Ricardo Torres Associate Editor	Recent Favorites: Splashdown, Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario Sunshine Most Wanted: Panzer Dragoon Orta, Project Ego, Shinobi, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid Prime, Sly Cooper, Primal, Metroid Fusion

And Now for Something Completely Different

So I've been having a blast hearing back from everyone on the subject of hard games--nice to know I'm not the only masochist out there. I'm still sifting through all the responses, so I'll probably revisit the subject in a future column once I've gotten a feel for the general sentiment. This week, though, I thought I'd ask another question--might be one most folks haven't given much thought to. Since most of us are pretty fanatical when it comes to playing games, it's pretty easy to take for granted that you can. Have you ever given much thought to how you'd game if you didn't have an arm? Or couldn't see? Quite a head-scratcher, isn't it? I remember a few years back, Nintendo, I think, worked with hospitals and provided custom controllers for special-needs kids who wanted to get their game on. I've been thinking about that lately.

I remember I first started thinking about the subject a while ago. I've volunteered at a variety of places over the years and have had the opportunity to work with a bunch of really amazing people. Since I'm an avid gamer, the subject of games always came up...and sort of screeched to a halt when I tried to figure out a way to convey the Technicolor lunacy of games like Nights to someone who'd been blind all his life. As luck would have it, a company called Warp (remember it?) released Real Sound: Kaze No Regret, a game for the Saturn that was later ported to the Dreamcast, whose gameplay was built entirely around sound--it was kind of like a radio drama. Sound also played a large part in another Warp game called Enemy Zero, where you faced off against invisible aliens you could locate only by the sounds they made.

I had the chance to talk to Kenji Eno, Warp's president, back in the day about the games. Turns out he'd been inspired to work with sound after receiving letters from some fans in Japan who were blind. I remember being impressed by how ballsy it was of Eno to just go and do these games because he wanted to offer games that literally everyone could play. Well, at least everyone who could hear.

One of the cooler games for the Saturn.