Other takes:

Silvercublogger: Don’t Cover The Art, Unless…

The Average Gamer: Cover Art

Aim for the Head: Browsing the Aisles

SnipingMizzy: In the eye of the beholder

Extra Guy: On Books and Covers

Zath: How Important Is A Game’s Cover Art?

carocat.co.uk: Cover art? No, thanks!

Pioneer Project: The game box’s big moment

Man Fat: How Important Is A Game’s Cover Art?

It was held in a large meeting room with one Wii projected on the room’s movie screen and two Wiis connected to flat screens set up in the far corners. With available Wiimotes, 4 players could use the projector set up and 2 players each could use the flat screens – accommodating 8 players in all which is exactly what we had.

Senior citizens playing the Wii isn’t new, but here are some things I noticed:

The Wiimote is perfect for seniors.
After a very brief introduction to the Wiimote, the seniors understood that there were two buttons they needed to be concerned with and that the most important thing was their movement. I can’t imagine launching into an explanation of the Xbox 360 controller and not losing their interest. Speaking of their movement, some of the players had limited movement and it was interesting watching them hack their muscle control – compensating by holding the controller at different angles and adjusting their posture.

It was great exercise.
One senior entered the room, relying heavily on his cane. He asked if that would interfere with his bowling and we said it wouldn’t. And it didn’t. And it wasn’t long before he was bowling without his cane.

Obviously, I don’t know, but I imagine that most of the participants lead sedentary lives. Wii Bowling had them up and moving for the better part of an hour. One guy said that he hadn’t been bowling in years. Which leads me to observation three:

We ran an hour-long commercial for the Wii.
Or the Wii advertises itself very, very well. By the end of the program, we could have sold Wiis to most of the participants. I actually felt a little skeevy fielding questions about how much the Wii costs, how easy it is to set up, and the like. I assuaged this by ordering copies of Wii for Dummies for the system, but still wonder how many new customers Nintendo gets from programs like this and what, if anything, Nintendo is doing for libraries.

The seniors appreciated the program on many levels.
The Greatest Generation is amazingly competitive and ready to shout, “Out of my way, Goldstein!” if someone’s delaying their turn. Another woman was happy because she now feels comfortable playing this when she visits her grandkids (and she’s thinking of buying one for their visits). They might not identify as gamers, but they were disappointed when the program ended and eager to sign up for the next session.

More pics on Flickr: Wii Bowling

It was usually a grab bag of user-made games along with cracked professional games and half of them wouldn’t work. Of course, back then, even store bought games were iffy. I had a copy of Gauntlet which worked about 25% of the time and a math game which worked once and then never again.

So that’s two notable things about Karateka: I owned it legally and it worked.

Karateka was released in 1986 for the C-64. I was 10. Even at 10, some things stood out. First, the game was gorgeous. Second, there was smooth animation. Third, there seemed to be a real story attached.

Image courtesy of MobyGames.com

In terms of gameplay, Kareteka started out as a typical run-to-the-right karate game. Instead of waves of enemies, single combatants would challenge the Karateka and the battles were more like thoughtful duels than button-mashing exercises. There were high, medium and low punch and kick attacks (a more than respectable arsenal in the 1980s) and they took time to execute – resulting in a surprising level of strategy.

Between enemies, you could resume running to the right, but you had to be careful. First, if you weren’t ready for combat, an opponent could kill you with single blow. Also, Akuma’s fortress contained a few insta-kill death traps.

Image courtesy of MobyGames.com

Saving a game wasn’t a major feature in the mid-1980s. Most games were designed to be played in one session. Karateka had a pause function, so I slammed it, ran downstairs and told my mom, “I’m going to beat Karateka!” I don’t know what her response was, but didn’t fit the magnitude of my potential accomplishment. “Kareteka – it’s this super hard game and I’m going to beat it!” Nothing.

So I ran back upstairs and – well, now I’m getting nervous. Now I have to beat it. My hands are sweating. If I don’t beat it, then this is probably the last time I’m playing it. Okay, I can do this.

And I do.

The final fight against Akuma is an epic duel. It’s a brutal back and forth session, but finally I prevail. And then there’s Princess Mariko. And I feel accomplished. I feel satisfied in my accomplishment. And it’s a feeling I like.

Karateka isn’t the first game I obsessed over (that would be Jumpman), but it is the first game which made me feel like I was doing something more than just playing a game – that my virtual accomplishment achieved on a small black and white television connected to a Commodore 64 had relevance to my real world.

Karateka is the game which made me a gamer.

This post was part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part of this, please email him for details.

