Best Games - Alpha Centauri I used to keep my copy of Alpha Centauri stowed safely in the bottom drawer of an end table, deep in the back, nestled under old papers and envelopes. This was for my own protection. Now it sits in the bottom of a box, stored under the stairs in the basement. This is also for my protection. Alpha Centauri is almost guaranteed to make me sick.

I’ve been using a new digital art tool called Mischief. I sent a tweet a few days ago that said “I’m gonna be real hyperbolic and say that I think this is as significant a technology as the textured polygon.” I might have been more accurate to compare it to subdivision surfaces, or adaptive tessellation, but the implication is similar. 

I don’t remember a fear of the water. There may have been a time that I wouldn’t blow bubbles, wouldn’t dunk my head, wouldn’t open my eyes for fear of that chlorine sting. It seems perfectly reasonable, but I don’t remember that. During a stint in the 90’s, I had to imagine, every day, what that fear feels like. 

Best Games - Megamania - through deep black empty - drifting between stars and void - space dice tumble down

I think I can safely say that the one movie I have seen more than any other, is Aliens. The first time I saw it was in my hometown theatre. I was probably too young to go to an R rated movie unaccompanied by an adult, but they didn’t tend to care much about that in the 80’s. I left the theater fascinated. Years later I would to watch a poor second or third generation VHS copy of Aliens almost daily. I knew every line of dialog. I could close my eyes and replay large chunks of the movie, shot for shot, in my memory. I would pause the tape, adjust the tracking to reduce the squiggly lines, and then sit with sketch paper on a TV tray for hours, trying to approximate my favorite frames. Or half frames. This was a bad VHS tape, after all. 

Stores The new consoles are almost here and the entire gaming press is wringing hands and wagging tongues. There is a lot of talk about what the hardware can or can’t do, different online strategies, and social networking hooks. I think it will all come down to the stores.

Ouya update Well holy flying weasel balls! The Ouya is actually working! I can turn it on and have both picture and sound. Like, both, at the same time. On the same old ass TV. How can this possibly be? 

Best Games - Bubble Bobble Now, if you don’t think this song is the greatest song ever, I will fight you. That’s no lie. - Ron Burgundy Unless someone can prove otherwise, I think that the music for bubble Bobble may just be the happiest music ever written. 

Ouya update The Ouya still sits there, weeks later. A silver cubic gargoyle. A totem to my lack of foresight. I’ll at that son of a bitch with both picture and sound one day. I may have to buy a new TV to do it.

For a young medium, video games sure do soak in the nostalgia. Retro games, pixel art, 8-bit sound. These are badges of honour for the long time gamer. We were there when it was all new man. Games were better then. Fresh. Exciting. Everything now is just a rehash of a rehash. No one has any new ideas. 

Can you imagine Star Wars without John Williams score? Think about it. Pretty bleak hey. You end up with a serviceable plot slavishly cribbed from samurai films, full of B movie nonsense dialog. The set, character, and visual effects design would still be incredible, but it’s filmed and presented in such a plain, workmanlike manner that it’s difficult to take much notice. The one element of Star Wars episode IV that sets it apart from other films of it’s genre, budget, and era is the music.

Best Games - Trio the Punch - never forget me Some people go a long way for a joke. The makers of Trio the Punch went a long, long way for a joke that only they would get. Then they packed that joke up in an arcade cabinet. People could pay to play that joke and almost no one would find it funny. Trio the Punch is the Andy Kaufman of arcade games. 

So there are a couple new consoles coming out in a few months. I think I’ll buy a new video card instead. I was never really much of a console gamer. That statement typically stirs up visions of PC gaming snobbery. Bearded dudes bragging about dual SLI rigs that push frame rates in the hundreds, while they play era accurate flight sims and grognard only, hex based, strategy wargames. That’s not me at all. I was the kid who desperately wanted to play any and every game, on every platform. It just happened that the platforms I had were computers. Usually strange ones that few people had heard of. Every time I would go over to some kids place, and they had a NES sitting under the tv collecting dust because they had grown bored with, I don’t know, magical wonder and awe I suppose, it would make my soul hurt. It might as well have been a puppy, and their whole family was making a conscious effort to ignore it. I would make trips to stores specifically to play the display model of whatever machine they currently had running. Multiple times a day. 

Just a video today. I sketched up a helmet concept for the game and then modelled it. It took just under an hour. I call the helmet “the goonicron”

Because, video games. That’s the answer I give to my kids when they ask me how any of these weird, inconsistent events could have just occurred on the screen in front of them. Why does this thing start on fire and this thing not? Why did that character just warp through the geometry of the floor? Why can I fly in this game but not in this other one?