['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time - some opinions and an interview with controversial indie game creator Luc Bernard.]

I pretty freely admit that I laughed quite loudly when I first saw Pitchfork's review of the second album from immensely average Australian rock band Jet. You know, the one where instead of text, they just had that YouTube video of a monkey drinking its own urine?

So, I'm not sure how I can really be about to say that I find the following quote, from Destructoid's review of indie platformer Eternity's Child, to be utterly repugnant. Possibly it's an issue I have with Jet, having had the displeasure of seeing them play “before they were big”. But here we go anyway:

“Whatever you do, don't buy this game. In fact, don't even say its name, for that might give its already unholy form power.”

That's repugnant. Utterly abhorrent. I've done my fair share of criticism, for both games and music, and that's a level I've never stooped to. That's the point where it jumps from taking your responsibilities as a writer in the public sphere seriously, to attention-seeking. 'Look at how funny I am!' It's pretty much everything I find repellent about the world of video game blogging in one sentence. There's a time and place for humour writing. Not every single post needs to contain a joke. Is the audience's attention span really that infinitesimal?

To be fair, the rest of the review isn't actually badly done, per se. It raises fair points in terms of the issues the writer has with the game, but jeez. That conclusion? Just...don't. Show some respect – both for the game, and for yourself, as a writer.

Here's the problem with it – it's trivializing the work of the game's creator, Luc Bernard, and turning him into a joke in the eyes of the readers. And the readers, for the most part, want to be the bloggers. They want to be as Oscar-Wilde-witty and fabulously scathing as the people whose work they read each and every day. That's why comments exist. That's where they try and prove that they can compete.

And, here lies the level of responsibility, which seems to be completely misunderstood. Anyone can laugh, and say that they're not responsible for the comments of the community, but that's not true. You can't play the 'do as I say, not as I do' game. Especially not on the Internet, where the much reposted Penny Arcade rule of anonymity stands so true. To wit:

“Luc,” read one comment, “Go fuck yourself.”

“GO FUCK YOURSELF LUC!!” Read another. “YEAHHHH!!!”

So: the thing. Eternity's Child might not be a good game. I wouldn't know – I haven't actually played it, yet. But I respect its creator, Luc Bernard.

Respect's a good word, I think. It means, according to the first online definition I managed to wrangle up, “To recognize the worth, quality, importance, or magnitude of”.

I think Bernard's reaction to this whole thing in the aforementioned comments section could have been handled with a higher degree of professionalism. In fact, I think even taking part was a bad move.

I think placing the blame on his co-developer, Joseph, was unnecessary. I think his recent – somewhat retracted – comments in regards to quitting video games smack of over-reaction.

But, he's 22. I did some pretty stupid things, and said some pretty stupid stuff at that age. Hell, I tried to steal a pine tree once. And at least he attempted it - putting the game out, I mean, not stealing a pine tree, because that only leads to legal threats and multi-hundred dollar bills. He put something out there commercially - putting a value on his work - and you have to respect that.

'Course, I'm not saying that you have to create something of your own to be able to engage in criticism, because that's just silly. But at least show a little respect, please - at least respect the effort that went into his work.

The following is a discussion with Bernard about his work, and his behavior.

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik - 'Much Ado About Luc Bernard'" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time - an enlightening chat with Matt Hestill.]

It’s been interesting reading Michael Walbridge’s series of interviews with prominent games journalists, and Simon Parkin's recent column on the same subject. It’s really given me pause to think about some of the people I admire in the field; Michael is actually interviewing a number of them.

There’s plenty of other people who I think exemplify the great things about games journalism – intelligence, an ability to think critically and a desire to move journalism past its occasional stagnancy in the mass-market commercial field. While a disappointing number of people writing about games are all too satisfied with towing a line of mediocrity, these people are pushing forward and asking, ‘Why can’t we expect more?’

Unfortunately, all of those people were too busy to talk with me, so I contacted my old acquaintance Matt Hestill instead.

You might know Matt from his blog, It’s Matt Hestill, Stupid - a surreal collection of self-obsessive rants and reviews, all written in Hestill’s somewhat underwhelming stream of consciousness style, punctuated with the odd bit of freeform poetry.

Or it was, anyway, until Hestill snapped in late January and deleted every single post because “the comments were just annoying and you people don't deserve my insight into the games industry anymore so you can all just get fucked”.

“Hey Matt,” my initial email read. “I want to interview you for GSW, man. What have you been up to since you stopped the blog? Are you even still writing? Haven’t seen anything around lately. I thought you were meant to be doing some stuff for 1Up or something.”

