Sinistar or: How to Play Games Wrong | Big Joel

Sinistar is one of my favorite arcade games ever. Hope you wanna hear me talk about that!
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List of footage I used, in no particular order haha:
• Tetris (Arcade)
• Super Mario Bros. - NE...
• BLACK OPS 4 Sniping Ga...
• Sims 3: how to make a ...
• Sims 3 || Let's Play: ...
• Seurat, A Sunday on La...
• Video
• Pac-Man Arcade gameplay
• Sinistar (Arcade) - Ga...
• Civ 4 - Rome - Let's P...

[@HxH2011DRA]

"For that person that game is legitimately about crafting a beautiful person, plopping them on some land, interacting with them a bit and then watching them starve to death." I found that sentence WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY funnier then I should have

[@russellharrell2747]

After a while I got tired of building houses and making sims happy and I started actively killing them off in groups of 8. I built a one room house and took away the door so the sims slowly starved but not before they started slapping each other and peeing on the floor. Eventually I just made a pool and order them all in so I could take the ladder, trapping them and drowning them much more quickly than locking them in a room. They would leave gravestones so I ended up with a huge cemetery that was haunted by dozens of ghosts every night. It was epic, and probably says way too much about me than it does of the game.

[@HxH2011DRA]

Russell Harrell Ya sound like a cool dude

[@lennysmileyface]

Starving is a mercy, are you a casual? I place everyone in a room without a door filled with kitchen benches and a fireplace. I then make one of the sims light a nice toasty fire. Their fates are sealed.

[@HxH2011DRA]

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) LOL

[@sousha3396]

My sims experience was selling everything in the house for money... one day going out... noticing my hunger bar is low, and not getting back home quick enough to eat.... and watching my sim die.

[@curtwildschutt595]

i have a sorta parallel experience from when i played the sims 2 as a young kid and didnt understand how to make money, so i guess to me the sims 2 was about trying and eventually failing to survive in a world where everything needs to be payed for, including food out of your own fridge

[@HxH2011DRA]

curt wildschutt "That was the origins of my leftist sentiments..."

[@celinak5062]

curt wildschutt +

[@DevDreCW]

I actually enjoyed finding ways to survive without going to work, because work was just a rabbit hole with no interaction, it wasn't fun. So from making preserves to creating a household with 2 kids that were forced to paint pictures and sell them for like 2$ each just to afford their next meal... playing the game correctly was way less fun, lol

[@odeliaadam]

When I first played The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, I didn't understand how to trade the Deku salesman a moon's tear for his plot of land. As such, I never figured out how to stop the moon from falling. For 8 year old me, Majora's Mask was legitimately about being tasked with saving the world, and being completely unable to do so, watching all of the people in town panic and run for their lives. I felt like such a failure. I felt like I had failed these people, and that I was helpless in the face of evil. Unable to fight back, unable to help, unable to even run for my own life. Majora's Mask was just an endless loop of the existential dread that comes with the end of the world.

[@ZacFrazier]

This topic, how the subjectivity of play inherently changes the "text" of a game and its reading, is one I love to think about. Definitely would look forward to other case studies from ya

[@skepticpunk_]

Honestly, I love that about this video. It's about the possibility of someone playing a video game simply _not being able_ to beat it, and experiencing it subjectively on those terms. It's about how video games, especially modern ones, assume that one is able to _complete_ a video game, and experience it on those terms, and how games of old simply assumed that being unable to complete a game was a result of insufficient skill, understanding and experience from _the player_ when one is unable to, as opposed to modern games assuming that it was the fault of _the game_ for not explaining itself to the player well enough.

[@arturoaguilar6002]

Well, if you aren't familiar enough with the language a book is written in, the text will be different for you than for readers more familiar with it. Or cultural references in movies can make it look weirder to people unfamiliar with them than the filmmakers intended (like how some japanese horror looks unnerving to the Western audience, while in Japan it's the equivalent of another Dracula, Frankenstein or Big Foot monster movie).

[@tarvoc746]

@@skepticpunk_ Paradox games like Crusader Kings 2 or Hearts of Iron 4 are kind of still like this. Yes, they have a tutorial, but the tutorial intentionally explains jack shit, and the player spends his first twenty hours or so of gameplay essentially randomly poking around in the simulation sandbox and its countless menues with no clue what they're doing.

[@curtmacquarrie]

@@tarvoc746 You are clearly forgetting about tutorial island, AKA Ireland.

[@picasmo103]

Big Joel, I had the exact same experience with Sinistar. I would play the game for hours, excited by the thrill that would come with Sinistar’s haunting laugh and the possibility that I might actually win. But after awhile, I would begin to realize that, no matter what I did, I could never defeat Sinistar. No matter how many enemies I killed, no matter how much white matter from asteroids I collected, no matter how far I would move from my initial location, Sinistar would find me. I would sit my sister and my dad down to play the game. They were masters at Mrs. Pac-Man and Galiga (respectively), so I thought they would intuitively pick up Sinistar with ease. But they too failed, again and again and again. This was when I realized that there truly were no heroes that could save me from overbearing existential threats like Sinistar. My fifth grade self did believe in a god, but I certainly didn’t want to after Sinistar. If a god were to hold the same feelings as Sinistar, there would be nothing I could do stop this god. I had run that experience in a simulation hundreds of times with Sinistar, and I never came out alive. I was in seventh grade when I accidentally clicked the button that released the bombs capable of killing Sinistar. And all of the sudden, I became a freer person. Less worrisome over a character in a video game and a hypothetical god. So maybe I did not have the exact same experience; but, if I had read of Cthulu in elementary school, I imagine it would have been.

[@M50A1]

How do you just "accidently" find that button

[@The-kr9rb]

@@M50A1 button mashing

[@Hellooo134]

Congrats on killing god

[@bobbobson110]

Why wouldn't you try all the buttons when you aren't able to proceed? That's gaming 101.

[@134t7]

So... a video game character made you atheist?

[@BigJoel]

Hey, there are some pretty bright, flashy lights toward the beginning of this video when I show the win screen of Sinistar, they occur for around two seconds. Oh also, I'm not charging for this one on Patreon since it was quite spur of the moment.

[@strassboom2612]

Big Joel could you analyze Kemono Friends please? I couldn’t find a suggestion section in your patreon so I decided to appeal to the comments section! I loved your Snow White and Lorax videos and I’d love to hear your opinion on what the show accomplished or is trying to accomplish!

[@BigJoel]

tbh i dont know what that is, but i will look into it haha

[@henzsol6771]

Would you do a video on the elder scrolls series PLEASE? There are a ton of videos doing reviews and walkthroughs of different games in the series, but I really want to hear your impression and perspective of them (I think there are 6 games in total and one mmorpg). Thanks! 💐

[@fren111]

When I was a kid I loved to play JRPG, fire emblem, tales of phatasia, Chrono Tigger, I just could not understand English, but even then I played for hours, and always invented the story in my head, and played for hours and hours without knowing what to do, it was a great adventure for me ... so I eventually got to understand English ... and my fun dropped quite a bit when the graphics got better, I lost my interest, I finally got to see the models perfectly, they were much better in my head ... I think nothing beats the imagination of a child

[@Alias_Anybody]

Pretty meta stuff here. Reminds me of my experience regarding difficulty settings - I like difficult games, but some of them are simply BETTER (or at least a new experience) if you play them on easy because you can use strategies/tools which are discouraged by design. You are basically playing it "wrong" on purpose. Acting like Rambo in a stealth game for example.

