Electrical Vampires

A preview of what I'm working on for the Dreamscapes game. One of the more minor monsters. A bit spoilersy for how it all fits together.

Non-physical life forms. Where physical life is made of matter - the particle side of the wave-particle duality -  these beings are the opposide, being made of waves and fields.Such life forms are not uncommon. Most exist in a rarefied intangible way, occupying frequencies that  humans simply don't perceive, unable to interact with matter in a meaningful fashion.
Whole ecosystems of flickering light-forms exist just beyond the bounds of human experience. Most are simple patterns of light or radiation, flickering and propagating themselves, much like plants or corals. Less are animalistic, displaying agency and action. A few reach intelligence comparable to human sentience. Of these, the most dangerous is the electric vampire.The electric vampire is a stable wave-form composed of complex self-sustaining electromagnetic fields. It flows down cables, inhabits machinery, projects itself across radio equipment. It craves the complex electrical activity of the human brain, luring victims close to dangerously faulty wiring, and absorbs the magnetically-encoded memories from within their skulls. It's intangible, ever-shifting, flickering and drifting, always hungry. Humanity's ever-more-complex machinery have turned the world into a glorious all-you-can-eat buffet for these electrical parasites.
They don't have some grand organisation; each such vampire is an entity of its own, only loosely allied with other electric vampires. Nonetheless, their intelligence and mastery of electrical technology is such that they can become masterful manipulators of human society.
While they have no capacity to travel between universes on their own, they can possess and hijack the technological means of others. When the squid-men travel between worlds, they inadvertently carry electric vampires that wait torpid in their strange machines. Even worse, the use of an FBPI Machine opens up an electrical highway between worlds that the vampires are learning to traverse.
 Electrical Vampire HD 5, HP 10, Save 14+, Defence 19+.
Electric Shocks (11+, d6 damage, and save vs normal hazards to avoid paralysis & the electrocution continuing just like other electrical shocks).  Can only be used while inhabiting something appropriate.Brain feeding (13+, d6 Intelligence lost, the vampire absorbs the victim's memories). Can only be used on helpless targets. Immune to all physical damage. Cannot be touched. Cannot be perceived through normal sight (although the technological means to see their electromagnetic field exists).An EMP does d4 to d12 damage to the electric vampire, depending on size.When not inhabiting an electrical device, the vampire moves only slowly - drifting at the rate of a gentle breeze - and can do little other than inhabiting a machine or using its Brain-feeding ability.When it inhabits an electrical device, assign the device a number of HP based on its size and durability (from 1-3 for a phone to 50+ for an aeroplane). The physical object can take damage normally, and when it has no HP left the electric vampire is forced out of it.When inhabiting an electrical device, has total control over that object's functioning. It can cause it to do anything that item would be capable of.
Can cause an inhabited device to malfunction, doing things it wouldn't normally such as throw of sparks, overheat, etc. Doing so causes 1 damage to the item inhabited.

 Death By Electric VampireIf a victim is killed by shocks, the vampire can imediately brain-feed on them for d6 intelligence loss before they leave the mission.
Furthermore, when a victim is killed by brain-feeding or shocks, the electric vampire can hitch a ride on the signal carrying their mind back to their body, using it to travel back to the waking world with them.A vampire inhabiting an FBPI machine while it's in use is a terrifying thought.

And here's some art by Scrap Princess, depicting one.

Eminent Domain Origins Playtests - 2P And 4P

Today I got a couple more "last minute" tests of Eminent Domain Origins in, one 4-player (using the 2-5p starting cards), and one 2p (turns out I hadn't tested 2p since making all these updates and changes).

In the 4p game, Dan joined Dave, Jesse, and me. He played the game once about a year ago, so was basically a new player, so I asked him to just play normally and let me know what was fiddly, odd, hard to understand, or easy to forget. Dave and Jesse each tried the new 4-5p starting cards (Jesse started with a colony marker loaded, an energy, and $10; Dave started with 2 crystal and an energy). I decided to try alien hunting, since I hadn't seen it much lately, and so started with a weapon and a crystal. I gave Dan a basic $30 starting card.

In the end, the game was quite close, with Dave winning out 60-50-50-49. I may have missed a round or two, but I counted 17 rounds -- I thought I remembered Terra Prime lasting more like 20-24 or so. Jump starting the game a little bit by giving players starting resources and cutting the phase 1 reward cards, and allowing colony spots (planets) to exist in adjacent sectors, may have sped the game up a little bit, but I DID add 3 tiles to the phase III rewards, so we were only really net down 1 reward tile total. It's likely players just did more scoring actions (colonizing and defeating aliens) than what sometimes happens so the game was on the short end.

Dave's winning 60 points came on the back of quite a lot of delivering. He used his 2 crystal start to quickly (turn 4 or 5) get a Matter Converter, and soon after delivered a bunch of cubes for a fistful of credits and bought 2 Thrusters in one turn. Dave is usually partial to Afterburners, but I guess he decided he didn't have the energy economy for it this time. In any case, he had 5 actions while the rest of us ad only 3 for a while. Dan and Jesse eventually got Thrusters of their own, for some reason I didn't bother, which may have been my downfall. The verdict on the starting card is that it's probably fine. The verdict on Matter Converter is that it's potentially very strong, probably not a problem, but might ought to be worded such that you still have to carry the correct cubes according to your holds, and then deliver/upgrade as if they're wild, rather than letting you convert them to whatever you want whenever you want, which just encourages you to visit your own places.

