Renkon

A classic Twitter feature of mine, now powered-up by Cohost letting me post as much nonsense as I want to go with it. Excellent. Let's take a look at two of the flyers made for Taito's Space Invaders follow-up to bring the game into the '90s.

via The Arcade Flyer Archive
First, we have the Majestic Twelve: The Space Invaders Part IV flyer from the US, this title also used for the Japanese release (UPL's Return of the Invaders serves as Part III, I suppose). US flyers by Taito around this time had this specific layout style with a grey box at the bottom giving a quick summary of the game, as seen on the flyers for Crime City and Cadash. They often used new artwork too, which is the case here as well- it's roughly the same composition as the Japanese and European flyers but completely redrawn, which is a little strange. They managed to sneak a cow in there, though.

Here's the back of the flyer explaining the game's plot (Majestic Twelve is a committee purported to exist in the US that dealt with extraterrestrial matters, so it's a pretty apt name for a game like this) and a brief explanation of some of the game's extra features. There's also a shot of the 3D bonus stage that isn't seen very often because you need to set the game to have two players alternate play instead of play at the same time, otherwise it won't show up. Rumours it was only included in Space Invaders Pocket on the PSP if you beat the game on one credit as stated by an old issue of Retro Gamer are, in fact, rubbish.

In Europe, the game was retitled Super Space Invaders '90 and...

via The Arcade Flyer Archive
Amazing. Incredible. Superb. No notes.

Ahem. Sharing something in common with Capcom's flyers in the '90s, European Taito flyers were often just direct translations of the Japanese flyers, retaining the same artwork and layout, which means yes, that headline is a translation of the Japanese flyer's headline. I'm guessing it's a reference to Kennedy's speech about the moon, but it's not even my favourite part of the flyer- it's the bit promising that we'll break the spirit of the Invaders. Just wonderful.

The other side explains the plot and features again but has some inaccuracies due to simply translating the Japanese flyer. The European version removes the branching path system shown here, making you play every single round in the game in-order as opposed to a smaller selection you choose between. That makes it a much longer, more gruelling challenge.

It's been an interesting week and it has me thinking about labor in the software industry.

There's a lot of talk about toxic cultures that create crunch and harassment. There's a well-known history of exploiting developers who think it's their dream job. These people are cut to the bone because it's assumed that there's a thousand starry-eyed candidates in line behind them waiting to voluntarily get churned up instead.

But what if the pay is good? And the culture is good? And you're being taken care of with raises and benefits? What if you like everyone in your department and morale is high and people openly discuss their pay and conditions and everything a union might fight for is mostly taken care of?

Even if things are good! Especially if things are good! Yes, just walk out if things are untenable and there's no successful organizing campaign in the tolerably near future, but something this take is missing is that this is part of the reason the industry is so fucked up.

When I started at my current job many years ago, the median retention at my company was less than two years. It wasn't considered good for your career to stay in a single tech role for more than two years because that wasn't the way to getting a good jump in pay, career progression by promotion was considered a thing of the past (much like unions!), and if you stayed in a job too long it would look like you weren't Sufficiently Ambitious and it would limit not only your current role but any future prospects.

This leads to no worker solidarity, even down to people talking about the hours they work. This leads to companies feeling free to run their people into the ground because they're just gonna fucking leave no matter what you do anyway, might as well get what you can. This leads to people not having any stability in their lives and being willing to take the next shit job that's gonna run them into the ground.

This is systemic and the capitalists are not gonna break it for us. ORGANIZE YOUR WORKPLACE.

Gotta start the new year right, so I'm releasing a brand new digital fusion single~

It's titled Gacha, and I'd really appreciate the listens!

Artwork was done by Karen Lam~

We did a cool (I think) thing this weekend with my regular playtesting meetup group (Playtest Zero! Tuesdays and Thursdays every fortnight!) and did a showcase of games that we've playtested in 2022.

Each participant did a short 5-15 minute presentation related to one of the games they playtested last year, and either talked about the process of designing their game or some other design topic related to their game e.g. designing ambivalence, designing for worldbuilding from small details up, designing a single set of questions, designing to reflect a culture, designing to evoke a feeling, designing to fit constraints.

I thought it was really cool, and I'm looking forward to doing it again next year :)