So Far So Good

Working on a partial list of games for my "Games that Hurt more than Helped" article. Let me know if you can think of any other ones:

1. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600)
2. Superman 64 (N64)
3. Dukes of Hazzard (PSOne)
4. Dragon Power (NES)
5. Castlevania 64 (N64)
6. Deadly Towers (NES)
7. Custer's Revenge (Atari 2600)
8. Deathrace (Arcade)
9. Fantastic Four (PSOne)
10. Enter the Matrix (XBox)

The list is certainly open for debate . . . and will probably change some before the final build of the article. I still can't really decide if I want to write about totally craptastic games, or games that actually hurt the reputation of the gaming industry . . . or a combination of both. Looking over this list, it's a combination of both. We'll see what happens.

Reset.

Structure

I think I'm going to take a more structured approach to the 'revolving' articles in Reset. I'm going to write all ten of the What They Should've Done articles at once, write all of the topics for the Histories articles, and so on.

Currently working on the What Makes a Villain article. Funny stuff. It takes the form of a correspondence course.

Ooot.

Plumb This, Ass-Spelunker

It's a me-a! Maaaario!

Yes, this is an image of a flying Mario on a man's shoulder. No, this is not my shoulder. I only have one word to say about that . . . and it rhymes with "fag."

Odd.

Pratfall

Ahhh. Pitfall Harry, how I miss you!

Something I just remembered . . . the highest possible score attainable in the original Pitfall game from Activision was 114,000. And, no, the game had no ending. Even though Kenny Epling tried to convince me that if you ran far enough before the timer ran out Pitfall Harry would get on an airplane and fly away. It just loops around, dumbass.

R for Restricted

I had this great idea for a chapter talking about how some of the greatest videogame ideas were only possible because of programmers being creative in the face of daunting hardware limitations. The only idea I could think of right off the bat was the appearance of Mario.

I'll have to find the book that I read it in if I want to cite it for Reset, but Miyamoto was quoted as saying as much about the appearance of Jumpman (or Mario) in the original videogame Donkey Kong. Think about this as you realize that Mario has become the quintessential gaming 'mascot' across the entire planet . . .

**Mario wears a hat because the programmers couldn't figure out how to make his hair move when jumped.
**Mario has a big nose because you couldn't see a small one with that character size.
**Mario has a moustache to accent his nose.
**Mario wears a red shirt and blue coveralls so you could actually see his arms moving as he ran.

Whoops, I found the cite. It was in an article in Next Generation from October 1998 called "A Question of Character." After going through all of those limitations, Miyamoto then said:

"As graphics technologies continue to improve and advance, the way Mario appears in his games is getting closer and closer to the original image I had in mind when he was first created."

Did I just miss something?

I Lurrrve teh Online gam3rz

Fit the Second

I think I'll write the "Ten Games that Did More Harm than Good" article tonight and tomorrow. Games that immediately come to mind are: Fantastic Four for PSX (winner of the "Total Crap" award from UGP), Custer's Revenge for Atari VCS, Death Race 2000 for . . . I'm not sure . . . Atari . . . Colecovision? Something like that. I may or may not include Mortal Kombat 4. The only good thing about that game was that it was the precursor to Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. Everything else about it was feces-flavored.

Unhappy ghosts.

The Argument

Here's the pitch - -

The vast majority of the mass-release books about videogames are histories. They are extremely informative and yet quite boring. They tend to be little more than glorified time-lines. These books certainly have a place in the literary pantheon, and works like Leonard Herman's "Phoenix," J. C. Herz' "Joystick Nation," and Steven L. Kent's "The First Quarter" should be the bookcase cornerstones of anyone interested in learning more about the videogame industry. My goal in writing "Reset" is to provide the current videogame players with a set of modern, relevant, and forward-thinking material about the industry they love. "Reset" is not a novel, nor is it a historical tome. It is a collection of 60 articles, or small chapters, that are generally between three and six pages long. The articles will be light, entertaining, and yet informative such as "What Makes a Villain," "Ten Games that did More Harm than Good," and "What's Wrong with SEGA."

The 60 articles will be broken down as such:
30 Fun Articles: these will typically be 3-4 pages long, and will generally read like a humorous piece in a videogame magazine as in the attached "What Makes a Hero" article.
10 Great Moments in History Articles: these will be longer, perhaps 5-8 pages long, and will be the informative pieces of "Reset" with articles like "SEGA vs. Nintendo in the Early 90's" and "The Great Donkey Kong Lawsuit."
10 I Wonder Articles: these will be a series of 'whatever happened to . . . ' pieces that will typically only be 1-2 pages in length and dealing with odd foibles of videogame characters.
10 What They Should've Done Articles: these will be the shortest of the lot at usually 1 page and will examine popular characters, consoles, and games that could be made even better through the power of hindsight.

