A young fox awakens on a beach, wondering where they are. Heading inland, they come to a signpost - it's written in an unrecognisable language. You open a nearby chest and claim its contents; the description is unreadable to you. The world may have a few simple antagonistic creatures, yet overall there is a peacefulness to your surroundings, giving you an urge to explore, even though you don't understand where to go or why. You eventually find a large golden door, perhaps to a temple or shrine, transporting you to a different realm, perhaps spiritual? You finally meet another soul, almost literally - an older fox, female, trapped it seems, wanting to escape. When you awaken you suddenly feel a sense of purpose... though you cannot explain how you know this. Finally, after some more exploration of the land, you come across a very important item - a page from a book. It still has text that you do not understand, but this finally has some words you recognise, plus pictures that provide some meaning. It's not a lot to go on, though now the little fox feels there is a direction. Determined, onwards they go, off on an adventure.

An Unexpected Journey

Tunic was the game selected by the Good Game Lobby as the choice for their game-of-the-month club in June 2026. For those not familiar, Good Game Lobby (GGL) is a fun group of people based all over the world who just love talking about video games. Once a month, we choose a game to play for the duration of said month, and then get to talk about it at the end - very similar to a book club. As this was my first time joining in with the conversation at the end, it was really exciting to talk about my thoughts on the game with people who equally share the same passion. Tunic gave me a lot (and the others in GGL) to think about, so I thought why not write them down? Perhaps my other reader might be interested too.

Tunic is a game released in 2022 on all the various platforms. It bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain legendary game featuring a Hylian hero who also sports a sword and shield. The perspective is even reminiscent of a Zelda or adventure game of the 16-bit era, adopting a mostly isometric viewpoint. The difference though is that this is rendered in 3D and adopts a beautiful art style. Everything reminds me of a model or diorama; trees and bushes are recognisable, yet angular and abstract. The sunlight will filter through cracks in ancient ruins to give light and shade, while the music that accompanies you feels relaxing, soothing. By first impressions, it looks amazing, with wonderful little touches to the environment or characters, such as your protagonist occasionally looking around as they move, as if their interest is captured by their surroundings just like you.

There have been many games in this adventure genre though, what makes Tunic stand out from the crowd? A number of things, actually.

Firstly, there is the fact that you don't understand what to do - intentionally. There are no characters in the overworld to talk to, and signs, messages and prompts are usually met with text in an unusual alphabet that cannot be deciphered. No-one is going to handhold you in this game, so it is your job to discover for yourself not just what to do but how the game works as well. In this sense, the game feels quite freeing, allowing you to wander and piece together your adventure yourself. As would be typical in the classic Zelda formula, you can't just go anywhere you want immediately - this isn't a sandbox. The path is actually very well laid out for you to progress, it just isn't immediately obvious. Once you do see where to go next though, the great lightbulb in your head flickers to life and understanding dawns on you, in the best way possible.

While you cannot read or be told what to do, you are not left completely helpless. Throughout the world you come across mysterious pages that have been torn from a book. This is Tunic's most unique aspect of the game, since these pages are for the game manual. What's that, young person? You don't know what a game manual is? Sigh... Well, back in ye olde days, where we counted console power in bits, games tended not to have prompts or tutorials to teach you how to play - the technical and design constraints usually did not allow this, unless you had designed an exceptionally well laid out game (looking at you, Super Mario Bros. World 1-1) Instead, a small booklet, the game manual, came along with your packaged game, explaining the fundamentals of the game (controls, saving or using passwords), and maybe, if the developer was having fun, some backstory, lore, and additional context. This is what Tunic aims to replicate, yet also integrate it directly into the gameplay.

As you discover the pages throughout your adventure, the cute hand-drawn and painted art style of the contents explain (without really using words) how to play, the key mechanics, the backstory and context of your adventure, and - best of all - explaining some of the secrets of the game. Just so long as you can understand it; like I said, Tunic has invented a unique language of glyphs that look nothing like what you can normally read, so you have to use some lateral thinking and observe the pictures carefully to divine some enlightenment. Some nice touches include some scribbled notes and known words here and there to act as clues, as if someone else had attempted to play the game and left some pointers for the next player. This act of discovery was one of my favourite parts of the game, as it meant I needed to use my brain to puzzle through even the basic building blocks of the game. Yet when I did feel like I had understood what the manual was telling me, and then seeing my experimentation work, it felt like I was the cleverest person alive.

To make it slightly trickier, you don't recover the manual pages in order. There are gaps between your discoveries - early pages may explain combat and how to effectively fight enemies, some include maps though not fully complete, and some explain the story and background context but with key points missing. You feel like you're progressing, though you also feel like you don't have the full picture yet; the land is not the only thing you are discovering on your adventure. We'll come back to this point later.

So far this sounds like a nice, pleasant, whimsical quest. It looks and sounds cute, plus you're an adorable little fox. Well, as you'll discover in other parts of this game, looks can be deceiving.

You Died

When the GGL gang got together and talked about their experiences and thoughts on this game, one point seemed unanimous. This game is hard!

On first glance, this looks like a Zelda-clone, yet it also shares similarities with another game genre; the Souls-like. This means the gameplay loop is focused on tough combat, limited item inventory, and locating shrines to pray at which save your progress - and also recall every enemy you've slain. It really is surprising how difficult the combat in particular can get quite quickly. Using your sword, shield and some other tools, you are expected to attack, defend and dodge with almost exceptional timing.

Souls-like is not a genre I particularly gravitate to. I've now reached the point in my life where I don't expect to repeatedly master the perfect dodge-roll just to get past one area of the game, I would rather use my more limited time to view as much as possible a game has to offer. However, this is what Tunic is and you need to meet it on its terms. At first I didn't have too many problems, yet eventually the lesser enemies start gathering in groups, forcing you to dodge and judge which one to fight in which order (using your lock-on targeting). Then the enemies get tougher with larger, heavier weapons that pack more of a force. Then the enemies have ranged attacks. Then they have ranged attacks and run away from your reach. Then they do all of the above and also poison you, sapping you of your precious health. And, of course, there are the boss battles, which also like to throw lesser enemies at you whilst sending out large area of effect attacks at the same time. It's quite a lot if you're not used to this.

The one saving grace is that Tunic does provide you with a number of accessibility options to help, any or all of which can be toggled from the get go. When I was starting to find it tricky, I turned on the "Reduced Combat" option to have less of my health taken with each hit. When I found my stamina bar was being used up too much from blocking or dodging, I turned on the "Infinite Stamina" option to remove that obstacle. Finally, when I was just overwhelmed and only wanted to explore, the part I enjoyed the most, I hit the nuclear option and turned on "No Fail Mode", becoming invincible. These options are the only way I was able to complete the game at all (or even get past the third boss). To some this might seem like chickening out, but to me it removed a significant barrier to my enjoyment of the game, letting me focus on what I did like; discovery and exploration. The downside to this is that all challenge is then removed, resulting in a see-saw effect; either play at a punishing difficulty, or no difficulty at all, no in-between state. It might have been better to introduce more of a sliding scale to difficulty, though I must admit I was happy that at least some options catered to me.

Show, Don’t Tell

It was the sense of discovery that kept me playing. Without any spoken or written words, I really enjoyed wandering the world, finding treasure chests that seem impossible to reach, and building up the story - which takes some surprising turns, without giving any spoilers away. Just like Super Metroid or Fez, I loved the fact that the game trusted me to follow what was happening, all without a single word uttered. Even exploration felt mesmerising, particularly when you realise you reach an area that joins back to where you started. All you had to do was wander around a corner and there would be the shortcut all along, hidden because the camera was pointing at the wrong angle; yet once you see it, you then can't unsee it. Sometimes the game may become a bit obtuse, yet for the most part all the clues are there, and Tunic does not belittle your intelligence.

By the end, despite the game wanting to pummel me into submission, I ended up completing a very enjoyable adventure, one that has made me ponder it long after playing. For me, that is the best kind of ending to a game, one where the mystery still wants to unravel in my head.

Have you played Tunic? Were you able to fair better at me with the difficulty? Did you discover all the secrets? Comment below to discuss further. Thanks!

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Improved 64-Bit Ergonomics

A while back I bought the 8BitDo Nintendo 64 controller. I had my eye on it since last year. Recently they released a variant with the same colour scheme as the original controller - and that is what tipped the scales for me.

The Nintendo 64 and its games share pride of place in my nostalgic memories; buying that console is what brought me back into enjoying games again as a teenager, and I have several years of built-up shared experiences with its multiplayer capabilities and fond recollections of its single player games, particularly those developed by Nintendo and Rare. As a retro experience, I still really enjoy playing these games again, even if some of their mechanics have aged a bit over the decades.

One problem with playing Nintendo 64 games today though is hard to get around. It's not emulation or getting access to the games - Nintendo Switch Online provides a decent enough job for the ones I enjoy playing, and I have... other means... of playing some others. The problem is the hardware, specifically the unique, trident analog controller. At the time it was revolutionary, a clear introduction to true 3D gaming and control. The problem now is that nobody else follows the standard it laid out, not even Nintendo themselves.

I have tried, other reader, I really have. The fact is though that it is just really difficult to adjust the two analog joysticks and four face buttons of every modern day controller to a one analog joystick with six face button scheme as dictated by the Nintendo 64. Having NSO provide the ability to remap controls within the application has certainly helped, yet it still requires a mental adjustment to remember which button should perform which action, and I would usually have to make unique adjustments per game to at least attempt to get the right feel. Some games I even had to give up on, the mapping was just too esoteric.

That is where 8BitDo answered our call, by producing this fantastic controller. While its shape looks more modern and removes the third prong, the rest is clearly inspired by the original controller. The analog stick is solidly built, unlike the Nintendo original, and not prone to stick drift, yet also nests inside the eight-way octagon of the original controller; a remnant of easing the public into 3D gaming by introducing at least some cardinal directions. The best part though is the face button layout - exactly matching the A, B and four C buttons of the original, even feeling the same in size and tactility. No more juggling of button mapping and hoping you don't press the wrong button at the wrong time. By also only including one analog stick, I don't accidentally feel the need to move my right thumb down like I would for modern games.

To test my purchase, I replayed Banjo-Kazooie for the first time in over 25 years on the NSO service and loved it. While some of its flaws are more visible now - the camera in particular (of any 3D game of that era, actually) can be awkward, with some poorly judged jumps ending in disaster - and I wasn't crazy enough to discover all 100 jiggies and 900 notes for full completion, the game as a whole held up to my memory of it. Funny with a good bit of British sense of humour, excellent progression, vibrant graphics, and a truly unique level design of Click Clock Wood, as told through the four seasons and making adjustments for each one.

If I could give one criticism of the 8BitDo controller, the analog stick seems slightly more sensitive than I remember the original N64 controller to be. For some very subtle movements, I felt like I had to be a lot more careful lest I careen off the edge of a cliff. To be fair though, that could also be the NSO software emulation at fault too - I've noticed the same issue if I were playing with the JoyCons. One big plus I could give though is that the 8BitDo controller battery seems endless. I've used it for a month and I have yet to recharge it.

In a Documentary, Far Far Away...

The other half of my limited free time was spent watching television shows I had been putting off. Light and Magic is a documentary series about the history of ILM, the visual effects studio literally built to provide the effects for the Star Wars films, now a major studio in many films with cutting edge visual effects. Season one focused on the original Star Wars trilogy - how ILM were founded, how they built so many models (and then blew them up), and touching on some of the films beyond Star Wars, such as Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, and the dawn of CGI.

Season two, which came out a year later, focused more on the Star Wars prequel films, along with a side story around Pirates of the Caribbean. Now, I was born in 1983, the same year Return of the Jedi came out. So the original trilogy, while I adore it, is simply not part of my makeup and nostalgia - I was born into the wrong generation for it. The prequels, however, are where I was exactly the right age for them. I was there at the precise moment when everyone thought that there would be no more Star Wars films, suddenly to be wowed by The Phantom Menace. I will freely admit I went to see that film at the cinema twice - unheard of for me. Of course, we could all quibble and argue about the story, the wooden acting and stilted script, how weird it could be, and one particular "comedy" character (which I'll touch on more in a moment) - and I would agree with all of them. Still... Lightning fast lightsabre fights! Thousands of droid soldiers and space battles! A chariot race with anti-gravity rocket engines! That kind of spectacle was exciting, thrilling, and is hard to replicate even now.

What particularly interested me about the behind the scenes interviews is how much of the old-style of ILM work still remained, even in the Star Wars prequels. Episodes I, II and III obviously used a lot of computer graphics to create that universe, particularly around pioneering digital actors and characters. Yet not everything was done with a computer, simply because the technology still wasn't quite there at the time - or it was too expensive or time consuming to wholly rely on it. Episode I apparently used the most models and miniatures than any other Star Wars film1; the pod racing spectator stands were an enormous model, as was the Geonosis coliseum in Episode II, while Episode III had a gigantic lava world built to complete the set for the climax, with underlit, gelatinous liquid to simulate lava flows.

The most interesting and solemn part was also what made the re-introduction to Star Wars controversial; Jar-Jar Binks, the first digitally acted character. Played by Ahmed Best, Jar-Jar was reviled by certain sections of fandom; too wacky, too silly, too annoying, possibly a racial caricature, unnecessary. What was George Lucas thinking? Watching this actually leads us into that thought process. Lucas chose Best to play a comedic character on purpose, both watching a lot of old silent comedies, like Buster Keaton films, to gain inspiration. Best used his theatre experience to carefully figure out his movements, his posture, how he would work out comic timing and perform physical comedy, all while working with animators and motion capture engineers to create a character never seen before. So much work by many people went into creating him - only for so much of the world to hate him in return. There were clips of press junket interviews, of pompous journalists asking condescending questions as to why this character even exists, all while Best and Rob Coleman (the lead animator for the character) try their hardest to remain upbeat and answer as best they can, nonetheless continually being beaten down by the waves of antagonism sent their way. It is no wonder that Best bravely admits in those interviews how bad it got for him, describing the one time he considered taking one step too far off a bridge, never to return.

Yet, for all the negativity surrounding this situation, some positive facts remain. Jar-Jar really was the first digital actor of his kind, one that lived and interacted seamlessly with real life actors, and would lead us to further advances, like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings films. Despite looking like madness, there was in fact a considerable amount of method to it. Best was actually more integral to all of the prequels than anyone realised, just more behind the scenes; Coleman, who was starting to panic about how to get Yoda to fight in Episode II without it looking ridiculous, leaned on Best showing him old martial arts movies and learn how a squat character could possibly face a larger foe. And, lets face it, Jar-Jar was not created to please the old-guard Star Wars fans; he exists in the films to make children laugh, which is exactly what they did. Still, it should not have taken over 25 years for Ahmed Best to get his due.

Game of the Month

Right now, I'm joining in with Good Game Lobby's current Game of the Month - Tunic. An adventure game with a familiar looking hero but with it's own unique charm - and difficulty curve, as I'm discovering! This is taking up some of my evenings now, as we get to play along and discuss the game along the way this month, sort of like a book club.

Are you interested in joining in? Visit Good Game Lobby or talk to , who will merrily explain how to join the Discord server and participate.

Coming Soon

Enough blabbing, none of this explains what I intend to do next. As I'm a bit rusty on the keyboard, this update was a good start to get things going. I have plans, many plans, for future posts coming up. However, this time I'll list just a few of them; experience has taught me that it is best to start small instead of overpromising what I cannot deliver. These also act as good motivation for me to actually complete them, since it would be wrong to go back on my word, wouldn't it?

Here are some posts upcoming that I definitely want to consider and you should hopefully expect to see:

• I have a strange fascination with DOOM, and it is not necessarily about playing it. A full post will be required for me to explain more.

• There was once a mysterious console lost to time called the Sega Saturn. I owned one, but was that the right choice given the competition at the time? Perhaps a moment to reflect on my history with it is in order.

• Speaking on reflections, since I succumbed to getting a Switch 2 earlier than I expected, maybe we should look back to its predecessor, the Nintendo Switch, and consider how it changed the gaming landscape.

I have many other ideas, but they will take time and possibly research to ensure they are good; I won't be ready to announce those until I'm happy with their progress. Rest assured, I'm sure there will be other posts coming beyond these three.

How about you? What have you been up to or discovered recently? Add to the comments to discuss further. Until next time!

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Super Mario Wonder was a game my youngest daughter got a couple of Christmases ago, based around the idea that she might enjoy playing it cooperatively with me like she does with the Kirby games on the Nintendo Switch. We both got into it, though I seemed to appreciate it more than her, since I could enjoy how the mechanics of the side-scrolling Mario platformer have evolved over the decades; my daughter simply wanted to master being able to run and jump at the same time. As a result, I chose to also play the game solo without my helpful daughter forcing me to lose a life because she nudged the screen too far and crushed me. Last year, I completed the game, making it a milestone in that I had never completed a 2D Mario game before - I had dabbled in playing Mario games of course, but I never grew up with them, so my platforming skills were never honed enough. I reached the credits, and moved on with my life.

Well, not quite. Something lingered long after finishing the game, something I wasn't expecting, a memory of my experience - the soundtrack.

And I don't mean I remembered it well because I thought "that sounded good", or "wow, these tunes are really catchy". I mean "this symphonic masterpiece has been forged into the neural pathways of my brain and will never leave me". I found I would replay the music in my head, I would hum the themes to myself, and I would use the Nintendo Music app to replay the playlist over and over and over again (when I wasn't endlessly replaying Breath of the Wild, that is).

What I'm saying is... I really, really, really love the music from this game.

Is that any surprise though? This is Mario we're talking about. Koji Kondo used simple bleeps and bloops in the mid 80's to create a theme tune that even newborn babies could hum along to. Every Mario game has a certain musical style to them that makes them memorable for generations. Great music in a Mario game is simply a given.

Yet something about Super Mario Wonder sings out to me (pun intended). The composers - Shiho Fujii, Sayako Doi, and Chisaki Shimazu - seem to understand the legacy that a Mario game should revere, yet also seemed to push the sound forward by adding different instruments that would not have been possible 40 years ago, and generally being a bit more experimental. Fitting, given that the game wants to surprise you at every turn.

So today, I'm going to take my other reader on a journey through the music as I feel it. Since this is the written word, I will do my very best to explain how I see some of the best tracks work as well as they do, bearing in mind my knowledge of musical theory is limited. If you've never heard the soundtrack, my suggestion would normally be to find it on a streaming platform like Spotify - except Nintendo do things differently with their own Nintendo Music app, which I can't share with you. The next best thing is to find some other source, like this one I found. If I refer to any particular songs though, I will use the names as listed in the Nintendo Music app.

Let's step foot into the Flower Kingdom and see where this musical adventure takes us. How about we start with the basics?

The Baseline

I think it's fair to say that Super Mario Wonder, at the very least, gets the basics right. You could listen to most of the songs in the early game and definitely feel that they sound very "Mario-like". Yet we've progressed from digital sound chips from the olden days and can now hear real instruments being played. Lots of relaxing wind instruments, acoustic guitars, xylophones. Maybe even a bit of acapella thrown into the Grassland Theme, the first level in the game.

There are a lot more natural sounds that can be heard now, thanks to nearly 40 years advancement of sound design in consoles. Simple things to accentuate the sound, like hand claps to the beat. Tracks that I think perfectly exemplify how standard Mario music has advanced are the World Theme: Pipe-Rock Plateau, Coast Theme, the new Athletic Theme (with a nice bit of banjo twanging), and Desert Theme. Particularly the Poison Swamp Underground Theme, which remixes the standard Underground Theme from Super Mario Bros, but adds a lot more reverb and echoing beats, making it sound particularly cavernous and gloopy to fit the theme of the level.

So, all standard fare so far. The bar has been set. Then Nintendo said "we can do better than that".

Trump, Trumpety Trump

One of the new power-ups in this game is the Elephant, which will turn your character into a larger, chubbier version with a trunk. Aside from how cute it looks, it also makes itself known musically. Nearly every track in the game has a variation just for the Elephant theme. The tune will always be the same, but with some distinctive instruments layered on top to make it sound heavier; notably more brass, bass and drums. The switch really emphasises the difference in the character's posture and movements.

So, every track has two versions - standard and Elephant, almost doubling the soundtrack. Then Nintendo said "we can do better than that".

The Wonders

The big selling point of Super Mario Wonder is... well, the Wonders. Every standard level includes a hidden wonder that drastically alters the level and mixes everything up. Each wonder is meant to surprise you. Suddenly you might find that all the pipes bend and stretch, or you suddenly can walk on the walls, or your character can stretch and shrink to fit around obstacles (in the dark!), or you turn into a Goomba, or run from a stampede of buffalo. All so you can find the Wonder Seed that you're meant to collect as the main currency for game progression.

While every level has a unique wonder, they don't all have unique theme songs. There is quite a bit of re-use here, but that doesn't detract from how wonderful (pun again!) they sound. The Bendy-Boing Wonder, for example, really sounds like everything is bending and stretching. The Medley-Mix Wonder has a mixture of sounding idyllic yet also chaotic. The Shapey-Shift Wonder has a sense of whimsy as well as urgency - since most wonders only last for a certain period of time. The Flowy-Flight Wonder creates a majestic, soaring theme as you ride a dragon high through the clouds. And finally, my favourite, the Zappy-Zone Wonder remixes the Metallic Mario theme from Super Mario 64; all clanging and crashing, including new synth sounds to modernise it.

So, the wonder themes add some spontaneity, meaning you never quite know what to expect next. Then Nintendo said "we can do better than that".

Musical Play

It's all well and good having a catchy tune, but what if that tune matched the gameplay as well? That's where the musical wonders come in. When the Piranha Plants on Parade wonder is activated, suddenly all the Piranha Plants come out of their pipes and sing along as you navigate carefully around them to find the Wonder Seed.

Similar with the Ninja Disco wonder, where the desert theme suddenly becomes more upbeat while small ninjas dotted around the level suddenly chant "Hey!" to the beat. Because... well, why not?

The best musically themed wonder though is, of course, A Night at Boo's Opera. Having a giant Boo force you to push through a scrolling level, all while singing baritone, is both overly dramatic and absurd in equal measure. Especially as the giant Boo still follows the common rules of being shy when you look at him, stopping his deep singing voice temporarily.

So, the musical wonder themes go one level beyond the other wonder songs by becoming a key part of the level itself, timed to perfection. Fantastic! Then Nintendo said "we can do better than that".

The Standouts

Now we come to what I consider my favourites. Later in this section there will be some mild spoilers, as a forewarning.

We'll start with Snowy-Mountain Theme, which is the most Christmas-sounding song I've heard in a long time that is not directly related to that seasonal holiday. The twinkly sounding chimes mixed with the bells ringing remind me very much of a winter wonderland, with a hint of warmth and cheer in the music. If the snow levels are charming and relaxing, then the Wiggler Race is at the other end of the spectrum. If you thought the Athletic Theme was up-tempo, you haven't heard anything yet. With a super fast bass line, it sounds like the violinist and xylophonist are having a seizure. What is even better is when you can contribute to the backing by running along the note blocks, adding your own slide along the keys while the background flowers cheer you on.

