Agreed Tom.
Dynaman and packman talks are actually in the odd catagory of being classic
arcade games with a first person view. A couple of crasier retro games
designers and more bizarre mainstream games have done this (there was a ps2
game of 3D space invaders), but generally it doesn't happen as much, sinse
from a sited point of view either a direct 2D side view or the top down
perspective has generally been used for classic games like packman or
boulderdash.
While I certainly see your point about 3D games such as shades and Sarah, I
do think audio 2D games have suffered far more from this lack of a second
dimention, which has seriously affected gameplay. Even in the original Monti
game, I noticed that there was very litle actual movement in the y axiss,
the hole game ran on a system of essentially stratified left/right corridors
linked by climbable ladders rather like prince of persia, some levels of
original donkey kong or the old C64 classic Freddy.
You didn't really have as much free vertical movement though as in something
like mario brothers, ---- much less metroid or mega man.
Just to illustrate, Take for instance the start of marrio brothers 1 as an
example. When you've dealt with the initial goomba you are faced with a
ledge above your head. you can walk undernieth it, or jump ontop of it.
Walking undernieth will let you jump up and get the mushroom and coin block
contained in that ledge, while jumping ontop will let you get the coin block
up there, ---- you could, (alternatively), simply run under the ledge and
miss the hole lot.
Thus already we have three levels of vertical movement, not linked by
ladders or anything else, and a number of options for how the player will
handle these choices.
I don't think representing this is in any way beyond the capabilities of
audio, --- afterall, you'd only need to represent the ledges your character
could immediately jump to (they can worry about the others once they get
there), but nobody has yet done it, which is a shame.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
---
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