Nintendo Demo Mode: Optional Walkthroughs on the Wii

June 19, 2009 1:31 PM

At this year's E3, Shigeru Miyamoto told Kotaku (video interview included) and USA Today that the "Kind Code" patent (noticed back in January 2009, and well summarized on Kotaku) will be implemented in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. The tentatively named "Demo Mode" was discussed by developers and received early approval from a teacher. With this new, slightly more solid information, feelings are mixed.

As noted in Red Herring,

The actual patent that was filed offered three modes to demo play (then referred to as the “kind code”): a video of gameplay that does not interrupt the action on screen; a full automatically controlled walkthrough that players could jump into at any time; and a DVD-esque scene selection mode that would allow players to choose where to start.

The patent also notes that if players jumps ahead with the full video walkthrough, they will not be able to save their progress.

posted by filthy light thief (59 comments total)

It's still strange to see the middle of the road publications take notice of things like this. At first I thought USA Today was paraphrasing from another source, but they did have people who interviewed Miyamoto. Also, This announcement was #5 in TIME's Top 10 E3 Announcements.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:33 PM on June 19

When I was your age...
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 1:33 PM on June 19

The Purple Coin levels in Super Mario Galaxy have utterly defeated me (could be because they are a pointless waste of time suitable only for children with unlimited time on their hands).

Will this help me finally totally completely finish off that game?
posted by KokuRyu at 1:41 PM on June 19

This is a good system. There will always be freely available walkthroughs online, so why not give the player the option of seeing them well-polished and in-game? It will allow people to enjoy the full game who otherwise would not, while people who take pleasure in playing legit can continue to do so (unless they would rather write whiny blog articles).
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:44 PM on June 19 [2 favorites has favorites]

Nice. Better than my childhood technique of "play until a hard/scary/boring part then give up and just watch the cutscenes while my brothers play."
posted by Solon and Thanks at 1:46 PM on June 19 [5 favorites has favorites]

You can already download saved games on an SDcard and slap them into your Wii, so why not this? Sounds like a great and natural feature.
posted by mek at 1:47 PM on June 19

Is it optional? Yes? Well, then where's the harm?
posted by lyam at 1:50 PM on June 19

As an aside, I can't believe the traditional gaming mechanic used to be that when you die you have to restart the whole level, and when you lose all your lives you have to restart the whole game. No wonder Focus on the Family said games were evil.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:54 PM on June 19 [4 favorites has favorites]

In Super Mario World, video game plays you
posted by kcds at 1:55 PM on June 19

Is it optional? Yes? Well, then where's the harm?

It takes time & resources to implement, I guess, which could otherwise be used to make games better and/or release them sooner.
Which could be construed as some kind of harm.
posted by juv3nal at 1:56 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

I think this is a great idea. I firmly believe that if you pay the $$ for a game, you should be able to see all the content, regardless of your skill level.
posted by gnutron at 2:03 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm pleasantly surprised by the comments here so far. Some of the comments at the linked sites kind of stun me.
posted by roll truck roll at 2:06 PM on June 19

As an aside, I can't believe the traditional gaming mechanic used to be that when you die you have to restart the whole level, and when you lose all your lives you have to restart the whole game.

I've been playing a bunch of old NES games in emulation lately, and it is really amazing how unforgiving the games are -- there is no training levels and very few in-game instructions or tips. Often the slightest touch of an enemy results in death, and options to continue after GAME OVER are either non-existent or limited (what the hell is up with THAT?). I really find it hard to believe I spent SO MUCH time playing them as a kid. Why didn't I just give up?
posted by Rock Steady at 2:15 PM on June 19

Could someone make a walkthrough like this for marriage? Save us all a lot of trouble.
posted by msalt at 2:16 PM on June 19 [2 favorites has favorites]

It takes time & resources to implement, I guess, which could otherwise be used to make games better and/or release them sooner.
Which could be construed as some kind of harm

I always have to reject that kind of speculative argument. Why make the graphics pretty when they could be working on the gameplay or levels? Why make 5 long levels when they should have been making 10 long ones? I heard they take full 1 hour lunch breaks! I NEED MORE LEVELS.

