Hello and welcome to Dominik’s Little Old Purple Column, the 19th of its kind, coming to you from the east coast of Canada where the salt is in the air, and it tastes beautiful but you really must remember to still moisturise.
Roll the theme tune! (for those with audio, otherwise imagine your favourite song ever. Really? It’s that one? Interesting…)
Last week I was talking about great random noises from the history of videogames. I mentioned the satisfying clunk of popping the floppy disk into an Amiga, the irony being it was the very lack of floppy AKA the rigidity of those 3.5 inches that gave it such clunk/thunk dependability. Comments section user Lord – who I am fairly sure may be a new code name for comments section user Coxy – mentioned some others that immediately had me skipping down that lovely flower-strewn Nostalgia Lane.
Firstly…
“The noise of being able to load the turbo cheat onto the SNES version of Street Fighter 2 Turbo with the weird sound to signal you correctly did it after turning the game on and off 8 times.“
I love this suggestion because it’s not just the sound that was great, but what it signalled: Acceptance of an incredibly special cheat code. For there was, and always will be, two types of cheat code. One that makes the game easier and one that makes the game better or more interesting.
I was never a fan of cheats to make the game easier. Unlimited lives and whatnot. To me that defeated the purpose of gaming: it’s a test of your ability. And any time I did use an infinite lives cheat and I did complete the game? It left me feeling a bit empty. It’s like letting down the tires on a kid’s bike so you can beat him in a race to school. And that is not good. Especially if it’s YOUR kid and YOU’RE a Dad.
What can I say? A win’s a win.
The only time I can see where it is morally justifiable would be if you paid a ton of money for a game, it really had you beat and you wanted to get your money’s worth. Or if you wanted to teach your kid a lesson about how there is more than one way to skin a cat. Or win a bike race. (Can I stress that I have never taught any of my kids so much as one single way to skin a cat.)
But then there were the other type of cheat codes: the ones that enhanced the game. Ones that gave access to hidden characters or different game modes. Those not only gave you added value but also made you feel in some way more powerful than the game. We all have a fear of machines being better and smarter than us: hence the popularity of things like the Terminator movies and the Westworld TV show. In the case of Westworld this fear is compounded by the pain of trying to understand each mind-bendingly obtuse episode.
The Street Fighter 2 Turbo code on the SNES was the pinnacle of this because it allowed you to squeeze more speed out of the game, putting you in the position of a quasi-programmer and it was also the very opposite of the cheat codes that made the game easier. Because this one made it harder. So, it didn’t offer just sonic/aural joy, but it bolstered the old self-esteem too. And, as Lord says, it was a bit of a gaming achievement actually managing to batter “Down, right, up, L, Y, B” while the logo was still on the screen. And you did have to restart it a few times to get it right. So that little sound? (Which I am currently mimicking in the oral version of this column to amazing effect). It was a release of climactic proportions.
(PIC More arty pics of thumbs and video game screens. How do I do it? When is my exhibition at the Louvre, eh?)
And that Turbo option on Streetfighter 2 was awesome. Especially when you whacked it up to ten stars. It was insanely fast, probably the fastest the Super Nintendo ever seemed to me and the only thing that came close to matching it to the speed of Sonic the Hedgehog on the Megadrive.
Lord also flagged up another joyful noise from video games gone by but I am going to save that until next week because it refers to the first game I think I ever played with my wife and kids when they were little, and I want to wax more lyrical about the game when I have more time and space and thoughts.
That brings me to the end of the FREE TEASER version of the column. If you want access to the rest – which is more than FOUR TIMES the length of this then you can pay what is four quid a month AKA a quid a week and it keeps this whole thing going.
This week’s PAID version includes…
More memories of smoking while playing videogames
A superb homage to a retro classic I’ve had fun with this week
how the Xbox tried to kill me by driving me to despair with its recommendations of games allegedly picked especially for me!
Who is the fittest videogames character of all time (aerobically speaking, not in terms of pretty faces and whatnot)
Until next week free readers and listeners: Keep it little, keep it old, keep it purple.
Dominik's Little Old Purple Column #19 FREE TEASER