The 1967 Hobbit or ‘What did I just watch!?’

 My son recently forced me to watch the 1967 animated adaptation of The Hobbit. Not to be confused with the 1977 Rankin-Bass adaptation. That one is profoundly awesome.

It was produced by Rembrandt Films, a Prague-based studio. They had bought the rights cheaply before the books really took off. Then, they made it at the last minute in order to hang onto the rights when said rights were actually becoming valuable.

Our son described the end result as narrated slide show. The whole thing is only twelve minutes long and was made by Gene Deitch, a name that I was familiar with from the animation history book Of Mice and Magic.

I honestly had two reactions to the work.

The first and most striking was that, taken as an adaptation, it was an absolute travesty. In fact, Deitch has gone on record being thankful that Tolkien never saw it even though he was alive at the time.

It is downright mind boggling how many differences there are from the book. Even virtually all of the names are changed. I’m pretty sure Bilbo and Gandolf are the only characters who get to keep their names. 

Bilbo, instead of being asked to be a burglar, is now prophesied to be a dragon slayer. He has only three traveling buddies, including a princess he ends up marrying. And they kill the evil dragon Slag with a makeshift Ballista using the Arkenstone as the tip of the bolt.

My jaw actually dropped several times watching it. The changes were breathtaking and, from a modern view, ranged from audacious to horrific. 

My other reaction was, if taken completely out of context and divorced from any knowledge of Tolkien, it was actually rather pretty.

The animation was beyond limited. Almost everything were still shots with some zooming in or rotating the picture. The art style was very evocative of a children’s book. Yet, at the same time, there was a clear, consistent vision, the vibe of a whimsical fairy tale.

Honestly, if I’d seen this as a young child and it was called The Little Dragon Slayer, I’d have been entertained. There is some artistry hidden in there.

With that said, morbid curiosity is the only real reason to watch it.

Fintastic is a simple game with a simple twist that I enjoy

 I found out about Fintastic via the PnP Arcade newsletter. It's an eighteen-card solitaire game that's themed around fishing. And, as simple as it honestly is, it turned out to have more going on than I expected.

In addition to a fisherman card, a fish card, and a reference card, the game is made up of fifteen water cards. Each water card is a two by three grid. The spaces are either blank or have symbols like frogs and cattails on them. (There's a total of six different scoring symbols) One space on each card will always have a fishing bobber on it.

Put down the fisherman card. Put the fish card three card spaces away from it. The cards you used to measure that distance are your starting hand. There, you're ready to play. 

Fintastic is a tile-laying game. You always have to overlap at least one square and you always have to cover up the bobber on the last card. You make a path to the fish. You add the fish card to your hand, which then has a reduced size. You make a path back, same rules, to place the fish card on the fisherman card.

I played a learning game and thought that was pretty easy. Then I looked at the scoring.

I was using the most forgiving scoring chart. Fintastic actually has three different ones, getting (or losing) points depending on symbols being adjacent. You always get a point for lily pads and lose points for cattails and beer cans. In the easy, most forgiving chart, you get a points for swans next to swans, beavers next to cattails and frogs next to lily pads. Learning game? I was in the negatives.

And I was sold on Fintastic. 

A tile laying game where you have to align symbols is nothing new. Micro Rome, for instance, does it very well. Where Fintastic stood out was that you have to go back the way you came. The clever plans that I had on my way to the fish ended up getting covered up on the way back. The only times I've failed to land a fish has been when I was trying to be clever and maximize my score. The challenge isn't completing the board by landing the fish. The challenge is scoring points.

As I mentioned, Fintastic has three different scoring charts that increase in difficulty as they go. There are also alternate starting setups to make your life more complicated. Most games offer different degrees of difficulty and it's nice for Fintastic to do the same.

Look, if you only are looking for only one or two micro tile-laying games in your collection, Fintastic wouldn't be my recommendation. (My recomendations wouldn't be any kind of surprise. They’d be Spawlopolis or Orchard) However, if you are like me and cycle through a lot of them, Fintastic offers enough interesting choices and unusual design choices to see some decent play.

https://doublemonk.itch.io/fintastic

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort keeps the spirit of Wii Sports alive

 I very quickly realized that Nintendo Switch Sports Resort pretty much fired Nintendo Switch Sports for me. Which is how it's kind of supposed to work but Resort completely eclipses the earlier game for me which only came out four years ago. In comparison, as much as I really enjoy Mario Kart World, Mario Kart 8 deluxe still has a lot of play for me and that came out eight years and two platforms before World.

