Game Sack

[Opethian]

There joe has it up you all happy now !?

Nope.  There's still no PC-FX episode. 

not ...yet...

[esteban]

I like how Philips knew the CD-i would be a plague unleashed upon man, so they put in RTC so they would suicide after a given amount of time when enough people have suffered. GG Philips, GG.

Hahaahhahahahahahahaha. Awwwwww, you're being too harsh.

I wont lie.. I play Tetris on CD-i just for the music.  I like the music A LOT

I also liked the FMV backgrounds that some (?) of the stages seemed to haven (the waterfall, for example). I know the footage is generic nature stuff, but the quality looks consistent and not random and shoddy.

AND YOU GOTTA RIP THE MUSIC FOR ME... or, record it via analog (oldskool).

HAHAHAHA I've been passivly heckling game sack here, on youtube and sega 16 since they started for a CDi episode. Thanks guys for making my dreams come true!! Now is the time for me to sell my system finally

Hahahahahshashs. I can't believe it has finally happened.

I totally enjoyed this episode.

[seieienbu]

I always wondered if people who were in charge of making FMV games liked video games.  Did they find playing video games fun?  Did they find playing their Own games fun? 

[SamIAm]

I always got the impression that most of the people given creative control of FMV games were film/animation guys who were trying to break into a new field, and who probably weren't really gamers. I imagine them trying the finished product and just going "It's a game, right? It's fun, right?" while the people beneath them nodded and smiled nervously. Meanwhile, the suits just kept their fingers crossed that they were going to strike gold sooner or later. After all, from the perspective of the time, mixing movies and games just sounds like a recipe for success.

This might sound ridiculously unrelated, but I once read an analysis of why the Challenger space shuttle blew up that these FMV games remind me of. What Richard Feynman and others on the Challenger investigation committee criticized of NASA was a sort of "top down" engineering approach. Rather than taking successful existing technology and growing it upward with proven ideas that will work even better, the "top down" approach is that management decides how it will work, and the engineers just have to make it work.

In the Challenger's case, management said that the booster rockets had to be redesigned to split into different sections that are assembled at the launch pad so that they could be manufactured and shipped from far away. This decision had nothing to do with how to build the best possible booster rocket, and everything to do with economics.

In video games, I think you had management insisting on making games based on FMV, and aspiring directors jumping up with promises to deliver when they didn't really have any good ideas for an FMV game design to begin with. Cue the sad programmer who is handed a mountain of footage and told "Make it fun" and there you go.

EDIT: This is a pretty good article on the subject (of FMV games).

[TR0N]

There joe has it up you all happy now !?

Nope.  There's still no PC-FX episode. 

To quote mario no !! Maybe you should twist joe's arm to get on it right away 

[BlueBMW]

AND YOU GOTTA RIP THE MUSIC FOR ME... or, record it via analog (oldskool).

  Someones already done a pretty good recording of it.  Even has a download link for ya.

[Sadler]

Honestly there were more cool games in there than I was expecting. I kinda wish we would have hooked it up now.

[BlueBMW]

You'd be wishing we hadn't if we did...

[seieienbu]

The article on Digital Pictures was a very interesting read.  I think the most interesting thing was the confidence that Zito seemed to have in his work.  The intention behind Maximum Surge, Digital Pictures final game, having more focus on being a game than a movie makes it sound interesting.  It's a shame that it wasn't released, it'd likely make for a better swan song than any of the others and possibly leave better memories of the genre than all the non-games that we got.

[esteban]

I always got the impression that most of the people given creative control of FMV games were film/animation guys who were trying to break into a new field, and who probably weren't really gamers. I imagine them trying the finished product and just going "It's a game, right? It's fun, right?" while the people beneath them nodded and smiled nervously. Meanwhile, the suits just kept their fingers crossed that they were going to strike gold sooner or later. After all, from the perspective of the time, mixing movies and games just sounds like a recipe for success.

This might sound ridiculously unrelated, but I once read an analysis of why the Challenger space shuttle blew up that these FMV games remind me of. What Richard Feynman and others on the Challenger investigation committee criticized of NASA was a sort of "top down" engineering approach. Rather than taking successful existing technology and growing it upward with proven ideas that will work even better, the "top down" approach is that management decides how it will work, and the engineers just have to make it work.

In the Challenger's case, management said that the booster rockets had to be redesigned to split into different sections that are assembled at the launch pad so that they could be manufactured and shipped from far away. This decision had nothing to do with how to build the best possible booster rocket, and everything to do with economics.

In video games, I think you had management insisting on making games based on FMV, and aspiring directors jumping up with promises to deliver when they didn't really have any good ideas for an FMV game design to begin with. Cue the sad programmer who is handed a mountain of footage and told "Make it fun" and there you go.

EDIT: This is a pretty good article on the subject (of FMV games).

Yes, I agree on all points.

Also, it is incredibly hard to create a compelling ___________ (game, novel, album, film) when things are brand new.

You don't have a long history of "best practices" and "exemplary works" to emulate and borrow from.

Think of the earliest 3D polygonal platformers....I actually like Jumping Flash on PlayStation, but it seemed like a huge step backward compared to the  sophistication and precision of 2D platforming.

So, I think FMV could be used, in some situations, to create an enjoyable experience...

