Gaming History: The Simple Series

For today's Gaming History article I'll be taking a look at a series of games that for the most part I wish didn't exist. It's filled with badly programmed, poorly designed rubbish and makes up just over 5% of the Playstation 2's entire Japanese library with 165 releases for the console alone. In total there have been 401 Simple Series releases across 11 consoles, with Sony's original Playstation and PS2 receiving most of the titles.

You may well ask how a company can manage to release 401 terrible games and stay in business, after all many other companies have gone into liquidation after far less failures, but the secret is in the budget. D3 Publisher don't develop many of the games themselves, but instead pay tiny developers who have no prior experience or talent to create titles for them for next to nothing. Once these are complete, they're put on sale for the budget price of 2000 yen (for the PS2 series, anyway) and the costs are recouped even if only a small percentage of gamers purchase the titles.

(The Sniper 2 for PS2 - The first simple series game I played)

Not all of the Simple Series games released in Japan made it over to Europe, but thanks to Midas Interactive (who already had their own line of terrible games established in PAL regions) 83 PS2 simple series titles were published over here. Since playing The Sniper 2, my first encounter with the Simple Series as a while, I've made it a personal challenge to find a game that I truly enjoy from the series.

So far I've not had much success, despite many attempts to find something I'll enjoy. I've even got a stack of Simple Series games that I've not yet reviewed because I've got nothing better to review it seems. It's pretty easy to spot a simple series game out in the wild; games with a generic title, published by Midas Interactive, or worse 505 Gamestreet are very likely to be from the series. In fact, in Japan every game starts with "The" and has borders to identify it as a Simple Series game. This results in rather silly title translations such as "The Tennis", "The Shooting" and my favourite "The Swim Meet of Covered Woman".

(Party Girls for PS2 aka The Swim Meet of Covered Woman in Japan)

Part of the reason the games aren't enjoyable is that graphically they're very basic, and unappealing. Many of the games in the PS2 simple series look as if they belong on PS1, and even use assets from other games if they can. I understand that these games were developed on a tight budget and thus can't afford the high level of graphics that we've come to expect of our consoles in the modern age, but there's a general lack of effort in most, if not all titles I've played so far.

Another general criticism of Simple Series games is their depth; often the play modes offered are very similar to one another and included only to give the illusion of more content. Menus have very few options, and most of the games can be completed in a single sitting. I'd perhaps expect this of games on simpler systems, back in the NES and Master System days, but to hardly fill a single layer CD when the PS2 has all the space of a DVD available for games is disappointing.

(Deadly Strike for PS2 - One of the worst beat 'em ups ever)

Before playing the Simple Series, I was under the impression that there were some genres that it was almost impossible to make a bad game for; racing, beat 'em up and fighting games for example have many examples of mediocrity, but not too many outright bad games. Whether through a lack of effort or a lack of funds though, D3 Publisher seems to manage to ruin one aspect of the game or another. With racing games, the steering is always horribly difficult to work, with beat 'em ups, the AI has no clue what it's doing and with any other game there's always a key component that doesn't quite work.

With many Simple Series games to check out, it's possible that I'll find a gem at some point and perhaps look a little more favourably on the series as a whole, but it's important to keep in mind where D3 Publisher are now, having published most of the Simple Series between 1996 and 2009. The Simple Series itself has luckily ground to somewhat of a halt, The latest game was "Family Party: 30 Great Games" for the WiiU, which was a universally panned launch title, wasting no time in putting shovelware on the console.

(Earth Defence Force 2025 for PS3 - The most successful export of the simple series)

The most notable games to come out of the Simple Series are without a doubt those of the Earth Defence Force series. What began as a Simple Series game of slightly better quality than most is now a series with full price titles that are almost as buggy as simple series titles. Most of the games hold a rating of 69 or less on Metacritic, indicating a fairly poor level of quality despite not technically being a part of the Simple Series anymore.

Outside of Simple series games, D3 Publisher have been involved with many cartoon and movie tie in games, most notably Adventure Time: Explore the dungeon because I don't know! which wasn't particularly well received at all. As another full price game from D3 Publisher, this more than anything proves the point I'd like to make about the Simple Series and D3 as a whole. If none of their games were ever released, gaming would be none the worse for it. In fact, it might even be slightly better for it. Avoid D3 Publisher, Midas Interactive and 505 Gamestreet games if you can, and leave the painful task of playing them to me.

Gaming History: Handhelds

These days we're spoilt for choice when it comes to handheld consoles; the 3DS and Playstation Vita offer two different approaches to dedicated console based handheld gaming while gaming on mobile devices and tablets is also becoming more widespread with apps, games and ports offered from a wide variety of sources. Looking back though, it's been an interesting ride to get to where we are today, with many handheld consoles attempting to captivate consumers and offer a unique gaming experience.

Though there were some devices which could technically offer a handheld or portable gaming experience before 1979, the first true handheld gaming console was the Milton Bradley Microvision, offering interchangeable game cartridges, 16 bytes of RAM, and a resolution of 16x16. 12 games were released for the Microvision, each of which came with its own facia for the unit, displaying the button functions and title of the game. Not a lot of these are around and in working condition today due to construction faults and 35 years of wear and tear.

(Milton Bradley Microvision - 1979)

Inspired by a businessman on a train who was playing with an LCD calculator, Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi came up with the idea of Game & Watch handhelds. Although these only played one game at a time, they were an important step towards the Game Boy, and 60 in total were released, beginning in 1980. The devices themselves consisted of an LCD screen, various buttons (most had a d-pad after 1982's Donkey Kong) and a watch/alarm function. The Game & Watch series proved to be incredibly popular in Japan.

In 1982 the first solar powered gaming device was released in the form of the Bandai LCD Solarpower. With only 10 games released it wasn't hugely sucessful, however it did feature cartridges with 2 stacked LCD panels atop one another for a 3D effect later in its lifespan. The first dedicated 3D home video hardware system was released a year later as the Tomytronic. This used a similar design to achieve its 3D effect, lighting the 2 LCD panels from a window on top of the device. Many later handhelds would dabble in 3D technology with varying degrees of success.

(Zelda Game & Watch - 1989)

Perhaps the best known handheld gaming system of all time, the Nintendo Game Boy was released in April 1989 in Japan, bundled with Tetris. Although it only featured 4 shades of grey for its colour palette and needed 4 AA batteries to run, the device achieved huge success due to its strong lineup of games which included Super Mario Land and Pokemon Red/Blue as well as various redesigns and colour choices for consumers.