Let's change the tone now, and delve into the Palace Theme. Some of the more challenging levels, they evoke a child-friendly version of a haunted house. With instruments that wouldn't entirely sound out of place in a Castlevania game too - a harpsichord introduction to set the mood, followed by a string quartet to add to the spookiness, then a bit of electric guitar later to add some levity. Of course, the palaces lead to a confrontation with the big bad meanie... Bowser Jr! Laying an absolutely funky bass to start off the proceedings, it kicks into gear with some synths and electronica for a fast paced theme. Finally add in a piano solo for the bridge, and it's one of the songs I try and replay in my head a lot. Bowser Jr's theme represents his micheviousness; more menacing than a regular enemy, yet not as intimidating as the big daddy, full of chaotic energy that you don't know what he'll do with. Such a scamp!

As we head to the lair of Bowser himself, we must first traverse his challenging gauntlet levels and listen to the Castle Bowser Theme as we go. Similar to the Palace Theme by making it sound slightly more intimidating yet not overtly scary, this track has me thinking of 50's sci-fi films; warbling, echoing synths reminds me of B-movies for some reason. Imagine a more techno version of the Palace Theme and you wouldn't be far off.

And now come the spoilers...

It's time to finally face Bowser, but not before we're met with Bowser's Wonder Rush. We're at the heart of Castle Bowser now, with the power of the Wonder seeds in full force, making this a chaotic level. You get to replay snippets of every previous Wonder you encountered, as the screen scrolls and pushes you forward. This allows the track to be perfectly timed to the action, a gauntlet of obstacles to overcome - sometimes upside down, back to front, or floating in the air. The song exemplifies this unpredictability, sounding imposing but with moments of the unexpected, with brief reprises from the singing Piranhas and the operatic giant Boo.

Beat the Wonder Rush, and it's time to face the Castle Bowser Battle. If Bowser Jr was funky, Bowser is metal, as he amps up the audience and roars to start. His stage looks like a rock concert, with heavy guitar riffs, thumping bass and drums, and the ever present build up of a counter hitting each bar. You see, the way to beat Bowser is to simply listen to the music and follow along. 1, 2, 3,... Jump! As the background flowers teach you, so long as you can follow the 4-4 time signature, then you'll jump higher and smash anything above you on the fourth beat, as the floor propels you upward. This track combines the best parts of the soundtrack design - climactic, matches the theme of what you're seeing, yet also making the music integral to the gameplay.

So, my absolute highlights in this soundtrack are ones that I constantly recall and play again to make me feel good. We reach the credits, listening to the Starry-Staff Wonder, which plays a medley of all the songs (as I believe all end credits should), and we feel happy and satisfied that we heard some amazing compositions.

And then Nintendo said "we can do better than that".

Bringing the Band Together

There are some tracks I haven't mentioned yet, but one of them is, hands down, my favourite in this game. And it's not one you necessarily have to listen to, as it is played in a level which is optional and you potentially skip entirely. It is called K.O. Arena.

You start the K.O Arena choosing which power up you want to take before you shoot up the pipe. The idea of the K.O. Arena is to beat all the enemies in a series of levels. Once completed, you go up the pipe to the next level for about 3, 4, maybe 5 times, until you get to the end for your reward. The faster you do this, the greater your reward. It is a very basic bonus level at heart.

What isn't basic though is the music that plays. Starting with a fanfare, only the drums lay the groundwork and play while waiting for you to make your initial power up selection. When you go up that first pipe though, the trumpets flair up as if changing gears - the clutch goes in, shifts into first gear, release and... go! Level one then plays a typically catchy tune, nothing mind blowing, all standard Mario fare; then the magic happens. Once level one is cleared, the drums come back, playing that backing beat again and waiting for you to ascend to level two. Change gears again - shift up to two, release, and... key change!

The melody is back for level two, with some new additions. The tempo has increased slightly, a new instrument has joined the band, and another bar has been added. This was already a catchy tune, but now it has new layers. As the waiting bridge plays, the trumpet plays along with the drums now too, until - that's right - another key change!

Level three bumps the tempo up further, yet another instrument has joined in the fun, and the energy is becoming more frantic. Once again, the waiting bridge becomes extended, as if each member of the band has just walked in. Level four comes and fleshes out the song even further, until the final push - level five - completes the song, at it's fastest speed and every flourish revealed. All capped off at the top of the arena with a fanfare for your success.

This is my favourite because it ties together everything this game represents - the combination of music with how you play. The music adapts to your ability and progress, ramping up more and more as you climb further, reflecting your success. It is rare that game music fits so well to how you play... though not unheard of.

The Video Game Storyteller

The Video Game Level That Always Makes Me Smile

Like having a small slice of your favourite cake before going to bed, there’s something really sweet about returning to a particularly beloved section of a video game. Sure, nothing quite beats picking up an old, cherished game and playing the whole thing from start to finish, reliving the entire, wonderful experience once again. But time is precious an…

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8 months ago · 20 likes · 8 comments · The Video Game Storyteller

Encore

I was extremely surprised when I played Super Mario Wonder. Firstly, I wasn't expecting it to be as enjoyable to play as it was. I also wasn't expecting to think about it so long afterwards.

You may disagree with me, yet I feel like this game has progressed Mario's soundscape for the future. You can feel the familiarity in the music, and you can also feel it pushing past its boundaries, experimenting and trying something different. The tracks that are my particular favourites happen to be the ones which do this best.

I don't have any profound way of ending this post. I suspect this is not such a ground-breaking score that it will move you to tears, tug at your heartstrings or think it deserves any awards. What I do think though is that it is... well... wonderful.

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I came late to Arcane: League of Legends on Netflix. So late, in fact, that both seasons were ready and waiting for me, unlike the general public who had to wait years for it to complete. Eventually I got around to watching it - and loved every second of it. Then I watched it all over again, this time with my teenage daughter. She loved it too, and I got to revel in watching her see something I thought was astonishing for the first time.

Why though? There were so many reasons I thought it was one of the best television series I've watched in years, that I felt compelled to write something about it. Where to start though? Should I comment on the absolutely groundbreaking animation and art style, that looked like a painting in motion? Or the story, multi-layered and weaving so many plot-threads artfully through each other, building a lived in, believable world? Maybe the characters, all with many facets to them, motivations and dreams, acted more realistically than many real life humans?

I could talk about those ideas for hours, but I've chosen to settle on what I think is the core of the show; so critical that they both appear on the "Netflix presents" intro. Two sisters who are deeply complex characters, who I've thought about long after watching the finale.

Warning: From now on I may talk in vague terms about the story, but there will be enough to piece together what happens. This means there are big spoilers going forward. If you haven't seen Arcane, I really would recommend it - to me, it's amazing. If you have seen it, or happy to continue anyway, then read on.

Super Punch Out

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Violet. Though everybody called her Vi...

Red haired and fiery, from the beginning Vi knew hardship. Born in the poor, lower-class Undercity, her parents killed by the hands of the Enforcers from the rich, guilded upper city of Piltover, Vi would carry with her an anger that could never truly be satiated. She may have been destitute, fighting for scraps and stealing from those richer than herself, but she understood one thing that couldn't be taken away from her: family. As the elder sibling to her much younger sister, Powder, she would protect her at all costs. Her best friends and thief-in-arms - Mylo and Claggor - were almost like brothers to her. And her adoptive father, Vander, would diligently watch over them all whilst attempting to keep the peace with the Enforcers in an unsteady truce.

Nothing could take her family away from her. Until it did.

Attempting to rescue Vander from an old friend of his, one who long ago lost faith in their cause for peace and justice in the Undercity, Vi would discover that her life was destined for far worse. The rescue plan almost worked - Vi, using her brute force and determination, almost held off those goons who were going to kill them. That's when the explosion happened.

An enormous explosion, from a highly unstable crystal discovered by the gang during one of their robberies, took both sides by surprise. And with an explosion that big, there was always going to be collateral damage. When Vi pulled herself from the wreckage, she stared horrified at the limp hands of Mylo and Claggor, and hearing the last words of Vander, the only father figure she had left.

What could make this even more horrific? It was Powder's fault. Her own sister. She was trying to help, she kept saying, through her own tears, she didn't mean for this to happen! But in a moment of extreme grief and shock, Vi made a choice she would later regret - she disowned her. Didn't everyone always say Powder was a jinx? Always messing up their plans, always breaking something, always getting in the way. Yet Vi would always stand up for her. No more though, not this time. They were right - she was a jinx. And she turned her back on her, leaving Powder alone in the rain.

Years pass, and Vi has been holed up in the prison island Stillwater ever since. With only stone walls for company, there was only one thing left for Vi to do: keep punching harder, and let the anger simmer, grow, waiting to be released. She would have her chance soon. A young female Enforcer called Caitlyn Kiraman is looking for a new terrorist called "Jinx", who is dangerous and must be found at all costs. Caitlyn believes Vi might help her track Jinx down in the Undercity. Who does this upper-class Enforcer wannabe think she is? Still, Vi sees something in her, even through her jaded, angry eyes. Besides, what else is she going to do? Waste more years in this dungeon, beating the crap out of every prisoner who so much as glances at her?

Perhaps wallowing in a cell would have been better. If she thought eventually finding her long lost sister again would provide some respite or hope, she was dead wrong. She didn't even recognise who she was anymore, this girl who calls herself Jinx now. A danger to herself, to everyone around her, you couldn't tell when Jinx was going to explode again, do something crazy, take lives just for the hell of it. Vi tries time and time again to convince her to come back, to be the little sister she should have raised properly, better. Until a horrible truth settles in Vi.

Powder is long gone. And she may have been the reason why.

Everyone seems to leave Vi eventually, somehow. With nothing but pain left in her, she uses the one emotion left in her - anger - to fuel her forward. The only release she has is to punch something - hard. If that doesn't work, well, punch harder. Every time she sees Jinx, they just fight. She could so easily end her, Vi has the strength to do it, no matter how many tricks Jinx throws at her. Why doesn't she?

Because Vi slowly learns there is one more emotion left in her, buried real deep: love. It's been hidden away for so long she may not remember it. No amount of hitting with fists will make that go away. And by the end, Vi is left with time to be peaceful and really think: what does she do next? Does she put those gauntlets on again and keep fighting? Or does she relax her grip, take a breath, and let the fury dissipate?

Choosing the latter might open her up to a new experience: accepting her sister for who she is now, not who she was. Besides, someone else in her life might need her, might want to love her. Letting go might be worth a shot after all.

Agent of Chaos

Once upon a time, there was a younger girl called Powder...

Blue haired and innocent, she looked up to her older sister Vi immensely. As the youngest of the thief gang of Vi, Mylo and Claggor, she was never as tall, never as fast, never as strong, and never as confident as the others. She wanted to be though, desperately wanted to be valued. The one skill she had that the others didn't was an innate ability to build things - gadgets, traps, anything that could help get them out of a sticky situation. An engineer at heart. Except they never seemed to fully work how she wanted them to. Was she just unlucky?

When Vander, her adoptive father, was captured, it was up to the gang to rescue him... except for Powder. Vi refused, saying it wasn't safe for her, she was too young. But why couldn't she help? In an earlier heist, Powder found a secret collection of blue crystals that seemed to have immense energy in them - magic, maybe? All she knew was that with these crystals and her gadgets, she could put them both to use. Yes! She knew just what to do. She could help them, she could save them all! Then they would finally accept her!

The problem with the young is that they don't think of the consequences of their actions. Sure, attaching a highly volatile energy crystal to a walking clockwork monkey seems like a good idea. But how big will this bang be? Too big...

When the dust finally settles after the enormous explosion that rocks the foundations of the old warehouse, Powder tries to find someone, anyone. Wait... Yes! She sees Vi! She did it, Powder saved them! She starts excitedly telling Vi how her brilliant plan worked, as only a young child can. But who is that large man on the ground next to her? Why is Vi crying? Why does she see Claggor's shattered googles under some wreckage? Where's Mylo? The dawn of realisation wells up as tears in Powder's eyes. Did... she do this?

This wasn't how it was supposed to be. She tries to explain to Vi, that she was helping, she was proving she could be one of them. She begs for forgiveness, as if Vi can fix all this and everything will be back to normal. There is no love left in Vi's eyes though, just disgust, as Vi confirms what everyone always said about her: "You're nothing but a jinx". And just like that, she walks away.

Distraught, alone, the rain beating down, Powder doesn't know what to do or where to go. Unable to live alone, she falls into the arms of the one who started this event in the first place: Silco, a freedom fighter who will use any means necessary to have the Undercity be respected, no matter how many lives it costs. In a rare moment of compassion, Silco calms her, saying it will be all right: they'll show them, they'll show all of them.

As Powder's tears of despair turn to tears of anger and determination, she understands what her future is now. And it does not include her sister anymore. She doesn't have a sister.

Once upon a time, there was a young woman called... Jinx.

Blue hair much longer now, grown into a young woman, she works as the right hand of Silco as the Undercity becomes worse: filled with more crime, corruption and drugs infecting the community. Her mastery of gadgets turn into traps and weapons now, with a sinister black comedy to them. No one can control Jinx, not even Silco. She is as chaotic and unpredictable as a thunderstorm, and all the more dangerous for it. One minute she could laugh along with you, the next detonate a cluster of grenades with smiles graffitied over them. You never really know where you stand with Jinx.

Not even she seems to fully understand herself. She may seem chaotic, yet only because of the voices she keeps hearing in her own head. Blaming her, taunting her, people who died at her hands when they should have lived. With no family left to teach her right from wrong, how else was she supposed to live?

She thinks she's lost and alone in this crummy world, except her sister, Vi, finds her again. She talks of forgiving her, of how sorry she was for abandoning her, how she was locked away for all these years and couldn't reach her. Jinx just feels numb though - too many years have distanced them, neither are the same people as they were before.

In fact, why won't everyone just leave her alone? Everyone is trying to tell her what to do, who to be. Vi wants the innocent little Powder back, just how she was. Silco says she must bury and let go of her past to walk forward as Jinx. And the ghosts in her head keep screaming at her. Why won't anyone let her be? Why won't they just all SHUT UP!

Fate intervenes, and chooses her identity for her. Nothing holds her back now. Powder says goodbye... And Jinx stands up. She leaves her mark on the higher-class Piltover across the river, levelling the council at the heart of the city with an explosive covered in a shark-like grin. Not because it was for a cause she believed in, not because of any ideals she had. Simply because... she could.

Surely this would end this petty in-fighting in the city, right? It seems no-one wants to leave her alone though. Half the people believe her a terrorist, public enemy number one, someone to be hunted. The other half believe her to be a revolutionary, fighting for the cause like no-one else, someone to aspire to. Instead, she just wants to be herself, figure out who she really is.

One little orphan girl seems to get her. She follows her around, idolises her, dyes her hair just the same as her hero. Jinx finally has something she never had before - a little sister, someone to care for. Jinx is having fun for the first time in so many years, she's... happy. They could live like this forever.

Love makes loss all the more unbearable though, as the orphan willingly sacrifices herself to save her hero. Numb with grief, Jinx now knows what Vi must have felt, all those years ago. She considers ending it all - her pain, misery, it would be so easy. Most people would be glad to be rid of her anyway. Until an old friend reminds her that there is one other choice.

Powder or Jinx? Innocent girl, or crazed psycho? Why does it have to be one or the other? What if who she was meant to be was... someone else? Someone she could choose, no-one telling her one way or the other? Jinx says goodbye... And Jinx, the new Jinx, stands up. This time, she'll do it her way.

A Real World

When I watched the first two episodes, I knew I was experiencing something great. When I watched the third episode, with a gut-punching twist, I knew this was exceptional.

For it is the third episode which provides a heart-wrenching turning point for both Vi and Powder that drives the rest of their story. I've spent this post explaining what happened from each of their perspectives, which is the key part to Arcane: there is no "right" or "wrong", simply choices, actions and consequences. As a result, each character (all the characters, actually) are solidified into real people.

If Vi had shown a just a bit more compassion, would Jinx have been born? On the other hand, you can still understand why Vi acted the way she did. Barely a young adult herself, how could she handle the sudden loss of her entire family and still be emotionally strong enough to support her sister? One moment where she wasn't the responsible one for once, which led to a cascading chain of events for both of them.

If Powder had listened to her older sister, would she still have her family? Vi was in a tight spot, and a lot of danger, so who's to say if she would have survived either way? And Powder did what she did because she cared for everyone, so you could argue that a young child would never have fathomed the repercussions of her choice.

There is the keyword I keep coming back to when I think over this amazing series: choice. Everyone in Arcane makes choices, whether they are right or wrong, yet they believe in them because they fit their character, their beliefs, their dreams and ambitions. That makes them "real" to me, that makes them... human. And that is why I felt so invested in what happened to them, even long after I watched every episode.

Vi and Jinx learn that all their choices and actions leads down a path they can never go back down. However, they can go forward instead.

Thank you for reading this. If you’d like to offer your own thoughts, add them to the comments below.

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Today I'm trying something a little different than what I usually write about. Instead of reminiscing too much about the past, this post will be talking about a day out I recently had.

At the end of February this year, I decided to go to the Bristol Video Games Expo for the first time (that's Bristol in the UK). I was looking for some kind of event which involved video games and stumbled upon this when searching online. Even better for me, since I was raised in Bristol, my parents only lived about 10 minutes drive away from the venue, so I combined it with a family visit.

To summarise what this event was, it was a combination of retro games fair which sold retro consoles and games, a showcase of upcoming indie games, and some talks sprinkled throughout the day from various people from the industry. To set expectations, it wasn't exactly Gamescom. However, for someone who doesn't like large, loud, crowded spaces full of strangers, it was a big enough local(ish) event for me which I enjoyed going to.

This post, therefore, will be a short rundown of what I saw there, with photographic evidence from yours truly. This means it's a less wordy post than usual, with more pictures to show off instead. I hope you enjoy it.

Please note: this post is too long for email, since it includes lots of photos. It would be best if you read this in your browser or the app instead. Thanks!

Sale of the Century

First up, half of the sports hall converted for the venue was taken up with stalls selling their wares. It was an opportunity for me to see so many retro consoles in one space - a good way to be reminded of the good ol' days!

Up and Coming

Another large section of the hall was devoted to demo tables presented by many indie developers and publishers. There were many, including some that I've only recently heard of like Everything is Crab. One that particularly caught my eye was called Nine Rounds Rapid, a twin-stick shooter that reminded me a little of an old PS1 game called Loaded. I liked the fact it looked quite stylish and slick, with it's monotone look with some splashes of colour here and there.

Our Next Guest…

I listened to quite a few talks being carried out throughout the day as well, a little hard to hear with the cacophony of noise, even when using microphones.

What Could Have Been

The final section of the hall was one I was the most interested in. Someone had set up a demo stand to show off all the console development kits they had procured over time. A development kit is a piece of hardware like the final console being developed for, except beefier and larger than usual - more so for testing and debugging games being built.

There were many interesting finds here...

And that concludes my day out. This isn't a post to learn anything from, I just wanted to show off what I saw, particularly the dev kits I got to play on.

Don't worry, my other reader, normal service will resume next time.

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Welcome to Part 2 of my retrospective on my favourite ever game - Super Metroid.

If you missed Part 1, why not start exploring the depths of Zebes here first:

Note: from this point on I will definitely be covering spoilers in the game, particularly the ending, so be warned. I shall also try to explain things that may be familiar to those who have played Super Metroid, yet I will try to explain for newcomers too.

Monsters and Nightmares

Many upgrades appear through exploration, but some are the reward for defeating the bosses. I've found the bosses come in two varieties. There are some that just require brute force to best them, so long as you understand their attack patterns. Kraid and Ridley, for example, are of this type. They can look intimidating, but at the end of the day you use your skills and attack power to come out on top.

The second category is more interesting, since you can use your wits and intelligence to overcome them; think Luke Skywalker escaping the Rancor in Return of the Jedi. Draygon is a flying monster that appears after you come out the other side of the Wrecked Ship. You start as usual dodging attacks and returning fire, yet eventually he is likely to pick you up off the ground and not let go. While he is gradually sapping your energy and you being helpless to stop it, you end up drifting closer to the walls, where you spot exposed electrical outlets. At this point in the game you also possess the Grapple Beam, an electrical beam that latches onto certain blocks to act like a swinging rope. If you put two and two together, you can try to use the Grapple Beam to connect to those exposed outlets and form a complete circuit, becoming a human conductor. You'll of course lose health (you are being electrified, after all), but not as fast as Draygon, who is very quickly dispatched.

Another example is Crocomire found in Norfair, the volcanic region of Zebes. As far as I can tell you can't physically damage him; your shots or missiles to his open mouth force him backwards, while he is trying to push you forwards into a wall of spikes to your demise. This becomes a push-me-pull-you situation, because if you can force him back far enough, he'll fall through the crumbling floor into the deadly lava, producing a rather horrifying death scene for a Nintendo game. For added effect, when you go back through the tunnel thinking it's safe, the ominous boss music plays again and it crashes through the wall - though thankfully it's just its skeleton now. Who knew Nintendo could do jumpscares?

World-building

The game mechanics are incredibly well thought out, and I always wonder, with Metroidvanias, how they are designed so well; the core sequence through the game always makes sure that you experience the upgrades in a particular order, so that you can go to the next essential area fully prepared (unless you're an expert who knows how to sequence break).

As you are interacting with the game though, you may also be noticing subtle environmental details too. As I explained in the previous post, story is not _told_ to you, instead you experience it. With no words at all - spoken or written - story and narrative has to be told in other ways instead. Exploring ruins shows statues and relics of old civilisations long gone but not forgotten. Why are the statues there? What purpose did they solve? And why do you seem connected to them somehow, is there some history between Samus Aran and these bird-like statues you keep seeing?

To me, the most interesting area in the game is the Wrecked Ship, located on the surface of the planet. A large starship of sorts, you can enter through one of the hatches to find an empty, derelict area. There is not even any power anymore, which causes some issues with navigating inside since some doors no longer open to you - even the save point is useless without a power source. The ship resumes some activity once the ghost-like Phantoon is disposed off, where worker robots with a retro 60's design amble around now following their original programming. I don't know about you, but as I go through this area I wonder a lot about this ship. How long has it been here? Where did it come from and why did it crash? Where are the original crew - did this ghost have something to do with their disappearance? Is it even actually haunted? These are all open questions, and this time no answers are given, it is left to your own imagination to fill in the blanks.

What I love so much though is that I'm left to figure out the details, so long as some breadcrumbs are presented to me. Some of my favourite films and television shows follow the "show, don't tell" style of storytelling, assuming that I'm intelligent enough to figure things out without info-dumps of dialogue or lengthy explanations. Games can do this too, and it must take a lot of planning to achieve it and make it look effortless, like Super Metroid does.

