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• 8-Bit Love: The Ten Greatest Vintage Game Songs to Have Sex To, part 2

  Cyriaque Lamar is a New York-based writer with a New Jersey-bred weltanschauung. He’s had original work published at Cracked.com and performed at The New York International Fringe Festival. Cyriaque is thrilled to contribute to 61FPS, as it brings him one step closer to his childhood dream of living on the set of Nick Arcade. 5.) Final Fight CD – “Walk In the Park (Bay Area)” System: Sega CD (1993) Sounds Like: A sweaty nooner with Don Johnson. I always loved the premise of Final Fight. The idea of a city’s mayor stripping down to his underjohns and beating the shit out of unemployed people in order to stimulate job growth was really ahead of its time. Wait? Mike Haggar was actually fighting to save his daughter from an evil street gang? And here I thought the game was some kind of radical Objectivist propaganda. This Bay Area theme is classic whatever console you play Final Fight on, but the Sega CD version pushes it to the limit with gale-force porno guitars. Seriously, these riffs are like an F4 on the Fujita Scale. In my mind’s eye, the person who would get the most out of this track wears a ton of sea foam green and frequents Fort Lauderdale whorehouses. Sometimes, you just gotta be that person. When it comes to the Sega CD, the only thing sleazier is Night Trap. Read More... Posted Apr 16 2009, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: nintendo, actraiser, game boy, rare, capcom, hideo kojima, satellaview, top ten, final fight, sega, commodore 64, atari, chrono trigger, genesis, metal gear, super nintendo, atari 2600, mario paint, sega cd, tetris, star tropics, donkey kong country 2, kid icarus, solid snake, cyriaque lamar, radical dreamers, zoda’s revenge, matt gray, msx, last ninja 2, david wise, streets of rage 2, metal gear 2, yuzo kashiro

• 8-Bit Love: The Ten Greatest Vintage Game Songs to Have Sex To, part 1

  Cyriaque Lamar is a New York-based writer with a New Jersey-bred weltanschauung. He’s had original work published at Cracked.com and performed at The New York International Fringe Festival. Cyriaque is thrilled to contribute to 61FPS, as it brings him one step closer to his childhood dream of living on the set of Nick Arcade. There are three reasons this list exists. First, I felt obliged to highlight 61FPS’s distinction as the gaming apparatchik of an internet sex publication. Second, I wished to showcase the unsung virtuosos of yesteryear who made masterworks using a limited palette of sounds. Finally, I intend to rebut those critics who still dismiss video games as low culture. Using the below examples, I intend to reclaim the carnal legacy of video games by evincing how early console music illustrated the gamut of human sexuality, from atavistic, heteronormative modes of eroticism to polymorphous perversity as delineated by Freud. Plus, the thought of people sticking penises into vaginas to Nintendo music is funny. 10.) Radical Dreamers – “The Girl Who Stole the Stars” System: Super Famicom Satellaview (1996) Sounds Like: Koyaanisqatsi composed on Mario Paint. Since roughly 95% of all human lovemaking involves someone with a XX chromosome pairing, I thought it necessary to seek out my female associates’ thoughts on which game music best applies to amore. The suggestions I received were few yet incisive — responses ranged from “the Kid Icarus theme” to “Who the eff effs to video games?” Ultimately though, I deferred to my own instincts and picked this pan-pipe jam from the Japan-exclusive, text-based sequel to Chrono Trigger. Composed by the legendary Yasunori Mitsuda, “The Girl Who Stole the Stars” is easily the most romantic theme on our list. Read More... Posted Apr 16 2009, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo, actraiser, game boy, rare, capcom, hideo kojima, satellaview, top ten, final fight, sega, commodore 64, atari, chrono trigger, genesis, metal gear, super nintendo, atari 2600, mario paint, sega cd, tetris, star tropics, donkey kong country 2, kid icarus, solid snake, cyriaque lamar, radical dreamers, zoda’s revenge, matt gray, msx, last ninja 2, david wise, streets of rage 2, metal gear 2, yuzo kashiro

• Mega64 versus Metal Gear Solid 4's Dad

  Despite these tough times, the sun still rises, and those lovable scamps over at Mega64 are up to their old tricks. I think we'll all be okay. Mega64 was at GDC this year, because it's important for someone to get all up in the face of video games when they become Serious Business. Sometimes, though, Serious Business bites back. At 2007's GDC, the boys of Mega64 dressed as Mario and Luigi and frolicked through the city streets, harassing attendees and women on cellphones. Everything was fun and games until some guy named “Shee-guyo Me-a-photo” put his hands on his hips and beat down the party with a look that said, “Come on guys, plumbers and mustaches are not joke material.” Mega64 took the lesson to heart, but got a bit naughty again at 2009's GDC with a parody of Metal Gear Solid 4. Serious Business raised its solemn head once again, but this time the boys were running for their lives. Read More... Posted Mar 30 2009, 07:44 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: hideo kojima, mario, shigeru miyamoto, metal gear solid 4, cliffy b, link, fan stuff, nadia oxford, mega64

• I’d Like to Thank the Imaginary Academy: Where Are the Videogame Awards That Matter?