The Game Boy's main competitors were the Atari Lynx, (released just one month later featuring a colour LCD screen, and the ability to link up to 18 units via a network system for some games), and the Sega Game Gear (released over a year later than the Game Boy and featuring hardware similar to that of the Master System). Neither of these systems saw anywhere near the level of the success of the Game Boy, possibly due to their far larger size, poor battery life and weaker game libraries. There was also a notable 4th place finisher in the 4th generation handheld race; the NEC TurboExpress, which was essentially a handheld TurboGrafx16. Its high price point, hardware issues with capacitors and screen hindered sales to just 1.5 million in total.

(Atari Lynx - 1989)

In 1995 Sega released the Nomad in North America. The console would accept existing Genesis cartridges and function as a handheld version of the home console. Unfortunately there was no support for many of the Genesis peripherals, the system was poorly marketed and only released in North America. Due to this, it sold poorly and with the release of the Pokemon games in the same year, it failed to gain much attention from consumers.

The next entry in the fifth generation of handheld console was the Tiger game.com in 1997. Featuring PDA style features and targeted at an audience of older gamers, it failed to excite consumers and was overshadowed by the release of the Game Boy Colour in 1998 which could display up to 56 colours simultaneously from its palette of 32,768, surpassing the capabilities of the Atari Lynx and other earlier colour consoles. In addition to this it was fully backwards compatible with the original Game Boy library, giving gamers a huge choice of games to play, even on launch.

(Neo Geo Pocket Colour - 1999)

Released in 1999, the Neo Geo Pocket Colour was the successor to the Japan only Neo Geo Pocket. The system on its way to becoming the biggest challenger to a Nintendo handheld in the US when it was dropped from the market after a company takeover. In 2000 the Wonderswan Colour was released in Japan, and had moderate success due to a deal between Bandai and Square to port and update Final Fantasy games for the console, though this success was shortlived.

2001 saw the release of the Game Boy Advance which added a larger screen, shoulder buttons and more power to the already successful design of the Game Boy Colour. With backwards compatibility for previous Game Boy and Game Boy Colour games as well as connectivity between the GBA and Gamecube, and the GBA SP redesign in 2003, the consoles sold a combined total of 80 million units worldwide, on top of the 118 million units sold by the original Game Boy and Game Boy Colour.

(Game Boy Advance SP - 2003)

Several competitors to the Game Boy Advance were launched between 2001 and 2004, including the Nokia N-Gage which aimed to combine the functionality of a handheld games console with a mobile telephone (somewhat unsuccessfully) and the Tapwave Zodiac, which like the game.com attempted to integrate PDA-type features, as well as photo and music storage but was ultimately unsuccessful as the company declared bankruptcy in 2005.

With Nintendo dominating the market arguably since 1989 and before, all eyes were on what would replace the Game Boy Advance, and just 3 years after its release, the Nintendo DS was introduced, featuring dual screens, one of which was a touchscreen. With many game design possibilities, games such as Nintendogs, Rhythm Heaven and backwards compatibility for Gameboy Advance titles, the system stands as the 2nd best selling console ever with almost 154 million sales, just 1 million behind the PS2.

(Sony PSP - 2005)

The first and only (so far) legitimate challenger to a Nintendo handheld console was released in 2005, in the form of the Sony PSP. Giving gamers higher graphical performance, and choosing to utilise optical media in the form of UMDs over cartridges, the system's games had more to offer in terms of content than the Nintendo DS. It worked far more like a home console than anything released before it, and could even play movies stored on UMDs. With 34.4% of the market share against the Nintendo DS, and around 80 million PSPs sold, the system was unlucky not to have been even more successful.

Although a fair amount of multi functional devices were released between 2005 and 2011, the huge success of both the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP systems lead to long term support for both, including many redesigns such as the DS Lite, DSi, PSP-2/3000 and PSP Go. The two consoles lead the handheld market in sales by a long way, and prevented any other company from gaining a foothold.

(Nintendo 3DS XL - 2012)

Continuing Nintendo's handheld market dominance, the 3DS is their current console, with an XL version available as well as the 2DS which has most of the functionality, save for the 3D feature. Despite a tepid initial reaction to the console, and many critics prematurely dubbing it a failure, it holds an approximate market share of 80% and has had many high selling games such as Pokemon X and Y. As previously mentioned this wasn't the first handheld foray into 3D gaming, but the autostereoscopic 3D is by far the best system for it in my view.

The PS Vita is the only other real notable dedicated handheld gaming device, and it's aimed more at gamers who want near-console graphics and gaming experience from their handheld play. The console went back to using cartridge style cards from optical media, though these can hold around 3 Gb which is higher than the 1.8Gb maximum for a dual layer UMD. Interestingly the Vita does feature a touchscreen, perhaps following Nintendo's lead but it seems to be less critical to gameplay for most titles.

(Handheld gaming on an Android device)

More recently handheld gaming seems to be taking place on smartphones and tablets, perhaps a natural progression given their touchscreen capabilities and the availability of ROMs online. It seems that the products which are most useful to consumers in this market are always the ones which will prevail. It remains to be seen whether Nintendo will be able to continue to dominate the handheld market with this new wave of handheld gaming across many other devices, but looking back over the history of portable gaming there's not been many points where they haven't been at the top.

Gaming History: E3 2014

E3 should be an exciting time of year for all gamers, with updates on games that we know are in development, and announcements of new games that we had no clue even existed. While there are often memes born at conferences; "599 US Dollars", "Riiiidge Racer" and "my body is ready" being prime examples, I'd like to take a look beyond that at this year's E3 and look at the promising content from each press conference as well as the games which weren't quite so inspiring.

The first conference of E3 2014 was held by Microsoft, focussing heavily on new games coming to the Xbox One console in the near and not so near future, with hardly any mention of the Kinect or media capabilities of the system. At least 22 big budget titles were announced alongside a handful of indie games, and although around half of them were exclusive to the Xbox One, there were enough titles to give a general excitement to Xbox One owners, and those keen to get the system.

