Hero (How you feel can …): I think both Nintendo and… Vega (How you feel can …): It might do Nintendo some… Metal Man Master (How you feel can …): You know, I've got over 4… Googleshng (How you feel can …): On the one hand, Steam an… R.R.Bigman (How you feel can …): I had no idea that you co… djSyndrome (How you feel can …): I understand the why - pu… JFink (How you feel can …): "Complain as I might abou… alexb (How you feel can …): This is exactly why I'm n… Nobbyworks (How you feel can …): I get the impression that… Rey (How you feel can …): I think the appropriate s…
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The gamer who once was
31 October 08 | 22:13 | Posted by: eirikr
As gamers, we know we can get a little too obsessed sometimes. But have you ever considered that, perhaps, our obsession is really a possession? When we play for hours on end with no want of the outside world, it seems that games are the true masters of our behavior.
Such is the tale of Howie, a once amiable young man who had his life turned upside-down by such an unfortunate obsession. His spooky tale is recounted below by a former friend who wishes to remain anonymous, who has also provided video evidence of the critical moment that changed Howie's life…forever. After reading it, maybe you will be more mindful of those recommended hourly breaks...
I won't deny that the futility of trying to keep abreast of major releases is a huge factor in my deciding to sit this fall out. (A decision to which I'm not quite as dedicated as I might seem; I'm having a tough time forcing myself not to restore my preorder for Valkyria Chronicles, for example.) I think I've been suffering long-term residual shell-shock from 1UP's first real fall season, when a paltry five of us were writing all the reviews, previews, news, features and guides for one of gaming's biggest years ever. The realization that the site can get along just fine without me hovering over the new release section like an anxious den mother has taken a while to sink in, but it's really quite a relief. It's freed me to look forward to the launch of the expanded content section and the opportunity to write about things that aren't games, because there's so much more to life than this silly little medium.
Another factor, though, has been my increasing revulsion at the prospect of association with self-proclaimed hardcore gamers. Just look at how various forums responded today to Jennifer Tsao's departure from 1UP for a depressing example. Jen wasn't just a great managing editor (a thankless, behind-the-scenes job that keeps a site's visible content moving at an even clip), but she brought a welcome and necessary perspective to our publications. Buuut: since her mature, reasoned point of view threatened the entrenched patriarchal hegemony of the hardcore gamer, her move to Sega has been met with more "good riddance" than "good luck," and that's pathetic given all that's she's brought to the gaming press. But such tends to be the case with people who think of themselves as hardcore: that is, they tend to be pretty pathetic. (Not all of them, of course.)
Of course, despite my flagging interest in the very narrow stream of content presented as Must-Play Experiences by the industry's finely-tuned engine of promotion and advertising, I'm still perfectly fine writing about the medium that has treated me so well these past years. There's more to gaming than the latest grisly exercise in shooting a bald musclebound spaceman in the face, and there are enough intelligent fans of the form to interact with whose shoulders are mercifully free of chips.
So keep it lively, guys. You're the object that blunts my innate pessimism to mere cynicism.
Today is Halloween, and many of you will be making the most of the all-hallowed evening at costumed social gatherings. Others, adult life being what it is, have to work tonight. And the rest of you might be planning to spend the night in like any other, keeping to yourself as you please. You might even be thinking of turning out the front lights, thinking, "Man, eff trick-or-treaters" -- that you just can't be bothered distributing candy to children (our future).
That being the case, I would advise you to quickly download this old episode of the dearly departed GFW Radio, skip to 5:23, and listen to what Jeff Green has to say to you.
With the launch of LittleBigPlanet, I'd like to offer a suggestion to all the budding creators out there who are now or will soon be using the game's easy-to-use tools to create their own levels and publishing them for the community to play: please consider turning off the copy protection. When you publish a level in this game, one of the settings you can tweak is whether or not you'll let people copy your level onto their game. I am afraid a lot of people won't do this, because popular levels from the beta have already been copied and republished exactly under a different name with no attribution to the original creator. That sucks, and the people trying to bask in the reflected glory of the hard work done by someone else should be tarred and feathered. But the nascent LBP community has already identified the offenders, and one only has to peruse the various forum threads devoted to the game to see who the plagiarists are.
Turning off the copy protection might result in your level being bootlegged, which would be a shame. On the other hand, letting the community at large take a close look at how you put your level together is the best way to share your good ideas. In the beta, nothing could be copy-prohibited, and I learned a lot by copying levels into my game and checking out exactly what they did to achieve the different cool gameplay mechanics or special effects in their levels. When I make my next level, I will be doing it with that knowledge, building on what has come before. My hope is that someone else will copy my level, see what I've done, and further build on that. I might someday play a level ten or fifteen times removed from what I've done, and see in there the evolution of an idea I had. That's cool.
My dream for LBP is for it to be collaborative beyond just multiplayer level-editing. To have hundreds of gamers building on each other's work can only make the community levels more fun for everyone. The first step in getting there is for everyone to share their work. I hope you'll consider doing just that.
Please allow me to take Mr. Nicolai's post below a step beyond: I have given up on gaming.
Well, in a certain sense. What I mean to say is that I've given up on keeping up with gaming -- that is to say, I'm not buying any new releases this fall. Except a couple of Atlus games, of course, because if I skip Persona 4 and Poison Pink now I'll have to pay twice their actual value in a year. Besides those two exceptions, though -- nothing! I picked up Order of Ecclesia last week and played about 10 minutes of it before shrugging and going to back to tending shop with Torneko. I've made a few forays into the world of Mana, too. (Via a 14-year-old Mana adventure.) But for some reason, everything else leaves me cold -- and the games that actually do interest me aren't so compelling I feel like paying money for them right now.
I suspect that all of this can be traced back to my random encounter with poverty a little while ago. Scrambling desperately to pay for rent and food for half a year forced me to stop and say, "Is it really necessary to keep up with every single release that comes down the pipeline?" Sure, I work in the gaming press, but it's not like we have a shortage of people happy to write about Dead Space and Resistance 2 on our staff. Why should I feel obligated to keep up simply for appearances' sake? This revelation resulted in a round of serious preorder culling; and after further thought, I looked at interesting titles like Fallout 3 and Valkyria Chronicle and realized that I don't really need them, either...at least not until next year, when they've had a price cut. Mind you, I've taken great pleasure in dredging up stuff to use on my new Twin Famicom; it's just the shiny new things that I have little interest in, probably because they all demand a lot more time to complete than something like Kabuki Quantum Fighter.
Not coincidentally, I've also quietly bowed out of reviews duty as well, because I can't seem to drum up enough give-a-crap to bother completing anything these days, and finishing stuff for review got to be painful. Besides, my main interest in game writing has always been researching and writing about the medium's history, and I enjoy that part of it more than ever. Sooner or later, Fable II will enter the purview of Retronauts. I'll probably get around to playing it then. (Assuming there are any working Xbox 360s left in the world in ten years.)
That's not to say I'm completely apathetic about upcoming releases -- and at the moment, nothing interests me quite so much as this little gem:
I saw some new screens for Dragon Quest IX over on that one corrupt and evil forum this morning, and it filled my shriveled little heart with happiness. Just look at it! Level-5 always manages to squeeze much more out of the systems it works on than should really be possible, and that seems to go double for the DS. DQIX looks like it's going to make Matrix's Final Fantasy remakes feel like amateur hour.
But what interests me most about this Dragon Quest is its multiplayer dynamic. I'm not normally one for gaming with others, but the concept of a traditional turn-based RPG with multiple players taking turns making input and working together to take down foes seems really intriguing and could make the toughest battles even more exciting than usual. Plus, DQ's tradition of no battle truly lost means you're less likely to genuinely hate a fellow party member for screwing up; you'll lose some cash if you team up with some weaksauce mage who wants to attack feebly rather than cast spells, but you won't lose the game.
The lower image shows the battle system playing out exactly as I imagined, and exactly as it should: each player chooses which foe to attack, moving down the player list in sequence with all commands and targets clearly marked. Player one is attacking; the second player, is casting "Mera" (which I think is "Sizzle"); and player three is trying to decide whether to go after a Slime or a Bodkin Archer. Meanwhile, player four is wishing the others would hurry the heck up.
I was disappointed when the action RPG system Square Enix initially showed off for the system disappeared, but in retrospect it was probably smart move. The Japanese portable market is more or less clogged with Monster Hunter play-alikes at this point, and had DQIX stayed on its original course it would have simply been another in a long line of me-too trend-jumpers. Hardly a description befitting its legacy. Besides, this turn-based approach seems more in keeping with the spirit of the series, not just the mechanics; DQ is about accessibility and playability, and a system that plays out at the party's speed should be a lot friendlier to the wide demographic spread that comprises the Dragon Quest userbase.
After all, as Nicolai astutely pointed out, "hardcore" and "casual" are just descriptions of gamers, not games. And Dragon Quest is a series for everyone -- even curmudgeons like me, it seems.
I've become decreasingly interested in what gaming's blockbuster releases have to offer with each passing year. You can't play everything and when the aggregate of major titles amount to a homogeneous swath of brown space marine gladiator zombie hunts it's hard to care. My friend gave me a brief tour of Dead Space this evening. It's very scary! He was stuck behind an impenetrable window incapable of helping as a crewman screamed for help behind as he was methodically killed, his head exploded like a Jackson Pollack against the glass. The attention to detail extends to the menus, a holographic representation that your avatar reacts to. Without this type of direct exposure I may have never looked twice at this game. Even the local word-of-mouth hadn't swayed me. So please indulge me in my Scott McCloud fantasies as I wonder aloud about the language used to describe video games.
When the paleolithic gaming press (journalisticas vidyagame) first roamed the Earth, they fashioned their wares from the only tools available to them, the language that the console manufacturers were using to distinguish themselves. In the 1970's a tasteful wood grain deco may have been all they needed, but as the cold war between Nintendo and... everyone that was not Nintendo got more competitive, the advertising became more hyperbolic, the capabilities of the various systems took center stage and game reviews became framed in those same terms, broken down into rigid categories. Graphics, sound, gameplay, "fun". It's a little better today, at least in some corners of the internet, but the metric of how people judge games continues to be narrowly defined. It's just that the terms have changed.
My last post got me thinking: this has been a pretty excellent year for fans of the Second Dimension. In addition to finally getting our hands on a comprehensible version of the aforementioned Mother 3, we've had a surprisingly decent amount of 2D (and semi-2D) releases for a time when even our handhelds are doing 3D.
First up is the "Good lord, that's beautiful!" category, lead by Wario Land: Shake It! Have you seen that thing? Regardless of whether or not it's worth more than a rental, it is certainly gorgeous to look at (but I guess hiring an animation studio to work with you will do that). In the same vein, we finally got a glimpse at Muramasa: The Demon Blade, another piece of 2D eye candy from the folks that brought us the stunning Odin Sphere. If your jaw isn't on the floor, you're probably at the wrong website, pal.
It seems like more and more games are being released and then collapsing under the weight of the people trying to play them. I think the worst experience I've ever had in that vein was trying to register to play Metal Gear Online. It took hours and hours and constant refreshes on web-based infrastructure apparently built with the belief that no one would actually try to play the game. Server issues seem at their worst in games where the multiplayer aspect is more important; online-only games likeSOCOM: Confrontation and Metal Gear Online are unplayable immediately after their release, and online-focused games like LittleBigPlanet have trouble accommodating the influx of players when the game finally hits store shelves.
It's incredibly frustrating, and since all of these games had public, online betas before their release, it's also quite inexplicable. I know that betas these days are just glorified demos, but the server issues that crippled all of these aforementioned games post-launch were all present in the beta phase. What is the cause? I don't know much about the tech behind online gaming, but as a layman, it seems to me that these companies are underestimating the demand for their game. With a release like LittleBigPlanet, which seems to be a cornerstone of Sony's PlayStation 3 marketing strategy, how is that possible? Especially since the recall limited the amount of copies that actually made it into consumers' hands.
I wrote earlier about how game publishers are experimenting with ways to reward early adopters, some of which rely on Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network. One of the games that is doing that is LittleBigPlanet, which has free, limited edition DLC for week one purchasers. It seems to me that all the progress they make in trying to get consumers to jump on their products as soon as they hit shelves is undermined if the day one experience is going to be a laggy, frustrating disaster.
The title of this post has nothing to do with the title of the post below. It's one of those weird coincidences where I formulated my own post in my head on the way home only to log in and find someone else had written something with an eerily similar title -- though not at all about the same topic.
Nah, this is about the mysterious Beatles/MTV announcement due in the morning. The one that all gaming publications are somehow on the hook for. Hmm, what could it possibly be? Obviously, it means we can expect to find Beatles tunes in some form of MTV music game Rock Band soon.
This neatly answers a question that bugged me when I played the new Guitar Hero last week -- one that I was planning to blog about soon, in fact. (I guess this saves the me trouble.) I was happy to see "Band on the Run" included in Guitar Hero, because who doesn't love Wings? And I couldn't complain about "Beat It," because Michael Jackson's Thriller was unspeakably huge when I was in elementary school. I mean, seriously, it's hard to explain just how pervasive and awe-inspiring it seemed back then unless you happen to also have been an impressionably youngster, in which case you already know. "But hey, don't Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson collectively hold the rights to the entire Beatles catalog?" I asked myself. "So why do they have songs in Guitar Hero, but there are no Beatles tunes? They're great songs, but hardly sacred."
I guess the answer is pretty obvious now: there are no Beatles songs in Guitar Hero because they're all exclusive to Rock Band. And I've gotta say, if MTV decided to put out a version of Rock Band that was nothing but Beatles, I would buy that so fast it would...it would be, uh, very fast. Yes.
I can't wait to activate my Star Power for "Her Majesty." Wait, wrong game.
Also, I took reader advice on the cover of the bonus magazine. I wasn't happy with the art, of course, but I liked the alternate suggestions you guys came up with. Why not use sprites? Why not take a photo? So I combined the two and took a photo of sprites, and tossed the original artwork in there for the heck of it. Hopefully it will photograph well! I'm quite happy with the pic, I must say. So thanks, random commenters!
Edit: It sounds like the new Beatles thing won't be Rock Band-related at all, but rather a Beatles-branded version of Peter Gabriel's XPLORA-1. Say it ain't so, Paul, lest I weep right alongside my guitar.
If you're an intelligent patron of the arts (which you must be if you're reading GameSpite, baby), you honestly don't have much practical use for professional criticism. Whether it's games or films, your senses are well-honed enough to accurately predict a product's worth to you at a glance -- nine times out of ten, at least. It's in that rare one-out-of-ten case that a savvy individual stumbles upon something that by all appearances should be irredeemable dreck but is actually delightful, whereupon he makes it his burden to preach to his skeptical peers the correction of an undeserved appraisal.
Prepare your disbelief, then, as I present you with a big one: Sex Drive is actually a really good movie.
Having finished the first chapter, I can safely say the biggest secret about Mother 3 is that the sprite work and animation is actually the most impressive thing about it. Don't get me wrong; I've found the battle system to be fun (rare for an RPG these days) and the story both emotional and hilarious, so consider just how good this game has to look to trump both of those things. Somehow, Brownie Brown managed to make the game simultaneously look like its predecessor and completely surpass just about every other 2D game ever. (Considering EarthBound was originally panned for looking too simplistic, this is quite a feat.)
I remember when Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 2 came out the same holiday season that it really highlighted how important animation, rather than raw graphics, were to making something look good. The idea is apt here, too. Mother 3 is a GBA game, meaning it's SNES-quality graphics at best. That's fine; I'm inclined to like those anyway. The reason it's such a treat to look at, even in a modern world of HD remakes, is the same (and apparently only) reason Wario Land: Shake It! was so exciting: the gorgeous animation.
