GDC: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 – User-Submitted Amendments

August 19th, 2014

Not long after I released Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 a handful of readers emailed in and gave suggestions for amendments. I’d like to share them here.

Quest Hawthorn had a theory that Aerodent’s biggest weakness is Large Lips because in Japanese “kiss” shares the same sound as a mouse squeaking.

Rowan Divey found a small mistake in Mario and Wario – A Character Comparison:

“You claim that the act of Mario taking away the golden princess statue is an example of Mario going against his do-gooder nature.

However, if you had read the manual for Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land, you would know that the statue had belonged to the mushroom kingdom before Captain Syrup had stolen it, and that Wario was planning on holding the statue for ransom when he had succeeded in obtaining it. Ergo, Mario’s action are not an act of spite, but an act of securing someone’s property before further crimes could be performed with it. This is even discounting the possibility that Mario was aware of Wario’s efforts or presence during that time.

However, it is still an embarrassment for Wario, as his greedy nature sees the inability to obtain any potential material reward as a failure, despite how many rewards he may already have obtained at the time.”

CM30 wanted me to add a bit more context to some sections in the Need to Know chapter:

“Okay, one more thing. On page 70, you talk about the flowers in Wildflower Fields and say:

‘wither up and be attacked for a few loose coins’.

This is technically right, but it’s also a bit misleading. The game actually gives you a different amount of money depending on how long you wait before breaking the flower bud, with the larger ‘bud’ giving the most money and the broken one (which occurs if you wait too long) giving you the least.

You might also want to mention that Robo Bird enemies are one of the very few monsters that actually respawn in this game, which adds another layer of challenge.”

Thanks for the submissions and thanks to everyone who continues to email and tweet in to let me know how the book is helping them better understand games. 🙂

Posted in Game Discussion | Comments (1)
Tags: wario book, wario land 4

Video: Camera Design in Wario Land 4

January 28th, 2014

Updates. Updates. Updates.

A few weeks ago, I finished the video you see above, and now I’ve made it public. If you like it, then please share it around with your friends. You won’t believe the trouble I went through to produce it, though. Before I get to that, I was interviewed for the Go For Rainbow podcast recently, so check that out (there should be more of this kind of stuff on the way soon). I’ve also been covered by a few gaming sites. You can find links here (yes, it needs updating). And we finally did the Kindle version of the book, so look out for the update email if you’ve already picked up a copy. Although the book is up on Amazon, I recommend that you pick it up through Stolen Projects as you’ll get access to all the versions (.pdf, .epub, and both .mobi versions for old and new Kindles) and will get any updates to the book for free, if I do choose to make any amendments (and I probably will; I’m looking at you “well-designed”). I’m wrapped with the Kindle version. I was originally worried that the images would be too small, but after a few tweaks it’s turned out magic. Props again to the excellent Daniel Purvis for his technical wizardry. We’ve extended the discount too, so it’s going to remain at $5 until the 14th of Feb. I’m also humbled by the positive comments I’ve been getting through Twitter and email. Keep letting me know what you think.

Producing the Video

After doing the script and recording the video and audio, I focus-tested the final short amongst friends and revised and rerecorded everything four times. For the final video, I had to:

Record audio in Audacity and adjust sound levels.
Record myself playing the game to the audio.
Play the video and audio recordings separately at the same time while screen capturing the video in Quicktime.
Repeat the last step for each segment.
Upload video segments to YouTube.
Tidy everything up in the YouTube editor.
Watch the video on YouTube and check for any sound spikes from when my computer’s performance dipped from the strain of simultaneously recording live audio and video—something which YouTube’s compression sometimes decides to accentuate.

This was all after:

Screwing around with the emulator folder auto-locking and thereby preventing me from saving my game and forcing me to repeatedly play through significant chunks of the game until I gave up and did it in Windows.
Updating my OS to Mavericks so that I could screen capture a select portion of the screen in Quicktime.

As such, I don’t I’ll do another video like this. I’m cool with doing stuff like the previous video on the Hall of Hieroglyphs, though. Again, let me know what you think.

Posted in Game Discussion | Comments (1)
Tags: wario book

Press Release: Wario Land 4 dissected in new eBook “A Game Design Companion”, unravels videogame design and player interaction

December 16th, 2013

Finally, after 3 years of talking about it, my Wario Land 4 book will be released this Wednesday. Unfortunately, Adventures in Game Analysis Volume #1, my new games analysis bookazine, has been pushed back to early next year. I also have another (completed) project that’ll be coming out in January and possibly another one shortly after that…but alas, it’s Wario’s time to shine, so read on.

New eBook “Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4” dissects the classic platformer, unravels game design and player interaction

Adelaide, Australia – 16th December, 2013 – Stolen Projects today announces the forthcoming release of Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4, an exciting new eBook from game design analyst and former GameSetWatch columnist, Daniel Johnson.

Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 takes under-appreciated gaming gem, Wario Land 4 (2001) for the GameBoy Advance, and splays the meat and bones of videogame design and structure across nearly 600 print pages to understand their influence on player experience.

Author Daniel Johnson, in a radical departure from contemporary videogames discussion, examines Wario Land 4 in its totality—including mechanics, psychology, education, level design, and game feel—calling on evidence-based analysis to understand the player’s subjective reactions to videogames.

Says author Daniel Johnson:

“A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 is unusual in its approach as we begin to understand videogames through evidence-based analysis rather than socio-cultural critique. I’m hoping this book will push against the accepted norms of ‘games criticism’ and open up new avenues for analytical discussion.”

Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 is essential reading for fans of Nintendo, side-scrolling platformers and retro videogames, curious players looking to better understand the games they play, and provides games designers a new approach for discussing their craft.

Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 will be available to purchase in digital formats through Stolen Projects from Wednesday 18 December. Retailing at $7.99, Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 will launch at a special introductory price of $4.99, lasting until January 31. Readers receive copies of Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 in both .pdf and .epub formats compatible with most computers, mobile phones and tablet devices. Kindle editions of Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 are planned for future release.

Early release editions of Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 are available to media on request to stolenprojects@gmail.com.

Daniel Johnson is available for comment and interview via email at danielprimed@gmail.com.

For more information and resources related to Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 please visit the web portal at danielprimed.com/warioland4

About Daniel Johnson

Daniel Johnson is a former GameSetWatch columnist now writing long-form analysis of games that have fallen out of the current release cycle.

Web: danielprimed.com
Email: danielprimed@gmail.com
Twitter: @danielprimed

About Stolen Projects

Stolen Projects is a design studio and publishing house producing and distributing books valuing videogames, art, design, illustration and other topics of an interesting nature. Stolen Projects is owned and operated by Daniel Purvis, professional illustrator and designer with clients including Kill Screen Magazine, Polygon.com, Hyper Magazine and Clemenger BBDO Adelaide.

Web: stolenprojects.com
Facebook: facebook.com/stolenprojects
Twitter: @Stolen_Projects

Stay tuned as early next year as Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 will be followed up by Daniel Johnson’s new boogazine series, Adventures in Game Analysis with subjects ranging from Metroid to WipEout. More information to come in 2014.

For any media inquiries, please contact

Daniel Purvis at stolenprojects@gmail.com or via phone on +61 433 788 717

Posted in Site Updates | Comments (0)
Tags: wario book