Hey, quick notice, but after watching a terribly dull movie (Transmorphers) on ShiMuNi tonight, the group of us in the Skype chat have started reading horrible anime fanfiction. Already, we've had GenkiJAM doing some good ol' Vegeta x Trunks action. Currently, Psychosoldier is doing some emo/romance Kingdom Hearts, and I will be coming up later with some INSPECTOR GADGET!
Check it out before we're done for the night. Oh, and some material may be verbally NSFW.
[Author's Note: This is an essay I wrote for an undergraduate course on Canadian Public History. So, it's long. But don't feel bad if you can't read through it, because it's essentially a copy/paste from my original paper]
The History Canada Game (also known as HistoriCanada) is a computer game, created primarily by Historica, and Canada’s National History Society. It is a strategy game, which allows the player(s) to take control of various cultures that interacted in Canada during the period from 1525-1763, and manipulate economic, political, cultural and military affairs in order to become the dominant civilization in the New World. The game is a modification (mod) of a commercial computer game, Civilization III, designed for adults, but HistoriCanada is targeted towards a secondary school audience, for education purposes. Therefore, a review of the game’s usefulness as a source of historical knowledge must take this audience into account, and determine whether the game fulfills its stated goal. Although the creators are respectful to the historical material within the game’s context, the weaknesses inside the game itself would probably prevent students from both enjoying and gaining meaningful insight on Canadian history.
The basic structure of the game’s mechanics is similar to the core material of Civilization III, but makes slight tweaks to incorporate the uniqueness of the post-Contact period. Users can choose to play as the English, French, or one of the major Aboriginal tribes (Abenaki, Algonquin, Huron, Mi’kmaq, Mohawk, Montagnais and Ojibwe). The key aspects of gameplay are to effectively manage the nation’s cities (e.g., provide food and resources, build buildings that encourage economic and cultural growth, etc.), expand into new territory, research new technologies (which allow the creation of new buildings and units) and engage in diplomatic relations with neighbouring nations (through peaceful trade, or competitive warfare).
The player uses individual units to interact with the game environment, and other nations: settlers/colonists are used to build/expand new cities, workers help build farms, mines and roads outside them, boats (such as caravels, carracks, or canoes) transport units across lakes and oceans, and military units can be used to defend or capture cities. Most of the units are specialized versions designed specifically for the game, such the French having “Arquebusiers”, the English with “Redcoats”, and the Aboriginals with “Braves”. The value of this is to show the disparity of military technology between the Old and New World, but the game is balanced by not making the colonial soldiers overwhelmingly powerful versus the Aboriginal warriors, which obviously takes into account the numerical advantage the latter forces usually had.
Finally, the game gives all sides the option to create “Wonders”: unique, and mostly historical, buildings that provide special benefits for the nations that build them. For example, the Hudson’s Bay Company will provide additional trade revenue, or “discovering” the Northwest Passage will enable the ships of the nation to move faster on the map. Of course, the Wonders, and their benefits, are abstractions of their historical uses, but serve as effective ways to emphasize their importance. Most of the nations, buildings, units and game concepts have relatively detailed historical descriptions within the game’s “Civilopedia”, which also helps to understand their uses within the game itself. In all, the game’s mechanics are detailed and refined enough to create a game with a wide variety of routes to “victory”.
Although the basic game structure is accessible for the primary audience, there are several weaknesses that make it difficult to obtain the historical knowledge imbedded within the game. Because the game is based on the game mechanics of Civilization III, the game lacks several key aspects which affected the development of the New World.
First, the game makes England and France abstract islands on the far east of the game map, and doesn’t include Europe (nor the rest of the world, for that matter). Ostensibly this was done to make the game focused on Canada, but it allows England and France to focus solely on colonial development and warfare, without taking into account the European and global factors which affected development (such as European wars, Caribbean colonies, etc.) As well, colonies are too easy to develop, since the game does not emphasize the difficulties of ocean travel: England and France are too close to Canada, and boats never suffer damage or sink because of weather (which even allows the old ship of John Cabot to map all of Hudson's Bay on its own).