“Wallis,” he replied. “Busy always. Here’s the interview’s focus: I am the next evolution of games journalism. The blog was my chrysalis. I was the pupa. Shutting the blog was the pumping of the hemolymph into my wings so that I might emerge stronger and more beautiful; flowering and rocketing. Now I am the butterfly, Wallis. Soon I will fly above the caterpillars of games journalism. Skype me.”

So, it quickly emerged that Matt had recently had something of an epiphany while rereading Kieron Gillen’s reknowned New Games Journalism manifesto. And then reading everything he could find on games journalism's need for a Lester Bangs. And then reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And then, the following is what transpired, immediately after connecting to Hestill via Skype.

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik: 'Beer and Loathing With Matt Hestill'" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time - a look at sculptor Sid Garrard and Gears Of War replica company Project Triforce.]

I'm going to take a stab in the dark here, and suggest that maybe – just maybe – GameSetWatch readers aren't exactly the kind of people to require the pictured Locust bust in their respective lounge rooms. Now, that's possibly a generalization, but I'm going to run with it.

Don't get me wrong. I've got nothing against the kind of people who horde this kind of thing. I just tend to go more for the subtle approach – a couple of signed Sam and Max posters and the odd Master System box is all I've ever really gone for. And I'm thinking that maybe GameSetWatch readers have that air of refinement that would suggest they do the same.

So, I don't totally understand that side of what Sid Garrand and his company TriForce are doing with their new range of Gears of War replica equipment. 'Do I really want a whopping great lancer propped right in the middle of my coffee table?' I pondered while conducting the following interview. 'No,' I thought. 'No I do not.'

But, somewhere in the dingy depths of my CV exists a little bit of prop making. Yes, readers, that field of heather at the start of the Honda Jazz advertisement voiced by Tony Robinson? The tremendous trees? That was me. Well, some of it was me. Admittedly, that's all the experience I've got in that field, but it's a fine field none the less, and so it's the actual sculpting side of things that I really dig. It's pretty amazing work, in that regard. I don't want it anywhere near my house, but I respect the huge amount of work that has clearly gone into it.

And so, with pre-orders on offer right now – oh go on, readers, indulge yourselves! - it seemed like a great chance to talk with master sculptor Sid Garrand to find out more about the line of products available, as well as querying how easy it is not to laugh while dressing up as Marcus Fenix.

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik: Locust Busts and Lancer Replicas A-Go-Go" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, the inevitable E3 retrospective, from a distinctly different perspective.]

Growing up, I remember E3 being a pretty amazing, mystical event. I could never remember exactly when it was, but when it appeared in the game magazines I bought, it always meant big exciting things. Obviously, the whole event is now rather different to what it was, but it’s still a focal point for the industry, and still brings with it more than a fair share of announcements. This year was interesting – it might not have brought the games that people expected, but I think the word ‘interesting’ still more or less applies here.

But really, no one needs to read another twenty-something journalist with pretentions of grandeur prattling on about their view of the whole thing: “I really believe that this series of announcements represents a shift in the momentum of this generation of consoles in regards to the juxtaposition of core versus casual users blah blah blah”.

Especially now, a few days after it’s all over, and especially from one who sat at home in Adelaide and read about the whole thing hours after the press conferences were actually held. It’s not that I don’t care, but quite frankly, I’ve done the whole writing about E3 at 6am Australian Central Standard time thing. I’d rather just sleep.

I thought I’d spare you the systematic pseudo-intellectualised babble. After all, as I keep saying, this is Quiz Me Qwik, not Masturbatory Analytical Journo Hour, though that is a very good name for a column and I hope Simon is making a note of that somewhere so he can use it later.

Anyways, we’re going to take a look at E3 from a very different perspective. Like I said, it was a very spectacle when I was younger, and it occurred to me: it wasn’t just me, was it? Or just that era? So I asked my nine year-old cousin Steven to do me a little favour.

For the events of E3, Steven was to take note of the announcements, and at the end of the week, I would interview him to see what he thought of the whole thing. Originally, I asked him to try and stay up and watch the press conferences – generally on at around 2am ACST – but his mother suggested that might not be the most awesome idea ever, even though he was on school holidays this week.

Actually, what she really said was: ‘Alistair, he’s a nine year-old boy! Do you really think that’s a good idea? Really? Christ - honestly, Alistair, I fear for the day when you have children.’ But nevermind. I managed to work past those issues, and give Steven a call to get the inside word on whether or not E3 still really is the magical event I remember it being.

