Tag: gaming

Sekiro and Elden Ring: My Experiences

TiberiusLeave a comment

Style plus difficulty equals banquet of substance

I’ve got another double bill for you: a pair of FromSoftware games that I’d put a substantial amount of time in and I thought I’d compare and contrast them from both my point of view and how they’re designed. Fair warning: I’m no expert on game design so don’t expect a well-informed breakdown of how XYZ works in insert game here.

I’ll start with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Released on March 22, 2019 for all available platforms, Sekiro is the tale of a shinobi dedicated to his lord, Divine Heir Kuro, and the dangers they face from the expected like ronin and ambitious samurai to the plausible like other contracted shinobi to the completely fantastical like ginormous creatures. Kuro’s position as the last in line of a divine lineage puts him in the crosshairs of the Ashina clan’s retainer, Ashina Genichiro, whose soul purpose in the game is to use the rejuvenating waters to revive his ailing grandfather Isshin and subsequently make the Ashina clan immortal and unite Japan under the Ashina banner.

You know, having played as the Ashikaga shogunate in EU4 and reading about the downfall of the Kamakura shogunate (and it’s most recent manga adaptation), I can’t tell what’s more sinful–Ashikaga treachery or Ashina ruthlessness.

Just goes to show that the shinobi had a better loyalty track record than the samurai. Inazo Nitobe was full of it.

I’m also going to out myself as having a lack of experience with the other FromSoft games, namely Dark Souls, so in lieu I’ll speak on the gameplay, level design, and combat I’ve witnessed. Although I’m not well-versed in the Dark Souls franchise, I’ve seen bits and pieces of gameplay here and there and from the outside looking in, it looks more like Dark Souls proper sacrifices speed for power and precision. By contrast, Sekiro seems to rely on quicker movements, agility, and a lot of times, simple tricks. Fitting for a shinobi, eh?

Dark Souls players needn’t quote me on this, but also based on what I’ve seen in gameplay and my own methods of playing Sekiro, it seems like there a more ways to cheese enemies in the game. The faster movements make it look as though there are more ways to do it, but it being a FromSoft game, wrong moves and the like will still result in the bosses planting Sekiro and seeing if a smarter shinobi grows.

Speaking of dying, Sekiro is also set apart by allowing a second chance at battle, really putting the Shadows Die Twice subtitle to use in-game. That said, reviving and dying before there’s time to recharge leads to NPCs being afflicted with a disease known as Dragonrot. It might seem like nothing to cheat death endlessly, but the energy to achieve can’t come from nothing. The way it works is that each time Sekiro flips off a shinigami, the energy required to do so draws on the healthy population, gradually sucking their life forces until they develop a hoarse cough. If it happens too often, they can die, and if I’m not mistaken, this leads to an alternate ending. Fortunately, there is a way to treat it in-game. Gathering the blood of a victim and bringing it to a doctor, Lady Emma, can help keep them alive until it happens again. So to keep it from happening again or often, git gud.

Paradoxically, Sekiro doesn’t want you to get too comfortable with the trial and error method because there are only so many times you can do that until you have to change strategies, as you’d know from any lesson on the scientific method.

Sekiro’s level design takes a page out of Spider-Man media. Plot spoiler: Sekiro loses his arm after the first encounter with Genichiro and is given a prosthetic that’s also a grappling hook. So swinging from tree to tree to rooftop and getting slashed in the face by a flying enemy feels so freeing and amazing. Sekiro is probably not the most physically imposing protagonist of all time, but he makes up for it with ninja-like reflexes you’ll definitely employ in-game. As of writing this, the furthest I got was the second encounter with Genichiro on console and I’m still near the beginning on PC, but there’s enough to glean from the combat even in the early game.

Breaking from the “one enemy attacks at a time” trope found in most media, FromSoft’s output reminds you of how special you’re not. Enemies work together to make sashimi out of your shinobi hide so living up to your reputation as a fiend from the shadows works best when it comes to clearing them all out piecemeal. Means dicks to the boss fights since they’re meant to face you upfront or at least most of them are designed to, so I guess Nitobe wasn’t completely full of s[horse neighing]t when it came to describing samurai warriors. Then again, you’re a shinobi so playing by a samurai’s rules are worthless to you. You could face them upfront the classic way, but staying in character means sneaking behind them to take off a health bar. At that point, you need only fight them once, collect a prayer bead and progress to keep on doing it.

