I don't know if coincidences are real or if everything we encounter is a deliberate arrangement of events for the benefit of an unseen force. Still, one funny thing I thought of recently is how closely the rise of video games matched the fall of westerns. Cowboys were a staple of film and television in popular culture for decades, lasting well into the 1980s. Still, just as video games grew in popularity, the romanticised image of the Old West held less appeal.

I use the adjective "funny" because cowboys and their clichés are perfect fodder for video games. They always carry guns, wear giant hats (no need to animate hair), spend much time in flat, empty spaces, and solve most problems with violence. If the desert was as black as outer space, Space Invaders might very well have been Cowboys vs Aliens. And what is Moon Patrol but a lunar wagon jaunt with laser guns?

Furthermore, despite the "wild west" is a specific set of tropes based on a vision of America's past, all those movies and hours of television we created spread across the Earth to other nations, making the cowboy a global ambassador for our culture. Some of the greatest westerns were made in other countries by actors and filmmakers who spoke little to no English—and that's not even including all the stories derived from westerns but recast in local historical settings. Akira Kurosawa did not hide his love of American films. When he wasn't adapting Shakespeare or Russian memoirs, his samurai behaved like cowboys with swords instead of six-shooters (though at least one film had both). Kurosawa's work, of course, inspired American filmmakers like George Lucas, who has left an impression on pop culture that can never truly be measured.

I'm laying all this out here because I hope you, dear reader, might comprehend how surprised I was to see Sunset Riders in arcades 30 years ago. Beat-em-ups were everywhere, and shoot-em-ups were just as well-known, but here was a game with all the personality of the former armed with the firepower of the latter. Sunset Riders is bright, loud, colourful, and eye-grabbing in ways that westerns were not to kids my age. That's because the wizards at Konami embraced their idea of how the West was fun in ways no movie or tv show ever did.

While arcade cabinets varied in size and equipment, under ideal conditions, Sunset Riders is a four-player game where a quartet of cowpokes blast their way through hundreds of varmints en route to toppling a criminal organisation, making themselves a pretty penny in the process. The four bounty hunters are all men, but all look very different, with distinct outfits in loud colours. In that sense, they have a lot less in common than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did when they cleaned up the crime-ridden streets of New York wearing nothing but bandanas and their shells.

From a gameplay standpoint, however, the characters fit neatly into two squads: Team Handgun and Team Shotgun. Steve and Billy wield smaller weapons, while Bob and Cormano start with heavier hardware. All players can gain dual-gun and rapid-fire upgrades, so if everyone plays well, there'll soon be four men filling the screen with righteous pink bullets. There are no health bars or armour in Sunset Riders, so taking any damage costs one life and forfeits all power-ups at once. At least there's no need to count your shots, as every gun in the game includes unlimited ammo.

Sunset Riders is a side-scrolling game that urges players to keep moving forward no matter the odds. Action is limited to a single 2D plane, but many levels have bannisters, bridges, or fences that can be scaled in a single vertical leap (think Shinobi or Rolling Thunder). There are also auto-scrolling chase scenes where all the cowboys ride on horses, and bonus stages offer a first-person shooting gallery for extra cash/bragging rights.

While purely a cooperative game (there is no friendly fire, making it in everyone's best interest to Always Be Capshootin'), Sunset Riders does include small, subtle incentives to create the players to compete with one another. The aforementioned bonus stages are one such example, as the hit counts are tracked per individual, with rewards doled out proportionately to the players who shoot the most pop-up bad guys. Boss battles are even more cutthroat, as the game displays how much damage each player dealt with the enemy, and only the top hunter receives the bounty.

If Sunset Riders carry any baggage, it is due to its unfortunate perpetuation of stereotypes from the western genre. All four heroes and most of the heavies are men, with women relegated to background damsels waiting to reward players for their deeds. One stage takes place entirely in a...brothel? Cabaret, maybe? Once the two bomb-throwing baddies inside are slain, ladies strut onto the stage and dance for the boys, much to their hootin' delight.

Native Americans fare worse, as an entire level takes place in their territory, leading to an army of "braves" charging at the heroes to be gunned down. Two of the games' bosses are also Natives, named Dark Horse and Chief Scalpem, and their dialogue is delivered in clichéd broken English. At least the latter is spared execution thanks to his sister running on-screen at the end of the fight to beg for his life. The heroes always agree by saying, "Alright, we won't shoot ‘em", even though they had just finished shooting him many times. With bullets.

Sunset Riders was an arcade smash, and being a 1991 release, it came home to 16-bit consoles at just the right time. While both the Super Nintendo and Genesis versions strongly resemble the original game, each port has its ups and downs. None of the home editions supports four players, limiting the action to two at the maximum. The Super Nintendo cartridge is the most faithful overall. Still, thanks to Nintendo of America's aggressive content standards, all the women in the game are redrawn to sport more conservative outfits. Also, all the cannon-fodder indigenous enemies are removed, and the Chief is renamed “Wigwam."

Much of the original arcade content is cut to fit onto Sega's console, leaving the game with fewer stages and bosses. Two of the heroes are also removed, leaving only Billy and Cormano. The horseback stages are cut, but those assets are repurposed into new bonus stages where players catch items tossed from the back of a wagon. The game generally features more collectables, as enemies (and slain heroes) drop lots of coins and other pickups. Somehow, despite cutting so much from the arcade original, the Native American enemies are still present, and the Chief is still called “Scalpem."

