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Though today it is mostly known as a major partner with Nintendo, it's easy to forget that HAL Laboratory began life as a developer and publisher in the late 80s and very early 90s. It was a small studio in these early days, but even here the team found a decent amount of success. Nintendo trusted them with the development of several early NES games, like Golf and Balloon Fight. They started publishing other studios' games as early as 1987 (the NES port of Stargate) and as late as early 1991 ( Kabuki: Quantum Fighter). The average observer at the time would have no reason to believe HAL needed to enter a partnership like the one they’re currently in with Nintendo.

But behind the scenes, the company's growing success brought with it new pressures that were difficult to manage. Developers at HAL felt they didn't have the time they needed to make their games as strong as they could be. The sales would often bear that out: their games just weren't selling enough to recoup development costs. This eventually reached its peak in the early 90s when the company nearly faced bankruptcy—only for a partnership with Nintendo to save them in the end.

In the middle of all this was Metal Slader Glory. The game bridged the gap between HAL's growth in 1987 and the end of its publishing days in 1991. It was even the last title the company published independently. Because of this, it’s often identified as one of the major causes for HAL's transition from independent company to exclusive partner with Nintendo.

Or at least it is in Japanese circles. Metal Slader Glory and the role it played for HAL aren't as well known outside of Japan. Fortunately, an interview I conducted over Skype with Yoshimiru Hoshi—the game's director/creative lead—shed some light on the game's development and HAL's relationship with it.

Above: scenes from the Super Famicom Remake

While he had worked with HAL on minor educational games like Gall Force and Fire Bam, Yoshimiru was known more for his work in manga than in video games. In fact, Metal Slader Glory was originally based on a story he'd originally developed in a manga called Fixallia. The manga itself was cancelled before he could conclude the story and he'd always wanted to tell a more complete version of it.

HAL gave him that opportunity in 1987. As he explained during the interview, he was given complete creative control over the project. "HAL was the marketing organization, I was the director and the origin of the idea", Yoshimiru said. "HAL provided a development team with its programmers, I went there to ‘direct’ the team. I made the scenario and the graphics/creative decisions, but I was not involved in programming nor music."

He further elaborated that the team disbanded after Metal Slader Glory was completed and that Nintendo assembled a fresh team when it was time to remake the game on the SNES. A separate email I’d sent to HAL corroborates this, as they were unable to put me in touch with anybody who had worked on the game. By contrast, Yoshimiru has continued working on Metal Slader Glory’s themes in many of his other works, even ignoring the 1995 manga or the Director’s Cut remake for the Super Nintendo. He described the game “as [his] life work.”

Looking at the finished project, it’s easy to see why he revisits the game as much as he does. On one hand, it’s grand and ambitious in scale. The plot builds up to things like a (quite literally) underground resistance, an alien species threatening the cosmos, and a climactic battle against the alien forces’ home base.

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Yet, as bombastic as the plot can be, it offers a very human story. Ordinary, personal conversations advance the action instead of big revelations, and the main premise sees a makeshift family of three trying to track down their father and learn the meaning behind the message he left for them: “EARTH IN PERIL... SEEK THE CREATOR.”

Midway through their journey, as clues are getting thin, the adults of the group wonder if tracking him down is even worth the effort. After all, Azusa is too young to remember the brief time her father was in her life, as Azusa herself confirms when they ask her. Yet she keeps the team's spirits up regardless, opining that her father has to be somewhere out there among the stars. While games with a personal focus like this were common among PC games at the time, they were much less common on console, where stories tended toward grander stakes.

Metal Slader Glory was also ambitious in terms of its production. Yoshimiru spent four years working on the game with HAL. He spent the first year planning out major elements of the game like the story, specific scenarios, drawing the art, etc. The remaining three years were devoted to code and converting his drawings into something the NES could render. Yoshimiru lamented the long amount of time he spent making the game, and all the sleep he lost during the game’s development.

He also expressed frustration with the limitations the Famicom imposed on what he could do artistically. Most notable were the memory limitations. Even as the Famicom’s largest game, Yoshimiru still had to cut a large number of scenes to squeeze the game into the small space the system gave him to work with.

And the art that did make it in faced significant compromises. Assuming you know how the Famicom’s graphics worked, you may think I’m referring to the system’s palette limitations, but Yoshimiru never brought that up in the interview. After all, rendering your game on a panel-to-panel basis most likely allowed the team to choose whatever colors a particular scene required.

What he did bring up was the pixel map. As he put it during the interview, "there was not any room for 'free drawing' [IE he couldn't draw curves and straight lines like he would with pencil and paper], we had to always think of the coarse pixel map." This limited the amount of detail he was able to render at any given time, and he expressed regret over not being able to tell Metal Slader Glory’s story in as much detail as he wanted. Fortunately, Nintendo offered him a second chance in 2000 with a Super Famicom Director’s Cut, which allowed him both to bring back the scenes he was forced to cut out and to clean up the original artwork.

