My Inspirations: The Crappy, Awful Game That I Loved

This entry is more or less part two of the story of my entry into the video game world. Part one featured my visits to Showbiz Pizza and a little game called Super Mario Brothers, which I loved but almost never played. This one features the first time I actually played one of the games at Showbiz/Chuck E. Cheese/whatever and played it regularly.

The game was called Pack Rat. If you don't remember it, and you won't, it's a bit of simple, late 80s maze hunting in the general style of Pac-Man. There were differences, of course. The game used semi-realistic, two dimensional side-view maps instead of Pac-Man's more abstract maze, and as such the character had to climb up ladders, fell of the sides of platforms, etc. But the goal, though more complex than Pac-Man, was about the same. Traverse the map, find a bunch of shiny objects, and bring them back to your nest. If you got all the items a level required, you move on to the next.

It was not an easy game, and in fact I later decided that not only did the game suck, I pretty much sucked at it. The problem was how easy it was to die. Your character, who was as you may have expected an anthropomorphic pack rat, died after one hit by collision with any of the dozen or so types of enemies that may populate any level. Some were simple enemies, like less humanoid dogs and cats, who stuck to one level of the maze. Others, like other rats, could climb ladders freely and tended to move in simple patterns. There were even birds and other flying creatures. The real problem with all these enemies is that the maze was several screens high, so often it was a matter of guesswork if an enemy was right above or right below the screen and about to kill you.

Your own offenses were limited. You could fire other minor collectibles as obstacles. But if you didn't have any left, you could only fire the important collectibles, if I remember right. Either way, ammunition was limited and only fired straight to the sides, which like I said was rarely the problem. And the map was often very good at dumping you into dangerous places. The ledges were often limited and led to slides that dropped you even farther. So while falling off a ledge was sometimes a viable way to escape a deadly threat, it also often dropped you right into another certain death.

Add that in with the limited three lives and (if I remember right,) the fact the game dropped you back to level 1 as soon as you ran out of them, and you can understand how child me never got past level 4. This might be one of the reasons this game has haunted me; it represents one of my earliest and most embarrassing failures. Now that I thought about it, I would love to play the game again, just to see how my own skills have improved, and how the game even ends.

But that doesn't explain why it caught my attention in the first place. I don't know if it was anything special, really; it was just the game for me To Play, and it was substantially less complex than Super Mario Brothers. I think it was the variety of levels and enemies that appealed to me. For all its simplicity, I still remember it looking better than Mario, and even at this primitive stage, the thrill of seeing something new visually was appealing. The levels had a relatively decent range as well, including things like buildings, underground tunnels, and giant trees. Who knows what the theoretical final level would have offered? Similarly, the game's attract mode included a display of all the enemies, including ones the first four or so levels never featured. I wanted to see what they could do, even if they almost certainly would have been identical, game play-wise, to the ones I saw earlier.

It's hard to describe what this game specifically inspired me to do. Well, it did inspire me to play more video games, so thanks for that at least, game. I think it also helped grow some of the types of funs I briefly reviewed earlier. The thrill of exploring a game and seeing the unknown was already in me thanks to Mario, but this was the first game where it became a drive, possibly even my primary priority. But ultimately, it inspired me by being the game I had the bravery to play, even when failure was so inevitable. Losing still isn't especially fun for me, but realizing its role in game design is needed to even play games so often, let alone make them.

My Ideas: My Muse

I actually planned this entry before I even started this blog, and in fact I partially arranged my schedule explicitly so I would have the "My Ideas" section on Fridays for said entry. Why? Well, today's entry is about one of my oldest ongoing characters. And today is, well, her birthday.

That's right, I do occasionally figure out the birthdays for my characters. And it's a good thing that I started the blog this year, or I won't be able to use this schtick until 2012.

I'm actually breaking one of my rules a bit here. The character in question definitely surpasses the "100 pages" rule I elaborated on in my first entry. Over the 16 or so years since I made this character, I never wrote up a design document about a video game involving her. I have, however, planned one television series, came up with a quick episode guide for the first few seasons, elaborated on the years of her life after the television series (which I might remind you does not yet exist) ends, including several adventures taking up dozens of pages. I then started an episode guide for a second television series, and this time I included not only an episode guide but also a detailed description of the episodes themselves. All 100 of them. In the meantime, I wrote several novels in the 50-60K word range, including one starring her, and at least two that directly or indirectly reference her.

So I passed up the "investment" level by 500 pages or so. But I'll get around it by not giving any details. Frankly, she's too important for me to ignore.

