Balloon Buster

Balloon Buster game. Click to play in a new window.

I decided to create this game purely as a self-promotional piece. I was getting more Flash game work around 2005, and I wanted to have an example of a simple online game that I created to show potential or existing clients, as a way to demonstrate my abilities. I decided to leverage an existing animated version of myself that I'd already been using on my www.stevespatucci.com website, so as to give myself a little head start on the game.

This pea-soupy green is my favorite color, and as it was already the color of my animated self's shirt, I decided to stick with it and let it dictate the color scheme of the game. That may sound lazy, but with an open-ended project like this, every limitation helps move things along.

I worked out the concept - a retro-style shooting game where you throw water balloons at me, Steve, disguised (in some cases, poorly) as different characters - real people, archetypes and fictional characters - in the windows of a building. You have to hit the Steves while the windows are open. And, you get a bonus if you hit the floating slice of key lime pie (a prize also determined by the color scheme).

I made up a couple more rules: I couldn't alter the cartoon of me lying underneath the disguises - I could only elements on top of it. And, I would only work in the existing color palette. I just started brainstorming, and worked out way more characters than I expected - I actually had to add more levels to the building to accommodate them. Since there are four characters on each level of the building, sometimes I'd think I was done... then I'd realize there was one more character I just had to include, and I'd add that character in... then I'd have to add three more to fill out the level. It should go without saying that the game took longer to complete than I anticipated because of this pattern - maybe a month total.

Here are all the characters, from top left to bottom right:
• magician
• party guest
• spaceman
• beatnik
• clown
• Indiana Jones
• Peter Criss (from Kiss)
• generic superhero
• Roman gladiator
• redneck trucker
• 1920's accountant
• soldier
• Robin Hood
• Fidel Castro
• Frankenstein's Monster
• pirate
• old-timey aviator
• devil
• Hannibal Lecter (from The Silence of the Lambs)
• Tin Man (from The Wizard of Oz)
• Rebel fighter pilot (from Star Wars)
• Kermit the Frog
• Amish guy
• The Pope
• chef
• Jason Voorhees (from Friday the 13th)
• Mickey Mouse
• Austin Powers
• Albert Einstein
• pilgrim
• Storm Shadow (from G.I. Joe)
• The Statue of Liberty
• Salvador Dali
• Batman (Christian Bale movie version)
• Chinese man
• The Cat in the Hat
• nun
• viking
• Napoleon Bonaparte
• Alex (from A Clockwork Orange)
• Sherlock Holmes
• George Washington
• old timey bowler-wearing guy
• late 60's John Lennon
• 50's greaser
• Marvin Martian
• Rorschach (from Watchmen)
• Andy Warhol
• Harry Potter
• Rastafarian
• court jester
• Willie Nelson


Closeup of the game. That's me as Indiana Jones, Peter Criss
from Kiss, a redneck trucker and a 1920's accountant.

I developed the basic game engine in Flash fairly quickly. At first the fact that the balloon you're throwing covers up the screen briefly (as it's a first-person view) felt wrong or confusing, but after a little test-playing I liked it - it only blocks your view for a brief moment, and it adds to the challenge - if you just keep shooting, you won't see where the characters are on the board.

Someone who played it asked me once where "you" (the player") are - it's not shown (since you're in "your" head) but in the instructions, it says you're in a hot air balloon. I guess I was really into balloons when I developed the game.

I created three levels - the harder the level, the quicker the descent, and the more the building moves side-to-side. The theme song, created in GarageBand, is meant to emulate early 80's game songs - simple, repetitive, and low-fidelity.

Oh, and there's a little bonus - if you hit every character you get a little surprise at the end of the game. I'm not telling what it is - you'll have to complete it (at any level) to see it.

After developing Flying Spaghetti Monster - The Game, I knew that if I posted the game file to one of the online gaming sites (that all "share" the game file generously), it would be all over the Internet in days. And it was - which is what I wanted (all part of my master plan). When I track hits to my websites, I get a few hundred a week from Balloon Buster - and mostly from all the other sites that host it (and not my own). Granted, I believe they're mostly from people looking for more free games, but occasionally someone does inquire about my game design services. There's no such thing as a bad link, I always say (not really, though I do believe it).