The Downsides

I have been gushing a lot about how wonderful this game is, but do I think it's perfect? Well... no, I do have some nitpicks. Specifically one area of the game - Maridia. You encounter it about two-thirds of the way into the game, and unfortunately it is also the largest area of the world map. For its theme, I would describe it as the wetlands of the planet, and probably one of the more drab looking regions. Brinstar features lush green jungles with adventurous music, Norfair is red-hot with lava with a thumping, ominous drum-beat in the background. Maridia is... wet? Beige? Also quite dull sounding. It's quite the maze, where exploring involves a lot of ascending vertical rooms with the Space Jump (a somersault that can keep you in the air for long stretches), yet you can also find sand falling in columns which, if not careful, forces you to a room below and you have to go back and try again. It's as intricately designed as the rest of the game, but I just feel the pacing and identity of it is somewhat "off" compared to the rest of the map.

One other minor quibble is I could never really master the Wall Jump in Super Metroid. There is an area in Bristar where, if you explore, you could end up a long way down the map, the only way back up being a vertical shaft which will force you to master the optional Wall Jump ability. Fortunately, there are some helpful creatures which demonstrate this to give you a clue (there is another helpful creature which demonstrates the Shine Spark too), yet the controls for the Wall Jump could have done with some finessing; you need to time the change in direction inputs correctly and jump at the right moment to physically jump off the wall, then keep that timing up to bounce off the opposite wall to gain height, and so on. It just feels a little too precise for me.

Mother

After all that exploring, monster slaying and upgrading, you will eventually reach the point to take on the final battle, descending into Tourian, the base of the Space Pirates and the lair of Mother Brain. Tourian is not only filled with the deadliest forms of Space Pirates, but even worse... the Metroids themselves! For those not familiar with them, they are effectively floating jellyfish, with their brain clearly visible through the dome, but instead of tendrils they have jaws and fangs. That is because their defining feature is to latch onto any lifeform and literally suck the life force out of them. They evoke a mixture of the facehuggers from Aliens and vampires. The only means to escape their clutches is to bomb them to let go, then fire your Ice Beam to freeze them, followed by five direct missile hits. Not so easy when there are multiple Metroids surrounding you!

I spent many paragraphs at the beginning of this retrospective discussing storytelling, which has taken a bit of a backseat till now. Here though, it comes back in full force, for once you get deep enough into Tourian, you encounter an enormous Metroid - a Super Metroid, if you will. About four or five times bigger than any you've encountered already, there is no escaping this one's clutches as it slowly depletes your energy tanks with you utterly helpless. And yet... it stops just before it is too late, then lets go and hovers around you, making it's curious noises. Why didn't it kill you? Referring back to the introduction at the beginning of the game, Samus recounted how she found the last Metroid hatchling who imprinted onto her. Perhaps this is the grown up version of that Metroid?

Samus presses on (recharging her health after the encounter) to face Mother Brain again, in a recreation of the original Metroid game, though with 16 bit graphics this time. Hitting Mother Brain's glass shield with missiles to expose her for attack whilst dodging the defence systems surrounding her, not to mention the red hot chemical bath below, you eventually defeat her and breath a sigh of relief. Until... Mother Brain rises up and you realise that the "brain" part was just the head, which happens to be attached to a much larger body. And she is not happy!

As you attack, Mother Brain will slowly charge up a beam attack from her head which she unleashes as a massive blast; so massive in fact, it pushes you back and up the wall, absolutely draining your health, yet not killing you (yet). What is worse is that Samus is now so weakened she cannot even stand up straight anymore; you can try and press a button on the controller to try and take control, but she just slumps back down, exhausted and defenceless. This is not how action video games are supposed to end, you are the hero, this can't be the finale, can it? Mother Brain charges up again while Samus waits for her doom...

...Until the Super Metroid swoops in and attaches to Mother Brain, absorbing all the energy blast. While Mother Brain tries to recover, the Metroid moves back to you and transfers energy to you this time; your energy tanks fill back up, and you posses the final upgrade: the Hyper Beam. In it's final act, the Metroid tries to attack Mother Brain, but is destroyed, giving Samus a reason for vengeance. With the Hyper Beam, you can now easily obliterate Mother Brain and dispatch her once and for all.

I find this one of the most unique boss battles I've played because it does feel like a mixture of story and gameplay. Getting past this boss battle is not actually that hard, in fact I would say it is expected that you triumph. By mixing together moments where you take control, but then experience a setback, it seems to perform a particular narrative trick you see in a typical third act of an action blockbuster; the hero resolves to end the villain, but the villain is actually too strong to be defeated, yet in the final moments the hero finds a way to defeat the villain after all. Seeing as the Alien franchise is clearly a big inspiration to the Metroid series, the climax of Aliens in particular feels very apt here. Once again, you are integrated into the story, you are experiencing it. The little touches like Samus becoming so weakened she cannot continue actually adds to the suspense, as you feel even more empowered when you are given the Hyper Beam and lay waste to your nemesis.

Oh, there is also the minor issue of the sudden self-destruct countdown triggering before the entire planet explodes. Time to escape! I'm not sure without definitive research if Metroid was the first game to introduce the "escape sequence" to a game, but it is definitely one of the most effective uses of it. Thankfully, with a beam that can now shoot through pretty much anything, this becomes a wonderful action setpiece, as you blitz through the base to try and get back to the surface of the planet to escape in your ship. As an optional side-adventure, you could even locate those helpful animals you found through the game to not let them perish in the explosion either - just don't let the time run out!

And just like any good action hero, Samus escapes just in the nick of time, where you will be greeted with Samus' ship hurtling into space whilst the planet Zebes explodes into a million pieces.

Mission Complete

I've spent many words in this two-part retrospective hopefully trying to get across my love of this game, and trying to analyse the way it is designed and why it is still relevant today.

To me, the gameplay is about as perfect as you can get; it doesn't feel like it has aged a day since being released in 1994, as you are slowly yet carefully taught how to play the game. The fact this is done without a single word uttered is actually just genius. The graphics obviously look like SNES-era graphics, yet everything is presented clearly and has a wonderful design style that evokes mystery, suspense, sci-fi, action and maybe a tiny bit of horror. In particular, secrets are always visible so long as you keep your eye out for them; no magic walls to pass through, just look for something slightly out of the ordinary, investigate and be rewarded. For me though, the ability to combine the story into what you are experiencing and controlling is actually quite special. Other games I can think of that do this - Half-Life, Portal, God of War (2018) - could have all been modelled on this philosophy. You are a playing a mixture of Ellen Ripley and Indiana Jones; part alien-killer, part tomb raider, all action hero. What's not to love about that?

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I look forward to more retrospectives on other games in the Metroid series. See you next mission!

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Samus Aran, renowned bounty hunter, steps off the elevator of the research space station and finds it devoid of life or activity; everything is quiet except for the background humming of the station itself. As she descends down the corridor, she enters the research lab, where she finds a central console with a glass containment unit. The glass is smashed, the containment unit is empty, and there are bodies on the ground surrounding it. On guard, Samus presses forward to the end of the corridor, finally finding what she was sent for in the final room; the last Metroid in existence. Now there is no sound at all, and the Metroid is caged, just sitting on the floor. This must be a trap.

Suddenly, a creature appears from nowhere to capture the Metroid; what could only be described as a huge space dragon, with a devilish spiked tail and an ear-splitting scream. Samus has met this creature before; Ridley, a high-ranking Space Pirate and often a thorn in her side. The music finally kicks in, calling Samus into action. She attempts to attack Ridley and claim back the Metroid, but to no avail. Ridley flies off, out the station, triggering the automatic self-destruct sequence. Samus runs back through the station to her own ship, just in time before the station explodes. Determined to complete her mission and reclaim the last Metroid, she sets a course for the planet the station was orbiting - Zebes, a planet she has visited before.

This is the prologue to my favourite game ever, Super Metroid. I've just described in two paragraphs what the setup for the narrative was, but how do I know this happened? Did I watch a cutscene, or read some text maybe? Apart from an opening crawl to fill in some backstory, assuming the player has not played the original Metroid on the NES or Metroid II on the GameBoy, there are no further spoken words or text in the rest of the game, and no point where the player is not in control. So I followed this prologue not by watching it, but experiencing it myself - I am Samus Aran, the most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy. Long before games tried to immerse you inside the story - like Half-Life's opening tram ride sequence, or God of War's (2018) over-the-shoulder camera view to keep you close to the character - Super Metroid did it with a simple but effective little segment before the true game starts. It lasts maybe two minutes, you can't really fail, and it covers a mixture of moods; initially the quietness and mystery evokes the Alien films (a clear design influence), yet switches to action mode, then fight-or-flight as you escape. And because I am the one in control of this "scene" at all times, I feel more invested in what is going to happen, even if the outcome is always going to be the same.

That is just one of the many reasons I enjoy this game so much, but there is far more to Super Metroid than that...

Note: from this point on I will be covering spoilers in the game, so be warned. I shall also try to explain things that may be familiar to those who have played Super Metroid, yet I will try to explain for newcomers too. Plus, I will pretty much be gushing about this game almost in the order it happens - no sequence breaking!

Origins

I said earlier that Super Metroid is hands down my all time favourite game, yet that sounds rather unusual when I stop and think about how that came to be. Not a heavy hitting franchise like Mario or Zelda, Metroid is still at least one that is well known and clearly linked to Nintendo. The thing is, I grew up as a Sega fan for most of my childhood; cut me in half, and you would probably see the Sega logo imprinted throughout me.

I cannot even remember exactly when I first noticed Super Metroid. While looking at the store shelves for Mega Drive games, I would of course see the Super Nintendo section too and admire the box art for many of those games, Super Metroid included. Not exactly matching the art style of the playable game, there was still something about the game box that appealed to me; the monsters, Ridley rising to strike, and an armoured hero. The cover art is actually framed and hanging on my wall today, I love it so much. But it also evokes mystery; what exactly is a Metroid?

Having bypassed the NES and Super Nintendo completely, I wouldn't be able to answer that question until many years later, as I had technically just left behind being a teenager and was venturing into early adulthood. Around the early 2000's I was finally aware of something that allowed you to play older games on the PC - emulators. A wild-west of legal gray areas and byzantine applications and configuration to get them to work, it nonetheless allowed me to experience games I never had the opportunity to play before. This was a chance for me to understand what Super Metroid really was. Armed with a keyboard acting as the controller, and more than one GameFAQ to help me when I got lost, I explored deeper and deeper into the planet Zebes, hunting for that elusive creature.

When I completed the game the first time, I reflected on what I had experienced; I absolutely loved it. Not just for the fact that I was able to complete a 16-bit game entirely on my own without any cheats (a real rarity), I realised that the design and structure of the game was exceptional. I did not know it at the time, but the genre "Metroidvania" is one that really appeals to me; a puzzle-like platforming game, where there are no levels, just a world that opens up slowly in all directions, where you must divine the correct path and understand how to navigate after unlocking new abilities. Somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle, initially it is hard to ascertain what the overall picture looks like at first, until the edges start being built, followed my more and more internal pieces, until suddenly you can see the entire frame right in front of you and feel that "aha" moment of pure clarity.

Perhaps I'm jumping ahead too much though. Let's return to the start of Samus's mission and see how the puzzle that is Super Metroid builds itself up.

Arrival

Samus lands her ship on the planet surface, in an area called Crateria. It is raining and desolate, with a thunderstorm crackling in the sky and dark mountains in the distance. Time to explore.

Games that allow you to move a character on a 2D plane in the 8 and 16-bit eras will have taught you a cardinal rule - to progress through the game, you must travel from the left to the right of the screen, maybe sometimes you can also go upward. Super Mario Bros. even clearly laid these rules out in its very first level, World 1-1, back in 1985. Yet if you follow that approach in Super Metroid, you are immediately blocked and cannot progress, forcing you to do the opposite and go to the left instead. As you go in this direction, you'll then find some ways to progress, like doors that open when shot. Yet you also find more obstructions - tunnels that are too small for you to pass through, blocks that do not break using your current weapon, and different coloured doors that do not react to you. There is only one option left to you - go down, deeper into the planet. Already, Super Metroid has taught the player that what you know about platformers of the past, you can forget about - it has literally made you go in the opposite directions to what you may have expected, suggesting that the way to progress "forward" is not always about taking the most obvious path.

The deeper down you go, the more familiar the surroundings become, if you played the original Metroid - you are returning to Tourian, the base where you defeated Mother Brain. You are, in fact, going backwards through your last escape route. This time though, there are still no enemies and everything looks destroyed and left to rot - the price a self-destruct takes, I suppose. If you haven't played the original Metroid you may not think much of this, but if you had then this worldbuilding is adding to the narrative, reminding you that you have been here before and you are seeing the aftermath of certain events. In fact, you will eventually take an elevator down to Brinstar, at the exact spot where you started the original Metroid.

And, lo and behold, the first suit upgrade is present, in exactly the same spot - the famous Morph Ball, an unusual ability where Samus is (somehow) compressed into a small armoured ball, allowing her to now navigate narrow tunnels. Two things are worth mentioning at this point. Firstly, you are immediately taught how to use the Morph Ball, because you are unable to jump back up to the ledge you fell down so you must use the tunnel instead. Secondly, you realise you are not alone, because someone (or something?) is now watching you; your presence triggered some sort of motion detector or camera, which now follows you but is harmless. Nonetheless, as you return back towards the surface, you understand the planet is not as empty as it first appeared; it has come back to life, with dangerous foes now ready to block your way.

So far, I've described maybe the first 5 - 10 minutes of the game, and what I really like about it is that we've already learned a lot without really being told anything directly:

1. You will experience moments of quiet isolation and exploration, not quite sure what is going to happen next. Then you will experience moments of action and suspense, putting your skills to the test.

2. The story is told through a combination of worldbuilding and environmental storytelling. Some of it will be pretty self-explanatory - the prologue sequence, for example - and other times you may stumble upon some ruins or spot something that catches your eye, wondering to the history of what you are seeing, filling in the blanks yourself. You are also always in control of the story, you will experience it rather than be passive through it.

3. The way you navigate the environment is not obvious. Providing nothing is blocking your path, you may travel in any direction to get to where you need to go. However, what appears to be complete freedom is not entirely true - there are some obstacles that will prevent you from progressing, but you will eventually come back to them and understand you now have the tool or ability to bypass it.

4. When you learn a new skill or gain a new ability, you will know how to use it from the get-go. In fact, the game won't even let you continue until you have learned its importance, as the rooms are designed in such a way that you must use the new ability. These act as mini-tutorials without taking you away from the game, such as reading a note in a game menu.

This subliminal method of pulling you into the game is what really makes me happy, because nothing feels forced or unnatural. I'm not made to sit in front of cutscenes or tutorials to learn what to do, I learn by doing, which happens to be my favourite way of learning anything in real life.

Exploration

Since you discover that the only option to you is to return back to where you started, you'll remember that you came across points of interest that trigger something in your memory; as you descended down into the depths, you came across tunnels that you could not initially access. You can now, however, so you start to explore those areas next and your world grows again... until you are blocked once more. Maybe you find a new type of block in a wall or floor, or another coloured door. Eventually though, you will come across a new item or upgrade that could be used to help you progress; Bombs to excavate through blocks, Missiles to open red doors, and so on.

This leads you into a steady gameplay loop. As you explore, you'll happen upon areas that you find significant but cannot access, then you'll happen upon an upgrade, then you'll end up backtracking and coming back to where you remembered earlier, which will then expand your exploration possibilities. This is the "Metroidvania" gameplay style, and is designed to keep you hooked - it certainly worked on me. As you play, you generally feel just about powerful enough to push forward, yet never feel completely powerful enough to go anywhere you want to - and the game is expertly designed to funnel you through the main route whilst allowing you to explore the fringes of the map too. There are sections of the map which force you down a path, only for you to not be able to go back the way you came. An example of this is in Brinstar, where a long vertical shaft has no ledges to jump on, except for some enemies that scroll horizontally across the tunnel. You are forced to drop down a long way, and you cannot go back up the tunnel until you explore the lower depths (leading to Norfair) where you get an Ice Beam, freezing anything the beam hits. Now the puzzle pieces fit together, because freezing those floating enemies stops them and turns them temporarily into platforms, allowing you ascend back up the tunnel.

When you get upgrades - either weapons, tools or movement - backtracking then feels easier each time, because now a more powerful Samus can just blast her way back through; small enemies that were annoyances at first now just get pummelled as you race back and forth across the map. By the end of the game, and when Samus is at her most powerful, the world literally becomes open to you, allowing you to explore anywhere you want for all its secrets.

Interestingly, collecting upgrades are the not the only abilities Samus has. She is able to also perform some other abilities without really being instructed on how to perform them, albeit you might need an item upgrade first. Bomb jumping, for example, is the ability to time your bomb placements to lift you into the air; do it well enough, and you can slowly ascend upwards quite far if you keep a good rhythm. Same with wall jumping and, the most interesting to me, the Shine Spark, the ability to sprint and store the kinetic energy inside you for about three seconds, letting you unleash it, propelling you in a direction and smashing through anything in your way. These are not essential to getting to the end of the game, but they are additional tools to help you explore some of the harder to reach secrets, if you choose to 100% complete the game. It is also interesting that all these "extra" abilities appear in the attract mode (the demo loop that plays if you don't press start at the title screen); again, another little snippet to show you what is possible, letting you figure out how to accomplish it.

There is plenty more for me to talk about, but I will save that for Part 2. Join me next time, where I talk about bosses, world-building, and a thrilling epilogue in 16-bit TechnoVision.

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Hello again, my other reader. I thought it was time for another update, since the last one was at the beginning of the new year. What's been happening? Well, I've actually been quite distracted in recent months, which has meant I've spent far less time than I would have liked playing or writing about video games - or even thinking about them, really. There are two reasons why, and one is more fun than the other, which I'll dig into in a moment.

Still, I was able to publish a few posts since my last update, which I was quite pleased with. In case anyone missed them, they were:

Three posts in the space of three months doesn't sound like a lot though, does it? Let me explain...

Child of the 80’s

Quite a large distraction in my household that has lasted many months is joining my son and daughter (the two eldest of my three children) in watching some amazing TV series with them. They are both teenagers now, so it has come to that point in parenthood where I can start to enjoy certain, more mature content with them - although I'll always happily watch SpongeBob Squarepants with my youngest daughter, no questions asked.

For my eldest daughter, the middle child, she loves fantasy stories, and said to me that she was looking for a new story where there was some moral ambiguity, with less clearly defined good/evil concepts. I had just finished watching a series on Netflix that I felt fit that bill, so I rewatched Arcane: League of Legends with her. I loved it the first time, but rewatching something to witness another person having a similar experience is another feeling altogether. Like me, she also loved the art style, animation, and more importantly the characters. She did not explicitly state it, but I had a feeling that her favourite character was Jinx, but overall I was glad that she could watch something with so many strong, female characters that she might be able to identify with on some level - particularly one who can punch really hard with giant, mechanised fists. She was genuinely sad when it ended.

What has taken even longer to complete though was going through every season of Stranger Things with my son. I had watched the first season many years ago when it suddenly took off, yet never got further than that. It was fortunate that my son suggested we watch it together, no doubt feeling a bit left behind in conversations with his own friends. So we have been watching, almost every night, all the seasons since before last Christmas. One of the benefits of being culturally late to every trend is that I then get to watch things uninterrupted without having to wait for seasons to be filmed!

Stranger Things has also been a great experience to share with my son, even though season four decided that episodes should last about as long as a modern day Marvel film. As of this writing, we are currently halfway through the final season, so once that is done I might be able to get more spare time to focus on other areas of my life I enjoy - like writing, perhaps.

One final thought I had whilst watching Stranger Things from beginning to end, was that it felt like each season was kind of a homage to various 80's films and popular culture. My take on this is:

• Season 1 - is partly replicating Alien, with a sole, relentless killer monster hunting them down.

• Season 2 - is then obviously Aliens, since now there are many relentless killer monsters, plus a singular creature controlling them all (the Mind Flayer).

• Season 3 - felt a lot like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as the Mind Flayer returns and controls the local populace into rebuilding itself. I also got a Terminator vibe from the Russian assassin hunting Hopper at every turn, including a very similar sounding musical motif.

• Season 4 - a horribly scarred man banished to hell, with a clawed hand, who invades traumatised teenager's dreams and terrorises them to death? Did someone say Nightmare on Elm Street?

• Season 5 - ... actually, I'm not sure what the overall theme of this season is yet. Feel free to suggest in the comments.

Threading the Needle

There was a slightly less entertaining distraction from February. I noticed that I had lost a significant amount of weight since Christmas, despite not having changed anything to do with my diet or eating habits. After noticing some other unusual symptoms, I visited my doctor, who admitted me promptly to a walk-in unit at the hospital to treat...

So, at the age of 42, I have been diagnosed as having type 1 diabetes. For those who don't know what that means, my body is not producing any (or not enough) insulin, a hormone that regulates glucose in your bloodstream. Without insulin, your glucose levels become too high and your body cannot do anything with the excess, which for me led to:

• Weight loss, because a high level of glucose in the blood produces an excess of ketones. Ketones are responsible for breaking down fat for energy, and if your body is not getting energy in the normal way, the ketones will use up body fat instead, followed by muscle.

• More urination, as the body tries to flush out the excess glucose which it cannot pass onto your other organs or cells for energy.

• Thirst and an endlessly dry mouth, which ironically leads to further urination.

• Blurred vision, as the fluids in my eyes went a bit haywire.

All of this is called hyperglycemia. And - thankfully not in my case since I caught this early - prolonged hyperglycemia leads to long term complications like damage to blood vessels, nerves, organs, and so on. As you can imagine, it was quite important I got on top of this and got back into a more stable state.

So, how does that happen? If you are diabetic yourself, then I'm preaching to the choir, feel free to skip ahead to the more interesting part of this post. For those who don't understand, let me try to briefly explain that I now need to inject insulin into myself multiple times a day, before every meal, to balance my glucose levels. How do I know how much to inject though? Well, that is what I've been spending the past couple of months learning how to do.

Basically, I need to understand how many grams of carbohydrates are in all food I eat from now on, since this is where the glucose comes from (not sugar directly, a common misconception). So for every meal, snack or even drink sometimes, I total up the carbs in every ingredient, or refer to nutritional information if available. Then I apply a ratio to it decided by my healthcare team. For myself, that is 1 unit of insulin from an injection pen for every 20g carbs, so a meal of 100g carbs for me would be 5 units of insulin. Great, so I can eat now?

Wrong! I also need to account for if I'm already starting a meal with too high a glucose level. If so, I need to add correction units on top. My correction factor is 1 additional unit for every 4 mmol/L above 10 mmol/L - so if my glucose level is currently at 14 mmol/L, I add 1 more unit on top of the meal. So I can eat now?

Wrong! Did I factor in activity after eating? A working body would naturally increase or decrease insulin along with exercise, since your muscles require glucose transferred to get the energy you need for any additional activity. However, I will now be injecting a constant stream of insulin that will not leave despite exercise. I've had issues on timing my dose and then even just going for a walk afterwards because my glucose level plummets due to the imbalance. So, I might have to deduct insulin units to account for that. So... I can eat now?

Wrong! Counting the carbohydrates isn't enough. Does the food contain a lot of protein or fats? Because guess what, high fat/protein foods actually delay carbohydrate absorption. Again, I've had issues with timing because I did not understand this initially, leading to huge slumps when eating something like pizza - a high-carb base with a high-fat cheese topping. For this, I've learned I usually need to split my dose before and after eating to account for this, and remember the timings and dosages for each side. So... I can eat... now??

