Category: Free Play

Random bits of news and one-off articles that don’t fit anywhere else can be found in Free Play.

Minecraft’s Volume Alpha Soundtrack Has Been Added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry

Two years ago, Koji Kondo’s “Super Mario Bros. Theme” became the first piece of music from a video game to be added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. But it definitely won’t be the last.

The National Recording Registry’s Class of 2025 was announced earlier this week, and Minecraft‘s Volume Alpha soundtrack by Daniel “C148” Rosenfeld was among the inductees. Here’s what Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden had to say about the selection:

Since its official release in 2011, Minecraft has grown into a cultural phenomenon, building its legacy as one of history’s most successful video games one voxel at a time. Key to the game’s early success is the ambient-style soundtrack, created by German producer Daniel Rosenfeld under his alias, C418. The gentle electronic score lends itself perfectly to the game’s open-ended design and sandbox environment, which invites players to interact, explore and build, free from any specific narrative constraints.

Inspired by pioneers of intelligent dance music such as Aphex Twin and the ambient music of Brian Eno, Rosenfeld’s original soundtrack to the game, compiled on the 2011 release “Minecraft: Volume Alpha,” provides a soothing and inviting backdrop to the video game’s open-world environment, creating instant nostalgia in the process. The influence of C418’s music can be traced through the proliferation of ambient scores appearing in video games since Minecraft’s initial release, as well as the cultural phenomenon of “lo-fi hip-hop,” which grew in popularity during the late 2010s and shares many of the same calming and nostalgic musical aesthetics as those found in Minecraft’s original score.

Minecraft’s soundtrack will be joined in the Class of 2025 by a wide variety of recordings, including Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Tracy Chapman’s self-titled album (which includes “Fast Car”), Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”, Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, the Original Broadway Cast Album of Hamilton, and the “Reboot Chime” from Windows 95 (which was composed by Brian Eno).

Ludocene Wants to Fix Game Discovery With a “Dating App” for Video Games

Discovering new video games is harder than ever before as thousands of new titles are added to digital storefronts every month.

I’m sure you’ve read some version of this sentence in dozens of articles over the last few years. But discovery isn’t just an industry buzzword and the “too many games” problem is very real. So how do you sift through more than a thousand games a month to find the best of the best?

Enter Ludoscene, a new website from the Family Gaming Database, that will try to help players find their next favorite game when it launches later this year.

Ludocene, which actually comes from the Latin for “New Games”, is now seeking funding through Kickstarter. The website (and accompanying app) is designed to function like a dating app crossing with a deckbuilder. Users will fill their deck with games they already love, narrow the choices with modifiers like platforms or ESRB rating, and even call on the help of Experts (such as Brian Crecente, Simon Parkin, and more than a dozen others) to meld their favorites with Ludocene’s human-built recommendation engine.

Ludocene is a new way to find your next game. It uses rich human-researched data to build your catalogue of games. It uncovers amazing, unusual and unexpected matches not just the usual suspects or big popular games.

It feels like you’re playing a game, where winning is discovering video games that perfectly match your tastes:

– Build your perfect deck of games you love.
– Pick experts whose taste you trust.
– Discover your best matches in the tailored suggestions.

Each game is represented by a card that you can interact with: click to view a game trailer and flip to view more details and the best prices on storefronts.

You can see Ludocene in action, and hear more about the project from Andy Robertson of Family Gaming Database, in this video:

If it’s funded, Ludocene will be available to Early Access backers in a few weeks. The rest of us will get a chance to find our perfect game sometime over the Summer.

The Video Game History Foundation’s Research Library is Now Open

Work had already begun on the Video Game History Foundation’s Research Library when it was first announced in December 2023, but the VGHF team has spent the last year making their online presence even better, diligently cataloging and scanning many of the materials available in their collection.

But the time has finally come, and beginning today, the Research Library is now open to all.

Though it’s officially in “Early Access”, the Video Game History Foundation Library (available at library.gamehistory.org) is a searchable catalog of the VGHF’s holdings. That includes magazines, newsletters, development documents, correspondence, commercials, and more. Best of all, material from the collection that’s been digitized can be viewed online from anywhere for free through the Digital Archive (archive.gamehistory.org).

This is an amazing resource for researchers or anyone who wants to learn more about games. For example, did you know Nintendo’s Rad Racer was originally going to be titled 3-D Racer? I didn’t, but I do now after digging through Nintendo’s Publicity Folder from CES 1987. Thousands of little tidbits of information just like that are waiting for you in the Video Game History Foundation’s Research Library.

Discover even more of what this (virtual) space offers with Library Director Phil Salvador in the video below:

I’m very excited to dive in to the Research Library and you can learn more about it on the Video Game History Foundation Blog.

OK Boomer Shooter: The Etymology of a Subgenre

Boomer Shooter. I’m sure just typing out the name of that subgenre has caused a visceral response in a good percentage of the folks reading this.

