parish (Notes from the ed…): Well, that was the first … M.Nicolai (Spotted in Chinat…): I still have tokens from … Lindsay Cibos (Notes from the ed…): Hahaha! Six years of doin… Anonymous (Spotted in Chinat…): Oh boy, that creepy arcad… SonicPanda (GameSpite Issue 6…): In regards to Kirby's Adv… GeoX (GameSpite Issue 6…): Also, not to be a super-b… GeoX (GameSpite Issue 6…): I enjoy the blatantness o… Lithros (GameSpite Issue 6…): Merus: The article I lin… Ilchymis (GameSpite Issue 6…): Parish - is them's Kirby… Merus (GameSpite Issue 6…): Lithros: Which Adventure?…
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Vacuum coming for the bright and the brute
31 March 08 | 18:29
New Game + | Weekly Games Column
This week in games... uh, well, there's not really much, to be honest. However, I personally disagree with the columnists' choice of Call of Duty 4 as the best thing happening this week. No, kids, this week is all about Mr. Driller Online. It's no Drill Land -- however, it is pastel and upbeat and simple and fun, which is pretty much what makes games awesome. And it's cheap. So buy it!
Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Column
This week's movie releases are also sort of bleak and empty, but that turns out to be a good thing as it has goaded contributor VsRobot into spreading his wings and exploring the concept of "reviews." He's not calling it that, but he's totally weighing in on this week's pick. It's a review. And it is good!
So apparently 2008 is destined to be the year of the roguelike; just as the shine is starting to fade around the edges of Shiren the Wanderer (buy it if you haven't already, kids -- it's supoib, as they say in Stoogeland) and the tykes gear up for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon 2, the most recent entry in Chunsoft's ongoing mission to make everything all hardcore and turn-based is announced for U.S. release: namely, Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon 3. (Or "Chocobo's Mysterious Dung," as the front page of 1UP once called it quite by mistake.) I suspect this Chocobo outing will receive more informed and forgiving reviews than its predecessor enjoyed nearly a decade ago.
I'm happy to see the game get a chance in the U.S. -- it apparently tanked in Japan -- but I'd much rather hear news of Shiren 3 or, dare we dream, Dragon Quest IV for DS. Even so, I won't complain; especially as this is the first game in ages to forego the usual Square Enix Tax that I've been lamenting since playing Dragon Quest Swords and realizing that it was better suited to the $20 price range than $50. Maybe the company is finally realizing that pricing niche games as if they were blockbusters isn't doing any favors to under-the-radar titles like The World Ends With You! Or, more likely, this was supposed to be a $30 game and they applied the Square Enix Tax to make it $40.
Yeah, that sounds more like it.
Price quibbles aside, it is always a pleasure to see roguelikes make their way over here. Now Atlus just needs to pick up Izuna Ni. And maybe someone can grab Dramatic Dungeon: Sakura Taisen and Dungeon of Windaria. (Or not, given how banal they look.) In the meantime, I'm trying to compile a list of console- and handheld-based roguelikes. Please let me know if I've missed any! And don't bother telling me about PC-based entries; that is an epic undertaking that could easily be someone's full-time job.
My girlfriend's cousin has taken to crashing on our couch of late, and the other night she had this sudden, random desire to watch The Goonies and play the NES game. So I broke out my crappy NEX and a copy of The Goonies for Famicom -- the first one -- since I figured its more straightforward approach would be more palatable than the sequel for someone who doesn't game much. (Well, ever.)
She seemed a bit disappointed that it wasn't the game she remembered, though. I thought about explaining to her how the original game never came to the NES and that I personally wanted to own a copy for years after playing the PlayChoice 10 version for a year of Sundays at the local pizza parlor and that it turned out I spent well more than the game was worth in my eagerness to snap up a copy on eBay, but... ah well. I guess you can't brute-force someone to share your own nostalgia. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find my copy of The Goonies II, so we had to make due with what is apparently a pale imitation.
On the plus side, last night was the first time I've watched the movie since visiting Astoria a couple of years ago, and I was surprised by how different my perception of the film's setting is. I should visit the filming locations of all my childhood favorites. I hear Tunisia is nice this time of year.
Please note that tomorrow is final day for this month's Shiren the Wanderer Fun Club session. Is it strange to say that I'm proud of everyone involved for the way this thread has gone? Because I am. It's a vicious little niche game whose considerable pleasures really must be sought out, actively -- the kind of game that requires patience and open-mindedness before its merits start to peek through. Even so, it's been the single most active Fun Club entry to date, with nearly 600 posts, the vast majority of which have really and sincerely been in the spirit of the game. You kids are the best.
