Gamers have enjoyed the fruits of emulation for decades. Though I grew up with the NES and SNES, I actually discovered Chrono Trigger first by playing it as a ROM on my desktop computer as a teenager before getting a cartridge. There are many products on the market that are essentially hardware running a software emulation of classic systems. I sidestepped those costs by being one of those obnoxious people who set up RetroPie on a Raspberry PI over a decade ago, complete with 3D-printed case meant to look like a US SNES. I still use this to this day and so do my kids.
There is another approach to playing old games on new hardware (other than porting) and that’s using FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) to replicate the same exact circuitry of the original system instead of running software emulation on a general-purpose OS. This is the approach used by nice but expensive products such as the Analogue Pocket.
Now there’s a cool open source project, Game Bub that can play GBA, GB and GBC games with a host of cool features. As its author, Lipsitz describes:
Game Bub can play physical cartridges, as well as emulated cartridges using ROM files loaded from a microSD card. Game Bub also supports the Game Link Cable in both GB and GBA modes for multiplayer games. I designed the hardware with a number of bonus features, like video out (HDMI) via a custom dock, a rumble motor, real-time clock (for certain games). Additionally, the hardware is designed with extensibility in mind, allowing future software improvements to expand its capabilities.
Game Bub has a custom-designed 6 layer PCB featuring a Xilinx XC7A100T FPGA with integrated memory, display, speakers, rechargable battery, GB/GBA cartridge slot, all packaged up in a custom 3D-printed enclosure.
You can also check out the video here:
The evolution of the prototypes can be seen in this photo of three side-by-side from old to new:
I would love to get my hand on one of these but I might just wait to see what cool enhancements the open source/open hardware community comes up with first!
Here at shoesatthedoor, we talk a lot about how contemporary social media algorithms affect our view of reality. But I usually think about this in the context of either searching for or consciously receiving new information. When we consciously form opinions on the state of things in the world, we sometimes think uncritically about the apparent data algorithms are presenting to us. This is to say nothing of how the volume of selected content coming down the pipeline affects us on a more subconscious level.
For those of us who are making these connections, I think the tendency is to unplug. But we’ve still got a job to do. Some of us have got to put on the hazmat suits, wade in, and curate the material, separating the chaff from the chaff we like. Then how can one know, you may ask, what can be safely regarded as that upon which one may carve an informed opinion? Well, perhaps forming an opinion on the state of things is overrated. But perhaps there is some good advice out there for vetting material such that some opinions will be slightly better than others.
As you may know, I began this exploration into blog curation with video game videos on YouTube. I wanted to explore why I liked the videos I liked, and why I didn’t the ones I didn’t. Today, I want to share another piece of that puzzle, but previously unbeknownst to me, it turns out to operate on a more subconscious level. At this point, I must say that I usually don’t want to admit when I’m being affected on a subconscious level. I’m a little too proud for that. But right now, with the all the apparent data in front of me, I find no better explanation for the ennui I now feel toward video games than that which accounts for the sheer force of the overwhelming quantity of negativity about gaming being uploaded every single day.
I don’t think it would be overly simplistic and small-minded to point out here that it wasn’t always this way. When I was young, my favorite publication, PC gamer, did nothing but get me hyped about every single game coming out. The negativity just wasn’t there, except when certain releases were obviously crossing the line in their lack of quality control. Gaming publications of yesteryear doubled as your excited friends and as your guardians watching out for wolves in sheep’s clothing. And the excitement didn’t just come from my having been young. In 1994, PC gaming and its magazines, including PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World, were made by and for more mature audiences. The video above rightly points out that old games are not necessarily better than games today (though there are good elements that have been lost). And if they are better, where has the excitement gone? Perhaps a little bit of hype is not such a bad thing, especially when handled by a third party. But don’t forget that some gamers used to get so hyped that they would issue death threats to these publications for negative reviews even before playing the game. Well, I guess they won. The publications of yesteryear are no more. Sure, some of them are around in name, but they have been bought out to the degree that they can no longer serve their original purpose. Now, hype has turned to hate, and no doubt by the same people who were issuing death threats for negative reviews.
