Game Review - Banjo Kazooie: 15 years later...

Back in 1998 I went on a road trip to Montana with my trusty giant (20 pound) 8'' screen TV, an N64, and a copy of Banjo Kazooie I was borrowing from a friend. During one of the more exciting journeys of my childhood I beat what I remember as being one of the best 3D adventure games ever made! If the save files from my friends' cartridges bear (no pun intended) any resemblance to my own skill at gaming, it probably took between 20-40 hours to get through the game with a 100% completion rate, completely unassisted by strategy guide or the internet (which wasn't a particularly useful thing at that time for walkthroughs). I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of Banjo Kazooie ever since and this weekend, a full 15 years later, I had a chance to pick it up, plug the very same N64 (complete with an expansion pack) into a 19'' flat screen, and use the same controller I used back in the day! I was extremely curious how good the game would still be and wondered with dread if perhaps I remembered Banjo Kazooie to be more fantastic than it actually was.

Cue the opening sequence. I was immediately pulled back in time through nostalgia wormhole by this insanely quirky game. Banjo smiles and laughs as if greeting an old friend, stares straight at you and knocks on the screen, shattering the 4th wall in the opening moments. As the cheesy music picks up, the new game starts, and Tootie is kidnapped, I couldn't stop thinking how hokey but strangely enjoyable the game already was. Perhaps it might just survive the test of time after all...

Plot

The plot is about as deep as one can expect from an All Ages game. You're a big brother bear named Banjo and your little sister bear, Tootie (named such because she plays the flute) is kidnapped by a witch named Gruntilda. Gruntilda wants to steal Tootie's youthful looks so you and your bird-friend, Kazooie (who lives in your backpack) need to rescue her so this doesn't happen.

Fearsome Foes!

Gameplay/Feel

The moment I had control over Banjo and Kazooie the muscle memories from years past told me to try all sorts of jumping moves that didn't seem to work. At first I thought that perhaps I was thinking of the controls for another game but after I talked to Bottles the Mole I quickly re-discovered that you need to learn all of the various moves throughout the course of playing the game by finding mole-hills and having brief yet comical exchanges with Bottles. A few such exchanges and two stages later I found my skills rivaling the apex of my childhood. I was able beat entire levels without dying and questioned if it was just an easy game by today's standards or if perhaps I was just really good at Banjo Kazooie. A few more stages, by Mad Monster Mansion, I discovered that the game has a fairly balanced difficulty curve and found myself genuinely challenged. Rare did a good job with balancing an ever-increasing difficulty without inducing crippling and entirely unenjoyable difficulty spikes found in games like Psychonauts.

The controls of Banjo Kazooe felt alright, even by today's standards. Banjo and Kazooie a fairly responsive and easy to control for the most part but it's sometimes tough to judge exactly where you are spatially, like when you're trying to jump from one floating object to another, or when your trying to judge the correct distance for an attack against a large enemy. It's often hard to judge how close/far you are from objects and creatures when swimming, flying, or even walking in some instances and I often found myself dancing around the pickup items. I think this can be attributed to lack of shading or shadow effects, which is something that can be blamed on the game's age.

Depth Perception Issues...

The Bad

There were only three things I outright disliked in Banjo Kazooie.
Swimming underwater felt slow, clunkly, and difficult to control, especially if you're not inclined towards Y-inversion. This made underwater item pickups frustrating because even if I knew what I wanted to do and how to do it I generally couldn't because of the lack of depth perception.

Another mechanic I really disliked was shooting eggs. I found it to be extremely difficult to aim eggs (a projectile you shoot) at distances greater than point blank. This was only mildly frustrating by comparison to swimming because in the few instances where you need to shoot eggs you are only required a lucky shot or three, and egg ammunition is plentiful.

I also noticed that there were a number of seemingly difficult-to-reach but utterly useless rooms you could reach that pertained to secrets that only affect the game's sequel(!), but that otherwise had no purpose. About half of the game's levels seemed to contain such a secret rooms and I found myself aggravated at the lack of in-game explanation, and the amount of time I spent scouring those empty rooms in confusion, looking for hidden notes or puzzle pieces that just weren't there.

After playing through 15 additional years of platformers and adventure games it also felt like there should have been a ledge-climbing mechanic in Banjo Kazooie, which my brain subconsciously noticed was missing. You can jump into ledges, you can jump over ledges, and you can climb trees, but you can't attach yourself to a ledge and climb up it (or drop from it). Mario 64 (a console release title) featured this mechanic so I don't think it was a system limitation.