Other takes:

Aim for the Head: The Gamer I Am Today

carocat.co.uk: A Trip Down Memory Lane

Yuki-Pedia: A Tale of Two Games

gunthera1_gamer: Early Gaming Experience

Extra Guy: Ah yes, I remember it well

The Average Gamer: What Made Me a Gamer

Silvercublogger: Uncovering Lost Treasures

Master Kitty’s World: Gaming Through the Years

Gamer Unit: What was the game that made you a gamer?

Next Jen: What Made Me into a Gamer

Ripper Books
Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden
If you want to know everything about the Ripper murders, Sugden’s Complete History of Jack the Ripper is the book for you. While most Ripper books put forward their author’s prime suspect, Sugden focuses on the details of the crimes and their investigation (drawing heavily on primary sources) making this the go-to for factual history. Sugden does evaluate suspects in the back of the book and finds most of them wanting.

Jack the Ripper: The Casebook by Richard Jones
If you aren’t looking for a detailed study of the crimes, Jones’s Casebook is an interactive overview complete with facsimiles of police reports, newspaper articles and the infamous Ripper letters. A great layout and compelling visuals will pull you into the worst parts of 19th Century London

Ripper Website
Casebook: Jack the Ripper
Casebook is an utterly amazing repository of information, combining the best aspects of the two books mentioned above (primary sources and facsimiles) with the internet’s predilection for minutia. Truly the ultimate who’s who to anyone tangentially associated with the Ripper crimes, including unlikely suspects like Lewis Carroll, Casebook is also a great survey of all things Ripper and home to the Rippercast: The Whitechapel Murders Podcast.

Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper Books
Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson by Lyndsay Faye
One of the most recent Holmes versus Ripper novels and one of the most successful, Dust and Shadow plays with the fact that if Holmes and Watson were skulking around the East End trying to ferret out the Ripper, locals might wonder how involved in the killings they really were. Faye introduces Mary Ann Monk to the mix, a streetwalker hired by Holmes to investigate where he can’t and gets a lot of mileage out of the power of the press.

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin
Easily the most controversial tale, Dibdin’s take is a relatively straightforward investigation until Holmes realizes that – plotted on a map – the sites of the murders would form a giant M over the East End of the London. But that detail alone won’t prepare you for the truly shocking conclusion.

The Whitechapel Horrors by Edward B. Hanna
Originally published in 1993 at a hefty 395 pages, the upcoming reprint is a slimmer 208 pages so caveat emptor. Hanna’s heavily researched mystery (complete with endnotes!) takes a more conventional and conspiratorial approach to the murders, placing Holmes on untenable ground in his pursuit for justice.

Chapel Noir and Castle Rouge by Carole Nelson Douglas
I’m not a fan of Carole Nelson Douglas’s Irene Adler novels, recasting the Scandal in Bohemia character as detective in her own right. In Chapel Noir, Adler investigates Ripper-like murders in a Parisian brothel. Castle Rogue, the follow-up, moves the hunt to Transylvania.

Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper: A Study in Terror by Ellery Queen
Hard to find novelization of the movie, which — according to Wikipedia — adds a framing device inserting Ellery Queen into the story and changes the identity of the murderer.

The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls by J. Robert King
This is cheat, but the entire book is kind of a cheat. Still Holmes does face off against Jack the Ripper in this supernaturally-charged adventure.

Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper Movies
A Study in Terror (1965)
I know I saw this on VHS years ago, but remember very little about it. Amazon has it listed for pre-order, but without a cover or release date. Reviews online paint this as a low budget exploitative entry, but with a decent cast and thrilling conclusion.

Murder by Decree (1979)
And this would be the high budget take with an all-star cast. As the title suggests this Ripper has ties to the royal family, complicating things for Holmes and Watson who must decipher secret Masonic rituals to crack the case.

Which game character do you identify yourself with most and why?

“The name’s Knight. Gabriel Knight.”

This line isn’t delivered by a superspy. It’s uttered by a bookstore owner and frustrated horror novelist. I’m not a frustrated horror novelist (but would love to be) and I work in a library, not a bookstore, but as far as starting points, this is pretty close.

Gabriel Knight was the main character in a trilogy of games by legendary game writer Jane Jensen. As an aside: the three games act as a great survey of adventure game design in the 1990s, making the transition from sprites backed by CD-quality sound to FMV realism and ultimately polygon-based 3D graphics.

1993’s Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers starts in Knight’s New Orleans bookstore. Within a few clicks, Gabriel Knight is on the scent of the Voodoo Murders resulting in some unexpected globetrotting. 1995’s The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery finds Knight in his ancestral German home where he uncovers a link between recent werewolf attacks and a missing opera by Richard Wagner. 1999’s Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, transitions to France and throws vampires and a missing Templar treasure into the mix.