The character's name, at least, I think I can give out. She's named Dot Fox because, well, she's a fox. That is, she's a literal fox, a talking cartoon fox. I originally made the character as a character for the role-playing game called Toon, where you roleplay a cartoon character. At the time, she wasn't much more than an experiment in the rules. While the game is all about having fun and enjoying the triumph of defeat and the agony of victory, it's still far too easy to make a character with a decent fight skill and just beat your way to totally pointless victory. I wanted to make a character with an awful fighting skill but a number of other, far more creative skills to make up for it.

Dot was the result. After noticing that the rules for disarming traps also let you built things, I wanted to play a mad scientist. So Dot became a super-genius because of a rules glitch. She became a ten year old girl because anachronisms are inherently funny. And she became a talking fox because it was a game called Toon. How boring is playing a human in that situation?

Dot's original gimmick, using elaborate, Rube-Goldberg style traps, lasted about halfway through the first adventure. At that point, I got annoyed with the adventure at hand (I usually run these things for a reason,) said "Screw it," and had Dot transform all of her equipment into one giant war machine of death. This became Dot's main modus operandi from hereon. Of course, this is Toon, where failure was both an option and highly encouraged, and things tended to go very wrong when they did. Thus, her machinery often went wrong, attacked the wrong things, fell apart in an instant, or exploded. This also became part of Dot's main modus operandi.

But her career as a Toon character was short, because I usually was stuck running those things instead, and my friends all lost interest eventually anyway. But as you might have noticed, I hate giving up on a character, and Dot quickly immigrated, along with some of my other characters from the game. Initially, she was supposed to be a sidekick to another character, an even younger child who just happened to be a robotic instrument of destruction himself. This relationship persisted as I created an actual back story for Dot, along with an entire setting to put her and her friends into.

It's here that the description must get vaguer, so I'll let up on the details. Here is a basic summary of the original television show, should it ever exist, and Dot's back story. Dot is still a ten year old talking fox, a super-genius, and a brilliant inventor with an unfortunate tendency to make dangerous experiments. She lived on a planet entirely inhabited by other talking animals and faerie creatures, though most of them were more harmless and traditional. Dot's actions eventually caused her to get banished from her home planet, and after months of wandering her universe, she ended up getting a job on a planet of robots, where she canonically met her sidekick. Yes, I switched that around by this point. Most of the story involved her getting used to a new place to live, a surrogate family, and actual school. It was a classic story of alienation in a school environment, plus robots and mad scientists.

It was around here that Dot started to connect to me as more than a character. Part of it was that I HATED elementary school. I went to this well at least one more time in my designs, but that examples even more in the investment category, so we'll ignore it for now. Anyway, eventually, I moved Dot out of school, and soon out of that environment entirely. I'm not sure why I did so, save for my general desire to advance the plots of my stories instead of getting settled into an unending rut. I put Dot aside for a while, figuring that I would come back to her in a few years.

But she wouldn't go away.

I made a new plot about her, a few years older and in a crisis of identity. That ended without any satisfaction for me or her. So I made another story. This lasted for years, and at this point my plans to age the characters actually put the character at the age of eighteen, and fairly consistently in a human form for reasons I won't elaborate on now. So I thought it would be amusing to put her in college. Then I put her aside again, content to summarize her college adventures again.

Four years later, I finished writing 100 episodes about her college adventures. Mercifully, after that was resolved, I avoided the itch to write another ongoing story about her, but it has only been about two years since I finished them. And Dot's life has continued in my mind, it just hasn't gotten that extensive. What I know about this character disturbs even me. I know about her allergies, her paranoias, her goals, and her paranoias about her goals. But I'm still learning about her. I never even had to write in her voice until about a year ago, for example.

In short, Dot's become a permanent fixture in my brain. I can use her personality to bounce ideas off of. I can hear her criticizing me or offering suggestions when I make a mistake. In short, I can sum up her position in one word: Muse.

Or possibly early onset dissociative identity disorder. It's probably the former, though.

It still boggles me that the character reached this point; I'm still not entirely certain why it's her. She's a role model in many ways, of course. She's incredibly smart, unbelievably talented, cleverly sarcastic, all the things I'd love to be. But she's also like me in some of the less admirable ways. I was briefly worried she was becoming a Mary Sue character, in fact, when I realized no Mary Sue is this neurotic. She's the opposite of me in terms of ambition. I know exactly what I want out of life; I just haven't figured out how to get it. She, on the other hand, is a ball of chaos, constantly questioning her identity. She's ideal in a crisis, but whenever things quiet down, she panics. Notice that pattern even in her back story. I think the personalities work well together; she gives me another viewpoint for my weaknesses, and she provides the motivation for my own storytelling, which obviously helps her, since she can't "live" without them. It's a bizarre mentality, but it's helped more than it hurt, I think.

