Gamboi Advans

Flood the Chamber (Matt Scorah)

2010-03-20T16:53:00.001-07:00

Flood the Chamber, being sincere any more not to be able this way to begin with good foot this critique, is something like “exercise of hijoputismo risen up to the quincuajesimonovena he promotes”.

This title was creaoa for Matt Scorah for GameJolt Rogue Contest and in him one shows us a hamoroso game of style plataformero structured on a screen with different plants that do his level function, for which, which Jumpman/Mario, we will have to come to the highest part of the phase (although fortunately in this occasion we will not have to suffer to any gorilla porculero). Unfortunately (or not, as it looks) to attack our company we will have to happen for an endless number of tests that will be able to go so far as to drive more of one to despair.

After his agreeable esthetics that ends up by being perjudicialmente deceitful, a game meets a high difficulty that it needs what we long for many in the world of the video game: The art of the essay - error up to the satiety, or worse, until the fingers bleed us trying to spend to us the game of glades (task in which the fact will help us of being provided with a series of check-points and the possibility of dying each and everyone of the times that need). Although it is true that for nothing it is impossible to spend it to him, since high place as that does not need a memorizing exercise so densely there us asks the masochist I Wanna Be The Guy, Flood the Chamber plays very well his tricks with the principal element puteador of the player and our biggest enemy: The water.

From the same moment in which it begins the game, the room in which we are is filling with water, if it catches us during the ascension, the palmaremos. It is for it that we will have to go rising as quickly as possible up to the top, being able to forget the elementary liquid for a little bit if we start with good foot or if we overcome some level of a rapid way, but if by any chance one we remain clogged in any moment, we will begin noticing his suffocating closeness putting ourselves at the edge of the death and begging to our incarnation that time learns to swim of a puñetera.

Flood the Chamber, being a skylight, is for persons patiently, that they can fail enough times and that thanks to it they want to learn of his errors later to amend them little by little. If you belong to those who get bored easily as soon as the palman two times, of course you will order it to the garete in a little time, but if you like the difficult challenges the most probable thing is that this kidling joyita is going to love you.

With his pros and his contras, his opportunity deserves this small game, although it serves to you to release improperios on him if you have patience small, it is the perfect example of that with 3 keys (all of them of movement or jump) they can make kidlings virguerías plataformeras that can make you spend a good moment.

Here I leave a video of the game to you, although I warn you that it contains spoilers, since one shows us the finished solution of the work in question.

Flood the Chamber can unburden himself from here.

GameJolt.

—

Released entry originally on March 11, 2010 in Nuevebits.

Filed bajo:Indie

Continuity (Ragtime Games)

2010-03-14T20:40:00.001-07:00

Inside the last batch of independent games sometimes we are with joyitas that, exploiting simple ideas to more not be able, obtain surprising results. Continuity is a puzzle that belongs to this select group.

Miscellany of game of platforms and puzzle (more of the second thing that of the first thing), this game of Ragtime Games supposes an interesting mental challenge and with a few bases seemingly enough simpletons.

We will have to take our personage across 32 levels that consist of different untidy pieces, which ones must be moved in a coherent way to create the correct way towards the door of exit of every level, which we will cover as if it was a question of a platforms game, step before to the collection of the keys that opens the above mentioned door.

Explained this way it can turn out to be easy to simple sight, but the true thing is that, as if of an Echochrome species in two dimensions it was talking each other, we will have to eat up enough our head in several levels, step back or even die voluntarily to come to our target (in the style of applied Braid of a very guessed right way, there is no any lives book-keeper during the game).

Although it is true that some phases are quite slack (and they do not have why to be between the first levels), the true thing is that even occasionally it is grateful that the game you of this mental break during a few seconds, this way to return with forces as soon as the above mentioned levels were overcome. The best thing of everything comes when you manage to give solution to this puñetero puzzle without realizing how you it have obtained milk.

Since I have already noticed earlier, in the game there are neither lives nor deaths, not even temporizador someone that presses you, nothing more that essays of test, error and regression to the origin point. This guessed right decision, his author the capture after the reflection, since of little he would serve to die for the causes that were. Only he is important to stop to think, to look for the piece that continues with your way and to manage to come in the end.

Everything what I have described is reflected thanks to a few simplest two dimensions that are provided with 3 colors in his palette (and he does not need any more, since if not of course there would have been obtained a more chaotic and less attractive great visual set). There are no objects except the keys, there are no enemies, only the structure of the phase organized in pieces and your incarnation, which turns out to be accompanied by a curious musical contrast. If we are in the puzzle way (for which we arrange the phase creating the different possible ways) a relaxing melody will sound, but on having touched the key, It Spread and to "jump" to the way platforms in the one that we will handle to our personage, there goes on to the first plane an electronic music that perhaps is too something repetitive, but that does not go so far as to bother precisely.

If there is something that fails in Continuity, the fact is that without being a game cortísimo, some fasecillas begin in absence more that they lengthen our long journey a little. I do not know if it is because I have had left a sensation of “I want more of the same drug”, but I believe that any other more complicated challenge had not come badly; in spite of it, I advise them ALREADY to prove it.

You can play it from here.

Source: Indie Games.

—

Corrected edition of the released text originally on December 22, 2009 in Nuevebits.

Published enIndie

Farewell 2009. Hello, holita 2010.

2010-03-14T10:15:00.001-07:00

Anyway, gentlemen, the year ends and with it it begins other that will provide sadnesses, happy moments, another triplete of the Barca to us, the ascent of the CD Huelva Basketball Prayed to LEB (although I know that that you her XD sweats), little sex (do not deny it), and all these small and insignificant things that will form that that soon will happen to be the year 2010.

