Steambot Chronicles (2006, PS2)

I have a hard time getting into sandbox games. They’re structurally overwhelming and often gruesome. I recently tried Sleeping Dogs on a recommendation (and because it was a recent Games With Gold giveaway) only to shut it off after a character had his ear cut off within the game’s first two minutes. What kind of a welcome is this? I have no idea who the ear-cutters or ear-cuttee are and no investment in the conflict.

 

A woman finds a young man injured and hungry. She takes him in and feeds him. The young man traverses territory occupied by power-hungry revolutionaries  to get medicine for the sick woman's mother. This is one of three opening Steambot Chronicles potentialities depending on the dialogue choices you make in the first minute or so. One of the sandbox genre's great advantages is its capacity for letting the player go through the story at his or her own pace. So why rush into ear-chopping?

 I’ve spent much of the past week as a professional gladiator, a musician, an archaeologist, and a pool shark. I’ve spent none of the last week severing ears. That's because Steambot Chronicles is the warmest, most welcoming sandbox game ever made. It’s one of the warmest, most welcoming games period.

Steambot succeeds in spite of not only its genre, but its aesthetic. It may look like a Tales of… game, but screaming, starry-eyed anime clichés are nowhere to be found. And this is the thing I love most about the game: its characters and world are delightfully boring. NPCs are bakers, farmers, and artists trying to get by. Vanilla, the main character, is just a polite guy finding his bearings in an unfamiliar town (unless you take him down the path of supreme assholery). The game’s central mechanic, the piloting and fighting of mechs called Trots, is elegantly woven into the world’s fabric—Trots are a part of everyday life. You’ll see them with plows attached plodding through fields and supporting cranes on shipping docks and waiting at stop signs. Steambot’s story isn’t one of Vanilla and his mech versus the world; it’s a story of Vanilla and his mech in the world. “If Hayao Miyazaki made a sandbox-style game, it would probably look a lot like this,” says Hardcore Gamer via the back of the box. “If Yasujiro Ozu made a Virtual On game” is more fitting.

Otostaz (2002, PS2)

Otostaz was the future of puzzle games we were promised. Otostaz lied to us.

A first-party budget game for the PS2, Otostaz is a simple puzzle game with an effervescent paper cut-out style and a sizzling soundtrack. Underneath its ebullient aesthetic surface is a simple grid-based puzzle game in which, without going into laboring detail, specific pieces placed within proximity of each other evolve into building pieces. Those new pieces, placed in proximity with others, evolve into bigger buildings. This can be repeated six times, the reward for which is a confetti-sprouting Space Needle-esque structure.

This kind of tile-based gameplay is perfectly suited for the touchscreen controls if iPads an cellphones. I would go as far as to say Otostaz was ahead of its time, but tried to make the best of the traditional controls to which it was limited. But instead of clever tile-based gameplay and confetti-shooting paper cutout Space Needles, the crown jewel of touchscreen puzzle gaming is a hackneyed Bejeweled clone with paywalls and procedurally-generated content.

P.N. 03 (2003, Gamecube)

Capcom was on fire in the early '00s. The Dreamcast allowed for nearly arcade-perfect ports of their late 2D masterpieces Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, and Capcom vs. SNK 2 in 2001. These games were stunning to behold and to play. Third Strike is regarded by many fighting enthusiasts as the greatest fighting game of all time. It was a tournament staple from 2001-2012 or so, and still commands a huge following on online emulators like GGPO and XBOX Live.

But the release of the Gamecube, and XBOX coupled with the success of the PS2 squished the Dreamcast around 2003, 2D gaming with it. It was obvious that Capcom could no longer get by on 2D arcade ports and was forced to enter the 3D action gaming arena. They did so with flourish. In 2002, Mikami Shinji announced five games for the Gamecube, each promising the ingenuity of Capcom's late 2D fighters. Those games were Killer 7, directed by an up-and-coming Goichi Suda; Dead Phoenix, a lush Panzer Dragoon-style rail shooter; Viewtiful Joe, still one of the most visually compelling 2D action game; Resident Evil 4 of which nothing need be said; and P.N. 03, no doubt the least-recalled member of the "Capcom Five" aside from the ultimately cancelled Dead Phoenix.

History's snub of P.N. 03 isn't entirely unwarranted. Today, there are plenty of mechanically better third-person shooters to play, not the least of which is Resident Evil 4. Compelling gameplay is not the reason you should play P.N. 03 today. Play Sin & Punishment 2 for a similar game better in nearly every way. I say "nearly" because of the one department in which P.N. 03 still captivates: its aesthetic.