This brings us to our headlining video. I’ve been watching NeverKnowsBest‘s videos for a while, ever since he made one about how the classic video game RPGs of the 90s were more fun because they were more imbalanced and exploitable. He’s not in the running for my hall of fame, however, because he’s doing what I’m doing, editorializing curated material. And he’s doing a great job. I don’t agree with all his conclusions, but that’s not the point. He’s helping and encouraging people to have more informed, thoughtful conversations about the topics he covers, which is exactly what I want to do here at Shoes.
Watch the video and hopefully it will complement what I’ve written above. But I do want to make a couple of comments on its observations and conclusions. First, the situation is not really that bad. Though I feel sorry for those who have been laid off, I feel as though I have to feel just as bad for those who have been chewed up and spit out by Hollywood. This is an industry based on entertainment technology, and it is about as predictable as the fickle human beings that provide its custom. I don’t think that it is very caring to act as if people don’t have to think about their career paths, encouraging them to follow their dream. If we really want a world where everyone is simply following their dream, we really shouldn’t be getting angry at the fact that nobody’s dream is to make my dream come true. Funny how, conversely, anger is the primary emotion that pursuing dreams seems to produce. And in terms of demand, I think it would also be rather uncaring not to remind people that they really don’t need the entertainment they think they do. You can do your own research, but you might easily believe that links have been shown between the crazed demand for entertainment and the social isolation that stems from postmodern consumerism. Gaming used to be so much smaller, and it was never better regarded than before postmodern dialogues began to reconstruct the meaning of “community”.
Second, the end of the video mentions elements of recent criticisms regarding what is being called “winner-takes-all capitalism.” Though this concept might be worth thinking about in some areas, I think it would be rather dangerous to give people the unqualified idea of clamoring for a marriage of government intervention with entertainment dissatisfaction. The fact that some games have such a large piece of the market might mean that a lot of people are actually having a lot of fun. Do less popular game projects need government protection for not being as fun to as many people, or because people simply do not have time to play all the games? Are the games of any such real value? Or is the ideal simply that the purpose of such government intervention would be to ensure that people never have to think about their career path and follow their dreams? Maybe if I lived in a country that taxed corporations and not its poor dreamless employees, this might not be the worst idea, but it certainly could not be too high on the list. It just seems like a bad idea to put the pitchforks in the hands of the angry mob, the very stupid angry mob who are now appearing on my YouTube side bar now that I’ve watched this video.
However, I must also lament here the state of independent games. As the big game releases of the last five years have been a little rough for me personally, looking back, I find that I have been playing a lot more indie titles than previous. Like the video mentions, I do remember a time between 2008 and 2014 when you could simply browse for good and interesting games on Steam. But now, with Valve adding 16K games a year, they have effectively, like everything else, offloaded the curation duty onto publications that no longer exist. Who could have possibly handled it, anyway? And what could government intervention do here but somehow protect us from the natural consequences of evil so that the ship never has to right itself? Is that good? Exactly how many of these sixteen thousand projects deserve protection, anyway? Each year? Is capitalism bad because it can’t do that? Not that we don’t all suffer from it a bit, but I still think the questions must be posed.
Like the video mentions, people have been predicting the death of gaming for a very long time. But despite all odds, some very special people seem to be drawn to make them, no matter the consequences to themselves. It’s always been that way. The sad truth is that we’re the ones who have changed. We’ve let the algorithms get under our skin so much that we can’t even enjoy what we enjoy. There is more to it, more than even what I and the video have stated. But if you want to get in on the conversation, you must respect what NeverKnowsBest has brought to the table. So check out these other two highly recommended videos.