As with all of these games, some people said it was fun, some said it was boring, and some people cursed me out and called for my death... anonymously, of course. Ho-hum. If I created a game featuring 25 levels with different gameplay on each level, and hundreds of characters, weapons, backgrounds - people would say it's too complex to play online. I may sound jaded, but feedback for online games is some of the most pointless feedback you'll ever read. Here are some of the highlights from one of the many online sites that host the game:

"wow, that game was good.............NOT!!"

#6 anonymous (3 weeks ago)

"this a effin bullshit this game is"

#5 anonymous (8 months ago)

"this is really bad"

#4 anonymous (8 months ago)

"gay"

#3 anonymous (8 months ago)

"ur a f*kin pleb"

#2 anonymous (2 years ago)

"this the the gayest sh*t i have ever seen"

#1 anonymous (3 years ago)

I just wish the #2 anonymous person would have been more clear - am I the pleb, or one of the other comment-givers? It really bothers me.............NOT!!

And a few positive pieces of feedback, not surprisingly from NewGrounds, probably the best (and maybe the oldest) online gaming portal, where people usually try to be constructive in their feedback:

"Nice job on the art, your use of green is really nice. The controls were great too, which made the game more addicting than it really is. Music went nice with the theme. You definitely have talent. Keep up the great work =]"[delete]

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"Fun game you have here, the 'CONTROLS' were nice and smooth, and the shooting was good, the color tone could have had a mixture and more color but it was still cool, a fun and addictive game, so nice work, keep it up..."

"it was a neat little game. a bit easy and repetitive, but it was fun to play and it had a good concept to it and your efforts in this one were good too."

I know. It's more fun to read the negative stuff. I agree.

After all that fantastic feedback, click here to play Balloon Buster.

Flying Spaghetti Monster - The Game

Click to play in a new window.

If you haven't heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster internet meme, then you're fine. No, really - it was a big thing in 2005, but now it's pretty much run its course. I won't bother explaining the deeper workings of this pseudo-religion (really "parody-religion") - a guy named Bobby Henderson created it as a goof, and it took off all over the Internet. "Pastafarianism", as it came to be known, is centered around a diety made of spaghetti and meatballs. Pirates are also part of the mythos. There's even a version of Heaven containing a beer volcano and stripper factory (don't be mad at me - I didn't make this stuff up) - pretty silly stuff.

When the Flying Spaghetti Monster thing was still taking off, I contaced Bobby to see if it would be okay for me to create the official FSM game. I even worked up a sample conceptual image for Him to review. He was very enthused and gave me the go-ahead immediately, and I got to work.

Within three weeks, the game was complete, Bobby posted it on his site, and people began playing. I posted it on a couple online gaming sites, and pretty soon people began stealing the source Flash file and distributing it to gaming portals everywhere (yes, without my permission - good thing I developed it as a self-promotion, for no charge). I get dozens if not hundreds of hits to my site every day from people clicking the link embedded into the game. Web analytics are fun.

I've never created anything with as wide a reach as this thing - before or since - so it took some time to get used to all the feedback the game generated - much of it negative. I made the gameplay fairly simple - you, as the Flying Spaghetti Monster himself, float above a scenic landscape, pressing the mouse button to fire one of your "noodly appendages" down to the ground. If the tip of the appendage hits one of the 25 people roaming the land, they are converted to a pirate. Convert all 25, and you win the game. There's a timer, a couple bonuses, and evil darkly-clad administrators roaming amidst the people - points are deducted if you hit them.

And that's it. But for some reason, the game play stumps the majority of people who play it - at least initially. See, you move the mouse left and right and the Flying Spaghetti Monster moves across the screen - the screen scrolls as well. But if you move up and down, your character also moves up and down - and your position in the sky determines where vertically on the ground the tip of your appendage will strike, which in turn determines whether or not it actually hits the people on the ground.