Mikami Shinji games unfailingly have great, distinguishing senses of atmosphere. Resident Evil's barren mansion halls were unlike anything that came before it. Devil May Cry's gothic castle, with its high ceilings and expansive corridors, still inspires agoraphobia. P.N. 03's atmosphere was designed using the same medium: emptiness and sterility. The bleach-white halls are redolent if 2001: A Space Odyssey's. Everything in the game is metal--everything except for the skin of Vanessa, the player avatar and one of the most unfairly overlooked protagonists of the PS2 era.

Its not just Vanessa's flesh that sets her apart from her bleak surroundings, but the way she moves. The games enemies are stiff, expressionless robots. Vanessa, constantly in motion, stands out among them. She cartwheels, and backflips with fluidity. She gyrates her hips when executing a special attack. When idling, she taps her feet to the beat of the background music. Shots are fired and enemies spawn to the beat of P.N. 03's music. Everything in the game seems to be able to hear it, but only Vanessa is in conversation with it--her gyrating and foot-tapping are her way of contributing back to the music, talking to it, and talking to you.

Highest Recommendation

Tecmo Classic Arcade: Tecmo Bowl (1987, 2005, Xbox)

I know this is cheating a little, but bear with me…

I’ve spent most of this blog mourning. I’ve lamented the lost arts of obstacle placement and locomotion and the developer psychology of player psychology and of caring. Now I write about a game where nobody cared about any of these things, least of all caring. And it’s a great game precisely because they didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I maintain that all first-person shooter developers should aspire to Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima’s mastery of enemy placement and to Compile’s inventiveness and re-inventiveness. But that’s not to say these are necessary ingredients to a great game. Happy accidents can and have happened. The move cancelling mechanic that defined Street Fighter II and, as a result, all 2D fighting games, was a glitch. In 2002, the discovery of another Street Fighter glitch, roll-canceling to give moves unintended invincibility, reinvigorated a stagnant Capcom vs. SNK 2 scene, turning CvS2 into an entirely new game. In 1987, a game of serendipitous accidents would be released in arcades. It would be buried by the legacy of its sequels and forgotten until its 2005 Tecmo Arcade Classics release. Then it would be forgotten again.

 

That game is Tecmo Bowl (1987). Not the NES Tecmo Bowl (1989), the original arcade game. Tecmo Bowl was a relative arcade success, but on the rare occasion when it finds its name in print today, is typically written off as an ugly stepping stone on the way to the greatness that is the worshipped Tecmo Super Bowl series. But do not be seduced by Tecmo '89's licensed NFL teams or selectable plays or differentiable players or, uh, field goals, because Tecmo '87 holds up to competitive player better than any of the console Bowls because of its free-wheelin’, no-playbook-havin’ spontaneity--not being tethered to a scripted play kindles creativity. It’s also more balanced than '89: you don’t lose a down because your opponent successfully guessed one of your four available plays, and both teams—yes, there are only two teams—are identical. It’s also more intense: the inability to punt or attempt field goals makes every 4^th down a white knuckle affair. It's also more skill-based: fumbles weren’t coded into the game, mitigating luck’s influence.

The exclusion of fumbles, punts, field goals, and play books is what makes Tecmo great. These were not conscious, progressive design choices. These were mechanics that, as legend has it, were omitted because the developers didn’t understand them. The Japanese programmers at Tecmo weren’t football fans. Supposedly, their only reference point for the game was a rulebook. Dimitri Criona, former director of sales and marketing for Tecmo USA, testifies:

The guys who did the game literally sat down with an NFL rulebook and read the rules of football. And because of that, they were able to program a game without bias. If you take an American programmer, he is going to have some biases about the game. But if you take a Japanese programmer, he’s going to create a program that follows the rules. (Power Up, 219)

The idea of a football game without elective kicking being “a program that follows the rules” aside, there is something to be said for unfamiliarity, removal, and leaving oneself open to inspiration (more on this later), which I think is what Criona means by “unbiased.” An under-contrived game is less likely to be a good game than an over-contrived one, but it’s also less likely to be boring. Sure, Day Z and its ilk are objectively better multiplayer games, but what’s honestly more appealing: collecting sticks and rocks for use in heavy-handed crafting systems, or hurling a so-high-it-leaves-the-screen 4^th-and-28 Hail Mary to your buddy as he freestyles a route on his way to the end zone? Both games are about using limited resources creatively and the liberation of constraint (see also: writing poetry that conforms to meter). But I’ve seen a friend empty a celebratory beer over his head while playing only one. See if you can guess which.

It was the second thing. It was Tecmo.