"Freedom"

Between the quirky but expansive level design, Mumbo Jumbo's ability to turn you into various magical "creatures", and the ability to fly gained early on in the game there really isn't much of the game that feels unexplored if you attempt a 100% completion playthrough. Before the days where games pointed you in a direction with a giant arrow, a minimap with a giant marker, and a HuD that obscured 25% of your screen, there were games like Banjo Kazooie that told you "there are 10 puzzle pieces, 100 notes, and a few Jinjo's hidden in each level. Good luck finding all that, get lost in any direction you'd like, and have fun!" There was a sense of true exploration throughout each level and I was really glad to reexperience that. It's surprisingly fresh when not 8 hours before I was playing an unnamed modern game where giant looming markers and flashing lights show you where to go on a screen obscured by HuD, or in other games where the level design is so bad that you literally need to follow the mini-map for guidance and just ignore what you actually see on the game's main screen. Banjo Kazooie inspires a sense of excitement when you're exploring the levels by not force-feeding you directions and allows you the freedom of multiple paths... which ultimately lead to the paths you didn't take but it's the illusion of freedom that this game gets right and the cheery sense of achievement you feel when you complete each level with 100% efficiency. The game also throws some silly things things at you like Gruntilda's sister, who tells you all sorts of silly facts about the witch, like the name of her band in highschool.

Kazooie eats those...

Art/Music

The art direction is toonish and despite the issues with depth perception that I mentioned earlier the game's graphics were revolutionary for its time and withstand the test of time as far as I'm concerned. They're not bad and they'd be considered stylistic if you saw them in a new release. At worst, they're about on the same level as the games Nintendo is still releasing on the 3DS.

In terms of music I feel that the soundtrack to Banjo Kazooie was well done. The arrangements are simple, a little hokey perhaps, but the songs constantly change and evolve as you're interacting with the environment. Each stage has a distinct song and within each stage exists several renditions of that song affected by your physical location within the world. Are you walking into a dark and creepy cave? The music for the level will seamlessly become a slightly more creepy version of the same song played on a digital xylophone. This feels fairly advanced for its time and is still an example of what solid interactive audio design can be.

Breaking the 4th Wall

Closing Thoughts

Banjo Kazooie has survived the test of time and in my opinion will always be a solid classic that future gamers can enjoy and seasoned ones can return to time and time again. I can see myself returning to play it in the future, which is rare, though I still have yet to try out the sequel: Banjo Tooie.

Interview: JT Murhpy - VGM Internet Radio Personality

On April 3rd, 2013 I tried to interview one of my favorite people in the Video Game Music (VGM) scene, the brilliant host of my formerly favorite weekly-ish show/podcast, JT Murphy. His show, the Blue Shell Manifesto show had just taken an indefinite hiatus at the time of the original interview.

Almost a full year later, I was able to catch up with JT to complete the interview.

JT has been a podcaster, a chat moderator, a radio host, and is currently a Program Director for 8bitX.
www.8bitx.com

How did Blue Shell Manifesto come to life?

I first became aware of the VGM community when I arrived at MAGFest 7 in 2009, on the invitation of an old elementary school friend. The entire thing- the 24-hour game room, the bands, the dealers, everything- gave me an overwhelming urge to do something to contribute. I came up with various ideas for a video game music podcast over the next year, but it wasn't until summer 2010 when I finally had the opportunity to make it happen. 

At that time, the Connecticut School of Broadcasting (fresh off of being closed) was purchased by its original founder, and opened again announced it would be founding a student-run station on Live365, All Noise Radio. I seized the opportunity as soon as I'd heard about it, and by August of that year I had begun my first foray into content creation, regular editions of what was then "WNES Videogame Radio" (much like Kirby, the name was a placeholder that stuck).

The next few years would be tumultuous. I had some major victories (talking to Jon St. Jon and the MAGFest crew, talking to fighting game pros at the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 opening), but also numerous delays. It was always the delays that got to me. I had to take several weeks off at a time to work on career stuff, revamp some show parts, or just recover from burnout. I'll just mention here that one such delay led to the show's most dramatic revamp, shifting the focus to news and editorials, and working with a new name.

By early 2012, WNES had been picked up by 8bitX, and I was in the middle of transitioning a pre-produced show to a live weekly broadcast. While I was in the process of updating my tech and my audio to do I eventually decided to take this opportunity to re-brand as well. "WNES" was sort of a placeholder, plus there actually is a station with those call letters. It's a tiny thing out in Kentucky which just rebroadcasts ESPN Radio to the area but I've been paying attention to the radio business to know how swiftly and dramatically that sort of thing can change.

So I named my show "The Blue Shell Manifesto." It was a phrase I had come up with the previous September when talking about Fox News' predictable backlash to a game mentioning climate change, and also marked a greater emphasis on interviews and commentary on my end.

Briefly describe the amount of work that goes into producing a single show... How much planning is involved on pre-production? What sort of things are you doing as you're live on the air? Also, what sort of work goes into post production before you post each episode?

The average show, one without any new segments or major interviews, takes about ten hours from start to finish: 

•         Five hours for topic research, show layout, and other preparations, 
•          Half an hour to assemble the actual playlist and set up equipment, 
•          Two hours of performance, 
•          And another two and a half hours to annotate the songs and segments, save the podcast and post it online. 

Post-production normally consisted of just scanning the finished recording for any drops or skips in songs and eliminating any excess quiet bits. It's the note-taking that was the most time-consuming part.

If you were a listener, what do you think you would like most about your show?

It's tough for me to say. I've done this for so long that it's hard to look at it from the outside. However, people really seem to like my interviews a good deal, so I'll go with that.

