The good people at Resetera occasionally take a break from their regular schedule of complaining that video game journalists get all their news from Resetera to share Something Nice. For example: thanks to Resetera member AstralSphere, I learned about Alistair Aitcheson's Magic Box and BizHawk retro emulation tools, which – among other things – let you play old Sonic the Hedgehog games in dizzying parallel, and switch between them whenever you collect a ring.
If you have any knowledge of games featuring Sega's spiky pinball, you know that switching games when Sonic collects a ring is a recipe for panic and confusion beyond Dr Robotnik's wildest, wettest dreams. That was certainly the conclusion of streamers participating in the latest episode of Random Number Generation, a Games Done Quick show dedicated to randomization modes and their communities (note the rapid screen flashes during transitions).
But the thing is: I used to play Sonic a lot, and when it came to some Sonic levels, I think I can handle thisGreen Hill Zone and the like, in particular, are so deeply embedded in my muscle memory that when the Almighty sends me off to my personal 16-bit heaven, they'll be visible as glowing threads within the swirling textures of my soul.
More importantly, it occurs to me that switching between games based on specific actions would be a great way to clear out my backlog by randomly combining games. Think about it: you're hoeing a pumpkin patch in Stardew Valley, and suddenly your hoe is a Bloodhound's Fang, and the pumpkin patch is a cauldron of Decay, and a hideous golden woman with big hair is doing butterfly combos on you. You roll past her, and oh my God, you've entered Karaz Ankor, and Thorgrim Grudgebearer is completely enraged.
After hours of hard-fought combat and a grueling battle on the outskirts of Everpeak, you manage to overthrow the High King while trapped in a closet in Amnesia: The Bunker, which is no longer much of a consolation. Forget mods: this should be an official platform feature. Maybe a certification requirement. Imagine a games industry built on games like the TV show Quantum Leap, full of hidden wormholes into other games. Questions of speed would become irrelevant, and today's debates about skill would become echoes, because no one knew what they were playing at any given moment, or what they would be playing next.
If Alistair Aitcheson seems like an RPS guy, that may be because (as I just discovered) our former assistant editor Alice B went to the same school as him. His other works include Book Ritual, in which you tear apart books that “think they're people” – the loose idea is to explore your attachment to a physical object. It feels like the tools Magic Box and BizHawk do the same thing.