finally... some nes t-shirts!

It's clear that I'm not going to get everything posted I had hoped to this semester, but I at least wanted to get those t-shirts I promised (that have been sitting on my laptop's desktop for months now) up on this site--even if my current crazy week of finals is going to dictate that they be posted without commentary for the moment.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy making your own meaning from them.  Who knows--maybe I'll get back to this thing next semester...?

In the meantime--happy gaming to all!

click to enlarge to read the small print.  a cultural critique of Mario, perhaps?

there's The Beatles vs. The Stones, Mac vs. PC, and Mario vs. Sonic

just one last boss to conquer...

yup.

gotta love the combo of Mario + Ghostbusters nostalgia

combo of Mario + this famous album cover

little sisters do too

how to be invisible in the land of Mario

it's the Konami Code!

mario in contemporary art

I came across this article called Videogame appropriation in contemporary art: Super Mario.  It goes through some contemporary artists' takes on certain parts of the Mario games--check it out.

I find it fascinating to see which elements of the older Mario games are preserved as what we now know to be iconic Mario, and which elements no one really remembers; various nostalgic takes on those games seem like a decent indicator of the elements that survive.  More on that later.

And just because I want to post this picture, here's my vote for coolest exhibit in that article:

My childhood dream bedroom

honey, can you get the extra life down for me?

Paper due this week, so this post will be a crappy cell camera photo of my kitchen:

And this is my 1up:

It's kept just above my reach, as 1up's always seem to be.

tricksy trash

For those who haven't played, there's a phenomenon in Dr. Mario's two-player mode that goes something like this:  If Player X manages to clear more than one row or column with just one pill (whose movement that player can control), Player Y is punished for X's awesomeness with two half pills (whose movement that player cannot control) that inevitably float down in precisely the most inconvenient spot of Y's screen:

Half pills falling on an unfortunate Player 2

I always took for granted that these were called "tricks."  I was born knowing that, same way I've always known that the A button jumps, that a blinking green screen means you take the game out and reset it in the console, and that (most famously) if a game continues to malfunction, blowing the dust out of cartridge usually fixes it.

Of course, all of this must have been taught and learned at some point, but I don't remember how we passed those pieces of information around.  I guess there were gaming books and magazines, but I didn't know anyone who read them.  So how did we all just know this stuff?

If the answer is that we learned by talking to our friends--and I suspect that especially in the pre-internet NES days, it might be--rethinking the stereotype of the antisocial gamer might be in order.  But back to Dr. Mario tricks.

Apparently, someone in my circle growing up invented that term; I just didn't realize it until I played the game with someone outside of that circle years later.  When my Boston running/Dr. Mario buddy referenced "trash," I had no idea what she was talking about--and vice versa when I attempted to allude to "tricks."

Out of curiosity as to what the Officially Licensed Mario Term actually is, I discovered and consulted this site, where some nice person has posted PDF versions of the original booklets included with old Mario games.

Here's an extract--the only part of the official Dr. Mario game booklet that says anything about the concept of tricks or trash:

 

Apparently, neither of us were using the official term.  There isn't one!

coolest halftime show ever

It's Friday, so everyone should just watch this awesome video:



Stolen from this site, here's a key to the games represented, in order:

Pong
Tetris
Mortal Kombat
Pokemon
The Legend of Zelda
Mario Bros. Theme
Mario Underground Theme
Super Mario Theme
Mario Water Theme
Mario...something...Theme

logic behind the insanity that is mario 2

The NES Mario games are a bit like what I've been hearing about the Transformer movies.  The first one was great; the third one was great; and the second one... well, maybe we should just forget that ever happened?

Mario 2 is bizarre.

There's no Bowser, no Koopas, no coin boxes.  And as I'm sure every Mario 1 player learned the hard way, there's no jumping on enemies to kill them.  You have to throw vegetables at them.

Vegetables.  Mario the plumber throws vegetables.

There's a reason for this insanity.

Apparently, the game originally intended to be released as the second Mario looked very much like the first... only it was more difficult.  Too difficult, in fact:

Adding to frustrations, some mushrooms were poisonous, some warps sent you back instead of forward, and inclement weather regularly kicked Mario off-course in mid-chasm jump. [...]  Nintendo decided Mario 2's difficulty level exceeded North American skill level.

Nintendo's solution was drastic:  Scrap the game they designed to be Mario 2 and rip a different one off instead.

