This is the fourth in our author-vs.-author Boss Fight Q&A series. Both Sebastian's book on Final Fantasy VI and Gabe's book on Majora's Mask are funding now on Kickstarter.
It feels impossible not to compare Majora's Mask with its older sibling — like it's the Solange to Ocarina of Time's Beyoncé. How does/doesn't it stand on its own, and how does/doesn't it fit into the Zelda canon? Do you even think OoT is even the right reference point, or is there a better game to set beside Majora's Mask as a point of comparison?
I think Ocarina is totally a natural reference point. Majora was built from the parts of Ocarina by many of the same people who made Ocarina. Those developers were thinking about Ocarina constantly because they assumed that most of Majora's players had already played Ocarina, and so they worked hard to differentiate Majora from Ocarina, to deliver a novel experience. I like the Beyonce/Solance comparison -- that tracks for me, especially for how Solange seems to ask of her music, "What is my blockbuster sister NOT doing?"
Link's Awakening is another useful reference: It's the game that first showed that Link can leave Hyrule, Zelda, and Ganon behind -- AND that Link's adventure can contain surreal or mysterious elements -- and we'll all still accept it as a Zelda game. (And in both games, those elements largely came from Yoshiaki Koizumi.)
Last, there's the German movie Run Lola Run, which the part of my book that was
excerpted in Polygon brings up. According to different developer interviews, Lola either partially inspired Majora or their similarities are pure coincidence, but either way you can see a bit of Majora in the movie's "hero must replay the scenario until she gets it right" plot. Groundhog's Day gets brought up too, but that movie is more ponderous and less goal-oriented than Lola or Majora -- even if
[90s movie SPOILER] it's love that saves him in the end.
The concept of time is at the heart of both N64 Zelda entries, but in very different ways. How else do the games speak to each other?
Ocarina set up Majora really well for how it would play with time. Ocarina already had an in-game clock that switched from day to night, though it only ran in certain locations. And Ocarina already featured an ocarina with the power of time travel. These elements were a boon for a time-strapped development team trying to make a sequel quickly, and they pushed both the in-game clock and time travel much further in Majora.
This is similar to the use of masks. The masks in Ocarina make for a fun quest, but they aren't a huge part of the game. Majora asks, "What if the masks change how everybody treats you?" And, a step further: "What if the masks change YOU? Your body, your size, and your abilities." I don't think the mask mechanic at the core of Majora would exist if there hadn't been some light use of masks in Ocarina.
It was by no means a flop, but why do you think Majora's Mask didn't have the same runaway success of its older sibling? What do you think might have happened if Majora's Mask had been released before Ocarina of Time?
I've thought about this a lot, and here are a few factors that hurt Majora's sales:
- It's a late-gen N64 game. If you look at the list of the top-selling N64 games, they all came out before Majora. And Majora has the dubious honor of "bestselling N64 game released after 1999."
- It famously arrived on the same day as the PS2, the console with the greatest slate of launch titles in history, and got a little lost in the shuffle.
- Its sales were hurt by the requirement of a RAM upgrade called the Expansion Pak -- which everyone who didn't own Donkey Kong 64 had to buy separately. There were reports of stores that had Majora copies but had run out of Expansion Paks.
A "Majora comes out first" timeline is fun to consider. It definitely would have sold better, but it also would have confused a lot of players because many of its design choices skewed away from over-tutorializing in the early game. The devs envisioned a slightly older player who has already played Ocarina.
It would also be weird to start with a bold experiment in a new land and then return with a relatively safe hero's quest in Hyrule. Majora places itself in the tradition of "we gave you exactly what you wanted the first time -- now here's a darker sequel." Like Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. Or Babe: A Pig in the City. A lot of people, myself included, are hoping they go in a Majora direction for the BotW sequel. Mostly I think we mean: We hope they use this as an opportunity to surprise us. They gave us the big classic Zelda adventure: Now what else do they have to show us?
Majora's Mask's initial Japanese release date was less than 18 months after Ocarina of Time. What the hell was Nintendo thinking, and how the hell did the development team do it? How did they manage to make something so idiosyncratic—and so right—with so little time and with recycled resources?
Majora's developers were masters of reusing assets. There is a chapter in the book titled "The Art of the Remix" because they did such an incredible job of recontextualizing characters, enemies, items, and music from Ocarina and making it feel... not just fresh but often eerie, turning Termina and its inhabitants into a sort of Bizarro Hyrule. The developers turned the similarities into a strength.
Also, there were not a lot of team meetings. The devs just divvied up the workload and got to work. For instance, Koizumi was more in charge of Clock Town, the game's central hub, whereas Eiji Aonuma was more in charge of the rest of Termina and the dungeons. Composer Koji Kondo got almost no notes and was left to do his thing. Mitsuhiro Takano wrote the dialogue. And we're lucky that a lot of elements worked well on the first try because the team truly didn't have time to go back and change things.
The last answer is kind of a downer: Nintendo was not immune to crunch culture, though nobody called it that yet. I think the team worked too hard. Poor Takano, newly married, didn't see his wife enough and had to wait to take his honeymoon until after the game was done.
Majora's Mask is dark, with constant reminders of the passage of time, mortality, and existential futility. It feels less straightforward—it's no save-the-princess story—and far more cerebral and somber than any previous Zelda game (and most/all of the ones that came after it). How does the game manage this and find some sense of balance and appeal? What does joy look like for the player within the game, and for the people of Termina?
The game does a great job of balancing that somber tone you mention with a lot of classic adventuring.
For the player, I think there's a lot of joy in helping people. The characters in this game feel much more well-rounded than your typical NPC -- perhaps because you catch them in so many different situations and moods throughout each of the three days. They feel antonymous, and you get to know them slowly.
