June 26, 2013
What Kind Of Game Is Earthbound?
Boss Fight Books is writing books about video games.
Eleven seconds into EarthBound's opening, a high-pitched whine fades in. A glitchy bloodstream of red and yellow static fills the screen. The whine is matched, doubled, synced—for fifteen seconds, it sounds like a chorus of car alarms, dying satellites and falling bombs heralding in some chaos.
Boss Fight Books is writing books about video games.
Eleven seconds into EarthBound's opening, a high-pitched whine fades in. A glitchy bloodstream of red and yellow static fills the screen. The whine is matched, doubled, synced—for fifteen seconds, it sounds like a chorus of car alarms, dying satellites and falling bombs heralding in some chaos.
The static's replaced by an image of a city street at dusk. Its vanishing point is down and to the right. A placard—G A S—on the building in the foreground, frame left. Set against the purple and yellow sky are three flying saucers, each firing a ropey bolt of some energy down to the ground and into unseen buildings in the distance. It feels cinematic—the scene's letterboxed with odd concave lines, as if we're viewing it from the safety of a visored helmet, or from within some faraway theater. Capitalized and urgent red text at the top of frame reads: THE WAR AGAINST GIYGAS!
At twenty-five seconds, the sky sparks. You feel these attacks, these strikes, the flashes of white light—both in the painted sky and reflecting off the buildings—each scored with a thump of bass. Then tighter thumps, and tighter, nonrhythmic. Explosions. The music's pure dystopia now—minor notes and the convincingly rendered sound of a panicked crowd—yelling, screaming—the lightning quickens, the explosions burst closer together, the sky quickly strobes and the sound rises—the whole screen goes white—
Less than two seconds of black later, EarthBound's jazzy and Latin-neighborhood-wakes-up-to-a-glorious-sunrise-after-a-nightlong-block-party-esque theme music plays, the deco title card swings in, and you're thinking: what the fuck kind of game is this?
Burger Hero
Bob's Burgers
It's on Netflix
Today's Photo:
Schindler's List
This is exactly what summer is for.
Getting things done that you don't have time to do during the year.
But this is also not what summer is for.
Because this is not exactly a popcorn friendly summer blockbuster.
Though I didn't hate being human after watching this.
I thought it would be much more depressing.
But I found it uplifting.
Goodness wins.
Oh, I also saw The Bling Ring.
Don't bother.
(And the title of this post seems too clever and too on the nose.)
(ugh.)
Getting things done that you don't have time to do during the year.
But this is also not what summer is for.
Because this is not exactly a popcorn friendly summer blockbuster.
Though I didn't hate being human after watching this.
I thought it would be much more depressing.
But I found it uplifting.
Goodness wins.
Oh, I also saw The Bling Ring.
Don't bother.
(And the title of this post seems too clever and too on the nose.)
(ugh.)
No comments:
Post a Comment