The Hidden Genre in Games
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/20/11 at 05:03 PM CT
Videogames are a perpetually evolving form of media. While literature and film have largely passed through their respective coming-of-age periods and have settled into a series of well-defined pigeonholes, videogames are still a bit more ambiguous. In all other forms of media, the genre describes the basic setting in which the characters and plot are revealed. While ‘genre’ is considered a dirty word among certain uppity English professors who think Literary Fiction is the only kind of writing worth reading, ‘Literary’ has itself become a genre (and one of the worst, at that).
Scanning the shelves at a bookstore will reveal: Literary, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Steampunk, Post-Modern, and a variety of other setting-based descriptions that give the potential reader a hint of what lies between the covers. Movies likewise cram their pegs into these same holes, despite the fact that the fit isn’t quite right. In film there’s also the style in which the narrative …
Veterans Day
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/13/11 at 03:32 PM CT
This Veterans Day weekend, millions of gamers will celebrate the sacrifices made by the United States military by shooting each other in the head, teabagging the corpses of their fallen adversaries, and screaming obscenities into wireless headsets, thanks to the recent release of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.” To these millions of gamers, many of whom are too young to understand its horrors, war is a form of entertainment.
While it may no longer be cool to hate on “Call of Duty,” lack of coolness has never stopped me from doing things in the past. Why do people (and in this instance, ‘people’ refers to ‘mainstream gamers’) find war entertaining? While conflict is necessary to drive the plot of any good story (and it’s debatable whether or not “CoD’s” 8-hour single-player mode qualifies as ‘good’), what is the infatuation with bringing home the horrors of modern warfare to our living rooms under the guise of ‘entertainment?’ These games aren’t …
In Praise of Nothing
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/06/11 at 03:42 PM CT
The Seventh Generation of videogame consoles has spawned numerous changes in the way videogaming works. While there has been little innovation in the games themselves, our interaction with them has changed immensely. And most of these changes were initially forced upon us by Microsoft, a company that never should have become entangled in the game console industry.
I have already discussed the fact that persistent online connections and built-in hard drives (first implemented by MS in the original Xbox) have allowed the slapdash PC game development model of ‘release it now, fix it later’ to migrate to consoles. But that’s just an example of something old and bad being allowed to stick around instead of being regulated out of existence. Persistent online connections also allowed Microsoft to come up with a new poison to taint videogames: Achievements.
Of course, Achievements aren’t exactly new either. There has always been e-peen waggling and one-upmanship amongst gamers. …
No-Effort Halloween Costumes for Gamers
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/30/11 at 01:20 PM CT
Uh-oh! Halloween is tomorrow and you don’t have a costume yet! Let MeltedJoystick help you out with 5 suggestions for no-effort (or little-effort) costumes with a gaming flavor.
5. Mario (“Super Mario Bros.”)
The only effort required for this costume is being a Club Nintendo Platinum Member… in 2009. That was the year Nintendo gave away official Mario hats (or the gimped WiiWare title, “Doc Louis’ Punch-Out!!”). Combine the hat with a red shirt, blue jeans, and a magic-marker mustache. You’re done!
4. Weighted Companion Cube (“Portal”)
This one needs to be done the night before so the spray paint has time to dry. Just take a cardboard box (big enough to cover your body), cut a head-hole, spray paint the whole thing gray, then glue a left-over Valentine’s Day card to each side. If you don’t have any V-Day cards, a red marker can do the trick as well.
3. James Bond (“GoldenEye 007”)
Do you have access to a place that rents tuxedos? Rent a tux and …
Of Js and Ws
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/23/11 at 09:08 PM CT
As I mentioned previously, I hate the term ‘JRPG.’ Not only is it used as a pejorative against my favorite genre, it adds negative connotations and a perceived need for segregation where none exists. What does the dreaded JRPG need to be segregated from? Why, the Aryan Race of ‘WRPGs,’ of course, with the ‘W’ standing for ‘Western.’ If this usage of Western was meant to separate RPGs featuring cowboys and six-shooters from RPGs featuring swords & sorcery or RPGs featuring space ships and mecha, it might make some sense. As it is, though, it’s just a way to geographically separate games by their country of origin. And it doesn’t really work.