FOR EXAMPLE: In the CDi episode of GameSack, I thought there were some nice "Silpheed"-esque moments in "Tetsuo Gaiden" (shootemup) that looked kinda nice. NOTHING GROUNDBREAKING. And, surely, having FMV as a background is limiting. But, I think it is kinda neat.

[Gentlegamer]

I always got the impression that most of the people given creative control of FMV games were film/animation guys who were trying to break into a new field, and who probably weren't really gamers. I imagine them trying the finished product and just going "It's a game, right? It's fun, right?" while the people beneath them nodded and smiled nervously. Meanwhile, the suits just kept their fingers crossed that they were going to strike gold sooner or later. After all, from the perspective of the time, mixing movies and games just sounds like a recipe for success.

This might sound ridiculously unrelated, but I once read an analysis of why the Challenger space shuttle blew up that these FMV games remind me of. What Richard Feynman and others on the Challenger investigation committee criticized of NASA was a sort of "top down" engineering approach. Rather than taking successful existing technology and growing it upward with proven ideas that will work even better, the "top down" approach is that management decides how it will work, and the engineers just have to make it work.

In the Challenger's case, management said that the booster rockets had to be redesigned to split into different sections that are assembled at the launch pad so that they could be manufactured and shipped from far away. This decision had nothing to do with how to build the best possible booster rocket, and everything to do with economics.

In video games, I think you had management insisting on making games based on FMV, and aspiring directors jumping up with promises to deliver when they didn't really have any good ideas for an FMV game design to begin with. Cue the sad programmer who is handed a mountain of footage and told "Make it fun" and there you go.

EDIT: This is a pretty good article on the subject (of FMV games).

It's pretty much the reason David Cage is a "game dev."

[technozombie]

There was a store in my small town that sold appliances and Tv's and such. I remember going in there with my mom while she paid her bill and they sold CD-I's. It looked so awesome to me as a game loving kid. I always wanted  one just to have, glad I'm over that phase.

[SamIAm]

Yes, I agree on all points.

Also, it is incredibly hard to create a compelling ___________ (game, novel, album, film) when things are brand new.

You don't have a long history of "best practices" and "exemplary works" to emulate and borrow from.

Think of the earliest 3D polygonal platformers....I actually like Jumping Flash on PlayStation, but it seemed like a huge step backward compared to the  sophistication and precision of 2D platforming.

So, I think FMV could be used, in some situations, to create an enjoyable experience...

FOR EXAMPLE: In the CDi episode of GameSack, I thought there were some nice "Silpheed"-esque moments in "Tetsuo Gaiden" (shootemup) that looked kinda nice. NOTHING GROUNDBREAKING. And, surely, having FMV as a background is limiting. But, I think it is kinda neat.

Absolutely. You know, I check on the status of Laseractive emulation from time to time because I would really like to give Hyperion a play someday. Among all those chase-view pseudo-3D FMV shooters, it looks like one of the best.

Any auto-scrolling game could have an FMV background and look great. It's a shame it never happened...except for maybe that weird stage from R-Type Final with the silhouette of people having sex. Is that rendered or prerecorded? I'm at work now, so that question will have to wait.

But everything changes when you try to include actors and put them in a central role in the gameplay itself. Whether you're trying to make a human drama or just have realistic action like in Prize Fighter, it seems really difficult to design the interactive side without creating this weird sense of separation between the player and the game.

Did anyone here like Riven? I know it's popular for console gamers to hate on Myst-style games, but I really loved Riven. Beat it without a guide, too. I think that game was on the right track, although I also don't really think of it as an FMV game in particular. It certainly had a lot of the same elements, though.

The article on Digital Pictures was a very interesting read.  I think the most interesting thing was the confidence that Zito seemed to have in his work.  The intention behind Maximum Surge, Digital Pictures final game, having more focus on being a game than a movie makes it sound interesting.  It's a shame that it wasn't released, it'd likely make for a better swan song than any of the others and possibly leave better memories of the genre than all the non-games that we got.

Yep. You can definitely add Maximum Surge to the list of unreleased games that we would just love to see leak out someday.

Whether you find him funny is crucial to how much you can enjoy this, but TheSpoonyExperiment's Let's Plays of Phantasmagoria 2 and Ripper are very interesting. Those two were both from 1996, and I'd say they represent the last, best, most ambitious pushes to make a movie-like FMV game work. Phantasmagoria 2 is maybe the better of the two, but Ripper has a Hollywood cast you wouldn't believe.

[Punch]

A game that I really like, the X-Files for the PS1/Macintosh, was well directed and nothing like the cheesy FMV garbage synonymous with the genre. It came on 4 discs, and as far as I know there's 7 or 8 discs on the PC version, which has much more detail in small things not crucial to the game.

It's really cool, if you wanted you could be the most tarded dickhead ever at the FBI, asking redundant/obvious stuff, being a dick to everyone.

I always thought I beat this game, but I've always found weird how there wasn't any credit rolls after the last scene. Little I knew that I screwed up in the only part that prevents the player to win, Sierra style. I got seriously pissed off when I decided to investigate about the game's weird "ending" years later on the internet.

The most annoying part of the game is the one where you actually use your handgun.

[Medic_wheat]

So Joe will Gamesacke be joining Nintendos YouTube partnership program or go the Pewdipie approach and make a twitch post saying f*ck them.