Double Agent
The Bouncer goes "Boing" - March 7, 2001 - Chris Jones

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. As these words were spoken, I swear I hear the old man laughing: "What good is a used-up world and how could it be worth having?" Don't say we didn't warn you.

Someone once remarked that being a bouncer consisted of 80% waiting around, 19% getting puked on by drunk people, and 1% sheer terror, as said drunk people pulled out a knife or a gun. Still, there's a certain romance to the job - it's kinda like being a cop, but cooler, and you get to hang out in bars. And nobody messes with you because, hey, you're the bouncer.

With that in mind, what I hoped I'd get out of Square's latest game was a grim, gritty title about violent scuffles for survival in back alleys. Grace, poetry, and brass knuckles, you know? Street punks on a rampage, kinda like Double Dragon meets The Warriors.

Instead, what I actually got was a 3D version of Final Fight in Day-Glo colors.

Ok, it's not that bad, and I admit I've only played about half an hour thus far. In fact, it could be a lot of fun, in a goofy sort of way. The lighting's foggy, the music lacks bass, the characters speak in cliches, and the fighting doesn't have the bone-breaking quality it should, but it is very shiny and diverting. The Japanese voice acting's not half-bad either... and it would rock exceedingly much if Square kept the "pick your dub and your subtitles" for the US version of FFX.

Onward.

All grown up
Chris,

The PSX has nothing to do with videogaming's sudden penetration into the 18-to-35 market. What's causing that is simple: time. Today's 18-year-olds are the same people who had an NES under the tree when they were 8. As they (I) grew older, they kept their interest in gaming.

If the PSX had never been released, would gaming still be the exclusive territory of Pokemon and middle-school? No. The PSX simply benefitted from being the best system at the time today's college students finally had some purchasing power.

No magic or mystery; Sony made the best system at the right time and got to cash in big-time because of it.

Ian

Good point, but I don't think it's so much of an either/or situation. Games probably wouldn't have taken off like they did if the PSX had replaced the NES - people at the time wouldn't have been able to jump from Pac Man to Silent Hill. As you point out, the NES raised a whole generation of kids who were ready and willing to embrace the PSX when it came out. But by the same token, it was necessary for the PSX to come out when it did, because people were ready for Silent Hill in the mid-90's. I don't know how many people would have kept up with gaming if it had frozen at the SNES level of technology - there's only so much you can do with 32x32 pixel SD sprites.

The best system at the right time... yep, that pretty well sums it up.

A corollary off that last letter
Hmm. Like Tim Rogers yesterday, I seem to be accumulating a large pile of unfinished RPGs (will I ever get back to Vandal Heart II?) and the sad reason is that I just don't have so much time these days anymore. This, I think, is the reason behind the rise of the shorter games - the Resident Evils, Metal Gear Solid and so on. Games tailored to people with a nine to five job, now the original console generation is all grown up and stuff. I mean, the only reason I managed to finish FFIX in a reasonable length of time was because I played it over my Christmas holidays. Which give rise to an interesting scenario, forty years or so down the line, when we all retire - will there be a resurgence of epic-length games for the elderly gamers? I wonder what they'll be like...

Ciaran Conliffe

Somebody brought up a similar point a few weeks back, and I'll make the same argument I did back then - the gaming market will almost certainly always be controlled by the youth demographic, just because they have the time and the money to properly overdose on games. Between that and the technological improvements games will see by the time we retire, I don't think anything even close to FF 1 through 9 will be in production... although there might be a niche market for old-style retro RPGs created for those geezers. But I do think there's a trend towards shorter, tighter games, as of late, and as much as anything that could be because gaming's audience has grown up, as you say.

It's fun to gloat, isn't it?
What's up with all this after-the-fact appreciation of FFT? Was I the only person that got the game when it came out and kept my copy? I mean, it's only one of the 3 or 4 greatest games ever to come out on the Playstation. Why all the hooplah now? Where were all these die-hard, relenlessly seeking FFT people then? If I'm not mistaken, it didn't sell just a bazillion copies or anything... Maybe it's just the gaming snob in me, but being an rpger old enough to remember the wait for FFIII like many remember the one for FFVII, I knew to expect a good game when it came out. Why couldn't all those other people? It's a little disgusting when people finally discover the greatness of something, but it's already too late.

-Magatsu

Heh heh... Generally, as a letters columnist, I don't feel like I can be this much in your face, but you're dead on here. After FFVII I knew I had to get Square's next PSX title, and I was there at Software Etc. the day it was released. And damn if it wasn't even better than FF7. But I have no idea where these latecomers crawled out from - how do they know the game's so great if they didn't snag a copy back then? Why weren't they waiting at the store, cash in hand, on 1.28.98? Why do they keep sending in letters on how great the game is, when they still don't have it themselves? What's wrong with this picture?

Still, let's hope they've learned something from this experience - get the good stuff while you can, rather than having to scour the ends of the earth for it later.

Psycho killer bunnies revisited
Sick of seeing the same old game plots? Here's one for ya : An RPG based on Watership Down.

........What? Why are you all laughing? If they can make shooters with killer hummingbirds, then dammit, it'd work.

Negative Creep

Er, seriously, what makes you think there's not an RPG based on Watership Down already? Not literally, of course (although I think I'd prefer Hazel to Zidane as a protagonist) but in spirit: Watership Down was chock full of archetypal heroes and villains, and at some level nearly every RPG ever made echoes those characters. You've got the inexperienced leader, the headstrong but honorable tough guy, the quasi-mystic seer, the token love female interest... any of this sound familiar?

