Samus is the Batman of Nintendo
A funny thing’s been happening to me. For the last year, I’ve been working pretty hard, every single night, on an art project. I also have a full time job and a commute that takes me 90 minutes, one way. I don’t have much time at all for anything else, from seeing friends to playing videogames. So in this last 12 months, I’ve only played 3 games for more than an hour or two. These games are Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and the new Metroid: Other M. And the differences couldn’t be more profound.
Bear with me for a minute. When I was younger, I read lots and lots of comic books. Comics of all kinds, really. X-Men. The Fantastic Four. Hellboy. Batman. I loved ‘em. But after years of this (I won’t say “after I grew up” because I was reading these as a child, teenager, and an adult) I just got bored. I felt like I was reading the same stories, over and over and over and over again. Wow, Batman is fighting the Joker! For the 815th time! Only this time there’s a new artist and digital coloring! Yay! It seemed to me that the problem was not that the possibilities had been exhausted. There were lots and lots of great Batman stories that could have been written. The issue was the status quo. Nothing changed. Nothing COULD change. Despite minor changes here and there, Batman would always be Bruce Wayne, millionaire playboy whose parents were murdered in front of his eyes when he was a child and who had sworn vengeance on the criminal underworld. From the safety of his Batcave he would use his riches, his vast intelligence, and his array of gadgets to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. Blah blah blah. By now, the only people reading Batman comics are those hardcore comic geeks, generally a steadily shrinking audience of white men in their 30s and 40s with far too much disposable income and presumably little desire to have meaningful conversations with women. And because that’s the audience for Batman, that is who the comics cater to.
Batman doesn’t change. Batman can’t change. Today’s Batman story is the same as a Batman story from 1999 and it will be same in 2019. And I’m starting to notice the same thing in some videogames. Metroid is a depressing example.
See, we now know that in every single Metroid game, Samus will lose the full capabilities of her suit and spend most of the game steadily finding / unlocking things like the morph ball, the power bomb, the grapple beam, or whatever. She’ll also explore a vast alien environment, endlessly revisiting the same areas to go through that door that needed missiles to open, but she didn’t have them yet. In the end, she’ll face off against some dire alien menace, beat it just barely, escape into space, and ponder the mysteries of what just happened. The only things that change are the graphics, the point of view, and to a very slight degree, the game mechanics. Only those don’t even ever change all that much because Samus will always shoot, always curl up in a morph ball, always drop bombs, and so on. It just looks different with each game. Slightly different.
It’s been a while since the designers at Nintendo created a Metroid game of their own, and it shows. The Metroid games don’t change. The Metroid games CAN’T change. They have to keep rewarding the same buyers over and over again by giving them exactly what they want. But where is the innovation? Where are the risks? Is there truly nothing more that can be done with Samus?
The Super Mario games, particularly Super Mario Galaxy, are a fantastic example of a design team willing to break with continuity and truly innovate. Admittedly, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is nearly identical to Super Mario Galaxy 1, but compare the Galaxy games to Super Mario Sunshine, or Super Mario 64, or Super Mario Bros. 2. Each one of those games utilizes the capabilities of their respective consoles in exciting ways, yes. But what makes the Mario games so delightful, for regular gamers and newer players, is that the designers refuse to follow the slavish dictates of the continuity of the “in-game universe.” It seems like each and every Mario game is a brand new start. Sure, he’s going to rescue the Princess but characters appear and re-appear in different configurations each time. In Super Mario Galaxy, Bowser wants to make his own universe and he doesn’t care if he destroys the old one to do so. In Super Paper Mario, Bowser fights alongside Mario, Luigi and the Princess against Count Bleck. It doesn’t matter that this would seem to be at odds with what has happened in other Mario games. The emphasis is on the game play, and more importantly, on fun rather than on making sure that the events of the game can somehow be squeezed into the chronology of the pre-existing games. I don’t know how many articles I’ve read about Metroid: Other M that begin with some variation of “Taking place shortly after the events of Super Metroid…” What does that really matter? Why is it such an important selling point? Who is that information really targeted at, the hardcore gamer or the average person?
As you can guess, Metroid: Other M has been a disappointment. I am finding myself thinking some of the same thoughts about most videogames, especially the big franchises like Final Fantasy and Zelda, as I was about comics several years when I basically stopped buying and reading them entirely. Console games are boring now. The big franchises are such important intellectual properties that nothing will ever again change. Think about it. What’s REALLY next for Samus? What will the Metroid game of 2020 bring us? Incredibly innovative story and game play? Fun? Entertainment? Or…Samus exploring a vast alien environment steadily unlocking abilities such as the morph ball, the power beam and the grappling beam, on her way to a brutal duel with a huge and terrifying alien entity that she will barely survive? And the answer is probably much the same for Final Fantasy, for Zelda, for Castlevania, for Halo, and on and on and on…
It’s disappointing really. But at least I have Mario. And for that I am thankful.
Ripping off Rolito: Triniti Interactive as the Patapon Plagiarist
I don’t know if Triniti Interactive’s Bowman games are any good.
I don’t care.
No excuse could explain the wreckless and blatantly intentional theft of Rolito’s Patapon art style.
Patapon 
Bowman War
Triniti Interactive’s game is no tribute - it is absolute misappropriation.
A couple of people noticed in App Store reviews that the castle defense game used the Patapon style, but one user said that the game should play like Patapon, and the other said that Patapon was too expensive and were glad that Bowman War is only 99¢.
