Imagine this: You're going about you're daily routine, doing the things you like, doing the things you like to do in your spare time and without the slightest warning...you catch a glimpse of of John Lennon. John Lennon as he was in 1968. But in the here and now, and walking to catch an elevator. He steps into the elevator and you momentarily make eye contact as he gives you a wry smile moments before the doors close.
I had this thought after I finished Katamari Damacy last week.
It was circa 1984 when I first played Pac Man at the Playland Arcade at Hampton Beach N.H. Namco was a superstar and quarters only served one purpose. Pac Man Fever played on the radio. Video game merchandising in America took off. My memories of that Namco had long faded until I picked up my controller and played Katamari Damacy. For a moment I stared in the face of that Namco of 1984. And it was smiling.
Video games have a spirit. A virtual ectoplasm created by the programmers and design teams. The most serious gamers understand it. A correlation exists between the caliber of a game and the affect the spirit will have on you. Video game reviews can describe the trees but not the forest.
In the earlier days of video gaming, the spirit of the game was easier to see. A prime example is Leisure Suit Larry. Playing Leisure Suit Larry on the Commodore 64 was fun and funny. The programmers humor worked in tandem with the spritely graphics and limited detail. They knew what parts of the game and graphics to leave ambiguous so as to let the player project upon them their own personality-driven assumptions which acted as a form of glue that bridged the more concrete portions of the game together. This process allowed for a very personal experience. Quite often in modern video games we are shown exactly what we should be experiencing period. A game's faults are harder to miss when there is only one clearly defined approach to game-play or attitude.
I'm certain that the modern Leisure Suit Larry cost a helluva lot more to make than the original and yet the moder iteration's spirit shines so much less. There are other issues of quality coming into play in this example but the game's overall presentation is a specific and narrow (mis)interpretation of a formerly classic game. (As a side note: What are the implications behind making the women in the new Larry game more or less anatomically correct and then simultaneously portraying Larry as some kind of baby doll headed character ala King Friday from Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood, all the while only being relatively four feet high?) I digress.
Wouldn't it be neat if Katamari Damacy was a sign of something real rather than a flashback? Has what was once a flame that became a spark , now in the process of catching fire again? Probably not. But I hope so.
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