My pick of the game announced at the conference was Sunset Overdrive, by Insomniac Games, a new take on zombie games which puts the emphasis on fast paced fun and evasion of zombies, rather than fighting your way through huge hordes. Players are able to grind along rails and gain huge kill combos by shooting and blowing up zombies. The cartoon style looks bright and vibrant in a deliberate contrast to recent zombie games and shooters, and fits well with the game's humour and sense of fun.

(Sunset Overdrive Trailer)

The other exclusive game announcements from Microsoft were; Halo: The Master Chief Collection which features the first four games in the Halo series, remastered and upgraded for the new generation. Halo 5 Guardians, announced as having a Beta opening in the holiday season this year, which should be exciting for fans of the series, although so far there's only a cinematic trailer for the game. The Forza series also got some exclusive announcements with Forza Horizons 2, the open road racing sidekick to Forza 5, in addition to some free new tracks for the latter game which is already out on Xbox One.

Also announced as exclusive titles for Microsoft were Scalebound, a game which seems to challenge players to battle dragons Monster Hunter style, a remake of Phantom Dust, Ori and the Blind Forest, a nature inspired platforming game, Fable Legends and Crackdown 3, as well as Project Spark, which seems as if it will be able to let players create any game they want and share it with friends (exclusive to Xbox One and PC), and the Xbox Live exclusive Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX plus Alpha, which lets players don Street Fighter and other classic Capcom costumes and take down zombies.

(Cinematic Trailer for Halo 5)

Multiplatform titles announced by Microsoft include Call Of Duty Advanced Warfare, Evolve, Assassin's Creed Unity, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Rise Of The Tomb Raider, The Witcher 3, and Tom Clancy's: The Division, in addition to a host of indie titles which may or may not also be appearing on Steam/PS4 also. The final announcement was not a video game, but Halo Nightfall, a live action miniseries detailing some of the events of the Halo franchise.

Overall Microsoft presented a strong field of videogames, both exclusive and non exclusive coming to the Xbox One platform. While I doubt that many people will choose to buy a console purely because a game comes to it first or has extra DLC, when added to the other announcements these make for good backup purchase justifiers. With a lot of work still to do to make the Xbox One competitive in the eighth generation, Microsoft have taken a step in the right direction by focussing purely on games, and bringing what seems to be a strong selection of titles to their console.

EA's conference proved to be one of the shortest at this year's E3 with a runtime of just 50 minutes, in which they showcased 5 sporting titles, and 7 non sports titles. While I felt that there was far too much time dedicated to their sports titles (since everyone pretty much knows what they're getting already), most of the games shown were at least interesting. The best shot at a memeworthy moment came from EA's conference with their presenter exclaiming "All the feels-uh!" after a trailer.

My pick for the most interesting game of the presentation was tied between two games; Dragon Age Inquisition (already showcased at Microsoft's conference), due to the sweeping flyover shots in the trailer, establishing the world of the game, a choice of action or tactical gameplay and a fairly diverse looking cast of playable characters, and Criterion's as yet untitled vehicular action game featuring helicopters, atv's, jetskiis, snowmobiles, wingsuits and more.

(Criterion's Untitled Vehicle game trailer)

Other non sports titles announced by EA include The Sims 4 which seemed to celebrate features that apparently appear for the first time in the series, but were basically present in at least the first two installments, Mirror's Edge 2 which promised less linearity and more realism once released, a new Mass Effect game, and Dawngate, a MOBA which is currently taking on player suggestions to craft it into a better experience; these included giving the characters a large and interconnected backstory to provide battles with more meaning to players.

The final title announced that isn't a sports game was Battlefield: Hardline which features "Cops vs Criminals" style gameplay for up to 32 players online, with action style chases, gunbattles and destructible environments. While it's unclear just how different the game will be to other shooters of this generation, the concept seems to be solid and if executed well could foster a large community of players. The beta for the game was announced at the conference and is available for PS4 players.

(Battlefield: Hardline gameplay footage)

Most of EA's sports titles seemed to promise improvements which should have been implemented years ago, such as "corner flags that move", "interesting defence" and "adding more emotion". EA Sports Golf got the best feature of the group, with a course editor that includes the ability to add battleships and other obstacles to your custom holes. Overall though EA's UFC, NHL, FIFA, Madden and Golf franchise games will most likely be bought by the same people who purchased previous instalments in each series.

As EA appeared on my bottom 5 publisher list earlier on this year, you might expect me to have disliked their presentation. While I wasn't excited for every game they showcased, there were a few good ideas on offer, and their insistence that they wanted to listen to what players want from their games left me slightly more positive. Let's just hope that they want to hear from gamers who disagree with them, as well as their fans.

Ubisoft's presentation showcased the least amount of games of the big 5, with just 8 games discussed and demonstrated. With an hour to fill, this left time for an in depth look at some of their upcoming titles. Three of their titles were shown in some depth at other conferences; Tom Clancy's: The Division, Farcry 4, and Assassin's Creed Unity. All of these looked like solid additions to their respective franchises, and I'll be elaborating a little more on the first two once I get to the Sony conference.

Another tie for most exciting game occurred with Assassin's Creed: Unity showing off what seemed to be truly next gen graphics and gameplay set in the French revolution, despite its rather boring cast of indistinguishable pale dudes. The other game which caught my eye was The Crew, a beautiful coast to coast driving game across the USA without any loading screens, featuring 2 hour+ missions and multiplayer capabilities.

(The Crew gameplay trailer)

Two rather boring announcements (from my point of view) were Just Dance 2015, and Shape Up, a new fitness game which promised to feature more of a gaming approach to fitness, allowing players to enjoy working out. The final two games to be announced by Ubisoft were Valiant Hearts: The Great War, which uses the same art engine as Rayman: Origins, but only featured a cutscene style trailer, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege which appears to be a team based shooter, challenging players to either defend or capture a hostage in a domestic style setting.

(Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege gameplay trailer)

Overall Ubisoft's conference showcased a strong lineup of games; stronger than EA's lineup in my opinion. Although not everything they're producing was 100% interesting to me, I remain hopeful that at least 3 of their titles will be fully innovative and enjoyable gaming experiences.

Where Microsoft focussed solely on the new games coming to Xbox One, Sony's press conference featured a lot more discussion relating to their hardware, PSN, tv shows they were involved in making, remastered versions of games and old games coming to PS4. Amongst these announcements were Playstation TV, a new streaming device which allows players to watch tv series and films, access selected Playstation games, and (providing you have a PS4), play PS4 on a different television to the one it's attached to.

