every inch of Mario’s new 3D world. In short, I was hooked. This truly was next-gen stuff. Over the coming months I paid way over the odds for every import title that wasn’t heavily Japanese in origin (Mahjongg etc). I paid £120 for Konamis Perfect Striker and £150 went on Mario Kart with the limited edition joypad. I even forked out £80 on the Hong Kong version of Cruisin’ USA, my first English language N64 cart. After a while though, I hankered after less esoteric games and looked forward to the full worldwide rollout of the machine so my more western tastes would be catered for. Japanese games are ok and most of the US stuff centered around sports sims, but I wanted something a bit more ‘European’, or specifically, English. Enter Rare. I was familiar with their earlier work as Ultimate, owning at one time or another most home computers of the 80’s. Their back catalogue was like a ‘must have’ list of titles for anyone even remotely interested in gaming. Tranz Am, Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf, Underwurlde, Knight Lore, and still one of my favourite games of all time, Entombed... all classic and all containing that special gaming something. Moving on to the new home consoles, notably the NES and SNES, Rare raised the bar again with the Silicon Graphics enhanced Donkey Kong Country in 1996. By the time the N64 had established itself in the Japanese market, Rare were already hard at work on games for the system. By now, Nintendo held a major stake in the company and had signed them up on an exclusive basis. What followed was a series of titles that will continue to grace any list of ‘Best Games Ever’. BlastCorps, Killer Instinct, Diddy Kong Racing, Jet Force Gemini, Goldeneye, Conkers Bad Fur Day... the list goes on. My personal favourite though was Banjo Kazooie. Released in 1998, BK quickly became a best-seller and for many out-Mario’d Mario. Everything about the game screamed quality, from the incredible graphics, dynamic and atmospheric music and stunning level design to the brilliant character set, humour and revolutionary (but ill fated) Stop-N-Swop game mechanic. Ok, I’m a fan, but even a fervent Nintendo hater couldn’t fail to recognise the quality. I played the game to death, collecting and completing everything, savouring each part along the way. In many ways, my N64 experience culminated in BK. The multiplayer and social aspects of Mario Kart and Goldeneye are fondly remembered, but BK, for me at least, represented a last hurrah for everything I loved about computer and videogames up to that point. Looking back, things seemed to get more serious after Banjo Kazooie. Of course there are some notable exceptions, but by and large the emphasis shifted from gameplay to the technology; polygon counts, renders, storage capacity and power. The romance had gone. I stayed the course though, upgrading and adding to my gaming collection. Each successive machine was bought and played, a collectors mentality took hold and I started buying all sorts of strange and wonderful things; a Virtual Boy, Atari 2600, Vectrex.The list grew as I cast around for a gaming fix and a yearning to return to the heady days of gaming. Sadly though, my collection gradually diminished and thinned. Family and responsibilities replaced the fanboy in me and my gaming habits became more mainstream. All the Sony’s, Segas and Nintendos followed, but it wasn’t the same. Sure there were some excellent games along the way, but they weren’t Banjo. Or Mario or Pilotwings for that matter. Then Sega went away and Microsoft emerged from their PC’s to have a go at games. As part of their stab at world dominance, they bought Rare for an astronomical sum and ordered them to bring their magic to their new console. Time and titles passed and last year it was with giddy excitement I read that BK was coming to Xbox Live to complement the new Nuts & Bolts game. I was happy but nervous. Should I play it again? Would it be as good as the memory? Tish and nonsense – how could I not play it?! I pre-ordered Nuts & Bolts and got the download code for BK early. I hadn’t been as edgy starting a game since Ocarina of Time. All Rare’s previous Microsoft games had been only moderately successful and had resolutely failed to set the gaming world alight. How could this be for a company with such a rich history of triple-A titles and IP? There was talk of staff departures and company restructuring, but companies don’t just go bad within the space of a game. And then I turned Banjo Kazooie on and it all came flooding back. The moves, the levels, the music (oh the music!) the characters, the design... This was what it was all about. Platform fun and frolics of the highest order. Nothing else could touch this, nothing. I played the full game all the way through to completion, much the same as ten years previously, loving each and every second. More in fact, as I could savour the experience without getting stuck as much. But what of Nuts & Bolts? I wanted to love it. I wanted