Beautiful Moments in Gaming: Ico

Ico and Yorda by Megakay

Ico is a beautiful game that stripped down a game to its purest elements and removed everything that would detract from the experience. In an age where it was about the end of the PlayStation 1 and the dawn of the PlayStation 2, a lot of big games were about making theirs as big and grand as possible with fancy FMVs that took half a game's budget.

One of the things I love most about Ico is that it expresses a story about a boy and a girl through gameplay and not through the traditional way of cutscenes, and any cutscenes there are in the game tell just enough about the setting, a whole 3 cutscenes throughout the whole game. As Ico and Yorda try to escape the castle, they rely on each other not because a cutscene said so but through gameplay mechanics.

It eventually all culminates into that bridge scene which I think is one of the most beautiful moments in gaming. It's a moment that's made much more powerful in that the player should innately know what to do without ever being told what to do within that frantic moment. Because it's the player that performs the action, it makes the moment carry much more weight than if there was a cutscene that took control away and did it for you. A ton of other games at the time would've probably gone the cutscene route.

Incidentally, this is one of my most favorite excerpts and interpretation of the game written by a Jared Matte years ago:

It's been about three years since my single run through Ico... I've long since meant to play through it a second time, but knowing of the additional content added to all the non-US versions of the game, I decided to wait until I got my hands on one of those. As I believe I mentioned not long ago, I just splurged on the Japanese version, so I finally sat my skinny ass down for a second investigation of my favorite PS2 game.

Firstly, I remember just how fucking awesome it is, even in light of everything that's come out since. Of course I didn't really forget how cool it was, but y'know, after a while you just sort of take it for granted, and accept almost in a religious manner that Ico is the best fucking thing ever, though you aren't ever immediately conscious of the passion that instated that mindset.

But anyway, the sexual innuendo associated with this game is even thicker than I recalled. Firstly, and most obviously, you have Ico's horns. Even if you brush off the contemporary associations with the word "horny," horns, probably as reference to the bull, have, throughout history and in many different cultures, been a symbol of male fertility. It could even be construed that this is why he was banished from his village, or tribe, or whatever society we are to presume he came from -- he was, perhaps, considered a sexual deviant.

Of course his weapon of choice is a stick, meaning that he runs around swinging his wood. Interestingly, he doesn't acquire the wood at all until he meets Yorda for the first time, when the stick seems to have magically appeared on the ground.

Another very obvious association are the save points... they're love seats. Love seats. Of course you'd expect to see such furniture in a game with a contemporary setting, but the fact that such items are found scattered around a crumbling, abandoned medieval castle can't be a coincidence. As soon as Ico sits on the stone couch, he calls over his spectral woman, who, after a bit of reluctance, slowly joins him on the sofa. If you quit your game here then load it later, you find that the young lovers are awakening from a slumber, and you are left to infer what must have happened while you were away.

Perhaps most interesting of all is the Star Wars light saber, which you can't acquire until your second time through the game and was not in the original US version. The light sword is normally very short, but as soon as Ico holds Yorda's hand, the sword triples in length. We are well beyond the realm of coincidence, here.

If I really wanted to go out on a limb, I could probably make associations with the black specters and their relentless desire to shove Yorda down their holes. Or Ico's offering of melons to Yorda in the ending.

A Christmas Story

Earlier this December I found a gift wrapped present from a friend in my room. Not thinking much of the implications on what this could mean, I opened it immediately to my delight a handicraft of one of my old fandoms.

After receiving this gesture, I knew the next time I had met with her I would have to thank her! But thanks to my rusty Holiday spirits (it's been years since I received any sort of Christmas present), when she discovered I had already opened it she chided me that I was supposed to open it on Christmas! D'oh! I should've done the math! Present+Close to December 25th=Christmas Present. I'm out of practice! I promptly put the handicraft back in its gift wrap and waited to (re)open it on Christmas.

