MIDI Week Singles: Song A - Gauntlet (NES)

"Song A" from Gauntlet on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1987).

No official soundtrack released.

Composer: Hal Canon

Game Developer: Tengen

Song A.  Unless you played Gauntlet either in the arcade or on the original NES back in and around 1987, your probably don't know which song I'm talking about.  Although what little music there was in Gauntlet II, it was, more-or-less, the only song included and a motif of the theme was briefly used in Gauntlet Legends during the character select, but as for other releases in the series (Gauntlet III, Gauntlet Dark Legacy, Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows) , I have not heard this theme, although it may have been used as a motif unnoticed by myself.

One thing that really impresses me about this song lasts about 1 minute 3 seconds before it starts to repeat.  Now, this is by no means a record for video game music of this era (Ultima: Exodus has some pretty long tracks), but even the "Above Ground BGM" from Super Mario Bros. (1985) clocks in at 40 seconds and the theme from stage 1 ("1st & 2nd BGM")in Ghosts 'n Goblins (1985) lasts 32 seconds.

The composer, Hal Canon is a mystery in itself.  The current? word is that the whereabouts of Mr. Canon are unknown so talking about his influences for "Song A" would be a bit difficult, although we are freely able to speculate since this is the Internet.  To me, I hear Baroque influences and could easily hear this song performed on a harpsichord, or the next best thing, the guitar (and the piano too I guess), which makes it sound a lot like the theme from Mystery! (composed by Norman Roger).  J.S. Bach would probably have other things to say about this comparison, but again, that's for the Internet to speculate on.

Alrighty, that's enough linkiness for one Wednesday.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

All You Search For

First Impressions: The Blue Wizard is about the Die (Book Review)

Blue Wizard is About to Die is a book of poems about video games, by Seth 'Fingers' Flynn Barkan.  I picked this up nearly a year ago in the Humble Story Bundle - Video games collection #2.  

I hadn't cracked said bundle of ebooks in all this time, and I wasn't sure when I would get around to it.  However, I just finished 'A Dance of Dragons,' reading about half of it on my cell phone.  I had such a good experience, I knew I wanted more books available on my little portable display and telecommunications device.  

Then I remember the Story Bundle I had purchased on an impulse, and after a skirmish with my cell phone over the subject of storage space (there's space, my phone just doesn't know how to use it) - I was able to download one of the books:  The Blue Wizard is about to Die.  So far, so good.  

I'm writing my first impressions, because after a delightful series of poems, I've discovered I'm about a third of the way through this book.  And, honestly, I'm scared to read the rest, because the enjoyment curve has been so delightful up to this point.  Can he keep it up?

Seriously though, this guy gets it.  I mean, he gets it!  He is approximately my age, and he has played a number of games, been moved by the experience and committed it to poetry.  After reading several of his poems, I can't believe this is the first instance of video game poetry I've seen.  Certainly the first collection of said theme.  And they're great!

I have my favorites so far.  Half Life (2?) is definitely a big plus, but his musings on Lag and his silly Mario scenarious are a great time as well.  All in all, I'm really glad I started reading this, and I recommend it to people who were playing video games in the 80s, 90s and 2000s.  Like me!  

-D

Monthly Update: September 2014

Happy September everyone.  Bloody hell this year is flying by, or maybe it just feels like that for me as I'm getting hitched next month.  Yes, I am looking forward to the wedding and I am very excited for it, so don't go ahead thinking that I am one of those "ball and chain" types.  

On other fronts, the Summer Reading BINGO is progressing nicely.  I am currently trudging through Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian on audiobook and I say "trudging" in the most sincere form of the verb.  I am not 100% sure where the story is going which is understandable for me as I am finding out that unless I am paying full attention to the story, I'll end up tuning out for a bit and come back when I realize I don't know what is happening.  So it's now article writing, game playing, reddit browsing for me while listening to the disparaging tone of Mr. McCarthy's prose, but instead it's sitting quietly awaiting the next description of the happy-g0-lucky times of mid-late 19th century Texas.  But yes, I am enjoying the book.