Of course, you can always argue that no RPG has yet done the characters quite as well as Watership Down did, but give games a bit more time, neh?

More literary stuff
Jingoistic and naive? I'm trying to understand a) why you would read a book five times if you thought it was jingoistic and naive, b) why you would read a book five times when you have obviously never read anything else by the author, who was a lot of things, but neither of those, and c) what Heinlein would have thought of Denise Richards. I am not sure about the last. I am pretty sure he had a thing for redheads.

I will admit the book was not among his best -- like a couple others, it had a tendency to devolve into preaching -- but I do think it managed to stay more patriotic than jingoistic. Heinlein had a real sore spot at the decline of modern patriotism, as well as disgust for anyone who wouldn't sign up and fight for their country when the shooting started. I agree with those concepts, which probably makes me outdated, but I'm not aggressively expansionist enough to be a jingo. Maybe a Ringo. I like drumming.

Also, I like PSX games. I think FF7 is my favorite PSX game, and second only to FF4 as my favorite video game ever. I haven't finished FF9 yet, though, and it may beat out FF7 eventually... so far, it hasn't succumbed to the "Look how pretty my computer graphics scenes are, and ignore the gameplay which we tacked on as an afterthought"-syndrome that FF8 seemed to have. (Yes, that was blatantly inflammatory. So what.)

However, as time goes by, I find that I am playing Castlevania:SOTN more than either of the good FF's. Maybe it's just easier to pick up and go on a Castlevania game than a Final Fantasy; less commitment of time. But, that's easily the top of the 2-D PSX games, hands down.

Del, realizes that this ran long, suggests you delete the first two paragraphs, as no one in this world could possibly care about them

What the heck - if I'm gonna mouth off about Heinlein I guess I should make a slightly better defense of myself. You gotta remember that Heinlein had every reason to be pro-military and virtually none to be anti-military - he grew up in a time and a culture where military virtues were far more present, and he graduated as a commissioned officer from Annapolis, but he never had to fight in a war himself. That makes a huge difference in the validity of his opinion I think, because Heinlein saw the military virtues as being good in and of themselves, whereas a lot of other, more experienced soldiers seem to regard them more as supports to hang on to when the entire world's gone insane and 90% of your best friends have gotten their brains blown out.

A lot of people seem to like Heinlein because he leaves very little room for gray areas, but you could just as easily argue the lack of gray is exactly what holds him back from being able to say anything useful. You can certainly make worthwhile arguments for the military and for patriotism, but when all the characters in your books are either square-jawed manly men who look death square in the eye or sniveling anti-military cowards who just don't get it, it's hard to see those books as anything but cheap propaganda. And cheap propaganda doesn't go nearly as far these days as it did in the 50's.

And just for the record, I've read plenty of Heinlein's other work, and never read ST 5 times - I was referring to that email, not the book.

End of rant.

It's like 1994 all over again
Well anyway the GBA announcement about the ports of classic titles is a good sign, I noticed the 'E-Card' technology mentioned in the article...does it remind you of the old 'barcode battle' devices? (oh cmon everyone who's read a game magazine with a Japanese import section knows about this thing...clip a barcode, tape it to an index card and slide it through the scanner and it generates stats randomly... ) Just an interesting observation on my part.

PS. Yay! 2D Metroid ... we're SAVED!

- JR

Hmm... I do remember those bar code scanners, now that you mention it. Weird little game, and arguably the precursor for Pokemon. Interesting, and good call.

A poorly written flame! How I've missed you so...
YOU DIS LUFIA!?!? FUK U WORSE THAN HITLET

-AJ

Wow, haven't gotten one of these in ages.... brings a farm fuzzy feeling to my chest, really it does. True, I'm pretty sure the author in question sent it in as a joke, but still, it's very evocative of the good old days. Ah, the memories...

Closing Comments:

Reader suggested topic for tomorrow, and it's a good 'un, so send in tons o' email. Me, I'm gonna go stare at the brightly colored PS2 game I just bought. Later.

-Chris Jones, just likes hitting people

Topic for Thursday, 03/08/2001
Hey Chris,

Let's say you find a genuine future-revealing crystal ball. As you peer into the murky depths, you discover that in the year 2008, RPGs do indeed undergo the revolution we've all been waiting for. Although it seems that they still aren't mainstream, RPGs are accepted by many as a form of art. As you squint a bit, you see a blurry image of a person. You sense that he is the leader of the RPG revolution, the Shakespeare of videogames. Which of the following groups do you suppose this person is from?

Group 1: Game designers who are currently in the industry - I personally don't find that much potential here (so I focused on the other two groups). However, they DO have experience, and the demigod called Matsuno.

Group 2: Non-gamers who are attracted to the dynamic medium that is the videogame, and become game designers - These people may have to reinvent the wheel perhaps, unable to learn from previous games' mistakes. However, they have the advantage of having little preconceptions of what an RPG should be. They know not of absurd traditions like random battles, and may bring fresh new ideas.

Group 3: Avid gamers who eventually become game designers - A few DA readers might fall into this category. These people have had years to dissect the advantages and disadvantages of an RPG and formulate ways to introduce improvements and innovations to the genre. However, growing up with RPGs may be a disadvantage too. An avid gamer might perpetuate strange RPG standards (such as how characters in battle tend to stand still and take turns hitting each other), because his/her subconcious accepts them as norms.

-Steve Tran

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