 Highest Recommendation

Pochi to Nyaa (2003, PS2)

Compile’s Puyo Puyo series (Puyo Pop, Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, and Kirby’s Avalanche in America) was a curious thing. Every iteration was more complex than the last while remaining just as accessible as the one that preceded it. Typically, puzzle game franchises heap new mechanics on top of gimmicks, diluting original concepts beyond recognition. There is a reason Tetris 2’s bomb mechanic was abandoned after one game. Bombastic buries Devil Dice’s elegance in trick pieces. Puzzle Bobble (Bust-a-Move) became so clogged with additions that the value of planning and placing a shot was subsumed by player knowledge of a given iteration’s recondite rules and tricks. But Compile beat the odds.

Every Puyo Puyo had a unique wrinkle. Some were better than others, but every Puyo Puyo was good. What’s more unusual: Puyo Puyo sequels never rendered their predecessors obsolete. Puyo Puyo~n’s (1999) character-specific attacks are fun. So are Puyo Puyo Sun (1996) unique sun pieces. So is working doubly hard to eliminate Puyo Puyo Tsu’s (1994) lead pieces. And so is delaying retaliation with Pochi to Nyaa’s (2003) detonators.

This is the way detonators work: matching colored pieces does not immediately clear them. Instead, clearing pieces requires a piece and like-colored detonator. You can change your piece to a detonator with a button press as it's falling. That’s it.

 

What does the addition of detonators accomplish? It heightens tension. Executing a combo built around a detonator (or two, or three) is potentially devastating to your opponent, but spending too much time orchestrating a combo leaves you at risk of having your detonators buried in “garbage,” defusing your combo and leaving you with a pile of problematic pieces to deal with. Unprecedented combo potential and the risk of its pursuit intensify the tension between risk and reward, between Do I and Don’t I. This is the kind of stuff great designers think about. This is the kind of stuff great designers think about you thinking about.

I write about Pochi to Nyaa not only because it’s a great puzzle game with a charming aesthetic and a challenging single player mode, but because it’s a great sequel. Sequels are too often designed by addition: more maps, more guns, more characters. This approach is boring and wasteful. Once Super Street Fighter IV was released, there was no reason to revisit Street Fighter IV. Pochi to Nyaa doesn’t offer anything more than the game that came before it, Puyo Puyo~n. It offers something different; something new. Compile was masterful in designing by reduction and by transmogrification. I am sad to see them go, but am happy they left with dignity. Pochi to Nyaa is their design philosophy, their creativity, their sense of whimsy, and their Teddy Ballgame last-career-at-bat homerun.

Highest Recommendation

Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima (2003, PS2, Gamecube)

             

Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima, released as Adventure Island in 1988 for the US NES after a 1986 arcade release (more or less) as Wonderboy, is your original “runner” game. It’s the Ur-Jetpac Joyride; the proto-Canabalt. Super Mario Bros. (1985) scrolled from left to right while obstacles moved from right to left first and Pitfall!! (1982) Pac Land (1983) before that, but I trace the runner genre’s Adam to the later Takahashi because it emphasizes something Mario and Pac Land do not: locomotion.

In Pac Land and Super Mario, there are two ways for the player to lose a life: he can succumb to an obstacle such a right-to-left scrolling enemy or drop into a pit. The Pitfall!! player loses score the same way. The other means by which a player can lose in any of these three games is by the timer reaching “0.” In Takahashi, a player loses a life for falling down a pit, but more interesting is what happens when he hits one of the games innumerable rock obstacles. He does not lose a life and does not lose score. He loses time.

Health and time are conflated in Takahashi. Colliding with a rock removes several timer bars. Collecting fruit replenishes several bars. It also ticks away on its own, and it ticks fast. It depletes so fast, in fact, that some of the game’s later stages require a foot on the gas at all times to clear. Playing Takahashi well means practically never stopping. To watch a skilled Takahashi player is to watch him turn it into Temple Run, a game where you can literally never stop.

Hudson Soft’s programmers recognized the urgency their health/timer bar instilled. Their level design anticipates the player who is always holding forward; at no point does Takahashi require you stop and wait for a platform or backtrack. The controls do as well. They know you want to run, so they do not require the holding of a button to do it. Instead, Higgins naturally builds momentum the longer he is kept in motion. The skateboard power-up pushes him forward even faster and on his own. Automatic movement defines the runner game. This is one of the earliest instances of it.

