The Five Games You'll Play In Heaven

Today I encountered an artcle entitled 'The Five Games You Play in Heaven' by Dan Scog. Though he's not exactly Matt Kirschenbaum, I find he does make an interesting point: Scog argues that Super Mario Brothers, Pac Man, Tetris, Space Invaders, and Pong are the five games that every video game expert should have mastered. Though it seems that Scog feels that mastery of these games is more of a point of pride than anything else (and though the author does seem to fall prey to the same generational prejudices he supposedly objects to), I think there's a larger point at the heart of this article.

The author claims that these five games are largely overlooked and disregarded today because of the availability of more complex or visually stimulating games on later platforms. Still, he reasons that they are still valuable because the skills aquired by playing these games are the building blocks of the skills one needs to play later games. I agree with this, and also submit that these games have become 'classics' because of their adaptability. That is, it is not only the skills these games require that make them stand out in our memories as special and interesting, but the combinations of their formal and narrative elements with these skills. In this sense I argue that even though people may not regularly pick up an Atari to play Space Invaders, for example, people still encounter most of the qualities of this and other classics in later games (Halo, for example) that attracted people to games like Space Invaders in the first place.

There's a definite parallel between book-literature and videogames in this sense: the true classics are those works which are constantly emulated, improved upon, and updated to fit the changing times. Just as, for example, MacBeth was updated for the movie Scotland, PA (2001), Super Mario Brothers has been rehashed for today's gamer in Half-Life, for one example.

I should probably substantiate that claim. In both Mario and Half-Life, the game objective is to progress through stages by gathering items and defeating 'mini' foes. Climax scenes divide the story into levels or stages, and an over-arching narrative links these stages until the ultimate objective is reached at the end. Though these qualities that link the two games are, admittedly, pretty general, I think the narrative structures of the games, their search-and-find objectives, and the presence of goons that inhibit the main character along his path are enough to place Mario Brothers and Half-Life in a class of games that differs from others.

I think that, in various ways, people today are playing the same games that people a generation before were playing; that is, it's less often the formal elements that change from game to game than the tools we are given to reach them. This is why platform has become so important in the modern gaming world, I think; technological innovation allows the same basic game structures to take on new dimensions that turn them into what is, partly (but not essentially) a new game.

So regardless of Scog's retrophilic opinion that these five specific games are the ones that will be 'played in heaven,' I argue that the formal elements of these games are important, in the grand scheme of things, primarily as the dawn of a genre, making it possible for other games to stand on their shoulders and exist as equally, if differntly, entertaining pastimes.

Rectifying the Mario Shortage

I actually play a fair amout of the original SMB in my spare time to de-stress while writing papers or studying. The other night, as I was hopelessly stuck on level 6, I decided to break the monotony and try to find some cheats or something. I was expecting a simple ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A select start or something, but what I found instead was a world of possibilities that ranged from simple cheats to game glitches that can be used to get Mario into all kinds of trouble I never knew was possible.

Pardon my ignorance, everyone who knows this already (I imagine some of you are probably going to say,' yeah, I figured that out.... when i was four."), but there is a never-ending water world at the end of 1.2!! This, to me, was remarkable. Not merely the fact that I've been playing Mario since I was in diapers (practically) and never knew about this, but that even now, there's interest in what this world is, what Mario can do in it, and whether it has any additional relevance to the game experience beyond diversion.

The never-ending water level, or "minus world" as most sites refer to it, brings up some new (well, if you're me) questions about paratextuality and canonicity in a franchize that is already so richly endowed with possibilities for interpretation. For example, can a portion of a canonical paratext be considered an epitext, and, if so, can external epitexts be considered more canonical than those internal ones?

We discussed with Myst that you can go though the entire game without really addressing the narrative exposition in the video content. Similarly, in SMB, you can play the game for, like, 20 years without ever addressing -1. And, in truth, you wouldn't be missing much narratively because, apparently, there's no way to leave it once you get in short of restarting. (Only one person has ever claimed to have completed the minus level, but he or she is largely regarded as a scammer.) Still, the presence of the minus world and other glitches of this nature have found a place in the game experience, particularly with the types of people who are attracted to cheat codes and other, more intentional secrets embedded in a game.

In fact, it appears that the minus world and the turtle of infinite life in 3.1 have survived editing, making it onto SMB for wii among other reincarnations. Yet I've found no indication that there has been any attempt to complete the minus level, to encode a destination at the end of it so that it doesn't loop, or to fix the "infinite" life trick in 3.1 so that it doesn't eventually game over (as it did in the original game after 128 1ups). That is, even though the glitches was almost certainly not intended for the final version of the game, the editors have kept them upon revisitation, and in so doing have acknowledged them as part of the Mario canon.