Game design, especially when practiced at a huge studio like Nintendo, is probably a pretty rigid process. The levels are set in stone early on- You're getting the full package.

It just strikes of. I don't know. Some kind of naivety to say "bubububub the game would have been better if they didn't take the time to put in DEMO MODE"
posted by GilloD at 2:18 PM on June 19 [4 favorites has favorites]

The only problem I have with the idea of this Demo Play concept is that I fear it will be too easy to access, and I will lean on it more than I should. As it is, it is a struggle to not jump right to a walkthrough when I get stuck, and if it is already baked into the game, I might end up playing very little of the game at all. Perhaps they could set it up so that Demo Play for a certain level is only available after a certain amount of time has passed since the player first began the level (like 2 or 3 hours, I'm thinking).
posted by Rock Steady at 2:19 PM on June 19

Or, what if the "demo" play of the level is just the basic walk through. No secret areas, optimal paths, hidden items, etc. So, even if you watch the hand holding walkthrough, there is still a reason for the completists to go back and try to beat the level better, or more completely.
posted by utsutsu at 2:22 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm pleasantly surprised by the comments here so far. Some of the comments at the linked sites kind of stun me.

I think the problem is that people didn't read the (summarized) patents, which is where the details are. Anyone reporting that Nintendo will allow users to fly through games at the click of a button is misrepresenting the system (as it appears in patent form). You can't just give in at the hard parts, you have to choose to play the game without save points from the beginning.

As mek pointed out, you can download saves, though not all savefiles can be copied, which does less to help someone through the game as compared to the proposed Demo Mode system.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:22 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

As an aside, I can't believe the traditional gaming mechanic used to be that when you die you have to restart the whole level, and when you lose all your lives you have to restart the whole game.

and

Often the slightest touch of an enemy results in death, and options to continue after GAME OVER are either non-existent or limited (what the hell is up with THAT?).

Old games didn't have the length and story of modern games, so the hook was in the challenge. If you had unlimited lives/continues, or too much health, etc, you would blast through the game in a couple hours and grow bored with it much quicker. I think the reasoning was probably something like "having the player quit out of frustration after 10 hours of play is better than having them quit out of boredom after 2".

That said, I don't have the patience for those old punishing games these days, myself.
posted by owtytrof at 2:23 PM on June 19 [2 favorites has favorites]

There is no powerup for willpower.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:23 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Old games were also ports of arcade games, or built with an arcade game sensibility. Remember, an arcade game doesn't make money if you get 30 minutes of play out of a quarter. These days, they want you to finish the game feeling satisfied that you got your money's worth, but they do want you to finish up so that you'll move on to another game.

The best games are the one with some replay value though, so that your friends will have to buy a copy instead of borrowing yours
posted by explosion at 2:36 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is a good system. There will always be freely available walkthroughs online, so why not give the player the option of seeing them well-polished and in-game? It will allow people to enjoy the full game who otherwise would not, while people who take pleasure in playing legit can continue to do so (unless they would rather write whiny blog articles).

I tend to agree. I've seen people explode with gamerage over the very mention of hacking single-player games, for crying out loud. Never mind studying a walk-through beforehand. There will always be game purists who never watch walk-throughs and insist that anyone who does is a dirty dirty cheater, or at the very least, a lesser player. I don't watch walk-throughs myself, but that's because the feeling of accomplishment is so much stronger when I figure something out on my own. What the condemning purists have forgotten is the one crucial element of games: they're supposed to be fun. Once a game is yours, whatever it takes to make the game more fun for you is entirely up to you.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 2:41 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Game design, especially when practiced at a huge studio like Nintendo, is probably a pretty rigid process. The levels are set in stone early on- You're getting the full package.

It just strikes of. I don't know. Some kind of naivety to say "bubububub the game would have been better if they didn't take the time to put in DEMO MODE"

You don't think, even at Nintendo, that they'll look at a design doc sometimes and say "we don't have the time to implement that, save it for the sequel"? It certainly happens at 3rd party developers.

But even leaving aside the "better" as being a pipe dream, it's a fact that it's either going to cost them more money or take them longer to put out a game with demo mode compared to one without. This potentially translates into seeing new titles at a slower pace. Which, if you like games, you like to see more new ones more often, don't you?
posted by juv3nal at 2:41 PM on June 19

It's a great idea, and I say this as someone who never uses walkthroughs or cheats or spoilers or whatnot unless it's a last resort.

