Whoa! I was blown away myself when I woke up this morning and saw all these great comments!
As for "Secret of Monkey Island," it is indeed my favorite adventure game of all time (not that I've played a lot of them). In fact, it's probably the last adventure game I really ever played. I loved the sword-fighting sequences! What version of the game was this? I seem to recall that the Amiga version looked better than this version, but I could be mistaken.
I played the DOS EGA version, which Ron Gilbert himself told me was the original. My habit is to try to get the original, but of course the later versions looked better. Bill was saying something about a Sega CD version, but I think the VGA and Amiga versions hold up very well.
A few production notes - You'll notice there is a jump cut around about the 2:47 mark.
Yes, this irritated the fire out of me, too. I had a gap between the two sets of footage and just gave up trying to make it look natural. I tried various kinds of wipes, fades, and transitions, but it seemed even more distracting! I generally like to record in segments, but the only thing that holds up is a continuous shot--which is difficult to pull off without a lot of scripting. If I ever get a replacement laptop, I plan to use it as a teleprompter to help me out. It's my understanding that pros shoot with multiple cameras or switch perspectives a lot to make the cutting process flow more naturally. I have no assistance, so some stuff is just beyond my capability at the moment.
If you made some changes to the intro and spliced yourself walking to a bookcase and retrieving the box of the game of the week and then cut to you sitting down and putting the disk in the drive of the PC/Amiga/Commodore/etc... all while the music is playing.
Hehe, that'd be more a Bil than a Matt thang. :) I don't have any retro computers, and the only consoles I own are my DS, a DC, and a PS1. I have tons of PC games, but mostly newer ones. Still, I love the idea. I could easily see Bill doing something like that, going into his archive and saying, "Hmm...Today I think I'll look at Phantasie!" hehe.
Pirate characters simply seem to promise freedom and unrestriced adventures - in part based on pure fantasy - while on the other hand enough similarities to a consistent, albeit clichéd, world to "feel at home".
That's a good point. I read somewhere that Ron was asked, "Why pirates?" and said something about elves and dwarves being too overdone. Pirates are a whole new realm of fantasy, if you will, and it's amazing how popular they've gotten in the wake of the PoTC movies. Everyone seems to love those movies (including people from all generations). For instance, my father-in-law would never watch The Lord of the Rings, but he loves the PoTC.
Anyway, like fantasy, westerns, mystery, romance, etc., there are enough recognized conventions that people do indeed feel at home. As soon as you see the opening of something like High Plains Drifter, you already know a lot of the content. It's just a matter of what the director is going to do with those conventions that matters. It also matters how well they're done. You can have wall-to-wall conventions, with little innovation or originality, but if it's handled to perfection it will still be a masterpiece. After all, those conventions got to be conventions for a reason!
Someone had pointed out earlier that Sci-fi really lacks a coherent set of conventions. Indeed, it seems to be all over the place, and most would-be conventions seem more like comedy or spoofs than actual conventions. It also hurts (and I think badly, badly hurts) that things that could become conventions are trademarked and forbidden to anyone but one company. There aren't generic things to draw on like elves and dragons. I could easily imagine, for instance, a sci-fi world featuring wookies and vulcans alongside the borg, alien, Jabba, predator, etc. However, of course that'd be impossible in anything but a spoof given the laws, which I detest because they stifle creativity. On the other hand, you can have fantasy or pirate movies with all sorts of conventions, like elves, dwarves, ghost ships, etc.
I see a lot of this like little kids playing with their toys. They don't mixing up all sorts of things, so you might have them mixing Star Wars and Star Trek along with Power Rangers and dinosaurs and God knows what all. However, I think that's the root of creativity there--just playing around and having a good time, not worrying about whether it makes legal or financial sense.
Still, I think something similar could be done for sci-fi, but it'd have to be done by someone willing to dispense with copyrights and trademarks and the like and let other people be creative with "their property." Of course, it'd be hard to make money with something like that, so it'd have to be a grassroots type of deal, and I just don't know how that could happen.