Plus, I always wanted to write a pilot or a screenplay, just in case the video game thing didn't work. I've got about two decades worth of ideas now. I'd rather work with video games, but I can't stagnate. After all, Dot was willing to traverse universes to find herself, and if I can't be inspired by my muse, who can I be inspired by.

Happy birthday, Dot. Many happy returns, especially since otherwise would technically mean I was dead.

Rantings: The Big One - Are Games Art?

In an official "big week" for this blog, you can't get much bigger than this one. The question has confounded us for decades. It was a deciding factor for court trials. The idea is often commonly accepted, and yet the most famous critic in the country insists that they're not art. Even some of the designers disagree that their products, often masterpieces, are not art. And gamers in general point out that a toilet or a cross in a jar of piss apparently count as art, so Shadow of the Colossus damn well better count. And yet the debate stands.

But here's my two cents on the subject. Are games art?

Yes.

That was easy. Thanks everyone! Good night!

What, I said it was only going to be two cents worth! But then, the entire blog is free, so I guess I have room to expand.

Well, the obvious starting point is defining art itself. Otherwise, this entire debate is as pointless as asking if games are threepzugga.

We'll start with an unorthodox source. Scott McCloud, the writer of Understanding Comics, defined art in that book as any human (or presumably other sentient, I must add,) activity which doesn't grow out of either our species' two basic instincts: survival and reproduction. In that definition, of course games are art. Most people play them for fun, leisure, entertainment, emotional growth, etc. There are exceptions, sure. Some people play games professionally, and thus get paid, and thus can buy food and shelter, and thus survive. Some people even meet significant others through games. But even in those cases, it's often not the reason to game, just a lucky side effect.

Of course, by this definition, plenty of things are art. Games are art of every sort; poker, chess, basketball. etc. Two people arm-wrestling are artists, at least unless you can define it as asserting tribal dominance. This example does work, but most people reject it inherently because it makes no difference between these examples and great works of literature, cinema, etc. Those just aren't for fun. Those have MEANING!

Okay, fair enough. I probably wouldn't use the above example either, and for the same reason. So, let's move on to more professional sources. The first and least redundant definition at dictionary.com is "The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. " Wikipedia, meanwhile, says the most common usages denotes "Skill used to produce an aesthetic result." Wikipedia also references Brittanica online, which says that art is, "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others."

What? This is a blog. That's as professional as this gets. I'm not writing a dissertation here.

Nonetheless, we see two elements that stand out. One is that art requires skill, imagination, or at least expression and production. In other words, art requires a conscious effort. Beauty may be found in nature, but art doesn't simply grow there. On the other hand, capturing the beauty of nature does take effort and creativity. I'd have no trouble saying a painting or a photograph of a tree is art, even if the tree alone is not.

The second part is trickier. By the above definitions, it's anything that produces aesthetic results, experiences, etc. That makes things trickier. What is aesthetic in this case? Simply that which is appealing? Then how can we justify intentionally banal or horrific art?

At this point, I'm going to start creating what I consider a more working definition of art in this context. Art is, in the Joseph Barder version, "Anything which requires intent and creativity to generate and which produces an intellectual or emotional response." Thus, aesthetic is anything that makes you think or that makes you feel. That covers our usual "Piss Christ/Saw/Manhunt" examples.

But it then falls into the same problems as the first definition I used. Of course sports make us feel and think; we get obsessed with statistics of the game, we feel excitement as we play or we watch our home team play, we feel comradery with the team and its fans, etc.

Let me modify my definition, then. Art is "Anything which requires intent and creativity to generate and which produces an intellectual or emotional response independent of the physical activity of the product." For example, a police report is not art. The physical activities of the product are the analyzing of the written symbols and the processing of the facts this analysis produces, so even if the story is a horrific one with strong emotional responses, it's not art. A story imagining how the police officer felt, though, is art.

When applied to games, this makes things much clearer. The activity of a basketball game, for example, is mostly not art. The excitement of playing or watching the game, the three of watching your team come out ahead or the agony of their failure, is a direct result of the physical activity of the performers. That is not art, and most actions in the game come not from artists. The three point shot, while exciting, is exciting because it is a calculated risk to get a greater tactical advantage.