They found a game bursting with rip-off potential in Doki Doki Panic.  The game was originally intended to follow a farming family of four who set out to rescue kidnapped children.  The folks at Mario took the four family members--Brother, Mama, Papa, and Sister--and redesigned them to instead have these familiar faces:

Mario (Brother), Luigi (Mama), Toad (Papa), & Princess Toadstool (Sister)

A Mario template was thrown over the top of the game that would have been released as Doki Doki Panic, and Mario 2 as we know it was born.

With my recent Metroid post lingering in my mind, I can't help but wonder how many more games would have gone by before a Mario enthusiast could play as a female character had Nintendo not needed that fourth friendly face--especially since the format of "Princess Needing Saved Rather Than Being Able To Actually Do Anything Herself" format shows right back up in Mario 3.

At least that whole farming thing explains the vegetables, anyway.

- - -
Credit for the extracted quote and info about the development of Mario 2 goes to this article:
IGN Presents: The History of Super Mario Bros

I highly recommend it for anyone interested in gaming, even if you're not a particular Mario fan.  At least check out the first couple of pages--there's a lot of fascinating stuff about the beginning of the video game industry and those responsible for it.  Enjoy!

the 80s called. they want their ringtone back.

I'm going to do my best to write more anecdotal posts in addition to the mini-analyses I'm always tempted toward, since those are often useful in brainstorming as well.  Here's the first of more to come.

When I got my first phone that allowed for custom wallpaper and ringtones, I went a little crazy.  It wasn't enough to make my favorite images into wallpaper or my favorite lesser known songs into ringtones--they had to work together into some sort of theme.

One such theme was (of course) NES--specifically, the first Mario game.  I measured the size of my screen in pixels by the guess-and-check method using bitmaps of various sizes.  Once I figured out the number of pixels there were to fill, I edited a screenshot image found on the net to fit the external screen of my phone:

Mario is outside here, so naturally this image had to be on the outside of my phone.

And one to fit the internal screen:

Mario has descended to the innards of the Mushroom Kingdom, so this one had to go on the inside.

Then came time for the sounds.  I wasn't as interested in getting the Mario music for a ringtone; that was already a thing to do by my peers.  There were still sounds of the game that others weren't using, though, and I found a Mario Soundboard online from which to record them.

For the alert that played when I received a text, I alternated between using the sound of Mario getting a 1Up and the sound of Mario getting a coin--both positive things that happen in the game.

For my voicemail alert, I used the sound of Mario dying.  I kinda hate voicemail.

I was beat at my own game, however, when I talked to a friend who also made symbolic use of Mario sounds on his phone.  He had his cell set so that whenever his ex-girlfriend would call, the music that you hear as you approach Bowser would play.

Ex-girlfriend = Bowser

Touché.

it's a girl!

Meet Samus:

Our hero.

Samus is a bounty hunter, and more importantly, the protagonist of Metroid--a popular NES game that did so well, it later became a series of games for more recent platforms as well.

When we first meet Samus in the opening levels of NES Metroid, the only thing that really jumps out at the seasoned video game player to distinguish this character from other video game heroes is the ability to roll into a tiny ball in order to crawl underneath things, like so:

See that orange thing?  Still Samus.

Beyond curling into a perfect sphere, Samus has pretty common video game abilities:  Samus runs from things that drop from the ceiling; Samus jumps over things with spikes; Samus shoots at things that move.

Run, Samus, run!

What we don't know about Samus until well into gameplay is... wait for it...

Samus is a girl.

A large gun and flowing green hair.

I love this.  Here's why.

Apart from Ms. PacMan, there weren't a whole lot of female protagonists in video games at this point.  Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider games didn't make her first appearance until 1996; Metroid came out an entire decade before that.

How ingenious, then, to create a character with a bizarre, genderless name who kicks major enemy butt in typical action-adventure video game fashion, all the while allowing the human players to assume what they will?

Maybe I'm giving the makers of this game too much credit, but I like the idea that twenty-five years ago, they responded to reviews of this game with, "What do you mean there's a 'twist' in the game?  Why shouldn't Samus be a girl?  What ever made you think this was a man in the first place?"

The mid-game reveal allowed for the challenging of the "default" video game gender in such a way that having the character start out with a pink suit and feminine haircut would never have lent itself to.

My tendency to get lost in real life makes me really terrible at this game, but that's beside the point.  I love it for Samus.

My hero.

(still) growing up, (still) gaming

Continuing my intro!

Shortly after college, I found myself training for my first ever marathon with a friend of a friend who I quickly adopted as a pace buddy.  We found ourselves on many a random topic in our many a long training run.  During one such jaunt, we were discussing our natural tendency to be competitive.  I credited mine to many a Dr. Mario match with my father--I used to spend hours in my parents' family room practicing to get good enough to beat him.

And guess what?  My pace buddy did too!

