I haven’t yet played any of these games on my DS, but’s it’s an interesting idea. There’s something totally geeky about the fact that this stuff even exists of course.

What this guy has done is basically port a load of classic text adventures over to the DS and has add an interface for entering text in to the console to play them. You can use either an on-screen keypad or use a special shorthand which includes characters for common words such as ‘get’ or ‘go north’ and so on.

It’s interesting, and even humourous, to note how much activity this is creating on the ‘net. We have all the killer graphics in the world, we have the next generation that’s just arrived (or has just arrived properly, before the 360 didn’t have any competition) and everyone is cooing and ahhing about the graphic capabilities. And then this just throws a spanner in the works. It’s just plain text. If you’re lucky you might get a few 16-colour EGA screen shots thrown in for a treat.

There’s actually a whole load of people still into these kind of games. What would be interesting to find out is whether those who play them now grew up with them originally in the 80s, or if some of them have got into them at a later date purely based on the characteristics of the genre alone. Do people view these through rose-tinted spectacles, or do they still offer an appeal to the modern gamer – desensitised as they are by more graphics, more gore, and generally more bling? By the way, this stuff is now known as interactive fiction rather than text adventures.

At a time when people are beginning to discuss the importance of character, plot and script writing in video games, as well as the part these things have to play in advancing the artistic power and value of the medium, this is an interesting event. This is a medium that perhaps more budding game designers should try their hand at sometime – because the only thing you’ve got to keep people interested IS the character, plot and scriptwriting!

I think I’ll just have to go and have a look and see how well these things play….

For those of you with DSs that have a flashcard of some sort in them (mine is flashed so that I can play homebrew and images of games I already own), here’s the link to the games – papafujis DS Adventures Page.

But it may be worth a look anyway for those of you interested to see how it looks.

Games must move forward. The way I see it Film, Cinema and Books have all grown to the point where different ’sub-industries’ exist within the relevant field.

For example, you can go to the cinema and see a big blockbuster movie. Examples of these might be 300, Chronicles of Riddick, Alien vs. Predator etc. These movies don’t usually sell on their exquisite character development or their sophisticated handling of controversial issues. They are meant to be dumb, they are meant to be entertainment. That’s fine and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But movies also have this ‘other world’ to them – the world of the independant movie maker and the art house cinema. These are the films made for ‘film enthusiasts’ – those that enjoy film more as an art rather than just mindless entertainment. It is here that you find creative minds working together to use film for a higher purpose than just entertainment. Films with a political message, documentaries on a misunderstood or little known topic and films which are pushing the art form forward.

What’s key about this dichotomy is that the independant film industry is there. It IS an industry. And where there is an industry there must be funding. Now I’m not a film enthusiast, so I’ve probably never heard of any or at least most of the films that are released into that category. Neither have most people on the street. But these films still make money somehow. There are directors, actors, sound engineers, camera people and all the other people needed to make a film who make a living from this without being a household name or their product becoming a household name.

Now what about games? Well, by this point we all know the story, in a roundabout way.

The myths and legends that tell of a not-so-long and not-so-forgotten era where game designers made games by themselves, where they were anything and everything. Where their creative muscles could be flexed. Where they had a certain amount of freedom to run with unusual concepts and try things out. Where the common values of chivalry, gameplay and unneccessarily sadistic programming challenges ruled!

And then the dark clouds of corporate success ushered in a dark age. Where Electronic Arts (hereafter to be known as ‘The Borg’) and others suppressed the purity and beauty of ideas coming from the good guys. Where originality was snuffed out like a candle in the wind as the world was subjected to such horrors as FIFA 2007 Special Championship European Rejects Edition, Pokemon Slightly-Maroony-in-a-kind-of-Blood-looking-fashion-Red and Driver 3.

Or so some people would have you believe. The truth of it remains for another post. But in the meantime let’s stay on track.

The film industry went through a heavy-commercialisation phase too where very few original films existed and all the films being made were made by just a handful of the same massive studios.

Sound familiar?

So, having reviewed where the film industry has been and where it is now, how does the games industry find this happy co-existence of more mainstream ‘entertainment-focused’ games with more marginal ‘art-focused’ games? It has to be something to do with the funding models. The flow of money. To that end, Sony’s new online download service, Steam and the new Xbox Live service could just be what the industry needs.