Shoot to Thrill

12 May (Tuesday)
A.M. Game Design - Shooting Games (Trainer: Hattori-san)
Yet another history lesson as we explore the next genre of gaming - shooters. We looking briefly at early shooters such as Space Invaders and Galaxian, as well as various vertically scrolling (e.g. Xevious, RayStorm) and horizontally scrolling shooting games (e.g. R-Type, Darius).

Part of the fun of shooting games come from the choice of actions the player has to make constantly in real-time, a large variety of enemy characters with complex behaviors, as well as complex attacks that the player character can execute. But as shooters became more complicated, they demanded higher skill level from players and eventually became too difficult for casual users. This was one reason which led to its decline.

Another reason was the arrival of action games such as Pac-man and Super Mario Brothers, with the appearance of more human and likable characters. Shooting games evolved into action shooters (e.g. IKARI Warriors, Contra), flight simulators (e.g. Afterburner, Ace Combat) and gun games (e.g. Time Crisis). Another variation of the shooting game genre is the First Person Shooter (FPS) game (e.g. Doom, Battlefield 2).

Ask Me No Question, and I'll Tell You No Lies
During lunchtime, we were asked to fill in a survey questionaire regarding the course so far. We gave them some honest feedback, and they treated us to lunch. Guanguan (the Mandarin translator from China) and Ueda-san (who also speaks some Chinese) took us to the Guilin chinese restaurant in the nearby Shibuya station/METS Hotel building. For 1000 yen (15 SGD) per person, the food didn't tasted particularly good though. In fact, the two ladies didn't finish their wanton noodle because it was tasteless. Guess who won't be going back to that restaurant?

P.M. No lesson (Trainer: Matsuura-san)
Kawashima-san will be busy with his university duties today and tomorrow, so there were no lesson planned. We were told to think about what kind of game we would like to work on for our next mini-game project, which would be a game based on the PlayStation Home environment. Matsuura-san was tasked to look after us during this period, but the poor chap is clearly overworked and lacking sleep. He actually fell asleep while we were doing our self-study.

Indeed, just a while earlier, Robert (the translator from USA) was telling us all about how the Japanese salaryman culture s*cks. It seems like if you like low wages, long hours and guilt trips for letting your company, your clients and your fellow workers down, you may enjoy being a Japanese office worker.

On a positive note, Matsuura-san did manage to find us a copy of the HDK docs in English. Though poorly written, like most Sony docs, they did answer a lot of my questions and help solved some of my Home development problems. Otsukaesama. Oyasumi nasai.