[@NimhLabs]

Ain't nobody going to have seen you... if there is nobody left to see you...

[@matt4193]

no survivors == no witnesses == 100% stealth indeed

[@LimeyLassen]

Cultist Simulator is a game I picked up recently that was designed without a tutorial or help file on purpose. After a few minutes it dawned on me that not knowing how the play the game was itself part of the gamefeel - of being an obsessive conspiracy theorist taping newspapers to the wall and drawing lines all over them, until you become depressed, insane, or devoured by something you tried to summon. Becoming overwhelmed and failing, with the suspicion that you didn't even scratch the surface of what was really going on, I think is the way it was meant to be played.

[@Ramsey276one]

Same Got it on Switch

[@fishlordusername891]

That's exactly it for Cultsim yeah. My experience playing it now, knowing what i do, is totally different.

[@zacw8869]

I just watched this video and was scrolling down to comment this. Its the first game that comes to mind where the experience of the game, and what you take away from, is intrinsically tied to failure and losing, it really does a great job at capturing that eldritch feel.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

And even having perfect knowledge can leads to different results. Let's take JRPGs. You can know about every single side quests, explore every parts of the game. Or you can speed run it by exploiting the game's flaws. They are using different kind of knowledge about the game, and ends up being largely different experiences.

[@Ramsey276one]

I agree with this

[@Geospasmic]

That stuff about Hamlet and the nunnery comment was interesting. I didn't know it was a euphemism for whorehouse, but girls used to go to nunneries when they'd been sexually improper. So though I took the comment literally, I still got what he meant.

[@flameoguy]

Chances are it was a double entendre. Audiences at the time would know that 'nunnery' was sometimes used to mean 'brothel', but Hamlet telling Ophelia to fuck off and join the Church would have still fit pretty well in the story.

[@Rainbowthewindsage]

I was told it was both, since he says it more than once, one time meaning it literally and one time meaning it as a double entendre, but it's been a while since I had to read Hamlet so I could be remembering things wrong.

[@Lettersforhartigan]

I thought the same"

[@MagusMarquillin]

I first played Sinistar on an emulator a year or so ago, I sort of had the same reaction, though more muted because I'm older, and reckoned there likely was a "better" way to play this if I looked up the rules. Your sentiment better sums up my experience playing Skifree long ago: what starts as a leisurely skiing sim is shattered when the horrible snow monster comes, as it comes for us all in the end, every time. Course that was the point, though a part of me held out hope that this time I could outrun him or discover some hidden mechanic to destroy it for all skiers sakes. Maybe throw a custard pie in it's face?

[@concordat]

Watching this video I thought of the same thing. Many years after playing Skifree, I learned that by pressing the F key, your character speeds up. This makes it more difficult to avoid obstacles, but allows you to outrun the snow monster.

[@MagusMarquillin]

Yeah, I didn't know that at the time either, but you might escape one, two or three of them, if you keep skiing there's only one way the game can end. Sort of like tetris, but so much more personal.

[@LieseFury]

If you play Skifree without knowing about the F key, an xkcd comic will destroy your worldview in adulthood. Kind of like what happens if you do literally anything else. It doesn't matter if you press the F key, for there is only one way it can end; xkcd will destroy you.

[@matiasdupree285]

i was literally thinking about skifree the whole time i was watching this video!

[@alexgaggio2957]

I quite enjoyed this. It reminded me of how I played a lot of games as a kid. My friend and I used to play Smash Bros Melee together but we didn’t really care much about fighting each other. Instead we loved pausing the game and moving the camera around to look at the funny poses the characters were making. I’m sure Smash Bro fans would hate us and tell us we were playing the game “wrong” but we loved it and had a great time, isn’t that what a “game” is supposed to be about?

[@danniruthvan3265]

Red Walker My brother and I did this as well!

[@watsonwrote]

Yeah, I did this with my sister and with friends. I mean, they programmed the camera like that so you could dick around with it if you wanted a break from fighting. Brawl even let let you save snapshots on an SD card and me and my friends would try to make pictures that were as funny and/or lewd as possible and share them with each other I can't imagine the developers going through the effort of adding these features if they didn't intend their users to *use* them

[@salemkitty99]

me and my little sister did this with mortal kombat and street fighter!

[@treehann]

I’m a smash bros melee fan and you were doing it right ;)

[@thedontpanic]

I think that is one of the many advantages games afford, is just how many ways we can use them and enjoy them. Sticking to Super Smash Bros Melee as an example, you could play it like a party game with items and inviting friends and family to play together. You can just joke around at look at all the funny stuff that might be happening. Or you could try and optimize your play to the nth degree, becoming one of the best players in the world. engaging in tournaments, genuinely competing with others. Sometimes even just one game can facilitate a whole spectrum of interactions.

[@BillyStyler]

Such a great analysis on such a perfect game. I was also six when I first played Sinistar. Don't know why, but I would replay it over and over with zero knowledge of my objective, and knowing full well that Sinistar would always eat me alive. Ah, great times.

[@Ava_Hofmann]

thank you for making this video. i feel like someone needed to finally come out in defense of playing games 'wrong' and you articulated it beautifully

[@littlebob2104]

Ava Hofmann i think there is one way to play a game wrong and that way is if you are not having fun playing it

[@Rhino1004]

People are absolutely allowed to play games wrong, but there are still those game reviewers that can't get past Cuphead's tutorial... I think a really fun and actually rather common 'wrong gameplay' moment came with one of the Final Fantasy games. A lot of people completely missed the method of actually powering up, so people would constantly be grinding to make up for the fact that they forgot to allocate their power. The impression for many was that it was one of the harder FF games. Pretty neat.

[@xingcat]

This reminds me of my experience with "Dragon's Lair," which came out when I was in high school. We would all gather around the machine in the local convenience store on the way home from school every day, trying to get past the first two or three minutes of the game, which seemed genuinely impossible because of how precise you had to be, but we didn't give up on it because the animation was just so different than all the other games we'd played before. I remember a few years ago, watching a run-through of "Dragon's Lair," realizing I'd never seen probably most of it, because that machine got broken fairly quickly (just a few months after it was installed) and we got Centipede instead, which was much easier to play, but not nearly as interesting.