Whoa! I was blown away myself when I woke up this morning and saw all these great comments!
As for "Secret of Monkey Island," it is indeed my favorite adventure game of all time (not that I've played a lot of them). In fact, it's probably the last adventure game I really ever played. I loved the sword-fighting sequences! What version of the game was this? I seem to recall that the Amiga version looked better than this version, but I could be mistaken.
I played the DOS EGA version, which Ron Gilbert himself told me was the original. My habit is to try to get the original, but of course the later versions looked better. Bill was saying something about a Sega CD version, but I think the VGA and Amiga versions hold up very well.
A few production notes - You'll notice there is a jump cut around about the 2:47 mark.
Yes, this irritated the fire out of me, too. I had a gap between the two sets of footage and just gave up trying to make it look natural. I tried various kinds of wipes, fades, and transitions, but it seemed even more distracting! I generally like to record in segments, but the only thing that holds up is a continuous shot--which is difficult to pull off without a lot of scripting. If I ever get a replacement laptop, I plan to use it as a teleprompter to help me out. It's my understanding that pros shoot with multiple cameras or switch perspectives a lot to make the cutting process flow more naturally. I have no assistance, so some stuff is just beyond my capability at the moment.
If you made some changes to the intro and spliced yourself walking to a bookcase and retrieving the box of the game of the week and then cut to you sitting down and putting the disk in the drive of the PC/Amiga/Commodore/etc... all while the music is playing.
Hehe, that'd be more a Bil than a Matt thang. :) I don't have any retro computers, and the only consoles I own are my DS, a DC, and a PS1. I have tons of PC games, but mostly newer ones. Still, I love the idea. I could easily see Bill doing something like that, going into his archive and saying, "Hmm...Today I think I'll look at Phantasie!" hehe.
Pirate characters simply seem to promise freedom and unrestriced adventures - in part based on pure fantasy - while on the other hand enough similarities to a consistent, albeit clichéd, world to "feel at home".
That's a good point. I read somewhere that Ron was asked, "Why pirates?" and said something about elves and dwarves being too overdone. Pirates are a whole new realm of fantasy, if you will, and it's amazing how popular they've gotten in the wake of the PoTC movies. Everyone seems to love those movies (including people from all generations). For instance, my father-in-law would never watch The Lord of the Rings, but he loves the PoTC.
Anyway, like fantasy, westerns, mystery, romance, etc., there are enough recognized conventions that people do indeed feel at home. As soon as you see the opening of something like High Plains Drifter, you already know a lot of the content. It's just a matter of what the director is going to do with those conventions that matters. It also matters how well they're done. You can have wall-to-wall conventions, with little innovation or originality, but if it's handled to perfection it will still be a masterpiece. After all, those conventions got to be conventions for a reason!
Someone had pointed out earlier that Sci-fi really lacks a coherent set of conventions. Indeed, it seems to be all over the place, and most would-be conventions seem more like comedy or spoofs than actual conventions. It also hurts (and I think badly, badly hurts) that things that could become conventions are trademarked and forbidden to anyone but one company. There aren't generic things to draw on like elves and dragons. I could easily imagine, for instance, a sci-fi world featuring wookies and vulcans alongside the borg, alien, Jabba, predator, etc. However, of course that'd be impossible in anything but a spoof given the laws, which I detest because they stifle creativity. On the other hand, you can have fantasy or pirate movies with all sorts of conventions, like elves, dwarves, ghost ships, etc.
I see a lot of this like little kids playing with their toys. They don't mixing up all sorts of things, so you might have them mixing Star Wars and Star Trek along with Power Rangers and dinosaurs and God knows what all. However, I think that's the root of creativity there--just playing around and having a good time, not worrying about whether it makes legal or financial sense.
Still, I think something similar could be done for sci-fi, but it'd have to be done by someone willing to dispense with copyrights and trademarks and the like and let other people be creative with "their property." Of course, it'd be hard to make money with something like that, so it'd have to be a grassroots type of deal, and I just don't know how that could happen.
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com