Each character, whether they're an NPC or a member of your party, animate in a way that makes each one a unique entity. It’s almost as if, somehow, against all odds, the designers noticed that you don't need dialogue to give something personality. Sometimes the littlest visual "tells" -- Flint's tendency to tip his hat, for example -- immediately communicate the same depth of character, with no readin' necessary. This, more than anything else, indicates it's a Nintendo game, since Nintendo has always understood how the tiniest of details can produce an immeasurable amount of personality.
So yes, it's a shame this never officially came here, but miraculously, it's the graphics in this two-and-a-half-year-old GBA game that I most regret more people can’t see. Static images don't do it justice; it really, truly must be played. Unfortunately, I'm roughly in the same boat as Parish when it comes to emulation, so I can't force myself to play any more Mother 3 until my flash cart arrives; with any luck, I'll get it this week, but until then, I hope I can find something to play. It's been kind of a slow month for games, so we'll see.
The other morning, as I was traversing my backyard in order to put out some grub for the gaggle of demanding stray cats that have made it their home, I heard a strange noise. I looked around for a bit, and decided it must have been the rabbits and one of their strange rabbit rituals. Their ways are mysterious to me. I spent a bit of time visiting with my wild-cat friends, whose friendship was bought with daily feedings and kind words. (Of course, it's not all roses and rainbows for them; all of these cats have been trapped and had their reproductive organs removed! That's a lot more than I would pay for a cozy yard to sleep in and meal service!)
I went back in just as my wife was getting up. She peeked out the back window to check on the resident menagerie, and I heard an exclamation. "There's a kitty in the trap!"
"Oh, I guess that's what I heard. I thought it was the bunnies."
"Bunnies don't mewl!" she told me. At the time, she didn't know how wrong she was.
The first bonus mailouts for GameSpite supporters were supposed to have gone in the mail a month ago. They haven't, yet, and I feel lousy about that pretty much every single day. Truth is, the bonus magnets were ready a month ago; the mini-magazine was written and laid out a month ago. The problem, though, is that it needs a bit of art, and I swore off drawing a while back -- for good reason, since my artwork was never great to begin with and has degraded horribly over the years. But it needs a cover, and it would feel false to have someone else draw it, so I've been stalled out at the point actually committing pen to paper.
The good news, I guess, is that I finally choked back my bile long enough to hack something out tonight. While it's not particularly good, at least it's done and I can get this issue out of the way soon. (And put the second one on its proper schedule. And give it a cover made entirely with text.) Anyway, my apologies in advance to any children or pets who are left emotionally scarred by the sight of the results.
This week, the real heavy hitters are coming out, just in time for Christmas. These games will sell out across the country, as grubby hands reach for them. Parents will buy them in droves.
And nobody here cares about any of them. There's something I noticed during the three years I spent working at a GameStop that happens way more than most people care to talk about, and that's the fact that budget games sell well and children's licensed games sell even better. Sure, your Halos and your Grand Theft Autos sell millions and millions of copies, but I'm sure that the other games cost a helluva lot less to make.
These games are wildly successful for two main reasons; one, the names carry a lot of weight. When a kid wants the Ben 10 movie and the Ben 10 action figures and he was Ben 10 for Halloween, it's not a hard leap to add in the Ben 10 video game as well. When a parent's shopping for their child and they see a video game with a character they recognize, there's a greater chance that this parent is going to purchase said item from recognizable franchise.
And then you have the bargain shoppers. The people who buy games based on price. In a landscape where the average game comes out at a whopping sixty dollars (and then collector's and limited editions running upwards of a hundred and thirty dollars), a game that's priced at thirty or forty looks way more attractive, or hell, even fifteen in the case of Playstation 2 games. In these trying economic times, a penny saved is a penny not lost to the stock market. People are freaking the hell out about this economy thing (and with good reason), but they'll still make sure little Billy has his bull riding video game.
So what does this mean to you, the hardcore gamer? Not a damn thing. Maybe you'll see TV Show King Party at Best Buy while you're heading to grab LittleBigPlanet, or you'll laugh at the bull rider on the cover of Out Of The Chute, but that's the extent of these games imposing on your hardcore game time. Besides, I seriously doubt that any retailer outside of Wal-Mart is going to purchase more copies of the latest Dora the Explorer game than Fallout 3.
Without further ado, I present to you the video game releases for the week of October 28th, 2008, judged entirely on their covers.
Aside from the usual slate of new stuff, you (that is, we) PlayStation 3 owners can now play catch-up with Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slice Precipice of Darkness Episode 1 as well as Prince of Persia Classic, both of which were released last week on PSN.
Of course, everyone else you know has played them already! Maybe. In the case of POPC, most likely not.
Yesterday, I finished Urasawa Naoki's 20th Century Boys. In related news, I have a new favorite manga series.
20th Century Boys is a near-future science fiction mystery, and the solutions to its puzzles lie in the gaps between the idealism of childhood and the disappointment of growing up. Without giving too much away, the story's main characters are literally assaulted by the ghosts of their imagination for reasons that slowly unravel as the plot progresses. Structurally, the story spans multiple generations, spiralling between eras; from the very first volume until the very end, 20th Century Boys jumps back and forth between children imagining epic battles with giant robots and adults facing the dangerous consequences of their own childhood fantasies come to life. As the main characters struggle to understand and confront this bizarre situation, fragmentary and intentionally distorted memories are gradually retold and revised from multiple perspectives as the truth gradually comes to light.
I'm starting to think that it was a bad idea to get Gundam Battle Universe. It's like handing a junkie a pound of China White and saying, "Enjoy!" Only, instead of China White, it's Gundam. And it's me who's strung-out on the couch at 4:30 in the morning, eyes glued to my PSP as I try to take down Amuro in a Zaku. (Protip: Don't get anywhere near him. Seriously.)
Ahead of me stretches a game that spans both sides of three full television series, two OVA series, and a theatrical movie. The only equivalent I can think of is LucasArts losing their heads and making a starfighter combat game that encompasses not just the original trilogy, but pretty much everything up to the Yuuzhong Vong invasion. Oh, and every single character and fighter that has ever had so much as a cameo in anything would be unlockable. That's Gundam Battle Universe, and it does almost everything right. They even thought to make the mission titles like episode title cards -- complete with the music chime that came from the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Never underestimate the importance of tiny details like these for a nutcase such as myself. They're important, damnit.
Of course, Gundam Battle Unvierse also happens to embody a Namco Bandai trait that's both admirable and infuriating. It's infuriating because they're perfectly content to throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks. When it does stick, as it occasionally does when you make five Gundam games a year, sequels are guaranteed. Lots of them. But while they mostly only make iterative changes to their sequels, they do often manage to avoid making the same mistake twice, which is actually more than can be said for quite a few instances of Resident Evil. The net result is Gundam Battle Universe, which is so superior to the first iteration of the series that they're barely the same game. That, in case you were wondering, is the admirable part.
On the other hand, what this basically means is that if you want value for your money when buying from Namco Bandai, you just have to be patient enough to wait for the inevitable "universe" edition. Unless, of course, you're a Tales fans, in which case, good luck to you. As for me, I'll call the wait I didn't even know I had a fair trade-off, because right now I feel like the luckiest junkie in the universe. Star Wars fans wish they had it this good.
Media | A2Q Archives | A2Q #62 | October 27, 2008: Welcome to Add to Queue, Levi's round-up of this week's US home video release highlights. Sorry, rest of the world. Region locks are the industry's way of saying they still don't understand the Internet. But on the flip side, I'm sure watching our horribly broken election process is way more entertaining than any of this week's movies.
The issue of real vs. fake appears to be more contentious than I expected, given that I didn't bother to dredge up anything about the morality of emulation and ROM-gathering. I wish I could sit down and do a demographic study on everyone who responded to see how if age, upbringing or personal history have any bearing on people's outlook, or it's just one of those random things.
Of course, after posting that bit of musing on how I'd rather play games in their original formats than emulated, what did I do? I downloaded Secret of Mana and started playing it on Virtual Console. Playing it with gusto, even.
This is admittedly an odd comparison to make, but I realized today that Mana is the inverse of Half-Life 2 for me. No, wait, it makes sense. See, when I play Half-Life 2, I hate every moment of it. It's a chore, an infuriating exercise in being railroaded and beaten down with endless gimmicks and gotcha level designs. But when I'm not playing it, I love it -- the flow of combat, the setpieces, the atmosphere. I guess maybe I like the concept of HL2 more than the game itself, as the game is bogged down by countless minor flaws that specifically grate against my tastes and desires vis-a-vis gaming.
Mana, on the other hand, I love while I'm playing. Despite all its glitches and sloppiness, the game is made of pure joy. But when I'm not playing it, all I can think about is the lousy programming and the weird animation and color choices and that stupid Dwarf Village theme and the grinding and...yeah. And so forth. Once I actually pick it up, though, I can play for hours on end.
These are the only two games for which I feel such powerful, polar sentiments. I wonder why that is.
I'm never, ever going to get a chance to fight that thing. Whatever it is. And it's too bad, because I've always kind of liked shooters. Good old-fashioned shmups just kind of appeal to me. I think it's the intricate dance around the bullets, the adrenaline, and the wicked power-ups. Unfortunately, I've also come to realize that I'm really not all that good at them. Actually, check that: I really suck at shoot'em-ups. When it's me in one spaceship against the world, the world wins. Every single time.
That hasn't stopped me from trying, though. When I was a kid, I considered it an accomplishment if I made it past the third level of 1943 for the NES. I never did, of course, because that plane was a real bastard, and I always seemed to be out of fuel at the end of the level. Getting hit all the time does that to you.
It was the same story with R-Type Delta on the PlayStation. Great game, quite nice to look at, too hard for the likes of poor little me. And don't even get me started on Mars Matrix. That game was indeed bullet hell, and I was its chief damned soul. Now here I am with the Gradius Collection and Metal Slug, butting my head against that same old wall. You would have thought I'd learned by now.
I've had a quick run through all of the Gradius games now (well, except for Gradius III, mostly because Kishi's article made me actively terrified of it), and the results have been pretty consistent. I pick up some power-ups, start to move faster. "Hey," a voice in my head says, "maybe you can actually do this!" I've got some Options now, my lasers are filling the screen, and I'm popping those little alien bastards left and right. Then, all of the sudden, wall. Bang, I'm dead. Or bang, there's that phoenix at the end of Gradius II's first stage. Or that caterpillar thing in Gradius Gaiden. Or hell, pretty much any wall of bullets will do it.
Bang, bang, bang, you're dead. Game over.
But unfortunately for the citizens of the universe, I'm going to keep hopping into that cockpit. And when I'm done, I'm going to pick up an RTS. Or god forbid, a fighting game. I guess there are some games that I just can't quit.
As the deluge of fall titles continues, I find myself unable to keep up with all the games that I want to play. It's not a bad problem to have, but it's got me thinking a fair bit about time management. Because I work in retail, this uptick in the amount of games being released conincides with my work load also increasing considerably. My free time is at its lowest when the amount of media I want to consume is at its highest.
As a dope who has invested in all three current-gen consoles as well as both portable platforms, the only thing stopping me from playing every game that looks good is time. Thanks to rental service Gamefly and the fact that I can borrow games from my place of employment, the normal inhibitor of cost isn't a consideration. However, I am strongly aware that every game I choose to play is another game I'm not playing. Every evening I spend playing a game is another film I'm not seeing, another book I'm not reading, another evening I'm not outside playing with the dogs, another evening I'm not devoting to spending time with my wife, another blog post I'm not writing for the site.
The only thing that even partially ameliorates the huge chunk of my free time that I am investing in gaming is that for most single-player games I can also listen to podcasts or audiobooks simultaneously, which at least offers me the illusion that I'm making productive use of my limited time.
I can't even imagine how much tougher it must be for those reading this whose jobs entail giving up a huge chunk of their free time. At least when I leave work at the end of an 11-hour day I'm done. For others, that "free time" is just time to get caught up on their work responsibilities.
This probably wouldn't be a problem at all if I just had patience. I feel a strong urge to play all these games while they are still current: part of the fun of this hobby for me is the discussion surrounding games and that's always at its peak while the game is in the afterglow of its original release. I listen to a wide variety of gaming podcasts, and they feed into this inclination I have by rarely discussing a game that's even a few weeks old. Is the internet to blame for the anxiety I feel looking at the over-stuffed game release schedule?
How do you guys manage your gaming time? Do you feel that your gaming hobby is preventing you from reading all the books or seeing all the movies or otherwise enjoying your non-gaming interests?
John over at 61fps has posited a question of sorts: namely, is he the only one who doesn't really care for emulation?
It is nice to know I'm not alone.
I think Sharkey is consistently baffled when he casually talks about playing via emulation and I sort of shrug and say, "Eh." He finds nothing odd about having beaten preposterously tough games like Dracula X using arrows and the Tab button. To me, that sounds utterly horrible. I don't even really enjoy emulating with a good USB D-pad; games just don't feel right under emulation. Except really perfect emulation, like most of the Virtual Console systems -- and even then, I think much of the appeal is that the games are running in their "proper" environment. That is to say, running from a console to a television.
I'm not sure what it is, but I've come to realize that there is some ineffable quality to a real game played on a real system that even Virtual Console can't quite match. Maybe it's actually a lack of quality? The scanlines, the shoddy A/V-out technology, the constant risk that this will be the time your batteries conk out, or that you won't be able to make the contacts work right thanks to the NES's stupid spring-loading system. Et cetera. But no, there's something else -- something more primal. There's a certain feeling I have when I see an older game running on its native platform that I just don't have when the same software is downloaded as a ROM, or even as a standalone Wii Channel. It could very well be some sort of nostalgia, or simply a Pavlovian response to when these games were new and expensive and hard to come by and generally just precious, a feeling completely lost when you can download several hundred of them in an hour's time.
I suppose that's another part of what I've been trying to capture in the giant console purge-and-rebuilding program (pogrom?) I've undertaken of late: the sense of visceral presence in games. I even picked up a copy of Rockman 5 while I was in Japan despite being so thoroughly unimpressed with my emulated experience a few months ago; I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe if I play it the way nature intended -- on a cartridge, in a console, on a TV -- maybe I'll feel differently.
On the other hand, maybe this is all just me growing more demented in my old age.
There's a lot of grumbling out there about pricing schemes for downloadable content, some of which is perfectly justified. No one wants to pay extra to unlock content on a disc they already own, for example, and can be frustrating to feel like game companies are squeezing you for money by splitting their product into tiny installments. So, to be honest, I was a bit irritated when I heard about the DLC for Mega Man 9, which seemed to do just that. I'd buy the Proto Man Mode, the extra stage, and Endless Mode, but there was no way I would pay for the extra difficult Hero and Super Hero Modes.
At least, that's what I told myself until I realized the new difficulty levels were only 100 Wii Points each.
At this point, I've downloaded all the extra content for this game, and I regret none of it. Not only that, but the higher challenge modes have far exceeded all my expectations. As you can see in the screenshot above, the difficulty is increased by flooding the screen with enemies and changing their placement to be more imposing, not simply making Mega Man weaker or making enemies more resistant to your attacks. Instead of just making the game tedious by adjusting damage values, Capcom took the time to rethink how the levels actually play.
So far, Hero Mode has kept me on my toes, letting me experience these stages again as if I were playing them for the first time; the revisions seem designed explicitly to trick overconfident players into making stupid mistakes. The first time I fell into a bottomless pit because the timing on a disappearing block puzzle had been slightly adjusted, I couldn't help but smile. It never feels cruelly difficult, but it's been altered just enough to force me out of relying on old patterns.
Even harder versions of Mega Man 9 definitely aren't for everyone, but I think 100 Wii Points is a pretty great deal for making this game feel new again.
I really wish Rock Band was a less interesting game. Really, I do, because I feel bad being the one writing about it so much on here. Unfortunately, few games have provided this many different points of discussion lately, and since I know you guys are hungry for something to read, you'll have to bear with me. At least you'll eventually figure out I'm barely talking about the game itself in these posts.