In paper form, I am reading Robert J. Sawyer's Flashforward which received a season of TV viewers on ABC back in 2009.  If you're not familiar with the story, a mysterious event happens that causes the population of the world to lose consciousness for just over two minutes and during those two minutes, people experience their lives 21 years in the future.  In turn, those who are not alive 21 years in the future experience nothing.  What I'm finding interesting is after the event, the beginning of each chapter (so far) begins with newspaper-type snippets about the worlds reaction to the event and while some are mundane such as reporting on the death of a news anchor or a continued car pileup due to the event, others are more intriguing, "After a record number of applications were filed in the last 24 hours, the United States Patents office has closed until further notice, pending a decision from Congress on the patenting of inventions gleaned from the visions."

Flashforward is not a long book, coming in at only 317 pages and it did not spawn additional books in this world so I feel that by the end, I will still have plenty of questions, such as, "Why don't I own the TV series on DVD yet!?"

Moving into the realms of video games (finally!), I have started again playing The Elder Scrolls: Arena thanks to a link posted by "Roger" in my Daggerfailed article from last year.  The links are to downloadable copies of Arena and Daggerfall but have all of the DOS commands prewritten so all I have to do is open the application and the game starts up without having to type all of the DOS commands that prevented me from being able to play Daggerfall.  In Arena, I also learned how to open up the world map (Shift+M) and fast travel to other locations as travelling from one city to the next closest would take about 3 days (0n average).  Apparently being able to fast travel in a flat world without any form of topography (trees don't count) has made the game infinitely better.  I will most likely put out a Second Impressions in the coming weeks, now if I could only master swinging a sword with the mouse.

So PAX Prime happened this last weekend.  I might have said something about absolutely not missing PAX again, but due to the general lack of funds due to a false criminal identification (#PeopleWithIncrediblyCommonNamesProblems).  The only presentation I was able to catch was a talk that Hironobu Sakaguchi gave about the "Past, Present and Future of RPGs," but it looks like that presentation was not archived/saved on PAX's Twitch channel.  Ah well.  It was, I felt, more of a retrospective on Hironobu Sakaguchi's career at Square(soft/Enix) and a brief look at a mobile game in development (Terra Battle) at his current studio, Mistwalker.

In semi-PAX related video game news, Gauntlet was showcased this last weekend and it seemed like the remake of the 1985 Atari game received some favorable press.  What surprised me the most about the game was that it is rated M.  Personally, I've never viewed Gauntlet as an M-rated franchise.  From the gameplay footage though, it looks like they're taking a Diablo approach to dispatching enemies as well as what happens to their entrails.  I feel like I can be an old fuddy-duddy about this because the decision doesn't affect me either way.  When I was a kid (mid/late 80's) I loved playing Gauntlet, but having the M-rating is going to limit the demographic that will be able to play this game, which essentially is a massive dungeon crawl with an annoying life timer.  I don't feel like the game needed to go for an M-rating, but that's just me.

Oh damn, I almost forgot.  Last week Nintendo unveiled their New 3DS, which coincidentally is the name of the system: "New 3DS" and "New 3DS LL" for the larger version that we've seen with the 3DS XL and DS lite XL; although that might just be a Japanese thing.  There are some much needed improvements to the system such as an added C-button type joystick to the right side of the system, improved 3D effect that causes less blurring, improved battery life, a micro SD card slot and two more shoulder/trigger buttons.  What they need to improve on is the life expectancy of the hinges, but that's just me being paranoid that the hinges on my 3DS are on the verge of breaking as they did with my DS lite.

So, welcome to September!

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Close Your Eyes and Believe

The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot: Chapter I: The Before

First, this is an awesome title for a game.  It'd even work well for a board game.  I feel like The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is advertising that knows what kind of game it is and knows what their target audience is looking for.  The title conjures up the image of a game of Diablo mixed with Gauntlet, but with an even greater sense of humor.

And the game is free.  That can either be a boon or a giant warning sign to stay away.  At least that's what I hear about free to play MMOs.  Sort of anyway, I don't know what I'm talking about as I've only played The Elder Scrolls Online (Beta) and a little bit of Neverwinter (which I will talk about at a future date).

Okay, back on topic.  TMQfEL (which seems more work than typing out the full title).  After watching the trailer for the open beta, I developed a slightly different view of the game.  Now, based off of the information from the trailer, the game still looks somewhat fun with a healthy portion of "Oh what the hell god damnit it you asshat."  TMQfEL, again based off of the trailer, looks to be a game where you create your own castle, wonderfully portrayed as floating castles, that you fill with x amount of loot wherein you build traps to protect that loot.