Jesse's downfall may have been poor rolls combined with potentially ill advised pathing. He kept crashing into asteroids, and hadn't bought shields first. This cost him 3vp on more than 1 occasion. Had he just rolled a little better (or spent the action and $20 to get and charge shields), he could have been neck and neck with Dave in the end. Never mind that one of the collisions cost him an engine, about 1/2 way through the game, putting him out maybe 7 or 8 actions! However, his start was strong, Starting with a loaded colony marker was pretty great, it allowed him to usurp a colony spot from player 1 (Dan, who might have been better off doing something a little bit different), and as Jesse pointed out, irrespective of turn order, starting with a loaded colony means that he's the ONLY player who could colonize 2 spaces from TP on turn 1. It also means that players earlier in turn order have to be a bit more careful and hedge their bets if they're not colonizing on turn 1, lest their colony get sniped. That's probably OK, but we decided to take away the energy, so that if there's an asteroid in the way, at least you have to risk losing 3 points to do that.

I tried to do some alien hunting, and I did an alright job, my big errors were getting an early Battle Station instead of selling cubes to afford a Thruster, and not setting up any accessible early game colonies for other players to use. The only planet 1 step from TP was a green one off to one side, and since Dan didn't take it, I decided to colonize it on turn 1. Nobody used it all game, and I didn't drop any colonies in high traffic areas, so I didn't get to leach any points off of other players.

Any way you look at it, that score was pretty darn close all around.

After Dan left, I mentioned the board scaling for 2 players (2 fewer tiles in each row, and only 1 of each tech upgrade), and it occurred to me that I hadn't played 2p in this new version of the game. So I had Jesse and Dave play 2p while I watched. They ended up choosing the sort of standard $20 and $30 for starting resources, and while I lost count half way through the game, I'm pretty sure it lasted about 20 rounds -- just a few more than the 4 player game. I noticed that in the mid-game, both players spent time upgrading their ship rather than dropping colonies or killing aliens, which dragged the game out a little bit, but also was fun for the players to really pursue a strategy. Dave ended up with a Thruster and 2 Afterburners (with Additional Module Slots), so was doing 8 actions per turn. Jesse had 2 Thrusters for 5 actions per turn. Both geared up for alien hunting, but neither did a whole lot of it until the end of the game. Between the two of them, they explored every tile, but they also left a lot of maybe lower scoring colony spaces alone... had either of them grabbed a Cryo Chamber (or Cargo upgrade) and started dropping multiple colonies per trip, the game could have been considerably shorter (on par with the 4p game perhaps).

The verdict was that the 2p game seemed fine. I think we don't need to do any further scaling such as removing any reward cards. It felt like the game dragged a little, but that was because (a) players drew it out a bit, and (b) Dave's turns started taking incredibly long as he hemmed and hawed over planning out his 8 actions!

All in all, I think it was a fine test day. I made a tweak to one of the starting cards (take the energy off the loaded colony marker one), and I might tweak the wording on Matter Converter. I might also add a reward card or two (probably double up on existing ones) just to make sure there's enough time in a 5 player game for players' strategies to develop.

Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (Oshima, 1983)

"I always look for characters that have either an emotional or physical limp" 
- David Bowie 

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I originally wrote a large part of the following blog for publication in David Bowie Glamour, a fanzine put together by Nick Smart - @QuietSeclusion and Andy Jones - @DavidBowieGlam with artwork and design by Helen Green - @Helengreeen and @LoveMilkyCereal which can be purchased here: https://davidbowieglamour.wordpress.com .

I've decided to post it here but to also expand on the piece included in the magazine with a few further thoughts, as I was originally working with a small word limit and there is more that I'd like to say about this thoughtful film.   

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When I first heard the news on the morning of January 11th - three things about David Bowie immediately raced through my mind. The first was obvious - Blackstar, the album we had all been listening to the night before. The second was a rush of songs of his that I had always admired - Word On A Wing, Everyone Says Hi, Teenage Wildlife, Letter to Hermione…. The third was this film, because it had long held a special place in the back of my mind. We'll always see our hero as a singer first, but I think this unusual picture captured maybe better than any other, his gift for acting.

"I didn't find a crazy rock star, I found a very hard working man serious about his work" - Tom Conti on David Bowie

Even though the perception of Bowie is as someone who was always one step ahead of absolutely everyone, looking to the future - in this he plays someone who is shaped by, and motivated by everything that has happened in his past.

Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (Dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1983) focusses on a Japanese prisoner of war camp located on the island of Java in 1942; the titular main character, John Lawrence (Tom Conti) is a compassionate and resourceful British officer that speaks fluent Japanese, and who spends much of the film trying to maintain any sense of order he can between the Japanese and their western prisoners despite their polar opposite cultural views. Lawrence's relationship with Japanese guard Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kaitano) is the first of the two main relationships that drive the picture, the second is that of Major Jack 'Strafer' Celliers (David Bowie), a new prisoner who disrupts the order of the camp and Captain Yanoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto), who takes an immediate fascination and attraction to the new arrival.