To commemorate that another year starts, I have chosen a few earnings that I have read throughout the year for different places, all this re-mixed with little music gratuíta of video games, doing a stop with the videos that more have attracted attention of me and ending with some discharges of independent games so that they throw the ratillo. There it goes quite:

Texts:

- from Ajare World, the world where the nipples and the video games give themselves hand and nipple, the big Mr. Pink has written a series of very good articles between which I am going to emphasize two. One is it is not at all, where Mister Rosa thinks about the analyses videojueguiles and his nipples (good, at least they know by intuition something of Pataki). Another text that me Henamoró was undoubtedly us do not pay attention, in which he speaks to us on the influence of the communities of certain video games and the requests that do the programmers for: to improve? his juego$. Must read 100 %.

- in Dandel, Samarkanda invites us to read a Gentleman I revise to a series of articles titled like Video games that changed everything and who is divided in four parts. It does not stop being a subjective and debatable list of games, but the true thing is that the written tochetes have no waste. Here I leave four texts to you: Part 1, part 2, it divides 3 and part 4.

- Manne quin, which also appeared in the first delivery of these recommendations, he wrote one month ago his introduction to a series of texts on the world of the video game, called which one The video game as dialogue. You can find it in his blog Et Cetera.

- to end with the letters section, I propose to you to read Newspaper of an ex-employee of Sega Spain: Massacre and Annihilation, written by The Punisher and in the one that does not speak on the tortuous one, but simultaneously successful childbearing of Mortal Kombat in our country, as well as of other supposedly difficult games for the intelligent Spanish press.

Music:

- not long ago, Wicked Wanda (group formed by John Tones, Libertine and Mr. Asterisk) gave birth to his second son. This time talks each other of Load “Wicked Wanda“, a direct one in which they interpret video games topics as a Castlevania or Mortal Kombat. Do listen to it, Diox.

- one of my favorite groups of those who do video games versions is undoubtedly Minibosses, which guitarreando as he-goats extract of the sleeve a few brutal versions of songs of qualifications like Castlevania or Gentle Man 2 or. In the linkage to his page they can unload them, they will not repent.

Videos awesomizantes and already of step musicals.

Games indie descargables:

- now they touch a few cosituated jugables. I start with Merry Gear Solid 1 and 2. Two metal parodies Gear Solid in which our darling Snake crossovea (it takes swearword) with Saint Claus. Stupid dialogues and certain regusto-joke to the Metal ancient Gear they can never be bad.

- on the other hand we have Saint Pooh. Remake with Christmas motives of the mitiquísimo Kung Fu Master's degree. You can play it in flash with your navigator or unload it on the page of the linkage.

- to end, I leave you with the beautiful pixeladamente Small Worlds. A game consisted of labyrinths 2D in an environment that is appearing to us similarly we us go penetrating into him. It is simple, it is addictive, and it is good, milk.

Without much ado, I say goodbye of you until the next year, darlings amorcitos mine. We read to ourselves.

Happy year 2010!

—

Sources of the videos: yocreoqueno and Games Ajare.

Sources of the games descargables: Indie Games and TIG Source.

Published enOff-topic, Recommendations

Not such a nice history of Sega I

2010-03-14T00:09:00.001-08:00

Like seguero that I am, I have always wanted to write on the Sega history, company that on one hand made happy, but for other one you suffer. It might begin from his beginnings like creator and exporter of recreational machines decades ago, but I am not going to continue with the established chronological order. I will begin for the ugly thing, the dark thing, the epoch in which the empire of the hedgehog crumbled noisily after having ill-treated his faithful for years. If I do it this way it is because I want to finish 3 or 4 texts that I have in mind of a happy way, with one 16 - bit called Gentle Drive fighting against his enemy Super Nintendo, in times in which you could be blue or red without having political connotations, but in that the same way there were breaking loose terrible social conflicts (you fight in the playtime, we go). Clear that if your father was calling Millonetis, you could always possess this Ferrari called Neo-Geo … but it is that Neo-Geo was so expensive that at least it managed to do a bit of shade Super Nintendo and Gentle Drive.

Dear friends, in this tochito I speak about the history of a console that, like others of the same company, there deserved better luck and a few parents less prostitute's children; but unfortunately, as A series of catastrophic misfortunes was saying the title of the movie, Sega Saturn had a very eventful life, is here an analysis on the causes of his fucked life.

Prehistory.

Readership, let's give a jump in the time and situémonos at the beginning of the 90s. At that time there was escaping a pitched, technological and advertizing battle between two principal companies of the sector of the video games. Aside of the ring there was Nintendo, which with Super Famicom/Super Nintendo as principal stiletto was facing Sega, which was trying to resist his rival with his Gentle Drive / Genesis.

The first one was highly placed in Japanese territory, while Sega had in his power a the majority of the American and European pastries. In spite of it, the company of Sonic instead of doing force against Big N, there was divided between his features American and Japanese (the European unfortunately was painting little in that panorama).

The career for 32 bits was worse than that of the Soviet ones and the Americans in his battle for the space. In spite of enjoying them 2D of an incredible health, Sega and Nintendo turned out to be involved in a rifi-rafe for improving his consoles by means of add-ons. Nintendo was allied by Sony to create the SNES CD-Rom, to which it retired promptly to center his efforts on the creation and promotion of the Chip Super FX, thanks to which there were born works of the caliber of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island or the saga Donkey Kong Country music, juegazos that obtained his fully deserved success.