Metal Slader Glory sold poorly (sales weren’t even enough to cover the game’s advertising budget) and HAL’s days as an independent publisher were effectively over. Yet the game’s financial failure isn’t as straightforward as it initially appears. Obviously, the game’s production had something to do with that. The four year development cycle made the game expensive to produce, and the technology required to make it only further compounded matters.

Above: the game featured on Game Center CX

Although the MMC-5 chip made the intricate art work possible, it also made the game significantly more expensive to sell. Nintendo only sold a limited number of the computer boards at a discounted rate of 15000 yen per board so HAL could sell Metal Slader Glory at a competitive price.

Whether Nintendo limited the number of boards they sold because they couldn’t afford to sell any more at that price or because high demand among developers created a small supply is hard to say. (Nintendo especially had a high demand for the MMC-5 chip. Super Mario Bros. 3, another game using the chip, was released in America a year before Metal Slader Glory‘s Japanese release and in PAL regions a day before.) Whatever the cause, the effect was still the same: HAL could only sell a small number of copies of the game.

Production wasn’t the only problem Metal Slader Glory faced. In fact, Yoshimiru remembers split opinions from game reviewers at the time. Players generally liked the game, but because of how it would switch between conventionally accepted video game genres ("Depending on the scene, it featured dungeon type scenarios, and sometimes in another screen it featured a shooting game", he explains), contemporary critics had a hard time figuring out what to make of the game.

Review scores in magazines at the time were split; reviewers at Famicom Magazine gave it scores in the 3-4 out of 5 range, while Famitsu assigned it a score in the low 20s. Combine this not only with the release of the Super Famicom but also the release of major games like Final Fantasy IV earlier that year, and it would have been difficult for Metal Slader Glory to stand out in the crowd and make a name for itself.

contemporary critics had a hard time figuring out what to make of the game

Metal Slader Glory is far from the underappreciated game that ended HAL’s days as an independent game creator. In this game’s history is an empowering message for game creators everywhere. Even if it was a financial failure, it gave a manga artist his chance to see his vision realized to the best of his abilities.

Besides, what happened to the game following its release doesn’t seem to have upset Yoshimiru. He still incorporated Metal Slader Glory into many of his future works and continues to do so because of how much it means to him. He ended the interview by saying, “I think of Metal Slader Glory as my life work. So, fans should continue following me and enjoy. Not only Japanese fans, but also fans overseas should enjoy Metal Slader Glory by having someone translate it.” When I pointed out to him after the interview that fans actually were working on a translation, he was happy to hear it, even if he’d prefer the translation be done through more legal channels.

Metal Slader Glory, for its infamy and oft-misunderstood status in gaming history, is proof that a game doesn’t need to be measured by financial success or immediate critical acclaim to be of value. It’s enough that the person creating it be content with the work they’ve put into it.

interactive presentation on the landscape of generative music

(The New York Times, 11/5/17)

(Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! #3, December 1983)

Says it all, really.

Related posts:

1. Let history divide

With Danica Roems winning a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, Jeremy Northam winning the governor’s race in the commonwealth after running an execrable campaign, and Phil Murphy’s victory in New Jersey, I have a thoughtful response for what has been a better than expected evening:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

The beta for the next Monster Hunter is PlayStation only.

'Recurrent consumer spending' accounts for 48 percent of Take-Two's net revenue this quarter, led by microtransactions in games like NBA 2K17, GTA V and GTA Online. ...

Player recurring investment made up roughly 51 percent of digital revenue for the first time thanks to a 69 percent jump year-over-year. ...

Introduction Meta is an abbreviation for Most Efficient Team Available and is essentially a term used to indicate if a card is currently strong in this day and age. However, the meta is not fixed and is ever evolving and changing. Thus, what may have been strong 6 months ago may have fallen out of … Continue reading Meta Trends in Puzzle and Dragons →

Along with several other copyrighted materials like films and TV shows.

On Wednesday, Nintendo blindsided North American Style Savvy fans not only with a release date for the latest game in the series, but also with a shiny new demo in the eShop.

This comes after a conspicuous omission when the game was announced this past September. While Japan would be getting their version ( Girl's Mode 4: Star Stylist) on November 2nd and Europe theirs (New Style Boutique 3 - Styling Star) shortly thereafter on the 24th, there was no word at the time about a potential North American release. Given the fact that it took Style Savvy: Fashion Forward over a year to make the jump across the Pacific, as a longtime fan I was braced for yet another delay. So calling Wednesday's news a pleasant surprise would be an understatement.

The full version of Style Savvy: Styling Star will be out on the eShop on December 25th of this year (with no physical release planned) but until then the demo seems like a sound example of what can be expected. I've written about the joy of Style Savvy games for Waypoint in the past so I won't retread that ground here, but I will say that what I saw in the Styling Star demo has impressed me.

