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Whatever the ultimate fate is of The RetroThinker (keep watching, his story is far from over) I'd like to think he'd be heartened by this pair of stories that broke today; giving renewed hope that The Golden Age of gaming still has yet to slip completely away:

Firstly, IGN reports that WayForward (a developer who has done more to keep me invested in gaming than almost any other lately) is bringing rebooting "Double Dragon;" and since it's WayForward there's no need to fear the dreaded "Gritty Reboot" virus taking hold: Instead, "Double Dragon: Neon" is going all-in on capturing not only the 2D Brawler gameplay but also the tacky 80s excess that so memorably colored the original; complete with "blaring buttrock" soundtrack. I'm IN.

But it's not just the 80s feeling the retro love - the 90s were themselves a Second Coming for Disney, and that extended into gaming: Licensed platformers based on Disney brands developed by Capcom and Sega are among the most fondly remembered games of that era; and today Kotaku reveals that the 3DS installment of the continuing "EPIC MICKEY" franchise is being built as a throwback to those vaunted titles - specifically, it's a return to the "Mickey's Castle of Illusion" series with a "Drawn to Life"-style mechanic added to the mix. DO WANT.

The Good Days don't die unless we let them die.

Yes, More "Mass Effect"

WARNING! All links and everything after the jump carries a MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING!

"Bob, WHY do you keep talking about this??" Because it's still THE story in this particular realm, that's why.

In any case, Devin Faraci of BadassDigest is the latest web-personality to weigh in on the controversial finale of "Mass Effect" - apparently he didn't get the memo that movie critics' opinions on video games aren't to be taken seriously, either. He does, however, bring the thus-far rare perspective of someone who - whether he is officially a "true gamer" or not - has played through the entirety of "Mass Effect" and actually really likes the ending. It's an extremely thoughtful piece (I don't always see eye-to-eye with Devin, but he knows his shit) that gamers would do well to consider:

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT!
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Money quote, from Devin: (boldface mine)
"In the end Mass Effect 3, like any other narrative video game, is a story being told to us. We have some control over the peripheral business but the meat of the story belongs to BioWare. This is the tale they’ve been telling. This is the culmination of what they’ve been doing since the beginning of Mass Effect. And I love it. This is true scifi, a story that examines the nature of conflict and humanity through the prism of imaginative, speculative fiction. I’ve never played a game where the decisions I made felt so powerful in the abstract; I wasn’t worrying about whether or not one choice would give me a better power up, I was worrying about the moral and ethical implications of the choices. And after all of that the final choice was so obvious, so true to what had come before, that I was kind of irritated at how slowly old Shep moved."

Now, let me get myself into a bit of trouble here: I'm wondering if it's more than coincidence that some (please, please, PLEASE note that I didn't say "ALL" or "MOST") of more interesting writing about video games coming out lately is coming from people - like Devin or FilmCritHulk - who come more form a film/literature background.

That's pretty close to blasphemy, I realize. Gaming has a fierce inferiority complex when it comes to movies - desperately wanting the visuals and narratives of games become more "cinematic" while stidently insisting that the interactivity of the medium makes it some kind of superior-evolution to stuffy old "passive" cinema. And I don't mean to suggest that one medium is innately superior on either the production or commentary side...

...BUT, a lot of the recent "big issues" in game-criticism ("Other M's" perhaps-unwittingly sexual-submission symbolism, "Arkham City's" casual sexism, "Mass Effect's" unusual ending, etc.) are actually narrative issues; and let's be real here: Film has been dealing with full-blown narratives for over a century and film writers have thus been dealing with them for their entire education and career; while gaming and thus game criticism has (with the niche exceptions of PC Adventure titles and JRPGs) barely been dealing with full-blown narratives for a decade or so. And even film didn't get there right away - it took a looooong time for a big-budget, wide-release movie to be permitted to end as abstractly as "2001" did; and even the magnificient "Psycho" is forced to follow-up it's intensely-awesome reveal with a horrible, clunky, dead-weight expository sequence where police veeeeery carefully lay out exactly what was wrong with Norman Bates, and why he is/isn't a transvestite, etc lest the audience go home without - what's that word? Closure?

What's the takeaway from that? I dunno. Maybe that gaming-culture would do well to not immediately dismiss criticism/commentary simply because it comes from outside "The Community;" I suppose.

Yes, I Saw The Jimquisition

Jim Sterling and I have shows on the same network, so yes I've seen his Mass Effect video. Stop Asking.

The Escapist : Jimquisition : Changing A Game's Ending And Destroying Art

I think he raises a plethora of good points - certainly framed more thoughtfully than the trolling I've been bombarded with for the last two weeks (guys, a MINUTE on Wikipedia can tell you that Arthur Conan Doyle left Sherlock Holmes untouched for about a DECADE before reviving him, and even then never "re-wrote" The Final Problem. Look shit up before you parrot it from 4Chan) but I still can't fundamentally agree that anything good will come of caving to "Re-Take Mass Effect;" whether EA/Bioware "planned to" or not.

I don't accept the premise that gaming is fundamentally different from film or literature because of the manner of user-engagement, nor that choose-your-own-adventure structuring and letting you adjust the visual look of a main character makes Mass Effect some kind of sea-change, NOR that any of this represents some kind of important shift in the relationship of audience to artist - and if it does, it's a bad shift. Good art and good stories are not made via democracy. The artist is the superior of his/her audience, with the sole caveat that they may choose to render said artist powerless by withholding support. You take that away and all we've got is made-to-order bullshit, which is where cultural stagnation comes from. People who only ever get what they WANT will never discover what the didn't know they NEEDED.

Also, I still say that the precedent this will set is one of the worst things that could possibly happen to this increasingly-ridiculous industry - YES, it's possible that Bioware's back-to-the-drawing-board approach will yield a "better" ending for this ONE game... but that won't be the end of it. This being so high-profile will have an automatically-disasterous effect on fans, telling them that if they throw a tantrum they'll get their way, and on publishers especially: they're already disgustingly risk-averse, and "Remember What Happened To Bioware!" will be a convenient cudgel to bludgeon the ambitions of any creative team that wants to do something risky or unconventional in the medium...

...but, then again, given the number of folks tripping over themselves to insist that "Games AREN'T art! They're PRODUCT! I don't WANT them to be art if it means stuff like this!!!" recently, maybe everyone else will be okay with that; while I just get used to the ever-clearer realization that my remaining actively-engaged in the modern gaming scene is becoming an act of masochism.

Still, let it never be said I can't appreciate a different point of view, and Jim expresses his exceedingly well.

EPISODE 68: "Crass Effect"

Here it is - The OverThinker on "Re-Take Mass Effect."

Yes, I wish I could've thought of a better title, too.

Frozen Synapse Mocks "Re-Take Mass-Effect"

Below, footage of the ending to "Frozen Synapse," which has (temporarily) been altered into a more "fan-friendly" one in an act of satire on the notion of Bioware potentially re-writing "Mass Effect 3's" finale due to unprecedented fan complaint. Funny.

Episode 68 ANNOUNCEMENT!

Episode 68, which will deal with the ongoing nonsense surrounding "Mass Effect 3," will debut for ALL AUDIENCES on Monday, March 26th. ScrewAttack Advantage users, as ever, have the opportunity to view it early right now.

This Is The Best Commercial For A Sports Game EVER