Q4Q3 20062006 #7 Table of Contents 4 Breaking the Law of Miyamoto 42 A Day in the Life of R-Ko, Super Mario Bros.—NES Gamestore Employee Comic 10 For Super Players Super Mario Bros. 2—FDS, SNES, GBC 52 Haiku for Dragon Warrior VII Dragon Warrior VII—PS1 12 Play a Friend’s New Super Mario Bros. New Super Mario Bros.—DS 54 Faith & Fantasy Final Fantasy Series—NES, SNES, PS2, 16 Out of the Valley GC, 360, GB, GBA, WIN, DS Great Abstractions in Videogames 62 Effeminaphobia and Male Intimacy: 20 To Be Frank Far Cry Only Worries when Dead Rising—360 the Jungle Drums Stop 24 The Unintended Horror Far Cry—WIN Fear in Games 66 Mushroom Hunting in Heels 28 Let Your Momma Sleep! Violence in Videogames Jet Set Radio—SDC 70 Use Your Illusion 34 There’s More to Gaming than Final Fantasy, Game Design, and Me Just Gaming 84 Zen Type Gaming in South Korea Ridge Racer—PS1, PS2, PSP, 360 38 Behind the Green Door 88 High Calibur The Xbox 360 Uncloaked: The Real Soul Calibur—SDC Story Behind Microsoft’s Next- Generation Video Game Console—TXT 90 The Next Next-Gen Back to the Future 40 Dark Oddysey Sound Voyager—GBA 94 Mommy, Where Does Novelty Come From? A Parable 98 Untold Tales from the Arcade The Battle for the Kingdom Continues! 106 Why Game? Reason #6: Nostalgia 1 From the Editor StaffStaff Era and Time By Matthew Williamson Editor In Chief: Staff Artists: Matthew “ShaperMC” Williamson Mariel “Kinuko” Cartwright This is the first time—and probably the [email protected] [email protected] This issue is the end of an era. Not of the last—that I will use this section of the Managing Editor: Jonathan “Persona-Sama” Kim magazine exactly, but of gaming. The Xbox magazine to ask you, our patrons, for sup- “Super” Wes Ehrlichman [email protected] 360 is already upon us and both Ninten- port. If you are reading this section you [email protected] Benjamin “Lestrade” Rivers do’s Wii and Sony’s Playstation 3 will be obviously enjoy the magazine and what Associate Editor: [email protected] available by the next issue. These are the we do for it. If you didn’t know before, Ancil “dessgeega” Anthropy final days of the current generation. the entire staff is comprised of volun- [email protected] It’s strange to think that in just a short teers who work many long hours with no Assistant Editor: Cover Art: M. “dhex” O’Connor Max Martin time, everything now current will be “last- compensation. If you have been reading [email protected] gen” technology. Whether it’s the inter- for a while you will know that we have [email protected] Copy Chief: Cover Art Color: face or the graphics, they will be labeled taken many strides to improve quality and Jonathan “Persona-Sama” Kim “last-gen” very shortly. It feels strange many exceptionally talented people have Tony “Tablesaw” Delgado [email protected] [email protected] because gaming seems to be the only volunteered to help. medium so fixated on technology, and yet If you are reading this in print while Editorial Staff: Contributing Writers: it’s also the most connected to it. lounging on a couch (or toilet), tell your Matthew “Mr. Apol” Collier We will finally be downloading older friends, e-mail your buddies, post on your Heather “Faithless “ Campbell [email protected] Craig Dore games onto newer consoles. Technically blog—but get the word out on what you Erica L. Van Ostrand we already have been with Xbox Live think. If you’re reading the digital copy of J. R. “Mr. Mechanical” Freeman John “Rud13” Overton [email protected] arcade, but Microsoft doesn’t have the this and you have been for a while, take Chris St. Louis Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh history of a company like Nintendo. So like a look in your Paypal account and see if Amandeep “ajutla” Jutla [email protected] books, films, and music, games now have you have a few dollars left to purchase the an accessible history, even if the compa- print version. If not, send your friends over Tim “Swimmy” McGowan Contributing Editors: [email protected] nies offering the history don’t have a full for a free read—if we’ve done our job, Angela McInnis grasp on it. they’ll thank you, and maybe get their own Jeremy “ApM” Penner Page Layout & Design: [email protected] In this issue, the Gamer’s Quarter team hard copy. Ancil “dessgeega” Anthropy Benjamin “Lestrade” Rivers looks at gaming—past, future, and where Next issue will be our eigth, mark- Sergei “Seryogin” Servianov [email protected] Matthew “ShaperMC” Williamson we stand at the present. The modern