Sega for his part, dedicated to the creation of Gentle CD and 32X, two devices that were mating the different models of Sega Mega Drive and that supposedly once combined, a console of 32 bits was obtaining (and that, combined also, were going out for you for an eye of the face).

Here it is where I see the point of inflection of the fall of Sega. Apart from the squandering caused by the short duet Gentle CD - 32X, it was left in the negligence the one that really was destined to plant facing the Chip Super FX: Sega Virtua Processor.

The above mentioned alone chip had a game in his credit, the first home-made adaptation of Virtua Racing, mediocre game but that was showing a few graphs pieces for the epoch that they were throwing p'atrás. The truth is that a sorrow is the way in which one ordered to the carajo this invention, since it was possible to have exploited in a considerable way (in fact according to The Punisher, when it was working for Sega they were representing in the lists of throwings works as Virtua Fighter and Star Wars Arcade, two creations that finally saw light in 32X).

History.

Simultaneously that Sega was mounting of way rocambolesca his grotesque Transformer, also it began to outline what would be his future console of 32 bits, naming it initially like “Gigadrive“ and looking with it for a species of “evolution“ in the line of the company with regard to “Gentle“ of his 16 bits.

In the beginning, Sega Saturn was going to be a console centred on 2D, showing a few two-dimensional graphs that were going to leave the previous generation at a height of the bitumen. So far, everything was a compresses announcement with his correspondent musiquita pastelosa.

But Sony came (that it is known that I have not forgotten Nintendo 64, but she was the gray kidling the one that ended up by destroying Sega).

The Japanese giant, after leaving previously said project nintendero, was throwing himself now alone with his PlayStation arranged to everything.

For it it gave a blow in the table announcing kindness 3D (that ironically began gaining leading role with the badge Model 1 of Sega …) in his small baby. Sega, before such a measurement, decided to change the internal structure of his future Sega Saturn, to which he gelded some of his capacities 2D, but gaining area to 3D.

It is necessary to review that in spite of it, Saturn managed to be a capable console of the mejorcito on the plane of two dimensions, sample of it there are small marvels like the spiritual predecessor of Odin Sphere for PlayStation 2: Princess Crown, which did not go out of Japan, or any struggle games made in Capcom as he can be Street Fighter Zero 3, the whole lady virguería like conversion or the viciante Saturn Bomberman. But not only of the bidimensionalidad he lived, qualifications as Nights (that Fighters Megamix or Resident Evil was coming accompanied from the novel Control Pad 3D), Virtua Fighter 2, Fighters Vipers and the crossover of both, between many others.

But since from these years absolutely quite it began Sega to go out like the bottom (or it continued to doing quite of prostitute sorrow, as it looks), his pants descent in favor of 3D transported problems for the games programming on the part of the third parties, which ended up by centring on the big winner of the group of consoles of fifth generation, Sony PlayStation.

In spite of his efforts in Japan in the field of the publicity with Segata Sanshiro as banner, even in this field Sega he harvested the clearest defeat (like sample, this announcement is a mister K.O. on the part of Sony). If to all this we add the facility with which it was possible to pirate a PlayStation (to what it always gave the sensation that Sony was not doing too much for avoiding the above mentioned situation …) and the qualifications which it had to face his rivals (Sony in this aspect moved to thousand marvels, obtaining you license everywhere between those who were emphasizing End Fantasy VII, Tekken or Metal Gear Solid for putting "simple" examples, having to Nintendo to this Game called Super Mario 64 as letter of credence for Nintendo 64), we cannot to obtain another thing than a soberado Fatality that ended in the prompt appearance - fire extinguisher of Sega Dreamcast, one of the best consoles of dessert that have never existed.

With the whole talk that I have just released you, perhaps be able to think that Sega was very unfortunate and such, but the true thing is that she was auto-condemned herself by the creation of some conversions patateras of his recreational ones, the cancellation of many top projects, or by the puñeteras decisions not to extract authentic juegazos of the Japanese borders.

Inside the group of games that did not go out of Japan we can see the one that was going to be the answer of End Fantasy VII: Grandia, which curiously arrived at our ground thanks to PlayStation; the port of Radiant Silvergun, one of the best matamarcianos of the whole history and that is provided with the stamp of these geniuses who make be called Treasure (Gunstar Heroes, Ikaruga, Sin and Punishment, etc.); or the decision to bring only one of three episodes of which there was consisting Shining Force III, series that was provided with enough followers in Occident.

If already of for himself these three games were justifying the buy of the console, with the cancellations of sacred cows of the caliber of Shenmue, Virtua Fighter 3 and Sonic Xtreme was the catastrophe. Although it is true that it would be necessary to analyze the context by which they were cancelled (each one has his peculiarities, and in case of Shenmue it is even moderately understandable before the Dreamcast exit, what does not remove that it had an INCREDIBLE pintaza for the epoch), the true thing is that there might have been banners of the console to accompany the everlasting Nights. Without going further, it was foreseen to realize a bent anti Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot for the "period" 96-97 that would have been formed by Sonic Xtreme and Nights, but we all know that he remained an enclosed lame person before being born. In the fund it turns out to me a sad knowledge that Saturn was the only console of Sega who had not a good time with a Sonic of those of the whole life proper …

Summing up everything what I want to express on this undervalued console: Sega had no luck on having come across in the way with a gray monster, but nevertheless, in certain way he behaved badly with his users, whom it violated (good, not so much) for years, fact that a time later, when they managed to create THE console, spent invoice to them, but this is something that we will see in the second delivery of this series.

Up to the next one.

—

Sources: http://www.retrogaming.com.ar/ (declarations of The Punisher), Hobby Consoles and Supergames of the year of the pear.

—

Released entry originally on December 15, 2009 in Soy a Jugón.