My favourite part of their 1 hour and 45 minute presentation was the announcement that the Hulk Smash move on Disney Infinity would be exclusive to PS4. In a way, I think that this sums up a lot of the 'exclusive content' announcements of late; they seem to be less and less exciting incentives. Obviously companies need some sort of lure towards buying games on their system, but 3 hours of extra gameplay, a few skins, exclusive missions, or one character's special move don't seem to me to be quite enough.

(The White PS4 Destiny Bundle announced at E3)

The main 8 games announced by Sony that make up the majority of their exciting news this E3 were Farcry 4 which had an impressive opening 5 minute cutscene and announced the ability for multiplayer with friends who don't even own the game. Dead Island 2 was also previewed with just a trailer to show fans what was to come. Battlefield: Hardline was shown a little more detail than at the EA conference, and Mortal Kombat X looked surprisingly good for a fighting game, especially one in the MK series.

The second set of 4 big announcements included the new gory Suda51 game Let It Die, which looked interesting. Batman: Arkham Knight looked largely like the other games in the recent Batman series, and even comparable to Batman: Arkham City on the WiiU, with a little more graphical power. Uncharted 4 got a teaser trailer, with Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain also receiving an interesting and exciting trailer.

(Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain Trailer)

In addition to these "Big 8" announcements, there were 6 game which I felt didn't quite look as impressive. Destiny promised an alpha which was open to gamers, two months before their beta, which was a short while before its release date. For a game with such a large budget, I'd have expected it to be released when it was ready. Infamous First Light was released as standalone DLC for Infamous: Second Son, and Entwined was shown off as an interesting indie style game where players control two separate creatures through space and attempt to ultimately link them up into a dragon.

Little Big Planet 3 announced 3 new characters in the franchise, adding new gameplay mechanics and options; Oddsock, Toggle and Swoop can help to solve different types of puzzles over each level. Bloodborne comes from the director of the recently popular Dark Souls series, and while graphically amazing, the trailer didn't show enough of gameplay to give a good idea of how the game would be. The final game in this set was The Order 1866, which is one of the exclusives for PS4. It looked to be fairly slow moving, and not as unique as originally touted, but again very little of the actual game was shown.

(Bloodborne Trailer)

The final set of games announced were remakes and indie titles. Two games from 2013 will be coming to the PS4 in the shape of The Last Of Us and GTA V. While these won't be hugely different from their PS3 counterparts, it's a good chance for those PS4 owners who had missed out on there experiences. Grim Fandango got a warm reception when a remake for PS4 was announced, and although I've not played the game myself, I'm glad that Sony are listening to fans in matters like this, as it could pave the way for other games (like Shenmue) to be re-released.

The Indie titles announced as coming to PS4 included but were not limited to; No Man's Sky, which is an interesting exploration game which promises to start each player in a different location and allow everyone to map the playable universe which is apparently infinite, and Abzu which is an underwater exploration style game, from the company Giant Squid.

(No Man's Sky Trailer) 

Overall, while Sony spent a little too long talking about tv shows they're developing and Playstation tv, their expansive lineup of new games and remasters justified having the longest runtime, and showed that the PS4's strong sales are likely set to continue in this console generation. Although most of the best games look to be multiplats so far, depending on your tastes, there are enough exclusives to justify getting a Playstation 4.

The final conference of E3 belonged to Nintendo, although they chose a digital event in which to showcase their offerings, rather than a traditional press conference. Despite being the shortest conference of E3, 11 games were announced, with the addition of 3 more later at the 'Nintendo Treehouse' event which showed gameplay and more details of many games featured in the digital event.

My pick of the games from Nintendo was surprisingly a shooter, though it's aim is more focussed on claiming and painting as much of the map as possible, rather than shooting other players (though doing so does have its advantages). Splatoon will allow 8 players to go head to head in 4v4 team matches dedicated to finding the best strategy with which to cover a map in paint. With the ability to turn into a squid to travel more quickly and recharge your paint, as well as the addition of super weapons and paint bombs, all this game seemed to need were a few more maps (which I'm sure will be added before its release).

(Splatoon Gameplay)

The announcement of a new Zelda game would have made for my top choice had they shown more than one minute of footage relating to it. While the trailer did look truly amazing and showcased the WiiU as a proper challenger to the other consoles in the generation, all it really confirmed was that a new open-world Zelda was coming soon. This was essentially the same for their Starfox announcement; a new game is coming, but you'll have to wait to see anything of it.

The new Smash Bros. game for WiiU and 3DS looked to be a worthy addition to the series with new challengers, stages and special attacks. At the Nintendo Treehouse event there was a Smash Bros. U tournament featuring 16 skilled Smash Bros. players which helped to showcase the game a little more than was shown in the Digital Event. Also mentioned was the fact the including the ability to fight as Miis means that "any" character can be modelled to fight in the game.

(Zelda WiiU trailer)

To go alongside Smash Bros. U, Nintendo announced the launch of Amiibo, small figurines of characters from their games which will interact with the NFC reader in the WiiU gamepad and have an effect on the game being played. While I think that gaming figurines are nice things to have and collect, I doubt that these will be particularly popular with most WiiU owners since they're not vital to gameplay, but are more of an accessory.

The two most 'hardcore' gaming titles coming to WiiU proved to be a mixed bag; Bayonetta 2 (which includes the first game) looks set to be a good continuation of the series, with plenty of action and features. As a WiiU exclusive my only real criticism is the Nintendo themed costume packs included as they seem unnecessary. Xenoblade Chronicles X on the other hand had a rather lacklustre trailer, visually, and the gameplay demo was even worse. It's framerate was inconsistent, and while the gameplay was better graphically, than the cutscene displayed in the trailer, there were many instances where players and objects clipped through eachother and somewhat ruined the immersion.

(Bayonetta 2 Trailer)

Nintendo's cutesy games received a fair showing this E3 with Yoshi's Wooly World looking like a spiritual successor to Yoshi's Story, Captain Toad seemingly launching a full game out of Toad's minigame from Super Mario 3D Land with added features and levels, and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, which looked to be the best of the 3, for its touchpad based play and colourful design.