Nintendo's press release about the game makes some interesting promises, but one that stood out in particular was the mention of new in-game items. At the end of the demo they actually specify that there are over 2,400 new items, which is a pleasant detail given how much of the wardrobe in the series has seemingly been around since the original DS days. There have been items of clothing with noticeably lower texture quality than others, things that appear in installment after installment seemingly unaltered, and while I saw plenty of old favorites in my closet in the demo I also saw quite a few new ones as well. There are new categories of items to wear and new areas of customization like nail art existing alongside the old favorites.

This new stuff also looks damn cute. Faces have been completely redone, with the characters becoming slightly more stylized and illustrated-looking look than previous versions. This aesthetic shift carries over to the new hairstyles as well, which look soft and silky and wonderful compared to the much flatter older styles.

Styling Star also seems poised to walk back some of the things that Fashion Forward fumbled. Like the first Style Savvy game, Fashion Forward operated on real time, but Styling Star returns to the internal day/night cycle that Style Savvy: Trendsetters used, allowing players to experience a full day in-game and then go to bed to see a summary of their earnings, as well as their experience gained. Also returning from Trendsetters is the ability to style male characters, even though the player character is still presumed to be a woman.

But the biggest addition to Style Savvy: Styling Star is, as the name implies, the ability to style up-and-coming celebrities at a local talent agency. The demo gives players a taste of this through making-over an aspiring pop star who arrives fresh off the farm with photos of her family's beloved cows in her pocket. Once she's dressed up, she performs a song complete with some super-cute choreography and a cheering crowd.

It's hard to tell how often this will actually come up, if it will get played out like the optional stage shows in Fashion Forward, if it replaces features like the contests present in previous games, or if it will have a structured story component. I've got countless questions, but all said the little slice served up in the demo certainly has me curious to see where that aspect of the game leads.

Have thoughts? Swing by Waypoint's forums to share them!

"Thaumistry: In Charm's Way is an all-new comedy text adventure from award-winning Infocom and Legend Entertainment author Bob Bates." - Author's description

Purchase on Steam (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Purchase on dev's site (Windows, Mac, Linux)

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Today I spent about an hour in writing a few very simple Intersection Observer tests, two hours in running them in a few browsers, and now an hour in writing down the results.

I’ve only just started my research, but can already draw a few odd conclusions, which make me fear Intersection Observers are not yet ready to be deployed on a large scale, particularly on mobile.

Intersection Observers are supposed to fire whenever an element (the target) scrolls into or out of a root viewport — and that can mean a wrapper element with overflow: auto or the actual browser viewport. See this test page for the basic effect.

Those who’ve followed my blog for a long time probably know the first question I asked: “Browser viewport? Which browser viewport?” As usual, spec authors and article writers alike ignore this question entirely, while it is quite important for the mobile experience to know whether the observer uses the layout viewport or the visual viewport as its root.

And as you might have guessed, browsers use the wrong viewport here.

But I’m getting ahead of myself now. First have some useful articles:

• IntersectionObserver’s Coming into View, a useful Google overview article that unfortunately doesn’t specify which browser viewport is being used.
• Using the Intersection Observer API to Trigger Animations and Transitions. Useful, practical overview. Ends with an example that does not work in Edge and is very buggy in Chrome/Android. (This is not the author’s fault, but the browsers’.)
• Observing Intersection Observers by SitePen, which details a rather large amount of little and not-so-little problems they found while attempting to use intersection observers.

Test 1: a wrapper div

The first test I created used a scrollable div as the root and a nested div as a target. When the target entered or exited the scrollable div’s viewport (i.e. when it became visible or invisible) the observer fired, just as one would expect.

I tested in Chrome/Mac, Chrome/Android, Samsung Internet, Firefox/Mac, Firefox/Android, and Edge. All of them handled this use case correctly. (Safari does not support Intersection Observers yet; neither on Mac nor on iOS.)

However, the first three, the Blink-based browsers, had one tiny, but telling bug. See the second test case on the page for the full details.

I currently suspect that the Blink-based browsers use the root’s padding box, and not its border box, as the actual viewport area.

That means that if the target element touches the root’s padding the browser fires an intersection observer, even though the target element is still fully visible within the box. To me, this is a bug. Not a huge one, but still a bug.

Test 2: the browser viewport

Even more interesting is the test that uses the browser viewport as root. As far as I’m concerned this is a very important use case: scrollable divs have their place in web development, but intersection observers are at their best when they tell you a certain element scrolls into the browser viewport and thus the user’s view.

Intersection observers expect an options object that may contain a root. The default value is the browser viewport (which one? crickets). So I decided to test that.

In Firefox and Chrome on Mac it worked roughly as I expected. The intersection observer fired when the target element entered or left the browser window. This is what one would expect.