Well, Michael posted about a DDR track and a GBA game and, somehow, I landed here, posting on shoesatthedoor and thinking about Lumines II for the psp. That was the first time I had ever heard music like this while playing a game – and over its music video, too! It was an incredible moment I had not expected. The game started out like the previous one, a kind of Tetris-style game with a slight musical component. Suddenly, the song changed, and the background faded into the music video. It was spectacular. And this wasn’t the only one. The game even featured one of Takagi Masakatsu‘s song-moving-painting things, perhaps one of his best. At the time, it was a multimedia experience that felt quintessentially Sony. I’m not really sure if companies compete for that wow-factor anymore, or maybe I just don’t notice it, except for in racing.
Near the end of university, and just after, I traveled a lot, and I spent a lot of time on airplanes and in some other rough places with my psp, playing Lumines II and Taiko no Tatsujin. Hearing these songs really takes me back, not to anyplace good, but to a place I was pretty thankful for having them.
I had known about Takagi Masakatsu before. I used to hang out on some website that was all about minimalistic music. I forgot what it was called. I found Masakatsu there and this other little band called Lali Puna. I also bought a couple of his CDs back then, probably the rarest things I own. Hopefully, with this blog, we won’t lose anymore websites.
So, in my last post, I reminded you about how I was putting together this internet hall of fame, but I didn’t elaborate on it much. The reason I want to bring this up again is because I somehow want to extend to you, the reader, the experience of how this sort of curation can yield certain dialogues that you might not have expected when starting out. For example, I started out with the kind of videos that I understand the most, that is, videos created by writing, editing, and performing. We started with video games and then we added movies, and there will be more stuff coming from other new categories, as well. But what about videos that don’t really require editing or writing? Obviously, the internet has a lot of those. Do we add to the hall of fame Sparks the kitty, that does that cute little thing with the box? It doesn’t really seem to fit. But what about Game Grumps, the YouTube channel that features a couple of guys playing video games – and that’s it?
What do we do when we are observing something with a perhaps unidentifiable and unquantifiable quality that, although having no discernible label, is noticeable in both its presence and absence? Not only that, but how do you pin this quality onto something when it’s not always there?
Sometimes, Game Grumps is pretty good, but not always. But then, I’m not sure if I fit into their biggest audience demographic. And that’s okay. They should be thankful for having an audience demographic, perhaps more so if that demographic is a little different from themselves. And they do seem to be thankful. But in terms of entertainment, some episodes really knock it out of the park for me. And maybe the simple fact is that these guys just are entertaining, except when they’re not. Perhaps the problem has something to do with the art of improv. I also tend to think that when the dialogue gets off of the game in front of the people playing it, the entertainment suffers. For example, in one of the most entertaining episodes to date, the P.T. demo (10 million views), the dialogue stayed on-game the whole time. At any rate, when deciding for the hall of fame, I want to see each candidate for their best. And for me, that’s going to be Dan’s solo adventure game series.
Now, I usually go to Game Grumps for laughs, but these videos are special. I really wish Dan had kept going with these, but I’m not sure how big of an audience there is for this kind of thing. While playing through Sierra’s Space Quest adventure games, Dan shows himself to be quite the capable host, taking the audience on a tour of what might be a rather inaccessible experience for most, all while keeping the dialogue going with his smooth, mellifluous voice. And it’s a tour that’s worth taking. It is worthwhile to experience old PC gaming in its best possible light instead of complaining about its lack of modern conveniences because putting the games in this light helps us understand how they were first played and enjoyed. This is almost, if not equally, as important as game preservation by itself. How many books have been preserved in libraries without most people ever having known how to appreciate them? Of course, I do take that to be the bigger problem. Nevertheless, we may have learned something from Dan, here. And that makes Game Grumps good enough for the Internet Hall of Fame.
The pick up and play factor of this gem is golden. People have all kinds of reasons for turning to older games. For me I like the ability to just jump in and start having fun. Kuru Kuru Kururin is available on the switch on the game boy advance emulator. If I told you the premise you might just raise an eyebrow and never look back, but jump in and twirl away around various mazes of gradually increasing difficulty. The colors and the music make for a nice zone to wash away in. I recommend this to anyone looking for a quick bit of fun with the potential for a serious challenge. I would put this game in the ‘quick to enjoy long to master’ category.
