I love video games. And I love making stuff. Unfortunately, making video games is hard. But over the years I've acquired a certain set of skills that allow me to do the next best thing... create video game art. Specifically, imagining characters.
A transparent version, to use as an avatar!
Ever since I popped in Vectorman for the first time, I've been entranced by the thought of 16-bit robots running around and doing awesome stuff. So what better place to start than with my own, admittedly less badass, robot character?
A close up, for those interested.
I present to you, RP-3213, a unicycled, slender fork handed, glowing automaton. His purpose is as mysterious as his origin. Perhaps he does taxes for his owner? Surely the answer resides in the manual sitting upon the counter top there. Or maybe he's used for detecting dangerous chemicals? Why else would he be near those flasks of mysterious liquids up against the wall?
Or maybe it's all a coincidence and he is simply charging there, because it's the nearest electrical socket.
All these questions and more will most likely never be answered because I'm too lazy to create a narrative.
Stay tuned for my next original character, here, on the Digital Odyssey.
This is the first song of the week piece I've done for this blog, so excuse me for being sentimental and selecting something a little obscure.
As I noted in my very first post, one of the first games I owned was Vectorman for the Sega Genesis. Vectorman was a real eye-opener for me. At four years old, I hadn't really been around long enough to understand what the sci-fi, futuristic, post-disaster Earth genre was really about. And I certainly knew nothing about techno.
By far, my favorite song from the Genesis era came from this robotic side scroller. After a frenetic start, blasting through sludge pilots, downing a HUGE hover plane, and a VectorTrain vs. WarHead fight, you are suddenly dropped into an ocean world. The sun is setting, and the waves are strangely majestic. Then the music hits:
The composer for Vectorman, Jon Holland, is even more obscure than the songs he wrote. I know literally nothing about him except his name and association with this amazing music. However, after some digging, it seems after Vectorman he didn't do anything else of note. Well, except for the equally intriguing music for Vectorman 2.
After BlueSky Software, the developers of Vectorman, shutdown in 2001, Jon Holland was out of the video game soundtrack business.
For those completely confused by the title, I direct you to this nugget of awesomeness:
"Rise from your grave," Zeus commanded... and so a generation of gaming was born.
A little back story: Altered Beast was released in 1988 as a stand-up cabinet game. Across all of Japan, Altered Beast ruled supreme in the local arcades, munching away at coins, leaving millions of small Japanese children bento-less. But then something special happened. Altered Beast was soon ported (i.e. re-released) on a little black box called the Sega Mega Drive. This little toy would come to be known in the US as the Sega Genesis.
With the success of Altered Beast on the new console, Sega was given the start it needed to forge ahead and ultimately release 914 more games for the console. In total, Sega sold some 40 million Mega Drives/Genesis' (Genesi? Genesises?). I was lucky enough to have received one of them.
It was Christmas. December 25th, 1995. I only vaguely remember that day. I was, after all, only five years old. But what I do remember was unwrapping a big box only to lay my eyes upon a strange contraption that at first I could not fully comprehend. Indeed, it was a Sega Genesis; a gift from my Aunt and Uncle in California. With it came two games:
The rest, as they say, was history.
Over the last 18 years of my life, I have played hundreds of games. Of those hundreds of games, I've completed about a hundred. I've probably spent thousands of hours playing games (I cried a little on the inside when I wrote that). And yet, still, somehow, I've managed to miss so many of the classics.
The Zelda series, the Metroid series, the early Final Fantasy games, and all of the 3D Mario platformers, just to name a few.
This blog is a record of my attempt to finally bring clarity to my video gaming blind spot, and keep track of my gaming exploits as I attempt to conquer these leviathans of the digital sea. One pixel at a time.
It's also a place to exchange memories, news, and other awesome gaming related things. So pull up a tweed couch, a 2-liter of Surge, a can of Pringles, and LETS DO THIS.
