The Gaming Influence

    If you read through Shining, then you might have noticed that the story and dialogue almost feels like a video game. One of the reasons behind that is that I had always imagined Neostriker as a videogame series and until then, that is how I wrote my stories. Shining was actually the first attempt to break from that but such habits are hard to break.
    The second reason is that as I wrote, I could imagine adapting Shining into a video game, particularly for the Wii if it had the power. The Wii U would actually fit better due to the asymmetric gameplay but that is a dream that likely won't come true. Nevertheless, I still kept the mindset as I wrote it and sort of deemphasized it when I went back to edit the format.
    The third reason was actually because it made sense. By having a set logic of how the mechanics worked, I was able to produce consistent combat that actually had reasoning behind it instead of impossible odds. For example, in Rurouni Kenshin or Dragon Ball, the heroes take multiple mortal wounds and yet recover to full strength. It sounds unrealistic and hard for me to ask the readers to swallow so I opted for a mechanic to base everything on (and I think it works).

    Do I still want to adapt Shining into a game? Well, at this point I've made it less game-like enough that it would be tedious and non-constructive to reverse it. However, there is one concept I really want to try and I think it would be fantastic. Spoiler alert. In Chapter 15-20, David goes into this cave that transports him to certain places. One idea I had was if he could visit Hyrule, the Mushroom Kingdom, Dreamland, and Zebes. Then you could battle against Link, Mario, Kirby, and Samus in what would be very unique battles. Alas, I would have to work for Nintendo to pull that off probably. Oh well, a guy can dream.

J. D. Nyle