61 Frames Per Second

Browse by Tags

• Print Isn't Dead, It's Just Resting

  I've always been a regular reader of video game publications, especially in my younger days; when you're living in the late 1980s and stuck in school for 8 hours a day, there's no sweeter escape than cracking open a fresh issue of Nintendo Power and poring over the pages.  But the state of print is much different than it was during my analog-based childhood.  Magazines are folding, newspaper sales are plummeting, and, frankly, the Internet is to blame--although it hasn't really done much aside from making our lives easier.  Print is now competing with the impossible task of remaining relevant in an age where waiting weeks for information is a laughable prospect.  And since the Internet has essentially stolen print's fire, it's going to have to do something drastic to stay afloat. GameSpite: Year One may be the perfect example of where video game publications should be headed.  For those of you not familiar with GameSpite, it's a web site--run by 1UP scribe Jeremy Parish--that features digital "issues" of content written by a staff of hungry writers.  What appeals most to me is that GameSpite's content is stuff you're not going to find in print, or even on major web sites; most articles are in-depth discussions of games well outside of their 2-week release window.  And GameSpite: Year One is a compilation of this content in book form--split into two volumes, what with how many danged words there are. Read More... Posted Dec 02 2008, 05:30 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: jeremy parish, journalism, bob mackey, magazines, gamespite, print

• 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

• WTFriday: The Mario Paint Music Showcase

  Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week. With all the hardcore furor over the recently-released Wii Music, I think it's important to put things into perspective. Luckily for me, someone has already done this: namely, 1UP scribe Jeremy Parish, who made a remarkable amount of sense with a recent blog post.  And, on his personal site, he also made a great comparison that I'm going to monopolize for the remainder of my own post: Have self-proclaimed hardcore gamers always been this hysterical about "non-game" software? I feel like Wii Music is the latest in a long line of toys and apps that Nintendo has been churning out for years; nothing new in the least. Maybe it's because I wasn't lurking in the proper corners of USENET back then, but I really don't remember Mario Paint eliciting so much FUD back in the day; on the contrary, people seemed to love it, and it's still regarded fondly. Seems sensible enough. But where would we be on WTFriday without something strange and disconcerting? This, my friends, is where Mario Paint comes in. I goofed around with this "game" quite a bit as a child, but little did I know that people were still actively using Mario Paint's composer for both good and evil.  There's even a free program, aptly titled Mario Paint Composer, that emulates the game's basic music-making functions while adding a few new features that weren't exactly in demand back in 1992.  After all, I doubt Nintendo anticipated an eight year-old reproducing anything like Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames:" More serious music discussion after the cut. Read More... Posted Oct 24 2008, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: jeremy parish, wii, music, snes, wii music, mario paint, bob mackey, wtfriday

• Actraiser III! Maybe!

  Nothing Square-Enix could announce would make me happier than a sequel to ActRaiser, their seminal 1991 genre-bender. Back in the early days of the SNES, ActRaiser was one of the first games that felt genuinely next-generation. Mario World was great, but, well, it was Mario. ActRaiser, with its dense forests, poisoned lakes and vast deserts, was a window onto a gorgeous natural world that older game systems only had the power to imply. And the soundtrack kicked fucking ass. Read More... Posted May 13 2008, 11:30 AM by Peter Smith with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: peter smith, gamasutra, jeremy parish, final fantasy crystal chronicles, toshihiro tsuchida, fumiaki shiraishi, actraiser, actraiser 2, simcity