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik: E3 Wrap-Up With My 9 Year-Old Cousin Steven" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time - a look into the art game world with Tale Of Tales.]

Possibly one of the more interesting things that came up during this interview with Belgium based indie development duo Tale of Tales was the idea that they are, effectively, experimental outsiders in the games industry simply because of their focus on story based, artistically motivated work.

Isn't that weird? Can you imagine what the film industry would be like if narrative works were substantially less popular than action based films?

Well, okay, maybe that's a bad example, given the films that tend to come out on top at the box office these days, but you get the point.

The studio, comprised of Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, admit that this isn't even something that's occurred to them before now. In fact, they consider what they do an “extremely traditional approach”, at least from the perspective of other medium, like cinema and music.

Then again, you get the idea from talking to them that maybe they're pretty used to being the outsiders at this point. Their favourite games are all at least five years old, proof that “a certain consolidation is happening where the big game companies are happy producing braindead toys for the masses”. Indie companies, for the most part are “creating braindead toys for the cliques”. Yeah, they're probably not exactly gunning for the Christmas card list, at this point.

But what would you expect from a group whose most commercial – for lack of better word – work is The Endless Forest, an MMO where the description is “You are a deer. So are the other players. You meet each other in an endless forest on the Internet. The setting is idyllic, the atmosphere peaceful. You communicate with one another through sounds and body language”? It's a bit bonkers, but gloriously so: wonderfully, artistically so.

They've also just started writing up a blog detailing the development of their next game, The Path, due in early 2009. So, we decided to chat with Harvey and Samyn about their beginnings, their somewhat provocative views on the industry, and why teenage boys find it a complete affront to their delicate sexuality to be asked to jump around as deer.

Continue reading "COLUMN: 'Quiz Me Qwik': The Tale Of Tale of Tales" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, an innocent bystander and a nearby train wreck.]

Regarding the whole Limbo of the Lost fiasco, has anyone coined the term “LoLgate” for it? I don’t seem to be able to find any kinds of references to it as that around the place, so let’s see if we can’t get it to catch on. After all, it’s a pretty fair bet that people will be talking about this for some time to come – how often do you hear about something as blatantly weird as this?

On one hand, it does seem cut and dry. The independent Majestic Studios used locales from existing games for their own game, Limbo of the Lost - 3D areas translated into 2D click and point adventure backdrops, presumably by simply taking screenshots. Screenshots from games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Diablo II, Unreal Tournament 2004, Unreal Tournament 2003, Crysis, Silent Hill 4: The Room, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, World of Warcraft, Painkiller, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and hell, probably more too.

It’s a pretty straightforward case of plagiarism, and copyright infringement. It’s absolutely no shock that US publisher Tri Synergy pulled the game from release within days of the accusations hitting news sites and forums. Majestic recently responded themselves, calling the “notification that some alleged unauthorized copyrighted materials submitted by sources external to the development team have been found” within the game “shocking”. It’s a pretty meaningless and weak rebuttal.

But, there’s something oddly endearing about the company’s naïveté.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not trying to defend it. It just feels more dense than insidious. Even their response is amusing: “Uh…wasn’t me.” Who would honestly believe that this kind of thing would go unnoticed in 2008? It’s like Ernest Goes To Digipen or something, except that they’re British, so maybe it’s more like Carry On Game Developers.

Still, even with that dimwit appeal, you’ve got to really feel for the people wrapped up in this. Majestic will never produce another game – that’s a given. But what happens to the credibility of Tri Synergy? What happens to the credibility of composer Marko Hautamäki, who worked to produce music for the game as a freelancer, and had no knowledge of the way that the game was being developed?

Already, he’s been under fire: guilt by association. “I have seen my name mentioned in several internet discussion forums,” he noted in a recent press release, “and there has been speculation about if the game contains stolen music but so far that has not been proven one way or another.” While Hautamäki didn’t produce every piece of music used in the game, he adds that he “can 100% guarantee everything” he worked on is original, offering the files on his website for scrutiny.

In order to work through his side of the story in more detail, I contacted Hautamäki, and asked about his experiences working with Majestic, and what this could mean for the future of his career as a composer.

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik - 'And The Orchestra Played On'" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, an eclectic Japanese game translator gets quizzed.]

