It's just been one of those weeks here at The Warp Pipe, where it was almost impossible to sit down and actually work. For some unknown reason, LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy sank its teeth into me, and wouldn't let go until I completely finished everything in the game. It's the first platformer/action hybrid that I've got 100% in for a couple of years, so it's left me feeling pretty good. It also helped wash out the awful aftertaste left by Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal. While I mourn the loss of animation pioneers like Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and Friz Freleng, I'm glad they're not alive to see what Warner Bros. has done to their creations.

This week, we're going to dish up another helping of random facts, thoughts and opinions about the game industry, revisit a rather good Looney Tunes game called Desert Demolition and uncover the awesomeness that is God Hand.

25 Random Facts, Thoughts and Claims II

BioShock's gatherers were originally slugs. Good for fishing bait, though.

For as long as I can remember, I've always loved learning new things about subjects I enjoy – this goes double for anything to do with video games, especially when it's related to a video game I've known and loved for many years. Occasionally while doing the research for the Warp Pipe's main sections, I'll stumble upon a few cool facts that I'd like to share, but can't really work into the column. I also have the odd thought or strong opinion that's just not substantial enough to base a full column around, so I'll just list them here. Everybody loves a list article.

FACT: The voice of Colonel Sergei Gurlokivich in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is none other than Earl Boen, better remembered for his part as Dr. Peter Silberman in the three Terminator movies.

FACT: BioShock's little sisters were always meant to be a part of a symbiotic relationship with the Big Daddies. However, in their earliest incarnations, the gatherers were actually slug-like creatures, rather than young girls.

THOUGHT: What happened to branching stories and alternate paths in video games today? I've always enjoyed having more influence over the events of a game, particularly in Deus Ex, and more recently in GTAIV, even if the effect of my influence is only an extra couple of lines in a cutscene.

FACT: There were many rejected designs for Sonic the Hedgehog, but the most amusing one was a caricature of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States. The design was overhauled and transformed into the series' main antagonist, Dr. Robotnik.

FACT: One side-quest in Oblivion has you dealing with a missing person. It turns out that the character is trapped in a cave by dark elves that allow people who hunt humans for sport, in exchange for fee. This mimics the storyline of Hard Target, an awesomely bad mid 90s Van Damme film.

CLAIM: Having played through both Enter the Matrix, and The Matrix: Path of Neo, I can say with a great degree of certainty that nothing good will ever come from involving the Wachowski Brothers in video game projects.

More games need to pay homage to Van Damme. Kudos, Bethesda.

FACT: Sega may be a Japanese company, but it has not successful in its native country when it comes to home console sales. Only two titles developed by Sega have ever sold more than a million units in Japan; Virtua Fighter 2 for the Saturn, and Love and Berry for the Nintendo DS.

THOUGHT: Sega is currently location testing a new Lindbergh-based light gun game for the first three Rambo films. Surely a game based on the fourth movie with House of the Dead's gore factor would be a bigger draw?

FACT: The protagonist of Just Cause, Rico Rodriguez, is based heavily on CIA Agent Felix Rodriguez, the man considered to be responsible for the capture of Che Guevera in Bolivia. The name of the game stems from "Operation Just Cause", a US led invasion to overthrow the rule of Manuel Noriega, the former militaristic dictator of Panama.

CLAIM: The reason video game stories suck is all in the execution. Common storytelling elements such as character development are generally overlooked in favour of a few cliché moments copied from two-decade-old action films. Twists are seldom handled well – Deus Ex, Knights of the Old Republic and BioShock had some doozies, and the way the twist was executed made them all the more impressive.

FACT: Fighters Megamix contains the most bizarre secret characters in any fighting game, including the Hornet car from Daytona USA, a Mexican green bean and the AM2 Palm Tree .

THOUGHT: To justify residual payments on high selling games, the Screen Actors Guild would need to prove that the voice actors featured in the game are a draw.

FACT: Screen Actors' Guild minimum pay for members involved in video game voice acting is $769 for a four hour session. To make the $100,000 that Michael Hollick was paid for Niko Bellic (assuming that's gross pay before SAG dues and agents' fees) would take 520 hours, or basically 130 recording sessions.