I will say, though, that for me Majora is the most stressful Zelda game to play because of the ticking clock. I'm so scared of screwing something up and having to start all over again! Majora is by far my favorite Zelda game to think about and talk about, but my favorite Zelda games to relax and play for fun are Breath of the Wild and A Link to the Past.
I have been thinking endlessly about Siobhan Thompson's recent tweet: "There are currently three types of video game: 1) you are a special fighting shootboy who shoots things 2) oh I get it, it's a metaphor for depression 3) nintendo." Joke aside, it feels like there is a kernel of truth there, and Majora's Mask seems to fit somewhere between #2 and #3. Do you think the game reflects on depression/mental illness? If so, how? Do you think this was the first major Depression Game?
Interesting! I guess it doesn't feel to me like a game about mental illness so much as it is a game about people dealing in different ways with the approach of death.
To feel despondent in the wake of an impending apocalypse makes a lot of sense. To me, the least mentally healthy characters in the game are those who refuse to believe what's going on, though they find their way to acceptance eventually.
I think Majora's Mask works nicely as a metaphor for any worldwide disaster: climate change, our current life dealing with COVID-19, or nuclear war. Majora's developers tell the story of being at a colleague's wedding at the same time that a North Korean rocket flew over Japan. It turned out the rocket was a failed attempt to launch a satellite into orbit, but all of Japan wondered if this was a declaration of war. The contrast of the rocket and the wedding informed the game: How weird it is to try to live a normal life with such a grave threat going on in the background. This is explored most literally in Majora in the Anju and Kafei wedding plot.
But to cycle back to that tweet: I think one thing that's really cool about Majora is that it chews on all this heavy stuff, but it is still unapologetically thing #3: Nintendo. Majora may be dark, but it's also silly, sweet, and playful -- and that duality serves it so much better than if it were merely a Serious Art Game. Especially in the year 2000, a time when most game studios were obsessed with nailing the aesthetic of action movies. Majora's devs had their pick of two different Link designs from Ocarina, and could have easily have made Majora starring adult Link. The fact that they chose Kid Link instead says a lot about the kind of game they wanted to make.
This is the third in our author-vs.-author Boss Fight Q&A series. Both Sebastian's book on Final Fantasy VI and Matt's book on Red Dead Redemption are funding now on Kickstarter.
First off: what's your personal history with FFVI -- and, more specifically, with FFVI's music? What made you want to embark on this unique critical project?
I actually didn't know Final Fantasy III had come out before I got it. When I was in grade school, I was absolutely obsessed with Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II. I owned Final Fantasy, but only rented Final Fantasy II (from Blockbuster, of course) — and I rented it over and over and over again, over a period of a year or so. I never wanted to return it, because that meant losing my save data, so we racked up unimaginable late fees. I'm pretty sure it got to the point that Blockbuster froze my dad's account and would no longer let him rent movies or games. By the time I hit fifth grade, my parents had had enough, threw up their hands, and decided to eat the up-front cost and buy it for me. When my dad got to Toys R Us, though, they didn't have it — But they did have Final Fantasy III. When my dad brought it home and I plopped the cartridge in, I was immediately in love.
I loved music as a kid, but didn't live in a house of melomaniacs — we didn't have a family stereo or album collection. Most of the music I knew came from a.) church, b.) oldies we listened to in the car, or c.), and most importantly, video games. I remember crying a little bit when I first heard the overture sequence of FFVI—the part with the oboe, where the Magitek armor is walking across the tundra. The opera sequence made me want to be an opera singer — and I was, for most of my twenties.
I wanted to take this project on because I think this game's three-CD soundtrack holds up against modern game soundtracks recorded by live musicians. There's some kind of magic to it. I wanted to figure out what that magic was, and figure out, from a critical distance, why I was so obsessed with the music, and why I returned to it over and over throughout high school, college, and in the post-college real-world of my 20's and, now, my 30's.
From a musician's perspective, what makes Uematsu interesting as a composer? What did he do in this game -- or what has he done, in general -- that other composers of video game scores haven't done?
Woof, what a question. To my ear, he's interesting and unique in that he hammers out melodies so effortlessly. This was the sixth Final Fantasy game, each soundtrack larger than the last, and he hadn't run out of juice! He also walks a very thin line between "classical"-sounding music and "pop"-sounding music. Almost all of his music has a string section, often brass and/or woodwinds, but it also might have an electric bass and a steady rock-like beat from a virtual drum kit. He also jerks around very clearly in other genres that do not sound anything like this: Celtic, industrial, jazz, ragtime, techno, there's a pretty big laundry list. I'm sure other composers/games do this — but I can't come up with any off the top of my head, so to me Uematsu obviously does it most memorably. Other games seem to stick to one sound without bouncing around so much—Mario's a little kooky, Zelda had its dramatic "classical" sound, Mega Man had this synth-rock thing going, etc. I don't think Uematsu even does this intentionally; I think he does it instinctively because he's so into prog rock, and pretty omnivorous (maybe as a result of the prog rock).
The opera sequence in FFVI rightfully gets a lot of attention from critics and fans, but I've always been drawn even more to the complexity of "Dancing Mad," the amazing multi-movement battle music that plays during the final fight with Kefka. I remember being obsessed with the rock version of it that Uematsu played with The Black Mages, his FF music cover band (which still owns). I'm sure this is a big topic in your book, but what's your take on "Dancing Mad"? What do you think Uematsu was trying to do with that track?
