Did you know Sega made a Die Hard Beat 'Em Up-style arcade? Anyway, join us for a conversation about three gameplay features and their origins.
Did you know Sega made a Die Hard Beat 'Em Up-style arcade? Anyway, join us for a conversation about three gameplay features and their origins.
In this episode, Willie takes us down memory lane, and we explore the first appearances of three gameplay features—the ability to slow down time (aka bullet time), free-flow combat, and quick-time events. Of course, we couldn't have this conversation without mentioning games like Enter the Matrix, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Dragon's Lair. Stick around until the end because Willie talks about the original first-person shooter game—it involves NASA and MIT, and it's way older than you think. Also, "After the eyes flash on the screen, shoot."
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Willie: That type of, yeah, type of thing. But this game is called Wild Gunmen from 1974.
And it has a light gun.
Joseph: Oh, targets pop up or something.
Willie: And it has these targets that, it's not actually a target. There's a gunslinger that's on a rear projection screen. So you're seeing this guy in front of you and you're basically having a draw with this guy. The prompt on the screen, right? A quick time event has to have some sort of prompt on the screen that tells you what button to push or what you need to do in order to pass this portion of the game.
And in this case, there's a rear projection screen. There's a gunslinger on that side. Who draws on you, but you his lights flash, his eyes flash, and that's what tells you, like, pick up the gun and shoot.
Joseph: Nice.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: But again, it's electromechanical, even though the gun is a, like, it is a light gun. I'm pretty sure actually-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -like, the way that we know-
Joseph: Like a Duck Hunt game?
Willie: -of light guns from NES, and stuff.
Yeah, like Duck Hunt. And this game was remade later for, um, Nintendo as well. I think also called what Wild Gunman, uh-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -in 1984.
Joseph: Interesting.
Willie: I said it's a rear projection screen, but it's an actual person. It's like a video. A video-
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: -of a person. It's not sprites or anything. It's like an actual rear projection video of a person pulling a gun. Like drawing a gun. Like a gunslinger.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:35
Joseph: What's up everyone, welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for tuning in for a casual conversation about video games. My name is Joseph and I'm here with my friends, Willie and Taylor, and we're just three guys wondering why the hell the first Batman Arkham game in eight years is being made exclusively for the MetaQuest 3, but I digress.
So what's up, y'all?
Taylor: Are you being for real right now or did you just make that up?
Willie: [chuckling] Yeah, it's for real. There was a trailer yesterday.
Joseph: No, it's for real, for real.
Taylor: Oh, I thought that was, uh, joke news or something. Oh my gosh.
Joseph: It sounds like fucking joke news.
Taylor: How'd the trailer look?
Willie: I mean, the trailer looks good because it's like not what you would be seeing in the Quest. [chuckles]
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Willie: I saw, like, the first comment on the YouTube video for the trailer as soon, like, within an hour of it dropping yesterday was like, I've never gone so fast from being like, "oh, wow, to, oh, damn." [chuckles] Just because you [Joseph chuckles] like, see it immediately, like, oh, shit, this is for, this is for VR. It's fine, like-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: It's cool for what it is, you know? People have done good stuff recently in VR with games.
Taylor: Yeah, but not Batman stuff. Is it gonna be another three hour game?
Willie: Yeah, I don't know.
Joseph: Yeah, dude. That's what it is. That's what it is. Taking that, that fucking series of games and making it exclusive for VR-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -sucks. Like it means I'm not going to play it because I'm not going to buy a Meta Quest 3.
Taylor: Yeah. And I'm, I'm probably not going to play it if it's another full price. I mean, even the last one I think was 40 and it was, you can finish it in two or three hours. To me, that is-
Joseph: Oh damn.
Taylor: -not a value. [laughs] It's not a value proposition-
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: -at all. I may pick-
Joseph: Shit.
Taylor: -it up someday for 10 if I happen to have a headset that... But that said, we don't know anything about it and if it turns out that it's like a 20 hour, really bad ass well done game in that universe, I would pick that up for sure and play it just depending on how well it works and all that. But at the good end of the spectrum, if it was something like that, I'd probably be interested.
Joseph: It would literally have to blow people away for me to even probably consider it. I guess mainly because I don't have a device, so that's definitely a thing.
Taylor: They've been getting cheaper. I think I saw the two went down to, um, 200 bucks. So I think they're getting desperate to sell.
Joseph: How much does a three cost?
Taylor: It was 400 last time I checked.
Willie: I don't know.
Taylor: Maybe it's hitting deals of 350. Might be making stuff up.
Joseph: Yeah, I don't know, man.
Willie: Uh, 128 gig one is 499.
Taylor: Whoo.
Willie: A 512 gig one is 649.
Joseph: Damn, man. Like, no, I'll go buy a PS5-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -and Rise of the Ronin along with it and fucking play that for way more hours than I would ever play the MetaQuest 3.
Taylor: I gotta agree.
Willie: This particular one, I think maybe all of them are like this, not that this matters, but it comes with Asgard's Wrath 2, I guess.
Taylor: Yeah, it definitely doesn't matter. [Willie laughs] You were completely accurate [Joseph laughs] when you said that.
Willie: That game is like the best game right now in VR, according to everybody. Like, that like--
Joseph: Oh, really.
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Willie: -the shit. It got nines and tens from multiple outlets. Everybody was like, holy shit, there's a VR game that's getting the best-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -numbers right now.
Taylor: It says something that I have not heard of it at all as well. I mean, just not about the game, but about VR gaming in general right now.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Willie, what's the, the VR device you have?
Willie: A two.
Joseph: A two. And Taylor, you have one too.
Taylor: Same.
00:04:56
Joseph: Same. Okay. Hmm. Alright. Well, today we're gonna focus on specific gameplay features or mechanics and when and where they were first introduced. Which will probably lead us to sharing the games with our favorite implementations of those features. Willie's been thinking about and working on this topic for a while and came up with a long list of common gameplay features we can dig into. But we won't be able to highlight everything on his list in a single episode, so there's a chance we could revisit this topic sometime in the future.
And for a little more context before we get started, these are a few examples of the type of gameplay features we're thinking about. The ability to crouch, the ability to use a health pack, or the ability to aim down sights when firing a weapon. Anyway, Willie, you should take over. W Wheelie? Uh, Willie, you should take over and lead the [Taylor chuckles] conversation since you've been working on this topic.
Willie: All right. Yeah, this started a long time ago when we were just thinking about topics for this podcast at all, like-
Joseph: Oh shit, like this could have been-
Willie: -a year ago, like years ago. Like, [chuckles] this is something I've been thinking about a long time.
Joseph: Original ideas that we like hand wrote on a sheet of paper?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Wow, I didn't think of that, but you're right.