Hyrule Warriors was touched lightly upon in the Digital Event, but had a gameplay showcase later on at the Nintendo Treehouse, at which the game looked like it'd be interesting for Zelda fans, as a stopgap before the newly announced open world game, and fun for fans of the Dynasty Warriors and similar series. The new Pokemon remakes were also shown in a little more detail and although in a lot of ways fans of the series already know what to expect, it was interesting to see some new Mega Evolutions.

(Kirby and the Rainbow Curse Gameplay Trailer)

I'm hoping that the final three games announced by Nintendo will be released as eshop downloads since I'm not sure they'd be worth full retail price. Mario Maker gives players the ability to design and edit their own Mario levels, for near infinite options and challenges, Giant Robot challenges players to robot duels amongst skyscrapers in a city using the WiiU gamepad to push other robots to the floor, and Project Guard plays a little like a tower defence game where the player with the gamepad needs help from their friends to spot all of the invading robots and put a halt to their infiltration. The last two of these games are projects by Shigeru Miyamoto, so I'm hoping that they will live up to his past standard of work.

On the whole Nintendo had some exciting announcements, and many of their games look fun, although there weren't too many surprises in their Digital Event. Pac-man was announced as a playable character in Smash Bros U/3DS, since Namco Bandai are developing the game, and the new Starfox game was confirmed at the Nintendo Treehouse event, so players have things to look forward to even if there weren't many unexpected announcements.

(Project Guard Screenshot)

So that's all the conferences from this year's E3. With a look at over 60 games across all 5 conferences, there's something for every gamer to be excited about. Personally I don't like the idea of any one company having "won" E3; there are good conferences and not so good conferences, and EA had the only conference that I'd say wasn't quite up to scratch. In terms of the Big 3, both Sony and Microsoft announced many new titles for their consoles, a fair few of which are multiplatform titles with some content first on either system. Nintendo in contrast announced a fairly strong lineup of games, though I'd say they came in a little behind the other two conferences, despite exciting games like Splatoon and the new Zelda.

My Top 5 most exciting games this E3 are as follows;

1. Sunset Overdrive (Xbox One)
2. Splatoon (WiiU)
3. Assassin's Creed: Unity (Xbox One/PS4)
4. The Crew (PS4/Xbox One)
5. No Man's Sky (PS4)

(remember that I haven't seen enough of the new open world Zelda to get hyped for it yet, or it would be at the top) and I'd have to say the the worst game showcased was Xenoblade Chronicles X as it definitely didn't seem to be "next gen". Monolith Soft have time to fix it however, and I hope that they do.

So hopefully that's given you some insight into what went on at E3 if you missed all/any of the conferences, and if you didn't then you're now aware of my opinions on the games announced. Feel free to disagree, or tell me what games you're excited for that were announced at the conference too!

Gaming History: Light gun games

If you've ever been to a video game arcade, then you'll have probably seen at least one light gun gaming cabinet where players are tasked with hitting on screen targets by aiming a gun shaped controller at the screen and pulling the trigger. Many of these types of games have also received a home console port, intended to work with gun peripherals for their respective systems.

The first recorded light gun game in an arcade was Seeburg's "Ray-O-Lite", the objective of which was to shoot a duck (which was an actual moving target with a light sensing tube attached) with a gun that emitted a ray of light. When the light was detected by the sensor on the duck, it would count as a hit, the duck would fall, and a point would be scored by the player. While simple, this essentially describes the process of most light gun games in existence, even if the way that it is achieved has changed dramatically.

(Seeburg Ray-O-Lite Cabinet - 1936)

Sega's first successful game, in 1968 was also a light gun style title called Periscope in which players targeted cardboard ships. In addition to being the first arcade game to charge a quarter per play, the game featured both mechanical and electronic sound effects, viewing windows for spectators and a series of lights to heighten the player's immersion.

Nintendo too produced some notable light gun arcade games before their entry into the home console market; 1973's "Laser Clay Shooting System" almost saw the company go bankrupt with a 5 million yen debt due to the oil crisis at the time. It wasn't until a smaller, cheaper version of the cabinet was produced that it began to be successful. Another more famous light gun title by Nintendo is 1974's "Wild Gunman" which began life as an arcade cabinet, featuring full motion video of a cowboy challenging players to a duel. 

(Wild Gunman for Famicom - 1984)

When the Famicom was released in Japan in 1984, the Beam Gun (or NES Zapper as it's known abroad) was quickly released as an accessory for the console. By the 1985 release of the NES in the USA, the Zapper was bundled with the console. With 7 specific light gun games, and 18 in total that worked with the peripheral, it made a noticeable impact on gaming at the time, even if the market for light gun games was fairly small. 

Sega too attempted a light gun accessory with their 3rd generation console; the Light Phaser, which had 13 (slightly more varied) games specifically for use with it. These two light guns worked differently to the early models, creating a black screen on the television for a single frame, before displaying white hit boxes over targets for specific periods of time, to be detected by the guns. There are plenty of rumours that guns could simply be pointed at light bulbs and would detect hits, but unless a game's programming was particularly faulty, this was not the case. 

(Space Station Defender from Menacer 6 in 1 Light Gun Cartridge for Sega Genesis - 1992) 

The fourth generation of home consoles didn't have a great amount of light gun games, despite light guns being released by Sega, Nintendo and Konami. Sega's Menacer was compatible with a 6-in-1 cartridge and two other games on the Mega Drive, as well as 6 FMV style Sega CD games, making a grand total of 9 games. 12 games worked with the Nintendo Super Scope, and the Justifier had just 9 compatible games in the 4th generation.

Fortunately the drought of light gun games in the fourth generation didn't carry over to the fifth, with the release of the Namco Guncon, and a Konami Justifier for Playstation. Among the games that worked with the Guncon were Time Crisis, Resident Evil: Survivor and Rescue Shot. While the Justifier worked with less games, it supported Die Hard Trilogy, Area 51 and Silent Hill amongst others. With a resurgence of quality light gun titles, the fifth generation set up a better future for the peripherals.

(Time Crisis for Playstation - 1996)

The fifth generation light guns were also more accurate than their older predecessors thanks to a change in how they worked. They used Cathode Ray Timing which sends a signal across the screen as the gun times how long it takes to detect the signal, and some maths is done to work out the destination of the bullet and register it as a hit or miss, all in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately neither this technology, nor that of the previous two generations works with flat screen televisions.