"Dancing Mad" does get some attention in my book, but not nearly as much as the opera scene. It probably could be its own chapter, though! I didn't get too deep into analyzing it while I was researching/writing, I bet a musicologist could come up with some really fascinating stuff about it. My take on it is that Uematsu took this mentally shattered character and shows us four of the shards. Each movement takes a piece or pieces of Kefka's theme and transforms or elaborates on it/them. The first movement feels pretty straightforward, hopping back and forth between grief and anger. The second is militant and unhinged. The third is fascinating to me: it's all organ. It nods a little toward baroque and early classical church music — it starts off with a bell, for god's sake, and he ramps up the reverb on the organ to give it a sense of space. It's Kefka's desire for self-apotheosis. And that final movement is just killer—the off-kilter meter, the sick bassline, the jammin' rock organ. Man—it's fun to listen to! The fact that "Dancing Mad" is in four movements may have been a choice the developers made, not Uematsu, but it's worth noting that pieces with four movements are pretty common in classical music. It's fun to think of this as a mini-masterwork.
The Black Mages version is really cool too, but amped up just slightly — it actually sticks pretty close to the original and even uses similar, but higher-quality, synth sounds for the organs (man, it would have been great if they had hired an actual organist. That would have been sick as hell.). Until it gets to that wild guitar solo at the end, I imagine this is what "Dancing Mad" would have sounded like if it had been used in FF7. Maybe with some more intense choral action, though, given what Uematsu did in "One Winged Angel."
One of the things I love about FFVI is the fact that the world ends halfway through the game: Kefka succeeds in destroying the "World of Balance" and creating the "World of Ruin," scattering the 14 heroes across a postapocalyptic landscape. Do you find that there's a big difference between WoB music and WoR music? How does Uematsu complement the game's sudden tonal shift?
By the time you hit the World of Ruin, I'd ballpark that about 75–80% of the game's music has been introduced in one form or another—but a lot of it is recycled/repurposed/massaged, so the stats are pretty subjective. Because of that, there's a limit on how much the tone can really shift. There are some clear contrasts, though. The airship music in the World of Balance sounds like a Showcase Showdown on The Price is Right, but in the World of Ruin it's a melancholy number featuring a pan flute instead of a brass section. The town music is almost performatively mopey. The overworld music is probably the starkest contrast; it, more than anything, has that post-apocalyptic Pure Moods vibe. I think the way the change is really hit home is in the music direction (i.e., the cues/placement): the strongest reminders of the World of Balance come when you reunite with friends — when their theme music plays — and when you beat the game. Other than that, things are relatively static.
As a longtime JRPG fan, I can think of a lot of great music besides Uematsu's work on the FF games: Yasunori Mitsuda's score for Chrono Trigger (which Uematsu also worked on); Yoko Shimomura's work on Kingdom Hearts, Xenoblade Chronicles, etc.; Toby Fox's music for Undertale. All bangers. Do you think JRPGs tend to have better music than other game genres? If so, why? Is it just that the genre has always attracted singular talents, or is there something about the genre that enables a different approach to composition?
So I need to come clean here: I largely fell off the JRPG train after Final Fantasy VII (for a number of reasons not related to JRPGs or video games at all). As I researched this book, though, I did touch on a lot of really great JRPG scores — and I agree with you that there are tons of amazing ones out there. These scores are memorable — I think— because of the purpose they serve and the needs the games have. JRPGs traditionally have pretty linear storylines and predefined characters, so the music has to tell a linear story, and the composer can plan ahead for how the music and characters converse. Our reception of the music is necessarily tangled up in our reception of the story; it's supposed to be. In a lot of ways, that makes the music more powerful, and I think that's why JRPG's feel like such a fount of amazing music. (Don't get me wrong, though, there are a few real clunkers in this genre.)
That said, there are so many bangers out there that aren't JRPGs—the comparison between JRPGs and other genres may be apples-and-oranges, because the music functions differently, because the games' needs are different.
If you could do a book like this about another game's music, what game would it be?
Argh, I hate to list another 16-bit JRPG here because I would love to branch into another genre and era, but it would absolutely have to be Super Mario RPG. There's a lot of rich material there! The music is really idiosyncratic, memorable, and effective — it really does feel like a mash-up of 16-bit Nintendo and 16-bit Squaresoft. I would want to explore its relationship to the Mario franchise and to its 16-bit contemporaries — FFIV–VI, of course, but also Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Breath of Fire, etc. I also want to get in Yoko Shimomura's head. She did Street Fighter II and Breath of Fire in this era, but this really feels like an important moment in her career: a real mark in the 16-bit JRPG world, where the expectations/standards are so high — especially at Squaresoft! — and in the Mario franchise. It's really wild to think about that 2-in-1. Also—Women in video game music are forgotten/marginalized in history a way that's really similar to women in classical music (and other kinds of music). Yoko Shimomura is a big exception here, and I want to know about what it was like to break in, and how she managed to break through.
Pre-order your copy of Final Fantasy VI by Sebastian Deken.
This is the second in our author-vs.-author Boss Fight Q&A series. Both Mike's book on Silent Hill 2 and Philip's book on Resident Evil are funding now on Kickstarter.
You’re known primarily for humor, but you’ve selected one of the most deadly serious titles in gaming history. What made you decide to write about Silent Hill 2? What do you think you bring to the conversation as a humorist?
To be fair, I played Silent Hill 2 long before I tried and aggressively failed to be funny. Silent Hill 2 is one of those games that's stuck with me my entire life. It also holds up incredibly well, making revisiting it less of a stroll down memory lane and more a chance to peel back more layers in its design and story. I'd say I'm approaching Silent Hill 2 less as a comedy writer and more as someone who's suffered from mental illness and abuse, which is always the most fun angle one can take. At the same time, comedy and horror do carry similar rhythms; both rely on context, suspense, surprise, and escalation. While Silent Hill 2 is rarely funny, you could say that the game's twist is an eight-hour punchline on the first scene of the game.