The most attractive thing about it is that it sounds like it'll be a toolbox-simple addition to any game in development, so all developers can use the feature with minimum effort. The extra benefit to users is a common interface.
posted by rokusan at 2:43 PM on June 19

Hardcore gamers will always whine about something. This is just the latest something.

But for anyone who's had to help uncooperative children work their way through LittleBigPlanet or whatever, this is a godsend. Good on Nintendo.
posted by HostBryan at 2:44 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Anyone interested in prior art? The game "Under a Killing Moon" shipped with a series of save games at critical points in the story, basically just after solving particularly tough puzzles. So if a puzzle has you stumped and you don't want to screw with it, you can load the save game just after that point and proceed. (I did that, myself. The "security robot" puzzle was just too tough for me.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:45 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Oh just for the record, I'm not poo-pooing the idea. Just the notion that there couldn't possibly be any downside to it.
posted by juv3nal at 2:46 PM on June 19

I've often wondered why games didn't ship with a "super-easy" mode that could be completed by anyone who can hold a controller (it would be incredibly trivial with something like a shooter - just give the player infinite health).

Do game companies think they would sell fewer games if they advertised that something like Halo or Bioshock had a mode that could be played by anyone regardless of skill level? Or if the latest racing game advertised "CASUAL GAMER MODE Allows Instant Access to Every Track and Car in the Game!"
posted by straight at 2:59 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Holy crap I wish they had this for Super Mario 64.

However the first time I played that it was in Japanese, and none of us playing read Japanese, so there weren't ever any clues to guide us through the levels, which was insanely hard. First, a little background, and a story...

I sublet a room briefly in the home of a genuine video game fanatic. He worked at a game store, he owned damn near ever console ever made and nearly every title and cart you'd ever care to play. At the time the state of the art was the N64, the Playstation and - ahem - the Jaguar and maybe the 3DO, so he had all those machines, and nearly every home system back to Pong. Famicom disk systems? Yep. Vectrex? Sure, with the color screen overlays and all the known carts. Virtual Boy? Sure. Atari? VCS to Jaguar, including multiple Lynx handhelds and any cart on any machine you'd actually want to play. Sega? All of it back to the master system.

The living room was a wall-o-discs and carts all the way around. There were two giant 36" sony TVs flanking a big-ass screen projection TV, and a bunch of card tables to hold whatever consoles were in play that day. At the time that usually meant three or four chipped PS1s, a Jaguar, a 3DO, a couple of super nintendos, regular nintendos and the famicom and super famicoms with floppy drives and other 16 bit consoles and so on.

I would wake up some mornings and find total strangers in the living room playing games like it was some kind of public video game flophouse. "So and so let us in." "Who the hell is that?" only to piece together the endless stream of stoner derelicts that somehow found the place like a glowing, bleeping Mecca.

So. He claimed to be the second person in the US to privately own a Nintendo 64. The first was some video game magazine, probably EGM. I believed him, because he spent a mint on the damn thing and I didn't see another unit in the states for nearly a year, and they didn't actually go on sale here until maybe a few months after that. Remember this was still in the infancy of the net. We didn't have broadband. I don't think I even had dialup there, come to think of it. So you couldn't browse to Ye Olde Importer or eBay and easily purchase out-of-region electronics.


So, we were playing the Japanese releases for games for that whole first year. Pilot Wings. Wave Race, etc. And Super Mario 64. In Japanese.

Playing that game without any hints or clues in English at all, without any guides, walkthroughs or websites to go to for hints was probably the singularly most difficult gaming task I've ever seen undertaken, ever. Worse than any Final Fantasy marathon play-through. Worse than nethack, even. Possibly even worse than a perfect Pac-Man game. Imagine trying to figure out the rainbow bridge levels without clues, or the sand levels, or any of the more complicated, freeform tasks that exist in that game that don't make a lick of sense without just a few words to guide you in the right direction.

