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  • FMV Hell: Mystic Midway: Phantom Express

    I'm saddened by the sight of bare-footed orphans selling cast-away cigarette butts for a few pennies, but I'm devastated by the over-eager acting that accompanies some game FMVs. It wasn't so bad in the Playstation era: most of the voiceovers for early anime cutscenes deserved to be ridiculed, and at least the “actors” got to live in infamy.

    But for a mercifully short time, gamers were infatuated with turtle-paced CD games that featured real actors, and not just a voice transplanted to a flapping mouth. These are the games that lived and died on the Sega CD and CD-i. Most FMV-based games were as much fun as sitting on an upright knife, but sometimes you have to look at the actors and think, “God bless them. They tried so hard, but to what avail?”

    Mystic Midway: Phantom Express is an on-rails shooter for the CD-i that stars an unapologetically sarcastic carnival barker. The barker heckles you mercilessly, opening the game with a joke he cribbed from the tuff grade two kids who hogged the sand pits at recess: ”I was just reading the most hilarious story! It's called...YOUR LIFE!”

    If you have at least one eye and/or one ear, you should be able to surmise why this guy's drama major probably never found use beyond a bottom-feeder game console. Still, he throws so much into the whole performance that just want to stand there and take his jabs. Yes, yes, my life is pitiful and my memory swarms with chilling instances of abuse and neglect. Shhh. It's okay. Go to sleep now.

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  • FMV Hell: Zombie Dinos From Planet Zeltoid

    I really enjoy the art of the “Let's Play,” a practise that involves one gamer chronicling and/or recording his or her journey through a game while other gamers look on. It's a very friendly, social pastime that does a lot to ease your aching faith in the gaming community after spending five minutes with any Xbox 360 multiplayer experience.

    Gamespite's forums house some particularly wonderful Let's Plays. I've sifted through some adventures I could never hope to experience otherwise. Forum member innerlogic has been slaving through some pretty rancid CD-i experiences for our amusement.

    People talk about the sacrifice Jesus made for humankind, but man. It's like the CD-i was the best joke ever told, but nobody was around to hear it. If only I had known about Zombie Dinos From Planet Zeltoid, the specimen for today's FMV Hell. So many dark moments have passed in my life where I could have looked back on this and thought, “At least I didn't make Zombie Dinos from Planet Zeltoid. I am not irredeemable.”

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  • 30 Years Ago This Week: The CD

    We’re taking a break from our regular 10 Years Ago column this week, but only because nothing happened ten years ago this week—unless you are some kind of terrible extreme sports game aficionado, in which case you can talk about EA’s Rush Down by yourself. Fortunately for the rest of us, something great did happen this week. It’s just something we have to go back a little bit further to discuss.

    The Compact Disc (released, sort of, on March 8th, 1979) was first publicly demoed thirty years ago this previous Sunday. It went on to become one of the major driving technologies of the digital media revolution. It also broadened the horizons of videogames as a medium, and to an extent democratized the industry as well.

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  • FMV Hell: Moses and Me

    Last week, a member of the Gamespite forums put together a Let's Play for Link: The Faces of Evil. I can only guess he's tired of life. I suppose living has lost its lustre for me as well, as I followed his progress throughout the weekend.

    The CD-i's Zelda atrocities are heckled at every opportunity, and with good reason. The controls are intolerable, the characters are abominable, and the cut scenes are indescribable. But I was shocked to learn through this particular Let's Play that the CD-i slopped its userbase with worse material through its “career”.

    See, the CD-i's Zelda library could at least legitimately be called games. Not good games or even functional games, but games nonetheless. There were items to collect, a goal to reach, terrain to navigate. Moses: The Exodus on the CD-i, on the other hand, didn't offer any gameplay aside from “Sing along to songs that are too bland for Sunday School.” Admittedly, that was a clever way to skirt around the controller issues that plagued Faces of Evil.

    The Angry Video Game Nerd already made a passing mention (rather, a passing rant) about the dreary song collection, but its champion, “Moses and Me” is worth another look. The song is about a school kid who's pressured into whispering test answers to his lazy-ass classmates. The choice is clear: do as they ask, or “end up all alone.”

    Much as I hate to admit it, “Moses and Me” tackles a conundrum that every kid finds himself in sometimes, particularly shy, brainy kids desperate for friends. Unsurprisingly, the song pitches forward and lands flat on its face with its proposed resolution: believe hard enough in Moses and he will somehow come down from Mount Sinai to protect you from bullies like a shiny Gyrados.

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  • about the blogger

    John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

    Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

    Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

    Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

    Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

    Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

    Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

    Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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