A (Relatively) Short Dissection of Rocket Knight Adventures, My Favorite Game

I write a lot about game design on this blog.  I write about how to do it right, how to do it wrong, and why certain concepts are really important to consider.

Now, considering how much I perseverate on these topics, you might be wondering what the ideal is for me.  Sure, I've brought up some games I really like, such as Super Mario Brothers 3, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Saint's Row: The Third...

But what is the ideal?

The ideal is Rocket Knight Adventures on the Sega Genesis.

Let's start

Follow-up on "Worst Levels Ever"

A few days ago (as of writing this, as I am offsetting the publish for this post, it's probably been roughly a week) I posted a blog article about Mario Maker and bad levels.

In it, I had a section all about ultimate deductions to the "worst levels" possible in an old-school Mario game.  I described levels with no obstacles, levels with way too many enemies, and even levels with no level at all.

Mama mia!

After having a chat with my good friend Gabriel Priske (the dude I made See No Evil with) of Noetic Games, I came to some deeper inspection of what "bad" can mean in this context.

Do NPCs In Video Games Really Die?

Mortal Kombat

Since the early 90's, old people who had no idea what video games are and Florida lawyers who are willing to spin the grief of parents who have lost their children to violent crimes to make a quick buck have tried to question the issue of violence in video games.  I mean, it's undeniable that video games depict a lot of simulated death.

Now, those disrespectful politicians and opportunists who I mentioned above have tried to rattle our ears with the concept that our brains can't understand the differences between reality and video games; that these video games will rot our minds and turn us into killers.

Half-Life 2

Those crusty old farts are full of it.  We know that now.

But, what if we actually are all killers?  What if those virtual characters, packed with "AI", are actually living things that we're killing?

A Brief Explanation of Educational Computer Games

Math Muncher

If you grew up in the 90's and early 2000's, then you remember playing some serious educational games either in school or at home.  The funny thing about them was that they never really felt like they were teaching you stuff.  You were just having a lot of fun.

But you did learn.  You had to!  It was the only way to play the game.  How can you munch math in Math Muncher without knowing the math?

These games were great ways of teaching children how to learn while having fun with the topics.  But there's not that much of this anymore.  What happened?  Where are the games that, dare I say, made learning fun?

Feeling Your Game

Anybody who graces themselves with the title of "gamer" knows a thing or two about the term "game feel," or at least have heard it mentioned.  Game feel is a pretty apt name for the concept- literally, how a game feels when you are playing it.  So, how does your game feel?

No, no... not like that

I want for this blog to be more than just a promotion for my projects, but a chance to discuss some ideas about developing games, so I'm going to initiate that conversation by talking about game feel a bit, as well as how I think that it really impacts a gaming experience.