So, one of Rock Band 2’s lauded features was an additional twenty songs available for free download sometime after the game was released; the track list was announced this week. It's a common misconception that either (a) Harmonix is offering these songs later because they didn't have time to finish them before the game's certification, or (b) they wanted to ultimately offer up more tracks for RB2 than Activision is with Guitar Hero: World Tour. And while I'm sure those are both true, it's not the actual reason for the songs; GameStop is.
It's no secret that EA has been using the constant drip of free DLC in Burnout Paradise to keep people playing and cut down on the number of used copies showing up at GameStop. Similarly, the absolute flood of downloadable content for Rock Band is a great reason not to trade it in. With so many tracks (approaching 500 by the end of the year, I believe), everyone is going to find something they like, and once you start buying songs, why would you trade the game in and throw that money away?
I've talked before about my reluctance to "go next-gen" because I constantly feel behind on older releases. There's another side to that, though. Whenever I get a new system, I suddenly find myself staring down a whole new library of everything that I had missed over the past couple years or so.
I tend to be reminded of this phenomenon whenever I upgrade my computer, which happened again recently. Suddenly, all those games that were barely better than slideshows on my previous system actually become playable, which means I inevitably spend a weekend installing every game I've ever owned just to see how they run. When I'm done with that, I move into impulse buy territory.
Thankfully, Sins of a Solar Empire has so far been the only new PC game that I've purchased this year, which is good for both my conscience and my pocketbook. On the other hand, now I own a PSP-3000, too, which means that it's back to traversing that same, familiar minefield. I already have three games of varying quality for the thing, but here I am scheming to buy more. After all, I simply must own Mega Man: Powered Up, Gundam Battle Universe, and Macross Ace Frontier. God forbid I enjoy the games I already have.
This happens to everybody, though. You get a shiny new toy, and you feel compelled to indulge in the novelty, the newness. What you have here, my friends, are the wonders of consumerism. I just hope one day that I'll find it in me to take a deep breath and stop cluttering up my house with games that I probably don't have time to play. Until then though, I'll be right there will you on that big old capitalistic hamster wheel. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go finish preordering my copy of Gundam Vs. Gundam.
What's this? An envelope from Capcom? Why, it's probably just my well-deserved invitation to their...
Oh. It's those free replacement covers for Okami they were offering a while ago after that IGN watermark boondoggle. That's nice, I guess. And they included two double-sided covers instead of just the one I ordered. Rather thoughtful.
Wait a second, when did I order these? Kotaku says the promotion started April 23...I'll spot myself two days...that's 180 days...Google Maps says I'm about 380 miles from Capcom...carry the four...and it comes out to roughly 0.08796 miles per hour on average. I believe that's what The Oregon Trail qualified as a "leisurely pace."
Seriously though, it's not like I could complain. Truth be told, I didn't even buy Okami for the Wii, so I sorta fleeced Capcom out of a couple of free DVD covers. With this and one of those one-cent Activision white DVD cases, I'll have the prettiest Wii Sports case at the ball! Plus, this is way quicker than the free FLCL T-shirt I got that took thirteen months to arrive.
Do the main enemies...remind you of anything? Perhaps, while wandering through the darkened hallways of an abandoned space ship, you suddenly have the urge to buy a used car, or perhaps suspect some sort of major savings are to be had?
I posted a...well, I don't know that "defense" is the correct word, but definitely a something about Wii Musicyesterday. The short of it is, I don't have any particular interest in the game...but I also don't see it as a clear and present danger to all that is good in the world, either.
Have self-proclaimed hardcore gamers always been this hysterical about "non-game" software? I feel like Wii Music is the latest in a long line of toys and apps that Nintendo has been churning out for years; nothing new in the least. Maybe it's because I wasn't lurking in the proper corners of USENET back then, but I really don't remember Mario Paint eliciting so much FUD back in the day; on the contrary, people seemed to love it, and it's still regarded fondly. While I was in Tokyo last week, I came across a set of Famicom Disk System titles that appeared to be Mario-themed lessons on sewing; for that matter, Nintendo even published (or at least played host to) a Game Boy application that could be used with a sewing machine to create special patterns. And let's not forget the Game Boy Camera, which was basically an add-on that let you do a simplified version of what the DSi promises to enable -- but people thought that was awesome, whereas the collective mindset regarding DSi's 0.3 megapixel camera is that it's the dumbest thing ever.
Nintendo's modus operandi doesn't seem to have changed so much over the years...is the problem simply that people who play games are becoming shriller and more egocentric?
In typical Square Enix fashion, the new trailer for Dragon Quest IX on display at this year's Tokyo Game Show consisted mainly of cut scenes that were in no way reflective of what it will be like to actually play the game. However, hidden among the smoke and mirrors were a few brief seconds of footage that actually revealed a great deal about the basic gameplay systems of this long-delayed sequel. While these clips were so brief in the actual trailer that you could have easily missed them by blinking at the wrong time (even if you can read Japanese), the most significant drops of information that trickled out in this new footage are profiled in the newest issue of Famitsu.
The ability to customize the appearance of your characters was announced in the very first promotional trailer for this game over two years ago, but now we know even more about its character creation and customization. It's now official that there will be a job system, most likely based on the one used in Dragon Quest VI and VII. Even more significant is the revelation that you can recruit and customize a party of your choice at the tavern, like in Dragon Quest III.
Nothing announced so far explicitly precludes the existence of story-based characters in addition to the blank ones at the bar. It's also possible that the characters you recruit at the bar may have backstories rather than being purely generic. However, some circumstantial evidence also seems to indicate party and character systems closer to those found in dungeon hacks than in story-driven RPGs. For example, the cooperative play system makes a lot more sense if multiple players are working together with their unique generic party members than if the game has story-based characters.
While this is admittedly all speculation based on the incredibly limited amount of information Square Enix has released, don't be surprised if party formation in this entry in the series has more in common with Etrian Odyssey than Dragon Quest VIII.
Shortly after that thought, I pulled my headphones out of the CD player I was listening to so I could get up –- and dance. I mean, you should have been there to capture it on film; it was likely a pathetic sight perfect for YouTube, blackmail, or some convenient combination of the two. But I couldn't help but put my hands in my pockets and shuffle about on my two legs with a step here, a jimmy-leg there, two steps back, and a flip around short of a cheap date.
And here's the kicker: I was listening to the newly-released Rockman 9 Arrange Soundtrack.
In particular, the remix of "Hornet Dance," a tune so funky-fresh that I would have taken my strutting to the streets of my hometown of Baltimore, if I were still in Baltimore and had it not been three o'clock in the morning. But I could see it in my mind: by the time I reached the intersection of Pratt and Charles, I would have successfully promoted five different soft drinks with my suave stylings, annulled the foreclosures along three city blocks with my mondo move set, and charmed approximately a dozen foxy ladies back to my princely pad because damn if I wasn't one of the coolest, calmest, collected(est) cats this side of the Mason-Dixon.
Okay, so that situation would have never happened in a million years. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that mix of Hornet Man's theme made me feel like doing those exact things. Pretty powerful stuff for yet another Mega Man 9 tie-in product, but surely, its sexy beat had to be a fluke, right?
I've just started watching the remastered Blu-ray version of Sleeping Beauty, and I had to stop and write this post because I am in disbelief that a 50-year-old movie can look this good. Sleeping Beauty has always been the most stylish of the Disney oeuvre, but now it's also the best-looking. It has the crispness and precision and purity of digitally-created animation, but also the soul and warmth of hand-drawn art. Seriously, wow. Even if you don't have Blu-ray, I imagine the remastered DVD transfer is every bit as good, just lower in resolution.
I have a feeling that this disc will become to Blu-Ray decks what Dark Side of the Moon is to CD players.
I didn't realize it until recently, but The Gunslinger makes a peculiar bookend for my time here in Japan. The last time I picked it up, it was January 2006, and I was looking ahead, not back, to heading overseas. And now here I am, a couple months to go before I leave for good, and I'm back on the trail to the Dark Tower.
You could say that I didn't really "get" The Gunslinger the first time around. It's hard to digest a nuanced story when you're half-asleep at a security guard desk, and Roland's adventures make for some odd company on the night shift anyway. I came away bemused, hoping that it would get better, which it actually did. I rolled through the whole series all the way into Japan, and was treated to one of my favorite conclusions to a series ever at the end of a mostly depressing Dark Tower VII.
I found The Gunslinger difficult to judge, though. I couldn't decide whether it was actually dull and confusing, or if I had just missed the subtleties while reading it at three a.m. But on closer inspection, it seems like The Gunslinger isn't so much boring as it is the purest example of an emotion that pervades the entire series: loneliness. The Gunslinger is about one guy, the last of his kind, crossing a desert in a world that has essentially ended. You'd better believe that he's going to be lonely.
Once you embrace that melancholy atmosphere, Roland becomes sympathetic rather than distant. You start to notice all of the little details of Stephen King's "world that has moved on." It doesn't seem quite as clumsy or pretentious as it did before, and it's easy to understand Roland's world of broken dreams.
Weirdly enough, it's the same feeling that I get with Watchmen, which I also happen to be reading right now (nope, not finished with that one yet). They're both dark, introspective, and apparently intent on showing us the true nature of humanity. They're also both incredibly difficult pieces to adapt to film, but are getting movies anyway. But if it makes you feel any better, I have more faith in J.J. Abrams' vision for The Gunslinger than I do Zack Snyder's for Watchmen. At the very least, I expect that he'll get the emotions right. And I'm starting to think that the emotions are the most important part of Dark Tower.
In any case, I'm moving on to The Drawing of the Three, the second book in the Dark Tower cycle. This is where it starts to get "good." Here's hoping that holds true while my time here in Japan comes full circle.
You'll probably notice three things about this week's downloadable content update.
One: It's a double dose, because last week's didn't make it up. Two: The games here are without the company of their retail-shelf counterparts. Three: It's a blog post, which means I'm blogging! The last two things are connected, as you may have guessed; the eminently capable reibeatall and I have sundered our New Game Plus ties to become each of us a tiny nation unto himself. Join us in this new world order! And click through to see what you can download, already.
Media | A2Q Archives | A2Q #61 | October 20, 2008: Welcome to Add to Queue, Levi's round-up of this week's US home video release highlights. Sorry, rest of the world. Region locks are the industry's way of saying they still don't understand the Internet.
After being teased several weeks ago, today finally sees the Virtual Console release of Gradius II: Gofer's Ambition (better known as Gradius II, because no one wants to acknowledge that goofy subtitle). As much as you might question whether the VC needs yet another shoot'em-up, this one is genuine cause for celebration; with enticing thematic stages, amazing music and visuals, and the ability to select from a variety of power-up schemes, it's one of the most beloved games in the genre -- and a sterling example by which to judge its progeny. Aside from a limited arcade run in Europe and a handheld release on PSP, this is the first time it's been made available to Western gamers, too. If you still can't empathize, then for you old-school Square fans, imagine that Square Enix suddenly decided to haul off and localize Seiken Densetsu 3, and forego the forty-dollar DS release to sell it for nine bucks on VC. That's roughly the level of excitement shmup fans are feeling right now.
If anything, we thought we might get the Famicom port, which made interesting revisions to the arcade stages but frequently suffered from abysmal hit-detection (not entirely unlike the odious Gradius III). But we can rest easy, for this is the PC Engine CD version: nearly identical to the arcade original in both function and aesthetics -- not to mention putting the CD format to use with the rockingest animated intro of all time. If you have ever longed to Shoot the Core, or found yourself curious at the prospect of a "Ripple Laser"; if dodging dragons made of fire amidst a field of artificial suns sounds like a pretty good time (and it should); Gradius II will do you right.
I've mentioned before that I'm rebuilding my game collection a tiny piece at a time, mostly by acquiring complete box-manual-cart sets when I'm in Japan. The logic here: buying bare carts is cheap and easy and turns games into meaningless commodities, but complete they cost more and are harder to come by, and they take up more space. The result: I buy fewer selections, think harder about which ones I really want to own, and value the choices I make more. And unlike Americans, Japanese gamers actually take good care of their possessions, so it's not impossible at all to find just about every 8- or 16-bit game you can think of in great shape. And complete Japanese games are (with a few notable exceptions) a whole lot cheaper than their American counterparts in similar condition.
The only problem is that Japanese game prices are very volatile. Sometimes that means they come down rapidly in price, but in many cases they can skyrocket at the slightest provocation. Case in point: the Rockman series. While I was in Tokyo in August, I picked up the entire Rockman World series (aka the Game Boy Mega Man titles) for a grand total of about $100. Not bad considering that Mega Man V sells for more than fifty bucks on eBay for just a bare-ass cart; in Nakano it was ¥2100. I didn't have the money to pick up the Famicom Rockman games, which were selling for roughly the same price, so I decided to take care of that at TGS.
What I didn't count on was a massive burst of Rockman obsession due to the release of Rockman 9, which resulted in a huge bump in the price of the games I intended to pick up. The price on the Game Boy games was a good 50% higher than two months prior, and I couldn't even find the entire Famicom series. I found 3, 4 and 5 easily enough, and for decent prices, but the sole, sad, disintegrating boxed copies of 1 and 6 commanded prices upwards of $60, and Rockman 2 was nowhere to be found. So, uh, I bought a ridiculous amount of other Rockman merchandise instead. I'm pretty sure Capcom's booth was designed as a trap for me: Shirts! Posters! E-Tanks! Dolls! Notepaper! The R20 artbook! And they even released a Rockman 9 arranged album while I was over there to make matters worse. What a bunch of jerks.
Let this be a lesson to you: when you want to buy nerd stuff overseas, best to check for upcoming exercises in nostalgia-flogging. Apparently there's a genuine market price attached to these things.
When Mother 3 was released in 2006, I was barely playing video games anymore. A lack of time and money kept me away from the hobby during most of college, outside of occasionally checking this site to learn about any particularly interesting news. I was mostly reading it out of nostalgia, without any intention to play or purchase anything myself. Without even a TV in my tiny Japanese dorm room and my old Game Boy Advance still in America, my gaming was limited to the occasional round of Hot Shots Golf while drinking with friends. However, readingaboutMother 3 at that time broke down all my resistance. Seeing its beautiful sprites awoke my long-dormant inner third-grader, who promptly threw a temper tantrum, disgusted that I had lived in Japan for nearly a year without having played any video games. I asked my family to send my GBA as soon as possible, and when it got here, I rushed to get a copy of Mother 3.
While I'm still not entirely sure if returning to this time-consuming hobby was actually a good decision, I do want to write a little about the game that brought me back and how it compares to Mother 2 (EarthBound).
(Please note that the text below the jump describes the gameplay and narrative structure of Mother 3 in general terms without spoiling specific details.)
I've been terribly hard at work this weekend struggling through the odious chore of sitting around watching old James Bond movies on Blu-ray. No, really, it's for work, honest.
It's been an enlightening experience; prior to this, the only Bond films I'd ever seen all the way through were a couple of the depressingly average Brosnan movies and the considerably more entertaining Casino Royale. (The Daniel Craig one, not the weird satire featuring Woody Allen.) Besides those, the majority of my life's Bond experience has been seeing bits and pieces of the films on TV when I was a kid; if memory serves, severely-cropped and heavily-edited Bond movies were a mainstay of Saturday evening television throughout the '80s. And little wonder I've never felt compelled to rush out and track down more Bond. Most of the films they ran on TV were of the Roger Moore era, and now that I have a wider context of Bond actors to draw upon, I can see why the franchise always used to strike me as boring and archaic: Moore is a really lousy fit for the role.