Willie: And if not, it was like right after, weeks after that, I was just like starting a note in my phone. And this is one of those old ones that I just had sitting in there for a long time. And I started researching a long time ago, but It is so complicated to nail down when something actually first started cause there's so much disagreement on like, well, does that count?
Or did this game have that particular mechanic or like one, uh, maybe I, I will spoil this a little bit, but one of the things we thought about, but we're not going to really go too far into today is double jump,
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: Just the conversation around that. Like I saw, oh, this game did it first. And then someone else being like, well, double jump has been around forever. Like... and will think about something like Joust, the arcade game where you're on a little ostrich jumping around, but like, is that really double jumping? That's not double jumping in my mind.
Joseph: That's not a double jump for me.
Willie: No, that's like-
Taylor: Uh-uh.
Willie: -Cause somebody was like, oh, but Joust had multiple jumps. It's like, that's not, that's not what we're talking about.
Joseph: No, that's, you're flapping your fucking wings as a bird. [Willie chuckles]
Willie: Yeah, that's completely different.
Taylor: Yeah. That's more flappy bird mechanics. Yeah.
Willie: So when I finally actually started researching this stuff, it was just like Googling to see where I would go on the internet. And there is one interesting article on, I think gamerrant.com that has like eight games that introduce gameplay mechanics.
Joseph: Oh nice.
Willie: So I went through that. And even that, I feel like there's one thing in there that I don't think should count as a game mechanic, though, even my list now has gone beyond just like mechanics or features.
It's like, when they first introduced certain like types of genres now too. So I started at that list and then I found this Reddit post that people were just talking about their favorite mechanics in games in general. So then I just like wrote all of those down. So I've got like 40 something things that I wrote down from that list.
And then I was like, I'm just going to go find out how many of these could I go find. When's the first time this came out, and so I put all those things together, compared to multiple places on Google across multiple websites, though, I also shout out that giantbomb.com has an interesting feature in their search where you could like, type in, we'll start with slow motion or slow, like, the ability to slow time down.
Because like, if you go to giantbomb.com, go to search, and do slow motion. There's one section that's just concepts. So it'll say-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Concept linked to 230 something games. And if you click on that, there's a full list of all the games that Giant Bomb has covered that has like that particular mechanic in it. And on that page, there's something that says first appearance-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: And tells you like what the first appearance was. Now, even that is imperfect, because like I have found multiple instances where-
Joseph: Found something earlier.
Willie: It's not right. I found something earlier or they listed something super early. And it's like, again, that's not what we're talking about. That's not-
Joseph: Like it's a stretch.
Willie: That's not the same thing. It's a stretch to say that's like the earliest implementation of this thing.
Joseph: Interesting. How successful were you in finding them in the list that you shared with us?
Willie: I shared a list with you of things that I found, like, pretty close to definitive answers for.
Joseph: Okay.
00:09:04
Willie: There's still some stuff up for debate and I think, you know, we'll get into that here. But, uh, since I already said slow motion or ability to slow time, let's, let's start there.
Taylor: Nice.
Willie: Which, obviously, slow motion in games just means that somehow time comes to a halt or just moves more slowly. So that you can manipulate things within that time. And sometimes this is just a visual effect, right? That happens, but like when it's implemented in gameplay is what we're talking about.
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: When do you think this started? What's the game that you think of actually, if I say the ability to slow time?
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: The first thing I think of, but I don't know if it counts for this. The first thing I would think of is Sands of Time from Prince of Persia-
Willie: sure.
Joseph: -would be like the very first thing that. But that's probably-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -more like a time mechanic because it has like a rewind type of thing.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Without digging too deep, I would probably say like a Red Dead.
Willie: Yeah, that's a good one.
Taylor: Hmm. Yeah.
Willie: Yeah, that's definitely a good one for sure. What came to mind first for me, which is not the answer, is a game called Dead to Rights. I don't know if y'all remember playing that.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: I think that was a, maybe it was Xbox and PlayStation, but I think I played it on Xbox.
Taylor: Is that a Western shooter? Like a western first person shooter?
Willie: No, it was like a... more modern, but you were like a cop or a detective or something.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: It was kind of Max Payne before Max Payne.
Taylor: Yeah. Max Payne was what I was thinking of as the earliest that I remember.
Joseph: All three of those games have it, right?
Willie: Uh huh. And Dead To Rights was 2002. I didn't actually add Max Payne to this list, even though I know it was one of them, but it actually goes way back further than that, which was wild to me.
Joseph: Like nineties way back?
Willie: No. [chuckles] Way back.
Joseph: 80s way back?
Willie: 80s way back.
Joseph: Oh, damn.
Taylor: Damn.
Willie: There's an arcade game that's like a vertical shooter. Looks like Galaga. It's not Galaga, but like, you know, you're a little ship at the bottom of the screen moving up. Stuff is-
Joseph: It's like a scrolling game?
Willie: Yeah. A vertical scrolling game from March of 1981. Made by Sega.
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Willie: Released in arcades.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: It's actually one of the first games to like feature digital speech as well.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: And one of the first games to use some sort of overheating mechanics. So if you fired too much-
Joseph: Cool.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Your guns would overheat and you'd have to wait for that. But it also had this-
Taylor: Dang.
Willie: -um, this thing that just like a button that let you slow time down for once per stage, you could slow time so that you could dodge around bullets and shoot at the enemy ships that were coming at you.
Joseph: What's the game called? Did you ever say the name?
Willie: Oh, so I didn't. Sorry. I didn't. It's called Astro Blaster.
Joseph: Astro Blaster.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: I'm trying to think. Oh yeah, it's called Warp. In this game it's called Use Warp.
Taylor: It's an interesting name for it.
Willie: Yeah, I looked at the like major, the first screen on the game basically, as you're like, you know when you walk up to an arcade game, you see the game playing and then it'll show you like some instructions or a narrative for like what's going on.
There's like five bullet points. It just says, Shoot enemy spaceships for points. Two, shoot fireballs for extra fuel. Three, use warp to slow down enemy ships and bombs. Only once per sector or ship. Four, discover how to earn secret bonuses for extra points. Five, dock with a mothership to refuel after each sector.
Six, game over when you run out of ships or fuel. And seven laser will not fire while overheated.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: That's pretty cool. I like the overheat feature. I would never have guessed that that is this old.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah. And I think from the research I did find it says like, this is the first game to use the overheat mechanic as well. So like, it's definitely one of them for sure.
Joseph: That's cool. Even the ability to slow down time on an arcade cabinet, like an arcade game. I wouldn't have thought it went that far back. Definitely not.
Willie: Yeah. I would have said it was like a PlayStation invention or something or-
Joseph: Or that, that level of console. Like the, like the first X Box, first PlayStation.
Willie: Yeah. Another game that did it, that I did like playing a lot was, uh, Enter the Matrix.