Nagisa Oshima hired David Bowie for the film after seeing him in the stage production of The Elephant Man (Bowie himself agreed to take on the role based on nothing but his respect for Oshima's past work). On the surface, it's difficult to see why such a role would give Oshima a brain wave. Captain Celliers couldn't be any more different. He is confident and admired leader (a "soldiers soldier") and defiant against the way the camp is ruled. In so doing he represents a challenge to the Japanese guards, who are not used to rebellion or what they would consider, bravery. Whilst the western prisoners see the Japanese as unrelentingly and despicably cruel, the Japanese see their enemy as cowardly and undeserving of mercy - they themselves are driven by an extreme moral code that sees any form of cowardice worthy of punishment and utmost shame. 

At least, that's was we're led to believe. But in reality Celiers is just as damaged as John Merrick - he's an emotionally and psychologically broken man who is forced to bottle up his traumatic past. His stoicism is what fascinates Yanoi, but what makes Bowie's performance so memorable is that he creates a character with a surefooted facade that is in reality so removed from the private anguish that he battles with. 

In a rare moment of vulnerability, Celliers reveals in flashback what befell him before joining the army. Withdrawn and ashamed, he explains how he failed to intervene when a group of schoolchildren were tormenting his younger brother in a brutal initiation ceremony at the boarding school they both attended. A gifted singer with an angelic voice, Celliers' brothers' spirit is absolutely crushed, and he never sings again.

"Over the years, I became, you might say… a haunted person. I really wanted to see him again. I never did. I was an eligible bachelor… a reasonably successful lawyer…and absolutely nothing" - Jack Celliers

Everything that Celliers does in his life after this is an attempt to compensate for these actions - he "embraced" the outbreak of war because it was something that offered a chance for redemption. He sneaks food into the camp, saves Lawrence from torture, and attempts to raise morale in the infirmary by leading a sing-along (quite humorously, he has to pretend he's no good at singing in this scene... and I ain't buying that). But the moment when he sees a chance for his true act of atonement comes at the end of the film, after Yanoi orders all prisoners to stand before him.

Oshima creates a great sense of foreboding in this scene. No-one knows what is about to take place. The Japanese surround the POW's, set up machine gun turrets and hold their rifles up ready for use. Lawrence assures Celliers that it's all "fairly routine stuff", but Jack seems lost in some sort of trance. He stares forlornly into space and says "listen John… I wish I could sing" - I think at this moment he hears his brothers voice in his head, so when a fellow prisoner is dragged to the feet of Yanoi to be executed, Jack is filled with sense of duty - to this time sacrifice himself in sake of another rather than standing to one side. Paul Mayersberg, the screenwriter said that he tried to make "as many mirrors of characters" as he could, and that "by having scenes that mirror each other you also cast reflections on the characters". No doubt this moment is a direct parallel with Celliers' time in boarding school. 

In one of Bowie's most famous on-screen moments, he breaks rank and stands between Yanoi and the POW, grabs the prison commander by the shoulders and kisses him on the cheeks. The besotted Yanoi is beset with shame - but as he goes to kill Celliers he instead faints into the arms of the soldiers behind him. Celliers pays the ultimate price for his sacrifice and is buried up to his neck in the sand as punishment. It is in his dying dream where he finally gets to see his brother and reconcile with him, saying how much he "wronged him". As a mark of respect, fellow prisoners sing to Celliers from their barracks, a funeral song that the inmates had previously sung earlier in the film for a deceased prisoner.

Bowie stated that, with this film Oshima gave him one of the most fulfilling experiences in either his musical or acting career. I do think this stands as one of his best performances, and it's definitely my favourite film that he ever appeared in. The fact that he really is a musician before anything else says alot to how much I admired this film before his passing, because as stated, this is one of the first things that I thought about when I heard the terrible news.

Because of the star power in Bowie, it's easy to overlook the other main character, but that shouldn't be the case because Lawrence really is the heart of the film. Bowie described Tom Conti as someone with "a wonderful analytical mind about how characters work and interact with each other", which too acts as a good description of the character Conti is playing. Lawrence is the only one who attempts to truly understand why the Japanese are the way they are, being the only prisoner who is fluent in both languages he is the one bridge between the two sides. In fact at one point, fellow prisoner Captain Hicksley (Jack Thompson) says that he spends more time with the Japs than he does with his own men. He looses his temper a few times, but ultimately is incredibly level headed in an environment that would drive anyone to madness. Impressively, he knew no Japanese at all before being given the role in the film, and had to learn all of his lines phonetically - he was so convincing that the Japanese attending the screening of the film in Cannes had no idea of this and assumed Conti was fluent in the language. 

The suffering that Lawrence suffers at the hands of the Japanese helps audiences to better understand the barbarity of his captors - at one point he is sentenced to death because of a radio that is found in the prison barracks. Even though it wasn't him who brought it in, Yanoi would rather punish the wrong person rather than no-one at all, to "preserve his sense of order". He too helps the other, non-Japanese characters understand the motivations of them, for example when the prisoners are forced to fast in order to cure their 'spiritual laziness', Lawrence explains to his fellow, confused friends that the Japanese believe taking away the food and the water will take away the nourishment for this spiritual laziness. Despite not believing in their code of honour and understandably finding it vulgar at times, Lawrence is still knowledgeable the culture of the Japanese - even if the cruelty itself is inconceivable, he acknowledges that their code of honour dictates how they must act ("You are the victim of men who think that they are right"). 

Unlike Captain Hicksley, Lawrence harbours, deep down, a kind of respect for his enemy - which is best seen in the ending. By the end of the picture and the end of the war, the roles of Lawrence and Hara have switched. Lawrence is free and Hara is being held in prison before execution for his war crimes, Hara has even learnt English and despite one of them being imprisoned, they finally talk as equals. It's here that it's made very clear that, had it not been for the war, these two could have been very dear friends. They reminisce about their time together and Lawrence is barely able to keep it together as he says that if it were up to him, he'd release Hara straight away to go back to his family.

Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence is based on the book The Seed and the Sower, a semi autobiographical novel written by Laurens Van Der Post. In an interview about the film, he was asked about what he hoped people who hadn't had to fight in the war would gain from watching this film adaptation:

"As important as justice is understanding, compassion, mercy and forgiveness. A deeper understanding is necessary if we're going to have a brotherhood of man" - Laurens Van Der Post

Indeed, by the end of the film, the two main Japanese characters have changed. Yanoi is unable to repress his love for Celliers and cuts off a lock of his hair whilst he's buried, saluting the Major before giving the hair to Hara to take to a village in Japan. Hara, meanwhile, who showed glimpses of humanity while in the camp is utterly sympathetic in the last scene. "There are times, when victory is very hard to take", says Lawrence before leaving one last time - this is the moment that best captures Laurens Van Der Post's quote. The two have forgiven each other, and for the first time their cultures are not anymore a barrier:

Shades Of Resonance: Fond Reminiscence - Memory Log #57

New Super Mario Bros.

There had never been a time like it: The Nintendo DS--which had been grievously languishing post-launch, its prognosis becoming increasingly dire--was unexpectedly in the midst of a rapid ascension. The dual-screened portable, which in the months prior had been showered in negativity, had resiliently pulled itself from the muck and was currently skyrocketing its way to the top of video-game world on the strength of releases like Nintendogs, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! and Mario Kart DS, all of which had succeeded in capturing the imagination of an expanded audience. In the span of just seven months, perception of the DS had turned 180 degrees, and even the system's most vocal critics had to start begrudgingly admitting that Nintendo was on to something.

Most importantly, the DS' disruptive values had opened the door for a whole new class of uniquely styled, radically divergent video games, and the old paradigm was finally being challenged in a meaningful way. And it was people like me who were blissfully enjoying the fruits of this revolution. The DS was providing me exactly what I had been looking for: a fresh new take on games. Before then, it had been my observation that the industry was stuck traveling a narrowing path whose destination welcomed only endless iteration and homogeneity. Now, suddenly, the medium's scope had significantly widened, and I couldn't have been happier with this outcome.

Still, I knew where a large part of my heart lied. While I was all for this shifting of the landscape, I certainly wasn't calling for the abandonment of the tried-and-true. By no means did I desire for the types of games I'd loved in the past to disappear or find themselves minimized. No--it was quite the opposite: I now hoped to see them appear in even greater number! Really, that was the true success of the DS: It had enraptured me with its collection of inventive, wonderfully new creations, yes, but moreover it had renewed my passion for video games on the whole. That's why I wanted for the DS to become home to both the distinctly new and the traditional at the same time. And that's exactly where its current course appeared to be leading us.

One game in particular spoke to that ambition. It was the game for which we'd been starving since the mid-90s. It was the game that was going to recover what should never have been lost. It was a new Super Mario Bros. title, and it was on its way to the DS.

Now, for those of us who had been around video games since virtually day one, the disappearance of 2D Mario games was a big loss. "Why has Nintendo ceased creating genuinely new 2D Super Mario Bros. games?" we wondered. "Is it really the case that all future Mario games will be rendered strictly in 3D?"

It was such a shame, since there was no convincing evidence that people had tired of 2D Mario. It was the consensus among players everywhere that Nintendo should never have stopped making them. We knew that there was still so much room to innovate in the 2D space. We were certain that were so many possibilities left unexplored.

I mean, even the Super Mario Advance games--mere remakes of the classic Mario titles--were pretty huge sellers (they averaged somewhere around five million units sold), which should have sent a loud and clear message: People want more of this, even if it's not original. Yet the fact remained that Nintendo appeared to have no further interest in producing side-scrolling Mario games; the company was apparently in agreement with the prevailing attitude that 2D platformers were a thing of the past.

Sadly, it seemed as though we'd seen the last of 2D Mario.

And then it happened: In a moment's space, Nintendo washed away our feelings of hopelessness. At E3 of 2004, Shigeru Miyamoto and friends revealed it to the world: a new Super Mario Bros. game that was so single-minded in its mission--so ostensibly rejecting of subtlety--that it was literally titled "New Super Mario Bros." What, exactly, was "new" about it, they didn't say, but I placed little importance on such details; what mattered most was that we were seeing the return of 2D Mario!

Strangely, though, New Super Mario Bros. was being exhibited to the audience in a rather understated manner. Nintendo was clearly putting a much greater focus on Super Mario 64 DS, which kind of made sense considering that it was slated to be a launch title. Still, I was surprised that the company didn't feel inclined to treat its unveiling as though it were a much bigger deal--as if it were promoting the grand return of a legendary series! Instead there was a largely uninformative 30-second trailer (about the only thing we learned from it was that Mario could now grow giant-sized and more effectively squish foes). Even the press coverage seemed a bit muted, reports on the game limited to brief interviews and a few unenthusiastic-reading trailer breakdowns.

But that didn't matter. We didn't need for there to be an elaborate ceremony to know what this announcement meant. This was what we'd long been waiting for. This was the Mario we all loved and missed. The only bad news was that we'd have to wait a year or two to get our hands on it.

