PixelLinkr #12: The Story Behind the Puzzle

Um Jammer Lammy (1999) is a follow-up to PaRappa the Rapper that replaces the rapping beagle with Lammy, a guitar player in a band called MilkCan, navigating increasingly surreal disasters, a maternity ward, a surfing emergency, death (she is briefly in Hell and performs her way out). It is a children's rhythm game rated T for Fantasy Violence. The game imagines guitar playing as a universal problem-solving tool. When confronted with a flaming building, Lammy plays guitar and it works. I believe her.

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🟢 Easy: Developed by Treasure

Games: Gunstar Heroes · Ikaruga · Radiant Silvergun · Mischief Makers

Treasure was founded in 1992 by former Konami developers who wanted to make the games Konami wouldn't let them make. Their catalog is not large (perhaps twenty games total) and almost every one of them is worth discussing.

Gunstar Heroes (1993) launched on the Mega Drive/Genesis and showed what was possible when the hardware was pushed: two-player run-and-gun, combinable weapon elements, a final boss that was a board game. The level design rejected convention in favor of surprise, each encounter was its own puzzle. Mischief Makers (1997) was the N64 launch-adjacent platformer about a robotic maid with a grab-and-throw mechanic. It is peculiar and not especially remembered, but the mechanical premise is interesting: you could shake anything.

Radiant Silvergun (1998) appeared in arcades and then on Saturn, and its weapon system (seven types, graded by fill-rate of specific enemy colors, with combination attacks) remains one of the most complex systems in the shoot 'em up genre. It was rare and sought after for years before digital distribution made it accessible. Ikaruga (2001/2003) refined the Radiant Silvergun concept into a single polarization mechanic: black and white ship modes, absorb matching bullets, damage opposite ones. Every enemy placement is a puzzle. Every section of every stage has a solution.

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🟡 Medium: Associated with Suda51 / Grasshopper Manufacture

Games: killer7 · No More Heroes · Lollipop Chainsaw · Shadows of the Damned

Goichi Suda (Suda51) is the studio head of Grasshopper Manufacture, and his games operate on the principle that coherence is optional and commitment to an aesthetic is everything.

killer7 (2005) is GameCube and PS2, and it is difficult to describe fairly. A wheelchair-using assassin manifests as seven distinct personalities, each with different abilities. The enemies are called Heaven Smile. The on-rails movement system is deliberate and strange. The story involves government conspiracy and alternative histories and it is never fully explained. It is completely, unpologetically itself. No More Heroes (2007) is the Wii's most interesting exclusive: Travis Touchdown, a beam katana, a ranking system for assassins, a Japanese suburb filtered through American cult action films. The meta commentary on video game violence and otaku culture is not subtle. The combat is excellent.

Shadows of the Damned (2011) came from a collaboration with Shinji Mikami (RE4 director) and has Garcia Hotspur going to Hell to rescue his girlfriend from a demon lord named Fleming. The demon lord is named Fleming. Garcia's sidekick is a skull named Johnson who turns into various weapons. The sense of humor is specific and sustained. Lollipop Chainsaw (2012) is Juliet Starling, cheerleader, chainsaw zombie killer. The character writing by James Gunn, the design by Suda51. It is exactly what that combination suggests.

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🔵 Hard: Published by New Blood Interactive

Games: DUSK · ULTRAKILL · Amid Evil · FAITH: The Unholy Trinity

New Blood Interactive is a small indie publisher founded by Dave Oshry, and their catalog has a specific identity: fast, weird, abrasive, proudly retro in aesthetic without being nostalgic in spirit. If you see the New Blood logo, you know what genre range to expect.

DUSK (2018) is a first-person shooter built in the Quake tradition: no sprint button required because the movement is fast by default, no iron sights, weapons that feel physical, level design that trusts you to read space quickly. It was the game that established that retro shooters could find large audiences in the 2010s. Amid Evil (2019) is the same formula with fantasy aesthetics, a dark sorcerer game instead of a grunge nightmare game. The weapons are staffs and axes and celestial instruments.

ULTRAKILL (still early access in 2026, but nearly complete) is the formal extreme: every element of the movement and combat system is designed around maintaining momentum and variety simultaneously. The blood parry. The coin ricochet. The style meter. It's what happens when you build a shooter around the question "what is the most expressive movement system possible?" FAITH: The Unholy Trinity (2022) is the outlier: a CRT-aesthetic horror game about exorcisms in 1987, pixelated but genuinely frightening. It looks like an Apple II game and plays like a nightmare. The New Blood catalog says: if it has conviction, we'll publish it.

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🟣 Tricky: Rhythm Games Framed as Performance, Not Note-Hitting

Games: PaRappa the Rapper · Um Jammer Lammy · Gitaroo Man · Elite Beat Agents

These four games are about the show. You're not aligning inputs with a timing bar, you're playing a character who is giving a performance, and the rhythm mechanics are the dramaturgy of that performance.

PaRappa the Rapper (1996) invented the format: PaRappa raps to pass his driver's test, to make food, to use a bathroom in an emergency. The conceit is absurdist and the emotional core is earnest. "I gotta believe!" is not ironic. Um Jammer Lammy extends it to guitar, to more elaborate scenarios, to a protagonist whose anxiety is played straight even in a maternity ward.

Gitaroo Man (2001/2002) is the most overtly romantic: a timid boy who transforms into a guitar hero when he plays, the stages framed as duels against antagonists who also play. The love story is handled with complete sincerity. The final level is one person playing guitar for another person. Elite Beat Agents (2006) is Ouendan localized for Western markets: three suited secret agents appear at people's worst moments and dance, generating inspirational power through synchronized movement. The "player" is the audience. The performance is the game. One stage involves a dog. I am not a dispassionate reviewer of what that stage does.

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Treasure's catalog is both easy and hard to summarize: every game they made is mechanically distinct and every game they made is centered on the same value, that the tactile experience of the moment-to-moment action should feel excellent, should feel designed rather than accidental, should feel like the result of someone who cared about what it was like inside the play. They made about twenty games and then slowed considerably. What they left is small and practically flawless.

Today's CineLinkr puzzle was about Sofia Coppola's loneliness in luxury, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's second career, one-take films, and stories told entirely through screens. Russian Ark filmed one continuous take in the Winter Palace and it goes fine.