This lack of context seriously limits the game’s historical accuracy. Assuming that a student goes straight into the game, the default options create a weaker game experience: there is no tutorial to understand game mechanics, the default difficulty is “Very Easy”, giving the player a tremendous (and unrealistic) advantage over the computer-controlled nations, there is limit for how many cities one nation can control (preventing any nation from gaining total control over Canada), cities can build units without player input (and they focus too much on military units), and the computer nations can easily work together against the player (e.g., during one game attempt, my France was attacked by all the Aboriginal tribes, and England, at once!) Also, the role of religion is almost totally ignored. Even though the French can build Jesuit units, they are portrayed, quite inaccurately, as military units that can “convert” the enemies they defeat. Finally, it must be noted that the game is built on a game engine first released in 2001, so this makes the game quite dated in the quickly changing world of computers, which many students are familiar with.
Altogether, The History Canada Game provides a weak, and less than enjoyable abstraction of the development of the New World, and although the game is not historically inaccurate in terms of information, it’s usefulness as a tool for teaching history to young people is quite limited. The game’s mechanics work against making it historically useful: it is too complex (compared to most other educational games), emphasizes military victories over trade and diplomacy, and ignores many global factors which affected Canada’s history. Although the original announcements for the game’s release stated plans to expand the timeframe to the 19th and early 20th centuries, no new information on expansions have been released as of the present, which means the current game is lacking a complete narrative of early Canadian history. It is quite apparent that the creators did not have a large budget for creating the game, and given the competition for attention it would have with commercial computer and video games, it is unlikely that students would play this game unless they already were interested and aware of Canadian history itself (meaning the game would provide little new material to them). Even though the creators of The History Canada Game put admirable work into creating one of the few video games with an emphasis on Canada (let alone its history), the game shows the essential weakness of “making history fun”: offering historical information in a format that is not very entertaining, nor accessible, to the audience.
(If you, for some reason, want the game, download it here.)
Do you like 8-bit style music? (You probably do, since you're on this site.)
Do you like anime and its music? (I know some of you must.)
Do you like mecha anime? (C'mon, everyone has seen Evangelion, and at least heard of Gundam)
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?...
Well, if you're still reading, look what I have here:
It's music (mostly opening and ending themes) from Gundam, Macross, VOTOMS and Gurren Lagann, all done as 8-bit chiptunes!
Available at AnimeRemix.org, it's called Operation British (a reference to Zeon's space colony drop on Earth in the original Mobile Suit Gundam series). As far as I can tell, it was a one-man project (by a certain Master Hatchet), and boy did he/she put a lot of effort into it.
Although chiptunes have been used in other genres like techno, they don't always try to emulate the classic NES sound. This album recreates the distinct musical qualities of the NES, while still accurately following the original anime songs. The artist even included a NES and a Sega Genesis version of the same track (Men of Destiny, from Gundam 0083), just to show how different the two systems' soundchips were. Even without looking at the title, I'm sure most retro gamers would instantly recognize that the one track has that unique, but not as memorable, "Genesis" sound to it.
Coming from someone who absolutely loves all things Gundam (if it wasn't obvious by my username and avatar) and a fair bit of interest in the other series included in this album, this was one of the most unexpected and amazing things I ever discovered online.
As for reviewing the album, I'd say most of the songs stand for themselves as high-quality chiptunes. All the Gundam tracks are from the Universal Century metaseries, so all you Gundam Wing and Seed fans will be disappointed. The VOTOMS tracks are a bit weak as well, since the classic opening theme isn't included.
I know that this came out last year, but before you say "old content is old", I searched through the blogs and the forums for this beforehand. Seeing that no one has posted this, I figured it was my duty is enlighten people about this retro-mazing combination of anime, music and gaming.
BONUS! Here are some other (non-UC) Gundam 8-bit remixes from Youtube. Not quite as good as Opertaion British, but still nice.
This will be the first in a series of articles that look back at my experiences renting video games, which used to be the main way I was able to play games, other than the biannual birthday and Christmas gifts. I have many memories to sort through, but I'll begin with this (long) story...
The halcyon days of the mom an' pop (well, more like weird uncle and cousin) video game rental stores are long gone. Although some still survive in strip malls across North America, they are a dying breed: squeezed out on the used games side by Gamestop/EB and on the rental side by big chains like Blockbuster. However, most of my best video game rental memories have come from the local stores and chains. They usually offered a decent selection, some rarer titles, and often some pretty good prices.
One of my favourite stores growing up was Video Time, located a good 15 minute walk from my house. It was in a mini mall that also contained a hair salon, and a convenience store that sold Blizzard-type treats made with chocolate ice cream! That made it an ideal destination to get a haircut, rent some games, and pick up an ice cream treat for the walk home. A pretty good combination, wouldn't you agree?