If there's one thing you can take away from the previous week's column, it's that I have absolutely no idea about programming. Forgetting the fact that I also have zero knowledge of other languages aside from what I've learnt from Serge Gainsbourg, the technical implications of translating even a NES game scares the living hell out of me. Translating a PlayStation 2 game? Fergeddaboutit.

But hey, at least there are people out there who have an idea of how to work with computers beyond, you know, writing words on them and making them say “Hello World”. People like TransGen founder and webmaster Saito. He's only been translating games since February of last year, but he's already worked his way through NES dodge-ball title Honoo no Doukyuuji: Dodge Danpei and its sequel on his own, and Kakuge Yaro Fighting Game Creator along with the rest of the team.

And now TransGen is working on Namco X Capcom. And Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories remake Re:Chain of Memories. They're both PS2 games. Oh, and Saito is Spanish, so English isn't even his first language.

Some people really are overachievers, you know?

But how could I not talk to him, and ask about what TransGen does? Oh yeah, and there's also the matter of enquiring exactly how much confusion comes from the fact that the group shares a name with a (seemingly abandoned) transgendered support website. That's gotta be worth a query of two.

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik - 'Talking 'Bout Saito's Translation Generation'" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, we get a little weird.]

This column seems to be turning into some kind of weirdly self-absorbed trip down memory lane for me, at least in the introductions, though it has on occasions made its way throughout the column proper like some kind of terrible beard-stroking, sky-gazing virus.

It’s like I’ve just discovered informal first-person journalism or something, except that I’ve been writing like this for other places for a while now. Anyways, given the lack of angry comments calling me out on my egotism, I assume it’s not getting up anyone’s nose, which is lovely.

And, on the odd chance that it is – and, by extension, I am - getting up your nose, hoo boy are you going to hate me this week.

Back in early 1992, while in Mr Harris’ grade four class, I was engaged in some kind of cartooning cold war with my best friend Sam. I had created – amongst other things – a family of anthropomorphic radishes. He had created a family of anthropomorphic echidnas. And though we were best friends, we did have more than a few blow-ups: he copied me, you know?

I like to think I was ahead of my time in regards to intellectual property protection rights.

Anyways, the one thing I had going that he didn’t was a video game design document. It was, admittedly, not a finished design document, but it was better than nothing. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the first thing about programming, and nor did any of my friends, so the Jaton the Radish game never really got underway – discounting a brief, unsatisfactory, jaunt into the world of Macromedia Director later that decade.

The documents, however, survive, and have been scanned for your enjoyment in an extraordinarily painful and time consuming manner: the scrapbook I used at the time is something like A3.75 or some inconvenient measurement. As such, the scanning was done in four sections for each page, before they were all stitched together. Goddamn it.

Back to the point at hand: since this column is called Quiz Me Qwik, and not - I don’t know; Show and Tell Hour or something, I’ve decided to interview myself about the project and its influences. Narcissism ahoy!

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik - 'Talking To Myself'" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time - a translation project for the unreleased in the West PS1 Atlus RPG Persona 2: Innocent Sin.]

It was suggested to me by Simon recently that this column could possibly be renamed, to reflect the apparent focus on hacking and translation. Oddly, while I realised that I have been conducting a number of interviews based on these subjects, it wouldn’t really have occurred to me to centre the whole column on them. I wouldn’t actually describe myself as being particularly obsessive about homebrew or fan-translations or hacked level-sets or graphics patches.

It’s actually the obsessional behaviour of the people who do these things that interests me most. Not everyone’s obsession is unhealthy, exactly – though I did have an interview request declined by a young lady who had written well over 250,000 words of Sonic fan-fiction over the past six years. Most times, it's actually really cool to see what people are spending their time doing. The amount of work put in by the people I've been talking with lately is nothing short of amazing, not to mention the level of creativity involved.

Also, to be fair, I kind of like the name Quiz Me Qwik.

Anyway, case in point: Gemini's ongoing translation of PlayStation RPG Persona 2: Innocent Sin. While the project was begun some time ago, he's only been working consistantly on it since January, and already has around 80% of the work done. That's a pretty amazing effort, but then, Gemini is pretty passionate about the game.

The Persona games started with Revelations: Persona back in 1996. The next iteration was split into two installments, Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment, with a story that spanned both games to a degree, though the former was never released outside of Japan. Depending on who you believe, this might be because of the optional homosexual relationship that the main character can engage in, or possibly because of the story that focuses on the resurrection of Hitler. Or neither.

