Player One Podcast

I remember the first time I played Street Fighter II. I was 15, visiting family from out of state, and I went with a younger cousin to an arcade. I was playing a bunch of different games – NARC and Double Dragon II: The Revenge were my favorites – but my cousin Mitchell plunked all of his quarters into Street Fighter II.

I didn’t love the game on my first quarter, but once Mitchell explained how to perform a fireball – and I pulled one off for myself – I was hooked. We went to the arcades every remaining day of that vacation, and when I got home, I had to seek a machine out. I found one at the local bowling alley, and there was always a line to play. As my skill gradually improved, and I was able to stay on through two or three rounds before being booted, I felt like I had joined a club. Opponents would become allies, showing me how a dragon punch was done (MAN was that hard to learn). They’d teach me etiquette – No throwing, no endless thousand hand slaps. They’d tell me where else I could find arcade machines, too. Matches would spring up in the foyer of Denny’s, at 7 Eleven, and at the Plitt Theater down the street. During the weekend, I’d head with friends to the bigger arcades – Galaxy World and Enchanted Castle. There, you’d find rows of Street Fighter II cabinets, and you’d be able to watch guys who REALLY knew how to throw down. 

I remember very clearly the first time I saw screenshots of the SNES version in EGM. There it was, nearly arcade perfect. I was a Genesis guy at the time, but those screenshots convinced to get an SNES. On launch day, I was working at a Software, ETC., and we had a line 100 people strong in front of the store, eager to pick the game up. I had never seen anything like that. Friends of mine cut down on prom plans to make sure they could afford to buy it. Several of us bought SNES Advantage joysticks for a more authentic arcade experience. Every weekend afternoon, my friends and I would get together and play for hours on end, trying to up our skills for some evening play time at the arcades. 

The SFII arcade updates kept us interested to a point, but it took WAY too long for Capcom to get around to getting Street Fighter III in arcades. By that time, I was in my last year of college, and the friends that had enjoyed learning SFII with me were no longer living nearby. The SFIII in my local arcade had a cabinet that simply – and pretentiously – called the game “Three”. I tried to get into it. It looked great, but I was annoyed that all of my favorite characters (except Ken and Ryu) were removed, replaced with a bunch of b-listers. I didn’t ‘get’ the parry system, and I didn’t really want to learn it. 

For the home edition, I excitedly picked up an import version of the Dreamcast version the week it was available. I was happy to have it, but none of my friends were remotely interested in putting in the time to learn how to play as Alex, Dudley, or anyone else… so I wound up mostly playing solo as Ken or Ryu. This was not how I had thought playing SFIII for the first time at home would feel like. 

Even when it was released domestically, nobody cared. Street Fighter III was a Dreamcast exclusive for a long while, but it didn’t move the needle for the system. It was not a killer app by any stretch. Where were the lines at stores? The excited talk between friends? The desire to improve your game for arcade play?

And so, it is a pleasure and a relief to see people so amped for Street Fighter IV. Finally, it’s an important series again, and it’s getting the fanfare it deserves. I LOVE playing the game, and can’t imagine any other game capturing my attention so strongly in 2009. Oh, and for the record… Phil is better than he claimed to be, and quite possibly, Greg Ford and I have been overstating our skill for the past several years. But any way you cut it, our day of Street Fighting revelry was fun, fun, fun. This Friday: the Chun Li movie, whatever the hell it’s actually called. It’s gonna be terrible – I can’t wait.

ethaneinhorn Uncategorized

[NOTE: This, too, is a repost of a blog entry I did a couple years back. Originally posted July 1, 2004. Enjoyyyyy. -CJ]

During the summer of ’95 I got to come back and do another project for Sendai—a one-shot PlayStation guide. Both the PlayStation and Saturn were scheduled to hit in the fall and they wanted to have two books ready for both of those consoles’ release dates. (Of course, the Saturn launched early, kind of messing up that half of the project, but they still did the book anyway.) As luck would have it, I got the better end of the deal and got to work on the PlayStation guide. (Brian Goss, another fanzine editor who did a fine ‘zine called The Guru, did the Saturn book.)

I couldn’t have asked for a sweeter deal. They paid me $5,000, the first $2k of it up front, and set me up with a Japanese PlayStation console and about 10 games. If I met all of three milestone deadlines, I could keep the PS and half of the games. Not bad for a summer job in between high school and my first year of college. With the money they’d given me up front I bought a brand spankin’ new Mac (before that all I had at home was an Apple IIGS, albeit nicely decked out), and churned out the book.