Fine, I guess so.

I haven't even touched on lots of other factors to consider, like temperature, alcohol, driving, and other things I haven't even discovered yet. Nonetheless, those are the basics I need to handle every mealtime from now on. I must make sure that my glucose levels do not go too high, but also that they don't drop too low either, since that would be worse and could lead to unconsciousness if I didn't treat that in time. Everything must be in a nice equilibrium for as much as I can manage.

Oh, and I need to do this forever. Well, that's a bit melodramatic. Let's just say for the rest of my life instead.

Adapting to this has consumed at least 40-50% of my brainpower as I'm learning new routines and new information I didn't need before. Not forgetting my usual life responsibilities, like work and family, and adding more medical appointments on top, has resulted in less leisure time recently, and video games and other hobbies had to go by the wayside for a while. Even keeping up with reading everyone's wonderful Substack posts became harder. I like to spend time reading everything written and share and comment on what I like, but recently that had to devolve into a simple click of the "Like" button and no more; it felt like laziness on my part, yet it was all the mental energy I could muster sometimes.

However, this is not a sob story, and I will politely decline any sympathy raised. This is simply a fact of life I will live with now, and it will become more natural over time. Already I have managed to get my glucose levels to a steadier state and am on target more often than not. I am blessed to live in an age where technology has caught up; I have a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) stuck to my arm which is connected to my smartphone, allowing me (and my healthcare team) to monitor my glucose all the time. I also cannot fault the NHS (the UK's public health service), who have done nothing but support me whenever I've needed it. I've already put on more weight and am feeling a lot healthier than I was a couple of months ago, and therefore slightly more relaxed too. Everything is going well.

Coming Soon

Given my recent diagnosis, I've given this a lot of thought and decided it's time for a hard pivot. This means my Substack is now going to be rebranded as "Diabetes with Dia-Petey"! Every week I will be discussing all the latest health news, sharing recipes and tips, giving updates on...

... I'm sorry, I couldn't say that with a straight face. I almost got you though, right?

Fear not, other reader. I'm already bored of managing the minutia of my body, I have no intention of inflicting that on you too. No, this will remain my happy place, where I talk about the things I enjoy and hope you do too.

Looking back on what I said in Late Update #1, I noticed that I said I had many ideas for posts, yet only managed to produce a fraction of them. I've taken that on board, and decided to ignore that and promise just as much. Shall we see how well I get on?

Here are some ideas I'm interested in perusing further, with no guarantees on timelines or actual manifestation:

• I promised that I would like to discuss my favourite ever game, Super Metroid. The draft is still just sitting there, calling out to me! Maybe one day it will become visible...

• I want to attempt something different with my writing, and expand on the topics I cover to venture slightly beyond video games. Now that I have watched Arcane: League of Legends on Netflix (twice), I feel there is something I want to say about it. This one might take me some time to get right...

• I've been shocked to discover that I'm obsessed with the music in Super Mario Wonder. So, I shall attempt to use words to describe a wonderful (pun intended) audio experience. What could go wrong?

• Last month, I attended a retro games convention for the first time. With lots of photos taken, perhaps you might like to see what that was like?

• Finally, after getting the remastered DOOM + DOOM II on sale over Christmas, I've been playing it properly for the first time in decades. There really is something about it, isn't there? Let me see if I can articulate my thoughts on it.

Thanks again for reading, and I hope I can update the frequency a bit more going forward.

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Sonic and Knuckles, the fourth mainline game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series for the Mega Drive/Genesis, was released in October 1994. After falling in love with Sonic 2, this was the next game I played, and it was a more than worthy sequel. Introducing a new character in Knuckles the Echidna, with his own abilities to add some variation to the speedy playstyle of Sonic, it resulted in another hit game. Still, it seemed like the game was missing something, like this felt like a "Part 2" to something bigger. And why did the cartridge have this bizarre, extra slot on top of it?

Looking back a step in the series, there was also another sequel - Sonic the Hedgehog 3 which was, not surprisingly, the third mainline game, also released in 1994 around six months earlier - rather unusual to have sequels so close to one another. Sonic 3 had Sonic and Tails meet a new antagonist - the aforementioned Knuckles - who would try to prevent them from reclaiming the Chaos Emeralds and stopping Dr Robotnik from relaunching his Death Egg once again. I happened to play them out of order, so it seemed strange to me that I had already met this new character yet could not play as him. Curious...

These two games released in the same year for the same platform were great additions to the canon on their own. Sonic 3 allowed you to play as Sonic or Tails for the first time, introduced levels that were at least three times larger than in Sonic 2, and seemed to perfect the gameplay to reach its zenith for the 2D style. Sonic and Knuckles, meanwhile, provided dual storylines by playing as different characters, allowing you to replay and explore each level in different pathways, with Knuckles' playthrough being the slightly harder version, yet allowing you to explore further by gliding and climbing.

Individually, they were great, yet these games seemed to each be missing certain elements. Sonic 3 allowed you to save your progress via a battery back-up, yet Sonic and Knuckles did not. Sonic 3 introduced a brand new character, yet didn't allow you to play as him until the follow-up sequel. Both amazing games in their own right, but if only it were possible to... I don't know... combine them together to make a bigger, grander, continuous adventure. One which would be the biggest adventure a Sega fan could have asked for.

Thankfully, we had the technology - "Lock-On Technology" to be precise - to experience, in my opinion, the pinnacle of Sonic's Mega Drive adventures. For this retrospective, let's look back at how two games became one.

Behind Closed Doors

Sonic 2 was a huge success, so of course Sega was hoping for a sequel. However, as I explained in my Sonic 2 retrospective, the development of that game was fraught, with an incredibly short timeframe and duelling opinions between Sega's Japanese and American staff. In fact Yuji Naka, co-creator and lead programmer of the Sonic games, refused to work with the American developers at STI (Sega Technical Institute) any further due to the stress of working on the previous game. He acquiesced so long as he could only work with the Japanese developers within STI, and was given the title of producer to keep him on side, making him one of the key people on the sequel. This meant that STI was split in two; the American development team would work on a spin-off, Sonic Spinball, to make sure that the release schedule at least filled a hedgehog-shaped hole, while the Japanese developers set to work on the true sequel, starting in January 1993.

Interestingly, the "3" in Sonic 3 was intended to represent the third dimension, where the game was originally planned to have an isometric perspective and utilize cutting edge (for the time) 3D graphics. For the humble 16-bit Mega Drive to pull that off, Sega were going to re-use their Sega Virtua Processor chip1, custom built for the Mega Drive port of Virtua Racing. However, this prototype was scrapped; firstly, the co-processor on the cartridge produced very low polygon counts and not great performance. Logistics also affected that design, since the production of the chip would not have been ready for the intended 1994 release. So Sega went back to the well and did what they did best; they produced a rock-solid 2D platformer.

While I am always interested in the background and development history of games, I struggled to find much information for Sonic 3 & Knuckles. STI, and most likely the controlling and stubborn Yuji Naka, kept Sonic 3 development behind closed doors at Sega and within only the Japanese team, much to the chagrin of the American staff, who became somewhat jealous of the priority the game was given over other projects.

What was clear in my research though was that Naka and his team had grander ambitions for this sequel. They wanted to tell a deeper story than they had done before, and expand Sonic's world, which greatly increased the size and scope of the project. Each level (or Zone in Sonic parlance, split into two Acts) alone would end up being at least three times larger than Sonic 2. Telling an end-to-end story as well would be a new element not attempted before - we'll get to that later.

The sheer scope of the game led to a junction point in development, for two reasons. STI had reached the technical limits of the Mega Drive hardware. Had they released Sonic 3 as intended, as one very large game, it would have needed to be produced on a 34-bit cartridge - enormous at the time, and very expensive to mass produce. Also, just like with Sonic 2's release, Sega of America's marketing people (or the Dictatorial Department of Pointless Deadlines™) insisted that Sonic 3 be released on a certain day to tie in with a promotion run by McDonald's - got to get those Happy Meals out to the kids, after all. The fact was, Sonic 3 could not be finished or released on time in the state it was in. What were Sega to do?

The answer, even if the team was reluctant to do so, was to split the game into two - Sonic 3, and Sonic & Knuckles. This solved the issue of release dates, since the second half of the game would have more time to be completed, and the strategy split the costs of the cartridge by passing them on to the consumer. To entice the players to buy effectively two parts to one game (remember, DLC did not exist at this point), a new technology and - more importantly - a new marketing buzzword was invented to sit alongside "Blast Processing" - "Lock-On Technology"2. The Sonic & Knuckles cartridge had a slot on top as well as below, the idea being you would plug Sonic & Knuckles into the Mega Drive, then plug Sonic 3 into Sonic & Knuckles, producing a rather large stack. As the two games were developed side by side, both had certain hooks and entry points in their game code to allow them to work separately, but also together as one combined experience, producing the true Sonic sequel STI had always wanted. As an added bonus, you were also able to plug in Sonic 2 instead to play that game as Knuckles, plus any other Mega Drive cartridge to play a randomised "Blue Spheres" special stage.

History lesson is now over, and we still haven't touched on the game itself. Hop onto Tails' biplane, keep your arms within the cockpit, and let's dig into what makes this game (or these games) special.

Welcome to Floating Island

At the end of a day, it's a Sonic game. You know what to expect; a 2D platformer where the main character goes very fast. So why do many consider this the greatest of the 2D series? The first game introduced speed and momentum as the unique selling point. The sequel, Sonic 2, took the handbrake off and let him loose, laying the groundwork for what I personally think Sonic is about - a mixture of zooming and bouncing around vast levels, mixed with some light exploration.

For me, every time I think about Sonic 3 & Knuckles, one overarching theme strikes me: cohesion. Sonic 3 & Knuckles took all the learnings from the previous games, perfected the formula, and stitched together the experience to make it feel you were playing in an interconnected world and story for the first time.

Take the introduction, for instance. After hitting the start button on the controller, you watch Sonic and Tails fly on their biplane across the sea (assuming this picked up right after the end of Sonic 2 and the destruction of Dr Robotnik's Death Egg). Sonic jumps off, becomes Super Sonic, and skims across the waves and onto a beach, then jungle undergrowth, until he's suddenly stopped by a new character - the first time we see Knuckles. After losing all the Chaos Emeralds and Knuckles laughing in your face as he zooms off into the island deeper, you get to start the game proper.

All told, this sequence takes about 20 seconds, perhaps 30 max, from beginning to end, and it's told you so much already. It's a direct continuation from Sonic 2 (if you happened to play that game), so you know that Sonic had collected all seven Chaos Emeralds already. You're introduced to a new location by rocking up on a beach, a logical starting point where the only direction to go is forwards. You're introduced to a new character, and can immediately tell he's stronger than Sonic. And you have a clear goal - chase after this new foe and retrieve the Chaos Emeralds he stole. Time to begin the first level.

Did I mention not a single word was uttered during this sequence? We were not yet at the point of having fully acted cutscenes on 16-bit hardware, yet this is what this is; a controlled sequence telling a short snippet of the story. Because this was probably the biggest change in the sequel - telling a narrative. Even better, the storytelling is fully and seamlessly integrated into the gameplay. You will be in control most of the time, then suddenly a quick 10 to 20 second sequence will show up, usually of Knuckles blocking your way and diverting you elsewhere, then you carry on. The story is silent, but the old adage of "show don't tell" is in full force here, with everything acted out as pantomime. It's a method of storytelling that perfectly matches Sonic's style; short, simple, fast, and to the point.

Having a story this time also means that there are some real stakes at play. Rather than a collection of themed levels, one after the other, there is a clear throughline instead. Each level has a logical transition to the next; Angel Island sends you to the underground caverns of Hydrocity, jumping onto the Flying Battery as it passes low over Mushroom Hill, beaming up from the Hidden Palace to Sky Sanctuary to chase after the Death Egg, and so on. You are traversing at speed through a real location, the mythical Floating Island, not just a random selection of well designed rollercoasters.

Each level weaves the story of stopping Dr Robotnik (again!) from launching his repaired Death Egg (again! Twice!), all the while dealing with a new antagonist who will become double-crossed. The final zones from Lava Reef onwards (Hidden Palace, Sky Sanctuary, Death Egg and Doomsday Zones) produce a rather grand endgame too, making it clear that the adventure just got serious. All in all, it leads to an escalating storyline which feels worthwhile.

The worldbuilding also helps immerse you, even if it is not explicitly laid out for you. This game has some of the best artwork, sprites and backgrounds of the Mega Drive library, and they are used for full effect. The first zone, Angel Island, looks initially idyllic with lush jungles and foliage, until it is burned into an orange hellscape by Robotnik's drones. The Launch Base Zone has turned what appears to be ruins from an ancient civilisation into an enormous spaceport, ready to have the Death Egg (possibly the largest background sprite I've ever seen) lift off into space. The Hidden Palace has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it artwork which portends to a prophecy explaining the final battle. Despite not being an overtly elaborate plotline, each part - big and small - help build up the story and makes you feel much more part of the experience than the predecessors.

Gotta Go Fast

Having a story slots neatly into the existing gameplay, for this is still a game where the aim is to go very fast and often. This means that the levels are huge, with plenty of opportunities to ramp up your speed and have just enough control to navigate hazards at the last second, yet also provide the feeling of barely holding on sometimes.

Keeping the unchecked speed of Sonic 2 in place, Sega also managed to polish the original gameplay until it is as shiny as a Chaos Emerald. Take, for instance, Sonic's main weakness - water. In previous games, every player hated the water levels because they sapped him of his momentum, making traversal slow and dangerous, the sound of the timer as Sonic is about to lose air haunting our dreams. Water is also used in Sonic 3 & Knuckles - particularly Hydrocity Zone, which resembles an underground Roman baths - yet I never felt it was an impedance this time. For every moment that you were trudging slowly through water, something in the environment would pop up to get you moving again, like a fan, turbine, or spring. Hydrocity Zone would end up being one of my favourite zones to play, especially when you ran so fast you could skim straight over the water. Add in new elemental shields, including one to let you breathe underwater inside a bubble, and it's clear that Sega rethought water levels as a whole. This game was built to keep you pushing forward.

This does not mean the game is entirely linear though. Exploration is also key to unlocking the most out of it. Throughout the levels are giant rings which will teleport you to the special stage, where you navigate on top of a spherical maze to catch all the blue spheres before you hit one red sphere to end the challenge - rewarding you with one of the aforementioned Chaos Emeralds again. Collecting all seven from the Sonic 3 part of the game will allow you to become Super Sonic again, invincible with double the speed. The unique part though is repeating this process in the Sonic & Knuckles second half of the game, which introduces you to the concept of Super Emeralds. Tying into some of the lore of the Hidden Palace Zone and why the Floating Island is... well, floating... reclaiming all of the Super Emeralds as well will provide you the true ending of the game and turn you into Hyper versions of yourself, powerful enough to fly through space!

This isn't just Sonic's adventure this time either. While you could play as Tails in Sonic 2, it seemed merely a cosmetic change. In Sonic 3 & Knuckles though, Tails comes into his own, providing his trademark ability to fly for short periods of time, and even lift Sonic to higher areas. Meanwhile, playing as Knuckles will basically provide a parallel adventure that leads to different and unexpected parts of the game. As the guardian of the Floating Island, Knuckles knows all the shortcuts and hidden passages to get to places. Combined with his ability to glide and climb walls, Knuckles can navigate to areas that Sonic and Tails cannot. This effectively triples the play opportunities and replayability; Sonic is built for speed, Tails provides vertical exploration, and Knuckles provides a tougher challenge.

Smooth Criminal

If you really want to get me nostalgic though, just play a few songs from the soundtrack. The original soundtrack from the Mega Drive I mean, not the current one. Hmmm, explaining this is going to get complicated...

The original soundtrack with, what I consider to be the correct Carnival Night Zone, Ice Cap Zone and Launch Base Zone music

It all revolves around the urban legend of Michael Jackson's involvement with the music. Strongly denied for decades, it turns out it was true that Jackson had some input into some of the tracks, along with other collaborators such as Brad Buxer, Doug Grigsby III and Cirocco Jones. During this time though, allegations were made against Jackson which made Sega distance themselves from him, though his musical contributions seemed to have still come through for the 1994 release. It is also one of the main reasons why Sonic 3 & Knuckles was rarely ported to other systems, unlike the other Sonic games. Legal implications, along with Sega's uncertainty of who actually owned what, caused the eventual remake contained in Sonic Origins to replace some of the tracks with remixed versions of the prototype music. I've tried to listen to the newest remixes, but I just can't, my memory refuses to accept them. The prototype music sounds too muted and dull compared to the beatboxing, funky, and upbeat tracks from the original. I implore you to listen to the original and current versions of Ice Cap Zone in particular, and tell me which you prefer.

Regardless of intellectual property hijinks, all the music in Sonic 3 & Knuckles is stellar, some of the finest in the series. A new addition to this game was to have a slightly remixed version of each zone theme played in Acts 1 and 2, adding a bit of variety. Sometimes this is very noticeable, such as Sandopolis Zone having a heavier, moodier version in the second act as you enter the dark and spooky pyramid. Or Lava Reef Zone, having a kind of tropical lilt in Act 1, then a more mystical, enchanting version in Act 2.

The Master Emerald

Sonic 3 & Knuckles combined was a big event in 1994, an almost perfect capper to a trilogy on the Mega Drive - Barrel of Doom notwithstanding. Everything was bigger (physically too, if you count the combining of hardware) to create the best Sonic game yet. While Sonic 2 might be the game I have more attachment to, given that watching it play on a demo booth in a video game store was what spurred me into this wonderful hobby in the first place, I cannot deny that Sonic 3 & Knuckles represents the epitome of excellence in this gameplay style, mechanically and narratively. It was expansive, full of secrets, endlessly replayable, and it made us care about some blue, orange and red sprites with a story revolving around saving the world, twice.

As Sonic and Tail's biplane flies off into the sunset, with Knuckles waving goodbye, I wonder if we'll ever see a unique game like this again; one where some creative ingenuity over technical constraints produced something so memorable.

All these words are my own. However, I have referred to the following sources for my research:

Sonic Wiki Zone
Wikipedia
Sonic Retro

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All caught up? Cool. Let’s continue...

I’ve thought about this for quite a while after completing the game, and I’ve decided that it feels satisfying (well, to me at least) because Nintendo treated the story the same as the other components of the game; it’s entirely your choice.

A quick recap, in diagram form, of how I see the story being structured:

You, the player, will decide how you tackle the ultimate goal of defeating Ganon. There are other layers involved though if you want to complete the big picture. However, you are not bound to any of them, you can skip plot points, and you can approach the story beats in any order. The adventure you construct, in your own fashion, will still make sense and offer a conclusion that makes you think “yes, that was damn good”.

Let’s explore these different layers and how they could, potentially, build up to an epic.

Note: there will be a lot more spoilers from now on compared to Part 1.

The Legend

After leaving the Great Plateau and surveying all of Hyrule before you, instead of heading to the castle, you could follow the advice of the old King of Hyrule and venture towards Kakariko Village. There you will meet Impa, a woman well over a hundred years old and one of the few remaining people alive who was there during what everyone has called “The Calamity”. She will fill in the gaps in Link’s missing memory (a convenient method of relaying the prologue to you, the player). It seems you were gravely injured a hundred years ago and have only just awoken, recovered but not yet in your prime. All during that time, you are told that Calamity Ganon, a purely evil and malevolent force, has been trapped in Hyrule Castle for a hundred years, held back by Princess Zelda, who is missing.

Impa will also explain a key part of the story; the legend that caused the great Calamity in the first place. The people of Hyrule unearthed ancient machines, referred to as the Divine Beasts, as part of a battleplan, for they knew that Calamity Ganon would eventually return. They studied the legends of old and made their play. Each race from the four corners of Hyrule - the Zora, the Gorons, the Rito and the Gerudo - would bring forth a Champion to pilot each of the Divine Beasts, who would launch a combined attack on Ganon once he appeared. The land of Hyrule would be protected by more machines, an army of Guardians; tank-like spiderbots with deadly lasers, to hold back Ganon’s forces. Once Calamity Ganon was weakened, two further Champions would make their final blow; the Hero of Time, using the Master Sword, would defeat Ganon, while the another holding the power of light would seal him away for good, never to return.

The plan was sound and flawless, the chess pieces were in position, ready for checkmate. The legend would become true.

They failed.

What I like about this part of the story is that the stakes have now grown. While the primary goal is to defeat Ganon, you now know why; because it did not work the first time, and the world has been in a state of unsteady limbo ever since, on the knife-edge of oblivion. It’s also not just your life on the line; Princess Zelda has somehow been holding back the evil on her own whilst you have been recovering, and the Champions are now gone. Link may not remember everything yet, but now you can start to feel a more personal reason for continuing. Also, the fact that the heroes of the story failed makes the idea of them succeeding all the more satisfying. After all, it worked for The Lord of the Rings and The Avengers.

At this point we could still potter around the world, or now aim for the target again at the castle. But what of these Champions that you can’t remember?

The Champions

A key reason to prompt you to explore the corners of Hyrule is to investigate these Divine Beasts, for they have now become corrupted by Ganon’s influence and are now dangerous. The Divine Beasts are the closest this game has to a traditional Zelda dungeon; a puzzle area to solve, followed by a boss battle - one of the Blight Ganon’s, generals that serve their great leader. This also gives you the opportunity, if you so choose, to explore the surrounding area of the Divine Beast, understand the culture of the key race in that area, and understand the characters and backstory related to their fallen Champion.

Mipha of the Zora, Revali of the Rito, Daruk of the Gorons, and Urbosa of the Gerudo - they form Breath of the Wild’s version of The Avengers; a team proven worthy of piloting the Divine Beasts to play their part in Calamity Ganon’s downfall and save the world. Also like Marvel’s greatest heroes, they didn’t initially gel as a functioning unit. This is played out more in the memories you recover (which we’ll get to later), but there was a sense that each race had their own ideas of how this would pan out, even if their intentions were to help the greater cause. Not all the Champions believed that Link, for example, was worthy of being considered one of their own; Revali, in particular, stands out as a character who looked down on others, too enamoured in his own race’s excellence as swift warriors with the power of flight.

As a result, each Champion lost their lives in a surprise attack by Ganon, their souls caught in limbo within each Divine Beats, trapped. As Link enters each Divine Beast and reclaims it from the Blight Ganon, the spirit of each Champion is freed and deepens your connection with the past. Each Champion, whether they believed it initially or not, now knows deep down that you have proven yourself worthy of completing the plan once and for all, offering their assistance when the time is right. It may have taken a century, but you - the player, as Link - slowly builds up the team again to become stronger than before, finally working together, not against each other. You do not need to reclaim any or all of the Divine Beasts to complete the game, but each one you do will make the final battle with Ganon significantly easier, and all the more impressive.

