Cast Your Vote: DP Writers of 2012 (Vote by: August 18)
Hear ye, hear ye! For public scrutiny, before ye lay three qualifying entries to the DP Writers of 2012 competition for thy judgement. Though ye may cast a vote for more than one, ye may also vote for as few as one. Only a single article will be crowned the winner. We shall reconvene upon this square to behold the judgement of the cast votes upon the morn of the eighteenth of August, the year of our Lord two-thousand and twelve.
(Translation: This poll is for fun - vote for one, two, or three of the articles. Ubersaurus and Treismac have already won the top two places by virtue of simply submitting a qualifying entry. The third place prize will be donated to Toys for Tots. The poll is all merely meant to determine who will get the top spot in the writing competition. Voting ends 2012/08/18.)
Originally Posted by ubersaurus
Fear of the Unknown: A Rescue on Fractalus Retrospective by Ubersaurus
The Atari 5200 has always been a black sheep of the classic gaming universe. Its many detractors will talk about the massive footprint of the system – one so large the original Xbox or Neo Geo look positively compact – the poorly designed controllers prone to breaking down even when not in use, and the fact that much of its library consists of basic ports of Atari 800 games (the system itself being little more than an Atari 400 with a funky controller). Enthusiasts will rightly point out, however, how the 5200 pioneered many of the gameplay elements we take for granted now. It has an analog controller with enough buttons (even a pause button!) to run fairly complex games, a slew of fantastic arcade ports, and some amazing home titles that hold up even today.
Possibly one of the best and most unnerving of these is Rescue on Fractalus. One of the very first releases by Lucasfilm Games (eventually renaming itself to LucasArts), it was set to come out for the 5200 in 1984, but didn’t limp out the door until 1986, alongside Gremlins and Ballblazer after Atari was bought out by the Tramiel family. In it, you are the pilot of a modified Valkyrie fighter, flying rescue missions on the inhospitable planet Fractalus. Humanity is at war with a species known as the Jaggis, and they have dug in on this world. While the bulk of the action is in space, you never see it; your duty is to pick up the pieces and rescue downed pilots. In a nutshell, you are supposed to maneuver your ship around the planet, dodge enemy gun emplacements, find downed ships, and pick up the pilots. There is a twist however, and it is terrifying the first time it happens.
For the first several levels, the game is fairly straightforward: you fly through the mathematically-generated landscape of mountains and valleys, pick off gun emplacements and kamikaze saucers before they can damage your shields, and look for a downed ship on your radar. Once you find one, it’s a matter of landing nearby, turning off your shields, waiting for the pilot to run over, and opening the airlock. Your task completed, you take off to find another pilot until you’ve reached a minimum amount and can blast off back to your mothership to head to the next stage. Had this been the entire game, it would get boring incredibly fast, but George Lucas himself suggested a way to give you, the player, a heart attack. To explain how, I’m going to back up and tell the tale of my first Fractalus experience.
The first time I sat down and really played this game was in 2011. I had picked it up during a trip to Chicago, and had finally hooked up the Atari 5200 to try out it and the other games I had picked up on the trip. I was impressed with the game – it had an effective first person perspective, made effective use of the many buttons on the 5200 to control thrust, land, boost into space, and handle the airlock. After several levels, though, I got complacent and settled into a routine: land, shut off shields, open airlock, wait for pilot to hop on board, and repeat. I had been doing this for a while, and had already reached my quote for the stage when I decided to go pick up another couple pilots. I found one, and went about my routine, barely even paying attention at this point. Imagine my shock when the siren started going off.
My ship began to shake as alert sounds screeched out of my TV. A message appeared at the top of the screen, screaming at me that a Jaggi had gotten about the ship and was tearing it apart. My ship has no internal weaponry, and clearly the other pilots were in no position to fight this thing off. Panicked, I took the only course of action I thought I had left: I fired the boosters to bring this fighter back to the mothership. It’s a terrible idea, if movies like Alien are any indication, but in the heat of the moment is was the only one that came to mind to save my life. Thankfully, it worked: the game never stated what happened, if the alien had been spaced or killed in the ship, but I survived to fly again. I was shaken up, however, and didn’t play for much longer before my nerves gave out and I quit flying.