I have no idea what kind of default root element Edge 15 uses. It’s not the browser viewport, since the observer does not fire when the target element enters or exits the browser window. I thought it might be the HTML element (i.e. the full document), but that would mean the observer never fires. And it does fire once you make the browser window narrow enough vertically. Weird.

Then on to mobile. On desktop the layout viewport is equal to the visual viewport, but on mobile it’s not. Which viewport would intersection observers use?

Try for yourself once you’ve zoomed in a bit — and use my visualisation app to understand why this test proves the following.

Mobile browsers (Chrome, Samsung Internet, and Firefox) all use the layout viewport as their root element. And this is the wrong viewport.

What we want to know is when the user starts seeing the target element; in other words, when it moves into or out of the visual viewport. But when you’ve zoomed in the intersection observer and the user-viewed area go out of sync, since the browsers wrongly use the layout viewport as their root.

So there you go. Unusable on mobile, badly damaged in Edge, and a small but potentially annoying bug in Blink. Intersection observers have not yet come to stay.

Here’s something for the people.

I await commenters complaining that this just can’t reach out to the people like that Joan Baez. Now there was a singer for the revolution! And so nice too!

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I subscribed to Filmstruck awhile ago and have seen some pretty interesting films on it. But perhaps none as fascinating as Fantastic Planet, from 1973. A Czech animated film, except that the director (Renè Laloux) and language was French, this film, made in Prague and begun just before the Soviet invasion in 1968, follows the tale of humans, who are tiny pets of these giant blue creatures. They treat them a bit like we might treat a pet mouse, perhaps cute to some as small pets (not to me particularly), but also wild beasts that most want exterminated when they get loose. The humans eventually have their revenge. It’s an obvious allegory against Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia and also a both sad and ferocious film. The production was halted for a few years after the Prague Spring and finally the authorities allowed its release. The animation is cool, the soundtrack could have been background music in Superfly if it were made by Europeans and basically the whole thing is pretty wild. Well worth your time.

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Everyone has an enormous backlog for 2017 already, and with Super Mario Odyssey, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, and Assassin's Creed: Origins all dropping in the next 24 hours, there's no shortage of new games to play. That alone would give most people good reason to ignore The Mummy Demastered. But what if I told you WayForward, masters of the throwback game, developed The Mummy Demastered? What if I told that despite being a licensed game for an incredibly mediocre movie, a movie that single-handedly seemed to kill the aspirations of Universal's ill-conceived Dark Universe, it has some really cool ideas?

There's no reason to punish yourself by watching The Mummy. Even yours truly, a horror buff who's seen every Puppet Master, skipped The Mummy. You'll be fine. In Demastered, players are an anonymous foot soldier of Prodigium, a secret organization designed for supernatural threats—things like world-destroying mummies. It takes the "anonymous" part seriously, too; every time you die, that soldier is gone forever. Players quickly re-spawn as someone new at a checkpoint, but without any of the precious upgrades you accumulated with the other soldier. In order to re-gain access to your best gear, you'll need to take down the newly zombie-fied version of your old self. Even worse, they can still use all that gear!

If you're wondering why Demastered looks an awful lot like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, there's good reason. WayForward basically dropped Symphony of the Night into a game with guns. You slowly explore a map, find sections that can't be explored without new gear, get new gear, go back to those areas and find more upgrades—rinse, repeat. The game could do a better job at making it easier to backtrack—for whatever reason, you can only swap between helicopter points, instead of of save locations—but the map isn't especially large.

Be forewarned, though: it's hard. Demastered does not mess around when it comes to ticking away at your health, of which you don't have very much, and the only way to get more is by farming enemies for health drops. Touching an enemy also produces a small bounceback, which means you're constantly getting knocked off ledges. It's a little much.

I mean, it's even got super cool, screen-filling bosses:

There's also a Russell Crowe lookalike, who clearly can't look too close to the character Russell Crowe played in The Mummy, but they got within a creepy spitting distance:

And out of nowhere, Demastered has one of the most banging soundtracks of 2017:

It's an incredible slate of music that is, unfortunately, not available for streaming, but if you want to support the composer, it's available to purchase on iTunes.

I can't imagine I'll find the time for Demastered, even though it only seems a few hours long, until later this year, but my time with it was enough to convince me it's worth going back to. Demastered isn't revelatory, it's just a good version of a very specific type of game.

Also, that soundtrack.

Follow Patrick on Twitter. If you have a tip or a story idea, drop him an email: patrick.klepek@vice.com.

Have thoughts? Swing by Waypoints forums to share them!

Reggie Fils-Aime says it was as surprising for them as it was for us.

My current obsession with retro gaming has brought me to creating a RetroPie on Raspberry Pi, a Recalbox on Raspberry Pi, playing retro games on Mac with OpenEmu, and exploring how to play Sony Playstation games within OpenEmu.  My newest adventure has me looking to progressively newer systems — this time the Nintendo GameCube.

