General gaming

General gaming

The Many Versions, Ports, and Re-Releases of Super Mario Bros.

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 05:08 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 13 | THE SUPER MARIO BROS. LEGACY

The Many Versions, Ports, and Re-Releases of Super Mario Bros.

Cover Story: We look back at the many, many different editions of Nintendo's platforming classic.

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hen a video game publisher releases a title which becomes -- or is expected to become -- a smash hit, it is only natural to expect them to want to port it to every platform which can manage to hold its code. From Angry Birds to Street Fighter, if a game catches on with players, you know that it will probably be milked dry.

Of course, there are some exceptions. In the case of a company like Nintendo, they want to keep all of their greatest hits to themselves; after all, if the only place to play a Nintendo game is on a Nintendo system, that means they'll sell more systems, and in turn, more games. This would seem to be the mindset which the company bears as they continue to refute the suggestion that they should make their games available on platforms such as the iPhone.

Borderlands 2's Noob-Friendly Skill Tree Attempts to Make the Game Much More Approachable

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 04:44 PM PDT

Borderlands 2

In addition to the four new characters being introduced in Borderlands 2, work is underway on a fifth class, the Mechromancer, which will be released post-launch as a piece of premium downloadable content and as a free bonus for those who pre-order the game. Little had been known about the particulars of how the class would work given that development only began on it in earnest after the game itself was completed last month. In revealing some details on one of the class' skill trees, which is designed to make the game easier for less skilled players, lead designer John Hemingway referred to it as a "girlfriend mode." This, as one would expect, caused somewhat of a controversy over the sexist name, though lost in all that noise is what sounds like the makings of a really solid idea.

The Mechromancer's main skill in and of itself lends the class to those less familiar with first-person shooters. The Deathtrap robot she can summon draws enemy fire away from the player, which is sure to be helpful to anyone who is less acquainted with the trappings of an FPS. What will really come in handy for newcomers is the first of her three skill trees -- various sets of skills that players can choose from to customize and enhance their character as they level up -- to be completed. The so-called girlfriend mode that offended some people today comes in the form of the Best Friends Forever skill tree, and it is designed to make the game more approachable.

Mario The Explorer

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 02:36 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 13 | THE SUPER MARIO BROS. LEGACY

Mario The Explorer

Cover Story: The role of discovery in Super Mario Bros. and beyond.

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ry to break the original Super Mario Bros. down to its core actions, the verbs that define most of your interactions with the game. You run as quickly as your stumpy plumber's legs allow. You jump across an alarming number of bottomless pits, head-first into bricks, face-first into flagpoles, and butt-first onto the heads of scowling mushrooms that possess just enough sentience to know how ridiculous they look. Whether you're aware of it or not, you also explore.

Of course, Super Mario Bros. does not take place in the sort of sprawling open world that modern audiences associate with exploration. Its ratchet scrolling doesn't even allow the screen to scroll to the left. Try to backtrack more than a few feet and Mario's nose gets squashed against the side of your television. The game does, however, offer meaningful moment-to-moment choices on a small scale, often with unpredictable results.

Dust Review: Gorgeous, Addictive, and a Whole Mess of Fun

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 12:50 PM PDT

DUST

Anyone who's been following the progress of Dust: An Elysian Tail over the past few years is probably aware of the main talking points that have been revolving around the XBLA title. Yes, the game is packed full of furries, but that is the least interesting of the factoids. Starting initially as an animated film before transforming into a gorgeous 2D action-RPG, the Dust is primarily the work of a single artist. Aside from the voices and the soundtrack, Dust was created by Dean Dodrill in a feat that absolutely boggles my mind. The reason I'm so taken aback is because Dust is a sprawling, gorgeous epic of a game that plays almost as well as it looks.

Truly the work of an auteur, Dust: An Elysian Tail delivers a delightful, singular vision that acts as a loving tribute to classic 16 and 32-bit action-RPG adventures. It quickly becomes evident that Dodrill is, like a lot of us here at 1UP, is a big fan of Whoopee Camp's PS1 gem Tomba!. Dust features a similarly large, open world packed with colorful characters, ample distractions, and a layout that encourages the player to retrace their steps once they've amassed an arsenal of new techniques. There's never any downtown in the adventure, which is something I realized after taking a peek at my quest log and realizing that I was at various stages of no less than a dozen different missions. Thankfully the weighed of these tasks never becomes a burden, because the world is just that damn fun to explore.

Leaps and Bounds: The History of the Jump

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 12:44 PM PDT

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Leaps and Bounds: The History of the Jump

Cover Story: How Mario's simple mechanics have defined games of every genre to the present day.

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hen the Nintendo Entertainment System launched October 18, 1985 (or thereabouts) in North America, it revitalized an entertainment medium which had been all but left for dead overnight. While the NES was a veritable powerhouse in terms of its hardware and game library, it is hard not to recognize its initial success without acknowledging the pack-in title that accompanied the system at release: Super Mario Bros. The game established the archetypal form for the 2D platformer with addicting gameplay, tight controls, and a soundtrack that remains permanently etched in the cranium of the hardcore and casual player alike.

