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A behind-the-scenes look at writing guides for videogames. -- By Michael Gray OK, before I start this article, take a look at the background image for this article:
I did not come up with this picture, so I have to wonder what the heck is going on here. It looks like Mario is jumping out of the head of a squirrel which was, as far as I can guess, reading an article from the Catholic Encyclopedia. Now, I happen to be Catholic myself, in case you couldn't tell by the way I helped Steve out with his Bible quotations last year. Personally, I think GameCola could be a little more friendly to the religiously-inclined, especially since Zack Huffman ripped on Christianity in his reviews of Spiritual Warfare, Super 3D Noah's Ark, and King of Kings*. But isn't there a better place to put religious references than in a picture with a squirrel and Mario? Anyway, last month, I was told that furries are taking over GameCola. So that explains why there's a squirrel in the background of this page. The furries have already taken over the GameCola staff. I guess that means I'll have to give in and start writing furry-friendly articles. OK. That means that, this month, I'll talk about Tiny Toon Adventures for the NES. They're tiny, they're toony, they're all a little loony! They're furry, they're funny, they're Babs and Buster Bunny! For those of you who don't know, Tiny Toon Adventures was a TV show that I watched all the time when I was a kid. Playing this game caused me to have random flashbacks of the TV show, which I can barely remember. This guide has a fancy layout, which is a first for me. Instead of separating sections with a boring old straight line like I did on this page, I separated sections with banners. Banners with pictures of carrots, even! I sure went all out in this guide. Also, for some reason, I put in a random scientific fact in this guide. If you check out the "characters" section, you'll see this:
Sea Urchins: Spiky creatures that live in the water. Scientists know over 300 ways to get them to reproduce through parthenogenesis.
A few days ago, I got an e-mail from someone who needed help with this game. Here's what the e-mail looked like: Hi Lost Gamer, [Note to
GameCola readers: That's the alias I wrote the guide under] I'm not sure why the e-mail has so many random line breaks, but Franz seems like a nice person, so I decided to help him. Unfortunately, my memory is not that good, so I had to play the game through again to get to the area he's talking about. It turns out that his problem was with one of those ridiculously hard areas where enemies come from the left and right sides of the screen, and they don't stop coming. On top of that, you have to pull off a series of difficult "slide" moves. Plus, it only takes one hit to kill you. So, yeah, I can see where Franz had trouble.
While replaying that section, I learned that the slide move involves temporary invincibility, which is the key to getting through the section. Who would have thought that? In a game where your character dies when it touches a bubble, your character lives through anything as long as he's sliding. Doesn't make any sense to me, but there you go. So I e-mailed Franz with this information and wrote this article at the same time. Wow, wasn't that an exciting story, kids? You bet it was!
-- Michael Gray {09-2007} * I don't know what Zack's problem with Christianity is. Maybe he's just hates the Bible because he's against books that 1) Are over ten pages long 2) Contain no pictures of naked women. Rate this article — |
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Past Editions of Inside the Guide:
August 2007: Super
Mario Bros. 2 |
