A few weeks ago, I delved into the narrative elements of early space-based aracade games , but I still want to keep exploring the frontiers of what space games have to offer. "Pew-Pew Zoom" will be closer looks at different aspects of space games, and I felt nowhere would be a better starting point than the humble (yet often very, very strange) SHMUP. So dust off your controllers, stack up those quarters, and GET READY! To start, we should probably define the rather odd, but fun to say, acronym "SHMUP." While it's a shortening of the age-old term "Shoot 'em Up" (which, prior to the advent of electronic gaming, primarily referred to films and TV shows, particularly Westerns and war stories), the term is generally referred to a specific kind of shooting game: one where the player guides a vehicle, such as a spaceship, fighter plane, blimp, or hummingbird , at a set speed across scrolling levels in two dimensions, avoiding enemies and their weaponry,...

The paddle. The light gun. The push-button guitar. All manner of joysticks, trackballs, and, of course, gamepads. The Nintendo Power Glove. The Coleco Super-Action. The Brøderbund U-Force. The Sega Toy-let (maybe... don't look that one up). We here at Never Say Dice collectively have lifetimes of experience with electronic games, and have seen all kinds of control peripherals come and go . From the straightforward to the truly bizarre , they all share a common purpose: to act as the medium between player and game, the means by which all interaction occurs beyond the one-way comprehension of audio and visual output. For such a significant role, though, the humble controller seems a little-recognized aspect of gaming as a developing artform and storytelling medium. When an idea catches on, it's quickly taken for granted, while alternate approaches are derided as foolish delusions or gimmickry. So, this week at Never Say Dice, we'd like to steer the conversation to electroni...

As we are all finally learning, with moral clarity comes absolute terror. The enemy is massive, the enemy is powerful, the enemy is cruel without a hint of mercy, remorse, or even camaraderie among their own. As we've seen time and again,  there is no crime they can't pin on those they've killed, those they've taken. This isn't a war story of complex motives, shifting values, and regrettable decisions. The simplicity is defined by horror they perpetrate to remind us that they  can  perpetrate on any one of us, anywhere. Now, as someone said describing a time much like our own, is the time of monsters . But we know monsters, we've been consuming media about fighting them our entire lives, which, for basically everyone below a certain age, naturally includes electronic games. Look, I don't want to be  that  nerd saying "video games prepared us for this moment," but I  am  the kind of nerd who will say we've been telling stories about times like t...

One of the great things about being into retrogames in the present era is how many surprises are continually being unearthed - their digital spectral forms ripped from dwindling (and sometimes literally rotting ) physical media, given new life via patches, translations, or undubs, and set loose in the unseemly back alleys of the internet. One such feat of gaming necromancy was revealed to the world earlier in this Spookiest of Months: an English version of the notorious (for anyone that's even heard of it) "first-person surrealist horror pinball game"  Paranoiascape , originally released in Japan in 1998 for the original Playstation. To my (probable) shame as a fan of bizarre and creative titles from a more "Wild West" era of gaming, I was previously unaware of it. To my (certain) shame as a fan of genre film and 90s music videos, I was also unaware of the game's creator, one " Screaming Mad George ," who has credits as special effects and makeup...

It's been just over two years since I first talked about SHUMPs as part of " Pew-Pew Zoom ," a series of posts on the history of narrative in video games set in space. (At some point I'll have enough experience to cover 4X and other strategic space game genres as well.) Since then, I've found myself bit by the SHMUP bug and put a lot more time not only into playing these games, but learning more about their history and the culture surrounding them. So this week, I thought we'd do a quick update on the fastest growing genre in my game collection and the discoveries I've made along the way. To start with, while my first SHMUP post was almost endearingly retro-brained (the most recent game I mentioned will turn 30 this year) and that, even though I've acquired many newer games, most of my actual play falls in the era I originally covered: the late 80s and early 90s. My genre associations were largely with the 16-bit era of consoles, so most of my foray...

It's that time of year again - every digital game storefront is having some kind of end-of year sale , meanwhile, that backlog just keeps getting bigger and bigger . Sometimes, it may feel like finding the right game for right now can be a bigger and more complicated challenge than anything the games themselves have to offer. With such widespread availability, particularly when factoring in a half-century 's worth of titles basically available on demand (depending on your current definition of "availability" vs. "legality”), option paralysis is a real possibility, and, for some of us, a guaranteed certainty. There are the obvious, concrete factors to consider: the amount of time you can dedicate, what your setup is capable of running, what you've already started and how close you are to completing any of those games. These are pretty straightforward to calculate, particularly with the help of tools like HowLongToBeat and your choice of review sites. But th...