Most people who play for the first time don't consider this vertical positioning (your shadow moves with you, as an additional targeting tool. People get very frustrated with this, often posting comments like, "This game is IMPOSSIBLE!" and "I can't convert ANYBODY!!! HELP!!!" until some nice person (not me) comes along and advises them to consider their up and down movement when they're playing. It would have been way too simple a game if you only had to move left and right, align yourself with the people below and press the button - but for whatever reason, that doesn't occur to people. Maybe I should hold a press conference or something. Ah, too late for that.

And speaking of player feedback, the comments the game has generated (currently at 558 on the official Flying Spaghetti Monster site) have ranged from really positive...

"I love this game, and enjoy the challenge of converting the non-believers while simultaneously attempting to improve my score and skills" (sounds like it was written as a school assignment)

"Bravo on the game. I thoroughly enjoyed it."

"This is heaven on earth! Thank tou (sic) FSM for giving us the wisdom and knowledge to create this wonderful game!" (hmmm... I didn't know "we" created it)

...to the moderate...

"Quite amusing and decently challenging without being impossible. I just wish there were more levels or the game was longer."

"Great game, but it needs more levels. It`s great fun, and really improves your eye-hand-coordination. " (okay, so I probably should have made more levels - quite a few people mentioned that - of course, many more were happy the game was short and able to be completed)

"i thought it was a little hard. then again, i suck at video games so who knows?"

...to very, very negative...

"This game sucks!!!! While the rest of the site aint bad the game needs improvement. I will sodomize the monster" (that seems a little unnecessary)

"IT DOSNT (sic) WORK FOR ME THIS GAME SUCKS!!!!!!" (read the instructions, bud)

"wtf that is the most retarded thing i have seen in my life who ever made this should kell (sic) themshelfs (sic)" (I'll take it under consideration... mmm, no - not gonna do it)

I even got this private message sent to my Newgrounds account, where I also have the game hosted:

"Your addiction to the so-called oh-so-glorius (sic) Flying Spaghetti Monster, or FSM for short, plain disgusts me. Sure, you're allowed to make up your own religion [wasn't me, bud], sure you're allowed to follow this twisted immage (sic) of a wannabe god, sure I can't stop you... And so on and so forth. [he got a little lazy there]

FSM is a lie. If you think different, please prove his existance, (sic) the reason of the religion, some stories behind the creation of life... Stuff like that. I'm waiting, Steve. Waiting in excitement.

~Dottorius Sigma, mouthpiece of Ender."

For the record, the opening of this piece seems lifted from the Star Wars quote about "your sad devotion to that ancient religion...". I took it as a joke, but I still held off on responding.

Ever since the game came out, I've been receiving screenshots and even videos of people completing the game and getting into "Heaven". That's pretty fun - reminds me of my own youthful video game fascination (some people even send me screenshots and videos of them not winning, which is a little harder to get excited about).

The game was featured on an episode of Attack of the Show, though I never got to see it. From what I heard, they got a good laugh out of it and talked about the game for a good fifteen seconds - but I'm not complaining. Oliva Munn wound up contacting me to develop a Flash game for her. Okay, not really. That would have been pretty awesome, though. But that show, and some online publicity the game received, helped me get a few paid Flash game projects. So you see? It was all worth the abuse.

And the only nearly unanimous feedback I received was on the game's music, which I composed in GarageBand early one Saturday morning. Even people who hated the game loved its theme song. That softened the impact of some of the harsher feedback and death threats. People asked for an .mp3 file and I obliged, making the song available publicly to appease the Pastafarians who hungered for it. It's not as satisfying as a good marinara sauce, but then again, you can't dance to sauce.

Jabloo - An Introduction

Jabloo is the biggest project I've ever undertaken, and for that reason, I'll be breaking it down into a bunch of different entries, each focusing on different aspects of the project (which is still far from fully launching).

I had the idea for the then-unnamed project in 2006, after reading Seth Godin's Free Prize Inside (more on that book later). I started thinking, in a purely analytical way, that I'd benefit from creating a project that exploited what I believe to be my strongest skills - vector character design, animation and Flash programming.

