The school year has come to an end, and that means only one thing: Summer vacation is now underway.
Many kids will go to summer camp; if they're older, they'll start summer jobs. Some will take the opportunity to kick back, relax, and play some video games. Some will play a lot of video games. (Not me, though--I'm going to write for the Museum this summer!)
Now that we're in a more virtual state of mind, I thought it might be fun to talk about another big development from the end of the 20th century: The shift from 2-D to pre-rendered 3-D console-based games, and how video gaming's "big three" mascots helped usher in this new paradigm with Super Mario 64, Pac-Man World, and Sonic Adventure.
From the 1980s to the mid-1990s, the dominant game style was the 2-D side-scrolling platform game, which began with Pitfall and which Super Mario Bros. fully codified. Later games, including the Metroid, Castlevania, and Sonic the Hedgehog series, further refined the style and added new quirks and defining touches along the way.
Full disclaimer, before I start going: Adventure is the only one of these titles that I have any direct experience with, by way of its GameCube port, Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut. I never really got to play Mario 64 or Pac-Man World, so my thoughts on them will have to come from Let's Play videos on YouTube and outside sources.
The first stop on our little excursion is the fabled Mushroom Kingdom, as we take a look at Super Mario 64, for the Nintendo 64. (If you don't own this game, please check out NintendoCapriSun's let's-play on YouTube.)
This game came out in 1996, and it really set the standard for 3-D platform gaming. More importantly, though, it successfully reinvented Mario's formerly 2-D world for a 3-D perspective. I'll let a Eurogamer article from April 2015 explain why:
"...2D Mario games move from left-to-right to reach a goal zone, Mario 64 has open environments with goals placed at different points therein. Completing a level is no longer about moving through the scenery, but exploring it. The 2D Mario games progressed linearly - World 1's levels in order, then World 2's levels in order, with warp pipes and whistles letting experienced players bypass sections. The goal stars in Mario 64 allow progression to become more diffuse, which in turns allows the game's structure to be more open. A big challenge in 2D Mario games is the enemies, and hence power-ups are focused on killing or avoiding them. The big challenge in Mario 64 is navigation, and so the power-ups are focused exclusively on movement."
Basically, Eurogamer's point is that Mario is no longer bound by "World 1-1; World 1-2; World 1-3;" etc. In 64, movement through a particular world comes in the form of a series of tasks, and completing these tasks awards the player with "Mario Stars," which open up more of the overall game. Many games today, such as online games like Candy Crush and Monster Busters, use this star ranking. (Sonic Adventure uses something similar--the first game uses "A-B-C" ranks, and every game thereafter uses "Special-A-B-C-D-E.")
Another unique innovation ties the whole game together: the idea of the "hub world," which here takes the form of Princess Peach's castle. Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World had used similar world maps for their level-select screens, but this time it was fully interactive: Mario enters the worlds and levels therein by jumping into paintings throughout the castle.
Many games released after Super Mario 64 used the hub-world, such as the Lego Star Wars series and, of course, Pac-Man World and Sonic Adventure.
Super Mario 64 also broke new ground with its multi-cam feature. Using the yellow directional buttons on the controller, players could switch from angle to angle in order to perfect their jumps and attacks. In a neat touch, the camera exists within the game: A friendly cloud-dwelling creature called a Lakitu holds a camera from a pole and follows Mario around with it, as if filming his adventure.
...So, why did this game make such a huge, sweeping change? The answer is very simple: It had to prove the Nintendo 64's capabilities to consumers, who already had the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn, both of which were 32-bit systems, to choose from. By 1996, Nintendo had already made a household name for itself with the earlier 8-bit NES and Game Boy and the 16-bit Super NES, but Sony's foray into the market made things that much more uncertain. Nintendo would have to do something truly unique in order to defend their position in the industry.
Mario proved more than ready to step up and usher in the new era.
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That's about all the time we have for the Mushroom Kingdom. It's time to move on to...Ghost Island.
Let us now discuss Namco's step into 3D platforming: the original Pac-Man World. (If you don't own this game, please check out ClementJ64's let's-play on YouTube.)
Pac-Man World emulates Super Mario 64's innovations, but in a more conventional way. Nevertheless, I include it within the Museum because it marked the very first video game character's transition from 2-D to 3-D, and it also marked the first true Anniversary Celebration--Pac-Man's twentieth. In fact, this celebration kicks off the game's rather light narrative: The ghosts have kidnapped Ms. Pac-Man, Prof. Pac-Man, Pac-Baby, Jr. Pac-Man, and Chomp-Chomp the dog right at Pac-Man's own party, and he has to go to Ghost Island to find them. (Sheesh! Whatever happened to manners?!)
