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Yes. Just take my hand and jump.
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Kieron = Dhalsim, for some reason I can't quite put my finger on.
Me = Some days I'm Ryu, hunched with stoic, weighty self-assurance and some days I'm Dan, a starstruck fanboy mimicking the greats but falling some way short.
Some days I'm Chun-Li. The weekend days, mostly. -
Off the top of my head I'm pretty sure evergreen critical classics will be Portal, Braid and Super Mario Galaxy. Perhaps Demon's Souls, although I'm not sure if its cult appeal is peculiarly of its time (in that, it's an anti-trend game).
Going back a little bit, Rez and Ico are obvious touchstones, but both are so embedded into this particular conversation by this point that I find it hard to believe they'll ever fall out of favour.
World of Warcraft has been one of the most important games of the last decade but I'm not sure if any particular MMO will outlast its descendants in quite the same way as with the other examples above.
Games that either transcend the fashion of an era or entirely define it seem to be the ones that last the distance. And, in all honesty, they are few and far between. -
I rode roughshod over some young men's marketing-induced dreams.
As a good game reviewer friend of mine says: 'F*cking numbers...' -
Probably Dudley due to the butler and the breeding. At least, till he walks past a mirror and promptly deports himself.
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One, as I'm guessing Professor Layton's 'assistant' is by now long 'gone'.
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I'm afraid my myopia, like your EDUCATION, is entirely assumed in order to make me look smarter.
Contact lenses would reverse the (albeit slim) effect, with the added downside of giving me irritable retinas, something your MUM handles pretty well by herself. -
If only! I'm afraid Ken is happily married to Eliza who, at the end of SSF4, gives birth to his baby.
It's OK though! I totally have a plan to get rid of her once she's finished nursing. Then Ken's fierce shoryuken will be all mine to enjoy. -
Curating http://boxart.tumblr.com/ is one of the most enjoyable things I do each day. It always makes me super happy when someone says they enjoy it. So thanks!
During my early twenties I played an inordinate number of classic and vintage games across just about every system I could track down. I feverishly collected games I'd missed out on growing up, and played many of them to completion.
Nowadays most of my gaming time is taken up with those current releases I'm reviewing at any one time. There's not much space to revisit classics on top of that with a young family around. That said, I do own an arcade machine, and, when I have guests over usually play Puzzle Bobble, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Metal Slug or Sunset Riders.
I also own the original PCB for Treasure's Radiant Silvergun, which stores the top 100 high scores on the board. From time to time I'm sucked wholesale back into that game (my desert island game, for sure) and play it non-stop for a few weeks trying to see how far I can get on a single credit.
Sometimes I do get to revisit vintage games by way of re-release reviews. That happened with Chrono Trigger on the DS and Final Fantasy VI, two of my favourite JRPGs. I still own a part-sealed US copy of Chrono Trigger on the SNES that I bought for £60 in 1998.
I definitely have collector tendencies in my psyche, and have to work super hard not to let them run away with me. These days, I try to limit my collection to my favourite titles, rather than attempting to own all games by a specific developer or publisher like I once did. -
I don't care too much about public understanding of the medium and games will get their ubiquitous mainstream platform in time. It's inevitable and doesn't need my help in coming about.
So I'd do something a bit more selfish and mind control the current Archbishop of Canterbury to play 200 of the most important games over a period of a few months before sitting him down in front of a keyboard and letting him write a book about his experiences.
He's an awesome thinker and I'd love to see what lines he'd draw between game creation and theology (I pretty much believe game development is a theological activity, in that devs are little gods, speaking worlds for us to exist within). I realise that's a pretty niche interest but hey, you gave me his MIND. -
I first wrote about games in 2003. I'd had an idea for a videogames magazine in the summer after I left university and, not really knowing how to realise that, wrote to head of games publishing at Future asking him for advice. He invited me to go to Bath to pitch the idea in person to him, which was equal parts exciting and terrifying.
The idea was for a Videogame Collector magazine, similar in format to the niche but perennial publication, Record Collector. The meeting was postive and, while Future decided not to launch the magazine, they did invite me to write a regularl section on the subject in Edge Magazine.
The series ran monthly throughout 2003 and was eventually released as a standalone publication on newstands, so the dream sort of worked out.