[UPDATE: Commenter Baines also notes another possible reason for the game not debuting in the States, something Kurt Kalata also mentioned in a 1UP article: "At the beginning, your characters band together and kill their high school principal. Sure, he's a murderous lunatic who's threatening their fellow students, but in the wake of the Columbine incident in 1999, schoolyard violence could not be taken lightly."]

In any case, while there have been multiple translation guides for the game, there's never actually been a full patch. With the first one presumably just a few months away from release, now seemed like the perfect time to chat with Gemini about the project, and his Persona fandom.

GSW: When did you first encounter the Persona series?

Gemini: Sometime near July 2001, the day my cousin bought a copy of Eternal Punishment in English. Unfortunately his copy was a bootleg with the whole debugging code still active, so it was almost impossible to play.

GSW: Weird! What kind of stuff would it do, and when did you get the chance to play through it on a normal copy?

G: It's a retail version with some more menus to do weird stuff like altering character stats in battle, explore any map - including debug rooms - watch movies, etc. It has even a neat utility to create temporary maps with the characters you want.

I played the actual retail version about two years ago, a couple months after I started getting interested in Innocent Sin.

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik: 'Gemini Strays Into Innocent Sin'" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a new weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, a Russian literary game adaptation is probed.]

Unfortunately, what I know about Russian literature could fit on the back of a business card. It could, in fact, fit on the back of a business card even if you were using really, really big writing and a big thick permanent marker to write it, and then had to cross out a bit and rewrite it because you'd misspelled a few of the words. I could name maybe three or four authors, but that’s about it.

I know enough to divine, though, that the Strugatsky brothers – Arkady and Boris – are pretty damned popular in the former Soviet territories. They're like, say, Noel and Liam Gallagher, if they wrote science fiction books. Oh, and if they hadn't released complete crap after their first two albums and were still regarded as masters of their craft.

Actually, the Eddings brothers would probably be a more apt comparison, come to think of it. Yeah. Maybe ignore that bit about Oasis, if you could.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Lazily using Wikipedia to fill in the gaps: "The Strugatsky brothers (Бра́тья Струга́цкие), as they are usually called, became the best-known Soviet science fiction writers with a well developed fan base. Their early work was influenced by Ivan Yefremov. Their most famous novel Piknik na obochine has been translated into English as Roadside Picnic in 1977 and was filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky under the title Stalker."]

The brothers' 1963 book Hard to be a God, dealing with "an alien humanoid world passing the phase of Middle-Ages", is one of their most popular – it's been filmed twice, once in 1989 and again this year. It's also now been made into a PC “hack 'n' slash RPG” by developer Akella.

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik: 'A Russian Literature Primer With Akella'" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a new weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, a thirteen-year-old whiz hacks up New Super Mario Bros for DS.]

“Back when I was 12 or so,” sang New York singer songwriter Jeffrey Lewis in his song Back When I Was 4, “I swear to god, I never felt so low. Everyone but me was making out and eating cookies.” I wasn't making out or eating cookies much myself, though I did play spin the bottle earlier that year at my friend Rob's party, and kissed Julia Mildenhall once on the mouth; no tongue.

But I wasn't feeling terribly low, either: I’d just bought my SNES and was playing my way through Zelda, Donkey Kong Country and Secret of Mana.

I can’t speak for whether or not he was eating cookies and making out at age 12, but hacker and programmer Treeki was already well into development of his New Super Mario Bros. level editor in 2007. Almost a year later, and he's gone through two released versions of the editor, and made progress into a third version, though he notes it's not likely to see release any time soon.

Oddly, there hasn't been the glut of levelsets you'd expect from a release like this. In fact, aside from an unfinished Super Mario Bros. remake, and a few uncompleted trial levels by unmotivated individuals, there have barely been any. So, hey, if you're reading this: why not give it a go?

I for one would love to see some interesting hacks out there; even with eight worlds, NSMB really felt over and done with much too quickly, and the multitude of cool Super Mario World hacks show there are some really creative minds in the hacking community.

That's not exactly why we decided to talk to Treeki about the editor, though - after all, he admits he “wouldn't recommend” people even bother with it. It's more to do with, well: how many 13 year olds do you know who are putting together projects like that?

Continue reading "Quiz Me Quik: Editing New Super Mario Bros With Treeki" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a new weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, an examination of Nintendo's portable system running a much more heavyweight vintage console.]

There’s kind of a weird mythical nature to the Neo Geo – in my mind, at the very least. I think it applies to other people, though, simply because of the price associated with the console throughout its lifetime: US$649 at launch, with games going for $200 or more.

