xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (12/18/90)
judd@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Stephen Judd) writes: > ... what is fun about Turrican? I've played the demo a couple of times > - you run... jump... shoot... wow. The excitement and originality of > it ceases to amaze me. Yet, many people have raved about it in csa. I > had attributed this to it's smooth scrolling and decent graphics, but > your posting seems to imply the opposite. So, in all honesty, I want > to know: What is fun about Turrican (and "arcade" games in general, > for that matter)? Well, I'm not much for arcade games, but am enjoying Turrican a lot. The trick is that if you are playing it as a run, jump, and shoot game, you are missing most of the fun. Turrican is a maze, a puzzle, and an easter egg hunt, which just happens to require running, jumping, and shooting for the solution. ;-) Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
judd@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Stephen Judd) (12/23/90)
What are you still doing reading news?!?! It's Christmas! You're supposed to be home with your families! What? Why am >>I<< reading news? Well, ah, er.... Boy, how about them Colorado Buffaloes... In article <1990Dec18.124704.1696@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >judd@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Stephen Judd) writes: >> your posting seems to imply the opposite. So, in all honesty, I want >> to know: What is fun about Turrican (and "arcade" games in general, >> for that matter)? > Ah, now we are getting somewhere. Congratulations, Kent, on being the first person to reply in defense of Turrican! >Well, I'm not much for arcade games, but am enjoying Turrican a lot. The >trick is that if you are playing it as a run, jump, and shoot game, you >are missing most of the fun. Turrican is a maze, a puzzle, and an easter >egg hunt, which just happens to require running, jumping, and shooting >for the solution. ;-) Awright... But, haven't we been doing the same thing since Jumpman (what, six years ago)? Can't the same thing be said for Super Mario Bros and Thexder and on and on and on ad nauseum? The argument isn't so much that it isn't fun as it is that Turrican is not even a clever variant on all it's predecessors - in other words, it's the same game. Now, since I have only played the demo, this next part is not said with as much conviction. If I am wrong, by all means, correct me. I want to respond to the four aspects of the game you found interesting: A maze: "That's not a maze. Now this, THIS, is a maze!" (says Crocidile Stevedee, whipping out a copy of Dungeon Master). I suppose it's a maze, but it doesn't seem like much of a maze. It's not very hard to get lost in there, and there aren't many possibilities to try before you've got the whole thing explored. Not much challenge there. A puzzle: You mean, find the exit? To me, a good puzzle is like a good integral (WHAT?!?!). Sometimes you get an integral where you solve it by going through about ten pages of algebraic manipulation. These are not fun. Some, though, are not obvious at all. You have to think about it, sometimes for days, then - Eureka! You jump out of the bathtub, and in about five or ten minutes the problem is solved. These are fun. Turrican seems to me like the first, where the puzzle is solved by either tedious exploration or by trying out different combinations. An easter egg hunt: You got me there. About the only argument I can make is that, again, this element exists in all the other games similar to Turrican. I might also add that easter eggs, like graphics and sound, certainly add to any game, but by no means should they make the game. That you just happen to need to run/jump/shoot: Consider this: Turrican is like a joke: The first time you hear it, you might think it was really funny. The second or third time... well, if it's been a while, or if it's a good variant on the original joke, then it will probably still be funny. If you hear it on a daily basis... it gets real old, real fast. The problem isn't Turrican itself, it's the HUNDREDS of similar games that flood the market. They have spoiled what was once probably a pretty good joke. I could take the joke analogy really far - some jokes depend solely on vulgar language or disgusting imagery. Some are funny, but most aren't. Sometimes you find that someone has taken the basic idea from the joke but turned it into something reasonably original (Analogy: The Killing Game Show is your basic run/jump/shoot game but they at least put in some puzzles to solve that aren't immediately obvious). The list goes on... So now perhaps you can see what I am interested in: Why does the public insist on doing the same thing, over and over? Why is it that people keep shoving quarters down new machines that are identical to the old ones? Take a look at pop music: for the past eight years it's been the same dang song, over and over, with the tiniest amount of variation between them. Why? Turrican is simply one example among many that I am trying to understand. >Kent, the man from xanth. ><xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> -Steve -- judd@tramp.colorado.edu // Nobody comes to give him his rum but the ...!ncar!boulder!tramp!judd \X/ Rim of the sky hippopotamus-glum -Dame Edith Sitwell
hastoerm@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Moriland) (12/24/90)
Why do we keep doing the same things in video games over and
over? Because it's fun. True as it is that most games can be fitted
into a catagory and the variations aren't huge among them, it's that
variation that keeps us interested.
Why do people watch Star Blek? It's the same thing every show:
The crew of the Enterprise encounter some form of hostile being and,
through the use of either brains or firepower, they overcome it. Every
show is just a variation on that same theme.
It's those variations that keep us coming back though. We KNOW that
Picard will get out of the mess he's in, it's HOW he gets out that
entertains us. Videogames work on the same idea. Sure, in shoot 'em
ups you just fly around blasting things, it's HOW you blast them that
keeps you coming back.
--
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"All usual disclaimers apply..." | Founder Of: Evil Young
// | Mutants For A Better Tommorow.
\X/ "Only Amiga Makes It Possible." | hastoerm@vela.acs.oakland.edudac@prolix.ccadfa.oz.au (Andrew Clayton) (12/24/90)
In article <1990Dec22.203220.17380@csn.org>, Stephen Judd writes: > What are you still doing reading news?!?! It's Christmas! You're supposed > to be home with your families! What? Why am >>I<< reading news? Well, ah, > er.... Boy, how about them Colorado Buffaloes... > > In article <1990Dec18.124704.1696@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > >judd@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Stephen Judd) writes: > >> your posting seems to imply the opposite. So, in all honesty, I want > >> to know: What is fun about Turrican (and "arcade" games in general, > >> for that matter)? > > > > Ah, now we are getting somewhere. Congratulations, Kent, on being the first > person to reply in defense of Turrican! > > >Well, I'm not much for arcade games, but am enjoying Turrican a lot. The > >trick is that if you are playing it as a run, jump, and shoot game, you > >are missing most of the fun. Turrican is a maze, a puzzle, and an easter > >egg hunt, which just happens to require running, jumping, and shooting > >for the solution. ;-) I recently rediscovered (prompted by Kent's message) the joys of Turrican. It's a very SMOOTH game. (Unless you get trapped on part two of level 4). You complain that the STYLE of game has been copied too much. Fair enough. Turrican does what it does WELL. It's much better than the Great Giana Sisters, or that dumb game where you turn into a flying robot [Thexder], and it's not quite as difficult as Emerald Mine. Plus you can blast things! Switchable autofire is just neato! (Spot the shoot_em_up player!). Another game that strikes me as being excellently done was 'Viper' - a sort of Galaxians clone, but with MANY different sorts of attacking spaceship, each with unique initial onscreen patterns, and attack patterns. You got entranced by the movement of the enemy with that game. It intelligently loaded all the levels into memory (if you had expansion [why, oh why, do game designers ignore large free memory pools and INSIST on grungy floppy disk access?]), and a huge high score table. A definite classic. Don't hear about it much though. Then again, I'm the sort of person who was amused by Ebonstar. (Which enters into a whole new realm in four player tournament mode!) > -Steve -- _l _ _ // Andrew Clayton. Canberra, Australia. I Post . (_](_l(_ \X/ ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au!prolix!dac . . I am. -------- I cannot send or recieve mail to or from sites outside of Australia.