Thought Shower

Back in 1996 when the N64 came out, all the gaming magazine covers featured one thing: Super Mario 64. Many of them had slogans such as 'Revolutionary' and 'Greatest game ever' and for once the hyperbole was, in fact, spot on. The game was unlike anything seen before it, the beautiful 3D worlds, the fluid animation, the bizarre but intuitive control scheme, all adding up to the legend that is Super Mario 64. Mario 64 had not only jump-started 3D console gaming, but it had knocked it out of the park on the first try! The game was challenging and addictive, gorgeous to look at and wonderful to play, easy to pick up and play but took forever to master. In short, it ticked all the boxes and ended up the greatest gaming experience up to that point. So has it been surpassed in the 10+ years since it's creation? Not even close my friends. As games slip further and further away from the philosophy of action and fun, and more towards 'storyline' and working your ass ...

What was the last two dimensional animated film that you saw? Hopefully you managed to catch Howl's Moving Castle in a cinema last year, or Spirited Away the year before that (both of which were directed by Japanese lord of animation Miyazaki). But what of American animation? What was the last Animated film that came out of the US? Titan A.E.? Spirit? Both films that are now going on 10 years old. And are there even any in the pipeline? Not that I know of. In fact, if it wasn't for the insistence of Pixar's John Lasseter, Disney would have closed down it's 2D studios by now. So why is this? Why have we lost an art form that was so instrumental in the golden age of cinema, that brought us so many classic characters, and stylistic conventions that are so recognisable that they are parodied in even live action films (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Mask etc.). It is all for a very simple reason; animated two dimensional films are simply not commercially viable anymore. Or at ...