I got to talk to a lot of great people through the course of working on my own program including brentalfloss, Jon St. John, Nicole Dieker of Hello, The Future, Order of Tyr, Kirby's Dream Band, the Megas, and of course, you and Juja. In fact while I enjoy pontificating sometimes, I feel as if I do my best work in the midst of a conversation. Some of the best moments on my show came from having two or more guests on and just letting them play off one another, like my E3 and MAGFest extravaganzas. This knowledge actually factored into my decision to get out of a weekly show.

What did you enjoy most about the show from a creative perspective?

The parts of my shows that I'm proudest of are actually my custom audio parts: the sweepers, the commercials, the intros, all that stuff. They're what set me apart from the rest, and help make a one-person show actually feasible. I love taking assorted sounds, quotes, and music cues and building them into effective imaging. Actually hunting down the pieces is a chore, but when I have them it's a joy to put them together, and it's by far my best quality as a producer.

What did you dislike most about the show, the creative process, or what you feel you could have been doing differently?

I've always had ideas beyond my abilities and on numerous occasions I've had to make do without needed updates, or really old imaging simply because I ran out of time. Worse yet, I've had to cancel whole shows due to an excess of outside responsibilities or too much burnout. Aside from the things I mentioned earlier, the weekly show was hindered and ultimately ended by the strain of doing the entire thing by myself: the show prep, the song selection, the assembly, the chat interaction, and then the editing, posting, and annotation of the show in a timely fashion. I have designs on getting back into it, but not until I've found people to help with these things, or ways to automate or cut back on some of the processes. 

Where did you learn your seamless audio-editing DJ wizardry?

Lots of practice, but there's one place that taught me better than any other. I was an assistant producer at Wired 96.5-FM in Philadelphia for a few years and one of my chief responsibilities was adding station sweepers (the bits of audio mentioning the station name, vital in the days when Arbitron relied on handwritten journals for ratings) to our weekend DJ mixes. I did that every single weekend for well over a year, and it trained my sense of rhythm and timing to what it is now. Also, while I did board-operating work for DJs doing on-location work, I got good at "hitting post": having the DJ's speech stop right at the moment a song's vocals begin.

How did you find new content every week? Also, how did you pick which content you found that you would use?

My content came from a variety of sites: Destructoid, Joystiq, the Verge (and then Polygon), and the like. I specifically chose stories based on how much insight I could put into them, any sort of perspective or new research or anything that built upon the original story. This is why my story selection was weighted towards fighting games and SNES classics, among other things. Just reading the story out loud would be a waste of both my time and the listener's.

Do you listen to radio? Podcasts? If so, what do you like and dislike about the ones you listen to?  Also, what are things that you listen for or notice (in a radio show/podcast) as a professional that you didn't before you knew more about production?

I still listen to the sports radio stations here in Philadelphia (WIP and the Fanatic), as well as rock station WMMR. Local sports radio is one of the best places you can find real listener interaction and WMMR, aside from being the only staffed rock station left in the market (Radio 104.5 is all outsourced, to the best of my knowledge), has a few people I draw inspiration from including Pierre Robert and Jacky Bam Bam, the latter being one of the few overnight DJs left in the business.

As for podcasts, I don't listen to as many as I should but that will be changing soon, as I'll be scouting for a ton of new shows to add to 8bitX over the next few months. Right now I tune in to Roundtable Wrestling Radio every Monday night, and catch the Black Tribbles wherever possible, as well as DJ Cutman's This Week In Chiptune and Cyril's Silly Show.

What changed from the original idea of Blue Shell Manifesto to its execution, to the season-based approach episodes, to it ultimately its end?

The season approach was a way for me to try and handle the weekly workload without overwhelming myself, but that didn't quite work out either. I still found myself struggling with weeks where I didn't have the time or effort to put on a program that would meet my standards. But that was only one of the reasons I ended the show and moved on from the name.

I lost a lot of interest in being known as a commentator when the obsession with social justice started. It's one thing to get behind the cause of getting more women in game development and organized competition, I'm all for that. I also don't have a problem with Anita Sarkeesian, I find her arguments to be pretty simplistic but she's not actually threatening anything or saying anything out of line. But the other extreme, the "OMG GAMERS ARE NECKBEARD SEXISTS" backlash makes any worthwhile criticism about gender roles in games extremely difficult and not falling in line with that is, at this time, a surefire way to not have a job talking about video games. The current state of gender discussion in the games media doesn't help anyone. It's just about beating other people over the head with gender politics. It's about attacking symptoms instead of looking for cures. Attempting to disagree with that on a weekly basis was just more pressure than I could handle at the time.

The other [contributing factor] was that this summer, Nintendo's baffling contempt for its fans was at an all-time high. They were already going after YouTube producers' revenue for using even brief clips of footage but then they actually tried to cancel the Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament at EVO 2013, a tournament that Melee fans had raised over $200,000 in donations to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation just to make happen. I was paying attention to that drama from day one and Nintendo going to war with its own fans over it was such a pedantic abuse of power that I may never forgive them for it. So, there went the "Blue Shell" name. No sense in participating in the future of fan interaction with a reference to a company that so desperately wants to stay in the past.

Where are you currently working on and where do you see yourself going?