Finding the Champions also introduces us to their descendants. Remember, a hundred years have passed, and each race will still grieve for their fallen Champion. Helping each descendant is key to helping each race overcome their current challenge in their homeland. My particular favourite is Prince Sidon of the Zora, younger brother to the Champion Mipha. He is an extremely likable character, always daring, positive and ready for action - with a sly twinkle in his eye, for added effect. Yet he also still mourns the loss of his sister, even after such a long time has passed, and vows to make himself the best he can be to serve his people well. By joining forces, you work well together to reclaim the Divine Beast in his land and finally bring his sister some peace. So not only do you heal each lost Champion’s spirit, forging stronger bonds in the process, you heal their families and descendants too; you are starting to bring the world back into the light and feel hope again, bit by bit.

Wasn’t there one other Champion though? The legend mentioned the four Champions who piloted the Divine Beasts; then there was Link, the loyal knight who would wield the Master Sword. What of the Champion who would seal Ganon away? What about Princess Zelda? For that, Link needs to try and remember the past.

Memories

When you repair the camera function on your Sheikah Slate in the Hateno Tech Lab, you discover some old photos on it. You didn’t take these photos; they appear to have been captured over a hundred years ago. Link looks at them with some familiarity, yet they are not enough to reclaim his lost memories of what happened. Like other amnesiacs, he needs more stimulus to try and remember better. So as you travel across Hyrule, the photos act as scenic markers; approaching the right place and position according to each photo causes Link to suddenly remember a key (yet also optional) story point.

These memories are not so much stories as they are tales; they have no particular beginning nor end, they are just a natural snapshot of the past. This means they can viewed in any order - just like you might suddenly remember something from your past out of sequence. And yet, whatever order you view Link’s memories in, they add to the overall backstory of what happened before the Calamity, all making sense.

Some recount the Champions, but most focus on the key person missing from this story so far; Princess Zelda. According to the legend we now understand, only Zelda can perform the final blow in defeating Ganon, sealing the evil away for good. There is just one problem - Zelda is scared. She’s scared of her destiny, the weight of all that responsibility, and most importantly, she’s scared of failing - both everyone she cares for, and her role in history. We’re talking serious imposter syndrome here.

Through these memories, we get to understand who Zelda really is. In one encounter, we see her excited at discovering a rare flower in the wild, totally absorbed in her scientific studies and what she is truly interested in. Let’s face it, wouldn’t we all like to give up our responsibilities to carry out our hobbies all day? And in another, we see her father berate her for her supposed lack of duty to her involvement in the legend - a young girl who literally has the weight of the world’s problems entirely on her shoulders, and hers alone.

So when the plan fails, Link remembers that she despairs and falls apart, unable to be the great leader she was meant to be. Link (you, the player) never leaves her side, such is his loyalty and courage, even when you are mortally wounded. It is at the last moment that Zelda truly understands how to play her part in defeating Ganon, but it is too late; everything is laid into motion. The Champions are gone, the Divine Beasts corrupted, the Guardians turned against their masters, and Link on the verge of death. That is when we learn how strong Zelda really is, for she prevents the Guardians delivering a final blow to Link, and has him taken to be healed in the Great Plateau (where we start the game, a hundred years later). All that remains is for Zelda to face Calamity Ganon alone, unable to stop him fully, but at least to hold him back until the time is right; she sacrifices herself for a brighter future.

None of the memories are required to complete the game; every one of them is optional, including the final memory which can only be unlocked once all the others from your camera are discovered. Yet each one provides one more bit of backstory that fills in a gap, a bit more understanding of the people from the past, and the sacrifices they made to help Link. The only reward for reclaiming them is to connect you to your goal in a stronger way. Your friends may have been lost to time, but actually you get to reconnect to all of them; Link just had to take the long path to get there and fulfil all their parts in completing the legend.

One final explanation of the memories, as I think this part fits into this section. In each memory, Link is carrying a very familiar sword, yet he does not possess it anymore. It seems quite bold that the legendary Master Sword is an entirely optional item in such a game, yet this is what Breath of the Wild symbolises: choices. If you choose to venture into the Lost Woods with enough strength, you get to reclaim your sword to complete your part in the legend.

Fantastic! We’re really building an epic of a story now, aren’t we? We understand our main goal via a legend passed down through the centuries. We discovered the Divine Beasts and fallen Champions who will aid us in our quest, rebuilding a team with the strongest bonds. We remembered who we were and our greatest friend, who devoted herself to holding back the forces of evil alone for the right moment in time for us to make our final assault. We even got our favourite sword back. Time to save the world!

Except... what exactly are we saving? Hyrule is wide and vast, but it is not empty. As we’ve been going back and forth on these grand adventures, Link has actually been taking part in other daily life routines alongside other people he meets along the way. The people of Hyrule cannot do much to defeat an evil overload, but that doesn’t make them less important. The final ring in my story structure is actually a composition of all the smaller stories that make up Hyrule.

People of Hyrule

If you were to set off hiking into lands unknown, you would probably bump into various people on your journey. Assuming you got to talking with them, they would start telling you about their lives, their local area, fables and legends - they would all have their own small stories they would want to pass on. This is no different to what Link experiences.

Usually, the key thing the people of the land want to point out is the big scary castle in the middle of the world, and most notably how it seems the world is going to end. And yet they still carry on about their days. The important thing about the people’s tales is that they are usually not very long, and you experience them like anything else in the game - disconnected, with no beginning nor end. Just like in real life, if you think about it. I doubt you would meet a stranger in the real world and be given an eloquent backstory of their life with a satisfying conclusion. No, you would be presented a snapshot of a moment in their life, one they would think noteworthy of talking about.

And there are many tales to tell in Hyrule. Many are nothing more than small snippets of a farmer or traveller on the roads. Some might make you wonder deeper - such as why a woman obsessed with her flowers get so angry if anyone dares to touch them. Some point out interesting areas of interest, and muse about what they could mean.

Some of the people try to make the world better than it is. The best example I can think of is Hudson, who has a grand vision for a brand new village in Hyrule - Tarrey Town. However, to build it from scratch will require a lot of materials and expertise, which culminates in a long-winded fetch-quest for Link to complete. Nonetheless, it means Link gets to travel to the four corners of Hyrule, acquiring all that Hudson needs. By the end of the side-quest, Tarrey Town is not just complete with buildings, but with people too - a small population of every major race in Hyrule. You end up building not just buildings but a whole community, a new beginning for Hyrule; proof that there is hope after the Calamity is over.

Which is why I think it is important to highlight that everyone in Hyrule is also part of the bigger story. They may not all contribute to the overarching goal directly, but they are all helped by Link in some small way. You heal the world one tiny problem at a time, which in turn builds up to solving the ultimate problem...

Defeat Ganon

So now we come full circle. We’ve decided that it wasn’t enough to just defeat Ganon on our own - we chose to finish what was started. Now we understand what this final battle really means to Link, to Zelda, to the Champions, to everyone. As we zero in at the centre of the castle, the Divine Beasts launch their co-ordinated attack, each Champion finally fulfilling their role. Ganon is significantly weakened, while Link uses the Master Sword to strike him down. A final, climactic battle on horseback as you fell the Beast Ganon until, finally, Link has accomplished his role - and Princess Zelda appears, stronger, wiser, and more powerful to end the Calamity once and for all.

Since I wanted to experience as much of this vast game as possible, I ended up playing for around 18 months in sessions lasting about 1-2 hours here and there. This took me a long time to “complete”, but that was my choice, as the game allowed me. I could have skipped a memory here or there, I could have freed only a couple of the Divine Beasts, I could have just replaced the Master Sword with another weapon. I chose instead to go as deep as I wanted to, to feel like the story told was connected to everything else the game offered. Nintendo obliged, by instilling choice at every level through the adventure. And when I did reach the epilogue, I felt like I really had saved the world.

If there was one takeaway from this double-post, it would be this; I don’t believe I’ve experienced a game before where I drove the narrative this much myself. And because I was in control all the way, I felt far more connected to this rather simplistic story than I’ve felt with many other games with more complicated character arcs or story beats.

The joy of video games is that they are an interactive medium, which film, television, books or art simply cannot replicate. Breath of the Wild might be one of the top examples of a truly interactive story done right.

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Stories, as we are taught from an early age, have three core components - a beginning, middle and end. Actually, those are the simplest kinds of stories. As our understanding of language advances, we realise that longer stories are better split into chapters; sections that tell part of the story in manageable chunks, and maintain our interest to keep moving forwards. Great authors can be very clever with their narratives by moving parts of the story out of sequence, placed in different time periods, or from different character perspectives. Nonetheless, all stories I’ve ever been aware of have one common element - they are linear, or at least the ending should make sense based on everything that came before it.

Novels and films have kept to this structure, so it only made sense that video games would follow that legacy. In the early days, video games would be very literal with story, if they even had a story at all. Replace “chapters” with “levels”, conclude each level with a boss, conclude all levels to get the ending to the story. As the decades have passed, I’ve witnessed the simplistic stories from the 80’s and 90’s, which have then tried to evolve to be grander in scope or structure. Half Life told an interconnected story from a singular perspective all throughout, RPGs weaved epic tales to world-ending demise thwarted by brave adventurers, Uncharted and The Last of Us went extremely literal by replicating movies. Maybe it’s possible that a game has multiple endings or outcomes, encouraging you to replay it and see how the story could be different next time. And still, stories in video games are mostly linear; beginning, middle and end.

If, somehow, you’ve experienced the end before the beginning, you’ve probably cheated. Or you’re a time traveller.

One trend I’ve watched over time is the genre typically known as the “open world game”; the idea that a world is presented to you and you are free to travel anywhere you want to within it. Perhaps there were earlier games, but Grand Theft Auto III was the great example of this. I don’t recall playing many of these myself, though I have played the Spiderman games, Batman: Arkham City and The Witcher 3. All of these offer expansive worlds and play areas, and really do offer the promise of letting you “go anywhere”. Yet they all also want to tell a story; which is where an open world and narrative clash, I’ve come to realise.

Let me present to you a visual representation of how I see an open-world game presents its story.

You are free to go anywhere you want, free to find diversions or side quests along the way, except for one constraint. The main story, the core narrative, must follow in chapter form, linearly, one after the other. To see the ending of the story, you must have followed the key path that leads chapter to chapter, just like a book or film. Even The Witcher 3 - an extremely dense game, with many side quests that can even dovetail through each other, leading to complex and sometimes conditional pathways - still has one main quest which must be experienced as a sequence. And so, “open world” games are not so open with their story, they are still linear; beginning, middle and end.

Except for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Defeat Ganon

Note: mild spoilers on the story from now on

That’s not strictly true. Of course Breath of the Wild has a starting point. You play as Link, like always, who awakens from a long slumber, unsure of where he is or what happened. And of course there is an epilogue, where Link and Zelda are reunited, who both vanquished a great evil across the land. What happens in between? Ah ha...

Nintendo are well known, and often quoted as such, to focus on gameplay first rather than telling a story; the mechanics of making something fun to interact with grabs their interest more. For Breath of the Wild, they chose to build a Zelda game that circumvented their decades of building a specific, structured formula. No more traditional, puzzle-oriented dungeons. No more fixed item progression. The intricate nature of the well thought out game became an enormous sandbox instead; you get to choose where to go, what to do, and in what order to achieve it. Want to climb over that mountain? Go ahead. Circle around that enemy encampment instead of fighting? Fine. Want to clear one of the harder dungeons before an easier one? Why not, it’s your choice. There are very few boundaries to stop you from trying and experimenting how you want to. Although, if there are no boundaries, how do you tell a linear story? If encountering a certain area of Hyrule is meant to trigger a key plot point, yet you can simply avoid or get around it, how do you progress through a narrative that makes sense?

I’ve been thinking about how this story is structured a lot, because I really like it. I’ll admit it isn’t Shakespeare, maybe somewhat basic (we’ll get to some drawbacks later). Yet I enjoyed it immensely and was satisfied because it felt both grandiose and epic, but also contained and focused on the smaller tales from the populace as well. Other opinions may differ, and I’ll understand that, but what I think I found most satisfying about it is that Nintendo treated the story like another system or component to the game, one that connects to everything else. There are a lot of game systems in play: physics, sound, weather, chemistry, among others, all combining and interacting with each other. I think “story” could be counted as one of these game systems too, because telling parts of the wider story fit around other elements of the game, they weave in and out of your chosen adventure, and you also have choice - you decide how much or how little of the story you want to experience. The story is as open as the world of Hyrule, with very few boundaries.

Above, I presented a diagram of how I see most open-world games functioning as stories. For Breath of the Wild, I think the story structure looks more like this:

Let me explain what I mean. Think of this as a target. The bullseye is the core goal of the game: defeat Ganon. Surrounding that goal are different rings though, each one adding a new layer on top of the goal, building to a bigger and bigger story. Here’s the thing though - if all you want to do is hit the dead centre, then you can. It won’t be easy, in fact it will be extremely challenging. Nonetheless, after you complete the Great Plateau training area, you’re free to make a beeline to the ominous castle straight ahead, fight your way through hordes of enemies, defeat each of Ganon’s generals, face down a fully powered Calamity Ganon, fell the final Beast Ganon, and help Princess Zelda destroy Ganon once and for all.

Wait, that’s it? After 40 years of video games, we’re still resorting to “saving the princess” as a story? If you choose to, then... yes. Remember, you get to decide how this adventure pans out.

Let’s say you craved a bit more depth though - why is defeating Ganon so important, apart from restoring a nice, scenic view and putting the central castle back to its former glory? That’s where the surrounding story rings come in, each providing you, the player, another layer of depth. The best part is that you could start from the outside of the target and work you way in, or you could jump between layers at any time. Or not even encounter all the layers. Or zig-zag through the story, in any order, at any time, and still explore the land however you see fit. Even more incredible, I’ve discovered, is that it still makes sense regardless of what path and options you take.

You build the story, in any order you choose, and you decide how complete your story will be. Now, to me, that is a truly open-world game!

There are drawbacks to this approach too. Like I mentioned earlier, this style of storytelling does not lend itself well to depth, as each part has to be small enough and self-contained so it can be reconfigured in any way possible. This does also result in a rather typical, well-trodden hero fantasy. Perhaps the player likes linearity too, and does not wish to combine the puzzle pieces this way.

I, however, thought that my particular adventure was wonderful. And it was my adventure - yours will be different. Since I chose to experience as much as I could, my adventure resulted in me understanding the stakes at hand to save Zelda, save Link’s friends, and to save the world, in more ways than one.

There is more I want to talk about, so I will end here for now and split this into a two-part post - this one, in fact.

Part 2 will explain how I see these layers working to add to the story and building up your adventure.

I hope you join me then!

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Greetings, Programs! We’re going to try something a little different today...

We’ve now moved into a new year, which is apparently the time when all the things change. I’ll be honest, a new calendar year does not usually bother me. As a natural problem solver, I can make resolutions anytime I feel it is necessary to. Incrementing a year by one does not really cause me to stop, reflect or consider change. To me, it’s just another day leading into the next.

Of course, a lot of people take great stock in this milestone, and I have been reading a lot of yearly recaps of everyone’s wonderful achievements and what they hope to accomplish this year. I’m not immune to this, and it does make me wonder whether I should consider this type of thing to be more important in my life. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I should continue as I see fit, even if that means I don’t follow the crowd. Change will happen eventually, either by my choice or not, and I will handle the situation as it arises.

However, I am planning some small changes to my publication, hopefully for the better. It all started with a conversation I had with over the Christmas break - the full conversation is here.

The gist of it was Cat’s great advice of just being consistent with posting your writing; that will lead to eventual results. I agree with this sentiment exactly, although I ventured an opinion that it may not be necessary to stick to a rigid schedule to be consistent (I’ll come back to this point). With some back and forth between me and Cat, I started to realise something thanks to her point of view. Maybe a schedule helps the writer, but also the schedule can help the reader too.

This really made me stop and think. Is it possible that my other reader is... interested in what I have to say? That my other reader... looks forward to my next post? Hmmm...

I’ll be honest, this never crossed my mind at all. Once I resolved to starting a Substack publication midway through last year, my goals were not for world-domination, or thousands of adoring, paying subscribers. My goals in fact could be summarised, in the format of RoboCop, as follows:

Directive 1: Write about things that I wish I could read about myself.

Directive 2: Not charge anyone for reading the nonsense I put out.

Directive 3: Write and publish when I want to, not when I felt I had to.

None of those original goals assumed that anyone would actually read my articles, let alone care about them; I just wanted to write because it was fun and it started engaging a part of my brain that was dormant and made me feel awakened. I now get to write the kinds of articles I love reading, and I feel like I finally have a voice to say something. Nonetheless, after six months I’ve had people comment on what I write about, say they like it, and some people, strangely, keep coming back. It seems I need to add one more goal going forward:

Directive 4: Engage with my community.

So I have been thinking about where to take things with Late to the LAN Party, and have come to some conclusions that are not a million miles away from where I am today, yet will incorporate some small additions.

Firstly, after thinking hard about schedules, I’ve decided that I am happy as I am in that regard. I am not a video games journalist, I already have a full-time job, I’m a dedicated family figure, and I still consider this to be one of my new hobbies. I don’t want to take the fun out of that by enforcing deadlines on myself. I am prone to going all-in of something to my eventual detriment, and it will ultimately lead to me feeling it become a burden, not a joy. Looking back through my old posts, despite sometimes having the feeling that I don’t contribute enough, it seems I have been more consistent with publishing than I thought; at least two posts a month since I started, sometimes more. That feels like a level of consistency that I’m happy with, even if no-one knows when those posts appear. So, that will not change; I will post when I’m in the mood to and I feel it is good and ready.

What I think will change though is a new type of post - this one, in fact - giving a preview of what I’m thinking of writing about in the coming months. Another excellent point Cat made is that some people here may not engage with Substack notes, only posts. This led me to the idea of writing an “update” post throughout the year, listing suggested articles I’m willing to write about - though not a guarantee! I think this might give my other reader a sneak peek into my thought process and show that I am still here and planning to stick around even if I seem quiet sometimes. This might also give myself a bit of structure and not sit on drafts for ages - because that has happened!

Without further ado, here are some ideas I want to get started on in the next few months:

• Musing about how the narrative works in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

• After looking deep into the “vania” side of “metroidvania” with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, it is time for a retrospective on my all time favourite game - Super Metroid. I have actually been sitting on a draft for months, but now I realise I need to redo it and split it into parts to make it more digestible.

• Another retrospective follow-up - after Sonic 2, I think it is time to focus on the next adventure, Sonic 3 & Knuckles (with all-new “Lock-On” technology!) I enjoyed the research part of the Sonic 2 post, so I hope to learn some new facts again with this one.

• I want to attempt something different with my writing, and expand on the topics I cover to venture slightly beyond video games. I have been watching Arcane: League of Legends on Netflix, and I feel there is something I want to say about it. This one might take me some time to get right...

• Finally, I’ve been shocked to discover that I’m obsessed with the music in Super Mario Wonder. So, I shall attempt to use words to describe a wonderful (pun intended) audio experience. What could go wrong?

Are any of these guaranteed? No. When will they appear? Don’t know. Will I change my mind? Possibly.

I would like it to be known that these are not hard and fast ideas or rules, though they are ones I want to think and write about. Plans change, of course, and maybe new ideas may come into my head in the coming months. I just thought this would be beneficial to you (and, to some extent, me) as a rough guide of what to expect. And then a new Late Update post will appear, with more random ponderings and suggestions for the future. Repeat.

Whilst planning out new posts, I’ve also spruced up Late to the LAN Party with a better theme and updated welcome emails and about pages. Not a new logo yet though; I lack the artistic skill to pull that off and would rather not rely on AI to do it. So shoddy clipart will have to do for now.

At the moment though, I still have other hobbies beyond writing too, which also demands my limited free-time. I’m currently doing another playthrough of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Also, my teenage children actually want to do things with me that I enjoy for once, so who am I to deny that? My son and I have started watching Stranger Things from the very beginning, since I have shamefully never seen it. And, after recommending Arcane to my eldest daughter, I’m re-watching it again with her. She is a fantasy fan, wanted a story not just about good vs evil, and was intrigued by the animation and art style. After watching episode 3 and immediately saying “one more episode”, I knew she was hooked. Plus it includes strong female characters who punch really hard! All this is me saying I’ll get around to new posts soon, when I find the time.

Most importantly, I want to start thinking about this little corner of the internet I’ve somehow built up. At the moment I try to like, comment and restack anything I see which I think deserves it; it makes me happy when I see other people’s works get more eyes on it. There may be other ways I can cultivate my little community though, these update posts being one of them.

Thanks for reading. I should probably go and write something proper now.

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The Argos catalogue is one of the things I credit to me not buying many material possessions for myself.

For those of you not from the UK, I should probably backtrack and explain. Argos is a superstore here in my country where, instead of displaying items in the store, you would peruse a large, thick catalogue. You could buy many things from there - home, garden, jewellery, electronics - but as a child I was only, obviously, interested in one section; toys and games. The idea was you would locate what you wanted from the catalogue, jot down the order number on a little slip of paper, then hand it over to the cashier to pay and get a queue number to wait. Then the staff would enter the back into what seemed like an impossibly large warehouse of shelves (or it could have been another dimension, maybe Narnia?) and retrieve it for you. Was the Argos backstore bigger on the inside? It certainly seemed that way.

You were free, and encouraged, to take the catalogue home so you could flick through it at your leisure. These days they don’t exist since you can just search on the website instead. Before the internet existed though, this was how me and my sister could wile away the afternoon looking at all the cool stuff we could theoretically play with. Even so, for some reason I have not usually been effected by commercialism, never feeling like I needed to possess a lot of objects. And so, while looking through the catalogue at all the fun toys I wish I could have, a little voice in my head always said that it was always just wishful thinking, so I would just move on and forget about it. I don’t feel a lot of pressure to get the must-have items that a lot of people crave, even if they do pique my interest. Even today, I can quite easily step into a shop and buy absolutely nothing. I am a salesperson’s worst nightmare.

The one exception to this are the video game storefront sales, like Steam. Even then I can still hold out, reasoning that I already own too many games that I haven’t played yet, and that the sales will come around again in cycles so I’m not actually missing out on anything, it’s just sales psychology making me think I must buy now. Still, it has been several years since I caved and went “why not”. So this year I felt like treating myself, for various reasons which I will explain in due course. Are you interested in what I purchased?

Note: all prices I write down from here on out are in British Pounds.

Did Someone Say “Rougelite”?

First, on the Nintendo Switch, I got a triumvirate of games based on the recommendations of and courtesy of Supergiant Games - Bastion, Transistor and Hades. These had been sitting on my wishlist for many years, meaning I was always aware and interested in them. But it took Oya’s series of articles about Supergiant Games to finally push me over the edge. All of these were at such a low price - Bastion and Transistor under £4 each, Hades only under £7 - that it seemed like the time had come to properly consider them and see what they were like.

