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      <h5><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">//<a href="../../../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">loonygames</font></a>://<a href="../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">issue 
        2.2</font></a>://<a href="index.html"><font color="#7C420E">pixel obscura</font></a>://<a href="index.php"><font color="#7C420E">1</font></a>, 
        2</font></b></h5>
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          <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP" width="100%"> <font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> 
             </font> <p><webdog><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2" color="#0022A8"><b><font color="#693A0C">What's 
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<p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><a href="../../2.15/feat/index.html" target=""><b><font color="#00025E">Livin' 
  With The Sims</font></b></a><br></b>
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  Josh Vasquez on <b>Omikron: The Nomad Soul</b>.</font></p>
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              <p align="left"><font size="-1"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2" color="#0022A8"><b><font color="#00025E">Random 
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                      <p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><font color="#904C10" size="2">Pixel 
                        Obscura: </font><font color="#904C10" size="4"><br>
                        <font size="3">The Metropolis Haunted by Speed</font></font></i></font></b><br>
                      
                      <div align="right"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">By 
                        <a href="mailto:citizen21@hotmail.com">Josh Vasquez</a></font></div>
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                    <h5 align="right"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#00025E">Vol. 
                      2, Issue 1&nbsp; <br>
                      November 16, 1999&nbsp; </font></b></h5>
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              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><loonystart></font></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">We are 
                in a vast city, silent save the droning hive like buzz surrounding 
                the preparations for a mighty race. A cyclopean balloon hovers 
                above the buildings, looking something like those Thanksgiving 
                Day parade monstrosities. It leers down on the track; a face looking 
                like it was borrowed from a cartoon made back at the beginning 
                of the century. As we see this, a gibbering sound can be heard 
                in the distance, muffled and flattened, rendered alien by the 
                broken tongue of ancient speakers. Are we hearing a voice? Is 
                there life somewhere in this empty city? For there are no people 

                to be seen, no visible life, only the incessant rhythm of animated 
                machines...like the massive advertising signs rotating high above. 
                A countdown reaches 0, and the race begins. One image is repeated 
                throughout the montage: pieces slowly spin in the air, colorful 
                fragments frozen in recollection of some disaster. By the end 
                of the sequence we come to understand the significance of this 
                cryptic moment: the pieces, spiked by a temporal gravity, are 
                drawn together into the shapes of three futuristic cars and speed 
                backwards along the road, disappearing into a tunnel.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Two tracks 
                of time exist here: the alpha and the omega, the beginning and 
                the end woven together. It is a telling example of the delicacy 
                of this vision. The viewer watches both the cause and the effect, 
                his or her eye rendered prophetic by stitches in time. Is it possible 
                that some comment is being made on the endless repetition, the 
                never-ending cycle of speed that makes up racing games? The games 
                themselves are particularly well suited to the subtle establishing 
                of phantom narratives.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The race 
                is all; one follows the track to its inevitable conclusion in 
                a fierce trajectory of fate. There is a scary purity to the contest, 
                a streamlined dream of victory parades and the fascist aesthetics 
                of pageantry on a monumental scale. This world of motion hides 
                a story in every corner. </font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Who are 
                the drivers of these spectacular vehicles, hidden within the metal 
                womb? Are they enacting some secret ritual? (&#147;His hands explored 
                the worn fabric of the seat, marking...a cryptic diagram: some 
                astrological sign or road intersection&#148;). What is the race? 
                Is it a drama repeated forever in-between the towers of an abandoned 
                city whose veins are filled with the blurred deja vu of passing 
                cars? Interestingly, for the racing scenes, the creators chose 
                to eschew the typical blue/gray color scheme of sci-fi design 
                in favor of a more autumnal palette. Browns, oranges, yellows 
                and blacks seem to emphasize the rusty age of this place. There 
                is an apocalyptic edge appropriate to these dying colors.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The viewer 
                has witnessed both the destruction and resurrection of three of 
                the racing vehicles. The race, it seems, is a terminal one and 
                yet also regenerative. It&#146;s a wonderfully reflexive moment. 
                During the game, the player will be destroyed countless times 
                only to rise again and be given the chance to continue. Death 
                means nothing here in this dream of the future, as indeed it never 
                means anything in video games. This is not a profound philosophical 
                insight, but rather a charming way of commenting on an established 
                truth. This is not the end however. After the race sequence, the 
                logos of the different companies who built the competing crafts 
                appear in a montage of advertisements.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It is 
                a very brief bit, a series of flashing wheels, arrows and block 
                letters coming together and breaking apart while in the background 
                we hear the crackling, accelerated droning of the soundtrack, 
                the pausing of some monolithic machine. The sequence is rather 
                beautiful, a hypnotizing combination of pastel colors and creepily 
                cheerful images, like a &#147;get well soon&#148; card given out 
                by a computer. Yet there is something more disturbing about it 
                than the design; in a way, it is a numbing reevaluation of the 
                race we have just seen. This is a world of advertisers, a deadened 
                place of colors, signs and symbols. Perhaps there is nothing at 
                stake, only endless ritual: a designer's republic indeed.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In the 
                end, the cinematics of <b>Wipeout 3 </b>are relatively simple 
                ones (narratively speaking), as befits the game itself, yet they 
                are not brain dead. Beautiful and oddly haunting from a visual 
                perspective, the piece also magically skirts that line between 
                meaning and abstraction. The result is a dreamlike mediation on 
                the little movements and fragmentary glimpses, the subtlety that 
                seems to promise so much more.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left">&nbsp;</p>
              <p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i><font size="2">- 
                Joshua Vasquez is the resident film critic here at loonygames. 
                He also writes for the Internet film site <a href="http://www.matineemag.com/">Matinee 
                Magazine</a>.</loonystart></font></i></font></p>
              <p></p>
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Pixel Obscura 
  is &copy; 1999 Josh Vasequez. All other content is &copy; 1999 loonyboi productions. 
  Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited, you cartoonish villian, you.</font></i></p>
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