It's very strange that Moore's films, despite being of a considerably more recent vintage than Sean Connery's, feel a lot more dated. Part of that is due to the themes (mysticism and sci-fi) and the music (less orchestra, more disco) and the film quality (fewer saturated colors, more dull earthiness). But a lot of it has to due with the fact that Moore himself feels like he comes from an earlier era than Connery. His suits are never as smartly-tailored, his movements never as economical; he never seems genuinely invested in the action sequences, and sort of glides through the plot on a cloud of quips and sardonic eyebrows. The concept behind Bond was always a rather nasty piece of work wearing the persona of an English gentleman as a disguise, whereas Moore just seems like...an English gentlemen. The sort of fellow you'd want to have as your kids' godfather, but perhaps not the ideal candidate to save the world from supervillains.
And man, it sure doesn't help that the HD treatment makes his real age so much more obvious. When he convinces a reluctant young Jane Seymour into bed against her better judgment, he comes off not so much as a dashing charmer as he does a filthy old lech. It gave me the same sense of uneasiness I felt when I accidentally wandered into Shibuya's love hotel district last week. Old men walking close by unenthusiastic young women toward neon signs offering discounted "rest" rates. Yech.
Ironically, though, it looks like it was the Japanese who had the right idea back then -- they made Bond look rather conspicuously unlike Moore in this Moonraker poster. Of course, any dignity that might have lent the production was instantly shattered by the free-floating Jaws swooping down to chomp his un-Moore-like neck. To say nothing of the sexy space love-slave nurses, or whatever those are supposed to be.
And as they say over in that part of the world: 1UP's movie blog should be launching soon. Please look forward to it. (bow)
With Kingdom of the Crystal Skull released for home consumption this past week, it's a good time to discuss what I consider the best thing to come out of it: Hasbro's Indiana Jones toy line. However, much like a certain Thuggee temple, it was doomed from the start.
The concept seemed like a no-chilled-monkey-brainer. As per the standard Hollywood promotion, the Indy line was launched last May, shortly before the new film, and began with assortments of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull figures, with Last Crusade and Temple of Doom waves following in June/July and September/October, respectively. To add to their value, each figure came with a special "hidden" boxed artifact to turn us into amateur archaeologists. I was so excited by the line that it got me back into action figure collecting after years of squandering my money buying other plastic things.
The Raiders assortment was especially notable for being an assumed remake of the long-forgotten and failed 1982 line that followed shortly (if not a bit late) after the film's initial release. The new figures of course featured Indy (two of them!), Marion, Sallah, and Belloq, but also the all-important Monkey Man and the flashy Cairo Swordsman, who suffered a frustrating death from the business end of Harrison Ford's diarrhea...er, Indy's pistol. The Crystal Skull figures followed suit with Indy (two of them!), that new kid Mutt (two of them!)…and you can probably see where I'm going with this.
Rock Band post #9,582: playing with your girlfriend
18 October 08 | 12:53 | Posted by: calorie_mate
I'm a big believer in Rock Band's ability to get "non-gamers" to play; there's just something about holding an instrument that lures people in, and the expansive soundtrack means there's something for everybody. Case in point: my girlfriend had never played the game before we started dating. Her best friend (who does play) actually laughed at me when I said I was going to get her into it; seven months later, she's gone through Easy and Medium on guitar and is learning to play on Hard. I've even let her pick a few songs to download.
Of course, the fact that I spend way too much time playing the game probably helped; one of those "I'll spend time doing this because he's into it" scenarios, y'know? This is actually where the biggest problem I've had stems from: I felt very conscious of how good I am when we played side by side. Here I am, shredding away on Expert, and she's plucking a few bass notes out right next to me. The problem is twofold: (1) I worry she's going to be discouraged by watching something so difficult, and (2) I'm especially worried I sound condescending when I say things like, "Great job!" or "You did really well!" I’m sure I'd feel the same way if Dave Mustaine complimented my Rock Band skills, then proceeded to play his actual song on guitar without missing a note.
Part of me suspects that this is the actual key to the Wii's success: by making the thing so accessible, it effectively evened the playing field between "gamers" and their families. No prior experience is needed, and unlike Rock Band, the gap in skill in, say, Wii Sports can never be too great. With both the Wii raising the mass populace's interest in games and those of us raised on gaming getting older and going out into the world to play with other people, though, I have a feeling this issue is going to crop up a lot. The good news is that, should you take advantage of this opportunity and avoid scaring people off, it's pretty great to have more people interested in playing games you like with you.
Back in May, Platinum Games announced three new games, and my eye immediately went to one of them. No, not Bayonetta, or even Mad World, as good as they both look. It was the then-titled Infinite Line that immediately grabbed me.
And it's not just because I like Japanese science fiction, which is a relatively recent phenomenon. Infinite Space was promising a game that I've wanted since I was a kid: the chance to take command of my own fully-customized starship, complete with handpicked crew. It was something that Starfleet Academy, Independence War, Bridge Commander, and Battlecruiser 3000AD all tried and failed to provide in my eyes. I-War and Battlecruiser because they were excruciatingly dull, and the Trek games because I didn't really get my own ship. I was just borrowing the Enterprise.
To be honest, I didn't think anybody would ever design the kind of game that I was looking for -- a fun, easily accessible but extremely customizable starship sim. So when I saw Infinite Space, I was excited, but also a little skeptical. I mean, could they really pull a game like this off on the Nintendo DS?
EarthBound fans: The Mother 3 fan translation is done! BOING!
Everyone else: EarthBound was released on our shores in the summer of '95, so it's been over thirteen years since we got anything new from the mind of Shigesato Itoi. Fans were ecstatic, then, when Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance sequel, Mother 3, a couple years back. But Nintendo of America...seemed less so. There was no word on a domestic release, and slowly but surely, the GBA died off without seeing it brought over. Eventually, frustration gave way to determination, and the folks over at Starmen.net (yes, the ones single-handedly responsible for giving "being an EarthBound fan" that kind of stigma) assembled a team of hackers and writers to produce a professional, localized translation. Two years later, it's finally been released, and based on some of the screenshots they've provided, the localization has fully captured the spirit of EarthBound:
So now we're free to enjoy the fruits of their labor, but the fight is never over to show Nintendo that their beloved series can actually make some money, if only they'd give it a chance. I, for one, still plan to buy EarthBound the second it goes up on the Virtual Console, and yes, I'd buy Mother 3 and play it all over again if it ever saw some kind of official release here. (As it stands, a donation to Starmen.net and buying a cheap flash cartridge makes me feel a little better, though I'm guessing all they really want is an official release of by Nintendo.) Scruples, and all that.
And really, there isn't much else to say. Go try it for yourself, even if you haven't played EarthBound; I hear it's not a direct sequel at all, and you can fully enjoy it on its own merits. EarthBound was an enamoring -– but decidedly weird –- RPG with enough charm to create a fan base dedicated enough to do something like this, and Mother 3 looks to be that and more. If nothing else, play it until the end of Act 1; I've been told that the game's opening segment conclusively proves sprites can have as much emotional impact as anything else. It isn't every day you're given a chance to experience something you'd given up on because you were born in the wrong part of the world, so please, enjoy it.
Well, I'm back in the States. I know this for a fact because the first thing that happened upon my arrival was the traditional United Airlines Omelet of Shame, the slightly nauseating robo-egg football stuffed with plastic vegetables that you eat anyway because it's been six hours since your last meal. (This is the airline's way of taunting you.) That was soon followed by a cab ride wherein I became stuck in traffic with a cabbie who loved him some Rush Limbaugh. You'd think he might realize that Limbaugh isn't really the best friend of immigrants of apparent Middle Eastern descent, but I guess not.
I fought against jetlag by forcing myself to stay awake until my normal bedtime all day despite only sleeping an hour on the plane -- not entirely successfully, since I ended up waking up at about noon anyway. I fought the good fight regardless, primarily by (1) going to work, (2) watching Dr. No and (3) making use of one of my shiny new toy.
Ah, OK, it's not really shiny, per se, what with its matte black finish. And I guess it's not really new, either. But I've wanted a Famicom Disk System for years, and watching Vs. Excitebike at PAX cemented my determination to finally jump in. I've sold off nearly my entire game collection over the past six months (and managed to pretty much pay off all my debts in the process), so I figured I could afford a small indulgence while I was abroad. Thus: a Twin Famicom. Perhaps not as cost-effective as a Famicom and separate disk system, but oh so much more awesome.
Unfortunately, there has been a terrible downside to ownership. And no, it has nothing to do with the belt, which works just fine, thanks.
NEWSFLASH: Wii Music has the most accessible song list in the history of music games. Probably. I'm not in the loop when it comes to what karaoke games are out there, but I still feel pretty confident. The fact itself is hardly surprising, and Nintendo already held the previous record with Elite Beat Agents. The game actually shares a couple songs with EBA, and I prefer to think that Nintendo is so cheap it took advantage of some sort of two-for-one deal that let it use those tracks at a discount.
So it's not that big a news item, but it'll be interesting to see what happens if the game takes off. Music games are already pretty popular, but there's a few underlying assumptions within the genre about what kind of music you can put in them. People go on about how Harmonix is so adept at choosing songs with interesting arrangement and instrumentation, but that's actually a constraint on what tracks are going to show up in the game. There's only one way to play a song correctly in Rock Band (depending on how you look at it) and if that way isn't interesting, the song's of no worth to the game. A play-along game like Wii Music doesn't really care about that because it doesn't really care about how you play a song.
It just might affect the way songs are chosen for these kinds of games. As it stands, depending on what sort of metaphor you wrap your game mechanics in, you choose the kinds of songs that lend themselves to such a play style. There's "DDR songs" and "Guitar Hero songs" based on the demands each game has for the music they employ. A game like EBA has less stringent requirements for its songs based on its more accommodating mechanics, and the free-form style of Wii Music is the most accommodating of all. In the future, music games could start employing songs not because they're good music game songs, but simply because they're good songs. Not that "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" is a good song, but hopefully you see where I'm going with this.
And hey, the game's got "Sukiyaki." That song's badass.
LittleBigPlanet has both a staggeringly robust level-creation system and all the right online infrastructure in place to facilitate an endless supply of user-generated content. I have incredibly high hopes for this game, and I could barely contain my excitement when I got an e-mail from Sony approving my application for the game's Japanese beta test. But now that the beta is finished, I have considerably less optimism for the game than I did just last week.
Looking at what said users had generated, I couldn't help but be disappointed by both the lack of well-designed levels and the popularity of poorly-designed ones. A large portion of the most popular levels were LittleBigPlanet's equivalent of hastily-assembled licensed products selling on brand name alone. While it was interesting for a couple seconds to see Metal Gear Solid or Shadow of the Colossus reimagined as platformers, the stages themselves weren't very fun. They felt superficial, intriguing only because of the source material, and not making good use of the actual game mechanics of LittleBigPlanet itself.
This gap between the possibilities of level creation and the realities of the interface for playing those levels creates an enormous challenge for designers to overcome. For example, while the construction system has incredible free-form potential, the player's avatar is always Sackboy, whose set of movements is quite limited. The restrictions of his abilities should help direct designers as they play with the enormous canvas the game provides; no matter how imaginative, creations in LittleBigPlanet are pointless if Sackboy isn't able to inhabit them comfortably.
The LittleBigPlanet beta ended last Sunday, and though I only got in on it towards the tail end, I did spend a decent amount of time on it. Considering it's probably the most interesting thing to happen to 2D platforming on consoles this side of Mega Man 9, I'm shocked it hasn't gotten more love 'round these parts, what with our affinity for those kinds of things. You guys are so lucky to have me blogging up here.
Personally, I was sold on it the moment Sony unveiled it. Something about Sackboy just clicked, in the same way Disney and Nintendo characters become instant icons. Now that I've spent some time with the game, I can confirm that it's even more charming than I previously thought (and having every little thing narrated by Stephen Fry doesn't hurt, either). The animation is particularly impressive, and the little touches –- changing your Sackboy's expressions on the fly, the fact that he lip-syncs anything you say into the mic, or being able to control each of his arms independently for no reason other than you can -– all brought a huge smile to my face. And since everything in this post-Mii world is about personalizing your avatar, you can choose everything from your Sackboy’s color to his eyes and mouth, to his entire outfit (which I’ve heard will have tons and tons of costume pieces in the actual game; I had to make due with a huge mustache and pirate pants in the demo).
In the process of staightening up some clutter in the living room, I packed several small boxes with my family's VHS collection and brought it to the basement. I didn't even bother dusting them off. Not even two weeks later, I find myself digging through them in a search of a copy of The Thief and the Cobbler that I didn't even know was there (and if you have ever derived the emotion that humans call joy from watching beautiful animation, you should go watch some clips). As I foraged further, I found myself unconsciously making a stack to"keep." The bargain hunter instinct that lies at the reptilian side of my brain had awakened, not above the familiar and faintly moldy smell of a quarter bin or the sticky, unorganized Game Boy carts lying in a cardboard box at a GameStop; but at home with items that I already owned. I carried the stack back to the bedroom and the last functioning VCR in the house, where my wife and I watched washed-out episodes of The Muppet Show and only slightly distorted Godzilla movies.
So it seemed like kismet this morning when I awoke to a new firmware for Sony's PlayStation Portable, version 5.00. Not because of the updated PlayStation Store (more on that below), but because of a feature I wasn't even aware was coming. PlayStation 1 games can now be played full-screen and in interlace mode, which means that if you can connect your PSP to a television, you can now play games on it. The previous set-up was less than ideal; because the PSP natively outputs in progressive scan and at a resolution that can't be easily doubled, you could only play games when connected to an HD set, and in a windowed resolution. The window I can deal with, since the image is still much larger than the PSP screen, but I don't have ready access to an HD set, which means I've used the feature all of three times. This is just the excuse I've been looking for to re-download the Japanese PS1 games I've bought. Now I can see what happens when I transfer my Symphony of the Night and Policenauts saves over to Metal Gear Solid (mwahaha).
Over the weekend I got equipped with my newly-acquired Mega Man 9 shirt and whilst prowling around in suburbia I was absolutely stunned by the reactions it received. Sure, its intentionally gaudy style got plenty of abhorrent looks from moms and grandmothers but amongst twenty-something males it elicited an almost humble respect of sorts, like you'd get at a Catholic mass.
If they weren't awed speechless by the shirt itself, many of the dudes were eager to converse -- after the prerequisite "Awesome shirt!" and "Where'd you get it?," of course. One guy, an employee at a small electronics store I was walking through, was keen to share how much he dug MM9 but that his favorite was still Mega Man 3. As I told him mine was Mega Man 2, I drew an imaginary line in the air and joked that our picks were more polarized than those for the upcoming presidential election. The poor guy seemed legitimately sad as I shuffled away and told him to take care.
Another instance happened with a supermarket cashier. Standing in line, I clearly saw his eyes shifting from his duty to my shirt. When it was my turn to pay, he couldn't wait to tell me that, while he loved the Mega Man games as a kid, he never owned them and recently bought the collection that had "1 through 10 on it." I'm sure he mistook the ten games advertised on Mega Man Anniversary Collection a little more to heart than was needed, but that's hardly the point here.
It's 9:30 a.m. Thursday here, and I catch my airport bus at noon. When I finish traveling, it will be...9:05 a.m. Thursday. If Einstein had known about United Airline's time-bending shenanigans, he'd have had a conniption fit.
I was actually dreading coming to Japan for TGS, having already spent so much time in the country this year, but I've rather enjoyed my stay. As ever, I have no illusions about being genuinely welcome here, but it's nevertheless a comfortable place for someone like me -- i.e., someone who prefers solitude. You are never more alone than in a country full of people whose cultural mores are founded upon the concept of not being a nuisance to others, a fundamental belief that anyone not of your own race is inherently defective, and punctuality. Of course, most of the genuine good in the way these things are expressed here is illusory and breaks down under close examination, but when I'm breezing through over the course of a week I can certainly pretend.
I also admire the nation's curious determination to make things work, even if it's a bad idea. As such:
Now that this year's TGS is over, I've seen a few grumblings that it was "underwhelming." True, it mostly yielded new videos for games we already knew about, but fresh material is always a pleasure (even if Wesker's new voice actor is going to take some getting used to). And considering the event was immediately preceded by a slew of new announcements from Nintendo's own media summit, my heart's just not in passing judgment. It's rare for me as a gamer not to be starved for new information, and I'm too busy savoring this moment to worry about which show was showier.