Now I’m not a globetrotting adventurer and I don’t think I’m a Schattenjäger, think supernatural detective but with a greater sense of responsibility, but these are all subjects which fascinate me. I came into each Gabriel Knight game, somewhat familiar with the supernatural mystery du jour, but I left the game more knowledgeable (because Jane Jensen throws in an incredible amount of research) and continued on.

I can honestly say the Gabriel Knight games influenced by reading lists for years after I played each game. And the recent “What was your first Amazon.com purchase?” meme supports this! The first book I bought from Amazon was the Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers novelization. The second was The Mad King: The Life and Times of Ludwig II of Bavaria (GK2). Jumping ahead I see Voodoo in New Orleans (GK1) and Holy Blood, Holy Grail (GK3).

Coming back to the character, Gabriel Knight may be a sexy adventurer, but he’s also bookish. While the games do have their share of puzzles – including the infamous cat hair-mustache one – a lot of what you do in a Gabriel Knight game is research. You track down clues. Find old books. Ask lots of questions . . . wait-a-minute . . . am I a librarian because of these games – is this why I go ghosthunting – is this why I visit supernatural places on vacation? Let’s shelve these for now.

So yeah, if there’s any character I identify with, it’s Gabriel Knight.

Additional notes:
The best place to play the Gabriel Knight games is at Good Old Games. They are cheap, DRM-free and work on modern systems.

Jane Jensen returns with Gray Matter for the PC and Xbox 360. [Adventure Gamers]

Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned beat The Da Vinci Code by 4 years and is superior in every way.

Other takes:
Pioneer Project: The importance of character creation

Silvercublogger: Will Sing Opera For Italian Food

Aim for the Head: Friends Through The End

Extra Guy: Who I Identify With

Next Jen: I’d Rather Be Me

carocat.co.uk: A rushed love letter

This post was part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part, please email him for details.

But when Tor released the Longfellow translation of Dante’s Inferno as a tie-in, complete with cover art based on the game, did anyone expect this?

From longtime Game Coucher Aramis:

Something amazing happened last Friday. I’m still not sure what to make of it.

I was at the library Reference Desk ready to answer questions and help people find stuff when a teenage boy came up to me looking for Catcher in the Rye. I checked the catalog for Salinger and didn’t see any hard cover copies available so I walked the kid over to the uncataloged Classic Paperbacks. His mom followed behind us and while I was browsing the S’s I overheard this incredible bit of dialog.

‘Hey, Mom! See this book?’ He grabbed a copy of Inferno, the first book in Dante Alighieri’s trilogy The Divine Comedy. ‘Remember that game you bought me? This is the book it was based on, but this book is even sicker the game! It was awesome!’

This blew my mind completely. It’s like something out of a marketer’s wet dream. A ridiculous video game induced a teenage boy of average coolness (he had a skateboard and was sporting a Bieber) to read not just a book, but a classic allegorical, epic poem written in the 14th century in which an Italian poet and a dead philosopher traverse the afterlife to find the poet’s deceased girlfriend and possibly meet God in terza rima (three part rhyme).

What do you guys think? Is this a thing™ or more of a fluke? Also will “literary” games become the latest trend replacing sandbox and/or post-apocalyptic casual zombie tower defense MMORPGs? What classic book would you like to see made into a game?

See also:

Score! Liz Danforth at Library Journal’s Games, Gamers, & Gaming.

Dante’s Inferno Alvin Dantes at The Catablogger.

Anyway, looking for information online I came across this commercial featuring a pre-Crisis Jack Black.

If anyone’s still doing something with their Game Room, send me a Challenge!

Lighthouse Hill, Edward Hopper (1927)

Oblivion, Bethesda (2006)

The Needles’ Lighthouse from Keyhaven, Hampshire
Charles Tennyson Turner (1868)

The downs and tender-tinted cliffs are lost,
And nothing but the guardian fire remains –
That crimson-headed tower on the rough coast,
Whose steady lustre ceases not, nor wanes
Till sunrise from the east reveals to us
The mightly Vectian wold, and tawny tract
Of shingle, seen through bowers of arbutus,
Like some fair corn-field, mellow and compact.
How that deep glow the deepening gloom attests!
How much is by that noble lighthouse taught!
Mine eye rests on it, as the spirit rests
In sorrow, on some holy, ardent thought,
The sole beam in our darkness! Those who dwell
Near these great beacons are instructed well.

_____________________________
According to Roger Ebert, one of these isn’t art.

Dark Forces was a first-person shooter set in the Star Wars Universe. History lesson: back in 1995, the term “first-person shooter” didn’t exist. Games like this were called “Doom clones.” But Dark Forces fought the clone wars, presenting innovative features like looking up and down, ducking and jumping. Yes, in 1995 simulating movement of your character’s neck, legs and spine were breakthrough accomplishments.