[@LieseFury]

Sinistar was a little before my time, but there was a GBA game based on the DreamWorks film, Spirit, which was open-world, but the sole entrance to an early section of the game was blocked off by a small lizard (not present in the movie) that killed you instantly on contact. I don't remember how you were supposed to get past it, but I never learned until years after the game had been lost in the back seat of my dad's S10, which was sold before I ever found the game. I thought that game was about running around in a grassy plain, and not ever venturing past your comfort zone, but there was an entire game with probably a story past that lizard. I just thought you weren't supposed to go to the desert, and little kid me was so clueless about what video games that didn't involve cars were supposed to be about, so I accepted it and was happy with it. I don't think about that game much, likely because there is nothing to remember from my experience besides that lizard, but maybe it had some effect on me. I'll never know, because I don't remember what, or if, I thought about it back then.

[@aghost2585]

I think this is almost the opposite of your very mechanics-focused review of Mario and I think it's much better for it. I think focusing on a personal relationship with games and the broader implications of those associations is a strong direction for games analysis in general, but plays to your strengths in particular. I'll admit, I found your Mario 3 review somewhat weak and wasn't excited to see a game review as opposed to another film analysis, but this really makes me excited for whatever medium you decide to tackle. Good job!

[@NimhLabs]

Are you suggesting the push for Objective Game Reviews by... certain sorts... is kind of ridiculous and silly? PREPARE THE COORS SILVER BULLETS! I need to take out one of them Social Justice Werewolves! xD

[@SidGarci]

I had a similar experience while playing No Man's Sky for the first time, exploring a planet while learning that I had limited life support, often returning to the ship before it ran out. This experience of being tied to a limited area around the ship, out of reach from any landmarks unless I suffer the consequences of my demise to explore them, had a much bigger personal impact than what the developers likely intended. A feeling of being a tiny dot in a huge space, unable to move on, being tied to 'home', being held back by artificial forces to appreciate the beauty of life - it connected with feelings of anxiety and fear of independence and solitude - a fail state created from my own misunderstanding. Once I realized that the life supply could be refilled when travelled, it felt hollow, like I had lost something meaningful. It's the kind of experience one feels strongest in solitude, facing one's own presumptions, biases and fears, and it's something beautiful. So thank you for covering this topic with such a personal example.

[@eldabys]

this is a legitimately amazing piece, with a point that seems so revolutionary, yet i haven't seen anywhere else. that might just be my ignorance, but damn if it didn't impress me.

[@Dahras1]

I really, really like this video but I'm not sure if I agree with its conclusion. I feel like games are in the unique position of having both more and less embedded authorial intent than other mediums. Sure, you could say that we can imagine a "perfect" reader of Shakespeare, but that's an external imposition on the text. Reading Shakespeare requires nothing of you. You dont have to get the jokes or references or symbolism and you've still read it. That's a legitimate reading of it, albeit what we might be inclined to call an uniformed one. On the other hand, games, especially arcade games, explicitly "grade" player input with fail/win states, scores, etc. The game itself lets you know how optimally you are playing. You can be ignorant of or choose to ignore this feedback, or any mechanic and that's still playing the game, just like you can read a book backwards. Its just that we, as observers, can say a certain way of playing is more or less informed based on the cultural assumptions we bring into game playing and criticism.

[@BigJoel]

I think there’s a distinction between being good at a game and being good at interpreting a game. I don’t think those two things are very connected. The fact is, the concrete outputs of most games often legitimize even the poorest play quality, are often geared toward those who don’t have mastery over the mechanics.

[@Dahras1]

Big Joel I see what you're saying. You clearly don't have to be a Tetris champion to interpret Tetris. But by having better and worse end states explicitly marked in a game, don't you think a game (and the culture around it) is pushing different ways of playing as being more or less legitimate, and thereby marking criticism outside of these paths of play as being less representative in kind? While this comparison doesn't match up 100%, you could say the same about reading and literary criticism. Being a good interpreter of books isn't the same as being the most skilled reader (in terms of vocabulary, speed, knowledge of other texts) but most wouldn't take a poor reader's criticism seriously. Obviously this is about context. The rise of more subjective, personal game criticism shows that there is a hunger for very individualized interpretations that are more about commiseration or community than technique. Talking about a game as a sport or as a race or as a text, these are all different and require different levels of mastery over game mechanics. And maybe that's what you're getting at that I'm missing. I just believe that, despite games having a far larger possibility space than books, movies, etc, they still have less and more legitimate avenues of play in terms of criticism, informed by the feedback the game gives you.

[@HxH2011DRA]

Dahras1 Replying just to follow the conversation, this is fascinating

[@watsonwrote]

I think the point I got out of this video is that if we consider a game "an experience," as something we walk away from and keep memories of, there's not one single, uniform experience to define the text. Not the way a linear medium like a book or movie exists. While there is a lot of room for reader interpretation in a book or movie, the actual make up of the medium is basically set the same for everyone. In a game, there are branches of experiences embedded in the media itself. It's like going to a park--if you took a different trail or participated in a different activity at a park from someone else, you can still talk to other park goers about it and share your probably similar experiences about the location, but none of you had the "canonical park experience." For example, maybe hanging out at one small bank near the river the entire time was an unconventional thing to do at this park, but nobody can say it wasn't a valid park experience. The people with dogs had a different shared experience than the people without dogs. But because the time, location, and recreational intent were shared, everyone can agree about the basic foundation of the experience. So with these games, if you explore their space in an unconventional way or end up with states that don't constitute an "ideal experience," or a "planned experience," or a victory state, there was still a very real emotional and artistic experience conveyed to the player. And that's something people can talk about and share their feelings about. If the game was frustrating due to lack of knowledge, or unintentionally hilarious--or in Joel's case, profound--it might not be correct within the logic of the game space, but in the context of our lives we can still treat them like legitimate encounters with a creative work.

[@HxH2011DRA]

Matthew Watson ooooooooooo

[@marichka-mulligan]

Also, let me tell you how I played GTA when I was little. I just wandered the city and did nothing. For me it was the game about eating at the fast food restaurant, going around the big city and messing around with cheatcodes (I still have a bunch of them written down somewhere). And I used to watch how my friend played, so I knew about all the mass murder you can do, but I was still punching him every time he killed a woman. Also, I didn't understand half of it because of an awful translation.

[@celinak5062]

Марічка Панф +

[@nonviablevenus9206]

Марічка Панф How a person plays says quite a bit about them and their experience. Yes we interpret games, but in a way they also interpret us. I love that you played GTA peacefully. 😊☺❤

[@tigerfestivals5137]

Марічка Панф me and my friend would go on murder sprees in gta v and see how long we could last under max wanted level....all while discussing philosophy and related topics.

[@Dexuz]

I know this is now 5 years old, but the sentence: "but I was still punching him every time he killed a woman." Is so hilarious to me for some reaosn.