The good news is that no one has to settle for an expurgated cowboy experience today, as Sunset Riders is available for modern consoles via Hamster's Arcade Archives series. This version supports a four-player simultaneous coop and includes unlimited credits, so even an arcade novice can grind their way to the end. I don't think Sunset Riders occupies people's memories like other games of its era (Konami's TMNT, The Simpsons, and next year's X-Men all seem to foster more nostalgia). Still, considering how little we thought about westerns in 1991, it's fantastic fun for four friends. Yee-haw!

There is no shortage of stories about vampires; they all have their own guidelines on what does and does not destroy these creatures who consume human blood to survive. A wooden stake to the heart is a standard method of slaying vampires, as is decapitation. Still, depending on the author, their weaknesses can also include holy symbols, silver, garlic, and sunlight.

Yet the Castlevania series began with a hero who wields a whip as his primary weapon against the forces of darkness. Later games create a legendary legacy for the Belmont family heirloom, but Simon and Trevor are just cracking a leather whip in the initial run. Each game includes its upgrade system wherein the whip transforms into a more significant, better weapon—most notably in Castlevania II, where Simon can purchase better equipment. Who needs ancestral hand-me-downs when you can buy a morning star and light it on fire?

On Halloween 1991, Castlevania leapt into the 16-bit era, and the star of the game was Simon Belmont's whip. Yes, there are all-new graphics and sounds, but the most significant change in this series entry is a complete overhaul for the so-called Vampire Killer. In the previous Castlevania games, regardless of which Belmont held the whip, their attacks were slow and had a finite, horizontal hitbox. Therefore, choosing the right sub-weapon is essential, as many boss battles come down to offensive speed and reach.

In this new adventure, a remake of the original 1986 Famicom game, Simon takes a new, much more flexible approach to fighting Count Dracula and his minions. His trusty whip is still his primary weapon, but he can now crack it in eight cardinal directions. Better still, he can continue manipulating the whip after the initial swing and loosely flail it to his heart's content. Of course, a limp whip doesn't pack the same punch as a fully-cracked whip, but the Vampire Killer deals contact damage to enemies and can block many small projectiles even in its flaccid state.

In addition to his newfound whip dexterity, Simon himself is also more mobile than ever before. Instead of a fixed jump, he can change direction while airborne and even leap onto a staircase (though not off of one). In addition, his whip enables him to swing from select grappling points, affording him even more aerial agility. Finally, on the ground, Simon can shuffle in a crouched position, a necessary manoeuvre to enter specific tight spaces in Dracula's castle.

With these new and improved movements and offensive skills, Castlevania's first 16-bit outing controls like a dream compared to the earlier games. Even if Simon is not any faster than before, still marching forward at a pace best described as "determined," he is capable of doing so much more that the game feels smoother. For example, it is now possible to hit most candles without jumping, making item collection a faster experience. Similarly, Simon's new angled attacks allow him to strike enemies without stopping, a godsend when leaping between precarious positions or fleeing another threat.

These improvements are in large part due to the new technology the Super Nintendo offered developers, mainly when it came to on-screen sprites. The NES had a hard limit to the number of graphical elements that could be visible at one time, which is why the action in certain games would slow down, and the visuals flickered in and out of existence. The SNES far exceeded those limits, enabling the team at Konami to give Simon a whip made up of individual segments rather than a single, rigid line. Enemies likewise could contain multiple bits and pieces to their bodies, allowing skeletons and other fragile creatures to explode when destroyed.

The SNES also excelled at sprite manipulation, opening the door to spinning and scaling graphics the likes of which had never been seen before. Simon's wiggling whip is just one fine example of this, as both his weapon and arm can freely move in any direction. Yet Castlevania has never settled for "subtle," so the fourth level of the game features an entire room that rotates while Simon clings to a grappling hook for his life. The next screen sets Simon inside a tube-like corridor with a spinning background full of spring-loaded skeletons who burst forth and block his path—a path slowly falling apart as he progresses. It's dizzying, dazzling, and there's no way it makes any physical sense. It's like the man will say a few years from now: "This castle is a creature of chaos."

The graphical enhancements are a welcome upgrade, but what makes this game stick with me three decades later is its soundtrack. Composers Masanori Adachi and Taro Kudo crafted an atmospheric score that's less about short hooks than setting the mood. Just as the SNES hardware allowed for more impressive visuals, the ability to use samples gives the music many different "voices." Players will hear plenty of percussion instruments, but strings, organs, and pianos are mixed in. Tempos vary from subdued uneasiness to rousingly tense as the final battle approaches. There are even a few covers of themes from Castlevania I and II, cementing a pattern as we advance that future games would consistently revisit past hits.

Today, this first 16-bit Castlevania soundtrack is lauded as one of the series' best, but that wasn't always the case. In a 2017 interview, Adachi told VGMonline.net, "at the time, the reception to the soundtrack had been extremely negative." Adachi said he even got harsh notes before the game was complete, but he kept making the kind of music he felt was best. "I was grateful that the people who were in charge of making decisions let me keep creating whatever I wanted to the very end," he said. The fans' rejection of the soundtrack hit him harder, saying, "I lost a lot of my self-confidence." Remember the next time you question yourself: Even the most skilled creators experience self-doubt, and sometimes their best work can be underappreciated.

