Blog? What Blog?
Due to laziness, forgetfulness, and, well, a complete lack of planning ahead, none of us bothered to post anything here between last episode and now, sorry 'bout that. But have we got a doozy for you this time. On Episode #113, all three of us were again back in the studio to talk about racism and discrimination in gaming. Not just inside of videogames, but also in a broader scope, such as companies using "girl gamers" as promotion, and even the term "gamer" itself being possibly out of place. I highly recommend you give it a listen. And no, not just because it's my job to say that...Next time on the show, after we've all regrown any digits lost on July 4th, and (hopefully) after surviving the iPhone 3G launch par-tay, we'll be hosting what should be another awesome episode, Videogame Busts. This will be everything that was meant to be... that was never meant to be. So get ready to curl up in front your computer with all of your buddies, your Panasonic Q, Phantom Console, ROB, Dreamcast (don't hate me), Sidetalkin' N-Gage, N64DD, and Playstation Home (yeah, I went there) for another to-be-excellent episode of Inside The Console.
In the mean time, be sure to send us your favorite videogame busts, especially any that you might have owned or possibly still do. What do you think about busts, do you feel bad for certain things that never made it, or do you think that some things just deserve to not make it? Let us know!
Also, as promised on Episode #113, be sure to read the comments on this post for Timothy Sundberg's novel on his favorite bosses, as well as two excellent emails from Joshua that we just didn't have time to rea on the air.
Until next time, game on!
-Phil
5 Comments On This Post:
Timothy Sundberg's Boss Battles Email:
Monday, June 30, 2008 at 2:16:00 PM CDTIn videogames, there are few concepts as eternal and long-lasting as the boss battle. The idea of fighting and defeating a boss has been around since the days of the Atari and still exists today. There are many kinds of boss battles, some good, some bad, some downright weird, but, they are an integral part of what makes videogames what they are. This essay will go into depth about my experiences with boss battles; so, let the pointless rambling begin!
There are many different types of boss battles, and what type of boss it is will usually be dictated by the genre of the game that is being played. For example, 2-D side scrolling games often have large screen filling bosses that follow certain attack patterns while fighting games often have way overpowered and cheap characters as their bosses. Some series of games and individual games in particular have notable bosses for some reason or another like how the Metal Gear Solid series is known for its eccentric character bosses. What bosses I will talk about are the ones I have fought, beaten, and remember well, so I won't have the widest scope here, but I hope it will be enough.
First off, one series in particular that sticks out in my mind for its bosses are the Metroid Prime games. I could list every boss through one, two, and three in order and how to beat them but, in the interests of time and length, I'll just list the standouts. In Metroid Prime, there were definitely some good bosses in the proud tradition of the Metroid series but there were some that stood above the rest; my favorite bosses in the first Metroid Prime were: Meta Ridley, the Omega Pirate, Metroid Prime itself, the Parasite Queen, and Flaahgra. All of these bosses were fun in their own way and one of the reasons why I liked them so much was the fact that they were so different from each other with the two part final battle with Metroid Prime itself being especially fun. In Metroid Prime 2, I found the bosses to be a bit harder, so for me, a bit better; my favorites from that game were the Boost Guardian, the (in)famous Spider guardian who was more of a puzzle than a boss, Quadraxis, Dark Samus, and the Emperor Ing. The bosses in MP2 were not as varied as the ones in the first one, but I felt overall they were better. Metroid Prime 3, which is very fresh in my memory, had some pretty good boss fights that were very, very easy on Normal but got a lot harder on Veteran and Hypermode with Mogenar being the biggest showing of that; some other favorites were Meta Ridley, the aforementioned Mogenar, Gandrayda, and the final showdown with Dark Samus/Aurora Unit 313. The bosses in Metroid Prime 3 were in general pretty good, but the total freedom of the controls made some of the fights very easy, a mark down in my book. The 2-D Metroid Games I've played also had some pretty good boss fights, but I feel with the transition to 3-D it really freed up what the bosses could do thus allowing for great creativity with the bosses.
Another flagship Nintendo series that has some pretty good boss fights is the Legend of Zelda series which has always had some pretty good bosses and I feel that this is partly because on the fact that the framework of an action-adventure game is well suited to boss fights. One thing about Zelda bosses is that they will usually be vulnerable to the weapon or item you picked up in that particular dungeon. Ganon/Ganondorf is usually the last boss of a Zelda game and tends to put up quite a fight and there is usually some involvement of Light Arrows in his defeat. One more thing about Zelda bosses is that they will always drop a heart container after you defeat them. I didn't really play Zelda for the bosses so I don't have a whole lot of fights that are really worth mentioning.