But more than that, it established a causal relation between the player and a game's world that remains an institution even today within a digital landscape that has all but forgotten the left to right linearity of the medium's oldest games and systems. With two buttons and the nearly singular use of a simple game mechanic -- the jump -- Mario and his green-tinted sidekick Luigi left an indelible mark on the industry. A mark that remains nearly unchanged despite the massive differences in hardware capabilities and the evolution of every genre and game type.

Cover Story: The Super Mario Bros. Legacy

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 11:00 AM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 13 | THE SUPER MARIO BROS. LEGACY

Cover Story: The Super Mario Bros. Legacy

All this week at 1UP, we do the Mario.

Super Mario Bros. celebrated its 25th anniversary almost two years ago, and this coming weekend will see the launch of the latest chapter of the Mario saga, New Super Mario Bros. 2. Depending on how you want to numerate the series, it's either the 11th, 32nd, or 200-somethingth Mario game since Super Mario Bros. defined the workings of the 2D platformer back in 1985. Any way you look at it, that's a lot of Mario.

Super Mario Bros. had a profound impact on video games. Any popular game sees its share of imitators; a truly great game creates its own genre. Super Mario Bros. didn't so much invent a genre as it defined how every action game to follow would play. It wasn't the first platformer, but everything it did hit just the right notes in ways that nothing that had come before it had ever accomplished. From the perfect physics of Mario's jump, to the incredible syncopation of its music and sound effects, to the gut-level satisfaction of simply snagging coins, everything about Super Mario Bros. was basically perfect. It's not even that Mario himself was intrinsically great; his previous outings Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. had been fun games, but the depth and precision of Super Mario Bros. utterly eclipsed them on every possible level. In retrospect, they resemble rough sketches next to the fully realized masterpiece that is Super Mario Bros.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 Review: The Brink of Self-Parody

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 10:56 AM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 13 | THE SUPER MARIO BROS. LEGACY

New Super Mario Bros. 2 Review: The Brink of Self-Parody

Cover Story: Mario Marios his way through the most Mario Mario to ever Mario.

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hances are, you probably don't think of Nintendo as being particularly self-aware. Most people do. It's understandable. The company has made its fat stacks of loot on gentle, family-friendly fare -- its reputation for creating kids' games didn't materialize from thin air, after all. The fact that Mario serves as Nintendo's corporate mascot, with his bland gormlessness and vacant stare, probably doesn't help matters.

In reality, though, Nintendo can be quite clever when it wants to be. Cuttingly so. Just witness the writing in games like Paper Mario and Animal Crossing and you begin to realize that some very pointed humor and rather adult sensibilities lurk beneath the company's Disneyesque façade. I mean, Satoru Iwata's no George Carlin ("laughs"), but if you pay attention you'll find a real undercurrent of acerbity informing much of Nintendo's work.

VIDEO: Take a Guided Tour of Sleeping Dogs

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 10:42 AM PDT

Last week, United Front Games Senior Producer Jeff O'Connell stopped by the 1UP office and took us on a guided tour of Sleeping Dogs. Watch and learn a few fun facts about the game before its August 14th release -- including a spoiler-free look at a never-before-seen level near the end of the game.


David Fox on LucasArts' Non-Adventure Roots

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 09:52 AM PDT

Long before Resident Evil coined the clunky term "survival horror," Lucasfilm Games (now LucasArts) gave gamers of the '80s the biggest jump-scare of their lives. Though it sold itself as a fairly straightforward (though visually amazing for the time) space shooter, 1984's Rescue on Fractalus! features a deeply disturbing moment barely hinted at in the instruction manual: at random, some of the downed pilots the game tasks you with rescuing turn out to be grotesque aliens in disguise, who suddenly smash your cockpit's windshield with their bare fists, letting the corrosive atmosphere leak inside. And if you can believe it, this concept came from the mind of one George Lucas, a non-gamer who's not exactly known for good ideas these days.

David Fox, one of the brains behind Fractalus!, might not be as well-known as other LucasArts alumni, but he played a role just as vital as that of Tim Schafer or Ron Gilbert; as the second official employee at Lucasfilm Games, he was instrumental in building the early titles which would get the company's foot in the door of the gaming industry, eventually leading to the legacy of point-and-click adventure games we know them best for today. Lucasfilm Games started as a bold experiment by Lucas himself, who knew that computers would eventually grow powerful enough to wow audiences just like Star Wars itself. And, operating under this rationale, Fox and his crew found themselves with a remarkable amount of freedom; their first two projects were allowed to be failures, as their wealthy bearded benefactor believed the experience gained could be just as valuable as the profits from a hit title. Thankfully, both Ballblazer and Fractalus! came into being as moderately successful technical achievements, with 3D graphics that bowled over gamers who assumed their humble little Ataris weren't capable of such a feat.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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