Published enRetrospectivas

Refuge (Noonat Games)

2010-03-13T15:58:00.001-08:00

Anyway, darlings hamijos, I have remained voluntarily in unemployment as for the texts indie (we go, that I have left friendly of Nuevebits), and while I am looking for some place where to publish my cochairs (supposing that the indolence me it does not prevent, JUAS), I will leave for my house some writings that to publish there had thought-out. This means that, OH, Gamboi Advans has suppressed original XO … that they is light. Without much ado delay, I leave them with Refuge, a short but intense game.

Sometimes the simplest ideas turn into something addictive. Noonat brings us a child shooter in flash that will make you remember some of the marvels retropixeladas ancient …
Refuge puts us supervised by a static cannon hidden in the last existing human refuge after a devastating foreign invasion, refuge that we must defend with fingernails and teeth by means of shots to skillful and sinister to (literally) foreigners' cascade that try to finish with our refuge.
The problem and the grace that exists to attack such a company is the said immobility of our incarnation, doing that we should turn our ship from a fixed point, where from we will have to spin dry sherry on having shot not to end up by being destroyed by the enemy.
The only "advantage" that we possess is that of supporting our shots in the walls, as well as of destroying several enemies of a tacada … Although of course, and why to cheat us, in most of the games one ends up by having a horror sensation vacui extraterrestrial clear due to the enemies' enormous quantity that they infest simultaneously for the screen.

Unfortunately, Refuge suffers from sound absence (except some effects fx), but it is something pardonable bearing in mind that the game was realized in two days for a competition indie realized in “Ludum Dare“.
In spite of his simple-mindedness and although he does not suppose a game concept for anything revolutionary, graphically it comes to be a breath of fresh air that drinks from the sources (hits in the eye) of for always Immortal Space Invaders, thanks to this stream of extraterrestrial invaders pixelados that do not stop appearing from the top part of the screen, to which we will have to defeat to the purest style of also mythical Missile Command … But without leaving aside the possibilities of enjoying ourselves with the bent destrozapantallas of Puzzle Boble. Refuge is a diversion in a small dose, but diversion of that of earlier: Of the good, nice one and on everything, free.
It is possible to discharge from here.
Version online of the game.
Tumblr of Noonat, creator of the game.
It notices for that you are not familiar with this type of games: After the discharge and later decompression, to play, puncture in the file html, not in the file of Shockwave flash.

Published enIndie

Kill the attacking aliens (Retro-review de Philips Videopac)

2010-03-13T06:18:00.001-08:00

Those who were following me in my ancient blog perhaps remember that it realized analysis together with Jumafas on games of the consoles Philips Videopac; well, the above mentioned section now will have fitted here, in Soy a Jugón. For those who do not know them, Videopac 7000 and Videopac G7400 (both successors of Magnavox Odyssey) are two consoles of the first and second generation, contemporaries of others like the mythical Atari 2600 or Colecovision, so they are not scared when he speaks about the kindness of the games on that I am going to comment to them, because they have a few. To begin with this second stage of articles about the above mentioned machines, I bring to them a game that a drove of donkeys of years was created like Pier Solar, that is to say, despuñes of the deaths of both systems and what has being in 2003 to be exact … that they the graphic jump is light and jugable; P.

We all know that many machines, thanks to authentic lovers of them many years are taken to his limits (and a little further on) after his respective deaths. Once I analyzed Trans American Rally for Philips Videopac G7400, a very meritorious precursor of Outrun … and believed that it was THE game of the above mentioned machine. Well, Soeren Gust has given a sonorous ZAS to me in the whole mouth with what I am going to present them.
To put yourselves in context, most of the games of Philips Videopac were not enjoying too many screens / levels, being framed many of them in the only phase in which it was necessary to look for the beans, which were enjoying a graphic quality certainly prehistoric and a sound that in some cases was inviting to lower the volume … that there consists that although it seems that I am defining to one fetus - console, the true thing is that it had some quite addictive games (and that were winning very much in his forms for two players) with that you could spend a good moment. The case is that with this analysis, I try to give his fully deserved recognition to this glades jueguecito, since there has raised the Videopac strip of wood one more pocazo of what it was previously

Killing the attacking aliens sets us in the skin of always defending appellant of the human species opposite to an invasion of aliénigenas ready to melt to the planet earth. Drinking from so unlike sources and simultaneously nearby like Space Invaders, Missile Command and to Defend (especially of these two last ones), our mission will consist of destroying every foreigner who boasts to defy to us simultaneously that we try to save the different elements of the set that adorn every phase (trees, houses, power lines, etc.), that they do his function of “bar of energy of the ground” that is to say, that if they destroy the whole terrestrial furniture, we can happen for dead persons.
To prevent from leaving to every made phase a few foxes, also we will be able to destroy the hostile shots that are approaching slowly the surface, as well as use power-ups of different kind.
Inside the technical paragraph, although some incautious one laughs the true thing is that the game bursts the capacities of the console XD, what might remind him to more of one to this dibujito that it did with the Paint at the tender age of 3 years, turns out to be to me the puñetera milk, and even more bearing in mind the system about which we are speaking. Unfortunately and through the fault of the limited capacities on the subject of sound of the console, on the sonorous part it is no much that to say, since it counts with a few effects fx that although there are no too many chunguillos, do not incite to raise too much the volume either.