There was a slight snag though. I didn’t have a memory card, which was kind of a necessity for a lot of early PS1 games. And I only had three weeks to do the book (broken into three end-of-week milestone deadlines). So while I was working on one of the sections, like the Ridge Racer chapter, I’d have to leave the system on and just barrel through the game and take as many notes as possible. After I’d unlocked everything I could in one game, I’d power down for a while and move to the next…and saved nothing. (So if I’d messed up and forgot to write something down I had to do it all over again. Luckily that only happened once.)

Since the system was brand new, a lot of import shops were sold out of memory cards. So I spent about a week without one ’til NCS (National Console Support) had restocked. I’d asked Sendai if they’d pop for it, but they refused and they didn’t have one in the office either. Getting the card from NCS saved me for the last two milestones, but after that point I’d already done most of the strategy without it.

This was the first time I had written strategy of any kind and it’s a very dry read. The “reviews” of each title that serve as intros follow the same formula from paragraph for paragraph. But it’s far from the worst I’ve ever done. The deadlines went without a hitch and by the end of the summer I was $5,000 richer and had a Japanese PS1 and 5 games. Not bad.

While I thought the final product would be all gussied up like EGM, it’s more like 100 pages of layout diarrhea. Imagine EGM from back then without funky type treatments or wacky colors in the background and you’ll have a good mental picture of it. It’s like they imported my text straight into a 4-column Quark layout and dumped screenshots around it randomly. I probably could’ve done a better job myself. Thankfully it still looks better than most of the competing books (some of which had no screenshots at all), but it’s far from compelling by today’s standards.

Like my previous EGM work, it’s full of lines that are stone-cold stunners, like:

Ridge Racer tip: “Pick a fast car if you can.” (Lovely strategy that can be applied to just about any racing game, when you think about it.)

Battle Arena Toshinden: “It is truly one of the great home video games ever made.” (Wow, I’d like to take that one back…)

Cyber Sled hint: “…just keep at it. Eventually you will fine-tune your own game play strategy.” (Ha, and you thought I’d written this book to give you my strategy. Fool!)

Air Combat: “Air Combat has a lot of playability.” (“Playability” is one term that shows up in a lot of reviews that has zero meaning to me. If you can explain to me what you think it means, please do-’cuz to me it means the reviewer is grasping at straws trying to fill a word count. Calling something “playable” means that you can push buttons and things happen on-screen. It’s an EMPTY statement. If you’re a reviewer, please don’t ever use this term, and if you’re a reader-this word should set off your bullshit alarm. Why do you think I used it here? I was bullshitting.)

Tama: “Tama is a fun game, but the concept pales in comparison to other ‘guide the ball’ games.” (??? What other “guide the ball” games?)

PlayStation: “The PlayStation is turning out to be a system that has almost every type of game available for it.” (Huh…well, I guess it’s true. I mean it has the market cornered on the “guide the ball” genre.)

Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. The book is actually pretty good and served its purpose, despite the shoddy layout and loads of poorly chosen screenshots. Many of the sections have huge shots of title screens. Just look at that Ridge Racer layout–one picture of the title screen and another of the pre-title loading screen. WTF? I can’t be blamed for those though — I had no hand in taking any screenshots for the thing. I just wrote the text. And I did it all without having to deal with Ed. My contact was strictly with editorial director Joe Funk and Sendai’s director of operations, Marc Camron.

More to come…

Chris Johnston Electronic Gaming Monthly Electronic Gaming Monthly

This week! CJ, Phil and Greg (Ford) talk about the last week’s worth of games. Including Noby Noby Boy and Street Fighter IV. In fact those are the main two things we talk about in this episode. Yeah there are a couple other games mentioned like Retro Game Challenge, GTA IV: Lost and Damned, Banjo-Kazooie, Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection (naturally). But it’s mostly Street Fighter and Noby Noby. Oh and DSi in America. But that’s about it.

Also, our next Game Club game is Beyond Oasis (Genesis). It’s available on Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection on PS3/360 as well as Virtual Console on the Wii. We’ll be discussing it on Episode 124, so get your comments in via this forum thread, this blog post, or by calling our voicemail line by March 6.

Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to visit our new web site at www.playeronepodcast.com. You can leave us a voicemail by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don’t forget to join our forums if you haven’t already!

Running time: 1:20:03

Direct download: 02_23_09-Episode122.mp3

This week’s links:
Iwata Asks: Nintendo DSi
Noby Noby Boy merch on Panic.com
How Street Fighter IV Could Make Other XBL (or PSN) Games Better

This week’s music (from 8bitcollective.com)
“In Vega” by Fighter X
“retardation!” by zabutom
“DEMO – DANGER LIMIT” by PDF format

Bonus video:

Chris Johnston Episodes episode, Noby Noby Boy, podcast, street fighter iv

In my last post, I apologized for not doing much blogging lately. Especially after I had been bugging CJ for so long about setting up the thing. Well, I’m doing it again. Once again I will bust out the excuse that California really runs its teaching candidates through the ringer. I’ve spent the past week working on a gi-normous assessment paper that I need to complete before graduating, and I’m currently taking a break from finishing up an extensive case study on a struggling reader that’s due…oh, in about four hours.

So yeah, this is another “Phil is a teacher” centric post. Not much game stuff here, sorry. I will quickly say that the YouTube upload feature in Noby Noby Boy is friggin’ fantastic. More games need this sort of thing. I’ll be talking more about that on our next episode.

This was my little adventure today, and it goes a long way in explaining why I’m very tired right now and not really in the mood to write up a case study. As a student teacher, I am currently required to be in the classroom on Monday through Friday. All day on Tuesdays and Thursdays and ’till lunch on the remaining days (starting at the end of March, it’s all day, every day!). I was pleased because as today is Friday, I was going to get out nice and early and get home to finish up this assignment.

As I arrived at school this morning, I happened to bump into the principal as she was getting out of her car. She sees me and exclaims that I was just the person she was looking for. She goes on to explain to me that one of their 3rd grade teachers was out sick and that the district was out of substitute teachers for the day (apparently there was some sort of training conference going on). Would I, she asked, be able to take over the class for the day?

Now, part of my previous student teaching placement (with 4th graders) during the first half of the school year required me to spend a week teaching the class on my own. Like, with the “real” teacher out of the room. So I certainly had some experience handling a class by myself. However, that was a class that I had been working with for months, so they knew me and wanted to work with me. This time, I would be running a class full of strange kids, and we all know how kids act towards the sub.

Still, what choice did I have? I told the principal that I’d be happy to take the class. It would be, after all, great experience, and making the principal happy is a smart move for someone who will be looking for a teaching job in a couple months.

Without wasting much more words on the day, it went well. The kids goofed off a bit, but nothing more than I could handle. I brought the hammer down on them pretty early so that they knew that I wasn’t going to let them run the class, but I also let them know that I could be a pretty easygoing guy if they let me.

I  do have to share the story about meeting the first kid to pop into the classroom, though.

I’m just hanging out in the teacher’s room about ten minutes before the bell rings. All of the kids are out on the playground when one boy wanders into the room. I look up at him and immediately know that he’s going to be trouble. He’s got one eyebrow raised, and he’s wearing a shit-eating grin as he swaggers over to me. This is the conversation that we had:

Kid: So I hear you’re going to be our substitute teacher today.
Phil: Yep. That’s me.
Kid: What makes you think you can teach 3rd grade?
Phil: Well, I’ve taught 2nd grade and 4th grade. I figure I can handle the one in the middle.
(at this point, the kid is a bit stunned that I’m not backing down from his carefully planned ribbing. Little does this kid know that I was him at that age)
Phil: What’s your name?
Kid: (says his name…I’m obviously not going to say it here)
Phil: Well, nice to meet you, (kid’s name). I’m Mr. Theobald. (I shake his hand)
Kid: I can see where the “bald” part of your name comes from.
Phil: You’re a clever kid. No one has ever made that joke before.

Clearly the kid was a little snot, but he was a likable snot. I survived his test, and he ended up respecting me for it. It also helped when I told him that yes, Captain Underpants was pretty funny and I (gasp!) knew what a Nintendo DS was. Not only that, but I’ve played LEGO Indiana Jones on the DS and the Xbox 360!

It was an interesting start to my day, to say the least, and being tossed right into the substitute teaching fire was a pretty good experience. It also means that I get paid for my student teaching today. So woo-hoo! Even so, it was also plenty stressful, and now I only have three hours and fourty-five minutes to finish this damn paper. Back to work!

