Saturday 17 October 2009

Amiga Power, Kangaroo Court, and RPGs

I'm not much of a magazine reader - if I'm going to have to leaf through a hundred pages of advertisements to read fifty pages of actual content they can pay me for the privilege, not the other way round - and the quality is generally better on the internet these days anyway. I'll make exceptions for Private Eye, The Economist and New Scientist, but that's about it.

When I was younger the ratio of shite to quality was much lower, and I had quite a few monthly subscriptions. Foremost among this elite group was the Commodore Amiga magazine Amiga Power, which I read religiously between 1991 and 1996 and still think of fondly. Written with a certain wit and intelligence which other games magazines don't have (writers were hired on the basis of writing skill rather than games knowledge, on the basis that it's easier to learn about games than to learn how to write), it's the kind of magazine that you could enjoy even if you didn't have any interest in the subject matter. The kind of games magazine that would write reviews of joysticks in-character as the Four Cyclists of the Apocalypse, make up 'Stupendous Tales' features exploring the sinister cult of spectators who can be seen in the background of fighting games like Streetfighter II (known as the "Behind Men"), and publish game write-ups so cuttingly disdainful that game companies would regularly try to sue. (AP's 'unique' sense of humour can be sampled on the myriad tribute pages, written by original mag contributors, here.) Some of this was down to the nature of Amiga owners, who in the early part of the 1990s were already a rather eccentric breed and who by the middle part of the decade could only be described as perverse - what with the SNES, Playstations and PCs readily available. As Cam Wistanley remarks:

"We never had to make up any letters because we could always get enough proper good ones. You never voted with your money by not buying us simply because we talked bollocks, never went on sale on time or produced slightly biffy cover disks. We succeeded because the Amiga owner was from that breed of slightly odd ZX Spectrum owner and therefore appreciated entertainment over information.

PC owners seem to be the other way round, which is why a PC POWER would never have worked - too many people would have written in to say 'Why must you waste space on features about the links between JFK and the Rwandan massacres? Couldn't you devote that space more sensibly to a roundup of modems?'

And then we'd have had to kill them."


One of AP's best features was Kangaroo Court, a monthly column in which game design "crimes" were detailed, a case for the prosecution made in a witty and entertaining manner, and a sentence (e.g. "execution by underwater spear-gun firing squad") prescribed. It only ran for 10 issues; the list of "crimes" covered will be well familiar to anybody who used to play computer games in the 1990s, and included:
  • "Loading...please wait" messages;
  • The Invisible Killer ("Having areas in your game where the player is killed without warning by something they couldn't see before it hit them, and then are expected to complete the game by finding all these areas (by dying, obviously) and then remembering where they are.");
  • Slip Slidin' Away ("Including in your game a so-called 'slippy-slidey ice world,' where normal inertia is greatly exaggerated to provide a more 'realistic' simulation of a character walking on an icy or snow-covered surface."); and
  • The Cheese Plant, then, maybe? ("Attempting to improve a game's presentation by replacing its menu screens with confusing, badly-drawn illustrations, areas of which you must click on to activate the various options.")
Which is of course a concept that can be applied to many different hobbies, including, for example, role playing games.

What would be Kangaroo Court candidates for me? I can think of a few:
  • It is an orc, but it is not an orc: Creatures in fantasy games that are to all intents and purposes orcs (or goblins, or elves, or dragons) except with another name, as if that's enough to make them original. Example: Eladrin in D&D 4e, who let's face it, are just elves, but not elves.
  • This is kewl and awesome: When it's obvious that the game designers are practically orgasming in their pants over the sheer brilliance of their own creation. Example: almost anything ever written about the drow.
  • If only real life could be like this: Wankfest utopian fantasy settings which are essentially thinly veiled political whinges. Example: Blue Rose.
  • This is what real imagination looks like: Excessive weirdness for the sheer sake of appearing creative. Examples: the setting for Reign; the Duck people from Glorantha.
  • This is an indie game, so it uses dice pools: Self explanatory, really.

There would have to be suitable sentences meted out by the RPG Kangaroo Court, of course. Underwater spear gun execution for the more minor offences.

9 comments:

  1. Some of this was down to the nature of Amiga owners, who in the early part of the 1990s were already a rather eccentric breed and who by the middle part of the decade could only be described as perverse - what with the SNES, Playstations and PCs readily available.

    But Noi', Amigas had markedly better graphics and sound than PCs until ~93 or so. And we didn't have all the configuration faff our poor Winbox buddies did (I sat appalled and amazed at the hoops they had to jump through just to play a game).

    That said, an RPG version of AP's Kangaroo Court would help to add to the - woefully insufficient - levels of nerdrage, backbiting and faction fighting in the web RPG community. Oh wait...

    PS: Yahtzee brings computer game review snark to the world and the silly colonials act like it's something new. *Pshaw!* I remember the jabbering irrelevances of "Your Sinclair"... [switches to 'back in the day' mode, fades out]

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  2. It should be noted that Your Sinclair and Amiga Power shared a publishing company and quite a few staff members.

    I yield to no man in my love for the quality of Amiga games but I think even in the early 90s it was considered a bit weird to have one. At least, most kids seemed to have SNES, Sega Megadrives etc...

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  3. Tsk. That swipe at the duck people was cruel and unwarranted.

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  4. "I yield to no man in my love for the quality of Amiga games but I think even in the early 90s it was considered a bit weird to have one. At least, most kids seemed to have SNES, Sega Megadrives etc..."

    Up until 1994, I had both an Amiga 1200 (successor to an A500) and a Sega Genesis+CD. The systems complemented each other very well. Then again, I was an E4 in the military, so had more money to spend than as a kid. Sold them both when I got out and went to college, and bought a (cough cough) PC, something I regret to this day. Oh, there is Linux, etc. now but it'll never be the same, y'know?

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  5. G. Benedicto: The duck people Suxxorz!!!!1

    Anonymous: As an A500 (actually A500+ I think) user, I was always jealous of those with an A600 or A1200.

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  6. Ah the good old days of Your Sinclair... The first magazine that I bought regularly, and I used to love things like Pshaw! and Haylp! (agony aunt/uncle page). When I thought that it would be in at my local newsagent I would literally run to get it.

    Those were the days.

    Now, whenever my monthly issue of Empire arrives I open it and go through first tearing out all of the pages that are adverts on both sides. I would do the same to SFX but for the fact I have an unbroken run of issues since August 1997...

    And people say that role-playing gamers are the ones who are geeky... Pshaw!

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  7. Those SFX's (with their reams upon reams of articles about Buffy and Torchwood) could be worth a lot of money someday.

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  8. I don't know if I agree with that first crime exactly. Used properly those sorts of things can fill niches. I reject your own example of Eladrin and Elves, for example, because such a thing remedies the inherently schizophrenic archetypes present in elves, where they are at once peaceable and martial, urban and sylvan, warriors and mages, hunters and vegetarians. I believe that in roleplaying having a stereotype to build on can be a valuable tool, but having two such strongly conflicting ones leads to confusion, if you follow my understanding.

    Likewise Orcs are sort of a baseline, where gnolls are more savage, hobgoblins more orderly, etcetera.

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  9. Ah, good old Amiga Power! I came across your post while doing some research on AP for an article for my blog (http://101videogames.wordpress.com), and reading about Kangaroo court brings back all the memories!

    I've just been reading through some of Stuart Campbell's old articles too (http://www.worldofstuart.co.uk/) - I'd almost forgotten how good some of the writing in AP was.

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