Old man is old. News at 11.

FACT: Shigeru Miyamoto is arguably the most mistakenly credited individual in the industry. While he comes up with many of the concepts and ideas in Nintendo games, and has served as a producer on over 90 titles, Miyamoto has only been credited as the director of 10 titles; Radar Scope, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2 (aka The Lost Levels), The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario All Stars, Super Mario 64 and Mario Artist. He shares the director credit for Super Mario Bros. 3 with Takashi Tezuka, his second-in-command.

CLAIM: While I enjoy the LEGO Star Wars games, they were really just released in the right place at the right time – easily accessible platformers with a safe license attached. Nothing really that brilliant about them.

THOUGHT: Why do players complain about skill based moves like rocket jumps in Quake and snaking in Mario Kart DS, to the point where the moves are essentially removed in sequels? Surely one can appreciate the fact that other players have discovered and can pull off these cool moves, since it takes a bit of training to do so effectively.

FACT: Metal Gear Solid 3 boss The End can be defeated in a number of different ways. You can (obviously) fight him, defeating him by draining his life or stunning him, but there are two notable alternate ways of defeating him. By messing with your PlayStation 2's internal clock, it's possible to make The End starve to death – Snake will find his body, and continue about his business. Alternatively, shortly after the cut-scene where Ocelot "tests" Tatyana with the pistol juggle, you have a small window of opportunity in which to shoot The End – land a headshot, and you never have to fight him.

CLAIM: I am utterly hopeless at real time strategy games. Since starting with Command and Conquer in 1996, the only one I've beaten to date is Command & Conquer Generals. I've never won a single match in multiplayer, either.

FACT: Rather than just selling pirated copies of games in the 90s, Hong Kong pirates used to infringe on copyright in other ways, including porting games to other consoles, or putting popular characters into other games. As an example, here's a video of Donkey Kong Country on the NES.




THOUGHT: How many years will it take for Guitar Hero to end up like the Tony Hawk franchise? I figure it'll be about 2010.

Pac-Man fever at its finest

FACT: Silent Hill 4: The Room originally started life as "Room 302", and was meant to be a project completely unrelated to the Silent Hill series. This explains the drastic shift in play mechanics, plot and tone in comparison to other Silent Hill games.

CLAIM: Pac-Man Vs is quite possibly the most underappreciated game on the GameCube. People scoffed at its original announcement, but if they bothered to play it, they'd have a whale of a time.

FACT: In its original form, Yoshi's Island greatly resembled the original Super Mario World. However, with the success of Donkey Kong Country, Nintendo's internal evaluation committee wanted producer Shigeru Miyamoto to produce the game used pre-rendered computer generated graphics. Miyamoto, a noted critic of Donkey Kong Country, instead decided to move the game towards the stylish, hand-drawn look the game has today.

FACT: While most people note the PlayStation 2 port of Half-Life for its co-operative segment, Decay, the game was one of the few titles on the system that supported the use of a USB keyboard and mouse.

FACT: Operation Flashpoint was praised, and sometimes criticised, for its accuracy and attention to detail. This praise resulted in Bohemia Interactive developing a version of the Operation Flashpoint engine for use in military training. This version was called Virtual Battlespace Systems.

Artistic License

Road Runner! If he catches you, you're through!

As I mentioned in the opening spiel of this week's piece, there seems to be a blatant disregard for Looney Tunes at Warner Bros. these days. They're happy to rake in all of that lovely money from merchandising, but the quality of recent productions based on the characters developed at Termite Terrace all of those years ago is rubbish, quite frankly. As with any form of media, there's always a piece of gold buried underneath a pile of crap, and in this case, that nugget is called Desert Demolition.

