Author: VGC | John

John Scalzo has been writing about video games since 2001, and he co-founded Warp Zoned in 2011. Growing out of his interest in game history, the launch of Video Game Canon followed in 2017.

Three Mini-Documentaries for Mario Day

It’s March 10th, which can also be written as MAR-10, which means that it’s Mario Day, an annual celebration of Nintendo’s mustachioed plumber.

Like Disney and Star Wars Day, the consolemaker has embraced this fan-driven holiday, and it’s likely that some kind of major announcement will happen later today (the smart money is on the first trailer for the upcoming Super Bros. Mario movie).

But you need to get into the proper headspace to truly enjoy the holiday, so sit back and enjoy this trio of mini-documentaries about the man they call Mario.

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“Mortal Kombat: Games of Death” by David Church is Now Available from University of Michigan Press

The Mortal Kombat franchise has been spilling blood and ripping spines for 30 years, and we’re bound to see some sort of celebratory announcement from NetherRealm Studios later this year.

But first, fans will be able to revisit the history of the series in David Church’s Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. In addition to recalling its arcade debut (and the political backlash it caused after moving to the Genesis and Super NES), Church will explore the multicultural inspirations behind the franchise’s creation, and its evolution over the years:

Upon its premiere in 1992, Midway’s Mortal Kombat spawned an enormously influential series of fighting games, notorious for their violent “fatality” moves performed by photorealistic characters. Targeted by lawmakers and moral reformers, the series directly inspired the creation of an industrywide rating system for video games and became a referendum on the wide popularity of 16-bit home consoles. Along the way, it became one of the world’s most iconic fighting games, and formed a transmedia franchise that continues to this day.

This book traces Mortal Kombat’s history as an American product inspired by both Japanese video games and Chinese martial-arts cinema, its successes and struggles in adapting to new market trends, and the ongoing influence of its secret-strewn narrative world. After outlining the specific elements of gameplay that differentiated Mortal Kombat from its competitors in the coin-op market, David Church examines the various martial-arts films that inspired its Orientalist imagery, helping explain its stereotypical uses of race and gender. He also posits the games as a cultural landmark from a moment when public policy attempted to intervene in both the remediation of cinematic aesthetics within interactive digital games and in the transition of public gaming spaces into the domestic sphere. Finally, the book explores how the franchise attempted to conquer other forms of media in the 1990s, lost ground to a new generation of 3D games in the 2000s, and has successfully rebooted itself in the 2010s to reclaim its legacy.

Mortal Kombat: Games of Death was recently published in hardcover and paperback by University of Michigan Press as part of their Landmark Video Games series. It’s also available to download as an open access title via Fulcrum in multiple formats.

Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole With Enter the Matrix, Path of Neo, and The Matrix Online

Even though its fast approaching the silver anniversary of its release, The Matrix still feels like a modern blockbuster to me. Maybe I just don’t want to admit how long its actually been, or maybe the eternal agelessness of Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Hugo Weaving has permanently trapped my brain in 1999 (my apologies to Laurence Fishburne and Joe Pantoliano).

Whatever the reason, it’s still great to go back and experience The Matrix all over again today. The gravity-defying fight scenes and its green-tinged cyberpunk aesthetic have forever etched the movie in our collective consciousness… and cast a long shadow over the game industry thanks to titles like Max Payne, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Control, and Nier: Automata.

But The Matrix also had a more direct inspiration on three incredibly ambitious tie-in games (Enter the Matrix, The Matrix: Path of Neo, and The Matrix Online) that were produced between 2003 and 2005. Let’s see how deep that rabbit hole goes…

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Hazelight’s It Takes Two Wins “Game of the Year” at the 2021-2022 DICE Awards

Hazelight’s It Takes Two continued its improbable run with a “Game of the Year” win at the 2021-2022 DICE Awards (and making it two-for-two after its triumph at The Game Awards).