Realizing that having 9 phases in a Videopac cartridge was going to occupy his, Soeren Gust, the creative handyman of the game, decided to give us only a life with which to try to spend the game to us, although well it is true that our energy bar can be recharged occasionally by means of the collection of a certain power-up … but that we will see like decrease in the top levels (some enemies are a few authentic little twerps) and for a point that does grace not even pinch, and is not different that “too much“ randomness in the appearance of the enemies on the screen. So random is that sometimes some aliens will appear in the same place in which our ship is, therefore we will not be able at all to avoid a stupid loss of energy:/. In spite of it, the true thing is that such a fallito does not steam up the final score of the title.
Summing up, if you like much - muy-muy-antiguo mixed with the genre shoot ‘em up, Kill the attacking aliens can that it makes you spend a good ratillo, so you do not hesitate to prove it.
If you want to prove the Videopac games thanks to the emulator of this series of consoles, you can unload it from here (courteousness of Jumafas).
—
Released entry originally on January 22, 2009 in Soy a Jugón.

Published enRetrospectivas

Examinations, examinations, examinations.

2010-03-12T23:09:00.001-08:00

The truth is that the blog right now is, as one is said in many places of Andalusia: "more parao that ojú, ojú that parao it is”. The reason is not different that the arrival of my batch of university examinations of February, which for the time being I believe that they are going out for me more or less well.
In another order of the things, after speaking friendly and briefly with my chief in Nuevebits, I am an editor again for such homes, although I will remain created proper content for this blog, since a lot of mini-games that need few words to be defined will be published here for enjoyment of the personnel. Apart, I am thinking of doing games mini-critiques retro, like that pequeñicas and slightly heavy … we will see already as the thing is worn across her chest.
Without much ado, we meet soon, once it is freer than student load. I will return (mos) with the continuation of not such a nice history of Sega and a few games indies if the books do not murder me for the way ^^.

I study in the U. Of Seville, if someone does not know HIS XD.
That they are fine (L).

Filed bajo:Off-topic

War and Peace (Mini - review indie)

2010-03-12T16:07:00.001-08:00

With this text I give initiated a series of exclusive mini-critiques of the blog that they will speak on games retro, indie or even of the present generation of consoles (the few ones at that it manages to look). I do not try to create extensive analyses not anything for the style, but spread a little of love in small and light square colors pills. Do not choke on them, querid@s mí@s.
War and Peace is the simplest mini-game created by Stéphane Bura based in the brilliant saga Civilization in which we see the evolution of our nation simultaneously that we fight against other enemies.
So simple is that if already of for himself it presents a few simple graphs to more not be able, with a zenithal sight of our territory where our cities and our subjects do not happen of being basic geometric representations, his mechanics does not go much further that choosing with only one key (any of the keyboard except Esc, which serves to go out of the game) if we must improve our nation with two different options, one that devotes itself to improve our potential armamentístico and other one that centers on the development of social, political, economic aspects, etc.

As small incentive, it is necessary to emphasize that as in his older brothers it is possible to finish the game of several different forms, what gives him a small bonus of rejugabilidad. In spite of it, his simple exposition leads us to excessively brief games (it is not either that it thinks about how to be a work that supports clingings to us to the screen hours), but the true thing is that as experiment fulfills his targets, obtaining this way a quite fixed set.
Unload it from here.
Official page of Stéphane Bura.

Source: Indie Games.

Filed bajo:Indie, Mini - reviews

Not such a nice history of SEGA (II)

2010-03-11T23:16:00.001-08:00

We leave our misfortunes segueras with the different causes of the death of Sega Saturn, which were propitiated by external causes to SEGA … and also you intern, why to deny it. Come to this point, he has us to speak about the one that was the last adventure seguera in the ambience of the domestic games consoles (if we except the recent appearances of MILLION clonal consoles of Gentle Drive that without being produced by the proper SEGA, yes that are provided with his pertinent licenses to be able to be distribuídas legally). Let's start.

Prehistory of 128 Sega bits.
Before speaking about Dreamcast, the true thing is that it would be unjust not to name to his system brother framed inside the recreational arcades. Us without going so far as to move of the year 1998, year of exit of Dreamcast, SEGA extracted to the market the successor of his recreational badge Model 3, a badge that had counted with qualifications of the caliber of Virtua Fighter 3 or Sega Rally 2. The new standard-bearer of the Japanese company inside the recreational ones was called Naomi, which one had a structure similar to the one that later would enjoy the console blanquita.
In her they would appear (chip - rom is in format or by means of GD-ROMs, a few discs on the halfway between the CD and the DVD) some of the works without which the Dreamcast history would lose enough felt, as there are Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis, the series Power Stone or Ikaruga.

Returning to the home-made system that occupies us, it is necessary to review that if Sega was coming of suffering stormy times with his previous console, Dreamcast did not also spend too much enclosed good being in the maternal belly. Already from, before being born, his creation provoked internal struggles in Sega through the fault of the eternal dispute that there was between his divisions American and Japanese and the debate that they had supporting from times of Sega CD / Mega CD for saw who had her longer (in this case every section tried to impose his design of the future console), gaining finally the above mentioned battle Sega of Japan.
Inside the above mentioned struggle in which it paraded the typical dance of names that he accompanies to every console before his throwing, which there paraded names as Katana, the white fumata with the definitive name of Dreamcast took place in the country of the nascent sun in November, 1998, always staying like the americanitos and the Europeans like the typical poor wretches that we were and that we had always to wait to receive late to the new consoles. For almost one year the western ones we had to be in small house masturbating with magazines images while the oriental pichacortas could enjoy the kindness of his flaming consoles.
Dreamcast, precursor of the current copot and mother of authentic juegazos.
Penetrating already into what supposed the above mentioned platform, it turns out to be curious to me to see that the games consoles that today we have in nuestas houses are alone the logical evolution of what one day did not go so far as to work. Dreamcast was the first console that was coming with a modem including of series that was allowing us to stamp on foreign bottoms from the armchair of our house, made that can be summed up in some words that he gathered Peter Moore does not too much time in his blog of EA and that they were used in the SEGA bosom: "We are taking the players where the video game goes“. If to all this we add a catalog of games that for me is the best of the puñetera and short history videojueguil in the relation “quality - number of qualifications - years of life of the console”, we have left a system quite fixed and capable of offering to us enough hours of diversion.

