Category: Free Play

Random bits of news and one-off articles that don’t fit anywhere else can be found in Free Play.

Video Game or Videogame? An Answer to the Most Important Question of Our Time

Don’t think of this as a spelling test, but do you like to play video games? Or do you like to play videogames?

I pondered this question in a piece for Warp Zoned back in 2012, and a lightly edited version of that article has been reprinted here.

Walk over to your media shelf and pick up a copy of Wii Sports or Halo 3 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Odds are at least one of these titles will be in your collection. What do you call the item in your hand? Some people consider these items part of the “interactive entertainment” medium, but most of us just call them something else.

Though they’ve existed for over forty years, no one has ever definitively answered the question… are they video games or videogames?

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Speedrunner Niftski Sets New “Any Percentage” World Record of 4:54.798 for Super Mario Bros.

The speedrunners attempting to bend Super Mario Bros. to their will continue to inch closer to completing a perfect run. Niftski, the current recordholder for an “Any Percentage” completion of the game, bested his own mark yesterday.

The speedrunner shaved a few frames off his previous time to set a new World Record of four minutes and 54.798 seconds. You can watch the entire thing, which includes a variety of nigh-impossible glitches and warps to save time, right here:

Niftski’s main competition for the Super Mario Bros. crown is Miniland, and the two speedrunners have been locked in a back-and-forth battle for the right to claim the World Record for the better part of two years.

Miniland set the initial pace in February 2021 with an “Any Percentage” completion time of four minutes and 55.23 seconds. Niftski answered two months later with his own time of four minutes and 54.948 seconds.

Miniland roared back in November by completing Super Mario Bros. in just four minutes and 54.914 seconds, but Niftski has been in control of the World Record in the months since after posting a time of four minutes and 54.881 seconds in December.

Both speedrunners are chasing the chance to complete a perfect run of Super Mario Bros., which is currently pegged at four minutes and 54.265 seconds. Known within the speedrunning community as a Tool Assisted Speedrun (TAS), this time is generated by a program that stitches together the individual frames that comprise the optimal path through the game.

Niftski and Miniland post updates on their progress to YouTube, so be sure to follow them to see who will improve upon the record (and get closer to perfection) in the future.

343 Industries Will Work With Modding Community to Restore Cut Content to Halo and Halo 2

One of the most interesting chapters from the annals of video game history is the story behind the development of Halo: Combat Evolved. The groundbreaking first person shooter first sprang to life in the late 1990s as an extension of Bungie’s popular Marathon franchise. Over time those connections were severed, and the game was reborn as an RTS similar to the Myth series.

A year later, the development team dropped the strategy elements and the still-untitled game became a third-person shooter starring a mysterious “cyborg” character. It was this version of the title, now known as Halo, that would be introduced on stage by Steve Jobs at Macworld 1999.

However, Halo’s life as a marquee title for the Mac would be short-lived, and the game would jump to Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox console after Bungie was acquired by the tech giant in 2000.

While it had a colorful trip from the drawing board to store shelves, history has been kind to Halo: Combat Evolved. Xbox fans considered it the console’s killer app at launch, and a string of sequels eventually gave way to an ever-growing multimedia empire that now includes comic books, novels, toys, and multiple live-action adaptations. But what happened to all those earlier prototypes?

Enter the Digsite Project.

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The History of Wordle: A Story in Nine Tweets

Every so often, a game comes along with a certain something that just completely captures the public’s fascination. It happened in 2006 with Wii Sports and its introduction of motion controls. It happened in 2007-2008 with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, a pair of games that seeded plastic instruments in living rooms across the world like some kind of Johnny B. Rockstar. It happened in 2016 with Pokemon Go, a game that encouraged players to go outside and explore the real world.

And for the last few months, it’s been happening with Wordle.

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Wata Games Publishes First Population Report of Graded Games

During the last two years, Wata Games and Heritage Auctions have positioned themselves at the forefront of the retro gaming boom. But while demand has skyrocketed, the two companies have come under fire recently for possibly engaging in self-dealing and price manipulation. In the wake of these claims, the market for retro games (especially sealed titles graded by Wata Games and sold by Heritage Auctions) has cooled considerably.

In an attempt to be more transparent with the general public, Wata Games rolled out their first-ever Population Report for NES Games last week. This report includes a full count of every NES game Wata has graded (and any packaging variants available), as well as how many copies exist within each grade. From there, it should theoretically be easy to determine just how rare a given copy really is by matching data from the report to sales listings.

Deniz Kahn, the President of Wata Games, introduced the Population Report in the company’s Email Newsletter:

The team at WATA is excited to share with you our first-ever Population Report. This initial release is centered on Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games and we will be expanding the report to include games from other systems in the coming months. We are putting the finishing touches on a full, dynamic population report – including all games and grading categories – by early next year and we can’t wait to share that with you.

To zero in on a recent high profile example, we can see the copy of Super Mario Bros. that was recently sold by Rally for $2 million is currently the only copy of the game with a “hangtab” variant to receive a grade of 9.8 from Wata. Does that make it worth $2 million? I don’t know. But it is very useful information to have if you’re a collector.