A lot of graphic designers don't have strong Flash skills, and even if they do their programming abilities are often limited. Something about the freedom of art, and the unforgiving nature of code, don't seem to mix often or well. But I was a Commodore 64 programmer in middle and high school (a badge of honor forever, even though I never got past BASIC back then) and entered college as a Computer Science major, with the plan to develop my own video games. Not a good idea, as I quickly realized the video game industry had already begun moving away from the lone programmer/graphics/animator/music guys I admired from the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 realms, and each separate discipline was being broken down to different people with different (very different) skills. I found myself sitting in classes with high-functioning science and math guys with an understanding of the deeper aspects of computing that I knew I'd never approach (I'm still not clear on stacks and heaps), so I moved on over to the Graphic Design major, which was a much better fit. Still, though, I had the foundation of programming in me, and it only took another ten years to actually be able to use that skill set again - in Flash.

Back to 2006: I started to think about the different things that were inspiring me at that time. I'd recently read an interview with the Homestar Runner guys, detailing how their fun little project had moved from a diversion they worked on in their spare time to a full-time business that sustained them and a couple employees, all based on the products from their growing product line. That's very impressive in the online world - unprecedented, maybe, at least in this area (an original animated series). They even turned down opportunities for a Homestar Runner television series because they didn't feel they'd have the ability to control the quality of the website's content and a TV series at the same time. I'd have loved to see a Homestar show, and I admired their integrity, but I was especially impressed that they had the focus to foresee where their primary efforts should go - into their online presence, which they could completely control. They really were truly living off their creation - which is about as silly as it gets, by the way. Awesome.

And as this nebulous idea for some kind of interactive, animation-centered project continued forming, I thought of the things that inspired me from childhood as well. My wife Sharon had recently bought me a Captain Zoom CD because I'd told her about the Captain Zoom flexi-disc I had as a kid. These cheaply-made records contained the same fun little song that was made special by the fact that the fictional Captain would sing your name several times throughout the tune. That personalized quality was impressive - they had a library of hundreds of names, and in pre-digital days, that must have been an incredibly labor-intensive process. But the benefit was, kids got to hear their very own name in their birthday song, and they loved it (check out some of the fond memories this site has collected). So that was swirling around now, too - "individual name spoken by a character". Remember that.

I also kept thinking about a personalized children's book my aunt had ordered for me when I was about six or seven. The way it worked was, you ordered this book and sent in your child's first name, age, and a few other facts about them, and in a month or two, you had (from what I recall) a fairly nicely printed, bound book, with the child's name inserted throughout. The story also contained other facts ("Steve went into the jungle with his favorite toy - his Pet Rock!"). I know the book my aunt choose for me featured me, Steve, following my new friend "Evets" through a jungle environment, to get to a birthday party. Get it? They flipped the name around. But that means, I would guess, some kind of primitive computer was involved.

As a pre-teen (the last time I can remember still having that book), I decided they must have printed the pages blank, with no text, first - the final text had an almost typewriter quality. The text was clear, but left very slight indentations in the page. I'm sure that's the best they could do in that decade. The problem with these "personalized" books, though, was the fact that they could never show you, the actual kid, in the illustrations. You were always a hand or leg peeking out from behind a bush or rock or something - colored a brownish-peach (they didn't want to betray race by showing a specific skin color), not looking fat, thin, feminine, masculine, toddlerish, older or anything else specific. So the fun was limited. I don't even remember if they had a variable for the gender - I think the book may have avoided personal pronouns completely - "Steve ate Steve's favorite food in Steve's back yard!" - or maybe not. Either way, you really had to use your imagination in the 70's. I began looking around online for some of these bits of 70's ephemera, but I was never able to find one of those original books (though there are, of course, plenty of modern versions). Still, that concept was swirling too - another instance of "child's name in the story", like the Captain Zoom song.

Another favorite memory from childhood was the Choose Your Own Adventure book series. If you're not familiar with them, they were very popular Young Adult books that had stories whose plots you could vary by making a choice at the end of each section. You'd read about how you, maybe as a knight or space explorer or just a regular kid in way over your head in some nutty situation, were stuck in some situation, and then at the bottom of the page would be at least two options: "If you want to betray your friends and run into the cave, go to page 31. If you'd rather not be such a jerk, go to page 37." Not really like that, but hey - you had options.