Sekiro also caused a stink with journalists who couldn’t get through the game to review it “properly” according to their arbitrary standards, and I think someone better than me can put in extra details, especially past the second Genichiro encounter, but for what it’s worth, if you’ve been putting off Sekiro for whatever reason, but really wanted to play it, I can’t recommend it enough. My best way to describe it as easy lessons, hard application.

Now for the other FromSoft game: Elden Ring.

Released on February 25, 2022, Elden Ring made a meme of itself rather quickly by wheelbarrowing in its gargantuan balls and declaring everyone to be maidenless gits. Well, screw you too, Discount Wales! I’m gonna go in and Margit threw me off a cliff.

That did happen to me in Elden Ring. I summoned some help and got thrown off the cliffside. But I kept going in until I won. Gittin gud, folks!

Working with the few memories I have of Dark Souls gameplays, I’d say Elden Ring is the closest to form without actually being Dark Souls in name. Classes to choose from, customizable character, in-depth story about constructing the titular item, ruined medieval European-inspired castles, spirit steed, bosses that can sleep you in one hit; rings a lot of bells, but without the proper experience I hesitate to definitively say they’re Dark Souls bells. Regardless, one thing I forgot to mention that both Sekiro and Elden Ring do is allow players to leave messages to each other, though Sekiro does it differently by showing instead of telling.

Dodge-rolling has made a comeback in Elden Ring and dodging a titanic swing and countering with a slash at the ankles feels right. Between these two, they crank up the difficulty to make the victories that much more rewarding. I genuinely get a kick out of beating a boss after getting planted enough times to make a forest of bodies. I have less time with Elden Ring, but as I said there’s a lot to extrapolate in a short time with the game. Toss away the shinobi-like agility and speed and the slower movements are because your character is covered head to toe in armor… unless you’re the solo guy.

Well, it’s not like there’s a wrong way to play games anymore. Nonlinear structures of this type encourage creativity and I’d like to be the fly on the wall of the player who found all the exploits first before sharing them with the internet.

As far as hard games go, both Sekiro and Elden Ring have the difficulty found in a FromSoft product, both cannot stress enough the importance of the parry, and both give you enough tools to play how you see fit with a few bosses having a method that makes them easier to deal with. In Sekiro’s field, sometimes you can just rack up a kill count and take the ryo that drops from enemies ’til you reach the desired amount to buy from a merchant; and other times you can eavesdrop on loudmouthed enemies and discover new weapons by simply waiting and listening for more details. For the most part in Elden Ring, I’ve found extra accessories from fallen enemies. I haven’t used the merchants yet, but based on my play style I might never get/have to. Even in video games, I’m a great big cheapskate.

Channel: AreaEightyNine

One main element in Elden Ring is that the titular artifact is fragmented and scattered across the game world, sort of like the jewel shards in Inuyasha. Finding them is “easy,” it just takes getting past the boss fights to get them. Once constructed, the Elden Ring is said to grant the wielder great power. So like Sekiro, there’s a powerful object that both sides want and depending on how the stories for both goes, the protagonists of both will realize that no one is meant to have that power and let it be, or they take the power and use the godly powers for good instead of evil.

I will peak ahead to see what I’m up against, but that’s the most I’ll do for spoiling myself–knock on wood. All I can say with certainty is that I have a long way to go.

Another spoiler: I never made it past Genichiro, Way of Tomoe on console.

As Rias is my witness, I’m gonna do it on PC. That’s my declaration!

For this recommendation, I present to you: Japanese Comedian Meshida.

https://www.youtube.com/@Meshida

As the title suggest, Meshida is a Japanese comedian. He said goodbye to salaryman life and chose laughter as a full-time job. His brand of comedy briefly explains Japanese society while at the same time taking the piss out of it. If satire is the best way to critique while also wishing for improvements, then I say keep it going.

What Was Lost from L.A. Noire

TiberiusLeave a comment

It was underbaked all along

I’ve brought up L.A. Noire before as an example of what went wrong with it on the developer’s side. To not repeat myself a third time, here’s the short version: Australian developer and programmer Brendan McNamara used his experiences working on the 2002 video game The Getaway to open his own studio in Sydney called Team Bondi with the goal of developing their only game L.A. Noire, based on old noir films from the 1940s and 50s. The problems that arose came from McNamara’s corrosive personality, crunch, and, according to ex-developers under his wing, explicit approval of sweatshop hours. Numerous people quit or got sick either physically or mentally of his open berating of “slackers” and loads of people who contributed to the project were omitted from the credits, especially if they didn’t see it to its May 2011 release. Keep in mind, Team Bondi started working on the game in 2004.

