Images that Defined Gaming – Vertical Gaming

February 8th, 2008

Images that Defined Gaming is a featured series showcasing the various images that changed the way we thought about gaming, the characters and franchises within it. To view more entries in this series click here.

Theres been a bit of fuss lately about gaming monitors, a few weeks back we saw images of the awesome AlienWare curved monitor and many months ago I posted up a screenshot of this new ‘Surround Gaming’ phenomena. Sure, these monitors definitely look awesome but they’re not quite as awesome as vertical gaming:

cruved multi monitor

Vertical gaming is just as it sounds; video games played vertically instead of in your typical horizontal fashion. One genre that works brilliantly in a vertical perspective is the shoot-em up genre.

Not surprisingly there aren’t a lot of games that support vertical play. The only one that I am familiar with is the legendary Ikaruga (pictured) on the Dreamcast and Gamecube.

ikaruga vertical

You’re probably wondering why someone would go to the trouble of buying a vertical only television or monitor just to play one game. Sure its great for shoot em ups but its not like every monitor is built vertically, they’d be difficult to find and probably quite expensive, right? Actually, quite a few new computer monitors (such as my Dell monitor) can actually be rotated 90 degrees so that they can viewed vertically (for photos and such). So it might surprise you how accessible this phenomena actually is.

If you are interested in trying this out and have a TV or monitor that you think might be rotatable then I have two pieces of advice. Firstly check the product information before you try and move anything because sometimes you can only rotate the base one way. Which leads me to the second point if you can only rotate your TV anti clockwise then I’d probably forget about Ikaruga (once again not sure about other titles). Unfortunately as a result Ikaruga will be displayed upside down and there is no option to change it. You can’t flip the picture in the game’s options hence you might be forced to play upside down. I have heard that they’ll be fixing this for the new Ikargua HD on Xbox Live Arcade though.

I ran into the second problem myself and decided to unscrew my base and flip the rotation plate. Which worked but this isn’t recommended.

Playing Ikaruga vertically is like a dream, I’m only new to shmps but I love not having the huge ugly bars in the horizontal mode. I set the display so that there is only very small bars on the top and bottom. The game is stretched out to high definition too. Its been very exciting so far so I want to following this up with some impressions of the game next time.

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Tags: ikaruga, images that defined gaming, vertical monitor

Images that Defined Gaming – Super Mario 64

November 6th, 2007

super mario 64

Theres not much that I can really say about Mario that you don’t already know. Like a lot of gamers I grew up with the plumber, as a child I adored him and as an adult well yeah I still adore him. Now when Mario went 3D this was a big deal and Nintendo went to great lengths to let everyone know that he was back, in 3D and that to play his games you had to have an N64.

The advertising campaign which included TV adverts and ‘Mario’s Million Dollar Mission’ where Mario fans were bought onto a TV set and had to shovel as many piles of coins as they could to get a million dollars. Ah yes, exciting times indeed.

Now one of the key images that I remember from this time was the following one:

super mario 64 world sphere

We see Mario flying with his winged cap, the castle and familiar enemies and environments(now in 3D). Nintendo always did a good job with their promotional work for the Mario series. They always showcase a lot of what is in the game(see SMB3 or SML2). This image shows off a lot of what is in the game(although not a much as some of the SMB3 or SML2 art). All very important parts of the game. But also it leaves enough to the imagination and hints and what might be to come(ie. Theres Boos in the image but no haunted house).

super mario bros artwork

I think that this is the ideal image to express Mario’s transformation into the 3D environment. Its rather ironic how it uses the circle planet, with the upcoming western release of Super Mario Galaxy.

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Tags: images that defined gaming, super mario 64

Images that Defined Gaming – Shadow the Hedgehog

August 25th, 2007

Today’s image is the first leaked image of art from Shadow the Hedgehog. This turned out to be the game’s final box art.

shadow the hedgehog boxart

I remember when this image first circulated around the internet, people initially didn’t think very much of it as the piece was leaked. So they assumed that it was some sort of fake artwork made for the fans or something. Seriously Sega would never give Shadow a gun, how stupid is that?

Well as we all know this was not fake, Sega actually did release a game dedicated to the anti-hero Shadow and he did actually wield a gun. People where shocked that Sega would do this to a character in a series which generally is picked up by children.

I’m not sure if Jack Thomposon was around when this image was released but he probably would have jumped at the opportunity to send Sega to court. Infact he probably would have had a large following of gamers behind him because everyone was starting to get tired of Sega butchering the poor hedgehog and buddies in 3D.

It turned out that the game didn’t really have much gun use or realistic like violence. The whole reason behind this beat up was for Sega to get more game sales from this aeiling franchise. Once again just slapping the Sonic franchise onto something that “looks cool” in order to make a quick buck. And just like every game Sega has done this to, it turned out to be a complete turd of a game.

So why is this image so important? Because it represents not only the pinnacle of 2D to 3D franchise butchering but also how such a mighty emperor like Sega could drop oh so tradgically low.

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Tags: images that defined gaming, shadow the hedgehog

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