"Reset" will be a quick read, and will be end up being 200-225 pages long. Through using the internet, personal knowledge, and an extensive research bibliography I will be able to create a book that is not only fun to read and talk about but also informative.

Working Bibliography

Just in case you were at all curious, or were concerned that I would have no idea what the hell I was talking about in trying to write a book about videogames, here's a partial/working bibliography for Reset. I'm trying to keep the articles light, but I will be able to back up any assertion or assumption with references. Some of these may get axed as articles change or get deleted . . . and some books might be added depending on the content (like the final three listed).

Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World Second Edition
David Sheff, with new chapters by Andy Eddy
Copyright 1999, CyberActive Publishing In., Wilton, CT
0966961706

Lucky Wander Boy
D. B. Weiss
Copyright 2003, Penguin Putnam Inc., New York, NY
0452283949

Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo
Eugene F. Provenzo, JR.
Copyright 1991, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
0674937090

Creation (Unpublished Proof)
Steve Grand
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
0674006542

Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames Second Edition
Leonard Herman
Copyright 1997, Rolenta Press, Union, NJ
0964384825

The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming Our Imagination
Mark Pesce
Copyright 2000, Random House, Inc., New York, NY
0345439430

Oversold & Underused: Computers in the Classroom
Larry Cuban
Copyright 2001, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
067400602x

Twin Galaxies’ Official Videogame & Pinball Book of World Records
Walter Day, Ed.
Copyright 1998, Sunstar Publishing, Ltd., Fairfield, IA
1887472258

Game On
Lucien King, Ed.
Copyright 2002, Universe Publishing, New York, NY
0789307782

Joystick Nation
J. C. Herz
Copyright 1997, Little, Brown & Company, Boston, MA
0316360074

The Video Game Theory Reader
Mark J. P. Wolf, Bernard Perron, Ed.
Copyright 2003, Routledge, New York, NY
0415965799

Interacting with Video
Patricia Greenfield, Rodney Cocking, Ed.
Copyright 1996, Ablex Publishing Corp., Norwood, NJ
1567501524

Revolutionaries at SONY
Reiji Asakura
Copyright 2000, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY
0071355871

Database Nation
Simson Garfinkel
Copyright 2001, O’Reilly & Assoc., Sebastopol, CA
0596001053

Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution
Steven Poole
Copyright 2000, Arcade Publishing, Inc., New York, NY
1559705396

Opening the Xbox
Dean Takahashi
Copyright 2002, Prima Publishing, Roseville, CA
0761537082

Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971-1984
Van Burnham
Copyright 2001, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
0262024926

Hacker Culture
Douglas Thomas
Copyright 2002, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN
0816633452

From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games
Justine Cassell, Henry Jenkins, Ed.
Copyright 1998, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
0262032589

The Ultimate History of Videogames
(First Edition Published as The First Quarter)
Steven L. Kent
Copyright 2001, Prima Publishing, Roseville, CA
0761536434

Arcade Fever
John Sellers
Copyright 2001, Running Press Book Publishers, Philadelphia, PA
0762409371

High Score: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games
Russel Demaria, Johnny Wilson
Copyright 2002, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, Berkeley, CA
0072224282

The Medium of the Video Game
Mark J. P. Wolf
Copyright 2001, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX
029279150x

Currently Researching
Videogames
James Newman

More Than a Game
Barry Atkins

Power Up
Chris Kohler

Fit the First

Okay. So I got the idea when I put up the Nintendo article on Pieces of Eight that I might want to have a separate little section devoted to nothing but RESET. And here it is. I'll probably put up some of the chapters here for internet consumption, but The Reset Articles page will mostly serve as a 'behind the scenes' for my close friends and me (yes, James, it's grammatically correct). I'll keep lists of book publishers, chapter/article ideas, my working bibliography, and interesting facts or pix I come across in my research posted here.

Feel free to add any suggestions, comments, or, God forbid, you feel that I'm veering off into some horrible labyrinth of minutia that only I would find interesting . . . you have my permission to try to reel me back in.

Having said that, let the fun begin.

Having said that, I'm quite sure that I'll now get hit by a bus, catch AIDS from a chewed up pencil, or fall terrifyingly in love with some beautiful Japanese woman and totally forget how to write anything apart from "I Wuv Ooo" and "Where's the Astroglide?"