VGC | John – Page 15 – Video Game Canon

Supergiant’s Hades Collects Another “Game of the Year” Statuette at the 2020-2021 GDC Awards

This year’s Game Developers Conference is operating slightly out of sync with its normal spot on the calendar, but it was still business as usual (in more ways than one) for the 2020-2021 Game Developers Choice (GDC) Awards.

Ghost of Tsushima, Hades, and The Last of Us Part II tied for the most nominations with six apiece, so competition was stiff for the night’s biggest prize, but it was Hades that took home “Game of the Year” (as well as “Best Audio” and “Best Design”) during last night’s virtual ceremony.

Supergiant’s roguelike just narrowly missed a clean sweep of all the major year-end awards, and the only statuette to elude the veteran developers was the “rising angel” from The Game Awards, which instead went to Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II.

As you may have guessed, Sony’s one-two punch from the PS4’s final Summer didn’t go home empty-handed. The Last of Us Part II was selected as the recipient of the “Best Narrative” award, while Ghost of Tsushima picked up “Best Visual Art” and the “Audience Award.”

Other games that expanded their trophy case last night included Genshin Impact (“Best Mobile Game”), Half-Life: Alyx (“Best VR/AR Game”), Microsoft Flight Simulator (“Best Technology”), Dreams (“Innovation Award”), and Phasmophobia (“Best Debut”)

You can find a full list of all the winners, nominees, and Honorable Mentions from the 2020-2021 Game Developers Choice Awards, as well as a video replay of the show (which was hosted by writer Sam Maggs), after the break.

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Former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime is Writing a Memoir

Thanks to his penchant for saying the right thing at the right time, Reggie Fils-Aime completely transformed Nintendo of America’s public image during his tenure as President and Chief Operating Officer from 2006 through 2019. For more than a decade, he played host and ringmaster during Nintendo’s public presentations and his irreverent attitude and larger-than-life persona encouraged fans to look at the company in a new light.

After his retirement in 2019, Fils-Aime put pen to paper and began to write a memoir about his early life, his time in the game industry, and his thoughts about succeeding in business. Over the weekend we learned that the book will be known as Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo, and that it’ll be published on May 22, 2022 by HarperCollins Leadership:

Although he’s best known as Nintendo’s iconic President of the Americas-immortalized for opening Nintendo’s 2004 E3 presentation with, “My name is Reggie, I’m about kicking ass, I’m about taking names, and we’re about making games”-Reggie Fils-Aime’s story is the ultimate gameplan for anyone looking to beat the odds and achieve success.

Learn from Reggie how to leverage disruptive thinking to pinpoint the life choices that will make you truly happy, conquer negative perceptions from those who underestimate or outright dismiss you, and master the grit, perseverance, and resilience it takes to dominate in the business world and to reach your professional dreams.

Disrupting the Game will also touch on Fils-Aime’s “humble childhood as the son of Haitian immigrants,” as well as how to “maintain relentless curiosity and know when to ask questions to shatter the status quo.”

As Fils-Aime famously said when introducing the Wii Balance Board and Wii Fit in 2007… my body is ready.

UPDATE (2/2/22): HarperCollins Leadership has announced that Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo will be published on May 3, 2022.

UPDATE (5/3/22): Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo is now available in stores, and Reggie was kind enough to share an excerpt from the book, all about his quest to convince Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto to bundle every Wii with a copy of Wii Sports, with The Washington Post.

A Copy of id Software’s PC Port of Super Mario Bros. 3 Has Been Donated to the Strong Museum

David Kushner meticulously detailed the story of id Software’s founding in 2003’s Masters of Doom, tracking the legendary development team’s history back through the creation of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. But before all that, John Carmack and John Romero approached Nintendo with the idea of releasing Super Mario Bros. 3 for the PC.

Nintendo’s signature brand of platforming wasn’t possible on the underpowered PCs of the time, but Carmack cracked the code in 1990 with the creation of his “smooth scrolling” engine. Sensing that this was a very big deal, the team (then known as IFD: Ideas from the Deep) got to work producing a prototype to show Nintendo:

Over those seventy-two hours, they fell into crunch mode. […] They got the game down to a T: Mario’s squat little walk, the way he bopped the animated tiles, sending out the coins, the way he leapt on the turtles and kicked their shells, the clouds, the Venus’s-flytraps, the pipes, the smooth scrolling. By the time they finished, the game was virtually identical to the bestselling hit in the world. The only noticeable difference was the title screem, which, under the Nintendo copyright, credited the makers, a company name the guys borrowed from Romero and Lane, Ideas from the Deep.

Unsurprisingly, Nintendo rejected the demo, but the new technology inspired IFD to create their own game, Commander Keen, and adopt the more familiar id Software moniker a year later.

According to Kushner, the developers eagerly shared their adaptation of Super Mario Bros. 3 with friends and collaborators as they worked on Commander Keen, and in 2015, Romero gave us a peek at what could have been when he uploaded a short playthrough of the prototype to his Vimeo channel:

Even though it was apparently distributed far and wide, this important piece of PC gaming history stayed hidden for more than 30 years. But a new report on Ars Technica has revealed that a floppy disk containing id’s Super Mario Bros. 3 prototype was recently donated to the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY.

The Strong Museum, which also operates the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) and the World Video Game Hall of Fame, said they will make the prototype available to historians and researchers upon request. There’s also the possibility that it could find its way into a public exhibit in the future.

