The Score	Muscle Cars vs. the Subcompact, Take 2
By Ben Calica Gamasutra January 1, 1998 Vol. 2: Issue 1 Past Scores A Million Monopolies!?! [12.12.97] A Gamer's Survival Guide to Las Vegas [11.28.97] The Next Game Boy [11.14.97] Settle the Score? [View Thread] Haven't joined yet? [Join Now]	OK... I was wrong. I hate admitting it, but there it is. At E3 last year, one of the coolest things I saw was a goofy game called Parappa the Rapper for the PlayStation. The game was essentially an unholy cross between the follow-the-lights game Simon and a Japanese Rapper character with all the animation finesse of South Park. (BTW... did you know that South Park is now done on high end SGI workstations, machines that spend great numbers of cycles to recapture the look of an eight-year old's cut-out animation? The world is a very weird place.) Anyway, I get hauled over by a friend of mine to see the only unused station in the Sony booth, with this giant four foot long controller sitting in front. I proceeded to start playing this game, being teased by each new Rap master to try and follow his rhythm and pattern on the controller. The Rappers themselves reminded me of the section in Toyko a few years ago where on Sundays you could find hundreds of Japanese teen-agers dressed up in poodle skirts and leather jackets, in perfect 50's simulation. (Very strange to see the Japanese doing Rock Around the Clock... but hey... we're not using that era right now.) So there we were, playing this game and having a great time, and I make the prediction that though the game is great and the Japanese will tear it off the shelves, it won't sell six copies in the states because we are the land of the great, strong and predictable. I mean, where's the jumping, where's the 3D, for god's sake man, where are the guns? We are the culture of the muscle car, and the political correctness backlash is being lead with the game business. Duke said it best, "Hail to the King, baby!" We are the culture where an educational software company came back from the edge of death by going Postal. (OK, I love the notion of mowing down the marching band, but that's just my point.) And when the Japanese make things with big explosions, we all think they're great. But what do they think they're doing by making these little wimpette 1982 Honda Civic kind of games. Well, selling them out at Toys-R-Us for starters. You can't get your hands on Parappa come love or money. They sold all six, and maybe just a smidge more. In the mean time, one of the next best selling games is Final Fantasy VII. So much for the theory that RPGs were a niche market. I'm a big RPG fan, so I'm very sensitive when I hear the big wigs talking about us being this tiny, but insane market. According to Sony's website, Final Fantasy VII is currently the #1 game in user polls and one of their best sellers. I started playing it over the weekend and was duly impressed. Pretty graphics, nice game play, good plot and that great Japanese interpretation of what Americans, particularly Americans of ethnic descent, sound like. It's kind of like someone from France trying to do a Texas accent. It's strange, but funny in a way not exactly intended. I guess the Japanese have been showing us that we have more broad tastes in games than we thought from the beginning. ("Allright Kid, what have ya got for me?" "Well sir, there's this big piece of cheese with a wedge missing... see it eats these dots and gets chased by ghosts, only some times it chases the ghosts until they chase it again... after a bit. Oh, and there are these pieces of fruit." "Kid... yer fired!") See I was looking at Doom and Quake and our dear friend Lara, the defier of gravity. Looked like a muscle car time to me. But if the sales are any indication, (and let's face it, what else matters in this biz), people are going for the subcompacts too. Go figure. Next year we might see something with some actual creativity after all... and it might just sell too. In the mean time, keep on rapping, you Pacific home-boy, you. -B Unemployed with a Theater Degree from Brandeis back in 1984, Ben Calica has been making a living in the computer and gaming business in various incarnations since then, Including: Founding Editor of New Media Magazine, First Toys Editor for Wired, one of the few single boys to write for Parents Magazine. Product Manager for the multimedia authoring system, SuperCard Director of Production for CyberFlix; (design credits on Lunicus, Creepy Castle, and conceptual design for Skull Cracker) Product Manger for the ill-fated modem for the Sega Genesis, the Edge, for AT&T [which, by the way, we decided stood for All Tiny Testi---maybe I'd better tell that another time -BC]; Worked for NeXT long enough to get into real good argument with Steve Jobs; And recently was the guy behind Apple Game Sprockets... He did a bunch of work on interactive drama (wrote script for MacWorld CD-ROM game of the year in 1993), before he decided it just didn't work. Spends a lot of free time now lecturing on multi-player/virtual world stuff. For a day job he works as Director of Product Development for ThinkFish, an artistic rendering company that recently merged with Viewpoint Datalabs. He could show you the secret desktop software he's working on, but then he'd have to kill you.