Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd Like You to Meet...

Posted by Derek Yu Tue, 28 Nov 2006 18:27:00 GMT

Welcome to Indie Games.

...the face of independent gaming. :(

Posted in  | 38 comments

Comments

  1. jhonus said 20 minutes later:

    thats quite some indepth analysis going on there.

  2. Albert Lai said 24 minutes later:

    I remember the days of SNES gaming, ‘specally FF3/6j. That one sprite of Terra on the ground, head facing you, confused me for the longest time.

  3. Fireblend said about 1 hour later:

    Damn, that’s sad. I’ll personally have to track down whoever dared to offend Cave Story and make sure he suffers enough to realize GRAPHICS DON’T MATTER. Specially when we’re talking about the best indie game ever created.

    Seriously, what’s wrong with today’s industry? Now Super Mario Brothers’ a bad game because of bad graphics? The article isn’t talking about being good/bad, but that’s exactly what someone reading that would infer. I panic at the thought that someone might skip Cave Story simply because he/she read somewhere it had bad graphics. Disgusting, the sole sight of that game made me remember of how awesome it is.

    Get ready William Usher… get ready…

    XD

  4. BMcC said about 1 hour later:

    Forget that. We’re the face of independent gaming.

  5. Derek said about 1 hour later:

    I think we’re more like the taint.

  6. BMcC said about 2 hours later:

    ::shrugs::

    Same difference.

  7. Derek said about 2 hours later:

    I wasn’t being deprecating. The taint is great!

  8. BMcC said about 2 hours later:

    Oh, I think we can all agree on that!

  9. mmodule.com said about 2 hours later:

    I read that on their site the other day and I was kinda stunned by it. Cave story has the most endearing art in an indie game I can think of (also the explosions are hottt).

    ps I’m up to 213529 on titanion

  10. jhonus said about 2 hours later:

    its not that he says its bad art, he just completely misses the point. its a LITTLE like looking at an impressionist painting and saying “it’s not very crisp”.

    or in this case, looking at a pixel art game and saying “it woudl have been good for 1989, oh but the colours are nice”

  11. BMcC said about 2 hours later:

    Exactly! It’s dumb and he should shut his big, dumb mouth.

  12. dessgeega said about 2 hours later:

    it’s not that graphics don’t matter. it’s that cave story’s graphics happen to suit it very well, and are full of character and charm. and, in fact, since the gradual unveiling of the protagonist’s identity is an important element of the story, doesn’t the ambiguity of the sprite (which our friend william usher comments on) work to the game’s advantage?

  13. someolddoor said about 3 hours later:

    Mans, now this is annoying land. Are there really so few people left that understand the wonderful beauty of pixel art? Sigh sigh SIGH, my little friends, the world is coming to a freekin end!

  14. Jimmy said about 3 hours later:

    I can’t wait for technology to reach the point where everyone can get bland, ‘realistic’ graphics with relative ease. Then maybe people’ll get over this absurd tendency to be completely absorbed in details like anti-aliasing, clipping, polygon counts, etc, and actually look at the overall aesthetic in the context of what the game is trying to accomplish. Ha ha. … a man can dream, though. A man can dream.

  15. alevice said about 4 hours later:

    what the fuck are smb1 goombas?

  16. Khris said about 5 hours later:

    I always enjoyed reading through these, a commercial critique of Cave Story by the Pixelation community: http://www.pixel-arts.org/pixelation/index.php?topic=1394.0

    Anyways, what’s so bad about caring about graphics in a video game?

  17. karolos said about 6 hours later:

    erhhhhhh, he he he, He can’t see the main caractere… What is his point anyway? Cave Story is one on the fun game I have played this year, most of the lot of AAA commercial games. The graphics are very good. May be he is one of the doctor’ s seed, yes, he want to destroy all us ;-P

  18. negative zero said about 7 hours later:

    the article does put cave story under some bad light, all cos he can’t appreciate the artistic flair behind the game’s stylistic approach.

    sure, there’s nothing wrong with not liking the graphics, but it’s concerning to see that there are many people who would rather play a 3d commercial game over a freeware 2d one.

    sounds like a NO! to me. heh, wat a biatch.

