Parappa the Rapper
Ah, music-oriented games. I remember back in the NES days, there was the "Miracle" system that taught users to play piano using their NES (you had to buy a keyboard accessory) and there was the popular "Track and Field" game that used a step-pad so gamers actually had to move--and, gasp, exercise--as part of the game. It doesn't seem like anybody at the time had the idea of putting the two concepts together to form what would essentially be the Dance Dance Revolution series as we know it today. One might speculate that before that leap of ingenuity could be made, somebody had to take a half-step in that direction. Cue the rapping puppy-dog cartoon character.
Parappa the Rapper turned a lot of heads and drew a lot of critical acclaim in its day because nobody had really seen an interactive music game before with such a simple concept: the song plays, you hit buttons following a sequence in time to the music, and your score is based on the accuracy of your performance. Clearly, this is one of those game concepts that is so simple that many people--even hardcore gamers--fail to appreciate the appeal of it. Of course, Dance Dance Revolution takes it to the next level by replacing the gamepad with a step-pad and forcing the player to involve their entire body in the act of playing, but in my opinion that does not detract from the brilliance of Parappa the Rapper.
Parappa was so popular in Japan that he displaced Crash Bandicoot as Sony's official PlayStation mascot. The game wasn't quite that popular in the US, but certainly every serious gamer at the time had at least heard of it. Since Parappa the Rapper and DDR, music-oriented games have had a steady fan following. Just recently, we've seen Donkey Konga (bongo-drumming game for GameCube) and Taiko Drum Master (drumming game for PS2) released. It's a good time for gamers to get their groove on.
Quest Game UI: Mouse-Centric vs. Type-Written
My previous post touched on the issue of mouse-centric UI in quest games versus the old type-written method, but I didn't really say much about it. I'd just like to expand on a few ideas here.
Sierra quest games like King's Quest really got a lot out of the type-written interface of old because of the way in which that interface style enhances the puzzle-solving aspect of the game. Supposing you are in a dark dungeon in an old Sierra quest game and you see an apple on the ground, you might type such things as "look," "take apple," and "eat apple." This sort of interface forces the user to think about what they are doing, or rather asking to be done, since the response to "eat apple" could very well be "You aren't hungry," for instance. What is important to realise here is that the available options are not spelled out--the user has to brainstorm for ideas and figure out what works through trial and error.
In theory, the purpose of the mouse-centric interfacem is to make the user interface more seamless, which draws the user more into the game in the cinematic regard. In this scenerio, the user sees the apple the apple on the dungeon floor and simply clicks on it to pick it up. Then the user opens an inventory window and clicks on the apple again for options like "drop," "eat," and "give." The fact that the options are spelled out for the user removes any ambiguity as to what actions may be taken, which may help to avoid frustrating the user because they don't know "exactly what to type," but it also removes the need for the user to think as hard about what they intend to do.
Many would argue that the mouse-driven interface is superior because it takes the emphasis of the puzzle-solving aspect of the game off of simply figuring out "what to type" and places it more on actual "puzzles." I agree with that to an extent, but as I've already suggested, I think that figuring out what actions might be taken greatly enhances the creative process of puzzle solving, and the type-written interface more easily accomodates that. Mouse-oriented puzzle solving also has a dark side that I haven't touched on yet: "hunting for the magic pixel." Just as players might struggle to find the right thing to type in a type-oriented quest game interface, players also struggle to find the right place to click in a mouse-oriented quest game interface. When a user types "take apple" or "get apple," typically the apple is taken with little more fuss than that. However, if the apple is only a few pixels wide and the user can't quite tell where it is supposed to be on the messy dungeon floor, finding the "hotspot" to click on for that apple might be considerably annoying. Whether the interface is text-driven or mouse-driven, it is important to realise that game design ultimately determines how often players are frustrated by its shortcomings.
Both UI styles have advantages and disadvantages, and moreover, I would say that they result in different kinds of quest games. Unfortunately, quest games with type-written style user interfaces aren't being commercially produced anymore; not that I know of, at least. In today's market, such a quest game would also have to contend with the fact that most console gamers don't have a keyboard accessory for their PS2, GameCube, or XBox. I also find it interesting that at one point puzzle-oriented quest games seemed to dominate the game industry, and their prominence now pales in comparison.