Before I'd even played Zork or any other text or graphical adventure on a computer, I loved the story possibilities the Choose Your Own Adventure books gave you. In fact, the only thing I ever "stole" (from a library, though) was one of these books. Shame. It's not that I just wanted to have the book - I wanted to possess the story possibilities it contained (if that makes sense). So that added one more swirling childhood memory as I worked on my "big idea" - it's nothing new in the online world these days, but the idea of a story that a child could control, and explore, making each visit slightly different - I wanted that to be part of whatever it is I was planning.

In the midst of all this thinking, Sharon and I went to Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ. It wasn't my first trip there, or even the first time we went together, but being in this creatively-inspiring place - specifically, hanging out in their water garden on a cool summer day, being spritzed from a fountain when the wind pushed a little harder, let my brain really open up, locking in on the overall tone I wanted for my project - that warm childhood feeling of friendship, adventure, exploring, creativity - and having unbounded fun.

And I'll leave it there for now. Lots of ideas swirling, looking for a home - a home which would eventually have a very silly name: Jabloo (rhymes with "canoe", by the way).

Stage Sweeper Game from The Family Values Tour

Stage Sweeper was developed to promote the 2006 Family Values tour. The lead agency developed the basic concept for the game (which tied into the tour's website and other promotional efforts), and contacted me to do the actual Flash development.


Click to play in a new window (some functions have been disabled).

On a project like this, where the main elements are already created and approved by the client before I'm even involved, my creative input is fairly limited. The agency provides the static layouts, individual elements (like the animations of the player himself - one of their employees, if I'm remembering correctly) and ideas on the game play - though that tends to evolve over the course of the project. Then it's my job to take those pieces and put them together, structuring and programming the game in Flash. My right brain takes a bit of a rest for these kinds of projects.

The game is pretty simple: the player must jump over obstacles on stage without being tripped up, collect bonus items, and perform tricks using the arrow keys while diving off the edge (some lower-scoring examples are provided in the instructions). There was (though it's been disabled) a high score function which tied into a database to collect player information for a contest the agency created. It was a nicely integrated campaign.

It would have been nice to include visual representations of each band during their respective level, but you'll only see a few shadowy figures holding instruments (and not even animated) in the background. Creating animated versions of each member of five different bands would have been as much if not more work than the developing the game itself, and it may have even been a distraction to see them right behind the player - but still, that would have been pretty sweet.

Figuring out the scoring system was, as expected, the most tedious part of the project. I created a complex formula, based on the level (1 through 5), the player's speed, and the jump angle (which determines the final jump). Then that number gets multiplied by another factor and becomes the "Jump Quality Bonus" - which is then added to a "Passes Left Bonus" (the number of lives remaining) and a "Jump Style Bonus" (the final trick, based on the key combination). Lots of testing on that one - by me and the agency.

And to this day, Stage Sweeper remains the only project I've worked on that allowed me to include the term "Smacked Ass" (it appears when your player burns to cinders after failing to jump over a flashpot). The agency and client loved that one. I've got to find ways to use it more often.

Attract Mode

In the past few years, I've had a growing fondness for the arcades of my youth. I think this first started when I found a Flickr photo set (sadly no longer available) with a massive batch of slides (yes, actual physical slides) that someone scanned after finding them in a dumpster. The images documented a collection of classic 70's and 80's arcades in all their glory, and it got my heart a'poundin'.

Those images from the dawn of video games inspired me to write One Big Pixel, which actually made me feel even more of a longing for that special time. It's kind of sick to be affected like that by your own thoughts, isn't it?

And then they tore down the Malibu Grand Prix in my home town of Mount Laurel, New Jersey. "The Malibu", as my childhood friends and I called it, was a chain from California that opened in the early 80's, and combined car racing with a full-on arcade. "Race Our Cars, Play Our Games" the building's sign invited. I liked the cars, but I lived for the games - and the environment itself. I have full sense memories of that place - bursts of video game-generated lights, testosterone-fulled sound effects, even the smell of the pizza in the little food area is still a part of me. When I wasn't at The Malibu, I was thinking about it.

