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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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he spring release season is now fully upon us, and with it comes the usual trickle of new IPs and a torrent of sequels to comparatively recent franchises. The biggest deal of the season, however, has to be the absolute flood of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King games and films. A&E's blockbuster LotR miniseries is finally moving on to its conclusion, and It's pretty much impossible to visit a flash game portal without tripping over a Minas Tirith tower defense game. Meanwhile, Rockstar's open world take on Rebel Without a Cause has emerged as the definitive reimagining of the flick even against all the major studio remakes, to say nothing of the glut of halfassed student films. Finally, Edmund McMillan's deeply unsettling take on Lolita as a dungeon crawler played from the point of view of the title character is still looking for a bold enough publisher despite sweeping this year's IGF awards.

That's just a small sample of a motley assemblage of games that all have one thing in common: They're all based on properties that entered the public domain this year. The yearly rollout of old properties, both celebrated and obscure, has long since become something we've taken for granted. We even make a point of taking a annual look at what will be emerging from the copyright cage once we're done breaking all our new year's resolutions, and we barely bat an eye when we're treated to a glut of weird furry Lady and the Tramp dating sims. Geeks around the world are already anticipating next year's Superman revival, or dreading his inevitable crossover appearance in every other comic in existence. It's so much a part of the culture at this point that it's easy to overlook the fact that it can all be traced back to a single momentous decision.

We certainly wouldn't be seeing so many films and TV shows based on Sherlock Holmes if the character were still the IP of a single publisher, and we sure as hell wouldn't be seeing him fight Dracula quite so often.

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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s we gear up for E3 2012, the biggest announcement expected to come out of the L.A. Convention Center this year is the latest generation of gaming's console goliath, the Play Station 4. Based on early reports from trusted third-party developers and info leaks from Chinese parts suppliers, the PS4 seems a given -- and with its arrival, the continued dominance of the games industry by joint Sony/Nintendo venture Taido should be a lock as well.

With the PS4 right around the corner, now is as good a time as any to look back at the history of the Play Station family and how two Japanese giants teamed up to put an entire medium in a 20-year hammerlock.

Diablo III was expected to do well, but with so many factors to take into account -- competition from Torchlight II, an always-online requirement, and complaints about a supposedly dumbed-down skill system and colorful art style -- it was hard to say for sure exactly how well it would do. It turns out it did tremendously well; Blizzard has announced the long-awaited sequel has already broken sales records, something the folks over at Activision are pretty accustomed to thanks to Call of Duty. However, Diablo's success may have more far-reaching effects than simply ensuring Blizzard and company are flush with cash.

More than 3.5 million copies of the game were sold in its first 24 hours of availability, according to Blizzard. This figure does not include the freebie digital versions handed out to those who signed up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass. Over 1.2 million people took advantage of that offer, bringing the total number of gamers with a copy of the game on launch day up to 4.7 million, good enough to make it the "biggest PC game launch in history." After the first week, that figure now sits at 6.3 million.

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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t's kind of a fascinating story really. Shigeru Miyamoto, maybe the most influential designer ever, had little interest in videogames until the late 1970s, when he played Space Invaders. Up until that point, he had wanted to be a manga artist. Well, what if he had followed his original dream and done just that? What would have happened to Nintendo? Or videogames in general? Here's one possible timeline.

1979 -- Miyamoto the Manga Artist: Shigeru Miyamoto graduates from the Kanazawa Munici College of Industrial Arts and Crafts. Because Miyamoto's father is a friend of Hiroshi Yamauchi, he soon receives an offer to work for Nintendo. But Miyamoto is something of a free spirit, and he has little interest in videogames. He decides instead to pursue a career as as manga artist.

Dead Island is set to be re-released in a Game of the Year Edition package next month, a fact that is the source of some complaints. It's not so much that the game is being bundled with its DLC that is the problem; it's the labeling of the game as Game of the Year, a title which many feel it is not deserving of.