It was strangely one of the most immersive moments I’ve ever had in a video game. I was that cocky pilot, who thought they had things well in hand, and I invited emergency onto myself. I panicked, and to save my own life I risked the entire ship, before losing my nerve entirely and dropping out of rescue missions entirely. The hellish world of Fractalus had won, and those men and women trapped on the rock would slowly perish without my runs to the surface.
As it turns out – and as a savvy reader of the manual can discover – some of the pilots have already been killed, and the Jaggi have donned their suits to try and sneak about the rescue ships. If you don’t open the airlock, they will leap onto the cockpit glass and punch their way in, venting the atmosphere and killing you instantly. The only way to stop them at that point is to activate your shields, which will vaporize them instantly.
Even without these tricky creatures, however, the planet itself is working against you. Starting on level 16, you are subjected to the day/night cycle of Fractalus, which lasts a whopping nine minutes both ways. Putting aside the sheer winds that would cause, as night falls, visibility drops precipitously until nothing but blackness is outside the cockpit. You can either fly using only your instrumentation, or you can land, shut down your systems, and try to wait out the darkness. When the only light source are the beams fired by the gun emplacements at your ship, there’s always a constant fear that you’ll end up flying into a mountain, draining your shields and crashing your fighter.
While the game does not introduce much more in way of new elements, it does build to an incredible level of difficulty. Gun emplacements are a more frequent sight, and tend to group together to hammer your fighter before you can get away, if you are unable to pick them off quick enough. More aliens hide out as pilots on the ground, and since the only way you can get more energy for your ship is by picking up actual pilots, this can drain your fuel reserves and kill you just as well as an alien on board can. Like nearly all classic video games, Fractalus will kill you, and the only way to look at it is whether or not you went out saving lives or cowering on a mothership, being overwhelmed for lack of space pilots.
The game found itself on numerous platforms outside of the 5200: the Atari 800 computer, the Commodore 64, the CoCo, the ZX Spectrum, the Apple II, and a few years ago, even a prototype Atari 7800 version had been discovered. Whatever system the game is played on, though, it remains a powerful and early example of how a basic action game can convey a simple story and play upon one’s own emotions and instincts.Single Smoocher, Double Dragon by Treismac
Double Dragon will forever be intertwined in my memory with the Summer of 1988 or ‘87 or maybe it was ‘89. Regardless, it was some murky time before I had my driver’s license and the ability to go too far beyond my childhood geographical confines. Back then I rode bikes, and this summer I made frequent bicycle trips with my older cousin Brandon, who lived next door through the woods, to the Circle K at the end of our Spanish Moss draped road for one purpose: to rescue some pixilated chick in a miniskirt from a bunch of pixilated thugs using as few quarters as possible.
Over the course of this yearless Summer that lies submerged in the back of my mind, Brandon and I got pretty damn good at the whole Spike and Hammer routine. No Abobo could burst out of bricks without being greeted by jump kicks or baseball bats and the majority of gang members were reduced to pitiful ping pong balls battered back and forth between our respective paddles, Billy and Jimmy… no, they were still Spike and Hammer at that point. I suppose, we could compromise ala Double Dragon III on the NES and call them Spike and Spammer. Anyway, we owned that cabinet, and we rode our bikes over to the Circle K every morning to assert that claim.
Yet, there was one thing we could not claim mutual ownership of: Marian. After the final boss fell for the last time, blinked, and faded, a line was drawn in the sand. Only one of us would ride our bike back home knowing that our Spike would get laid while poor Spammer remained a good friend who Marian confided to about her relationship troubles with over sexless coffee. Perhaps I didn’t understand the joys of physical intimacy with ’80s chicks in pleather nor did I have any inkling of the dread of being in the friend zone quite the way I do now, but I sure as hell didn’t want to be Spammer. Having a hot woman, pixilated or otherwise, wrapped within your arms meant you were somebody- somebody who wasn’t blinking, fatally alone on the side of the arcade machine’s monitor while your older cousin basks in his Alpha Male glory with his objectified prize in hand.