Right now, I'm actually on a brief hiatus as I reorganize, find a better job, and prepare myself to handle 8bitX's increasing profile and listener base. To be frank, we've outgrown ourselves and everyone's looking for ways to expand this thing to handle the impressive goodwill and notoriety we've gained from the last two MAGFests. Once I'm settled, my biggest project will be finding something to run the music stream other than a jerry-rigged Voscast AutoDJ, something that will make for easier updates and promotion. From there I want to get back to doing my own show with a greater emphasis on the things I like, instead of the things I don't. I'm not in this to make enemies or stir up controversy. There are people in the games media, your Jim Sterlings, your Yahtzees, your TotalBiscuits, who can do so elegantly in a way that tears down other peoples' bullshit with little collateral damage but I don't have that kind of cool. I get excited about things. I have all the emotional subtlety of a Meat Loaf/Kanye duet. Sure, I still want to rant about anti-games like All the Bravest, or undeniable embarrassments like Duke Nukem Forever, because comical overreaction is fun, but the internet is crammed full of anger as it is. If all I have to offer is more of that, what's the point of me?

Switching gears...

Do you see a future in CD's or are they going the way of the VHS?  What about Vinyl?

Vinyl came back because people discovered that it could double as a musical instrument and that it's more physically durable than its successors. I only ever buy CDs as a hard archive for digital music, and I don't think physical media in general is long for the marketplace.

What are some of your favorite video games?

Modern: Borderlands 2, Team Fortress 2, and The Binding Of Isaac.
Retro: Super Dodge Ball, WWF No Mercy, and Katamari Damacy (yes, I'm counting 12 years as "retro")

What's the most recent game you've played that left an impression with you?

Naturally The Stanley Parable. I don't think it's as revolutionary as others think but it's a great exploration of the trappings of games and a study in how on a game's engine (in this case, Half-Life 2's) can be modified to deliver an entirely divergent experience.

Do you have a favorite band or musician?

Not really one favorite, but a few I'd like to comment on:
brentalfloss- It's good that he's getting into original game composition, but he still hasn't reached the peak of his talent yet. He's going to be creating amazing things all his life.
The Megas- This band is the reason I got involved in this whole business. Get Equipped opened my eyes and it's only a shame that there's so much time between their releases.
Mega Ran- I couldn't think of a better ambassador for this thing we call "video game culture".
This Place Is Haunted- There's lots of VGM cover bands out there, and good ones, too, but these guys are one of the originals, and one of the best.
DJ Cutman- I love that I'm getting to watch this guy build an empire for himself from scratch.

Finally, what's the best way for people to enjoy your current projects?
Right now, there's not that much of a current project to speak of, but stay tuned to 8bitx.com, and follow their Twitch channel at twitch.tv/8bitx.

Creative Update: February 2014

The last few months have been busy at best and I've accomplished much. While I have a few Video Game reviews I could post this week, with the start of the new year a quasi self-reflective post on things I'm working on seems healthy.

Photo by Tiffany Mueller

Random Encounter has evolved so much in the last two months that it's barely recognizable to me as being the same individuals or even an offshoot of the band I started so many years ago. I'm extremely proud of my bandmates as Rook has taken to professional bass lessons (far surpassing any skill I once may have had on the instrument), Kit got a huge promotion at work (I'm really proud of him) and has significantly increased in his recording abilities, Konami has really picked up a lot of the "band leadership/motivator" role & writes/arranges with me, and Moose is rapidly improving as a drummer, far surpassing the physical limitations of what he once thought was possible. We've become extremely organized... for us... We have some extreme goals for 2014 we intend to accomplish which I can't really share for awhile but we have some really exciting upcoming shows across the state, and at the shows we've played so far we've been very in-sync with one another to the point where I feel extremely comfortable in our performances... Something I never feel as a solo performer, and don't feel performing with other musicians. Sure everyone in the band (but me) is catching a variation of the MAG-flu, but all in all this will be a great year for Random Encounter, though I don't expect we'll have anything to show the public for our efforts for quite some time beyond live shows.

Careless Juja is also chugging along nicely. We're well into production of the Layton album and while many would find 4 hour recording sessions stressful, I really enjoy them in this creative outlet. Where Random Encounter is something that HAS to sound professional, I am not under the same self-imposed stress with CJ and can experiment as much or as little as I want to. To explain, I'm not particularly concerned if I don't become popular here so the only person I have to really please is myself (and Juja). My goal with CJ is to record music I want to hear, the way I want to hear it and I get that other people might not be interested, which allows me to try new things which I ultimately allow me to really grow as a recording musician. Most of the tricks I used for LMTYAS were things I discovered on accident while recording stuff for CJ. As CJ, when it stops being fun I stop recording, and when I run out of ideas I do something else. Juja's much the same way, we like the same things for the most part, and though we have a specific goal in mind that would seem taxing, recording what's left of 34 tracks in three weeks, I'm glad that we'll soon have a quality product of our musical friendship that we can share with the world.

