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Kojima made a GBA game about a vampire hunter who was stronger in the daylight. The cartridge featured a light sensor that could detect if you were playing it o

Kojima made a GBA game about a vampire hunter who was stronger in the daylight. The cartridge featured a light sensor that could detect if you were playing it out in the sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boktai:_The_Sun_Is_in_Your_Hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boktai:_The_Sun_Is_in_Your_Han...

autoexec 3y ago
Sure you'd be stronger, but for those playing without a backlight you'd also be nearly blind. The GBA SP would spare you from struggling to make out anything on the GBA screen under direct sunlight, but the cartage also went in at the bottom facing you and the floor, not at the top facing the outside world which might have made the sensor less effective.
- janderson3 3y ago
  Oh my. I had a GBA that me and my dad modded to be backlit. Boktai was so good on that system. I didn't think about how lucky I was that I could play the game pretty easily.
- everdrive 3y ago
  The original wide GBA, as well as the first run of the SP had a reflective screen, and would look wonderful in direct sunlight. It’s only the second gen of the SP which had a backlight (rather than a front light) and could not perform in the sun.
  - xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
    Indeed, the original solution for the GBA was a peripheral lamp to illuminate the screen just like natural light: The Worm Light It's almost as if the peripheral port was made for it.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > The original wide GBA, as well as the first run of the SP had a reflective screen, and would look wonderful in direct sunlight. None of mine ever did. The best lighting seemed to be sitting with a lamp behind you but with actual sun overhead everything was too dark to make out.
- rzzzt 3y ago
  Nicely balanced mechanic.
snowram 3y ago
Pointless rambling but I am tired of Kojima being titled as the sole creator every time he is involved in a game. This cult of personality is silly.
- TonyTrapp 3y ago
  Game creators are also annoyed by it. ;) https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFGyOnLWsAA0GF3?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFGyOnLWsAA0GF3?format=jpg&name=...
  - LelouBil 3y ago
    Great quote
  - Minor49er 3y ago
    How ironic If anyone else is a fan of the original Deus Ex, one of the writers for it, Sheldon Pacotti, has been writing science fiction for years: http://sheldonpacotti.com/ http://sheldonpacotti.com/
    - tpoacher 3y ago
      I read Demiurge right after I played the original Deus Ex for that reason. It was a masterpiece. Haven't had the chance to read anything by Chris Todd yet (the writer/curator of all the snippets you come across within the game, as opposed to the plot itself), but I remember enjoying his in-game style a lot too at the time.
  - arp242 3y ago
    That's double silly as Warren Spector was only marginally involved with Thief for a short time; certainly not the "creator". In his own words: "[I] worked briefly on Thief: The Dark Project (though my impact on that title was, at best, minimal)".
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  It's not ideal, but it's better than crediting the game entirely to the publisher. Talking about studios can be useful, but then you have to include a year or something since the make up a studio can change radically over time. There are definitely people in the industry that have an outsized influence or a particular style/flavor to their output.
orbital-decay 3y ago
This is a questionable mechanic - I'd even say a useless gimmick that adds nothing substantial to the gameplay. Dean Hall, the creator of the viral survival sandbox mod DayZ, was obsessed with realism-based immersion, and also tried something similar in his game in 2012. One of the updates tied the in-game time to the real time at the location of the server you were connected to. It also made the moonless and/or cloudy nights impenetrably dark, even GPU gamma correction wasn't able to help you see anything. Considering that the majority of players played the game in the evening, that the game was set in the fictional Balkan country (they only had an hour or so of twilight at best), and that the night vision device was a top-tier item hard to obtain in a survival sandbox, the majority of players just played on servers in distant timezones, preferring huge latencies to playing in the dark. The update was reverted shortly after that, as it was obvious that it degraded the gameplay quality immensely.
- ttymck 3y ago
  You've made quite the generalization based on one example of a real time MMO. I still acknowledge the artistry behind it in the case of DayZ, and it's even more interesting within the context of Kojima's career.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    If the game was designed for it, I could see the advantage of having a synchronous day/night cycle in game for a few reasons. For instance, an RPG where your time of day combined with in game locations could change what enemies spawn, or characters that get sleepy and less capable after so long, but it should also be able to cause unique time events to happen, and not just spooky Halloween season or Xmas spectacular, either.
    - ttymck 3y ago
      Indeed. Pokémon gold/silver is the first instance I can recall that did this. It was mind blowing at the time (I was maybe 10 years old).
- EdwardDiego 3y ago

autoexec 3y ago

Sure you'd be stronger, but for those playing without a backlight you'd also be nearly blind. The GBA SP would spare you from struggling to make out anything on the GBA screen under direct sunlight, but the cartage also went in at the bottom facing you and the floor, not at the top facing the outside world which might have made the sensor less effective.