I wish this was a story about the time I finally was Spike after landing some Hail Mary jumpkick. It isn’t. The last time we beat the game together that Summer, I recall pleading with Brandon for mercy as the last boss died. “Let me win this time, please!” Swatting me again and again with the bat, he shook with laughter as I jerked the joystick frantically while ineptly barraging the buttons with failed petitions for punches and kicks that would make that bastard Spammer once and for all. The gods of Double Dragon turned deaf ears to me for the last time, and we rode back home wearing the same invisible yet still tangible name tags.
That Double Dragon cabinet taught me a few lessons that still resonate with me to this day. The virtue of mercy is a construct invented by those who struggle with achieving victories in life. Schadenfreude sweetens with the increase of the pain of its object. And the mind chooses the damnedest events to enshrine in its halls of memories. I don’t see my cousin much anymore as we now have a state between us acting as a buffer, but I still see him at family holiday get togethers now and then. I wonder if he still thinks of that Summer. I also wonder if being Spike feels as good as I imagined it would. Maybe next Christmas I’ll surprise attack him with a wiffle bat when I have a bit of eggnog courage flowing through me and find out. I’m fairly certain that memory would make it into both of our memories’ respective halls. I’ll try for the Christmas of 2012 or ‘13, I reckon.Saving the Summer by Treismac
The summer of 1990 saw the death of countless brave Italian plumbers*in the neighborhood of my childhood, Rice Mill. I would like to think, looking back, that they did not die in vain. That their sacrifice amounted to something; something bigger than the sum total of their lives’ calculated worth by a cold utilitarianism mathematics. What that “bigger” was, I cannot say. But… I knew it was true in the part of my heart that words can’t reach. The part of my heart that died the summer of 1990.
Walking through the neighborhood in summertime with Lyle, my friend since pre-school, was a hallowed tradition of sorts. We bounced back and forth between our houses playing video games at one of them until the mom who ruled the respective home unceremonially ended our gaming and told us to “play outdoors” or to “get some exercise”. Once ousted, we walked to the other Nintendo at the opposite end of our small upper middle class neighborhood, to continue playing indoors free of the shackles of either exercise or nature.
One care-free evening after Lyle got Super Mario Bros. 3, we were forced to yet again make the familiar passage from one cool de sac to the other.
“Dude! The new Mario is so awesome that I almost forget about part 2 being the retarded cousin of the series. All the different suits are*so*awesome, John. Makes me wish I had a hammer head suit to wear when we go back to middles school so I could throw a hammer through the gym’s trophy case.” Lyle said in an awesome way as we sauntered down Springhouse Drive.
“Yeah, I totally know. I wish my dad wasn’t so cheap and would buy it for me too. I wasted my allowance I had been saving at the flea market last week on some crappy ninja sword. I broke it on the first stupid tree I hit with it and now…,” I said as I looked off into the never to be grasped future, “it’ll be at*least*another month before I can buy my own Mario 3.”
“John, I could understand your dad not being able to get you the new Mario if you only had a one story house like poor Larry’s, but you’ve got a*2 story, John!” Lyle said while shaking his head ever so lightly back and forth.
“Sometimes… I think… my dad wants me to think I’m poor, Lyle. I really do.”
“Why? That’s stupid! Is your dad a Democrat?!!”
“No no!! God, no! He’s a Republican, Lyle! You know that! It’s just that he thinks I should learn the value of money or something.”
“What the hell does that mean? How can you learn the value of money by not having it to spend? So do the poor understand money better than…”
“No, no its that… I mean… like, I’ll understand its value by knowing that it cost something to get it… I guess.”
Lyle’s feet stop and begin to fill with a rising indignation that escapes from his mouth after the disbelief fades.
“That is more retarded than the second Mario, John. You should make your dad play the second Mario after playing the third one and say, ‘Dad. This is what the crap you say about knowing the value of money is like. Lame and not worth putting into my Nintendo. So shut up, stop being cheap, and buy me the damn game already!’ I just don’t get your dad, John.”
