CORFAISUS'S PROFILE

I need use of the Crown series of assets for my game, so in order to legally use them, I need to purchase the original RPG Maker 2000 (Tsukuru). I can't find a market that works, so I need your help.

Thank you.

People like to discuss the possible intentions of a story or a character being written in such a way. What is the author trying to say by writing their this or that character as the villain or the healer, etc. Sometimes arguments break out that seem to derail what else the game has going on in it or its other qualities that were clearly intentional and not just hypothetically. What if the author very much meant for this to be how the character is written? Even if it's uncomfortable (not criminal, just disconcerting), shouldn't they be given a pass as a legitimate contribution to the story?

What if it isn't necessarily the character but the scene? If you're establishing a serious or disturbing mood, how often do you allow the characters to joke around before the shit hits the fan? At what point do you run the risk of ruining the narrative? What if you weren't meant to be jokey yet what you've created ends up producing an unintentionally comical tone? What if you're convinced that it has to be this way in order to get your point across?

Maybe you would like to answer some of these questions or give your experiences on the matter.

In before this gets C&D'd. If it doesn't happen before Saturday, download it immediately and treasure it forever because Capcom is never going to do what Nintendo did with Super Mario Bros. X and make their own. That being said, if it does survive (highly unlikely) do you think we'll get a jump on creating community games with this?

EDIT: "I'm not a robot" has never made me smile more than it does with this thread.

I was doing a lot of thinking about my childhood last night and a certain game came to mind. The game: Sesame Street 1-2-3 for the NES. The longing effects it's had on my mind has been nothing short of momentous, but for all the wrong reasons.


23 years later and I still remember how deeply this game upset me, but I can't put my finger on exactly why. I know it had something to do with the moon, but was it just that? Was its dead set eyes and sunken features so jarring that I set it down then and never picked it back up? That I would actually bring my mother into the room to beg that I never play this game again - to leave learning to schools - and return to happier times with Mario and Kirby?

It should be stated that I never had a problem with Ernie and that the use of colored shapes to construct images of stuff like birds is something I quite like and would like to see return in games even meant for older folk.

What could've been an excellent teaching tool for young children centered around a familiar and well beloved television show set in a medium that encourages play suddenly became the thing of nightmares for many (just view the comments section of the video above and you'll see what I mean). And the strange thing is, even though the signs of mental scarring are clear, I don't blame Rare (this game was made by Rare, by the way; not a crowning achievement in the slightest) for what they set out to do. They knew exactly what they were getting into and clearly wanted to make something good and helpful for early development... but they failed miserably due to one or two fatal flaws.

The biggest of which is the overwhelming sense of negative reinforcement of failure pushing the player away as opposed to the positive reinforcement of succeeding encouraging bonding with the product and the lesson at hand. Shigeru Miyamoto once described his game design approach towards Super Mario Bros 1 as giving the player a safe place to experiment with the game before moving forward and finding surprises and rewards that would "make them happy".


Sesame Street 1-2-3 could've used this sort of reward system to help counterbalance what ultimately made its way into the product. You see, in early learning (at least in the States), it's common practice to give young children snacks (animal crackers and juice boxes, typically) in the middle of a teaching session and/or candy or colorful stickers for succeeding to keep them engaged. While this sort of thing isn't possible with a Nintendo cartridge, they could've broken up the lesson with fun mini-games that made the player feel good and gave them something to look forward to.

Instead what we were given were creepy depictions of our favorite Sesame Street characters (friends, really) and a celestial being that was disappointed in us (nobody else in the silhouette of the neighborhood, just us) for making mistakes; mistakes, mind you, that are pivotal to the learning process. The failure jingle didn't help, either.

But the instruments of learning are all there, and that's what disappoints me the most about this game. It could've been so much more if only one or two things were changed to make it less upsetting, but people only remember it for how badly/scared it made them feel and how it made them cry because they didn't understand why they were being punished by their friends on Sesame Street.

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Did you ever play this game growing up and did you have a similar experience? Or do you know of any other games that just barely missed the mark? That despite having what seemed to be every item on the checklist present just didn't succeed in what it set out to do: provide an entertaining experience.

Share below.

EDIT: Shortly after submitting this thread, I found another video hosted on Vox's Youtube channel that further interviews Shigeru Miyamoto about his design philosophy and what's made him such an iconic designer over the years. Most of this you'll probably already know, but I feel it's a good watch all the same.

This is an odd discussion, but I'm one to think outside the box, so let's get this started. Have you ever played or seen a game that for whatever reason struck you as something that if it were edible, would be extremely tasty? Maybe the graphics have a strangely food-like feel to them (we're not necessarily talking Kirby's Adventure's Ice Cream Island) or maybe the music just feels crunchy and peanut buttery? I'm not expecting this topic to explode given the subject matter, but what the hell, let's give it a go.

My game would be Darkwing Duck for the NES, namely the turtles that sneeze and shoot their shells at you and the "thickness" (for lack of a better word) of the sound effects. For some reason, that's always made me hungry.