Whose Faulty Vision

Off to Costa Rica

I’m off to Costa Rica for my photography trip (explained in more detail over on my photoblog). I’ll be gone for a week, so likely no posts until a week from Monday.

RPG Eras

I’m kind of amused that on my PSP, I’m playing a game that looks like this:

And at the same time, playing a game on my PS3 that looks like this (click on the thumbnails for full-sized images; WordPress won’t let me change the thumbnail size, so they’re too teensy to show how incredible they look):

The difference in gameplay is as extreme as the difference in graphics–Oblivion is incredibly freeform, letting me define my character however I want and go and do whatever I want, whereas Phantasy Star II is utterly linear. Which isn’t to say that Phantasy Star II is a bad game–it’s just very much of its era, and it’s incredible how much computer RPGs have evolved since then.

Bold bolditty bold

I am reading a deck that is written like this and it’s really butt-annoying. Please don’t do this or I will come over to your office and shove your bold key where the sun don’t shine.

Quote of the Whenever

Quote of the Whenever:

“The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.”

–A.A. Milne

99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

You know that song, “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”? Who actually puts bottles of beer on the wall? I’ve seen bottles of liquor on the wall at many a bar, but never bottles of beer. I guess “99 Bottles of Beer in the Cooler” doesn’t have the same ring to it?

Superpowers

Christmas expressed her amazement the other day at the speed at which I read. I suggested that it could be a superpower: “Fast-Reading Guy.” I don’t think they’d let me into the Justice League as Fast-Reading Guy, though:

Batman: Quick, Fast-Reading Guy, read that sign!
Me: Okay, I’ve read it.
Batman: Now tell us what it says!
Me: Um, wouldn’t it be faster for you just to read it yourself?

I guess my other superhero identity could be “Obscure Trivia Man.”

Luthor: Muahahahaha! Foolish Justice League, I will defeat you!
Aquaman: Quick, Obscure Trivia Man! Tell him something he doesn’t know!
Me: Hey, Luthor! A regulation golf ball has 336 dimples!
Luthor: (Falls back, wounded, and pulls a lever) Obscure Trivia Man, you’re no match for my new invention!
(A huge robot charges in.)
Luthor: The Ignorance-Bot Mark Seven! It’s capable of forgetting over 9,000 things per minute!

What talent do you have that would make a good superhero identity?

Old video game design

I just got a disc for my PSP with about 20 old Sega Genesis games on it–things like Altered Beast, the Phantasy Star series, and Sonic the Hedgehog. I actually bought it for the Phantasy Star games, but I decided to take a crack at Sonic first. It’s a fun game, but it reminds me–I had largely forgotten–of how unforgiving video games used to be.

In Sonic, and I expect this’ll turn out to be the case for most of the games on the disc, when you lose your last life, that’s it–you have to start over all the way at the beginning of the game. There’s no password, no save points, not even a “Continue” option to go back to the beginning of the current “world”. And a lot of old games used to work that way.

I’m astonished that I ever had the patience to play games like that–nowadays, I hate games that make me replay the same sequence over and over again–but more than that, think about how limiting a formula like that must have been for the game designer. You can’t make your game too long: if it would take more than one gaming session for even an experienced player to win the game, then essentially nobody ever will. You also can’t make any individual challenge in the game too difficult: if a player has to go through two hours of game to get to a particular challenge, he’s not likely to keep practicing that challenge if it takes too many tries to get through it. (I’m playing Resistance on the PS3 right now, and it would be unplayable if you had a limited number of lives and had to go back to the beginning of the game after they were used up.) These are both real limitations that I’m sure held game designers back until checkpoints and quicksaves came into widespread usage.

Thank goodness, the folks who released the disc added a quicksave option to every game, so I don’t have to put up with replaying the same early levels over and over again. Of course, adding a quicksave to games that weren’t designed to have one throws the limitations into sharp focus–I’m blowing through the Sonic levels, because I don’t have to play through the early ones over and over again just because I die on a later one.