Searching between his games we can find aunténticas joyitas between those who were emphasizing with proper light the creations of SEGA, which were splitting between the qualifications created (in the beginning) exclusively for his console and the originated ones from the recreational machines, apovechando like that the similarities that existed between Dreamcast and previously named Naomi. With it, we saw to turn out to be cosituated like Sonic Adventure, which without coming at a height of his two-dimensional ancestors were not badly at all, the saga Shenmue, for which many keep on crying for there see his conclusion, this visual and musical spectacle to which REZ submits us, the sports pretenders as 2 deliveries of Virtua Tennis or the beginnings of the sagas 2K, which offered to us very good sports games to beginnings of the present century. On the other hand I would not like to leave to myself in the inkwell other virguerías jugables of the caliber of Phantasy Star Online, Chuchu Rocket, Jet Set Radio and tropecientas any more for that sure that anyone will cry out to the sky for his non-inclusion in this article.
If we look at the third parties, speaking high place and skylight, the enormous quantity of qualifications of fame that Dreamcast received on the part of external companies was the puñetera rehost. For naming few ones, I am filled by the mouth of salivas (agreeable image undoubtedly) in spite of the fact that only the Ikaruga think in (made in “this factory of virguerías called Treasure“), for me one of the best and more puñeteros shoot ‘em ups of the history of our way. We can find also a varied choice of excellent games of struggle, represented in qualifications like three Street Fighter III, Capcom vs SNK, Guilty Gear X or Soul Calibur between others. I would not like leaving aside to a work as Metropolis Street Racer, which (him despite the one who weighs him) was bursting, was ill-treating and carving his contemporary Gran Turismo 3 up.
I have named them only, but remember that these small samples are only the spearhead of a brudical quantity of games that can be considered to be at least how “quite good” by the big public.

The battle with Sony.
Entering other ambiences, if in the previous chapter of this series of texts I indicated that the SEGA publicity during his epoch of 32 bits was severely beat by that of Sony, the true thing is that the company of the hedgehog put the batteries in this generation, giving place to more serious enough announcements and where there were explained the capacities of his new machine, giving priority to the possibility of being able to stamp on the bottom of (for example) a foreigner, as he remains reflected in this commercial.
The case is that for very well that were doing the things to themselves, Sony had the frying pan fixed for the handle at that time, exploiting his first console up to the maximum and making use very well of his licenses with other companies. Speaking about my personal experience, the appearances of till then unpublished in Final European territory Fantasy IV, V and VI (especially of the last one) or Metal Gear Solid they did that it continued with my PlayStation happily during a time … and I am speaking in the first person, because the friends who were surrounding me for then did not even know what was a Dreamcast, they (as it was happening and it happens with a drove of donkeys of adolescents that “they were playing / playing to video games in his free time”) only they had in mind a series of games that was not different that Pro Evolution Soccer, who was beginning eating the toast to Fifa to massive steps, firstly in 32 bits and later in his step to his successor: PlayStation 2.
Sony, on having seen that SEGA had gone forward in the career of the following generation of consoles obtaining very good sales in his beginnings, played his tricks of a magisterial way. Occupying still an immense part of the market with his PlayStation, to a few months of going out Dreamcast dropped that a future PlayStation 2 was in development, what brought as a result that enough potential Dreamcast buyers were keeping the pasta in his pockets to wait to the new Sony console. The result, already they know it: PlayStation 2 triumphed in an extraordinary way thanks to his juegazos and his licenses, yes, but also to the inclusion of a reader of DVDs, accompanied by a strategy of marketing for which there was selling the PS2 as multimedia breeding animal just as console of video games. SEGA for his part ate the snots through the fault of the inclusion of the breeding animal of GD-ROMs, since due to the previous losses that were coming crawling from time of Gentle Drive it was not possible to choose to any more.

Dessert hara-kiri.
To finish off the task, the election of the support GD-ROM (created exclusively for SEGA) also it helped to dig its own grave to Dreamcast. If previously PlayStation had been pirated in a scandalous way, SEGA wanted to avoid such a situation on having asked Yamaha for the creation of a new way in which to include his games, to which we might qualify with a sovereign one …
…
…
FAIL.
The above mentioned system was easily deceived by the pirates, being able to start any Dreamcast with simple CDs that did that the console practically was pirated of factory:/, done that was translated in more and more losses. As positive ésto fact, at present we can enjoy enough games that in his times did not go out of Japanese grounds, thing for that one is grateful of exceedingly seeing the prices that can reach works as Ikaruga in Internet.
Finally and after a quite tortuous end, SEGA detained the consoles production in the year 2001, stopping orphan to a followers' legion that him had been a believer for years.