The slam dunk, on the other hand...

As that last example suggests, I do think that there is plenty of art to be found in a sport. The slam dunk has no advantage in terms of the game, but it is a staple of the game because of its demonstration of skill and confidence. It can be unique. It is, for all intents and purposes, performance art. The same is true of touchdown dances, the routines of cheerleaders, the antics of mascots, and even the little graphics many stadiums play during games. Using this definition for video games, not all of them are art. Pong is not art; there are no elements that don't come from the gameplay. But art is incredibly easy to find in games. Take a blocky enemy, toss a vague facsimile of a swastika on it, and you're not just killing designated opponents, you're saving the world from Nazis! The enemies of Doom aren't scary because of their tactical advantages; they're scary because their horrific demons.

Art is everywhere in games, and thus games are art. At the very minimum, they're identical to movies and television; just another example of the narrative form of art, a model that goes back to ancient cave paintings and verbal story-telling. But video games are more than that, and they offer their own unique method of experience art, just like every other medium has. But the advantages of video games as an art form is a discussion for another night, and it will be a self-righteous one on my part, I'm afraid. Because no matter what Ebert's bizarre take on art say, video games are art and the video game industry will produce art for as long as it exists, save for the one thing that stands in its way...the video game industry.

But more on that later. Thanks everyone! Good night!

My Life: One of the Few Things I'm Getting Right

I was with a girl in my room the other day. We were discussing food, among other things. She then said one of the most wonderful things I ever heard, "I have a delicious apple!"

To clarify, "my room" was my old room in my parents' house, the girl in question is my niece, and she is two. My heart melted.

I know a lot of things are wrong with my life. I'm looking for a better job, I suddenly need a new roommate, the whole "Moon language, love, die alone and unloved, blah blah blah" stuff. But I am happy with the fact that despite it all, or perhaps because of it all, I still am close with my family, or at least my immediate family. I notice that a lot of my friends and women I know (in the sense that they're the ones I actually want to date, not cute misdirections,) have less luck, being constantly frustrated by one or more parents or other family members, so I know I have it relatively lucky.

Not that it's always easy. I try to make sure I keep in touch with them, and I'm close enough to visit them regularly. Usually once a week, on Sundays more often than any other day, I drive the 28 or so miles to the parents home in Darien, or perhaps I visit my brother or we collectively go out to eat. Unless some of us are extremely busy or sick, there are no exceptions. Sometimes, the entire experience gets on my nerves, especially on days when they feel compelled to spend three hours at a restaurant or when it otherwise takes them forever to start a plan. I'm too A type and methodical, and I get impatient easily. But it is worth the occasional day like that.

Among my family, though, the one that impresses me the most is my brother, because he at least made something work right. Now, I love my family, but we're not the most successful or lucky people. We all have jobs we dislike or are unsatisfied with, despite collectively being smart people. And socially, we tend to be introverts or socially awkward. Some of us, like my mom, fake it better than most, and she's managed to become pretty popular, but it's not something that is instinctive or that comes naturally to us. Despite all that, my brother at least is on the right track to success in life, if not vast financial riches. Over the last few years, he got married, had a child, got a decent starter house, and is otherwise on the fast track to adulthood. Not bad for someone 26 years old. And he may be sick of the long hours of his job, but at least it’s in a field that he loves. He can stand to improve there, but at least he has that.

I'll never forget when I learned about my brother having a child. I was visiting the family, and we decided (for reasons I would later figure out,) to go out to eat instead of the normal meal at home. I was tired and annoyed that day, as I often am, though more the former than usual. I had three soda refills before the talk even turned to the...subject at hand.

I then yelled out "Holy Crap!" in a crowded restaurant.

I was wide awake after that, it should be noted. Despite my surprise, I was happy for both of them. My brother, Mike, and his wife Rose made an excellent couple. The always seemed to get along, they were happy together, and it was remarkable how quickly she became part of the family even before they got married. I was best man at the wedding, which save for the record heat and broken air conditioner at the reception went without a hitch.

And their niece, Violet, is a wonder. I saw he grow up a week at a time, watching her learn how to crawl, walk, and talk. She is incredibly smart for her age and usually very friendly. We all hope she'll get over any social awkwardness we have built in. For now, though, it's just wonderful seeing her every week, watching her act so excited and curious at the world.

