Released: June 23, 1991 Played on: 3DS (Sega 3D Classics)
As with most video game enjoyers, the holes in my personal Video Game history are defined by the consoles I was fortunate enough to have access to growing up. I have had access to a PC for pretty much my entire recorded memory, but my first console was an N64. We made the switch to an Xbox to get in on Halo, followed by a 360, and then a switch to PS4. I had every Nintendo handheld at one point or another but was mainly a Game Boy kid. Notably, I did have a Game Gear, though I never did get into the copy of Sonic Triple Trouble I owned. Other than that, I played a bit of Sonic Generations on Xbox 360, and I tried Sonic 4 when it came out.
So, this is really my first serious dive into a Sonic game. My platforming experience is primarily Mario, though I’ve also enjoyed platforming in some other games like Guacamelee. The thing I recall about my brief Sonic experiences in the past was trying to “Go Fast” and getting frustrated as the consequences of moving with that speed. The main tension I felt playing Sonic 1 was between moving quickly through the level and knowing what lies ahead.
As I have grown older, I have experienced what many of my ilk have also experienced – I listen to more podcasts and read more posts about my hobbies than I actually partake in them. Nowhere is this more the case than with video games, where the siren’s call of yet another Madden or NHL franchise save eats up the majority of the time I actually have to sit down with a controller in my hands, and Pokémon eats most of the rest. I have tried to catalog and organize my backlog, but this does not solve the issue, and the backlog grows year-over-year.
If you should be misfortunate enough to find yourself in conversation with me that touches on the topic of video games, it’s only a matter of time before I start discussing a YouTube essay about one. It could be an HBomberGuy classic, or a Jacob Gellar or Any Austin special, but it’ll probably be one of Tim Rogers’ Action Button reviews. If you’ve not had this misfortune – Surprise! You are having it right now.
In the post-Rise of Skywalker era of Star Wars, fans frequently call for the return of material from the Expanded Universe (EU) or Legends. Dissatisfaction with where ROS left the story has left fans eager to revisit material from an age when they were happy with Star Wars. This sentiment has only grown with the work of uber-fan Dave Filoni and his Mando-verse, which has reintroduced favorite Legends characters into canon. Recently, for example, Ahsoka brought Grand Admiral Thrawn to live action.
As Filoni works through the top of the “Disney Please Canonize” list, and ignores the ones that aren’t compatible with the new canon (Dash Rendar and Mara Jade will live on forever in our hearts), the calls regarding Knights of the Old Republic into the canon have been consistent and loud. Beyond bringing the game into canon, something we might anticipate if the remake ever actually comes out(and have optimism for, as KOTOR characters continue to appear in Action Figure form, and star in the mobile gacha game Galaxy of Heroes), fans have repeatedly expressed an interest in adapting Knights of the Old Republic into a Disney Plus series or a movie.
KOTOR is on my personal Mt. Rushmore of favourite games. Alongside Homeworld, it is forever near or at the top of said list, with the other two spots probably shifting in and out of a broader list of mostest-favouritest games depending on my mood. Star Wars itself has always had an outsized footprint in my psyche. I grew up on the X-Wing novels, playing the Decipher card game and, of course, many Star Wars Video Games. Rebellion, Shadows of the Empire, Rogue Squadron, Racer, X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, Jedi Academy, and quite a few more.
However, KOTOR rose above the rest. My nostalgia undoubtedly obscures my vision to its flaws and creakiness, and I suspect that had I played them back-to-back (especially with the Restored Content Mod), KOTOR 2 may have exceeded the original in my estimation. You might call it The Last Jedi to KOTOR’s Force Awakens, and I mean that as a compliment to both games. But KOTOR stands alone in my mind as the pinnacle of the many, many, many attempts to bring Star Wars into the video game medium.
I’m going to beg for an extended pardon for what is to be a lot of generalization to come in this section. If I refer to something as being the opinion of a group of people, I do so only to illustrate a point. For example:
When asked about what makes KOTOR so great, some fans will give specific answers. And I agree that the soundtrack IS great, the characters ARE well realized, and, despite being in a fully 3D game rather than its usual home of isometric pseudo-3D, the DnD based combat IS well balanced and interesting. The fans who offer these answers are likely doing so in an attempt to give a non-vanilla answer to the question immediately after giving such a common answer to the “What’s your favourite game of all time?” question that spurred it. However, much like KOTOR, vanilla is a GREAT flavour, and saying so does not make you boring. The vanilla answer to what makes KOTOR so great is, of course, the “Story”.
“Why the scare quotes around story there?” I hear you ask. I’m glad you asked, rhetorical reader, because it’s the whole point I’ll be attempting to make here. Despite KOTOR being one of my favourite games ever, and despite my undying love of all things Star Wars (I consumed ALL of Book of Boba Fett AND Obi Wan like I skipped breakfast AND lunch), I do not want Disney to adapt KOTOR. Not as a live action series, not as a comic book, not as a movie, not as a trilogy of YA novels, and not as a Dave Filoni-produced animated series. The why is also why I think the twist in KOTOR worked. If you have somehow made it this far into my weird blog post about this 20-year-old video game, don’t know the major twist, but ARE interested playing in this game, go play it! It’s been ported to mobile devices and you can get it for the Switch, or for almost nothing on Steam, and I clearly recommend you do so. Okay, spoiler warning issued.