I owned the GameCube when I was younger and, though there were a shortage of decent games, I really enjoyed Mario Kart: Double Dash, so it was important I figured out how to play GameCube games on Mac.  After a bit of research I figured it out — let’s’a’go!

Step 1:  Download Dolphin

The Dolphin emulator, available for Windows and Mac, allows you to play your favorite GameCube titles.  Start by downloading and installing the Dolphin emulator.

Step 2:  Configure the Controller

You’ll need a suitable controller to play GameCube on your computer; you can purchase a USB GameCube controller or you can use a controller you already have, like a Xbox controller.

With an acceptable controller available, choose Options > Controller Settings in the main menu.  You’ll need to click into each button field and set them by pressing the corresponding on the controller:

Step 3:  Game Time!

With the Dolphin Emulator installed and your controller configured, it’s time to play!  Dolphin accepts games as ISO images.  There are plenty of places to find games (token “you must own the game or it’s illegal” declaration), most of which can be found with a Google search.

It seems that no matter what retro gaming console you’d like to play, it’s available on some form for Mac or PC.  What’s even more amazing is how easy they are to access and configure!

The post Play GameCube Games on Mac or PC appeared first on David Walsh Blog.

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October 20th, 2017: TODAY'S MY BIRTHDAY! Looks like *I* completed an orbit around the sun and now deserve a moderate slice of cake!! – Ryan

Bank of America downgrades Chipotle because the chain pays its workers too much. The chain pays its entry-level workers a bit over $9 an hour. This is evidently unacceptable in modern American capitalism.

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I haven’t seen the Ken Burns Vietnam series yet and given my indifference to Burns, not to mention my outright hostility to his anti-intellectual and anti-scholar claims that professional historians don’t want to engage popular audiences, which is bullshit, I may or may not get around to it. But it has led to a number of editorials about Vietnam, some of which discussing things Burns did not and others reminding us of key issues. I don’t know what Burns said about the pervasive and pernicious lie that protestors spat on veterans, but there is absolutely no actual evidence suggesting this is true. Nothing at all. And the man who exposed this myth, Jerry Lembcke (who I got to know because I interviewed him for my logging book because of his organizing in the 70s) has a good op-ed about this.

But you don’t believe the stories, right? she asked. Acknowledging that I could not prove the negative — that they were not true — I went on to say there is no corroboration or documentary evidence, such as newspaper reports from the time, that they are true. Many of the stories have implausible details, like returning soldiers deplaning at San Francisco Airport, where they were met by groups of spitting hippies. In fact, return flights landed at military air bases like Travis, from which protesters would have been barred. Others include claims that military authorities told them on returning flights to change into civilian clothes upon arrival lest they be attacked by protesters. Trash cans at the Los Angeles airport were piled high with abandoned uniforms, according to one eyewitness, a sight that would surely have been documented by news photographers — if it had existed.

And some of the stories have more than a little of a fantasy element: Some claim the spitters were young girls, an image perhaps conjured in the imaginations of veterans suffering the indignities of a lost war.

Listeners, I speculated, are loath to question the truth of the stories lest aspersion be seemingly cast on the authenticity of the teller. The war in Vietnam was America’s longest war at the time, and its first defeat. The loss to such a small, underdeveloped and outgunned nation was a tough pill for Americans to swallow, many still basking in post-World War II triumphalism. The image of protesters spitting on troops enlivened notions that the military mission had been compromised, even betrayed, by weak-kneed liberalism in Congress and seditious radicalism on college campuses. The spitting stories provided reassuring confirmation that had it not been for those duplicitous fifth-columnists, the Vietnamese would have never beaten us.

The “war at home” phrase captured the idea that the war had been lost on the home front. It was a story line promulgated by Hollywood within which veteran disparagement became a kind of “war story,” a way of credentialing the warrior bona fides of veterans who may have felt insecure about their service in Vietnam. In “First Blood,” the inaugural Rambo film, the protagonist, John Rambo, flashes back to “those maggots at the airport, spittin’, callin’ us baby killers and all kinds of vile crap.” The series supported the idea that decisions in Washington had hamstrung military operations. “Apocalypse Now” fed outright conspiracy theories that the C.I.A.’s secret war run from Washington had undercut the military mission. “Coming Home” and “Hamburger Hill” played on male fears of unfaithful wives and girlfriends, a story line hinting that female perfidy and the feminist subversion of warrior morale had cost us victory.

The whole thing is really important. When I lecture on the Vietnam War, this is a huge part of my lecture, because nearly every student has heard this myth and they all believe it. It’s simply an accepted truth now, a truth not that dissimilar from how southern propaganda framed the War to Defeat Treason in Defense of Slavery for a century. It’s tremendously damaging and helps play into people freaking out by football players kneeling during the national anthem today. It’s a myth that doesn’t just need to be debunked. It needs to be defeated and destroyed and discredited.

