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And Then There Were None

by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh

Part three of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation, under the title “Culture: Five that Fell”.

For all its immaturity, you can tell the videogame industry is getting on in years. With increasing, even alarming, frequency, the faces of our youth have begun to disappear – forced from the market, absorbed into conglomerates, restructured into oblivion, or simply retired from the grind.

The first big wave hit back in the mid ’90s, when increased development costs, the demise of the American arcade, and the shift from 2D development left dozens of small and mid-sized developers – from Toaplan to Technos – out in the cold. Those that didn’t die completely – Sunsoft, Vic Tokai – often pulled out of the US market, or even out of the videogame business. Western outfits braced for the storm by merging with larger and ever larger publishing conglomerates, rationalizing that it was the only way to survive in an uncertain market.

The second wave came only a few years ago, after the burst of the tech bubble. In effort to streamline costs, parent companies began to dump their holdings left and right, regardless of the legacy or talent involved. Those that didn’t often went bankrupt, pulling all of their precious acquisitions down with them. Sometimes the talent moved on and regrouped under a new game; still, when an era’s over, it’s over.

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(June 24th, 2006 @ 5:19am)



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True Balance

I am never so constructive as when I am meant to be working on something else.

(June 20th, 2006 @ 8:02pm)



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The Invasion

There have been rumors for a while; now it’s been publicized. A teaser trailer‘s even out.






Yes, the legendary and long-incomplete 1968 Patrick Troughton serial The Invasion has been completed — through modern flash-based animation, set to the original off-air soundtrack. It’s been done by Cosgrove Hall (Danger Mouse, Count Duckula) — the same people also behind the Scream of the Shalka webcast from a few years ago. This is supposed to be a good deal more sophisticated, though.

It’ll be out this November, in the UK; we’ll probably have to wait until next spring for the DVD. The remaining six episodes are getting the typical Restoration Team cleanup — which is welcome, considering the condition all existing consumer prints are in.

As it is, I find the story hard to take, as it’s drawn out and padded to a ludicrous degree. (It was conceived as six episodes, then cut down to four because there wasn’t enough story to sustain a six parter, then expanded to eight because another serial fell through at the last minute.) The whole middle part of the serial consists of the characters repeatedly breaking into the enemy compound, getting caught, escaping, then breaking back in again. And again and again and again. It’s impressive, on a certain level.

Even so: wow. The cleanup on its own should make the story far easier to watch. Interspersed with animation of this detail, this release perhaps wins out over The Beginning as the most ambitious and appealing classic series release to date.

Odd that there have been so few truly great Cyberman stories, considering how much potential the Cybermen hold.

(June 20th, 2006 @ 7:36pm)



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The Nintendo Syndrome

by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh

Part two of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation.

So Nintendo’s at the top of its game again – or near enough to clap, anyway. The DS is one of the bigger success stories in recent hardware history. People are starting to buy into the Wii hype; even Sony and Microsoft’s chiefs have gone on record with how the system impresses them. Japan is mincing no words; 73% of Famitsu readers polled expect the Wii to “win” the next “console war”, whatever that means. And these people aren’t even Nintendo’s target audience.

Satoru Iwata has done a swell job, the last couple of years, taking a company that was coasting on past success, whose reputation had devolved to schoolyard snickers – that even posted a loss for the first time in its century-plus history – and making it both vital and trendy again.

So what happened to Nintendo, anyway? How is it that gaming’s superstar was such a dud, for so many years? What’s the white elephant in the room, that everyone has taken such pains to rationalize? It is, of course, the same man credited for most of Nintendo’s success: Shigeru Miyamoto.

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(June 20th, 2006 @ 3:16pm)



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NextGen’s Top Ten Years In Gaming History

by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh

Originally published in some form by Next Generation. I was asked not to include 1999 or 2000, because the Dreamcast was perceived as a low mark in the industry rather than a high one. I was also asked to include the previous year, to suggest that we were in the middle of an upswing. So… that explains some of the selections.

In videogames, as in life, we tend to get things right about a third of the time. There’s one decent Sonic game for every two disasters; one out of every three consoles can be considered an unqualified success; the Game Boy remake of Mother 1 + 2 was released in one out of three major territories. With the same level of scientific accuracy, one can easily say that, out of the thirty years that videogames have acted as a consumer product, there are maybe ten really excellent milestones, spaced out by your 1984s and your 1994s – years maybe we were all better off doing something out-of-doors.

It kind of makes sense, intuitively: you’ve got the new-hardware years and the innovative-software years, spaced out by years of futzing around with the new hardware introduced a few months back, or copying that amazing new game that was released last summer. We grow enthusiastic, we get bored. Just as we’re about to write off videogames forever, we get slapped in the face with a Wii, or a Sega Genesis – and then the magic starts up all over again, allowing us to coast until the next checkpoint.

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(June 19th, 2006 @ 10:35pm)



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