And as time has gone on, it hasn’t got much better. Games for the system – rare ones, that is – have a tendency to go for over $1,000 on eBay. I’ve always thought of it as a highly regarded system, though it’s obviously one that was never hugely successful in a commercial sense.

I’ve only played one – only even seen one – in the wild once, and that was at an import store on Melbourne’s notoriously expensive Toorak Rd. I can’t remember what I played, as I think I was about 12 at the time. I know it had grenades in it, but that really doesn’t narrow it down for the Neo Geo, does it?

I do remember the controller, though; that thing was super sturdy, and really a joy to use. And I think that I knew from reading GamePro that it was a far more powerful machine than what I was used to (although given I was used to a 286 at the time, that’s not saying much).

And now Neo Geo games are playable on DS, with Ben Ingram’s NeoDS emulator, which has just been released, and is currently at version 0.1.0. It's funny how quickly technology moves. I've just replayed Monkey Island 2 on my mobile, for example. That game wouldn't even run on my 286 growing up.

Naturally, there’s a few bugs with it right now, but that makes for some interesting discussion – how many people really know about the processes involved in writing emulation software, and how to deal with strange issues? There’s no better time, then, to actually talk with Ben and ask about the emulator as he works to iron out the bugs and implement new features.

GSW: What made you think, initially, that the DS would be powerful enough to support a Neo Geo emulator?

Ben Ingram: I didn't know if it would work initially, but looking at the Neo Geo specs, it seemed like if I can stream data fast enough, everything else would be doable. So I gave it a shot.

Continue reading "Quiz Me Quik: 'NeoDS - 100 Meg (Portable) Shock!'" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a new weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, we have a look at the history and state of gaming on the world's most famous free operating system.]

It would be interesting to find out exactly how many people have switched to Linux since the release of Windows Vista. Not a big percentage of PC users, sure, but it’s probably a number worth taking notice of.

Personally, I loaded Ubuntu onto my laptop just a month after buying it – Vista’s sluggish operation got to be a little too irritating. And boy is the difference noticeable, too; Ubuntu might actually be the fastest OS I’ve ever experienced in terms of basic operation.

There are drawbacks, of course. Open Office is a fine counterpoint to Microsoft Office, and The GIMP is a great Photoshop alternative, but the gaming side is predictably lacking. I can play all the fantastic Kenta Cho freeware shooters, but…no Warning Forever? Tragic.

Of course, I’m not putting down the whole scene - I’m far from a Linux gaming authority. That’s why I thought now might be a good time to have a chat with Bob Zimbinksi, who has run the Linux Gaming Tome for around nine years now. He denies being an authority either, unfortunately, as he’s stepped back from the day-to-day workings of the site a little over the past few years. “Answering your questions has made me realize just how removed from Linux gaming I am these days,” he smiles. “Don't mistake me for an authority on modern Linux gaming. I'm a guy with a Macbook Pro and an Xbox 360. Sorry!”

Err, so…maybe that says something about Linux gaming, eh? Not that Zimbinski doesn’t still have some interesting things to say about the history of the site, and where Linux gaming has been in the past, of course. More importantly, he’s got an explanation as to why he’s moved away from Linux, and whether or not commercial gaming has a home on an operating system that thrives on a base of free software.

GSW: When did you first start using Linux, and what attracted you to it?

Bob Zimbinski: I started using Linux in the mid-90's, maybe 1994 or 1995. At the time, the notion of a Unix system on my desktop seemed pretty radical to me. I'd used Unix at work and school, and it was exciting to have free reign over an entire system, especially considering what a hands-on project administering a Linux system was in those days.

Upon getting my first Slackware system up and running, I resolved to use Linux exclusively for my computing environment.

GSW: What were your first experiences with Linux gaming?

BZ: I've always been a video game nerd, so it was important to me to see how much gaming I could do on this new system. I remember how exciting it was to get Doom running fullscreen - [graphics library] svgalib was a monster that I'm sure nobody misses today. I was also quite taken by Maelstrom, a Linux port of a slick Asteroids clone for the Mac.

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik - 'The State Of... Linux Gaming?'" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a new weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, we talk to the translator of a classic handheld card battler.]

I’m really quite atrociously bad at competitive card games. I missed the whole Magic explosion growing up, and while I admit that I did get into the Pokemon cartoon to a degree that could be considered mildly inappropriate for someone at university, I didn’t even touch the collectable card thing. So, yes, part of it is simply that I have very little interest in it, but it doesn’t excuse how mind-blowingly bad I’ve appeared to be the few times I’ve tried video game based card games.