Over the course of nearly eight years, Team Bondi lost a lot of people and with a high turnover rate and new people not knowing what their predecessor was specifically working on, lots of stuff was scrapped. It wasn’t until Rockstar themselves made a personal investment in the game’s release, but by the time it released, it never broke even and Team Bondi’s assets were sold off in October 2011. The studio was said to have spent over $50 million on the game, making it one of the most expensive video games at the time, but it only made back less than half, even with all the marketing in the years prior to release.

After 12 years and a series of remasters and graphical upgrades especially on newer consoles, Rockstar clearly has a place in its heart for the game. As for what would’ve been different if more level heads were allowed to direct or manage the project, it’s difficult to say. Maybe someone could’ve reined in McNamara or fired him from his own studio for the toxic sludge he spewed from his mouth. Maybe the game would still be in development with graphics and physics engines changing over time. Maybe it’ll get cancelled and all we’ll have are numb, carpal tunnel afflicted hands to show for it. No one can say for certain at least not until we master interdimensional travel.

As for what should’ve made it into the game, it’s clear to see that some content was missing. Select characters seem to know the protagonist Cole Phelps without a proper introduction for the audience, especially on the game’s ad vice desk which handles drug crimes. Spoilers incoming, there’s also a subplot in the latter quarter of the game tying together (though haphazardly) the fate’s of the characters Cole Phelps, an ex-Marine who fought with him in the Pacific Jack Kelso, and a German immigrant jazz singer Elsa Lichtmann. Part of the subplot is meant to hint at Cole becoming smitten with Elsa and beginning a love affair with her despite him being married with children.

Following this revelation, his partner on the vice desk rats him out due to personal reasons (he lost out on a boxing match and Cole pretty much ruined the fun for him by promising one of the potential victims a ticket to catch a ferry from New York), and he’s demoted for adultery. The scandal makes the headlines and left with no one but Elsa, after a few cases on the arson desk, Cole looks into a personal conflict Elsa’s been looking into for a while: the most likely (read: confirmed) fraudulent death of her friend. This is where Kelso comes in as an investigator for the California Fire and Life insurance company. Elsa’s friend was a construction worker who was contracted in the development of new homes for returning G.I.’s but the house he was working on collapsed and killed him. It’s revealed from Kelso’s investigation that most of the houses were build with subpar wood and brickwork, some of it from shut down silent-era film sets.

I bring all this up because the adultery subplot comes in quite apropos of nothing. Call it subtlety or a hint at the rushed development cycle, but the closest we get to a build up of Cole’s and Elsa’s relationship is him visiting the club that she sings at most nights. The scenes where they get even somewhat intimate are rare and in the last few cases in the game. It also seems that much of Cole’s character development is absent. Throughout the patrolman cases and going to the traffic and homicide desks, he’s portrayed as levelheaded and quite straightlaced, even chiding fellow officers for not sticking to his personal definition of justice no matter how slight, though keeping to himself for some other officers’ personalities.

By the time he’s on the arson desk, he’s back to his old professional ways and he’s still the type to chase a victory, even with the power of slippery slopes, but I personally never saw him as the type of guy to think himself as a hypocrite, nor did I think that his preaching morality was in some way a shield for his own personal conduct. Some moments do stand out, but don’t have that much of an effect on the story, such as his pride in his own job as a cop while his first partner, Stefan Bekowsky, complains about aspects of his tenure on the traffic desk; or his taking the homicides more seriously on that desk while his partner there, Rusty, is busy drinking half the time, and several others.

Still, if the devs weren’t dodging an interpretive clock or a nasty boss, it could’ve seen a lower turnover rate and some of the original ideas that were cut could’ve been added back, if not in the game itself than as an expansion pack or DLC. The finer points of this implementation can be better explored elsewhere if they haven’t been already, but of the ideas that were scrapped, there were two crime desks that were abandoned: the fraud desk and the burglary desk.

According to McNamara himself, the desks were exactly as described: burglary dealing in thefts and robberies, stuff going missing, and all that entails; fraud would’ve dealt with scams, conmen, forgeries and everything in between. We don’t know who would’ve been the officer in charge of dispatching detectives to investigate these cases, but we have one clue as to who would’ve been partnered with Cole at least on the burglary department: a minor character named Harold Caldwell.