But the best part about video time was that it offered what I feel is the best deal for renting games during the summer: 7 games, 7 days, 7 dollars! Considering that at the time rentals at the big chains would be $5 per game for seven days (nowadays it seems to be $7 or $8), it was an incredible deal. It wasn't even an occasional special deal, it was available every day!
Being a small store, the selection was limited to the older systems (meaning the SNES and Genesis), but it did have a fairly big library and, despite the deal, the games weren't too picked over whenever I was there. I could also mix and match from different systems (even throw in a few VHS videos if I felt like it), which guaranteed I'd have more than enough gaming possibilities for a full week.
Normally, renting a single game could be a risky proposition. If the game was bad, the rental was wasted. The same was true if I got stuck somewhere, and didn't have quick access to the Internet and its FAQs (which was usually the case). But with seven games, there was little chance I would run out of games to play. If I would get stuck/bored with one, all I had to choose another of the remaining six and come back to the other game later. I could also afford to pick a few "safe" games, like s Sonic game or a Square RPG, in case my riskier selections turned out to be disappointing. This let me try out games I otherwise wouldn't have rented, let alone buy. For example, I never would have discovered the excellent Genesis "Zelda-clone" Crusader of Centy, or tried Mutant League Hockey and Football if I had to pick these games up by themselves.
On the other hand, renting so many games at once had its disadvantages. If I became too engrossed in playing one game (e.g., Chrono Trigger) there would be less time to enjoy the others. In fact, sometimes a few of the rented games would never even be touched in the seven days. Then, after having returned them, I would feel somehow that I had "wasted" my money on games that I didn't play. Other times it would seem like I forced myself to play a crummy game just to somehow get my money's worth. Of course, in retrospect the relative value of playing 1 game completely or 7 games lightly over seven days is pretty much the same. But I was a kid then, and didn't always look at the big picture.
I haven't been to that video game store in years, since I moved away from the neighbourhood it's in. I've never found a better deal than 7-7-7 anywhere else. I doubt that deals like that are very profitable, but that's what was (and still is) great about independent video game stores: they aren't stuck to a big company's directives and financial goals, and can stock and price their games however they wish. With the bigger scale of modern games (some can barely be beaten in seven days unless you have marathon sessions), multiplayer, and the fact that I doubt I will ever have a continuous block of seven days with little to do, being able to rent seven games at a time is pretty much guaranteed to be wasteful (either for myself or for taking up games that other people want).
Still, I hope the younger generation of gamers will get to experience the joy of coming home, laying out seven games on the floor, and simply having to say "Where to begin..."
Hey, its Jason. My older brother left this blogmaker on so im gonna post what i think. i thought you had to be an editor to write stuff so my brother must have hacked into the destructoid internet or something.
So i was playing the battlefield: 1943, and i think that its one of the baddest games ever. They got so many things wrong..
The biggest problem is The gamemakers didnt look in their history books, because this game HAS NO NAZIES IN IT!!! I read in class that Nazies tried to take over the entire world, so maybe the gamemakers thought that the Nazies couldnt find the tiny islands in the game. The problem is that the game has all the Nazi tanks, guns and airplanes, but they decided to give them to the "japanese", who never fought with britain in WWI. They were probably afraid that the germans would sue them because they make Nazis look bad so they copy-pasted the japanese onto the Nazi characters. They didnt even try.
The weapons in the game are totally garbage. You can't customize them with scopes, silencers and skins like in CoD4, so everyone just sprays there bullets all over the map, since they don't have aimers on the guns. The rifle never seems to hit anyone, but if someone uses it to shoot at you you die. The MP40 is way worse in this game then CoDWAW, since you cant run and spray with it and someone goes up to you and no scopes you. garbage! The sniper sucks because you cant lie down and shoot, and whats the point of having a sniper if the building your in can get blown up by a tank!
Yeah, tanks are way to cheap in this game. They have a big gun AND a machine gun AND a machine gun on top. People just sit in them and shoot people because they have no skill. Halo does it better, since they dont put many tanks on there multiplayer maps. Planes are stupid too, since if you stop in midair to keep firing at someone you just fall to the ground or get shot. The missles never work they always fall straight down, major bug! They even have cannons that shoot exploding bombs to blow up planes. They had things like those in Battlestar Galactica, but that show was millions of years in the future so the gamemakers put it in even though they never had them in WW1.
i cant beleive that microsoft made such a terrible game. they should have just made another Halo expansion pack and we would all have been happy.