Bastion and Transistor I’m interested in because they seem like action RPGs that are not too long nor too short, with what I’ve heard are excellent stories. Hades grabs my attention for being uttered in the same vein and another popular genre I seem to have missed out on - the rougelite. Perhaps it is my old age, previous genre staples or the idea that a game does not really end that has had me a bit on the fence until now, but I’ve been wary of trying out randomised gameplay loops because I like the idea of “finishing” games, and rougelites never seem to fit into that category. Progression to me has usually felt like keeping track of items and stats to move forward, not resetting from the beginning each time I fail. Still, I don’t remember actually completing many retro games as a child, always hitting a wall somewhere, and still enjoying them. Plus, Hades seems like one of the best examples of its genre. I thought it was time to see what everyone else sees in it.

Speaking of rougelites that never end, I also picked up Dead Cells on my Switch too. This was another game I have liked the look of for years, and yet again one I kept thinking “what if I don’t like it though?” What has attracted me to it is the visual style, the dungeon-crawler aspect of finding items and traversing a castle, even if it is a randomised one. I like the idea of finding more and more powerful items and artefacts, with higher numbers and splashy graphics and effects. I have watched this game go on 50% discount for many years and kept putting it off. This time I took the plunge to see what this rougelite genre is actually about.

These four games I decided to get on the Switch, despite being available (and possibly cheaper) elsewhere because these indie games seem more suited to being portable if I wanted to undock my Switch. Hades and Dead Cells, in particular, seem to me that they are good for shorter bursts of gameplay, then you can put it down - that is just my theory of course, I’ve yet to prove that. Nonetheless, the Switch feels like a platform ideally suited to some indie games.

Steam Powered

Over on the PC platform, I had a look over at Ol’ Faithful, the Steam Winter Sale, and came away with some additional games too.

First of all, a classic and obvious one - Doom and Doom II. It is such a popular game that is has been ported to many consoles, and then gadgets which have no right to play games (tractors and pregnancy tests, anyone?), and has been played by everyone on the planet. And yet, my memory of Doom is only playing the shareware version on Windows 95, the first episode of levels. I can definitely remember E1M1, especially the music, the rest not so much. I’m imagining that this will be good to play in quick spurts here are there in between other tasks, like writing posts for this Substack. And since it only cost around £3, it seemed silly to ignore that much content.

The next game I bought was another classic in a completely different genre. I have never played a JRPG before, only dabbled in them. Like rougelites, it was a genre I was unsure I would like or not, given that roleplaying games typically are turn-based, whereas I’ve usually played action games. When other people talk about Final Fantasy, I just politely nod along with them. I thought it was time to put aside preconceptions and go with one of the most loved JRPGs, Chrono Trigger. Having never played it, I’m still fully aware of it’s legacy and credentials and am interested to see if I can play through the story and understand the tactical battles. If I like this one, I may then consider some of the Final Fantasy games afterwards.

Finally, I rounded out the sale with two indie titles that came into my radar this year simply by reading recommendations from my fellow Substackers: Grandma, No! and Metro Gravity. Grandma, No! reminded me of Octodad - cartoonish, silly, bizarre, funny and intentionally over the top. Since I liked Octodad, I was willing to give this a try. I cannot remember how I came across Metro Gravity, yet something about the trailers caught my eye. The graphics look very PS1 era, yet it’s the gravity bending gameplay which I think looked the most interesting part. I have no idea if these two games are good or not, or whether I will enjoy them, but I’m willing to try more indie games this coming year, since they are a well of untapped games I would never have thought of looking into before now.

Honourable Mention

My white-whale of PlayStation gaming... Horizon Zero Dawn. I had actually purchased this in 2018 for my PS4 and it has been sitting idle, waiting patiently to be played. The problem with Horizon Zero Dawn, an open-world game, is that I already have two other open-world games on the go still to finish - The Witcher 3 and Tears of the Kingdom. I only have so many hours in my life, and a third overtly large game seemed like too much. However, after listening to some recommendations that it really is worth trying, I will find a time to start this and see what I think. So I upgraded this copy to Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and will (eventually) try it out.

A Change in Outlook

Surprisingly, despite going on a spending spree, these nine games I purchased in a few days still amount to less that a current day, triple-A game. So I think me waiting for years has paid itself off. This has not made much of a dent in my wishlists, though I was deliberate in what I chose to purchase this year, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I wanted to experience what rougelites are actually like. Parts of their gameplay loops have put me off just from their descriptions, and yet they seem extremely popular; I feel like I’m missing or misunderstanding something, so I wanted to dip my toe into this genre. The same with JRPGs, another popular genre that has completely bypassed me but, with a little dedication, I could probably find myself interested in.

If I have learnt anything from the Substacks I’ve followed this past year, is that games are not just from the big publishers. There are so many indie and self-published games covering more than you could imagine. My horizons have really broadened a lot thanks to people like , and , so I’m resolving this upcoming year to be more open and look into more indie games - I might find something I like.

Finally, going back to the eternal debate I have with myself of owning too many games and not having enough time to play them, I’m trying to change my relationship with how I play games. I am a completionist by nature and love ticking things off a mental checklist to feel the satisfaction of finishing a job. Yet games have sometimes felt like another “job” to complete at their worst, stacked on top of more life and work. I want games to be fun, not to feel like an afterthought. Something that mentioned recently was to not worry about your backlog, let your mood dictate what you want to play today. That’s why, even though I now own more games than I could possibly complete, I’m trying to not think about these as a backlog of games, but as a library of games I own; one I can look through whenever I feel satisfied and go “I’ll play that one today”. It will be quite a mental shift for me, but one I think will be beneficial.

What do you think? Did you succumb to the sales like I did? If so, what did you get a good deal on? I’d love to hear about it below. And when I finally get around to playing all these games, I might venture a proper opinion on them.

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I have to admit, I don’t often have that feeling at Christmas anymore. I understand, as a parent, that it’s not really about me, it’s about the happiness my own children’s experience. Plus, video games these days don’t quite have the same allure being presents that they used to; it’s hard to unwrap a download key and wait four hours to download gigabytes of data, patches and updates nowadays. Back in the day (remember, I’m in my rocking chair here) we used to have game boxes, cover art to admire, screenshots on the reverse, something physical to hold and feel an attachment to.

Which is why this post looks back on some of the video games I got for Christmas when I was a child. I’m sure games factored into a lot of past Christmas years, but these are a few that I have strong memories of.

Sonic Chaos

As The History of Sega, written by the great , has verified for me, there was quite a long period in the UK where the 16-bit Sega Mega Drive and the 8-bit Sega Master System lived in harmony, with an overlap of several years. While I may have yearned to own the Mega Drive, I did possess and use the little brother Master System for quite a while. The Sonic the Hedgehog games were fast, colourful, exciting, and exactly what I wanted... on the console I didn’t yet have. Master System players didn’t entirely lose out though; they had their own, unique versions of Sonic, slightly more cut-down to fit the 8-bit limitations. This meant they were not quite as fast, not quite as complex in their level design, yet had their own charm to them.

Sonic Chaos was released in 1993 and the game I asked for at Christmas time. The previous two games had to make some compromises and had different gameplay ideas which seemed a little odd compared to their 16-bit versions. However, Sonic Chaos I was excited for. Finally, they had loop-the-loops! And corkscrew turns! And the “Spin Dash Attack”! Plus Sonic CD’s “Super Peel Out” speed boost move for added effect! Most importantly, Tails was now a playable character! And he could fly!

So excited was I, in fact, that after opening all my other presents I dutifully went up to my bedroom, unplugged my Master System, carried it with cables and controllers downstairs to the living room where the big family CRT TV lived, plugged it in, and played Sonic Chaos whilst ignoring the rest of my family. I remember it felt wonderful.

Christmas NIGHTS Into Dreams

During December of 1996, me and my sister stayed with my Grandma for a weekend while my parents went away. During this weekend, I convinced my Grandma to take us into the city centre of Bristol to look in the shops, so I could find a very particular item - Christmas NIGHTS into Dreams.

The main NIGHTS into Dreams game was a rather unusual, esoteric game. Marketing tried to compare it as Sega’s answer to Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 - it absolutely wasn’t similar at all. You played as NIGHTS, a sort of dreamland court jester who flew through dreamscapes under a time limit through four courses, trying to score as high as possible, before encountering the end of level nightmare boss. It was unique, bizarre, and tied heavily to SEGA’s history of score-attack, arcade-like games. It even produced the Sega Saturn 3D Controller as a result, allowing you to more fluidly control NIGHTS in the air.

So what was Christmas NIGHTS into Dreams, then? Imagine the same game except cut down from six levels to just two. Now imagine those two levels have been redecorated with a Christmas theme - snow, trees, presents, bells and so on - and NIGHTS now wears a fetching red and white outfit instead of purple. It was effectively a mixture of demo and DLC before DLC officially existed. And the disc came free as a demo on the cover of the official Sega Saturn magazine, which I went on the hunt for in newsagents that weekend in December. I found it, then spent the rest of the weekend reading the magazine for news until my parents returned so I could play it at home.

The game was slightly more than a demo though, some unique features were added. At the end of each level, you would play a memory matching game to earn presents, which would unlock special extra features. These could include the music player, time attack and link attack modes, and - the best cameo a Sega Saturn fan could ask for at the time - a version where you played as Sonic in 3D! The game also used the Saturn’s internal clock to adjust the backgrounds and themes based on the time of year. Christmas was rather obvious, but you could also have New Years NIGHTS, Valentines Day, and April Fool’s Day.

Christmas NIGHTS into Dreams was an interesting curio for me as I look back on it. It seemed strange that SEGA would have gone out of their way to develop this as a semi-extension of the original NIGHTS. However, since I enjoyed NIGHTS on the Saturn, I was happy to receive this free present from them.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Also known as: The Big One.

Maybe you don’t look at 3D Legend of Zelda games as anything special now, since there are so many. There was a time, though, that Link adventuring through 3D was a big deal. When the Nintendo 64 released in 1996 and Super Mario 64 floored everyone with how good 3D games could be, there was one more thing to look forward to: seeing Link and Zelda transition to the third dimension too. It took several more years for that to happen, with quite a few delays. Yet everything shown before the final release promised something truly special. A real, living world, where the sun rose and set according to a day-night cycle. Where the world seemed so big that Link required a horse to ride across it. An adventure that was truly going to feel epic and real. Even myself, who had played nothing but SEGA consoles up until that point, knew that The Legend of Zelda in 3D was going to be huge, enormous.

The rest of the world knew that too. Released in November 1998, it was primed to be the big Christmas seller that year. Having recently purchased my Nintendo 64 to play Goldeneye and wanting to fill up my library more, I asked my parents if I could get Ocarina of Time that Christmas. I wasn’t hopeful though. Of course I wanted to own it, yet I knew that it was going to be extremely popular and most likely sold out. Add the fact that my parents were not exactly knowledgeable about video games, and I silently chose to accept my fate: it was unlikely to impossible that I would be unwrapping Ocarina of Time that Christmas.

Which made Christmas Day 1998 all the more special to me... Don’t ask me how, but my mum had somehow managed to get me a copy! A genuine copy too, the real deal! I can genuinely say it was the best Christmas present I’ve ever received, because I knew my mum must have gone to a lot of trouble to find it for me. I thanked her for it in the only logical way possible: by hiding myself in my bedroom for a week playing it almost non-stop.

Since my history of video games only really focused on SEGA consoles and games up to that point, I had never played a Zelda game before; everything was new to me. I loved the way the game was structured, the feeling of taking part in a world-spanning adventure, even more so when I travelled through time with adult Link seeing a possible future and trying to repair it. The then brand-new “Z targeting” system of locking onto enemies to focus on them during combat, the little side quests and secrets you could find, riding your trusty horse across the land... There are moments that are just special and remain in your memory, and this game was one of them.

How about you? What did you get for Christmas? I’d love to hear about your stories.

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Note: this post will contain some mild spoilers about the 2012 game Fez.

What if you could see the world from a whole new perspective? Not just something you hadn’t noticed before, but an entirely new physical point of view? That’s what happens to Gomez, the playable character in the 2012 game Fez, who dons a rather jaunty fez after witnessing the breakup of his known universe to reveal something mind-bending.

The game starts like any other day in Gomez’s life. Wake up in his perfectly flat, 2D village, talk to some of the inhabitants, climb up to the top, and talk to a mysterious stranger who speaks of an adventure. At this point, Gomez witnesses something truly unique; a third dimension, and is given a new hat to wear, allowing him to rotate the world 90 degrees at a time. Unfortunately, this also seems to destabilise the entire universe, causing a funny glitching effect which makes it look like the game has locked up.

Instead, the game “reboots” and Gomez wakes up again in his village. Back to carrying on about his day, talking to the villagers, go around the corner of that building, climb up... Hang on. Go around the corner? How is that possible? It seems that beyond the usual x and y axis, a new “z axis” has appeared.

This changes everything, because now you can go around buildings and structures and realise that there is something behind the flat structure you used to know. Maybe a doorway to a new region, maybe a chest, maybe something secret. The game allows you to rotate around Gomez centrally 90 degrees at a time. In practice, this means that blocks and platforms that seemed far away at first may now appear right next to you. Or incomplete ladders suddenly become whole again. Or a dead end with no way forward suddenly produces a new path.

At it’s essence, there is not a lot to do in Fez. You can move, jump, rotate the world... and that’s mostly it. There are no enemies in Fez, no real sense of danger or fragility. You can’t even really die in this game; should you fall too far off a ledge, you’ll respawn immediately at the spot you last stood.

So why do I love this game so much?

Let’s start with the pacing. I played this game at a time when I was feeling a bit tired of games forcing me to progress by either winning a battle, or overcoming a dangerous obstacle, or facing a “win or fail” scenario. Most games are designed like this for a reason of course; you need a goal or objective, and some tension preventing you accomplishing it, to provide you with a sense of overcoming a challenge. This instils some pride that you faced a challenge and succeeded, and makes you feel like you could face the next challenge and beat that too.

Fez doesn’t have that, which I found refreshing from the types of games I’d normally play. It was pleasant to not face death or mortal peril over and over again. The only real obstacle to me was not progressing any further; it was therefore a very relaxing game to play.

Although, if you need something to aim for and nothing is really preventing you from achieving it, why isn’t Fez boring? Instead of action, peril or reflexes, Fez asks you to solve puzzles in the world to locate cubes. Collect enough cubes to rebuild the one you saw at the beginning of the game to rebuild it, and restore order to the universe from chaos. Finding the cubes are not always obvious though, and rely on you navigating the now new 3D world to understand it’s geometry and be aware of space - and how it can be manipulated. So part of the reason I find Fez relaxing yet I still want to be driven forward is because of the puzzle solving, and understanding the world around me in a logical fashion. It also meant I could easily jump in and out of the game whenever I felt like it. I played on the Nintendo Switch, which was perfect for me when I could sit down for maybe 20 - 30 minutes, take a leisurely stroll through a region and find a few more cubes during a session.

Another reason the game kept drawing me in was the sense of mystery it exuded. There is very little guidance included in the game besides some very basic points on the controls and initially understanding the 3D rotating mechanic. So a lot of your understanding of the game must come from you experiencing it yourself. You will encounter strange obelisks, structures which suggest a civilisation which pre-dates Gomez’s history, warp gates to new locations, and so on. You’ll also encounter a ciphered alphabet to a lost language, and the game’s equivalent of Morse code, providing sequences of button presses you can accomplish to uncover more cubes - so long as you understand the code. None of this is explained to you in the game, yet by simply observing carefully and having some patience, it is possible to discover these secrets yourself. Or, by now so many years after initial release, you could look up the answers that many other fans have carefully documented. Still, the fact that secrets are baked directly into the game is another reason I enjoyed it; the feeling of uncovering something that seemed lost but is now found also works as a game driver. It was one of the earliest games I played which required me to take some notes along the way, something I actually enjoyed doing, like an explorer noting places and points of interest.

Even better, when you get to the end of the game, and assuming you found all the cubes, you realise... (sorry, minor spoilers) you’ve only completed half of the universe cube. There are just as many more to discover on a second playthrough. This time is when paying attention to the world and secrets really becomes important. Meaning you need to learn the ancient alphabet, you need to learn the ciphered instructions for sequences to find more cubes, you need to think even further outside of the box. You even get to discover secrets at a particular time of day.

And you will get to achieve that at a nice, gentle pace. With pleasing visuals harkening back to pixel art yet in 3D, and a calm, synthetic soundtrack by Disasterpiece, I just felt quite happy being drawn (slowly) into Gomez’s world. Sometimes I thought that I should maybe try and work a bit faster, my action-game instincts kicking in slightly. In the end though, I just let the game wash over me, I took my time, and I felt calm and relaxed all the time I played it.

Sometimes it’s just nice to absorb a game and wonder, literally, what’s around the corner.

Thanks for reading this shorter than usual post, about a game that is now over 10 years old. If you have any comments, add them below.

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With the announcement of a remake of the original Halo, I have suddenly become a lot more interested in Halo than I have been in recent years. Halo: Combat Evolved (the original) was one of the best games I played on the original Xbox decades ago. This news has led me to consider my opinions on what I think about the upcoming Halo: Campaign Evolved (the remake).

So this post is a bit of a mixture - part retrospective on why I loved the original, part personal story about why it matters so much to me, and part opinion on where I hope the remake takes us. I may discuss minor spoilers about the original game, though I will try to not dwell too much on ruining the story. This has also turned out to be quite a lengthy post, so I hope that is not too off-putting.

Like the remake, let’s start at the beginning - what is Halo?

The Silent Cartographer

If you want to understand what Halo: Combat Evolved is like to play, there is no better vertical slice than the demo that was released way back when the original Xbox came out. I cannot remember if the demo was released via magazines - it was a distinct possibility - but it was definitely playable in sales kiosks in shops, which was how I experienced Halo initially. The demo was the entire fourth chapter in the campaign, called “The Silent Cartographer”.

This one section of the story demonstrates everything great in the game. Initially you are dropped by airship into a battlefield on a beach, where you’ll immediately encounter the enemy troops, called the Covenant. They are not one species, but a collection of different alien species with distinct attributes and combat strategies. Grunts, as the name suggests, are the simple cannon fodder; always willing to charge into battle without much forethought, yet will run away scared when the tables turn. Jackals use hand shields to protect themselves and fire pot-shots at you. Hunters are enormous hulking beasts, fully armoured except for a few small weak points; also packing a mighty punch and a powerful arm cannon. Finally, the Elites are your counterparts; fierce, intelligent warriors that are more than a match against you, commanding the lesser troops on the battlefield.

The first thing you realise is that all these enemy types are grouped together in different formations and combinations, forcing you to strategize as you go, locate weaknesses, and understand how to manage the different combination of enemies with the terrain and weapons you have. Even then, they show a surprising amount of intelligence; they will flank you, charge at you, and seem to adapt to the battles as they progress. You are not alone, however, as you often have the help of human troops to fight with you. Sometimes they may get in the way, but they are there to even things out. And back in 2001, it was rare to see this level of real-time war games; large groups of soldiers fighting each other just like skirmishes should. To allow these larger battles, the areas you encountered were far larger than anything we had seen before; some of the corridor-style mentality of shooters like Doom remained, yet there were many large, open areas for you to use as your literal sandbox; large enough to play and experiment in, yet still constrained enough to not feel lost or overwhelmed.

With wide open spaces, you’ll need efficient ways of traversing them, leading to another innovation: vehicles, and vehicular combat. Perhaps earlier games introduced vehicles too, yet Halo really made them feel good and worthwhile. A combination of human and alien vehicles could be used, also with their own attributes. Tanks, hover bikes, even ones that flew. The standout and most iconic though would be the Warthog, a human built jeep that would fit a driver, side passenger, and tail gunner with a chaingun. Having additional troops fill up the seats and letting you tear down the terrain felt really special, even if the game AI wasn’t always the best at helping you out in these situations. The vehicles also had a unique feel to them; not like a racing game, but felt very floaty and odd to control initially. Once you understood how they functioned though, players had a lot of fun just experimenting with them and seeing how far they could be pushed - sometimes literally.

Finally, the Silent Cartographer is a nice introduction to the lore of Halo. You are clearly standing in a natural environment, with beaches, trees, grassy hills, and running water. Yet look at the distant horizon - why is the ground curving up into the sky? Look all the way up and you see the entire ringworld ascend and come back around behind you. Surely someone - or something - created this gigantic world, but who, how, or why? Progress further into the island you’ve landed in and you start to see the ancient, yet oddly futuristic, structures that descend deeper underground. All the worldbuilding adds to your own goals and missions, along with the Covenant’s, with both sides trying to answer the same question from different perspectives - what is Halo?

The rest of the campaign follows these same core concepts to a conclusion. You’re given mission briefings and immediate goals by your AI companion - and part-time narrator - Cortana, where you will progress from battle to battle, uncovering more of the mysteries of Halo whilst trying to stop the Covenant at the same task. Each firefight will make you consider quick-thinking strategy, with each one introducing a few more variables to increase with difficulty the deeper into the story you get. Halfway through the game, a new, deadlier enemy type enters the picture - The Flood, a zombie/parasitic enemy that only wants to consume, human or Covenant alike. The Flood are not intelligent, compared to you or the Covenant, yet greatly outnumber both sides and have one aim - charge and attack. This will mix up the proceedings greatly, as now there are three-way battles that must be encountered, or even used to your advantage if you’re clever.

Halo also made some key changes and innovations that had not really existed before in first person shooters up to that point. Since the game was designed for the Xbox console in mind, rather than the PC with more precise mouse controls, instead the dual-analog setup of one stick for movement, one stick for aiming ended up becoming the standard going forward - for many game genres in fact. Instead of having to manage a large inventory of weapons and items, you were instead limited to holding and managing two weapons at a time, plus a stash of grenades (the plasma “sticky” grenades in particular were a highlight, and much fun to use). And finally, while it was possible to find health kits to regain health, a super-soldier such as the Master Chief had a new trick up his gauntlet - a recharging protective shield. So long as you could find enough cover and time to recharge the shield, you could take as much damage as you wanted and still live to fight another day. Yet the Covenant Elite also had recharging shields, adding a nice, balanced “cat and mouse” situation of which would break first, particularly when surrounded by multiple Elites.

Being a launch title for the original Xbox, Halo did have a few flaws present, yet I and many others found most of them to be perfectly manageable and not really a detriment. Since the game had to be rushed to launch, a fair criticism is that the last third of the game replays levels you have already progressed through, but this time backwards, as you journey back the way you came. Repeating levels could be considered a bit lazy, or a design shortcut at least, yet I was not too bothered by them; even if backtracking, introducing The Flood meant that the combat encounters at least were different and more complex to navigate. What about only being able to use two weapons at a time? That was also fine, because the ground would end up being littered with weapons after the Master Chief made short work of the Covenant, allowing you to swap weapons easily based on the situation you were in. How about the somewhat wonky physics, especially for the vehicles? True, they took some getting used to, yet it also didn’t stop people having fun playing around and seeing how far they could explode their Warthog jeep - a common pastime apparently, according to videos posted online. And The Library, a mid-story level which was just an never-ending slog through layers of identical corridors and nothing but The Flood to fight against? Well... Halo had other good points to make up for that.

