Double Down on DS

NOTE: This op-ed is based on very loose hearsay, speculation, and partial evidence. The very nature of the Nintendo NX is subject to change between the time of this writing and its eventual release. 

The console market is in a place of uncertainty for the first time since the early 1980s. Sure, the uncertainty principle has followed consoles from day one, but if we look at the facts, the years have seen a dwindling number of advantages consoles have held for consumers over PCs in the last fifteen years. The Dreamcast introduced a built-in modem in 1999, whereas previous attempts at internet support have been aftermarket accessories like the Satellaview or the Sega Channel. Despite this, the idea of distributing games over data lines was years away from viability, with the 64DD, PS2 Hard Drive, and Phantom Console's graves as trail markers. Now, hard drives and internet connections are standard, along with digital storefronts and infrastructure for downloads and even streaming. Put simply, the line between consoles and PCs has been completely blurred, the only true differences having more to do with politics than hardware. PCs are still fundamentally the wild west while consoles are gated communities. Literally anyone can develop a PC game, and even get it released through a proper online store like Steam or Humble Bundle. Console developers have to offer their firstborn just to be put on a waiting list for a development kit. Granted, that line is blurring, but there's very little point in waiting for the treaty to be signed if the arms race is already over by way of stalemate. 

Between Miitomo and the runaway hit Pokemon GO, Nintendo has shown they're not above going to third parties for hardware, the taste of Philips out of their mouth at long last. Still, what we've always loved about Nintendo is how they go their own way, for better or for worse. Though they may have tread lightly in bringing the NES to America, compromises have been few and far between, much to the chagrin of developers, publishers, and even gamers. The Super Nintendo sold well enough, but if not for the Mortal Kombat blood controversy and Sega looking the other way to EA bypassing normal publishing channels to bring Madden to the Genesis, the SNES could have buried the competition as the NES had done to the likes of the Master System and Atari 7800. The N64's use of cartridges (in)famously drove away powerhouses like Square to Sony's bed, alienating those RPG fans who had cut their teeth on the SNES. Again, it sold well enough, but we have to ask what could have been. Similarly, the GameCube was a reasonable success, but now stands as Nintendo's second worst-selling home console, after the Wii U (we won't count the 1973 Color TV-Game since it's a Pong console), owed again to a proprietary format and a reluctance to play ball with third parties. 

Meanwhile, in the portable and handheld market, Nintendo's only true blunder to this day is the Virtual Boy. Otherwise, even the weakest link in the Game Boy/GBA/DS chain has been a license to print money. It's almost hilarious how people would forgive serious flaws like a blurry, spinach-green display on the original or a dim-as-moonless-midnight screen on the Advance and still send the things flying off the shelf. It took Sony pouring buckets of money and marketing into the PSP to even make a dent in that wall (Rest In Peace, Neo Geo Pocket Color). It finally took the iPhone to make Nintendo sit up and notice they weren't alone in their dominance of the handheld market. As much as I laughed at the prospect of iPhone/Android games and still hesitate to call it a serious platform, just like consoles, the line is blurring and it's all getting better. I still love my Vita, and I still have my original PSP, and if I could only have one, I'd take either of those over the best iPhone or iPad any day. The problem, the final hurdle for mobile phones and tablets to overcome, is the interface. Touch controls and gyroscopes do not give the same satisfying, tactile feedback as buttons or even knobs. Nintendo seems to understand this. That's why I think they're making a legitimately smart move in presenting the NX as a souped-up gaming tablet, following patterns laid down by the likes of the NVidia Shield or the Wikipad or some of Sony's Xperia devices. Some may be scratching their heads, but I think this move is the best decision they've made in years. They're still going their own way as they always have, it's just down a trail they blazed years ago. 

For Sale: Bumper Pool Table, Overused

The title is a joke, partly-based on the purported Hemingway story, and also a nod to my friend Oogle's most recent DeviantART journal being posted in haste to bump a larger journal off her front page. 

While working on a larger, triptych form of When They Fold Space, as well as a version after that which will be a somewhat even longer form, I was looking up Twitter novels. I'd stumbled upon them a long time ago while looking up an author I'd almost forgotten about whom I'd first heard of thanks to a paperback hand-me-down. 

Clare Bell had written a book called Tomorrow's Sphinx, a very interesting book about a cheetah with weird markings that, sadly, I never got around to delving into past the first half-chapter. Eventually, the book was lost in one of several moves, possibly sold off in an oversight, and forgotten. Many years later, I'm looking through Pokemon fan art while compiling a Top 5 list for my Tumblr, and happen upon Umbreon, which has a notably Egyptian styling in terms of color and markings. It made me think of that book. It led me to wonder just what happened to Mrs. Bell. I'd never seen her name elsewhere apart from that one book; it made me wonder if she was a one-hit wonder. 

