If you’ve been on this website very much, you probably know already that I like old games. Yeah, part of it is nostalgic – I make no apologies. Nostalgia only makes bad games better, but it doesn’t mar the reputation of a game that was always good. People forget that sometimes. But I also love classic play styles – mechanics pared down to bare essentials and pushed to the limits of what can be accomplished. It takes a lot of skill to create works of art with a surfeit of limitations placed upon you, and the eight-bit era of gaming certainly had it’s share of limits placed on game designers. (At this point, it would be good to draw attention to the obvious parallel at play here – my own work is mostly in the four-panel comic strip format. Limitations, indeed.)

But this didn’t stop the games of the time from having compelling stories. It just happens that most of that story took place within the gameplay. Yeah, you got a set-up most of the time – though not always in the game itself…often enough the only narrative given was in the game manual. Blaster Master happens to be one of the few to give you a real intro, with motivation to work your way to the end and everything. You see, it seems that Jason Frudnick’s pet frog Fred has had an accident with some…well, just watch this:

That shit’s AMAZING. You bet your ass I’m going to go through the bowels of mutant hell to get my frog back. Fred didn’t deserve to be the victim of carelessly discarded radioactive waste, and you can damn well be sure it was Jason’s neglectful parents that dropped that barrel in the backyard. Idiots. I respect Jason’s responsible nature. “Hell yeah I’m going to jump down this hole to get my frog back!” and “WTF? A Tank? Shit, I can roll with that. Gonna make the job easier. I’m coming Fred!”

Seriously. That plot’s no different than The Protector. Sorry, Tom Yung Goong for you purists.

But that’s all you really need. No overwrought protagonist caught up in an unintelligible conspiracy involving robots or A.I. or George Washington or whatever the hell the Metal Gear series is about. No Umbrella corporation. No world saving emo-teen with a sword that is also-rather inexplicably-a gun. There isn’t even a blue hedgehog with an insanely bloated cast who likes to kiss human women.

Because — and this is the important part — the story is the game. Who woulda thunk it, right?  All those hours you spend with the sound effects, and the music, and the repeated repeated repeated repeated attempts to just get one single pixel futher. The screaming frustration followed by nervous intensity and body melting relief as you go though the wash, rinse, repeat cycle of death, attempt, success inherent to games of this nature. Because, admit it – we all have a story from the trenches of old-school videogame warfare. Whether it’s the level with cloud-thing that throws those spiky turtley bastards in Super Mario Bros, a particularly manic session of tetris, an entire month lost to multi-player Goldeneye, or playing Blaster Master for twenty years and still never beating it. Those are the stories behind the games that supposedly have none. And I think it’s a perfectly valid way to tell a story – and one that’s unique to each player.

Maybe that’s why bad old games have such traction on the net. They create compelling narratives in the Sisyphean task involved in just playing them.

Anyway, here’s your closure:

Yeah, he saves the frog. But it turned his hair blue. Shit happens when you find a jumping tank in an underground cavern filled with mutants in process of saving your irradiated pet frog from someone called the “Plutonium Boss”.

Aaaaanyway, later.

Jason.Share/Bookmark

Let me start by saying that I’m not just some regressive man-child who can’t claw his way out of the haze of his own childhood because mommy drank too much and daddy yelled at him for not being enough of a man. In fact, I’m long since over all of that. No, I realize that there were more than a few terrible games made during the 8-bit era of my youth, and some of them were even ones that I enjoyed at the time. I did in fact enjoy the first Godzilla, but it had a whole lot more to do with the fact that it was the only game my parents ever rented for me, and this only because I had gotten a fly trapped in my ear and had to visit the emergency room. However, I have no illusions about the quality of said game. My taste is untainted by the saccharine of memories past.

In fact, I currently spend a good deal of my free time playing bygone videogames (mostly NES games) that I never played as a child. Why? Because I like hard fucking games, That’s why. I’m only middling good at playing them — my greatest accomplishment being split between beating Bionic Commando, and almost beating Bayou Billy — but the sense of accomplishment that comes from making progress in a game that relentlessly pounds your ego into the ground easily trumps the cakewalk that a lot of games seem to have become in the last decade or so. I realize that you game developers out there really want us to experience all of your brilliant story, but I didn’t come to watch the show – I’m here for it to make me feel bad about myself.

So here’s where I tie it together with something that matters.

Gaming like this gives me the same rush and drive that making comics does. Both are harder than shit. They make me feel bad, and frustrated, and sometimes really want to break my tools (and sometime I actually do). But somehow, they’re both still fun. Why? How does an activity that causes me pain and anxiety keep me coming back? It could be the thrill of having everything go right. Sometimes it feels like I’m skating on butter with four legs in slow motion. I couldn’t screw it up if I tried. Other times I’ve left my apartment and walked into a nearly frozen over lake just to try and quench the frustration. (I’d like to point out that this was not over a video game. I was trying to draw a doorway.) Maybe it’s just the feeling of overcoming something that you couldn’t the day before. Who knows…

All I know is I’m crazy for doing both. I need a hobby that’s more relaxing.

Anyway — happy Monday you teaming multitudes.

JasonShare/Bookmark

I have these sorts of conversations with myself fairly frequently.

So, after tearing up the fifth attempt at penciling this singularly frustrating (but stupidly simplistic) panel, I settled in for a night of deadened emotion and surfing the interwebs. Shortly thereafter, I stumbled upon a review of this game:

Videogames can go both ways for me when I’m at a high level of frustration. Some make it better, some make it worse. Some games I play for the frustration of continually failing. It makes the eventual success all the more satisfying when it finally happens. This game, however, somehow manages to work on both levels. It’s certainly not an easy game, but the continual building up of the song as you get further and further into the level (each of which is upwards of 15 minutes long) and the simple but hypnotic visuals induce a sort of trance, and you can’t help but be pulled along with the beats.

And then I sat down and laid out the panel that had been frustrating me for hours.

Not bad, Bit.Trip Beat. Thanks for the helping hand.

Later,

JShare/Bookmark