Category Archives: Nintendo

Hairy Palms

The refrain about how tacky and misrepresentative the Spike VGAs are is so prevalent now that I can’t believe anyone still asks me what I think of the VGAs or did I watch them or blah blah blah. But miraculously people still ask; I haven’t responded in a structured way since 2008, so it’s a good thing Jeff Green played appropriate complainant this year, saying what I would have said if I felt it’d make a difference.

We spend a lot of time saying “video games aren’t like this” and yet the stereotypes persist. Maybe video games are like this, and we’re a vocal minority. Isn’t that a terrifying thought?

This fascinating New Yorker profile of Shigeru Miyamoto may not tell you anything much you fans don’t already know about Nintendo’s heart and soul, but the tone and word choices are illuminating: The article illustrates the bizarre paradox between the seriousness of people who make games and the way they’re generally perceived by others, with the product an inscrutable plain lying in between.

For the most part, the piece refrains from judgment, but does contain one particularly damning quote: “The best analogue for combined disreputability and ubiquity may be masturbation.” And if you don’t know where the author gets that, and if your instinct is to splutter and argue and ignore what elements of our business and culture might have led him to that conclusion, you’re in denial.

So what’s the big deal about the Spike VGAs and aren’t I excited about the marketing-coordinated super-reveals of pre-rendered cinematic trailers of games that are at least a year away and aren’t I so happy we’re getting any mainstream celebration at all? Tch.

It’s a marketing blitz; it’s an advertising show. But can’t we sell the scale, scope and excitement of new video games without being like this about it?

Also, to throw levity on the concept of Being A Total Douche, reflection on this parody “GDC commercial” that Mega64 did last year might be in order. It never stops being funny.

Finally, for other, bigger disappointments in the game industry’s year, check out my colleague’s retrospective today. On Friday, I contributed a piece on 2010′s biggest surprises, and the picture is very cute.

What Does A Gamer Look Like?


If you are a Brooklynite or you know one, the perception that Manhattan is like ugh so fucking far, impossible miles comprised of inconvenient steps, is familiar to you. Although Brooklyn is as much a part of New York City as any other borough (holding my tongue against the Staten Island jab, because they’ve had enough) , when discussing Manhattan destinations, we talk about “going to the city” as if it were a cross-country road trip.

In fact, it’s just a matter of train stops. It’s not that big a deal. But when I had to go “to the city” yesterday to see the U.S. launch of Dragon Quest IX at the Nintendo World Store, I fully-loaded my iPhone with brand-new music and brought my PSP (YES! I GOT ONE, present from a lovely friend) for the train ride, and in case I had to wait in line when I got there.

Incidentally, what is the etiquette around playing a PSP at a Nintendo launch event? What if you’re using it to re-play Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII at the launch of a Square Enix game? These are the things I wonder about, friends.

As it turned out, I did not have to wait in line, but I did play a fair bit on the train — the early train sequences in Midgar, incidentally. Semi-surreal; Cloud and his AVALANCHE rebel cohort trying to evade train security so they can take the railway to their scheduled Reactor bombing, while all around me the subway interior is decorated with lectures about “if you see something, say something.” The ride was punctuated by voice-over drones about “suspicious packages.”

You read the ‘Hey Baby’ post, and how unfortunately acclimated girls from my neighborhood get to long stares, unwelcome conversation-starters like “I like your bounce, Mami,” and generally aggressive strange men. So when the guy I sit down next to on the train begins staring at me and grinning stupidly, I simply ignore it, put my headphones on, and keep playing FFVII.

He goes on staring and nodding at me the whole time, this guy in ginormous baggy pants, askew ballcap, sporting a huge diamond stud — like, not my type. By the time we arrive at the station, I take off my headphones and begin putting them away, and glance to make sure this creeper isn’t planning to follow me or something.

But he goes, “Hey, Final Fantasy VII. Old school, that’s cool!”
I was floored and embarrassed, and all I could say was something to the effect of “yeah, it’s pretty essential, right?”

And he goes, “I was surprised. You don’t really look like a gamer.”

Ha. Not for one minute would I have guessed it was my PSP he was staring at, either. Damn, did I feel dumb.

I mean, here I’ve been writing for years about “broadening audiences” and “cultural diversity” and things like that, and yet I suppose I still had in my head an idea about “what a gamer looks like” (those dudes wearing turbans and capes and Slime costumes at the DQIX event, for example).

Do you?

I once wrote this article about the innate desire “we” all have, as part of a culture that’s been historically fairly small, fairly intense and fairly marginalized, to “recognize” one another in the public, offline space. When I wrote it, it was 2007; I lived in Manhattan. I felt very much like the only gamer in the world (if you’ve seen the piece I did for Kill Screen Issue 0, you might recognize some sentiments in common).