My only question is, what happens when you type in “IDDQD”?

Explore the Music of “Final Fantasy VI” in Boss Fight Books #28

Boss Fight Books is closing the door on their fifth “Season” of titles with today’s release of Final Fantasy VI from Sebastian Deken.

With its novel fusion of magic and technology, Square’s Final Fantasy VI (which was originally released in the US in 1994 as Final Fantasy III) helped usher in a new era for the RPG genre and turned Terra, Locke, and Kefka into household names. The epic grandeur of the story was further enhanced by the rousing character themes and operatic flourishes found in Nobuo Uematsu’s score.

Deken, who is also a musician by trade, looked at how the RPG’s world intertwined with its soundtrack, as well as how Uematsu inspired other game composers to dream a bit bigger:

Terra the magical half-human. Shadow the mysterious assassin. Celes the tough, tender general. Kefka the fool who would be god. Each of the many unforgettable characters in Final Fantasy VI has made a huge impression on a generation of players, but why do we feel such affection for these 16-bit heroes and villains as so many others fade? The credit goes to the game’s score, composed by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu.

Armed with newly translated interviews and an expert ear for sound, writer and musician Sebastian Deken conducts a critical analysis of the musical structures of FF6, the game that pushed the Super Nintendo’s sound capabilities to their absolute limits and launched Uematsu’s reputation as the “Beethoven of video game music.”

Deken ventures deep into the game’s lush soundscape—from its expertly crafted leitmotifs to its unforgettable opera sequence—exploring the soundtrack’s lasting influence and how it helped clear space for game music on classical stages around the world.

Final Fantasy VI is now available in print and as an ebook through your favorite online bookseller.

Sealed Copy of Super Mario 64 is First Game to Sell for More Than $1 Million

Just days after a sealed and graded copy of The Legend of Zelda sold at auction for $870,000, a similarly-preserved copy of Super Mario 64 sold for nearly twice that amount… $1.56 million to be exact.

This is the first time a single game has sold for more than a million dollars, but surprisingly, there’s not much that’s particularly noteworthy about this copy of Mario’s first 3D adventure.

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A Sealed and Graded Copy of The Legend of Zelda Sells for $870,000

I guess Mario isn’t the only classic video game character who can bring in the big bucks from collectors.

On Friday, Heritage Auctions held their first standalone “Video Game Signature Auction” and auctioneers brought the hammer down on a sealed and graded copy of The Legend of Zelda for $870,000. This eye-popping price isn’t just impressively high, it also set a new record for a single game transaction.

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Shigeru Miyamoto and Other Nintendo Executives Reveal Their Favorite Games

There’s usually not much entertainment value to be found in the dollars and cents of a corporate financial call, but the Q&A during Nintendo’s Annual General Meeting of Shareholders is usually an exception.

The dialogue between the consolemaker’s executive team and shareholders is oftentimes bizarre, and the questions are never what you’d expect. In one infamous exchange from a few years ago, a shareholder used their time to say “I do not understand video games” and then scolded the executives for talking too much about “childish topics.”

This year’s Q&A (the company’s 81st overall) was no exception, but one shareholder was able to ask the executives, including legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto, about their favorite games.

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Bite-Sized Game History: StarCraft and the Spurs, Behind-the-Scenes with Mass Effect, and Sonic’s Hare-Raising Origin

There’s a lot that can link two video games together. Sometimes it can be as simple as a few developers in common, but other times it can be an influential game mechanic or even a subtle in-game reference that hints at a connection between two universes.

What do Blizzard’s StarCraft, BioWare’s Mass Effect, and Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog have in common? Not much actually, but all three are featured in this edition of Bite-Sized Game History.

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The E3 Expo is Changing: What Will it Look Like After 2021?

The future of the E3 Expo is once again on shaky ground.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo split off from the Consumer Electronics Show in 1995 and originally served as a place for the game industry to show retailers what they had in development for the holiday shopping season. But mainstream media attention soon followed, allowing the event to grow in size and spectacle over the next decade.

After a 2007 rebrand as the slimmed down “E3 Media and Business Summit” failed, the event continued to hum along as an important date on the Summer calendar for yet another decade. Even after the introduction of a wide range of digital showcases from the major publishers (including all three consolemakers), as well as the rise of player-focused events such as PAX, E3’s importance as a one-stop-shop for major announcements is only somewhat on the wane.

But that hasn’t stopped game journalists from musing about the future of E3, even before the 2020 event was canceled in the face of the coronavirus pandemic…

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Nintendo Will Build and Open a Museum Dedicated to Their History in 2023/2024

You’ve probably heard it before, but did you know that Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a playing card manufacturer? Nintendo was known as The Nintendo Playing Card Company for much of its early history, and though they’ve spent the last 40 years as one the best video game developers in the world, they still produce playing cards and hanafuda cards to this day.

All this history will soon be on display for the public as Nintendo has announced plans to repurpose one of their shuttered manufacturing plants in Kyoto to construct the Nintendo Gallery, a museum dedicated to all their wonderful toys and games.

Scheduled for completion during Nintendo’s 2023 fiscal year (which runs from April 1, 2023 through March 31, 2024), the Nintendo Gallery will feature “exhibits and experiences” that highlight the company’s “product development history and philosophy.”

Nintendo doesn’t have any specific plans for the museum as of yet, but an artist’s rendering of what the facility might look like is pictured above.