Novel Gamer Episode Eight - Pilotwings Resort, or "Learning to fly"

This is the eighth episode of the popular online alternative review column "Novel Gamer", part of Game People, which specialises in real world, alternative and artistic reviews. Don't forget that a podcast is also available from the source of this article, here.

This week, awoken by a mysterious message on his computer screen, an invitation leads Geo to a waterside warehouse where he must ask himself: does the Matrix have him? Or is the truth about the other side of the screen far more incredible?

This weeks' Novel Gamer review is based on reactions to a pre-release launch experience of PilotWings and is a preview, than a review based on a full assessment of the game.

...Wake up Geo

That was what the monitor screen said. It's appearance, unbidden, on my display had woken me from my light slumber as I lay on my couch with my DS on my chest. The battery had obviously died some time before. I was so tired when I had been playing I actually had no idea what I had been doing or what progress I may have lost.

At least I thought the text on the screen had appeared. I could picture it, but now the screen was blank. I half remembered that actually that was the beginning of a movie, so maybe it hadn't happened at all?

I stumbled into the kitchen, drew a glass of water, tipped some cereal into a bowl and sat down. The milk looked okay and I'd only bought it a couple of days before, but I still unscrewed the cap and gave the contents a sniff, automatically. Some habits you just get used to.

That day -- more than any other day -- I was strangely aware of my senses. The floor, between the kitchen table and the fridge had a slightly tacky patch. Not actually sticky, but maybe a place where a spill had once happened and been cleaned up, leaving only the faintest of adhesive traces. One end of the room seemed slightly darker, as though perhaps the bulb on that side of the fitting was on its way out. Condensation had formed on the tap spout where the cold water had escaped its confines for the alternative comforts of my glass.

There could be any number of reasons for my heightened feelings on that day. But, the reason I prefer to cling to is because that was the day I was about to have my eyes opened to a new world.

I've always been a gamer. From my earliest memories I recall slipping into an alternative world of adventure and intrigue on the other side of the screen. For me games have always enabled me to lose myself in an alternative reality. Much more than film with its fixed view on the action and its set narrative. The only other route I have ever found as effective for escaping from this world is books. It's not for everyone, but for the confident reader the barrier of the ink on the page melts away and the words and ideas are transported directly into the brain; to fire the imagination and to create a witness eye view on events that are unique to the reader.

The problem with games has been the thing it shares with film: the screen. In spite of its ability to display incredible vistas, gravity-defying moves, heart-breaking empathy and deep intrigue, it is the screen that reminds us we are trapped. Trapped in a world of mundanity, tethered to practicality and shackled to domestic limitation.

The screen gives us window into a world that is more alive and that accepts fewer excuses for what "cannot be done" within the bounds of physical reality.

That day was the day a man came who took the barrier away and enabled me to soar in the skies, as I used to in my childhood dreams.


If I could not be sure that I had seen the cryptic movie pastiche on my monitor I was in little doubt as to the reality of the card that had been pushed through my door.

It was clearly meant to serve as a business- or calling-card; however, it's dimensions were more reminiscent of a playing card. That certainly grabbed my attention. It featured a simple "?" mark.

I turned the card over, half anticipating something from the world of literary cliché: the ace of spades maybe, or the Tarot figure of Death grinning up at me. Instead, the reverse of the card featured a simple typed message: a local address and a time.

Looking at my watch I saw that I had just enough time to get ready and get to this meeting. There could be no question of my not following this invitation. Not only was the "?" mark on the card reminiscent of the prize boxes in Super Mario, but I couldn't help but think that if I had slept any longer I would not have been able to make this appointment; I thought back to those ghostly words on my screen.

I walked down to the docks. The address I had been given was for a waterfront warehouse, next to a small cafe. I decided I had no time for a tea break and headed inside. I was too excited about the wonder of this invitation to delay.

In the centre of the room stood a tall, imposing man in a long, black, leather coat. Beside him on a table was what appeared to be a Nintendo DS.

"Welcome, Geo" the man intoned. "I am glad to meet you. I believe that you are a man with a problem. A problem I hope to solve."

I nodded my head, "you're talking about the games."

"I'm talking about the reality you create for yourself, Geo. You who have always loved the excitement of exploring other worlds and doing things that no person could hope to experience in reality but who always feels like you are kept on the outside. Are you ready to go deeper into the game?"

I frowned, trying to understand. "You're talking about increased immersion?"

He replied, quickly, "I'm talking about reality, Geo. What is real? If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. If you can convince your brain that an image you are seeing is in three dimensions -- 'appears' solid -- then who is to say it is not real?"

