The Return of the Donkey Kong Country 2 Article

Backed by popular demand, I resurrected my 10-year-old article about hiding secrets in platform games. It's updated and spiffy now. Enjoy!

The Secrets of Donkey Kong Country 2

More on Facebook

My 10-word summary of GDC 2010 was just the word "Facebook" 10 times. Game designer Soren Johnson quoted that, and wrote a long post that gives a good sense of what's going on there. He covers the phonomenon from several angles, it's a good read.

And while we're at it, here's the new Facebook page for Sirlin Games. It would be cool if you clicked to be a fan so you can see various new art (coming soon!) and other developments. Thanks!

Sirlin Games on Facebook

Flash Duel On Sale Next Week

The first of my series of three Fantasy Strike themed card games will be available next week (EDIT: both regular and deluxe versions are now available in the US.) The game is called Flash Duel, and it comes in regular and deluxe versions. Let's take a look:

The regular version is just a box of cards. This makes it very small and portable. The deluxe version has a fancy wooden box (with LASER engraved logos on the sides), a cooler dueling board, two wooden pieces for the characters, and five wooden win tokens (more laser engravings, woo!). Here's what you get:

 This shows the board for the deluxe version (two wooden pieces that

Click to read more ...

Donkey Kong Country 2 Album by OC Remix

Once in a while, everything comes together just right. Donkey Kong Country 2 (SNES, released in 1995) was one of those moments. The sound and visuals were great then and great now. The game design remains a landmark to this day. The game introduced the concept of the DK coin as a huge golden spinning *hidden* item, and executed that concept perfectly. It's also full of different game mechanics and gimmicks that come at just the right pace to make it interesting all the way through.

I'm not music expert by any means, but the game's music always stood out to me. The sheer quantity of tracks was unusual for a SNES game, for one. More to the point, I still remember those tunes to this day and just plain like them.

Today marks another landmark in Donkey Kong Country 2's history. 15 years after the game's release, OC ReMix (who you might remember as the creators of the music for Street Fighter HD Remix) just released a remix of the DKC2 soundtrack. It has over 30 tracks, was made by over 30 remix artists, and contains over 2 hours of music. Hundreds, if not thousands of hours of work all-told. And the price? $0. It's free and you can get the torrent right here, right now.

Preview
Download it
Torrent
Comments/Reviews 

But there's more. The game's original score was created by David Wise, and amazingly, he contributed the final track of this remix. Wise is actually part of what is basically a tribute to his work. Pretty cool!

You know, I really don't know why these guys did all this, but I think it's pretty damn awesome that they did. The least you could do is check it out and keep the spirit of Donkey Kong Country 2 alive. Oh and here's a plea:

"Dear OC Remix: how about we create album of tracks for Fantasy Strike, the someday fighting game from Sirlin Games. There's already plenty of art for the characters and three card games of them fighting, nearly done now. The music could go in the online version of those card games, in development right now."--Sirlin

GDC 2010, Day 3

Welcome to the last day of GDC 2010. First, there was my lecture.

David Sirlin (Sirlin Games)

I was supposed to inspire the students who are trying to join the industry. This was part of a student track, so several other speakers would speak on various student-themed topics over the course of the day. I didn't know ahead of time what other speakers would say, and I still don't know actually, but I figured they would cover boring detailed stuff. So I gave a lecture about how to get into the game industry that isn't really about how to get into the game industry.

Those new to work in games will probably face a "hump" they have to get over to really be allowed in. I'm not saying this is how it should or shouldn't be, but just that it is. If you're not "in" then people kind of push you away usually. But if you are "in" then even if you kind of suck, it seems to be easier to get work than if you're "not in." So how do you get over this hump? My lecture is a 4-step process to forget that there was ever a problem in the first place. The steps are:

1) Have courage from within
2) Do Something
3) Get Better at the Thing
4) Stand Apart from Others

Courage Within. Absolutely do NOT wait for anyone to give you permission to be what you want to be. If you're a game programmer (or whatever) then be it, live it, do it. If someone tells you that you aren't or that you can't, then tell them (out loud or just in your head) "Fuck you, and don't tell me what I can't do." You have to have internal motivation to keep going, and ignore external factors like naysayers who don't have the vision that you do. Every visionary who ever lived was told by naysayers they couldn't do whatever it was they were doing. Ignore them.

There's a reason to ignore them though, it's not just delusion. Take as an example, the first time I saw the movie Reservoir Dogs (I was in high school). It has an unusual plot structure and I starting thinking about why it has the structure it does. The non-linear structure allows Tarantino to have careful control over the flow of information, so that each question he answers raises more questions. I started thinking about 1) what was the designer intent behind lots of these choices and 2) what effect on viewers did these choices have. For the first time, I was thinking about structure of a film.

From then on, I thought about the structure of other films...and books, street signs, conference halls, laundromats, and so on. It becomes a way of looking at the world, a "designerly way of thinking." Now you might have your own discipline such as programming or art and I'm not saying you have to be a designer. What I'm saying is that I didn't wait around for people to call me a designer or game designer or whatever. I just started being one by adopting the right mindset myself. It comes from within.

 I mentioned an artist I knew who said basically the same thing. When I asked how he can draw as well as he does, he said he and other artists have "the artist's eye." That means when he looks at something, he really LOOKS at it. He sees the shadow, the highlight, the outline, the form, the color, the composition of the scene, the tone. He looks at all these details and really sees them and thinks about their interplay. You can't wait until someone calls you an artist, you have to just be one.

I then told them about an interview I saw with actor Jim Carey. Carey described a time in his earlier career that was analogous to the situation many students in my lecture were probably in. He cared about comedy, he studied it, he worked on material, and he even performed in local clubs on stage, but he was not famous or successful. He looked more "unemployed" than "comedian." He had his one big shot to be discovered by a talent scout...and he really blew it. He thought his career was over. He got past his depression and pushed on though. He decided that he IS a comedian god damn it, and there would be another talent scout and another and another and someday, someone would realize his ability. THAT is why we know who Jim Carey is. It takes enormous internal drive (aka persistence or stick-to-it-ness) to make it, especially in a creative field.

Machiavelli said kind of the same thing. He talked about "virtu" and "fortune."

Click to read more ...