  MTV is a wily beast on the international stage. While we associate the one-time purveyor of actual music videos here in the States more with the decade long reign of TRL and reality shows starring wildly libidinous mannequins, Viacom’s behemoth plays host to a much wider and weirder slate of content across the globe. MTV Germany actually holds a special place in my heart. It introduced me to the Army of Lovers way back in 1997 during my international flight from the law. (I’d elaborate further, but this is a videogame blog. Let’s just say that I’ve atoned for my crimes and am no longer a target of Interpol. Sometimes you just have to cut a deal, you know?) I mean, just look at this video: That’s the sort of thing that sticks with you. MTV Germany held the MTV Game Awards last Friday. Yes, Game Awards. Read More... Posted Nov 24 2008, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, hideo kojima, igda, final fantasy xiii, mtv, army of lovers, academy awards, jade raymond

• Watcha Listening To: Retronauts Episode 55: Snatcher Edition

  This podcast is dedicated to all those cyberpunks who fight against injustice and corruption every day of their lives. That wasn't how the latest episode of Retronauts began--but it should have, damn it! Sorry, I got all worked up there. But there's a good reason to get excited: Hideo Kojima's Snatcher is an awesome game, and people are talking about it. On the Internet, no less!  In the latest episode, Retronauts ringmaster Jeremy Parish leads an Interesting discussion of a game made at a time when Hideo Kojima wasn't the Bono of his respective industry. And as a bonus, the podcast also includes a brief chat with localization producer Jeremy Blaustein, who worked on the ahead-of-its-time English language version of Snatcher.  If you can't believe the awesomeness, check check out the game's intro: All of this Snatcher chatter got me thinking of the Policenauts (AKA Lethal Weapon in space) translation, which was announced as "complete" 20 months ago, but has not yet been released to the public.  Since it's a game made by Kojima very much in the style of Snatcher, I'm dying to play it.  Maybe we need to helicopter over some of those Mother 3 translation guys to whip them into shape. Read More... Posted Oct 30 2008, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: jeremy parish, hideo kojima, retro, bob mackey, watcha listening to, podcasts, snatcher

• C'mon Kojima: Port Metal Gear!

  As things currently stand, I'm probably never going to play Metal Gear Solid 4. The reason? I simply don't have the money or real estate for a PS3.  I'm a big Metal Gear Solid fan, so this situation is not entirely wonderful for me; but I've come to accept my fate and stay out of the console wars.  However, a recent post on the Kojima Productions web site may justify any possible whining over the platform-exclusivity of Solid Snake. From Kojima Himself: The creativity of video games is now on the verge of crisis. Massive advertising campaigns are executed for games before their entertainment values are put into consideration all too often, resulting in sell-off tactics happening without hesitation. [Translation via Kotaku] Kojima's complaint has everything to do with the fact that MGS4 just isn't selling as well as he hoped it would in his native country. Sales are by no means terrible, but a game of MGS4's budget and caliber shouldn't be moving less than a million copies.  And a large amount of that budget--as Kojima claims--was spent on an expensive advertising campaign, making it even more difficult to turn a profit.  Porting the game to the 360 probably wouldn't give the game much of a sales bump in Japan, who only really cares about Microsoft's system when some exclusive RPG surfaces in a green DVD case, but I guarantee that this decision would bring in a lot of money from America. Read More... Posted Sep 10 2008, 08:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: hideo kojima, metal gear solid 4, gta iv, final fantasy 13, sales

• Kojima's In Another World

  Depending on what side of the world you live on, you might even say Metal Gear Solid's daddy is Out Of This World. I already know I'm a hopeless nerd, so I have no problem confessing that I love to find out about what inspires creative types. I get to say "Oh hey! Me too!" and for a precious second, I feel validated. Then the shadows gather again. Kotaku published an article about the five games that matter to Hideo Kojima. Super Mario Bros is a given, but I was happy to see that Eric Chahi's brooding alien adventure Another World was on the list as well. Another World, cleverly renamed Out Of This World in North America, comes from a rare point in history when computer gamers had every right to laugh at console gamers. While young scientist Lester Knight Chaykin picked his way through a grim and hostile alien world with seemingly no hope of getting home, he took hundreds of enthralled Amiga, Apple II and DOS owners along with him. Every move he made counted, because one wrong turn or one bad step was all it took to die a hauntingly animated death. Every victory in Another World was bitterly earned, every discovery mattered. Meanwhile, console gamers said "Ook Ook", threw their NES controllers at the screen and picked each other for lice. Read More... Posted Jul 10 2008, 08:50 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: kotaku, hideo kojima, adventure games, alien, out of this world, another world, buddy, lester knight chaykin, interplay, inspirations, eric chahi

