Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

might assume that these were identical-looking but different vehicles. This is how montage creates a sense of rhythm and motion, but such an approach would be fatal in a videogame, where the player has to control the car, and thus requires a continuous, unbroken viewpoint—either a cockpit cam or follow cam. This is essential for easy, intuitive navigation; if the camera cuts to a different position so that your vehicle appears to be going the other way, the physical videogame controls will suddenly be reversed in their effects. You’re going to crash nastily.

Sometimes videogame camera positions change automatically rather than at the player’s behest; even so, when they do, they are not performing traditional montage but trying to give the player a better view of the action under his control. This is the case in the Tomb Raider games, for instance. Such changes of view, however, can and often do employ other quasifilmic techniques such as tracking and panning. Metal Gear Solid is given a particularly “cinematic” feel by touches such as these: whenever the hero backs up against a wall to hide from an enemy guard, the camera, which normally takes a functional aerial viewpoint, swoops in to about shin level to frame the player’s character and the guard walking past (see fig.

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