 |
|
 |
Features
Crochet a pair of gloves to keep your hands toasty when you’re handling a controller, stylus or pencil and dice.
Latoya examines the MTV Multiplayer blog’s Women Working in Games Series in this month’s edition of Gaming in the Media.
When we think of video games, and by extension video game commercials that feature players, we think guys. Usually commercials show us gamers who are close to the stereotype: white, geeky stick-thin guys. This is not so for the Wii, which aggressively targets a broader demographic.
The debate over “casual” versus “hardcore” players is an old one, but with the increasing popularity of casual games the old rules that defined hardcore as the serious gamers are fast becoming outdated. Will hardcore gaming remain the heart of the industry that drives innovation and creates lasting franchises or will casual gaming overtake it to become the voice of modern gamers?
Interviews
Articles
Author: Samara Steele
In this ongoing series, Samara shares her experiences as a female LARPer in a male-dominated LARP organization.
Author: Robyn Fleming
Robyn outlines the trials and tribulations of organizing an all-women gaming group.
Author: Andrea Rubenstein
Andrea looks at some of the influential women in the video game and tabletop gaming industry.
Author: Richard Pilbeam
Richard discusses ways in which imitation and a lack of innovation help to perpetuate sexist themes in games produced by the RPG Maker community.
Gamer Stories
Author: Olivia Luna
Reviews
Author: Ariel Wetzel
Author: Abby Wilson
Odds ‘n Ends
By Olivia Luna
“Scars of Time”
To me, those three words symbolize the start of a serious gaming career. Sure I’ve played games all my life, ever since my older brother got a Nintendo Entertainment System with a copy of Super Mario Bros./Duckhunt and the original Castlevania for Christmas when I was five, but I never really considered it to be a hobby of mine. I wasn’t even very good at games so, more often than not, I was content to just watch him play. (more…)
By Ariel Wetzel
Naomi Clark is Content and Community Manager at GameLab, where she’s designed games like Miss Management and LEGO Fever . She’s previously taught history, culture, and sociology of online game worlds at Parsons School of Design, worked as an editor of the online magazine Word, and directed the popular Sissyfight 2000. She also blogs under the name Holly at Feministe and does webdesign for the transgender advocacy nonprofit Sylvia Rivera Law Project.
(more…)
 The turning of the year is, for many of us, a time to anticipate changes in our lives and strive to improve ourselves. But can we anticipate improvements in games and in the broader gaming community? And what can we learn from looking back and examining what has been done before? Our contributors are grappling with these questions, among others, in many of our articles and features this month. In Gamer vs. Gamer, Victor Barreiro Jr. and Anika Cunningham discuss the casual vs. hardcore gaming divide, both where it’s been and where it’s going. Meanwhile, Richard Pilbeam looks back at some of the past products of the RPG Maker community, and Samara Steele delivers something novel in the form of a free-verse poem.
When you’ve read these and our other articles and features, be sure to enjoy a little amusement on The Back Page, where we’re announcing the winners of last month’s LOLGAMERS contest.
And after that, maybe you’d like to start this new year by looking over our submission guidelines and planning an article of your own
By Richard Pilbeam
The essential game-authoring tool for creating exciting, original RPGs without programming knowledge [...] comes with a wide variety of commands enabling you to shape a world and tell a story completely from your imagination.
- Enterbrain’s RPG Maker promotional video
Enterbrain’s RPG Maker series of programs are, right now, probably best known to mainstream Western audiences as the chisel with which Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was sculpted from a lump of badly-dithered photographs and Marilyn Manson .midi files. For the uninformed, Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is a rushed, bug-ridden, borderline-unplayable recreation of the 1999 Columbine shootings in which the player takes control of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as they wander around a poorly-drawn representation of Columbine High School and engage in Dragon Warrior-style turn-based combat against characters like “Nerdy Girl”, “Openly Gay Man” and “Church Boy”, none of whom can effectively defend themselves as you cast “Shotgun” on them from your magic menu. (more…)
By Ariel Wetzel
Super Mario Galaxy, Nintendo, Wii, 2007
Super Mario Galaxy is the most intuitive game right out of the box that I’ve played since Katamari Damacy. Galaxy pushes the platform genre by getting out of up, down, left, and right. Direction is relative as Mario moves through space, and gravity simply flips out from under him. Use of space and gravity, combined with a beautiful world, inviting two-player mode, and the inherently engaging Wii remote, is what makes Super Mario Galaxy so dang fun.
I found Super Mario Galaxy to be best experienced with others; if you’re a social gamer, Galaxy has a built in active role for your co-pilot with the second controller in “Co-Star Mode”. Your “Co-Star” uses the second Wii remote to freeze enemies, literally point where to go, make Mario jump, and collect and shoot Star-Bits at enemies. As one friend pointed out, youngest sisters and brothers everywhere are going to get a lot of play time in with the second controller. At my less hierarchal household, we took turns passing the controller back and forth when we beat a level or died as we worked on the same save file.
