R.Regular readers will know that I find the ability of video games to bring people together to be one of the most interesting things about them. I have a soft spot for stories about strangers meeting, and the games make that happen with delightful regularity. I once wrote about a long-distance couple who stayed connected by playing Dark Souls, struggling with that game’s opaque online matchmaking to make sure they could always find each other’s summoning signs, tucked away in a corner behind a wall. or under a distinctive vase. And I’m fascinated by how Eve Online has attracted a particular type of person, usually obsessed with science fiction, very often in some position of power in real life, to create an intergalactic community that mimics the economy and power structures. of ours. , but with additional tricks.
Online gaming has given us a lot in this regard: people have formed lifelong friendships through all kinds of video games, from World of Warcraft to No Man’s Sky. Twitch is also part of this continuum: streamers don’t just play for an audience, they build communities, where relationships can then be formed.
I experience the social aspect of gaming on a smaller, more intimate scale. Aside from a brief Guild Wars obsession as a teenager, I’ve never been into online multiplayer. For whatever reason, I don’t connect with people in those worlds, behind screen names, but I’ve spent most of my life playing with people in real life in front of the same screen. The revival of GoldenEye 007 this month has reminded me how vital that type of multiplayer has been to my personal gaming history.
When I was little, I played video games with my brother on the family SNES and N64. In the tiny room under the stairs that our parents let us cover with ads and posters ripped from video game magazines, we’d diligently enter a co-op cheat code so we could play Diddy Kong Racing together, one of us waiting near the finish line. line to sabotage our competitors with rockets while the other flew by first. We played Smash Bros. and Mario Party together, and developed a rather nasty rivalry in Mario Tennis.
As a teenager, I would pull my friends over, hauling TVs around the house to facilitate 16-player Halo LAN parties when I got my hands on an Xbox. On one glorious night in 2004, I managed to get enough people, Game Boys, and link cables into the same room to play four-player Zelda on the Gamecube, and it was an absolute riot. In college, Guitar Hero was always out at parties (and Rock Band, DJ Hero, and every other music game enjoyed a brief surge in popularity when Activision squeezed the squeeze on the genre).
In 2013, he was running Kotaku UK, the lawless games site he edited before coming to The Guardian. The shining moments I’d had with local multiplayer games growing up inspired me to start Kotaku game nights, where we’d pack up PlayStations and controllers and drag them to the pub, hosting events with a local fighting game community. Total strangers would be joined by pints and left-field multiplayer classics like Nidhogg or Sportsfriends, or that reliable old standby, Mario Kart 8; downstairs, people competed in Smash, Street Fighter, and Tekken tournaments. (In 2015 we brought Kotaku game nights to Glastonbury, in a game tent in Shangri-La – unfortunately this didn’t work out. quite unsurprisingly, as we became the de facto nursery for the free-roaming gangs of artists’ children. But still, it was a moment.)
Yo loved seeing how people interacted with those games in the real world. Anyone who still thinks gaming is an anti-social pastime should walk into one of the many gaming bars and cafes out there these days and watch them make people cry with communal laughter.
Now, my kids and I play Switch games together; I managed to get my six-year-old son to Kirby’s Forgotten Land, and I can be his guide and helper, sitting right next to him. When my teenage stepson was the same age, I introduced him to Minecraft and all he wanted to do for a few months was play together. I well remember the pang of sadness I felt when he started to prefer playing online with his friends.
No doubt this is a matter of age; The memories of today’s teenagers of playing Fortnite or Minecraft with their friends online as a child will presumably be as fragrant to them as my memories of split-screen multiplayer. Because gaming is still a relatively young medium (it’s been 50 years since Pong) and online gaming is even younger, we’re just beginning to see generational differences in the way we connect through it. But at the risk of sounding like my mom worried that texting was preventing us all from having real conversations with each other: I really hope we never lose split-screen multiplayer and the in-person connection it fosters. .
what to play
Continuing with the nostalgic theme of this week’s issue, Nintendo announced a remaster of the incomparably atmospheric first metroid last week, and then immediately released it online. Live! This is some of the best science fiction in this medium, no kidding. Stripped of his powers, he guides bounty hunter Samus Aran through abandoned space locations, but despite what it looks like, it’s not really a first-person shooter. It is an adventure; You are an archaeologist, a puzzle solver, a documentarian. I had forgotten how good Metroid Prime was in the decades since I first played it, and I’m happy to report that the overhaul of the visuals and controls makes it even better. It’s expensive for a re-release at £34.99, but great.
Available in: nintendo switch
Approximate playing time: 15 hours
what to read
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Axios Reports that the people who worked in he original first metroidreleased in 2002, they are not properly credited in the re-release and have expressed their frustrations about it.
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Double Fine have launched a massive 22-hour documentary series on the making of their excellent psychonauts 2based on six years of footage. Watch the trailer: The entire series is a huge time commitment, but this is the kind of start-to-finish information about the game’s development that we just never get.
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I’m not quite sure how to phrase this, but the developers of The Witcher 3 seem to have accidentally incorporated a fan-made mod giving their female characters realistic genitalia and pubic hair in the December PS5/Xbox Series X version of the game. And the creator of that mod is angry because he says they did not ask for permission. Just a normal day in game development…
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A book recommendation from our well-read gaming correspondent Keith Stuart: player vs monster – The making and dismantling of the video game monstrosity by Jaroslav Svelch. MIT Press publishes many fascinating books on game theory and this is the last – a comprehensive study of monsters in video games, looking at their historical sources, design conventions, and the fears they exploit. Intellectual yet accessible, and full of examples from Golden Ax to Shadow of the Colossus.
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In addition to announcing and releasing a Metroid Prime remaster, Nintendo showed off new footage of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Pikmin 4 at Nintendo Direct from last weekand also announced that Game Boy and GBA games are now playable on Switch, among many others (here is the summary). Tears of the Kingdom showed Link riding around in a makeshift wagon that is very reminiscent of the niche vehicle experimentation game Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, which is not something he had on my 2023 bingo card.
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what to click
TechScape: How Nintendo stayed the most innovative tech company of our time
A Beautifully Preserved Slice Of Video Game History – Toaplan Arcade Shoot ‘Em Up Collection Vol 1 Review
The Last of Us recap episode five: all hell breaks loose
Can The Super Mario Bros Movie put an end to 30 years of terrible video game movies?
Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard buy will hurt UK gamers, watchdog says
block of questions
Writing this week’s newsletter made me realize that my knowledge of multiplayer hits is stuck in 2015, so this time I have a question for you. youreaders: what are they your favorite split-screen or party games? Which are the proven favorites and which new ones are making their mark?
I’ll start with my own outdated recommendations from my days hosting game nights in bars: uncertain competitive fencing in nidhogg and its sequel; circling the narwhals in star whale; offbeat riffs on various sports in athletes; lethal league, an indie baseball fighting game; baby jelly wrestling in gang beasts; cute pixel battles with archery and magic in Tower Fall: Ascension; and the greatness of all time rocket league (above), soccer with RC cars. oh and nintendo land. Mario Chase is an underrated work of genius.
Send your selections to [email protected].