I don't agree with every decision my parents made when we were kids, but they remain concerned, sacrificing people, and I want them to know that I love them, and my brother, sister in law, and niece very much. I think they're one of the few things keeping me from just moving to, say, California and starting over with the first job in the industry I could find. I may not be happy with all of my life, but starting over with nothing, including family, would be unbearable.

Reviews: This Isn't Good Bye, Guitar Hero 3, Technically

In general, I want to wait for a game or other source of review to be finished before I review. Technically, this is true for today's subjecgt. I did beat every single song on easy, and I did beat medium. I did not, however, beat all of the songs, and the infamous "bonus song" looks impossible even at this difficulty. As for hard and the expert levels, I'll have to pretend that fifth orange button is just a technical mistake for now.

When I got this game at Christmas, I didn't know how far I would go with it. I'm not usually the type to play through the same game multiple times just to clear all the difficulties, but it's not a very long game if you just play all the songs, either. My decision to more or less stop playing at this point, at least for now, came from a few things. For starters, it came from my desire to focus on Persona 3, a huge RPG I'll likely have to take over 100 hours to beat, so I can finish it before Smash Brothers Brawl comes out in about two weeks. But it also is because of which kinds of fun Guitar Hero 3 offers, and which ones I focus on.

Contrary to anything Raph Koster says, there are many kinds of fun that videogames offer. The first is the task of overcoming the challenges of the game, ranging from physical accomplishments to more logical puzzles. The Guitar Heroes are ultimately about these challenges. Winning the game requires increasingly precise and rapid finger motions, mental recognition spill, and incredible speed. Fun type #2 is fantasy fulfillment. Most videogames offer this by letting one become a superhero and save the world, or at least defeat evil. Guitar Hero, though, is no different, even if the role played is not inherently heroic and it exists in the real world. Nonetheless, the idea of being a rock star is incredibly appealing; one of the most glamrous and sought after jobs on the planet. There's the money, the ability to travel the world, the almost obligatory hedonism, but even without that point, there's the ability to be an artist, inspiring millions with your unmatched physical abilities. Plus, guitars are cool; we're not playing Pianist Hero for a reason.

Fun type #3 is the sense of wonder and exploration; seeing things you've never seen, hearing things you've never heard. You see a lot of this appeal in games like World of Warcraft, where the world is very large and full of strange, wondrous things to find. Type #4 is the same type of fun we get from watching an engrossing movie or television show; the fun of interesting characters, engrossing plots, and twists both horrifying and hilarious. For #5, there's the social aspect of games, and friends are made or simply enjoy each other's time in the game. Finally, fun type #6 is the customizable aspect, letting people make their own stories, or at least their own characters.

This is a scattered list, and it would make a good Rant blog at some point, but really I just needed to get some ideas out there for Guitar Hero to be evaluated on. How does it match up? Well, the customization options are pretty limited. You can pick your own characters and their costumes, but that's it, and options in that regard are limited. Social fun can be done online, but I haven't had much of a chance to figure that out in time. That will be part of the elements I will look into, but not yet. Otherwise, it requires a friend with his/her own fake guitar and the same time and interests to play the game as I do, which I do not have. Sense of wonder is not the focus, but it is not nonexistent. Most of the songs in this games are ones I never heard before or just never thought much about, and as a result there's a good dozen new bands I want to look into from the game, and a few new favorite songs. Of course, most of that sense of wonder ended as soon as I beat easy.

Plot and character are practically nonexistent in Guitar Hero 3, save for a few brief, barely animated cut scenes between areas, so that's out. That just leaves Guitar Hero 3's biggest strengths, the sense of escapism and fantasy and the excitement of puzzle solving. The former was still there, but the harder the game gets, the less you can enjoy that element. You go from rocking out to applause and 5-star reviews to struggling to even finish the songs while the music is often replaced by long strings of silence and the "you screwed up" plinking noise. That doesn't make me feel like a rock star, that makes me feel like the incompetent guitar player without a single iota of training that I actually am. And that leaves just the puzzle solving fun. The problem there is that while there are mental elements to the puzzles, most of it is simply getting your fingers to react fast enough to finish the song. This is just not a fun type that I get into. I did enough data entry for my jobs to say that I can't enjoy that element when taken by itself.

So, that's my justification for letting the game go for now. Of the six types of fun, three never were part of the game for me, two were really strong elements that faded as I finished medium, and one only partially appeals to me. Even so, .5 out of 6 is enough for me to return to the game. The thrill of a challenge is always a part of that desire to learn and win. And that social element is another thing to explore, when the time is right.