Phil Theobald School School, teaching

I picked up Street Fighter IV for the 360 today after work. And, it’s pretty awesome. I suck at it, but it’s really fun. But that’s not the point of this post.

Street Fighter IV has this setting called Arcade Req. You turn it on and it makes you available for matchmaking as you play the Arcade mode offline, then when it finds a suitable opponent or needs someone for a game (based on your settings — ranked mode or player match and similar or any skill level, etc.) it’s just as if someone plopped a token in the machine at the arcade and challenges you. When you’re done, you can choose to go right back to Arcade mode where the cycle begins anew (or stay on if it’s a Player Match and keep fighting each other).

Anyway, I think this kind of thing is a much-needed option to have in a next-gen online game. Maybe it’s not great right now when the game’s new and you get sucked into an online match before you’re even able to complete one round of Arcade mode offline. No no, this mode is cool for the future. You know, months down the road when people have moved onto bigger and better games but you want to get in some Street Fighter. This will help people find games even as the community has kinda dwindled (if it does).

So that got me thinking. This’d be great to have in other games. Especially older XBLA games where the community’s completely dead and gone. You might actually find online matches for stuff like Carcasonne, Jetpac Refuelled or TMNT or what have you. It could go a long way in giving older games some new life.

I’d almost take it one step further and go system-wide with it (but not automatically put you into a game). What if for XBLA games you could set a preference so that if someone was looking for a game you’d be notified or even invited to their game, wherever you were? Like let’s say Jetpac Refuelled. No one really plays that anymore. What if one day you’re like, “gosh, I’d like to play some versus of that, but no one’s ever on?” You tick a preference box to “notify me when someone’s looking for a game” on XBL. Then — when you are online (and only then, otherwise it’d be stupid) — and someone’s searching for a Player Match game, you’d get a notificatiom or option to join that game. Or limit it to friends list-twice-or-thrice removed or “only when I’m just sitting in the dashboard” to limit the number of times you’d get notified. The system would search first for people who are just in the XBL Dashboard (not already playing another game) then extend to people who are playing a game offline, then finally to those who’re on but already in another online game in an effort to get someone to join ya.

You’d have to build it in or patch it in to games, naturally (so maybe this is something more for Xbox 720′s version of Live). If you’re the player searching for a player match on an old game you’d have to know that the system was about to do a systemwide search for an opponent. Otherwise you might just leave in frustration. So I’d imagine it’d be something like…you search for a Quick Match on Jetpac Refuelled. No one shows. In addition to the “Create match?” like you usually get (and then sit and wait forever) — have a “create match” then also “invite players interested in playing this game?” — so it automatically sends an invite to people who’ve marked that they’re interested in playing if they’re online so they could potentially join you right then. If you get a declined notice or have been waiting too long, it sends an invite to the next person down, and so on.

So that got me thinking about how to further breathe life into the old catalog of XBLA games. And that comes back to notifications/messages when a friend has beaten/bested your score. This’d be something you could toggle on/off per game, and could work real well for keeping the competition alive in something like Geometry Wars 2 or Pac-Man CE. If you’d be getting a lot of those messages, set it up so XBL sends you a digest every day or week with updates (if there are any).

Perhaps these ideas aren’t perfect, but how many XBLA games do you have in your library that you’d go back to if there was any community left for it? And what could Microsoft (or even Sony on PSN–does anyone play Calling All Cars anymore) do to resuscitate those?

Chris Johnston Video Games online play, playstation network, street fighter iv, xbox live

Two Game Clubs in one month? Surely not!

Because we haven’t pimped Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection enough, the next Game Club is all about Sega’s oft-overlooked adventure game, Beyond Oasis. Let’s see if this masterpiece from Yuzo Koshiro’s Ancient development house stands the test of time.

Get your stories/comments/memories of this game post to the blog/forum/email or voicemail (713-893-8069) by Friday, February 26. We’ll be talking about the game in Episode #123.

Greg Sewart Game Club, Video Games Beyond Oasis, game club

I must be remembering the Xbox 1 era of gaming wrong. Because I thought that there were more than 20 games worth owning on the system, but you wouldn’t have guessed it by the games Microsoft’s been putting out via their Xbox Originals program. The Originals banner, which does not seem to imply any sort of quality standard or particular sales requirement, is frankly a joke of a program that makes you wonder how the hell Microsoft’s been lucky enough to be in second place this generation if this is the kind of software deemed “original” on the first Xbox.

