I was delighted to be asked about writing in games last week for a Wired Magazine piece by David Cornish. You can see the finished piece featuring some of my comments, which is well worth a read, here: Press X to skip: the challenge of storytelling in computer games.
Answering his questions gave me an opportunity to refine some of my own theories, so I decided to post my full responses here. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
So, I attended the Eurogamer Expo again this year, and there may be a post about it in a few days. But today I want to focus on something tangentially related. At the Expo I played a level from Sonic: Generations. This is supposed to be a mesh of old and new levels from various Sonic games. Although whizzing around in a 3D environment was fun, I want to talk about when I got home and installed the classic, original Sonic the Hedgehog on my PC, thanks to SEGA’s excellent Mega Drive Classics pack on Steam (I also purchased the Sonic games separately — 1 2 3), on sale over the weekend.
Other than using an Xbox controller, it was exactly like returning to the heady days of 1991, when, aged seven, I embarked on the great Sonic adventure. One of the things I was most looking forward to was the music, which did not disappoint. Maybe one of these days I’ll post a video of my brother and I playing the Green Hill Zone theme, adapted to bass guitar and piano. Not today, though.* For now, enjoy the classic version itself in the embedded widget here:
For a change, I want to talk about the game design of Sonic. Continue reading