I wrote stuff this past week, and now I'm forcing you to read it. Or at least putting it out there, you know, to tweak your sense of guilt and obligation. I'll be tracking the clickthroughs so I can know once and for all who's just using me for my bandwidth.
echochrome
This preview turned out to be a lot more pretentious than I expected. But hey, at least 1UP style dictates that all game titles are written with an initial cap rather than the emo-boy all-lower-case style that Sony has trademarked for the game. Redeemed by groupthink.
Pokémon Ranger: Bataonnage
I think "batonnage" is French for "scribbling around things with a stick." It's almost exactly the same as the original Ranger so far as I can tell. You know what would have made it awesome? If it were "Pokémon Ranger: Batardage," a game in which you walk around hitting monsters with a loaf of bread. Me, I have an olive loaf I'm saving up for Mr. Mime.
Super Dodgeball Brawlers
I wonder what the publisher of this game thinks of the fact that the premise of this article is basically, "Thank goodness for emulation!"
Bangai-O Spirits
Apparently this didn't even make the top 30 software charts in Japan. Honestly, does anyone find that surprising? The Japanese gaming audience is no longer receptive to the sort of wacky, hardcore games Treasure develops. Their only hope is to start making Dragon Quest spin-offs for Enix, or maybe Idolmaster: The Shooting. Whatever. The point is, they'll need more underage chicks if they want to sell in Japan. Hopefully Bangai-O will fare better here, though, because it's pretty great... even if it doesn't play much like the Dreamcast version.
Oh, I see. It's Etrian Odyssey II. Like, in English and all.
Oh, hey! Etrian Odyssey II! In English! That's fantastic. June 17 is looking like a very, very busy week, with Metal Gear Solid 4 in need of completion and Final Fantasy Tactics A2 crowding the hardcore portable RPG space. I think I will make time for EO2, though. I might even have finished the first by then -- although, sadly, that didn't happen while I was on vacation as I had planned since I spent my free time posting images here of Japan instead.
Currently, I'm nearly finished with the 13th floor after having become bogged down with the ant nest on 12F. Like most major FOEs in the game, the Royalant was a brutal fight that I won in part through sheer luck that I probably couldn't repeat reliably on a second try. That might actually be what I enjoy the most about EO: The constant sense that I'm surviving through sheer audacity and determination, the knowledge that brute leveling doesn't go nearly as far in this game as smart skill selection and application. I've been flipping between EO and Shiren this past month, and the two games (though considerably different in many ways) succeed largely because they share this key element in common.
I feel quite a bit more attachment to the mute, personality-free characters of my Etrian guild (El Spite) and to Shiren than I do to most game characters who are considerably better-defined. Ultimately, they both tap into the essence of role-playing's original vision, allowing me to define them through their abilities and their actions and how they react to circumstance. This is, I have to say, considerably more satisfying than letting some wannabe film auteur define them for me with drawn out dialogue and story sequences. The biggest forum-rat complaint about the last episode of Retronauts was our observation that the Materia system turns the characters into generic, replaceable carbon copies with no innate definition besides their character models, as apparently it doesn't bother some gamers. That's fine for you guys, I guess; more power to ya. But honestly, the core concept of determining the growth and improvement of characters is essentially the last thing a game like FFVII has to draw upon for its claim of being a role-playing game; take that away in favor of hot-swappable powers and much of the appeal of the genre evaporates from the experience. Ultimately, you're stuck with a crew of fighters whose salient traits are wholly defined by the developer (and in that particular case defined very poorly); more critically, you lose any sense of risk and reward in your choices. Why specialize and strategize when you can effortlessly wade through each situation with a quick visit to the Materia screen?
Anyway, this is a stupid aimless ramble and I don't remember what the original point was. So, in conclusion, I can't odyssey in Etria for the next week since I have to review Rondo of Swords and Dodge Ball Brawlers instead. I'm seriously never gonna finish that game.
I went to that Crisis Core event last night -- partly because I had to for the sake of the 1UP Show, but also to settle a bet with Shane regarding just how relevant FFVII really is in this day and age.