Caldwell was seen getting along famously with Cole. During the final case on the vice desk, he lends a hand to Cole and his vice desk partner, the sleazeball Roy Earle. Caldwell was suggested to have been Cole’s partner on the burglary desk which would’ve had around 11 cases to play, which is the closest explanation for how he has such a good chemistry with Cole at this point in the game. Because the game skips forward six months between the traffic and homicide desks, it’s suggested that the timeskip was supposed to be the burglary desk, but the reason for its omission comes down to formatting and storage.

The PS3 version has the benefit of a large capacity Blu-Ray disc, but there’s no equivalent feature for the Xbox 360 version. Having played it myself after getting it loaned to me by a friend, I remember the game case having a total of three discs. Leaving extra content in the game would’ve necessitated a fourth disc and to my knowledge, few, if any, games would’ve come with so many discs. Without the cut content, L.A. Noire clocked in at a 20 hour campaign depending on your playstyle, but with 11 more cases focused on burglary, who knows how many more hours and gigs would’ve been dedicated to the game?

As for the fraud desk, we know even less. All we have is speculation based on what probably would’ve counted as fraud in the late 1940s since this game was also released in a time before the Miranda rights afforded criminal suspects protection while in police custody along with a defense attorney. It might not be obvious playing it, but if you ever look at gameplay of L.A. Noire or play it yourself, you’ll notice that Cole never reads the suspects their rights. The landmark Miranda rights case was argued in Arizona in 1966, less than 20 years after the events of L.A. Noire, so a lot of what the LAPD could’ve been implied to play fast and loose with in 1947 would’ve largely ceased by then.

Regarding people involved in the fraud desk, that’s also not well known. Who would’ve been the dispatcher? Cole’s partner? Is there a desk that challenges Cole’s lawman philosophy and awaken him to the shades of gray in law enforcement? All of this is up for interpretation. McNamara claimed to have had some levels and concept art for the burglary at least, but I couldn’t find any screenshots of these to verify. Not that I’m calling McNamara a liar, but he was the only public face during the development of the game.

The attitudes and accounts of the disgraced ex-employees of Team Bondi (especially those who left before the game released) may suggest that McNamara had all the cards, so unless an artist or designer snuck away a copy of a potential level, this cut content exists as lost media. Instances of both still exist in the game, but you would only be able to see it in the game’s free roam mode, looking at fliers and ledgers and whatnot.

Would the cut content have made the game any better than what we got? Well, I doubt it would make as big an impact as expected, though it could still change a lot of things. Like what? Probably an in-depth look at how theft was prosecuted post-war or what defined fraud. The examples I listed above are clearly not exhaustive and people smarter and more experienced than me in those fields may have more to add to those, but those would be the more obvious ones to me as I’d never investigated a missing object in any capacity, nor have I investigated fraud. Certainly, Caldwell would join the list of partners Cole has had over the course of the game and likely one of the more respectable ones compared to Roy Earle who takes home loads of allegations of racism and misconduct, even for an America pre-integration.

For formatting and storage, if Team Bondi was able to commit as much as possible to leaving everything in undisturbed, then the game case may look more like a binder or folder with well over four discs dedicated to each case on the Xbox 360 and probably two or three Blu-Rays for the PS3. Subsequent re-releases for PCs would occupy more storage than can possibly fit on an unmodified computer. If I was a part of that alternate reality, I could easily see myself budgeting for more than one high capacity hard drive for just one game or even a series.

On that note, there’s also a part of me that sees this as being a series given the same treatment as the multiple expansions for The Sims franchise or Battlefield and Medal of Honor, which probably says a lot about how EA’s design philosophy compared to what was inherited from Team Bondi into the Rockstar family.

The only notable changes for later releases of L.A. Noire is the interrogation going from Truth, Doubt, and Lie to Good Cop, Bad Cop, and Accuse. All things considered, what counts as speculation for a different game solely exists in criticisms for what didn’t work or go far enough in the version we got. Then again, it takes a game with enough hard work going into it to spark debates and discussion years after the original developer went under and the closest thing we had to DLC or a sequel was seemingly shelved forever. This video by Real Pixels explains all the faults in L.A. Noire. Based on what I wrote, there’s a lot so take this as a brass tacks examination of L.A. Noire.