Author's Note: This is my first c-blog article! Sorry for the wall o' text, but I'm a history graduate student used to filling up essays in order to reach that word count. That's also why the other articles I'm working on are languishing in various stages of overwriting. Plus, because I'm a newb and took too long to write it, it was originally stuck being published two days ago! That's not really fair, so I'm reposting it so it has a faint chance that someone will read it...
I've been reading Ashley Davis' series From the Console to the TV Station, and since Lucasarts' adventure games are having a bit of a renaissance lately (with Monkey Island), I figured I'd take a look at one of the most obscure video game-to-television adaptations: Maniac Mansion .Yes, ladies and gents, the classic 1987 C64/PC/NES adventure game featuring meteors, mad scientists and microwaved hamsters was made into a television show!
Is this your reaction?
The season one opening, featuring one of the few references to the game. Simple, but somewhat catchy.
Background
Maniac Mansion was a Canadian production that aired from 1990 to 1993, with 66 half-hour episodes over 3 seasons. In the US, it was broadcast on the Family Channel (now ABC Family), while in Canada it was shown on YTV (Youth Television). As you can tell by looking at these stations, Maniac Mansion was targeted towards a broad family demographic, and it shows. Essentially, the only common points between the television show and the original game are:
1. The title.
2. A scientist named Fred Edison.
3. He lives in a mansion.
4. Weird stuff happens, involving science. A meteor is vaguely involved.
Other than that, the show ditches most of what made the game a classic: the dark and risqué humour, the creepy denizens of Fred's mansion, sentient tentacles, etc. Instead, the producers used the basic framework of the game to create a family-friendly sitcom with a touch of the paranormal.
Also interesting is how the show is closely related to the classic Canadian comedy series SCTV. The creator of the show, Eugene Levy (now better known as...sigh...the dad from the American Pie movies) was one of the stars of SCTV, the majority of the cast and writers were also alumni of the earlier series, and much of the SCTV cast guest starred in a few episodes: Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Martin Short, and Andrea Martin. So, SCTV's unique brand of witty and referential humour was also present in Maniac Mansion, almost to the point that it can be considered somewhat of a spinoff (at least in terms of comedic style).
Cast
The second season opening, which shows off the cast more clearly.
Fred Edison: The patriarch of the family is a honest but bumbling scientist, resembling little of the blue-skinned mad doctor of the game. Played by Joe Flaherty (another SCTV star, though better known now for roles in Happy Gilmore and Freaks and Geeks.
Casey Edison: Fred's loving wife, who serves as a point of normalcy among the strange events that occur. Played by Deborah Theaker (she graduated from my university!).
Tina Edison: Fred and Casey's teenage daughter. Interested in science, she helps her father with many of his experiments. Played by Kathleen Robertson, who has been several average TV series and movies since, most recently as Azkadellia in the Sci Fi miniseries Tin Man. Also, pretty hot (at least later).
Ike Edison: Your average pubescent middle-schooler. Played by Avi Philips, who did little else afterwards.
Turner Edison: A normal four year old toddler...except his body has been changed into a overweight adult. Played by George Buza, a Canadian character actor.
Harry Orca (aka Harry the Fly): Fred's brother-in-law, who was accidentally transformed into a fly before the series began. Played by John Hemphill, whose SCTV character was an alcoholic who broadcast a children's show from a bar!
Idella Orca: Harry's wife, who is stuck at the mansion while Fred tries to restore her husband to normal. Played by Mary Charlotte Wilcox, another SCTV alum, who is now an Anglican priest!
Plot
The episodes revolve around Fred and his family facing a variety of problems, ranging from normal sitcom dilemmas (trouble at school for the kids, a bothersome neighbour, etc.) to the bizarre events that come about due to Fred's experiments (someone being shrunk, mutated, sent back in time, etc.). Think of it as a less macabre version of The Munsters, or the later seasons of Family Matters (with Stefan Urquelle, time travel and all that).
The series also tends to rely on dream sequences and meta-humour in order to create unusual situations, a testament to the quality of the writers. The first episode itself is a dream sequence where Fred thinks he is on a sitcom celebrating its 10th anniversary. The second season begins with Fred telling the audience about alternative pilots for the series. The creators must have seen the fourth wall-breaking humour from the game and incorporated it effectively into the series.