Early Character Concept

The Liberty comic book series has seen its greatest developmental growth over the last two months than it's seen in the six months prior. There have been a lot of changes, so I'll start from the beginning... The comic book story takes place hundreds of years after the planet "Atrius" was colonized. Adam (the co-creator) and I sort of set an arbitrary marker for the "present" as being "roughly 600 or 800 years", what we thought was enough time passing to justify the social changes that would be required to make our story believable, but we didn't really have any idea or framework for the events that took place between the "present" (year 713) and the initial colonization of the planet. To fix this, and also to clearly compile a list of all government organizations that would be required to make the totalitarian Inner City function (with their respective job functions, key personnel, and jurisdictions) I put together a book called A Citizen's Guide to Atrius. The intent of the book was to paint an outline to the city's events and a (now very colorful) history over the course of 50 pages while giving bios for key figured, places of interest and the like, without giving so much detail as to make writing future books or comics about those events seem excessive. It's sort of like how I read the Wikipedia entry for the Crucible and was still captivated when watching it performed at a local theater, being genuinely surprised with the outcome of the trial despite knowing how it was supposed to end. The Citizen's Guide is effectively written (taking up most of my December), being edited by someone with a working knowledge of the Chicago NB format. The illustrations for the book should be done sometime in March and if there's enough interest we might do a limited self-publishing run, but I'm skeptical anyone will want a background book to a story that hasn't been published.

Recent Character Concept by Adam

With the sudden existence of a detailed history we had a make a large number of revisions to the comic book script to ensure that continuity existed between the history book and the script itself. As we've not published anything we're thankfully free to make revisions unlike authors like Tolkien (who i'm told desperately wanted to go back and rewrite the Hobbit), or Lucas (who everyone was angry at for revising the cannon of the expanded universe) which took the bulk of my January to accomplish. While I was working on this Adam developed a line of "standard issue" firearms for the Inner City, departmental color schemes, and a general color scheme for the comic, settling on an uncommon color scheme we think will be most visible on a comic book store shelf. We also added a dedicated cover artist for the entire series to our creative team, which we're really happy about. In the short-term we are also working with concept artists to create a unique sense of fashion in the world, a designer to create logos for each governmental division/department, and an archaeological illustrator (my girlfriend) to create a legit archaeological illustration of one of the city's key buildings, as well as an awesome 3d rendering. We're also working with someone who designs advertisements and logos as their full-time job to create a title for the series. I'm finding each of these individual processes to be fascinating, and working with professionals in each of their respective fields has been quite an experience. I hope to share some aspects of the creative process in the coming months but for now it's a bit too early to really get into.

On a final comical note, we had a rough revelation last week whereby we concluded that the amazing back-story we'd written for one of the main characters (which is periodically referenced throughout the script) could have never taken place within the confines of our world's history. Instead of rewriting what he have, we sadly concluded that it's all true... in that character's head and that s/he's simply delusional.

Game Review: Fallout

This Christmas break I heard that GOG.com was having a sale whereby the entire classic Fallout series was available for free! Having never actually played the original Fallout I happily "purchased", downloaded, and installed it. About 20 hours of play later I'm through the game and have the following to report.

Bar Fight!

Plot: (Spoiler free) You are a key citizen of an underground vault who's looking for replacement water-generating machine parts in a post apocalyptic 1950's California. The plot is a bit more complex than that but the real plot of the game is about how you experience the journey, exploring and interacting with the few towns and settlements that survived the nuclear holocaust. You can join or fight raiders, mutants, cartels, cults, unmask schemes, investigate rumors, and do most of the things that you would expect from a quality classic RPG of this era.

"Freedom": This is one of the oldest RPG's I've played that I felt offered real freedom of choice, specifically in dialogue and the way you interact with the world. You really can be good or evil, rude, or polite to the people you encounter and there are almost always multiple solutions to the problems presented to you in the game. Unlike action adventures like Diablo (which I enjoy for different reasons), I feel that the Fallout series helped set the standards I hold for the "freedom" I expect from a non-dungeon-crawl RPG and the original Fallout is no exception. Fallout requires you to use your brain and actually plan what you're going to do next at times. As a scavenger with a limited weight capacity, do you want to pick up gear that's more useful or more valuable? Can you really afford to waste the last of your rifle rounds in this fight or will you risk close combat? Do you want to target the enemy's leg, preventing them from following you, or their arm, preventing them from holding their weapon? Do you really have the time to be helping out this time while your family is dying of thirst? Fallout also features dozens of variables that will effect its ending.

A Direct hit with the Rocket Launcher!

Gameplay: While I enjoy turn based RPGs, the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, and the VATS targeting system it was difficult for me to enjoy Fallout 1 at times because it felt watered down from the future versions of the system which I've become accustomed. Understanding that this is the 1.0 of a game system that's evolved quite a lot, there are significantly less perks available, the scarcity of ammunition more or less invisibly guides you into a specific type of character build/evolution, leveling up feels sort of useless after awhile, and there really aren't many ways to improve your base statistics, but it's still a fairly fun system. However, Fallout is very glitchy in terms of quest acceptance/resolution. For instance, at the end of the game I had no less than 5 fairly big plot-points that I was entirely unable to resolve due to the fact that I'd played the missions in the wrong order, or was entirely unable to interact with a character (through dialogue) properly due to poor programming, or unable to beat a character in a game of chess because of additional poor programming (don't even try, it's a glitch!). Considering that the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system was created from scratch in mid game development after a disagreement with the creators of the GURPS system (who felt that the Fallout world was too dark) I feel like the programmers did what they could with their limited resources and still made a fun game.