There was a communal quality to arcades back then - they were a destination, not a momentary diversion. I longed to have my high scores listed on games - that was a goal. And with enough determination and quarters, players back then stood a chance of beating a game - a very satisfying thing that doesn't happen much nowadays. Eventually most games were designed to get as many players simultaneously competing as possible, forcing them to keep pumping in quarters to continue. I found that to be much less satisfying.

All of this culminated in my writing what I planned to be a short screenplay, but which eventually went to 32 pages - a very awkward length for a short. Initially I planned to keep the locations limited and shoot it myself, but eventually the story seemed to demand scenes contained in a large video game warehouse/repair shop/arcade, and I gave in. Now the scrip=
feels more like the pilot for a television series, which isn't a bad thing, but doesn't make it especially marketable. Art for art's sake, I suppose.

I named the story "Attract Mode", after a video game's self-demo, designed to attract players - and there's a second meaning, too: the main character, Joel, is trying to woo a lady - something all gamer nerds dream of. Here's the logline:

"A disgruntled package delivery driver uncovers a never-released, before-its-time video game and plots to use it as a means to bring back the classic arcades of the 1980's."

I got to do a lot of research (ask me what a "pinout" is sometime), and even gathered up some circuit boards for possible future props. They're in my basement if you want to borrow them.

I did what seemed natural to me in developing the script, which is taking constant breaks to create logos for the movie's title as well as for the other entities in the story. Creating the fake game and company names was especially satisfying, because I think those names mostly suck in works of fiction. I don't know how many stupid sitcoms in my youth had kids talking about "Chomp Man" or "Star Battle" or crap like that. My names are better. Or if they seem sucky, it's intentional - a lampoon, if you will.

I developed a bunch of logos for auto-inspiration (it's not what you think) and also to help keep things moving, in case I wind up filming this myself. For the main Attract Mode logo, I kept the feel very 80's-rainbow-sh, with the kind of Star Wars-inspired font that dominated the era including the extensions on the left and right. I did some heavy modifications to the font, adding notches to connect a few letters and tighten it up horizontally (specifically, the two T's, and the C and T) and recreating the R entirely (the original one was too rounded). So far, it's served its purpose nicely.

This is the logo for Devastar, the Maguffin of the story - it's the catalyst that sets the plot in motion. I designed it as a marquee, the transparent piece that's mounted at the top of the video game cabinet and lit from behind. I used another early 80's-style font (though the story takes place in the present, the fictional game was created in the 80's) and simple 3D effects combined with gradients, all rendered with super-saturated colors. Inspirations: Xevious, Sinistar, Defender.


Hittami is the fictional company that developed the Devastar game in the story. I used a rounded typeface that was also popular in the 80's. The little incomplete notch really makes it work for me. A logo like this, in practice, would change colors frequently for different applications, so it's got a simple treatment - solid fill with a moderately-thick outline to differentiate it from the background. Name inspirations: Nittoh, Konami, Namco, Capcom, Taito.


The Secret Layre is the hub of video game activity in the story. I modeled it off the real TNT Amusements fairly close to me in Southampton, PA. I've even considered trying to secure that as a location to shoot the film (I dream big). Check out the site - their half-hour infomercial, which runs on local cable channels, is a bold masterpiece of the format. The wide range of services TNT offers (video game sales, repair, rentals, on-site parties) inspired me to give those same attributes to the fictional Secret Layre. In my story, this place has stayed fairly current - hence the clean, modern (though retro-spacey) font and logo layout.


I even wrote a main title them for the project, as well as some additional music. Using GarageBand, I only worked with sounds and instruments that were era-appropriate, and I reduced the bit rate to give more of an 8-bit feel. If you're "of age", listen to hear instrumental inspirations from Space Invaders, Dig Dug, Pole Position, Reactor and more.

