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• Videogame, Non-Game, Old Game, New Game: The Miyamoto Rule

  To the internet-list aficionado, the end of the calendar year is the time of greatest bounty. You like lists, chances are you like pop culture, and nothing gets the pop junkie going like ranking all the crap that came out in the past twelve months. Top ten movies, top ten books, top ten celebrity nip-slips, top ten Billy Mays products, and, yeah, top ten games of the year. We are no stranger to the list here at 61FPS, as you well know from reading our scintillating, thought provoking top tens, and you can imagine how we’re gearing up to deliver all sorts of meaningless judgments on the year known broadly as 2008 (4706, 4705, or 4645 to the Chinese. They seem to be confused.) Over the past few weeks, Derrick and I have had a number of conversations about our mutual contenders, but these dialogues have always ended in a conundrum: what counts as a videogame? Derrick’s smitten with Wii Fit, but is it anything more than a Nintendo-upped Sweatin’ to the Oldies that comes with a snazzy scale? We’re both fans of the Korg DS-10, but, even though you play it on a videogame system, it is an actual musical instrument, not a new sequel-ready game franchise. Does an instrument go on a top ten games list? My personal definition of a videogame has been a work of interactive digital media wherein you follow a set of rules to achieve a goal. Wii Fit, Korg DS-10, and the many other games like them belong in the broader videogame discussion at this point and this is making me re-evaluate just what a game is. Leave it to Shigeru Miyamoto to lay down the single best definition of videogame I’ve heard to date. Read More... Posted Dec 01 2008, 07:45 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, wii fit, shigeru miyamoto, korg ds-10, wii music

• Shigeru Miyamoto, the Heartbreak...Man

  I like Shigeru Miyamoto. He taught me that video games can be more than triangles that shoot peas at cookies (and broken up chunks of cookies). He taught me that video games can be a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. He taught me how to dance and read and sing, and what it means to be a woman--no, you didn't just read that last bit. Mind-melt ray. *zzzt.* Hello. We were just talking about kittens. I like tortoiseshells, don't you? There's a new wrestling game or something coming out. I don't know, it's some manner of digital man-wrangling that my husband's been going on about. The most I know about Wrestling is that Hulk Hogan wants me to drink my milk and say my prayers. I also know that wrestling games are pretty famous for their Create-a-Brawler wrestler generators. Here we have a very enthusiastic Shigeru Miyamoto stepping into the ring with plenty of bum-shaking and hip grinding. His theme song is courtesy of the esteemed Game Jew. Read More... Posted Nov 10 2008, 11:00 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with no comments Filed under: shigeru miyamoto, nadia oxford, raw vs smackdown, theme song, game jew

• Miyamoto Is Concerned About Excessive Violence in Games

  Are you? Miyamoto stated that he's troubled by developers' tendency to rely on excessive violence to attract gamers. "I don't want to curb freedom of expression, but I am concerned many developers focus on excessive violence in order to stimulate people's minds. "I believe that here are more ways of grabbing players' attention than violence alone." On one hand, Miyamoto is absolutely right; a game doesn't need to be excessively violent in order to garner interest. On the other hand, just as family-oriented games like Animal Crossing and Super Mario Whatever are for everyone and not just sissies and little girls, "violent" games are not the wretched product of a diseased society. There is nothing wrong with an adult enjoying a Grand Theft Auto game; humans are an aggressive species. It's a bit unfortunate, but natural--and far better to stick to outlets that don't harm others. Read More... Posted Oct 21 2008, 07:02 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: mortal kombat, shigeru miyamoto, grand theft auto, nadia oxford, game development, game violence

• Wii Music: A Rare Miss For Miyamoto?

  The reviews for Wii Music are trickling in and the verdict overall seems to be "Meh." Wii Music doesn't look like it's on course to become the holiday item worth garroting fellow shoppers over. Most damning is What They Play's test play, featuring real live children. The game apparently didn't go over much better than homework. I don't often feel bad when a hyped game flatlines, but I kind of feel sadface about Wii Music's lukewarm reception just because Shigeru Miyamoto is so excited about it. I know some gamers put their hands on their hips and say, "Well, it's about time he was taken down a peg" when one of Miyamoto's projects is a notch below stellar, but I still have mad respect for the guy. He is one of my heroes (Nadia Trivia Bonus: another hero is Terry Fox and another is the inventor of cookies). I haven't seen any Wii Music-related scorn directed towards Miyamoto yet, but I'm sure it's out there, or it will be. The Wii has opened up video games for a whole new audience; even though it's easy to get mad and decide that Nintendo has abandoned hardcore gamers, I can't fault Nintendo for thinking Wii Music will be a runaway hit with the Wii Sports/Wii Fit crowd. But if Wii Music fails to sell, what will it mean for Shigeru Miyamoto? Read More... Posted Oct 21 2008, 06:08 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: wii, wii fit, shigeru miyamoto, wii music, wii sports, nadia oxford, holiday, creative process

• Miyamoto Says, "It Would Be Great If Music Education Started With Wii Music."

