Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 323)

Trigger Happy
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the sudden appearance of grenades flying toward us in
Time Crisis 2, and we “duck” by lifting our foot off a
pedal before they hit. The expansive exploration game
Shenmue, meanwhile, utilizes a “Quick-Time Event”
system for certain periods of gameplay, which in
contrast to the game’s breathtaking visual
sophistication is a revealingly crude instance of symbol
manipulation through time. This occurs, for instance,
when the hero is pursuing another character down a
crowded Hong Kong market street. At regular intervals
a symbol corresponding to one of the console buttons
will flash on the screen; if the player fails to hit the
corresponding control very quickly, his character will
trip over a cart of tomatoes and thus lose his quarry.
As the period of time in question expands from
tenths of a second to whole seconds, tactical timing
bleeds slowly into a second component of videogame
rhythm: strategic timing. A classic example of this is in
the shoot-’em-up Defender. The player’s basic weapon
is a laser. To shoot down alien craft and swoop to
rescue falling humans is a question of tactical timing.
But you also have a limited supply of “smart bombs,”
which instantly destroy everything in the screen area.
Now as you only have three of these precious devices