Image courtesy of MobyGamesIn Dark Forces you played as pixilated mercenary Kyle Katarn who went on secret missions for Mon Mothma – black ops stuff the main characters couldn’t handle. Need the Death Star plans? Done. Crix Madine needs rescuing? Done. The Empire rolling out a line of Dark Troopers? Done.

And Katarn accomplished all of this with a combination of blasters, detonators and – when necessary – his fists. Obviously, his fists were a fallback weapon; something only to be used when you’ve exhausted your ammo supply. But Katarn is still able to punch a Kell Dragon to death, if that’s what needs to be done. The point being that Katarn is just fine without a lightsaber and a Star Wars game is fine without a Jedi – up until some guy decides to mod the game swapping out a lightsaber for Katarn’s fists.

Image courtesy of MobyGamesSuddenly, everyone on AOL was like, oh Dark Forces is so much better now that we have a laser sword! Nevermind that it was purely cosmetic, doing the same amount of damage as a punch making it the most underpowered lightsaber since Jedi Arena on the 2600. The budding franchise experienced a shift and people like me who always thought Han Solo was cooler than Luke died a little inside.

Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II came out in 1997 (trading pixels for polygons) and Kyle Katarn learns that not only does he have secret force powers, he also has unconvincing facial hair. Sure Katarn can still blast stormtroopers, but using his newly found lightsaber is more fun because you can run around cutting arms off and deflecting blaster bolts.

Image courtesy of MobyGamesBy the time 2002’s Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast came out, it’s a full-on lightsaber fest complete with mopey force-powered ennui. Oh no, I’m tempted by the Dark Side :( *cries* And – hey! – Dark Forces has been dropped from the title? What kind of naming system is this?

Then a year later, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy comes out – shouldn’t that be Jedi Knight III? – and Katarn is now some serene Jedi Master basically opting to make a cameo appearance in the series he launched.

Which brings me back to The Force Unleashed, which people should realize is actually Dark Forces V: Jedi Knight IV: People who don’t want to play as stupid Jedi III. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with Jedi, but at this point every game has overpowered laser swords and magic powers. What the gaming world needs is a return to space opera themed first-person shooters – something we haven’t seen in 15 years.

This post was part of Blog Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part, please email him for details.

For other takes on this topic, check out:

Next Jen: X-COM
Silvercube: Looking For Ingenuity
Game Couch: Dark Forces

American Scary
Directed by John E. Hudgens
DVD released: Feb. 17, 2009

King Kong (1933) aired on television in 1956 and demonstrated the viability of televised horror films. This led to a flood of TV releases, but gems like the classic Universal horror films came were packaged with B-movies or worse. You had to air the bad if you wanted the good, and horror hosts made even the worst films palatable.

Skipping ahead to the early 1980s and I was a young kid who hurried home from Palm Springs Elementary everyday to catch the 2:00 horror show aired on a pre-Fox WFLX. The Bat People (1974), Frankenstein: The True Story (1973), The Fly (1958), and Dracula (1979) are the only titles which come to mind – more memorable was the horror host.

Our horror host was a mad scientist and his sidekick, who spent the movie slowly simmering in a cauldron. Thinking back now, it seems likely that the sidekick was probably a prop, not a person. Introduced with Napoleon XIV’s “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!,” the horror host was the right mixture of cheese and creepiness whose intros, outros, sketches and asides both set the tone for movie and took its edge off.

Penny Dreadful
Let me explain how I watched horror movies. I sat an arm’s length away from my small, black and white TV with my hand on the volume. The secret to watching horror movies – especially ones late at night – was to have the sound just loud enough for me to hear and the ability to silence any screams which might draw my mother’s attention.

So this became a ritual – but one that faded as we got cable and a VCR – events happening on a larger scale across America.

American Scary is a documentary about this phenomenon starting with “Lights Out” on the radio and reaching to the Internet horror hosts of today. It’s a talking heads documentary about talking heads, but the heads who talk, know what they’re saying. Vampira, Zacherley, Ghoulardi, Svengoolie and many other horror hosts are covered – and you get a great sense of the role they played as local celebrities (sadly, Barb Billens Program Director for WFLX tells me ours was syndicated).

Sir Graves Ghastly
Providing context are the likes of Leonard Maltin, Joe Bob Briggs, and Neil Gaiman (who talks about his horror hosting of FX’s 13 Nights of Fright). American Scary also connects horror hosts to MST3K, so Joel Hodgson appears leading to fun moments like Tom Savini gushing over the show.

So I asked Barb if WFLX was interested in restarting this and was told that “with all the cable channels and other movie services, we air very few movies on our schedule” which is the case all over. However, if another local station is interested, I’m ready to be your horror host.