After this discovery, I figure the only way to respond was an artistic creation of my own. So I busted out Maya and made an animation based on the kind of things she created.

I actually wanted every single bead to explode outward from the point of impact once Harley hit the words but my computer couldn't handle all those dynamics so I had to settle for a bright white flash. Maybe next time!

Preliminary art:

Thanks for the present!

Melted My Brainy and About to be Insaney

 

After some months of wracking my brain over math equations and dabbling into a scripting language, my brain's beat! Hope I have some artistic juices to last me for a while! ZBrush here I come, you're gonna be my company for the upcoming Holiday break!

Nice Bowler Hat

I forgot when I drew this

I got a soft spot for that Horace Horsecollar. Horace was a character in the early black and white Mickey cartoons and he played second fiddle to Mickey. However, as time went on, Mickey started playing second fiddle to Donald and Goofy, and Horace was eventually phased out, so when I see Horace in more recent cartoons like House of Mouse I feel like they forget some of his aspects (he neighs every time he laughs, which he did a lot in the old cartoons, he's very strong and did a lot of strongman stunts, and he's got quite a dashing set of teeth for a smile that he displays quite often). He is also the boyfriend of Clarabelle Cow who's also similarly obscure but more well known as one of Goofy's recent love interests, a concept I never bought because

1. Clarabelle and Horace have been paired in almost all their appearance in the old shorts.
2. I don't like the need to shoehorn in a love interest for Goofy just because Mickey and Donald have one.

These two shorts in particular feature Horace heavily, Camping Out especially where he was pretty much the main character:

A few of my favorite shorts with Horace:

Admittedly, he was a boring character, but I got a soft spot for him. Someone who the world used to know as one of Mickey's pals but Mickey would later become an American icon and Horace would become... well, forgotten.

Adventure Time!

I just recently finished watching season 1 of Adventure Time. It's awesome! I love watching fantastical creatures doing what is normal for them and some of the dark comedy that makes me question if I should be laughing or sad! Every time you say "what" we'll kill an old lady!

Headless Sonic?

Sometimes I don't know why I draw what I draw!

Super Fighting Goat

Once upon a time I once took on a fangame project called MegaGoat. I believed I worked on this back in 2003 or 2004. You can check it out at TwinSky Games if you feel the urge to play this magnificent title.

Spritesheet of Mega Goat

I think my logic at the time of working on this project was that I was a huge Mega Man fan at the time and the best way to get your hands dirty into making a game was experience, and one of the best ways to learn was to imitate something else just to see if you could do it yourself.

The Robot Masters

Mail>Weather>Fisher>Muffin>Ice Cream>Mail, the logic being mailmen are supposed to able to weather through any storm to deliver mail, the weather can ruin a fisherman's day and be unable to fish, fish can ruin muffins, I'm not sure how muffins beat ice cream but ice cream can ruin mail.

All those art assets was a lot of work! On top of doing backgrounds, there was a lot of animation work that had to be done. I had never really done animation before so it was kind of daunting!

Some interesting things I remember was Mail Man's stage was supposed to be based off of Paper Boy to an extent and a Grim Reaper enemy was planned for the stage. We also got Retarded Goat Man (a recurring gag with a yellow/purple color scheme in Tim's games), a Paper Man enemy and a Weather Man enemy.

This particular enemy was inspired by a game with two funky aliens

Some generic enemies like the Giant Jumper as are common in Mega Man games were made too. I liked the Frying Pan enemy because it was supposed to be like those birds in Airman's stage and we wanted to play on Player expectations where when the egg breaks, a bunch of mini enemies pop out to bombard the Player but instead we'd just have an anticlimactic sunny side up.

Anyway when I was feeling nostalgic about this I recently decided to draw some art based on Mega Goat!

Looking back at it I can totally see how I would draw and shade and animate some things differently. Maybe someday the game will be finished! Kickstarter's all the rage these days isn't it? I hope we'd be protected under parody!