Games Analysis (I Get to Play Games) and game cover analysis

"Mega Man X"
This is a game that set the tone for the console it was introduced in, the SNES.

the story of this game follows X the PC of the game. It starts with a boss battle that is designed to make you loose and genuinely feel powerless. this links nicely to what Ben 'Yahtzee' Crowshaw talks about in game design when he refers to the "Show don't tell rule" that a game is much more enhanced by you feeling an emotion by experiencing it in gameplay rather than a cutscene or a plain text box telling you how to feel or making your character feel helpless not you as the paler of the game.
It continues on as you are rescued by the character 'Zero'. the plot is then loosely set but you must fight your way through the "Robot Masters" combining in you collecting upgrades and fighting the final boss becoming more powerful than the role model character "Zero".
The gameplay for this game is incredible as it was revolutionary for its time, taking the original format for the original mega man games and pumping in a large amount of creativity and ingenuity. as Arin Hansin of EgoRaptor fame says "it is much better when a game Teaches you through gameplay" and as far as this game is concerned there is nothing that this game throws at you like a text box that intrinsically tells you how to play the game but instead opts to teach everything through gameplay. a great example is one of the mini bosses who spawns slow enemies but at first only one, it is slow enough for you to realise that hitting it in its legs is doing nothing and you are drawn to jump and shoot causing visible damage. this example may seem relatively small but this actually sets up the idea that some enemies have sweet spots where that is the only spot they take damage and this for many enemies is a recurring theme.
Theming in a game is important for its coherence and as you play this game you will see that each area has its own unique personality through visuals, level design and music. This means the game never feels stale or like is is stagnating which for some of the earlier megaman games was an issue. despite each level having its own identity you never feel like this is not a mega man game. the over running theme for the whole game is to become stronger than the boss you lost to at the start and every level has this as its underlying theme even down to the bosses.
In the end of the game before fighting the last boss you have to complete a boss rush, where you fight every boss in succession. this is perfect in its theming as instead of feeling like the developers were padding out for gameplay time you feel like you have grown and become powerful as each boss fall quickly under your massively upgraded self and you as the players more superior skill compered to the beginning.
the level design is intuitive but still holds much challenge. each area is a straight forward level progression that gets eventually more and more difficult as you get closer and closer to the boss. It rewards exploration finding new upgrades not signposted, hidden bosses and even health items or sub tanks. To be able to do this in a platformer requires a fair amount of skill as while some areas are branching paths you never find yourself not knowing where to go. this is done through hidden areas with objects that seem like walls but you can walk through them to a new area. the entire game is full of new ideas (for the time) such as this.
The music is perfectly constructed to fit in with the level and there are even musical cues that means the music changes for different situations. The music is suited for each area. the fast paced levels have a quick tempo melody fitted to it with more bass and a beat to it while the slower more thoughtful areas that require a level of puzzle solving are slower with a much more heavy focus on lead melody over the bass or beat.
For the SNES this game must have been good at one huge thing in regards to coding and that is conservation of space. The SNES cart rages had very little space on them and as a result it was required to code temporary values that self destruct as soon as they are not needed, this level of coding will require a huge amount of competence in coding as well as the patience to scrawl though the hundreds of lines of code to find the one line that is still interacting with the destroyed item of coding.

Overall this game deserves the critical acclaim this game gets whenever the SNES is mentioned as it takes on the life of its predecessors and makes something new.

"MineCraft"

Minecraft is Minecraft and as a result is very hard to explain in simple terms as it does so much different in comparison to basically every game ever.

Firstly it's story or at the least the lack there of. If you were to walk in to any AAA game studio and you were to pitch this game it would sound a bit like this:

"Hello mr. Ideaforagame how can I help you?"

"Well I have an idea for a brand new game called Minecraft."

"Okay so what is the story for this game?"

"There isn't one." 

"Uh okay so how would the player you know play? What would the objective be?"

"Well there really isn't an objective."

"Then how can you call it a game?"

This is unfair to Minecraft as the recent updates have attempted to throw some semblance of an objective in but it is still entirely player driven. There is no plot and no objectives so the fun you have is the fun you take from it. The best description I have ever heard for this game was "a creative builder game with enemy's" and that really is the only way to look at it.

The game play is interesting as you have two main things you can do: destroy and build.