Well, this guy is done with it. It’s food day here on ShoesAtTheDoor.com. No, it isn’t, but I should have posted this under Cereal Man. This is okay, though. It gives me a chance to talk about this show separately from its channel, The Dice Tower, which I plan to cover later.
This is Crowd Surfing, the panel show that covers pertinent information about crowdfunding campaigns that are, at the time of recording, live. Most of the campaigns are related to board gaming, but, as you can see, they have also been working on covering the weird and wonderful as well. This is also another opportunity for us to point at someone and say, “Look, they’re doing what we’re doing!”
Well, Iron Pineapple has. In fact, he’s collected quite a few followers which now makes us wonder how he came by such compelling magic. For anyone struggling to make videos to upload, this guy makes it look too easy. But we know that it’s not easy. Perhaps he gets by on charm alone. Whatever the case may be, this is one of the channels I wanted to include in the little ‘performer hall of fame’ I’ve been putting together here.
“Steam Dumpster Diving” is a wonderful concept. It’s sort of like what I’m trying to do here on this blog. But that endeavor alone makes the work appreciable, and Iron Pineapple handles it with grace and with an economy of language and editing. Although, some of that language is as course as it is light-hearted.
At any rate, in my previous post about Game Sack, I thought afterwards that I had perhaps downplayed the role of editing in a video. Since I have only minimal experience with this, I can’t tell you precisely what makes for good or bad editing, but I can tell you that a poorly edited and mixed video will probably make me turn it off before my brain even registers that I’ve watched anything. I am starting to realize that what I said previously about concision counts for even more than I had once gathered. If it did not, we would not be seeing as many annoying jump-cuts as we do from the majority of uploaded videos.
It seems that the choices made in editing, such as cuts and transitions, are creative ones. They are creative in that the variety of editing options, while multitudinous, affect the delivery of the message that the writer has previously decided. The editor must think about how these cuts and transitions affect the message. If the cuts were standardized to a high degree, or if they were chaotic and random, the video would not match the narration, regardless of what was being shown from cut to cut. Iron Pineapple tends to use rough jump-cuts accompanied by a jaunty, light-hearted tune, to convey his comedic experience of being surprised by all the weird things that pop up on his dumpster diving excursions. It accentuates the experience, making the content more digestible while bringing the viewer parallel to the viewpoint of the author in a smooth and enjoyable way.
While it may seem somewhat ephemeral to discuss, one trend that we might associate with good aesthetics has to do with supplying creative variety within an understood, defined space. Limitless variety is overwhelming and detached from real human experience, while rigid regulation is oppressive to the soul. But this is a topic we’ll get into later. For now, we have one more thing to think about when it comes to why one video is better than another.
I finally finished reading Spiral, the second novel in Koji Suzuki’s Ring trilogy at around 5:50 p.m. yesterday, and if you’ve read that book before, you know that it leaves you with something. But it’s not time to say exactly what that something is, yet. I’ll first have to read the last book in the series before I try and articulate any thoughts, but I suspect that the end of the second book might be trying to leave me in a similar place as the end of the first book. Asakawa was wrong. Now, how about Ando?
You really have to love that towel scene. I’ll never forget it.
But I think I can say without spoiling anything that one of the most interesting things about the sequel to Ring is the fact that it mentions the Ring movie and the Ring video game within its own universe. It also mentions why the movie and the game must be different from the book! Say what you want the series’ perspective, but I can’t remember the last time I encountered something so incredibly clever.
Speaking of such, the title of this blog post has gotten a little too clever. It started out in my first post as a Hot Fuzz reference that Dr. Ando has unwittingly completed. Well, I’m not done with it yet, but this is probably the last time I’ll mention it.
So, to me, Spiral answers the question that this video most certainly imparts to the viewer as, “What’s with all this wacky different Ring stuff?” For years, I’ve wondered how someone might explain what I call the Rashomon aspect of Japanese media. We have all seen how different video games, manga, and anime will have different sequels and spinoffs that, to the Western mind, disrespect the original cannon. However, this particular criticism seems to be an imposition of the West, demanding something of Japanese culture with which its people have no interest in producing. It is also worth noting that this sort of story variation was also popular in the West, during what is commonly referred to as the “silver age of comic books.”