That's a lot of words about why I'm not playing a game, and not enough about what I thought about the game in the first place. Well, I liked it enough to play through it twice in a row. The sense of wonder of the music, the sheer thrill of being a rock star, the white knuckle, gripping, breathless emotion you get as you struggle to finish a tough song; these things are enough for me to recommend this game to nearly everyone. I never tried the earlier ones, at least not for more than a few minutes at a party, but I'm very glad I played this one. After all, one of the appeals of video games is to try new things, and I have saved the world as a superhero oh so many times. This, this was different. And so I'll be returning to the game, and happily so.

But it will probably be in smaller doses. If you stand up while you play, and you damn well should, it starts to hurt like hell after a while.

My Inspirations: My Ode to a Little Blue Metal Boy.

In exchange for missing last Wednesday's update, I plan on doing a week or so of more personal, important entries. Well, I actually had one of them set up for next Friday specifically anyway, and I wanted to do a big one last Wednesday and now just had to move it up a week, but when the cosmos thinks its onto something, I might as well indulge it. My review will be fairly simple this week still, though.

For now, though, it's time to discuss one of my favorite heroes in the video game world, at least among the actual characters, as opposed to the designers. This is a hero that caught my attention and held it for years. Hell, this is a hero that almost made me appreciate the greats like Mario less simply because there was someone else to root for. That never happens to me. I live in Chicago, home of two baseball teams that hate each other, or at least their fans do. I smirk when one team does well and the other team's fans are compelled to root against them, even hoping one of their own home teams fail as a result. But this hero, this series, this very concept makes me care.

This hero is Megaman.

And yes, as a result, the final roster for Smash Brothers Brawl really has depressed me, thank you very much.

I first learned of Megaman from my babysitter in grade school. To clarify, I was in grade school, the babysitter was not. That would be criminal. Anyway, he had an NES, and often we would play video games on it or, much more likely, watch him play it. (Sense a pattern here?) Once, he showed me Megaman 2, starting rather inscrutably with the game's final levels. With time, though, I saw them all, and I understood the connection between the levels and the bosses, the bosses and the powers they provided.

For those who haven't played the games, a brief description could be necessary. Megaman is a series of games about a humanoid robot. This man (or boy, as he tends to more resemble in later sources despite his name and the vague 8-bit graphics,) has to take down a typical mad scientist by the name of Dr. Wily. To start this mission, he has access to 8 (6, in the first game,) levels that are nonlinear; that is, he can explore them in any order. Each has a boss, as video game levels are wont to do, and each boss had a naming schema of a noun or adjective descriptor plus man. For example, enemies in the game series include Fireman, Quickman, and Magnetman. The level usually matched the boss's theme, as did the boss's attack. Best of all, after defeating a boss, Megaman earned one of its attacks, or a variant thereof, and this weapon was especially effective on at least one of the other bosses. Only after defeating all of the original bosses (dubbed Robot Masters in the series,) can Megaman go into the series of final levels, which tended to take place in Dr. Wily's fortress or that of an ally or patsy of his.

There was a lot to like about the games. There were the technical achievements the series managed, despite the limited prowess of the original NES. The music was astoundingly catching; I could still remember the music for every Robot Master's level years later, though admittedly buying the soundtracks helped. The graphics were crisp and well-animated, with some of the later games getting into multi-layer backgrounds and other tricks the NES seemed incapable of. The gameplay was usually challenging yet fair, requiring some memorization but mostly quick reflexes and pattern recognition skills. Every level, as a result of the boss theme elements, was by necessity unique from all the others. Given that games of this generation sometimes produces sewer and caves for a good third of the game, that remains remarkable to me. The boss fights, while often unbalanced by the power level of the attacks, were ultimately designed to be simple one-on-one duels. Both sides had no real allies and an identical, visible life bar. It felt less like a three-hit-wonder behemoth and more like an actual duel among equals. Small wonder that, a few years later, the same company would make Street Fighter 2 and turn fighting games into a phenomenon.

But I'll tell you the first reason for my love of the series; it was pure, distilled inspiration for designers. Like any hopeful designer, as a child, I thought about ways to do sequels for games that already existed. They were for the most part terrible. Every Mario game was little but an amalgam of earlier ideas. Who could blame me? The Mario games are famous for their innovations; the fantastic leaps of logic and rejection of gameplay assumptions that help make the series one of the primary drivers of the entire business. Megaman, on the other hand, was a perfect template. Toss a word in front of "man," and imagine the possibilities! There were billions of worlds to play with, ideas to ponder at all times, inspiration in every direction.