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On Oct. 5, Newport Construction removed 37 trees from Beacon Street without giving notice to the city as a part of the ongoing Beacon Street Reconstruction Project. Outraged, residents immediately contacted [...]

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October 13th, 2017: This weekend I'm in ENGLAND, for the LAKES INTERNATIONAL COMIC ART FESTIVAL, so if you're near the Lake District (which frankly sounds great) - let's hang out and enjoy some comics! – Ryan

Toys for Bob cofounders Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III announced this week that they've begun working (in their personal time) on a sequel to the 1992 space adventure game Star Control II. ...

While walking along the streets in Harajuku, we met 18-year-old Saw Raw, a fashion student.

Saw Raw’s streetwear style consists of a vintage yellow t-shirt tucked into pink pants from Yoko Ono’s fashion collection, black leather shoes and a Nike bag. His accessories include a studded Mickey Mouse ears cap from Dog Harajuku, a handmade black rope belt, a single earring, a chunky chain necklace, and a silver bracelet.

His favorite fashion brands are Dog Harajuku and Comme des Garcons and he likes the music of Taboo1. He is active on Instagram and Twitter.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Nashu Iwata is a 17-year-old student we met while we were walking on the street in Harajuku. He caught our attention with his leather and denim punk style.

Nashu’s outfit consists of a 99%IS- leather jacket over a black t-shirt, distressed jeans, Dr. Martens boots with white laces, and a black Bounty Hunter backpack with badges. His accessories include a Bounty Hunter beanie, sunglasses, a studded belt, an o-ring belt, and an armor ring.

Nashu’s favorite fashion brand is LT Tokyo, and he likes the music of Hat Trickers. Follow him on Instagram.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Many hardcore survival sims from Eastern European davs have found passionate niche audiences. We spoke to the makers of Life is Feudal, Escape from Tarkov, and Legends of Eisenwald about this trend. ...

On Monday's episode of Waypoint Radio, I shared a story about a very special game of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, one that I can't quite shake, and which has caused me to think a lot about why some multiplayer games stick with you.

We'd wrapped up our morning Breakfast and Battlegrounds session, during which we'd hoped (and failed) to get a match with the new "fog" weather mode. On a whim—and with a great deal of curiosity—I queued back up for a match the second we ended the stream. And as Erangel Island loaded in, I couldn't see a damn thing, and I was thrilled about it. Time to play in the fog.

That's when I noticed my mistake: I'd forgotten to switch back from squad to solo mode, so I wound up in a group with players who I do not know and who would not attempt to coordinate or communicate during the match.

We immediately all went our own separate ways, and in the early moments of the match, I managed to quickly gear up and set off to enjoy the weather. That's when I heard the motorcycle cut through the low, hollow wind...

I stalked two figures through the fog. One with a motorcycle. The other, the first person's companion, desperate to get on that motorcycle. I did not let them.

With the local area seemingly safe I spent some time looting nearby houses, getting better equipment for my trip. I'd decided: I was going to meet up with "Krispis," the one remaining member of my hypothetical team. I got on the motorcycle I'd taken from the pair of players I'd encountered earlier and set off across the map, driving over mountains and hills, dipping into the valleys, and eventually swimming to meet my teammate near the old ruins towards the center of the island.

As I approached, I turned on my team voice chat, but heard nothing back. He arrived in a buggy, rolling across gravel and sand. We exchanged looks. I dropped a pair of first aid kits to show know my level of commitment. He let me in the back of the vehicle, and we began to drive away.

The ruins rarely let people go easily, though. And after a brief turn, Krispis found the buggy slammed into a rock. In this moment, absent communication, I made a judgment: Krispis must've been a new player or a fool. I let out a little laugh. That's why he was in this match to begin with: He didn't know not to group up with random squads. Was I going to have to carry him through the fog towards victory? I would at least cover him, I decided. I became protective instantly.

And then I spotted the figure.

A silhouette on the roof of a church, stark against the stark white canvas. I call out its position to Krispis, but by this point, I am speaking only to myself—I'd turned off voice communication when it was clear that he wasn't listening or talking back.

The silhouette looked back. Our buggy found its ground and tore away, shots ringing out in the mist. I fired back helplessly, but with dedication, and Krispis sped us away. But separated from the columns and walls of the ruins, the fog only seemed to get denser.

The media scholar Alexander Galloway once wrote that games have abandoned montage as a technique. Alexander Galloway has not been in the fog. Because in this moment, we slipped into a fever: Jeeps and bodies and guns shifting into view, sliding out from the haze for a brief moment. A car slides across the valley and a body collapses out of the door. It is only in sight for a breath, but it gestures towards an entire series of events that led to its appearance.

