Game Release Dates: Inconsistent

Recently, I've been bothered by the question of why video game release dates in the U.S. are so confusing. Usually, companies will officially announce a date that a new game will be released, but this is often the shipping date, not the date the game will actually be in stores available for purchase. Why? Other than the developers and publishers themselves, and retailers, the people potentially purchasing the game don't really care about the shipping date. They only want to know the first possible day they can purchase the game. I don't understand why game companies don't agree to always advertise the release date when the game will be in stores. DVDs and CDs are pretty much exclusively released on Tuesdays. People know that every Tuesday, there will be some new products to think about purchasing. And ads reflect this reality. What's so different about games that release information can be so confusing sometimes? You never know if the published date is the shipping date or the in-store date. Granted, most new games are available on a Tuesday, but not always, and stores tend to differ. Game companies should coordinate their releases more to make it less confusing for the consumer.

Japan makes a little more sense. Super Mario Galaxy was one of the first games here I was really excited about. I couldn't wait to get it, and walked about 40 minutes in the rain to the closest game store to pick up a copy. But I was a little worried, because of all the confusion in the U.S. about release dates. I didn't want to walk that far to the store only to find out they weren't selling it until tomorrow. So I asked a student. And he assured me that games are released on Thursdays, this one in particular on November 1st. Indeed, this was the exact date I was seeing everyday in TV commercials. No confusion, no hassles. Except slightly sore legs the next day.

When is a game complete?

My last post, where I once again realized my preference for single–player experiences over protracted multiplayer skill matches, led me to think about a different question: when has a video game been completed by the player? This leads directly into a larger issue currently being discussed about how games are different from other media and culturally important in their own right. The answer to the question, as is often the case, is probably that it depends. It depends on the game itself, the individual gamer, and even the larger gaming community.

The most unique thing about video games is the level of interaction required from the player. Television, movies, and books are, for the most part, relatively linear and straight-forward works. Once you read a book or watch a movie, you’re mostly finished with it; except, of course, for those classic works that you might revisit semi–regularly. Games, on the other hand, often contain many more options, secrets, or side–quests that extend beyond the main plotline or primary purpose of the game.

I would argue that the vast majority of games have a distinct plot and are trying to tell some sort of story. Many other writers have noted how a current game development trend is trying to give games a more cinematic feel. A large number of story–based games are mostly complete when you reach the end of the main adventure. For example, in Super Mario Galaxy, the main goal is to collect at least 60 stars so the planetarium has enough power to track down Bowser. Then you can defeat Bowser and officially finish the game and see the conclusion and credits. Some types of gamers are content with this level of completion. However, some games have no clearly–defined ending point due to their current focus on online multiplayer experiences. Beyond an often short main campaign, when is a multiplayer game like this truly over? Gamers play the most popular multiplayer games for many years after the original release.

For those entranced by the game and willing to invest the time, Super Mario Galaxy has quite a bit more to offer. Defeating Bowser once actually unlocks the player’s ability to collect the final 15 or so stars (out of a possible 120) in order to see the true ending. After this, you can also choose to collect the 120 stars again as Luigi to open up one final level. Super Mario Galaxy has a lot of game play beyond the main story. Thus, many games contain a number of optional activities or secrets available for the dedicated gamer. A great thesis was written by an MIT student, Kristina Lynn Drzaic, about the significance of video game secrets.

As another example, Final Fantasy games are well–known for their epic stories, and that’s arguably the main reason to play through much of that series. But epic side–quests are also one of Square-Enix’s trademarks, even though not many gamers are necessarily inclined to complete them. In Final Fantasy X, to get one character’s ultimate weapon, you have to dodge lightning strikes 100 times in a row. If you miss a single time, you have to start over again from zero. Thus for different types of gamers, which Mitch Krpata at Insult Swordfighting categorized into Perfectionists, Completists, and Tourists, games have widely varying personal requirements for completion, depending on one’s willingness or desire to accomplish sometimes ridiculous tasks.