As gaming entered the sixth generation in 1999, the Dreamcast light gun was released with its own D-pad and A and B buttons, as well as being one of the most accurate light guns to date. Unfortunately, the untimely demise of the Dreamcast just two years later meant that only 2 light gun games were released that are compatible with PAL consoles; House of the Dead 2 and Confidential Mission (which are both excellent). With Time Crisis 2 and 3 coming out on the PS2 alongside the new Guncon 2, it was evident that light guns weren't just a thing of the past.

(House of the Dead Overkill for Wii - 2009)

With the advent of the Wii, Playstation Move and Xbox Kinect (to a lesser degree), "light" gun games have made a comeback as popular titles with games such as Resident Evil 4, Red Steel, Call of Duty and Goldeneye 007 using the Wiimote as a traditional lightgun style device (although technically there's not any light involved, but rather bluetooth signals). There is a large list of Wii titles and Playstation 3 titles which use the controller as a gun peripheral (or support the Guncon 3 in the Playstation's case).

In the eighth generation of consoles there's not yet been a light gun game, or a peripheral (besides the Wiimote) which supports this type of game. Whether this is a sign that light gun games have run their course and virtual reality is now waiting to give the added immersion that we seek or just due to the fact that the current generation is less than two years old I'm not sure. There's been a constant stream of light gun games in arcades from the 1936 Seeburg Ray-O-Lite to 2011's Friction, and beyond, which I'm sure will continue. 

Gaming History: Publishers

Video game publishers play a large part in the release and marketing of games, and often the development stages also. Good video games publishers will allow the developers to make a game which fits the original vision of the creator whilst appealing to both a core audience and other gamers alike. Bad video games publishers allow budgets, time constraints and obstacles to consistently get in the way of the development and release of video games resulting in a sub-standard product at release which is lucky to make its money back.

For this edition of Gaming History, I'll be looking at 5 good and 5 bad video games publishers, their history and what they've done right and wrong. While I don't think that every game released by these publishers is good or bad, there's an overwhelming majority of titles in their output which swing my opinion eitherway. I'll be starting with the good publishers, so that I can reference things later on which worse publishers could have done.

For most people, Sega is instantly associated with Sonic The Hedgehog. As both their mascot and flagship franchise, the Sonic games of the Mega Drive era received much critical acclaim and are widely regarded by many fans to be the best in the series. Whether or not this is true, Sega published a whole host of other great titles for the system such as Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Revenge of Shinobi, Comix Zone, Ristar, Toejam and Earl, Super Fantasy Zone and Vectorman. This wide choice of quality titles for their own system lead to its success alongside the Super Nintendo.

The very first home console I owned was a Sega Dreamcast which helped to shape my views on what video games should be. Particular favourites of mine from this era are arcade titles which had been ported to the Dreamcast such as Crazy Taxi, House Of The Dead 2, Sega Rally Championship 2, 18 Wheeler American Pro Trucker, Power Stone and Sega Bass Fishing. All of these titles retained an arcade feel with enough content and gameplay to justify a home release.

(Jet Set Radio for Sega Dreamcast - Published by Sega)

In addition to these arcade style games, the Dreamcast had a strong lineup of other titles such as Shenmue, Sonic Adventuer, Soul Calibur, Phantasy Star Online, Skies of Arcadia and Jet Set Radio, all published by Sega. While the Dreamcast didn't sell nearly as well as the Mega Drive, it seems that mistakes made in the 5th generation of consoles had more to do with this than any failings of the system itself.

In both of the eras I've discussed above, Sega had around 8 studios which produced games for them; the most famous of which being Sonic Team. Spreading their franchises out between teams which worked on every instalment of said franchise meant that games were made by people who already had experience of producing titles in that series, and were attempting to make quality titles to aid sales of Sega hardware.While their output seems to have gone downhill in recent years since they left the console market, I regard the Dreamcast Era and Mega Drive Era as proof that they were once one of the best video game publishers around.

I couldn't reasonably include Sega in a list of greatest video game publishers without talking about Nintendo also. While their approach to franchises and producing games has been markedly different historically, their output has been consistently full of quality and good games. Starting from the NES (released in 1985 in America) which reintroduced the public to quality video games as consumers began to flock back to the video game industry after the crash of 1983, titles such as Super Mario Bros 3, Metroid, Punch-Out!, and Legend Of Zelda gave gamers a taste of new, more detailed and exciting adventures.

The SNES era forced Nintendo into much greater competition with Sega, as the Mega Drive was released first and was quickly gaining a fanbase. Deciding to let their games do the talking for them, the SNES era produced new titles for most of their popular franchises as well as introducing titles such as Earthbound, Donkey Kong Country, Pilotwings, Pokemon, F-Zero, Starwing, and Kirby. These two eras saw the introduction of the majority of Nintendo's most well known franchises.

(Earthbound for SNES, Published by Nintendo)

The N64 era saw many third party publishers preferring Sony's disc based approach to gaming and leaving Nintendo to make games for their own console. Despite this the N64 managed to rack up 32 million sales worldwide on the strength of its gaming lineup. The top 20 best selling Nintendo 64 games were all published by Nintendo themselves, and are all highly rated and acclaimed video games. Without much 3rd party support, it would have been easy for the company to have given up hope of selling many systems, but instead they teamed up with Rare and their internal development teams to produce a stellar lineup for the system.

While gamers can criticise Nintendo all they like for sticking to the same franchises since the SNES era, both the Gamecube and the Wii had a lineup of quality titles which sold systems and held their value much better than many other releases. My respect for Nintendo comes from the fact that it would have been easy for them to release substandard games and resort to a slew of mediocre titles, selling on the weight of their franchise names, but they haven't. Pokemon, Mario and Zelda games of today are just as highly rated as their original counterparts.

Although I haven't played a lot of Capcom's recent titles or indeed a whole lot of Mega Man, their most well known franchise, they've still impressed me enough with other titles to warrant inclusion on this list. The first Capcom game I played was Power Stone for the Dreamcast, a 3D arena fighter where players compete to collect 3 power stones and transform into a far more powerful version of themselves in order to win the fight. There was an anime series based on the game which ran for 5 months after the game's release. What really impressed me about the game was the cast of original characters, exciting gameplay and overall mood of the game.