For starters and to her credit, she's not a one-hit wonder; there's a whole series of books apparently more well-known and much-loved by her fans than Tomorrow's Sphinx. While it's true her activity in literary fields has dwindled a bit, it's not for the sake of resting on laurels. Not only is she building electric cars, but whole solar and hydroelectric systems for green living, and she's been doing that since before the term "green" was in vogue. More interestingly, she embraced Twitter as a way to connect with her amazingly patient fanbase by giving them a new installment in the Ratha series via tweets. 

Some of you may be laughing at that idea, especially if you've spent any real time on Twitter (and I love the service, flaws and all). It's true, the 140 character-at-a-time structure can be a little hard to work with. It probably reminds some of you of old videogames, where a sentence leaves you hanging only to reveal there was only one word left, with a long and awkward pause before it. It's really something you paradoxically have to plan meticulously in advance for yet be extremely malleable about. It seems like something poets would be better equipped to approach, except that poetry is all about syllables, and 140 characters doesn't give nearly as much leeway in establishing rhythm and flow as you might think. Despite a fair amount of good tips out there on how to approach it, as well as a few good examples of making it work, this may be a medium not suitable for the English language. It makes me think of Tommy Tiernan's remark about how the English language doesn't suit his soul, like it's this giant wall between him and his audience, with profanity as his chisel. 

The people who seem to get the most out of Twitter as a new form of modern literature, on the whole, are the Japanese. I remember hearing a story on NPR about people in Japan tweeting reactions and thoughts to the recent earthquake. At one point, the interviewer interrupted the recitation to confirm it was actually a tweet, not only because of how eloquent it was, but how long it seemed. The reader retorted, rather cleverly, that while 140 characters can be fairly limiting for English or Spanish or French, it's no problem for a language like Japanese where most words and even some phrases can be expressed in a single character, a Kanji. 

It's also worth noting that many Kanji, being borrowed from Chinese, have double-meanings. 

Think about it. 

Control Issues: Offspring Fling!

So I bought Offspring Fling! which you should totally do as well, and the game is awesome. It's a platform puzzler that many people compare to the Kirby games, though I get more of a Lemmings-meets-Flicky synergy from it, but whatever it makes you think of, it'll always be good. You play a cuddly, floppy-eared... well, I think she looks like a Clefairy or possibly Wigglytuff... something that'll make an awesome plushie. Anyway, this loving mother has been separated from her children, and she has to explore a modular environment, gathering them up, and returning them to safety. The main twist is that, like real children, they're a terrible burden on their poor mother. You can't jump as high depending on how many of the little rascals you're holding over your head, and you can't fit through certain spaces with as few as one. This is where flinging comes in. Don't worry, your little bundles of joy are built like tanks wrapped in bubble wrap and goose down, and won't even yelp a little at being hurled at the walls, as long as you don't throw them into naturally-occurring pools of acid or in the path of ravenous lizard monsters. On top of that, the little guys can actually help you save them by activating switches, breaking brittle blocks, or even stunning those mean ol' lizard things. It's not exactly rocket science, but kudos to them for knowing to sit still and not step off the switch or the precarious ledge they may land on.

There's not that much to say about the game, but that's not a knock against it. It's very straightforward, very pick-up-and-play, and tends to use gameplay to teach you how its mechanics work. Most levels fit on one screen, giving you the chance to think ahead and strategize, and many exist entirely to teach you various gameplay mechanics, like how many babies you can hold over your head at once or how many of them can stand on narrow platforms (the answers being, respectively, a lot and hardly any). The graphics are bright and colorful, with lots of little details and nice animations. The music, while a tad repetitive, isn't annoying and fits the cutesy-but-not-cavity-inducing atmosphere. The puzzles are challenging, but not punishingly hard, overall extremely forgiving (one of the early levels practically forces you to mess up to teach you to restart a level if you get stuck).

My only honest gripe is in the nuts and bolts of the hardware support. Of course, I don't blame the developer for that; developing for the PC (as well as Mac and Linux) is tricky enough without all the hassle that comes with getting controllers to work. For however bad consoles get knocked for bad user interfaces, the PC side of the equation is the wild west by comparison.

Here's the thing: I don't like PC gaming. I don't hate it, I don't think PC gamers are elitist snobs or losers throwing away money or that consoles are better or any of that stupid nonsense. I simply don't like playing with a keyboard and mouse. It's just so unnatural to me and while stuff like Starcraft or most shooters work well with the keyboard and mouse, playing Offspring Fling! that way simply feels weird, downright wrong. Sadly, I didn't have that many great options at my disposal. I don't like dealing with drivers or most config programs, and even if you find a fairly user-friendly one, compatibility with a specific game is still a roll of the dice. I looked around for a few controllers like the Logitech F310 and some wired XBox360 controllers, but they were kinda pricey, the F310 got some real iffy reviews, and I don't care much for the design of the 360 controller (especially the D-Pad, which this game plays best with). I also looked at a retrofitted N64 controller that connected through USB, as well as an adapter cable that would let me use an original XBox controller I had lying around. That's when I remembered my Thrustmaster. It's this PS2/PC hybrid controller I got a few years ago for the first PC I ever bought (grew up in a Mac household). It looks almost exactly like a PS2 dual-shock except for some really nice triggers below the shoulder buttons. I wasn't sure it would work with my current version of Windows, which is 7, as I barely got it to work on XP. Still, I figured there was no risk in trying (unlike the others which would have meant dealing with returns in case they didn't work), and dug the guy out.