Finally, the larger gaming community can sometimes extend the life of a game seemingly indefinitely. A great example of this is the PC strategy game Starcraft in South Korea, where it’s practically a national sport. Tournaments with highly skilled players are still regularly held there, for a game that’s nearly 10 years old. Similarly, a large competitive scene developed around Super Smash Brothers Melee, in which some players discovered advanced techniques that practically turn Melee into a completely different game. On top of this, especially in the realm of PC gaming, many games develop extensive modding communities, where the game is fundamentally and extensively altered to extend replayability.

What is the point of all this? I love how easy it is for different gamers to take away such wildly different experiences from the same game. Compare a competitive and a casual Melee player – they’re worlds apart, both in terms of skill level and in describing the game they both enjoy playing. Granted, the best movies also allow viewers to each take something different away from the theater, but you’re still almost entirely limited to what’s presented to you on the screen. Games allow gamers to choose their level of involvement much more so than other forms of entertainment. In the near future, it will be interesting to see if either Starcraft 2 or Super Smash Brothers Brawl develop and sustain the same kind of competitive, meta–game following that the current iterations have had for years.

How Long Can One Game Last?

I've been on a break from video games for what will soon be a full week, which was a Valentine's Day gift to my girlfriend. Nice. Extra quality time. But we also had a small party at our apartment last night, which included a little Wii Sports and Brawl initiations. It was quite a lot of fun, and since it was a party, I got to play too without invalidating my present.

On to the point. In playing Brawl last night, I realized that I am and probably will always be much more of a single-player gamer than a multi-player gamer. I am much more interested in a good interactive story, with solid, fun game play mechanics than in trying to become an expert at a certain game or spend dozens of hours playing online matches against people. This inclination is probably a large part of why I often choose RPGs (like Final Fantasy), strategy games (Fire Emblem), or action/platformers (too many to name). I love Brawl, and I plan on playing it a lot more. I would also love to get really good with 1 or 2 characters (especially little Mr. Olimar). But deep in my heart, I know the reality is that I will probably slowly grow tired of Brawl over the next 3 or 4 weeks, and slowly move onto other story-driven games I have waiting, such as Hotel Dusk, Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones, and even Final Fantasy III. I also want to play some of the old LucasArts adventure games, of which I just got Grim Fandango.

Maybe this would all be different if I had a couple of friends always wanting to play Brawl, but I don't. It's a lot of fun, but I tend to move on to other games quite quickly after finishing one, mainly because there are so many classic games I haven't played yet. Brawl will still last me a while, but not the several years that some people can get out of it.

On a side note, I absolutely love reading Michael Abbott's posts over at the Brainy Gamer. He's a theater/film professor and writes about games from a thoughtful, academic perspective. And you also easily get the obvious feeling that he really loves games. I highly recommend his blog.

Million Man Brawl

As an add-on to my last post, I also wanted to say that I really like Toon Link. He's similar to Young Link from Melee. Even though he's similar to adult Link, I always liked the Link from Wind Waker, he's smaller and faster, and his cartoony bomb explosions are soooo cute

On to the modes. The biggest addition is the Subspace Emissary, which is basically a protracted adventure/story mode. It's amazing. There's practically no spoken text, and you go through tons of platforming levels, with the occasional boss battle or regular brawl match-up. You're not playing it for the story, really. You're playing it for the awesome combination of Nintendo characters, such as Metaknight battling and then joining Marth, before Ike saves them both. It's a lot of fun, although a bit repetitive, so I can't really see playing through the whole thing again. In fact, after beating it, it said I was only 80-something% finished. Then I noticed that some of the locations on the map had a flag, and some were just flashing. It took me a while to figure out which ones still had hidden secrets (the ones with flags). So now I've slowly worked up to 94%, but I still have 9 or 10 locations to revisit. Some of them I've been through several times, and still can't find that one missed item or door.