Feel: I did a bit of research before writing this and was still unable to conclude if the GOG edition of Fallout was censored or not. I felt that the because Fallout was only a third as dark as its predecessor, Fallout 2 it was either an issue of post-release censorship (AKA GOG cut content) or perhaps the creators of the game felt it wasn't dark enough and compensated in the sequel. If there were any children characters in the original Fallout game they don't appear in the GOG version, so perhaps that can be some form of measurement if anyone reading this has played the original and can clarify... Possible censorship aside Fallout feels a lot like Fallout 3 in terms of story, world, and characters in that it's quirky, exciting, and adventurous. That is to say it feels like a different kind of fantasy RPG of its era, like Baulder's Gate or Arcanum. There isn't any of the sexual stuff or child-killing prevalent in Fallout 2 but drugs and their respective abusers are still present in small numbers. If you like Mad Max or A Boy and His Dog this game is perfect for you.

In-Game Map of Vault 13

Art/Music: The graphics for Fallout are what I think of as characteristic of the first classic age of PC-RPG's. The few 3D renderings in use for the game's 4 or 5 cinematic, or in conversations with key characters, are obviously dated but they're indicative of the best that 1997 had to offer. In terms of music I felt that the soundtrack, though not entirely memorable, matched the mood the game was trying to convey and created the right atmosphere. Where the game really shines in many places though is surprisingly in its voice acting. It boasts a talented cast, my favorite of which is the classic RPG narrator of the era, the voice I automatically associate with Baulder's Gate, Jim Cummings.

You can get permanent party members
but they don't talk much more than this...

Closing Thoughts: The aforementioned quest-based issues: not being able to help the very people I needed to tell something to or not being able to interact with them at all after I'd completed a key mission were frustrating and made me feel less of a connection to the characters and their world. This hurt my opinion of a game I otherwise enjoyed and caused me to halfheartedly rush through the game's final few quests just so I could experience the final really enjoyable things the game had in store at the very end (which were totally worth it!). For all my gripes I felt that Fallout was still an enjoyable experience overall and one I'd easy recommend to people before moving on to the greatly improved sequels: Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics, Fallout 3, and New Vegas.

Featured Interview: Dan Dos Santos

After much delay and a lot of excitement, I can finally announce that the January issue of Mir Fantastiki made my interview with the talented Dan Dos Santos the featured article! The cover you see was produced and printed over 30,000 times out of Moscow and is available in hard copy throughout Russia! Special thanks to MF for allowing me to post the interview in English, thanks to Sergey & Cate for the introduction and formatting, and a special thanks to Dan Dos Santos himself for agreeing to the interview and answering the difficult questions.

The Cover of the December issue of MF

A conversation with Dan Dos Santos

Dan Dos Santos was born in 1978. A dedicated fan of comics, his childhood dream was to become a science fiction artist. Dan studied at the New York College of Visual Arts where he perfected his love of painting on oil, the technique in which he creates all of his works. After college, Dos Santos rented a studio, prepared a gallery, and began work as an illustrator. Dan Dos Santos has collaborated with well-known companies like Disney, Universal Studios, Wizards of the Coast, and DC Comics.

Dan Dos Santos, by his own admission, likes to portray beautiful and powerful heroes in his paintings. Works by this American artist, who's favored genre is Urban Fantasy, decorate many book covers. Today Dos Santos shares his thoughts with us on how to break down stereotypes about comics, reveals some of his "kitchen" secrets, and confesses his love for the show Firefly.

You are a famous fantasy artist. How would you define the genre?

There was a really good quote I heard recently that said "Fantasy begins where nature ends" and I think it's a perfect affirmation of what it really is. The fantasy genre is broader than people give it credit for and while many people just assume it's a lot of boobs, armor, comics, and dudes with swords it's really anything that doesn't exist. This includes the majority of the novels that we read. The genre I work in primarily is Urban Fantasy, which includes anything with a little bit of magic in it or anything a little larger than life.

I think maybe 15 or 20 years ago fantasy art had a stigmatism to it and even great artists like Greg Manchess would work under a pseudonym like Ravenwood (or Rick Berry who worked under the pseudonym Rakeland) because being a fantasy artist would not quite ruin your career, but it would seriously add enough stigma that you couldn't be in a gallery or earn the same respect. My generation grew up with Spectrum, which I had in college, and I particularly aspired towards fantasy art. Even at a young age all of my favorite cartoons in America in the 80's were ThunderCats, Dungeons and Dragons, Voltron, and Transformers, which were all fantasy.

In your work, which is more important: Trying to tell a story with an image or showcasing a character?

It depends on the subject. I never think of myself as a fine artist but when I do get to do a piece for myself I'd say it's probably a little bit about the story and the emotion. When you say story I'm not thinking a literal novel but for the most part that is my primary goal: to achieve the flavor of that novel. I'd say 99% of the work I do is commercial work so i'm really focusing on the accuracy of the character, capturing that character's attitude, and getting not just a scene of the story but the flavor of the whole book.