In some ways, this could practically be dubbed a weakness of the series. After all, almost every great series is known both for the individual stories and for the ongoing arc, the development of the heroes and its ongoing changes. Megaman, at least if you focus on the original model, barely changes at all throughout the series, save for some consistent new powers. Granted, the later spinoffs, like X, Legends, and Zero filled out the series' future in a way that created a much more elaborate, viable story arc, but individual games changed the plot little, especially for the original series that remains my favorite. Now, this is reasonably common in other artistic mediums. The most long-lasted scripted series of our times are things like CSI and Law and Order, which are notorious for focusing on a very strict focus on episode arcs and limited changes among the characters and overarching plot. But I never liked those shows; I prefer dramas that feature extended growth and changes, like Lost, Heroes, and Buffy.

It's the hardest thing about the Megaman mythos for me to explain, but let me give it a try. I already explained how easy the series was for designer fodder. I made plenty of complete games using the series' format; I even plan on devoting an "Ideas" blog to them some day. Maybe the simple story combined with the ease of design to imprint on me the idea to take the simple idea, and make it more so. For example, the earliest of my Megaman ideas copied the concept precisely. The later ones, though, actually started to implement a plot. It went from a simple rise to a new villain other than Wily to the final classic game, which ended with the destruction of the planet, the realization and discovery of Wily's real ambitions, and a climax to the entire series, putting things to a definite end. It wasn't a very good end, but 20 years later, you still haven't seen Capcom do any better, have you?

So what I'm saying is that Megaman not only was one of my first and most tenacious inspirations to be a designer, it made me want to become a better one. After all, the world of Megaman enchanted me; I had to try to improve on them! It's the rules! That I made up.

Sadly, that's still as far as I went on this series. I moved on from making sequels of others' ideas to making my own; another advancement I can thank Megaman personally for. But the best ideas not only were salvaged for the new games, some of them served as the starting archetypes for entire games themselves. So, that little part of Megaman will always be with my designs, and thus always with me. But, in a perfect world, I would still jump at the chance to make my own Megaman game or level. Though seeing the little Blue Bomber in a Smash Brothers would be nice too.

That does bring up the single thing that most annoys me about the character, though. The nickname Blue Bomber is an awful nickname for Megaman. He. Doesn't. Use. Bombs! At least not regularly. Blue Blaster or something would be so much more appropriate.

My Ideas: Dark Banner of Kylaria

As you already guessed, no, I didn't get a chance to make up for the "suffering from a horrible disease" missed entry. It turns out that my cold is actually a sinus infection, and while the normal cold symptoms have passed, I still have a horrible cough. But the show must go on! Any of my 1.3 or so readers can feel free to wish me well, health-wise, but I will continue to do these blogs either way. Besides, tonight's is my favorite subject, the old ideas I had. And, since my future looks to be full of unpleasant yellow substances and hacking noises, let's focus on the past, and a game idea of the genre classification. A game idea that was once, at least, three game ideas.

This is a response to a particular neurosis I have. I can never let an idea die. Well, I can, but it would have to be incredibly stupid first. Otherwise, even if a game idea itself never manages to get anywhere (creatively, obviously, since professionally none of them have yet to reach this achievement,) some of the characters, ideas, settings, or game play features are interesting enough to salvage. This game idea, known as the Dark Banner of Kylaria, is unique in that it was made of almost nothing but.

The concept had its base from an earlier "Me too!" genre idea. Specifically, it came from trying to make an idea for a real time simulator after being enchanted with Warcraft 2, and yet disappointed with its map-making features. I had elaborate plans in my head of maps involving massive slave revolts, hunts for hidden objects, quest to overthrow empires, and so on. But Warcraft 2 just wasn't at that level of complexity; it was kill the other side or be killed. Plus, it began my irritation with a common staple of the genre; anything you do on one map doesn't carry over to the next.

The Kylarian Campaign was my response to this. It was a ludicrously elaborate RTS with not two, not three, but TWELVE unique sides. This was also my "unnecessary overkill" period, I must admit. I assumed each would be less individually developed than a Warcraft race, at least. There would be four "good" races, like a good human kingdom, ye olde typicale elves and dwarves, and a pack of northern barbarians who used ice-based powers. There were four evil races, include ye juste ase typicale dark elves, an allegiance of evil humanoids like orcs, an undead horde, and an evil magic-hating human empire. The neutrals were pretty weird, though, and they included dragon-based lizard people, an allegiance of aquatic races, a force of intelligent nonhumanoid monsters, and magical space travelers. Ideally, you could select your level from a number of options, and your choices would affect which of the other 11 side would ally with yours and which would become enemies. This idea, while neat sounding, eventually faded due to lack of interest.

