Articles

Frets on Fire

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You knew it was going to happen eventually. Just like DDR before it, Guitar Hero has inspired people to emulate the game on the PC. Frets on Fire is an open source GH project for all major Operating Systems, and tries its best to emulate the basic structure of the game, as well as support song creation. You’ve probably heard about it on some game site or another. I’ve known about it for a few months now, but I never gave it a shot because of one huge, glaring problem; the basic game requires you to use the keyboard, holding it in place like a guitar.

Simple, but workable

I don’t think I need to tell you that this is the Stupidest Idea of 2006. But fear not! It turns out that, for a small financial investment and absolutely 0% tinkering, you can get the game to work with a Guitar Hero SG controller. Here’s what you need:

The program

The controller

A ps2 to USB converter (which can be found at seedy online stores, or at your local Radio Shack for $11)

With these things in place, all you need to do is set up the converter as a proper joystick (which is simply installing the drivers), and run Frets on Fire, which has joystick support. →  Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatarticle

Best Game Ever – The history of puzzle games leading up to Baku Baku

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Some day in the far off future, Tetris will be played with six screens. One screen will feature the gameplay while the other five will show images of unrelated games being automatically played. All five other games will be superior to Tetris.

Once upon a time there was an evil Communist engineer named Alexey Pajitnov. Don’t bother asking Alexey if he is an evil Communist because, like all evil Communists, he signed a blood oath with Stalin (and possibly Hitler) to hide his menacing ways should Soviet Russia ever fall. Anyway, Alexey was a genius and in 1985 he bestowed upon the world a video game he liked to call Destroy American Freedoms. This was later renamed Tetris.

The premise of Tetris was to line up American freedoms in order to destroy them. A line represented free elections, the L piece was the right to a free trial, the other L piece was the freedom of the press, and so on. →  It was the best of games, it was the worst of games

The One Year Delay

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The holiday season is upon us, and this time its not just a few big games coming out; we’ve got two new consoles as well. I’d like to try a little experiment. Would you like to help?

I hate making accusations against big name game journalists, because I’m trying to write myself, but there is one trend that I notice among them that I just can’t stand, and I’d like to see if its just me, or if it really is true. I call it the One Year Delay, and it works like so:

– A big, hyped title is released, and gains huge scores and heaps of praise when the reviews pour out. We here about it in blogs, editorials etc. for some time afterwards. The fans like it too, but even the most die hard begin to admit that there are some problems with the title, none of which are ever mentioned in any of the reviews.

A year or so goes by, and the sequel is announced. →  Tony Hawk’s Posting Ground

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.27.06

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The proud owner of four Xbox 360s.

360 breaks all sorts of records in Australia
Watch out Master System, there’s a new kid in Australia. By selling over 100,000 units, the 360 has become the fastest selling console down under. The first European settlers in Australia were criminals and we have Australians to blame for those rambunctious reptile lovers, Crocodile Dundee and the Crocodile Hunter (“that’s not a terrible accent, THIS IS A TERRIBLE ACCENT”). Clearly Microsoft must take these facts into account before celebrating the good news.

Gamasutra interview Clover’s Inaba
Prepare yourself for an only marginally related rant. Oh, and read the interview, it’s interesting.

The way the games media goes from one golden boy of creativity to the next is pretty odd. Why do gamers get three or four different interviews from Inaba but not one from Takahashi, Ueda, or Mizuguchi? Because they aren’t the flavor of the month, that’s why. Maybe when they release another game the games media will care what they have to say, but for now Okami is on the store shelf and that’s what we are going to hear about. →  Look upon my works, ye mighty, and read!

A Luminous Experience

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As of now, my job as a QA tester is becoming dreadfully boring. They don’t have any games for me to test anymore, gosh darn it! This has lead me to pull out the ol’ PSP and get some Lumines sessions going.

I bought this game when I first got my PSP over a year ago, and it’s still one of the system’s best games. Tetsuya Mizuguchi is a true pioneer in what I like to call “audio games.” He puts far more time and effort into the audio presentation than anything else in his games. Go back and play Rez and you’ll see what I mean.

The cool thing that I recently discovered with Lumines is the menu’s background techno music. If you’ve ever accessed a few of the menus, you’d see that each successive menu adds a new beat to the song. Go deep into the menus and your song will really be cooking. I just think this is amazing. →  Look upon my works, ye mighty, and read!

