Comments on: Classic Literature/Video Games http://plasmapool.org/2008/12/13/classic-literaturevideo-games/ a set of sharp and cogent notes Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:19:08 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Lee Konstantinou http://plasmapool.org/2008/12/13/classic-literaturevideo-games/comment-page-1/#comment-103 Lee Konstantinou Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:40:43 +0000 http://plasmapool.org/?p=1534#comment-103 Haven't read the Bissell piece yet, but the point about the surrealism of early video games is interesting. I've wanted to write about two-dimensional world-building and Super Mario Bros. for a while. Maybe now's the time. Haven’t read the Bissell piece yet, but the point about the surrealism of early video games is interesting. I’ve wanted to write about two-dimensional world-building and Super Mario Bros. for a while. Maybe now’s the time.

]]> By: Josh Riedel http://plasmapool.org/2008/12/13/classic-literaturevideo-games/comment-page-1/#comment-102 Josh Riedel Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:14:01 +0000 http://plasmapool.org/?p=1534#comment-102 Did you get a chance to read Tom Bissell's article in the New Yorker about a month ago on Cliff Bleszinski, the design director at Epic games? Though it's not directly related to what you're talking about in this post, you might appreciate its discussion on the evolution of video games, particularly concerning the shift from a symbolic to a more literal representation of what the gamer sees and does. I found this piece of information on the psychedelic (and symbolic) world of Mario and his mushrooms interesting: "Issued in 1985, Super Mario Brothers was a game of summer-vacation-consuming scope and unprecedented inventiveness. It was among the first video games to suggest that it might contain a world. It was also hallucinogenically strange. Why did mushrooms make Mario grow larger? Why did flowers give Mario the ability to spit fire? Why did bashing Mario’s head against bricks sometimes produce coins? And why was Mario’s enemy, Bowser, a saurian, spiky-shelled turtle? "In film and literature, such surrealistic fantasy typically occurs at the outer edge of experimentalism, but early video games depended on symbols for the simple reason that the technological limitations of the time made realism impossible. Mario, for instance, wore a porkpie hat not for aesthetic reasons but because hair was too difficult to render." http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/03/081103fa_fact_bissell Did you get a chance to read Tom Bissell’s article in the New Yorker about a month ago on Cliff Bleszinski, the design director at Epic games? Though it’s not directly related to what you’re talking about in this post, you might appreciate its discussion on the evolution of video games, particularly concerning the shift from a symbolic to a more literal representation of what the gamer sees and does.

I found this piece of information on the psychedelic (and symbolic) world of Mario and his mushrooms interesting:

“Issued in 1985, Super Mario Brothers was a game of summer-vacation-consuming scope and unprecedented inventiveness. It was among the first video games to suggest that it might contain a world. It was also hallucinogenically strange. Why did mushrooms make Mario grow larger? Why did flowers give Mario the ability to spit fire? Why did bashing Mario’s head against bricks sometimes produce coins? And why was Mario’s enemy, Bowser, a saurian, spiky-shelled turtle?

“In film and literature, such surrealistic fantasy typically occurs at the outer edge of experimentalism, but early video games depended on symbols for the simple reason that the technological limitations of the time made realism impossible. Mario, for instance, wore a porkpie hat not for aesthetic reasons but because hair was too difficult to render.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/03/081103fa_fact_bissell

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