Joseph: Oh, right, right, right.
Taylor: Oh, yeah.
Willie: That was on GameCube and maybe PlayStation. I can't really remember, but I played it on GameCube when that came out.
Joseph: Yeah, that's a great example of giving it context-
Willie: Right.
Joseph: -within like-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -whatever world it's in. But yeah, I think that's a great way to obviously carry again, carry it over to the game from the movie franchise.
Willie: Right, like obviously bullet time became synonymous with the Matrix and like that style of editing and slow motion and in anything. So of course they would do it in the game. Like, it made sense.
Joseph: Yeah, we didn't even say bullet time, but that's probably, I don't know, most, maybe the most common name and phrase for talking about this type of ability to slow to slow down time in the middle-
Willie: Yeah, for sure.
00:13:34
Joseph: Of a game play, but I mean, it works for, for two of the games that I thought about not really trying to figure out what the very first one was. But when I was just thinking of games, I've played that I like or love that have that type of feature Ghost of Tsushima is one of them, which it's called concentration in that game and you unlock it in the skill tree, I think.
But it's like, as you're aiming, I think most games as you're aiming with like the left trigger, you press in the right stick and that kind of basically activates concentration or some games call it, call it focus, but Ghost of Tsushima has that, which is super helpful when you're, when you're shooting with the bow.
And then Days Gone, extremely helpful in Days Gone, especially if you're trying to, like, actually defeat a horde, but it's called Focus Shot in that game, same thing, aim with left trigger, press in the right stick, it slows down time for a limited amount of time, and then Cyberpunk, which is a game I haven't finished-
Taylor: Oh, yeah.
Joseph: -but played recently. There's cyberware in that game. I think it's Sandevistan and Kerenzikov. I think like you can combine those two and basically increases like the uptime, the duration of the slow motion time, you can combine a whole bunch of different cyber... cyberware and gear so that it's like almost unlimited.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: A ridiculously long amount of time that you can go in slow motion if you combine the right things together, but that's pretty cool. You know, I think you can do it like while you slide. I think that's, uh, I think it's Kerenzikov, like, while you're in the middle of a slide, you can slow down time and, like, shoot and then Sandevistan, I don't know if that's specific to when you're driving in a car, or you can just use it whenever. Maybe you can use it whenever.
Willie: Yeah, one of the things I found when I was looking at the ability to slow time was that there's like, I guess it was in Need for Speed: Most Wanted as well.
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: There was like a mechanic to slow down time so you could make tight turns and stuff like that. And-
Joseph: Hell yeah.
Willie: I don't, I don't remember that. And I know I played that game, but I just don't-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -remember it.
Joseph: I mean, shooting, yeah. Any game that like you have to fire a weapon, that's obviously a great use for like bullet time. Driving, that's cool. I didn't think of that one. Did GTA have it? Last GTA? Was it in that game?
Taylor: Yeah. It had driving. If you played as, um-
Willie: Mm.
Taylor: -oh, one of the characters, the driving guy. Um, he had the ability to click both sticks and it would slow down time. And it was, it definitely was sick. It like, it allowed you to steer your car in insane manners, completely defy physics and everything else, which is awesome.
Willie: It's been so long. It's wild how many times I've played that game and how many hours I've put in. Is it only Michael and Trevor that are playable or is there a third person that I can't think of right now?
Taylor: There's a third guy. I can't think of his name.
Joseph: I don't know.
Taylor: Uh, Franklin.
Willie: Oh, okay.
Joseph: Oh.
00:16:22
Taylor: Yeah. He's, and he was the driver. Um, out of the group. So he had like a special ability to slow down time and when he was driving. And so, and that obviously helped a lot with the shooting out of the car. So he could really just be getting those headies, but you bring in a Cyberpunk and the builds for slow mo that I, my example was Fallout-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: *-*but it was, it was a similar kind of thing where you could, you could basically pad your stats. I can't remember what the name of the perk is, but. If you have it all the way maxed out, everything you take, drugs, all that, anything you ingest that gives you abilities was, I want to say 200 or 250 percent plus
Joseph: Damn.
Taylor: When you max that out. So yeah, you would take the, I think Jet was the drug that makes everything slow way down. So you could take one of those and you are in slow mo for something like a minute. Or a minute and a half or something ridiculous where you were just all over the place, taking off heads, taking off limbs with ease.
Joseph: Dude, a minute, a minute and a half. That's...
Taylor: Yeah, it might have been a minute. Maybe a minute and a half is too much. But I know that it got to the point where it was almost annoying to take one because you would have the battle finished-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -in 30 seconds-
Joseph: Oh.
Taylor: And then you still have to wait because people are coming up like, Hey, I'm Preston. Garvey...
Joseph: Oh, shit. Like there was no way to cancel it. [Willie chuckles]
Taylor: [chuckling] I don't think so.
Willie: And I guess, you know, in, in Fallout, I guess I would say. The VAT system in itself is sort of its own slow motion, right?
Taylor: Right. Cause it is technically slow mo. It seems like it's stopped unless you really watch it. And then it, you can see that it's just going like one frame per second or something really slow.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Dang.
Taylor: So two slow mos in one game.
Joseph: Willie were there any other notable games you came across that we haven't talked about or thought of?
Willie: I definitely listed a couple other things like Bayonetta is one that people really like just like a 2009 game. Dead Space is another one that people say has slow mo and I don't actually remember that at all.
Taylor: Oh yeah no it's the stasis. You-
Willie: Mm.
Taylor: -can shoot stasis at something and it didn't make the whole world slow mo-
Joseph: Oh, freeze stuff.
Taylor: -and made that person or thing slow mo, yeah. But technically slow mo as well, and that was a good one because those fucking enemies suck balls.
[Joseph laughing]
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: I hated those things.
Joseph: I've never played that game.
Willie: Oh, it's great.
Taylor: Oh, it's terrifying. It's on the game pass too so you can check that out anytime.
Willie: Oh, yeah, the remake is right or the...
Taylor: Yeah, and it's good. Oh my god. It looks so good Oh, speaking of Fallout, I, I did play about three or four hours of the intro just to check out the new graphics.
Willie: Oh, the graphics mod that came out?
Taylor: Yeah, I was surprised how good they are.
Willie: Is that on PS5 or on Xbox One, or Xbox Series X?
Taylor: Yeah, Xbox. Yep, exactly. And, and so they did a really good job to spice everything up because literally the day or two days before it came out, I started to play it and I played it with Rebecca and we were both like, oh man, that's really a nice little thumbs up on the video chat. [chuckles]
We were, we were just saying this looks cool, but it looks really rough.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: And then two days later the update came out and she watched again and we both agree that it looked amazing. It's still rough movement because everything underneath the skins-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -is still the old game. So all the characters move awkwardly and...