About a half a dozen N64 controllers were smashed in frustration. I saw the cart get torn out of the console and flung at a brick fireplace dozens and dozens of times, and sometimes stomped on - and it refused to die. We started calling it Satan-in-a-box because we were halfway convinced that Nintendo had managed to make something so devilishly, insanely difficult that it was pure evil in a plastic shell that refused to be physically destroyed or beaten in game play. Try that with your DVD-ROMs and network downloads, kids.

In retrospect the game is, of course, much easier in English once you know where to go and what to do, yet still deliciously challenging. A lot of the difficulty of the game is the clumsy camera controls, but at the time the game and N64 system was really state of the art, and it's a testament to the game's aesthetics and play that we kept returning to it despite how aggravating it was to play totally blind.

That said, I am an old-school gamer. I approve of the very idea of demo mode for these more complicated 3D games we're playing these days. I think it's appropriate that gaming is still about the mechanics and play of doing something fun and novel, and not simply about a plot or storyline.

And really, how much plot is there to Super Mario? "Save the princess!" "OK." "Your princess is another castle! Go do more gymnastics! Here's a whole new level of insanely complicated stuff you have to crawl over and avoid. If you're good you'll get a shiny new toy!" "OK." "Your princess is in another castle!" "No shit. OK."
posted by loquacious at 3:03 PM on June 19 [17 favorites has favorites]

Game designers will have testers run through the game over and over to find bugs, so this won't add any time to development.

The only downside of this to me is that games are great for teaching kids (and adults, I guess) perseverance and problem solving and this demo mode will allow them to sidestep that. I know my nephew will resort to cheat guides or walk-throughs when he hits the slightest tough spot even when he can figure it out. And I know he can figure this stuff out, because I've hidden his cheat guides before.
posted by stavrogin at 3:08 PM on June 19 [2 favorites has favorites]

that is, one of the testers can just do a demo run.
posted by stavrogin at 3:11 PM on June 19

I've often wondered why games didn't ship with a "super-easy" mode that could be completed by anyone who can hold a controller (it would be incredibly trivial with something like a shooter - just give the player infinite health).

Heh. That's a fun little double-edged sword. My favorite game series comes with four modes: Easy, Normal, Hard and Lunatic. In pretty much all cases, Easy Mode is really just marginally easier than Normal, but that doesn't stop fans from pouring mockery and ridicule (in the form of YouTube comments, song, and even fan art) upon those who post replays of their Easy Mode runs.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:18 PM on June 19

that is, one of the testers can just do a demo run.

Maybe. Usually there is always someone who does a game completion as part of game testing. But there are other people who are payed to know the ins and outs of the game that are not part of debug.
Put me in the camp that this is not only a good addition but probably a lot simpler to install (after they initial developed it) than some people are making it out to be.
posted by P.o.B. at 3:20 PM on June 19

The only downside of this to me is that games are great for teaching kids (and adults, I guess) perseverance and problem solving and this demo mode will allow them to sidestep that.

Perhaps the walkthrough mode will only show you the basics: here's everything you need to simply beat the game. You'd miss out on all the side-quests, hidden gems, and details that make some games more than just a fun weekend, but something you can play again and again.

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to devote to gaming, so my wife and I will do our best, but when it comes to finding that last hidden item or two that stand between us and 100% completion of the game, we turn to online walkthroughs.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:30 PM on June 19

Okay. As someone who hadn't heard about New Super Mario Bros Wii until this post - that looks insane. I've been holding off getting a Wii for ages, given how much of my all-too-finite life has been gobbled up by playing DS, but Jesus. Penguin Mario? Four players simultaneously? Mushroom Retainers as playable characters again? Damn straight I'm quitting daylight and real-world achievement for some of that sweet, sweet platformer action.

Oh yeah, and the playthrough thing sounds good too. Very low cost to implement, a nice leg-up for casual and younger gamers, and, if they're done as optimal run-throughs, a cool thing to watch through once you've completed it yourself.
posted by RokkitNite at 3:42 PM on June 19

If this existed, I might have actually finished Psychonauts... that fucking Meat Circus. I was so close to seeing the goddamned ending!! It broke me.
posted by jcruelty at 3:42 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm all for this, and I'm as "hardcore" as they come (well, maybe not quite on par with loquacious's roommate, but still). Of course the commenters are treating it as the worst thing since Reader's Digest: they're all thirteen, don't own a Wii, and are desperately trying to make themselves feel like they're not missing anything.
posted by Amanojaku at 4:33 PM on June 19

This is strange to me. You have a lot of people crying that video games do not get their respect as an art form. Then, when presented with a video game that can stand as a work independent of the player, pull out their pitchforks.
posted by absalom at 5:10 PM on June 19

The Purple Coin levels in Super Mario Galaxy have utterly defeated me (could be because they are a pointless waste of time suitable only for children with unlimited time on their hands).

