My first experience with mixing up an original piece of art with a derivative piece of art was thanks to Weird Al Yankovic. "Like a Surgeon," "I Lost on Jeopardy," "I Need a New Duck" -- these were original songs, songs that someone went back in time to have other artists cover, with new words, words that weren't funny and involved adult subject matter, instead of funny stuff like ducks and food.
If Rich Hall and his Sniglet brigade hadn't laid down his sword and gone to run a tavern in Springfield, I could request a word for this mistake. The word should be broad enough to extend not just to parodies of works being mistaken for the original, but, more broadly, ripoffs and homages as well. Any sort of inspiration, so long as it is pretty clear and objectively transitive, should be covered under the aegis of this word.
I bring this up because of Nintendo's new 3DS eShop lineup. One of the few games on display is Alleyway, a launch game for the original Game Boy. I love me some Alleyway. Back in the day, I could beat that game like a redheaded rented government mule. Huge satisfaction in clearing board after board of blocks. Back them, I thought it might be similar to Arkanoid. Now, after loads of gaming research, I know both it and Arkanoid were version of Atari's 1976 game Breakout.
That word-that-does-not-yet-exist would sure be handy to explain that, right? 12-year-old me enjoying his game would have liked to have known there was a whole fleet of Breakout-y games, and the one I was enjoying was just the latest in a series. The same way I'd like to have known before slogging through 13 David Eddings books there other fantasy novelists in fact did it better.
Back to the 3DS shop: They're revamped Excitebike as a 3D game, and to tout their system are giving it away for free for the first month the service is online. Also available for download of Radar Mission -- not Radarscope but Radar Mission, the Battleship precursor to Steel Diver. And the original Super DoIHaveToSayHisName Land, again from the Game Boy's early days.
Good news: prices are cheap, just a few bucks, cheaper even that to download then on the Wii. You'll be able to port your bought old-school games from the Wii to the 3DS. So-so news: that's about it for "new games" for the time being. Everyone else is staying in the Disney Vault. The 3DS could really use a great game, but the 3DS shop isn't offering anything close to a killer app.