How we remember games

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Our long-term opinion of a game may have little to do with how good a game actually is. How we remember games is almost as important as the games themselves. The way we remember any medium greatly shades our opinions, whether it be a game, a book or a movie. Games, unfortunately, share certain properties of the other two media that make each prone to being colored by memory.

First, I will explain what about books and movies are different from video games in regards to how we remember them. Books are highly personal experiences; no one can walk by and share some of a book with you. All of the action, drama, character’s introspection and so on happens in your mind and in your imagination. In this regard, they are different from both movies and games. A key way a movie is different from a book or video game is its comparatively short length. Both how long an experience takes and how personal the experience is dramatically affects how you remember the experience. →  Ring of Read

Chris loves Jesus part 2

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Continued from Part 1

The casual (or obsessive?) reader may ask, “How does one foster a personal relationship with Jesus?” The best way for me was to translate it.

Don’t look at it too long or your brain will melt.

Long, long ago in a mindset far, far away I decided to translate a Famicom game by the name of Jesus: Kyoufu no Bio Monster. Despite all the difficult aspects of both translation and ROM hacking, I managed to create a patch that (I hope) carries across much of the feeling of the game.

The first task, naturally, was to figure out what in the hell was happening in the game. I could figure out the basics between context and the words I already knew. From there, I ended up using an electronic dictionary to figure out the rest.

In a somewhat underinformed decision (more on this later), I resolved to write out a script for the game – by playing through it, writing down the script, and translating that. →  Onimusha 2: Samuread’s Destiny

Oh, Aren’t You an Adorable Little VG Cat!

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If anyone has paid attention to Joystiq’s weekly WebComic Wrap-up, you’d no doubt run into a comic named VG Cats. I love this webcomic. The style is great, and the humor is right on key. The guy doesn’t go too deep into the whole video game lore thing (there’s a lot of Zelda and Final Fantasy VII commentary), so you don’t have to get out your Ultimate Videolamer’s Guide to Everything About Gaming and Dating(tm) to understand it.

He’s got 215 comics on his site, and most of them are hilarious. If you were looking for a great comic strip on video games, you can do no wrong with VG Cats.

And before I get bullied, I will say that I also love Penny Arcade. Those guys are great, but I prefer VG Cats’ continuous commentary on video games. And the whole hand-feet thing freaks me out…

The guy, Scott Ramsoomair, tries to update every Monday, so jot it down on your Google Calendars posthaste.

Chris loves Jesus part 1

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I’d like to tell you all a little story about me and my friend named Jesus. No, not that Jesus… This Jesus doesn’t save. It uses passwords instead.

I like women who match their bedrooms.

When it comes to obscure and unknown games, it takes a lot to get much less known than Jesus: Dreadful Bio-Monster. Although it came out on several systems in Japan, it saw no English release. Despite the – somewhat recognizable – name, the game bears no teachings, or indeed any characters somewhat resembling, the well-known founder of Christianity (in fact, the name refers to a space station in the game). There is a bio-monster, however, and it inspires dread.

Jesus is an adventure survival horror game developed by Enix and published by King Records. While most console adventure games have some element of action, Jesus more resembles a text-based adventure. Jesus is obviously a product of the 1980’s, right down to the bright red, oversized hairstyle of the main character. →  Onimusha 2: Samuread’s Destiny

A tale of E3, education and a fairy

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Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time I worked with a magical 60 year old fairy. She saved me from the mundane tasks I was hired to perform and charged me with studying the field of video game education.

Suddenly, work became almost pleasant and thoughts of suicide (through suffocation by books) were pushed to the back of my subconscious. Little did I know, the Middle East was secretly and silently watching, waiting for a moment to pounce and destroy my happiness.

With the fairy behind me, I organized a presentation on video games and education for librarians across the country (or at least East Coast). Despite my inability to articulate my thoughts coherently during the question and answer sessions (though it may have been academics inability to ask questions that weren’t abstruse and pompous), the overall presentation was successful enough to secure me tickets to E3 in Los Angeles.

Oddly enough, E3 sucked more than expected but LA less. →  We have nothing to lose but our games.