Anyway, chatting with Christian Nutt and Kohler and various other game writer types at the Metreon last night, I had a realization as to why I think Crisis Core succeeds where Advent Children fails miserably, and it's so simple that I feel kind of stupid about it. The difference: one is a video game, the other isn't. For all that gamers complain about movies based on games totally missing the point and straying entirely too far from the source material, I look to Advent Children as a resounding demonstration that movies can only go so far in mimicking the other medium before they drop off the deep end and into utter ridiculousness.
The things I hate most about Advent Children -- the obtuse narrative, the lack of tension and consequence within the endless violence, the general preposterousness and joylessness of it all -- are things that, within the context of a game, wouldn't feel entirely out of place. But when you turn a boss battle into a cinematic sequence (which is precisely what the one-on-one brawl between Tifa and Pretty Boy #2 is) the result is incredibly stupid, a pointless back and forth that goes nowhere. Having those little numbers pop up when you hit a dude makes a world of difference, I guess.
From a narrative standpoint, I guess Crisis Core probably isn't really that much better than Advent Children, besides having a much more likable protagonist. But since the video game-y bits are allowed to be video game, it comes off much better. So let this be a lesson: if you want to make a cinematic game adaptation, don't put a freaking video game director in charge.
Except Hideo Kojima. Naw, just kidding. Especially not Hideo Kojima.
I'm out of Japan stuff, unless you want to see a few dozen pictures of red gates at Fushimi Inari or something. So! Back to the usual blog shenanigans. Fortunately, before I start posting my usual prattle we have the weekly columns, so that's at least one last day of interesting stuff.
Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
Movies are out this week! Some of them on Blu-ray! Fewer of them on HD-DVD. Buy something, will ya? (Ideally from VsRobot's store.)
New Game + | Weekly Game Releases
The steady march of commercialism also plods along in the gaming space as well. However, as always, we choose to highlight the major stuff and skip over the likes of Australia Zoo Quest and Women's Murder Club. Sorry. Clearly our priorities are totally outta wack.
So, I'm nearly out of images for my clockwork Japan auto-blogging. Here is a picture of frickin' incredible ramen from Kyoto station, ramen with broth so fatty and rich that a skin actually formed and stuck to my chopsticks once I finished and let it cool a bit. When you suffer a heart attack just thinking about it, you know your ramen is good.
Delicious as the food here is, though, I'm alarmed by the utter lack of fiber it contains. The closest most meals get to actual roughage is a small saucer of pickled veggies, or maybe a few shreds of cabbage. I can eat like that for a week or so, but any longer and I think I'd freak out a little -- it's like gambling with my colonic health, a crap shoot of the worst sort. I have to assume that bowel movements can only happen with the aid of a weekly surgical procedure.
In other words, it's good to be back home. I think I'll celebrate by having a salad the size of a television.
The Japanese Robot Apocalypse Phase Three: Gangly Laputa Sentries Come Forth From Their Hidden Volcanic Base in Mt. Fuji to Abduct Children, Our Most Precious Natural Resource.
From left to right: "Banana Chocolate Au Lait," "Fruits Au Lait," and my personal favorite, "Pudding Latte." And by favorite I mean "proof that not all Japanese cuisine is appealing, or in fact intended for human consumption."
At the top of Kyoto Station is a collection of seven different ramen restaurants, all dealing in different regional variants of the dish. Also present are a few shops selling takoyaki and okonomiyaki and the like. And then, this:
Log Kit is a charming hamburger little place that brands itself all American-style -- the cooks have to wear cowboy hats, and fries are served in American-sized paper cones decorated with the Stars & Stripes. They've even got the kitsch factor down: just look at that big plastic burger, and the board of photos of people who could cram their most ultra-massive burger down their gullet in a single sitting.
But man, that name. That name. Definitely one of those instances where an innocently nonsensical English name carries horrible, unpleasant undertones for people more versed in the language's colloquialisms.
The red vending machine there, tucked away in an obscure back alley of Kyoto, has the distinction of being, so far as I can tell, the only place in Japan where you can buy Diet Coke. Like a colony of red ants being wiped out by their black cousins, Diet Coke has become the victim of a violent pogrom which has seen its place in Japan usurped by the darkly-packaged Coke Zero, which is much too sweet for human consumption. I kinda liked Japanese Diet Coke -- like most foreign variants, it never seemed to switch over to Nutrasweet from saccharine, which I honestly prefer. Not simply because it takes less sickly-sweet, but also because I take comfort in knowing the specific toxic properties of my carcinogens.
