Your Insert Credit Panel covers how a video game might be political, new games for dead consoles, and the Jaffe Cut of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Hosted by Alex Jaffe, with Frank Cifaldi, Ash Parrish, and Brandon Sheffield. Edited by Esper Quinn, original music by Kurt Feldman.
If politics is understood as expression of morality/moral systems, then I think there’s a non-zero amount of games that promote certain moralities in what they want you to do and how they tell/make you do it
Then there’s the whole funding question and who gets what kind of say in how things are produced which is obviously political, but that’s more meta textual
-When I was a kid, my mom loved Dr. Mario and the Donkey Kong Country trilogy, especially 2 & 3 because she liked Dixie Kong’s propeller ability
-my brother has always been a huge Kirby fan, and I think these days he’s into Ocarina of Time randomizers or something
-as far as I know my dad never really played video games on his own outside of playing them with us
that was a really interesting intro question. Also, not only are all video games political, all video games are queer, actually :3
My grandfather loves only one video game - MediEvil for the PlayStation. He owns a PS2 slim for the sole purpose of being able to occasionally replay MediEvil. I guess he discovered it when my uncle had his PlayStation and it spoke to his love for the Middle Ages. He’s part of a kind of 17th century LARPing group called the Society for Creative Anachronism, used to go to events and sword fight and stuff, I think he also had a makeshift forge and made swords. I’ve occasionally wondered if it would be possible to get him into something like Crusader Kings but he’s always been pretty actively disinterested in finding anything else. Just as well, there’s something magical about MediEvil being someone’s only game and I wouldn’t to ruin that
The Wikipedia entry for Atari Circus mentions that the guy who coded it realized at one point he was working late into the evening on July 4th rather than having taken the day off, and determined “Well, that’s what you’ve gotta do when you own the company.” That feels like a pretty clear reflection of social and political systems and values baked into the production of that art object.
Heck, even if we relegate ourselves to content within the game, the existence of helium balloons entails an extractive relationship to the land and it’s resources, I suppose.
My mom loves Dr. Mario, and pretty much any Terris-like.
For her birthday a couple of years ago I got her one of those Chinese emulation handhelds filled with a curated (by me) collection of falling block puzzlers (plus Kirby’s Pinball and a couple of Scrabble games). She plays it every day, takes it travelling with her, etc. it was a great gift, the only down side is it’s been hard for other gifts since then to live up to it!
CJ in San Andreas is the first Black video game protagonist as far as I can remember. Obviously there were Black characters you could play in various games before then (Jax, Lance Vance, Barret, Axel, etc.), but I don’t remember anyone before CJ that was the main character.
That was a big reason me and many others were so hyped for, and ending up loving San Andreas so much. I never cared too much about the race of my video game characters, but it was definitely cool and refreshing to get to play as someone who represented my community/experience.
And by that I mean more than just being Black. Even though I’ve always been nerdy, I’ve also always been a sports bro, and grew up in a relatively rough environment. I played basketball in the worst hoods, witnessed a lot of violence (all kinds), was friends with the guys slanging on the corners, wannabe rappers etc. So I lived a lot of the stereotypical “80s/90s Black male experience”, and actually embraced the fact that San Andreas was so cliche. It was like my two worlds finally acknowledged each other.
Side note: @exodus , the Tweety bird shirt you’re referring to immediately brought back memories of all the Looney Tunes gear that was so prevalent in hood fashion back in the day. The ultimate hood jacket was a Nascar knock-off with Looney Tunes characters on it. Ridiculous, haha.
The SICK FREAK mix is the perfect volume. Thank you, @esper!
I think making a coin feel substantial is also heavily reliant on the size and look of the coin, sound effects, and visual effects. Mario Odyssey coins feel fantastic, even when you’re grabbing your thousandth one directly in your path.
Another good episode of “Not Inserting Credits Because We Need To Make Everyone Else Play SOmething”.
I’d like to add on to Jaffe’s Oz reccomendation and compliment the adaptations Eric Shanower and Skottie Young did at Marvel of the first six books. Was pretty surprised by the end of the second one, reading it in the 2020s.
As kids, my sisters played the Sega Genesis and Commodore 64 about as much as I did. I beat Sonic 2 alone, but for weeks before that I’d played it with them. They were just as frustrated as me at Carnival Zone Act 2 in Sonic 3. They still play games - they both got me into 80 Days this year, for instance. If one of them recommends a game, 9 times out of 10 it’s a banger.
My younger brother played what I played (a lot of RPGs, strategy games, and the like). Today I think he skews more to CRPGs over JRPGs compared to me, and he really racks up hours in Age of Empires II, Balatro, and Neverwinter Nights.
My dad and mom both played Bubble Bubble together and other C64 titles individually. Mom liked Infocom more; Dad liked golf and strategy. But they both played a lot of stuff until they didn’t. Mom bounced off of Sonic 2 after she drowned in Chemical Plant and her next significant game was Bejeweled a decade later; Dad played the entirety of the Windows version of Metal Marines (exhaustively and to completion multiple times, including repeating the very hard final missions ad nauseam) and then I never saw him play anything except online bridge again.
With the question of after it’s discontinuation - heck, even SEGA has gotten into it. The SEGA Genesis Mini 2 has a ton of games which are new to the system, made by the people themselves.
My mom is a huge fan of digital settlers of catan to the point of playing at least one round of it a day against bots. she likes other digital board games but i think catan is just her comfort game and has been for the past 10 years and doesn’t care that much about learning new games that i buy for her.
I’m extremely curious what she’d thing of balatro. i really wonder if it requires too much gamer literacy to get into it and if her poker knowledge is enough to make her cross that hurdle.
@adashtra - Have you shared your extended/spoiler-full thoughts on Gladiator 2 anywhere? Would love to hear some Roman-Empire-nerd insights on the movie.
I don’t think I ever got my dad playing anything other than solitaire.
My mom played a lot of Snood, which was a freeware Bust-A-Move clone for Mac. She also really likes the NES Dragon Quests. I gave her my old PS4 with DQXI, but I don’t think she played it beyond the initial setup session.
