The people who were around for the original punk movement and its derivatives are in their 60s, 70s, or even 80s now - isn't that crazy? My own dad, in his 60s himself, loves to remind me that he was actually there for Buzzcocks, The Clash, and Sex Pistols. His crown jewel "I was there" story is that he saw Diego Maradona score his first ever international goal at Hampden Park and then walked down the road to see Joy Division play their one and only gig in Glasgow later that day. Imagine living through that! When I go to a hometown gig and see a grey-haired dude or two hanging around the bar area, leaning on a walking stick or trying to sneak a breather, it's a surreal reminder that the ranks of "the older generation" are quickly being filled with people who raged against the machine before it was even a band. It's fun to imagine what these folks were like when they were young - what passions and dreams they held. How do I relate myself to them, and what do they have left to relate to me?

I'm not going so far as to say that Goichi Suda and his collaborators are synonymous with the occassional old men I see propping up the bar at their local PVSSYC#NT DIY show or Buzzcocks revival tour-stop, but the long-time staff at Grasshopper are, despite their pseudo-punk status, among the elder statesmen of game developers. Suda 51 has credits on 40 games that are spanned across three decades (will he retire at 51 games and release "The Suda 51 Games Collection"?!) and outside of secretive Nintendo legends like Miyamoto and Tezuka, I can't think of many individual game designers who are sitting on such broad production prestige and history. Travis Strikes Again, is, to my mind, the equivalent of one of those old greybeards finally sitting you down at a table in the beer-soaked venue and telling you all about their good old days stories - and how they're going to try and start a new band, too, of course.

It can feel somewhat ridiculous to attribute any video game to a single creator - as people often do with Suda - but Travis Strikes Again seems well aware of this, with frequent acknowledgements of the collaborative sacrifices that game developers make to create something that's either theirs or another's. It may feel unfair to the programmers and artists and guys who man the Twitter accounts, but I feel that it's imperative for games with "independent" spirit to continue transmitting truly single-personal perspectives in response to amorphous commitee-led industry dominators like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed, and one of the only ways to tell a personal story is to focus it on one person - often the writer, or the director. Or the guy who is both. And the guy who is both in this case has an interesting life story (that's still in development, sorry) that I'd like to hear.

Despite speaking so highly of Suda (and Grasshopper) here, I'd say it's fair to say that it's rare that I outright love any of the many games they've made. There's always some glaring, punishing flaw or Duchampian aggression against the status quo that just reminds me too much that I'm wasting precious time. Time-wasting feels like a trait that's almost exclusively reserved for video games, and perhaps it's a unique aspect of the medium that Suda just loves to take advantage of time and time again to differentiate his work from that of a movie or painting or book. But I don't often appreciate it! And while it's nowhere near as brain-mummifiying as The 25th Ward or FSR, Travis Strikes Again still likes to hold up your clock. It feels to me like the game is hamstrung by a perceived need to offer value for money - despite its attempts to stand apart as a genuine art-piece of personal history, it's still constrained on some level by a desire to be a consumable product that people can "get their $40 from" and put 6/10 or 4/5 star ratings or whatever against in a games magazine or website or review blog. It fills its levels with stuff that simply doesn't need to be there, feeling like a guitar solo that goes on too long. But that's punk, right?

The greatest artwork-transgressor is likely the combat itself. While surprisingly strategic and satisfying at times (especially in the later levels), it eventually boils down to the same patterns/plays as always, and ultimately serves as an overbearing obstacle that stands in the way of getting more personal insights and pseudohistorical musings from the remembering minds at Grasshopper. Golden Dragon GP and Killer Marathon are probably the most enjoyable Death Balls in the collection due to the generous ways they interrupt the monotony of streets of raging/geometry warsing across Pac-Man mazes, and I kinda wish the game had been a minigame collection that homaged the different Grasshopper genres. It might have been even better if Travis had just peacefully walked round an Unreal Engine recreation of Suda's headspace and history in a manner not unlike Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective; the game is at its best when it's just sharing its secrets and fun with you.

It's cute that the Serious Moonlight section bills itself as a Shadows of the Damned mini-sequel, but how fun would it have been if they're actually tried to emulate that game's feel, even superficially? C'mon! It's Unreal! The engine that everyone and everything uses for TPS action! (Given how much this game honours Unreal Engine/Tournament, it's a shame that Travis hasn't flossed his way into Fortnite yet) Perhaps too much to ask of our developers, but I honestly feel like there's a human limit to how much mindless swinging of a beam katana one can do while waiting for their clinch super move to charge back up. I went to the UK National Video Games Museum recently, and it proved to me that there's genuine value in getting people to experience gaming history by actually playing those games in quick, sequential succession. I think an Any% playthrough of Grasshopper's entire history is maybe what Vicarious/Grasshopper wanted for Travis Strikes Again, but probably didn't have time to do. Again, video games continue to take away our time in ways other artworks don't quite manage...

It's interesting to parallel this game with something like this year's Iwata Asks book - Iwata's auto/biography has some insightful stories and letters, but doesn't truly bear any of the guy's emotion or soul much beyond vague pleasantries like "I respect the developers at Nintendo" and "Shigeru Miyamoto was my friend". Suda, by contrast, seems more than willing to (sparsely) share his silver threads of thought, often in ways that can be uncomfortable for players - the infamous "the CEO of EA is a woman-beating piece of shit because he didn't let me make my high-concept AAA RPG game wacky enough" is an ugly piece of thinly-veiled thought from Suda, but it's preferable to the Nintendo CEO's polite corporate mannerisming. If video games really want to take that next artistic step, they do need the space to let out some of the ugly problematic thoughts inside our heads (the need to "burn sadness like life-giving fuel" as Travis surprisingly says), and I feel like Travis Strikes Again is moving things in the right direction. This is arguably an art-therapy session for these old boys.

At its core, I guess that's what Travis Strikes Again is. Something that's kinda ugly and protracted and painful, but undeniably worthwhile by virtue of its willingness to be earnestly personal and transgressive. A game that isn't so much about the act of playing the game itself, but more focused on the process of putting your brain against a gamepad to see inside someone else's brain on the other side of the cartridge. It's been a long road to this point, and there's still a long way to go, but they'll keep going. 10 hours of video games a day.

In the human world,
the time for games has ended.
Nothing binds us now.