LAND OF THE BLIND: Gaming From A Blindness Perspective

I’m a lot like most of you who were born in the 80′s. I grew up playing video games like Mario and Zelda. I struggled for hours trying to beat that damn Soda Popinski in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out (and no, Mr. Dream doesn’t count. It will always and forever be Tyson). I jumped on the fighting game craze, marveling over new and interesting characters like Ryu and Blanka from Street Fighter II or Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. I was one of the millions of kids who had a GameBoy — hell I still have my original giant GameBoy, and it still works. I followed the adventures of Terra Branford and company in Final fantasy VI, wondering where Kefka would strike next, always seeming to be one step ahead. But there’s one slight difference between myself and most of you:

I’m totally blind.

Now, some of you may be asking, “But, Stirlock, how can you possibly play video games if you’re blind? Don’t you need vision?”

The short answer to that question is: not necessarily. True enough, I can’t really play certain games (puzzle and most racing games are pretty much out of the question), but this doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy games that everyone else does. I’m a huge fan of the beat ‘em up genre, my particular favorites being Final Fight, Streets of Rage 2 and a little known arcade gem called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. I love Japanese RPGs, although to progress in most of them, I of course need sighted help. I am a huge fan of fighting games, especially Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. I love rhythm games like Parappa and Um Jammer Lammy, even though the latter is extremely hard to play. I’m a huge Pokémon fan and have been playing the games from Red, Blue and Yellow to current the generation — and, yes, I’m a big enough nerd to import the upcoming Black and White games that are coming out in just over 2 and a half months.

“But, you haven’t really answered the question”, some of you are probably thinking. “How do you play these games without sight?”

Well, the answer is quite simple, really: I rely only on my sense of hearing. Therefore, I’m very picky about sound in video games; it’s everything to me. If a game doesn’t have good music and sound, I usually pass on it. A game could have the most cutting edge graphics to date, but it’s nothing to me without good audio. Even the NES boasts amazing audio capabilities (most games from Konami come to mind), but one of my favorites in terms of sound design is Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. Let me explain. There are sounds associated with nearly everything in that game, from dodging a punch to blocking, and when a fighter is about to do a special attack. You’re absolutely spoiled with audio cues in that game, and it’s even more so on the new Wii title. I’ve gotten all the way to Tyson himself numerous times, but sadly I could never beat him because the cue for his one-hit knock down punch is purely visual. This doesn’t really bother me though, since I was happy to have made it even that far.

As a contrast, I can wipe the floor with most of the fighters in Super Punch-Out for the SNES, though certain fighters have random patterns to their special attacks that can give me trouble (the way Mad Clown throws his juggling balls and the direction Hoy Quarlow swings his stick are the two main examples). Sadly, I don’t own a Wii, so I’ve never gotten the chance to mess around with Punch-Out Wii, but I’m confident I could master that game as well with enough time and patience.

Another great example of great audio making a game playable to us blind folks is the Pokemon series, which is another series that spoils you with the amount of audio. There are two main factors that set this game apart from most others. First, each Pokémon has its own unique cry, so I can effectively tell what I’m fighting. If you were to play me a random Pokémon’s cry, and ask me to name the Pokémon, I could probably tell you what most of them are. The other truly amazing thing about this game is navigation. You move around in your standard four directions, like most other RPGs, but the Pokemon series adds a little touch that makes this game playable to the blind: an audio cue that tells you when you run into walls and other obstacles.

This may just seem like a neat little detail to you sighted Pokémon players out there, but for someone like me, it allows me to go from not being able to know where I’m heading to being able to navigate towns and most dungeons. Combine that with having sounds for when you go up and down stairs and through doors, and you have a game which is 95% playable to the blind. The only thing that’s really tricky are certain dungeons, and some of the gym puzzles — although they can be navigated if you have a a good friend who can go through them themselves and then give you step-by-step written instructions.

Well, I could go on and on about aspects of gaming from a blind gamer’s perspective, but then you’d be reading a novel instead of an article on an awesome website. I just wanted to give you a slight example of how I play some games and what the gaming experience is like for me. I’ll most likely delve deeper into different areas in future articles — if you guys are interested, of course.

Also, if you’d like to check out videos of a blind gamer playing various games, check out my friend Liam’s YouTube page. He’s currently playing through Super Street Fighter IV and Parappa the Rapper.

Also also, for the curious, I own a variety of gaming systems. As far as consoles go, I own an NES (top loader), SNES, N64, Gamecube, NEC Turbografx, Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2, and an Xbox 360. The handhelds I own are the GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, Nintendo DS, PSP, and the Virtualboy (I’m probably the only person left on the planet that actually plays that thing).

Have other questions? Comments? Want to tell me I suck? Either comment below or send me an e-mail at mike@geek-life.com. Don’t worry, I don’t mind answering questions about blindness at all. I’ve heard it all before, you won’t offend, I promise.

“In The Land of The Blind” is a weekly column discussing the unique perspectives of a blind gamer geek.

About Mike

Mike Breedlove, AKA Stirlock, is Geek Life's resident blind gamer from California. While he enjoys most types of games out there, arcade style beat 'em ups and RPGs are his personal favorite genres. It is his firm belief that Snatcher is the best game ever made, and he still hopes, (even if in vain,) that whenever Hedeo Kojima announces a new game, it will be related to Snatcher. He's a fan of Nintendo's Mother series, and thinks it is a crime against humanity that an official translation was never made to Mother 3.

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