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The Game-Maker Archive — Part 15c: The Easiest Lifting, Act III

Bergervoet is a Dutch fellow who goes under the developer name Multigames. In 1998, probably about two or three years after RSD pulled support for Game-Maker, he found the software and threw together a few games. For his inspiration… it’s not that he just lifted sample material and called it his own; he drew all his own sprites and tiles, and I think recorded most of his own sound effects. And unlike Felix Leung it’s not that he directly quoted popular references and based a game around them. Strictly speaking, everything in his games is original. It’s more that his games are strongly inspired by other, existing games.

There’s nothing unusual about that, of course. Without Mario Bros. we wouldn’t have Bubble Bobble. Without Bust-A-Move/Puzzle Bobble, we might not have a casual game industry. What’s unusual is that all his games are based on, well…

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

(September 15th, 2010 @ 10:32am)



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The Game-Maker Archive — Part 15b: The Easiest Lifting, Act II

Previously we discussed Felix Leung, who did a pretty good job of co-opting familiar properties and filtering them through his own fairly advanced understanding of Game-Maker to create original, often bizarre, conglomerations. You could say that he crossed the line in places, and then danced back over it, and then tied the line into a sheepshank, but it’s easy to understand his method and reasons. This next fellow is a bit more brazen, and therefore a bit more puzzling.

In 1994, a fellow from Vallejo known variously as C.H. and Viper decided to grab everything in sight and call it his own — but then, at the last minute, to give it just enough of a bewildering spin to make it memorable. His first port of call, understandably enough, is Gregory Stone’s Nebula.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

(September 13th, 2010 @ 10:29am)



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Sock me in the stomach three more times

In retrospect some elements of Big come off creepier than they were intended, or would have been perceived at the time. In the early ’80s when children vanished, people weren’t so much worried about molestation as they were about bodily harm. The assumption was that the motive for kidnapping was financial gain, rather than a personal drive. What other use is a kid, really, than ransoming him off?

Naive, maybe. But look at the way that products were advertised even back then. Would you buy something based on those ad campaigns? The 1980s may not seem that long ago, but our assumptions and attitudes about the world have changed so much. Racial, sexual, cultural understanding and acceptance are becoming more the norm. Taboo subjects have become everyday discussion. Even things like basic psychology have developed and spread so far.

This movie is grounded in the same mid-’80s American middle-class mindset as much children’s entertainment of the era, written by baby boomers more inclined to reflect on their own rosy memories of childhood than to observe the world and the real logistics around them. The kids don’t speak and interact like kids; they behave the way that adults remembered themselves in the 1950s. Hell, the whole theme of the movie is some baby boomer yearning for his own youth. Except sort of inverted.

I think I can appreciate this movie a little better as an adult, even given its weird cultural obliviousness. As a kid I remember it annoying me to no end. Everything was wrong. Why was everyone so excited about insect Transformers? Insecticons had been around for years at that point. The bulk of the oh-so-droll jokes about social security numbers and workplace politics bored me or went over my head. The only appeal the movie had for me was the setpieces like the FAO Schwartz piano duet, Tom Hanks’ apartment hijinks, and all the Zoltar business. It was all flash and curiosity. Was that really what it was like to move into your own apartment? Was that really what it was like to get a job? Wow, it would be great to be left alone to wander around in FAO Schwartz, or that carnival.

Now I can stand back and understand the movie’s ambition. I still marvel at its blinkered vision, but from within a cultural context that I can appreciate. As a case study, it gets a person thinking.

(September 12th, 2010 @ 11:58am)



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The Space Museum

You may remember some of my advice on this show. If the fans love a serial, you’re probably safe in skipping it. If they despise or ignore it, it’s probably worth a look.

To give an idea of The Space Museum‘s reputation, the main extra on the disc is a short monologue from new series writer Rob Shearman in which he half-heartedly defends the story. He grasps to fit the story with a retrospective literary justification, and doesn’t quite succeed. It’s an interesting feature, but so far as I’m concerned it’s unnecessary. This is one of the more creative and fascinating stories of one of the show’s more creative and fascinating eras.

The first three or so years of the show are closer to literary science fiction than anything that has followed. Nearly every story is based either on some theoretical premise or on attempt to push the boundaries of the show’s format. Add in a cast that is fascinating to watch no matter what they’re up to, and there is room to push the show very far before it starts to get too experimental, too odd to work.

The Space Museum begins on a weird note; the cast, battered, bruised and torn from misadventures in the Crusades, suddenly finds itself standing around the TARDIS console, dressed in tidy new clothes. Dropped glasses bounce back into hands and repair themselves. Walking in heavy dust leaves no footprints. And then, spoilerphobes be warned to skip to the next paragraph, toward the end of the first episode, is one of the show’s greatest cliffhangers. The four regular cast round a corner to find their own embalmed bodies as exhibits in a space museum.

After the first episode, the mystery element diminishes and the story becomes more about the characters interacting with the world and trying to prevent the future from occurring. Though the rest of the serial is rarely as heady as the first episode, the character dynamics are always fun and the story is scattered with great moments such as a guard’s attempt to mind-probe the Doctor.

After a short 100 minutes the serial ends with an overt transition into the following story, and Ian and Barbara’s farewell after nearly two years as the show’s protagonists, The Chase.

This one is a keeper. If you want an example of a Hartnell-era story that overstepped its bounds, try The Web Planet. Ambitious, creative, and such a curious disaster.

(September 2nd, 2010 @ 10:43am)



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