The Lair of the Monkey

Fostorial.co.uk is still his homepage, but he’s changed the template. Not only that, but he’s added an excellent article on 2D games. As there isn’t a facility for comments yet, I thought I’d write my own here. Great article, keep up the good work! On the subject of 2D though I don’t think it’s died a death just yet. For starters you have games that are in 3D but have 2D (i.e. cel-shaded) graphics such as Okami. Moving on from that, you have ace games that have 3D graphics but use 2D planes for gamplay - such as the uber-hard Ikaruga.

One other thing to note is both Nintendo and Microsoft have a growing library for download, with a huge array of 2D games (Sony’s gaming history doesn’t include 3D games, and they aren’t following the same strategy as Microsoft just yet). Now okay, these aren’t going to be massive budget sellers, but something like Geometry Wars evolved made arguably a bigger impact on gaming that a lot of 3D games of recent years. It also sold really, really well. Overall though, I see where you’re going. They are never going to take advantage of what could be done. Then again, that’s at least partially due to the market forces. Stuff that looks out of the norm (Rez, Doshin, Animal Crossing, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, Jet Set Radio, Hotel Dusk to name just a very few) whether in 3D or not doesn’t sell too well.

I for one still enjoy 2D games and in fact some of my fondest memories come from the SNES - which had very few 3D games to its’ name. This has meant of course that popular genres have changed, with the FPS basically arising from the invention of 3D and vector graphics. The history of that however is a whole different topic…

History is littered with empires who have risen only to fall within a relatively short period of time, but it is very rare for an empire to bounce back from such a defeat. In modern times, this exchanging of empires is much rarer than in days gone by, but with the new inventions at our disposal new empires are born, with the same goal of domination but an entirely different target. It’s hard to go into a shop without noticing a drink from the mighty Coca-Cola empire or walk down a high street without finding something owed by the mighty Gregg’s superpower (it’s a bakery chain based in the North East of England that is everywhere - ed), and this is the kind of empire that I refer to.

The gaming industry has always been a volatile and varied one, companies appearing from no where to produce gaming consoles (Playstation coming from what was predominantly a household appliance manufacturer being the best example I can think of) to challenge the colossi of the gaming world, occasionally winning the battle (Playstation again). Because of this variation the gaming industry has arguably seen more empires rise and fall within its relatively small lifespan than most industries have seen in over a century. How many of the pioneers of gaming still exist in their original form today? Not many! In fact I can only really think of Nintendo out of all the giant console companies that still exists from the early days of consoling (while Sony are still going strong they joined the console world pretty late on), their major competitors, SEGA and ATARI, long gone from the console arena.

That said, Nintendo have had their fair share of troubles over recent years. The humble NES and aptly named Super NES took the console gaming world by storm, holding a mighty choke hold over the home console medium (along with SEGA) in the early 90’s and this success was cemented by a myriad of Nintendo related spin-offs. (more…)

When you stand back and take a look at the current games market, you’re bound to notice just how spoiled for choice we are – so many games being released regularly and, certainly in my case, a limited bank balance with which to splash out. 

Unless you’re incredibly rich and have more free time than you know what to do with (nope, sadly not - ed), chances are there are games you miss.  Some games take purchase precedence over others; some games you’ll never consider, thinking ‘It’s not really my thing’; or perhaps, which has been the case with me, a game will sit unplayed on your shelf for weeks, or even months.

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Choose Your Fighter

The problem with doing something so engraved in any gamers memory is that,
no matter how much or little you played Street Fighter, everyone has a
favourite Street Fighter. Obviously the main two characters had to be Ryu
and Ken, the characters most closely associated with Street Fighter,
included because they are so integral to the story and the mythos, but who
else?

Yes there are characters who have been in from the beginning, and characters who played vital parts in the ongoing story, and even characters who left the gaming screen to try their hand at the movie business (although why the British Cammy is played by an Australian and the American Guile is played by Jean Claude Van Dam is anybody’s guess) but with so many to choose from the choice quickly became a chore.

For the third character I decided that a woman was needed since Street
Fighter is quite male dominant, and as a Streets of Rage type game 3
characters to start with seemed like a sensible number. Once this decision
was made the choice of who would make the starting line up became a whole
lot easier. Street Fighter 2, despite its various incarnations only had
Cammy and Chun Li and not getting the chance to play the alpha games, hence
not knowing any others female characters apart from Sakura, and being too
much like Ken and Ryu she was instantly disqualified.