  As if I didn't already have to listen to my father go on about "these goddamn kids today who don't want to learn real guitar 'cause of Guitar Hero," now we have Shigeru Miyamoto himself talking about how awesome the world would be if music education started with Wii Music. Iwata and Miyamoto discussed Wii Music on "Creator's Voice," a developer session hosted on Nintendo's web site. Iwata: Well, there, with Wii Music, there's a strong possibility of raising people's basic level of music education. Miyamoto: Yes. Thus, from now, I've even thought it would it would be great if kindergartens or elementary schools got Wii Music and began kid's music education with that... My first school-related music experience involved garbage bags stretched over tin cans and held in place with rubber bands. How can we even think of replacing real instruments with such false, plastic alternatives? Read More... Posted Sep 25 2008, 03:56 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: wii fit, super mario bros, shigeru miyamoto, wii music, nadia oxford, education

• Toys are "Better than Video Games"?

  "Who put this thing together? Me, that's who! Who do I trust? Me!" - Tony Montana That's what I thought of when I read the following: Since Wii Music has no discernible scoring system, no goals and little in the way of those squishy innards that makes a game a "game," isn't it just a "musical toy"? That was the question posed by one European journo. "Yes, that's right," Miyamoto curtly replied "And that's why it's better than a video game." OK, Miyamoto, you've used up your last "Get out of Jail Free" card with this one. I stuck with you through the turbulent N64/Gamecube years, and I was happy to see you take it to the top with the Wii. But the above quote is so screechingly wrong, so not what I wanted to hear from E3. Read More... Posted Jul 18 2008, 12:00 AM by Cole Stryker with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: kotaku, cole stryker, casual games, shigeru miyamoto, wii music

• Game Designers: Rockstars, Auteurs, Dweebs?

  One crummy thing about living here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. is that we don’t get issues of Britain’s Edge Magazine for a full month after they hit stands in Britain. Yes, I know, it’s a hard life. We’ve been at war with two separate nations for close to a decade, the economy is disintegrating, and our health care system is an atrocity but all that pales in comparison to not getting pretty videogame rags in a timely manner. But I digress. Yesterday, while flipping through their July issue, something stuck out about their Platinum Games cover story: the photo spread of Atsushi Inaba, Hideki Kamiya, Shigenori Nishikawa, Hifumi Kouno, and Tatsuya Minami made them look like a god damn boy band. Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, platinum games, valve, shigeru miyamoto, cliffy b, edge, david jaffe, gabe newell

• The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History, Part 2

  Super Mario 64 If you'd asked a young me to imagine a three-dimensional Mario Bros. game, I'd have pictured a screenshot from Super Paper Mario — essentially, the point-A-to-point-B linearity of classic side-scrolling Mario, shot from a different camera angle. Instead, Shigeru Miyamoto's first 3D adventure completely rewrote the rules of platforming, replacing the "get to the end" format with a variety of challenges set in one, open physical space. To a generation weaned on linearity, this was pretty overwhelming at first — I remember being plunked down in Bob-Omb Battlefield and wandering around like a chump for an embarrassingly long time. 64 was so different from its precursors that you arguably wouldn't call it a sequel, but bear in mind that no one knew at the time what the next generation of games would look like. Early 32-bit games like Bug and Clockwork Knight dressed 2D gaming in 3D clothes. As usual, that nut Miyamoto had something different in mind. — PS Read More... Posted Jun 05 2008, 08:31 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, the legend of zelda, top ten, list, gradius, donkey kong, castlevania 2, the ten most adventurous sequels in gaming history, shigeru miyamoto, the adventure of link, clockwork knight, super paper mario, super mario 64, zelda II, contra, bug, simon's quest

• The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History, Part 1

  More than any other creative medium, videogames rely on sequels. Unlike serial fiction (television, comics) or film franchising focused on continuing narrative and familiar characters, videogame sequels — at their best, mind you — are not just the next chapter of a story or the return of a popular protagonist. The most successful gameplay designs are perfected through revision. Practice, as they say, makes perfect. And while sequel-as-business-model more often than not leads to stagnation, sometimes pandering to the audience reveals a vein of creativity richer than that found in the source material. Sometimes, a good idea needs to be demolished and rebuilt over its original foundation to become great. This week, 61 Frames Per Second takes a look at gaming's ten most adventurous sequels: direct successors that significantly alter the fundamental design, aesthetically and mechanically, of their predecessors. Some of the entries on this list are great successes, others failures. But they all broke the mold to change our ideas about play. — John Constantine Adventure Island IV Even as an old-school die-hard I've always been pretty indifferent to the Adventure Island series. Sure, it's solid hop-and-bopping, but without much aesthetic or architectural distinction. Does anyone feel passionately about Adventure Island, really? More people might if Adventure Island IV had come out in the States. IV melds the series's standard run-around-whacking-stuff-with-other-stuff mechanics to an ambitious Metroid-esque superstructure, in which newly acquired items must be used to open previously inaccessible sections of a large, continuous map. (The snowboard you pick up in one area gives you passage through a snowy field, and so forth.) This is a familiar tactic today — see recent Castlevania games, for example — but at the time it was unusual, and certainly not where you'd have expected a staid platforming series to go. — Peter Smith Read More... Posted Jun 05 2008, 08:30 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid, top ten, castlevania, list, akitoshi kawazu, the ten most adventurous sequels in gaming history, hironobu sakaguchi, final fantasy II, dragon quest, adventure island iv, doki doki panic, super mario bros 2, shigeru miyamoto