Transmigration is a wild mixture of sound, music and gameplay. This shooter is not too hard, but the emphasis is clearly on the dynamic of music and play. Feels like interactive video or better the future of music videos. Have a instant play now. And read this related article.
Today I present two music shooters – Otocky from 1987 and Le Fonque Vol from 2005. The first game was made by Toshio Iwai, meanwhile well known for his Tenori-On and Electroplankton, the second was made by *ähm* me.
Otocky is Toshio Iwai first game-music mixture made in 1987. It’s a side-scrolling shooter, very rare, that was released on the Famicom Disk System which I am even not sure if is is the same as the NES or also something also very rare. (Noticed? We’re in very rare-land.) But thanks to Google, YouTube and the “wisdom of the crowds” there is a gameplay video available. In Otocky you play a spaceship-lookalike rocketman, that shoots on.. hmm.. shapes to get score and change the sounds. On every shoot a new tone is made, shot objects change the tones or the scale the tones are triggered on. The tones are quantized to the beat, shooting is trying to get nice melodies.
The game is an experimental instrument or an instrument for generative music in shape of a game. Whatever it is, it was a very early work on generative music at the experimental edges of videogames. (On the other side all games from the 70ies and 80ies had a somehow experimental touch.) Like all music-toys from Toshio Iwai this game is somehow cool, but also has this unfinished, or let’s call it open, touch that is very unique to all works from him.
Continue reading “Otocky and Le Fonque Vol – Two Musical Shooters”
Who makes the most weird and crazy games on this planet? It’s Cactus, and finally he has a more structured website where you can conveniently browse and download all of his games. Cactus not only follows a very innovative approach on making his games in fresh visual styles, but also tries to innovate gameplay and storytelling at the same level. Visit the Cactus Soft Website or directly browse the games.
Screenshot from Retro II
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Another interesting gameplay ahead with the game Portal. Innovative gaming seems to slowly overcome the market, although I still think that still most of the commercial games are some kind of bloodless (if you take it literally this is clearly a good thing, but on a meta level this games don’t seem to communicate much). This is very fast opinion though on Portal, in fact I did not even played Portal, but it looks very first person shooter-like, just with puzzle elements and different game mechanics. Nevertheless interesting game mechanics, though.