There's also the re-included Classic mode, which is pretty much the same as always. I remember in Melee, I could rarely beat Master Hand at the hand without dieing, but now I've gotten a little better at battling the Hand. There are also 41 events (+20 co-op), Homerun Contests, timed brawls, target breaking, an all star mode where you fight the entire cast, and a boss battle mode. Oh yeah, and regular old multiplayer Brawl, with a ton of options. One feature I really like that I played around with for the first time last night is the ability to set which songs play on each stage. In particular, the Twilight Princess, Pikmin, and new Pokemon Stadium stages all have awesome music. So does Animal Crossing, just because it's so peaceful.

Next time: online brawls. Awesome, or a hassle?

Yet Another Inevitable Post of Brawl Impressions

So, I've had Brawl for about 10 or 11 days now. And it's basically consumed my life. I love it. Which is surprising because it's unlike almost every other game I own. I usually go for RPGs, or strategy games, or slower paced platformers. But Brawl is amazing! And I'm saying that as someone who owned Melee, but was never very good at it and actually rarely played it. I didn't even get around to unlocking all the characters and stages in Melee, but I've already done that in Brawl in a around a week. And I'm not sure, but I think I'm actually improving a little. I've bumped my standard CPU difficulty up from futsu (regular) to muzukashii (difficult). And I'm pretty much holding my own. I'm slowly learning to shield more, block attacks, and throw my opponents. I doubt I'll ever really learn more advanced techniques, but I would like to improve still more.

My favorite characters right now are probably Snake and the Pikmin and Olimar, both of which are little different from the others and unique. Snake uses a lot of grenades, explosives, and weaponry (although he oddly doesn't have a gun). He was also surprisingly slow at first, but I've gotten used to that. And Olimar/Pikim is just super fun to play as. All the Pikmin have different strengths and weaknesses, Olimar's fast and maneuverable, and I love attaching the little Pikmin to an enemy and suck away their life. I'm terrible with the slower characters (like Donkey Kong), and sometime I'd like to play more with Pit, Lucas, Ike, and maybe Samus.

In my next post, I'll talk some about the modes and options in Brawl. Especially online mode, which has a lot of potential.

Smashtastic

Wow. It's been an incredibly long time since I posted - about a month and a half. I went to America, came back, and am counting down the days until I can go back for good (6 months). I played quite a few games in the last 45 days, but I also sort of stopped keeping track of how many hours it's been.

My main interest right now is waiting for Super Smash Bros. Brawl (or Dairantou Smash Brothers X), which comes out Thursday here in Japan. Originally, I wasn't very interested in it, wasn't gonna buy it at all, and maybe would buy it for $20 sometime in the future in the U.S. But the Brawl hype machine has hit me with a big ol' smash ball, and I can't wait to get this game. It looks huge and amazing, with dozens of characters and stages, and a pretty extensive degree of customizability and hidden secrets. I was going to go grab it on Saturday before a dinner party, but if the weather's decent, I might make the half hour hike through the snow to Uki-Uki on Thursday instead. Plus, I've heard rumors that only 300-400,000 copies were made for the initial release, and many people are anticipating a sellout around launch. We'll see. I'm just praying for clear skies and a little sunshine to light my way to the Nintendo self-love fest that's being released in 2 days. Impressions soon to come, if you can tear the controller out of my cold, sweaty hands.

Out with the old, in with the new

Last week, my video game time was dominated solely by Fire Emblem for the GBA. But I haven't even played anything at all since Sunday. I put in a grand total of about 6 Hours and 40 Minutes. I can't base this on the in-game clock, because it doesn't account for my regular chapter restarts when characters die. Although, due to a stupid mistake on my part, I finally lost my first character to permanent death a couple chapters ago. It was one I hadn't used much and was trying to level up a little. But he died, so no big loss really. Naturally, I'll try not to let it happen again. I'm about halfway through Chapter 26x, so I think I have only 7 more chapters to go. I should be able to finally finish this game through a combination of on the plane ride to the States and time at home. But, then there's the second story. This might take a while...