Some genres, like driving for instance, don't really lend themselves well to the boss battle format and if there is a boss in a sim/sports game it will usually just be someone with really bumped up AI. One type of game that is infamous for its bosses would be the fighting game genre. These bosses are almost always way overpowered and incredibly cheap characters with lots of health and I feel that they really don't belong there because I view the genre as purely skill based, whoever is better at the game wins, not who picks the best character.
First person shooters can have bosses if it's a more “arcadey” game like Serious Sam, but with the more realistic ones, you don't see outright bosses much. Sometimes large vehicles can serve as bosses to overcome but they really aren't singular boss characters. You don't see bosses in puzzle games very often, and only when it's something head-to-head like Meteos. The thing about puzzle game bosses is that it is really is about how dumb, not how smart you make them; as a computer, they could completely crush you instantly because they could easily figure the best solution to the puzzle in a matter of seconds.
Old school shooters in the vein of Gradius and other such games also have a fine pedigree for boss battles, with their play philosophies of keep shooting and don't get hit fitting well into the style of boss battle play. Some shoot em' ups (shumps for short) are almost exclusively boss battles. RPG bosses are sort of in the same vein, it is very easy to give an enemy a lot of health and damaging attacks and call it a boss. Both of these genres are famed for their respective boss battles and interestingly, a lot from both genres come from Japan. It seems that Japanese games tend to have more of a focus on bosses than Western ones.
Now we get to the famous Mario series bosses, or as I like to call them, not really bosses at all. Although the Mario Series has had “bosses” most of the time they take three hits or you just avoid them until you hit a switch/they kill themselves. As much fun as they can be, Mario games are not really about bosses and haven't been from the beginning. For example, in Super Mario Galaxy, if you know what you're doing almost all of the bosses can be beat in less than a minute (last Bowser fight excluded) so, even though the game call them bosses I just think of them as particularly tough enemies, not bosses.
One game that I have recently played that focused heavily on boss battles was the game No More Heroes. Really the highlight of the game was the wacky and inventive boss battles against the eccentric characters that serve as the ranked assassins above you. They all had some weird exposition before the fight started with cut scenes before and after being very Quentin Tarantino-like. Not only are the fights fun to watch but they are fun to play with each boss having a pattern that hey follow and animations that will clue you in on what they'll do next. The final, final boss (no spoilers) that you fight when you get all of the beam katanas is especially satisfying.
I feel that this rambling of mine has gone on long enough so I'll close this out. All-in-all, I feel that boss battles are an important part of the past, present, and future of video games and deserve to be honored and remembered.
Joshua Email Riker:
Monday, June 30, 2008 at 2:17:00 PM CDTOK, as promised, my response to your most recent episode. Yes, Yes, I'm aware that I'm sending this the day you're slated to release a new episode. I figure that limits your ability to read anything I write, "on the air". Having said that, though, I'm sure you'll fix that after all. I will say that I missed the Alcoholic Drink of the Week, I would have been seriously trashed by the end of that episode, and as John will tell you, I like being trashed.
Now, onto the Guitar Hero v. Rock Band commentary. I have to say that I hadn't been reading up on recent developments for Guitar Hero, because I was just not interested after my disappointment with GH3. As has been pointed out, I listen to the podcast as I walk to work on Monday Morning. That morning, when you mentioned that GH:World Tour would ship with a drum kit, I sort of stared into space, and stopped for a moment. WHAT?! Are you kidding me? That's officially no longer Guitar Hero. At that point it should just be called Rock Band v.2.0 -- Honestly, I can understand wanting to compete with the present generation of "Music Games" but, I would rather see further development of the guitar itself.
As has been brought up in the past, the Wii guitar ... sucks. You seriously have to fling that thing half-way across the room to make it respond to anything. I'd love to see that fixed before I see a drum kit shipped standard with GH:WT.
As far as the future of "Music Games" are concerned, I can only see one logical advancement. We have our Rhythm Games (Donkey Konga, Drum Star, etc ), Dancing Games (Dance Dance Revolution, Dance Mania, Pump It Up etc...), Singing Games, (Singstar, ad nauseum; Karaoke Revolution), Guitar Games (Guitar Superstar, Guitar Hero), and Collective Games (Rock Band & (now) Guitar Hero). Rock Band mixes the Drumming, Guitar, and Singing into one game, and the same with the new Guitar Hero. The only further addition you can possibly make is to add in dancing to the game. Next thing you know, we'll have Guitar Hero:Rock Band, Boyband Edition.
Just imagine it, little Asian kids dancing on a pad, while some white kid sings, and somebody else is on the drums. God forbid it ever get to that point, because that's when I just give up on the musical video game genre altogether. I am not looking forward to John and Jess calling me up to invite me over to dance to Spice Up Your Life, while Jess plays Guitar, John keeps the beat, and Stephen fails miserably at matching pitch. Yo no me gusta Guitar, Dance Dance, Rock Revolution Band. *shudder*
I'm rambling though, what's important is that I think Guitar Hero could have chosen a different route and still kept their core demographic without blatantly copy-pasting their 'competition'. (And let's not even touch on the Harmoix v. Activision intellectual property BS)
Looking Forward to the Upcoming Episode, my walk to work is getting lamer every day.