During that time I picked up more freelance work with Future mags and things developed from there. I was fully freelance for about 3 years. Nowadays I am on retainer with Eurogamer, do the occasional piece for Edge and Gamasutra and also work as a Flash Game producer in Brighton. -
I enjoy playing Richard Stanton from Edge at Street Fighter IV as he's ace at trash talk and we're pretty evenly matched, so it's always a fun evening's play. Also, Aubrey Hesselgren from Splash Damage and I have endless Ryu vs. Ken match-ups online at the moment. Though he's better than me in that match-up now. So Brink's getting a 7 out of 10 from me when the time comes...
I still enjoy playing my brother at Namco's brilliant Smash Court Tennis on PlayStation, and I regularly play one of my neighbours and best friends (and his mum) (no really) at Words with Friends on the iPhone. -
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You know, I can stomach pretty much anything in games so long as the execution is strong. I quite enjoyed the QTEs in Ninja Blade, for example (which is the thing people usually pick, right?) and I loved the stealth sections in the first Metal Gear Solid.
There's gold in cliches, providing you're a skilled enough developer to find a new twist on them.
I realise it's fashionable at the moment to criticise external reward systems in gaming (e.g. achievement points etc) but I'm a sucker for leveling in RPGs and watching numbers increase, so I'm even happy with these more manipulative systems, providing they're handled with some style and sense.
That said, I believe gaming's at it's most fulfilling when it's leveling the player (in terms of their skill at the game, reactions, or viewpoint) rather than merely the cipher. -
At the moment I play Juri but I'm best with Ryu.
Second tier choices would be: Ken, Akuma, Balrog, Fei Long or Chun Li, with varying degrees of competence. -
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I play with the first edition of the official Tournament Edition stick. I do have the new TE:S, but the sharp edges hurt after prolonged play, and the stick is too loose for me.
In terms of my favourite change: there's a new fluidity that's been introduced to the game in Super. I can't quite put my finger on how they've achieved the feel, because the game hasn't really been sped up. It just feels a lot more smooth.
Also, I really like the damage decreases Capcom has made to attacks across the whole game. Bouts last far longer now because of it and players are more inclined to take risks, making SSF4 a more offensive (and therefore exciting) game to watch and play. -
In general I don't think Capcom could improve Super Street Fighter IV without it becoming something else entirely. It's pretty much the prefect realisation of the blueprint the developer laid down for this entry to the series.
That said, I would have them include tutorial videos for every Challenge (with read outs showing the button press timings as in Virtua Fighter) to teach the player how to do the more tricky combos.
Also, because I'm getting old and slow, I'd possibly have them widen the link windows to make it easier to string together combos in a match. But then again, the reason some of the hardest moves in the game are so impressive is because they are difficult to execute, so you'd lose something in the process...
Basically, I'm just really happy I have zero involvement in the Street Fighter creative process. The game is meticulous, intricate clockwork and the tiniest change has significant ramifications. I would definitely break it. -
My favourite aspect of Braid was the way in which time worked in unexpected ways. Not just in the sense of being able to rewind time - that's a familiar trope in games now - but the way in which time behaved in different, unfamiliar ways as you moved through a level.
Games are at their most exciting when they subvert the laws of our reality rather than merely aping them. That's always been a feature of the medium, but increasingly designers focus on merely exaggerating our present reality rather than twisting or pulling it apart completely.
We have the power to breath new worlds to life and fill them with new, unfamiliar sets of physical laws, so why not explore that potential more creatively than merely giving a character a giant jump, or the power to punch through concrete? I can think of very few games that have truly surprised me in this regard.
I'd also like to see more games that are uncomfortable or even unpleasant to experience, and yet still compel the player through the experience for a higher purpose, like 'Maus' in comics, or 'Breaking the Waves' in film.
Does a player always have to feel good to want to continue playing something? Far Cry 2 came close to framing an engaging experience within a relentlessly hostile, depressing scenario.
But there's a lot further we could go - especially once we get away from gaming's most overused viewfinder: the barrel of a gun. I hope to see a game in which you assume, for example, the role of a Jew in Auschwitz. I think a videogame could provide a player with insight to that scenario that's unique to this medium, a point of view distinct from that found in Schindler's List or Maus.
Until we see a project with that kind of approach on a mainstream platform, I wonder if gaming will continue to loiter in adolescence. It's not about gaining mainstream acceptance through doing something worthy (mainstream acceptance is inevitable in the long run), but it's about pushing the boundaries of our interactive scenarios, and exploring taboo in a way few games manage with any sort of grace or meaningful point right now.
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Simon Parkin’s Bio
Writer on videogames and interactive technology.