  19. The Arsecast Host said about 8 hours later:

    YOU MORONS! 3D IS BETTER THAN 2D BECAUSE 3 IS MORE THAN 2!

    Jeeze you guys are all idiots. Of course Teenage Lawnmower is better! MATHS HAS PROVED IT!

    ;)

  20. Teeth said about 9 hours later:

    Although I agree with the sentiment here, it’s unfair to criticise Game Tunnel as a site because of this - clearly it is the guy who reviewed Cave Story who is retarded.

    Comparing reviews of two different games written by two different people is fruitless.

  21. Rakszens said about 9 hours later:

    You took it all wrong - its a LESSON: 3d - good, 2d - bad XD. I felt like reading some polish videogame magazine…

  22. Wolverine said about 10 hours later:

    I choked on my corn flakes this morning reading this…

  23. Clint said about 11 hours later:

    Hey baby, wanna choke on MY corn flakes?

  24. BMcC said about 13 hours later:

    Hah hah, Clint, you stud.

  25. Tim W. said about 15 hours later:

    editors are there to sort out the writers, i s’pose.

    Derek kicks my ass all the time. :)

  26. Lorne Whiting said about 20 hours later:

    “…Despite having dated graphics…”

    Motherfucker! Son of a bitch goddamn, this is terrible.

  27. abadox said 1 day later:

    the problem isn’t that he doesn’t like the graphics in Cave Story, It’s that he actually doesn’t understand them.

  28. Derek said 1 day later:

    Style is something that’s noticeably absent from so many games, and in the mainstream industry the excuse is that “wow, we have all this technology to make things photorealistic, let’s do that!” (It’s a dumb excuse, of course - you can have a stylistically very interesting game that also makes use of the same technology.)

    It annoys me that Usher took Cave Story’s distinct (and well-executed) style to be a negative point, while Scarpelli thought that just being “3D” and not horribly broken is enough of a virtue to warrant a plus rating.

    Of course, to each their own opinion. But why would you have someone who doesn’t like sushi review a sushi restaurant? And then you have a guy who reviews a hamburger joint and he gives it a thumbs up just because he didn’t throw up after the meal…

    I don’t hate Game Tunnel, and I think they provide a service to a certain type of gamer. I just hate to think that this is how independent gaming is represented to the rest of the world.

  29. Lega said 1 day later:

    Cave Story is beautiful, simply put. Endearing, charming, polished, cute… and so much more. I truly believe Cave Story is one of the best looking games out there.

    And then to see it get such a review? A truly sad state of affairs…

  30. NO! said 1 day later:

    cave story IS shit. graphics are pretty though.

  31. NO! said 1 day later:

    Sorry, I meant I’M shit. I keep confusing myself with Cave Story, cause I hate it almost as much as I hate my own emotions.

    cries in a corner

  32. failrate said 5 days later:

    Review review: William Usher’s review was bland and uninspired. He seemed to contradict himself: first praising, then decrying the graphics. Additionally, his syntax could be better. He repeatedly uses comma splices. I give this review a 3.099 out of a possible 10.598 points.

  33. aargh said 6 days later:

    what the hell :(

  34. Hunty said 6 days later:

    “I will say, I must confess, yet I have to be honest.” is TOTALLY going to be the refrain of my next emo song.

  35. Citrus said 6 days later:

    I’ve noticed that generally, only people who do pixel art themselves really appreciate it. Anyone else think this is true? Or I’m mistaken?

    Anyway, if I’m right, I have an idea: Put more pixel-art oriented user-customisable-content in games. Like the Mario Kart DS decal editor. Things like that… then the gamers of the world will eventually see and love the pixel like we do.

  36. Mark.P0rter said 8 days later:

    I am sorry but what exactly IS “game tunnel”?

  37. Teeth said 8 days later:

    Independent games review site. Google is your friend!

  38. NO! said 8 days later:

    …a better friend than Teeth ever was. :(

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