He held up his hand dramatically and I could see that he was holding a pair of old-style 3D glasses, with coloured lenses. "You have a choice," he announced, "look through the blue lens and you will see the world as it has always been, flat and dull ... ummm..." he faltered, "and looking a bit blue..."

I raised my eyes to the ceiling. The dramatic mood had been broken.

He continued unabated, "look through the red lens and you'll see, well, exactly the same thing." I think he sensed he was losing me, as he went on, hurriedly, "but if you look through both -- here's the thing -- it also changes nothing! What I am about to show you doesn't require glasses." He threw them over his shoulder and they landed in a puddle of water leaked from somewhere high in the ceiling.

He opened up the machine on the table. "This," he declared, "is the Nintendo 3DS and it will show you a world of which you have only dreamed." He stuck out a hand towards me, palm up, "the card, please."

I reached into my pocket and recovered the calling-card that had been pushed through my door. As I placed the card down on the table, "?" mark facing up, he handed me the 3DS and I focused on the image of the card on the screen. It wasn't like looking through a camera lens. It was like seeing the table in front of me with fresh eyes. A 3D viewport onto the world as it is. Then the 3DS showed me the world as it could be: the card unfurled, revealing a deep recess in the table. A dragon head on a long neck extended out and toward me.


I was reeling, "but this is incredible!" I called out.

"Patience, Geo," he said, raising a hand "I agree this is impressive, but the dragon is only to demonstrate that the world is not necessarily as you see it. Let me show you what you are really here to see; what you really came to do..."

*****

I felt myself soaring high above the ground, floating over the sea and onward, ever toward my target. The clouds parted and I saw the world laid out before me. It was like the world, only at the same time not like it. It wasn't drab, grey and mundane -- this was a world inhabited by living colour as though the sea was trying to be as blue as it could be and the grass exerting itself to be the greenest grass the world had ever seen.

The world was so ... if I had to settle for a word, I'd have to go with 'real'. Not the kind of real I expected. It was not our world reproduced on the screen. If anything it was the reverse. It was as though the world of the games had been made solid and brought into our reality. Before, these places had always seemed like colourful sketches in some framed picture I could never enter. Now they lived and breathed in three dimensions and it was like seeing a cartoon hero come to life.

The flying itself was breathtaking. The ease with which I could soar through floating rings seemed to come naturally to my fingers and I glided over the beautiful island paradise and landed the aircraft gently on the waves exactly as I had been taught.

The dream changed and I found myself hanging in the sky, held aloft by a jetpack. It was a fun variation on the controls required by the plane and I propelled myself forward, through balloons onward towards the goal.


The dream changed once more -- now I was whooshing over the mountaintop, suspended from a hang-glider. The world was so deep and so intense and I wanted to explore every part of it, but I felt myself being pulled away.

I blinked and found myself back in the room with the stranger.

"How was it?" he asked me.

"I feel," I struggled to find the words, "I feel like I've held a world in my hands, a world that I can enter whenever I choose and fly over, under, through and across. I want to explore every inch of that world from my vantage point in the sky. It felt real. It was almost too deep. Sometimes I felt like the gulf of depth was too massive and I wanted it to feel a bit flatter... incredible."

I rubbed at my eyelids, "why do my eyes hurt?"

The figure looked at me poignantly, "because you've never used them before."

I made to pick up the Nintendo 3DS again. I desperately wanted to fly some more.

He stopped me. "That is all you can see for now. It is time for you to return home."

I was incredulous, "but I've just seen the most incredible things! I've seen the world of games as it could be and I'm not sure if I can return to the other side of the screen! I want to spend more time here and see more and fly more..."

He nodded, kindly, "the world you seek is coming soon, Geo. It is only a few short weeks away and you will be able to return to the real side of the screen again. For now, you must spread the word that others may be enlightened."

*****

My alarm clock beeped loudly and I awoke. I could hear the rain lashing against the glass.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and, in doing so, I remembered the adventure with the Nintendo 3DS. I remembered getting my pilot wings and soaring high above the ground.

I looked out of the window and could see blue sky breaking between the grey clouds. I had had the most incredible adventure, journeyed to a colourful world and flown... and then had it taken away before I was ready; before I had had a chance to see it all.

The memory felt like the aftertaste of a sweet dessert in my mouth. In my heart I knew I was desperate to fly again. It had all felt so real to me.

It couldn't have been a dream, could it?

The Nintendo 3DS: My experiences at the Bristol Pre-Launch event

I had the chance on Feb 13th to see the Nintendo 3DS in action at a venue called Arnolphini in Bristol. It's one of those art gallery / coffee bar / small theatre / cinema venues that sit so beautifully in the regenerated areas of a city. Sitting alongside the quayside, it's a cool - if surprisingly anonymous - place for Nintendo to show off their latest hardware.