Nonetheless, for anything that the game didn’t do as well at, Halo got a lot of things right from the outset. And a great, memorable game is one where it may misfire in some ways and still be fun to play. Halo introduced an extremely fun gameplay loop - attack, defend, maneuver - that was far more balanced than you would expect. The situations you encountered felt very freeform compared to previous games in the era, letting you experiment and play and try different ideas. The story itself was also very engaging - aiming to be an epic sci-fi adventure, yet restrained just enough to remain focused on the core characters and goals. In fact, I would argue that Halo: Combat Evolved is the purest form of Halo, which further sequels would only keep adding to (not always in a good way). And while I have not yet mentioned the multiplayer, since my personal experience did not extend that far, for a time it was the hot LAN party game to play if you connect enough Xboxes together to produce 16 player matches - only improved exponentially when Halo 2 introduced online play via the then new Xbox Live service.

Pillar of Autumn

It’s all very well saying a game was great, but usually nostalgia kicks in for more reasons than just it being technically competent. The reason why we have such attachment to particular games (or anything really) is because of the surrounding events at the time we play them. For me, Halo was the killer app for choosing to get an Xbox after my Nintendo 64. I wasn’t interested in the multiplayer or LAN parties, but I did enjoy the demo of “The Silent Cartographer” and enjoyed the rest of the single player story. In particular, I really enjoyed the fact that you could play the entire story co-operatively with your friend sitting next to you, ignoring the fact that the story clearly states there is only one remaining super-soldier left.

2001 was not just the year Halo was released, it was also the year I started my degree at university.

I hated university.

Studying for the degree itself - that was fine. I had chosen to study Computer Science which would lay out my career as a software developer, which I’m still doing today. The learning part, that was easy; it was a subject that particularly suited me and, without trying to brag, I naturally leaned towards it with my technically focused mind. Everything else about the student life though... that was what made me miserable. The sudden jump from teenager to early adulthood, the change in every one of my life routines now that I had moved away from home, having to meet entirely new people on my own with no familiarity... When I learned a few years ago I could possibly be neurodivergent, it all made sense, but nearly 25 years ago I just felt completely lost, alone, isolated and not sure why I didn’t seem to understand how this new life path was going to work for me. I learned early on at university that I did not seem to fit into any social group, so I ended up closing myself off to everyone and just focused on the work instead.

This isn’t a sob-story though, this is just background context, because there was one highlight during those years which I could look forward to. My childhood best friend, who had moved away some years prior to a new city, was now only a 30 minute train ride away from where I lived. This meant, using my newfound “adulting” powers, I could organise weekend trips to visit him, stay over, and play video games with him. He had a PS2 so Metal Gear Solid 2 was a favourite of ours, yet we also played Halo co-operatively, and these were some of the best moments I had during those normally unhappy years.

A short sidebar before I continue... During my A-Levels (16 - 18 years old), me and my friends would organise Goldeneye and Perfect Dark play sessions in the common room at school using my Nintendo 64. We would get the caretaker to wheel out the school TV (a very large CRT one at the time), while I would bring the Nintendo 64, controllers and games. Given the Nintendo 64’s nicely compact size, I was able to fit into my backpack: one Nintendo 64 console, all the cables, two controllers, a multitude of game cartridges, and then have plenty of space leftover.

During university, when I took the train to visit my friend to the next city over, I would do something similar. I would fit the Xbox console into my backpack... and that’s it! The original Xbox was absolutely huge, so big that it took up every inch of my bag alone, just about zipping up. I then had to take a second carry bag for the power brick, cables, controllers, games - oh, and a few clothes for a stayover. Carrying the Xbox around via shoulder straps was also not a fun experience, since it was not just big but heavy too. Criticise the Nintendo 64 all you want, but you can’t fault it’s portability as a party machine.

Never mind though, because it really felt worth it to me. Halo was a great game with engaging gameplay, but the co-operative play with my friend really exemplified that. Now I could experiment with combat scenarios with my best friend, working together like teammates towards a common goal, helping him when he was overwhelmed by the enemy, him driving the Warthog while I took the tailgunner position. The gameplay alone would have cemented Halo as being one of the greats in my history of played games, yet tying it so personally to my situation to produce a happier outcome in my life, even briefly, means Halo will always be special to me, no matter what anyone else’s opinion of the game is.

Truth and Reconciliation

And so, nearly 25 years later, the original Halo returns as a remake. What to make of this...

My first reaction was happiness that something I recognised was returning, mixed with some cynicism. I’m 25 years older now (ahhh!), meaning I have a far better understanding of how the game industry and business in general works. After many years of Microsoft and it’s studio custodians making mistake after mistake with the Halo franchise, promising the moon and delivering buggy products that are fixed over the span of years, why should I not see Halo: Campaign Evolved as anything but a chance to wring more money out of us? Does the franchise even mean much to people anymore, or has it been run too much into the ground? Maybe I’m also part of the problem - the news triggered just enough of a reaction out of me to actually dream about buying it when it is released (on my PS5 no less!), meaning I would be part of the masses which fall into the remake/remaster trap; just build the same products over and over again, and consumers will buy them, profits will follow!

I am also wary of the track record of Halo Studios (previously 343 Industries). I haven’t actually played a Halo game since Halo 2, however I have been following the history of the franchise with interest. My understanding is that the games developed by Bungie, the original creators, were much loved, while Halo 4 onwards, developed by 343i/Halo Studios, devolved into stranger and stranger messes. The Master Chief Collection - the first four Halo games brought into one collection - was delivered in such a bad state that it apparently took years to rectify most of them. The direction that the latter Halo games took also did not seem to gel with their audience, trying to reach loftier goals and be even more epic in scope that the previous. And Halo Infinite, released after a drawn out development cycle of many years and hoping to be a “forever” game to be continually updated, ended up being not quite as infinite as the name implied, with active support now ending four years after release. The one thing that personally saddened me in particular though was their lack of commitment to co-operative play. Time and time again I would check to see if it would return, only to hear false promises followed by outright rejection saying that co-operative play (as in local co-op, not online) is not important enough to warrant their attention. I’m sure that online multiplayer is a big part of the Halo experience of course, it’s just not the experience I wanted - my Halo experience allowed me to sit next to my friend so we could enjoy it together. And so I’ve drifted further and further away from the franchise as a result.

Although... With Halo: Campaign Evolved I can see some practical applications of lessons learned. For starters, it is being built in the Unreal Engine. Admittedly, every game seems to now be built with the Unreal Engine, though that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Halo Infinite was built using an in-house engine where no-one actually knew how it worked, given the high turnover of contractor developers. Building your tools and the game at the same time requires a lot of determination, skill, project co-ordination and luck to produce a good end result, none of which have been demonstrated in the past. Unreal Engine is at least proven technology, removing one of the key hurdles to building a game. It also means it becomes easier to build your game for multiple platforms, producing the most eye-opening bullet point of the project - the first introduction of Halo not in a Microsoft ecosystem, it will actually be available on PlayStation too. It’s Sonic appearing on Nintendo consoles all over again!

This remake also only focuses on remaking the original Halo campaign; except for local and online co-operative play, that means no traditional multiplayer modes. I could understand that this would disappoint a lot of people, since their experience of Halo may be tightly bound to multiplayer. This does not affect me personally - I finally get co-operative play back! - but it does demonstrate something else key about this remake; Halo Studios have learned to constrain the scope of their ambitions. Traditionally, the studio have loved making everything bigger, better and all at once. Why not remaster one Halo game when you could remaster four, bundle them into a collection, and have all online components work flawlessly straight away? When building a new “forever” game with a 10 year lifespan, why not build a whole new engine from scratch, an open-world campaign, and a Fortnite competitor all at once?

The reason why is because your scope is now too large, unwieldy, and harder to actually deliver - it just doesn’t work, or if it does then you are the luckiest studio on the planet. What Halo: Campaign Evolved tells me is that, for once, this is a rather focused package. Adjust to using a new, proven technological foundation, deliver a campaign that (in my opinion) had the best story without alienating a new audience, add a few new embellishments, deliver on platforms that expand your audience reach, and leave it at that. It may not produce the most ambitious game ever, but it will at least deliver a game that should work.

I’ll close by saying that everything I’ve read about Halo: Campaign Evolved has left me feeling cautiously optimistic... though still cautious. I’ve learned many times over that hype does not lead to success, so it is best to adopt a “wait and see” approach. However, I will be keeping an eye on further news of this remake. The one thing that keeps me hopeful is what captured me in the first place. 25 years ago, I sat next to my best friend and we created shared experiences together. 25 years later, that friend and I have drifted apart, as we all do. Yet I host a regular games night with another friend now who likes playing co-op games. Best of all, I now have a 15 year old child who is at the perfect age for being introduced to Halo from the beginning. I can see it now, how me and my son can bond over something like this; me the old-timer, him the rookie, both looking for the joy of playing together.

That is what Halo means to me - playing with your best friend, together. I hope they bring this back.

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I am an extremely cautious, risk-averse person. I always want to plan ahead in every situation I face, never happy until I feel comfortable knowing the lay of the land. The unknown is scary to me, because anything could happen; and if anything could happen, that is a lot of potential scenarios I haven’t accounted for. “What if...?” runs around the inside of my head a lot.

Faced with navigating the decaying forest of Nibel with Ori - a small, white, spirit creature and the main protagonist of Ori and the Blind Forest - I sense danger everywhere. And there are moments when it feels like nature wins over, because you are faced with what appears to be insurmountable odds. Pathways filled with many obstacles that could hurt you, the elements fighting against you. How could such a small creature save an entire forest and all life within it?

Nature, though, is neither kind nor cruel, just chaotic, and you must adapt quickly to survive. It is your adaptability which will be your saviour. I faced so many situations in this game, looking towards where I needed to be, and saying to myself “I can’t do that, that’s impossible”. And yet, like Ori, I took a deep breath, and leaped into the danger, trusting that a way would present itself. It always did, and each time I learned that it would be alright to not know everything, to believe in myself to adapt, survive, and, best of all, win.

Light of the World

Ori and the Blind Forest is a Metroidvania game, with a heavy emphasis on platforming. It was released in 2015 on many platforms; for my playthrough I played via Steam on my laptop. I also played the “Definitive Edition”, now considered the main version of the game, which provided some optional additional areas, abilities, and some minor adjustments to the game. I may refer to features in this game that are only in the “Definitive Edition”, so please be aware that your experience may have been different to mine.

The game starts with an emotional and gut-wrenching prologue, which you are an active participant of. In the forest of Nibel, a small spirit creature called Ori is lost during a storm from the great Spirit Tree and is found and adopted by another forest creature, Naru. Together they live peacefully throughout the seasons in the forest; collecting food, building a bridge together. One day, the Spirit Tree blazes with light and becomes extinguished. Naru attempts to care for Ori back in their cave home, but their food supply is dwindling, and the forest is dying, producing nothing more for them to eat. In an act of silent self-sacrifice, Naru gives the last of their food to Ori so that they may continue on. Whilst attempting to look for more food themselves, Ori finds one final fruit and races back home, excited, to offer it to Naru; only to find that she cannot be awoken, succumbing to starvation. With no reason to stay, Ori wanders alone in the dark forest, each step becoming harder and harder, until they too can go no further. This is when the Spirit Tree, in a final act of remaining strength, revives Ori and provides a spirit light called Sein, who will remain with you on your journey and act as your guide to restore light and life to the forest.

Apart from the small lump in my throat, the most obvious thing to stand out from this is the presentation; it is exceptionally beautiful to see in action. Gone are the days where games had to rely on repeating tilesets to build their environments - everything in this game looks unique and custom designed for each moment. The forest is also one continuous map with no loading screens or points where a new “section” may start or end - no doors like in Metroid or Castlevania. So the world you traverse does feel like a natural forest, a complete world. The use of colour is also something that stood out to me. The forest may be dying, but that doesn’t mean it looks completely dead. I found there tended to be one primary shade of colour used for each section - oranges, browns, greens, blues - which would be used judiciously in providing the tone of the area you were in. Then other colours would accentuate that, with a lot of luminous fungi and lanterns providing some variety. Moving at a fluid pace, it was gorgeous to behold.

The musical soundtrack should also not be ignored. If the sight of Ori losing her adoptive parent doesn’t tear you up, combining Gareth Coker’s score surely will. It is filled with some of the best music I’ve heard in a game, all underscored with simple melodies that make each of the songs memorable. The score is filled with moments of wistfulness at a forest and ecosystem slowly dying, but can easily switch modes to make you feel tense and fearful of a natural environment that is dangerous and something to be wary of, then switch modes again into taking action, confident and determined.

Fight or Flight

Playing as Ori, you will follow the typical gameplay style of a Metroidvania. Progression through the world will allow you to take pathways which you will not (yet) be able to continue down or overcome, until you find the correct ability from one of many Ability Trees - special, ancient trees that invoke the spirits of old and bestow Ori with new core skills. What I found interesting though is that this game does not really rely on combat. Ori can gain some offensive abilities, and there are certainly enemy creatures that can attack you. Yet the focus isn’t on acting offensive but rather being defensive and evasive. Ori is an extremely nimble character, but also slight compared to the rest of the forest and other creatures. There was a lot more platforming and navigating around the environment than I was expecting. However, I think that fits the theme of this game well - Ori is clearly the “prey” in a forest full of “predators”, so naturally your options when faced with danger would be more geared towards fleeing instead of fighting.

Since platforming is a key part of the gameplay, it’s a good thing that it feels very tight and precise. Ori really does scamper around with some real agility, which becomes enhanced with each new core ability discovered. When I got the wall jump, an early ability, it did not perform as I was expecting - instead of bouncing off a wall in the opposite direction, instead Ori bounces up the wall, just like I would imagine a squirrel to do. Again, perfectly in keeping with the theme of nature and animals.

The most unique ability though is called “Bash”, and it is a platforming ability I don’t think I’ve witnessed before, yet feels actually ingenious. “Bash” though doesn’t feel like the right word to me - “propel” might be better. If you encounter a lantern in mid-air, you can hold down a button and have a short window of slowdown of about a second or two, during which you can angle an arrow, let go and shoot off in that direction. This allows Ori to do some complex mid-air trajectories by flinging from lantern to lantern. That’s not all, because you can apply this to enemies and enemy projectiles too. It will actually become essential to master this, since you will end up using enemies as mid-air platforms to navigate tricky sections. Still not enough? Letting go of the bash button will fling you in a direction and an enemy projectile in the opposite direction. Using this to your advantage, you can then fling projectiles back at enemies, at crumbling walls to open secrets, or into pipes and portals to direct them through puzzle sections. This one skill, I felt, really opened up the possibilities of navigating around the world in a way I haven’t seen before; it felt like a genuinely new gameplay idea.

You will need to master all your traversal abilities too, because this is a serious platforming game that can become relentless and difficult. There are difficulty levels in this game - easy, normal, hard and one-life only - yet I feel that only benefits the amount of damage you are dealt and how much you can deal out. The difficulty levels cannot do anything about the level design itself, which can sometimes appear challenging at best and downright mean at worst. You see, this game will present you with a real test of your platforming skills, and usually requires many attempts at learning, failing, repeating, failing, repeating and finally succeeding to make progress.

A typical scenario might be for Ori to start from some safe ground before approaching spiky thorns along the floor and ceiling. What the game wants you to do is jump towards the spikes, straight into danger, and then double jump before you land, and then bash the lantern you now see to fling you closer to the wall, and then wall jump up the wall to get higher, and then use the enemy projectiles that are now hurtling towards you to stay in the air and dodge more spiky thorns, and then...

Towards the end of the game, this pattern of continually escaping danger by a hair’s breadth is pretty much all you’ll be doing, with the final area - Mount Horu, an active volcano with lava, fire, spikes and enemies everywhere - causing me many headaches with trying to stay as airborne as possible while avoiding death at every moment.

Let’s just say this can be a tough, challenging game. Yet it isn’t unfair. Every platforming encounter has been meticulously designed to be tough and push you out of your comfort zone just enough to make you initially think this cannot be done, only to very narrowly pull it off. Once you understand the pattern you need to follow, the feeling of finally getting to a safe area is actually quite exhilarating. Also, you have the unique ability to mark a save checkpoint anywhere in the world - a Spirit Link - so long as you have enough energy orbs in your possession. Dying, therefore, is not ideal but also swift and painless, taking you immediately back to the last Spirit Link you created, with no loading times. Due to my risk-averse nature, I used this judiciously to ensure I was always making progress and not backtracking too much on each failure. Even so, when I encountered the chase sequences - forced scrolling sections where you have no choice but to run, climb and get the hell out of danger’s way, usually whilst being chased by huge creatures or the environment flooding or crumbling around you - my stress levels were very high and it often took me many attempts to not panic and clear them. Going back to the theme of nature though, each time I succeeded, I did feel like I was facing adversity and, even better, overcoming it.

More Than Meets the Eye

You are not alone in the forest. Sein is a spirit that reminds me of one of the fairies from Zelda, who tends to provide the background context for the story as you progress. Gumon is a strange black, gangly creature who at first appears to be actively harming your attempts to restore the forest. Until, that is, you start to realise that he seems just as lost and alone as Ori is. Finally, there is always the towering, looming shadow of Kuro - an enormous bird similar to an owl, with a piercing stare and screech that screams death in an instant. You will face Kuro several times in the game, and these are the closest you will have to a boss battle. However, you cannot fight Kuro; just like in the natural world, a predator like Kuro will always hunt for prey like Ori, leading to tense scenarios of running and hiding until Kuro cannot reach you. Even though Kuro is domineering, and without revealing any spoilers, you will learn that even your tormentor is not the evil she is made out to be. As I explained at the beginning of this review, nature is neither kind nor cruel; everyone in this forest has their reasons for their behaviours, even the most dangerous.

This was an excellent Metroidvania, however it wasn’t a perfect one. If I had some gripes about it, they mostly related to the experience tree than games seem to commonly have these days. As well as capturing the core abilities like any good Metroidvania worth its salt would provide, you can also collect yellow orbs from defeated enemies until you collect enough for a skill point. These you can spend on the experience tree via three possible tracks - offense, defence and exploration.

My minor gripe with this - and experience trees in general - is that they never seem that useful to me. Sure, you can make your playthrough a bit easier by boosting your health, your attack ability, or adding more secret markers on your map. Yet the choice of which I go with first is hard for me always, since it forces me to decide which area I want to improve more first. Without knowing ahead on my first playthrough the most ideal strategy, this leaves me with some decision paralysis. Also, eventually I will have unlocked the entire tree before I reach the end of the game, so it won’t really matter how these minor upgrades occur; the idea of choosing how I enhance myself then ultimately seems pointless.

I can forgive that though except for a key flaw directly related to the experience tree. The definitive edition of the game introduced two new optional areas to explore - Black Root Burrows and Lost Grove - and with that, two new optional abilities - Dash and Light Burst. Aside from the fact these new abilities are only really useful in this optional area (you can use them anywhere in the forest, yet the levels are not designed with them in mind), the experience tree actually allows you to upgrade the Dash ability before you acquire it. When I unlocked the upgrade, I was initially confused why nothing I did seemed to trigger this Dash ability. Only some brief internet research explained to me that the order I completed things in was wrong. When you need to ask for assistance like that, that clearly becomes a game design flaw, and one I find really stands out, especially in a Metroidvania which is meant to neatly interlock abilities, progression and gameplay together. Nonetheless, this was the only main flaw I experienced.

Light of Nibel

This was not a light, breezy game for me to play. It really tested my platforming skills, the first time in many years. And there were moments, late in the game, when I questioned whether I would ever be good enough to continue, and was it worth the stress? After watching a few video playthroughs to take away the element of surprise, I finally overcame all the challenges, ran my final race away from Kuro, and restored light to the forest. The quest was long, arduous and filled with my failures - and yet I persevered and pushed onwards, and was rewarded. With the soundtrack’s final songs buoying me forwards, it really did feel like I achieved something, like maybe I was capable of playing “difficult” games. Even so, I think I need to choose a more relaxing game to play next time!

The themes of this game though tie neatly together. Nature, light and dark, the loss of hope and fighting to restore it. I really felt it was a game with a unique story. It was a challenging game, but that was because it had to be. It’s art style and music really enraptured me, and it pushed me to want to see the end. Ori and the Blind Forest is a mixture of puzzle solving via navigating your environment and action set pieces, forcing you to literally run for your life. Just like the “fight or flight” response, you feel a combination of stress, adrenaline and exhilaration in those moments. And it made me feel like even the tiniest creature, like Ori, could make a huge difference in the world, so long as they were determined to do so.

Thank you for reading, and maybe even following along with my Substack notes as I played through the game. If you have any thoughts about Ori and the Blind Forest, let me know in the comments.

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Even though I’m calling these the golden years, my glasses are not so rose-tinted as to blind me to some of Rare’s less favourable antics. The pace of work was long and extreme at Rare; I’m not sure how much the term “crunch culture” applies here, but the hours were certainly beyond what was reasonable. Starting at 8:30am prompt, a half hour lunch break, and usually finishing towards 10pm or later each day, the developers at the studio worked extremely hard. This work ethic came from the Stamper brothers themselves, who were notorious workaholics and worked harder than anyone else - they even only took half of Christmas Day off as holiday, it was reported. The Stamper’s philosophy was “a part time employee results in a part time game”. They hired many young, unattached, and - unfortunately to say, since it fits the stereotype - male developers. Not just because they were very talented, but that they could also count on them not really having a social life or family outside of work, encouraging them to hang around the barn at Twycross more often and working on something useful.

To balance this overwork culture out a little bit, the Stampers did seem to look after their employees well. Despite all the long hours everyone put in, if their games were successful - and, during this time period we’re covering, they all were - then Rare’s bonus scheme ended up being very lucrative. I’ve heard stories of company bonuses being able to afford cars and deposits for houses, that’s how much money we’re talking about - a far cry from the benefits I’m sure games developers get today. The GoldenEye team, producing one of the top selling Nintendo 64 games of all time with 8 million units worldwide, got Rolex watches, the same that James Bond would wear himself, one for each member of the team. These extras were used as incentives to help each developer drive towards producing a better game - not that they needed much help, since everyone who worked at Rare seemed to love doing what they did and had an inbuilt desire to make great games anyway, bonus or not. Still, I’m sure it all helped.

The Stampers also seemed to protect their employees a lot from the bureaucracy of the business at large. Teams at Rare took their time to build their games, sometimes even rebuilding them because they weren’t working out how the team had hoped. Deadlines seemed non-existent - which of course meant release dates kept getting pushed further and further back. Yet it didn’t matter, because the Stampers knew that building great quality games took time, and the end result would always be better than rushing them. So the Stampers ended up shielding their employees from the higher ups at Nintendo - particularly when having to explain why GoldenEye was going to be released three whole years after the film first hit cinemas - so that everyone could produce games at their best.

Nonetheless, heading towards the year 2000, employee turnover was starting to become more prominent, especially since people almost never quit Rare before then. As their success kept growing, the employees were starting to wonder why they should keep working at a relentless pace for another few years at a time to produce another smash hit that, ultimately, they would not own. Again, referring to the GoldenEye team, who produced one of their greatest releases, the rewards may have been especially generous, yet they still weren’t quite enough to some of the team members. So they decided to leave and start their own studios - Free Radical Design being a good example, makers of the Timesplitters series. The Stampers hated this, feeling like every employee who resigned was a personal betrayal to them, having invested so much into their careers as they saw it.