Time was not kind to the Thrustmaster. It apparently hated being stuffed in a bag with random cables for years and really let itself go. It still worked fine and dandy, but the rubber for its grips had some kind of chemical breakdown. It's sticky and so far has not come clean at all.

I persevered:





The moral of the story is: NEVER GIVE UP and the best solutions are always the simplest ones.

I may have to take the controller apart and run the casing through the dishwasher or, more likely, wrap the damn thing in athletic tape, so it'll look like a burn victim. In any case, it's all about the games.

Das Pokemans

Deadmau5 said this about dubstep, and it almost perfectly mirrors how I feel about Pokemon. To give a little background, I was entering college when Red & Blue came on the scene. All my friends were into it. I'd seen the show and the movies, which I liked, albeit I prefer Digimon as far as the shows go. One of my favorite mangas is the Pokemon one by Toshihiro Ono, which I think is one of the best renderings of the world outside the games proper. As far as those go, my experience begins and ends with Blue (more on that in a moment). The only other Pokemon games I've bothered with have been Snap, Pinball, and Puzzle League, all ancillary titles. Here's basically how I feel: 

I don't hate it for the concept. That's all fine and dandy. It's a very well-crafted world with a solid premise absolutely bursting with appeal. The movies and the manga flesh it out nicely and really help with the immersion, between the colorful characters and surprisingly rich lore to what's in essence a very simple RPG. 

I don't hate it for the fans. I actually love it for the fans. At the risk of sounding like a total parent (which I'm  not in the slightest) or some kind of chaperon, Pokefans are the most well-behaved and friendliest fandom I've ever come across. If there's any sort of elitism or snobbery, I've never run afoul of it. Even Whovians have that massive quasi-generation gap between people who've loved it since the classic series (or that middling, limbo phase between 1989 and 2005 thanks to videos, books, and TV specials) and those who came following the revival. I guess it all goes back to that appeal I mentioned before; there's something for everyone to like and love liking. Sure, some of the memes and parodies are a tad annoying, and some people who play the card game can be a bit manic, but they're raindrops in the ocean. I can let them go. I wish Portal fans could be more like Pokefans. I wish Bronies were more like Pokefans. Even D&D nerds could learn a thing or three from Pokefans. 

I simply dislike the core gameplay mechanic. I think I've briefly mentioned this elsewhere, so I apologize if I repeat myself. Somehow, the very idea of collecting monsters to fight for you strikes me as an incredibly lazy piece of game design. I know that sounds completely ridiculous and I freely admit it. I fully deserve to be raked over the coals for painting the games with such broad strokes. I'm not pretending to have any sort of expertise on game design or RPG development, that's simply the best reason I can think up to account for my boredom. That's what it boils down to for me. After hours of playing through Blue, getting a few badges and exploring some towns, all I could think was, "I am not having fun." and instead turned to more involving adventures like Final Fantasy, Star Ocean, Monster Hunter, Samurai Warriors, and XCOM. I'm not saying the Pokefans who enjoy the core series of games are stupid or juvenile or lack skill or have bad taste. That is not the case at all. It is simply not my cup of tea. I suppose you could say that after all the buildup between that awesome world and those enthusiastic fans, the games just didn't hold up. They have an attachment to those games that I can understand and relate to, but cannot share. 

While I have promised a very good friend that I will give one of the latter day entries like Diamond/Pearl or Black/White a chance to see if I may feel different with those tweaks and mild alterations, I feel comfortable saying it's not likely. On the whole, the only Pokemon game that I'm genuinely interested in is the Mystery Dungeon series because they're roguelikes, arguably the most commercially successful ones ever made, and that's a genre that I find wildly fascinating. 
There is also the issue (which partly led to that conversation) of not having any Nintendo hardware that can play any of those games, though I'd been weighing the pros and cons of springing for a 3DS. 
What we settled on is to try and go down the dark and twisted path of emulation, specifically the GBA because that's the era of Pokemon games I'm most likely to get into. I also intend to abide by the "code of emulation ethics" and get a physical copy of the games to have. They're easy to find and some places practically give them away (and down the line I may luck out on a Micro or SP or Player for my Gamecube). After shopping around, in addition to Mystery Dungeon Fire Red, I'll pick up a Sapphire cartridge. Why Sapphire? Well, it's a translucent blue cartridge named for my birthstone, why wouldn't I settle on that one? Makes a dandy keepsake.