Pathetic and sad.
- Kyle
Easy as Pie Pixel Painting: Stephen Lavelle’s Monopoint
I did the above image in no time admittedly with little effort using Increpare’s awesome pixel painting web app, Monopoint.
Here is a rad Ghastly my girlfriend made:
It’s dead simple, monochromatic, and uses pixel interpolation for the fancy magic that I don’t quite understand yet, but have had such a blast using to make images.
I dig it so much when mathematical and creatively inclined dudes like Stephen Lavelle make these little tools for us non-game makers to craft our own tiny creations that do so much for the imagination.
Go try Monopoint right now!
- Kyle
Trainer Mentalities: An Observation of the Hearts and Minds of the Humans Who Inhabit The World of Pokémon
I’ll admit it.
I love Pokémon. It won me over with its deep and ever expansive battle system, and it continues to pull me back with it’s charm. Take for example the Battle Frontier.
At the Battle Frontier you and a friend battle together against opposing trainers, gain BP, and generally have a good time. While I do enjoy playing Pokémon together with my girlfriend, what I really enjoy are the things the other trainers say.
Observe:
Beauty Trainer
Before Battle:
“…Oh, wait one second.
I have to take this call.”
After Battle:
“Hi, yup… Yes,just battled… Nope…
Kid beat me… Uh-huh…”
Waiter Trainer
Before Battle:
“Work is fun, and Pokemon also.
I am happy I come to this country.”
After Battle:
“Oh, why you beat me? So mean!
I want to go home to my country.”
Expert Trainer
Before Battle:
“Fwo-fwo-fwo. Youngster, what’s most
important is to never give up.”
After Battle:
“Fwo-fwo-fwo.
You’re and admirable Trainer already.”
Collector Trainer
Before Battle:
“I’m the main character of this story.
It’s impossible for me to lose.”
After Battle:
“…The hero has to suffer a bit so the
audience feels more empathy.”
With only a few lines of text, Game Freak was able to give massive amounts of color and texture to the Pokémon world. It really shows how much thought they have put into the game. Beside being one of the cutest game scripts I have read, this game also managed to pack in humor, a pretty surprising vocabulary, and just a touch of social commentary.
Take a gander:
Lady Trainer
Before Battle:
“Partying, shopping, dining…
Darling, I’ve grown bored of it all.”
After Battle:
“Only battling lifts me from this idle
existence of boredom and apathy…”
Wow! I never thought I would be reading something like that in a Pokémon game.
While I do love that last one, thus far my personal favorite has been this one:
Reporter Trainer
Before Battle:
“This microphone is what made me a star.
It’s my all and everything.”
After Battle:
“…Thud. Bzzzzt…”
- Aaron M.
sprties via bulbapedia
The old GameBoy graphics style is definitely obsolete, with its limited resolution of 160×144 and a monochromatic color palette that had four shades of olive.
Its legacy is intriguing as a game development platform if you think about it. It’s the absolute anti-thesis to contemporary mainstream game design.
TripWorld for the GB, via PixelStyle
I know I’m beating a dead horse with this, but it’s incredibly important to note how creating and playing gamess can be endearing with limitations.
Limitations like that can lead to some really wonderful ideas, and if you think about it, look at the game download services such as the PSN/PSPminis, XBOX LIVE Arcade, the App Store and WiiWare/DSiWare.
Developers have four main limitations when developing:
- a low budget.
- low man power
- non-cutting edge hardware to produce games
- limited mega/gigabyte space to create the game with.
Some might think those are drawbacks to game development, but really they have spawned an incredible wealth of independent and low-budget games that have pushed the medium further than multi-million dollar budget titles. You also have to consider that due to lack of funds developers can’t make crap games look good by just coming up with a huge marketing campaign, so again thinking with limitations forces them to be more original.
These aren’t drawbacks but simply boundaries that are set in place to help promote creativity if you spin it the right way. The obsession with constantly updating hardware to play video games is something to blame manufacturers for. However, the blame doesn’t just fall on them, it falls on the developers as well, and of course, us as consumers. Every time we purchase a mediocre game we cast our vote for ridiculous high budget, low creativity games that are more eye candy than deep and engaging gameplay.
CANABALT - Browser/iPhone
PLANTS VS. ZOMBIES - PC/MAC/iPhone
ELISS - iPhone
MOTHER 3 - GameBoy Advance
SPACE INVADERS EXTREME - XBOX LIVE/Playstation Portable/Nintendo DS
FEZ - XBOX LIVE/Unannounced Platform
HALF-MINUTE HERO - Playstation Portable
LILT LINE - iPhone
FLOW - Browser/PC/MAC/Playstation Network
FAT PRINCESS - Playstation Network
With the onset of these great download services that cater to gamers looking for something different and bleeding heart developers who want to express themselves and distribute themselves in a way they never thought possible, the future looks bright for those who want to think inside of the box, be frugal, and appreciate and embrace limitations to be able to create amazing things.
Paint, brushes and canvas haven’t really changed for hundreds of years, but amazing artists, willing to push themselves and stretch the box around them have created new and exciting pieces. The medium has never really expanded for real material/supply artists, only their creativity, and passion.
Indie game and small-budget development is the same way, with little tools, and infinite passion, games can be magical to create, and most importantly, play.