The Takahashi remake is more faithful than PC Genjin’s because of the original’s meticulous design. Shifting the placement of an enemy by a space or two could potentially collapse the design of the entire level if there were no way for the always-holding-right player to avoid it. In my PC Genjin post, I praised it for remaining within the spirit of the original without replicating it. I would argue that Takahashi, in spite of being a nearly pixel-for-pixel recreation of the original, is in the spirit of the original as well: painstaking obstacle placement is part of Takahashi’s spirit. Hudson, especially latter-day Hudson, had a knack for acknowledging what made their games great. It’s not by accident that making the longest jump possible while on the skateboard in Takahashi is nearly always safe. It’s the result of adroit design and rigorous testing. Like so many great games and movies, Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima is only making it look easy.

 Highest Recommendation

PC Genjin (2003, PS2, Gamecube)

Hudson Soft is dead. Long live Hudson Soft.

Here is a good-but-not-great game in the form of a ten-year-old remake of a twenty-year-old Mario competitor which was never, as much as I love it, as good as Mario. Why do I care? Why should you?

Consider the method by which long out-of-print games are brought to contemporary platforms today. Porting is tricky business, and I do not intend to undermine the efforts of AM2’s nearly flawless reproductions of classic Sega games (Wonderboy, Streets of Rage, Space Harrier) to XBOX, PS3, and 3DS. But they’re exactly that: reproductions, exactly the same at best and pallid imitations at worst. More recent 3D games are generally upscaled, smoothed out a little, and packaged and put on the shelves. While this can potentially make the old new again—ICO and Shadow of the Colossus finally play as intended at 60FPS—most games look just as dated as their sources or worse. Rendering decade-old assets in 1080p can accentuates flaws. Ten yeas ago, developers hid graphical blemishes in the gaps between a 480i/p display's lines. The low resolution had a way of smudging the images to conceal aesthetic blemishes. As so many newscasters would find out, hi-def gave blemishes no place to hide. Playing Devil May Cry 3 on a PS2 connected to a 480p CRT television is looking at your reflection in the soft lighting of your bathroom after you shower. Playing Devil May Cry 3 HD on a PS3 connected to a 1080p flatscreen is looking at your reflection in the blazing fluorescence of an Exxon Mobil restroom at 3AM. The only way around this is to overhaul the assets; to rebuild the game from the ground up. That takes time, money, and creativity, a combination few developers have.

 

And that’s exactly what Hudson did with their PC Genjin remake. The 2D sprites are now colorful, fluidly animated 3D models. The general shape of the levels is intact, but with secrets added to the original’s barren stretches and with some of its padding extricated. It’s a work by fans. It’s a work of love.

Hudson bestowed three other games with paeans in their Hudson Select line: Cubic Lode Runner, Star Soldier, and Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima (Adventure Island). Each has a distinctive look: PC Genjin’s backgrounds resemble the paper cutouts of an elementary school diorama (Little Big Planet would later perfect this aesthetic) and Takahashi's renders are Claymation inspired.

PC Genjin is still about a half hour too long. The difficulty of its bosses is disproportionate to that of its levels, and the enemies, while cute, cloy. But that it wasn’t a great game to begin with makes the remake even more interesting, because if it were perfect in the first place, what would a remake offer?

 

The Adventures of Cookie & Cream, cont.

There is a moment, midway through one of Cookie & Cream’s Music World stages, where a seven-key piano blocks the paths of both characters. When Cookie presses a button, a short melody of four notes is played. To proceed, the player must replicate the melody on the piano.

The challenge is threefold. Even if a visual cue denoted which keys must be pressed in which order, hopping from key to key without accidentally brushing an extra note would be difficult. The second layer of challenge is the Simon-esque memory requirement. The order of the keys must be instantly committed to memory to replicate it; only one attempt may be made. A mistake brings about a new melody, eliminating the progression through brute force trial-and-error and necessitating immediate memorization. The last layer is pitch recognition. The player must be able to transliterate the audial notes to the piano keys to which they correspond and replicate the melody perfectly.

The synthesis of three obstacles symptomizes an unwillingness to settle and a brave readiness to stray from generic conventions (a music puzzle in a platforming game) that is defines Cookie & Cream’s epoch and is too rare today. The only skill required to advance through most contemporary games is the ability to move a reticle over a moving target. To paraphrase Yahtzee of The Escapist, a first-person shooter is a point-and-click puzzle game where the solution to every puzzle is "Use Gun On Dude." The other end of the gaming spectrum, cell phone games, is worse: progression there is often gated behind pay walls.

I find myself playing games less and less often. I usually chalk this up to simply outrgrowing them. But after revisiting Cookie & Cream this weekend, I think it’s games that are outgrowing me. Their interests keep getting older and more “mature,” a games industry euphemism for “violent and sexualized,” and I'm still here, skipping cartoon rabbits over giant pianos.