Channel: Real Pixels

Finally, is L.A. Noire even good? It clearly doesn’t live up to its purported expectations and as I’ve explained there’s a lot under the hood that’s missing or what’s left over isn’t perfectly aligned, but considering I’ve dedicated one post to the game and sections within two separate blog posts to the game, I have a relatively high opinion of the game, and so do others given how many people dream about there being a better version of L.A. Noire or even a Whore of the Orient.

We end 2023 with a YouTube recommendation for the channels Business Basics and Geopolitics Daily.

https://www.youtube.com/@BusinessBasicsYT

https://www.youtube.com/@GeopoliticsDaily247

The twin channels cover news coverage and geopolitics across the world keeping viewers up to date on major issues that affect us directly or indirectly, typically from a consequences of conflict standpoint especially in the case of territorial disputes like those of Russia, Israel, and China among other places across the world. Both channels began as business and investment guides before the shift to global events, but do still offer tips and guides for business and investing.

The Nintendo Formula

TiberiusLeave a comment

One of the most consistent formulas since 1985

Before I begin proper, I’m basing this blog post on on-the-fly research and my own observations. Don’t take everything I put here seriously, I am going to be wrong somewhere in here.

Nintendo needs no introduction. There’s a strong percentage that a property belonging to them has come into your possession somehow. Donkey Kong? Mario? Kirby? Pokémon? Pikmin? Maybe it was something more action-oriented like Metroid, or something a bit more obscure with a cult following?

Well, no matter how it started, it almost always goes pretty well for what started as a hanafuda card company. Even the cult classics have devotees of their own. Just try to find someone who doesn’t know about the following:

A little bit of the background: in 1983, the movie E.T. was so popular, it franchised remarkably quickly for a film released at the time. As such, Atari got the million-dollar idea to make a video game out of the property over the course of about five or six weeks. And a lesson we continually forgot even after Sonic ’06 is that games are to NEVER BE RUSHED. Nothing good comes from kicking a game out the door before it’s ready. Like a beef hamburger, you need to cook it thoroughly.

In what became a lesson to burgeoning devs at the time, E.T. for the Atari 2600 went down in history as both the worst video game in all of gaming history and a mass murderer in the video game industry, almost killing it en masse before it got a chance to grow. Developers fell off left and right with how poorly received and sold E.T. was which might as well be an ironic twist of fate. This was E.T., one of Spielberg’s crown jewels, and the aftermath of its failure proved a few things:

  1. If the best of the best can’t take a W, then it certainly lowers morale for most witnesses
  2. Games based on movies would go on to have the worst W/L ratio of all time
  3. Considering Spielberg movie-based games to be released after this, it was for the better that the man quit while he was behind or we would’ve had Saving Private Ryan the game.

And no, I don’t mean World War II games which do work. I mean a game based on this movie above.

The mid-1980s were when the pool of video game developers had shrunk in record time. Then came Nintendo in October of 1985 to save the industry and breathe new life into the industry with a full library of launch titles, unlicensed games, and even to this day homebrew games. In the west, Nintendo became something of a god. They gave us the templates for nearly everything that made for great games, and as the years went on and more and more developers and studios worked with Nintendo to develop games, consoles, or distribute on their platforms, Nintendo has been running home with the gold.

In the modern day, they took the crown from Sega who abandoned console manufacturing in 2001 after the failure of the Dreamcast. Then again, to not sound like a propaganda piece for the Nintendo Empire, they’ve shot themselves in the foot several times. Censorship and a heavy push for a family friendly image turned off some of the more core players in the 1990s and 2000s for a start. Mortal Kombat’s Nintendo ports have been major misses than hits with all the blood, which can be turned off at least in Deadly Alliance, but of all the things to censor in the game, turning the blood to sweat is something I’d expect of a modern day Chinese distribution of Demon Slayer or Spy x Family.

At least Sega had the fans’ backs on this with the blood code.

Another failure was found in several of the consoles they released over the years. The GameCube was meant to be what the Switch is now, a console that can switch between mobile and home functions at will, but it wasn’t to be. The tech wasn’t there yet. By 2006, the Wii launched with high intensity motion controls that proved to be a fad at best and a nuisance at worst. Never mind the fact that Xbox tried it with the Kinect and PlayStation with the Move around the same time; the motion controls mostly worked with things like Wii Sports and other games encouraged to be played with families or with friends at parties and whatnot. Core gamers wouldn’t have been down for that, so third party devs were more likely to work with Xbox and Sony than stick with Nintendo’s wacky rules long term. Props to those who stuck it out though; we got some really creative games out of that.