[@Your2ndPlanB]

Very interesting thoughts. I'm wondering: is it really just games that can be 'enjoyed wrong'? Imagine someone who does not speak English, who listens to an English song. They don't understand the words, which makes the experience for them a lot different from someone who does speak English (to highlight this, we might want to take a song that sounds upbeat but has a very bleak message, or vice versa). For books, we can do the same, although it might be hard to see how someone can 'enjoy' a book that they can't read. But if it's a picture book, sure. But this is basically just me saying 'there *are* non-ideal audiences for every form of art'. The two questions then become: 'is there really not an ideal audience for a video game?' and 'do other forms of art (necessarily) have ideal audiences?'. I guess one way to look at the 'Death of the Author' cliché is to see it as precisely a rejection of the idea of an ideal audience (conveniently personified in the Author: if anyone knows everything there is to know about a work, it would be them). But on the other hand: Games are already meant to be different for everyone, since the player is a constitutive component of the actual product ('the play'). I think I'm reiterating what you said when I say that "games are intended for everyone, not just one (ideal) person". And so the lack of an ideal audience is already built into the *intentional content* of the game. Which might be a good reason to see games (not just video, by the way!) as essentially different to other media in this regard. Just some random thoughts. Thanks for the ideas!

[@HxH2011DRA]

Your2ndPlanB Huh that's a very good point about the audience actively be part of the creative process in a way dissimilar to other mediums

[@GameGod77]

This is weirdly how dark souls came about. The game's director really enjoyed medieval stories when he was younger, but because he barely understood English he could only really admire the pictures and try to figure out the story through context clues. That experience explains a lot about the design of dark souls when you think about it.

[@Youtube.Commen-tater]

I just want to point out that there has been a paradigm shift in what audiences expect and seek from games: Experiences and not necessarily challenges. I blame Dragon's Lair. Arcades were made to take your money, sure, but that's because you didn't own the arcade machine. Long story-driven gameplay just wasn't enjoyable if you had to keep plugging in cash and you didn't even get to save your progress (barring examples like the Neo Geo AES and MVS since the machines were typically populated with arcade-styled games like Metal Slug and Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move and not the story-driven titles that used the exchangeable memory cards between machine and home systems that practically nobody owned/used). That's why most people just opted to watch someone else play. Sound familiar? So, Game Overs and High Scores. Because the hardware was limited at the time (Dragon's Lair had to use Laserdisc after all) a player's focus was put on refining skill at a game's ideosyncracies to achieve the best scores. What drove arcade gamers to get high scores isn't "I have bigger numbers than you" (at least if you don't fantasize about working at Twin Galaxies), it was the desire to show off your skill at games you cared about. Some could become so proficient that they could play to a kill screen, or even endlessly until passing out from exhaustion. People really, really liked these games, and I feel they're now disparaged as being hostile to the player all because the players expectations of what they cared about changed. The NES brought gaming to the home, Genesis brought arcade power to the home, and now that everyone was focusing on powerful home hardware the arcade gameplay began to feel tedious compared to story-driven titles by Square or Atlas. Even Sega picked up on the slack here by maintaining a diverse set of IPs, before they were a bunch of incompetent plastic suits. Before, adventure gaming was limited to PCs and TRPG. Now you could play though a story on a D-pad. Now, we have the opposite issue. Our hardware is so impressive that we're starting to have trouble utilizing it without adding a bunch of superficial resource-wasting shaders and on-disk DLC. I honestly feel like the number of staff needed to make these new games is so great that any creative vision is completely watered down and muddled as a result, and now we have glorified movies masquerading as games. Press F to Pay Respects

[@DoomRater]

A game that has Cthulu in it? Skifree. Also a great reason to never tell someone how they should play Undertale.

[@Ramsey276one]

Fully agree on both!

[@sadisrmaacy4341]

you can press "f" to go faster than the yeti and escape. skifree has no god but you.

[@Adachi69420]

THE GAME LITERALLH TELLS YOU HOW TO PLAY UNDERTALE IF YOU DO A NEUTRAL IT TELLS YOU HOW TO DO PACIFIST

[@marichka-mulligan]

When I was little I was legitimately scared of the Neverhood because our disk was damaged and it always crashed on the cutscene with some monster showing up. Same with one Moomin game I had. It had awful translation, so I didn't understand what's going on only that there was a comet aproaching and it was kind of scary. The fact I only read that one Moomin book about sqwerrel freezing to death wasn't helping.

[@YourFaceisPretty]

Oh man, yeah... Moomin is eerie as shit!

[@MattMcIrvin]

I knew the Moomins from the books, and the weird thing is that, in US publication, "Comet in Moominland" was the earliest one in the series (there was one earlier, but it wasn't published here until quite recently). So, as I read them, Tove Jansson *began* this wry and charming fantasy universe with an apocalyptic narrative about the impending end of the world. (The American publisher actually tried to present the third book, "The Magician's Hat", as the introduction to the series, titling it "Finn Family Moomintroll", but I'm pretty sure I read "Comet" first.)

[@WobblesandBean]

That ad-lib announcement at the end was adorable. XD Sorry you're not feeling well!

[@marichka-mulligan]

Oh, and one more thing, because this video really brought up some memories. Terrible translations! Terrible translations everywhere! Even official stuff had terrible translations. Like, the only two games with good localisations I played was Sims 2 and Warcraft 3. I revisited a few games from my childhood and realised I couldn't pass some of them just because of the nonsensical translations, like first Spy Fox where they translated all the puns WORD FOR WORD. And that awful pirate translation of Sonic Adventure... How did I find any sense in that confusing story?

[@littlefieryone2825]

"How did I find any sense in that confusing story?" It's okay, nobody did.

[@mercyhawks8884]

This essay is very interesting! I've never seen many perspectives that value failures and incorrect choices the way this one does. It feels like just the start of a large body of study in psychology and sociology. Thanks for sharing! I hope to find more information on this view in the future!

[@HughDingwall]

I reckon _Dark Souls_ makes an interesting commentary (possibly by accident) on this. Because of the whole "time is convoluted" business, the loop from the end to the beginning, and the fact that things like player invasions are treated as diegetic, the implication is that all playthroughs of _Dark Souls_ (including ones where the player gives up in disgust) are canonical and exist simultaneously.

[@yeetleslaw8529]

I remember playing Sinistar, I honestly thought it was quarter muncher. A huge scam from the 80's. I had no idea killing Sinistar was killable. lol

[@LauraCrone]

Really love the way your voice fits in this more personal kinda meditative format. Reminds me of really good Vlogbrothers videos.