Why you haven't watched (or even heard of) this show
Well, there are a few reasons why most of you have never seen this show. Being broadcast on the Family Channel and YTV limited its audience, though I suspect we Canadians are more likely to have seen it, given YTV's popularity and the SCTV connexions. You probably have to be at least 20 years old to remember watching it. As a middle-of-the-road family comedy/sitcom, it didn't follow the path of any other video game adaptation, which have usually been a cartoon on TV, or a live-action film of dubious quality. The only other live action TV show based on a game that comes to mind is the short-lived (and awful) Mortal Kombat: Conquest.
The original game itself was obscure, relative to Mario, Sonic and other games that were adapted for TV. When I watched the show, I had never played the game, and only vaguely knew about it from old issues of Nintendo Power. I wonder how many other viewers thought the same way. Perhaps the lack of "baggage" from the video game actually helped the show to be as successful as it was, since the show could stand on its own, rather than be compared to the game (which I tried to do sparingly in this article).
Finally, the show is almost impossible to find now. A few VHS tapes were created, and used copies go for over $25.00 on Amazon.. Their are only a couple of YouTube clips other than the openings, and they don't capture the show's humour very much. As of yet, there hasn't been a DVD release, and I doubt it ever will unless someone at Lucasarts rediscovers it while working on the inevitable Maniac Mansion remake.
Why this show matters
Why did I write this (too) long article about this forgotten TV show? Well, I consider this to be one of the most successful video game to TV/film adaptations. At 66 episodes, it is slightly longer than both the Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Sonic the Hedgehog (SatM), which are the most well known TV shows based on games. More broadly, a sitcom on cable that is able to run for three seasons can be considered a relative success.
Most other video game adaptations have failed when they try to shoehorn the unique forms of storytelling from games into traditional film/TV formats, making them seem ridiculous: Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Hitman, etc. Other times, when the producers realize that the game doesn't offer much in terms of characters and plot, they go off in different directions that rely on the quality of the writers (which usually isn't very good, e.g., Super Mario Bros. The Movie)
Maniac Mansion got it right. The creators of the show managed to mold the source material into a format that captured the basic concept and style of the original game while still making it appealing to a general audience and critics, not just video game fans. They had a solid writing staff and cast, with a succesful comedy series under its belt, to bring forward original ideas and quality humour that could help the show appeal to people who had never played the game. They weren't there to make a half-hour advertisement for the game, or leach off of its success. They wanted the show to stand on its own, and it did.
I guess I will summarize by saying that Maniac Mansion was an exceptional show in that it adapted a video game into a family comedy, and was able to last three seasons. Regrettably it is difficult to find now, and few people remember it. I also doubt whether any game now can be adapted in a similar way.
If anyone wants more information about the show, go here.
So, what do you think of my first article? Any questions? Anyone actually remember this show?
Profile: I'm a longtime gamer, and started playing video games during the transition from the NES to the SNES. Although I like retro games, I play mostly newer games on the 360. Still, my favourite gaming memories are from all-nighters filled with Goldeneye, Perfect Dark and Smash Bros. in the late 90s.
I'm graduated this spring with a B.A. Honours (History) at the University of Saskatchewan. I'm starting work on my M.A. this fall at Carleton University in Ottawa, and guess what my thesis proposal is...the use of history in VIDEO GAMES!!! Maybe this will make up for my shattered dreams of being a video game programmer (I was a Comp. Sci. student in my first year), and hopefully let me get research grants to play games!
Systems: NES, Super NES, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo 64, Wii, Sega Genesis, Playstation 2, Xbox 360, PC, Colecovision (my dad's). Also, many other systems (including arcade) that I not emulate.
Some Favourite Games: Retro: Megaman 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars, Sonic 3, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Robotrek, Illusion of Gaia, Megaman X, Strider, Metal Slug, Twilight Zone pinball.
Retro Limbo: Ogre Battle 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Mystical Ninja starring Goemon, Goemon's Great Adventure, Descent: Freespace.
Modern: Call of Duty 4 and World at War, Fallout 3, Bionic Commando Rearmed, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Metroid Prime 1-3, Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam, Hearts of Iron II, Europa Universalis III, Civilization IV.
Other interests: -History, of course. Particular fields: military, Canadian, counterfactual, museums and public history
-Politics. Card-carrying, though not very active, socialist.
-Anime. Favourite series: Anything Gundam, Evangelion, Macross, Code Geass.
-TV (i.e., mostly through torrents): Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Mythbusters, Are You Being Served?, Fawlty Towers, Monty Python's Flying Circus (TV series, not films).
Destructoid is an independently-run publication forged by our love of video games and the gaming community's need of accountable enthusiast press living the dream since March 16, 2006
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