Before Power Stone even existed, Capcom were well known for their Street Fighter games, Street Fighter II particularly. With many improved versions and updates keeping the game fresh and relevant as a fighter, it enjoyed continued popularity and remains as arguably the most influential fighter of all time. Partially inspired by another Capcom Beat 'em up, Final Fight, Street Fighter II brought bonus stages, combos, special moves and increased arcade popularity to the fighting genre.

(Killer7 for PS2, published by Capcom)

Just after the short Dreamcast era, Capcom began to publish some surreal games which have gained much popularity since their release such as Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Killer7 and the Phoenix Wright series. While they had different roles in the production of all of these games, I'm confident that many of them would not have had as much character and charm without Capcom's involvement in the development and publishing process. In recent years they've continued this sort of ethic somewhat with the release of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective for the Nintendo DS.

Today Capcom are best known for their Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Monster Hunter and Mega Man series. All of these have had plenty of installments across many consoles and continue to please fans on the whole, despite a few fans who never seem to be satisfied. Overall Capcom are to thank for inspiring many of the fighting games we see today, as well as releasing fighters such as the Capcom vs SNK series. While they could easily have sat back and focussed on fighters once Street Fighter II was sucessful, gamers were instead given an excellent selection of games spanning many genres.

As the third largest video game publisher in the world behind Activision and EA, Ubisoft have an advantage over a lot of the publishers I've mentioned, however I still regard them fairly highly as a company. Their most beloved game series, Rayman has had many instalments from its inital release in 1995 up to the present day. The most recent game in the series, Rayman Legends had a very good critical reception, as have most of the games in the main series. While the spin-offs from the series haven't faired quite as well, the Rayman series as a whole is enjoyable and innovative.

Ubisoft brought the JRPG Grandia to the PS1 in Europe two years after its release in Japan, which is something I'm particularly grateful to them for, as I've been enjoying it between games for a few months now. Later Ubisoft published quite a few games for the Xbox's target market; (though many of these were on other consoles also) releasing Morrowind in Europe, the Tom Clancy series, the Far Cry series, and XIII, a cel-shaded comic book style first person shooter.

(No More Heroes for Wii, published by Ubisoft)

Ubisoft were also responsible for publishing some enjoyable titles for Nintendo's 7th and 8th generation consoles; No More Heroes and its sequel were enjoyable and innovative titles which challenged the player with becoming the top ranking assassin in a surreal world, with many humourous elements. While Red Steel didn't get the most amazing critical reviews, it made good use of the Wii's motion controls and was a decent launch title for the console. Another launch title published by Ubisoft was ZombiU for the WiiU. Again, the critical consensus was mixed but it's a game that I personally enjoyed.

The best known modern series published by Ubisoft would have to be Assassin's Creed which recently received a highly acclaimed 4th instalment. With titles in the series based in different historical time periods and vast locations to explore, the series has become incredibly popular. Alongside publishing traditional videogames, Ubisoft also released Rocksmith, a guitar hero-esque game which uses real guitars and is able to teach users to play them.

One of the most controversial video game publishers in existence, Rockstar Games are renowned for their Grand Theft Auto series, which tops sales charts for both the PS2 and PS3 with San Andreas and V respectively. The many intriguing and violent instalments of the series have been popular since the release of the original GTA in 1997. Other Rockstar titles which have attracted a lot of controversy are the Manhunt series and Bully, set in a boarding school, though it was far less violent than the two aforementioned games, and had a somewhat misleading title.

Rockstar have also published their fair share of stylised, film-like videogames including Max Payne, Red Dead Revolver and L.A. Noire. Having recently researched and reviewed L.A. Noire, I was surprised to find out how much of the development fell to Rockstar for the game, as Team Bondi who were initially responsible for development made mistakes and bad decisions in addition to treating their staff poorly. While I wasn't truly amazed by the final product, I'm sure it would have been far worse without Rockstar's input.

(GTA V for PS3, published by Rockstar)

Other games of note from Rockstar include a video game adaptation of the 1979 film "The Warriors", the Midnight Club racing series, and strangely "Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis" which is far better than it might seem and has a great 'pick up and play' quality to it, especially on the Wii. There's a good choice of characters to choose from, an in depth tutorial and a good difficulty curve to the career mode.

Overall there's no set formula for being a good video games publisher. Consistently releasing quality titles, in a series or over a range of genres, innovating and pushing the boundaries of video gaming and allowing titles which might not normally be published to be released are just a few of the things which have made the companies on this list great. My own personal criteria for a good publisher seems to be when I begin to notice that a few of the games I like are by the same people.

If you're a regular reader of my review blog then you'll be aware of the Simple Series. If not, then imagine a set of over 200 games for PS1 and PS2, amongst other consoles, produced and developed as cheaply as possible and published by D3 Publisher. With titles such as "The Chess" and "The Pro Wrestling", most of these games were only released in Japan, but around 80 of them made their way to Europe. From what I've played of these games, there's little effort put into the programming, most game modes are basically the same and there's hardly any play value to them.

As the idea of the Simple Series is to sell games at a budget price, having published them cheaply. The early simple series games were based on generic themes such as tennis, chess, or mahjong but extended to slightly more complex themes. The most popular Simple Series game, Earth Defense Force has made its name for being pretty bad but almost playable, spawning an entire series out of the idea.

(MaXXed Out Racing for PS2, published by D3 Publisher)

Outside of the Simple Series, D3 Publisher seems to enjoy acquiring licenses for kids television shows and other popular franchises and publishing rather mediocre if not outright rubbish games based on them. Examples of this include the recent Adventure Time: Explore The Dungeon Because I Don't Know!, Ben 10: Alien Force and Ed, Edd n Eddy: Scam Of The Century. While kids games have never been the most highly rated titles, producing horrific budget titles could put young fans off video games for life.

The worst thing about the budget titles produced by D3 Publisher are that even for the price you pay, they're nowhere near worth it. While I've decided to collect the PS1 and PS2 titles in the series, I'd never pay over £1 for anything in the series and no-one should ever have to. If you're looking for good value games then the pre-owned section is a far better bet.

Next up on the list of my least favourite game publishers are Midas Interactive who have gone through a few name changes including simply "Midas" and "Midas Touch". Their first crime against video games is bringing the Simple Series to the UK, as they publish most of the titles from the series which arrive here. In addition to this Midas publish budget games in the UK much the same way that D3 Publisher do in Japan. Most Midas games are so budget that they don't have a metacritic rating of any sort, and the ones that do are mediocre if not bad.