I was, for example, invited to the Kongregate Kongai card game beta to go along with the interview I did with Jim Greer and David Sirlin which appeared a couple of days back. I had to admit to Jim that I really can’t say whether or not the game is any good, because I suck so viciously at it. Mildly embarrassing stuff.

But enough about my shortcomings. It’s obvious that there is a real interest in card games, especially when they happen to revolve around a premise as blatantly awesome as SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighter’s Clash. Characters from the most beloved fighting games series around in super deformed appearance, with cards! Even I can recognise the appeal in that.

There are currently three games in the series – two for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, and a more recent one for the DS. The first game proved reasonably popular as far as niche titles go, but the second was never released outside of Japan. And the less said about the DS effort the better. So, a translation project, helmed by one Flavor, was started in late 2001, and finally – after a number of roadblocks and pauses – completed in March.

To celebrate what is a pretty mammoth effort, we talked with Flavor about all the goings-on regarding the project, and received some astoundingly in-depth answers about topics such as his Card Fighter’s Clash fandom, why it’s all taken so long, and why the Lost Church is now a Rooster Church.

Continue reading "Quiz Me Qwik: Card Fighting With Flavor" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a new weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, we examine an activist Flash game cautioning against overfishing.]

Aside from Ecco the Dolphin, it’s kind of hard to think of any other games that have you playing as a sea creature. EVO: Search for Eden? Did you play as a fish in that? I really can’t remember. In fact, it’s entirely possible that I never played it, and only know about it because I saw an ad in GamePro.

Anyway, we can add another game to that list now: Pew Environment Group’s Flash title Ocean Survivor. It’s a little more on the serious side than Ecco, however, with about 100% less Vortex Queen and more of a focus on the actual realities of the sea. “Pollution, habitat destruction, mismanagement and overfishing have impoverished our ocean resources,” says the game’s website, “and have caused more than 90% of the world's large fish, including tuna, swordfish and marlin to disappear from our oceans.”

It’s overfishing that’s the game’s real concern, though. Your bluefin tuna swims through a 2D ocean, avoiding nets and hooks of various kinds – the game details the destructive impact of each if you manage to hook or net yourself.

Of course, to hook the public in, there’s the high score table, which currently sits around the 300,000 mark. I’ve only managed about 80,000 so far, which makes me feel like a complete failure of a fish, but I guess that’s life.

We had a chat to project lead Joseph Gordon about the game, and – more importantly – about whether the high score grabbing public will actually learn from the game and take the chance to sign the petition.

Continue reading "Quiz Me Qwik: [Insert Joke About Fishing For Overfishing Activism]" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a new weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time... we go a little off the rails.]

I’ve become mildly fascinated with this little mystery lately. It’s a FAQ detailing the ‘programmers door’; an un-openable feature of the designers ending of Chrono Cross. According to the FAQ, there’s a lot of really weird things that can happen in that ending, if certain conditions are met. But, of course, it’s random whether or not they will be met, and so results may vary.

The overwhelming cynic in me suggests pretty much immediately that this is complete crap. It’s entertaining crap, at least, and seems to have enough basis on what really happens in the game to be believable for some people, but crap all the same.

But then, some people – especially younger gamers – will believe anything. I’m not talking about the EGM Sheng Long prank style stuff so much as simple playground stories. Things like the hidden level on the island above the Top Secret Area in Mario World; hidden characters in Wrath of the Black Manta, and so on. Stories that are products of a time when technology hadn’t quite caught up with the imaginations of nine year olds yet.

There are two examples that stand out for me. When I was younger, I only really had a 286 for games; we did have an Atari 2600, but it was pretty well broken by the end of 1988. Most of the games played on said 286 were “gifts” from a friend of my sister, and didn’t come with any documentation. Therefore, I had little idea of how to actually play them, and so when my friend Michael Trewartha told me in year four that he knew how to get further in two particular titles that had stumped me, I was all ears.

In a way, that’s something infinitely more insidious than April Fool’s jokes in magazines. That’s taking advantage of the trusting innocence of someone who doesn’t even know how to play the game. That’s not making up tales about how you found a secret ending for Double Dragon II which involves the evil clone end boss turning into a two headed dragon – it’s deliberately misleading someone looking for help in a basic sense.

And so, I tracked down Trewartha to ask about this gross displacement of trust, and to fish for an apology that should have occurred 16 odd years ago.