Speaking of under-appreciation, Castlevania has never been a huge seller, and there is little evidence to suggest this 16-bit overhaul changed that paradigm. Even today, with more people pledging themselves fans of the series, this entry tends to sink beneath the beloved games that preceded it (such as Castlevania III) or followed it (the one-two combination of Rondo of Blood & Symphony of the Night).

I can see why some fans of the series wouldn't want to revisit this one. Simon's body takes up much real estate on the screen, making him a big target. The colours aren't as vibrant as other games in this series, with lots of browns and greys smudged together that, while thematically appropriate for a rotting castle, don't make for an appealing visual feast. Even the showcase feature of the fantastically flailable whip has its detractors, as the massive upgrade in reach makes Simon's sub-weapons much less critical. There's no point in grabbing a throwing knife or an axe when one whip strike covers at least two-thirds of the screen.

There's also a nagging sense that this story has just been done before, a problem directly tied to how this game was localised. Since Konami intended this as a remake of the original Castlevania, its Japanese title is the same as that first game: Akumajō Dracula. Yet, in English, it is branded Super Castlevania IV, painting it as a sequel even though it's a retelling of Simon's original defeat of Dracula, which necessitated an entire follow-up quest to save his soul. Even teenage me, a kid who had no problem with Marvel Comics' heroes and villains fighting the same battles for decades, thought that was weird.

While I certainly have a stronger fondness for the exploration-heavy Castlevania games that would follow this highly linear retread of familiar material, I'm still a huge fan of Super Castlevania IV. I played that copy of mine over and over until I sold my SNES for a next-generation console, and when I picked up the SNES Classic, it was the first game I played to completion. Unlike Castlevania I or III, IV is entirely beatable without cheating or laborious practice, even if the final battle underwhelms. In addition, it's the only Castlevania game I can think of where Dracula never changes form or summons any allies; he attacks how you'd expect him to and dies when he's had enough.

When can inevitability and evitability co-exist? When can something be a sure thing yet remain entirely up in the air? Ask Capcom: In 1991, Street Fighter II, a sequel to a modestly successful 1987 arcade game, connected with such force that it became a pop culture phenomenon. Street Fighter II cabinets circled the globe, occupying just about any commercial real estate space available. The game made such a splash that the entire notion of what we consider a "fighting game" was modelled on Street Fighter II, as Capcom and any other willing publisher rushed to bring more 1-on-1 fisticuffs to arcades.

Part of Capcom's efforts to answer the overwhelming demand for more fighting games included updating Street Fighter II slowly adding new techniques and even new characters to the original 1991 version. Yet the company did not turn into an exclusive Street Fighter factory; Capcom instead experimented with the nascent genre, producing fighting games starring superheroes, monsters, giant mechs, and more.

As the years passed and the genre only grew more extensive and more crowded, everyone had the same question on their minds: When will Capcom "count to three" and make a new Street Fighter sequel? The Osaka institution maintained a flair for fighting games, as so many of the best titles from this era came from Capcom's brain trust, but the company seemed unwilling to take the next step. Instead, Capcom gave fans iteration after iteration on Street Fighter II, beginning with the prequel Street Fighter Alpha, followed by a Street Fighter based on the 1994 live-action film and even the first 3D version, Street Fighter EX.

As a fan, I was left wondering what could be taking so long; in the time it took Street Fighter to go from II to III, competing series Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, and numerous SNK properties all hit the arcades and had sequels of their own. I had no fundamental right to complain since the genre's explosion gave me more choices to play than I could keep up with, but at a certain point, the absence of Street Fighter III turned comical. This wasn't a vaporware situation, as Capcom never formally announced any plans for a sequel to Street Fighter II. Still, the magnitude of its success convinced the gaming world that indeed we had not seen the last of Ryu, Ken, and all the World Warriors.

In February 1997, the wait was over: Six years after planting a flag upon the fighting game genre, Capcom released an actual, legitimate, numbered sequel to Street Fighter II. Street Fighter III represented a considerable step forward from all previous Capcom titles, running on the new CPS-3 arcade board with levels of animation never before seen in a fighting game. Individual character sprites contain hundreds, even thousands of frames of hand-drawn artwork. While the game unequivocally resembles Street Fighter II, Street Fighter III looks magnitudes smoother and more advanced. If you showed the game in motion to an unaware party today and said, "this is coming out next year," I think they would believe you.

Ryu and Ken, the two most famous best friends/rival karate experts on the planet, don their instantly recognisable gi and enter the fray in Street Fighter III. However, these two are the only characters making their return, with the rest of the "New Generation" cast made up of first-time fighters. The ostensible protagonist, at least according to the intro animation, is Alex, a blond, shirtless grappler from New York City. Other combatants include a traditional Japanese ninja, an upper-class British boxer, an African tribeswoman, and identical twin brothers from Hong Kong. Counting the twins as one (they are identical) gives Street Fighter III an initial roster of only ten characters, definitely on the small side for a 1997 release.