Of the two games I've reviewed by Midas, (I'm not that keen on picking up any more, outside of the Simple Series) I'm not sure which was worse. The first is X-treme Express, a train racing game which while novel, felt incredibly budget, didn't have much choice of game modes and looked graphically poor. It turns out that racing on straight tracks is just as boring as it'd seem. Players are allowed to switch rails at certain points in the game, but the bad AI and controls make it almost unenjoyable.

(Xtreme Express for PS2, published by Midas Interactive)

The other game; Golden Age Of Racing was a classic style racer featuring cars from the 1960s. Unfortunately turning was impossible at any speed above 40mph, and even then it took considerable effort. In addition to failing at the basics of being a racing game, it suffers from a lot of the same problems as Xtreme Express. I don't hate Midas for being a budget games publisher, but the amount of effort they put into any of their titles seems minimal. None of their titles seem to have much depth or replayability to them either.

Midway began their life by distributing Space Invaders and Pac-Man in the USA. After this they published some arcade titles of their own, which in more recent years have made it onto "Midway Arcade Treasures" collections. Three of them. So, what sort of arcade classics warrant having 3 individual collections of games? There's Defender which technically wasn't even published by Midway, but Williams Electronics who merged with them 8 years after the release of the game. Or maybe Joust, another Williams game? Marble Madness? Paperboy? The only game that I can honestly say is worth playing on any of the Arcade Treasures collections is Smash TV, and once again it's by Williams.

Okay, so most of their claims to fame in the early arcade era were actually by Williams, but there's the Mortal Kombat series? Personally I think Mortal Kombat is a pretty mediocre fighter with poor AI and little appeal outside of the fatalities. Primal Rage is another game which is referred to lovingly by nostalgic fans every now and then, but really isn't much fun at all. In fact I can only think of two Midway games I even enjoyed; Showtime NBA on NBC and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing.

(San Francisco Rush on N64, published by Midway)

The rest of Midway's output seems to be about making updated versions of their arcade "classics". Examples of this are L.A. Rush, an attempt to update the San Francisco Rush series, which included a licensed West Coast Customs and horrible gameplay, Rampage: Total Destruction for the Wii which made some of the worst use of the motion controls that I've seen, and the various updates to the Crus'n series which haven't got any better since the first game.

Overall Midway were the type of publisher that relied on their previous games and franchises to keep their business alive. Unfortunately most of these were aquired when the company merged with Williams, and most of the games that weren't aren't worth playing. Midway went into liquidation in 2009 as they ran out of franchises to produce a new version of. Probably.

Before Activision, third party developers didn't exist. While being the first was quite an achievement at the time, it was bound to happen at some point, and doesn't shield them from criticism, particularly in their present day dealings. It's not until around 1999 that Activision began to do anything of particular note, but around this time they began to acquire developers whose games they were publishing such as Neversoft and the Tony Hawk's Series, Treyarch and Infinity Ward with the Call Of Duty series and Luxoflux and the Vigilante 8 series.

Instead of developing and publishing games themselves, Activision acquired developers and published their games, with much more creative control over the process as they owned the developers. Some of the developers acquired by Activision were only able to produce a few games before going out of business, such as Bizarre Creations (makers of Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham Racing), and Luxoflux (who made the True Crime series whilst owned by Activision).

(True Crime New York City for PS2, published by Activison)

Activision's best known game series to date, Call of Duty is also the 8th best selling franchise ever. While its widespread popularity is well documented, so are concerns of unoriginality between instalments of the series and short single player modes which give way to focus on the multiplayer aspects of the series. While the gameplay seems to have kept a consistent quality of sorts, there's not been much progression for a series on it's 10th instalment.

Overall Activision seems to rely on bringing out two new Call Of Duty games a years, buying developers who seem like they might have a good franchise and then letting them go out of business if they don't. While I don't deny that there have been some good Activision published titles over the years, it doesn't make up for or excuse their behaviour in general.

My final publisher on the list of bad ones is possibly the worst. EA Games received the Worst Company in America award for 2012 and 2013, for poor treatment of their staff and customers. Over the years they've produced some enjoyable games, but in a lot of cases they've acquired developers who were already making good games in the same way as Activision and passed the product off as their own.

Some fine examples of this sort of activity are their purchase of Criterion Games, makers of Burnout (one of Need For Speed's biggest rivals), Maxis, makers of the Sims (now EA Maxis, so that EA can get extra credit), BioWare (makers of Mass Effect), and Bullfrog Productions (makers of Populous, who are now defunct, following the EA takeover).

(Dungeon Keeper for Mobile Devices, published by EA)

More recently, EA released a mobile version of the Bullfrog Productions game "Dungeon Keeper", except that the gameplay had been changed to fit a free-to-play model which eventually demands cash out of the player if they wish to make any decent progress. Add this to the fact that EA had fixed the rating system for the app so that users could only give 5 stars and you have something that can hardly be called a game, so much as a pay-to-win experience being released by EA.

Some of EA's biggest moneymakers are their sports games; FIFA, NBA, NHL, and Madden games are all pretty popular and bought by gamers regardless of their similarity to last season's game. In a lot of ways this is worse than my frustrations with Activision for releasing similar Call of Duty games. Personally I'd like to see a definitive version of each sports game released and then have EA wait until there's a large enough technological advance to actually warrant a new game. It's not as if rosters couldn't be updated with simple downloads anyway.

With more and more examples of EA's greed and lack of respect for their consumers being documented in the media in the past few years, gamers have started wonder just how long the company will be able to completely ignore what they want before a complete boycott of their games ensues. The release of Simcity caused some discussion of this, and I'm sure it won't be long until there's more.

A few companies that were close to making these lists were Atlus and Konami, on the good side and Microsoft Studios (purely for ruining Rare) on the bad, but I didn't feel that I had compelling enough reasons to put these companies on here.

All in all there's no recipe for how to be a good publisher, but perhaps there is for being a bad one. Trying to make games as cheaply as possible to sell at a budget price hardly ever produces satisfying results, if at all. Attempting to cash in on past successes that we're particularly good to start with won't get you very far either, and acquiring any studio that is making a sucessful game so that you can be on the publishing credits, only to continue the series by keeping everything exactly the same for 10+ instalments is probably the worst publishing sin of all.