Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 380)

Trigger Happy
382
this all in one go; the current position in the game may
be saved to disk, or to a “memory card.” But often, the
process of saving is made into another thoroughly
arbitrary hurdle. Tomb Raider III, for example, only
allows the player to save when he or she has collected
the appropriate power-up, a blue save-crystal, and they
are frustratingly few and far between.
Again, it’s an easy (for the designers) but
incoherent way to make the game more challenging.
Saving a videogame should be just like pausing a
videotape. The save-crystal (or, in Resident Evil, the
typewriter ribbon) is also an unwarranted extra rip in
the fabric of the game universe. For this power-up
doesn’t mean anything in the fictional gameworld. The
fact that I have to stop playing now because I’m going
out has nothing whatsoever to do with Lara’s universe.
After all, Lara doesn’t know who I am—she doesn’t
even acknowledge my existence. That is precisely why,
for some, she is inexhaustibly desirable.
The moral maze
Desire and fear: our twin primal responses to fire, from
the moment Prometheus first unveiled his spark to
humans’ dumbstruck eyes. Fires burn in hell, yet also