RE: Don Miguel videos x 2 (thanks Ragnar!!):
I'm starting to feel the same... as in, I gotta get my hands on RM2K's... getting back 2 rootz... anyways, in case u didn't know Cicada, that demo and Don Miguel is probably the reason GW/SW exists today... all the futuristic teenagers o' of the hayday got their first impression/experience with RM2k through that Don Miguel's demo that came with the program. So it actually IS historically important, to western JRPG scene and to GW/SW. Also important because this was pre-youtube era, so you didn't get easy exposure first by the means of some video... funny how these little seemingly childish/non-important things make big explosions in real life, huh?
Prior to RM95, there were some kinda sliphod children's programming tools for WIN95 like Games Factory, but nothing actually functioning or actually beautiful/esthetical. Lot of these new ideas were still within the engineer-like/nerdy WIN95 esthetic box... like the Chaos Creator or whatever it was called, where you could create Dungeon Master games... but it ran in Win 95 desktop-window look, and looked disappointingly like Win 95 game... so there was no real drive to make games by oneself, since there's no proper inspiration there.
I got into RM95 through by playing FF 4-6 in SNES emulators. In particularly FF4 and FF6 did an lasting impression, like give this exciting burning idea that "wait, if i can just pixel things myself and do midis, then I can make my OWN FF6...!". That kinda deal.
It's like 60-70's rock giving birth to the idea that you can make your own band and own sound with these new instruments - now the idea was that you could spin these beautiful, old/esoteric/mysterious/pre-modern age fables in videogame form fairly easily. 90's Woodstock...
But RM95 again, was mostly plagued by running in Win 95 windowed mode, and thus the resolution was "too good" and the graphics looked something straight out of IBM-256-colours meets PC88 esthetics. Same problem with Tactic's Maker, the resolution and esthetics were not good... you couldn't work on the graphics like that as an amateur very easily.
I was really taken by Don Miguel's demo after trying to make RM95 work somewhat fruitlessly. (But I didn't know it was also a "programming tutorial" either! Thankz 4 Ragny 4 this...).
I think the demo really still has a lot of charm, and he accidentally did lot of right things in that demo esthetics-wise. He could give the ridicilous default tilesets a kind of a ramshackle charm? Everything makes inner sense in a weird way. You'll have DESERTS next to your JUNGLE TREES and GRASS + FLOWERS... you check every stone just in case of any beautiful interactions...
Just the beginning area is really beautiful, with it's idea to use background panorama, shifting cloud EFX, and combining all this to the often-unexplored cliff-tileset.
Or the area's water stone- moment, where the music stops entirely for a good span of time (or at least contributing to the next areas more somber/quieter level of music), and the way the rain effect transitioned into battles and next area as well... I played a lot of Little Big Adventure 2 in my youth, so I was fond of these nature elements. IT'S INSPIRING you know? So you start to get "visions" on where to take it next.
So yeah, i wouldn't wonder if there was this DIVIDING/AXIOMATIC INSPIRATION in RM2K games like, already built into it? Like there was these "professionals" who wanted to make Custom Battle Systems etc try to push the poor default engine into FF6 territory, but the default tileset etc kinda easily lends itself into the strange mystical territory? Hence you get Space Funeral, Barkley 1, swordofking's EB-inspired game, etc exploring that aspect... a strange platitude-kind of attitude, i'm not sure what i'm trying to convey with that one lmao.
I wouldn't call it exactly "DOS-shareware esthetics" ... not autogenerated either... it somewhat reminds me of the "city of dissonance" at the end of the Space Funeral. Not exactly random, but not without a meaning either? I don't think it's the mind's way of "generating meanings to anything / pattern recognition", but I think the mind probably recognizes SOME kind of ACTUAL ESTHETIC in it... it's just hard to put into words or genres. Probably that esthetic spawned this interest in dumb topic etc into trying to find the proper terminology and descriptions of this mystical in-between-the-lines kinda stuff... that the esthetic could be highly meaningful, but in an unusual way, that is still distinguishable from schizophrenic-like delusions of reality. It's as if you're receiving data and signifiers, but the metric's say "???? ESTHETIC" or something... that "congratulations, you have found a new genre, but it also seems to function in an unorthodox way as well". Probably lends very well into literature and explorations of new narrations / different set of value systems...
OH YEAH, like that Snoopy - textgame!!! I thought that somehow REALLY captured to an extent that "idea"!!!
Tho I don't think it's easy to literally conclude stories like these... it's not easy to give a narration or meaning to this stuff. hmmm.... like i don't think it's about "taking weird worlds at face value" or "fully exploring weirdness"... it's bit like that Bubsy 3D game, where you get sudendly a strong sense that "this all actually (accidentally) seems to hint at something powerful yet to come", and i don't think it's entirely delusional or laughable to think that possibility? but it doens't either get right to say, "oh, this snoopy game is about how everythign falls to chaos etc", just to make a point (and i don't think that game is like that)... like it doesn't feel that the point is about say, naively immersing yourself into a made-up world... or hell, any other kind of "easy meaning" for these games.
It's bit like sometimes watching a 70's art or arty movie, and the movie tells that "this is the reason why this movie exists, this is the narration" etc. I don't think the movie creator knows, really... The movie itself doesn't know... The watcher knows, on a more subconscious level
(or even on a some kind of meta-level? where it knows WHAT this platform is FOR, like where it is TRYING to take the experiencers mind TOWARDS TO like a stepping stone).
I think some smart psychology researchers like Jung makes a point that humans are largely subconscious in every decision and values we make, and it would make sense that the first ideas and revolutions start maybe from pioneers, but maybe from "a collective pool or pallette of beginnging seeds". Sounds very high-minded, but basically... that maybe human mind first instinctively recognizes something familiar in an intangible, emotional way... in the subconscious... in the "finger feel", deeper in the psychological darkness... and then it slowly makes it's way into terminology and consciousness and metrics. The metrics are already there, and there's the finely tuned senses to already receive it, but it takes hella lotta time to just be able to COMPREHEND.
So it would make sense that these strange artifacts etc esthetics stories dumb topic don miguel, THESE MAKE LARGELY GREAT SENSE IN THE SUBCONSCIOUS. again, very high-minded, but i wouldn't be surprised that the function of these "motions" is to bridge that gap... that they feel important, important to protect and hold unto, BUT YOU ARE UNABLE TO SPECIFY WHY. but they serve some very high or important purpose. Jung would agree. For example, maybe we recogninze eg important archetypes or archetypal metaphorical thematics or modes/lanes of the mind, and this is largely the way human mind works it's way... we just don't know yet properly.
... Wasn't there a research that eg gooses make set paths in the forest, and seemingly walk through those paths for no reasons at all, even if they end up to a dead-end? and someone purpoted that maybe the role for those paths for goose, is to function as "outsourced thinking pattern"... it's almost like an outsourced extension of their brain, where in order to process something, they literally walk through a routine that activates that pattern in their own brain, but in the outside world.
Forests and trees largely commincate with each other through not roots, but the fungi that extends from the roots etc...