What people are mistakenly calling ‘JRPGs’ should technically be called by their old name, ‘Console RPGs.’ But wait! Now that consoles are capable of running ports of the games formerly known as ‘PC RPGs,’ that line has been all but erased. It started to blur a long time ago when games like “Dungeon Master” …
De Metroides
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/16/11 at 06:34 PM CT
The ‘Metroid’ series has become one of Nintendo’s most popular franchises. This popularity seems pretty inexplicable when one considers the series’ roots. The original game, “Metroid,” appeared on the NES and, while it did take bold steps into unexplored types of gameplay, it was also one of the most inscrutable games ever made. Actually, out of the original ‘Metroid’ trilogy, only the third, “Super Metroid,” had the style, pacing, and gameplay framework to be playable and enjoyable without hours of boring trial-and-error and reams of graph paper. “Metroid II: The Return of Samus” was stuck in the middle, approaching the refined experience of “Super Metroid,” but stuck in the Hell of portable exclusivity.
How did this franchise become one of Nintendo’s ‘Big Three,’ alongside ‘Super Mario’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda,’ when it only had three games, one good game, and skipped an entire hardware generation (the N64) as a no-show? The answer lies …
Love and Hate: Portable Game Systems
Matt - wrote on 10/09/11 at 02:41 PM CT
Greetings fellow gamers! It is great to be a guest on the MeltedJoystick blog. Nelson asked me to fill in for him while he’s on vacation.
My adventure into the world of gaming began with the NES and has continued through this current generation. Since I am a child of gaming in the '80s and early '90s, I have a distinct love and admiration for platformers and RPGs. My brother and I spent countless hours mastering all the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ games for the NES and the SNES, along with many other platformers for the Genesis, Game Boy, and, later, the PlayStation.
Over the years my gaming habits have evolved and grown for better and for worse, which brings me to the topic of this blog post: portable game systems, particularly my love/hate relationship with them. Unfortunately, my career and life choices have dictated that I spend more time with portable systems than consoles, and I am sure that I am not alone in this camp. So I would like to reflect a little on portable …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2011
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/25/11 at 09:29 PM CT
This is the first in what I hope to make a quarterly feature in which I round-up all of the Official Staff Reviews from the previous season and put them in one easy-to-find location. As you probably know, the MeltedJoystick staff currently consists of four people: Me, Chris, Nick, and Alex. Nick and Alex spend a lot of time working on behind-the-scenes matters for the ImaJAN Media Network, so their reviews aren’t nearly as numerous as those written by me and Chris, and can easily be lost in the shuffle. These articles will also only feature full-length reviews of games we have played immediately before write-up. Since MeltedJoystick opened this year, the Summer 2011 Review Round-Up has a bit of overlap with Spring 2011.
For future installments, I’m considering featuring a member review that the MeltedJoystick staff agree is exemplary of the kind of writing we like to see. So keep submitting those reviews!
Nelson’s Reviews:
I followed my usual trend of reviewing an …
Unfinished Business
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/17/11 at 03:38 PM CT
“Skyrim” comes out in 24 days.
Do you know what that means?
“Skyrim” won’t be ready to play for at least 389 days.
The reason should be obvious: PC games have always followed the paradigm of ‘release it now, fix it later.’ Since “Skyrim” is a PC game (that just happens to appear on consoles as well), this is old news. Even worse, it’s a game built by Bethesda and a sequel to one of the buggiest games ever made. But I continually find myself asking, ‘Why does it have to be this way?’
As I have mentioned before, I think PC gaming should be moving in the direction of console gaming instead of the other way around. In this specific instance, I think Bethesda needs to keep the lid on “Skyrim” until it’s done cooking. Of course, they won’t. They want to get “Skyrim” out the door in time for Black Friday and the Christmas rush. Bethesda wants to ensure that every little child (who is at least 17 years old due to the ‘M for Mature’ rating) …
The End Comes Beyond Chaos
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/09/11 at 03:19 PM CT
Having been a stalwart supporter of the game-creation endeavors of both Squaresoft and Enix since 1989, it pains me to say this: Square Enix is dead. No, they aren’t going out of business or anything official. It’s worse than that: They have turned their last unsullied franchise into an MMO.
While the merger Squaresoft and Enix in 2003 prompted many to rend their garments and gnash their teeth, it ultimately turned out okay, combining two of Japan’s most beloved developers/publishers under one roof. Indeed, the merged Square Enix managed to produce some very nice sequels in their core franchises. But that’s all they did. Non-sequel games with new ideas diminished to a trickle from the Square Enix tap, and what did manage to leak out wasn’t particularly good. Square Enix has become a company that ONLY does ‘Final Fantasy’ and ‘Dragon Quest.’
So, knowing that the only Squaresoft and Enix games that are worth a damn have some combination of ‘final,’ …
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