Joseph: It's just literally like a reskin.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I did see that they added a bunch of quests and stuff though, so I am interested, but I also don't have anything to play it on that I would like, I'm not going to spend money on it right now, so.
Joseph: Which game is it?
Taylor: They haven't added it to the PC game pass?
Willie: Uh, you know, I don't know. I know they-
Taylor: That'd be nice.
Willie: -did on PS5. On PS5, there's like a, it got super complicated and we shouldn't go too far into it, but like, If you had PS One Plus or something, and you downloaded Fallout for a long time ago, the update doesn't work on that. But if you have-
Taylor: Ooh.
Willie: PS Essentials or something else, you do get it. And I don't know what that means.
Taylor: Oh man.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: It's really complicated that some people get it-
Taylor: It means upgrade.
Willie: -and some people don't get the upgrade. And some people-
Taylor: That sucks..
Willie: -are obviously upset-
Joseph: Dang.
Willie: -that they can't play the better looking version.
Joseph: So you're-
Taylor: I would be too.
Joseph: -talking about 4, Fallout 4?
Willie: 4, yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: Yeah, it got a graphical upgrade and-
Joseph: Yeah, it's been really interesting to see YouTube kind of explode with like new Fallout 4 content and-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -like creators like replaying the game and making all types of content for it because of the series.
Taylor: I hope it leads to... so I will say one thing about it. It's feels like they smoothed out the, the control engine, the movement and all that I can might be making it up, but it seemed like it was like they just tweaked it in some ways. Like they brought it into the now, um, just with. The movement feeling a little more fluid and, and like less like you're steering a person that is 3d, if that makes sense.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And it feels a little, a little more like current games, first person shooters.
Joseph: Did you just not say the opposite? Like the game was like pretty much the same and the movement.
Taylor: Well, the mechanic, the, the AI, the NPCs, all of that, the enemies, they all move the same. They have better looking graphics, but that was the one other thing I noticed was that it feels like they made the controls a little more snappy, a little more fluid.
And that, that was really something that that game needed. So what I was getting at, as I hope that the sudden burst of popularity also leads to them either coming out with a new one or adding some real love to Fallout 76 and maybe giving it some of the same kind of treatment, you know, making it look better and bringing it into the now.
Willie: So the last thing I think we should say about that is that I agree with that. I hope it goes in a good direction instead of a bad direction as far as like their next development. I hope they understand that they do have to improve their engine and their graphics to like make the next game versus being like, we'll see people buy our shit anyway, because it did suddenly get a huge boost of numbers-
Joseph: Aw, no.
Willie: That I hope, I hope they don't take the wrong-
Taylor: [chuckles] Yeah, that would be the worst.
Willie: -message from that, that like we could just-
Joseph: We're doing great.
Willie: -keep putting out shit. It's fine.
Taylor: Yeah. Our engine is awesome. We have more particles.
Willie: And those games are good, right? Narratively. They're great. It's just like, I hope, I hope they move in the right direction.
Taylor: That's me too. And I, and it's the, one of those things where like maybe being attached to Xbox, hopefully that'll help that too.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Help them make the right decisions. But anyways, yeah, I thought, I thought that was interesting.
00:22:47
Willie: Yeah. Let's talk about something that we all know very well and has a specific name called Free Flow Combat. This is one that, if you've heard of before, is something that got super popularized by Batman, Arkham Asylum, and that whole series of Arkham games.
And I think it's fair to say that it is, specifically if we're talking about Free Flow Combat, that it is the originator, right? Like, that is the game that did it. That came out in 2009 and it is a lot of other games play that or use that system.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I might step on Joey a little bit here, but there's a, like, he's probably going to talk about Shadow of Mordor or Shadow of War because those games do a great job of implementing that kind of system.
There's also the Marvel Spider Man games now that use very similar system. You know, I think I would categorize this as something where to truly be Free Flow Combat. It means that your each enemy has to be sort of in rhythm and hitting extra buttons is just not going to work like you can't button mash.
It's got to be in rhythm. There's also typically a counter in somewhere on the screen that's like counting number of hits you get. And if you get certain thresholds, you unlock new abilities that you can do right? Like it's not. Oh, I press X, X, Y, and that's a combo for a move. Like, no, you can't do that unless you get to a certain point in your multiplier for your hits.
Joseph: I feel like this is one of those, one of the features we're going to talk about today that has like a lot of back and forth about like who did it first and which game originated this type of thing. Cause like, is it Assassin's Creed? Is it Batman Arkham? That series? Is it Prince of Persia? Like you can go back to that.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But to your point, I think if, if it is like it needs a counter and that it needs the, it's a lack of combinations, like button input. It's literally the same button over and over and over again to create those streaks. And then maybe a button to parry or block.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: To kind of keep the sequence going.
Willie: Yeah. There's this point that it's supposed to let you move quickly between enemies, right? To chain attacks together, like all over the screen. And once you start hitting, once you hit like three attacks in succession, then you sort of enter in Batman, you enter Free Flow where suddenly everything slows down or it's honestly, everything speeds up, you get faster and all the enemies get faster in a way that like, you're just chaining stuff over and over fast, like flipping over people's heads, hitting them from behind, doing a kick.
And ultimately you like. Unlock a takedown or, uh, use your batarang to hit a bunch of people across the room.
Joseph: Oh, yeah. Or like a finisher of some kind.
Willie: Yeah, which is the, yeah, that's the takedown move, which is a combination of buttons. But there's really three main buttons in Free Flow, which is like, there's an attack button, a stun button, and a counter. It relies on those three sort of elements.
Joseph: Yeah, which man, that's fucking Batman Arkham all damn day.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. And it's unforgiving. It's like one of the common things about it too, is that there's no, I haven't played a single one of those games that will, unless maybe there's some sort of accessibility, but...
If you don't hit those buttons at the right times, like there's all kinds of different combinations you can do, but if you don't time it correctly, you're going to mess it up and you're going to lose your bonus. You're going to have to start over. And sometimes that can be just super punishing.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: In all of those games, but especially, uh, Shadow of Mordor and the Mordor games were like that were-
Joseph: The Mordor games.
Taylor: -if you, if you do it right, you can take on a whole army of fools. But if you can't get it off the ground, like you're only doing three, four, five hit combos. You're going to get destroyed and somebody's going to talk shit about you [Joseph chuckles] after they take you down.
Joseph: If you can't chain it, if you can't chain it, man, you're going to have a hard time in a game like that.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: I sort of moved to this game because Enter The Matrix is another game that people throw out there as being like an early sort of game that does this because that came out in 2003. Uh, I will say that it uses more buttons and there are more combinations of buttons to learn. So I don't, it's like a cool fighting system, but I don't think it qualifies.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: One of those things is focus, which is what you said earlier, the button in that game is also called focus to enter the matrix and suddenly be a badass and keep up with agents and stuff. But it's definitely not rewarding you for combos the same way that a Free Flow mode does.
