Trigger Happy
up, or amorphous blobs of energy floating in the air to be driven or flown through.
Power-ups in general enhance the abilities of the player’s character in the game: aside from restoring health or granting an extra life, they may also increase speed, envelop the player’s ship in a temporary shield (which mysteriously stops bullets from entering, but allows the player to shoot outward) or furnish the player with one of an arsenal of extra-destructive weapons with which to meet the next enemy onslaught. In their instantaneous and nakedly magical effect, power-ups partake of a totally different ontology from anything else on the screen. Their mode and effect is purely relational, redefining the logic of how the player’s character and the enemies interact.
Out of control
What’s the most glaringly unreal aspect of videogames? It’s a cybernetic thing. Cybernetics is the study of control systems (from the Greek kubernパtパs, meaning “steersman”). And videogame control systems are for the most part radically removed, in structural terms, from what happens on the screen. I have so far been talking about how videogames manipulate the imaginative involvement of the player,
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