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Recently, I came to a revelation: Games don’t have to have a great story to be fun. Games didn’t use to have a story at all. Take a look at Pac-Man and the like. What story is there? Why are the ghosts trying to get him? Why are there ghost running around in the first place? We didn’t know and didn’t care, it was simply fun. The recent consoles have brought the point home even further for me. With Live and PSN, multiplayer has definitely been opened up for all of us. Even those of us that thought it wasn’t worth their time before. This is definitely a trend that needs to continue. We need multiplayer in our games. Why? Because it’s just plain fun to join either a team or individual multiplayer map and just shoot or slice stuff up, be it a monster of indescribable hideousness or a soldier from that faction we hate.

The image of the lonely gamer in the basement, leveling up his black mage in the latest version of a Japanese RPG, while surrounded all the accouterments of geekdom is slowly going away, and definitely for the better. Now we see a more social experience that bridges the console and PC crowd. There are some diehards that will always say, “First person shooters suck on consoles”, or “Platforming blows on a PC”. Well, they are both wrong. Games belong to the gamers, not the systems that they play them on. I know people will disagree and that is fine. As long as you are happy when you play and with what you play on, you win.

- Thanks Hurt!

The net’s full of debate about the perfect game protagonist (ninjas, pirates, or robots?) but too little real debate about what makes the perfect in-game enemy.

The perfect enemy is:

• Ugly: the perfect enemy generates involuntary revulsion on the part of the beholder. Examples: Alien, Klingons, Predator, zombies, headcrabs, trolls, orcs, snakes.
• Inherently dangerous: It’s in the enemy’s nature to damage humans or the human way of life. If the enemy is to live, humans must suffer. Whether driven by pure malice, the need for a warm, wet place to lay eggs, or mere appetite for brainsss, the enemy’s existence must be predicated on human destruction.
• Foreign: the perfect enemy cannot share the same values as the protagonist. Whether that means the enemy believes that Democracy is wrong (and Communism right) or the believes that humans are tasty: foreign values allow all sorts of wonderful misunderstanding and conflict. The enemy should not speak our own language.
• Sentient: the perfect enemy is smart enough to maliciously plan your death. The Atlantic ocean, for instance, is inherently dangerous, but tends to be at the mercy of winds and doesn’t appear to be plotting against us all.
• Politically appropriate: the perfect enemy is culturally and politically acceptible to hate and destroy. In ages past, the perfect enemy might have been the Visigoths, Muslims (remember the Crusades?), people with different skin color, whatever. Nowadays, it’s generally more politically correct for the enemy to be inhuman. Zombies and aliens make great enemies precisely because it’s hard for America’s religious extremists to object to ostensibly wholesome themes such as “protect the human race from Martian invaders!” or “Defend your homeland from unholy swarms of undead!”
• Difficult but not impossible to eliminate: The perfect enemy needs to be vulnerable (else there’s no hope, and no way to win the game), but not so vulnerable that the enemy doesn’t pose a credible threat.

Is this definition sufficiently inclusive? Any examples of enemies that fall outside of the requirements?

[via Joystiq]

The story of Double Dragon is a twisted web of love. Billy Lee’s girlfriend, Marian Kelly, is often playing the “damsel in distress,” forcing the Lee brothers to come to her rescue. Jimmy Lee was secretly in love with Marian, which causes some family disputes near the end of the game. The plot behind Double Dragon follows a similar line to that of an afternoon soap opera. The truth is, few gamers listen to storylines anyway.

Double Dragon was developed by Technos Japan Corporation as an arcade game in 1987. The now defunct development group was founded in 1981 by three former members of the once popular Data East. Data East eventually filed for Bankruptcy in Tokyo. Today, both companies have gone under and have sold their intellectual property to a number of other firms that still publish hand held games using the Double Dragon branding.

The Double Dragon series was comprised of side scroller, “beat-em up,” fighter games. It allowed for two player, simultaneous gaming and contained a rich world of side-scrolling fun. It contained a number of weapons including barrels, bats, knives, and a machine gun. The players could attempt to disarm the enemies, except for that damn machine gun, and use the weapons against the enemy. The knives were extremely deadly weapons, often leading to death in a single hit.