Anyway, I was gonna pour one out on the curbside for O.G. Diet Coke, but that seemed wasteful. So I drank it instead. Even though I'm sure the only reason this machine still had it in stock is because it was so far out of the way that no one ever uses it, and the can in question probably dates back to the Koizumi administration. Or the Clinton administration, even.
As I imagine is the case with many foreign visitors to Tokyo's Shimbashi Station, this restaurant's sent certain members of our group into paroxysms of laughter.
Not me, though. Which isn't to say I'm particularly high-minded or anything. I was just too busy trying to sort out what ethnicity they're shooting for here. The Irish accoutrements are a lie -- I took this picture on St. Patrick's Day, which a very tiny number of Japanese businesses seem to recognize -- but the star in the logo and the color of the letters made me think it was maybe supposed to be Israeli food. Then I noticed the star is actually five-pointed rather than six, so my second guess was that it's catering to the Satanist contingent.
A thorough study of the menu options suggests that this is in fact the case! Assuming that weirdly botched Japanese adaptations of foreign cuisine are the mandate of the Prince of Lies and not merely the result of well-intended ineptitude.
There you go: the best and worst of Japan, together in a single image. (If you ask "Hurr hurr but which is which?" we will be forced to take you out back and shoot you.) Delicate, traditional beauty that has inspired a million poems, and crass, garish, commercial, uh... I'm not sure what that is, actually. An off-brand Jack Sparrow making moves on Sailor Moon, I think.
When I was a kid who devoured NES games for breakfast, I totally cleared all six floors of this castle and saved Sylvia. But this time around I only made it up to the second floor before the timer ran out. I guess all those years of playing RPGs really have made me soft.
P.S., I've posted some legitimate Japan game blogging content on the ol' 1UP blog. It is a handy reference that you should bookmark for the future!
Luckily, when you find yourself lost in the Lady room and there's no one to help you find your way, Japan also provides helpful maps of its restrooms. It's not entirely unwelcome, since hand soap and hand-drying facilities are very difficult to find. Sometimes even... non-existent.
I sort of lost reliable Internet access for a few days there, but now it's back. And I can finally publish the weekly columns. Like, almost a week late. Oops.
New Game + | Weekly Games Column
Another big week of releases both at home and abroad. I am abroad, and have discovered that Bangai-O is much more difficult than I remember it.
Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Column
This week, our intrepid columnist reveals his most secret shame. Surprisingly, it doesn't involve a criminal record borne of force-feeding HD-DVD fans their own Xbox 360 media drive add-ons.
(The image would have been more amusing if I were more inclined to tread toward the realm of the pervert and had actually shot into the restroom, which like many in Japan is of a shallow design that lets you see right in -- and in this case would reveal a room with enough room and stalls for quite a few ladies.)
(Also, the no-smoking sign may seem to contradict my previous post about the national obsession with smoking, but bear in mind that cigarettes aren't nearly as common among the Lady set.)
Meanwhile, in Ueno Park, a murderous bear statue is sneaking up behind innocent cherry blossom viewers to crush their heads with a pair of cymbals. They weren't kidding about crime being on the rise in Japan.
It's no secret that Japan is all about smoking -- cafés here have smoking sections, most hotels have smoking rooms, and you might as well forget about fresh air if you step into a bar. But you don't really appreciate just how into smoking Japan is until you realize that they've installed cigarette holders between urinals so that trifling details like "bodily functions" don't cut into your precious cigarette time.
In a funny coincidence, many old people here have voices like a rusty lawn mower.
To look at the photos I've been taking over the past few days, you'd think umbrellas were mandatory in this country. Of course, it did finally let up raining this afternoon... just in time for all the cultural tourist attractions to close for a long weekend. It's vernal equinox, which much to our surprise is a huge holiday in these parts. Yup. We sure did time this one well.
But of course if we've learned anything in our time at the Blair Warner School of Existential Truths, it's that you take the good, you take the bad, you take it all. So let us celebrate the positive, as well: We ducked into a sidestreet off Kyoto's main shopping concourse in search of lunch and discovered a place that sells chirashi. I couldn't read the kanji of the shop's name, but my guess is that it translates to something like "Nuthin' But Chirashi!" It's probably the best idea for a restaurant ever; I love chirashi, but in the U.S. it's only sold in sushi restaurants, where it feels like ordering a cheeseburger in a steakhouse. But take away the other food options and offer a line-up consisting entirely of fish over rice and, hey -- no guilt.
Then I celebrated the end of the rain by picking up Bangai-O Spirits, a game probably best played indoors. While it's raining, say. Sorry, I'm too deranged with grief from Umihara Kawase Portable being delayed from its intended release date of today to function rationally.