[@thesaltmerchant4564]

Laura Crone it's just stilted and monotone. There no emoting or life in his voice and says everything the same. it's bizarly off putting

[@DoodleZoo]

@@thesaltmerchant4564 he doesn’t say everything the same

[@LoonAtticLtd]

Last week I visited The Broad in LA and saw an installation by Pierre Huyghe, named A Journey That Wasn't. It was a short documentary played in a room behind a curtain, about a film crew exploring the arctic aboard a small ship. I later learned that the actual artistic intention Huyghe wanted to explore was an inquiry into postmodernism, and questioning the reality of documentary through the ambiguity of truth, which is an artistic angle I'm somewhat disenfranchised with and I think has been explored better elsewhere. I certainly saw a lot of pieces I favoured over A Journey That Wasn't during my visit (Ligon's Narratives was fantastic and there was a brilliant 9 screen musical installation by Ragnar Kjartansson called The Visitors) but A Journey stuck with me quite profoundly simply because, when I entered, I had no idea at what point I was entering the story, and as such the structure of the narrative came to be dictated by the moment I joined it. For me, this meant that the story began with the beautiful vistas of arctic oceans, howling winds and distant mountains - and the footage of New York City, narration, and subsequent recreation of the journey as a musical performance acted as a sort of epilogue; one that made me feel profoundly sad, and homesick for the majesty and haunting barrenness of the ocean imagery. I have no idea if it was intended to be viewed in this order, and don't know at point the narrative reset and began the loop for the beginning - but to me this didn't matter, because it made the work into a personally directed narrative which gave me a genuine emotional reaction from an artistic intent I had no real fondness for. Like games, art is very much dictated by the way we experience it and the limited amount of information we have contextually available when we first experience it. But I felt like the nature of looping narratives within a human framework for interpreting story structure really parallels the nature metagame narratives within player experiences you describe here, Joel. Really nice video. Also, Sinistar is awesome.

[@FrameRater]

1:56 I assume this has already been said, but Sinistar is not Namco. That would be Williams. You're probably thinking of the Midway Arcade Classics compilation. Sinistar was never released on a Namco compilation - it wouldn't make much sense.

[@michaelwiggins3663]

This is incredibly interesting perspective to me. I'm old enough to have played Sinistar on the original arcade cabinet where the instructions were written on the bezel and on-screen during attract mode. The idea that people played this game not knowing Sinistar could be killed is intriguing.

[@RethinkRetro1]

This was my child understanding of sinistar. I've never heard someone recognize this but I absolutely agree.

[@Rhomega]

Speaking of playing games wrong, Final Fantasy V. I was having trouble with a boss, and in asking, it turns out I was supposed to have everyone try out different classes and get the different abilities instead of sticking with one the whole game.

[@celinak5062]

Rhomega how some people play pokemon, 80 level starter by the end

[@Rhomega]

Plus 5 other Pokemon that haven't been touched since they were caught.

[@thirteenfury]

Rhomega Regarding Final Fantasy, at least in the ones that let you change classes throughout the game, I rarely go for the recommended party setups and which character should have which class because it's fun coming up with all kinds of combos. In III (Japanese 3, not 6 originally sold as 3 in the US), one of my favorite classes is the Geomancer. I have a feeling it's an often overlooked class, but I love playing around with it to see which abilities are activated in the different environments, such as Flare in the World of Darkness. In FFI, I defeated Chaos by using only the support skills on equipment, no spells, abilities, items, or basic attacks. It's not how you're "supposed to" play the game, but it's a fun and rewarding challenge.

[@celinak5062]

Rhomega yep

[@IsThatEtchas]

Didn't know this was a game. The entirety of my experience of this game has been the song Sinisterrrrrrrr by Renard.

[@terryh.9238]

S A M E

[@Xaivius]

This is an incredibly erudite take on how we as people define and communicate our experiences with games, especially in regard to personal failure, which seems to have recently become a taboo concept. I feel you're spot-on regarding this matter, of how failure shapes our character (possibly more so than anything else), and how it is a unique factor in the medium of gaming. Looking forward to more insightful content!

[@personmcperson4440]

When it was new in the arcades, they would jack the sound up WAY high. I was in early grade school. So crazy. I'll never forget that game.

[@FloatingGhost]

I had the GBA port of sinistar (w/ a load of other "midway classics") back when I was about 6 as well I'm kinda glad I'm not the only one that entirely missed the aim of the game back then It was the only game I never played more than like three times because I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing before dying

[@chandlerklangsmith7913]

This might be the best video essay I've seen on KZbin -- and I've watched a lot of media criticism on here. But Sinistar is such a perfect and strangely haunting example of the phenomenon you describe. Excellent work, sir.

[@helpme5785]

I didn't get til the end of the video sinistar is sinister star

[@somerandomguy802]

I absolutely love this video. Very interesting perspective on the uniqueness of games as an art form. A lot of games held up as artful tend to produce experiences that are more traditionally narrative. Their purpose gameplay-wise is not open to interpretation even if their artistic statements are. Their purpose gameplay-wise is to tell a story. There’s not really anything wrong with that, but I like that the ideas in this video show a factor unique to games creating different artistic statements and different perceived goals for the player to experience and understand.

[@watsonwrote]

I love the way you articulate your points--and the topics you choose as well. I feel like I have a profound experience with each video

[@artosbear]

3 years later I think this is one of your best videos and it's extremely relevant concerning the extreme ableism in gaming about people being able to *access* games and just enjoy them.

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

Joel, I always find your videos insightful and thought provoking

[@MrNobody-fk7fc]

I was 9 years old in 1983. I used to play this at a skating ring my babysitter's daughter had meets at, otherwise i would never have known this game. I played it all the time, though i always lost, not understanding the game, as discussed in your video. It was my favorite game nonetheless. I decided to purchase a classic collection on my daughter's xbox....the sounds bring back sweet memories! Now that i don't blow through my limited quantity of quarters, i will eventually, and finally beat this game!

[@jmalmsten]

So you're experiene with Sinistar was basically the Kobayashi Maru test? I... Am honestly surprised that more games, especially those based on Lovecraftian sources, don't explore the no-win-possible scenario.

[@smithwesson1896]

Imagine if instead of the Kobayashi Maru test, Captain Kirk had to play Sinister VR

[@thawhiteflip]

What?? This was in Namco Museum? I really need to get another copy, there are a lot of games on there I haven't unlocked.

[@eggynack]

Nah, that was a mistake. It was on Midway Arcade Hits: Volume 1.

[@jordanfry2899]

Excellent video. This turned out to be way more interesting and thought-provoking than I anticipated coming into it. Thank you!

[@roxycontinandvodka]

Your video kind of gave me the answer as to why some players enjoy speedrunning or other challenges. Despite you not knowing how to win the game, you kept playing up to a point where you "won" according to your own standards. The game was still fun because you found another way to "win". Perhaps that does make you the perfect player.

[@jojodelacroix]

I'm not going to lie. My whole background as a critic comes from video game designing. I like movies okay, but I know about movies more form watching people talk about movies than actually watching movies. I love football, but I really only understand it through the lens of those who write about it and do breakdowns so that I can actually understand the complex strategies being employed. But games, I get games. I understand games. Because of that, I liked your Mario breakdown well enough, but I am knowledgeable enough about it to understand where I kind of disagree with certain points, or to appreciate some of the bigger picture. But here, I really loved this. Just completely and unabashedly. It reminds me of a video that Folding Ideas did talking about how anything that a game allows you to do is, in some way, a moral possibility that is reinforced by the game since the developers had to explicitly create all of the systems that make it possible. Both this video and that one make me think of painting, or composition in a certain shot in a film. Like, sometimes it can be as much about what is there as what is not there. And in this instance, possibilities, with failure states being a possibility and incomplete information resulting in unforeseen failure states, we are given a much larger frame for understanding games. You can see this in large ways, like here, or you can see it in smaller ways. Like, a lot of games like Dark Souls are built on pattern recognition and memorization, which means that tough bosses can take multiple (to put it lightly) before you know all of the moves and know how to adequately counter those moves. Dying is a very large part of the game. You can't think of dying, which is one of the fail states-- even if only temporary-- as being a large part of the intended experience, definitely more so than most games. You are meant to die. And you are meant to go through this torture like tedium. Your experience aligns with the in-game character's experience quite nicely because of this. In Chrono Trigger, there are a lot of various endings. It is completely possible, and viable, that you experience any of them, even if you accidentally initiate the fight way too early and beat it by the skin of your teeth. But, we even see this in really benign ways. Like, I recently saw one of the reviewers at GameInformer mention that they had no idea you could dual-wield pistols in Red Dead Redemption 2 until like 60+ hours into the game. That person's experience was different, even if minutely so, just because they didn't realize or understand this really unimportant aspect of the game.

