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Yamaha's YST001 shimmies into the speaker-lamp niche
If a few more companies get into these speaker-lamp combo designs, it just might define a whole new product category. Yamaha's YST001 speakers, however, offer up a couple of features that make them better suited for HT use. First and foremost, the cabinet design and front-facing drivers on these are a natural fit for the HT arena. Second, the lighting is rearward-facing, so using a pair of these speakers for front channels will bring an adjustable backlight to your display -- good news for those who want to produce better perceived contrast. From our mangled Japanese translation, the YST001 seems to be a combination of Yamaha's NS-M125 bookshelf speakers and a speaker stand with integrated lighting from Koizumi. Nice idea -- and the design seems to have avoided the gimmick of dynamic, colored backlights -- but ideally we'd like to see the speakers positioned closer to ear level. Read on for a couple of gallery shots.[Via CyberTheater]
Mario Galaxy's Koizumi on getting stories into Mario games
Chris Kohler conducted a fascinating interview with Super Mario Galaxy director Yoshiaki Koizumi, in which Koizumi revealed the reason for the increase in storyline complexity through Mario (and Zelda) games: himself. He takes a different approach to storytelling in his games from the Miyamoto method, which he describes as providing "a goal" for action and not a narrative. "There's not necessarily a buildup and a resolution of a deeper kind, like you'd find in a novel. It's just a situation that motivates the players." Koizumi's interest in narrative, as contrasted with Miyamoto's sensibilities, has caused him to have to integrate story in unusual, yet organic ways, like the storybook-style presentation of Super Mario Galaxy.He got his start writing game narrative in a rather roundabout way: by writing instruction manuals. In the era of his first game (Link's Awakening), game developers didn't necessarily feel the need to motivate everything, leading explanations up to the people writing the manual. With no existing story in place, "...I ended up making an entire story to go along with the game. The dream, the island, that was all mine." We won't quote too much of it, because you should really go read the whole thing. Game developers are rarely this candid, and nobody ever talks this much about working day-to-day with Shigeru Miyamoto.
Galaxy director Koizumi on how Mario became Galactic
Super Mario Galaxy director Yoshiaki Koizumi gave the keynote at this year's Montreal Games Summit, discussing the evolution of 3D Mario. He has unique perspective on this, having been not only a 3D animator, but also co-director of Super Mario 64, then director of Sunshine and now Galaxy. His portfolio also includes work on Link's Awakening and directing the fantastic Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat.It goes without saying that all the talk about the early development of Mario 64 is fascinating -- including descriptions of Miyamoto pantomiming certain movements for the animators -- but the really interesting part of the story is how the problems of 3D platforming influenced the design of Galaxy. The major problem? The camera.The world of Galaxy is, basically, a world free of walls. Without walls, backtracking is reduced, and sudden 180-degree camera movements become unnecessary. "We should tune the game so people can play without ever having to think about the camera," said Koizumi. An admirable goal -- awful cameras have just about sunk the Sonic series and countless other 3D platformers.