Another World

In Part 2, I touched on nearly all of the Nintendo 64 games that Rare produced. Except for one, because it was one that I didn’t play. No-one did, in fact, because it ended up being cancelled... in a fashion. Let’s go into what happened to Rare’s plans for their last, and most ambitious, Nintendo 64 game - Dinosaur Planet.

So far Rare had covered in their pantheon the well trodden genres of platformers, action games, fighting games, racing games, first person shooters, and... whatever Blast Corps was (smash-em-up?). However, the Nintendo 64 also happened to be the home of a beloved and historic game, called The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A game carefully crafted to combine action and an expansive adventure in a 3D world, the “Zelda-like” genre was one that Rare fancied also having a go at. Which led to me and other players being teased about a new game aiming for release on the Nintendo 64 around 2001, called Dinosaur Planet. Not only would it be the swansong for the Nintendo 64 as the GameCube approached, but it would be the culmination of Rare’s extensive technical and creative knowledge of the hardware up to that point.

Dinosaur Planet was meant to be a game where you played as two characters - Sabre the wolf and Krystal the fox - where they would travel through said planet of dinosaurs in an open world adventure. It would not just be expansive, but pushing the hardware to the limits. Extremely rich textures, day/night cycles, dynamic weather, fully voiced characters, all requiring the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak for additional memory to contain it all. It was also planned to be released on a 512-megabit (64MB) cartridge1 - the largest capacity for a Nintendo 64 game, only used by Conker’s Bad Fur Day and the port of Resident Evil 2. Images and snippets of information would trickle out about this game, everyone was excited for what Rare could pull off with their take on the genre.

So what happened to Dinosaur Planet? Two words - Shigeru Miyamoto. In an internal review carried out by Nintendo, Miyamoto noticed that the wolf character, Sabre, bore an uncanny resemblance to one Fox McCloud of Star Fox fame. This led to the team at Rare being convinced by Nintendo that Dinosaur Planet would actually be better off working within the Star Fox universe, with Fox McCloud becoming the main character. This apparently was met with some skepticism by the Rare team, especially as they had to make a lot of changes to the story and game design to make this work. Nonetheless, the change in direction happened - I guess you don’t argue with Miyamoto. Dinosaur Planet was “cancelled”, to be reborn instead as Star Fox Adventures, which would be released on the GameCube instead.

And so we loyal Rare fans were denied our last Nintendo 64 game. Frankly, that change would be the least of our concerns.

Enter Player 2

It was also around this time that rumours of Rare being bought were becoming louder. Each console generation seemed to greatly increase the cost of game development, and Nintendo did not seem interested in increasing their stake in the company beyond what they already owned, which surprised the Stampers, given Rare’s enormous contributions to the Nintendo 64 and previous consoles. They decided that they needed to find an outright buyer for the company, with Activision being a strong possibility of owning Rare, except that deal fell through. One other large company was mentioned in this bidding war though, and became the eventual winner.

On 24th September 2002, Rare announced that they were now owned by Microsoft, who had just entered the console space with the original Xbox, and spent $375 million to add the prestigious development studio to their then small collection (which, as we know, Microsoft grew significantly over the next couple of decades). I remember reading this news on the Rare website and being more than a little shocked, to be honest. Although I hadn’t known Rare for it’s entire history, the idea of a studio so closely tied with Nintendo swapping to a different parent company was hard to wrap my head around. The types of games that Rare created seemed so perfectly matched to the style Nintendo wanted to convey - family favourites that any age could play, mixed with slightly more complex games for when they grew older - and Microsoft did not fit that image at all. Microsoft were clearly aiming for the teenager to young adult market with their games - Halo being the prime example. But, let’s not be too judgmental, it could work out somehow... couldn’t it?

History suggests not quite. After the initial honeymoon period and some awkward intellectual property juggling - since Rare had worked on a mixture of properties from Nintendo plus some they entirely created themselves, it all had to be divvied up between Nintendo and Microsoft - it was time to see what Microsoft would do with what once was Nintendo’s crown jewel. Not a lot, it would sadly seem. Like most of their other studios, Microsoft seemed to be very hands-off initially with Rare, letting them manage themselves mostly. This could sound idyllic, not having corporate overlords breathing down their necks, yet the strategy did not produce many new successful games. Grabbed by the Ghoulies, a cartoonish action game set in a haunted house and with a very British pun for a name (classic Rare), failed to attract a wide enough audience. Conker: Live and Reloaded was a remake of Conker’s Bad Fur Day, except now with actual fur rendered to the characters. Yet it also seemed to censor the game even more than Nintendo would have done, plus replace the original multiplayer mode, which I enjoyed immensely, with a class-based online war shooter in the vein of Battlefield, which to me didn’t seem to fit the tone of the game at all.

These were followed by games entering the Xbox 360 era. Kameo: Elements of Power, Perfect Dark Zero, Viva Piñata, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts... I’ll admit to never playing any of these games, the Xbox 360 being a console that I never owned, so I don’t want to pass judgement on any of them. I’m sure they all had their fans, so I would hate to besmirch any of their memories of playing them. Nonetheless, I think it is fair to say that something now didn’t seem quite right. Reviews were not hitting the same highs, and sales were lower. From my perspective, it looked like Rare really were trying their best, attempting to design games that pushed them to think beyond what they had done before. Viva Piñata, for example, looked like what we now call a “cozy game”, clearly aimed at a larger and younger audience than typical of Xbox players. Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts introduced the concept of building vehicles in any way you wanted, many years before The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom would attempt the same feat. And yet none of these games were really sticking the landing, none of them became outright classics like what happened a decade before.

What was happening to Rare?

There seemed to be many factors involved, and it is hard to pinpoint an exact cause, despite the public clearly wanting to just outright blame Microsoft. Yet this quote from an article on Eurogamer I think sums things up in a clean, balanced way:

However, in time it became clear that everyone had underestimated how much of the studio’s success was down to Nintendo’s gentle steering. “It seemed like Microsoft was really a novice in the games industry and for some time they left us to try and see how things worked,” [Justin] Cook [Viva Piñata designer] explains. “They wanted hit games for their console and since they weren’t sure how to go about it they trusted Rare to do what was necessary. The problem here was that Rare was a very long way from the very corporate structure of Microsoft and when Rare had made games it wasn’t in isolation from Nintendo but as a creative partnership.”

Simon Parkin - Who Killed Rare? - Eurogamer, 8th February 2012

The fact was that Rare were driven in part by the guidance and mentorship of Nintendo, who they looked up to greatly. The top executives from Nintendo, including Shigeru Miyamoto himself, all offered their advice and opinions on the games they developed. Some of those offerings were ultimately rejected - such as Miyamoto’s suggestion that the end of GoldenEye involved meeting all the enemies you killed in a hospital to shake hands with them - and some of them wouldn’t have gelled with Rare’s inherent Britishness and cheeky sense of humour. But these always seemed to give Rare food for thought, helping them think how they could improve and polish their gameplay to become great, not just good. For many years Rare seem to have been relegated to building games for the Xbox Kinect that no-one seemed particularly interested in, so I don’t think Microsoft could ever have filled that kind of creativity hole.

To put it rather more succinctly and abrasively:

Microsoft and Rare was a bad marriage from the beginning. The groom was rich. The bride was beautiful. But they wanted to make different games and they wanted to make them in different ways.

Martin Hollis, project lead for GoldenEye - Who Killed Rare? - Eurogamer, 8th February 2012

Venturing Into the Sunset, Across the Seven Seas

Since Rare became part of Microsoft Game Studios, there has definitely been something missing from the classic Rare magic formula, to the point where they almost seemed to be missing in action for the best part of a decade during the 2010’s. Whatever the reasons are, their games since the early 2000’s have lacked the spark that they possessed before, particularly after working alongside Nintendo. They have, though, managed to create a game more recently that harkens back to their glory days; Sea of Thieves, a living, online, live-service game where you play as pirates to sail the seas in search of treasure, adventure and fun. I have not played this so cannot offer my own opinions. From what I have seen though, it feels a little more like the Rare I used to know; cartoonish pirate characters, that British sense of humour, and a focus on gameplay just being fun. Since the game has continued to be played and updated since 2018 and now spans Xbox, Steam and PlayStation - of all places - I would consider that a success for them (finally), and a welcome one.

We seemed to have reached a downbeat ending to this story, which cannot be helped unfortunately given the order of events that have passed. However, I don’t like to grumble and complain just for fun; everything happens for a reason, and I like to think life balances out somehow, even if it is not in the way you hoped. Life is about change and adaptation, and to expect everything to stay the same or continually get better is somewhat foolhardy. What will not change are the experiences we had, which we capture into this nebulous concept we call “nostalgia”. Plus, everything I’ve described in this series of posts can still be played today, no matter which time period you encountered Rare; we can relive the glory days, which can mean a lot.

When I think about Rare, I don’t think about their stagnation for nearly 20 years. No, I think about the time when I played as a robot dog with jet boots in Jet Force Gemini and used a triple barrelled rocket launcher to turn an armada of bug aliens into mush. I think about how I was convinced, with just one play of GoldenEye’s fantastic multiplayer mode, that I should ditch Sega and swear allegiance to Nintendo. I think back to how in Banjo-Tooie there was a pub in the Jolly Roger Bay level called “The Salty Seaman” - and salute them for how they ever got away with that joke. I remember the shear audacity of releasing a game like Conker’s Bad Fur Day onto a Nintendo audience. I remember the hilarity of throwing away my assault rifle in Perfect Dark’s multiplayer mode, then watch my friends try to pick it up but actually trigger the proximity detonation instead.

Mostly though, I remember how every single one of their games I played emphasised one very important factor; they were fun, from beginning to end. And that is what I miss most about Rare.

Thank you reading this far, and maybe even following all the parts to this series. This has now drawn to a close, but my memories of the “golden years” of Rare will live on. Perhaps you’ve got your own memories to share? Why not provide a comment, I’d love to hear them. Until the next topic - bye for now.

All these words are my own. However, I have used the following sources for research and to verify facts:

• Wikipedia

• IGN, “Presents The History of Rare”

• The Lost History of Dinosaur Planet

• Eurogamer, “Inside Dinosaur Planet - examining Rare’s recently recovered ‘lost’ N64 game”

• Eurogamer, “Who Killed Rare?”

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Rare created many games I loved for the Nintendo 64. Learning that these wonderful games which I treasured, as well as the rest of the world it seemed, were created in a location only a few hours drive from where I lived really meant something to me. When I was a child growing up, I knew that games were created in places far away - Japan and America. Yet I happened to live in the same country as one of Nintendo’s top development studios, what were the odds of that? It compelled me to learn more about them.

Many others wanted to know a great deal more about Rare too, though that kind of information was hard to come by. Rare were an extremely secretive studio, so much so that even their own development teams were kept separate and not told of what each were working on. This was partly a culture decision by the Stamper brothers, to foster a kind of friendly rivalry between each team, hoping that each group would work hard to make each of their games a success and be better than the others. It was also related to the fact that the Stampers never really wanted the spotlight. In fact, I don’t believe I ever saw a photo of them until a few years ago.

The secrecy and mystery around this company could also work to their advantage though. I would remember that any news about their games in magazines or the gaming press caused people to take notice. A few new screenshots here, a few more tidbits on game features there, was all it took to grab attention. Maybe even an updated release date for their games too! Though it paid to not be too hopeful - similar to id Software, Rare liked to release games “when they were done”. Once they had enough of a reputation to bank on, that alone could pull off a lot of their marketing clout.

There was one other method of getting information from Rare though, and it happened to be my favourite means of getting the latest details on what was upcoming. Simply get it from the horse’s mouth - via their brand new website!

Let me back up a second here to remind you of what time period we’re talking of, because I’m painfully aware that some of you reading this may have been born at a point in recent history where there was never a “before” time of the internet.

This was not a website crawling with cookie banners, adverts, and popups. There were no videos, no social media, and certainly no screen sizes that were small, rectangular and could fit in your hand. No, no, no! We’re talking the mid 90’s here, the actual beginnings of the public internet! Broadband and wi-fi did not exist! You connected to the internet by literally dialling a phone number and waiting for the other end to pick up! Then you would have to remember to hang up when finished, lest your parents get a rather uncomfortably large phone bill. That was the internet I started with, and a time when every company knew they had to have a website but didn’t really understand why.

Rare’s website was no different. It was incredibly basic by today’s standards, and contained typical things like company details, a list of their games, which would include new screenshots and, occasionally, music track samples they were willing to let you download (excruciatingly slowly via a dial-up 56k modem). However, everything was written with a British sense of humour - they were having fun with it, because the other parts of the website were devoted to building a community of sorts with their players.

They had forums and letter pages where you could email your questions to them and they would print a response. They had a section called ”The Tepid Seat” (as opposed to a “Hot Seat”), which was your chance to put questions directly to one of their teams to ask anything you wanted about one of their games.

They had an agony aunt page, although they opted instead for an agony uncle - ”Ask Uncle Tusk”, modelled after one of their characters from the Killer Instinct series. No matter what the question or problem was, good old “Uncle Tusk” would undoubtedly suggest extreme violence as a response, as a caveman fighting game character would of course do.

”Scribes” was their version of a letters page, equivalent to writing a letter to a newspaper for the editorial section. Finally, they had a survey page, overseen by none other than the greatest scribble drawing known to history - Mr Pants! It may shock you (or bemuse you) to learn that Rare eventually made a puzzle game starring him on the Game Boy Advance called It’s Mr Pants, because... well, why not?

If you’re hearing all of this for the first time and are completely baffled as to what I’m talking about, that was kind of the point. You didn’t go to Rare’s website to get useful information. You went there because it was a laugh to read what would come out of it. We all asked them questions - serious or humorous - and we all knew that Rare would respond with completely evasive answers, but in a really funny way. By playing into their illusive and secretive nature, they just wanted to have some fun together with us. I once emailed them and I was absolutely overjoyed when they printed it and replied. Did any of their response make any sense? Of course not! But I still loved it.

Some of their old website remains in the Internet Archive, so you can take a look for yourself - I recommend you at least browse for five minutes, because I don’t think I’m explaining their particular brand of humour very well. For me, it is a time capsule to my youth, where I had near infinite free time to play their joyous games on my Nintendo 64, then check their website to see if there was anything new on it. This was a time, after all, where notifications or not even RSS feeds existed. To get updates, I would connect to the internet each day and refresh the page until it looked different. And a lot of time could pass where nothing changed, but when it did, you can be sure I sat up in my chair and poured over every new page of content they had.

Their games, their community... I wanted in. All of this happened at the perfect moment in my life, nearing the end of my teenage years and entering adulthood, with the prospects of jobs and a career to think of. I had decided whilst doing my higher qualifications at school (A Levels in the UK, aged 16 - 18 years) that I would go to university to study for a Computer Science degree and focus on a career as a programmer/software developer. Why not take that further and try and get a job at Rare? Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could help build the kinds of games that really captured and entertained you? Once I got my degree I did actually send my CV and very limited experience details to them.

I think you can guess that I never did work there in the end. I cannot remember if I even got a reply back, however I didn’t take it too personally (much). Reflecting back on that crossroads in life now, perhaps it was for the best that I wasn’t recruited. As we’ll find out in the last part of my series, things would be changing at Rare in a big way.

Thanks for reading. Perhaps you were expecting more talk about Rare games, but I felt that there was more to them than just that. Hopefully this was a glimpse into a different time for you, and what I experienced. Were you aware of Rare’s loyal community, or even a part of it? I’d like to hear from you… just to make sure that Mr Pants is not a bizarre figment of my imagination.

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By the mid-90’s, Rare now had multiple development teams working in different areas of their Grade-II listed building acting as their company office; Manor Farm, on the edge of Twycross. The teams worked in converted barns and floors of the old farmhouse, each security controlled with keycards so members of different teams couldn’t access places they shouldn’t. It was time for Rare to ramp up and focus on the next generation - the Nintendo 64. This period of time is where I think Rare truly shined bright, and it is right where I jumped into their catalogue of games.

Licence to Thrill

Although their first Nintendo 64 game, Blast Corps, had a unique gameplay hook - using vehicles to destroy buildings to clear a path for an out of control missile carrier - it only sold around 1 million copies; still a large number, but less than their successes on the SNES. Their next game in 1997, however, would guarantee them a place in the video game hall of fame.

I remember it very well, the day I told myself that I was going to buy a Nintendo 64 and get it’s killer app. Not Super Mario 64, that could come later. No, GoldenEye! At a friend’s house, I took part in my first four player match with an unusually shaped controller, and came out of it unable to wipe the smile from my face, convinced I needed to have this kind of fun in my life for years to come. Based on a movie that revived the James Bond franchise from a lull in the 80’s - and one I consider to be one of my favourite Bond films - the game was supposed to be another licenced tie-in and released at the same time. Instead, rather unusually, it came three years after the movie was released and still managed to hit a cultural nerve. While first person shooters were not new, they never felt this good on a console before. It managed to get so many things right - a single player campaign that closely followed the film, a mission structure that rewarded players with additional objectives the more difficult it got, cutting edge graphics that looked realistic and faithful to the film, exceptional controls, and, most importantly for it’s longevity, a last-minute multiplayer mode that easily set up four players for competitive party games. Many of my Nintendo 64 memories are tied up with GoldenEye’s multiplayer mode, and how it bonded me and my small group of friends together.

Racing, Jiggies and Floyd the Droid

Once Rare were on a roll, the hits just kept coming. Here are some of the ones I owned and played.

Diddy Kong Racing was inspired by Mario Kart, yet added some changes by allowing you to not just ride go-karts, but control hovercrafts over water and fly planes around racetracks. Also, adding an adventure style campaign to complete the courses and open new ones made it feel like a racing game with close links to the 3D platformers that were becoming popular.

Not to be outdone by Mario, Rare had their own 3D platformer called Banjo-Kazooie. Modelled on a similar structure of discrete levels all flowing from a central hub, again Rare expanded on Nintendo’s ideas and added their own twists. The central hub was a huge castle with many sections to it. The main character was actually two - a bear and a bird - who worked together to pull off moves and abilities, more of which you earned the deeper you got into the game. The look of the worlds also seemed like a leap beyond Super Mario 64, with lots of detailed textures and a unique visual style that helped set it apart from Mario. It also presented a more British sense of humour in the story and the characters - pitched at cartoon-like silliness, but with a hint of innuendo for the older player who was paying attention. The bear and bird also had a sequel, Banjo-Tooie (naturally) which was even bigger and produced a more cohesive world instead of discrete levels. Plus, the first game even hinted at a future method of swapping key items between it and its sequel, called ”Stop n’ Swap”, which sadly amounted to nothing in the end for technical reasons.

Jet Force Gemini was a sci-fi platformer and third person shooter, with a key focus on the shooting - the amount of bug splatter you could achieve in that game was ludicrously high. It was not a mature game though, more aimed at older children and young teenagers, off on a space quest to rescue some sort of Ewok-based civilisation across planets and spacestations. Playing as one of three characters - twin boy and girl, and their cyborg dog - I found it great fun, even if the final boss was tough as nails.

Not Safe for Work

Finally, two of Rare’s final games that came late in the N64 lifespan but kept me playing the Nintendo 64 for many more years to come; Perfect Dark and Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

Perfect Dark was a spiritual successor to GoldenEye. The team could not and did not want to retain the James Bond licence for further Bond films. So they took the concepts of a secret agent, along with the mission structure combination of action, shooting and stealth, then created a whole new universe to base it off of, in a fictional sci-fi world now playing as the “perfect” secret agent, Joanna Dark. Goldeneye was already a masterpiece, so Perfect Dark dialled it up to eleven. So many features were packed into this game that it was practically bursting at the seams, making the Nintendo 64 work its hardest to try and manage it all. Yet it had so much imagination; the sci-fi setting allowed so many more varied weapons, plus common pastiches such as Area 51 or Blade Runner inspired environments. And the multiplayer mode from Goldeneye was somehow bettered too, with the addition of computer controlled players (”bots”) to add to the four human players. Perfect Dark ended up becoming my friends top multiplayer game as a result.

And Conker’s Bad Fur Day... Well, this is certainly an odd one. What started as another cutesy 3D platformer staring a lovely, wholesome looking squirrel called Conker ended up going through some... revisions. After initial feedback noted that Conker’s game looked too similar to other platformers at the time, and it wasn’t exactly differentiating itself from Rare’s other platformer Banjo-Kazooie, one of the team members at Rare decided to pitch something very different. What if the platformer looked like a typical, family friendly 3D adventure, except Conker and the characters in the game would actually be playing through a mature, sweary and very violent comedy? A raucous comedy where the lovable squirrel could hit things, shoot things, swear enough to make a sailor blush, get drunk and, quite literally, piss all over his enemies. Somehow this scatalogical idea was not met with outright rejection from Rare management (or, more astonishingly, the Nintendo overlords) but greenlit. And so Conker ended up becoming the inverse of the typical 3D platformer, which was... actually quite good. It was the talk of the industry that it seemed so different which made it stand out so much more. And it showed off all of Rare’s technical prowess now they had spent years developing for the Nintendo 64: lighting and shadow effects, impressive texture work, wonderful and varied animation (with facial expressions), and completely, fully voiced speech for every single character, all crammed onto a cartridge. Would the humour still hold up today? I suspect not, as my tastes may have now moved beyond the style of the early 2000’s. And although it failed to sell as much as their other hits - a combination of being one of the last Nintendo 64 games, and Nintendo refusing to market a mature rated game - it showed Rare’s creativity and ability to take risks and trust in their own judgement. I mean, where else would you see a giant turd pile sing an operatic overture whilst trying to kill you?

Everything is Golden

These are just the games I owned, there were more. Killer Instinct returned, as did the uber-collectathon Donkey Kong 64. In the five to six years of the Nintendo 64’s lifespan, Rare managed to put out multiple games a year and not seem to put a foot wrong. Every one of their Nintendo 64 games was critically acclaimed and hugely successful - Goldeneye in particular sold 8 million copies worldwide total.

A cynical person might suggest that Rare did not really create original ideas, not on the ground-breaking level as Nintendo might do with Super Mario 64, say. However, I would counter that by saying Rare could take ideas already established and fill them with so much of their own creativity. Rare might have taken the templates of a platformer, adventure, or first person shooting game, and then gone absolutely wild with new ideas within it. Thanks to Rare, we had an effective, fun and simple way of introducing multiplayer matches in your living room. We had adventures that criss-crossed between worlds, just like a traditional Zelda game. We had guns that could see and shoot through walls. And we had a mature rated game hidden under the veneer of a sweet, family-friendly platformer.

That’s a lot of magic I got to live through, and why I think these were the golden years of Rare.

That’s not the end of the story though - Part 3 will touch on more of Rare’s golden touch, just not in a way you might have expected.

Thanks for reading. I don’t think this one post could do justice to all of these great games, so there may be retrospectives on them individually in the (far) future. In the meantime, let me know if you played any of these games (or others) during the Nintendo 64 era and what you thought of them. Until next time!

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