[@YensR]

We played a lot of games on the C64 that we had no manual for. We figured out how to play it, one random key press at a time. It was amazing, but of course we must have missed many tricks and the "correct" way of playing a game - your video is a great way to put that experience into a different light, thank you!

[@JupiterNoose]

"Namco Museum" You meant Midway, right? Other than that, nice video, brought some interesting points.

[@allenharper2928]

'Missles'? 'MISSLES'??? Sinibombs, my good man!

[@justalittlegnome]

Really interesting commentary! It makes me think of my first time playing Fallout 4 I didn't know where that first power armor was or that I was supposed to be wearing it. So the moment that huge deathclaw emerges from the ground became all the more impactful for me as just moments before I was focused on shooting raiders with my tiny pipe pistol and had to run for my life when the smoke cleared.

[@nixien1496]

A fun exsample of this for me was Jazz Jackrabbit 1. It's a platforming shooter, vaguely inspired from sonic. When I was a kid about age 7 I played the Demo and requested the full game as a Christmas present. I got it and the bonus pack levels too. Every episode had 3 (Worlds/planets) and 2 levels per planet with a boss battle at the end of 3-2. I was good at this game I played it for hours as a kid. I could complete most of the episodes without even getting hit. There was however one episode I could NEVER complete Ballistic Bunny Episode 2 World 3-2... There was jump that seemed to require nano-second timing. You got thrown through a pipe then you had to jump on a 0pixel spot up without touching the floor if you touched the floor you were made to redo the segment. I couldn't figure it out and I would sometimes spend HOURS trying to do this jump. Most levels took under 10 minutes to complete I was certain that I just had to be faster, I trained in all the other levels I practiced the jump tried every conceivable method to jump that gap using any trick I could. but no matter how fast I was I was never fast enough to do this final challenge. As such I'd NEVER seen the final boss to episode 2 even when I could flawlessly battle all other bosses. As it happens this jump was impossible there was a bug in my version in the game that was patched in later versions. It was literally impossible.

[@arturoaguilar6002]

“I don’t think anyone would say that my interpretation of that work is lesser than that of someone who knew everything about it” Real gamers ™: B E W A R E, I L I V E !

[@Mike14264]

This was a very interesting look... Very interesting indeed! When you play the game with full knowledge of the rules, it becomes a fun arcade game about quick gathering of resources. But when you play it without knowing all the rules, it becomes similar to these experimental indie games about Lovecraftian/Cosmic Horror, looming doom and inevitable demise. Like it's meant to convey an experience, rather than arcadian fun, or even satisfaction. And so, the feeling lingers with you, how you can never escape, let alone beat Sinistar. Except, in this one, there's a key for that lock, and it's that realization that makes this arcade game have a slightly more intense feeling of accomplishment. But only for that moment, because this is still an arcade game that never ends. However, that ends up playing in favor of that "inevitable demise" feeling. You think you found the way to defeat Sinistar, but it always gets rebuilt. It always returns. And it won't stop until you're gone. He hungers.

[@Nuclearstomp]

Good video! I was looking for Sinistar gameplay and I ended up watching the whole video. When I was younger, I never knew how to beat Sinistar either. I grew up thinking Sinistar was invincible, and it took me a long time to realize that he wasn't, or that you could even beat him.

[@LukieLuke5]

It’s interesting that you brought up Tetris. Which is one of the games most people THINK doesn’t have an ending, but actually does. (At least for most Tetris games. I’m not sure about all of them.) I never knew I could actually finish Marathon mode until I was like 15 and just happened to beat it.

[@jbivphotography]

Sinistar is one of my favorite games. It's SOOO good.

[@lukeconleyluke]

This video reminded me that im not a fan of the things you make videos about, or really of your videos, but rather im a fan of the kind of videos you choose to make, and your perspective. I hope that make ssense

[@wakimaki1336]

Sinistar haunts my childhood. An unstoppable god. An unkillable being. Also I was about 5 when I played it so I had no idea what was really going on.

[@drunkenmumble]

My experience was very much like yours, I played this at a young age and it was a straight horror game. I had no clue how to actually deal damage to Sinistar, so his proclamations of “Run, run run!” freaked me out constantly. It reminded me of Ski Free and the yeti that would chase you. I enjoyed the video quite a lot.

[@ShockedLogic]

For me, my experience with this was as a kid with the N64 Zelda games, especially Majora's Mask. I didnt know what I was doing or how to go farther in the game than returning link to normal. All the game was for me was running around this little town and either letting it die or resetting the clock if I had managed to get back the ocarina. I would go to the little pond in town and make deku link bounce around on the water, seeing how long I could get him on there, and when I was done, I would go to the inn and hold down the shield button. Deku Link would curl up scared under his shell, and I'd just... wait for the moon to drop. And at 8, that's all the game was to me. Watching link skip on some water and then wait for oblivion.

[@fen4554]

The subject of how differently you play games when you're a child is a lot deeper than anyone has gotten into. I still remember playing Mario for the NES and thinking I reached the end at the first castle, never being able to beat it during the brief windows when I would play it at friends houses. It was a mind bending experience to see how large the game world actually was.

[@lericthurston2543]

Neat that you mentioned Civ when discussing this topic because I've recently been trying to get a friend to play Civ V more, but because of the nebulous mechanics and a sort of ineffective tutorial he's a bit adverse to it. I have over 400 hours (or probably about 1 and a half full campaigns) in Civ V, without counting what's likely to be 100+ more from when I played a Pirate Bay edition, and most of what I know, I learned without the tutorial, and I feel like I have at least a mostly complete grasp of the game, but for some reason anything older than Civ V makes me feel like my friend. Something about the HUD and how it notifies you about finished projects just feels less complete or something. Did you put Civ 4 in there because it's your favorite?

[@funlover163]

Civ IV is superior to Civ V. Well maybe not but since Civ V is so different than past games

[@MidoriMushrooms]

ok sure but, HOW do we talk about those things? If someone told me they didn't know how to play the game the intended way, I'd just tell them what they were supposed to do. The point wouldn't really go any further because they'd probably either boot up the game again and mess about with that or they'd just shrug and figure it wasn't a game for them, I mean, nothing really constructive for criticizing game design can come out of that conversation except discussing better ways to design tutorials so people don't end up in those situations. Because even if failure is a game state, it's not one most devs actually want people to reach and never overcome.