By “2024 Denver Broncos Draft”, I of course mean “Bo Nix”. It’s been a number of years since I’ve dedicated enough time to pre-draft research to have informed opinions about any but the top draft picks, and the intervening years have convinced me that even a lifetime dedictaed to researching and analyzing college prospects will only marginally improve your ability to project success at the pro level. A few weeks of crammed reading of others’ analysis might be interesting or fun, but it isn’t useful.
With that said, I do enjoy thinking about team building, and I am a Broncos fan. While I let the Russell Wilson era/disaster go by without breaking out the ol’ blog, the Broncos rarely draft QBs, and have only drafted one higher than the 12th overall pick just spent on Bo Nix – the 11th overall pick used to take Jay Cutler in the 2006 NFL Draft.
NOTE: I wrote this on November 11th, 2016, and then let it rot in my drafts folder. I’m publishing it now because, well, why not?
Please excuse this self-indulgence. I’m a well-off white man who lives in Canada who has a great family, a great fiancee, and all of the privilege that comes with those things. If you want to dismiss this for any of those reasons, go right ahead. It’s also worth noting that nearly none of these thoughts are my own – This is merely the attempt I am making to fit them together.
I was writing a post on my favourite music of 2014(and early 2015), and when I got to my section on Mark Ronson’s newest album, I just kept writing. So, I decided to make it its own thing. The other post will come out, but for now, here’s my take on Uptown Special.
This is going to be a tricky needle to thread. My relationship with Christopher Nolan’s movies has been had its ups and downs, but it has taught me one lesson more than anything else I can think of – The value of expectations. So let’s go back to his last work.
In the lead-up to Inception’s release, I was wildly excited. Memento is one of my favourite movies, and I had baited breath for Nolan to do another one-off mind bending thriller. I went into the theatre to watch Inception more prepared for a movie than I ever have been. I was going to carefully follow everything, make sure to note every detail. As a result, I hated it. I thought Inception was an bland caper movie with paper thin characters wrapped in the cloak of a “Wow, wouldn’t this be cool” idea, an idea that Nolan spends the first 45 minutes of the movie telling us all about – particularly how cool it is. I had paid super close attention, and knowing from Memento that timelines would be good to track, didn’t have issues following what was happening, so it didn’t really “blow my mind”, either.
Inception was a massively popular movie, almost universally loved in spite of its many problems, and I’m convinced this was entirely due to my unreasonably huge expectations walking into the movie. I am sure that most fans of Inception went in with large expectations, but I would SUSPECT that most of those came from the Batman movies, not Nolan’s more complicated plots like The Prestige, Insomnia, or Memento.
One of my favourite documentaries of all time is The Fog of War. In it, Errol Morris uses his clever Interrotron to interview former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The movie plays a bit like a monologue; Morris’ voice is hardly present. The movie is structured on MacNamara’s “11 lessons”, which are given to us as he moves us through his wildly fascinating life. Ever present in The Fog of War was the invisible elephant in the room of Iraq. McNamara had, for the vast majority of his life, maintained that former Secretaries of Defense should not criticize current ones. His rhetoric and general message sure seemed pointed towards the Gulf, however, and shortly before he passed away he changed his mind and spoke publicly against the war. This was after he took part in this film, however. Clearly, Morris had something to say about Iraq with the film, though it stands alone as a study of McNamara’s life and times. Continue reading The Unknown Known→
Some games have blown my mind with the quality of their storytelling. Braid’s clever use of familiar cliches told us about how perspective changes everything. Red Dead Redemption told us an amazing tale worthy of Leone. Metal Gear Solid 3 made you pull the trigger on Naked Snake’s mentor, the best use of integrating gameplay into storytelling I’ve ever seen. But I’ve never come across anything like Thirty Flights of Loving. To be fair, I’ve never come across anything else labelled a “Video Game Short Story” either, but Thirty Flights of Loving’s storytelling prowess isn’t fundamentally anchored to its gameplay(or lack-thereof) structure. It’s a proof of concept. It’s not hard to imagine adapting the cinematic jump-cut style of storytelling to a game with adventure mechanics, and a creative designer could adapt them elsewhere. TFoL opens with you descending down a staircase into a bar. You are immediately given a taste of Chung’s quirky style of humour; Mecha-Presidente, Prohibition License, and so forth. As a long time Blendo Games fan, I love this quirky stuff. I’d also recommend checking out the turn-based Homeworld-type game “Flotilla” for more of this, along with a brilliant game.
The music playing sets the mood perfectly. Its tinny nature puts us in the past. This is the kind of bar you are intimately familiar with, despite the fact that you’ve never been in one. You pull a lever disguised as a photo and descend into a hideout. A plethora of cliches assault you. A giant map, boxes of bullets, two compatriots. Interacting with them begins a series of flashes that quickly establishes everything you need to know about the situation. You are part of a crew, these are your partners in crime, they each have specialized roles. But at the end there’s something else. Caterer? Best Man? Whose wedding is this? Was it a job, or something else? Are there social bonds in this crew that go beyond our business? It’s hard to say. You advance to the whimsical aircraft, and are suddenly transported to a room, with your female teammate clicking an empty gun at you, covered in blood, with the game’s title flashed over the screen.
Do you have questions? Does my summary so far seem insufficient? Then play this game.
