clearly a work of video game dadaism. what one may perceive as incompetent design is in fact an exploration into the very nature of the video game; why do we play to win? what do we seek to gain from an authored victory? where does simulated satisfaction stop and true satisfaction begin?
if you don't believe me, look no further than the game's title, "Garfield no Isshukan" (A Week of Garfield), clearly an homage to the 1934 artist's book, Une semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness) by german painter and poet Max Ernst. The contents of Une semaine de bonté are an amalgamation of preexisting victorian art, cut together into entirely new works (dare I say, in a sense, remixed). compare this to both the fashion by which the Famicom's graphics are displayed by the arrangement and rearrangement of so called "tiles" to make "objects" (colloquially and somewhat anachronistically known as "sprites" in many gaming communities), yet also to the form Garfield no Isshukan takes from a mechanical perspective.
In being such a diabolically hamstrung gameplay experience (yet one more entry in the then popular "platforming" genre, and a notoriously poor one at that) the work effortlessly conveys, to those giving it mind anyhow, that all video games, and by extension all art, is remixed. Perhaps, then, all life is remixed as well, preexisting archetypes, ways of being, mannerisms, behavioral patterns, histories, and lifestyles. The times adapt, the nouns change hands with one another, but many of the verbs remain the same.
if you don't believe me, look no further than the game's title, "Garfield no Isshukan" (A Week of Garfield), clearly an homage to the 1934 artist's book, Une semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness) by german painter and poet Max Ernst. The contents of Une semaine de bonté are an amalgamation of preexisting victorian art, cut together into entirely new works (dare I say, in a sense, remixed). compare this to both the fashion by which the Famicom's graphics are displayed by the arrangement and rearrangement of so called "tiles" to make "objects" (colloquially and somewhat anachronistically known as "sprites" in many gaming communities), yet also to the form Garfield no Isshukan takes from a mechanical perspective.
In being such a diabolically hamstrung gameplay experience (yet one more entry in the then popular "platforming" genre, and a notoriously poor one at that) the work effortlessly conveys, to those giving it mind anyhow, that all video games, and by extension all art, is remixed. Perhaps, then, all life is remixed as well, preexisting archetypes, ways of being, mannerisms, behavioral patterns, histories, and lifestyles. The times adapt, the nouns change hands with one another, but many of the verbs remain the same.