Although, there was at least one legitimate revelation last week -- one that might have even slipped beneath some people's radar (GameVideos still seems oblivious to it): NMH2.
No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle, that is. Which, despite the initials, is not a DS spin-off but a Wii sequel to Goichi Suda's painfully stylish and metatextual opus from earlier this year. And if that doesn't excite you, it should. The only criticism anyone could muster against the original was the squandered potential of its open-world elements, so it's easy to see Grasshopper and Marvelous redeeming that sole shortcoming, refining what was already remarkable, and overall, producing something even greater than one of the best games in recent memory.
As for the trailer, it's even less informative than the first game's concept video from TGS '06, but it says all we need to know for now: Travis Touchdown is back, and he's going to cut down whatever freaky customers gets in his way to becoming number one. Whatever that means.
Pushing Daisies is back! This ABC network show is currently my favorite on the air. Of course, that's not a hard position to hold. Have you seen the other crap that's on TV? I mean, Heroes just keeps getting worse with each new episode, and I'd honestly hoped it had reached its nadir with the bitterly disappointing second season. Another show I dearly loved, Bones, seems to have jumped the shark last season with the completely awful resolution to a completely awful "serial killer from a long line of serial killers who kills and eats people in secret societies and makes sculptures from their bones" season-long storyline. I had high hopes for Fringe, which is a show from Bad Robot. Bad Robot produced Alias, and currently produces Lost; unfortunately, Fringe isn't nearly as good as either of those. It's a shame, because Alias in particular is a show I revere. I put it up there with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the early years of the X-Files, Arrested Development, and Veronica Mars as one of my favorite shows of all time.
Back on topic, Pushing Daisies deserves your support. It's a shining light of goodness in a sea of reality TV and lowest-common-denominator garbage. Not since Arrested Development has a show with such quirky style captured my imagination, and I'm worried that it might be too quirky to last. You can watch the show for free on ABC.com, and I have to believe that a lot of people who read this site might be the kind of people who will fall in love with this show. If not, I'm writing for the wrong place! I wrote it up a few weeks ago in my Add to Queue column, and I'm going to put an edited version of that review after the break in case you missed it. Also, if there's a show currently running on one of the major networks that you absolutely love, let me know in the comments. I don't watch much TV, so I'd love to be pointed towards your discoveries.
Special bulletin: Super Mario Bros. 2 is just like Doki Doki Panic
14 October 08 | 23:10 | Posted by: Kat
You really can't say you know a game until you've picked up the controller and played it. Seems obvious, but there are some games that have spent so much time in our collective consciousness that it feels like we really have played them, even if we haven't. The Metal Gear games, for example. Or in my case, Doki Doki Panic.
Here's another stupid revelation for you: I had no idea how similar Doki Doki Panic was to Super Mario Bros. 2. Oh, I knew that Mario's journey into Subcon had borrowed liberally from that largely forgotten Miyamoto gem. I knew that the mechanics were largely the same, as were the environments. But for some reason, I had always assumed that the levels were different. Or that someone other than Wart was waiting at the end of the game. Or that the Birdo phenomenon was something unique to the Mario games.
But nope, as these lovely pair of Game Informer hands will tell you, Nintendo even went so far as to essentially reuse the box art for the Japanese version of what they called Super Mario USA. The levels remained intact alongside the enemies, bosses, secrets, and even the character attributes. The only difference is that Mario and company star in place of the original Yume Kojo festival characters, and that they're running through Mario's dreams rather being sucked into a book with an Arabian setting. Oh, and the enemies seem to kind of emit a horrible, digitized scream when they're plunked by a radish. Appreciate the visceral touch there, Nintendo.
And yet, playing it, I'm not upset. I'm not upset that Americans were able to experience a great little game that would never have made it Stateside otherwise. I'm glad that the Shy Guys and Birdo have become firmly entrenched in Super Mario Bros. lore. I'm only sad that the save feature inherent to the Famicom Disc System didn't come along for the ride, because it was kind of cool that it recorded whether or not you finished each level with all of the characters. It was almost like having Achievements.
But you know, maybe that's just a super-bonus for taking the time to actually play the original. Going back and playing Doki Doki Panic isn't about unmasking a ripoff. It's about going back to the roots of one of the great underappreciated games of our time.
I've been playing Dragon Quest games a lot recently. I'd avoided the series for a long time, because I was under the impression that it was so basic that there was nothing to it but a rote level grind. However, despite its reputation as one of the most archaic RPG brands out there, actually trying it was surprisingly refreshing and has changed the way I feel about the genre as a whole. Specifically, it's made me much less accepting of the way series like Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei punish the player so severely for dying.
Audible sounds like a fantastic service: you pay a subscription fee and are able to download audiobooks. Since most audio books are longer than can fit on a standard CD, getting the book as a download is a lot less cumbersome than buying a multi-disc set, and theoretically would be more convenient to listen to since you can put it on your portable media player.
At least, that's what I thought when I first signed up for it. Unfortunately, Audible uses copy protection (DRM) on the files they sell, and they weren't compatible with my device, which at the time was a very popular model in the Sansa line. Their only workaround was burning the books to CD, but since I'd already moved on from that format, I wasn't interested. I ended up going to a torrent-based piracy site to get an unprotected copy of the book I bought so I could use it on my player, and I canceled my Audible subscription.
Yesterday -- that's today for you, o America-bound ones -- was a holiday here in Japan. I was slightly alarmed by this, actually, when I stepped outside and a fleet of Japanese flag banners had appeared everywhere in the city overnight.
So far as I know, Japan doesn't have the equivalent of Independence Day, so I was concerned that I had unwittingly stayed long enough to get caught up in some sort of nationalistic fervor. While most people you meet here are friendly toward (or at least tolerant of) foreigners, Japan does have a rather aggressive right-wing faction that drives around in vans equipped with loudspeakers to shout about how all non-Nikkei should be kicked out and the country should go back to being an isolationist feudal monarchy. So I was worried they'd taken control and I'd be forced to participate in a Pamplona-style running the gaijin, herded naked through the streets with the other outsiders and drowned in the sea of Japan. But no, actually it was just a day to celebrate the country's love of its native sports. You know, like baseball and cricket. So I'm happy to report that I'm alive and dry.
Later, I saw this scene and thought about warning the guy that some kid was sneaking up behind him to punt his skull. Then I decided that anyone with that hairstyle probably deserves a good kick to the head.
This Tuesday sees the home video release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, an unfairly maligned entry in the greatest adventure series ever put to celluloid. While many were content to write it off as George Lucas (who wrote the story) having somehow lost his movie-making touch, I personally found the movie to be incredibly entertaining. Indiana Jones has always been about paying homage to the classic pulp adventures that Lucas and Spielberg grew up on. When your influences include the Republic Pictures serials of the '30s and '40s, and the B movies of the '50s, it would be wrong not to include outlandish, over-the-top action sequences.
I don't mind so much that some poor unfortunate souls don't care for this film, but when they argue that it's not an Indiana Jones movie at its core, I just have to shake my head. Is it just nostalgia that tints people's perceptions to think an adventure movie about finding a supernaturally powerful MacGuffin is a complete turnaround from a series where archeological artifacts are discovered that can, you know, melt people's faces off, allow you to perform psychic surgery, or let you live forever?
At its core, Crystal Skullis an Indiana Jones movie. It may not be as good as as Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it fits comfortably into the series and puts to shame imitators like National Treasure or The Da Vinci Code. If you haven't seen it, go in with an open mind, and I think you'll have a good time. I was worried before I saw the film that Harrison Ford was too old to be an adventure hero; now I really hope they make another sequel.
Secret of Mana was released on Virtual Console today. And with that, one of the seminal showcases for social gaming has finally been placed where it belongs: on the machine that gets turned on at every house party. It's standard price, too, when Square Enix could have easily enforced a premium on it, citing the three-player support (or, more honestly, "because we're Square Enix").
Not that this development isn't without its drawbacks. As SE representatives have so glibly admitted, they see the VC as less a convenient platform for their classics than a dumping ground for properties they're never going to bother with again. Then again, we've had long enough to accept that Mana will never return to its former glory, and the more Koichi Ishii tries to salvage it with things like Havok physics and produce cultivation, it only gets increasingly insane and embarrassing. Maybe when someone is willing to consider what made this game and Seiken Densetsu 3 so good in the first place, it'll finally get the Mega Man 9-like revival it deserves; but for now, it's time to hang it up.
To be honest, SoM and SD3 are enough for me. They're of the same caliber as any of the better Final Fantasy games, and the multiplayer element makes them especially timeless. What really makes me sad to see Mana on its way out, though, is that I'll never see a high-quality, unmarked version of the artwork that served as the basis for both SoM's promotional campaign and title screen (pictured right). While that might be wildly myopic in any other case, that image of the heroes standing at the root of the mythically tall Mana Tree, brimming with life on every scale, is one of the most impressing works of art this medium has ever produced. (And if there were any doubt that it's an object of reverence, Square Enix even callously channeled it to manipulate fans into buying the abysmal Dawn of Mana.)
I'd have it framed and hung on my wall, given the chance. Alas, like the series itself, it seems destined to be lost to history.
Many in the games industry have been very vocal in decrying the business of selling used games. Their arguments are numerous and homogenous: games purchased second-hand don't compensate the creators for their hard work; second-hand resellers are exploiting the industry for their own greedy ends; second-hand sales leech revenue from the industry and will ultimately lead to less games being produced.
It's not hard to see their point when they're decrying the policies of a retail partner that actively encourages its customers not to buy the games new. At the same time, as a consumer, I value my rights when it comes to purchasing their product. If I don't care for the game, I can sell it to someone else. If I'm not sure I'm going to like it, I can rent it. I can borrow it from a friend. I can trade it with someone I know for a different game. I can even bring it into a chain video game retailer and get credit for a different game.
Tokyo Game Show is done, and I'm back in Tokyo (as opposed to outside Tokyo, where I was for Tokyo Game Show) for a couple of days to (hopefully) drum up some work. I think today I'm just going to lay in my hotel and quietly let my body heal, though. It's been a rough couple of days full of people. People are exhausting, as it turns out. I think I will avoid them for today. But it's all been for the best: we have at least two episodes of Bonus Stage in the bag now, and shockingly enough the sound quality for the episode of Retronauts we recorded last night while sitting around an iPod microrecorder is more than good enough to use as an actual podcast.
Also, last night we were able to hit a bar in Shinjuku that I've heard about for years: 8-Bit Cafe. As you might guess from the name, it's very video game oriented! It's a fairly small place on the fifth floor of a scary and uninviting building -- there's a Russian porn shop on the main floor -- but inside the bar is a huge collection of random old video game stuff. Sadly, they have a no-pictures policy, but trust me when I say it was vaguely like my definition of what the afterlife might be if I live a good life, except more crowded and with a lot more cigarette smoke. Lots of '80s memorabilia, including tons of Takahashi Meijin merchandise and an abundance of Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku goods as well. And a couple of game systems hooked up to a TV in the corner.
Somehow Sam and his friends and I ended up playing through Final Fight 2 for Super Famicom, which was a total waste of an hour. But worth it for the way Sam breakdanced the final boss right through his dojo wall, I think. Also, it gave us an excuse to imitate Haggar for an hour.
They also offered a small number of game-themed drinks. A few others had the Princess Peach, which was overwhelmingly Peach flavored. Me, I had the Doctor Mario. It was...Dr Pepper, mixed with something fermented, served in a Pyrex flask with a side of candy pills in a petri dish. Amazing.
I was planning on providing a rundown of my favorite picks from TGS this week, but my attention was diverted by Mega Man 9. Not necessarily by the game, mind you, but by the proclamation that Capcom was making the much-lauded MM9 press kits available to the public.
I was one of the many Mega Man fans who clamored to get even half a pinkie on one of them -- was fully willing to prostrate myself before Capcom, holding out wads of cash, just for the chance to purchase this completely ridiculous and unnecessary item. So how did it go? Well…
When Odin Sphere debuted last spring, it was lauded as one of the most beautiful games ever made, and a shining star of hope for 2D relevance in the mean world of console games. Although it may have overreached by stretching its assets across a few too many game hours, it was undeniably a painstaking labor of love. The main regret, then, was that it was such an intimate, personal project, so many years in the making, that we weren't likely to see another to match its brilliance any time soon.
Which is why Muramasa: The Demon Blade (then known by its Japanese title, Oboro Muramasa Youtouden) was revealed to such amazement last September. Odin Sphere trailed its predecessor, Princess Crown, by a full decade, but here was evidence of "Princess Crown 3" not half a year later! Naturally, there was some skepticism that a company as small as Vanillaware could conjure an experience of the same quality in so short a time frame. And after the initial blurry Famitsu scans and shaky-cam trailer, no further details emerged, and the game slipped off the radar for over a year.
But here we are at TGS, and Vanillaware are eagerly showing off the fruits of their silent labor with gorgeous new screenshots, a playable demo with a slew of different environments, and best of all, an American publisher. Consider me back on the enthusiast bandwagon. In fact, I call shotgun.
I've had relatively few dealings with the local media during my time in Japan. I don't watch a lot of television, and my only contact with NHK has been via the collector who comes to my door in an attempt to extract cash moneys for the greater good. That's when I turn off the lights and pretend that I'm not home. Because I'm a horrible person like that.
But despite my past transgressions, I have apparently been deemed a video game expert by the Japanese media. While I was waiting in line to play Gundam Musou 2 with a friend of mine, I got a tap on my shoulder.
"Hello," said the woman whose head you see below. "Are you a foreigner? Can you please do an interview?"
After checking to make certain that I was still a foreigner, I agreed. A moment later, I was being grilled with questions like "Why do Americans like Japanese games?" and "Has the financial crisis affected Japanese games in America?" Pretty hard-hitting stuff from the mainstream media!
My answers?
A: 1983 was an absolutely fantastic year for American gaming. Absolutely fantastic.
B: Yes.
Well, I might have gone into a little more detail then that, but I think that pretty much sums it up. When she finished, she gave a half-bow, thanked me, and said, "You are an expert!" Yeah, I kinda am. I'm glad that she noticed.
So keep this in mind from now on when you read my entries: I'm an expert. The Japanese media said so.
You know, I'm not really an uncultured philistine; when I'm abroad I do like to take in actual cultural experiences. But at the moment, I'm way out in Chiba, which is basically Tokyo's New Jersey. There ain't much going out this way. So, rather than try to eke genuine Japanese heritage from countless square kilometers of warehouses and convention hotels, I must instead content myself to drink in the local cuisine. (Er, so to speak.) And by cuisine I mean "convenience food." So the report continues:
Japanese soft drinks are famous for their collectable "bottle toppers," which are little plastic toys they snap and seal over the lids to encourage you to buy lots and lots of said beverage. Common enough on the likes of Pepsi, but I was intrigued to see it's spread to coffee as well. And with Transformers, no less! Not that I care about Transformers, but it was a recognizable brand in this cold and distasteful world of anime panty-shots. So I bought some Boss Coffee Rainbow Blend. Not really sure what the "rainbow" bit is about, but it was pretty good -- a lot less sweet than most Japanese canned coffees. And it came with a Soundwave figurine. So, I guess this job's a success!
Less successful: "Muscat of Alexandria" Kit-Kat. The name seemed basically to be a fancy way of saying "grape," which struck me as a terrible mix of flavors for Kit-Kat. But my faith in the brand led me to take a chance.
Said faith, sadly, was not rewarded. "Muscat of Alexandria" is actually a fancy way of saying "seriously gross, dude." It's basically a white chocolate Kit-Kat (strike one) whose chocolate has been infused with the worst kind of chemical grape. It made those cheap off-brand grape sodas I used to drink as a kid seem authentic; it made grape Kool-Aid taste like a fine French vintage. It was Not Good. Recommendation: avoid unless forced to eat at gunpoint.
