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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Aug 2, 2010 12:36:17 GMT -5
By the same guy who made Kagirinaki Tatakai, it's Brain Breaker for the Sharp X1. I'm also writing up a long interview with him, having tracked him down, and this will be upload later so that all the cross-links tie together. In the meantime the main article. I'm also asking around at Tokugawa if anyone has a picture of the front cover. If not, I'll replace it with something else. www.hardcoregaming101.net/brainbreaker/bbreaker.htmEDIT: According to a Japanese blog, one guy thinks the Brain Breaker soundtrack sounds like Duran Duran's Union of the Snake. I'm not convinced, but I don't want to admit to thinking it has Metroid vibes (which I do think) when everyone thinks it sounds like a 1980s pop song. www.nicovideofire.jp/watch/sm1441110www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEPEPYXcVZkThe NicoNico video takes a while to get to the audio, but stick with it. Thoughts?
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Post by jorpho on Aug 5, 2010 19:40:26 GMT -5
I find myself very much not sharing your enthusiasm for obfuscated game design.
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Aug 7, 2010 9:55:18 GMT -5
That's a shame... Don't you like games like Legacy of the Wizard? Perhaps I worded it wrong - but I find that old style of design, prevalent in computer games especially, very appealing.
Anyway, by the time you click the link I should have a new version uploaded, with box art!
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Post by kyouki on Aug 8, 2010 0:24:29 GMT -5
I like this style of "obfuscated game design." It was prevalent in early western computer games as well, especially in the RPGs. I also have a lot of fond memories of playing games like Sorcerian, Legacy of the Wizard, Castlevania II... even Clash at Demonhead requres you to explore a lot and figure out what to do.
I think from a modern point of view, where it is all about finishing the game is a set number of hours so you can trade it in for the next big title all the while experiencing no lulls in the action, these kinds of games can be extremely frustrating but it's a different mindset. It was rewarding to work your way through a tough game where you had to take notes and draw maps and maybe even share tips with your pals.
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Aug 8, 2010 4:31:43 GMT -5
share tips with your pals. Exactly. This kind of design and way of thinking died with the internet - because during the NES era you'd have to look up tips in magazines and share with friends what you discovered. Forums allow this to a certain extent, and Demon's Souls brought the camaraderie back somewhat, but today it's all too easy to just look up a FAQ.
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Post by kyouki on Aug 8, 2010 7:54:19 GMT -5
It's kind of a chicken and the egg thing also, in that what came first? People not wanting to figure anything out on their own? Or developers assuming this, and designing their games so that everything is explained to you? I guess like most things, they both sort of just happened at the same time and here we are. Though Nintendo did decide to include a "how to play Mario" DVD with Super Mario Galaxy 2, and I don't think I ever heard of anyone having trouble understanding the first game.
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Post by kimimi on Aug 8, 2010 8:08:24 GMT -5
I'm finding the exact opposite to be honest - thanks to the internet I now have more people than ever to discuss absolutely any game I can think of with, from Idolm@ster to frame-by-frame analysis of whatever the in vogue beat 'em up currently is. All this nostalgic talk of sharing hastily scribbled secrets with friends never really existed for me, not to the extent the internet would have me to believe and certainly not to the extent that it would have ever been anything more than a few unsubstantiated rumours (blood in SNES Mortal Kombat, for example) or just regurgitated magazine tips.
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Post by kyouki on Aug 8, 2010 21:04:22 GMT -5
I guess I meant this more for adventure/RPG games. The discussion you are talking about- frame analysis and such- is really high level stuff that you could go your whole life without knowing and still play a decent game of Street Fighter or what have you (especially in the case of fighting games, where most people do not play competitively, and just play to beat the last boss with all the characters or unlock all the parts, or whatever).
But games like Brain Breaker, Legacy of the Wizard, Xanadu, Sorcerian all require a ton of experimentation and note taking just to get anything done at all.
