Vector vs Spectre
A couple of worthwhile recent projects and whatnot directed my way: a Flickr group set up to celebrate/investigate the lift test tower of Northampton; and the group behind the Frankfurt TV Tower exhibition previously mentioned have a book out entitled Space Time Play, on computer games and architectural space. It's so long since I played one that I may be talking nonsense, but this is an area that seems to have had far too much damage inflicted on it by realism, whether 'hyper'-prefixed or no. Obviously it wasn't ever thus, and I was only being slightly facetious when I described Tron's mise-en-scene as one of the most important (and under-explored) since Caligari, not least because the strangeness of the space was emphasised so much, rather than CGI'ed into boredom.
posted by owen hatherley at 4:38 pm
6 Comments:
This reminds me that I was reminded of you while playing "Half Life 2" over the summer - it's the only computer game I'm aware of in which Eastern European social housing plays a prominent role.
There are loads of non-realistic games around, ones that look like games, rather than rolling TWAT news, or similar.
The game I'm playing at the moment, We Love Katamari on the PS2 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy), has little or nothing to do with realism and everything to do with in-game mechanics.
If you're trying to avoid realism on games consoles, you'd be best looking at Nintendo. The recent re-release of Paper Mario (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Mario), first out around 2000 in Japan, is a whimsical version of the Mario world, where the player can flip from 2D to 3D mid-game.
That would make sense: always preferred Nintendo to their more macho competitors...
I don't know much computer ganes and architectural spacve - let alone mise-en-scenes - but if you've got only one life left at a score of 3000, then you're rubbish at Battlezone, mate.
Oooh I've always loved Tron! It's very true that the more primitive special effects available at the time lead to a far more believable computer world than a modern (computer generated) version could manage.
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