The weather yesterday was much too rainy for strolling about Kyoto, so we shinkansened our bad selves down to Himeji to visit the castle... which turned out to be a mostly outdoor affair on dirt paths. Yeah, that worked out well.
Back in Kyoto, I realized I need to append my previous statement about it being less high-tech than Tokyo. That's true for the most part, but there is one exception: the newer portion of Kyoto Station, which is a grand, sweeping, gorgeously-designed architectural feat that is the sort of thing you'd expect a communist regime to install in the midst of poverty to glorify itself. Except that the beautifully-designed rising wings are packed with businesses and manicured public spaces rather than being superfluous monuments to emptiness, and the construction is impeccable. Oh, and it's not in the midst of poverty. So really, that analogy sucks. The station doesn't, though.
It's still raining today, so no telling what's happening. We're bidding adieu to the ryoukan and toting our bags to a more typical hotel, which is somewhat disappointing, although I will enjoy having room to walk around the room. There was some talk of heading to Osaka, so who knows.
I'm definitely liking being outside of Tokyo in any case; it's been so long since I've been anywhere in Japan outside the city that I'd forgotten that not all Japanese are impassive, highly formal, acutely fashionable worker ants. The people around here seem a lot less uptight, just in their mannerisms and language, and they don't seem to be concerned quite so much with the cutting edge of fashion. You can spot the kids from Tokyo at a glance in Himeji -- they're the ones making the cold, muddy climb to the castle in micro-minis and four-inch heels and delicately-made designer pants that were never designed for such abuse.
So, I'm in Kyoto. I've barely seen it, since we came straight to the hotel, but at a glance it's a much more, um, real city than Tokyo. I always get the impression that everything in Tokyo was built about a week ago and constructed entirely of plastic, but here (discounting the old city quarter, of course) the construction seems to date back to the post-war reconstruction era of the '60s -- everything is very stolid, very granite-and-concrete, very lived-in. Basically, it's not all that different from an American city like Detroit or Chicago, except that the crime rate is no doubt a teensy fraction of what you get in either of those places.
Anyway, I was going to update the weekly releases last night, but when we arrived at the ryoukan they fed us this:
And the bottle of sake I drank put me right to sleep the second I returned to my room. I am what is known in some parts as a "lightweight."
So now I'm sitting in the lobby of this very traditional Japanese hotel, looking out over a peaceful rock garden with a waterfall that feeds into the public bath -- that I won't be using, because it would go counter to my tradition of hiding every possible inch of my body from public sight, and the last time I wore shorts was in the '90s, and I don't remember how long it's been since I wore short sleeves without a long-sleeved shirt beneath it, so you can forget about me sitting naked in front of a bunch of strangers -- using the very traditional wireless Internet connection as the PA plays very traditional Japanese music box renditions of Disney music. I can show you the world, take you wonder by wondeeeeerrrr....
I'm alarmed by the frequency with which I've heard these ear-shredding chime-y tunes since arriving here. They seem to be what they use in place of elevator music here; first there was a tonkatsu restaurant that inflicted Aerosmith, Whitney Houston and Elton John tunes on us, then I kept hearing it throughout our Shimbashi station base of operations in Tokyo, and now there's this. If Japan is trying to prevent me from ever returning, this is probably the surest tactic for it.
Now they've switched the "The Entertainer." Aaaand I'm off to go crush my skull beneath the massive stone tanuki statue in the courtyard.
Yesterday, our group randomly decided to split up and go our own separate ways after lunch, which left me a new situation: alone in Tokyo. Which was awesome. There are few things I enjoy as much as having a few hours to myself in a large, mostly unfamiliar city. A pair of headphones, a juiced-up subway pass and a rough idea of where I want to go -- few things in life are better for a social misanthrope. I can be around people, but don't have to interact with anyone. And I get a feel for a new place as a bonus.
So, I headed to Nakano to buy myself a birthday gift at the secret awesome inexpensive retro game shop Kohler showed me last time we were here. (Speaking of which -- thanks, mom and dad! You bought me a copy of Harmful Park. This probably means nothing to you, but I'm pleased... especially since I found it for about 2/3 of what it cost last time I saw it in Akihabara.)
