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Life & Arts

'Runner' ventures into 3-D

My 8 Bits

Jason Poland

Do you know what it means to be a 3-D World Runner? I'm not sure you really do. This isn't just about being a 1-D or 2-D World Runner, but a 3-D World Runner. Not World Walker or World Jogger, but World Runner. You are running. Across worlds. In 3-D. I get tired just writing about it. Imagine the sacrifice. Would you give up your school, your job and your family to pursue floating stars and glory across acres of sprawling checkered fields across eight different worlds? I did it once. And the world hasn't looked the same since.

In The 3-D Battles of World Runner, you control an interstellar marathon runner who eternally sprints toward the horizon line, dodging alien creatures and snagging stars. Leaping across black chasms and holding tight to magic balloons are also part of your planetary obstacle course. It may sound like a cross-country acid trip, but this is survival. Hope you stretched. 

Taking a cue from the Renaissance invention of illusionary perspective, all characters on the screen are staggered on a checkered grid field and become larger as they approach the World Runner from the vanishing point. If that doesn't do it for your third dimensional digest, hit the select button and don some cheap 3-D glasses; the on-screen color scheme will switch to an overlaid pattern of red and blue just like those cheesy sci-fi flicks from the 1950s. Virtual reality is overrated.

Rad Racer, a single cell ancestor to the likes of car racing games like Gran Turismo, was the only other Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge to use this space race-age technology. Both games were developed by the same company, Square, who later introduced gamers into the immersive world of Final Fantasy. 

Because of the tractor beam-like appeal of the illusionary 3-D effect, both Rad Racer and World Runner have the hypnotic effect of pulling the gamer into the screen, which is every Nintendo player's dream. While most Nintendo games were exploring the flat strata of the up-and-down and side-to-side scroll of the screen, "3-D" games like these were pushing the limits of their 2-D boundaries. Video games wouldn't truly be 3-D until polygon -- and not flat, sprite-based graphics -- was implemented nearly a decade later.

Like the art world, there have been many movements in video game graphic history. Some work toward delivering a more than life-like experience to the gamer, and some hope to deliver gamers from life-like experience. These early VR attempts at pulling the gamer into an immersive environment may seem gimmicky, but they amazed gamers of their day. 

Sadly, unlike art, movements in video game graphics are not widely appreciated after a new generation of consoles hits the market. Imagine, in only 20 years, the Xbox 360 will sit on a dusty shelf, and its graphics capabilities will only be seen as a stepping stone to the laser, vapor and crystal-based graphics of the future perfect world of tomorrow. Let me tell you, robots will kill your Tetris high score. Then they'll kill you.

Make the sacrifice to become a World Runner, and free your mind from the oppressive tyranny of a 3-D world. There are other dimensions out there to explore that don't come on a video game console. They come on sheets of paper and they are far out. I'm talking about books, but I guess acid would work, too.

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