The final choice basically lay with whom I liked the most and not being one for Chun Li
(sadly despite my accumulated years of SF experience I could never use her
that well and this infuriated me in a deep profound way) the third character
in the starting line up became Cammy (it didn’t have anything to do with the outfit then? - ed).

Now this is by no means the end of the character debate, in fact it has only
just begun. As part of the grand scheme it has been decided that there must
be at least some unlockables, for what kind of games designer would I be
without rewarding the diligent and determined, in fact I’d be setting a poor
moral example for all, so it is safe to assume that at some point in the
development process I’ll be returning to this dilemma.

The main objective of this decision was to give me a list of characters I would be designing the game for, give some indication of how their story would play out and how
they would control and play in the foreign Streets of Rage combat system.
Mission accomplished, I can now get down to the really hard part, making the
game!

Development Diary - 10/06/2006
When I mentioned to Mr Butterscotch, the proud creator of this very site, that I was developing a complete game he suggested that I should keep a diary of my progress, my victories, my defeats and everything that lies between. As it happens I thought this was a very good idea, and upon seeing my interest offered to post the diary on The Lair of the Monkey.

I immediately jumped onboard, knowing fine well that I have a habit of starting so many things at once that I get swamped down and not finishing them for months, seeing the published diary as convenient tool to keep me focused and on track. Another benefit became apparent a couple of days later as coding began produce some results (just the basic underlying code of the game engine) and that was rather than take my usual cowboy approach of adding things as they come up I began to design and plan in more detail.

Maybe this is because other people will actually see my battle with addiction (yes, I know how much of a geek I am, but you can’t argue that I am not indeed L337) or perhaps I’m just growing as a developer, it being my job description nowadays, whatever the reason it can only aid the design and quality of the finished product. But what is the product you ask? Well the clever marketing answer would be, keep coming back to see how the product progesses over the coming weeks, but I never was one for the marketing side of things (leave that to me, we’ll make you rich yet - ed), leading nicely into… (more…)

Merriam-Webster define euthanasia as “the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy”.

Now, this may sound like an odd way to open an article on gaming but when you consider the meaning this is exactly what happened to the 2D games of yester-year that we all enjoyed. I’m sure you’ll agree that phasing out of 2D games over the early months of the 3D consoles could be considered “permitting the death of” because sadly the casual gamer, and many of the hardcore fraternity for that matter, believe that in today’s world of 3D, 2D constitutes “hopelessly sick”. Yes, they do still exist, but mainly in the handheld world, and if we continue to run with the metaphor, the gaming equivalent of a nursing home, the place games that are graphically far inferior are housed because of the lack of processing power in a hand held.

If game genres and styles have a natural lifespan surely it is a little ageist to state that it only lasts until the next generation comes along. I have always been of the opinion that new technology is a way to improve what already exists, not a sure fire way to forget it and move on. Surely the natural lifespan of a genre or style is until the day game developers have done everything they can with it, but unfortunately it seems that I am in the minority on this. (more…)

This article came about courtesy of a discussion I was having with my
flatmate and frequent Tekken buddy Fost. We were discussing the merits of
the Wii versus its’ competitors and Fost began to oppose my support of the
PS3 (not really a surprise in itself).

He claimed that the modus operandi of the Wii from Nintendo was that they knew they were never gonna rival all the souped up power and capabilities of the other machine and were just setting out to bring the fun back into gaming. This in turn got me thinking about the most fun games I played in recent years and how they were in no way
connected to gaming speed, awesome graphics, capacity and all those words we
“casual” gamers don’t really understand (given how much we play Tekken we’re kinda hardcore - ed).

The most fun I’ve had in any game in recent years for example is Donkey Konga on the GameCube. Or recently Buzz for the PS2. Hell on a more conventional front the game I played most was Ultimate Spider-Man, hardly a game with fantastic graphics (albeit in an attempt to replicate the look of the comic). Thinking back to why I got rid
of my own PS2 (besides needing the money) I realised that a large decider
was that games just weren’t fun, my greatest annoyance for example was Metal
Gear Solid 2, a game that in my opinion was about 90 per cent movie and 10
per cent actual gameplay (I certainly agree with that one - ed).

So what other fun times have you had with these zany games? Do you think Nintendo are right in their attempt to bring back the fun? Do you fervently disagree with me and get more enjoyment from newer and more complex games and systems? The floodgates are open, feel free to reply…