janderson3 3y ago
Oh my. I had a GBA that me and my dad modded to be backlit. Boktai was so good on that system. I didn't think about how lucky I was that I could play the game pretty easily.
everdrive 3y ago
The original wide GBA, as well as the first run of the SP had a reflective screen, and would look wonderful in direct sunlight. It’s only the second gen of the SP which had a backlight (rather than a front light) and could not perform in the sun.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  Indeed, the original solution for the GBA was a peripheral lamp to illuminate the screen just like natural light: The Worm Light It's almost as if the peripheral port was made for it.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > The original wide GBA, as well as the first run of the SP had a reflective screen, and would look wonderful in direct sunlight. None of mine ever did. The best lighting seemed to be sitting with a lamp behind you but with actual sun overhead everything was too dark to make out.
rzzzt 3y ago
Nicely balanced mechanic.

snowram 3y ago

Pointless rambling but I am tired of Kojima being titled as the sole creator every time he is involved in a game. This cult of personality is silly.

TonyTrapp 3y ago
Game creators are also annoyed by it. ;) https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFGyOnLWsAA0GF3?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFGyOnLWsAA0GF3?format=jpg&name=...
- LelouBil 3y ago
  Great quote
- Minor49er 3y ago
  How ironic If anyone else is a fan of the original Deus Ex, one of the writers for it, Sheldon Pacotti, has been writing science fiction for years: http://sheldonpacotti.com/ http://sheldonpacotti.com/
  - tpoacher 3y ago
    I read Demiurge right after I played the original Deus Ex for that reason. It was a masterpiece. Haven't had the chance to read anything by Chris Todd yet (the writer/curator of all the snippets you come across within the game, as opposed to the plot itself), but I remember enjoying his in-game style a lot too at the time.
- arp242 3y ago
  That's double silly as Warren Spector was only marginally involved with Thief for a short time; certainly not the "creator". In his own words: "[I] worked briefly on Thief: The Dark Project (though my impact on that title was, at best, minimal)".
AlexandrB 3y ago
It's not ideal, but it's better than crediting the game entirely to the publisher. Talking about studios can be useful, but then you have to include a year or something since the make up a studio can change radically over time. There are definitely people in the industry that have an outsized influence or a particular style/flavor to their output.

orbital-decay 3y ago

This is a questionable mechanic - I'd even say a useless gimmick that adds nothing substantial to the gameplay. Dean Hall, the creator of the viral survival sandbox mod DayZ, was obsessed with realism-based immersion, and also tried something similar in his game in 2012. One of the updates tied the in-game time to the real time at the location of the server you were connected to. It also made the moonless and/or cloudy nights impenetrably dark, even GPU gamma correction wasn't able to help you see anything. Considering that the majority of players played the game in the evening, that the game was set in the fictional Balkan country (they only had an hour or so of twilight at best), and that the night vision device was a top-tier item hard to obtain in a survival sandbox, the majority of players just played on servers in distant timezones, preferring huge latencies to playing in the dark. The update was reverted shortly after that, as it was obvious that it degraded the gameplay quality immensely.

ttymck 3y ago
You've made quite the generalization based on one example of a real time MMO. I still acknowledge the artistry behind it in the case of DayZ, and it's even more interesting within the context of Kojima's career.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  If the game was designed for it, I could see the advantage of having a synchronous day/night cycle in game for a few reasons. For instance, an RPG where your time of day combined with in game locations could change what enemies spawn, or characters that get sleepy and less capable after so long, but it should also be able to cause unique time events to happen, and not just spooky Halloween season or Xmas spectacular, either.
  - ttymck 3y ago
    Indeed. Pokémon gold/silver is the first instance I can recall that did this. It was mind blowing at the time (I was maybe 10 years old).
EdwardDiego 3y ago