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• What Michael Jackson’s Game Collection Says About Michael Jackson

  Remember that ridiculous auction of all of Michael Jackson’s stuff? The one that got pulled a few weeks later when Jackson suddenly remembered he liked all his stuff? I do, because it had me scouring my couch for enough change to purchase his 87 arcade cabinets. Now, a game collection says a lot about a person—for example, my game collection says that I am credit risk, and that my love for engrish alone probably qualifies me as functionally illiterate. But even with all those pre-approved Diner’s Club cards I could still never afford anything remotely approaching Michael Jackson’s ludicrous collection. So what do his games say about him? Read More... Posted Apr 17 2009, 07:30 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: rule of rose, joe keiser, michael jackson, jaleco, collections, auctions, ponies and their many marks

• 10 Years Ago This Week: Silent Hill

  Silent Hill (released February 24th, 1999) did not mark a pivotal moment in the original Playstation’s lifecycle. Technologically speaking, Silent Hill was a solid effort, but nothing unusual for the time. Foregoing the pre-rendered backgrounds that were horror games’ stock-in-trade, Silent Hill’s full-3D environments weren’t as pristinely rendered as Konami’s own, year-old Metal Gear Solid. The CGI cutscenes, another requisite of the era, were competent but by no means up to the Squaresoft gold standard. Its control was wonky, its camera unwieldy, and the voice-acting was stiff even for a Playstation game. Of course, none of that matters. Silent Hill was a pivotal moment in game’s maturation as an affecting, expressive medium. Forget technology; its technical failings made it a stronger work. Forget genre; Silent Hill is not survival horror. It’s just horror. Read More... Posted Feb 23 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, capcom, metal gear solid, silent hill, konami, sony, rule of rose, Playstation, tecmo, fatal frame, team silent, silent hill 2, sunsoft, 10 years ago, akira yamioka, shuji ishikawa, punchline, david lynch, jacob’s ladder, Adrian lyne, siren, clock tower

• OST: Rule of Rose

  Horror lives and dies by its ability to create an atmosphere that unsettles the basic human state; it must confine, pursue, and isolate. It must be desperate, wrong. Even more so than in other mediums, sound is essential to horror in games since it must constantly envelope its audience in a way that keeps them moving through the world. A horror movie takes its audience with it but a horror game must rely on its audience’s willingness to keep going of their own accord and its aural landscape must antagonize and sooth a player in equal measure. Music itself typically takes a back seat to ambient noise. Akira Yamaoka is the torch bearer for this genre maxim. His work in the Silent Hill series, while not devoid of melody or traditional song structure, is predominantly dissonant squalls, distortion laden static, and the thick organic sounds of things that go bump in the night. Punchline’s Rule of Rose, a cousin of Silent Hill in the horror genre, takes a decidedly different route in creating a soundscape of dread and wrongness. Incidental sound takes a backseat to Yutaka Minobe’s chamber music score. Read More... Posted May 21 2008, 03:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, ost, silent hill, angelo badalamenti, rule of rose, yutaka minobe, akira yamaoka