I am a child of sorts with somewhat limited time and I can hold my head up high and say that I completed all the purple coin levels. Even the bastard that is the toy-galaxy purple coin level. And then? I did it all again as Luigi. I completed everything possible challenge that Nintendo could throw at me with aplomb.

Victorious, I stood up and looked at what I had become. Then, I cried tears of shame.

Thankfully upon finishing the game Nintendo supplied me with a jpg that I could send to my friends so they could relish in my victory.

This 'kind code' threatens the delicate balance in which socially-inept individuals such as myself debase themselves over a game in order to send their well adjusted friends jpgs of Nintendo characters.
posted by Serial Killer Slumber Party at 5:34 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Was it Mario Kart 64, or Diddy Kong Racing, that had the prerecorded time trial runs where you test your time on the track against a ghost? This seems almost like an extension of that.

Also: is the best Mario game ever the first one that comes out for the console? Hmm. Maybe on the N64.

Also also: endless lives make a better easy mode than invincibility.
posted by box at 5:56 PM on June 19

So much to comment on here....

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94: "As an aside, I can't believe the traditional gaming mechanic used to be that when you die you have to restart the whole level, and when you lose all your lives you have to restart the whole game. No wonder Focus on the Family said games were evil."

That originated in the arcade, where the game was supposed to end relatively quickly so the next player could have a go (and put in more money). And yet, I actually do find something appealing about that style of game.

gnutron: "I think this is a great idea. I firmly believe that if you pay the $$ for a game, you should be able to see all the content, regardless of your skill level."

I think the important factor here that is ignored by people these days is that, in a good arcade game, "content" isn't considered to be all that special. It's supposed to be fun to play. The enjoyment is in the journey, not a destination. Many classic games don't even -have- an ending. The object is to improve playing skill, and to measure it, usually by using a score. The way the developers look at isn't at all "you are unworthy to see our levels," it's more like "hey, how far can you get?" The game changes in later levels as a way of introducing new elements to master, more than to "wow" the player with new things to see.

Rock Steady: "I've been playing a bunch of old NES games in emulation lately, and it is really amazing how unforgiving the games are -- there is no training levels and very few in-game instructions or tips. Often the slightest touch of an enemy results in death, and options to continue after GAME OVER are either non-existent or limited (what the hell is up with THAT?). I really find it hard to believe I spent SO MUCH time playing them as a kid. Why didn't I just give up?"

One of the greatest influences Shigeru Miyamoto has had on video gaming is the "learn as you play" approach. In those places where the player isn't overtly told something to try, the game might offer a kind of leading setup. Like the Goomba, a monster that looks like it was born for the sole purpose of being squished.

But one could take an alternative view here, that this could be argued to be overdesign in Miyamoto's part. Older games wouldn't lead the player through a predetermined experience, but instead let him experiment with the game and figure out things for himself. That way, it could be argued, the process of learning the game is more a function of the player's skill and effort than a primrose path set out by the designer.

It is the difference between the player experiencing a process set forth by the designer, and him finding his own way. I can imagine there being room for both approaches.
posted by JHarris at 5:57 PM on June 19 [4 favorites has favorites]

"You have a lot of people crying that video games do not get their respect as an art form. Then, when presented with a video game that can stand as a work independent of the player, pull out their pitchforks."

Group A is not the same as -- nor is it likely that it overlaps substantially with -- group B. People in "A" want games to be some kind of postmodern literature, something to be deconstructed and analyzed. Set "B" is comprised of people who want to go home to unwrap and play an actual game when they pony up their cash at the game store. It's possible there are a handful of people who are in both sets, but it's exceedingly unlikely that they comprise a majority.