We wouldn't see it in action until a year later at E3, 2005. And still it was weird: Despite its carrying a transformative-sounding prefix, there didn't appear to be anything particularly "new" about the way New Super Mario Bros. played; in fact, it looked to offer a pretty traditional Super Mario Bros. experience. The only real difference was its visual style; it boasted that 2.5D presentation (polygonal characters moving along a flat plane) that I always felt lacked character when compared to games that featured detail-rich sprite-based graphics. And since the DS wasn't really much of a technological powerhouse, it couldn't do much to render sharp-looking 2.5D visuals; in New Super Mario Bros.'s case, it was hard not to notice that its graphics were kinda warped and pixelated, which was especially obvious when the game's camera would zoom in close. "They should have gone with sprites," I said to myself as I watched gameplay videos.

But again--how it looked wasn't a make-or-break for me. It didn't really matter. All I cared about was getting a chance to play a new Super Mario Bros. game following an inexplicably long layoff. I was going to be there day one no matter what it was.

I made sure to nab myself a pre-order the moment Nintendo gave stores the go-ahead.

A few months later, there I was playing it--the first new 2D Mario in 14 long years. Mine was a memorable experience not due to a remembered chronology but because of how the game did so well to capture the spirit of the moment and fill me with positive energy. So I'm going to speak about its impact in more in general terms.

Upon first seeing it action in a more personal setting, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that New Super Mario Bros. featured pretty solid visuals; for certain it was a much more attractive-looking game than I'd originally assessed. I still would have preferred that its graphics were sprite-based, sure, yet I couldn't deny that there were clear benefits to the 2.5D presentation. For one, I appreciated how the use of 3D character models opened the door for the inclusion of Super Mario 64 enemies and allies as ripped directly from the game of origin! This was important to me because I had always been bothered by the aesthetic disconnect that existed between the 2D and 3D Mario games, whose discordant values I could never reconcile; simply seeing Swoopers, Scuttlebugs and Dorrie (the helpful Plesiosaur from Hazy Maze Cave) intermixed with more-classically-rendered, Super Mario Bros.-style characters and environments--merely observing how they functioned within a flat, side-scrolling space--went a long way toward bridging the gap.

And considering that the DS was most comparable to the N64 in terms of power, their inclusion seemed highly appropriate. It spoke to a deeper spiritual connection between two systems I adored.

New Super Mario Bros. incorporated plenty of Super Mario 64 elements (familiar characters, recognizable voice and sound samples, triple jumps, ground-pounding, wall-jumping, etc.), yes, but it also made sure to reference other classic Mario platformers. I could sense as much any time I was exploring a labyrinthine Ghost House, throwing a Bob-omb toward a destructible wall, sliding down a slope and wiping out strings of Goombas, balancing myself atop a snaking platform, getting eaten by a Cheep Chomp, or climbing a series of reversible fences. New Super Mario Bros. was one big love letter to the Super Mario series.

"So if that was all true," you skeptically inquire, "then what about the game was 'new'?"

Well, it was clear that New Super Mario Bros. was largely derivative, its dependence upon recycled elements and assets working to bely its contemporary-sounding title, but it did make a few unique contributions. For one, it introduced interesting new power-ups like the Mega Mushroom, using which the brothers would temporarily grow more than three-times their normal size and use their newly afforded girth to plow through enemies, blocks, warp pipes, Bullet Bill dispensers, flag poles, and just about anything else that stood in their way. Mini Mushrooms, which rendered them tiny enough to run across the surface of water, squeeze through the tiniest of gaps, and leap great distances. And the Blue Shell, whose donning allowed them to slide across surface in Koopa-shell form, bowl over strings of enemies, shatter breakable blocks from the side, and repel certain attacks (while crouching).

And it was fun to experiment with these new powers--keep them stored in my lower-screen inventory and bust them out in stages whose structuring either invited or visually discouraged their use. You know--just to see what would happen. My only disappointment was that there weren't more of them. That was me continuing to hold to the illusion that one day a Mario game would come along and meet Super Mario Bros. 3's standard in terms of number of power-ups and suits. 25 years later, I'm still waiting for that to happen.

Also, New Super Mario Bros. came to convey a distinctly formed personality via its visually interesting, sometimes-bonkers platforming scenarios. This game was having all kinds of fun with tilting, swaying and undulating platforms. Certain stages had me swinging across series of vines or ropes as attached to track-mounted devices; walking or riding atop giant-sized characters (like Wiggler and Dorrie); sidling along mountain ledges; or spinning through the air, tornado-style, over and around expansive, multi-level environments.

It featured a collection of uniquely scripted boss battles. It contained a large number of lengthy, specially themed stages. And it had an interesting take on world progression: In order to gain entrance to Worlds 4 and 7, both of which appeared to be completely inaccessible, you had to endure Worlds 2 and 5's castle stages and defeat their respective bosses as Mini Mario; this would allow you to escape these strongholds via the tiny apertures that led directly to the alternate worlds (I've since learned that you can access World 7 via a warp cannon, but still I'd always choose to take the former route). I liked this idea of having to go to perilous lengths to access hidden worlds; reaching a new world via the required method imbued me with a greater sense of accomplishment, as if I'd just endured a mighty struggle in a quest to earn access to mysterious sacred land.

What New Super Mario Bros. lacked in originality it made up for with variety. There was a lot to do here. In particular, I enjoyed finding all of the big coins and unlocking all of the Toad houses. I had a ton of fun scouring the stages in search of them.