Listen to the Attract Mode Main Title:



And of course, there's the script itself. Link below:

Attract Mode

I did get a couple requests from the Short Scripts section of InkTip, a screenplay promotion site, but I haven't heard back from any of the production companies that asked to read the screenplay. Maybe it's for the better - it's a big project, but I don't know if I could hand this one off for someone else to produce. My 12-year-old self would be forever betrayed, and I don't know if I could live with that.

JoyStik Magazine a.k.a. Nerdbait

(click for larger image)

This is just plain embarrassing. I was a deeply devoted video game fanatic in the early days of the phenomenon - and without question, that's exactly what video games were in the late 70's and early 80's - a worldwide phenomenon. So much so that I subscribed to two video game-oriented magazines (maybe the only two at the time) - Vidiot (VIDeo + idIOT) and JoyStik. And on more than one occasion, I wrote letters to them (composed on a typewriter, mailed in an envelope - those kinds of letters), but only one got published.

The thing about this letter is, I knew before I was finished writing it what had happened - the power pellets (you may call them "energizers") had blinked off when they took the photo. I was twelve, but I wasn't stupid. Well, not niave in the ways of video games, anyway...

But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to be a part of an actual video game magazine (!) so I continued writing, believing that they'd be likely to publish the piece. It worked, as the image testifies - and my blatant butt-kissing must have helped solidify my placement.

My wife Sharon loves the "I am a serious gamer" line. She's got me there. And couldn't I think of a different adjective for "great" in the first sentence, instead of using it twice in a row? Sheesh! It's not like I didn't own a thesaurus.

I don't have a scan of the next page with the continuation of the article, but the magazine went on to school me in the art of photography and how video games aren't static. But in a nice way. And what's really funny is the fact that I found this as a .pdf when I googled myself (don't even act like you don't do that) - the entire issue was scanned and indexed (manually, I assume) along with many other issues - perhaps the magazine's full run. Someone out there is as much of a Jostik fanatic as I was.

I remember when this came out, I saw a kid in my middle school lunchroom reading the magazine. I was so excited - my first brush with fame! I walked by him, and he looked up at me, squinting with disbelief, and said, "Spatucci, you're an idiot. You didn't figure out how they took this picture?!" I squirmed out of answering him. This was not reaction I'd been hoping for. Crap.

Deviated Discharge Game From "The Heartbreak Kid"

The agency that was putting together the website for the Ben Stiller movie "The Heartbreak Kid" needed a little help with one of the pieces for the site - a game concept they'd sold the studio on called Deviated Discharge. If you haven't seen the film, Malin Akerman's character Lila reveals that she once had a problem with the nose candy, and as a result she developed a deviated septum, from which she inadvertently shoots a beverage while Ben's character looks on in horror. It's a funny scene. I laughed when I saw it in the movie, even though I'd seen it in the preview dozens of times already. That's humor.

And based on that scene, the lead agency created the concept for the game and asked me to develop it into an interactive Flash piece as a fun addition to the movie's website. It was a fairly straightforward project, but I was only given a couple weeks from when the project was assigned until it needed to launch - pretty short timeframe, but most of the graphics had already been supplied by the studio, so that sped things up.

Click above to play Deviated Discharge.

The client didn't have a solid concept of how they wanted the actual game to work - that was for me to figure out, of course. On my first pass, the player merely clicked on the objects at the bottom of the screen and they'd launch directly from Lila's nose. That wound up being too easy, though, so the Art Director asked me to change it to a two-phase load/launch system - click to load the object into her nose, then press the space ar to launch it. Allowing the user to only load one object at a time, plus speeding up Lila's head rotation and the targets characters' movements as the time progressed made the game a bit more challenging.

I think the game wound up more funny than fun - the gameplay is pretty limited, but to be honest, these tie-in games aren't meant to provide hundreds of hours of play. They tend to be simple novelties, more notable for their concept and the way they pull elements from the original movie than long-term diversions themselves. What I'm saying is, if you wanted to play more than two or three games, I'd be surprised. It takes a lot longer than a few weeks to make a deeply addictive video game.

I also got to do research for the different status lines at the end of the game. Based on your score, your septum can be rated "dense", "stiff", "perforated" or several other medical terms related to that particular body part, ultimately ranking you "deviated"... if you can meet the challenge (I got it twice!)