And finally, a pair of Mega Man E-Tank energy drinks. I haven't brought myself to consume these just yet, because (1) they were hard to come by; (2) I want to keep one as a collector's item if possible; and (3) if it's anything like other limited-edition branded energy drinks, it's not really intended for human consumption.
A lot of new 2D fighters on display at TGS, huh? Well, I guess that depends on whether you'd consider three "a lot." And also whether games with 3D characters count as 2D. Still! Big day for fans of the genre.
People have made light of Street Fighter IV copying II's roster and mechanics, but at least it's not the lone offender in playing it safe. Sure, The King of Fighters XII has gorgeous new, hand-drawn sprites, but c'mon, it's been a decade since they updated some of these characters. It's more an act of penance than evolution.
The addition of Sakura to SFIV's roster is one of the more telling signs of this reliance on series history. Storyline-wise (yeah, yeah, I know) there's no reason for her to be there, let alone in a schoolgirl outfit. Parish claims it's meant as parody, but I think he's just being charitable to Capcom on account of Mega Man 9. SFIV is really just a mash-up of Street Fighter's greatest hits (and, uh, Rufus). KoFXII's roster reveals about the same. Iori's been redesigned, but that primarily entailed relocating one of his belts, and Terry's back to his classic Fatal Fury jacket instead of his Mark of the Wolves look.
But these are fighting games. Cut them some slack; they have a hard enough time surviving without relying on their most valuable assets. And besides, solid mechanics usually trump bringing something new to the table. Oftentimes being a good fighting game is irrespective of being a groundbreaking one, and characters are, to a degree, window dressing under which the game is played. If copying Street Fighter II's roster wholesale means bringing back casual fans who fondly remember mashing-punch-as-Blanka duels, why the hell not?
During this week's Sonic the Hedgehog-focused episode of Retronauts, Sharkey mentions a free, Flash-based game called Dino Run. He argues it's what would happen "if you distilled just the speedy bits of Sonic and made that the entire point." As someone raised on Nintendo consoles, my only real experience with Sonic was playing the game briefly with Genesis-owning friends. I tended to like the games until I got far enough that running fast became suicidal instead of fun, so I decided to give Dino Run a try to see how it creates a game based purely around speed.
Yesterday on the TGS show floor, a woman flagged me down and asked if she could have a moment. Since she was a normal human and not one of those vinyl booth babe robots they send out to smile painfully at smelly nerds, I actually complied. She handed me a notebook whose cover said, "What is the coolest thing about Japan culture to you?" Then she asked me to draw my favorite thing about Japan. It was awkward and uncomfortable! So I drew the first thing I could think of, having just come from Square Enix's booth: a DS with a Dragon Quest slime on the screen.
Then she told me she writes for the Nikkei Daily and I realized that she was probably going to post my stupid doodle and a photograph of me drawing it to the Nikkei website. D'oh.
Then the marker she had given me to use exploded in a gout of fizzing black ink.
It's nice to know that being in Japan can still be a bafflingly surreal experience.
If Nintendo making a new Punch-Out!! and publishing Sin and Punishment 2 hasn't convinced you that they still have love for the hardcore gamer, here's a sight that should warm your icy heart: The two games being promoted on Nintendo.com's front page right now, representing the Wii and DS respectively, are Wario Land: Shake It! and Kirby Super Star Ultra. See? They do care. And while the former turned out to be more of a rental than the transcendant 2D milestone we all wanted it to be, if you have any oldschool sensibilities whatsoever, the latter belongs in your DS.
It always surprises me when savvy gamers admit they've never played Kirby Super Star. Even though it was released post-PlayStation, I've always considered it one of the essential SNES titles, up there with A Link to the Past and Yoshi's Island. A solid base of Kirby platforming, augmented by over twenty special powers and move sets, spread across several varied game types, plus co-op equals something very much resembling perfection. Now DS owners (that is, you and eighty million friends) have the perfect opportunity to find out what they've been missing out on.
Which isn't to say those who have played Super Star to death shouldn't look into this; it just goes double for everyone else. Longtime fans can appreciate the complete visual makeover on display (impressive, given it was already one of the best-looking SNES games), as well as enjoy all the new sub-scenarios, which stand up to the originals for fun and invention. My favorite is "Revenge of the King," a subtly disturbing nightmare version of Spring Breeze, the first scenario of the game. That probably sounds too heavy for a Kirby title, but believe me; albeit in a very simple, Kirby-esque way, there are parts where the developers seem to have flown off into Kojima territory.
And on the off-chance that none of the new content appeals to you, hey: it's still portable Super Star. You can't go wrong.
I'm pretty big into game music. Once in a blue moon, I'll listen to some '80s glam, Rush, or symphonic metal, but well over ninety-five percent of my aural diet is from the real classics: Mega Man, Castlevania, Ys, Final Fantasy, Gradius, and the like. As such, I'm pretty opinionated when it comes to what's good and what's composed by Tommy Tallarico. So I'll be sharing my views and highlighting individual pieces of game music I think are worthy of "best of" status -- and to make it easy, we'll start off with a classic.
"Beginning" Composed by: Konami Kukeiha Club Also known as: "Dreams of Triumph," "BIGINNING" First appeared in: Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse/Akumajou Densetsu
"Beginning" is part of the holy trinity of recurring Castlevania themes, alongside "Vampire Killer" and "Bloody Tears." Conveniently, these compositions serve as the opening stage music for the first three "main" games in the series (screw you, Castlevania: The Adventure). Together, they provide a consistent musical link between the Castlevania games -- or possibly just an easy way out of composing new material.
"Beginning" was likely named for Castlevania III's hearkening back to family patriarch Trevor Belmont's undead odyssey, set centuries before his descendant Simon made watching castles crumble a routine experience. So why is it a piece of music worth remembering?
Aside from a new hardware reveal and plentiful software announcements, last week was still a good week to be a Nintendo fan. Specifically, their American arm announced they'd be rolling out a customer loyalty program, their own version of Club Nintendo. Besides sharing a name with several foreign magazines, Club Nintendo is a program that offers exclusive merchandise and even original games available nowhere else. Prizes are exchanged for points, which are earned by visiting a website and redeeming a code packed inside first-party games. See the image to the right ->
These are for the Japanese Club Nintendo, and if you know anything about Nintendo, you already know that the Japanese get it better, because that's just how they roll. Points can't be redeemed outside your region, but you can pay exhorbitant prices for these goods on eBay no matter where you live. I have grave doubts that we'll get anything that cool; my guess is that the US club will offer Wii Points and online extras, similar to the European club. But least we'll have a head start: according to NoA's Cammie Dunaway, points will be rewarded for certain games that have already been registered. It's like Nintendo doesn't even hate its fans or something.
I was saving this for later, Kat has forced my hand: it's time for me to write about the junk food I've been eating over here. I've made it my mission to try a small amount of new snackage I've never experienced before each day. Not too much, because I don't want to crash the plane from unexpected added weight on the return flight, but enough to give me something to look forward to in this dreary, terrible place that I have been forced to visit against my will.
Item 1: Kit-Kat Caramel Pudding
Japan has amazing Kit-Kat technology. This nation wins the Kit-Kat arms race, hands-down. America soundly rejects all but the standard Kit-Kat and the horrible "white chocolate" version, but Japan embraces the Kit-Kat family in all its myriad variants. While nothing will quite match the majesty of last year's winter premium with its dark chocolate and black tea cream, I'm always willing to press forward.
Alas, Kit-Kat Caramel Pudding is entirely too sweet for its own good. I kinda taste the caramel, but mostly it's like tiny sugar molecules are stabbing my tongue.
Item 2: Meiji chocolate potato sticks
This was a little more adventurous, and also far more regrettable. Chocolate and potato can be inexplicably good together, which is why all humans dip their Wendy's fries in their Frosties, but you'd never know it to try this. The potato adds a weird sourness to the mix that makes the chocolate taste curdled. Horrifying! But perhaps an appropriate chaser for "A taste of the BREAD" teriyaki burger. Which is why I've sent it chasing the burger to the landfill.
Of course, the worst culinary offense I've yet seen was the chilled red win at the Italian place pictured below. I believe the correct term is "grotaceous."
How do you find out new games? Where do you go for information on upcoming games? The internet, right? But where on the internet? For me, I find that I'm increasingly not interested in reading "first look previews" and "world exclusive reviews!". That's not to say that I don't appreciate games journalism or the expertise they bring to bear. It's just that what they have to offer is so much more compelling when it's more informal.
It's no secret that as consumers we value the opinions in our social circles much more than we do the opinions of experts and mavens. I work around games, and I can't tell you how many times I've overheard my customers telling their friends that they heard that Grand Theft Auto IV sucks. This critically acclaimed title is sitting at a 98% score at Metacritic, which is a site that aggregates the scores it was given by reviewers. The experts loved it -- or so their review scores would indicate -- yet for many they heard from the friends about the repetitive missions and the lack of "play" available and decided it wasn't the game for them.
I have also heard many of these same complaints from games journalists, and it wasn't in their reviews. It was in their podcasts, their blog posts, their twitter posts, on their posts in internet message boards, in the comments section of their websites. Anyone with access to a computer can expand their social circles far beyond that of their geography. Because of microblogging services like Twitter, RSS readers which make it very easy to keep up with a large number of blogs, the podcast phenomenon which lets us listen in on the experts having the kinds of conversations with each other that we have with our friends, you can eavesdrop on the entire cycle of a games lifespan. A review is a single moment in time, trapped in amber. That is how they felt when they wrote the review -- but how many of us still feel the same about a game a few months after we've put it back on the shelf as we did in the afterglow of completion? Some games hold up to the test of time; others do not.
I weigh the opinions of critics whose opinions I value more highly than I do those of critics whom I am not familiar with. Because of social media, I'm much more familiar with a wider range of gamers, both expert and amateur. Because of social media, I can follow along with these same critics along the entire cycle: how they felt after first being shown the game, if the game held up when they got to play it, their deeper thoughts after getting the play the final version, and, most valuable of all, how they respond to what others are saying once the game is out in the wild. The kinds of back-and-forth discussion that result are much more in-depth and wider-ranging than a review can, by it's very nature, be. The most fun part of watching a movie with your friends is hashing out your thoughts afterwards.
Decent Italian restaurant sighted. Commencing mission.
08 October 08 | 12:53 | Posted by: Kat
I'm now safely ensconced in Makuhari Messe, everything I need ready to go for TGS. Well, everything except for my camera, which I kind of need to do that photo blog that I had been planning. Unfortunately, my camera has apparently decided to take the weekend off and chill out at home.
That is to say, I forgot it.
So I guess if you want pictures from TGS, you'll have to live with whatever random thing that I decide to photograph with my phone. For instance, behold!
Haha, I didn't say my phone's camera was any good, did I? It's actually pretty ancient.
But anyway, that is a halfway decent Italian restaurant you're looking at. In Japan, no less! These are actually harder to find than you'd think, primarily owing to the Japanese penchant for mixing perfectly good pasta with things like mayonnaise, cod roe, and seaweed.
This place had some of that, but it also had a spicy garlic spaghetti that proved to be pretty tasty. I'll rate that as a success in my book, especially since I only paid about 1200 yen for the pasta, a salad, a glass of wine, and some coffee.
Tomorrow is the Tokyo Game Show, where Parish and I will undoubtedly continue to regale you with our fascinating experiences with the local cuisine. Yes, you are indeed reading GameSpite, the world's first culinary gaming blog.
Pshh, you think those shiny new games from TGS are worth talking about? Man, I think you came to the wrong site. We love old stuff here, and what could be older than a Game Boy game from 1994? Well...a lot of stuff, to be honest, but this is my blog post and I'll do what I want.
So yeah, after finishing up Braid, I was in the mood for more puzzle platforming, and the general consensus was that Donkey Kong (sometimes called Donkey Kong '94) for Game Boy was one of the best puzzle platformers out there. Turns out that’s a pretty accurate statement, because this game is awesome.
Imagine, if you will, a 2D Mario that has all the moves from Mario 64 (handstands, side-flip-jumps, double and triple jumps), but two years before its release. Now imagine plunking that Mario into the original Donkey Kong, which, after the four initial stages, becomes a crazy puzzle game where you have to get a large key to the locked door of each stage. I’m told Mario vs. Donkey Kong is similar to this, but I haven't played that (yet). But if you have, you get the idea.
It skews slightly more to platforming over puzzles than, say, Braid, but it'll definitely stump you later on. Case in point: I'm currently stuck on a level in the seventh world, and have no idea how to progress. (Oh, did I mention there are, like, a billion levels in this thing? Best ten dollars I ever spent.) That's okay; I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, because I can't put the thing down. Seriously, it might rival [insert personal choice here; I tend to go with Link’s Awakening] as the best game on Game Boy. I know -- I had a hard time believing it, too, but I've played it, and it's true. Ignore all those new games and go pick this up, or, failing that, pray that it shows up on the DSi someday and play it then. (And if you've already played it, good job! Go play it again and relive your youth, or something.)
The soon to be released Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3 has gathered much attention for both its charming visual design and the way its central gameplay innovation, the ability to directly control units in battle, injects action into a genre that often limits the player to issuing orders from afar as they position their units on a rigid grid.
To be sure, both of these factors are worthy of praise. Its watercolor aesthetic is refreshing compared to the endless sea of brown that plagues games on the most recent generation of consoles. And it's true that having to dodge bullet fire to rescue a downed teammate or crawl through the grass to sneak into an enemy base is infinitely more exciting than grid-based movement. However, lost in the mix, I believe, is how having direct control over units in a 3D environment enhances the game's strategic possibilities by fundamentally changing the way players interact with the game space.
Playing through the Japanese release of Valkyria Chronicles was not only the most fun I've ever had with the SRPG genre since Final Fantasy Tactics, but it was also the first time I've ever felt that an SRPG game contained anything remotely resembling strategy.
One of the best parts of coming to Japan, of course, is the food. Japanese food exists at extremes; it's either incredibly good or utterly nauseating. Although some of my favorite spots from years past (namely the ramen hole and Little Spoon) are now somewhat less than amazing. But anyway! I admire these extremes, and I hope to experience them whenever possible.
To that end, when I was out foraging through convenience stores for a midnight dinner after arriving way too late in Shibuya due to flight delays, I could not resist something called "A taste of the BREAD." Sitting on the shelf of a Lawson's, it appeared to be a bread roll wrapped in brown wax paper. Yet! Yet the flavor, I parsed, was "teriyaki burger." My guess was that it would be hunk of bread chemically treated to taste like a teriyaki burger. Disgusting! So I had to try it.
To my amazement, though, the truth of this food item was far worse. Sitting on the shelf, unrefrigerated, was in fact...a teriyaki burger.
Yes. It was actually much worse than it looks, and it looks pretty bad. I hate wasting food, but this was all I managed to choke down before I began questioning my will to live. It tasted like a White Castle, was the size of a McDonald's burger, and made me question how a kind and loving god could allow such atrocities against his people. Now I don't know much about this crazy world we live in, but I'm fairly confident in stating that meat is not something you leave sitting around in a convenience store at room temperature. To my mind, this suggests that what I ate was either (1) not meat or (2) pumped so full of preservatives that I've just saved my next of kin a load of money on embalming fluid.
Alarmingly, this was hardly the only "A taste of the BREAD" product on sale! They also had many other "meat" products, including a sausage egg roll whose egg component oozed nauseatingly off the bun and onto the clear plastic in which it was wrapped. I suppose that should have been a warning, but I always want to believe the best of others. My faith in human nature will be the death of me, or at least the terrible stomachache of me.