Following in the footsteps of the Street Fighter Alpha series, every character in Street Fighter III has multiple super moves available, now called "super arts," capable of dealing significant damage in a hurry. The catch is that only one super art is available per match, decided by players at the character select screen. This would become standard for all future Street Fighter games, adding an extra layer of strategy to every face-off since your opponent can see which super art was chosen.

By far, the most significant change in Street Fighter III is a new defensive mechanic that I'd wager no one thought would have the impact it did. From the very first Street Fighter game, players could push the joystick away from an incoming attack to block, reducing damage and providing an opportunity to react with a strike of their own. In Street Fighter III, pushing the joystick towards an attack at just the right moment completely nullifies the blow and opens a window for an immediate counter. It's by no means an easy feat to perform or capitalise upon. Still, with practice, this "parry" manoeuvre completely changes the game's flow, giving defenders an advantage they never had before.

To quickly recap the tale of the tape: After years of development, Capcom released a highly-anticipated sequel to one of the biggest video games in the medium's history, a technical marvel many times more advanced than its predecessor or its peers, and introduced innovations that would impact the series for decades to come. Indeed this achievement was received with open arms from fans, critics, and arcade operators alike, heralding a new golden age of video games about punching another person in the face!

Alas, that was not the case. For starters, 3D graphics were seen not as the future but as the present in 1997, with 2D pixel art viewed as old-fashioned at best. For all its gorgeous animation, Street Fighter III appeared behind the times to a frustratingly large number of people upon its release.

The character lineup also took many people aback. The cast of Street Fighter II had already become iconic, having leapt from the arcades to comic books, television, motion pictures, and even toy shelves. Ditching that legacy would be a tough sell under any circumstances, but the pushback was powerful given Street Fighter III's unusual launch roster.

Complaints about the new faces of Street Fighter III ran the gamut from "too generic" to "too weird." Alex underwhelmed as a protagonist, lacking the hirsute charms of Zangief. With his karate gi, Sean looked too much like Ryu and Ken. Even though green-skinned Blanka in Street Fighter II had plenty of fans, people seemed far less willing to accept either pasty-white Necro or the one-armed supercentenarian hermit Oro.

Grumbling about graphics and lamenting missing heroes did Street Fighter III no favours, but the most damning perceived fault of the game was its high barrier to entry. Street Fighter II reached a plateau of fame few games ever reach, but as time wore on, the players who stuck with it acquired a level of skill that made it nigh-impossible for beginners to compete. From day one, Street Fighter III seemed to demand a level of execution that made it more challenging to comprehend. In particular, the parry system proved to be crucial to winning fights, yet it required such precision and carried such weight that it sent many players away from the game altogether.

All this bad news amounted to deeply disappointing sales of Street Fighter III machines and far fewer fans coming back to give it a chance. This was not the reception Capcom had anticipated, having spent billions of yen to follow-up on the Street Fighter II sensation. Imagine a reality where Avengers: Endgame opened in sixth place at the box office to put this flop into perspective. No one would have been surprised if 1997, the tenth anniversary of the original Street Fighter, became the last year anyone cared about hearing those two nouns said together.

To Capcom's credit, the company never threw in the towel. Instead, just like Street Fighter II, Street Fighter III saw arcade updates and expansions twice over, adding more characters (including a few familiar faces) and adjusting move sets. Surprisingly, the company doubled down on the technical aspects of the game, leaning into the image that Street Fighter III was for hardcore fans.

1999's much-improved Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike barely resembles the vanilla 1997 edition, but the revamp did little to move the needle of popular opinion. As a result, Capcom put the once-ubiquitous franchise on ice for almost a decade, and the 2D fighting game genre as a whole fell into a dark age with very few commercial successes in the early 2000s. This left fans like me wandering in the desert, desperately snatching up the last few Neo Geo releases and whatever ports happened to make their way to the already-defunct Sega Dreamcast.

Even though Street Fighter III eventually found a fanbase, its commercial and popularity struggles tainted its legacy. Absolutely none of the New Generation characters were included in the launch rosters of Street Fighter IV or V, with only a handful of them showing up as late-season add-ons. Contrast that with every original Street Fighter II character appearing in both Street Fighter IV & V, most of whom showed up on day one. It's as if every new Street Fighter game is positioned as a sequel to II, with III tucked away in Capcom's back pocket, only to see the light of day once the company feels comfortable taking a chance.

I know I did not embrace Street Fighter III as I had II (or Alpha, or even EX), but I grew fond of 3rd Strike when I imported a copy for my Dreamcast in the summer of 2000. Parrying never got any easier, half the characters still strike me as inscrutable, but the animation nerd in me couldn't resist all that eye candy. Sadly, it is unlikely we'll ever see another game company gamble on creating that much original artwork ever again. Today, even the "2D" fighting games are made in 3D, and only a few invest in the extra effort to keep up the appearance of hand-drawn animation.

At the very least, technological advancements and digital re-releases have granted more players access to Street Fighter III than ever before, and its reputation today is much improved. It may lack three-dimensional graphics, but its exquisite sprite-work has aged far better than any pre-Millenium polygons. You don't have to love Street Fighter III, but I think you have to respect it.