Silent Hill as a franchise seems like it should be able to endlessly reinvent itself, but after the third game its star harshly fell and never quite recovered. Now it’s dead, at least for the time being. Why do you think it failed to keep an audience?
It's hard to say, because I am a fan of the series as a whole. Even bad Silent Hill is still fun in its own goofy way. Most forms of art, and especially games, require massive teams of people who all genuinely want it go well. Nobody wants to leave a project feeling like they disappointed their audience. But if I had one criticism of the series - and please keep in mind this comes from a Silent Hill 2 fanboy - it's that it became too enamored with its own iconography and lore. Lore is great, but when a horror series gets weighed down by its past, there can sometimes a split between introducing new, scary elements and fan service. For example, I love the Bubble Head Nurses in Silent Hill 2, but when they come back in the movies and on t-shirts and in games like Book of Memories, they feel like mascots rather than horrors. There's just a point where Freddy Krueger goes from haunting your dreams to being a vinyl figure on a shelf.
So I don't necessarily think Silent Hill failed to keep an audience - and there is still a very dedicated audience online - but I do think that some later entries lost the thread on what made the series so captivating in the first place. Sadly, games that did try to reinvent the series like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories were essentially buried by Konami. Show of hands - how many of you played Shattered Memories? Exactly. You're missing out. Konami's cancellation of Hideo Kojima's Silent Hills after the release of the incredible P.T. also likely left both the series and the fandom in suspended animation. Finally, Konami has unfortunately failed to make playing most Silent Hill games easy for modern audiences. Outside of the poorly-produced Silent Hill 2 HD Collection, there's just no easy way to play most of the series on modern machines or at all. Well, unless you emulate.
We each chose to write about survival horror games! What are your thoughts on how that genre has largely faded in the past couple of generations, with the emphasis shifting back to action?
I don't think horror games have largely faded, but I think they've split up into action games with horror elements like the Evil Within and smaller, more artistic horror experiences like Layers of Fear. I'm sure this theory doesn't hold up under even the slightest scrutiny. But for me, the genre didn't fade so much as I found the experiences I needed off the AAA path. Games like Corpse Party, Pathologic (1 and 2), Darkwood, and Stories Untold. These are off the top of my head, not a list of my favorite games, people who are ready to be mad at me. That said, many of those AAA action-horror games are great! Look at something like Bloodborne. It's action-based. It's an RPG. But the way the game unfolds, the way you try to figure out what exactly happened doesn't feel that far from what Silent Hill often tries to do with its environmental storytelling. And I'll say that playing Resident Evil VII in virtual reality is one of the scariest gaming experiences I've ever had.
What is the earliest piece of media (not necessarily horror) that you remember scaring the hell out of you? Walk us through every aspect of that childhood trauma!
Two things come to mind. First, I was terrified of horror movie VHS box art. Just the designs - especially of those late '80s, early '90s horror movie boxes, just felt mysterious and terrifying to me. I didn't get into horror until middle school, so as a child, I would just see boxes for movies like Child's Play and feel immense fear. Two, the Large Marge scene from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Honestly, still scary.
How far did the final book land from what you envisioned? What changed during the writing process?
Hoo boy. As you know, these books aren't very long, so we don't have space to cover everything we want to talk about. I had to cut down chapters on the development and release of the game (although I do touch on it) because the developers themselves released a making-of documentary that's available on YouTube. My first draft was somewhere in the range of 65,000 words and I had to get it down to 30,000, so some topics just had to go. I care about these topics! I just put more emphasis on other subjects I felt like I'd seen a little less of in the ether. I'd also say that the earlier drafts were "funnier" in the sense they had more jokes, but upon re-reading, I felt like I was shoe horning them in a bit much, accidentally making the book a bit more cringey than fun. Who knows if I've succeeded making it less so. Probably not!
Mandatory question: What features and creatures would you encounter if you were to visit Silent Hill? (Or, perhaps, “when.” I have no idea what you’re planning to promote the book.)
What I like about Silent Hill 2 compared to other games in the series is that the horrors you face come directly from your own sins. Most of the other Silent Hill games may have put the horror on a cult, but Silent Hill 2 just wants its characters to feel bad for what they did. So I'd probably encounter a really sad, deteriorating city that made little sense and left me feeling lonely and isolated based on the sin of letting friendships and relationships fester until they died. As far as monsters? I think the ones that always disturb me the worst are the ones that have human forms but look wrapped in a sweaty sheet made of flesh. F that S.
This is the first in our author-vs.-author Boss Fight Q&A series. Both Mike's book on Silent Hill 2 and Matt's book on Red Dead are funding now on Kickstarter.
You're writing a book on a game that is both inspired by and subverts tropes found in traditional Westerns. What was your previous experience with the genre? If you had little experience before, what about Red Dead Redemption made you interested in the Western setting?
Honestly, my experience with the Western was limited before I started thinking about this book. I suspect a lot of people my age absorbed the genre from their boomer dads via osmosis; mine was not the biggest Western fan. But The Searchers has been embedded in my brain ever since an eccentric old lefty named Mr. Loose showed it to us in high school film class, freely throwing around terms like "phallic symbol" and "miscegenation." He really showed us how you could look beneath the surface of the genre to find the values undergirding it (American exceptionalism, gruff machismo, gun culture, etc.), and his head kept reappearing in my mind like a foul-mouthed Obi-Wan when I sat down to play Red Dead for the umpteenth time. It seemed clear to me that the best way to understand what Red Dead does, as a game and as a narrative, was to delve into the source code of the genre that it tries to emulate, cannibalize, and ultimately outdo.