More than 50 games received at least one nomination at the DICE Awards, but the membership of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences continued to come back to the same titles over and over again… which benefited the developers at Hazelight with a second trophy for It Takes Two in the “Outstanding Achievement in Game Design” category.

While it didn’t win “Game of the Year,” Insomniac’s Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart took the momentum from its nine total nominations (the most entering the night) and tallied up four victories during last night’s ceremony across an eclectic set of categories (“Outstanding Achievement in Animation,” “Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction,” “Outstanding Technical Achievement,” and “Family Game of the Year”).

Several other games secured multiple awards at the DICE Awards, giving the development teams from Eidos Montreal (“Outstanding Achievement in Story” and “Adventure Game of the Year” for Guardians of the Galaxy), 343 Industries (“Online Game of the Year” and “Action Game of the Year” for Halo Infinite), Ready At Dawn (“Immersive Reality Technical Achievement” and “Immersive Reality Game of the Year” for Lone Echo II), and Housemarque (“Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition” and “Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design” for Returnal) two chances to deliver a speech on the DICE stage.

You can find the full list of winners and nominees from the 2021-2022 DICE Awards after the break, along with a video replay of the IGN-produced ceremony, which was hosted by Greg Miller and Jessica Chobot.

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Comedians Ask… Why Don’t They Make Advergames Anymore? Are Games Just for Boys? And Are Games Too Violent?

It’s easy to assume that a comedian wouldn’t be the best good source to go to for some random bit of game history, but in some cases, they’re actually pretty pretty good.

So come along as a few funny folks tell us what’s the deal with advergames, video game violence, and why some people think games are just for boys…

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Listology 5.0: Untangling Atari’s Past and Digging Up the Company’s Best Games

It’s been 50 years since Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabny formed Atari and ushered in the beginning of the game industry’s commercial era. But thanks to an almost neverending series of buyouts and acquisitions, the Atari that still exists today is not the same company that ruled the arcade in the 1970s and the living room in the 1980s.

And in the beginning, even Atari wasn’t known as Atari.

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Bite-Sized Game History: Microsoft Acquires Activision, Pac-Man Design Docs on Display, and the Neverending Quest for Tomb Raider’s Nude Code

Despondent over poor working conditions, a group of developers left Atari in 1979 and formed Activision, the first fully-independent third-party console developer.

Here we are 43 years later, and executives at Activision stand accused by employees (and government regulators) of creating a hostile workplace of their own. But while a number of employees have struck out on their own over the years, Activision’s fate will soon lie with Microsoft, as CEO Bobby Kotick has decided to sell his company to the consolemaker, effectively putting Activision on the path to becoming a first-party developer.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision is a seismic shift for the game industry, and there are a lot of moving parts involved (including those abuse allegations and an FTC approval process that could take up to two years). You’ll find the first steps in that journey in this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, as well as a pop-up museum devoted to Pac-Man, and the infamous (and fictional) Nude Code from Tomb Raider.

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The History of Wordle: A Story in Nine Tweets

Every so often, a game comes along with a certain something that just completely captures the public’s fascination. It happened in 2006 with Wii Sports and its introduction of motion controls. It happened in 2007-2008 with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, a pair of games that seeded plastic instruments in living rooms across the world like some kind of Johnny B. Rockstar. It happened in 2016 with Pokemon Go, a game that encouraged players to go outside and explore the real world.

And for the last few months, it’s been happening with Wordle.

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Bite-Sized Game History: Video Games at the 2021 Hugo Awards, Shining in the Darkness’s Hobbit Problem, and RIP John Madden

The Hugo Awards are arguably the most prestigious prize in the science fiction and fantasy community, but it took until 2021 for the members of Worldcon (AKA the World Science Fiction Society) to finally recognize video games with an award of their own.

In this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, we’ll look at the Hugo’s first foray into video games, as well as another example of gaming’s lax recognition of copyright law, and say goodbye to the man who defined how football was meant to be played as a video game.

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