Joseph: Right, right. Man, Shadow of Mordor, so brutal, man. That's what I love about that fighting system and the combat style is, I mean, obviously you have like an edged weapon, so you could literally decapitate orcs and stuff. And, and I think all these games do it where like, there is a slowdown moments, like in the animation and like-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -some of the miniature finishers and stuff, or the camera will kind of rotate in 3d and like, you get a different perspective or you can rotate the camera-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -during one of those like executions or finishers.
Willie: And that's super important. It's super important that you do rotate the camera so you can pick out the next person that you're going to hit.
Joseph: Exactly.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: It could get overwhelming really quick. But like Taylor was also saying, you can get wrecked pretty quickly. I think most of all, if you miss one of the counter opportunities, cause like you'll get hit and that'll end the streak, it'll break the rhythm, break the flow.
And then-
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: -if you are overwhelmed by numbers, that's when it can like just fucking tank you.
Taylor: Yeah. It's the perfect complexity mechanic because like on its own fighting three or four guys, you'll get to that point. That's no problem. You can just destroy them. But can you do it when a horde is upon you and you're freaking out and there's a guy that you didn't realize was here in this encampment, but now you really want to get to him and take him out because he has a bad ass weapon, but you're surrounded and like all these things going against you, uh, ranged weapons as well.
And then you're trying to hit the buttons at the right time and avoid stuff at the right time. It's a really good mechanic. If you're into that kind of stuff and you like that kind of complexity within the gameplay, it's endless. It's really good.
Willie: Yeah, there are some other games that came up in this like conversation that I'll go through really quickly and then I'll talk about the one that I actually do think comes closest. Watchmen The End Is Nigh Part Two is a game that came out in 2009 as well. I think just a-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -month before Batman and it has a similar system, but it's not, it's not the same. Uh, Yakuza is one too from 2005, which is even earlier.
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: It's another interesting combat system that it has a way to choose between fighting stances. And there's like basically three main actions you can do in, in fighting. But again, it doesn't reward you for combos in the same way.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Prince of Persia, like you said, from 2003, like the sands of time, that game is a little closer to what free flow combat looks like. But I also think you're limited to the number of times you can hit an enemy
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: And not just because of their health, but like, you can only hit an enemy up to six times with the attack button.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: You just have to do something else. You you're not allowed to go past a certain combination of buttons.
00:29:40
Joseph: You know, like, as you're saying that, there's a game, uh, it might be like a Mark of Re or something. Do you have something like that on your list?
Willie: Uh, I saw that Mark of, it's Gri, I think, G R I or something like that. I think I did see that somewhere.
Joseph: That sounds about right. But that game kind of had something similar too.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I can picture, I can picture it.
Willie: Is it Mark...
Taylor: What about Devil May Cry to those count for something like this too?
Willie: It's close. I do think that's pretty close and it does have a counter on the screen. I think the reason it doesn't is because you also have to memorize a lot of combinations, right?
Like you have to go like X, X, Y, or like X, X, X, Y, or. X, Y, X, like, and those are like different types of, that's doing one move with a combination of buttons, you know, not-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -in Batman, you just hit X every time. And sometimes it'll be a punch. Sometimes it'll-
Taylor: Right.
Willie: -be a kick. Sometimes it's like a kick from the ground and it's just like-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -changes it up for you. And you're not memorizing-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: This kick is this specific combination of buttons.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Got you. So it's going to fall in with Ninja Gaiden and those kinds of games.
Joseph: I think that's probably the biggest difference in like Free Flow versus something like Red Dead 2, where like, you can, like, you can, it's like free flow combat or like Sifu.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Sifu is a little different too, cause like you do have like combinations that you have to input to do certain like martial arts moves.
Taylor: I just started that yesterday.
Willie: Nice.
Joseph: Sick.
Willie: I started it recently and I haven't played too much of it. I want to, I just haven't.
Joseph: I need to. I've had to download it forever.
Taylor: I love the intro.
Willie: Intro is fucking great. It's so fucking good for sure.
Taylor: Absolutely love that fucking intro, man. And just...and the way they segue, uh, not to derail us, but to the way they kind of like the red-
Joseph: Mm. Hell yeah.
Taylor: The all red when they're doing the like in intro titles and...
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: It serves as the tutorial too, right?
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly-
Joseph: Yeah, that's fucking sick.
Taylor: And when you get to the final guy and you take him out. Then it's like, uh, you realize it's a dream or something. He's, he's fighting, you know, the sticks-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -and so cool, man.
Willie: I will say the thing that does get closest to Free Flow Combat actually is Assassin's Creed from 20, from 2007.
Joseph: Yeah, that makes sense.
Willie: It's called low profile in the game, when you're trying to like stealth through the city, when you're like just walking and like bumping into people and stuff-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: [chuckles] You hit a button to enter high profile, which is when you enter combat. And then there's only three options for you. There's attack. And then one button that is your free run jump evade button. And then another button that's grab. So it is sort of mapped to three buttons only, just like, just the sort of same basis that the Arkham games have.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And it does allow you to sort of move across a smaller space of screen to like fight off multiple enemies at once.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: It's not quite the same, but it's, it's definitely the closest thing you get-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -to free flow combat before free flow combat actually exist.
Joseph: Right. You know, the other thing when thinking about the flow and just how fluid that type of combat can be is I feel like it also needs that magnetic attraction. When you're like-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -far distance from an enemy, like it'll zap you there,
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, like you'll transport there really quickly. And like, obviously Batman and Shadow of Mordor and War have that type of thing where like if you're too far away it gives you that distance because that's the next closest enemy or the enemy you targeted with like the analog stick in that direction.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Spider-Man is even more ridiculous [Joseph laughs] than any of them because you could [chuckling] just be doing that from a hundred yards away-
Joseph: [chuckling] Right.
Taylor: -you're zapping to a guy and... Yeah, that's a good point, that is, that magnetic zap.
Joseph: One final thing I was thinking about a second ago is that this is I think the feature that I feel like a lot of people even you know dedicated gamers, don't know to call this type of combat system Free Flow Combat.
Willie: No, there was so many arguments about this and like people talking about-
Joseph: Like different names for it.
Willie: -things like Devil May Cry where they're like, Oh, this is like also super fast combat. It's like, well, it's not just super fast combat.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: That's not what we're talking about.
Joseph: Yeah. I feel like-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: This is the hardest kind of like phrase to nail down for a mechanic is like, because if you don't know, you just don't know what the fuck to call it.
