the migration of our favorite videogames from cartridges to pure software helps those games to be preserved and played: to outlive the media they were printed on. combined with the proliferation of streaming video on the internet, it also means that it takes about five minutes for someone to load up a game with no context or knowledge of the instructions, denounce it as ugly and unplayable, and post a recording of the whole experience on youtube.
which is why i appreciate the chrontendo project, the goal of which is to document every game released for the famicom, in chronological order. though sometimes bitter - playing every game entails playing every mediocre game - “doctor sparkle” clearly invests time into learning each game and playing it on its own terms, juxtaposes ports from other platforms with footage of the original games, and attempts to provide the context that a straight list of roms lacks.
each episode is an hour long, so i tend to skip around. this episode, though fairly negative, contains footage of otocky, apple town story (the japanese localization of david crane’s little computer people) and the famicom port of law of the west, one of the games that inspired calamity annie.
i’ve also been watching subtitled episodes of game center cx, a japanese show that’s focused on the player experience: the protagonist, arino, isn’t a videogame expert or someone who identifies as a “gamer,” which is why the drama of his attempts to work through difficult or confusing older games is so genuine and compelling. atlantis no nazo is the first episode i watched and the first episode i show others (the full show is an hour long): that it becomes tangibly tense attests to how sympathetic arino is as a player.
i only wish the subtitles were less literal in places, but the show is supposedly being released in the west on dvd, and i expect them to include a more natural-sounding translation.
what else has been going on? patrick alexander articulates, in a recent self-indulgent piece, why i rarely care about corporate videogames.
i’ve updated mind fuck with the ability to set the number of points to play to - 100, 200, 300 or 400. use the arrow keys on the opening screen. most of my energy right now is being spent on this.
8 comments
I will believe people really like indie games when they start paying for them
like, double digits
people have paid me double digits for my games, and they were free to play anyway.
i paid myself double digits for one of my games
Now I can’t stop watching Game Center CX! To be completely honest, I think that the literal translations make it more charming for me. I kind of assumed that they were putting on an act to help make the whole thing more dramatic/camp.
I’ve actually worked as a “quality-checker” of TV-Nihon’s release of the show, starting with the Challenger episode. The subtitles are… sort of “an act,” I guess - that’s just the translator’s style, and he usually doesn’t change anything unless there’s a blatant typo, and even then it’s dicey (see also: misromanization of Xevious in the Challenger episode).
Also unfortunate is that the official releases will remove all of the non-game segments of the show, where Arino visits game centers and the like. I’ve spoken to Tomato (pro translator responsible for Mother 3 fan translation) about possibly subtitling the show, and he expressed strong interest with the reservation that he’s going to wait until the official release definitely falls through - he’s just that classy of a guy. Still, if that ever happens, it will almost certainly be the best English-language treatment of the show possible.
Also, I’m pretty dang sure that Arino identifies as a “gamer,” - in that episode where he visits hot springs game centers, he’s shown playing Pokemon while riding a tram through a beautiful mountain vista, which he is ignoring completely. I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that qualifies him at the very least.
I’ve been working on a similar project for my own web site, except I call mine Awesome NES, and it focuses on American releases, reviewed in alphabetical order. Here’s the link in case you’d like to see it:
http://www.lakupo.com/grblitz/NES/intro_faq.htm
Dear God. I’ve spent the last 3 days watching these Chrontendo videos. I have no idea why.
One trackback/pingback
[…] E lá soube também do Chrontendo. Um AUDACIOSO projeto de jogar e resenhar, em podcasts, cada jogo do […]
post a comment