I still remember being at a party shortly after the Wii came out and playing tennis on Wii sports. While it didn't make me go out and buy a Wii, it was a transformative experience for me.  It wasn't really like playing tennis but it was much closer than Pong. It was socially engaging and physically active. I had even less video game awareness than I have now but that one tennis game completely revised my thoughts on what was possible with a video game. I still think of it as a revolution.

By the time Nintendo Switch Sports came out, the Switch was a mainstay in our home. My wife and our kid love video games, specifically Nintendo, and Animal Crossing keeping me sane in 2020 got me a lot more engaged as well. I hoped Nintendo Switch Sports would recapture the magic of Wii Sports for me. And, you know what? It did. The formula is simple on paper but it works. Use motion controls to imitate sports. Makes perfect sense right off the bat.

But when Nintendo Switch Sports Resorts came out? Resort kept everything that I was actually doing with Sports and added so much more. 

There are only three games that have been dropped from the lineup and I only regularly played one of them, Badminton. Resort added Table Tennis, which scratches the same itch while being more meaningfully different than tennis Tennis. Mainstays like Tennis or Golf or Bowling are still there. It is amazing how relaxing a game or two of virtual bowling can be. And DLC and patches are industry standard now so I'm expecting more games will be added. (And I'm good if that doesn't happen)

And I am pretty sure that resort increased the level of motion sensitivity and fidelity. Which actually makes things more difficult because it means you have to work harder on being accurate, but that gives me a reason to keep on playing.

But... what makes Nintendo Switch Sports Resort bury Nintendo Switch Sports in an unmarked grave is Wuhu Island. Nintendo Switch Sports took place at Spocco Square which was basically just a menu for sports. It didn't have any actual meaning for the game or gameplay. Nintendo Switch Sports Resort lets you explore the actual island via plane, jet ski and skate board. Wuhu Island is treated as an actual place. When you fly the prop plane over the golf course, it looks like the golf course you play on.

Ironically, these are all activities that you can do sitting down so they are farther away from being sports simulations than any of the other activities.

Our entire family has gotten into the sightseeing option, which has you hunt down floating cameras and interaction with the environment in other ways. It lets you explore while giving you some additional purpose. Free play is also available if you want to just wander but we like having a goal. Really, the three exploration activities are more like 'regular' video games but they add a lot of play for us.

Compared to the Hyrule of Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, Wuhu Island isn't that big. But it is big enough to keep you busy as you explore it in different ways.

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort isn't deep but it gives me a reason to keep moving.

A Meeting With Medusa is all about setting, setting, setting

 While most of the Tor Double Novel series republished New Wave or post-New Wave works, the headliner of the very first volume Arthur C. Clarke's A Meeting with Medusa. Clarke isn't a name I see associated with the more cynical, mature and philosophical bent of New Wave. That being said, I honestly assume works like Childhood's End, 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Nine Billion Names of God had some influence on New Wave.

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A Meeting with Medusa is about the first manned exploration of Jupiter. Since Jupiter is a gas giant, this has to be done with the high tech equivalent of a hot air balloon, although the balloon has to use super heated hydrogen to function in Jupiter's atmosphere. As you'd expect from Clarke, when actual science gets involved in the plot, he goes all in.

The protagonist, pilot and sole occupant of Kon Tiki high tech balloon is Howard Falcon. His personal story serves as bookends for the novella. At the start, we read about the terrible accident that forces medical science to turn him into a cyborg. At the end, we are shown, for the first time, how heavily he has been rebuilt, to the point where he has wheels instead of feet.  There is a thin theme about how Falcon is now a liminal being, existing in between worlds and can act as a bridge between them.

But that's not why anyone remembers A Meeting with Medusa.

No, what you take away from this book is Clarke's vibrant vision of Jupiter, including what kind of life could evolve in that kind of environment. In this case, medusa does not refer to the Greek legend but the jellyfish. Clarke's vision is very much of sea life, floating and gliding through the thick atmosphere. And the showpiece of this vision is indeed a jellyfish ten times larger than a whale. That might even be intelligent.

The plot is remarkably thin. Falcon goes to Jupiter, observes the fantastic landscape and makes reasonable decisions in order to get back safely. The opening scene of the balloon crash that cripples Falcon is easily the most dramatic part of the entire book.

But again, that doesn't matter. What you take away from the book is the setting and that is worth the price of reading. I don't know if that was Clarke's real point in writing the work but it has become the point. 

In the decades since A Meeting with Medusa, Clarke’s vision of Jupiter’s ecology as a fusion of sea life and ballooning has informed many later visions of Jupiter. In fact, while reading it, I realized that the 1980 National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe used it as the basis for theoretical life on Jupiter.

As a work of fiction, A Meeting with Medusa isn’t that strong. As an exercise in world building, it’s amazing.