This fever lasted for 30 seconds, and during each I was sure I was dead, poised to be shot from the back of the open-aired vehicle. As we rolled to a stop at a small residential compound, I wondered what Krispis would do if that had happened, if he were left alone. I did not need to wonder long.

We moved quickly, efficiently, grabbing what we could in a flash of speed and fear. More important, though, was securing position. Depending on your footing, the fog could be cloak or spotlight. So we found ourselves laying on the roof of a building, hidden behind the parapets of this two-story home. Waiting to see the dark, clear shape of soldiers break through the white.

My scope did little in the fog except to give me a closer look at our poor visibility. I anxiously re-positioned myself a few times, hoping to find a spot where I'd feel comfortable. I heard Krispis reloading and, when I go back to the recording now, its a motion that sounds purposeful in a way that it rarely does.

I lost track of him for a moment, turned my camera with paternal care, and saw that he was gone. I spotted him on a lower level balcony, looking out into the empty distance. Then, shots. His shots. Then two more bodies. Then we were running towards them, and dark smoke broke through the white. A little yellow Dacia, surrounded by four bodies.

As we picked them over for ammunition and medical supplies, I wondered if this car was the same one as before, if this was the future tableau of the past montage. I'd been impressed when he fired, but it during these moments (and slowly), that I realized that Krispis was the one carrying me. Yet I did not lose the parental urge to protect.

He led us up a hill, then another. The blue wall closed in tight around us and pushed us towards the valley. 20-odd survivors moved in the fog towards their deaths. We were two of them.

We rumbled down a hill and into the cracks and crashes of bullet fire. We took cover behind rocks, trees—but the blue wall would take those from us. We moved further on, and I knew immediately: There was no position to be held for us. The 20 other survivors were our foes, but the fog and the valley were their allies.

Krispis ran ahead. I saw movement in the distance, intersecting his vector of flight. I planted my feet, put my scope to my eye, and did my best emulation of him, like a child trying to move like their parents had—or maybe like a father struggling to keep up with his own kids. A hit. Then another. And then, the trees took my target into safety.

And as I pulled my eye away from the scope and looked for Krispis, I saw him laying on the ground there, dirt kicking up as rounds slammed into the earth. He did not need to ask me to run towards his side.

But he did anyway.

Or, perhaps he didn't.

His voice was tinny over the speakers. Accented, maybe? I've listened back a dozen or more times and I cannot decide what he said in that moment. I can't even decide which I'd rather he had said.

If I had to bet now, it was "trees." As in "They're shooting us from the trees. Look out." He was telling me where our enemies were, as if I hadn't already known that the forest was against us. "Trees."

But in the moment, I was certain that Krispis had said something else: "Please."

I've played two fog games since them—both with my usual Breakfast and Battlegrounds partner Patrick Klepek—and both have been memorable in their own right. I even, for a blink, was able to channel Krispis' stoicism:

But when I think of my favorite multiplayer moments of all time, it's this game, this first walk through the fog, that will stand out forever.

What's your favorite multiplayer gaming moment? Is it about what you did or the people you played with? Let us know over in the forums!

"A thread of three lives confront the personification of appearances as it grows from larva to adult." - Author's description

Purchase on Steam (Windows)

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The thing is, there was always a good Tom Petty song. Casual listening is easy these days. In the same way you’d satisfy your curiosity about an old friend by visiting her Facebook page, or how you’d say hello to a neighbor whom you’ve never befriended, you may have given 2014’s Hypnotic Eye, 2002’s The Last DJ, or 1987’s Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) a couple listens on Spotify. Get to “Faultlines,” “You and Me,” and the title track, respectively. I guarantee you’ll hum a chorus, silently mouth an intro, marvel, on another track, at the inexhaustible variations on Byrds chords that Mike Campbell coaxes from his twelve-string, or the feel that Stan Lynch got from his drum kit on the material before 1994. The Last DJ‘s “You and Me” I discovered thanks to the ILM obituary thread. If Lindsey Buckingham had donated this song to Mirage-era Fleetwood Mac, it would have sailed into the top ten; instead, Petty buried it on a concept album about how MTV and the radio play Britney instead of Tom Petty records.