It is completely understandable why a publisher would want a game re-release to be positioned as a "Game of the Year Edition." That title carries with it a certain connotation of quality, that it was among the very best, if not the best, games released during the year it originally came out. Game of the Year Editions are commonly associated with the likes of Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption, and other critically acclaimed games. There is a certain expectation that a GotY Edition consists of a terrific game and bonus content (be it downloadable content or expansion packs) that early adopters had to pay extra for, with all of this often coming at a sub-$60 price.

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

December 12, 1985

You'll never guess what I got for my birthday! I woke up this morning, walked into the living room, and saw Dad playing Nintendo in front of the TV! He was having trouble with the first level of Mario, so I sat down and helped him jump over the pits until we got to the flagpole at the end. After that, we brought out the Zapper and played Duck Hunt until dinner time. Mom got kinda mad at Dad for buying something so expensive, but he told her that my birthday only comes once a year.

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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n late 1993, state senators and certified oldsters Joseph Lieberman and Herb Khol got a whiff of this whole "video games" thing and decided to use their unholy powers to investigate the issue. While our friends in Germany and Australia often find amazing games banned outright or plagued with hilariously conspicuous censorship, we Americans escaped with a barely perceptible slap on the wrists thanks to the efforts of testifying industry vets who actually knew the subject at hand. But one can only wonder what the '90s gaming landscape (and beyond) would have looked like if the iron fist of government oppression punched the living daylights out of our beloved hobby...

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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ith his latest book, 1983, game journalist and historian Chris Kohler has chosen to take a slightly different tack then he employed for his massive treatise Power Up: How America Gave Video Games an Extra Life a few years back. Rather than approaching the topic of video games from a wide-ranging, all-inclusive perspective, Kohler instead drills down here into a single crucial moment in time for the young medium: The near-crash of the industry in year 1983.

Despite the Orwellian overtones of the title Kohler has selected for his work, there's nothing ominous about the story contained herein -- perhaps, except, the idea that video gaming could have been snuffed out entirely a mere decade after Pong's debut. A combination of gold-rush greed, incompetence, and '80s corporate culture nearly suffocated the fledging entertainment medium just as it was hitting its stride. The Warner corporation's eagerness to cash in on their purchase of Atari, combined with the influx of low-quality, externally developed 2600 games after Activision broke away to become the first third-party developer, nearly buried the industry beneath a deluge of self-cannibalizing mediocrity.

I like to play games in what I imagine is an unusual manner, or at least I thought this to be the case until 1UP members revealed they share some of my habits. One of these things, my propensity for systematically exploring an area before moving on, has reared its head in particularly noticeable fashion as I make my way through Max Payne 3. Playing in this way was clearly something the game's designers accounted for, as evidenced by the collectables scattered throughout, and yet it feels almost as if I'm being punished for deciding to be a completionist.

My process for approaching each area in Max Payne 3 follows the same pattern, only being altered if I'm low on health and out of painkillers (health packs in Max Payne's world). I kill everyone and then proceed to sweep over the entire room, seeking out any hidden spots or areas which do not appear to lead to the next area. As I make my way from one combat area to the next, I'm mindful of my surroundings and am sure to double back to check behind staircases and to see which doors can be opened. I do this all while searching for golden gun components, painkillers, and clues which can be examined. The latter can fill in the backstory but is hardly needed to get the gist of the narrative. I'm able to comfortably do this because there is no ticking clock, even if what Max is doing at any given time suggests there should be, and because enemies come in limited numbers and only in certain areas.

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

People love to look back at the past and ask, "What if things had gone differently?" Navel-gazing at history spans cultures and races. Whether it's author Harry Turtledove making a fortune by contemplating how differently the American Civil War would have gone if someone had time-traveled to give the Confederate Army machine guns, or the manga Konpeki No Kantai in which the Japanese navy beats up America in World War II before teaming up to kill Hitler, second-guessing ourselves seems to be human nature.

Maybe it's the competitive nature of the medium, but video gamers seem especially fond of revisiting the past and wondering about alternate outcomes. As the Three Fates in the image above suggest, games have woven a rich and complex tapestry in their mere half-century of existence -- a tapestry whose design and nature could have changed radically had things turned out differently.