For those who don't know, Dr. Mario is a Tetris-like game--except instead of clearing out rows of tiles, your goal is to clear out the viruses on your screen.  To my knowledge, Dr. Mario was never nearly as popular as Tetris--so the fact that we had that shared experience on opposite sides of the U.S. was pretty bizarre.

It was decided at that moment--especially given that we both claimed to have surpassed our respective fathers' Dr. Mario abilities--that we would need to compete with each other at an Ultimate Dr. Mario Showdown.

Unfortunately, we were both out of practice.

My pace buddy would be fine:  She and her husband owned a Wii, and Dr. Mario is one of the many older games that customers can download online.  Both of them practiced their virus-clearing on the new system.

I did not own a Wii, and my parents' NES was 2,000 miles away.  Much to my roommate-at-the-time's dismay (she was really hoping I'd get a Wii for our place), I eBayed a refurbished NES, the Dr. Mario game cartridge, and a controller or two.  The moment the pieces began to arrive:  instant nostalgia.

As long as I had the system, I set about picking up my other favorites as well.  Soon Life Force and (of course) Super Mario Brothers 3 found their way to my mailbox.

My boss at the time, a video game aficionado (who was later awesome enough to upgrade my childhood GameBoy to a DS, in fact!), helped accessorize my new purchase as well.  He picked up a terrible (and therefore amazing) volleyball game for me at the Penny Arcade Expo.

In Bowling Green, a friend turned me onto the GameSource store downtown, and I couldn't resist picking up a few more titles, in the name of "required texts" for this course:

(More to come on those later--I'm sure I won't be able to resist complaining about how bad I am at Turtles, and how annoyed I am that Caveman Games doesn't work.)

I still play a few new games now and then.  A trip to visit a friend in Wisconsin resulted in instant addiction to Call of Duty; I can never resist a Rock Band party; Castle Crashers proved a lot of fun; and I fell instantly in love with Kirby's Epic Yarn last weekend in Oxford.

But for the most part, I really only venture out to new games when it's a good excuse to spend time with friends.  Otherwise, I need to stop mocking those who only listen to the music of their childhood years.  I think I've found my equivalent to that phenomenon in this medium.

growing up gaming

The excellent blogs of my colleagues (see links at right!) have reminded me that I never properly introduced myself or gave any summary of my gaming history.  Lemme take a crack at that.

As the URL of this blog indicates, I'm an NES person.  I've played the console since I can remember, growing up in a household with a hand-drawn map of the Zelda world (Mom's), an excitement for Galaga finally making the move from arcade to cartridge (Dad's), a healthy appetite for beating her little sister through any medium (my sister's), and this book:

This was fished out of the entertainment center solely for that memory card game in Mario 3.

At some point, I'll have to post a complete list of the games of my childhood.  It will be easy to do come parental visiting time this Christmas--the cartridges are still neatly stacked in Mom and Dad's basement next to the original console and controllers (including a Duck Hunt gun!) that we all played fifteen+ years ago, many still in the original boxes.  But I digress.

I won't spend too much time here detailing NES gaming experiences; I'm envisioning that topic to be the focus of most of the posts of this blog, so I'll get to that later.  Instead, I'll fast-forward to post-NES days in my childhood home.

We skipped the Super NES, so I was always jealous of the kids who got to play Kirby and MarioKart on that console.  We skipped the Nintendo 64 too, so Mario Party envy came next.  (A friend of mine had every new console the minute it came out, so I beelined my way to her parents' game room anytime I was invited over.)

The next console in our living room wasn't Nintendo brand at all, in fact--we went from an NES to a PlayStation 2, probably convincing Dad it was a worthwhile purchase thanks to the DVD player function.  I'm almost sorry to say that the primary motivation for my part in that persuasion was the Dance Dance Revolution craze.  *Almost* sorry.  Let's memorialize my near-shame with a photo, shall we?

I don't actually know these people, but they're cool by me.

Dad got his game for the PS2 (Gran Turismo 3), and Mom got hers:  Escape from Monkey Island--a King's Quest-like adventure game, so right up her alley.  We all marveled over the graphics for a while, but soon enough, a bargain bin game with some forgettable name like "Greatest Arcade Hits" found its way into my parents' Best Buy shopping cart.  They quickly tired of my mocking them for using the (then) top of the line graphics of the PS2 to play PacMan.  Not surprisingly, when I visit home now, I usually find a thick layer of dust on their PS2, while their NES is loaded and ready for play.  Their gaming preference is firmly established, and I don't see them bothering with another upgrade anytime soon.