Willie: And it's hard to like specify what it is-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: -about it that makes it free flow until you see it and you're like, okay, I understand. It's definitely rhythmic. It definitely has few buttons in use and that like snappiness that you were talking about of just zooming across the screen to hit people.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: And I think the other thing is that counter that's telling you like, Oh, if I get this many hits, I can also do this extra special move.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And it sort of resets my counter until I get more of those.
Joseph: Real quick about the counter, it usually also gives you like a visual indicator-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -that like an attack is about to happen, this is the window of opportunity to execute a counter. So I think that's pretty common, at least in Batman and Shadow of Mordor.
Willie: Unless you go up to higher difficulties, and then-
Joseph: Oh, yeah.
Willie: -it turns off the like, that feature that lets them, let you know when the counter is going to happen.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Then you have to like, just recognize this person's going to hit me and I have to like hit my counter button.
Joseph: Which I mean, there's like a, there's a visual indicator, like in their movement. But like when you're trying to see everybody on whatever battlefield you're playing, like that shit can get, it become easy to miss those visual cues.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Willie: I'm going to talk about this for just one more second, because another game that comes up in this conversation is Shenmue. Which came out in 1999, which is like a full decade-
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: -before Batman.
Joseph: Damn. I've never even heard of that.
Willie: It was a pretty cool game. I think it was on Dreamcast. It might've been on PlayStation as well, but maybe it was just a Dreamcast game. I can't quite remember. I did remember seeing it in the store. I never played it. It follows a teenager whose dad died and you're trying to figure out who murdered his father because he saw it.
He sees the person and then he's like open world going around talking to NPCs. And then you get to sections that are called, um, what's it called? It's like a, uh, it's a battle sequence, but it's a different mode and it sort of represents virtual, it replicates Virtua Fighter. It's called free battle is what it's called actually.
Joseph: Oh.
00:35:39
Willie: It also has I'm going to talk about it because it actually has the first thing that's called, it's not the actual first implementation of this, but it popularized the term Quick Time Events-
Joseph: Really?!
Willie: Because those also happened. They're actually called-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -Quick Timer Events in that. That's where the name came from.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: However, it's not the first actual implementation of Quick Time Events because that one is actually way earlier.
Joseph: Super early again, like 80s?
Willie: Yeah, yeah. It's sort of up for debate as well. I think the debate here is, does an electromechanical arcade game count-
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Willie: -the same as a video arcade game? [Joseph laughs]
Because there is a... electromechanical arcade game from 1974.
Joseph: So we're talking like a whack a mole kind of situation? Like that type of...
Willie: That type of, yeah, type of thing. But this game is called Wild Gunmen from 1974.
And it has a light gun.
Joseph: Oh, targets pop up or something.
Willie: And it has these targets that, it's not actually a target. There's a gunslinger that's on a rear projection screen. So you're seeing this guy in front of you and you're basically having a draw with this guy. The prompt on the screen, right? A quick time event has to have some sort of prompt on the screen that tells you what button to push or what you need to do in order to pass this portion of the game.
And in this case, there's a rear projection screen. There's a gunslinger on that side. Who draws on you, but you his lights flash, his eyes flash, and that's what tells you, like, pick up the gun and shoot.
Joseph: Nice.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: But again, it's electromechanical, even though the gun is a, like, it is a light gun. I'm pretty sure actually-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -like, the way that we know-
Joseph: Like a Duck Hunt game?
Willie: -of light guns from NES, and stuff.
Yeah, like Duck Hunt. And this game was remade later for, um, Nintendo as well. I think also called what Wild Gunman, uh-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -in 1984.
Joseph: Interesting.
Willie: I said it's a rear projection screen, but it's an actual person. It's like a video. A video-
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: -of a person. It's not sprites or anything. It's like an actual rear projection video of a person pulling a gun. Like drawing a gun. Like a gunslinger. [Joseph and Willie chuckle] But-
Taylor: I remember that vaguely.
Willie: But it is electromechanical. So I don't think it counts as an arcade, like a video game.
Joseph: So what, what modern video game console, what's the, do you know the oldest?
Willie: So I think the one that everyone thinks of as the originator of Quick Time Events where you have to react to something on screen and hit a button-
Joseph: Fucking Dragon's Lair.
Willie: -which in this case, I think was usually up, down, left, or right, is Dragon's Lair from 1983.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Which is super interesting because that game was really hard to maintain because that wasn't just a regular arcade game, that was, that was a Laserdisc in an arcade cabinet.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: It used Laserdisc technology so that they could have better graphics.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Let's see, I'll just read some of this from the, the wiki real fast, like, Laserdisc video game published by Cinematronics in 1983. I'm going to skip a lot of this, but the protagonist, Dirk the Daring, is a knight. He attempts to rescue a princess, um, from a dragon. And it features animation by an ex Disney animator, Don Bluth. And most of the other games in that era, right, use sprites, which is just a series of pixels. Displayed in succession, as it says, but due to those limitations, there just was not a lot of detail-
Joseph: mm-hmm.
Willie: -in a lot of video games back then. So using a laser disc meant that they could have like better resolution, better frame rate, and they could just like use a different style of animation.
Joseph: Which is brilliant.
Willie: Yeah, it is brilliant. It also-
Joseph: I mean it fucking looks great to today, man.
Willie: It does.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: It led to some problems in that, like, Laserdisc sometime would skip, or, uh, when changing from the next chapter that it's supposed to go to, it would, like, mess up and stall. But, um,
Joseph: Yeah, that's a fuckin rage moment right there.
Willie: Yeah, it was advertised at the time as the first truly 3D video game, and sort of as this meeting point between video games and animated films. And if you look at it, like it is.
Joseph: It's incredible, man.
Willie: It's great.
Taylor: Yeah, I'm watching it right now.
Joseph: It's probably, I would, I put a question mark on my own notes. I was like, is this the most famous Quick time Event game? Like it has to be.
Willie: Yeah, I think so for sure. Cause in the game, you're the knight running around from screen to screen, like sort of side scroller in a way, but you'll get to a point where like, you have to duck underneath the, like some sort of-
Joseph: Like a swinging axe or something.
Willie: -yeah, something like in the way, some sort of obstacle. You got to duck under it or jump over a pit. You're just reacting to the things that are happening on the screen. So your character is moving all the time until you make them jump or crouch or do whatever like that.
Joseph: It's amazing how seamless it appears.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: After you input the command and like, what I can remember pretty unforgiving, man. Like you can-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -you can mess it up really fast. And then of course, there's like a, there's an animation scene for the failed QuickTime event, and then an animation for succeeding it and moving on.
Willie: And I think the first time, I played the original Dragon's Lair, like that version somewhere, I think also [chuckles] a very popular place that you might see it is, I think the first season of Stranger Things when they're in the arcade, that's the game they're playing.
Joseph: Oh, really? I don't remember that.
Willie: Maybe it's season two.
Joseph: That makes sense though.