[@jackalexandroff4550]

Fantastic video. The best discussions of Lovecraft in videogame I have yet seen. And some of the best videogame criticism I have seen to boot. Thanks ☺️

[@5ft4inprotagonist24]

I find listening to people talk about video games to be interesting as a person who does not enjoy videogames much myself. I prefer tv shows, comics, and books. watching this video has introduced me to the possibility that losing and not knowing are a part of games, a concept I've never thought of before. My brother bought me Earthbound 1 and 2 for my birthday and after playing it for a bit decided to stop and wait until I've watched a lets play of it to take it up again because I had no idea what I was doing. This video has convinced me against that idea. Because not knowing is okay

[@SpaceLanceFTW]

Makes me consider how I play and think about JRPGs in particular...Like yeah it's still possible to enjoy them without understanding their systems as a whole, but often they're a lot more tedious if you gloss over customization and basic number usage.

[@redanwrong]

I remember when I was a kid and I never finished Super Mario Sunshine because the platforming sections were too hard for me. However, I kept playing. I kept going back to older levels, roaming around the hub world for stuff, it was something I could always go back to because it was never finished. After dropping out of school, I found my old GameCube and beat the game from start to finish in about a month or so. The entire time, though, I wasn't exploring the game's hub, I was finding the collectibles; I wasn't trying the platforming sections, I was beating them, and I wasn't playing old levels, at all. The ending, of course, didn't live up to rest of the game, but how could it? As a kid, never beating it meant that there was essentially unlimited playtime to it, now it's just another game that I will never go back to. It sounds like a lot worse way to play the game, but in a sense, it was the only way I could. I couldn't win, now I had to, or fail on purpose, and why do that. I simply couldn't experience the game in the same way that I had before, and have never enjoyed it less.

[@JustinY.]

I guess you can say Act 3 freezes your game.

[@arikaaa69]

Jarei B what did he say wrong?

[@iambugking]

Jarei B its a jojo reference bud

[@arikaaa69]

it did seam relevant this time (and also a clever Jojo reference)

[@dualindigo9672]

Do you even sleep? Justin Y.?

[@cappy8314]

oh...

[@mewmew4179]

I think this is an amazing and heartfelt video, with really wonderful insights into games journalism and how we play games! keep it up, your work is amazing Big joel !!

[@CrazyRandomLord]

I love this. The earnest and sincere fear of an indomitable creature. To face a foe with the genuine fear that it very well could be immortal. All encapsulated in the way you said. "I didn't know if he could die." It struck me.

[@TexasFriedCriminal]

When I was about 11 and did not speak English, I bought the first (and for any years only) PC game of my life: SSI's Champions of Krynn. That being an RPG and mostly text driven, I struggled for a year with it until I had learned enough English to get some idea what I was supposed to do. And for that year, how I played was: 1) create a party, 2) run around of the overland map, 3) trigger a random encounter, 4) repeat 2&3 until game over then go back to 1. I have fond memories of that. The game was like a magical mystery land and I was exploring it, sensing that there was something hidden there, some unknown depth. That kind of feeling is what I treasure most from my childhood, whether in this occasion or when I first visited a dedicated RPG store in the big city, diving into the narrow aisles... I can still imagine the smell, paper and old carpet. Oddly enough, I have almost no memories from actually playing through the game the first time.

[@AndreVandal]

Amazing, I had a similar experience with the Sinistar arcade, I never knew at the time that he could be destroyed. I think this came mainly from the fact that the only place I could find machines like this was at the bowling alley and was moslty the only kid around playing with, so nobody could tech me the workings. Thank you for this video.

[@mothcub]

This is like exactly how I feel about SkiFree?? and also reminds me of all the fun times I had doing stuff like, idk killing Lara Croft over and over again for fun, or playing Call of Duty and slowly checking out and analysing the environment and not shooting anyone for as long as possible. Like it's the most fun thing ever to play games in a way you're not supposed to. I hunger

[@CheCheDaWaff]

Reminds me how my brothers and I used to play Time Splitters 2 but we were so bad at it that we never got past the first level. For us that game was about dying in Siberia over and over... forever.

[@AmyMist]

It's kind of funny that I came across this video while playing Dwarf Fortress. In DF, you _can_ make a very safe, carefully managed fortress that you can then play for hundreds of in-game years... But doing that would *suck.* The fun of that game comes when you make mistakes and flood your fortress with magma, or attract a creature you are completely unequipped to fight, or dig too deep. I mean, the community mantra is straight-up "Losing is fun" for a reason. I think that game is an incredibly strong example of the thing you're describing.

[@BikerTrashWolf]

When I was young, I read about Final Fantasy 1 in Nintendo Power. My mom rented it for me. I thought it was terrible. I bought the weapons from the shop, went and got killed by imps. A lot. 8 Year old me didn't know that I had to EQUIP the weapons I bought.

[@im19ice3]

dude.... i'm not a gamer ive played a total of like 3 videogames in my life time but this is my favourite video of yours... joseph u made me cry over here..... i literally have a clinical fear of failure and eternal games like the sims without strict rules were my refuge.... i'm trying to get better to do more to overcome myself and maybe just maybe there's some hope in getting into videogames to get in some practice at dealing with mistakes and unsuccessful attempts, thats actually such an important skill for human life that i felt quite broken for lacking..... but maybe i can work through it, it'd be great if i could,,, anywaysthnx bye

[@QueenOfPessimism]

I feel like i did something similar with my first playthru of Earthbound. I did not know anything about rpgs. I didn’t know leveling up had a purpose and i did not know that talking to NPCs was a big deal. I also didn’t know that NPCs sometimes just say things that aren’t very relevant to anything, little comments and quips and jokes. So when i was told by a police officer at the start of the game that i should “..do something about Pokey!” I thought i had to remove Pokey from the area. Anyone who’s played Earthbound knows that you are just supposed to go back to your house and change clothes. Then the adventure begins! But i read what that cop said and legitimately thought i had to get Pokey out of the way. I spent all of three or four days checking everything trying to figure out what could lure the kid away from the grumpy policeman. I even went back to my house and chose “no” when your mother asks if you want to rest up! So for me, my first experience for a long time of that game was that there was this huge, seemingly impossible puzzle presented to the player right at the start that everyone else found very easy to get, abd that i was the only one who didn’t understand it! And for almost a year i hated that game with a passion. I didn’t get why it was so popular and why so many people had such a connection with it. It took an entire year for me to figure out that all you had to do was go back to your house and sleep. And for a long time? I was so very upset about that! I mean, now it’s one of my top five favorites but at the time the game was just...meh to me. An overly cryptic puzzle game. It took a while for me to enjoy that game the first time i played it (i dont want to even talk about me trying to fighre out leveling up for the first time!). So yeah, “playing a game wrong” really does impact alot of ppl’s experiences with games. I sort of did the same with Monkey ball two as well. I didn’t play to complete puzzles, i played to look at scenery. Try to glitch OOB so i could see the environment bc i thought that there was some big mystery involved in the backgrounds. That if i could just get over there this whole new game would open up for me. This way of playing was actually really fun for me! Later on i finally realized you were supposed to solve puzzles but i hardly ever did. I still wanted to try and get over to these big wolrds i was convinced i could play in. ...and i also just liked to sit and listen to the music. I was a rather slow kid XD