I started playing video games from a very young age, and it didn't take me long to imagine what it would be like to create my own game. I can still vividly remember two ideas I had back when I was in middle school in the late 1980s. One was an ultraviolent beat-em-up about cleaning up the streets with an assortment of weapons, both melee and ranged, because I was such a fan of Double Dragon. The other was an epic Mega Man sequel that included all the robot masters in a single adventure, one where players navigated a world map to choose their own path to reach Dr. Wily's castle.

While I spent hours doodling detailed layouts of these ideas in my Trapper Keeper, my grand plan to embark on a new career never took off. The odds were stacked against me: Everything I wanted to make was entirely derivative of established properties. Moreover, I had only a fleeting knowledge of BASIC programming, which was insufficient to create a complex consumer game, and I was 12 years old. I had the passion and enthusiasm to fantasise about designing a video game but lacked the means or opportunity to do so.

In honour of his 75th birthday this week, we shall talk about a man who was afforded such a chance despite his open hostility for the medium. A significant corporation assumed that getting a famous face on the box would justify developing a game around a celebrity, only for said celebrity to propose ideas that turned the project into an infamously obtuse puzzle few players could understand.

The man in question is Takeshi Kitano, and the game is Takeshi no Chōsenjō a.k.a. "Takeshi's Challenge."

In a pop culture landscape that is entirely celebrity-driven, Takeshi Kitano stands as one of the giants of Japanese media. He made a name for himself as part of a manzai comedy duo back in the 1970s, where he and a pal were collectively known as "Two Beat." While the pair have long since split up, to this day, Kitano is regularly credited as "Beat Takeshi" in his many, many TV appearances. We used to crack jokes about the late Bob Saget when he starred in two shows on ABC in the 1990s. Still, Kitano regularly hosts at least six programs on Japanese television as of this writing, with a list of past broadcast credits that reads more extended than most biographies.

However, Kitano did not stick to stand-up, as he quickly found acting roles in a variety of genres. One of his earliest parts that garnered worldwide attention was that of a cruel prison guard in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, a beautiful but harrowing story of British POWs in World War II. Kitano delivers the final, titular line of the film in a moment I will never forget.

During this post-Lawrence period, when Kitano could not be more well-known, the comedian and Taito met to discuss creating a video game with his likeness. Accounts differ as to which party took the first step: Either Taito approached Kitano looking to license his name and image for a generic shooting game, or Kitano came to Taito and told them about a game he wanted to make. Whichever side contacted the other, everyone agrees that Kitano was not content to sign away his identity without creative input into the project.

The development process for Takeshi no Chōsenjō has a similarly contested backstory. Kitano claims that he met with the staff just once for an hour in a coffee shop and outlined his entire plan. Taito's people tell a different tale, one where they diligently recorded everything Kitano told them over drinks and pledged to include all his ideas regardless of how intoxicated he was. According to chief programmer Eiichiro Morinaga's personal blog, he recalls taking many trips to the top floor of a Shinjuku hotel to meet Kitano and coming away with an entire notebook's worth of material.

Whomever you choose to believe, the resulting game created under these disputed circumstances is a uniquely ambitious open-world adventure. In Takeshi no Chōsenjō, players control a nameless "salaryman," an icon of the Japanese bubble economy. He lives and works in Tokyo, and his in-game neighbourhood is teeming with options. Players can choose to visit his office, return to his home, go to the movies, stop by the bank, go shopping, play pachinko, sing karaoke, get drunk in the bar, plus many other potential activities. All these destinations, as well as the streets in-between, have other people milling about at all times; the salaryman can start a fistfight with any of them, and a few will attack him on sight (this includes his wife and kids).

The aptly-named "challenge" of Takeshi no Chōsenjō requires players to decipher exactly which tasks must be completed (and in what order) to advance the plot. The game offers no hints, and only wild experimentation or incredible luck will lead players to unscramble the dream-logic of this world. In short, the salaryman is unhappy with his life, and he must free himself of all his woes before undertaking a journey of self-discovery. Should he make the "right" choices, he can obtain a treasure map and embark on an international jaunt to uncover a hidden fortune. Any slip-ups or oversights lead to a Game Over screen featuring his smiling portrait on display at his funeral.

Takeshi no Chōsenjō came out in late 1985*, after Super Mario Bros but before The Legend of Zelda. The Famicom craze was in its third holiday season, and Taito's gamble paid off; with Beat Takeshi's name and face on the cover, Takeshi no Chōsenjō sold about 800,000 copies. While that's not a figure that breaks any records, it certainly ranks among the system's most popular games.

Well, "popular" might not be the right word because Kitano's elaborate video game proved to be so challenging to play that audiences were upset, so upset that they inundated the publisher with disgruntled phone calls and messages. The company that produced the strategy guide received so many complaints that they printed a second supplemental book offering more tips (They also told people that the author of the first guide died, a story that I'm not sure if it is a diversion or a genuine tragedy).

Video game history is rife with stories of failure, and in the wild west that was the 1980s, there were undoubtedly more "bad" games than "good." Nevertheless, we tend to remember the ones that kept us entertained, the ones we played over and over, the ones that brought us joy. Takeshi no Chōsenjō achieved a level of infamy that few video games do by becoming synonymous with crap. In Japanese, the term is kusoge, a portmanteau of kuso (excrement) and "game," and thanks to its extensive sales and celebrity association, Takeshi no Chōsenjō is seen as the king of the heap.

