Play Games
1 month ago
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Image credit: Sega
Every so often, the fine folk of Resetera take a break from their usual schedule of complaining that video games journalists get all their news from Resetera, and post a Thing Of Beauty. For example: it's thanks to Resetera member AstralSphere that I know about Alistair Aitcheson's Magic Box and BizHawk retro emulation tools, which - amongst other things - allow you to play old Sonic the Hedgehog games in giddy parallel, shuffling between them whenever you collect a ring.
If you have even the slightest understanding of games featuring Sega's prickly pinball, you will know that switching games whenever Sonic collects a ring is a recipe for panic and confusion beyond Dr Robotnik's wildest and wettest daydreams. That was certainly the conclusion of streamers participating in the latest episode of Random Number Generation, a Games Done Quick show dedicated to randomisation mods and their communities (beware rapid screen-flashing during the transitions).
Here's the thing, though: I played Sonic a bunch back in the day, and as regards certain Sonic levels, I think I could keep up with this. Specifically, Green Hill Zone and its equivalents, of which I have muscle memories so deeply engraved they will be visible as glinting threads within the swirling tissues of my spirit, as and when the Good Lord packs me off to my personal 16-bit heaven.
More importantly, it strikes me that shuffling between games based on certain actions would be a wonderful way to clear my backlog, by splicing together games at random. Picture it: you're hoeing the pumpkin patch in Stardew Valley and all of a sudden your hoe is a Bloodhound's Fang and the pumpkin patch is a cauldron of Rot and there is a stinking golden lady with big hair doing butterfly combos at you. You dodge-roll past her and oh shitballs, you've just invaded the Karaz Ankor and Thorgrim Grudgebearer is absolutely livid.
After many hours of hard campaigning and a gruelling battle in the foothills of the Everpeak, you succeed in felling the High King, which isn't much consolation now that you're trapped in a cupboard in Amnesia: The Bunker. Forget mods: this should be an official platform feature. Perhaps a certification requirement. Imagine it, a games industry built like the Quantum Leap TV show, with games full of hidden wormholes into other games. Questions of pacing would become irrelevant, and today's arguments about skill would fade to echoes, because nobody would have a clue what the hell they're playing at any given second, or what the hell they'll be playing next.
If Alistair Aitcheson seems like an RPS kinda guy, that could be because (as I've just discovered) our former deputy editor Alice B went to school with him. His other works include the Book Ritual, in which you shred books that "think they're human" - the loose idea being to explore your attachment to a physical object. It feels like the Magic Box and BizHawk tools are kind of doing the same thing.