That was the other side of Tom Petty too, perhaps borne of the stubbornness with which he willed himself out of the mephitic heat of Gainesville, Florida, a hundred miles from the nearest beach. He had a reactionary side. His songs boasted more angels, gypsies, and bad girls than Hélène Cixous and Adrienne Rich would know what to do with. When he sang “It’s such a drag when you live in the past” on 1979’s “Even the Losers,” I considered it aspirational, not an admission. “Footloose by habit and not what you’d call a ladies’ man,” Robert Christgau wrote in praise of jukebox perennial and diamond-certified Greatest Hits, “he often feels confused or put upon, and though he wishes the world were a better place, try to take what he thinks is his and he won’t back down.” The confusion and put-uponness, together with ace marketing, made Tom Petty and his magnificent, protean backing band the Heartbreakers “New Wave” during the Carter era; you might say that New Wave existed to taxonomize and market bands like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Especially in the early material there was no mush. With Lynch’s walloping beat and Ron Blair’s unassuming bass lines on the one, the thin hard pungency of Petty’s own underrated rhythm guitar could do what it pleased – appreciate as he pushes against the beat in “Listen to Your Heart,” as relentless as a neurotic on the cocaine that has wooed the singer’s lover/girlfriend away from him. When Petty, flush after his triumphant Wilbury-curated solo debut Full Moon Fever in 1989, thought Jeff Lynne and the Heartbreakers would get on peachy-keen for Into the Great Wide Open (1991), the result was mixed: discussing the project on the Peter Bogdanovich-directed doc Runnin’ Down a Dream, Petty sounds like a whistleblower bound by a gag order. But, again, no mush. Just the other day at a CVS I heard that album’s “Out in the Cold,” a track serviced to AOR radio that garnered considerable airplay that summer, and understood why weird old Greil Marcus appreciated it — I mean, it fucking rocks. Not one, but two ace Campbell solos, excellent Lynne call-and-response harmonies, and an urgency in search of a subject.

An urgency in search of a subject. If Tom Petty had a weakness, it was making his songs resonate beyond mere content. He filled song with more gypsies, hearts, and angels than a Hallmark store, and it stuck in this gay’s craw. Complacency suggested he wasn’t moved to try because he liked the tropes inherited from three dozen referents — and Tom Petty was using them in his twenties. My theory: he developed that characteristic warble-whine to refresh these tropes, modernize them even — the rock era validates the instinct to sing this stuff “badly,” after all. But it reduces some of his famous material. I may be alone in thinking 1985’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More” a sound in search of a song. A helluva sound, no doubt: it would take boomers several years to approximate Petty and co-producer David Stewart’s amalgam of sixties mysticism at its most vacuous (i.e. the Coral Sitar) and eighties will-to-bigness at its most stentorian (i.e. the backing vocals, echo, and synth strings). Failing to emulsify the material is Petty, whining like the Texas delegation at the 1984 Republican National Convention. “You tangle my emotions,” he wrests from his larynx; it’s not all that’s tangled. Yelling “STOP” was better, illustrative — the William F. Buckley, Jr. mission statement for National Review for the boomer crowd. As the Moody Blues, the Grateful Dead, and fucking Steve Winwood scored their requisite comebacks, it was easy to be fifteen, watching VH-1 and thinking these people were standing athwart rock yelling “stop.” Fortunately, the Traveling  Wilburys, formed by George Harrison as an excuse to barbecue with friends who happened to be world-class songwriters, made middle age look fun if MTV still played your records.

But here’s the thing: Petty was beloved by the MTV crowd anyway. Through 1996 he could count on heavy blanket rotation for the most minor of hits. You’d be forgiven for thinking “Into the Great Wide Open” rode the pop top forty for months in the autumn of 1991 — it didn’t get past #92. You’d be forgiven for thinking 1987’s “Jammin’ Me,” the first (superior) draft of “I Won’t Back Down,” got higher than #18. You’d have thought “Walls,” released during the Beck and Cibo Matto era, didn’t compete with The Wallflowers on Y-100. Making watchable videos didn’t explain it – Cutting Crew made watchable video. (His first top ten? Not “Refugee” or “American Girl.” It’s “Don’t Do Me Like That.” His highest charting hit? The #3 Stevie Nicks duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”). Key is the Petty persona, an older brother out of step with the times but not a dick about it, ready to listen if your argument amuses him, and even during the most vicious fights he’s convinced, in the words of one of his most fragile ballads, it’ll all work out.

As the number of dead rocker obits accumulates, the critic must fight the sentimental temptation to praise the obit subject’s uniqueness. Save the noun for the deserved ones – like Tom Petty. As committed to the rock and roll canon as Harold Bloom is to the Western canon, a fanatic about music’s power to mitigate what would otherwise be a revanchist attachment to the pieties of youth, Petty kept reeling in new fans snared by his hooks and moved by the folk art simplicities of his lyrics (here’s a future Trivial Pursuit question: which rock and roller do Sam Smith and the 2008 John McCain presidential campaign have in common?). Now that he’s dead, we’ll never see his likes again because we don’t respond to music the same way he did, nor were we shaped by the same cultural politics. Dull? Sometimes. Embarrassing? Never for a full album. And even if I haven’t succeeded in demonstrating the depth of his catalog, there isn’t a single bar jukebox in America at which Greatest Hits isn’t spitting “American Girl” and “Free Fallin” for the tenth or hundredth time this week – enough to make one skeptical of bar culture, yeah, but so was Tom Petty. Few rockers so complicated the Everyman persona. Even a loser from Gainesville could get lucky.