• The 61FPS Review: Metal Gear Solid 4 Part 2

  As I mentioned in the first part of this review, Guns of the Patriots is the Metal Gear that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, for the series and game type, passive viewing is every bit as much a part of the play experience as actual player control. It’s misleading, though, to think that Metal Gear Solid 4’s greatest achievement is its presentation. Since its debut on the MSX in 1986, the actual game under Metal Gear’s graphics and story has been about using a limited, often suffocating interface to explore multiple solutions to a problem. A classic scenario: Solid Snake enters a room filled with obstacles (packing crates, trees, stationary vehicles) and a handful of hostile artificial intelligences (soldiers, security cameras, dogs) moving along set paths. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater The goal is to guide Snake passed hostile elements without alerting them to his presence. The environment and tools acquired in its boundaries (anything from firearms to camouflage) create options; you could crawl under cars to avoid detection or tranquilize a soldier to distract the others as you move on. Snake is difficult to manage though; move too fast and you risk accidentally walking into an enemy’s line of sight, fire a gun and you risk being heard. You could make the argument that the finicky and imprecise control of Snake is immersive, simulating the stress and precision of actual stealth, but the truth is that it superficially increases difficulty, masking the rudimentary artificial intelligence’s faults. In Guns of the Patriots, not only has the environment and multiple-solution approach been expanded upon in both scope and realism, but the control has been streamlined to a point where agency is truly in the player’s hands, no longer at the mercy of a stilted interface. Read More... Posted Jun 24 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, metal gear solid, hideo kojima, 61fps review, metal gear, mgs4

• The 61FPS Review: Metal Gear Solid 4 Part 1

  I’ve spent the last ten years of my life resisting Metal Gear Solid. I didn’t play the series’ opening chapter until April of 1999 and, even then, I only played because it was gifted to me by an exceptionally generous friend. At sixteen, I considered myself a staunch traditionalist. I wanted my games two-dimensional and my gameplay familiar so Metal Gear Solid didn’t appeal to me (I'd be lying, though, if I said its monumental popularity wasn't at the heart of my dismissing it.) It took playing MGS to realize Hideo Kojima, more an eccentric than a trendsetter at that point, had captured the gaming zeitgeist in two discs of content. Basic play in MGS was little more than a polished version of the original Metal Gear’s, but its presentation and narrative ambitions were a new face for gaming, every bit as redefining as Mario’s first hop-around Princess Toadstool’s 3D castle. MGS’ in-engine acted-cutscene, dramatic-instance formula remains the template for storytelling in videogames to this day. Read More... Posted Jun 16 2008, 01:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, metal gear solid, hideo kojima, 61fps review

• Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojima’s Inability to Show Instead of Tell

  As Metal Gear Sold 4’s June 12th release date looms, more and more information about Solid Snake’s purported final adventure has begun to leak into the press. British gaming mag CVG reported late last week that MGS4 features a cutscene that lasts a full ninety-minutes. While the article doesn’t mention where said cutscene appears in the game – it may be smack in the middle or after the conclusion of play for all we know - it still means that a player will watch MGS4 for an hour and a half instead of playing it. Director and designer Hideo Kojima, in his Metal Gear Solid series especially, is notorious for using long non-interactive cutscenes and filling them with verbose, convoluted narrative. This over-reliance on the narrative language of film turns a number of players away from the games completely. Just two months ago, I replayed through MGS1 through 3 and both of my roommates could barely stand to be in the room while I played because, more often than not, the screen was filled with stiff talking heads. Games are meant to be played, not viewed, and that maxim makes Kojima a difficult creator to engage. Read More... Posted May 27 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, metal gear solid, hideo kojima, joystiq, cvg

• Bringing Sexy Back: Yoji Shinkawa

  When it comes to Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima’s always the first name that springs to mind. Yeah he’s the creator, the designer, the director, the writer of all that dialogue, not to mention that the entire team behind the games is named after the man. But another name springs to my mind as I quiver with anticipation of Metal Gear Solid 4’s release: Yoji Shinkawa. Shinkawa’s expressive illustrations have been the face of the MGS series from the beginning and are, if I do say so, sexy as hell. The vaguely defined faces of his figures, the broad-stroke heavy lines of his characters, the almost melancholic tone of his largely monochromatic illustrations. Shinkawa gets us hot and no mistake. What do you say, FPSers? Read More... Posted May 14 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, metal gear solid, hideo kojima, bringing sexy back, yoji shinkawa