I've developed a theory about this sort of food product, though. My guess is that it stems from Japan's apocalypse-oriented state of mind which causes the entire nation to be perpetually braced for a devastating earthquake, a nuclear holocaust or a huge radioactive lizard emerging angrily from the sea. We are not intended to eat foods like Lawson's "A taste of the BREAD" line now. Rather, the nation conscientiously keeps these barely-palatable preserved foodstuffs stocked as a matter of preparedness. When The Big One hits, the survivors will be able to subsist for weeks on the psuedo-burgers, thus remaining alive until the Japan Self-Defense Force gets its act together and sends in the rescue crews.
You have to admire such a forward-thinking sort of food. You should not, however, eat it. At least not until Tokyo Tower falls. (Which was of course constructed to serve as the city's early warning indicator -- all disasters, natural or otherwise, are intrinsically drawn to Tokyo Tower.)
The necessity of physical media seems incongruous with the times we live in. After all, iTunes is now the largest seller of music in the US, and they don't have a single CD or LP on offer. All of the music they sell is in bits. You download it directly to your PC, and if you have an iPod, you can carry it with you very conveniently. I'm a big proponent of digital distribution for music; for me, it's something to listen to while doing other things (driving, cleaning the house, writing), so the trade-off for going digital (compressed, lossy music) doesn't bother me.
I'm even looking forward to the day when any song you might desire just exists on the "cloud" we call the Internet. Much like Gmail has taken e-mail from the desktop to the cloud, it's not hard to imagine needing only a PC or an Internet-connected portable device to gain access to the vast majority of the world's music.
So why don't I also want movies to follow this model? I'm not a particular fan of having physical media. I don't need shelves of DVD and BD cases taking up room in my modest home. While grabbing movies from the cloud seems like it would be ideal, there are a number of reasons why I think losing physical media would be a tragedy for movie buffs.
We managed not to crash yesterday, although I was wrong about the timing; due to mechanical issues, my flight was delayed about three hours. So I guess if I had been right about the timing, we also would have crashed and burned. I suppose this was the better compromise, in the end.
This is normally where I'd be flooding the site and my Flickr account with photos, but this being my fourth trip to Tokyo in about a year's time I rather suspect I'm going to be hard-pressed to find much new to photograph. I won't really have time to range far afield from the usual haunts -- Shibuya, the stultifyingly dull Chiba, the usual side excursions to nerd shops -- but I do intend to film the first season of Bonus Stage while we're here. So I guess that's something to look forward to several months down the road, yes?
Anyway, on with the celebration of consumerism. Strike now before the credit market implodes the rest of the way and we're forced to eat our own young to survive. Sadly, not having any young myself, I don't imagine I'll be around much longer. It's been real, everyone.
Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
There are a few decent new releases this week, but the most important thing is the restored, high-definition version of Sleeping Beauty. Simply put, the movie is the best thing classic Disney ever created, a real masterpiece, and its angular modern (in the Modern Art sense of the word) visual style should hold up wonderfully to hi-resolution scrutiny. Be excited.
New Game + | Weekly Game Releases
This is one of those weeks where the games industry has conspired to make its releases (both in the U.S. and abroad) as boring as possible so that we'd get all excited about the stuff they're showing at TGS. On the other hand, I've heard the developers behind Etrian Odyssey have somehow sewn a silk purse of the sow's ear that is Legend of Kage, so that's something.
If it wasn’t abundantly clear from the article I wrote about it, I have a few issues with Metal Gear Solid 4. (And for the hundredth time, no, it wasn't an awful game. It was merely disappointing.) No aspect of that game is safe from my venomous spite, not even the online component, which -- while not the biggest disappointment the game had to offer -- probably hurt me the most.
I should start out by saying that I played the original MGO -- Metal Gear Online, for the uninitiated -- that came packaged with Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistencea lot. Like, I (along with our pal Tomm "I <3 Kojima" Guycot and a few others) placed pretty highly in the team tournament thing Konami held because we played it so damn much. I mean, it was Metal freakin’ Gear. But online! With your buddies! And with MGS4, the online component was supposed to be a big focus right out of the box, offering more weapons, more stats, more abilities, more clans, more downloadable maps, more character customization, and more players! Great, right?
GameSpite Issue 10.3: Fight for your right to spite
05 October 08 | 23:33 | Posted by:
As this goes live, I am landing on a runway at Narita International. At least I certainly hope I am! I mean, I am happy to be wrapping up another issue of GameSpite, but I feel like maybe this isn't the final legacy I want to leave the world. After all, we've gone and harshed on entries from three world-class game franchises this week. They're not even bad entries! Just demonstrably flawed chapters whose shortcomings keep them from living up to their respective legacies. So let's hope I'm enjoying a secure touchdown rather than a watery splashdown. I don't think I quite trust that those seats effectively double as flotation devices after being compressed by a thousand pair of buttocks each year, is what I'm saying.
Dragon Warrior VII
M. Nicolai comes to pretty much the same conclusion here that I've held for a while: Dragon Warrior VII -- or Dragon Quest, as they'd be calling it nowadays -- was underwhelming on PlayStation. And overwhelming, in terms of raw man-hours to completion. I know lots of people who have logged 100+ hours into the game without finishing it! But as a DS remake, it would probably be pretty boss.
Metal Gear Solid 4
Calorie Mate, Talking Time's second-biggest Metal Gear fanboy (the first being Tomm "Kojima is My Dad" Guycot), speaks out on the series' conclusion and is...not particularly fanboyish. In fact, this is pretty much the article I was going to write, if all the shenanigans around reviewing is hadn't made me want to avoid the series for a few years. Good on yer, 'Mate.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
And, finally, the Metroid Prime 3 article I started last August after finishing the game. I gave Corruption a solid score in EGM but had a lot of complaints on a "personal satisfaction" level that didn't really belong in the review. In fact, I've held off on publishing this in case my irritation subsided, but it turns out my misgivings have proven to be symptomatic of a larger ailment, so. Here we are.
I don’t think enough hoopla has been made over the EA Partners program ‘round these parts…or, well, on the Internet at large, really, save for a few "that’s an awesome idea" comments thrown around from time to time. It’s annoying, because the Partners program is brilliant. So I’ll just have to make my own hoopla, I guess. That’s what blogging is for, right? Don’t take this away from me. Let me have some hoopla.
In the past twelve months, EA Partners has:
Published Harmonix’s Rock Band and Rock Band 2
Published Crytek’s Crysis
Published/helped port Valve’s Orange Box to consoles, and will soon be doing the same for Left 4 Dead
Have signed a deal to publish a new game by Grasshopper Studios’/Suda 51’s/Shinji Mikami’s new game
Have signed a similar publishing deal with Epic Games
Have (yet again) signed a publishing deal on id’s new game, RAGE
Possibly some other stuff I've forgotten
There are two reasons I like this program, and the first is pretty easy to guess: obviously, it promotes creativity. In theory, EA has little to no say in what each developer is doing, meaning developers can make the game they want to without the publisher breathing down their necks to make sure the final product is an easy sell. I’m not naïve enough to think EA doesn’t have some sort of production schedule laid out for its partners, so the "it’s done when it’s done" Holy Grail of development freedom is still a ways off for everyone who isn't Valve or Will Wright. But this is probably the next best thing.
It never ends. If the rumors are to be believed, the next round of consoles will hit as early as 2010. Didn't we just leave this party?
No, you haven't, say Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. The party never ends so long as you're willing to give us your money. And plenty of gamers are willing to do just that. But I'm no longer one of them. Games sure aren't getting any cheaper, and the price of admission is getting tougher and tougher to stomach. I won't mind dropping a few hundred dollars on a new high-definition television when I get back home -- it would be stupid to buy anything else. But dropping hundreds of dollars on a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 when I barely have time to play games as it is? What a waste, my conscience says. I still have to finish Super Robot Taisen Z, Final Fantasy XII and Persona 3.
But there's another side. A side that says that I'm liable to be left in the dust as we rush headlong into the next level of the perpetual arms race. I wouldn't be at all surprised if 2010 hits, and I suddenly find myself not one but two generations behind the curve.
Who knows? It might not be so bad to take a backseat in gaming's rat race. Maybe I'm okay with just looking back to the thirty years of gaming that I've missed, rather than scampering to keep up with the latest and greatest. Maybe I've reached the point where I'm happy to leave Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony to their arms race while I give the PS2's library the justice it deserves. Maybe I can save myself a night standing in line while I spend my money on a trip to Europe. Maybe I can finally find the time to play Shin Megami Tensei and Chrono Trigger.
Maybe I'm crazy. Or maybe I'm not alone. Stranger things have happened.
My name is Christopher, and I'm now blogging for GameSpite due to what I can only assume was a tremendous lapse of judgement on the part of this site's management. I'll do my best not to drag everyone else down with me. People who visit Talking Time might know me as estragon. While this handle has served me well as as an anonymous member of an internet forum, I think we should all get to know each other a little more intimately out here on the front page. As luck would have it, I know just the right sleazy love hotel for us to get up close and personal.
Now that I've turned this place into a den of sin and irrevocably damaged the site's reputation in the process, I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a self-loathing dork trapped in an abusive relationship with JRPGs. I forget all the bad things they've done when they treat me right, but it's so rare these days that I'm starting to question whether or not they really do love me back.
My way of looking at games these days stems from my interest in experimental theatre, where there is often more focus on creating a self-contained environment than telling a traditional narrative. Along these same lines, I'm most interested in games like Rez, Katamari Damacy, and Shadow of the Colossus that present a well defined environment with clear rules and push the possibilities of that environment to its limits. Other than games, I've recently been interested in slow paced, depressing movies, manga that doesn't suck, and books with just the right amount of surrealism.
Part of me is deeply hesitant to write on this site, which has been one of my favorite places on the internet since I first found Parish's writings online about 10 years or so ago when I was still in high school. To be honest, posting this feels a bit like I'm scribbling graffiti mustaches on the photographs in someone else's newspaper. That being said, I will do my best to scribble the most beautiful mustaches I possibly can.
My name is Eric Jonathan Smith, or "Eirikr" around these parts and others. Eirikr is simply the original Norse form of the name Eric and as a simple Google search will prove, I've built quite a character for myself even if I don't quite remember doing any of it. It can be fun -- in the "anything is better than listening to a class lecture" sense of the word -- to try and piece together an adventure of your own based on your parallel internet self. Such is the (very abridged) tale of Eirikr Interwebsson:
From the bountiful pool of Muses cast high in the heavens, I received divine revelation as to what my goals in life would be. These goals included a diverse range of topics such as "raise[ing] money" and "donations." It was not revealed to me exactly how much I needed to raise and donate, so I just bartered my grandfather for a quarter and gave it to my cat. My fair and balanced deeds boiled the wrath of Bill O'Reilly who proceeded to slander me in graphic detail. As a result, I boycotted FOX until further notice(caution: it's a MySpace page) but it was too late: I was already crushed beneath the conservative amounts of pressure in the No Spin Zone. Because of my great donations to the Earth, however, I was reincarnated as a rottweiler and apparently have "the most expressive face" and am "such a joy to always have around."
Yeah, it's a pretty lousy story, for sure, but such is your control over fate! I guess that's why I'm here, then: to better the reputation of Eirikrs everywhere with ample talk and analysis of gaming, game music, toys, and schlong demons. Even better when it's all four at once! Suck it, Eiríkr rauði.
Predictably (and predictedly), announcements are shooting up all over the place as the Tokyo Game Show draws ever nearer. Now that E3 has become an undead husk of its former self, TGS is the industry's most important trade event, with enough gravity to pull news items not even pertinent to Japan into its lower orbit. Really, it doesn't take much to surmise that the Japanese audience is at least matched by those of us angling for information worldwide, so there's little reason not to send a few morsels our way. Companies get eyeballs, we get a briefly sating glimpse of what's to come; everyone's happy.
Case in point: an English trailer for Dragon Ball Origins. It's significant just to have reconfirmation that this is coming out here, since Dragon Ball's main appeal in the West has always been the cavalcade of grimacing muscle-men it became in later years, rather than the fanciful globetrotting adventure it started out as. Origins places its focus firmly with the latter, although someone in advertising clearly recognized the cultural divide, setting the trailer to the same kind of droning synth-rock that plagued the English dub of Dragon Ball Z. It's only by the sanity of modern localizations that I trust the game itself will retain the lighthearted orchestral score of the original anime.
The ESRB notice gives the game a T for "partial nudity" and "suggestive themes," which hopefully will be enough to account for the disparity between Toriyama's outwardly kid-friendly art style and his blue sense of humor. In particular, it'll mean the world to me if this brilliant use of the DS hardware goes unedited:
Oh, yes. The gap beween screens may have gotten you killed in Contra 4, but never forget the time it spared you the indignity of Bulma's dainty parts.
I suffered a random wave of hopeless curiosity about a toy I had as a kid a while ago and decided to indulge myself by snagging one off eBay for a few bucks. The toy in question: the Dreadnok Thunder Machine from the G.I. Joe line. I had a sudden realization about how utterly odd it was: in a line of military realism (back when it was more or less about military realism, mind you, and not a pro wrestler driving around on a neon open-top battle tank), this vehicle possessed a different sort of realism. The Thunder Machine was basically a chop shop special -- a hodgepodge mess of random vehicle parts welded together and covered with makeshift armor plating.
It appears to possess the body of a truck with a jet engine bolted to the back and a Camaro grille bolted to the front -- no doubt for vanity. Strategically-placed bits of armor protect the drivers, and there are twin gatling guns on the front. I'm not too certain about the jet engine, but the rest of it is uncannily convincing as a sort of urban guerilla armored vehicle. As a kid I thought it was simply cool-looking, but now I really wonder who came up with something so offbeat yet appropriate.
Anyway, I just noticed tonight that there's a set of police flashers bolted to the top, which pretty much pushes it over the edge from "great toy" to "greatest toy." You kids these days don't know how bad you got it. Playthings were way more awesome when I was your age.
So both that Sonic RPG by Bioware and Sonic Unleashed are due out this year, and on top of that there’s a rumor floating around that suggests another Sonic game will be announced at TGS next week. Seems like a lot of Sonic if you ask me -- which got me thinking, oddly enough, about Mario.
A few years back, a friend of mine (who hadn’t owned a Nintendo console since the SNES) said that, despite his preference for Sonic, he really respected how conservative Nintendo was with the character. It’s an odd thought, considering how Mario parties all the frickin’ time, plays every sport known to man, and has the ability to exist as a sheet of paper, but his reasoning went something like this: the sports and party games serve to slap a familiar face on the product for Mom to buy, and kind of keep Mario in the underlying gaming consciousness. Meanwhile, the “actual” Mario games are still huge events; sure, they’re usually very high quality, but they’re a big deal mostly because we’re all saying, "Damn, it’s been a long time since I got to do this!"
Really, it’s rather impressive. Much as Walt Disney retired Mickey when he feared the quality of his cartoons might go down while keeping the mouse as the company's face for so long, so too does Nintendo trot out a proper Mario on an incredibly rare basis. Not to disparage any of the offshoot, particularly Paper Mario; rather, it's simply impressive that Mario is, essentially, the sole survivor of the 8- and 16-bit mascot era. Stop and think about how exciting Super Mario Galaxy was to everyone last year and just how hard it would be for any other character to enjoy similar success after 25 years or more. I’m really tempted to dig out the article I read in college on what makes Disney’s mascot "timeless" to see what happens if I just substitute every occurrence of "Mickey Mouse" with "Mario".
I have only a passing interest in the alternative toy community. Sure, I see the artistic vinyl toys that some people collect, and it makes me wish I had more disposable income. When it comes right down to it, I'd rather spend what little money I have on something that's a bit more interactive. So it's great that Shawn Smith -- who has always been "a guy who used to write for EGM" to me despite the fact that he's made a name for himself as a toy creator with his Shawnimals line of toys and dolls -- has become involved in the video game industry again. This time, though, he's on the other side of the fence. One of his Shawnimal characters, the Wee Ninja, is being spun off into Southpeak Interactive's Ninja Town.