Developed by Blue Sky Software and published by Sega in the latter days of the Mega Drive's life, Desert Demolition is a game that highlights the rivalry between the Road Runner (speedicus birdicus) and Wile E. Coyote (canis ravenous). The game stands out above its peers because of the quality of its presentation – the developer set out to capture the spirit of the shorts, and did so quite magnificently. The sprites are impressive; not only well drawn, but expertly animated. The sound is in a world of its own; rather than having music in the traditional sense, its rhythm is tied to the motion of the characters – stand still and it's quiet, move stealthily and the music will be sneaky, move swiftly and the music will be upbeat.

If one were to strip away the game's stellar presentation, they'd discover that there is still a pretty enjoyable platformer underneath. One can play as either the Coyote or Road Runner through six stages, which differ significantly based on the character used. The Road Runner is all about speed – avoid getting caught by the Coyote, or sneak up behind to startle him with a "Meep! Meep!" before dashing away. The Coyote's aim is (obviously) to try and catch the Road Runner, but it's mostly about using all sorts of neat Acme gadgets to keep up with him, such as rocket skates and bat wings. The game is rather easy, though highly replayable, and arguably serves as the best example of what can be accomplished when using Looney Tunes characters and respecting the source material.

Diamonds in the Rough

Clover Studio was one of the most critically successful developers of the last 10 years. Unfortunately, that critical acclaim did not transform into sales, and the studio was closed by Capcom. The folks behind Clover live on at Platinum Games, which they say will have a similar ethos. The last game Clover released was God Hand, an amusing comedy beat 'em up, inspired by the post apocalyptic stylings of the popular Fist of the North Star anime. The game was directed by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami.

Batter up!

Players take on the role of Gene, a young man who is the latest in a long line of people to inherit the God Hand, which is essentially the power of a God sealed inside an arm, called upon every now and then to destroy the forces of evil. Gene is not like your usual action hero – he complains, gets his arse handed to him, cracks jokes and, in typical Japanese style, is a pervert. Players have a great deal of control over Gene's move set; as you play through the game, you'll find all different sorts of moves to create your own combos. Moves are not limited to any one martial art – you'll even find moves from oddball arts like Capoeira and drunken style. Fill up Gene's energy meter, and you'll unleash the power of the God Hand, not only granting you a ridiculous increase in speed and strength, but allowing access to the Roulette Wheel. Contained within the reel is an assortment of unique, and often hilarious special attacks. One move has Gene creating a baseball bat out of God Energy and smashing his opponent into the stratosphere, while others are much more simple, like a swift kick to the family jewels (complete with a ding).

God Hand's presentation is relatively simple from a technical standpoint, but cheesy voice acting, a hilarious script and a stylish soundtrack provided by Masafumi Takada (Killer7, No More Heroes) provide a unique atmosphere – it's the only game I can think of that includes a laugh track. You'll encounter many strange characters, including a wrestling gorilla, and a group of pint-sized super sentai (Power Rangers) heroes. Like many "stylish action" games, God Hand features a punishing level of difficulty, even on the easiest setting. Players have to get accustomed to dodging every attack that the enemies throw at Gene, and make the most of their ability to customise his moves. The game encourages players to play on its more difficult settings by locking certain moves and features in the easy and normal modes.

While not a difficult game to find a copy of, God Hand had the unfortunate honour of being one of those games that gets released at a budget price everywhere across the world except Australia, so finding a copy for a good price locally can be annoying, but it's well worth chasing down.

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Quote of the Week

Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten had some rather mixed news to share concerning the Xbox Live Marketplace; while they are increasing the size of games to 350MB and launching a new first party studio dedicated to developing digitally distributed titles, they're also doing this; "In addition to allowing these bigger and better games we will be delisting older underperforming titles in order to keep the service focused on a section of high quality games." Further research around the web suggests that anything that, after six months a) has a metascore below 65% and b) a conversion rate of at least 6% (i.e. people who downloaded the demo going on to purchase the final game) will be a candidate for delisting. Does this not go against the "unlimited shelf space" appeal of digital distribution? I personally think it might be a little more effective if these titles were dropped in price – to say less than 400 MS points, just to gain a little bit of extra revenue from those achievement obsessed types.

Next Week

How about a look back at the history of the Metal Gear series?