I find Takeshi no Chōsenjō a fascinating piece of work as it offers players an unheard amount of gameplay choices for its era. It is so absurdly tricky that it enrages players when viewed as a task to complete, but I cannot ignore the degree of ambition and gusto that went into its development. Taito could have slapped Kitano's mug on any generic software and turned a profit, but instead created a unique interactive experience that no one will ever replicate.

To the company's credit, Taito has never shied away from preserving Takeshi no Chōsenjō by letting it slip into the annals of abandonware. Before the service shut down, Takeshi no Chōsenjō was available for purchase on the Wii Virtual Console in Japan, and a mobile port for smartphones was released in 2017. I doubt it's any easier to play with a touchscreen, but I suspect that was never the goal of the conversion.

Many video games are ephemeral products of their time, and fame is a fleeting asset in our lives. Cutting-edge technology can become obsolete in a matter of days, and even the most prominent celebrities can fall into obscurity. Yet Takeshi Kitano endures: Thanks to his lengthy career in cinema, he is even more well known in more countries in 2022 than in 1986. His "challenge" also endures; despite over 1000 cartridges in the Famicom's library, Takeshi no Chōsenjō is still a game people talk about, struggle with, and love/hate even today. Call me a cynic, but I don't think anyone involved in its production had any idea their work would leave an imprint of this magnitude—least of all Kitano, sober or otherwise.

Over the last few months, I've had a real itch to make a game. I would love to make a story-driven RPG adventure like "To The Moon".

I'm wondering is it worth doing an online course in RPG Marker MV? Or should I just buy the software on Steam and figure it out by myself.

Has anyone here used RPG Maker? What did you think of it?

Over the past few months, I've stepped away from games and just threw myself into my film hobby. I tend to go through phases where I'll dedicate more time to one over the other. So I decided to do the Film365 challenge, purely to make it through my movie backlog, and after six months of watching a new movie every day, I'm really starting to miss playing games.

Don't get me wrong I haven't completely abandoned games in the last six months, but the only game I've been playing is Rainbow Six Seige, usually just a match or two of terrorist hunt. So it's purely my 30 minutes to kill game. I did buy Far Cry 5 and God Of War but have barely spent any time with them, about an hour with Far Cry 5 and about 90 minutes with God Of War.

Now that E3 is just around the corner, I've really started to develop that gaming itch and kind of want to scratch it and by itch, I mean not just playing games but also blogging about them again and being part of a gaming community.

So besides Far Cry 5 and God Of War, what else have I missed in the last 6 months? Is there anything worth checking out, maybe a few indie titles or a triple-A game? Or should I just stick with finishing FC5 and GOW?

I was chatting the other day with a friend and he's moving home, and he was saying that he has to pack up all his games into boxes and such. Then he asked me jokingly, "How many boxes would it take to move my game collection?" I just said "One, I'm all digital since about halfway through the PS3's lifecycle. I can't even remember the last time I went into a Gamestop and bought a game."

I buy all my games via PSN and Steam. So we chatted about the whole digital versus physical arguments as people tend to do and I concluded that the reason I'm all digital is that its convenience. I have high-speed internet so download a decent size game this generation doesn't take that long.

Then he threw a question at me, "Why haven't you switched to all digital when it comes to movies?" It's true my physical collection of films well outnumbers my digital side, and I started to think about it and came to the conclusion that physical is still the best way to watch a film.

When to buying games digitally it's the same product as the physical disc. The game runs at the same framerate and same resolution. If I had two PS4's running the same game side by side, one digital one physical, you would be able to tell the difference. But if you do it with a film, there is a difference.

I find there is a big difference in both picture quality and sound quality when it comes to watching a film either via blu-ray or iTunes or Netflix.

Let's just get sound out of the way, while both Netflix and iTunes can both do standard Dolby Digital 5.1, the basic standard since DVD's came on the market in 1997, they create this sound field at a compressed bitrate of (usually) 640Kbps, which to 99% of the ears out there is fine and does the job. But with blu-ray, it's completely uncompressed with Dolby True HD and DTS-HD and averages out between 2-5Mbps. And now with the advent of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, the sound fidelity is getting even better, while digital platforms continue to stay at the standard Dolby Digital 5.1.

With picture quality, and this is in regard to 1080p, I've noticed a big difference between the three platforms. Netflix streams at a bitrate of about 5Mbps, while iTunes streams at a rate of 8Mbps. So there is a slight bump in the image quality, it's noticeable in a few films but not every film. Physical, on the other hand, plays its media at a bitrate of 20-25 Mbps. To me, it's a night and day difference, and that's why I continue to invest and support physical media when it comes to films. Maybe it's just the film buff in me that wants to see a film with the best possible picture and sound, and try to recreate that "cinema experience" at home.

Why do you think? Have you gone all digital, for games or movies? Or do you continue to use physical media?

A lot of my favourite games from the previous console generation were from Valve, from The Orange Box, Portal 2 and the Left4Dead series.

Over the last few days, I've been on vacation from work and I started to get back into Team Fortress 2, I find it to be a fantastic game to play while listening to an audiobook or podcast.

And I started thinking, why haven't Valve ported TF2 to the PS4 and Xbox One? It's now a free to play game and now that both consoles are basically PC's you would think that a port would be an obvious idea. It would easily run at native 1080p and 60fps and maybe even at 4K, on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.

