Retrospective

Ten years ago today I woke up early in the morning and rode a bus downtown before taking a light rail train to, what was at the time the closest Best Buy. I walked out with a white box emblazoned with an orange swirl.

Yes, if you bought one then you already know that today is the tenth anniversary of Sega’s US launch of their greatest achievement and biggest failure. The Dreamcast was the little machine that could do everything except compete against the PlayStation 2 launch hype.

Bundled with a 56k modem for online gaming the Dreamcast was ahead of it’s time. The Dreamcast was also the first console to support progressive scan (albeit through an optional adapter). In addition it supported mouse, keyboard and microphone peripherals.

In a way the Dreamcast was too much of a good thing. Sega’s much touted GD-ROM anti-piracy method was cracked within a year of the US launch. Rampant piracy combined with an already low price point resulted in a product line that was impossible to sustain. With the PlayStation 2 already on shelves and the Xbox and GameCube on the horizon Sega threw in the towel and walked out on the hardware business.

It’s a shame that the Dreamcast had such a short lifespan, but we should be happy it existed. Without the Dreamcast Microsoft may never have entered the console market. Microsoft would then never have developed Xbox Live and online gaming on consoles would be very different and probably not as good.

So dust off that copy of Shenmue and rejoice. Today is Dreamcast Day!

When to review

Recently several news outlets have delayed reviews of Killzone 2 because they were given review code and not final code and because the multiplayer features are difficult to test. Reportedly the code submitted to outlets for review was older and had bugs which were removed from the retail version. This raises some interesting issues.

If a publisher submits pre-release code for review then they must have a certain amount of faith in the product. Still it’s somewhat unreasonable to review admittedly un-finalized code as a finished product. It’s also unreasonable to presume that all of the admitted bugs have actually been fixed. The question here is one of editorial policy: Do you take the publisher/developer’s word at face value? Do you preface your review with a note about pre-release code and review the code as is? Do you just wait and review the retail version?

There are legitimate arguments to be made for every option. The ultimate issue is that whatever policy a publication decides to use, they have to use it across the board. If you wait for a retail copy of Killzone 2 then you have to wait for a retail copy of Halo: ODST or any other game. At the same time if you notify your readers of pre-release code in one review, you must do it in all reviews.

Gravity Bone

Gravity Bone is a stylish independent game. It's hard to say a whole lot more about it because in the time it takes me to write it, nay the time it take you to read it, you could have played it.

There's the problem. The game is too short. It's like reading the epilogue to a novel and nothing else, at once engrossing and disappointing. Gravity Bone grips you and then throws you off a cliff without so much as a hello.

The upsetting thing is that while what little there is of Gravity Bone is very good, it's so short it's almost bad. The way the game is designed (there are at least four item slots, but only three are used) makes it feel like an aborted attempt at worst and a demo at best. The whole middle of the game is just missing.

The thing is I still love it.

Gravity Bone via Offworld
screen shot blatantly stolen from Offworld

Bit. Trip: Beat

Over on Offworld Brandon Boyer has posted a video of Beat, one of the six games in Gaijin Games' WiiWare offering Bit. Trip. The thing looks to be made of pure concentrated awesome:

It's like something I'd expect to see on Live Arcade or PSN; stylish and minimal yet impossibly shiny. Nintendo needs to let people know that games like this and other WiiWare titles exist. I'm willing to bet that half of the Wii userbase doesn't even know that it can connect to the net.

Asshole Mario

There's a legend to this one. I haven't bothered to look it up, but the story goes that there's this Super Mario World champion in Japan who's friend challenged him to complete his hacked levels. These are fiendishly hard levels that require just as much luck as skill. A more reasonable name is Kaizo Mario but I find the YouTube poster's choice to be more accurate in describing the pain:

That's just the first level. There are close to a dozen more of these. And if that's not enough there's a sequel that begins with this masterwork:

What I love about this one is how it totally subverts the Mario conventions. Hidden blocks are a punishment instead of a reward and the mechanics of stage completion are used against the player. It's all at once an example of what to do and what not to do in the area of game design.

Rock and a Hard Place

I was listening to a podcast the other day where some writers and editors for prominent game publications talked about how many gamers put too much stock in game previews. The argument was that for the most part previews have to be optimistic given that they are looks at incomplete products and nothing is written in stone.

For the most part this is a good position to take; previews can't look into the future and tell you what the final game will be like. Features my be added or dropped, bugs may crop up at the last moment or problems with framerates may be solved. A game that gets a glowing preview may end up being a total turd while one that leaves middling impression could turn out to be the second coming of Donkey Kong. It's not an exact science, anyone who has done extensive beta testing can tell you that. Developers get the benefit of the doubt because they're people too and a product isn't done until it is sitting on store shelves.

Still there is a problem. Previews come too early, but reviews come too late. By the time you find out that a game like Katamari Damacy is totally amazing you are already relegated to the retail store crap shoot. GameStop won't have a copy for you because you didn't pre-order and the big box stores probably didn't order any because it's too weird. In a business where profit margins per unit are razor thin pre-orders are going to be the law of the land. Previews need to reflect that.

For a game that is reasonably popular there's no need to put money down; they'll have enough copies even if they swear to be selling you "the last one." But for games like Okami and Zack and Wiki chances are that your store will only get enough to fill pre-orders. These are the games where previews need to function as pre-release reviews, where writers with review copies need to give estimated scores before the final review is published. People need to know about innovative and unique games before they hit the shelves so they can put their five dollars down. A preview can't always be a preview, sometimes it has to be a pre-review judgement.

Arcade Cabinet

Since moving into my own house I have had time to mull over the idea of building my own arcade cabinet for a MAME machine. It's my estimation that such a project should run me less than a Kegerator (this could be especially true considering upkeep costs). In a perfect world I would be able to find an unloved cabinet from Capcom or SNK and re-wire the buttons to a new interface. Obviously it's not a perfect world, but I hope to find an empty cabinet I can make a new control panel for. Once I get started I'll detail the project here.