Perhaps a better question, then, is, “Why are we demanding canonicity now?”
Was Ryuji right? Are we being pulled apart, with one pole being an innate desire for conformity and the other being the unequivocal human dilemma of boredom? Is this the tension that drives humanity forward? Carrying with it the unasked, but unavoidable question left hanging at the end of the spiral: Why now?
But as for Grimbeard, not now. He’ll get his own post later.
Maybe it was that thing Sadako’s mother found in the water.
That’s the one I had, the one on the left, the top-loader. It was a rerelease well into the lifespan of the Super Nintendo. They even rereleased some of the biggest games along with it, like The Legend of Zelda, which came with the original map! At least, I think it did. I heard someone talking about that map recently and I knew what it was. But I had only played these games at the houses of friends when I was a kid until I got my own, years later. So, I must have gotten it through a rerelease, right? As for Nintendo, they were already into reselling their old games all the way back then. And as for me, all the way back then, I was already into classic gamming.
One of the things I’ve wanted to do with this new blog having to do with cataloging, categorizing, and codifying the various and lovely oddities I find on the internet is to post some of who I think are the best examples of good YouTubers. Now, most of the YouTube videos I watch are related to classic video gaming. And thanks to YouTube’s algorithm-driven homepage, I’ve been introduced to many people who are quite bad at making these videos. Some of them are funny in their missteps. Others annoy me to the point of exasperation. What I find interesting is that before YouTube had introduced me to these jokers, I would not have thought to ever form an opinion on the subject of what makes one of these videos either good or bad. At this point, however, I have seen so many bad videos, that I want to try and map out, here, what might be some contributing factors to the appropriate enjoyment of amateur video editing.
This brings me to a side note, if you will allow me to veer into the margins for a bit. I don’t really enjoy calling these people YouTubers, because they have existed and will continue to exist independent of that website’s longevity. Perhaps “vlogger” or “content creator” are more appropriate terms, but not every video available need be thought of as a constituent pertaining to a “video-blog.” And as for the creation of content, though this may be key to forming the bloated detritus of material foundational to the site’s business model, the result of having made something hardly lends itself to critique. If we were only flinging leftover spaghetti against the wall, it would seem rather inconsequential to want to say anything about it. But we do want to talk about it, don’t we? Perhaps the very activity of the comments section and the active chat indicate that we long for something more than just a post-labor opiate, perhaps even real, personal interaction. This is why I like to think of these people as “writer-performers” more than anything else. Yes, they do edit video, and they do film some of their own, but we are only talking about the medium, here. You wouldn’t call a novelist a paper-decorator, would you? Thus, we are able to discuss and think about the quality of the writings and the performances to which YouTube has triumphantly exposed us. Forgive me my digression.
Meet Joe Redifer, who has been uploading videos about classic gaming consoles for a very long time. Joe does a professional job, and his casual demeanor and low-wit sense of humor make what he does look easy. Joe doesn’t do a whole lot of unique stuff, which makes him a good base line to compare to others who are trying to do the same thing. Just from listening, you wouldn’t think he was one of the best because he does tend to speak clearly and naturally, but this is something with which many other performers struggle. He is also concise and is able to explain complex things quickly and with simple words. Which, now that I think about it, is worth mentioning to the people I teach. Using big words and complex expressions to talk about simple things sounds foolish. Even worse, using overly expressive and emotional language to talk about simple and mundane things is aggravating, but I plan to talk about this in another post. For now, you can see and hear for yourself how Joe is a good writer and performer. I would also guess that he does video and audio professionally, but his expertise in the medium only helps us to focus on Joe and what he has to say. I highly recommend Joe’s Game Sack videos for your lunchbreak or for anyone who wants a general overview of what classic gamming has to offer.