Logic would dictate that when you begin the game, you start out with a set amount of money, presumably "gold," to build and furnish your castle with traps, hazards and other golf-titled pitfalls to protect the aforementioned loot from the rest of the online community.  In order to get more gold to build more castle and better traps, you have to raid other castles.  I do not know if your character is able to level up, which would make sense on one level in that you would need additional HP in order to make it through elaborate castles filled with elaborate traps; that is unless all traps are considered one hit kills.  I also do not know if you would be able to keep any gold you found along the way if you are unable to make it out alive; again assuming that you find loot throughout the castle and not just in the final treasure vault room.  The downside though is that someone who has a character built up would be able to ransack and destroy other community castles that are just starting off.  The way around this is to only allow the players attack/raid/ransack/pillage/lay waste other castles within a certain range of levels that are close to their own.

Again, this is what I presume the game to be.

What I would be afraid of is people not creating castles to be clever, but to be total assholes.  I feel like a game that is created by a person to be as difficult as possible is no longer creating a game/stage/level to be fun, but to be a dick to the rest of the gaming community.  But sure, I recognize that there is a percentage of the population that enjoys a rigorous challenge (meaning the people who have beaten Super Meat Boy), I just happen to not be a part of that particular group.

Not my idea of fun.

So, with all that, I will now give The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot  a try and report back next week with how my hypothesis compares to the actual game in "Chapter II: The After."


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Want to Reconcile the Violence in Your Heart

NES Games I Will Probably Never Complete

All of the games that I will be listing are from my memory.  These are games on the NES that I was never able to beat for one reason or another.  I'd like to think it was because they were crazy difficult and not because of my failure as a gamer.  Are these games passable?  Of course they are, otherwise there would've been a patch...... except not, because back in teh 1980s, 1990s and early 2000's, the final release of a console game was it's "final" release.  No patches.  No DLC.  No way to correct anything that might've gone wrong in the game testing phase.

In short, these games were pretty fucking hard.

Not that you can tell, but this is the second incantation of this list.  The first list I wrote up was made up of games that wouldn't surprise anyone that I hadn't beaten.  Games like "any" Ninja Gaiden on the NES, Blaster Master, Battletoads, Silver Surfer, Ghosts 'n Goblins, and Back to the Future.  Then I figured I would make a list of maybe not quite so well known games that were a bloody pain in the ass.  So here's that list:

Mega Man (1987)

Now that I think about it, I don't know if I've ever beaten any of the mega man games....on the NES that is. In Mega Man I, I could never get through the Guts Man stage.  Now that I think about it, I don't think I was ever able to beat Mega Man II...... or maybe any in the series.  No wait, I'm pretty sure I did beat Mega Man X.  I blame it all on constantly losing (or having my Mom/Dad) throw away those small pieces of paper that had the passwords written down on them.  That was always the problem with password games, keeping track of random pieces of paper, knowing which game they went to and where in the game they were to take you.

Back to the Future (1989)

I played this game for the first time at PAX Prime 2010 and promptly got my ass handed to me.  This game came out when I was 9, and even at the age of 30, there was no luck for me getting passed the Lou's Cafe sequence.

A Boy and His Blob: Trouble in Blobalonia  (1989)

Granted, I didn't know what the hell I was doing when I was first playing this game, I didn't know what to do and what the point of the game was.  The week that I played the game, I immediately went to Blobalonia.  Yup, I didn't know that I was supposed to actually explore the real world in order to collect jellybeans.  I guess I could probably go back (if I could find the game) and actually try to beat the game.

Captain Skyhawk

I briefly went over this already in the previous post.  What the video that I previously posted didn't show you , was that you can change your altitude to help you dodge enemy fire.  The other hard part was docking with the space station, or at least it was really hard for me.  These kinds of "fit the thing into the rotating slot" things, I find that I have a hard time with.  The other nice thing with this game was that it was a one-hit-kill.  No life meter.  Well, just a life meter of one I guess.  And you have four lives.  I now know that I've gotten to the third level.  I don't think that I'd gotten to the end of the third level.

By now nearly everyone knows that games back in the early days of console gaming were required to be difficult because the memory capacity of the game cartridges was fairly limited.  Maybe I didn't have the attention span to sit and complete an entire game (I was able to get to Room 97 or 98 in Gauntlet over the course of an entire summer with my Mom so we'll rule the ADHD theory out), or maybe I didn't have ample amounts  of coordination, but whatever the reason was, these games were really difficult (to say the least) and I have no shame in my admitting this.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Sounds of Failure