[@THawkMedia]

Sinistar: a villian so pants shittingly powerful and terrifying, he breaks the laws of space by creating sound in a vacum

[@ninereeds1810]

I think you can have the same experience with other types of media. I just watched this video earlier today, and later I read a book I half-remembered from long ago. This book ends on an ambiguous and slightly ominous note, leaving you question what was real and what was fiction. Normally I'm not a fan of these kinds of endings, but with this book it somehow felt right. I've just googled the book and found out that it is actually the first in a trilogy. But somehow I don't feel the need to read any further. I want to leave the first book on its mysterious and bittersweet note. It's not "right", but the book has meaning to me on its own.

[@rattyeely]

Can relate to not knowing something about art and having that impact your reading of it. When I was a kid I watched a power rangers episode with a clifhanger ending and my parents told me there was no ending and I would just have to make one up in my head. I thought ending an epic storyline on a clifhanger like that was very cool and thought provoking.

[@Katie-hj5eb]

All arcade games are kind of cosmic horror, because you face off against an impossible task that no matter how hard you try it just keeps getting harder until you lose. The few games that can be beaten like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong can only be beaten by getting to the point where where you reach the edge of the games code and glitch out. The create of Missile Commander apparently had horrible nightmare about trying to protect a city from a never ending barrage of nukes after making the game.

[@ethanclark85]

“And it was all because I didn’t know he could die.” Bro why did this line give me chills out of nowhere

[@Zealant]

Watching you play this barely using sinibombs is frustrating though. It does make me think about how as a kid I played the StarCraft expansion before the main campaign. It advised against it, but I didn’t get the concept, so I just played it all out of order and it was surreal.

[@jeanclaudevanjeej4841]

One of your best videos in my opinion, it really gets to me, I don't know why

[@nutherefurlong]

There are movies I enjoyed more when I first accidentally caught them in the middle (and had to race to figure out what was going on) than when I saw them start to end. I guess I wanted to skip to the weird bits. And yeah, Sinistar terrified me when I first played it :)

[@grendelum]

I remember *Sinistar* as a kid as well... in the summer, a few towns over was an *_amazing_* arcade (as was common in the 80s) and I remember so many sounds... _”elf needs food, badly”_ (Gauntlet), _“hiya-née-née, hiya-née-née”_ (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (I’ve no idea what they were saying but that’s what it sounded like)), _”thwip-thwip-thwip”_ (Paperboy) and of course _”I hunger !!”_ from Sinistar !!

[@IXPrometheusXI]

What an excellent demonstration of the difficulties in critically examining a game space. I've heard other people make this point before, but I really like the way you've presented it here. I don't think it had the same impact on my experience, but I have a story similar to yours about sinistar. It was umbra, the original game from the people who made amnesia. There are these dog enemirs in that game that. I thought you couldn't kill them, and they can kill you pretty fast, so I spent a lot of time avoiding them. The experience was do anxiety ridden that I frequently had to stop playing because I was too scared. Later, when I found out they could be killed from a playthrough I saw online, I went back and played it again. Completely different experience. Now, it was really just less scary, so not a radical reinterpretation of the text, but still very different. I also think about, like, the first dark souls. What if you play that game without ever meeting Andre the blacksmith? Or what if you never figure out how to summon other players? Or that the messages are left by other, real people? I think there's ample, unexplored criticism about different interpretations of games from a standpoint of an uninformed player. Hell, maybe there's lot of critical space for uninformed interpretations of art on lots of mediums. I wonder if anyone is already doing work on this.

[@hokostudios]

Good video! It brought me back to thinking about playing certain games for the first time. For some, the first time playing was an incredibly memorable experience. But now, knowing the games better, the experience is very different. I still enjoy it, but the wonders of seeing new Pokémon for the first time (at such a time when I couldn't have possibly imagined such a thing! Not to mention getting lost in New Bark Town of all places...) or Rain World successfully training me to fear EVERYTHING are experiences I won't ever have with those games again. And those experiences are just as valid as the ones I have now...just now they're so much more novel and elusive.

[@tonyjackomisandtheimaginar5876]

I played a decent amount of Resident Evil 4 without knowing there was a Run button. I couldn't beat it on Gamecube, then when it came out on Wii I bought it thinking it would be easier with motion controls but I still didn't know Leon could run. I didn't find out until around 2015. I bought it for Switch a few months ago and finally beat it

[@Zehcnas89]

MY GOD, the EXACT same thing happened with me! I had the game on a PS1 disc that had several old arcade games and this was one of them. I had absolutly no clue about the missiles and basically your interpretation was beat for beat my own, even it happening in childhood. Sinistar to me is little more than an immortal space god that consumes all in his way no matter what.

[@austenlaxton1115]

The Void had me thinking like this. Gives me freedom with a very subtle story that I should follow, or I'm met with fierce resistance

[@elenaschmidt9476]

I keep coming back to this video, the perspective is so interesting to me

[@CorndogMaker]

Games *can* be played wrong. Art can be looked at wrong, especially if you don't understand its context. it isn't subjectivity all the way down- unless you legitimize mislabeling. It isn't the intention of billiards merely to give you an experience of slamming a billiard ball as hard as you can against another, like I did as a kid, if you don't know how to play billiards. It's a different activity, that isn't playing the game at all, but using the games tools in ignorance. It's mislabeling to say it's still billiards. And not knowing how to kill Sinistar (by mining crystals from asteroids to build Sinibombs before he's constructed) and so *inserting* the meaning that Sinistar is just an inevitable end akin to the death we must all face- means that you were getting the *wrong* message from the art. Sinistar has a lot of implied messages in its art and that isn't one of them- at all. Even if it is a profound message that chilled you to the bone. And that's okay, you were a kid playing with tools too grown up for you to fully get- but that's not the advent of a new generation of technology and videogames ripping apart what art even is, or how we should think of art in a more post modern way because- gasp, it's interactive. So don't goof off in the backyard with a baseball bat and say that the message of baseball is to imagine you're Luke Skywalker. A legitimate interpretation of The New Colossus isn't "give me your poor, your tired, able to stand on their own two feet" art isn't an open project for you to insert whatever meaning most appeals to you.

[@Donteatacowman]

This is why I may play games but I am not and will never be a "gamer." The approach you had a kid is exactly how I have always played games (unless I give up immediately and do a walkthrough). I only like games that are either very easy or are about exploration instead of an exact set of win conditions. As a kid I enjoyed the Sims but only because of rosebud. Good take