Dreamcast at present.
In spite of his prompt death, this console has survived during these years thanks to the active scene that surrounds him and that nourishes to the system with numerous emulators and games that a few nostalgic ones still keep on programming. One of the most active foci on a global scale is the Spanish page Dreamcast.es, page that supports us to so much of all the movements that are having every a little time about the community that has created environment to the console. Apart, although SEGA was closing the servants to play for Internet years ago, still there exist some independent servants in whom to let off steam against other players (that it remains clear that they are not too much, but less it gives a stone; P).
Sega, vetoes, he forgets my name, my face, my house (although it is by half) …

Part of the letter of so fucked and simultaneously well-known Pimpernel song can be applied to the SEGA of today. As company re-turned in third party we can see a panorama of clair-obscure clearly.
On one hand, (apart from the creation of: games? since this one) the segueros of the year of the pear hurts of exceedingly the prostitution to which Sonic has been submitted for years, and all this for the continuous appearance of products of the blue hedgehog that have enjoyed a level that can be clearly classified like “garbage“. Year after year have been going out to the market products in which Sonic devotes himself to things as unlike as they can be going completely hostiado after obtaining his target to go out for the right rim of the screen or to transform in hedgehog - wolf (WTF?) . To finish off the task, also it might raise me to the car of many criticizing also the Sonic appearances in the games on the JJOO that it coleads along with Mario, his eternal enemy … but the true thing is that: A) Two pompous games until now are not bad. B) Muchos of those who complain about the appearances of the hedgehog in the above mentioned qualifications well that rubbed the shallows to the knowledge that Sonic was going to appear inside the series Smash Bros, which looks like to me an act of cheap hypocrisy of the pyx XD, cof cof …

For other one, also it is necessary to emphasize that SEGA keeps on trying to do decent games (less bad XD). Some of them will be better and others not so much, but a hope slight sign is glimpsed facing the future after there see going out of his hands qualifications like Valkyria Chronicles, the different aftermath of the saga Virtua Tennis, Bayonetta or the series Yakuza.
With all this, using the machine hypeadora that so good results (or not) gives between the companies at present, SEGA has already advanced that Sonic is going to turn to his roots with a game with three-dimensional graphs but with a development plataformero in 2D (or at least this is the little that it is possible to deduce of the scarce seconds in which it is possible to appreciate the game in this video). At the moment the game has already raised blisters between some players for the decision to sell the game to pieces and across the different platforms of discharge of three current consoles of dessert … although it will be necessary to wait to see the final score of the product, for which the ancient segueros we will pray properly.
That they the waiting is light.
—
The first article about this series:
Not such a nice history of SEGA (I).
—
Other articles about interest about SEGA Dreamcast:
The machines that make us dream (V): Sega Dreamcast.
Dreamcast, the last bet of SEGA.
—
Sources: Wikipedia, magazines Supergame several understood between 1998 and 2001, proper making. Image of the badge taken Naomi of the flickr just4eternity
—
Released article originally on February 15, 2010 in Soy a Jugón.

Filed bajo:Retrospectivas

He interviews to Nivel21, creators of Rotor'scope.

2010-03-11T15:51:00.001-08:00

Darlings hamijos, the truth is that it hurts me a bit that there do not exist too many developers of well-known video games framed inside our borders. Fortunately, which certain Gallic village that we could see in the cómics of Goscinny and Uderzo, we are with Nivel21, a relatively young group that is beginning sprouting inside the sector thanks to his last creation: Rotor'scope. The Secret of the Infinite Energy, which has been deserving of two awards in each contests summoned by Microsoft and Artfutura.

- let's speak about your team: Who agree Nivel21? How did arise the idea of throwing itself to create video games?
Nivel21 is a team that was born somewhere near 2004, in the first moment, like a group of friends determined to turn into professional creators of video games. Most of us we were devoting ourselves to the development of software of management, although our real passion was the games development. The beginnings were very hard, during the first years we were dedicating several hours every day, after the work, to learning and practising everything necessary to do games.
Our wise move was to bet from the first moment for, in spite of talking each other of a hobby, doing the things of the form as professional as possible. Our activities were organized as if of a company it was talking each other, and the execution of the projects was always done following a methodology. We have invested enough efforts in improving this methodology so that our projects were more and more ambitious and of better quality. In 2007 we obtain the second award in ArtFutura with a prototype of a game of table football called “XtremeTableSoccer“.
Finally, “Rotor'scope“, the game that at present we are promoting has been a completely professional development, so much in as it has been carried out, as in the obtained result.
- After the Rotor'scope creation, do you have more projects in mind? In affirmative case: Do you feel predilection for some genre especially?

We would like devoting ourselves professionally to the video games development, therefore, our designers are already turning to the head to create new games, but we still cannot reveal of what it is going to be our next project. For the time being you animámos to all to whom you prove Rotor'scope and see that it is possible to wait of Nivel21.

In an ambience so exploited like that of the puzzles, you have given a quite interesting draft that is not content to be only the typical one “it eliminates cards”, but in your work we will have to eat up the coconut at the time of solving the puzzles by means of rotating the board to settle the different phases …
- Who have been your sources at the time of creating the game and how long of development has it taken you this project?

The principal insparación came thanks to the appearance of Wii and his control for movement. Thinking about ideas that should be carried out there arose the idea of using a simple movements set for a puzzles game. After exploring several concepts of rotary puzzles, we think of using a puzzle inside a closed debater and applying the rotation on the board to re-place the pieces. Nevertheless, the high cost that supposes for an independent group developing for Wii, did that we were praising ourselves for Xbox 360 and his independent games.
As for development time, Emilio, the designer of Rotor'scope had already programmed a prototype of the game for his account in two months, and since we begin the official development for Xbox one year has happened up to his final publication in Indie Games.
- Esperábais a reception as her you that you have found in the contests in which you have taken part?