That is to say: People crying about games as art are usually not the kids plunking down their allowance for an xbox game they can use as another venue to spew uncreative epithets at other people in some feeble substitute for asserting their simian primacy.
posted by majick at 6:06 PM on June 19

This 'kind code' threatens the delicate balance in which socially-inept individuals such as myself debase themselves over a game in order to send their well adjusted friends jpgs of Nintendo characters.

Yeah, whatever, like we haven't had up up "down down left right left right b a start" for ages, or Justin Bailey or any number of cheats like GameSharks and emulators.

You can still show off your quadruple wall jump to butt-slam-spin-kick attack on manual all you want.

Look, I'll make this simple. I'm going to throw down the gauntlet, because I get it.

If you're viewing this as an affront to your own personal button mashing skills, you probably suxxor and will be pwned upon thine own game grid, tools and fools all - your insecurity on the ABCs and XYXs will be revealed.

Meanwhile those of us who see this as a way to see if we can do better than the game designers themselves and beat their demos and push the envelope of the environments they've built will be in your base killing your dudes.

I wouldn't mind a "perfect" mode included from the design team to every game just to see if i could best it.
posted by loquacious at 6:06 PM on June 19

your insecurity on the ABCs and XYXs will be revealed

Edit: XYZs. As in I've got the axis on the angle on the headshot, yo. *sigh* (Edit button, pleeease?)
posted by loquacious at 6:09 PM on June 19

The way the developers look at isn't at all "you are unworthy to see our levels," it's more like "hey, how far can you get?" The game changes in later levels as a way of introducing new elements to master, more than to "wow" the player with new things to see.

Cases in point: Yume Nikki and Cave Story. Not really well known for their graphics, but the challenges you face to make it to the next level will make you chairdance when you beat them.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:43 PM on June 19

I sublet a room briefly in the home of a genuine video game fanatic. He worked at a game store, he owned damn near ever console ever made and nearly every title and cart you'd ever care to play. At the time the state of the art was the N64, the Playstation and - ahem - the Jaguar and maybe the 3DO, so he had all those machines, and nearly every home system back to Pong. Famicom disk systems? Yep. Vectrex? Sure, with the color screen overlays and all the known carts. Virtual Boy? Sure. Atari? VCS to Jaguar, including multiple Lynx handhelds and any cart on any machine you'd actually want to play. Sega? All of it back to the master system.

The living room was a wall-o-discs and carts all the way around. There were two giant 36" sony TVs flanking a big-ass screen projection TV, and a bunch of card tables to hold whatever consoles were in play that day.

He could afford all that stuff and still had to sublet his apartment? Crazy.
posted by delmoi at 7:23 PM on June 19

I'd be down with it if you'd have to call Nintendo's support line or go to GameFAQ's to find the code, much like it already is with infinite life cheats right now. Having it right there in the menu is too tempting. I wouldn't work through a really tough spot and get that hit of satisfaction, but instead I'd just have the game mill through it.

It's like those "think outside the box riddles." When you figure it out yourself, it's really cool, but when someone tells you the answer, it doesn't feel nearly as good.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:50 PM on June 19

Ikaruga comes with "how-to" videos showing people beating the game in two ways, the easy way, and the quick way. Fortunately, with enough time spent, you can unlock unlimited continues, because the game is damn hard.
posted by pwnguin at 8:38 PM on June 19

He could afford all that stuff and still had to sublet his apartment? Crazy.

House. Which he owned. He did it so he didn't have to have a real job to pay the bills and whatnot. Also, party house.

Your perspective and reasoning is a tad narrow. :)
posted by loquacious at 9:19 PM on June 19

Ikaruga comes with "how-to" videos showing people beating the game in two ways, the easy way, and the quick way.

Yeah, but it's still not going to show you how to do it the insane way.
posted by juv3nal at 10:51 PM on June 19

The best game of the modera era, Portal, would have been terrible with something like this.

Exactly as JHarris said:
In those places where the player isn't overtly told something to try, the game might offer a kind of leading setup.

This sort of thing is the linchpin of excellent game design. If you are playing terrible shitty frustrating games that don't lead you into the skillset you need by the time you need it, play better games. The point is absolutely not "I want to see how it ends", it is "I want to have fun playing this, I'm into it, I'm immersed, I want to keep going."