Do you get to read the books that you're asked to create a cover for? If so and you don't like it do you get to reject the commission?

[laughing] So i'd say most of the time I get the manuscript and I always read it. Every now and then for the really big titles the cover actually gets painted before the book is even finished, like all my Mercy Thompson covers. I'm working on a cover right now and the author hasn't even begun work on the novel because they start promoting it to the Barnes and Noble buyers early. By the time I read the manuscript no, you can't say no anymore, and sadly there's a great number of really horrible books I've read, that even though the book is bad those are some of my favorite covers, oddly because they just have good visual material to work from. Maybe the character looks really cool or some absurd scene makes for a great cover even though the story is not so good.

Is it easier for you to draw with more specifications from a client or less?

Just enough. I really do need a compass to tell me what to draw. If you tell me "Oh just paint whatever you want" I could do a guy, I could do a girl, I could do a dragon, a vampire, anything. If you tell me to draw a cool vampire now all of a sudden I can think of 20 different cool vampires and can really focus in on it. Some of my hardest covers have been the ones where they let me do anything I want. It's difficult when you have a million options and you don't know what you want but if you box me in I'll find a way to think outside that box a lot easier.

Do you ever feel too limited by the description of a character?

No. Oddly enough authors tend to provide a surprisingly small amount of description in most of their characters because they want their reader to envision them (the character) the way that the individual reader wants to envision it. It's usually "oh she was really tall or really buxom and had glaring blue eyes" but usually not much more than that. So no, i'm not too restricted.

Do you think that portraying the portrait of a character on the cover of a book in some way inhibits the readers imagination?

It's kind of tough because when it's nondescript you always envision it the way you want to envision it and the moment you put a face to something people will love or hate it. It's either what they envisioned or not what they envisioned. So I can [create] what I had in my mind but if there wasn't that much description in the book, all of a sudden you start getting complaints from readers saying "that's not what he looks like," and I think "no, the author doesn't say what he looks like. It's just what you though he looks like." There's a book I love called Name of the Wind and the main character Kvothe is described as having red hair but that's pretty much it. I've seen so much fan art because the covers don't actually show is face, and no one ever gets my Kvothe, the one I have in my head. I'm not even sure that I could achieve that if I tried painting him, it's tough.

What's it like working on preexisting characters, like your Firefly/Serenity piece?

That's a geekout for me. I got that job because the A.D. knew I was a huge Firefly fan. I'm a browncoat forever and I might be doing a 6 issue miniseries (the covers). We'll see though, their first deadline is tight and I don't know if I can make the first issue. If I can't make the first issue I might not get any of them because they don't want to change artist mid series. I've got my fingers crossed. As for the piece I already did that was a funny job. It was a total geekout but because I have so much passion for Firefly I felt this weird weight in having to really do it justice. It gave me an excuse to go back and re-watch the entire season for the zillionth [**Translation Note: a fictional number that Americans generally use as an exaggeration. It rhymes with Billionth**] time, doing screen captures of Nathan Fillion's face, because I didn't want to use the same Google Image photos everyone has. Then, I flopped the screen caps, trying to  figure out a good face that no one had and I put it on my body to make a new pose that didn't exist. That's kind of what we artists live for and even though those kind of jobs don't pay as well as some of the other book covers those are the ones that make it all worth it.

Do you often use yourself as a photo reference?

Sadly so. I've posed as 14 year old girls on covers but usually I'll find a really handsome model to get the face. I think maybe it's the way I draw. I tend to draw poses for comic [projects] that are so off the wall that it's really hard to get people to take those poses sometimes, and I know what i'm looking for. I'll usually set the camera on a timer, get that body pose, at least just enough for reference, and then when I hire the real model I can move them like a mannequin and just mimic what I did. I'd say at least 50% of the time i'm using myself.

In Russia and in America people regard comics as simple entertainment for children. What do you think is the origin of this perception and do you think there's truth to it?

Absolutely. We don't give comics nearly the respect that they deserve. Some of the most talented and hard working artists I've ever met are in comics, particularly American comics because they come out on a monthly basis. French comics, called bande dessinées are treated so much more like an art form, and they take a year for the artist to complete. I wish we had the same amount of respect for them here. As for why they're considered childish, we don't get pictures in our books anymore. If I want to read Treasure Island, it's not childish to me to have a chapter head drawing or a picture in the book but for some reason we have that bizarre stigma here where people say things like "Oh there's pictures in that book so it must be for kids."

How do you think we can overcome the stigma?

I'm hoping e-books might be the saving grace. For a lot of people reading seems a lot more cerebral than simply looking. It's a higher art form or it's considered that, so I think pictures went out of fashion. Financially it's also really difficult to print a book with pictures in it. I'm hoping E-books, because there's no overhead cost to having an illustration inside an e-book will revive that a little bit.

What do you think of the oversexualization of female characters in fantasy art?