Otherwise, I've been focused on learning as much as I can about Japanese Mahjong. Somehow I've become fascinated by it. My goal in the new year is to find a Japanese Mahjong tutor. I really want to learn and to be able to play against people. If I can, it might feel like I actually take something away from Japan with me. Here's hoping I can find a good teacher.

Mahjong...Not the Tile Matching One

How can you become incredibly passionate about something, even if you've never actually done it? I've recently fallen in love with the game of Mahjong, and I've never even played it before. Except that stupid Mahjong solitaire computer game (matching tiles), but that's different and doesn't count. The Mahjong I like is sort of a combination of Rummy and Poker. I really want to learn how to play. There are a dozen or so major versions of Mahjong, usually based in different countries. Naturally, I'm interested in learning the Japanese version, commonly called Riichi Mahjong (it sounds like "reach"). It's a 4 player game, where everyone's trying to complete a hand similar to Rummy, but with cool tiles instead of playing cards. My girlfriend's getting me a Mahjong set for Christmas, and more importantly, I hope to find a Japanese Mahjong 'tutor' to teach me. I feel like I know how to play the main game, but I don't really know much about the rather complex scoring and hand system. So that's my immediate goal: find a Japanese person willing to teach a foreigner with limited Japanese language ability how to play Mahjong. Quite a daunting task. I hope I actually see this desire through to the end.

Oh, and the best site I've found about Riichi so far is the recently redesigned Reach Mahjong. It's updated by the only 2 American professional Riichi players, and one British girl who they are teaching to play. Great site, although they're still working on bringing the new site up to date. Can't wait to start playing. I just need 3 friends who know how...

What I'm Playing

Monday means it's time for my weekly video game update. Here's the numbers for 11/26-12/2.

Super Mario Galaxy - a paltry 0:15
Final Fantasy II - 2:40
Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi (#6) - 0:40
Fire Emblem (#7) - 1:00
Total Time - 4:35

It was a busy week, with hardly any time for games. I only managed 4.5 hours. On Friday and Saturday, I didn't play anything at all, largely because there was a big school enkai on Friday night, and I spent Saturday recovering and shopping for Christmas presents. But that's ok. It's not a contest. I tested Fire Emblem 6 just because I'd been watching a lot of Fire Emblem preview videos on Youtube, and that made me want to play an easy mission. That, of course, led me to delve back into my nearly completed Fire Emblem 7 game, which I've been playing occasionally for a couple of years. I need to finally beat it. I finally beat mission 24 tonight, and I think there's around 31 or so. So I've probably got a good 10 hours of game play left. I'm hoping to work on it a lot on the long flight back to America. We'll see.

Busy Weekend

It's been a busy weekend, with very little time for playing any games so far. In fact, I haven't played anything at all since Thursday, when I played a few minutes of Fire Emblem 6, the Japan-only GBA release. I just had a sudden urge for some turn-based, strategic combat, and I didn't feel like working my way back into Fire Emblem 7. Then Friday night was an overnight bonenkai (end of the year party) in Tendo. I wasn't looking forward to it, because my Japanese is shit and I usually feel a little awkward at some point. But I ended up having a great time. The first party had great food, bingo, and I got to talk to some of the new, younger teachers a little bit. And, the 1 teacher I really, really can't stand didn't talk to me at all. What a success! Then on to the second party in a hotel room with Kocho- and Kyoto-sensei (principal and vice-principal). It was tense, but fun. Then out to a strange, modern hostess bar, where I was forced to sing a song by myself. It was the first time I've had to sing in an open bar rather than a private room. I was terrified. I chose the classic "Copacabana," and I think it went pretty well. Thank you, alcohol. Oh, and 1 of my teachers did an awesome Elvis impersonation on "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You." Brilliant. Then on to ramen, and in bed at 1:30. Excellent night.

So Saturday was spent recovering, and doing some last-minute shopping for Christmas presents for my family. Today, also, will be shopping. I need to get a shogi set (Japanese chess) for my dad, but I'd really like to find him another present too. He's hard to shop for. So there might be little time for games today, too. But, less than 2 weeks until I leave for a much needed holiday in the U.S. Thank goodness.