I won't cry when and if this feature appears in games, but it is a crutch and, to me, against the spirit of the medium. Games without players are called movies.
posted by Super Hans at 2:12 AM on June 20

I wouldn't mind a "perfect" mode included from the design team to every game just to see if i could best it.

I remember many hours of playing F-Zero with my friends, attempting to best one another's times. I think the prime impact of things like this is social, and if you have friends that care, you'll care. If you don't, you won't.
posted by perianwyr at 5:49 AM on June 20

Also, as a side note; I think that these days we could do with less global competition in games, and more local competition. I'm not really sure I care about beating everyone everywhere on the internet, but I most certainly do care about beating my friends.
posted by perianwyr at 5:52 AM on June 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

I know patents are hard to read but, (1) the link in the FPP goes to a patent issued eleven years ago based on a Japanese filing in 1994 for simple reproduction of video, and while (2) the link in the Kotaku article does take me to Nintendo patent application filed this past Thursday, but it's a patent application, not a patent, and it also relates to overvoltage protection, not a gaming system as being discussed. In fairness, the USPTO makes it hard to link to patents and applications, and maybe the link to the newish patent application went someplace sensible at one point.

Patents and patent applications are quite different, in that only the former grants rights. The latter must survive examination to mature into patents. While I'm at it, copyright and trademark are totally different from each other (wiki links omitted). Sigh. /rant off

I don't mean to pick on your post, filthy light thief, but the accumulation of slack I've seen on MeFi regarding understanding the most elementary IP just became too much.
posted by exogenous at 8:07 AM on June 20

This is strange to me. You have a lot of people crying that video games do not get their respect as an art form. Then, when presented with a video game that can stand as a work independent of the player, pull out their pitchforks.

Because video games as works of art should not necessarily "stand as a work independent of the player". Interactivity is the defining characteristic of these games, and should be included in their aesthetic appeal.
posted by jdotglenn at 8:54 AM on June 20

The biggest problem I see with the video game "community" is that for so long it's been a small enough industry that it was expected that 100% of the development resources should be spent on something that is specifically made for "us". Everything must appeal at some level to the homogeneous gamer demographic, and if someone else is interested, good for them.

Over 20 years were spent with that mentality but now things are changing. Video games are just another medium, so they'll exist like any other medium-- with a wide variety of products that appeal to a wide variety of people. No one expects every movie in theaters to appeal to them or every book in the library to be something they want to spend time reading, and hopefully some day it will be okay for a video game to be "not for you". Was this ever a problem with music or books or film?
posted by ckolderup at 10:13 AM on June 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

I suck at games. I love them, but damn, I'm awful. That's why I use GameFAQs, and easy mode. I play games to enjoy the created worlds and plots, not the overall challenge. Plus, I'm bad enough that easy/normal modes are challenging.

That said, I don't really see the need for this mode in Nintendo games. Nintendo games are not hard. You are playing the game to have fun, not to be incredibly challenged or to enjoy a complex plot or something.

There are games I would love this for, like the Silent Hills (I suck at scary). Or games that this would work well for but don't really need it, say Indigo Prophecy.
posted by graventy at 12:07 PM on June 22

I suck at games. I love them, but damn, I'm awful. That's why I use GameFAQs, and easy mode. I play games to enjoy the created worlds and plots, not the overall challenge. Plus, I'm bad enough that easy/normal modes are challenging.

I admit I've fallen victim to peer pressure with regards to easy mode, and won't allow myself to choose a difficult below normal. I'm no longer a total purist, though - if I run out of lives, I'll take the continue so I can practice harder stages.

Now, because I doubt I'll ever be good enough to play Lunatic mode, I have no problem watching replays of Lunatic stages. Some of them are beautiful to behold. Kefit - who is kind of a legend in Touhou circles - posts replays of his Lunatic stages with tips on how to beat them. This one is breathtaking. I can watch this and enjoy it, and have no worries that I'm "cheating" because I seriously doubt I'll ever be a Lunatic player.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:16 PM on June 22

Yeah, but it's still not going to show you how to do it the insane way .

WHAT THE SHIT I MEAN REALLY
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 8:14 PM on June 22