so much for the world to swallow me up so I could get lost in the BK universe once again, this time in HD with all the little details I just knew the programmers wanted to put in first time around but couldn’t. I wanted more of the same as before. I wanted a bigger, better, more polished BK experience. Did I get it? In a word, no. Ok, I’d read the reviews about it not being a platformer in the traditional sense, and some lukewarm previews hadn’t been exactly complimentary, but hell, it’s Banjo Kazooie! What could go wrong? Everything, as it turned out, apart from one glimmer of hope at the beginning. After the opening cutscene we are treated to a view of Spiral Mountain and the overweight Banjo has to start collecting things. This is just a comedy prelude to the game proper, but I can’t be the only one to have longed and ached for the stunningly realised new graphics to be continued in the same vein and given us a proper new Banjo for the current generation. Instead I was offered an insipid hub to wander or drive around with perhaps the clunkiest gameplay and level access mechanics I have ever experienced. The levels themselves didn’t fare much better, despite being so lovingly crafted and brought to life. I just wished that those fantastic sets had been put to better use by giving me a proper game, rather than an enormous canvas to whizz around. I was, to put it mildly, disappointed. But let’s get a little perspective. Nuts and Bolts is not a bad game as such, it’s just not what I wanted from my most treasured of gaming experiences. There are forums and fans who love the game and believe it’s the best thing since sliced bread. There just aren’t that many of them. Apologies for being so blunt and obvious, but the game didn’t make much of an impression in 360-only sales, never mind the whole software charts. This makes me sad. I would have been happy if the game had done tremendously well but still not been to my liking. It would mean that the BK franchise is popular, and the suits would decree that more similar titles should follow. That at least would give me hope that in the future I could look forward to a huge, sprawling, ultimate Banjo adventure to properly satisfy my platforming needs, nay, demands. That now looks increasingly unlikely. Poor sales and mediocre reviews will probably signal the end for poor Banjo. Rare have confirmed that Banjo Tooie is coming to Xbox live soon, but I feel it will be the swansong for the bear and the bird. And so to the point of Microsoft and its focus groups and opinion polls. If they are such a good indication of how a game should be made and are what fans want, how come they don’t work in the case of Rare? It’s long been the case that many gamers are convinced that Microsoft don’t know what to do with Rare and are making excuses for them, but how long will it (or can it) continue? In these financially uncertain time, not long at all one would guess. I can’t even begin to imagine the focus group where Nuts & Bolts was given a unanimous thumbs-up. Despite the corporate line, I don’t believe Rare are happy with it at all. I think their identity and reputation is being so undermined that they have forgotten, to use a Peter Pan metaphor, how to fly. Can they be fixed? Yep, bring back the staff and give them the freedom. Bin your focus groups and scrap the opinion polls and let them get on with it. Make each employee play the entire back catalogue of Ultimate and Rare games pre-Microsoft and then lock them away to create. I have heard the opinion that there is no place in todays market for this or that style of game, usually aimed at the platformer genre. Wrong. There is always a market for a good game, regardless of the pigeonhole we want to put it in. RoughText Jace’s reply Damn! I wish i'd written that. I totally and wholeheartedly agree with your article, and it's something I also feel just as passionately about. I was a huge Rare fan, and finished both Banjo and Tooie. I always fondly think of that last level on Banjo 1 with the changing seasons, it was like Rare were saving the best level for only those who would work for it. Rather than buy Nuts and Bolts, I just downloaded the demo on XBL, and was so bitterly disappointed, I haven't got around to buying the game - though i'm sure i'll play it one day. It wasn't just the change in game type, but the dreadful hand holding through the first level which completely irritated me. I also hope Rare haven't lost their magic for good, I remember the excitement of getting Grabbed by the Ghoulies, only to put it away after an hour, then the 360's Perfect Dark Zero, which I just thought was awful in comparison to Goldeneye or even the N64 version of Perfect Dark. Maybe with Banjo now sidelined for good, our only hope is they free themselves from Microsoft at some point, and maybe we'll see a sequel to DK64, or the abandoned Donkey Kong Racing. They still release games for DS, which I find odd really. |
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