You’re not going to find anything approaching an official definition of Boomer Shooter on the Internet, which is fine, because generational theory doesn’t really work that way. Instead, it’s all about what feels right. And to most players, a Boomer Shooter is a first person shooter inspired by the genre’s roots in the 1990s. Titles that blended a focus on frenetic shooting (often at non-human enemies) and breakneck speed with wild color palettes and an otherworldly sense of place. Games like Doom and Quake and Duke Nukem 3D instantly spring to mind. Those are the original Boomer Shooters (and then known as Doom Clones) and they are the games that many of today’s developers look to for inspiration when dabbling in the subgenre today.

Amusingly, only a few actual Boomers (that’s folks born between 1946 and 1964) were responsible for the games that inspired today’s Boomer Shooters. Instead, most of those genre-defining games were actually created by Gen Xers like John Romero and John Carmack.

Anyway, a little over a year ago (as reported by GameSpot), Valve took a step to make the subgenre just a little more official when it added Boomer Shooter as a tag on Steam.

After the news broke, composer Andrew Hulshult took credit for popularizing the phrase during the development of Dusk:

A few years before it was added to Steam, Boomer Shooter felt like it emerged from the ether as a fully-formed entity. No matter where the words were written, or even when, everyone knew exactly what they meant.

But where did it come from? And, as PC Gamer asked in a 2023 editorial, why can’t we call this subgenre of games something else?

The latter question is beyond my grasp, but I’ve spent the last year trying to answer the former.

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GOG.com Launches GOG Preservation Program to Keep Classic PC Games Available on Modern Systems

The capital letters in GOG.com don’t stand for anything anymore, but when the digital storefront first launched in 2008, the acronym stood for Good Old Games and was meant to shine a spotlight on the company’s retro focus. In the decade-and-a-half since, GOG has positioned themselves as a competitor to Steam, often selling the same AAA titles that appear on Valve’s storefront. But their desire to be a destination for retro gaming never really went away, and earlier this month the company unveiled the GOG Preservation Program.

The GOG Preservation Program is a new initiative that’ll attempt to ensure that “classic games remain playable on modern systems, even after their developers stopped supporting them.” To accomplish this, GOG has pledged to “commit [their] own resources to maintaining compatibility with modern and future systems” for games in the program. These updates can include everything from testing whether or not a game is supported in Windows 10 and 11, all the way to fixing bugs that have existed for decades (just look at these Patch Notes on a classic Resident Evil Bundle).

But why are they doing this? I’ll let GOG’s Arthur Dejardin explain:

Across my desk sits someone who describes his personality as a carbon copy of Squall’s from FF8. Another colleague told me he became a financial controller because he played so much Tropico as a kid. I love rainy days because they gave me the perfect excuse to play The Legend of Dragoon for the entire afternoon back in the day.

Games shaped us. Being able to play them is an essential part of reconnecting with ourselves. They must stay accessible, playable, and alive.

Unfortunately, the classic PC games market is in a sorry state. It’s too tiny for leading platforms to give it any attention. Classic releases often get the sell-it-and-forget-it treatment, and as time goes on and technology evolves, compatibility issues arise and remain unaddressed. Head to one of the massive platforms to buy a classic game and try to play it on your Windows 11 machine: You’ll stand disappointed.

We believe that maintaining these games as compatible and playable will allow you to keep our shared history alive, reconnect with yourself, and pass on your legacy.

It is incredible to see a company dedicate themselves to game preservation like this. As of today, more than 100 games are part of the GOG Preservation Program, but the storefront hopes to add many more to the program in the future. And like all the games on their virtual shelves, the titles in the GOG Preservation Program will be available to download without DRM.

Introducing the Video Game Research Library

Say hello to one of the next big projects from Video Game Canon… the Video Game Research Library… which is a collection of articles, videos, and podcasts that offer a glimpse into gaming’s past, present, and future through historical, retrospective, and contemporary reporting and scholarship.

Within the library, you’ll find links to investigative reports, retrospective histories, biographical sketches, commentary and criticism, editorial opinions, book excerpts, interviews, oral histories, journal articles from academic and medical professionals, development materials, postmortems, and a lot more. My goal is to create a hand-built collection of links inspired by a bit the old web.

Does the library represent the full history of video games? No, of course not. But it is a good start and I want to add new links as often as I can.

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Nintendo Offers Up a Video Tour of the Nintendo Museum… Which Opens on October 2, 2024

It’s been three long years since Nintendo announced their desire to transform a shuttered manufacturing plant in Kyoto into a Nintendo Museum, but with a grand opening planned for this Fall, the consolemaker is finally ready to give fans a sneak peek at what’s inside.

The video tour, which has been embedded above, is hosted by Shigeru Miyamoto himself, and it actually starts on the second floor in the “Make Connections” exhibit. There, museum patrons will be able to browse Nintendo’s 135-year-history of games, toys, and playing cards. This massive display case overlooks the first floor, which will feature eight interactive play exhibits. Miyamoto shared three of those exhibits during the video.

