I know this isn’t useful.
Let’s have a go at getting to this.
The Making of Karateka
I have caught glimpses of this book-non-book over the years.
If so, I reckon you will love The Making of Karateka, which has just come out.
You travel a long distance with a couple of the characters.
It’s gently novelistic.
Cor, you get to the bottom of it here.
But you aren’t just told it, in text and lovely, sweet-natured video clips.
You get to read diary entries and design documents, you get to play prototypes of early games.
You might get a breakdown of the music or pages from an autobiographical graphic novel.
Karateka is a funny beast.
It’s cinematic but it actually has the starkness of theatre.
Except, unlike theatre, it uses cross-cuts to create tension.
I’m drawn outwards to the little details.
There’s so much stuff like this.
I love the space that the format gave them for their relationship to emerge, too.
There’s a pixel-art pocketwatch with no hands or dial.
No hands or dial!
It was one of those accidental pairings that just works so beautifully - salt and caramel.
And it tells me: games have been around for a long time now.
And we struggle to understand the best ways to bring them back to life.
This week I saw two of these potential ways and I loved them both.