Continue reading "COLUMN: Quiz Me Qwik - 'Being (Pranked By) Michael Trewartha'" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a new weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time - Line Rider creator Boštjan Čadež.]

There would have to be a fairly large percentage of people who've played Line Rider who first experienced it through YouTube videos. It's a pretty amazing sight – the rider swooping and diving through intricately created courses, coming close to peril on oh-so-many occasions, but always pulling through and continuing on his epic journey. And then you try it yourself and realise that – eep – it's a lot harder to put something like that together than you'd think.

That's really testament to the versatility of Line Rider, though. It is an amazingly simple idea – like all the best innovations – but it allows people to create their own unique vision and have fun with it, even if you're not able to recreate level 1-1 from Super Mario Bros.

It's going to be interesting to see what inXile can do with the game on a commercial level. Will it be as compelling with the knowledge that you're actually having to shell out money to play this on your Wii or DS? The issue of value in games has been gone over again and again, so I'll leave it well alone here, but how do you create value in a game that effectively lets you control just a pencil and eraser?

It could even be that it goes too far in trying to create value in the game, of course. Maybe people will pick it up and sigh, 'Jeez...I remember the good old days, when Line Rider didn't even have an eraser'. Only time, sales figures and the collective whining of forum users across the Internet will tell, I suppose.

With the game's release only a few months away, it seemed like a perfect time to talk to the creator of the Flash toy, Boštjan Čadež, and ask about the history of Line Rider, and his experiences with inXile in putting together its future. Oh, and also about whether the little sledding dude has a name.

Continue reading "Quiz Me Qwik: Boštjan Čadež Talks Line Rider" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a new weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subject in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time - the wonderfully odd Web-based net.culture pastiche Forumwarz.]

Browser based game Forumwarz has done a pretty good job of drawing the attention of those who spend their time wallowing in Net culture. Small wonder, really: t's a sharp parody of the many negatives and positives out there, from furries to Boing Boing and 4chan, all wrapped up in a slick self-contained imitation of the web.

There's Sentrillion, the Google-alike search engine, sTalk and Tubmail, the Gmail and Gmail Chat equivalents. Kind of like a more sophisticated version of the front-end to PS2 RPG .hack, except that it's actually fun to play. Oh, and it's all rather funny too.

Then there's the gameplay, a sort of turn-based RPG style that sees players using various methods of annoyance to take down forums, depending on their class. It's bra shots and descriptions of sexual experiences for Camwhores, whining about parents and self-mutilation for Emo Kids and spoilers and “yo momma” jokes for Trolls. Maybe it's just an instilled obsession with level grinding, but it really is quite addictive.

GameSetWatch posted an interview with Robin “Evil Trout” Ward – developer Zombie Crotch Productions' only full time employee – a few weeks after the game's release.

With a little water under the bridge, and the second episode of story content on the way, we figured that now would be a good time to catch up with him and see what the reaction to the game has been like, and how it's affected the way the game's development is continuing:

Continue reading "Quiz Me Qwik: Forumwarz' Robin Ward On Launching A Net.Culture Game" »

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['Quiz Me Quik' is a new weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subject in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. First up - the Czech Republic's SCS on their odd success with... truck/bus driving sims?]

There's a few things that make game developer SCS Software a tiny bit different: firstly, the company's based in the Czech Republic, making it one of a relatively small band developing out of that country. But more unlikely still, there's the focus on trucking games - an odd niche genre, to be sure, but one that's proved pretty surprisingly lucrative for SCS.

The company formed back in 1997, and released Rocky Mountain Trophy Hunter III in 2000. For years before that, though – before SCS was officially formed, even – the group worked on an engine: Prism3D. 2002 saw the release of Hard Truck: 18 Wheels of Steel, the first of five Wheels of Steel games from SCS.

The company's latest title, Bus Driver was released late last year. It's fairly self explanatory kind of game, described amusingly by The Escapist as “the bus driving simulator that lets you drive a bus” - here's a demo video from YouTube, surprisingly reminiscent of Japanese regulation-heavy titles like 'Densha De Go' for trains.

So sure, there's a bit more to it than, say, Desert Bus, and while it's received criticism from some that it's watered down the, uhh, 'level of simulation' expected from SCS, reviews have generally been positive.

More recently, the game was picked up by publisher Meridian4 for retail release in the US and Australia in May, and that's how we got to speak to SCS Software CEO Pavel Sebor about the company, its history, and about the unlikely success of Bus Driver

Continue reading "Quiz Me Quik: 'The Czech Bus Game Powerhouse'" »

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