Stumbling through Little Nemo

[davidn]

I cannot believe that the demographics of videos uploaded on Youtube are so heavily weighted that putting the innocent word "through" in a video title immediately throws up the tag suggestions "fire" and "flames".

Anyway. I tried another NES game, this time with an elaborate recording setup that I was playing about with all day that allows me to record my voice through the headset connected to the computer, while simultaneously running the game's audio to the guitar processor thing I use and recording it on that, then editing the two together at the end. So you can now hear both Little Nemo: The Dream Master and my reactions to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQItDEQn69Y

I'd never so much as seen the game before I started recording this video, but as it turns out, it's a game in which you hop around a dream world lulling monsters to sleep by throwing boiled sweets at them and then hijacking their bodies to get yourself around the level. It also turns out I'm dreadful at it, even though I was very proud of myself for getting to the second level.

The method I used for recording worked out rather well, but I'm confused by how out-of-sync the sound gets in Camstudio - it seems to play my voice and the video at normal speed, and yet the voice always drifts slightly ahead or behind the video over time. The process of resynchronizing them in iMovie just got more and more difficult as it went on, having to re-import the same file multiple times to split it up, having the Trim menu disappear entirely and with it preventing me from scrolling down to the last row of thumbnails on the video to edit the end - it came to be so excruciating that I found myself wondering insane things like whether Windows Movie Maker might actually be better at it.

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Also, I LOVE the idea of the story functioning on dream logic. :D Has anyone ever actually done that with a narrative?

[davidn]

Hmm, maybe Harvester? (There's blood near the start which I remember disturbing me in a magazine screenshot ages ago, although now it looks a bit... MS Paint-y.) It's renowned for not making any sense, with the story revolving around the Order of the Harvest Moon in the centre of the town which also houses the PTA and needing to get an application form to get inside, or something like that... that, combined with the live action cutout look of it, gives me the same uncomfortable feeling that Mortal Kombat did.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Oh, crap, I think I read about this in that adventure games book! Yeah, good call...

And, I find when watching videos of anything from that era that I had only ever seen in magazine screenshots, your imagination tends to assume a much more impactful experience than the awkward direction that cutscenes of the era got could actually provide...

[davidn]

Yes, that's very true. Whenever I read about something that I know or assume is meant to be frightening when seen, my mind always tends to assume the worst when it tries to fill in the gaps - this was why I held off on trying Trauma Center for so long before discovering that it was actually a great action/rhythmish-thing game.

I might try Harvester at some point, now that I'm thinking about it again, and face that lifelong fear/curiosity - though I'm accidentally developing a reputation for liking horror games, even though it's not so much a liking as a continuous being roped into playing them.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Why it's almost as though you're a sucker for punishment. ;)

[davidn]

Having something to complain about keeps me happy - it's why I've survived in America as long as I have!