Kahn also confirmed that Population Reports for all platforms would be coming soon:

Q: Why not wait to release a full Pop Report?
A: We felt compelled to share something of note with our collecting community now and while this is by no means a full picture, it does provide a solid look at grading stats for NES games. This particular report is a limited, temporary effort while we work on the more robust process of generating dynamic Pop Reports for all systems.

The release of their first Population Report doesn’t answer all the questions swirling around Wata Games, but it does give the public a slightly better overview of what the market for graded retro games actually looks like.

Microsoft Opens Virtual Xbox Museum for Console’s 20th Anniversary

The original Xbox made its worldwide debut on November 15, 2001, and Microsoft has been celebrating 20 Years of Xbox with special Anniversary Edition swag and the #Xbox20 hashtag all year long. The consolemaker will also roll out a six-part documentary series, Power On: The Story of Xbox, in December.

But first, they’ve opened the virtual doors to an Xbox Museum at Xbox.com.

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National Videogame Museum Opens “The Animal Crossing Diaries” Online Exhibition

The National Videogame Museum began collecting stories about the public’s lockdown-fueled fascination with Animal Crossing: New Horizons back in August 2020. The museum’s curators and archivists solicited hundreds of diary entries from players all around the world, all of whom were more than happy to share the details of their island adventures with Tom Nook, Isabelle, Blathers, and all the other villagers.

Now, after more than a year of hard work, the NVM is finally ready to open the virtual doors to their Animal Crossing Diaries online exhibition:

While the world was on pause, the island paradises of Animal Crossing: New Horizons thrived, welcoming those in isolation with open arms (and paws). The game became a routine part of everyday life. Cancelled plans were reimagined and reprogrammed to the virtual sandy shores of players’ islands. For many people unable to socialise in real life, the game became a vital creative space for personal connection.

Using Animal Crossing: New Horizons to maintain that personal connection with friends and family quickly became a huge part of the game’s appeal. Players also gravitated towards it’s strong emphasis on creativity and personal style, as well as the importance it placed on maintaining a daily routine. The NVM saw these common threads appear again and again throughout the diaries, ultimately sorting each entry into one of five categories:

Keeping A Routine – Faced with an uncertain day to day life in lockdown, players turned towards the game for an escape. If you couldn’t find a comforting routine in real life, the game could provide. For many players, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was not a comforting distraction. It saved 2020.

Making Your Space – An island can be a place of comfort to create a world that expresses its player’s personality. It can be a social, artistic and cultural space shared with others across the world. For some it is a space in which processing feelings of stress, anxiety and grief can take place. Players making spaces to travel, connect and share experiences opened up new possibilities. For many players, events were accessible for the first time via virtual spaces.

Representing Yourself – Many games, like Animal Crossing, have a main hero you can customize to look like you.

Sharing Creativity – The closure of museums and other cultural events limited access to creativity. And while the island does have its own museum of art, insects, fish and fossils, it also has a range of design options. You can create your own outfits, patterns and even games! Players could recreate cultural and artistic events that couldn’t happen in 2020.

Staying In Touch – For many people, the pandemic means social distancing from friends and family. This creates a sense of isolation many struggle with. In the game, welcoming new neighbours to your island placed a big focus on social connections.

Visitors to the Animal Crossing Diaries exhibition can also explore diary entries through a timeline feature that highlights important days on the New Horizons calendar (like Wedding Season and Toy Day), along with more impromptu in-game events (such as Biden Island and Pride Month) that were created by the players themselves.

The NVM plans to maintain and expand the Animal Crossing Diaries exhibition project going forward, and you can add your story to the collection using their Online Submission Form.

Jeopardy! Guest Hosts Ranked: Who Did the Internet Pick as the Best of the Bunch?

OK, you caught me, ranking the guest hosts who’ve appeared on Jeopardy! this season is slightly outside the purview of Video Game Canon.

But there have been a lot of video game adaptations of the show over the years, and the firestorm surrounding the selection of Mike Richards as the permanent host (and his quick exit from that job just a week-and-change later) makes figuring out who the next host should be a very interesting question.

Plus, I’m a huge Jeopardy! fan, and I’ve been slightly obsessed with this whole process from the beginning.

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Rally, a “Stock Market for Collectibles,” Sells Their Copy of Super Mario Bros. for $2 Million

Rally, a “stock market of collectibles,” made a splashy entrance into the world of high-value game collecting during the Summer of 2020 when they purchased a sealed and graded copy of Super Mario Bros. for $140,000.

After acquiring the game (which received a 9.8 A+ grade from Wata Games), the company sold 3,000 “shares” in the collectible cartridge to investors for $50 apiece

Rally’s $140,000 purchase set a record for a single game sale at the time, but it’s been eclipsed multiple times in the past year, including twice just in the last month. That’s when this merry-go-round of motivated sellers and deep-pocketed buyers culminated in sales of $870,000 (for a copy of The Legend of Zelda) and $1.56 million (for a copy of Super Mario 64).

But now Rally gets to sit on the top of the mountain for a little while, and that’s because the game’s shareholders have decided to sell their copy of Super Mario Bros. for $2 million to a private collector:

According to The New York Times, each shareholder will receive roughly $475 per share after the sale is completed. That’s honestly a pretty great return on their initial investment.