You can build a pickaxe to destroy a huge mountain to build your own castle. As a game that is all there is to it, as it said you get out of this game what ever fun you can find. Some players will crank up the difficulty and fight hords of enemy zombies and exploding shrub monsters while others may turn it on to peaceful to play the game as a creator of there very own home built town, or some may attempt both at the same time.

The music for this game is interesting for two main reasons: number one it hardly exists, number two you can find your own music. 

All the music in this game is incredibly docile and is only played to symbolise the passing of time so you get one peace for the morning and one for as the sun sets so the music in this game is more of a mechanic than it is to add to the experience of the game itself. It is useful as mechanics goes as a lot of the time you are going to be inside vast caves or mines and knowing the difference between wether it is day or night outside is a life savour.

To my second point you can find music with in the game as well. If you find one of the records that are scattered around and only findable with a spoon full of luck you can build your own jukebox and I feel this adds to the game as it incentivises exploration and experimentation, both of which are huge mechanics within Minecraft.

Everything in this game feels perfectly tailored to pushing the player to make there own fun within the game and the graphics are no exemption to this.

The graphics are blocky, as everything is blocks. Everything is made out of the 3D equivalent to a pixel on the NES and this means that everything in the game becomes so much more simple to see and understand, this is a must in a game that try's to get the player to make there own fun.

One thing you find in many AAA titles is sometimes the graphics can make gameplay confusing especially today in the world of perfect particle effects and realism so good becoming emerged is easy, and as a result things need to be sign posted more and more and games become more linear because of this and that is why the very basic graphics of Minecraft are so perfect for that type of game.

This game has more players than the most current call of duty game and as a result this game can easily be considered a commercial success and is loved by so many fans that it is hard to criticise this game for anything as anything negative is there to add to the experience.

My Final Analysis is a video found here:

 Balloon Fight

For the NES this is a very standard cover for a "classic" NES game. The top section is souly for the the art work of the game the part that (similar to magazines) would be seen at an old BlockBuster or any shop that sells or rent games. The top half is exiting and full of all the fun art work for this reason and is meant to catch your eye.

The sight of this format of NES games really helped nintendo create a brand for itself for games either they published or others published and looking to ride on the recognition of the Nintendo logo on the box. the colour scheme as with every game in that era was limited to the 8-Bit processor of the NES and the use of hexadecimal data to actually code everything  leaving them will a full pallet that looked like this...

as a result art work for games also where as a rule relegated to the same colour pallet.

the top ballooner going over the top border for the image is a good design choice as it gives the cover a more layered and ironically 3D feel to it. while this may seem to be the sort of design choice that seems like it goes against the common convention but in fact leaving the border is more common that staying inside the border. this is because this new generation of gaming was aimed towards young kids and this plays to the idea that they are all rebellious figuratively showing going out of the lines by literally going out of the lines, Playing up to the dual Hebdige stereo type of  “youth as fun” and “youth as trouble maker.”

in admittance this style is only stereo typical of the very early era of the NES and for less than 1/2 of the total market but it shows how the games industry was treated at the very start of the gaming rebirth and how they wanted to distance themselves from the elaborate covers of the Atari 2600's games.

Battle Toads

Not going to lie but this may be one of my number one covers of all time because of how insane it is and how indicative of an era this was. while the first cover is very much "early NES" era games wanted to stand out so as a result they did away with the minimalism and just went 100% 90s.
there is a lot going on within the screen and is the definition of contrast. the two main colour of this is the green and yellow of not only the battle toad himself but also the masthead, while at the same time boasting a violet, white and blue background that makes the colours of the toad and the title pop out more.
One of the first things you will notice is that this is different from the first cover as it doesn't use sprites from the game but rather an artists impression of how the games looked and for many the covers embodied how you felt playing the games (Unless you were playing two player on battle toads because Jesus Christ).
there is always little to say about game covers for one reason and that is because even today game covers hold a minimalistic approach to summarizing the game in one image. I mean for god sake this is probably one of the more complex covers and it tells you three things: There are toads, you fight those guys, and this game is awesome, and that is all you get.
one aspect this cover holds as a convention that is followed on by the mainstream game industry and that is having the cover of the main character facing the "Camera" representing the character as if taken from a low angled shot. this is always used for the main character when it is used and coveys the power of the character, creating a feeling of awe, and aspiration while you play the game.