Really, the whole game was fun--just a great entertainment experience all around. I liked playing it. I liked listening to it and soaking in its wonderfully inspiriting vibes. Most everything about it spoke of what was so special about that moment in video-game history. "What a time!" I'd think to myself as I was progressing through it.

The game's infectious personality was formed in large part by its delightful soundtrack, which was rife with whimsical spirit. I couldn't help but feel invigorated by its buoyancy, which always had me swaying side to side. Particularly, I loved how the music played into the action; I thought it was hilarious how the enemies would make sure to momentarily stop in place so that they could bop to the overworld tune's most emphasized recurring note ("BWAH-BWAH," as we'd spell it phonetically). Ordinarily, having characters bop to a game's music was the domain of wiseguy players like me, but now the games, themselves, were apparently looking to get in on the act--looking to steal out heat. And that was just fine by me; I was inviting of such silliness.

Well, except for when an enemy's sudden pause would result in my screwing up the timing on a stomping or bouncing attempt. Then I didn't like it one bit. Nope.

New Super Mario Bros. wasn't a grand production, no. I never felt as though I was playing a game that eclipsed either Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World or rendered them obsolete in any notable way. It couldn't. That's not what it was aiming to be. Rather, it was purely a back-to-basics affair--a fresh starting point for all--and that was OK. I didn't mind that it had such a narrow focus. It was what we needed at the time: the necessary reestablishing of Super Mario Bros.'s core values during a period of great change, when so many lapsed players were getting back into video games and so many new people were being introduced to them. And if ours was a true desire to see Mario ascend back to the top of the mountain, upon which he hadn't stood for almost a decade, then we'd need for them to help pad our ranks. We'd need for New Super Mario Bros.'s accessibility factor to be a welcoming force--to make believers out of them. And from there we could all move forward together.

All I knew was that I was happy to be playing it that particular moment in time. I'd labeled it "the ultimate feel-good spring/summer game"--the type you'd snap into your DS on a sunny, peaceful afternoon when all of the windows were popped open, the birds were chirping, and the atmosphere was reminiscent of those ol' summer-vacation days. I did that more than a few times.

But the best news was that 2D Mario was back, and New Super Mario Bros. was a game off of which the series had a great chance of successfully springboarding. I couldn't wait to see how Nintendo would follow it up--where Miyamoto and pals were planning to take us next. "Will the sequel be as wonderfully divergent as, say, Super Mario Bros. 2?" I wondered. "Or will it be something so amazingly innovative that my human brain is unable to comprehend such a product?!"

And, well, we all know how that story played out. Much to my dismay, it never advanced past the prologue. None of the three succeeding entries sought to meaningfully evolve the formula. Not a single one of them endeavored to take us to a new place. To examine them up close was to find no immediately perceivable deviation from New Super Mario Bros.'s established template.

I was expecting for the series to undergo a creative renaissance and gloriously reinvent itself, but instead it decided to run in place for the next six years.

Really, what Nintendo did to the Super Mario Bros. brand was inexcusable. For decades the company had done so well to nurture and protect it and avoid tarnishing its image by pumping out underwhelmingly iterative cookie-cutter sequels, but now its executives had made the inexplicably shortsighted decision to betray their own principles in pursuit of greedily wringing every last penny out of the fickle customers they knew were only buying these games because it was trendy; suddenly Iwata and his staff, who surely understood the medium's history and were well aware of why so many big-name franchises had died off, were determined to ignore all of the available data and heedlessly produce an endless string of creatively stagnant, aesthetically identical New Super Mario Bros. games. And they were doing this at the expense of the always-trusty Mario character, which was now no longer associated with top-tier 2D platformers.

What was at first unique quickly became generic. And that should never have happened; mainline Mario games should never be perceived as "generic." Yet now they were. There was no longer anything special about them. What Nintendo did was turn the Super Mario Bros. brand into a pure product, each new release feeling as though it was born not from the imaginations of enthusiastic, ambitious creators but instead from the cold, purely functional mechanisms that comprised the nearest assembly line.

"Why the hell are they doing this to such a beloved series?!" I continued to question, my frustration-level increasing each time Nintendo would announce another samey-looking New Super Mario Bros. game. "Don't they understand that their standardizing the series will likely come with serious repercussions?"

Now, I'm not saying that any of them were terrible games. No--they just weren't what they needed to be. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, while its multiplayer modes held the potential for great fun, was ultimately nothing special. New Super Mario Bros. 2--a pure impulse purchase--was supremely forgettable; were it not for its prominently advertised coin-collecting gimmick, I wouldn't remember a damn thing about it. And I didn't even buy New Super Mario Bros. U. Nothing about it was compelling; in fact, there was a never mainline Mario game in which I was less interested. So I passed on it. And you know what? I felt no regret about doing so; not for a moment did I ever feel as though I was missing anything. That should tell you something.

And let me tell you: A cold chill ran down my spine when I read that Iwata told investors to expect even more New Super Mario Bros. titles. "God no," I said to myself, "We don't need any more of that."

So far, thankfully, nothing has become of that chatter.

Let's hope it stays that way. If we're lucky, Super Mario Run will be the last we see of that series and its tired aesthetic.

But regardless of the ill feelings I hold for the series as a whole, I remain quite fond of the first New Super Mario Bros. I'll continue to cherish the memories of the time I spent with it. It wasn't an incredible game, no, nor was it some huge advancement over the older 2D entries, but it did a lot of things right. I found it to be creative, inspiriting and fun to play--a winning combination in my book.