However, unlike Kohler, I decided to take the public Tokyo Metro instead of the privately-owned JR lines -- for some reason, everyone I know and work with is seriously averse to using the Metro. I'm not really sure why, though. The trains are just as nice as the JR trains, the stations are as convenient, the schedules as frequent and efficient, and the lines are much more direct. Getting to areas like Nakano and Akihabara via JR from our 1UP base of operations in Shibuya requires transfers and planning, but you can reach both without switching trains via Metro. So, this job was a success: I know my way around a bit better.
And now I bid farewell to the Tokyo portion of the trip, where we've been traveling to places familiar to me as staging points for ranging further afield. Today we catch the shinkansen and venture into the completely unfamiliar sights of Kyoto (and Osaka and Nara) -- a very welcome chance to do entirely new things. As we'll be staying at a traditional ryokan the next few nights, there's no guarantee I'll have Internet access. But while I'm away, know that I love you all.
I have a little game I like to play every time I'm in Japan. Well, two little games. The first is called, "Try not to be an ugly American!" Partly out of respect for the country I'm visiting -- no one likes disruptive outsiders disturbing the peace -- but also because I know, down inside, it rankles everyone a little bit to see an foreign failing to conform to their preconceptions. The other game, though, makes for more interesting blogs. It is called, "How hard can Japan rip off Starbucks?"
At first, I thought Excelsior Caffe deserved the prize -- same typeface, same use of a circular logo element, and if you look at the initial letters of each word you'll see a hint of Starbucks green. Then last year I noticed another cafe in Shibuya (whose name I've forgotten) which was even more blatant -- bold use of green, blatant typographic matching, even a circular badge with something resembling Starbucks' mermaid. But today, I think we have the grand prize winner:
In fact, this is so Starbucks-esque I was almost certain it was actually just a sub-brand. But apparently not! This one's gonna be tough to top, but I look forward to seeing who manages to pull it off when I return this October for TGS.
Or maybe it's time for a new game altogether. Maybe I could try, "Man, is it depressing to visit Japan while the dollar is at a long-term low against the yen or what?"
Talk about a letdown. I went in here hoping for some advice on renting a summer condo in Tokyo...
But that wasn't what this place was about at all.
Still, occasional instances of deceptive naming aside, I'd have to say yesterday ranks among my better birthdays. If I have to be reminded that I'm growing old and dying, it might as well be in a place where old people are allowed to be incredibly rude to anyone without liver spots. Hope for the future, there.
Oh, if you want to read about gaming stuff, I've posted about my 15-minute layover at Super Potato in my 1UP blog.
So I've added descriptions to a bunch of my Flickr photos, in case you're interested. I would do more but I guess we're off to get breakfast and go to Akihabara. That should be quite a trip, because my group is decidedly not into games and anime, and certainly is unfamiliar with things like moé. So it should be interesting.
Shibuya appears to have changed in small ways since September. Very, very small. Some things remain the same, i.e. it's really hard to find a public restroom, which is bad news when you've had four hours of sleep in the past 48 hours and are fueled almost entirely by tons of canned coffee. But I noticed a few new sites along Center-gai:
Has anyone let the Danish consulate know about this? I can't decide whether Cafe Danmark is a well-intended but ultimately botched attempt at tribute to the nation that brought the world the cream cheesiest pastries ever, or a strange case of slightly changing a proper noun to avoid trademark infringement. I'm pretty sure the copy protection on Denmark(TM) has been up for years, though.
Meanwhile, fricking awesome curry joint Little Spoon has been replaced by a craptacular-looking ramen joint. That kills like half my reasons to ever come back to this country right there.
I've uploaded real photos to my Flickr account, if for some reason you want to see pictures of today's tourist gauntlet. Which I really think would be of no interest to anyone but the parties involved. Said gauntlet consisted of arriving at dawn at the Tsukiji fish market to eat the best sushi on earth -- seriously, this stuff was alive a few hours before we consumed it (and in one case, a few seconds) and it's really impossible to appreciate just how big a difference that much freshness makes until you experience it. It was quite a breakfast. Uh, also, we went to Ginza and Shibuya, but only after wandering the fish and vegetable market. So don't click if severed fish bits bother you. Dead tuna heads everywhere.
It's 5 a.m. and we're off to look at a fish market auction. Jetlag? What's that? Ah hahahahahoh god kill me
On the plus side, the view of central Tokyo from my top-floor apartment window pretty much makes me want to stand looking over the sleeping city and cackle about how my secret army of cyborgs will rule the world, Knight Sabers be damned.