[RDR1 SPOILER IN THIS QUESTION AND ITS ANSWER] Red Dead Redemption ends in the death of its hero. As someone who also wrote about a game with a sad ending, how do you feel a game protagonist's death affects the "interactivity" of the form? How does it clash with regular gameplay in which a death outside of the narrative is curable with a restart?
To me, Marston's death scene might be the most interesting moment in Red Dead -- the way Dead Eye blankets the screen in orange and makes you scramble furiously to pop off headshots, only to watch him get pumped full of bullets. I think it's amazing because both Red Dead's game genre (open-world action game) and its narrative genre (Western) let you indulge in a fantasy of lawless freedom, yet it ends with this death that clamps down so brutally on both the character and the player. Other games have tried to wag their finger at you and be like, "No no! Not so fast! You're not so free and powerful after all, gamer! Heeheehee!" -- but because Red Dead makes you feel so free, because it has GTA in its DNA, because it makes you inhabit a cinematic and literary genre that has meditated in so many ways on the promise and meaning of freedom, the moment lands in a way that feels authentically tragic. I think the interactivity of the form makes his death a hundred times more effective as an ending. And then "respawning" as Jack, doomed to continue the cycle of violence and run into the same Big Government buzzsaw -- that, to me, is authentically tragic, too.
We both went to grad school for English, although you got a PhD and I most certainly did not. How did your academic experience reflect on your view of the game? How did it reflect the way you approached the book itself?
Somewhere on ProQuest is my 350-page dissertation on Victorian literature and the concept of species. This is not that book; this is nothing close to that book, which I think only 4 people will ever read. But I guess one thing that really fascinated me when I was doing my degree was the way that we (and by we I mean 21st-century Americans) keep returning obsessively to the Victorian era as an aesthetic touchstone: e.g. steampunk, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, these
Vox sickos from a few years ago who decided to live like Victorians by bathing with a bowl and pitcher and using a letter opener made from a taxidermied deer foot. To me, steampunk Victorian England and the "West" are two sides of the same coin -- the Western is the rugged, American version of the same idealized 19th century, just as packed with stereotypes. I think my academic work made me predisposed to question why we keep returning to that period, and what we get out of reimagining it over and over.
Despite the massive success of Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2, games set in the Wild West are few and far between. Why do you think that is? What do you think are the challenges of the setting for other games?
I have some theories. First of all, Westerns dole out violence at a slower, more deliberate tempo than other movie genres. They're all about tension and release -- the quick, precise revolver shot. There's nothing about that rhythm that's impossible to translate into gameplay, but it needs to be done properly, and when done properly I think it translates into gameplay that has a more niche flavor. The closest analogue I can think of is something like Sekiro, which borrows from another prominent movie genre (Samurai flicks) that isn't replicated faithfully by games as often as you would think. In a true Western video game, bullet sponges of any kind should be illegal; XP systems and skill trees should be heavily frowned upon; damage in number form -- any kind of damage that isn't completely binary, kill or no kill -- has no place. In other words, a lot of the basic design principles of modern AAA games besides the open-world don't really gel with the Western.
But also, the genre isn't the towering cultural behemoth it used to be. Critics used to say the Western was "dead" every 10 years or so, and they were always wrong; the last time it "died," which was around the mid-90s, after Unforgiven and Dances with Wolves, it just ended up migrating to TV (Deadwood, Westworld), along with a bunch of other genres that used to fall within the category of mid-budget prestige pictures for adults. But it is true that sometime around the late 70s, after Star Wars and the original Superman, the Western lost its pride of place as the premiere form of pop-cultural American mythmaking. Sci-fi and superhero blockbusters superseded it, both in terms of box office and in terms of cultural importance. And those are the genres that videogames borrow from, more often than not.
If you couldn't have written about Red Dead Redemption for your book, which other game would you have chosen? Why?
Someday I will write the definitive critical study of Banjo-Kazooie and everyone will laugh at me for defending collectathons and toilets with googly eyes. But by God, I will do it.
Rockstar games has been criticized in the past for its working conditions, especially during crunch. While this is a common problems in the games industry, how does this knowledge affect your view of the game?
It's a problem throughout the industry, but what gets me about Rockstar's particular brand of crunch is the level of irony and complete lack of self-awareness. Every Rockstar game -- including this one! -- has snarky things to say about evil corporations, capitalism, and an authoritarian state bureaucracy that consumes and coerces ordinary people. Every Rockstar game starts to seem a wee bit hypocritical when you peel back the curtain and look at Rockstar itself. I generally try to keep that curtain in place when I think about games, because I tend to look at them -- like books or movies -- as cultural artifacts. But it's impossible to ignore the disconnect between the values Rockstar espouse in their games and the values embedded in their corporate culture, and that disconnect casts a shadow over the games themselves.
"The first time I called Turmell for an interview, I asked him one question and he spoke for something like 30 minutes straight, telling me a summarized version of his life story and what happened with NBA Jam."
As we get closer to the Nov 14 paperback release, I wanted to share an excerpt of the book that we published in Polygon about the game's history of including secret characters:
Already,
Old School Gamer Magazine raves,
"It is incredible how much of an influence NBA Jam had, and now it is carefully curated in this book. If you’ve ever played a game of NBA Jam, you owe yourself to hear the story behind this game."
GDC's Simon Carless says he's "Loving the book," citing "lots of meticulously researched detail on obscure hidden characters & loads more."
And from Youtube reviewer Caleb J Ross: "I'm not a sports game fan or an arcade game fan, but the story Ali tells is so interesting and well-researched that it doesn't matter. If you like video game history, you need to buy this book."
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One of our favorite Kickstarter traditions is the "gamer profile tier," in which one of our authors interviews a Kickstarter backer. Today, Gabe Durham (Boss Fight's editor and author of Bible Adventures) interviews Daniel Greenberg about his gaming history.
