The Mammon Philosophy

GTA:IV is out tomorrow, which means I’ll be picking it up in a year or so when I eventually cave in and buy a 360. Already, the parodies are piling up, and one in particular caught my eye: GP mentioned that The -Minus World had a piece on Stephen Harper trying to make GTA:Montreal happen. Can’t link through to the main article because comedy apparently demands bad web design that gives 404s on every page, but from the introductory description (Canadians riding golden eagles, which they no doubt wingjacked) it’s probably a trip through the “51st State” mentality, where all of us Stalinist Canuckistanis are beer-swilling lumberjacks with lisps, perpetually trying to dig ourselves out of the snow that falls whenever the sun goes down. Eh? Eh?! Truly, when you have run out of George W. Bush jokes, you come to Canada and avail yourself of the abundant stereotype fields. Never mind that Toronto is further south than St. Paul, Minnesota; if they knew that, they’d just use it as ammunition against Minnesota.

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After the confirmed success of Super Mario World, Nintendo turned its eyes to the next step in their plot for console domination: character branding. Mario-universe newcomer Yoshi, the ridable, loveable, gobblin’ dino, was already winning the hearts of gamers, presumably with his hypnotic dinner-plate eyes and willingness to fall to his death while Mario reached the secret goal of the Cheese Bridge. Appearances in Super Mario Kart and Mario Is Missing! served to enhance his reputation as a happy-go-lucky reptilian (well, maybe not so much MIM, which was about as fun and educational as a Denny’s placemat.) It was time to bring it up a notch. Yoshi would star in his own game.

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1830 — It’s a beautiful day for a hostile takeover, folks. Whoever is running the audio stream has chosen to go with World Keeps Spinning by Brand New Heavies as the pre-meeting music, a rather optimistic choice, followed by further hip-hop beats.

1836 — Still playing music. Just as I’m wondering, “are they having trouble getting started, or am I being shut out?” the meeting starts… with a video. That I can’t see. Thanks guys.

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A few days ago, I was going to get into some drunken Chrono Trigger (playing familiar games after a hard night on the town is a good way to make yourself unfamiliar with them again) when my controller broke. There was no audible snap or crunch; the buttons simply stopped responding. A tug on the cord revealed the problem by revealing the internal wires which had been dragged off the circuitry. My other controller, an artifact as old as the Super Nintendo itself, had also eroded to the point of non-usage. Damnit! Now my entire collection of SNES games is rendered useless until the local Microplay restocks their controllers later this week.

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Obviously, I didn’t feel like there was enough challenge in my life, because I picked up a few games that are really pushing my gaming skills to the limit this week. It seems that if you’ve got a void in your life that can only be filled by sharpening your controller acuity, you’ve got two directions you can go in: the intellectual or the dexterous.

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I took an obsessive step forward yesterday and slipped my DS into my jacket pocket before heading to work. Partly, I was tired of staring at the trees and office parks on Hunt Club Road whenever I forgot to bring along my copy of Macleans, but mostly I’ve been trying to make more headway into Tetris and Nanostray 2 (a 2.5D space shooter you’ve probably never heard of; my mother gave it to me for Easter) before I pick up Endless Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer. The bus was crowded, but I thought I spied an open seat near the back, which turned out to be next to one of those people who thinks their bag is as worthy of a spot as they are. Normally, this would rile me up, and I’d go stand next to the person and glare at them until they hauled their backpack onto their knees or under the seat, like a sensible bus rider. This time, however, I was rather bemused that I had an excuse to stay standing: the guy in question was playing his DS, and it would look ridiculous if I were to sit down next to him and power up. People might’ve assumed we were some sort of protest organization that plays video games on buses.

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It’s perhaps the simplest code ever programmed, not to mention a mere blip on the radar in a game whose secrets include magic beanstalks, warp zones, and a negative world, but holding the A button while pressing start at the game over screen allows you to continue in Super Mario Bros. Nothing ground-shaking, I hope, but it’s a good place to start on a subject that seems to have grown uncomfortable over the last twenty years: just how much should a game punish a player for their failure? The question was brought to mind by a minor nostalgia trip I took over the weekend, when an MMORPG review at Something Awful made me wistful for some Mario Kart 64 action. Now, I wouldn’t say this game is entirely biased towards the player; sitting on the lead guarantees a stream of banana peels and green shells, whereas dropping back to even second place will generate more useful (or at least more interesting) items, which is why the computer can sneak up on you and suddenly attack, leaving you stuck in fourth on the final stretch of the last lap. But there’s an unorthodox solution to this problem, such as it is. Finishing lower than fourth causes you to be “ranked out,” meaning you don’t pass the course and have to continue, effectively giving you another shot at taking the pole position. Continues are infinitely available, so you can artificially throw the race until you get the place and the points you deserve.

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