Willie: At some points they're, they're in an arcade. Maybe it's actually even season three. Cause I think they, they, uh, Sadie Sink's character is there. That's where they first meet her I think like-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -outside the arcade, but maybe the arcades in all three seasons and I just don't remember. But one of those years they're definitely... it would make sense that it's 83. It's the third season.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Maybe that's where it is, but that's the game they're playing is Dragon's Lair.
Joseph: Yeah. That's a great, great little easter egg to put in that show.
Taylor: It's crazy how many consoles that has been on.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Dude, it's been remade like a billion times.
Taylor: A ton.
Willie: That's what I was going to say. I think I played it on SNES when I finally did play. It's been remade and sort of put into sprite form, but I've played a version that is the animated form on one of the-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -consoles and I can't quite remember what it is.
Joseph: It also became like a platformer, like it kind of-
Willie: Exactly.
Joseph: -transitioned from like the cinematic animation reactions to being like a straight up platformer. And I assume that happened when platformers were like the fucking jam.
00:41:56
Willie: Yeah. Yeah. Something you said I do want to point out real fast. You said there's death animations in this game, like once you make the wrong input, there is a game that came out in December of 1983 called Cliffhanger.
So like six months after Dragon's Lair, that's also has a bunch of quick time events, but there's no onscreen prompts in it.
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Willie: So the player had no idea like what to input [Taylor chuckles] and just had to guess.
Joseph: That's fucking impossible.
Willie: It was completely trial and error at an arcade game. Where you just had to guess. And figure out what to do next.
Joseph: That's bold. I love the, [Willie chuckles] I love the concept of just making a really difficult game with very little instruction. But also, that's the game that gets it's fucking screen smashed.
Willie: Yeah. [Joseph laughs]
And before we move off of this one, I want to say, Shemue 2, uh, like I said, Shenmue coined the term Quick Time event or what popularized that term for their quick timer events.
Joseph: Mm-Hmm.
Willie: But Shenmue 2 actually has something called a Command Quick Time event, which is a string of inputs with a limited amount of time to do all of those things.
Joseph: Oh, okay.
Willie: So like, you know, we have seen that even more recently. Like I would say like even Helldivers is almost sort of like, uh, just calling in stratagems is like a Command Quick Time Event in a way that you're like-
Taylor: True.
Willie: -on a screen, though you can start over anytime.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: There's the Stratagem Hero game that's in the ship. That game is definitely a command quick time event.
Joseph: Oh, really?
Willie: There's a timer at the bottom of the screen that's just a bar that, like, gets smaller and smaller as you're entering your Stratagems. But the goal is to enter as many Stratagems as you can before the bar goes away, before time runs out.
Joseph: Oh nice.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: And every time you do one successfully, it adds a little time to the bar.
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: So, like, you're competing against this timer running out. And like adding more time by entering a stratagem correctly.
Joseph: That would definitely qualify in my eyes.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: One game I thought of that we played recently was The Quarry-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -which I think is a great quick time event game. And then, one of the first games I thought about was the, the newer trilogy for Tomb Raider. So the first one I think was 2013. And that game is pretty good quick time too. Like, it's the kind of quick time events where you just kind of like button mash.
It's either like your button mashing left and right on the d-pad or you have to like hit x at a very specific time to like kick somebody off of you that you're being attacked by or kick a bear off or something. And uh, The Quarry is kind of like that too. And then I just got a thought of another one. It's a game you definitely know, Willie, that now I'm blanking on.
Taylor: There's a lot of it in Final Fantasy.
Willie: Yeah, they do. That's the, one of the things I have listed here is like, all the mini games and stuff definitely started adding in...
Taylor: Have you seen the piano one that they have in the second one now?
Willie: I saw someone playing a song on the piano and I can't remember what it was.
Taylor: Unreal. [Willie chuckles]
It's just like playing the real piano.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: And that like, like it's easier because you don't have to hit the keys, but you're using the wheels to click in the right places-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -of the right key and moment, and right hand left hand as you increase the difficulty. It's hard as hell.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: I can barely struggle to through a song just on the lowest difficulty.
Willie: I wish I could remember because I saw someone just like playing one of their actual songs. It was an artist who plays piano playing one of their songs as we all know-
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: -it's very popular and I just can't remember who it was now.
Taylor: It's tough on there. They have created a very tough minigame with that. [chuckles]
Joseph: Dang, I can't remember.
Willie: Do you have a description of what you're talking about?
Joseph: Me, the game I'm trying to remember?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I can't, can't remember dude. It's like right on the edge, right on the edge of my mind, but I literally thought about it when I was talking about Tomb Raider, so I do think it's an older game.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But I know it's a game you know very well because I thought, I thought you could mention it like right, right as I, as I was like, oh, I'm thinking about a game.
Willie: Yeah. Uh, let me see.
Joseph: Oh, it was The Walking Dead.
Willie: Oh, all the Telltale games?
Joseph: All the Telltale games, yeah.
Taylor: Oh, of course.
Willie: Yeah, yeah. That's a great series of games that definitely uses quick time events to determine like what's gonna happen next. I didn't actually add that to this list. People attribute apparently the rise of quick time events in games to RE4, to Resident Evil 4 and God of War.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: Like that popularized it again to be in games that are more action packed, like fast paced games-
Joseph: Right.
Willie: But then throwing in a quick time event at a time that you don't expect it, like a cinematic.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. I like that. Yeah, and those are, those games are fucking huge. So-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -makes sense that other games are going to kind of catch on and obviously, it's, there's a huge gap and difference between something like The Quarry and God of War-
Willie: yeah.
Joseph: -in a game that's more action based where there are quick time events, but, and Tomb Raider is kind of like this too, where you're clearing gaps, right? You're jumping on rooftops of buildings and then you grab a ledge and then you have to hit X to make sure you do climb up the ledge and like while you're dangling, you hit X to make sure you climb up versus missing the quick time event and then you fall.
I get what you're saying, like God of War, like it's, um, there's not a ton of them, but where they stick them kind of enhance the cut scene.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like actually provide a little bit more interaction during the cut scene, which would normally probably have no interaction besides just watching it.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I kind of like it, man. I think some people don't like that type of thing, but I like it.
Willie: Yeah, no, it definitely gets a lot of hate, I think, in cut scenes, and I'm, I'm not 100 percent why, but. I'm just not sure why, but-
Joseph: I think it could be overused.
Willie: Yeah, for sure.
Joseph: And that, that could maybe get annoying.
Willie: There is also a, just so you know, there's a Die Hard arcade game from 1996 [Joseph chuckling] that uses it, but only when traveling, like from basically one location to another, like a different part of the map, it's sort of this cut scene that it's like you traveling from one place to the next.
And it's the same sort of thing that you have, like joystick or button prompts to make you dodge or bypass whatever obstacle is coming up.