Gabe and Daniel did the interview in person from the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity by Michael P. Williams. Enjoy! - BFB
Gabe Durham: What got you into video games?
Daniel Greenberg: When the NES has its worldwide launch in 1986, we couldn't get one for a while. It was kind of a novelty... My brother, who is about eight years older than me, had a Commodore 64, which my was father could afford at the time. When I was old enough to be able to crawl up into the seat and mess with it and play with it, I think I was playing Test Drive and Kickman and whatever else I could get to boot. We also an old Atari 2600, and this was when you could get the games for literally nothing: KB Toys had bins that were like three for a dollar.
G: So you benefited from the Atari Crash.
D: Oh yeah. And by the time we could afford an NES in 1988, there was plenty out to pick and choose from. We ended up getting some great games by sheer luck. With those covers, there was no way of knowing what you’d get! Games like Bubble Bobble, Mario, Zelda, Marble Madness—
G: Oh, that was a big one for you?
D: That was the only game I could get my father to play. He held the controller upside down. I have no idea why he did that to this day.
G: What do you think made you stick with gaming over time?
D: Probably the shared memories. I remember playing the first Final Fantasy with cousins, one of whom has since passed away. We’d all huddle around the TV at my grandmother’s house and play Final Fantasy or Championship Bowling. A lot of people remember running around outside and playing with friends as popular characters like Ninja Turtles, but for us it was video game characters. It was just so familiar to us. So when I moved away, which was not quite in the age of online gaming, we were able to stay connected by talking about the games were were playing on the Nintendo and Super Nintendo.
G: How has your taste in games changed over time?
D: Part of it is my ability to play them. When I was young, for example, I loved the music in Ninja Gaiden, but little me never had the skill to get far enough in that game to actually enjoy it. Whereas Bubble Bobble’s music was a 40-second loop, and we could get all the way through that, so that's burned into my head forever.
G: Oh man, that song!
D: As you get older, you get into longer-form stuff like strategy games and RPG. I got into Civilization when I was at an age to be able to crunch the math and appreciate what was going on behind the scenes. Civilization for the PC wouldn't have appealed to me, with the traditional war-gamer and utilitarian user interface, but the polished-up version with the mouse interface for the SNES made it really accessible.
G: How has your career intersected with games?
D: When I got older, and was interested in computer programming—and I’ve programmed for a number of different companies—I always appreciated the code and complexity that goes into game design. My second undergraduate degree at George Mason University was in computer science, and I’d see students working late at night on game projects in the labs. As I’d help them debug their work, it occured to me very quickly that the projects they were assigned were way more fun than my own assignments! I pivoted over to a degree in applied computer science in game design degree, and followed through to a master’s, and then into teaching as an adjunct professor of game design at George Mason, teaching game history and game design, and working closely with first- and second-year students to make sure they know the fundamentals and work from a common lexicon.
G: How do you put together your syllabi when there are so many resources out there? What are the fundamentals?
D: You can lost in game history, so you need to look for the touchstones. One of my favorite books is Tristan Donovan’s Replay, which takes a slow, segmented approach from the Festival of Britain in 1951 all the way to the end of the 20th century, offering a controlled window into some key events. And his storytelling really makes it work: I don’t care for games textbooks that read like social studies texts, listing just facts and figures. I find it doesn’t engage college-age students and it doesn’t stick with them either.
G: Is a lot of the study of games also the simultaneous study of games history? Learning how to do it by how people did it?
D: My students typically take the two classes "History of Computer Game Design" and "Basic Game Design" concurrently. “Basic Game Design” is about understanding the shared language and common patterns, and since this is usually their first time designing games, we focus on simple 2D experiences in GameMaker or Construct and help them get a few games under their belt. One thing we absolutely must have them do is develop a portfolio by the time they finish the program. We encourage them to go to game jams like Ludum Dare or Global Game Jam and work in the student programs like the Game Analysis and Design Interest Group we have at George Mason. In a few weeks, we’re going to be doing a 24-hour livestream to benefit Extra Life, but in addition to playing games, they'll also be making games for the stream.
G: So then they’ll watch the streamers play the games that they just made.
D: That’s the hope, yeah!
G: Is that one of the most satisfying things for your students, when they've completed a game and can watch someone else enjoy a game they had made?
D: When they’ve finished their first midterm, and they’ve finished their first thing—it’s not really a complete game, but they’ve seen that they can do it. And that's huge. The inertia of getting there is a big problem. When they first come into the program, you ask, “Who has an idea here for a game?” And everyone will raise their hand. Everyone comes in with their golden baby, and we have to give them two options. Either try to make it while understanding where you are in your skill development, or take the “James Cameron route”: Wrap up that game, set it aside, and work on other stuff until you feel like you’re ready for it.
G: Oh, the old Avatar treatment!
D: Exactly. He’s said how he wrote that in high school. “Unobtanium,” right? I believe him when he says he wrote it in high school! So if something is precious enough to you, and you don't want to damage it with amateur efforts, you’ll work on other things until you get to the point that you can make it.
G: Are you working on any of your own projects?
D: A few! I’ve been a writer for a few years. I’m currently working on Pat Contri’s Super Nintendo book with a group of other writers. I’m also part of a group called Winterion Game Studios currently based in Maryland. It's sort of a creative clearinghouse for me and my friends. I had bought all of this video equipment when I was a graduate student, and my friends and I decided to use it to make let’s plays, which we’ve been making for about three years now, focusing on older titles. It gives us a chance to do post-hoc analysis where we sit down and experience the game as accurately as it was intended. There’s something to be said for taking a single work, breaking it open, and getting some context for it. That’s why I wanted to back Boss Fight Books for Season 4. I hadn't even realized it existed until then! I appreciate the format and the concept: deep-diving into games, getting out and interviewing people. Those are time-limited things: There are amazing anecdotes from people in this industry, and we’re not going to have the opportunity to talk to them in 50 years, 100 years. The people and events behind the games, the context, the development, the marketing, what's going on in the world at the time, all form interesting and crucial stories.