Full Throttle
For me to rant about LucasArt's "Full Throttle" now--rather than first ranting about Sierra quest games like Quest for Glory, Space Quest, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and, of course, King's Quest--is a bit backwards, but I'm not going to get too hung up here about "what games came first," otherwise I should have started off this whole blog by ranting about games like Pong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Rogue. This particular rant does, however, start by drawing attention to a particular step in the evolution of Sierra quest games: the adoption of a mouse-oriented UI.
When King's Quest V came out with it's mouse-centric user interface, I was initially disappointed by it. In general, I was completely blown away by KQ V (and even more-so by KQ VI), but to drop the type-written nature of the UI featured in the older Sierra quest games seemed like a huge loss. I'd even say that it felt like the beginning of the end, and in many ways it was. King's Quest started to go downhill after King's Quest VI, as did Sierra quest games in general.
LucasArts quest games, on the other hand, were thriving on the mouse-centric UI. I didn't play a lot of LucasArts games at the time, but I did play Full Throttle (and The Dig). Like Sierra, LucasArts understood that the key to creating an engaging quest game was to make it cinematic, and Full Throttle certainly demonstrates the principle. The game is bursting with colour and flavour--from the characters, to the story-telling, to the setting, and even the music, everything contributes to the game's mood. Full Throttle is a unified package. It has humour, suspense, action... pretty much everything that people enjoy about classic Lucas-involved movies like the original Star Wars and The Raiders of the Lost Ark is present to a degree in Full Throttle. To see a game that reaches for that high of a standard with some real success brings a tear to my eye.
I'm not saying that Sierra didn't accomplish the same thing in their quest games. I could easily have written this rant about King's Quest VI, but I would have different things to say about that game. I think I'll save the King's Quest ranting for another time.
In the meanwhile, grab a copy of Full Throttle and let yourself get lost in the game. It sure is an addicitive experience, and one that you can look back on after and feel good about--not unlike going to see a satisfying movie. Full Throttle is one of those games in particular that I can crack out and plug myself into when I feel like revisiting some of the glory days.
Wing Commander
At one time, I believed that Wing Commander had single-handedly invented the space-combat sim genre, and that it was an early pioneer in crafting a virtual 3D space that the user could explore. I have since learned about earlier games, most notably Elite, that have a much more legitimate claim; however, Wing Commander remains a remarkable game. Although it wasn't the "very first" space combat sim, it was certainly a landmark game title (and series) that captured the imagination of many loyal fans.
One of the things that impresses me about Wing Commander is how cinematic it is, especially for its time. WC unfolds like a movie with fairly lengthy cut-scenes inbetween levels featuring a lot of plot and character development. These elements do not exist entirely apart from the "action" portion of the game, however: if a character dies during a mission, that character's storyline is cut short and the next scene will be a funeral service for that character. If you fail an important mission, the following cutscene often depicts the consequences, such as a peaceful science colony being ransacked by the enemy. Even when your character is killed, resulting in "Game Over", you are treated to a funeral cut-scene in which your commander makes a speech about you (one that may vary depending on what part of the game you are at) and your remains are cast into space. The cinematic nature of Wing Commander is practically never broken, and the resulting experience is incredibly immersive.
Also helping the immersive quality of Wing Commander are the cutting edge graphics and sound. Of course, by today's standards the low-resolution sprites subjected to scaling and rotation do not make for a convincing 3D space environment, and the MIDI music is unlikely to get a gamer's blood pumping (excepting, of course, old fans of the series)--but at the time, those effects were state of the art. Near the start of the 90's, a Roland or Creative Labs sound card was an expensive commodity, and it would be several years before the first Voodoo 3D graphics accelerator card was released. Back then, a math co-processor was a good thing to have in a gaming machine, and 4 MB of RAM was a lot. By such standards as those, Wing Commander is hot stuff. I remember struggling to build a boot disk that removed most of my system drivers just to free enough base memory to run Wing Commander 2. But I digress--the point is that Wing Commander's state of the art graphics and sound made it all the more cinematic and immersive.
When I first played Wing Commander, it seemed to completely take over my life. I felt very much as if I was a part of the game, which made it very easy to get lost in the storyline and develop personal attachments to the other characters in the game. A lot of modern-day game productions could certainly take a cue from this old classic.