World is a much more linear experience than Mario 64, perhaps because Namco didn't want the game to look too similar to Nintendo's property. Players are constrained to "World 1-1, 1-2, 1-3," and so on, but there's a healthy variety of gameplay: Most of the levels are platform/puzzle levels, but there's a space-shooter level, a bumper-car level, and areas where our hero can swim or explore underwater with a "Chrome Power-Up."
Pac-Man shares moves in common with other characters: he has Mario's stomp in the form of the "Butt-Bounce," Sonic's spin-dash in the form of the "Rev-Roll," and he can swim. But he does have one other trick up his sleeve: He can use the "dots" from the original arcade game as weapons against the non-ghost enemies he encounters (a move which World 2 and 3 dropped). Ghost enemies require him to eat a Power Pellet and then attack them.
The game has a fixed camera, and for the most part it's a sidescroller with some 3D elements (jumping on boxes, moving toward and away from the screen, etc.). It may seem like a step back after the marvels of Mario 64, but the slightly more retro approach works in World's favor, because the background art is quite beautiful.
Instead of attempting to try wild new things and innovate in all sorts of crazy ways, Pac-Man World uses the side-scrolling platform game as the starting point, but then it finds other ways of setting itself apart. In an inspired move, World finds ways of incorporating the arcade game's elements within this new game. The fruit icons which give you bonus points in the original game now open doors and score bonus points and extra lives. Certain switches can activate "mini-mazes" within each level, allowing players to get rid of ghost enemies. Collecting tokens rewards players with Pac-Maze minigames inspired by the level they just played. And, as a way of remembering where it all began, the 1980 original is an extra feature.
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Whew! Those ghosts sure gave us a hard time! Tell you what? Why don't we reward ourselves and go for "Bright Lights, Big City"? Our next stop is Station Square! (If you don't own the Dreamcast version, I would highly recommend SheepNDan's extensive Let's Play on YouTube.)
So...Sonic Adventure. Where, oh, where to begin? We need to go pretty far back for context.
In 1991, Sega released the Mega Drive/Genesis (I shall use "Genesis" for simplicity's sake from here on), whose pack-in game was originally a beat-'em-up called Altered Beast, but this was later changed to Sonic the Hedgehog. From then on, the Blue Blur starred in hit after hit: Sonic 2, 3, Sonic & Knuckles, and several other spinoff games. By 1995, Sega was at an all-time high, but the company was a victim of its own success: Two failed consoles--the Genesis 32X add-on and the Sega Saturn--dealt a massive blow to Sega's profits and position in the market.
By the end of the decade, Sega and its mascot were in a bad way.
Enter the Dreamcast, Sega's 128-bit answer to the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. Unlike the Saturn, which had NiGHTS into Dreams and one version of the Traveller's Tales-developed Sonic 3D Blast as its primary games, the Dreamcast boasted the most ambitious Sonic game to date.
Adventure expands upon Super Mario 64's hub-world by giving players three unique hub-worlds to choose from: Station Square; the Peru-inspired Mystic Ruins; and the Egg Carrier, a flying battleship.
The game features a whopping six characters to choose from: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy Rose, a robot named E-103 Gamma, and Big the Cat. Each of them has their own unique playing style: Sonic runs fast; Tails flies; Amy runs from a robot that's after her; Knuckles hunts for gemstones; Gamma runs through shooting galleries; and Big the Cat fishes. (Yes, that's right--he fishes. His section was intended to make use of a fishing-rod peripheral, but Adventure wasn't compatible with it. The one thing that would have justified his presence in the game, and it doesn't work!)
On top of that, the game featured quite impressive graphics for 1999. The signature scene from the game, and the one that everybody remembers, is the scene in Emerald Beach where Sonic is running from a massive orca whale as it breaks the pier behind him. There are at least three pre-rendered sequences within the game: the opening titles, the Egg Carrier flying through the air (it's one shot, but reused from different angles), and Chaos' destruction of Station Square.
Finally--and this is a big one--Adventure is the first Sonic game to come with an intricate narrative that involves all six playable characters. Certainly, the overall thrust is "get the Chaos Emeralds and defeat Dr. Eggman," but this story involves a god of destruction, an ancient tribe of Echidnas, a frog with an unusually long tail, a robot with an identity crisis, a team of explorers who got lost out in the jungle, and a painfully shy young woman who's infatuated with the chef at a hamburger joint. (Spoiler: She ends up working there.)
There is one other point of trivia: The game interacted with the Dreamcast's "clock." On New Year's Eve, 1999/2000, players got to see this:
(I can't remember where I found this, but it was interesting enough for me to include. I thank and credit whoever had it...It was probably SonicRetro, but I'm not sure.)
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And there you have it: Gaming's top three mascots rang in a new millennium and brought about the evolution from 2D sprites to 3D polygons.
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