It was an opportunity I had to take up - I've been a huge fan of what Nintendo has achieved with the DS. With the prospect of potentially immersive 3D gaming without glasses combined with a boost in processor power, I really couldn't wait until the 25th March (Nintendo 3DS release date in the UK) to see if it would meet my expectations.

The event itself was very well presented. It was handled admirably by Nintendo's chosen PR company - there were few representatives of Nintendo proper but the staff on hand seem to be very well informed about the console and related facts around release. The building was filled with about 50 Nintendo 3DS consoles so there was plenty of opportunity to get hands-on an try out a number of titles.

Greeted by a historical display of Nintendo's successful handhelds in display cases (the Virtual Boy, Nintendo's last attempt at a 3D gaming device, was notable in its absence), entertained by a very credible live theatre of Street Fighter IV, taken through an immersive Resident Evil interactive drama, forced to endure a Jonathan Ross video face-check we were eventually led into a room full of 3DS units in clear illuminated pillars which reminded me of classic Doctor Who sets.

There were a nice range of games to try out in here. The 3D effect of the Nintendo 3DS' screen impresses immediately, regardless of the game. Street Fighter IV offers great a great depth-of-field illusion; Steel Diver, a submarine combat game, provides beautiful immersion while undertaking Periscope target-shooting; Pilotwings Resort generates a soaring feeling of exploration while flying through hoops and popping balloons. Raving Rabbids Travel In Time, from the little I played of it, doesn't use the 3D to enhance the platform game-play, but the sense of depth of the landscape stretching into the distance is compelling and the depth information helps with the old problem of telling the platforms apart from the scenery. My other half seemed quite taken with Ridge Racer 3D.

Interestingly there is no catch-all experience for the 3D on this console. Each title seems to offer a different feel. Generally speaking I felt comfortable with the full 3D setting for each game, but for some reason I felt most comfortable with Pilotwings at about 60% strength. More time with this console should help me get to grips with the reason for this.

So that deals with the stuff I expected to get from this event. Now for the things which the Nintendo 3DS threw at me which I genuinely did not expect.

The 3DS offers a few AR (Augmented Reality) experiences. Bundled with the 3DS, Face Raiders offers a quirky shooter in which the enemies are based on a photo of your own face. You physically turn to locate and aim at the enemy, which are superimposed over a 3D video feed of your own surroundings (using the outer camera). Missed shots knock holes in the live scenery to show outer space beyond. In a nice touch, face photos of other 3DS users nearby also appear in the game (presumably via wi-fi) and can be freed and collected. It's a great touch that the captured image of your face is distorted to form frowns and villain-gurning to become the evil enemies.

The 3DS' sense of motion control is unrivalled, in my opinion. It's ability to rotate with you is pin-sharp and provides real immersion when combined with the 3D display. The only trick is maintaining your own viewing angle to the screen when moving, to avoid breaking the 3D effect.

Similarly, the other AR game (as yet untitled to my knowledge) involved laying a card (about the size of a playing card) down on a surface and pointing the camera at it. Once calibrated, the screen shows, targets, creatures and holes forming on the real-world surface presented. The effect is remarkable and the requirement to move around the object to attack targets from multiple sides is a great addition. While the game does moan at you if you move out of the optimum distance to the target card it didn't seem to stop it working. The realtime distortion effects on the real world objects is very laudable.

The other AR-style quirk I enjoyed was the automatic Mii generator. It's always a slightly inexact science trying to generate one's own avatar (assuming you wish for a cartoon replica of yourself) and it always generates arguments between friends and couples. With the 3DS, the internal camera can be used to take a picture of your face and then the software generates an appropriate (and pretty accurate!) Mii.

The big surprise which 3DS delivered is the promise of 3D films on the console. As well as arrangements in development with the major film studio to deliver 3D films via 3DS cartridge, there is also the prospect of 3D TV feeds via a Sky application - usable with or without a home Sky subscription. This goes a long way to making the Nintendo 3DS a highly credible multi-media device, something which previous iterations of the DS have failed to achieve.

All things considered it now seems a very long wait until the 25th March. Some of the highlights won't be available for day one, it seems: even though I couldn't drag my eyes off the rolling 3D videos of Starfox and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, these are a little way from completion.

As for the cost, I think its pretty reasonable, considering what Nintendo are delivering with this console - and with the apparent generosity of the built-in games it offers pretty good value for money, in my opinion at least.

You can read more thoughts about the Nintendo 3DS and reviews on the games as they become available at http://www.gamepeople.co.uk

One of these people is not a character in Resident Evil 3DS. See if you can guess which.