It arrived at the perfect time: The DS was riding a wave of momentum the likes of which we'd never seen. The gaming world was changing for the better. And people were again clamoring for the types of games that originally brought them to the dance--the types that were lost to the console arms race.

And there was Mario to answer to call. He was back. Super Mario Bros. was back. 2D wasn't dead, as hardcore gamers had proclaimed. It was alive and well on the DS. There was plenty of room for it on Nintendo's dual-screened wonder. There was plenty of room for everything. The future was looking bright.

That's what New Super Mario Bros. represented: good times during one of the best eras in gaming history. I'm glad that I savored both it and the (sadly unreplicated) generation it helped to define.

Whenever I think about New Super Mario Bros., I'm always reminded why I loved that era. The enduring mental images never fail to evoke memories of everything I considered great about it.

That, to me, is the measure of a truly impactful Super Mario Bros. game.

And I'm happy to say that New Super Mario Bros. is indeed worthy of carrying such a label.

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ouo.io - Make short links and earn the biggest money

Shrink and Share

Signup for an account in just 2 minutes. Once you've completed your registration just start creating short URLs and sharing the links with your family and friends.

You'll be paid for any views outside of your account.

Save you time and effort

ouo.io have a simple and convenient user interface, and a variety of utilities.

We also provides full mobile supports, you can even shorten the URL and view the stats on a mobile device.

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Top 15 Highest Paying URL Shortener to Earn Money Online 2018

1. Shink.me: Shink.me is one of the old URL shortener sites.It is a legit site.You just have open an account free.You can earn from this like other URL shortener companies.It offers the good CPM rate for all countries traffic.
   You can earn $4.65 for every 1000 views.The minimum payout rate is $5.ther offer 10% referral commission.PayPal and Payza are payment methods of shink.me.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$4.65
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-10%
   • Payout methods-Payza and Paypal
   • Payment time-Biweekly
   
   
2. Shorte.st: Shorte.st is another very popular and most trusted URL Shortening Company. Shorte.st comes as a user-friendly URL Shortener Service with many creative options for making money by monetizing the links you share. Shorte.st provides you an opportunity to earn from $5 to $15 per 1000 views for promoting their shortened links.
   For WordPress Bloggers, Shorte.st brings its WordPress Plugin which will help you greatly to boost your earnings. Shorte.st has a low minimum payout of $5.
   The payment is credited automatically on the 10th of each month. The payment methods include PayPal, Payoneer, and WebMoney. It also presents a referral earning opportunity wherein you can earn 20% commission on referrals for a lifetime.
   
3. Clk.sh: Clk.sh is a newly launched trusted link shortener network, it is a sister site of shrinkearn.com. I like ClkSh because it accepts multiple views from same visitors. If any one searching for Top and best url shortener service then i recommend this url shortener to our users. Clk.sh accepts advertisers and publishers from all over the world. It offers an opportunity to all its publishers to earn money and advertisers will get their targeted audience for cheapest rate. While writing ClkSh was offering up to $8 per 1000 visits and its minimum cpm rate is $1.4. Like Shrinkearn, Shorte.st url shorteners Clk.sh also offers some best features to all its users, including Good customer support, multiple views counting, decent cpm rates, good referral rate, multiple tools, quick payments etc. ClkSh offers 30% referral commission to its publishers. It uses 6 payment methods to all its users.
   • Payout for 1000 Views: Upto $8
   • Minimum Withdrawal: $5
   • Referral Commission: 30%
   • Payment Methods: PayPal, Payza, Skrill etc.
   • Payment Time: Daily
   
   
4. Link4.me: Link4.me is another trusted and fast growing site.You can earn by creating an account for free.You have to shorten your long URL into the short one.Then you can paste it into websites, blog, and social networking sites.You can earn $9 for 1000 views.they offer 20% referral commission for the lifetime.
   When your earning will reach $5 then you can claim your earning.Paypal is the only method through which you can withdraw your earnings.
   
   • Payout for 1000 views-$9
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-20%
   • Payment method-Paypal
   
   
5. LINK.TL: LINK.TL is one of the best and highest URL shortener website.It pays up to $16 for every 1000 views.You just have to sign up for free.You can earn by shortening your long URL into short and you can paste that URL into your website, blogs or social media networking sites, like facebook, twitter, and google plus etc.
   One of the best thing about this site is its referral system.They offer 10% referral commission.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $5.
   
   • Payout for 1000 views-$16
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-10%
   • Payout methods-Paypal, Payza, and Skrill
   • Payment time-daily basis
   
   
6. Petty Link: Shorten URLs and earn money with Petty Link which is one of the best URL Shortening for earning money online.
   Getting started is easy. You need to create an account, shorten your link, and start earning money. Petty is one of the best ways to earn extra money.
   You get to make money from home when managing and protecting your link. Using the Petty Link tool, you can create short links. What's best, you get paid. It's a completely free tool.
   You have to create an account, create a link, and post it. For every visit, you earn money. The payout is as much as $12 per 1000 views. Plus, you can get 21% Referral Bonus.
   It has the Petty Link Referral Program. Refer friends and receive 21% of their earnings for life.
   Its featured Administration Panel allows you to control all of the features with a click of a button. It offers detailed stats. You get to know your audience.
   It has a low minimum payout. You need to earn only $5.00 before you are paid. Payment method is PayPal. Moreover, Petty offers the highest rates.
   Plus, it has a dedicated support team to help you out in case you have any questions or issues.
   