his- ing nearly two years of work. Since we Website Design & Layout: tory of games is important, and to ignore launched, we have been featured on Andrew “Mister” Toups [email protected] “Super” Wes Ehrlichman it leaves many of us treading the same MTV.com, Gamasutra, Game Set Watch, water until we drown and ignore games all Slashdot, Kotaku, and Joystiq. But we Francesco-Alessio “Randorama” Ursini [email protected] together. don’t have an advertising budget, and our voices only go so far. So if you like what All content © The Gamer’s Quarter 2006. All you have been reading—or even if you de- images and characters are retained by original company holding. spise us for it—start the next generation by telling someone about us. 2 The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #7 Staff 3 Pipes Stuff Hidden in Bricks Pipes are the ultimate Super Mario secret The flashy question blocks are obvious made obvious. Everybody knows you can “secrets” by their very nature, if not by the go down pipes; it’s part of what gives fact that the demo depicts Mario hitting Super Mario Bros. its identity. They’re one in the first five seconds. The regular also perhaps one of the most rewarding, brick-type blocks are easily discovered to ArticleBreaking or the Law taking the player to secret rooms hidden be breakable in the beginning, too. underground. And yet, it’s possible to It’s not until world 1-2 that the player is complete the game without going down a likely to discover that stuff can be hidden Sectionof Miyamoto Title single (vertical) pipe. The manual does not in them. That brick above the goomba is even mention the possibility. just begging to be smashed. The brick in Super Mario Bros.—NES The game hits the player over the head world 1-1 is pretty suspicious too, but it By Jeremy Penner with this one, with a short cutscene at the at least has a plausible reason for being beginning of world 1-2 where Mario enters there—to get high enough to hit the Google for the phrase “Law of Miyamoto” a pipe and heads underground. There’s question block. and you will come across the following The Structure obviously something up with those pipes, I’ll grant that it’s potentially even Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I was definition: “The Law of Miyamoto states and indeed, if you take that knowledge more likely that the player would, in their able to quickly dig up maps of every level that, early on, a game must show a back to the beginning, you find that the clumsy inexperience, hit the brick they of the game.1 Poring over them, I found the player something he cannot do.” Lies! fourth pipe of the game takes you to a were trying to land on top of. Either way, following structure to the level design: Super Mario Bros., Miyamoto’s seminal coin room and lets you skip most of the the game is quick to demonstrate that exploration game, not only breaks this first level. bricks aren’t just for breaking. • For the first four or five worlds, “law,” it in fact is designed in precisely systematically introduce the player the opposite way. For every kind of secret to all of the kinds of secrets that the embedded in the game, there is a place game possesses. where the level is designed to compel you • After that, start turning up the to discover it. This place always shows up difficulty a bit. after the first occurrence of that secret. • In world 8, crank it way up. Super Mario Bros. shows the player things he could have been doing all along. More interestingly: This is something few people noticed, because of the playground effect. The • It is possible to complete the game playground effect is simple—Super Mario without going down a single pipe or Bros. was so popular that you probably finding a single hidden brick—you had friends demonstrating how to get to could just progress from left to right the warp zone before you learned to jump without discovering a single secret. that first goomba. Kids couldn’t keep their • For every kind of secret, there is a spot damn mouths shut. More often than not, where the level design practically begs the game didn’t show you its own secrets the player to discover it. like it wanted to—other people did. • That spot is never the first occurrence of that kind of secret. You could conceivably make the case that the puzzle dungeons don’t follow this pattern, but then, they’re not secrets—you Pipes. Left: First obvious occurrence (world 1-2); Right: First occurrence (world 1-1) have to solve them to progress.