The biggest one in recent memory was the Wii U, which was either worse than the Wii or better than nothing depending on who you ask. Honestly, the Wii U circled back to issues that plagued other consoles from the 90s, in the sense that the tech was too much and the devs weren’t capable of adapting to this new fangled machinery, hence why the 3DO and Neo Geo sold so poorly and had a tinier library compared to the Great Library that would eventually become modern day Nintendo. Of course, these all had their own hidden gems. Metal Slug anyone?

But the one notable blunder in Nintendo’s history that gets overlooked these days is that they technically created one of their rivals in PlayStation. Sony and Nintendo had worked with each other prior to the mid-1990s and in the lead up to the PSX’s debut console, Sony and Nintendo had been developing a game-changing console that would incorporate early 3D graphics and transition to CD-ROM technology. Unfortunately, Nintendo’s paranoia caused them to renege on an agreement and in a fit of rage, Sony made Sony Computer Entertainment as the ultimate vengeance. Basically, Nintendo is PlayStation’s father.

Despite the decades of video game development under Nintendo’s belt, their flagship series haven’t changed all that much. Even when Donkey Kong and Brooklyn’s least infamous plumber became well-known across the world, the core of their respective games hasn’t really changed since then. For as long as there’s been a Mario, there’s been a princess in another castle. Donkey Kong used to lob barrels at him, but retiring from that put him in the crosshairs of the crocodiles and King K Rule, paid for in part by the United States Marine Corps. If you don’t get that reference, watch this:

Third parties tend to get a pass when developing for a Nintendo console, but their own properties have been on the same script with almost no change whatsoever. Even the spinoffs don’t make much of a difference when they have little impact on story canonicity. I don’t mean the spinoffs from after Mario and Donkey Kong made names for themselves after the original 1981 game.

In another instance revealing how little I play Nintendo games, I can’t recall Mario making mention of saving Pauline from the ape, nor are there any mentions of the plumber dodging Donkey’s barrels. So what, did they have a professional relationship only? Because every spinoff suggests elsewise. For a franchise with 5% story, the spinoffs do a better job at fleshing all the characters out than the main games, so this is Nintendo’s fault for sticking with the same storyboard for almost 40 years.

Tennis, sports, partaking in the Olympics themselves, go-karting; if I fell into a coma and woke up decades later, oblivious to what Mario even is and I got into through one of the spinoffs, I would’ve initially thought they were all good buddies who play games together, which is probably a reference to a Nintendo ad campaign. This all being said, its a formula that works for nearly every Nintendo game. The only one I recall trying something different was Kirby with more enemies to fight, more complex plots at least during the GBA and DS eras, and callbacks to old mechanics or concepts from previous installments. And that pink round thing almost always has a score to settle with Dedede, even if things are different for Forgotten Land.

The crux in my custard here is that if they can throw more ideas at Kirby’s pink mass, then surely Nintendo has what it takes to try something else with some of their other properties. The Zelda series alone has a new idea with each release. Consider how different each Zelda game is from each other. Windwaker, Majora’s Mask, Ocarina of Time, A Link to the Past, and about 4,000 other Zelda games. There’s always variety in the story of Princess Zelda and the mute, canonical femboy.

Zelda’s tastes are exquisite and pristine.

Even if Kirby is owned more by HAL Laboratory, Zelda is a wholly-owned Nintendo property and the ideas trough is always going to that hungry pig while the rest of the zoo animals starve. Maybe it’s due to the way Japan does things (what with most companies being run by old men who loathe change), but it really isn’t gonna hurt them to try something new with the rest of their lineup. Even one-off experiments are worth the effort. No one was really feeling it at the time, but the XCOM hybrid that was Mario and Rabbids was something different. Good? Bad? Don’t ask me, I didn’t play it. But there is gameplay of it in full on YouTube and it stands as the second thing I recommend aside from Nintendo picking a different direction after almost 40 years.

The third recommendation is a YouTube channel called Ryan McBeth.

https://www.youtube.com/@RyanMcBethProgramming/about

Ryan McBeth is a retired US Army platoon sergeant and expert in software engineering and development, cybersecurity, military analysis and open source intelligence. He has a lineup of t-shirts, makes videos and YouTube shorts (and probably also TikTok videos) about the military and battlefield analysis. Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in February of 2022, he’s made videos about several aspects of the ground operations with some other stuff sprinkled on the side. I highly recommend his channel and as an added bonus, if you have any inquiries on software development or cybersecurity, try reaching out to him for that as well. And to top it all off, with YouTube being what it is regarding censorship, full length explanations and videos can be found on his associated Substack page.