To be quite honest, I guess it feels different now, even a few years later. I went to an internet cafe in Williamsburg to print some stuff out and they had a bunch of TW@-branded mousepads there (although, to be fair, the clerk told me I was the only person who’d ever noted the reference). Many weekends I join friends from the local Silent Barn community space in playing and promoting Babycastles, the indie arcade they’ve got going on in the basement (I recently had the privilege of playing Messhof’s Nidhogg with a bunch of my friends whose usual purview is playing music). People at my local hangouts tell me my job is cool. I know one bartender with a Triforce on his arm, and another bartender with a Buster Sword on his calf — and that’s just at one restaurant.

We are proliferating. We should adjust our expectations of strangers.

Bonus material: While we’re on really old articles of mine, one about people who got way too into Final Fantasy VII.

Double bonus: I loaded my iPhone with new music, yes — if you follow me on Twitter you’ve been picking up the mixtapes I regularly post, but if you missed it, here’s volume 2 of my ‘summertime mix’. Due to the limitations of free hosting, it’ll only be available for a limited time, so if you’re remotely curious, grab it now and give an ear to these fantastic artists.

Triple bonus ding-ding-ding: Guess what else I did at the DQIX event? I interviewed Yuji Horii. You’ll get to read that ASAP.
[Slimes on the cobbles of Rockefeller Plaza]


[Today’s Good Song: ‘I’ll Follow You‘, White Fence (via noise narcs)]

Evolution, Revolution

So while I’m putting things into moving boxes and wondering how Zelda will tolerate taking a long subway trip inside a duffel bag thing that’s made to carry cats, you should read Stephen Totilo’s chat with Miyamoto. I can’t say enough good things about the work Totilo does, especially as far as his interviews, which I tend to find the only ones worth reading out there. I especially like the way (you’ll see if you read the piece) Totilo presses Miyamoto on a question he didn’t exactly answer, which I dunno if many game journos would have the balls to do. Most interviews game journos do with him read like holy shit, it’s Miyamoto, and I’m quite sure I wouldn’t do any better.

I did squeeze in an interview of my own lately, though. No, not with Miyamoto. You may or may not have noticed I’ve had survival horror on the brain all month, writing about the state of the genre, reviewing and discussing Silent Hill, chatting with Mitch and Michael on the Brainy Gamer podcast recently — and most of that discussion ends up coming down to the combat issue. How much to have, how capable the player should be, whether there are better ways to create a horror mood than by attacking the player.

I’ve never played Frictional Games’ Penumbra titles, which take the minimized-combat approach (since the nightmares of my brand-new PC continue, it’s not hard to see how I’d rather put nails in my eyes than rely on computers for large games) — but real survival-horror buffs always bring them up to me, and the games enjoy quite a loyal following online, from what I’ve always seen. I had a chance to interview the devs about their approach to the genre — frightening without fighting — and the new game they’re working on now.

While we were talking Miyamoto walked in because he just wanted to hang out with us but he didn’t really say anything interesting so I just left that part out.

…Yep. But anyway, back to Totilo’s article. Was talking with him about it after it ran — mostly about Miyamoto’s most interesting question (he turned the tables and started interviewing the interviewer!): What’s innovative about today’s hardcore titles?

Just that question alone, and the things he says about his recent projects do provide a bit of insight into how he’s seeing this casual-hardcore spectrum — in other words, not as a spectrum. To Nintendo there’s “different” and “not different.” And I’m sort of torn about it; on one hand, you could call Nintendo “different” or “innovative” because its games are distinctly different than anything that’s available on the other platforms, arguably with a more consistent vision and a stronger identity than any other developer’s first-party stuff.

But that consistent vision and strong identity has been built by iterating very subtly, not by taking particularly high-risk moves. I’ve admired Nintendo most for the fact that, as technology evolves, they always manage to produce a franchise title that leverages the new tech while still keeping, say, Mario’s literal formula straight. What impresses me most about Galaxy is that it’s exactly what Super Mario Bros would be on spheres; it’s a Super Mario Bros. made precisely for the Wii era, taking the “words” from the 1980′s, so to speak, and translating them verbatim into the newer, more complex language of the new century’s first decade.

But it’s still the same words in newer language — that’s evolution, not revolution; it’s iteration, not innovation.

I’m sure, though, when we look back in twenty years at Nintendo’s innovations, it’ll be things like motion controls and wide-appeal Wii Fit-style things that are more “products” than “video games” for which they’re remembered. Point is, what I took away from Totilo’s Miyamoto interview is that he simply doesn’t see “casual” versus “hardcore” the way we do.

Which would probably explain a lot, huh?