But it was brought to my attention again when I tried to rip off ANOTHER genre after playing Final Fantasy Tactics. It's the usual formula among designers. 1: See something we like. 2: Play/watch/read/etc. it until we become completely enchanted with it. 3: Figure out how to make it better. There wasn't much in this case, barring translation errors, but I tried anyway. Eventually, I needed backstory, and Kylaria came back to me.

This time, events occurred some 500 years after the RTS would have finished. Good won, but not completely. The evil humans were supposedly wiped out, the evil humanoids and undead formed their own empires and started a fantasy equivalent of the Cold War, and the neutral races mostly were retconned out of existence. This game began when the supposedly destroyed evil human empire returned, wiped out the northern barbarians in a traditional "look how evil we are" move, and then began a plan to destroy the other races.

But I needed more material. More importantly, I needed actual characters; RTSes at that stage were notoriously limited on that subject, but after Final Fantasy Tactic's brilliant if almost indecipherable plot, I had to do more. I responded as by salvaging even more ideas. For the protagonists, I reached deeper into the past into a game so old, I don't even know if it has a name. It involved a group of pale, attractive humanoids who lived underground and would dissolve instantly if exposed to the light of day. This version changed it to "damaged over time," and took the three leads, a mostly personality-free protagonist and his two female friends/potential love interests, as they had to leave their sheltered underground habitat to find help on the surface after their home was threatened by a magical rock elemental thingy.

As for villains, I reached even farther into the past. I utilized a game called The Black Flag, which came before I ever heard of the other things named after that. I think there was a band and a pesticide, but I'm not sure. Anyway, this idea was nothing but a hypothetical side-scrolling action game I created when imagining what sort of projects I would make when I went to Digipen. Well, if I went to Digipen, but I hoped at the time.

This is actually a bit of a sore subject, so we'll get to that in a later blog.

Anyway, the noteworthy thing was that Black Flag itself, or at least the boss enemies, were THEMSELVES salvaged from at least two other ideas I had for licensed projects. One of these was started about the time I was eight. That's a long history for a project I don't even work on much as of late.

But, hey, we finally have a semblance of a plot. The heroes are three outsiders thrust by crisis into the intrigue of a good nation forced into shaky ground with more dangerous empires, once sympathetic, one inherently evil (save for vampires and the occasional ghost, undead never get nice treatments.) And all three were being played by the new force, which included several mechanical and bio-engineered monsters from my older game designs (and you know that'll be another blog.) I just needed an explanation for the robots and such. I eventually figured that the evil empire, now known as the Dark Banner, spent those 500 years becoming a technologically advanced nation while the other empires were locked in magical advancement.

Even that was a stretch until I worked out the game's big climax. They gained this rapid advancement rate by creating a creature called Intellect. Intellect was a nation-wide social engineering program. They sought out the most brilliant scientists and overall geniuses, arrested them, and eventually merged all of them into one being. A decade later, I have to admit I have no idea how they started this process, but here we are. As the years passed, they continued this, sacrificing hundreds or thousands of super-geniuses into the collective mind of Intellect, which was forced to advanced technology several times faster than all of Earth's scattered intellects could. Of course, in the climax, Intellect goes insane, destroys its masters (or any left after the party killed most of them in boss fights,) and tries to conquer the world, so the party kills it. Hey, it's not a Jesus allegory, but it would do.

I actually was a little proud of this game. The villain's plot revolved around splitting its army into different combat units, each with its own theme. They would separately attack each empire but randomly spare certain parts, leading to accusations of treason between each nation and within as well. Meanwhile the Dark Banner itself was not unified, especially in the machinations of their spymistress. And there were even branching story paths, including if the party can return home and stop the earth elemental in time, and multiple possible new party members, which admittedly mostly came from the party I used to beat Final Fantasy Tactics the first time. There are ideas everywhere!

So what have I learned from this project? Well, I learned the sad truth that you can't write "this game has intrigue!" without getting in to more detail about how that intrigue will play out. I learned that interest is often difficult to maintain, though if I had this idea today, who knows how it would have played out? And nonetheless, I learned that every idea is a lead to another. Every past character or concept may very well be just what the next idea needs. And hell, if I ever get into a company that's looking for some new strategy-based IP, I know how that meeting will go (unless they read this blog, I guess.)