G: Absolutely. I think many people have started realizing this as people in the industry have started to retire, or get older.
D: We just had Nolan Bushnell spend some time with us at George Mason as a game pioneer in residence. He was able to explain his time at Atari in the 1970s to our students, and that was invaluable. The students have read the history in books, but to hear it from the source was so good for them.
G: Speaking of books, tell me a bit more about your work on Pat Contri’s SNES book.
D: We had the stack of over 700 games made for the system to write for. No one is champing at the bit to review Dirt Racer or Bébé's Kids or some other dreaded games, so we just split the games up as made sense. I had a good set-up for Super Scope games, so I tackled a lot of those. You also don’t want to give somebody twenty RPGs, because some games are going to be longer to digest.
G: How does Super Scope hold up these days?
D: Surprisingly well! The device’s accuracy is pretty good, so as long as you’ve got a good receiver and a light gun. We’ve also got a nice Sony Trinitron TV that we’ll play on. But for the games themselves, there’s not a whole lot there. A few are fun, but by and large it was a novelty. A lot of rail shooters.
G: What in gaming tends to excite you the most?
D: I’m always compelled by what my students, present and former, are doing. We have a program called the Virginia Serious Game Institute, where we given students some office space and the time to work on their ideas. Some of the people I’ve worked with are doing UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) flight simulators, and others had a great simulation program for training firefighters: It’s a lot cheaper to practice 100 times in a simulator than set a real building on fire and then rebuild it! We’ve also had a program for the State Department for diplomats to simulate emergencies in VR renditions of embassies. It can be invaluable training.
G: Is there anything else we should know about you?
D: Gaming helped me meet the love of my life! When I founded Winterion, I started getting into discussions on Twitter about older games, and suddenly Alex and I are talking back and forth about The Legend of Kyrandia, a lesser-known point-and-click adventure series from Westwood. She knew it, I knew it, and before I knew it, a few months later we’re going to see Madame Butterfly together at the Kennedy Center. And now it's been a wonderful year-and-a-half together and counting!
*
Check out Daniel's projects below!
https://youtube.com/winteriongamestudios
https://twitter.com/winterion
https://winterion.com
Our latest books are Katamari Damacy and Shovel Knight. Click through to learn more.
Come see us October 20-21 at the Porland Retro Gaming Expo. Meet Boss Fight's editor/Bible Adventures author Gabe Durham and Final Fantasy V author Chris Kohler.
We now have audiobooks! Chrono Trigger and Bible Adventures are available now on Audible.
Six of our books are now out in French. You can pick them up from Omake Books.
7/26 - Los Angeles: Boss Fight Books: Season 4 Launch Party Funtimes
- Alyse Knorr (Super Mario Bros. 3)
- Daniel Lisi (World of Warcraft)
- Jarett Kobek (Soft & Cuddly)
- Brock Wilbur (Postal)
8/10 - San Francisco: Boss Fight Books Presents: Kingdom Hearts II Release Party
- Alexa Ray Corriea, author of the new Kingdom Hearts II
- Nick Suttner, author of Shadow of the Colossus
- Chris Kohler, author of the forthcoming Final Fantasy V
9/1 - PAX West (Seattle) Panel
Details forthcoming. Alexa Ray Corriea, Nick Suttner, Chris Kohler, L.E. Hall, Gabe Durham.
One of our favorite Kickstarter traditions is the "gamer profile tier," in which one of our authors interviews a Kickstarter backer. Today, Alyse Knorr (author of Super Mario Bros. 3) interviews Alraz.exe about his gaming history.
Enjoy! - BFB
Alyse Knorr: What is your favorite game and why?
Alraz: This is a very tough one, but after much consideration, I'll go with Mega Man 3 on the NES. The main reason why it's my favorite game is because it's the Mega Man game I played the most as a kid. Though I never owned the game back then, a friend of mine had it and I used to borrow his copy and play it all day long.
I know is Inafune-san's "least favorite" of the whole franchise because of all of the things that went behind it's development, but as a kid, I was completely unaware of any of that and couldn't care less. The game was awesome. It had very addicting music and a kind of mystic dark mood to it that rather than scare you away, it lures you into it, makes you wonder "what's in there..?"; and my Gosh, you are in for quite a ride! Even to this day, I feel that Mega Man 3 has the best and most nostalgia-inducing credits music.
A few other runner-ups for the title of "top favorite game" would be: Marvel vs Capcom 1 and Diablo 2. Those games stole so many years of my youth ^_^"
What was the first game you fell in love with?
This was definitely Mega Man 2: My first Mega Man game ever. I was like 7 years old when I first played it; was not aware of the first one, but it didn't matter. Mega Man 2 was so different to anything I had played until then, with it's colorful visuals, it's lively music and the fluid and responsive controller. Of course, back in the day I had no clue that those were all elements that were drawing me into the game, all I knew was that, even though I kept dying over and over again, I was really enjoying it.
It was so powerful that it eventually led me into taking a career in computer science because I wanted to know how these games were made. I wanted to make them myself.
I owe so much to this inspiration: I come from what in my country we would call "a humble background", which is just euphemism for "a poor family", but I liked these game so much that I couldn't stop. I had to learn more. Today, I owe my professional career to the inspiration that Mega Man games in general gave me; I loved them so much as a kid, and that love kept feeding my curiosity and that curiosity eventually led me to learn about computers and programming. Had there been no Mega Man, I would not be talking to you right now about my favorite anything, I would probably be a low level employee at a department store or something like that...