Joseph: Interesting.
Taylor: Oh wow, this is one of those that was during that period that the game started off with winners don't do drugs.
Willie: Oh yeah.
Joseph: Oh shit. [Taylor laughing] Stay in school, you're only cool if you stay in school.
Taylor: Do what Reagan says or whatever, whatever it was that they were putting on games back then. I'm watching some footage of it right now.
Joseph: That's probably the kickoff of like the War on Drugs, huh?
Taylor: Wow, that's crazy how much it looks like Final Fight [Willie chuckles] in some ways. Almost Final Fantasy VII graphics meets Final, oh yeah, oh yeah, dude even did like the Haggard, whatever that guy's name was-
Joseph: [chuckling] Oh yeah.
Taylor: -where he swings them around [Willie chuckles] and throws them. Wow.
Joseph: Wait, what are you looking at? What game?
Taylor: I'm looking at Die Hard, the arcade game. [Joseph and Willie laughing] Yeah, it's wild. I've never seen this before.
00:48:30
Willie: I know we got to get out of here, but I do want to leave us with one point real fast about a completely different thing. And it sort of doesn't fit this topic, but does. One of the things that we put on our list was first person shooter.
That's kind of a genre now, right? But I do want to say that. You know, the first person perspective has been around for a long time in arcade games where there's driving games. There's that gun game that I was talking about before that has that, but there's even like a Periscope game from 1965. That's also an electromechanical arcade game that is like you're, it's like a shooting submarine simulator sort of thing.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: It is first person, but it's not a video game.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: I do want to say though, that the first person shooter does date back to 1973.
Joseph: Really?
Willie: There is a game called Maze that ended up being called Maze War. It's a first person shooter maze game. It was started development in '73 and then expanded in '74 made by a group of high school students who were in a NASA work study program
[Joseph chuckles]
to like figure, I don't even understand the sentence I'm about to say, but they were working on creating graphical representation of computational fluid dynamics on these certain mini computers, which unlike other mini computers at the time, included a vector's graphic monitor. So they could like create these 3D environments that you could move through.
And it ultimately, they liked it enough that they like expanded on it and made it a competitive game where you could play two computers against each other. Two people on two separate computers could play against each other. And ultimately, after going to MIT later, they developed it even more so you could play like eight players-
Joseph: damn.
Willie: -against each other and then they actually made it available on like an early version of ARPANET so that you could play across like campus and across like campuses-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -to play against each other.
Joseph: Yo, that's fucking sick.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, that's crazy.
Joseph: So did it look like Asteroids like the graphics? Like they're just kind of vector shapes.
Willie: They're vector shapes, but it's just hallways. You're just walking through hallways, and I don't actually know what the bullets like look like, 'cause I haven't really seen them.
Joseph: Mm-Hmm. Dude, that's great, man. This is like the early days of multiplayer games.
Willie: Yeah, it really is. Somewhere around the same time. So that was late 1973. Early 1974, like February, 1974 is when they expanded it to an eight player game. But then there's another game a month later called Spasm. So March, 1974. That's considered to also be one of the first first person shooter games. It's a space flight simulation game-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -and shooter that's 32 players.
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Willie: Which is wild.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Yeah, in the mid seventies. This had me thinking, okay, dog's barking and now I forgot.
Taylor: That's all it takes.
Joseph: That's all it takes. [Taylor laughs]
Willie: You know, obviously some of the other ones that come up in this conversation are games like GoldenEye and Doom and Halo are like, are the games that have popularized these sorts of games, like first person shooter perspective.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Wolfenstein.
Willie: Yeah, Wolfenstein, obviously.
Joseph: Duke Nukem.
Willie: It's, you know, huge now, but to think that it started in 1973 is wild.
Joseph: Oh, that's what I was going to bring up. When was Pong? Was Pong in the eighties? I was thinking about multiplayer games, like really, really popular big multiplayer games.
Willie: I think Pong was also 70s.
Joseph: Pong, 70s.
Willie: I think so. Uh, '72.
Joseph: Oh, okay. Shit. So I guess right now that's the oldest multiplayer game I can think of is Pong.
00:51:59
Willie: Yeah. It's wild that that all goes back that long. Cause now, I mean, we're talking like 50 years now.
Joseph: Yeah. Oh my gosh, dude. Yeah. That's insane. It's also insane to realize that video games are only 50 years old.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: That's also wild to think about too, because obviously they've been around for our entire lives.
Willie: Yeah. We talked about, you know, Batman on, in VR at the beginning of this, but like that stuff is only getting better.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: It will be, it will be nice once that gets to a place where graphically it can handle, a little more.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Anyway-
Joseph: Before you close us out Willie, for anyone that might be listening that's younger, younger than us, if you've never seen video Dragon's Lair you have to go watch some videos of Dragon's Lair because that game is still fucking incredible. And I can't imagine to be alive when that came out or you know to be in the gaming and playing games when that came out and seeing those graphics at that time. It had to have felt groundbreaking in some way.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: For sure. Yeah, I think, you know there's so much more we could talk about even on our list today we've got like four more things, four more features that we're not even going to touch today. So we'll do that. We'll definitely do that in a future episode.
And then beyond that, I have like another 40 that I have on a list that I've been researching as well so there's plenty to pull from. As a teaser for those things, maybe we'll talk about crouching a little bit. [chuckles]
Joseph: Crouching is a good one, man. [Willie chuckles] I like that it's so broad.
Willie: Yeah. It's funny also to see where it comes up and how to like try to verify.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: People are like watching videos to be like, Oh, I saw this guy crawl over this log in this game. Does that count? Is that crouching? [Taylor laughs]
Taylor: It's a crouch. Nice.
Willie: But, uh, anyway.
Taylor: Yeah, I look forward to doing some more of these. It's a lot of fun.
Willie: Yeah, and hopefully next time we'll talk a little bit more about y'all's favorites and like favorite implementations of these things and where they come up. But like to see the evolution of a first person shooter from that game Maze, if you go look up Maze or Maze War to like what we're doing now is just ridiculous.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
But, um, yeah, thanks for listening and thanks for being with us today.
Joseph: Peace y'all. Goodbye.
Taylor: Peace. Get gaming.
Joseph: Get gone. Left ear. Left ear.
Taylor: Get gone.
Joseph: T-Boz.
Taylor: Peace out, left ear.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
00:54:10
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Taylor: The-
Joseph: Oh..
Taylor: -way it explodes and-
Joseph: Ohh.
Taylor: -they just fucking fly-
Joseph: Oh yeah, they get ragdolled.
Taylor: -end over end. [laughs]
Joseph: It's synchronized too, which is weird. [laughs]
Taylor: Synchronized and then the titty [Joseph and Willie laugh] man walks up, the wrestler-
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Taylor: -titty man.