“Ultra Machine SP” is based on an indoor pitching machine sold by Nintendo in the 60s and 70s and will let you take the plate in a replica of a typical Japanese home. “Zapper and Scope SP” gives players a Zapper or Super Scope and lets them loose on a 13-player light gun game that attempts to modernize one of Nintendo’s first moves into the video game space. And you’ll get exactly what you expect in the “Big Controller” exhibit, as two players will attempt to complete a Nintendo-themed game challenge together using an extra-large controller.

With this combination of museum gallery and interactive play-based exhibits, the Nintendo Museum seems to be very reminiscent of The Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. But as with all things Nintendo, I’m sure a few surprises are still being kept under wraps.

The Nintendo Museum will open to the public on October 2, but to help control attendance, Nintendo is currently offering tickets through an online lottery. You can reserve your tickets, and learn more about the rest of the museum, at the Nintendo Museum’s official website.

Here Come the AAAA Games… But What’s a AAA Game and Why Do We Call Them That?

Where did the AAA designation come from? And what even qualifies as a AAA game?

I investigated both of those questions in a piece for Warp Zoned back in 2013, and a lightly edited and updated version of that article was reprinted here on Video Game Canon after Microsoft tried to announce a AAAA game in August 2020.

But a few recent discoveries have given us a clearer look where the AAA designation came from, and this article was rewritten to incorporate those updates in February 2024.

The console changeover from the PS3/Xbox 360 generation to the PS4/Xbox One generation brought a lot of worry about the spiraling budgets and massive teams required to create AAA games. Many felt it was hurting the industry, and while there was a reduction in games with blockbuster-sized budgets, these types of games continued to push the conversation among developers, publishers, and players. These same fears are being echoed today in light of the massive wave of layoffs that game executives inflicted upon the industry in 2023.

But for all the hand-wringing about how the AAA game was (and still is) detrimental to smaller developers, no one could seem to agree on what exactly a AAA game was or when the AAA designation was even first used.

In attempting to solve this etymological mystery, I found that the AAA designation shares much in common with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s obscenity test from a 1964 case (“I know it when I see it”). But I also found out that no one’s quite sure what the future of AAA games will look like.

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Puzzle Games Have Always Had Personality… Featuring Threes, Dr. Mario, Peggle, Tetris, and a Lot More

Wordle jumpstarted a new wave of addictive puzzle games after it was released to almost universal praise in 2020. Players found competition and comradery in those green and yellow squares during the COVID pandemic, and this little bit of personality continues to fuel the game’s popularity today.

But puzzle games have always had personality, and on the second anniversary of Wordle‘s acquisition by The New York Times, I decided to look back on an article I wrote for Warp Zoned in 2014 that argued exactly that. A lightly edited and updated version of that article has been reprinted here.

As video games begin to resemble film and television productions more and more with each passing generation, it’s interesting to observe that puzzle games continue to remain a vibrant genre.

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A Teenager “Beat” Tetris for the NES After Clearing 1,511 Lines

I’ll bet you thought it was impossible to “beat” Tetris on the NES… but that’s because your name isn’t Willis “Blue Scuti” Gibson.

Last month, the Tetris prodigy quite literally broke the game, clearing 1,511 lines before reaching the game’s never-before-seen kill screen. Blue Scuti is just 13 years old, and he’s part of a growing group of young players who have taken over the ranks of pro Tetris.

Blue Scuti and his peers are able to rack up such impressive line totals thanks to a strategy known as rolling. In rolling, the controller is pressed flat against your leg with your thumb hovering over the D-Pad. By tapping the back of the controller with your other hand, you can apply just enough pressure to the D-Pad to make pieces move across the screen (and where you want them to go to clear lines) at even the fastest levels.

While my own personal best of 214 lines is pretty decent for an amateur, Ars Technica explained how the pros are able to use rolling to push beyond the human limits found in a normal game of Tetris:

What makes Blue Scuti’s achievement even more incredible (as noted in some excellent YouTube summaries of the scene) is that, until just a few years ago, the Tetris community at large assumed it was functionally impossible for a human to get much past 290 lines. The road to the first NES Tetris kill screen highlights the surprisingly robust competitive scene that still surrounds the classic game and just how much that competitive community has been able to collectively improve in a relatively short time.

The whole world has come together to congratulate Blue Scuti, including Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris, and Henk Rogers, the developer who brought the game to the rest of the world in 1988. A surprise appearance from both men during Blue Scuti’s interview with NBC News gave the young player quite a shock.

Shortly after the new year, two other Tetris players also managed to reach the kill screen: Justin “Fractal161” Yu and Andy “P1xelAndy” Artiaga. Both regularly compete with Blue Scuti in tournaments around the country.

Blue Scuti’s record-setting playthrough was recently shared by Classic Tetris World Championship, and it’s been embedded above. He dedicated this accomplishment to his father, Adam Gibson, who passed away on December 14.