Unfortunately, it's slated for late October, when it'll be fighting for shelf space against higher-profile releases like Fallout 3, Fable 2, and Dead Space. This seems like a perfect candidate for the blink-and-you'll-miss-it files, and that would be a shame. I recently had the opportunity to enjoy a hands-on demo of the game narrated by Shawn, who guided me through the first level. Ninja Town's mechanics are easy enough to describe if you've ever played Desktop Tower Defense or Pixeljunk Monsters, as it falls into the same slice of the strategy genre as them. In most tower defense games, you fend off incoming waves of enemies by strategically placing towers mounted with ranged weapons. Different towers have varying effects against enemies, so the key to success is using the right mix of towers to repel all the different enemies. For example, you might have to ward off flying enemies, so you build anti-air towers; but if you build too many of those and neglect mortars, ground based monsters will make it through your defenses and destroy your base.
So how is Ninja Town different? For one, instead of building towers you're building barracks. While towers simply sit there and spew ammo, Ninja Town's barracks generate different classes of ninja that emerge to attack the incoming enemies. Ninjas need to stay within range of their barracks, but as the barracks increase in level that range increases. In the mission I played, I set up barracks with White Ninjas who threw snowballs at the enemies, which caused them to slow down. This gave my Wee Ninjas more time to deal with them before they marched out of range of the barracks.
The first level offered four different classes of Ninja available, and it wasn't too difficult to figure out the best places to put them in order to stop the hordes of bad guys from attacking you. As you play through the game, though, many more classes of Ninja will become available, exponentially increasing your strategic options. As anyone who has lost hours to Pixeljunk Monsters can attest, this style of gameplay can be very addictive. Fans of portable or strategy game (and anyone looking for a smaller experience to balance all the epic triple-A releases this holiday season) should keep Ninja Town in mind. I had a really great experience with it, and now I'm starting to look into getting a few of those Wee Ninja plushies. And hey, a vinyl toy sure would look nice on my desk...
Today wiped me out, waking up early and scrambling to write up stuff from Nintendo's conference, so I am at last ready to reveal the dark truth behind GameSpite's new (ish) bloggers: to give me breathing room in which to slack off. But, if you'd like, you're free to read what I came up with today at work:
Punch-Out!! first impressions: Rather obviated by the fact that the trailer this was based on has been released online. But hey, if you're that tiny percentage of the Internet who would prefer to read rather than watch, this article is for you.
Sin & Punishment 2 first impressions: Probably the best thing ever to come from VIrtual Console was the fact that Nintendo was forced to recognize that, oh yes, America does want hardcore Treasure shooting goodness. Bangai-O Spirits has restored my faith in the developer's ability to create a great sequel; this is going to be great.
Mario & Luigi 3 first impressions: I'm not entirely sure this preview is accurate, but it was written based on brief video impressions. Forgive me if I misinterpreted NIntendo's cryptic visual missive.
Now: scroll down and read the great commentary everyone else came up with today.
While I’m not really sold on the DSi either, I’m excited about its potential quite a bit more than Kat seems to be. Yes, a fairly large number of Gameboy games are utter crap, and yes, there’s probably a decent number of people out there that still own a working something that can play Gameboy games; between the original, the Pocket, the Color, the GBA, and the GBA SP, there’s a good chance you’ve owned something that can play them at one point. Much like Nintendo’s E3 press conference, though, this isn’t for you.
No, the DSi, to me, seems like Nintendo’s next big step at becoming Apple 2. With the announcement of DS Ware and the name change from "Wii Points" to "Nintendo Points" the Virtual Console is no longer Wii-specific. This could very well be the foundation of Nintendo’s virtual games service…thing. There’s no way Nintendo hasn’t looked at the success of iTunes and said, "We can do that, too." The new buzz word in technology these days is "platforms". The iPhone, Google’s Android phone, and even Rock Band’s downloadable songs are all (or will be) platforms. Nintendo was always good at making money off platforms back when we called them "consoles," but the idea is evolving along with the consumer these days and Nintendo doesn’t want to get left behind. What with the strength of their lineage -- and since we’ve all taught them just how much we’re willing to pay for nostalgia over the years -- they can offer up hundreds of bite-sized titles for a few bucks and build one hell of a virtual gaming platform.
I'm pretty sure the general populace is over Wii puns by now, but, eh...
Perhaps lost amongst the new DS and Club Nintendo and Punch-Out!! news is the announcement that GameCube games would be re-released on the Wii. Pikmin was announced as the vanguard release for the lineup. Paranoia that this is what they meant when they said they were working on Pikmin at E3 aside, this development is somewhat interesting*.
This isn't the first time games have been re-released on the Wii; Okami and Resident Evil 4 both made an encore appearance on the system. But those were fairly recent releases on the tail end of the last system generation, and when looking for a current gen system to port to, the Wii's the obvious choice. The hardware's analogous, and both had mechanics that suited the Wii's controls.
Pikmin, though. This was a launch title for the GameCube. Even if they integrated Wii controls (which I doubt) this seems like an odd choice. The best I can figure, Nintendo figures it's worked hard enough to attract a hardware base large enough it can call a mulligan on the GameCube. It may not have treated Nintendo too well during its lifetime, but that just means there's a lot of Wii owners that never got to play its best games. Sure it already has backwards compatibility, but throw in some widescreen support and progressive scan and why the hell not?
It's almost as if Nintendo expects the Wii's Midas Touch to let it do-over the last generation. It'll either end up as a bit of hubris, or proof that the Wii is simply unstoppable in Japan. Or it's just one of those long tail sort of things.
Edit: IGN claims that Wii controls will be added, and the fact that Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat will be the first release seems to support the idea. So now it's only mostly weird, as opposed to completely.
* The other bloggers already took the actually interesting announcements.
The battle of who could care less (about a Game Boy Virtual Console)
02 October 08 | 10:33 | Posted by: Kat
So it seems that all of the rumors about Nintendo's multimedia DS were true, and we now have the opportunity to buy yet another Nintendo handheld SKU. I simply can't wait to fork over another $180 or so for one of these things.
So what's new? Apparently we're trading the GBA slot for a low-res camera, thus further ceding the handheld market to Japanese high school girls. But as compensation, Nintendo has finally given us an onboard memory solution via an SD memory card slot. Now we can transfer "DS Ware" (and hopefully Virtual Console) games to our DS. Sounds neat. People also seem to be taking this as virtual confirmed that we're going to get a Game Boy channel for the Virtual Console now.
Cool. Bring it on, right?
Well, it seemed like a great idea for about an hour or so following the announcements. Then I realized that I still have two GBAs and about a dozen games lying around the house. Yeah, I'm probably in the minority, but I'm also pretty sure that there are more people who still have old GBA games than there are people with say, working Famicoms.
And therein lies the problem. Part of the appeal of the Virtual Console is getting the chance to discover long lost games for the Neo-Geo, TurboGrafx or, hey, the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. But the GBA is comparatively young, so there aren't very many long lost GBA games around. Sure, there are a few isolated gems like Ninja Five-O, but the rest are either SNES ports or games that were done better on the Nintendo DS. About the only thing that the GBA has over the Nintendo DS right now is Metroid.
So then what about the original Game Boy and the Game Boy Color? Well, apart from a few games like Link's Awakening, Battletoads, Wario Land and Tetris, the old Game Boy has aged really poorly. Most of those games were just barely passable back in the day, but we put up with them because, damnit, they were portable! Now they're practically unplayable. Most of the time they were NES ports that you were better off playing on the home console anyway. Can't say that I'm really aching for the chance to play Donkey Kong Land or anything
The new DSWare has the potential to host some good games, but it mostly seems to be Nintendo's way of laying the groundwork for the next generation of the Nintendo DS, ala Xbox Live on the first Xbox. I'll be keeping one eye on the releases, but something tells me that we won't be seeing anything really interesting until we get a new Nintendo DS with onboard memory as a standard.
So I guess that the DSi isn't as interesting as I even thought when I started writing this post. Oh well, I guess I'll have to make do with playing my GBA games the old-fashioned way. Call me when Nintendo announces the DS-2.
I'll form the hand that glows with an awesome power
02 October 08 | 07:31 | Posted by: Nicola Nomali
If you're a GameSpite Person, you're probably at least cognizant of the Super Robot Taisen series. (Taisen means "war," but you get more indie cred if you leave it unstranslated -- even if it's your job to translate it.) Put simply, it's a gathering of several decades' worth of giant Japanese robots with the express purpose of exhibiting all their show-stopping super-moves. Put even more simply, it's fan service incarnate. But most importantly, it's darn attractive.
Fundamentally, the presentation hasn't changed much since it debuted on the humble Game Boy, first with overhead grid-based maps, then a side view for hot-blooded duels between robots. But with the move to predominantly 3D consoles, the series has become a sort of champion for the lasting appeal of 2D, sprite-based graphics. While they could have easily cast everything in polygons, Banpresto has instead used hardware like the PS2 to turn out a vast array of detailed and well-animated characters, flashy effects, and simple backgrounds that parallax all over the place.
Now, the latest installment has arrived in the form of Super Robot Taisen Z. It's a milestone in a number of ways, not the least of which is setting a new standard for aesthetics in a franchise already known for them. It functions the same as ever, with robot combatants occupying a flat, side-scrolling battlefield; but now they show depth when transitioning between background and foreground, spin and juke relative to a swerving camera, and seamlessly zoom into screen-filling close-ups. It surely adds a visceral edge to the gameplay, but it's also just a joy to behold -- especially since it's all done with sprites. This is why, even though I lack the time and money to play the games myself, I can say I've become a fan just by seeing them in action.
I'm starting to think that buying an elliptical machine was a mistake.
No, no -- scratch that. It's actually been a very effective aid in my mission to stop being so flabby. I've lost a fair amount of poundage already, which is good; I can actually fit into pants that have been in that sad sort of storage, the hide it in a drawer as an admission of fatness kind of storage, since 2005. That the beginning of what historians now refer to "the great expansion," or what my girlfriend refers to as "you turned 30, so what do you expect." They don't fit comfortably, at least not yet, but I'm almost there. So that's good.
But man, I wish I hadn't bought a Schwinn. It is a company with some terrible quality assurance. Bad enough that I had to wait a month after buying the stupid thing to be able to assemble it since they didn't bother including half the screws and bolts and washers I needed; worse that once I assembled it the whole thing very nearly broke because the instruction manual forgot to mention that, oh, by the way, those half-inch-thick aluminum tubes that weren't included anywhere in the instructions? Yeah, those are supposed to reinforce the load-bearing joints. But today we entered true "you've got to be kidding" territory: the welds broke. Yeah, the joined metal portions at the base of the mast section, fused with intense heat and theoretically one of the strongest points on the machine, just kinda popped loose, rendering the entire thing useless. Awesome. Luckily the frame is warranted for 30 years, but at this point I'm fairly certain that the bulk of those 30 years are going to be spent with the stupid thing half-assembled as I wait for replacement parts.
So I guess what I'm saying is, don't buy Schwinn stuff.
Meanwhile, I do recommend you download the latest Retronauts. Admittedly, it's not warranted -- but then, it's also free, so there's nothing to lose.
Also: I've temporarily shut off new registrations for Talking Time due to a massive influx of porn spam this morning. Seriously, it was at least a dozen spambots in the course of a few hours. If for some reason you desperately want to communicate on the forums and have never gotten around to registering, drop me an email and I can add you manually. (This offer not valid for porn-linking spambots.)
One of the most enjoyable parts of writing my weekly Add to Queue column is the opportunity it's given me to not only discuss upcoming movies but also to weigh in on the technology behind home entertainment. Film and home video tech are in a state of flux, and I can't wait to see where their rapidly changing mechanism end up taking us. For those who aren't early adopters, however, the new packaged media formats (along with the smorgasbord of other, more ephemeral options) can be both overwhelming and confusing. Fear not: my next few posts on GameSpite should help bring some clarity to the mess that is high-definition home content.
I've been a proponent of Blu-ray from the beginning; Blu-ray, of course, is a disc-based home video format that offers higher resolution picture and sound than DVD. But Blu-ray is hadly the only way to get HD content. As gamers, you're no doubt aware that you can download HD movies and television shows from both Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. You may also subscribe to cable or satellite services that offer HD movies "on demand", where you can pay a little bit of money for access to an HD movie with a few clicks of your remote control.
So why is Blu-ray better than those options? And for that matter, do we even need new HD formats when an upscaled, standard definition DVD looks nearly as good as a Blu-ray disc to most consumers? I'll tackle those questions in depth next time, but if you have any thoughts on true HD vs. upscaling -- or on physical media vs. digital downloads, or on anything else related to this topic -- please do speak up in the comments.
Did you hear? There was a big fifty-percent-off sale on all Rockstar games this past weekend. With GTA San Andreas running a mere $10, I could finally see the lovely city of Los Santos for myself before deciding whether I should drop $50 on GTA 4. Perfect!
Then I logged onto Steam, went into the store and searched for San Andreas. The cupboard was bare. "Hey stupid," said a little voice in the back of my head. "Did you forget? Rockstar games aren't available on Steam if you live in Japan."
Oh yeah, I remember alright. Thanks for asking, brain. Kind of hard to forget when you've just got three trailers staring you in the face. Valve really knows how to rub in that salt.
Now, here is what amazes me about Steam. It's supposed to be the best digital distribution platform on the Internet, and it can't tell that I'm an American with an American credit card? Even iTunes knows that much. I just switch to my profile, and there's the American store front. I can download a new episode of Battlestar Galactica in peace. Meanwhile, Valve and Rockstar are saying, "How do we *know* you're American? You could be a sneaky Japanese in disguise."
No guys, I'm not. Most Japanese people can't get American credit cards. And even if they could, why are you so concerned with keeping GTA out of their hands? Last time I checked, there were quite a few GTA games available here. I even once had a student tell me that Liberty City Stories was his favorite PSP game.
But it's fine. Trust me, I'm taking deep breaths. I'm just going to get it from Direct2Drive. I don't even mind that I have to pay an extra $10, because as far as I'm concerned, that's my $10 screw-you-Steam tax. That's right, I'm sticking it to the man. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to Pandora and play some GameTap while I wait for my download to finish up.
Oh wait. I can't!
Well, now we know why GameTap ended up hemmorhaging money, huh? You keep on locking out those customers, guys!
I saw some new screens for Dragon Quest IX over on that one corrupt and evil forum this morning, and it filled my shriveled little heart with happiness. Just look at it! Level-5 always manages to squeeze much more out of the systems it works on than should really be possible, and that seems to go double for the DS. DQIX looks like it's going to make Matrix's Final Fantasy remakes feel like amateur hour.
To be honest, SoM and SD3 are enough for me. They're of the same caliber as any of the better Final Fantasy games, and the multiplayer element makes them especially timeless. What really makes me sad to see Mana on its way out, though, is that I'll never see a high-quality, unmarked version of the artwork that served as the basis for both SoM's promotional campaign and title screen (pictured right). While that might be wildly myopic in any other case, that image of the heroes standing at the root of the mythically tall Mana Tree, brimming with life on every scale, is one of the most impressing works of art this medium has ever produced. (And if there were any doubt that it's an object of reverence, Square Enix even callously 
Aside from a new hardware reveal and plentiful software announcements, last week was still a good week to be a Nintendo fan. Specifically, their American arm announced they'd be rolling out a customer loyalty program, their own version of Club Nintendo. Besides sharing a name with several foreign magazines, Club Nintendo is a program that offers exclusive merchandise and even original games available nowhere else. Prizes are exchanged for points, which are earned by visiting a website and redeeming a code packed inside first-party games. See the image to the right ->
Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
New Game + | Weekly Game Releases
Dragon Warrior VII
Metal Gear Solid 4
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
I'm pretty sure the general populace is over Wii puns by now, but, eh...