“Yeah… to be honest, I don’t get him either. Maybe because he grew up poor he’s that way. I don’t know, Lyle. It has to do with “character” or something. I dunno…”
“One time my dad started to talk about “character” or some crap like that and my mom started to laugh, but tried to keep a straight face till they both started dying laughing and had to leave the room. Dad said we’d have the talk later after they get back from Europe.”
Nearing my end of the neighborhood, we’re hit by a funny smell. Strong and pungent yet unfamiliar, we have no category to place this alien scent. Emerging from the woods, a young man comes into focus. Somewhere in his early twenties and living with his decrepit grandmother, Todd worked at the Circle K which he drove/pushed his beat up car back and forth to. He was unkempt with long straggly hair he pulled back in a pony tail and was seldom seen not smoking a cigarette. In a strange unsettling way he looked like a skinny unhealthy Jesus with an Adam’s apple. I got the gist from my parents that Todd had made some “poor life choices” that I would do well to avoid.
Adjusting to the sunlight as he comes out from the wooded area, he calls out to us.
“Hey… uh… kids!”
Todd’s eyes are on fire as he wears a relaxed yet crooked grin. There was something about him that seemed off but I couldn’t place it. He pulls his blaring headphones behind his ears off, rests them on his shoulders, and then finds a crinkled cigarette from behind his left ear that was hidden beneath his hair. As Todd flicks and raises his green lighter to his mouth, his head jerks back slightly while his eyes lit up opening relatively wide. Regaining himself, he swaps the crinkled cigarette out for another one behind the right ear that he examines for a second, finding it smoother, he lights it up and starts to smoke in a somewhat satisfied manner.
“So ya’ll enjoying your summer?”
“Yeah… I guess so. We’ve only got one month left before we gotta go back to…,” Lyle answers with a matter of factness that kids usually use at an adult’s quizzing.
“Awww… that’s too bad,” Todd said with words not touched by the remotest
sense of sympathy as he exhales.
“I remember summer vacation and school and all that sh*t. You know one day… all that will be over, right? Ya’ll are going to have get jobs you f*cking hate and join the real world where life sucks. So you little f*ckers better enjoy this sh*t and make the most out of it ‘cause its going to be gone, and after that even your f*cking memories of these happy lil’ days will start to fade, and all summer will be to you is just the time of year when everything is just really really f*cking hot.”
Lyle and I stand speechless. I glance over and see that he’s clutching the Super Mario 3 cartridge tightly in his quivering hands. Todd bends over slightly putting his left hand on his knee to make himself eye level with us and grins as he flicks his unfinished cigarette to the side.
“You girls enjoy the rest of your summer, okay?”
He kinda stumbled away while he laughed to himself. For a good 10 minute we stood like corpses as his words sunk deeper and deeper inside of us. Never before had I contemplated the transience of my life nor life in general for that matter. My dad’s allergy to pet dander had shielded me from having to say goodbye to furry friends as they were tossed into a cold merciless ground. None of my grandparents had passed on yet and frequently spoiled me in praise of my good grades. Always and forever, I had seen life as an endless cycle of school and summer with the Christmas holiday joyfully meeting me halfway to raise my spirits for the rest of the trek to Summer’s sweet perpetual embrace. Life was a game with unlimited continues where you got an extra 30 men if you knew the right code to put into the title screen. Now… I caught a glimpse further through the hourglass of time and saw the unforgiving grains of sand that were covering over me slowly but surely, until I am buried and forgotten, and the once sacred mantra “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A” is but the mumblings of a tired and broken old man whose mind and time are now gone. That moment in time of my sixth grade Summer forever broke the way I viewed every moment after that. Childhood had died. Game over.
Later that night, we egged the hell out of that loser Todd’s car. I tried slashing his tires too but the damn blade broke on the butterfly knife that I bought at the Flea Market. I think I finally understood what “character” was that night, too. When the blade snapped on the tire, I still managed to use it to scratch what was left of the faded paint on Todd’s bomb even though it was hard to find amongst the rust in the night’s darkness. I never did buy my own Super Mario 3, but my 401k is pretty damn good and I should be up for partner at the firm soon if I don’t drink myself to death before then.
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