My Experience with Video Game Emulation

Tiberius1 Comment

In recent times, I have taken an interest in video game emulation and emulators, chief among them is the PS2 emulator PCSX2. This program operates the same as a PS2 with a few different bells and whistles for your computer.

SONY DSC

The PS2 was my first console. My uncle got it for me as a gift when I was about four and my library of games didn’t start collecting dust until I picked up my first Xbox 360 about a decade later. At the same time though, there was a large amount of dust building up around our old 1980s wooden paneled TV and the ports around the PS2’s cords and both had to go.

I discovered the emulator years after that when the nostalgia wave hit me once when I was watching old footage of the 3D era Mortal Kombat games. In my naiveté, I assumed the best way to play this again meant tracking down an old, but refurbished console since I had both the games and some old memory cards. Searching on websites offering them for perhaps a fraction of what they cost in October of 2000 when the console launched in North America proved fruitless.

I don’t know when I first started googling PCSX2, but I know that it was sometime in August or September of 2020 that I had downloaded it to my old computer. My old gaming computer couldn’t handle rendering The Sims 4 in HD and if I dared play a pirated PS2 game on that machine, it needed a new CPU which I could not install. The design of the computer makes it impossible to mod, so I was stuck with the PS2 startup screen and display.

But that much meant that it was in my grasp. I could play the old games I used to have and then some until it was time. For now, it was time for me to find a new computer. And while I have the opportunity to go into a slight tangent right now, I just want to say that modern computers have been extremely nerfed in the years. My grandmother’s old desktop computer, though prone to slow down, lasted upwards of at least six or seven years. My last gaming laptop lasted from August 5, 2017 until May 22, 2021. Less than four years. But hey, the machine I use as of now is much faster and the problems on the other computer are either nonexistent or greatly diminished.

Back to the topic of emulation, I finally after a year and change got the PCSX2 program to work and it’s just like I’m back in elementary or middle school again and this is my prize for knocking out some homework. As of writing this, the games I have active on the computer are as follows:

  1. Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002)
  2. Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004)
  3. Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (2005)*
  4. Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2 (2004 JP/2007 NA)
  5. Tekken 5 (2004)
  6. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006)
  7. Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix (2005)*

The asterisks on Shaolin Monks and Midnight Club are to signify games that I’ve either 100% completed or got as close to getting to 100%. Further sidenote on Midnight Club, the save file still exists, but to make room for other stuff, including legally bought and owned games and their corresponding updates, I had to ditch it from my list of ROMs.

You’d best believe that if I had a YouTube gaming channel, a larger capacity hard drive (ideally 4-5TB), and perhaps a gaming desktop whilst leaving the one I’m writing on for simulation-type games like The Sims or Civilization, I would either record playthroughs and upload or cut out the middle man and try to stream on Twitch. I challenged myself in this game to use only cars that I had won in tournaments and along with the car you buy before the first qualifying race, there’s enough of prizes to fill the garage to near-capacity in the three cities of San Diego, Detroit, and Atlanta. With the addition of Tokyo, my garage was at capacity. I noticed when the last thing I tried was attempting to test drive a car.

Now, this isn’t exactly my first time playing emulated games or even a program to do so. On browsers alone, old GBA and Nintendo DS titles are available to run through and I had blazed through nearly that entire era of Kirby games, sans the original Super Star game and Canvas Curse. Super Star original wouldn’t cost me anything monetary or temporal to play, but memories of the original Canvas Curse on my DS reminded me of how ass my reflexes used to be. Though I still managed to beat Planet Robobot and Triple Deluxe on the Citra Nightly emulator.

As for the games that let me play by going straight to the files, well, there’s an extra step to that. Downloading and extracting files to a 7-Zip location through the WinRAR application makes things all too easy. Even when the app threatens to charge you for using it, it’s not all that much trouble. Just X out of the paywall window and the download will still be there ready for extraction. Easy.

There’s an old debate on the pros, cons, dangers, etc. of video game piracy that has had people talking for years, decades at this point. Before the internet age, backyard engineers have made homebrew consoles before. The Angry Video Game Nerd has a few in his position specially made for select episodes like his Nintoaster and the 4-in-1 console.

