Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 91)

Trigger Happy
93
automatically doing pretty complex parabolic calculus
without any conscious thought. Appreciation of
dynamic properties is hard-wired into the species—it’s
essential for survival. This, then, is one of the most
basic ways in which videogames speak to us as the real
world does, directly to the visceral, animal brain—
even as they tease the higher imagination by building a
universe that could never exist.
Furthermore, just as timing a good shot in tennis is
a pleasure in itself, there is a direct link between
convincing videogame dynamics and gameplay
pleasure. A game that is more physically realistic is
thereby, Topping says, “more aesthetically pleasing,”
because the properly modeled game enables us
pleasurably to exercise our physical intuition. “All
great games have physics in them—that’s what gives it
the lovely feel,” Topping points out. And this is just as
true for classic games such as Defender or Asteroids as
it is for modern racers like Gran Turismo 2000. In
Defender, you aim your ship to face left or right and
then thrust, and the simple inertia means that you can
flip around and fire at aliens while still traveling
backward; the subsequent application of forward thrust
takes time to kick in. Even a very simple puzzle game
such as Bust-A-Move exercises the intuitive