Issue 6, 25/5/07
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Tony Hawk's player now sees "rad grinds and jumps" wherever he goes
Despite never actually having used a skateboard, Brydon says that the hours spent playing the game has allowed him to appreciate everyday items such as railings, benches, telegraph poles and even homeless people sleeping in the street in an entirely new light. Brydon reports that in addtion to his newfound ability to mentally map out an alternate, skateboard-based route to any street he happens to be passing, his taste in music has also changed since playing the game. Previously a fan of trance and house, he now finds himself drawn to "more grungy tracks" such as those from Linkin Park and Nine Inch Nails, featured on the game's soundtrack – bands which, Brydon admits, he had up until recently thought of as "really gay." The final change that has come about is to his vocabulary. The privately educated, middle-class gamer now finds his speech peppered with terms such as "rad", "sick", "gnarly" and, once, "tubular" – which appears nowhere in the game and was originally coined as surfing terminology. "Kyle's always banging on about 'popping a boner' or 'grabbing a stiffy' over this or that when we go out," said one of Brydon's three housemates, who did not want to be named and associated with his co-inhabitant. "It's completely embarrassing. He only plays that stupid game because he's so shit at the beat-em-ups the rest of us play." "What a fucking idiot."
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A high street, overlaid with Brydon's mental map of an alternative route (right to left) |
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"Killer 7" creator Suda Goichi speaks cheerfully of dead prostitutes hidden in Grasshopper's basement
Eccentric head of Grasshopper Studio, Suda "51" Goichi, left a videogame journalist unsure whether he was joking or not after an interview where he stated he had murdered several women in the course of researching horror-shooter "Killer 7". The comments were made off-handedly during an explanation of the painstaking research that had gone into every detail of the game. This included Goichi role-playing as each of the split-personalities exhibited by the game's central protagonist, Garcian Smith, and performing at least one killing "in character". At first the reporter, seeming not to register what had been said, simply nodded and smiled to encourage Goichi to continue talking. As the developer began to discuss the difficulties of lighting sources when dealing with cell-shaded graphics, however, a look of slight confusion appeared on the reporter's face. "Sorry to interrupt you there, Suda," he said. "But did you just say that you murdered people as research?" "Yes," replied Goichi. "As I said, realism is very important to us. To ensure that I truly was able to get into the mind of a multiple-personality serial killer, I of course had to abduct and murder a number of prostitutes whilst in character." Apparently completely oblivious to the look of slack-jawed disbelief
on his interviewer's face, Goichi went on to joke: "Fitting
into a skirt to do a killing as Kaede was a little tricky! But fortunately,
as she was the fourth or fifth one on the list, there was already
a range of dresses laying around not being used, and I was able
to find one that fit."
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The gruesome "Killer 7" featured a split-personality
assassin guided by a paraplegic preacher dominated
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