Joshua Email Number Two:
Monday, June 30, 2008 at 2:17:00 PM CDTFirst thing's first. Thank you for using DarkMateria's Picard Song for the intro. That made my day (∫10^13 2xdx) times better. Seriously, I think I had a little bit of a mini-gasm. Not so much in my pants, but more in my left shoulder somewhere. I will not try to win this week's trivia question, especially since I already proved my ultimate geekitude previously, on that note though, nobody ever answered John's trivia from a month ago, and as such, I decided to ask the geeky girl down the hall, who sells me Ritalin™ and plays Oblivion Obsessive-Compulsively, about the 100% chameleon suit. According to her, the best way to guarantee a 100% chameleon suit is to enchant five pieces of armour yourself. She then went on, ad infinitum, about something involving a spell, and some randomly collected stuff, and brief durations, and something about cheese -- I pretty much stopped paying attention when I realized that she was geekier than John and Stephen mixed together.
As far as plaigarism in gaming is concerned, South Park said it best, "Simpsons did it!" Good luck finding an original story in ANY video game, book, movie, television show, anything. Show me a story that the Simpsons hasn't done, and I'll show you a story Star Trek already did. You can start writing nonsense on a page, and eventually, somebody else, due to the finite nature of words and visual stimulus, will come up with the EXACT same thing. No matter what the story is, somebody has done it.
(RE: Ninja Gaiden and concept ownership and other randomness)
From a code standpoint, I've worked for a game company. When I joined Skotos, as a volunteer, several years ago, I signed SEVERAL pages of contracts. One of the very first things I signed, after the non-disclosure Agreement, was the rules to intellectual property, and participatory content.
"By submitting any Participatory Content, you represent and warrant that you are the owner of or have the right to post your Participatory Content, and your Participatory Content does not infringe the rights of any third party. You hereby grant Skotos a perpetual, irrevocable, sub-licensable, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, distribute, publicly display and perform any and all of your Participatory Content in all media now known or later developed. You, and not Skotos, are entirely responsible for all of your Participatory Content that you upload, post, email or otherwise transmit via the Site, Services or Games."
Essentially, anything I coded, any code that I wrote, all of it was free to be abused, bastardized, and mangled by Skotos as they saw fit. Likewise, there were passages that limited my rights to ideas, plotlines, and skillsets that I developed while I worked for the company. Furthermore, my contracts strictly limited my rights to use ANYTHING I learned, while working for skotos, for another gaming company. Let me tell you, they took full advantage of these few lines of blah-blah. I can't tell you how many times I rewrote some ridiculously complicated section of code, and then found out three days later that my rewritten code had been slaved to several dozen other scripts all over skotos.
The moral of this story though, is that this is not abnormal. This is the norm. Every company that develops code for games has similar clauses wirtten into their employment contracts. If you develop something while working for a company, that company owns it, and all the rights to it. They pay/paid you to come up with those ideas. Look at it this way, I pay a chef to make me a pancake. That chef, no matter how totally awesome, can't claim continue ownership of that pancake once it's been bought and paid for. I can do whatever I want to that pancake at that point. I can smother it in ketchup and step on it with a stiletto heel, it's mine at that point.
When it comes down to it, if somebody builds a better mousetrap, it's become free game. Anybody can grab it and incorporate it into their game, system, movie, show, etc-- The important part though is the INCORPORATION, and ATTRIBUTION. Take a piece, and incorporate it into your game. Don't steal the whole fucking thing and just do a copy-paste (that's gay!), and at the end, say, O BTW, This particular system is totally stolen from the land of milk and honey.
(Side Note: I was actually looking at the Exact Same Religion Website. http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/comic_collage.html {lol, The wonder twins are LDS!})
I'm going to stop for now, but know that I have more to say, but I'm starting to ramble and need to recollect my thoughts. We'll wrap up this portion by saying, "If you can do it better, then do it. If somebody does it better than you, sign them onto your dev team."
Just wanted to say that as a still current (going to finish??) Math major..... It takes a special person to make a math sex joke. The answer to the question guys is 69. We get that by taking the antiderv.(integral) of 2xdx which is x^2 + a constant. Therefore from 10 to 13 we get 169-100= 69. Q.E.D =)
Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 8:15:00 PM CDTREMEMBER THE FOLLOWING:
ln(e)=????
THAT'S RIGHT...... NUMBER ONE. =)
JIM
Where is Ep.114?
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 3:36:00 PM CDTPost a Comment