Reinforcing the games/prog connection, one niche product at a time

My first experience with Sony’s No Heroes Allowed, No Puzzles Either was, shall we say, less than impressive. Eventually I did manage to get the game working correctly, a few weeks after penning that non-review, and it turned out to be about as good as I expected. Albeit somewhat grindy and dependent on random drops.

noheroes

However, it wasn’t until a few days ago, as I was skimming over my trophies list, that I decided No Puzzles Either is actually totally boss. You get a trophy for each of the eight worlds you defeat, and each trophy has an appropriate numeric allusion in its title. The trophy for World 6 was “Six of the Best,” which I didn’t originally think much of until I noticed it in my trophy list and had a sudden flash of recognition.

“Six of the Best” was the name of the big Genesis reunion concert from the early ’80s, where the band got back together for a single show with Peter Gabriel to help raise money to bail out his failing world music project. It wasn’t recorded, and no album or video of the event has ever been published. I only know about the event because a flyer for the concert was flashed on-screen briefly in a Genesis documentary I watched a few times in the early ’90s.

That is a pretty ridiculously obscure reference. Not to mention pretty ridiculously rad. I would really like to shake that localization team’s hand. If only for proving, once again, that video games and progressive rock are forever, inextricably connected.

2 thoughts on “Reinforcing the games/prog connection, one niche product at a time

  1. I love these sort of references. I think you’d have a ball with MMOs – they seem to be packed with obscure title allusions (not necessarily prog rock of course). Just the other day I did a fate in FFXIV, when the reference hit me… the fate was called Schism, and it involved destroying a bunch of tool boxes. “Schism” being the name of a song by a band called… Tool. Bad puns and obscure references for the win!

  2. …or it could just be a reference to school beatings. Which is the original derivation of the Genesis title.

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