Still, I feel like there is a division between the type of experience in the minus world and that which takes place in normal gameplay that warrants their seperation. I would say that the minus world can indeed be considered epitextual, even though it is contained on the same physical device as the proper game and can be accessed through an exploitation of SMB's glitches. And if this is the case, I believe other texts with similar issues can be regarded in the same way, since physical location does not seem to be a determining factor of canonicity, even if that physical location is embedded within a canonical object.

A Wii-Markably Unscholarly Post About My New Favorite Thing

(Pardon the pun. I couldn't help myself. Really.)

My sister got a Wii a couple of weeks ago, and I tried it for the first time today.

Now, I know this is supposed to be a scholarly blog, and I usually do my best to comply with that guideline, but this entry is going to contain very little substance. None, in fact. I'm sorry, and I'll do better next time, but this has to be said:

Wii might be the coolest toy ever.

I played just about everything available to me, and it's really great because I kicked all kinds of ass at bowling and baseball and boxing and everything. I threw strikes all over the place, and KOed every person who crossed my path, and pretty much wiped the floor with my sister. Not that I dont usually, at most things in fact, but it was still really cool to confirm that I could take her virtually, as well as literally.

Anyway, Wii was some of the most fun I've had in a long time. There was an article in the Red Eye last week about how people play this system so much they loose serious weight, and I totally get why. If I didn't have a million other things to do, I'd Wii-exercise (Wii-xercise?) like crazy.
Every day, probably. First I'd do 30 minutes of DDR (the only other videogame pheonomenon I've subscribed to in my adult life), then I'd switch gears to Wii Sports for another 30 to pound homers out of the park, Billy Blanks be damned. I'm confident that if we all did this, we'd all look like Giselle. Even the boys.

I remember when I was a kid and my parents got me one of those great Nintendo sports pads and I went nuts with it. Wii brings back some of those great memories of stomping my feet really hard in the same place over and over again, except with the added bonus of superior graphics and comparatively realistic sports action. I got sick of the Nintendo thing after a little while, but between you and me I'm glad that Wii belongs to my sister and not me, because let's just say I'd be doing a disproportional amont of homework for videogames class.

Put Ze Candle Back - Secret Passageways and Videogaming

Recently, HGTV aired a special entitled Secret Spaces, which explored hidden rooms and secret passages in modern architecture. (See link: HiddenPassageway.com)

The program featured a number of rooms and passageways, each of which was activated by a unique "trigger" known only to the architect and the homeowner. Interviews with the head inventor at Hidden Passageways revealed many portal options, including a revolving fireplace, a revolving bookshelf, and a staircase on hydraulics that lifts to reveal another staircase.

Though the passageways themselves may seem to have been torn from the pages of a Nancy Drew mystery (or perhaps a Mel Brooks comedy?), what is intriguing about them is the way by which they are accessed. Rather than falling back on the old "trick book" trigger, many buyers opt for less obvious choices. For example, one homeowner's secret space is revealed only when one uses a special statuette to circumscribe exactly the right pattern over an electromagnetic countertop. Currently, engineers are working on a chess board that will, when all the pieces are in their correct places, give access to a secret room that originates elsewhere in the house. Hidden Passageways also offers hinged paintings that, when opened, reveal the passageway they depict; there are also wall panels that push to reveal hidden rooms, trap doors that mask underground safe rooms, and secret-rooms-within-secret-rooms, accessed by way of sliding shelving.

Strangely enough, however, the rooms that are masked by these elaborate entryways are hardly ever worth the trouble. One might find oneself crawling through a slender gap in the back of a fireplace only to discover an ordinary sitting room on the other side. Or one might wander a corridor for half an hour before leaning against the wall in utter frustration -- and falling backwards into the secret loo. The luckiest of secret passage-seekers might find a cache of wine at the end of his expedition, but in more instances than not, one would be fortunate to find merely a dusty stairmaster or a pile of old posters. In fact, it is very consistently the case that the rooms concealed by these secret entrances are far less exciting than the entrances themselves.

If all of this starts to sound a little familiar, it might be because you've played a few videogames.

Admittedly, none of these secret features is a “convention” of architecture, but the opposite is true of videogames. Many (if not most) games, from Mario to Myst to San Andreas, invoke the convention of the secret room in order to add excitement, mystery, and heightened difficulty to the gaming experience. Just as, according to Hidden Passageways, a secret space in a house can make it “the talk of the town,” secret rooms and optional levels will spur additional interest in a game, and will get people thinking and talking about it in much more depth than they might otherwise. The mere fact of secret passages and optional modes keeps the astute player on the lookout for deeper significances. It acquaints them with the possibility of game interaction that they otherwise would not have known. It gives them the opportunity to “author” the game, to determine its path and its contents.

And even though secret rooms themselves are often routine in both form and content, offering a small clue or a one-up as a reward for perhaps hours of hard work, I maintain that, as in the example of the house, the room itself is not what a player is after -- rather, it is the experience of having found the room, of having interacted with text in a deep and meaningful way, that keeps gamers wanting to look beyond the obvious linearity of the gamescape and into the possibilities that lay beyond.