But this is different. This isn’t modifying a console; this is grabbing an illegal version of the game made available online. What makes it illegal? Without the recorded sale of a good from a producer to a customer, this is what makes it illegal. But calling back to old Blockbuster video warnings, FBI warnings on nearly every DVD and VHS tape, and movie previews about the consequences of theft, emulating isn’t as easily policed or punished. Hackers can and at times do face the consequences for hacks and viruses, same as a thief who robbed an old lady or the mastermind behind a car theft racket.

Emulation though remains largely unpoliced and unpunished and a lot of the time, it’s rare for their to be a court debate over the issue since a publisher can shut a site down if they catch wind of their old products being made available on the web.

In particular, Nintendo shut down the website Emuparadise, which on the surface sounds like a forum for enthusiasts of birds of large stature and little intellect, but it was more of a storehouse for just about every game available. According to the website owner, he grew up in rural India and had zero access to any of the games growing up. I don’t remember if he explained it on the site, but to my knowledge, the purpose of Emuparadise was to give similar folks the world over a chance to either play these games for the first time, or veterans of old games a nostalgia trip.

While I fall into the latter category, the guy in charge of the site isn’t really all that special regarding his background, but what he made available for the wider public was. People who got into gaming late in life had something to entertain them in the short-term, and veterans like myself have a repertoire at our fingertips. The nostalgia wave hits more like a tsunami, and while I acknowledge most of my old games weren’t as good as I remember, there were things about old gaming that I think a lot of us really took for granted.

One of the biggest of them was DRMs and internet connections to play games. I don’t mind online or offline play when engaging in a legacy run of The Sims 4, but there’s a lot of practices within this 2014 game that probably should’ve served as a sign of things to come for EA going forward. Sims 4 has gotten better over the years, but it’s not very perfect or close to it. Hell, always-online handicapped Destiny in 2014 and almost assassinated the Xbox One a year prior.

Games released before the wide use of internet and mass adoption of social media has this going for them, but as much as I praise and make use of emulators, I can’t ignore the problems that exist within the practice. I mentioned earlier that my old computer had hardware limitations that I couldn’t overcome in order to play on the PCSX2 properly, but there were other problems. Bad ISOs and ROMs make a game literally unplayable. Additionally, what matters is the recency of the tutorial you might view in order to get it right step-by-step. It’s fortunate that the PCSX2 site itself directs you along the way, but more visual learners might try YouTube and without a visible dislike counter to consider (excluding add-ons), you could either use information that’s long out of date or worse be subject to a Rick Roll or something similar.

Granted, these days these are all easy fixes and minor nuisances, but spending enough time in just an internet forum can clue you in to how clueless some people can be sometimes. Another danger that can deter piracy leads into developers sneaking codes into games that make the game unplayable, like the drunk camera on pirated copies of GTA 4. But that’s largely the worst that can happen to a pirate and I’d say they deserve it. Some games aren’t worth pirating. If it’s still available, you can drop a few bucks on it or wait for a sale if you’re frugal. The worst case scenario would be a bait or a scam.

The countless YouTube sponsorships that encourage (read: implore) the viewer to get a VPN like Surfshark, Atlas, Private Internet Access, ExpressVPN, and many others do have a point, not just in identity protection, but also preventive care. If you’re not too careful about where you get your ROMs and whatnot, a lot of your data is up for grabs. I extend this to mods as well, especially those for The Sims.

But above all else, it should be all for good fun. As I said, I’m all for pirating if it means a beloved game is no longer available or if a reputedly acclaimed game can’t be played without the sacrifice of an arm, a leg, or Deez Nuts.

However, I limit my free rein to pirate to the mostly 2D and 3D era. HD games can still be purchased in the modern day and if you really want to play GTA 4 or Mortal Kombat 9 or BioShock, you can drop a few bucks or wait for a sale, or just watch a silent playthrough on YouTube. It is not hard. Speaking of acclaimed games that can’t be played today, I thought I’d make a list of the games, I’d like to play. Some of these I had heard of from a GCN video on Everything Wrong With God of War 2018. They’re as follows:

  1. Onimusha: Warlords (2001)
  2. Ninja Gaiden (2004)
  3. God Hand (2006)
  4. Devil May Cry (2001)
  5. Black (2004)

As I’d done previously, moving some files around and deleting the unneeded would be required if I want to try these all, and the save files all still exist, so not a lot to worry about until I run out of room.