Many children spent hours of their time at the local pizzeria down the road playing Double Dragon. Among the sounds of the game was the sound of them popping in coins to continue their adventure before the “continue timer” ran out. Then in 1988, Technos Japan developed a home version of the game for the NES, and, two years later, a version for the Game Boy emerged. Technos used a publisher known as Tradewest to localize the languages and sell the games to a worldwide market. The NES release contained a number of platform “liberties” that affected game play and hurt the reputation of Double Dragon.

The NES game contained alternating turn based two player mode, which was much less fun then the arcade’s simultaneous two player mode. This NES version included a “versus” mode, so that you could challenge player-vs-player or player-vs-AI, but it was limited to one screen, and contained none of the single player adventure. The developers changed how the two brothers fought. In the arcade classic, the brothers had all their special martial arts moves at the start of the game, while the NES release used an experience system to build new skills over time. Those who wished to do a spin kick in the start of the game would have to find ways to “exploit” battles to build experience faster. Oddly enough, Marian’s dress was longer and it was impossible to see her underwear when the bad guys picked her up over their shoulder to carry her away. For some young boys, that was the main feature that made the arcade version a hit.

In 1988, Double Dragon II: The Revenge, was released by Technos Japan for the arcade, just as the original version was hitting the US console market. This time they used their experience with the video game Renegade in order to change the punching and kicking game play style. Acclaim published this game for Technos worldwide and it made it into our homes on the NES at the end of 1989. The arcade version was a continuation of the prior Double Dragon where the NES version simply ignored parts of the storyline that were “wrong” from the original home console port. This release included all that gamer wanted: two-player simultaneous action, great new graphics, and all the cool moves at the start of the game, without experience gathering. The NES version offered almost two times the number of game stages as the arcade version, and it did not require quarters. I believe this was, by far, the best Double Dragon game released from Technos.

By 1990, it was time to release yet another Double Dragon game. Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone, made its way to the arcade, but was not as successful as the other two releases. One reason for its downfall was the “shopping” system that was built so that players could purchase weapons, power-ups, and other enhancements by inserting more quarters (this feature did not make it to Japanese markets). Double Dragon 3 was redesigned from the ground up by a development group known as East Technology. Although the game had been completely redesigned, Technos of Japan opted to re-design it, again, for the NES in 1991. This release, known as Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones had a completely altered storyline, and was extremely difficult, especially when compared to the original Double Dragon 3 for the arcade, and all the prior Double Dragon game releases.

The final hit in the Double Dragon saga arrived in 1992 with Super Double Dragon for the next generation Nintendo console known as the SNES. This release was targeted strictly for home markets, and contained many new additional features that enhanced the Double Dragon franchise. Billy and Jimmy Lee each had a unique fighting style to differentiate them, as well as gauges that filled up over time and allowed the fighters to utilize special moves that could not be used constantly in battle. The graphics were, once again, amazing. The brothers learned how to block, fist grab, and use other martial arts related takedowns. Again, Tradewest published the game for worldwide localizations, but was not given the final build of the Japanese version to convert. The result was partial storylines, unfinished final levels, and characters mentioned in the manual that never saw screen time. The end user must not have cared about these discrepancies because the game still managed to live up to its brand-name title.

The success of Super Double Dragon would be the final hit in the series. Many other games followed or cloned the features but never lived up to the name. This includes a 1995 release of Double Dragon ‘95 for the Neo-Geo platform, a movie starring über babe Alyssa Milano, a cartoon, a comic book, and a bag full of hand-held games. The franchise even went as far as creating the title “Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team” which was a desperate plea to add two successful titles together, hoping for a hit. It hit the bargain bin instead, so perhaps this wasn’t a complete failure after all.

Billy and Jimmy Lee can be considered the foundation for most of the great side scrolling fighters that followed. Double Dragon was no doubt inspiration for such games as Renegade, River City Ransom, Final Fight, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Streets of Rage, and many others. When a developer designs a new 3D fighting game there must be some piece of them that recalls the beauty of Double Dragon. Although the founders of Double Dragon no longer produce games, the intellectual property still lives on, and everyone can hope that someday we will see a revised, refinished, and redesigned version of Double Dragon.

[via codemonkey@2old2play]