When we first started doing concepts for Broken Saints back in the summer of 2000, the core crew was pretty much a rookie triumvirate. Sure, I had a LITTLE more industry experience, but then I trumped the lads by 10+ solar cycles. (yes, yes…I LOOK young – but that’s just all the virgin blood drinking. For everything else, there’s Mastercard). And of the three of us, BS artist Andrew West was easily the most ‘raw’…hell, I smelled his fear and confusion when that rectangular hunk of plastic hit his desk. I damn near expected him to use it as an armrest. But after 4 years of commitment to his craft and nearly 5000 pencilled, inked, and painted sequences? The man spins gold. Scope the acrylic-on-wood self-portrait to the right. Hit PAUSE anywhere during the first 11 Chapters of the revamped DVD set. Hell, just zoom in and out on this ’til your wrist hurts. The boy’s got serious chops.
So, what does this have to do with the price of microchips in Taiwan? Well, Drew and I have been friends for nearly 10 years now. He used to grace my old videogame shop in North Van and we’d have the classic Sega vs Nintendo debate until I threatened him with physical violence – I was a musclehead, he was 14, and this somehow seemed fair at the time. But nostalgia aside, our bond formed over a mutual love for compelling videogame experiences, and Nintendo almost always emerged victorious in our books. They ruled 8-bit like Mario owned Peach’s ass. They dominated 16-bit like Guile scored effortless 6-hit redizzy combos. And even in the face of stiff competition in the 32/64-bit era, nobody – and I mean NO-DAMN-BODY – could work this type of magic. Or this. Or this. We were such diehard loyalists that there were N-shaped chunks in our stools. That’s right…our love was sickeningly true.
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So when I shared my intriguing finds surrounding their next platform, I knew his initial reaction would be a pretty good barometer for hardcores everywhere. Andrew is NOT an easy man to impress, and he’s definitely not one to waste words or spraypaint shit and call it shinola. This is a guy who’ll offer endless wellsprings of support…but if you fuck up? He’ll let you know. Sure, he’ll FORGIVE you for your fall from grace, but that pedestal will never reach quite as high as it once did…even in the face of compensatory brilliance.
So I told him my big ‘secret’ – the one I’d pieced together from press releases and patents – the one cobbled from closed-door party speak and movie effects guru blatherings – the divine genesis that would hopefully resurrect the House that Miyamoto built, and march it boldy towards textured polygonal zeniths yet undiscovered. And you know what he said?
“SOUNDS cool…but what about the games?”
Truer words have never been spoken, kidlets. The looming spill of gleaned technology beans may thrill you, or just reposition thousands of eyebrows in the upwards-arched formation. Just keep that essential question in your hearts before swinging the pendulum either way this weekend, gang. As the cyber prophets and flame carriers for Nintendo’s great legacy, we should all remember what this is REALLY about.
Let the games – and the speculation – begin!