In the development of the game we have always put the care, care and necessary interest so that the game was as professional as possible. To be sincere, when we decide to take part in Dream Build Play we believed that we might qualify between the best participants, but once the delivery time closed and there began appearing videos of the presented games the world came to us above because we saw qualifications that perfectly could be finalists and leave us to us out. Fortunately, we manage to be between the best six, which for us it was already the whole achievement (of 150 G), and then to gain the second award, which has not been badly at all. After this and to give him the game to be known we had hope to keep on obtaining certain relevancy in the contests and fairs in those that we have informed.

- Rotor'scope has just given the jump to XBOX 360 inside his bazaar XBOX Live. How has been working for Microsoft? Have the easy things put you at the time of publishing?

To publish in the bazaar of games Independent from Xbox is quite simple. Microsoft brings to the developers his bookstores and development programs, XNA and Visual C# 2008 Express of a free way, also, there is a community dedicated to the development of independent games supported by Microsoft, as well as many forums and pages specialized with tutors and it helps the developers.
As for the publication, it is quite easy whenever the game fulfills certain requisites and norms that must follow for the publication in Indie Games across the creators' Xbox community.
- to end already, returning to the phrase with which I began this interview: How do you see the state of the development of independent video games in Spain at present? And inside, let's set for example, 10 years?

The Spanish at individual level we have always had enough interest in the topic of the development of games. From the epoch of 8 bits, we do not stop meeting marvelous and talented individuals who have done of the video games his way of life. Undoubtedly, what has trumped us there have been the infrastructures. In these moments we are paying the duck for not having paid enough attention to the topic for years. Today, finally we have acquired the cultural industry status, and we will have still to fight against the tide during a time, until it eliminates the stigma accumulated during decades of abandonment, when we were had as a frikis fistful being employed at the house garage.
Nowadays, thanks to Internet everything is a little easier, and if we can make use of the advantages that it offers us we will see the industry evolving quickly. The heyday of the electronic distribution and of the portable platforms and online they are opening many opportunities so that the new generations enter the industry with the desire and the necessary propulsion to do that this one matures.
In 10 years I would like seeing a national industry that does not have anything that to envy to that of any other páis. That's why we have decided to remain in Spain, and create our own study, instead of going out to look for fortune to the extrangero. We are determined to change the laws of the game, and to create a study that is appreciated by his workpeople and wished by the workpeople of the competition. We believe that the magic, this special ingredient that the best video games have, is something that only arises in the appropriate culture medium: A team of professionals motivated in a creative work environment.
Finally, only I can only wish you all the luck of the world in your future and I wait that agreeable way as developers of games.
Thank you very much!
—
Interview published in Nuevebits on February 13, 2010.

Filed bajo:Indie

Flow (Jenova Chen)

2010-03-11T06:01:00.001-08:00

One of the games that more reputation has obtained in the jump of the freewarismo to the current platforms of digital distribution is flow, a work that he sends to us to the marine depths.

Jenova Chen, one of the creators with more reputation between the current independent developers, already brought to us some year ago the one that for me is his most obtained work, flow.
Conceived like a thesis inside the studies of the creator, this game in flash managed to happen to be distribuído in PS3 and PSP, although we will center on the original version for PC. This work immerses us in an agreeable experience in which we put ourselves in the skin of a marine organism that must survive and develop in his ambience. To attack such a company, we have to feed on other organisms that are along the different screens that we will be finding to our step; some, recognizable for his orange / reddish tonalities they will present resistance and he even battles to the death that they approaches with our presence, while others will not be difficult to knock down. I do not know if Jenova Chen was looking for it, but with it it introduces us in topics like that of “the survival of the strongest species” framed in an ecosystem (represented by us except, obviously, in the cases in which we are defeated by the enemy), or incuso in terms darker like that of “cannibalism“.
Along our long journey and especially in the first phases of the game we will meet different creatures that seemingly have an equal or practically equal form to ours, which, unlike any declared enemies, do not put up resistance against our attacks. If we finish with the above mentioned specimens, our incarnation will evolve likewise it would do it after having fed on a being of another species. It is for it that the game creates a small doubt in the player on what it should do and what not: Do I feed at the cost of my equal ones and gain possibilities of survival in later levels or allow to live through the beings of the same species simultaneously that stopped gaining faculties that can help me further on? The decision to take a way or other stays in your hands.

A small point that deserves to be emphasized is that there does not exist the possibility of dying in flow. The only consequence that has having been attacked successfully by our enemies is the comeback towards the previous phase, with what we will have to look again for the entry point towards the following phase. The truth is that it is a solution enormously simple and agreeable, since, it costs, the possibility of dying does not fit like happens in almost all the games we do not even have meter of life that makes our task difficult, but as check-point and like the smallest penalization, the work appears us again of looking for the entry towards the phase that we have just left and trying to advance of level from zero.
Technically, flow, it might define with a word: Simple, but not for it stops being a tremendously obtained game. The phases accompanied by a few soft effects fx and differentiated only by small changes in the bluish chromatic tonality that the funds are acquiring (that do not stop being the ocean floor), transmit to us the guessed right sensation that little by little, the same way as we are advancing and the tone of the levels is getting dark, we are approaching at the end of our small adventure, increasing simultaneously the thought of which our targets to be hunted are going to stop being beings unicelulares to find us with enemies of major caliber who remember us to animals how there can be streaks, what finishes infundiéndonos slightly more of respect for our opponents similar spends the time.
Summing up, flow it is pequeñamente big, relaxing, nicely and enormously addictive, and the fact is that it never comes badly to submerge in his waters occasionally to savor the potential that Jenova Chen possesses and that drinks to us of way gratuíta.

Official page of Jenova Chen.
It plays to flow online here.
It unloads the game from here.
—
Released article originally on February 23, 2010 in Nuevebits.

Filed bajo:Indie