The most recent example of which is Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Rare’s first game under Microsoft’s publishing banner and a pretty bad one at that. I remember spending a little bit of time with the odd analog-stick brawling control of the game and not being terribly impressed by it, but then again perhaps my utter and complete disgust with Star Fox Adventures colored my judgement of that one.

Frankly I think Microsoft should step up and establish the Originals banner as something other than a dumping ground. Really program the label with quality Xbox 1 games (and release something like Ghoulies in October to coincide with Halloween where it sort of looks like there’s a reason you put it there.) But then I think it’d be worth unifying the store as Apple has with its App Store. In the end, Originals, Arcade and Community games are all downloadable games — and what happens in the future if Microsoft begins offering full downloadable 360 games as Sony has done on the PSN with stuff like Warhawk and Burnout Paradise? There’s no reason to keep the “Arcade” banner if half the games released in there aren’t actually “Arcade” or retro games. Open it up. And give Community Games the kind of exposure and dignity they need to foster more and better titles by taking them out of the black hole that is the “Community Games” area on XBLM. Does anyone go in there? No. As Apple has on the App Store, let the iFart Mobiles mingle with the Sim Cities of the world on the charts.

Also, and I’ll really never get this…open up new releases to days other than Wednesday. And open the floodgates. I know that early on there were reports that Microsoft would say no to games of similar genre on Xbox Live Arcade. But screw it, man! Let the best version of Sudoku win (or what have you).

Chris Johnston Video Games Microsoft, Rare, xbox, xbox originals

This week CJ, Phil and Greg Ford (Sewart’s away having a baby) discuss the following game tapes: Far Cry 2, Banjo-Kazooie, Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection, Retro Game Challenge, Lit, Flower, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Onechanbara Bikini Samurai Squad and Loco Roco 2, among others.

Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to visit our new web site at www.playeronepodcast.com. You can leave us a voicemail by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address,playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don’t forget to join our forums if you haven’t already!

This week’s link:

Mario Kart Game Night Thread

Running time: 1:29:11

Direct download: 02_16_09-Episode121.mp3

Bonus Retro Game Master videos:

Chris Johnston Episodes episode, podcast

So, in a couple of weeks, Phil, Greg Ford and I are planning to celebrate Street Fighter IV’s release the right way… with a full day of revelry. We’ll start with an early afternoon of SFIV on Xbox 360, having two Hori arcade sticks in hand. Eventually, we’ll shift to watch the Street Fighter IV anime that comes with the game, enjoying some delicious pizza while viewing.

Before the evening festivities, which (of course) includes going to see the new movie, I’m gonna be pushing Phil and Greg to pop in the “Street Fighter: The Movie” Blu-Ray, to enjoy Van Damme at his finest. There will be many slapdowns, most, I assume, handed down by Mr. Ford. But it should be fun for all, and I’m counting the days leading up. What is everybody else doing to celebrate this momentous game release? And if we hop online, is anybody up for jumping into a few rounds?

In training for this day, I’m looking for challengers next week: you can find me online on Xbox 360 under the gamer tag “Ethan 360″. If you send me a friend request, please let me know in the note that you’re a POP board member.

ethaneinhorn Uncategorized street fighter iv

Game Club returns in this episode and we spend the last segment talking about Rare's original Banjo-Kazooie game for the Nintendo 64/Xbox Live Arcade. CJ and Phil and joined once again by Gregs Sewart and Ford for that plus a discussion of the game tapes that took up our free time in the last week. Those include R-Type Dimensions, Dead Space, 3 on 3 NHL Arcade, Fable II, Killzone 2 (demo), Halo Wars (demo), Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, Burnout Paradise, Far Cry 2, Donkey Kong JENGA, DJ Max Fever and Phantasy Star Portable, among others.

Thanks for listening! Don't forget to visit our new web site at www.playeronepodcast.com. You can leave us a voicemail by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don't forget to join our forums if you haven't already!

Running time: 2:03:43



This week's links:
Our forum topic on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection
MTV Multiplayer: Halo Wars feels like a Diablo RTS
Direct download: 02_09_09-Episode120.mp3

Bonus image:

Chris Johnston Episodes, Game Club banjo kazooie, episode, game club, podcast