Thoughts? Would you like to see something like Left4Dead 2 or Portal 2 brought over to current consoles? Should a game like DOTA2 be brought to consoles? It's easy to hook up a wireless keyboard and mouse to the PS4 and play it.

Sorry I've been away from this blog for the last few months. It's not like I didn't have stuff I wanted to blog about; it was more I just couldn't find the time to blog it correctly.

What I mean is, when I am writing something I will write it and rewrite it in my head a couple of times before I sit down and put fingertips to keys. Not every sentence exactly, but I will have a general outline of the blog and will then write it in one sitting.

So since work is starting to get busier and busier and I have less time to play games for the time being. I have even less time to sit down at my PC for thirty to forty-five minutes and write.

But anyway. I'm here now and typing and that's all that matters.

So a slight update on what's being going on in my gaming and non-gaming life.

I finally started to play an MMO, my friend Nanaka plays Final Fantasy XIV and while I've always been curious about the game, the whole MMO part was somewhat of a turn-off. Purely ignorance on my behalf as I have little to no experience playing MMO's. So I thought, fuck it, let's dive in the deep and we'll see if I'll sink or swim.

So I logged into the mog station and paid for an 180-day subscription. The reason being that I do plan to play other games while playing FFXIV, I just prefer to have long term subscription plan so that I can hop in and out of it freely and not worry about if my subscription was paid for this month. I would love if Netflix brought an annual plan, to be honest, one payment and you have it for twelve months. Same for the WWE Network.

I have picked up Persona 5 but have yet to sit down and play it. I'm thinking I'll probably leave it for late summer/early autumn as my sister is getting married at the end of July and things will be hectic leading up to that. So once that's over, I'll have plenty of free time in the evenings to sit down and binge play Persona 5.

In non-game related news, I'm thinking of picking up a region free 4K blu ray player. Amazon has one for £500 and it is the Sony one, which is getting some great reviews. It's something I've been putting on the back burner for about five or six years. I'll save up a little bit of money and then I'll buy a region free player and then finally I'll start collection the Criterion blu-ray's (as they are region locked) but every time I'm near the price, something comes up that has me putting the idea to one side and the whole "I'll get to that later" attitude starts to kick in.

I applied for a job at GamesRadar+, it's a writing and presenting job and if I am successful I will be moving from my current home on the west of Ireland to Bath in the south west of England. It will be a big life change if I do get it. I am somewhat pragmatic about it and if I can make it to the interview stage I'll count that as a small but positive victory. I will keep you updated on this.

We have E3 next week, which is now starting on Saturday with EA leading the press conference pack. I'm not even sure what to expect from it this year. Sure we'll have Destiny 2 and the new COD. Hopefully, we will have one or two major surprises. I just hope for some new interesting IP's to be shown instead of the usual sequel after sequel or remaster or remake, with the whole carrot on the stick of, "If you buy the remaster of this old game, then maybe we might give you that sequel you always wanted."

I will try to update this blog over the next week or so as much as I can with thoughts on E3.

Intro: Why Game?

I've been asking myself a question for the past few weeks, why do I play video games for a hobby? Is it because I am of a generation when video games started to break into the cultural zeitgeist with Mario and Sonic or were it something else that lead me to play games?

Maybe a combination of both?

Who hasn't felt a tinge of regret after spending a beautiful Saturday afternoon shut away from the world with the blinds down playing games? Who hasn't wished they spent a little bit more time reading or maybe checking out that movie that everyone is talking about at the moment?

I know it's not an easy question to answer, when I asked this question to NeoGAF in research for this I did get some quick answers like "it's fun" or "escapism" but a lot of the two hundred plus replies I got were long and detailed and while I can sum why I play games in one word, there is something deeply fascinating to explore if you wish to dig a little deeper.

My Own Personal History With Games

Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit the Earth - Matthew 5:13

I was born in the early eighties and cannot remember a time when we didn't have a computer or gaming console in the house I grew up in. My dad had bought a Telesport SD 050C (just rolls off the tongue) back in the late 70's which was basically a Pong knock off console. By the time I was born he had purchased an Atari VCS, the one that looked like it was made of wood. I do have a few flickering memories of the Atari. Just random images of games. I'm not actually sure if I was the one playing them or just watching my Dad and my older brother playing it.

The first video game moment I truly remember is visiting our neighbour's house and watching my friends older brothers play Barbarian on the C64. The bright colours and the sound effects had my complete attention. The game is a one on one fight to the death. You can play against the computer or against each other.

When my brother and I got home we begged our parents to get us a C64. My dad then went down and had a go at the C64 and I guess he must have liked it as when he came back he convinced my mother that buying one would be good for the kids as "it would be able to help them with their homework" I still have no idea how the C64 was meant to do this, but once the system entered the house all knowledge of the homework argument quickly faded and disappeared.

At the stage of my life gaming was something you did with other people. Either my brother and I would play together, either two player games, or if it was a single player game like Last Ninja 2, as soon as you died then pass over the joystick till he died.

I remember playing and finishing games like Double Dragon, Thing Bounces Back, Turrican, Bionic Commando, Platoon, Vendetta, Last Ninja 2 and Rambo First Blood Part 2 as a group of four plus friends all sitting on a couch and simply passing the joystick to the next person when your turn was over.