7. Ouo.io: Ouo.io is one of the fastest growing URL Shortener Service. Its pretty domain name is helpful in generating more clicks than other URL Shortener Services, and so you get a good opportunity for earning more money out of your shortened link. Ouo.io comes with several advanced features as well as customization options.
   With Ouo.io you can earn up to $8 per 1000 views. It also counts multiple views from same IP or person. With Ouo.io is becomes easy to earn money using its URL Shortener Service. The minimum payout is $5. Your earnings are automatically credited to your PayPal or Payoneer account on 1st or 15th of the month.
   
   • Payout for every 1000 views-$5
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-20%
   • Payout time-1st and 15th date of the month
   • Payout options-PayPal and Payza
   
   
8. Linkshrink: Linkshrink URL Shortener Service provides you an opportunity to monetize links that you go on the Internet. Linkshrink comes as one of the most trusted URL Shortener Service. It provides an advanced reporting system so that you can easily track the performance of your shortened links. You can use Linkshrink to shorten your long URL. With Linkshrink, you can earn anywhere from $3 to $10 per 1000 views.
   Linkshrink provides lots of customization options. For example, you can change URL or have some custom message other than the usual "Skip this Ad" message for increasing your link clicks and views on the ad. Linkshrink also offers a flat $25 commission on your referrals. The minimum payout with Linkshrink is $5. It pays you through PayPal, Payza, or Bitcoin.
   
9. Wi.cr: Wi.cr is also one of the 30 highest paying URL sites.You can earn through shortening links.When someone will click on your link.You will be paid.They offer $7 for 1000 views.Minimum payout is $5.
   You can earn through its referral program.When someone will open the account through your link you will get 10% commission.Payment option is PayPal.
   
   • Payout for 1000 views-$7
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-10%
   • Payout method-Paypal
   • Payout time-daily
   
   
10. ADmy.link: ADmy.link is also one of the best URL sites.It is a trusted site.You can earn simply by registering for an account.It's fast and free!then you can Find URLs you would like to monetize and shorten your links.You just have to Share your shortened links and drive traffic to your content.
    Then Earn money by sharing in the advertising revenues for each real visit to your links!You can earn $5 for 1000 views.Minimum payout is $5.You can earn extra money by their referral system.They offer 15% as a referral program.
    
    • Payout for 1000-$5
    • Minimum payout-$5
    • Referral commission-15%
    • Payment method-PayPal
    • Payment time-start of every month.
    
    
11. Linkbucks: Linkbucks is another best and one of the most popular sites for shortening URLs and earning money. It boasts of high Google Page Rank as well as very high Alexa rankings. Linkbucks is paying $0.5 to $7 per 1000 views, and it depends on country to country.
    The minimum payout is $10, and payment method is PayPal. It also provides the opportunity of referral earnings wherein you can earn 20% commission for a lifetime. Linkbucks runs advertising programs as well.
    
    • The payout for 1000 views-$3-9
    • Minimum payout-$10
    • Referral commission-20%
    • Payment options-PayPal,Payza,and Payoneer
    • Payment-on the daily basis
    
    
12. BLV.ME: BLV.ME is one of the most trusted URL shortener sites.It pays high CPM rate.You can earn $10 for every 1000 views.One worst thing about blv.me is its referral system.
    They only offer 5% referral commission which is very much low.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $10.You can claim your amount through Payza, Bank Transfer or Skrill.
    
    • The payout for 1000 views-$10
    • Minimum payout-$10
    • Referral commission-5%
    • Payout options-Payza, Skrill, and bank transfer
    • Payment time-at the end of the month
    
    
13. Short.am: Short.am provides a big opportunity for earning money by shortening links. It is a rapidly growing URL Shortening Service. You simply need to sign up and start shrinking links. You can share the shortened links across the web, on your webpage, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Short.am provides detailed statistics and easy-to-use API.
    It even provides add-ons and plugins so that you can monetize your WordPress site. The minimum payout is $5 before you will be paid. It pays users via PayPal or Payoneer. It has the best market payout rates, offering unparalleled revenue. Short.am also run a referral program wherein you can earn 20% extra commission for life.
    
14. CPMlink: CPMlink is one of the most legit URL shortener sites.You can sign up for free.It works like other shortener sites.You just have to shorten your link and paste that link into the internet.When someone will click on your link.
    You will get some amount of that click.It pays around $5 for every 1000 views.They offer 10% commission as the referral program.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $5.The payment is then sent to your PayPal, Payza or Skrill account daily after requesting it.
    
    • The payout for 1000 views-$5
    • Minimum payout-$5
    • Referral commission-10%
    • Payment methods-Paypal, Payza, and Skrill
    • Payment time-daily
    
    
15. Adf.ly: Adf.ly is the oldest and one of the most trusted URL Shortener Service for making money by shrinking your links. Adf.ly provides you an opportunity to earn up to $5 per 1000 views. However, the earnings depend upon the demographics of users who go on to click the shortened link by Adf.ly.
    It offers a very comprehensive reporting system for tracking the performance of your each shortened URL. The minimum payout is kept low, and it is $5. It pays on 10th of every month. You can receive your earnings via PayPal, Payza, or AlertPay. Adf.ly also runs a referral program wherein you can earn a flat 20% commission for each referral for a lifetime.