My October Gaming

 October was another crazy busy month. To be honest, I know adulting will be heavy for the rest of the year other than the holidays.

I learned:

Adventurous - Outlands (playtest)

Roll and Robot (design contest)

Banana Carts (playtest)

Leap Frog (Alexander Shen)

Untitled Simply Solo #12 (playtest)

Fintastic

October gave me the gift of a bunch of Buttonshy Playtests. Which I sadly didn't have a lot of time for but it gave my game time more structure and purpose. That was really quite nice. I will say that I found Adventurous - Outlands significantly more enjoyable than the original game. A few changes made the game more intuitive for me. And I was surprised and delighted at the hidden rigor of Banana Carts. The cute artwork (which will be a real selling point) hid some interesting choices.

Roll and Robot is perhaps the quintessential example of a Roll and Write that I squeezed in to make sure I learned a new R&W. Quick and simple with mechanics I am already very familiar with.  That said, it was a very chill experience. It's not a challenging game, in fact the more unique bits make it less challenging than similar games. However, it will get some play from me just as a way to relax.

Fintastic is a tile-laying game that has one tiny twist that makes it interesting. You have to make a path of tiles to a fish but then you have to make a path back to the fisherman. So, while you try to set up scoring combinations, you can end up being forced to cover them on the way back.

I am hoping Thanksgiving will give me the chance to get some heavier gaming in. However, Buttonshy really made my October.

My October PnP

 Play testing drove both my PnP crafting and game play in October. October was a very busy month with lots of adulting but play testing gave me a reason to kick gaming up a notch.

I made:

Adventurous - Outland (playtest)

Banana Carts (playtest)

Fintastic 

Roll and Robot

Legends of Mana Island (base map)

Leap Frog (Alexander Shen)

Pocket Landship (Star Wars fan variant)

Untitled Simply Solo #12  (play test) 

I guess Fintastic or Leap Frog would count as my ‘big’ build for the month, even though some of the play tests were at least as big. But those aren’t exactly final versions so it doesn’t feel right to count them.

I sadly did not get a lot of play out of anything I made or anything else. Still, having the play tests made both my crafting and playing more structured than September. That was good.

A lot of anyone’s time is spent adulting (or, in the case of a kid, training for adulting) but it’s healthy to work in some play.

Palm Laboratory builds on its island little brother

 Palm Island was a watershed game for me. It wasn’t the first In Hand game I learned but it really kicked off my interest in the medium. And I still think it is one of the best, between a solid decision tree and intuitive game play.

However, I think that it’s sequel, Palm Laboratory, is better.

Like its younger sibling, Palm Laboratory is an In Hand game, in this case means a deck of cards that stays in your hand the entire game. Handy for when you don’t have a table.

There are functionally three things you can do with a card. You can discard any card, putting it at the back of the deck. Some cards can be turned sideways and put in the back of the deck, becoming resources. And cards can upgraded, spending resources to flip or rotate cards before you, yes, put them in back. Upgraded cards can be better resources or worth points or both.

In Palm Island, your deck is an island village that you are developing. In Palm Laboratory, it is a mad scientist’s lab and you are doing mad experiments. You know, using the same basic mechanics, different flavor.

The big change between the games is the addition of goal cards and a danger meter. In Palm Island, you play for eight rounds, plain and simple. Palm Laboratory makes it a bit more complicated.

At the bottom of the deck, there is a goal card and the danger meter. Each stage of the goal card requires you to pay a certain amount of resources. If you don’t upgrade the goal card, the danger meter goes up. And if it maxes out, it’s game over.

So, instead of eight rounds and trying to beat your own score, Palm Laboratory has variable rounds and a win-lose condition. On top of that, the goal cards don’t give you any points so you have to spend resources that keep you alive but don’t help your score.

There are three different goal cards. The resource goal, which is easy one, that just has you spend regular resources. The research goal and the experiment goal add cards to the deck, creating new types of resources that only count toward the goal card. Which still count towards your four active resource card limit. The research goal makes resource management much tighter while the goal card adds a push your luck element.

Oh, on top of that, you can add a helper card that will give some kind of resource and, for a very limited number of times, keep the danger meter from going up.

Palm Island offered a sleek resource management, engine building experience. Palm Laboratory adds a new layer of decisions and the very real threat of failure. Palm Laboratory adds some legitimate meat to the system without getting fiddly about it. 

Palm Laboratory isn’t just Palm Island with different art. The mechanical changes take it to the next level and I didn’t even know it there was a next level. 

Unfortunately, Palm Laboratory seems to be harder to find than Palm Island. Hopefully that will change because it is worth finding.