As a homage to that inspiration and that life-changing experience, I have been building the Mega Man collection that I could not afford back when I was a poor kid and I support Inafune-san on everything he does (you may or may not be aware: I'm a voluntary moderator on MN9's forums). I owe them.
Is there anything about Mega Man as a character that you’re drawn to?
More than the character, the gameplay!
Call me "simple-minded", but to me, simple things work better; and that's one of the many reasons why I always regard the original Mega Man series as the best one: while I acknowledge that other series have other more complex elements that enhance the gameplay experience, classic Mega Man has something that can never be matched: there is charm in its simplicity.
You mentioned that you’re “building the Mega Man collection [you] could not afford back when [you were a kid].” Can you tell me a little about this collection?
Well, the collection contains a few hundreds of items (mostly merchandising stuff like comics, mangas, toys, etc.)
Keeping up with what I have and what I don't has become such a complex task that I'm working on a website to document the whole thing so that I can have a quick reference before purchasing something that I most likely already have ^_^". The site is still years away from complete, but it's a lot of fun to work on.
This whole "collect them all" thing started kinda unintentionally, when, after getting my first professional job, I realized I could buy some of the many games I always wanted to have as a kid. Then I realized there were many other nice Mega Man related things that I was unaware of at the time and new merchandise that Capcom kept releasing...
I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but I eventually decided that I wanted a more proper, more complete and more coherent collection (at the time, all I had was a few items of this and a few others of that).
Here is an early picture of Jan 2011 when I was barely starting in this obsession with collecting mega man: https://goo.gl/photos/aM1h2JJ6L4FujugX7
And here are a few more recent pics, which does not include all items, and many of them are a bit outdated by now, but it's a good reference:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/Y3fGPWpLSbGhkE4B3hN7ctPlSC7row82WFpC7sTltix?v=grid&ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy
Are there any items in your collection that you’re particularly proud of or excited about?
This one:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/mPvdYyKBZ3tRJRJBF2M02oiXuxb33PMJLcsle8yKTjk?v=grid&ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy
The Mega Man face on the right was drawn by Keiji Inafune himself (the so-called "Father of Mega Man").
Best of all: this is NOT some overpriced stuff that I bought from a scalper on ebay. Inafune-san drew it for me, and for me only.
I’m intrigued by what you said about your background growing up. What is your home country, and would you say there’s anything unique about gaming culture there?
I was born in the north-west-ish part of Mexico. A region dominated by drug dealers, corruption and an antiquated old-world culture.
Back in the day, being a gamer was seen as a weird thing. We were the exception. Technology hadn't caught up there, so, those technology addicted geeks like me had a hard time trying to fit in. It wasn't so hard for me because I have always been an anti-social ^_^". So, all I had to do is keep being myself.
Thankfully, things have been improving over time. Specially with the advent of the internet, things have improved a lot. Mexico in general is now a big marketplace for AAA titles. So much that some big game studios like Microsoft now translate their games to "latin american spanish"; previously, all you would get was European Spanish, which, while perfectly understandable to any latin american, sounds a bit weird due to the marked European accent (imagine all your english subs and dubs being in British English).
Gaming has become so important in Mexico that, in fact, the roles have reversed: now it's harder to find someone who doesn't play any games than someone who does.
Something unique about gaming in Mexico: the video game making industry is almost completely non existent. For such a big market, one would expect everybody to be making games and trying to get a slice of the cake; but nope. We are happy to play games made by everybody else.
It’s so fascinating that you owe your computer programming career to Mega Man. When did you start coding, and did your early coding involve games?
I started coding at around age 14, when I got my first computer: an IBM PC 80383, with 1 Megabyte of RAM (yes, MEGAbyte, not Gigabyte) and a black and white monitor... Well, more like black and nuclear glowing green... aaah~, those were the days~
I would code in something called Quick Basic, a programming language that, if I recall correctly, was included with MS-DOS, the command line OS that was available on my computer.
And yes, most of my early works were very VERY VEEERY crappy text-only video games. Unfortunately, none of them survive to this day.
While my current job is not related to making games, I still take some of my free time to play around with available video game creation engines like Unreal 4, Unity 5 and so on. So much fun :)
I have a dream of making a more modern and story driven Mega Man game that remains truthful to it's old school NES roots... but that takes way more resources (especially time) than I have available... at least for now... Have not given up yet!
What games are you into today?
Today, I barely have any free time to play, but I'd have to admit I have a soft spot for construction games ^_^. I got very addicted to this game called "Project Highrise", although I think I'm almost cured of the addiction by now... I have also been playing Mega Man Zero on a live stream with a friend, as well as Dragon Ball Z Xenoverse sporadically.
I guess I can summarize my gaming preferences as follows:
1-Mega Man
2-Fighting games (mostly Capcom ones)
3-J-RPGs
4-Everything else. Not too much into AAA titles, but would give them a try if I have the chance.
Is there anything else about you that you think someone would need to know to truly understand your gaming history, and who you are as a gamer?
I'm a very shy guy!
Actually, I've always been a very anti-social, quiet, reserved, introverted person... but once I open up, you'd wish I had stayed that way ^_^"
This is the fourth in our author-vs.-author Boss Fight Q&A series. Both Sebastian's book on Final Fantasy VI and Gabe's book on Majora's Mask are funding now on Kickstarter.
This is the third in our author-vs.-author Boss Fight Q&A series. Both Sebastian's book on Final Fantasy VI and Matt's book on Red Dead Redemption are funding now on
This is the second in our author-vs.-author Boss Fight Q&A series. Both Mike's book on Silent Hill 2 and Philip's book on Resident Evil are funding now on