Well, doesn't look like the remote upload thing is gonna work out so well. My rental camera phone is a marvel of technology, including but not limited to its ability to pick up VHF television, but for some reason the 1.3 megapixel camera has a max resolution of 120x180. Which, at last check, does not actually multiply out to be 1.3 million pixels. So much for that, then.
In the meantime, here is a ghetto blog instead: drawn by hand on the plane, then photographed badly during turbulence. YEAH.
I am off to the land of vending machines and cherry blossom viewing parties. If all goes well, I will have a cell phone waiting for me at my hotel which is capable of emailing photos -- meaning I should be able to upload pics directly to my Flickr account, which RSS feed you see below. So by tomorrow this space will, hopefully, be full of rapidly-updating images. If not, well, at least you can rest assured knowing that I am having more fun than you.
Assuming this works, you'll see various pictures here. And assuming I have Internet access at my hotel, I'll also add a few new posts below the photos. So scroll down if you'd kindly be so kind.
A heart full o' gimme, a mouth full o' much obliged
12 March 08 | 20:59
So, Shiren kicked my butt to Table Mountain and back again. It's good, but setbacks can be maddening. After a satisfying run in which I made it within spitting distance of the quest's finale, I decided that maybe it would be nice to leaven the experience with something less abusive and switched over to Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. It's a roguelike for babies! No, seriously -- the lack of level resets makes it stupidly easy. And I realized I can only meander through the same challenge-free random tileset so many times before I lose my mind. Team Asskickers and I saved pokey mans for about five hours before I lost interest and decided to switch over to something with a little more... tooth. And sapphic fanservice. Which could only mean one thing: Izuna.
And I got an hour into that before deciding that maybe I've had enough of the genre for the time being. On the plus side, I can safely say I get the roguelike now -- unlike when I wrote the Essential 50 Rogue retrospective, which was a well-researched tribute to something I didn't really understand, I grasp not only the appeal of these games (which I've liked since I first discovered them) but also what makes them good and what makes them... not good. So I guess that's a small, useless victory. Go me.
Also, as of today "expanded content" apparently includes movie reviews. I'm not really certain that this works as a news story, but at least it's something new.
This may end up being the most dramatic example of two games canceling one another out since Donkey Kong 64 single-handedly erased every positive memory I had of the original Donkey Kong.
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Lots of people seem to hate No Country for Old Men due to it not having a tidy Hollywood ending or some such, which makes me like it on principle. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be watching Appleseed Ex Machina for work, but I've developed a Pavlovian terror reflex about anything associated with Masamune Shirow. Two words: Cowgirls. Milking. Friggin' Shirow.
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Yesterday I was the only person in America not playing Smash Bros. Brawl. It was a good feeling. A pure feeling. Meanwhile, I've played entirely too much of Ring of Fates, which (like all games masterminded by Akitoshi Kawazu) means well but performs poorly. It's not bad, but Square Enix should know better than to make stupid DS interface mistakes that were overcome in 2005.
I've just returned from a Capcom event. They showed off video games, but all the previews we're writing based on this showing are embargoed until Thursday.
However, they said nothing about the sandwiches. I would like to offer a first, exclusive look at the event's lunch table. Turkey on wheat confirmed for spring '08 release! Also note the Ruffles product placement -- signs of a possible in-game advertising scheme? I'll be the first to let you know.
Sorry, this is not a hands-on preview -- just impressions based on watching others' experiences. (I picked up a gyro once I returned to the office.)
Edit: OK, I think the novelty of Flickr uploading via email has almost worn off. Back to the usual brand of stupidity instead of this newfangled type.
Freakish early-riser that I am, I bounced right back from the grim and horrible time change inflicted upon us this morning. My girlfriend, who describes her reluctance to go to bed at night and wake up in the morning as "sleep inertia," did not. Loving boyfriend that I am, I walked over to the little micro-Chinatown on the other side of 19th Avenue and grabbed two items guaranteed to motivate her to shake off the fog caused by daylight savings: a Vietnamese-style paté sammich and an iced latte.
The sandwich is a toasted six-inch french roll full of meat, vegetables, sauce, spices and homemade mayo that's so good even I will eat it -- and I find mayonnaise indescribably disgusting. The coffee is two shots of burnt espresso dropped into some milk and ice. Can you guess which cost more? Yes, that's right, the coffee. It was bought at a store run by a massive corporation designed to drain overworked yuppies and hipsters of as much money as possible. The sandwich shop is run by Chinese immigrants in a neighborhood full of their own kind and is priced to provide a filling meal on an immigrant's salary. They are situated, physically, a few blocks apart, but there is another sort of distance between them that humanity has been trying to close for centuries.