My claim to fame, and I'll forever be proud of this, is one of the sound effects. I supplied all the sounds, some created from scratch, but there needed to be a sniffle sound for Lila to make when she shoots the objects from her shnoz. So I did some rehearsing, created a bunch of options, selected the one that worked best and pitched it up a bit, to (I guess) make it more feminine. If I ever meet Malin Akerman, I'm telling her that we essentially collaborated on one of her roles. Hey, it's kind of true, isn't it?!

One Big Pixel?!

When I was a young lad, my grandmother would wax nostalgic about the dawn of radio - the big invention of her time. She would talk about how much she and her family anticipated the weekly shows, how the neighborhood would discuss the events that took place in those early radio serials, and how exciting it was to be informed of national news via radio waves, and not the medium which she considered to be old-fangled - the newspaper.

With much the same sense of wonder, my parents would remember the invention of television. Tales of the neighborhood gathering at the home of that one early adopter who took the plunge and purchased a set - a few inches wide, in a cabinet three times its size - abounded. It was a heady time for them, and they spoke of it with an enthusiasm that was still fresh a few decades later.

But as a jaded young technofile, I was far from impressed by all of this. I was born in 1970, and came of age in the spacey-futuristic late 70's and early 80's. Like everyone else of my generation, Star Wars permanently altered my views. I wanted my future and I wanted it now - shiny metallic clothing, wrist communicators and moving sidewalks could not come too soon for me. I considered myself to be a man (okay - boy) on the edge, and old-fashioned things did not have a place in my world.

So radio was not amazing; it was a given. Television, similarly, was an entitlement. Video games, however - that was an invention of my time. Primitive arcades were around when I was very young, but the first home consoles - specifically, the Atari 2600 - came a few years later. I was eight when that magical device was delivered to the world - just old enough to remember a time before The Atari, and that made me appreciate its presence all the more.

My pre-teenage friends and I devoured all of those early games - Combat (of course - that one came with the system), Missle Command (straight from the arcades), Yar's Revenge, Dodge 'Em - and Adventure. Adventure was a very special game - it was one of the first visual adventure games, and it contained the very first Easter Egg - the secret dot that programmer Warren Robinett buried deep in a dark maze, which allowed intrepid Adventurers to unlock a secret room and discover his name. Joy of joys.


Following detailed instructions in Atari Age magazine, I found the dot and beat Adventure on a day when I was home sick from school. That day was over twenty years ago, and yet I can still taste its delicious victory. Yumminess.

In the intervening decades, video games became more sophisticated. Resolution increased, sound improved, and then everything went all 3D (and eventually, MMPORPG) - good luck finding a simple, fun 2D game that you can beat in less than a three month expedition. I've purchased and played many of these games, and some I've really enjoyed - but in all honesty, I would have to admit that none of them are truly special to me - not like those old Atari cartridges.

Not long ago, my nephews and I were discussing video games - they'd discovered Atari through the Atari Classics - the joystick that sells for about the price of one of those early Atari cartridges, yet contains ten games (that's progress for you). After hearing much about these games, my nephews only noticed big pixels, minimal color pallettes, and crude sounds. Adventure was especially laughable to them - "You're just one big pixel!" they defamed. They were decidedly not impressed, and they couldn't understand why people of my generation spoke so highly of these games.

I took the defensive position and I told my nephews that they had to look at it from the point of view of a kid who didn't have video games in their home - and then suddenly did. For people my age, it was a thunderbolt in the middle of our collective childhood. We had to use our imaginations to bring those big pixels to life, and so we put ourselves into the games. That's why we love those old games so much - we were part of them, and they were part of us. Corny but true.

Though they endured speech with a reasonable amount of teenage respect, my nephews weren't won over. I did hear a certain familiarity in my own pleas, though - the irony of my defense of the dated technology was not lost on me. Grandma - I hear where you're coming from.

And my nephews - and all younger gamers today - please remember: someday you too will be fondly recalling today's technological innovations through magenta-colored glasses. Don't get cocky, kids.

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