Artists get so much blame for that but it's the market. Almost every single art director I work for on a regular basis is female and all of those covers I do that seem overly sexualized are these female art directors asking me to do that, generally for a female author and a female readership. You can't blame it on sexism, it's not a guy thing. It's really just a market thing. Women know that if they want to read a romance novel there's probably going to be a buxom woman on the cover so they want me to paint a buxom woman on the cover because that's their audience. If I painted it to look like something else they're going to miss their market, not that it's necessarily faithful to the book, but you've got to reach your audience.

I feel like people are so worried about it lately that it might change. A lot of the worry is from the internet. Outspoken people are always outspoken but if these people really had what they wanted there'd just be words on the cover. They wouldn't have any pictures and no picture can ever do justice to what they want. My problem with sexualization: I don't mind making a woman sexy. Sex is okay. Making her look weak or like an object, that's different. If you make her look sexy and make her look tough, or make her look powerful, who doesn't want that? Guys want to be sexy and powerful in the same way. It's the submissiveness that I take issue with and for the most part I don't do those covers.

Everything you do is by hand but there are those who think that digital (versus traditional) methods of creating art will take over the industry. Where do you see the future of art?

It's kind of like saying the Casio keyboard is going to make pianos obsolete because it's not. Top 40 music will be created digitally, commercial art will probably be produced digitally, but there's always going to be a niche for traditionally created art. When you go to a concert you want to hear a real grand piano. If you want to hang a piece of art in your house you want it to be an original piece of art. So it may come to that, but I also still think it has a place commercially. I expect that within the next few years we'll see a [demand] for people to painting traditionally. There's just so much digital work and it's all become a little incestuous because digital art is so young that people are feeding off the same artists over and over that I think they're lacking the voice that they need, that they're going to look for new ways to do be creative and they might go to traditional media and manipulate their works digitally, almost like CGI in a movie. I think the perfect blend is a little bit of practical effects mixed with CGI.

Could you explain the concept of Muddy Colors?

Muddy Colors is a fantasy art collective. The basic idea was that it's hard to maintain a daily blog with a daily readership on your own (as an artist) unless you're James Gurney, so I got some of my best friends to help me put together a blog and it's grown from 9 to 14 people. It's basically some of the leading artists in the fantasy industry providing insight to their process and the industry for the benefit of aspiring illustrators. I have a really poor concept of time but I think it's been around for two to three years.

You've done a few videos showing your creative process. Do you have any advice for young artists?

Drawing is a super important aspect of painting. My painting was not as good as it could be for a long time because I kept overlooking the amount of effort that drawing takes. One of my teachers once told me that beneath every good painting is a great drawing. If you don't have that great drawing don't take the next step yet. You have to start with the under-painting a little bit before you take the next step.

For more of Dan Dos Santos' work, please visit his website: www.dandossantos.com/
For more information on Muddy Colors, please visit their blog: www.muddycolors.blogspot.com/

Published Article: The Escapist Expo II

I'm a bit behind on posting published articles. The following was featured in Mir Fantastiki.
Special thanks to them for letting me post this!

A Positive Gaming Community

The Escapist Expo II

What: The Second Annual Escapist Expo

Explanation: A three-day gaming festival hosted by the Escapist, an online gaming magazine.

Where: Durham, North Carolina, USA

When: 4-6, October 2013

Turnout: Est. 1500

The Escapist is an online gaming magazine that hosts a variety of unique content. From the video game music group Miracle of Sound to Zero Punctuation, a video game reviewer with a tendency to point out often-overlooked faults video games, it’s a quirky and unique website that hosted their second annual festival in early October.

The Festival was held at the Durham Convention Center in Durham, North Carolina, and even as I got within a few city blocks of the event it was easy to spot attendees in costumes or Escapist tee shirts. Once inside, even more people were dressed in fantastic costumes inspired by characters from video games, board games, or movies. There were also dozens of people armed with Nerf guns dressed as zombie-hunters, apparently there for a weekend-long Live Action Role Playing game: Humans vs Zombies.

The second Escapist Expo also saw the extremely successful return of their live music event, the Saturday Night Shindig. Filling their venue, The Motorco, to capacity with an extremely energetic crowd, this year featured the musical talents of Miracle of Sound, Random Encounter, and The Warp Zone, music acts that write songs inspired by video games, television shows, and movies.

In addition to a vendor room, ongoing panels, and a night of music performances, the Escapist Expo also featured a ballroom with hundreds of board games that people were free to pick up and try out. Also present were a few indie video game developers showcasing their latest creations, the developers of the survival horror MMO [Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game] The Secret World, and some of the creative minds of Insomniac Games.

One unique thing about The Escapist Expo is how approachable and friendly everyone is. TheEscapist (magazine) has spent the last 8 years developing a positive online community and the event itself seemed to embody this. I was consistently surprised with how friendly people I talked with were, how much the people I talked with had in common, and how great the crowd was during the Saturday Night Shindig. This phenomenon didn’t just apply to attendees, as I was able to freely chat with game designers, artists, and one of the creative developers of Ratchet and Clank at length without any formalities. At its heart, The Escapist Expo is not just a yearly convention. It’s the annual coming together of a positive gaming community I can’t help but feel like a part of.