Then one day my dad came home and told us he had bought a Nintendo game for the Atari, which had since relaunched as the Atari 2600. It was Donkey Kong. It was my first ever experience of hearing the name Mario (not that common a name in Ireland in the 80's) let alone the word Nintendo.

I heard from someone in the school yard that Nintendo was it's own gaming device as was better than Atari, I don't remember the reason why it was better but only that he kept telling everyone that it was cooler to have a Nintendo then an Atari.

I was seven years old at the time and was about to make my first communion, which was a huge deal growing up in Catholic Ireland. But I also knew, due to my brother making his the year before that the first communion was like a second birthday as you got cards and the cards would contain money from family members and I have a lot of aunts and uncles on my mother's side (my dad was an only child). My brother got £60 for his, which to us back then was a nearly a king's ransom. I think my brother spent his on an Irish soccer jersey as Ireland had recently qualified for the European Championship for the first time ever.

I, on the other hand, had my sights set on loftier dreams. I knew what I wanted to do with my communion money, long before I ever held it in my hand. I wanted to buy a Nintendo. I was in Limerick with my mom and asked if I could go to the toy shop to "look around." At the very back of Smyth's Toy Store in Limerick was the game section. I was like a child in wonderland, all these games that I never heard of, and console I didn't even know existed. I asked the person behind the counter how much a Nintendo was and I was told £90 and it came with two games, which would turn out to be Mario and Duck Hunt.

I remember thinking that £90 was way more than I would ever get for my communion and if I didn't get enough then how could I ever get a Nintendo. Sure there may have been a war raging in the Persian Gulf at the time, but this was a real world crisis, well, to my tiny world.

A small sliver of light did lie in the distance. My birthday is in November and if I didn't spend my communion money right away (as was the style at the time) I could join it with my birthday money and then hopefully, even maybe, have just about enough to get a Nintendo just after my birthday.

The communion came, I got £60. When asked what I was going to spend it on I would just say "I haven't decided yet". Had to play it cool and keep those cards close to my chest, for if my parents found out what my master plan was they might say no and all my well laid plans would be ruined.

By the time my birthday came around in November I got £50. So I was over the moon with excitement and joy and running around the house as if I had drunk too much lemonade. I asked if I could go to the Smyths toy store on Saturday. We went on a rainy Saturday and went to the games counter with my mom and asked if they had any Nintendo left. They said yes and I said I wanted one. My mom was someone puzzled, how could I afford this with my birthday money. That's when I played my trump card and pulled a small brown envelope that I had "borrowed" from my dad's work suitcase, and pulled out the three £20 notes. The console was mine.

When we got back to the car with it, I sat in the back seat and held it on my lap. My mom played her trump card when he leant back and said, "You're not allowed to play with that until Christmas." Christmas may have only been three weeks away, but to me, it was a near eternity.

Christmas came and I was allowed to open and play with my new NES. I was the coolest kid in the class when I went back to school in January. Suddenly kids who wouldn't normally give me the time of day wanted to hang out, and always at my house, never at theirs.

From there I lifelong obsession was born with games, and I thought that games would never get better than Super Mario 3, how could they? We heard that someone new had opened in out small Irish village, an arcade? And that there some game called Street Fighter 2 that everyone was raving about.

The arcade was about a ninety-second walk from my back gate. So every Saturday morning my we would always make sure to be up early and be at the arcade at about 9:30 am as it opened at 10 am and we wanted to be first in line to play Street Fighter 2.

After that came the SNES and then the Nintendo 64. I was twelve and was about to go to secondary school. This is where gaming took on a whole new life for me. To cut a long story short I was bullied at school. Verbally first, then by the time I was fifteen, and my older brother had graduated, it had become physical bullying.

The summer before I had bought a Playstation, purely to play Tekken 3, Resident Evil 2 and Metal Gear Solid. So when things got rough at school I would go home and put on my headphones and get lost in games. It was the perfect escape, worlds where I was in control of things. Worlds when I would ignore everything around me and just get lost. My parents didn't think anything of it, as I was always playing games growing up and they just figured that it was just me being weird old me.

When I was in college and the whole Web 2.0 scene came on to the scene. I had just gotten broadband internet and my first ever laptop. No longer would I have to share my computer with everyone else in the house. This is when a whole new world of gaming opened up to me. I started to visit websites like Gamespot, IGN and 1UP to get all my gaming news and reviews. I joined 1UP and started to blog there until the site was closed. But during that time the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 launched and the world of online gaming came knocking at my door. Because of sites like 1UP, I was making new friends and we would play games together. I found out that I wasn't the only one, there were other people out there who went through similar shared experiences with games growing up. From people who grew up in California to people who grew up in Japan. We all had this shared experience of gaming. We would be able to talk about retro games from the NES and SNES era without having to provide context. We all knew it because we were all there.

So that where I am now. Sitting at my desk, which has both a gaming PC and a PS4 Pro sitting on it. Gaming is still a major part of my life. I still play games online with people who I consider friends but have yet to meet in person. I chat about games with some of the people at work, and with the advent of smartphones, gamers are more connected community than ever before.

Will I still be playing games in twenty years time?

I think I will be.

So now the question is open to you Dear Reader, why do you play games?