Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy User Manual
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Trigger Happy
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seems possible: you can specialize in computers and
hacking and infiltrate the enemy installations that way,
or you can become an expert lockpicker, or a lethal
sniper, or just rock in, all guns blazing. No strategy is
privileged over another. The terms of the semiotic
conversation in Deus Ex are unusually and laudably
broad.
Among other aesthetic gems was the extraordinary
style of Jet Grind Radio (2000), Sega’s in-line skating,
graffiti-spraying game. While its detailed, Tokyo city
environments are built in standard “realistic” polygonal
fashion, the lovable teen-tearaway characters are given
heavy black outlines to resemble hand-drawn cartoon
figures. This “cel-shading” technique, as it became
known, provides a glorious fusion of traditional anime
style with high-powered computer rendering. Together
with its excellent soundtrack of Japanese hip-hop, Jet
Grind Radio had one of the most coherent design
personalities of any videogame in history.
Meanwhile Rez (2001), also developed by Sega,
was perhaps the first real work of abstract art that
videogamers experienced running on next-generation
hardware. Harking back once again to the futuristic
wireframe aesthetic of Battlezone, but this time in