Galaxy is a great game for bonding with your friends. However, something feels a little empty when turning it on to game alone without anyone to see how bad-ass you are for tickling a bee-queen. (My opportunity to play actually came from a fellow gamer bored playing solo; I borrowed the game from a friend because he was bored after beating the game and didn’t want to go back and collect the remaining 60 stars to unlock the playable Luigi.)
Super Mario Galaxy is fun and approachable for nongamers; the dimensions give Galaxy a bit of a learning curve. Whereas my gamer instincts let me pick up the remote and scale a sinking tower while upside down, friends felt a bit of vertigo watching Mario slingshot into space.
Super Mario Galaxy actually has a pretty good story for a platform Mario game. The tired Bowser-captures-Princess plot is rehashed and not especially compelling, not to mention Bowser’s intent to force Peach to live by his side is disturbing and inappropriate. What works for the story is that what Mario does in game–collect star-bits and stars–makes sense with the story. Mario is helping a woman named Rosalina, the watcher of stars, repower her spaceship so that he may travel to confront Bowser.
I never expected a Mario game to be so beautiful. The world-building is fabulous: levels are collections of colorful planets and shapes floating over a bright constellations. The music, tranquil and orchestrated, is reminiscent of Epcot Center, and indeed playing Super Mario Galaxy like a theme park ride, disorienting, but delightful in its engaging details. Show this game off: it’s an essential title for the social gamer.
Article © January 2008 by Ariel Wetzel.
By Abby Wilson
Pitfall!, Activision Games, Intellivision, 1982
I’ve always wished that the Intellivision was more well-known. Most of the games on it were ported to other systems at the time (most famously Burger Time), so its owners weren’t getting any sort of exclusive feeling of superiority (unlike many Xbox 360 owners I know today – get over yourselves, Halo 3 is boring). Pitfall! is one of those games – I’m fairly sure it’s appeared on almost every game system in existence, including the Intellivision, which is actually the only version that I’ve ever played.
The story is reminiscent of Indiana Jones, that archetypical adventurer. You are Harry Pitfall (at least he wasn’t named after the dog!), and you are adventuring through the jungles of South America. Treasures abound, but watch out! Large rivers filled with hungry crocodiles block your path, rolling logs threaten to mow you down, and cobras stand ready to take your life. Also, there is an underground passage with some brick walls and a scorpion. It’s hard to know what purpose all of these serve, but Harry knows what he wants: all of the treasure he can find.
The game is a basic side-scrolling endeavor, with the fun twist that you can go either left or right at the start of the game, making it feel as if the jungle is vast and easy to get lost in. It is. Your goal is to collect as much treasure as you can in twenty minutes, while avoiding pitfalls, scorpions, and other natural hazards. Each piece of treasure gives you points, while every time you get hit by a barrel or fall down into the underground causes you to lose points. On top of all of these complex things to remember, you only have two lives. Want Harry to learn how to swim? Lose a life. Want to see that giant scorpion (seriously– it’s half as tall as you!) up close? Lose a life. The jungle is dangerous, my friends!
I’ve also never beat this game. Why? I have very, very little patience for it. The Intellivision controller is not famous for being responsive; the river of swear words that fly out when I miss a jump by one pixel is epic. Also, there is no music to accompany you. It adds to the immersion, I guess, but when I’m being eaten by crocodiles I’d really like to be able to hum a catchy 80’s tune. I also really want to know why there are brick walls underneath the jungle!
There has to be some sort of odorless gas that gets released every time I play this; when I turn the game off in frustration, I swear that I’m just going to play He-Man next time. And yet, every time I go to the basement to turn the Intellivision on, my view turns to Pitfall. “Maybe this time I’ll be able to beat it,” I say, as if my memory has been completely wiped. “Maybe I’ll find the end of the jungle.” I never do, and I don’t think I ever will.
Article © January 2008 by Abby Wilson.
Welcome to the Back Page! This is where we publish the odds and ends that our readers send in, from artwork and writing, to shout outs, thoughts on gaming, and whatever fun and silly things we can come up with. If you have something you want to show off to the rest of our readers, head over to our submissions page and fire off an e-mail to us! (more…)
By Andrea Rubenstein
What better way to kick off the new year than with a feature celebrating some of the influential women, past and present, in the industry? This article looks at some of the women who have made an impact on the gaming industry as a whole. (more…)
By Latoya Peterson
This piece was originally intended to be a wrap up of the year in games but it looks like every other blog has covered the topic - and, in a surprising twist, so did BBC. Apparently, the world of gaming has gone mainstream. Perhaps we will remember 2007 as the year video games came out of the fringe and into the realm of mainstream entertainment. (Or maybe not.)
At any rate, while reading through all the other year end wrap-ups, I came across an interesting series on the MTV Multiplayer blog.
The Women Working in Games Series features interviewer Tracey John asking various women in the gaming industry about their impressions working in a field that is male dominated and has some very sexist overtones.
(There are also racist/ableist/homophobic overtones but that is another post entirely.)
The results were illuminating. (more…)
Next Page »
|
Compilation copyright © 2007 - August 27, 2008 Cerise Magazine.
|