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Post by kimimi on Aug 8, 2010 23:38:40 GMT -5
I've gone and ruined my own argument there - although I mentioned a specific game and a specific genre my point was that these days I can discuss anything from frothy "casual" games to really technical details very easily, which was simply not possible before. Of course this will be further skewed by me being a schoolgirl in the late 80's/early 90's, so getting someone to talk to about gaming at all was difficult, let alone trying to discuss the latest floor in Black Crypt.
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Aug 9, 2010 5:20:45 GMT -5
The last game I had a really discussion about online, with dozens and dozens of people, was Demon's Souls. Though we talked less about what we needed to do to win (there was the online Wiki for that), and more about why it was so great.
Certainly the internet makes it more difficult to be stuck on any game - even with Brain Breaker, which had me stuck for a while, the NicoNico video was easy to find.
I think that's one of the reasons why I prefer obscure games. There's less chance of a FAQ, and when I introduce it to others, we're all on the same level, trying to work things out.
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Post by kyouki on Aug 9, 2010 6:07:23 GMT -5
I've gone and ruined my own argument there - although I mentioned a specific game and a specific genre my point was that these days I can discuss anything from frothy "casual" games to really technical details very easily, which was simply not possible before. Of course this will be further skewed by me being a schoolgirl in the late 80's/early 90's, so getting someone to talk to about gaming at all was difficult, let alone trying to discuss the latest floor in Black Crypt. It's okay, I messed up my own argument too haha. What I meant is that, there really aren't games where you have to figure stuff out the hard way anymore. Games like Xanadu and Legacy of the Wizard cannot be finished unless you take careful notes and figure them out (unless you cheat and go download some maps or walkthroughs). Even the most complicated fighting games- Virtua Fighter, King of Fighters, Blazblue- can be played at low-medium levels with no outside help... you can button mash in any of them and still beat the computer, which is I'd guess how 70-80% of the people playing them at home play the game. VF and BB even have tutorials built in to get you started in the upper levels. RPGs are so different from what they were back then you can't even compare, but I guess we can take something like Demon's Souls, which is a pretty difficult game to get into. But even then, you never really are wondering where to go or what to do, and the combat never gets much more complicated than it is at the beginning. Maybe the closet thing we have now is all the bonus/extra stuff in RPGs, like hidden bosses, rare weapons, etc. But that is like the fighting game thing again- it's stuff you certainly don't need to figure out to play the game, just to play it at a higher level. I'm not saying that all games should go back to how they were 25 years ago, but it is a nice surprise when someone introduces me to a nice game like this that I missed for whatever reason. So anyway, thanks Sketcz!
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Post by Gendo Ikari on Aug 10, 2010 13:25:31 GMT -5
I wish Jorhpo elaborated better but I think I understand what he meant. One thing is to have a game that doesn't take you by hand and makes you figure what to do step by step with satisfaction, another is when it's taken to the extreme, becoming just obtuse and/or frustrating - and from the article, Brain Breaker sometimes falls there. That doesn't stop it from being an extremely interesting find, I gave it a brief try and I was prompted to give a go to Kagirinaki Tatakai too, it is really incredibile for 1983. It's a shame Ishikawa hasn't made videogames since.
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Post by DreamCuPs on Feb 23, 2017 21:51:16 GMT -5
For someone like me, who grew up into old Atari-2600 games, a game like Brain Breaker inevitably feels fascinating. It's like -at least for us, westerners- a secret side of the evolution of what Atari and alikes had kind of stop doing by '83. It's challenging, sophisticated, eerie, technically huge and also rough, in some ways. The main thing i usually think when a game like that is discovered, is how would we feel if had we played it back them. I guess it would help us to expand our vision about what we were usually playing, something like a new door that's just been opened. In times like these i feel sorry for the unfortunate obscurity so many games fallen into, though yeah, i know it adds to their mystique... But Anyway, I can't help feeling that so many games should have been released for game consoles (instead of been isolated in old "intricated" pc machines) where they could have got the exposition they deserved. At least nowadays we've the chance to try out these unknown pieces of past greatness and, well, talk about it.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Jan 22, 2019 12:39:35 GMT -5
Can you update the link? Page not found.
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