As for my sister and me, I found a second willing competitor in her boyfriend at the time of our PS2 purchase, and the three of us would compete at Red Faction, SSX 3, and Crash Team Racing.  Sis and I also entertained our two practically live-in guy friends with hours of Gauntlet Legends, Simpsons Road Rage, and Crazy Taxi spars.  DDR was pretty much just the two of us--I don't remember too many male friends willing to join for more than a round or two of jumping around on square mats.

Gaming was definitely a social thing for us, a means to an end much more than an end in itself.  To this day, I've never bothered completing the actual storyline of Red Faction, as many hours as I've spent playing that game.  The multi-player mode was the only feature we really needed.

Red Faction--the game with a gun so big, it takes up half of your screen.

High school ended; Sister married; friends moved away; and none of those games particularly stuck.  I still played Red Faction now and then when I saw one of my friends who remembered how, but SSX 3 got boring once I got good; Crazy Taxi got boring after twenty minutes; and I'm not sure we ever actually owned any other games, so they didn't have the chance to get boring.  No family member had any particular desire to buy new games for a console on its way out.

College didn't hold much gaming for me.  It was an easy way to hang out with folks I didn't know very well or hadn't seen for a long time every once in a while--throw in a Star Wars game and have instant conversation fodder for the next two hours.  I never bothered investing in a console when I first ventured out on my own, though.

It wasn't until post-college that my gaming somewhat resumed, and I found that my trajectory stopped moving forward, and (like my parents) I suddenly found myself more interested in games that came out twenty years ago than I was in trying a PS3 or a Wii.

To be continued in the next post--this thing has gotten lengthy enough!

how many castles are actually out there to conquer?

Castle Crashers!

Fun game!  It's easy to learn and (generally) rewards button-mashing, so great arcade arcade game--reminded me a bit of my Gauntlet Legends days.  Here's the bit about it that I find interesting, though:

Twenty-five years later, we're still breaking into castles to rescue princesses?

I'm not taking the feminist approach to this; that's just too easy here.  What I have been doing is attempting to come up with an analogy in some medium other than video games to explain why I find this so odd.  Here's the best I got:

Let's say when Citizen Kane came out, it wasn't just a critical success, but it was the biggest box office hit of all time.  It was followed by Citizen Kane II (a flop), and Citizen Kane III (a triumph!), and then some screenwriter attempted to make Charles Kane cure viruses in Dr. Kane.

Assuming all of that happened, would we see a new batch of movies about a wealthy, reclusive millionaire in the theaters every year--and take for granted that this was just the natural topic for the medium of cinema?

I'm not calling Castle Crashers a Mario ripoff--it's not.  It's a clever game with a lot more going on than the basic "Hero Rescues Princess" plot at its spine.  I'm just fascinated that that's still the basic spine being used.

Was Mario such a smash hit that it's continuing to sell new games that sort of look like it?  Why did that basic element get preserved--how come the castle-crashing is still a motif, but plumbers with mustaches didn't catch on?

I'm forming some kind of theory about our favorite plumber having tapped into the American dream--a nobody overcoming evils and obstacles to become the hero, etc.  Until that's flushed out, I need to hit up my Castle Crashers buddy so we can finish the game.  I really want to know if the last princess has been moved to another castle.


Final thought:  It could be that this game is an intentional callback to Mario's castle crashing days--that 99% of new games have nothing to do with castles or princesses anymore, and that's what makes this game nostalgic and cute?  ( Hopefully one of my fellow Independent Study folks can let me know if that's the case; I'm not up enough on recent games.)  If that's the case, I'm still interested in why the motif crops back up in *this* game, but it does change my line of thought a bit.

hello world

It seems only fitting that I would have had this first post up earlier today, but I got distracted trying a new(-to-me) Xbox game with a friend. More on Castle Crashers later.

Okay, okay, so Xbox games aren't 8-bit... but this is! Check out the flickr page of a fellow 8-bit NES fan. This guy has taken his fandom to a new, creative level: he's created 696 different 8-bit avatars, which will now serve as my Exhibit A of contemporary NES nostalgia. (Or perhaps Exhibit B, after this blog.) This isn't just love for 8-bit graphics, this is love specific to what our flickr champ soundofdesign calls "standing Mario"--protagonist of the first NES Super Mario Brothers game, pictured at left.

For kicks, here are a few of my favorites. From top to bottom, this is our flickr friend's 8-bit version of Dr. Zoidberg (Futurama), Professor Dumbledore (Harry Potter), Walter Sobchak (The Big Lebowski), and the classic Slimer (Ghostbusters).

692 more found here!

Credit for my stumbling upon this goes to this article, courtesy of The Onion's avclub.com.