Blue and Cyan

A week or two ago I saw a big thing online about Video Game History month. And that kinda made me laugh. It was an ad for a sale at Best Buy or something. I’m not really sure. I didn’t give it that much thought. But you know me. Never let a stupid opportunity go unexploited. So for the next week, we’ll be talking video games. Yaaaaay.

Yeah, yeah. I know. You're worried once again that this is stupid and not relevant to you. Not a good attitude for writers to have, methinks. Besides, you don't even know what I'm going to use this week for. Initially I was going to use today to debunk some common myths, but it was so long and so serious (and many others, such as respected MIT professors who write on behalf of PBS have adressed many of the same issues in many of the same ways have already done so) that I figured it wasn't worth doing here at the moment. So instead today I'll talk about some game terminology. On Wednesday I'll discuss some of my favorite video game heroines and on Friday, something similar for men, but since there are more of them I've decided to challenge myself and try to find ones who are actually relatable. As in, people you could see yourself eating lunch with. And that's pretty hard since men in games tend to either be childish twits or rampaging beasts. There. Doesn't that sound edifying? Now, on with the show.

Levels or Dies: a classic method of making a one player game into a multi-player experience simply by trading off the controller when a specific goal is accomplished (beat a level) or thoroughly failed (die).

Noob: An insulting but often fecetious term for someone who is either new to a particular game and therefore ignorant of how it works or ocassionally, just someone who is really bad at it.

Nerf: verb. Past tense is nerfed. To be nerfed is when a character or enemy is weaker than they should be. Used especially in franchises when a recurring character who was once strong is toned down too much.

Winners don't do drugs: and cheaters never win. Has nothing to do with games other than that the community happened to pick up on it. I think it was a drug awareness commercial way back.

IK/OHK/OHKO: All mean basically the same thing, but stand for Instant Kill, One-Hit-Kill and One-Hit-Knock-out respectively.

Metroidvania: A term referring to a particular style of exploration heavy platformers. Derived from the series titles "Metroid" and "Castlevania."

Dragon Punch/Reverse Dragon punch: That would be forward down to forward for the DP and back, down to back for the RDP. A common command especially in certain types of games.

Numerical notation: Some players, especially of certain kinds of games will write down input commands using numbers. Something like 41236 X2. Sounds complicated, but it's not. Look at the number pad on the right side of your keyboard. See how they're arraged? 41236 X2 means "Half circle back to forward twice" Tah dah!

NPC: Non-Player Character. Technically villains are NPCs too, but we rarely think of them that way. Usually it refers to minor support cast.

RPG/SRPG/TRPG: My favorite genre. Roleplaying games are text heavy and battles rely on strategy and preparation. Affixing an S or T to the front stands for Strategy or Tactical, to designate the ones that are a lot like playing chess and reading a book simultaneously. Players will also often refer to RPGs as "JRPGs." The J is for Japanese- these games tend to have complicated but fairly linear plots and light to moderate character customization. Historically, they were distinguished from CRPG (Computer RPGs)which were less linear, had less developed characters but had more customization involved. This was only because CRPGs tended to be made in "the west" and closely reflected old pen and paper games such as Dungeons and Dragons. These days, so many things are availible on so many systems on both sides of the pond that CRPG has fallen out of favor, and is replaced with "Western RPG". In general, this is the most popular genre in Japan and is very popular in Korea as well. It's about the least popular in America.

RPG Elements: A term that's been common since the late 90s. Refers to elements such as towns full of NPCs, stats, upgradeable equipment, item creation etc. As games came into their own, they've been made more complicated, and these elements have become more common. There is currently, and has been for about five years, a debate over whether this will ultimately cause pure RPGs to lose all value and die as a genre.

MMO: Stands for Massively Multiplayer Online. In other words, one of those games where dozens, even hundreds or thousands of people will be playing on the same server at once and can interact with each other.

NES/SNES: Shorthand for Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Both are on the short list for best systems ever made. In Japan they were called Famicom and Super Famicom respectively.

PSX/PSOne/PS2: PSX is short for Playstation, Sony's first console system. It was later remodeled and dubbed PSOne, presumably to distinguish it from the Playstation 2 (PS2). Again, both of these systems are favorites in the gaming community. PS3 by contrast falls somewhere between slightly dissapointing and abysmal failure in the minds of many gamers.

Cheap: A term which refers to any ability an enemy may posess against which a player can do little or nothing. Simply being powerful doesn't qualify. Spamming a high speed unblockable IK- that's cheap.

Color-Swap: When a setting or character is almost an identical clone of another except that it has been re-colored. This is a common technique to make various grades of enemies, some weak some strong- in other words, to make the game more complicated while giving your artists a break. As I like to say "Beware the color-swap my son." Look for the full Jabberwocky reference in MacGuffin Quest coming to a PC near you in... I haven't decided yet. Developed by Crewd Entertainment Inc.

Port: To port a game means to re-code it and re-release it for another system. This is done to keep popular games availible after their systems have died or to make them availible to more players. Of course, many games are initially developed for one system but are likely to be released on two or three, even at launch. In which case, any system that seems to have been an afterthought, where there is more likely to be glitches or technical problems may be called a port even if it shares a release date.

Emulation: Means the same for games as with any technology. To emulate is to attempt to run a program not originally made for the system you're running it on by attempting to mimic its original system. This is one way developers can port games to other systems. It also refers to playing older games on one's PC through a special emulator. This is technically illegal, but the average gamer doesn't really care. Namely because there's no one to sell you a copy of a 20 year old game never released outside of Japan. There's also a bustling community of fan translators out there to serve this. I admit however, that my perspective on the issue may be unfairly biased in emulation's defense because of my preference in games. See: RPGs. And again to be fair to myself and emulation: they actually serve as decent PR. When a series is released here, there is only a small community of importers and emulators to spread word of mouth on behalf of the publisher. Combined with the fact that those emulating probably aren't able to buy a copy in the first place, only a handful of companies (heavily reliant or re-releasing old stuff at full price. I'm looking at you Square-Enix) concern themselves much with it. Note: this is a little different from pirating which, although it may be emulated, refers to games that ARE availible and relatively recent. This IS a big issue for developers on both sides of the ocean (and sometimes, the number of people pirating a game's Japanese version before stateside release kills profits) so this is a VERY BAD THING.

There. Now you have an elementary knowledge of gamer terms.