And who bridged it? That's right, baby: it was all me.
Anyway, this was mainly a test post to see if my cameraphone-email-to-Flickr setup works. Looks like the answer is "yes." Handily, the phone I'm renting in Japan has a small camera and email capabilities, so hopefully the upload service works as nicely with a Rentafone's functions as it does with mine, aka America's most alarmingly pervasive personal device, aka the iPhone.
Hey kids, I'mma upgrade the blog backend in a few minutes, just as soon as my complete backup finishes. If things suddenly stop working here, that's why. Don't call 911 or anything, though; I'm fairly certain nothing in the update scripts is fatal to the end user.
Edit: Welp that was a disaster. Guess we'll be going with the old, janky version for now.
I've been writing, on average, two and a half articles a day... for the past three weeks. I'm stockpiling words for the shortage that will result when I go on vacation, see. I have three new 1UP pieces online today, in fact. I kinda feel like I'm hogging the promo space.
There's another Crisis Core thing. I'm not sure that we actually need to go into quite so much detail, but it isFinal Fantasy VII, and the kids do love it. Sometimes you just have to prostitute your brain to pay the bills, you know? At least it's a game I've enjoyed. I'm less optimistic about this Smash Bros./Mario Kart Wii face-off that asks, which game panders harder to Nintendo nerds? These are the crucial questions of our times.
However, I have no issues whatsoever with the final piece, Five Things Games Have Learned from Dungeons & Dragons. We wanted to publish a tribute to Gary Gygax, and honestly something like "top ten D&D video games" seemed inappropriately prosaic. So instead we put our heads together and dug a little deeper, looking at the influence of Gygax's creation in larger, more abstract ways. My name's on the piece because I put the words together, but it was a collaborative effort and, I think, really does the topic justice. And we didn't even get into the less entertainment-specific social influences of the game, like the big D&D scare of the early '80s.
I still remember my whole bible school class being trotted across the road to the nearby college so we could sit and listen to a lecture by a local cop who had launched a personal crusade against the fell satanic evil of a game that, ultimately, was about lonely kids getting together with their friends and exercising their imaginations (and algebra skills). I'm sure if he's still around, he's probably lecturing people about the grotesqueries of Mass Effect's explicit hardcore gay rape pornography simulations. Things never really change... they just become stupid in new and different ways.
(The D&D piece is also the first 1UP article to sport our new features layout and CSS and it's gorgeous -- so much cleaner-looking than the old format. Hooray for my eyeballs no longer feeling abused.)
I've decided that roguelikes may in fact be the quintessential desert island game genre.
I'm very gratified by the small but enthusiast groundswell of interest Shiren seems to be enjoying -- the Fun Club thread is in full swing and has somehow evolved into a chronicle of everyone's grim deaths. Which, really, is the point of the game. Its popularity is an especially remarkable achievement considering the baleful horror of the boxart... although given that Shiren is a 15-year-old game it rather fits, actually: this is exactly the kind of terrible "Americanized" box bastardization we were suffering in 1993. Suikoden's 40-year-old version of Tir McDohl, you are in good company.
I'm sure that's what Sega was thinking. Yeah. Almost certainly.
But don't despair; here is a purgative piece of original game art to cleanse your mind of Shiren the Constipated Wanderer and his companion, the Very Angry Spice Weasel:
No, you should pick it up because it's one of the best RPGs available on DS -- and easily its finest roguelike.
Of course, you may not like roguelikes. You may think they're too limited, or too random, or too hard. But I say this is not so. Sure, they're all those things, in a way... but Shiren manages to turn those elements into selling points, or to simply subvert them. The action seems basic on the surface -- move, and the enemies move with you, and you hit them until they die -- but you absolutely cannot beat the game by simply striking foes. You need to use missiles, scrolls, wands and other items (usually in combination with one another or with special abilities like transforming into enemies), or else you'll never get anywhere. The dungeons, items and enemies are random, yes, but always laid out in a varied but consistent (and eventually predictable) fashion. And it's hard, but it's a good kind of hard.
I was amused to see some message board comments that expressed shock, shock I say, that I like a hard game. B-b-but Ultimate Ghosts 'N Goblins! But no, I love challenging games... when they're challenging for the right reasons. UGnG was definitely not. But Shiren is a different story -- though it's true that some of the difficulty comes from random factors, and it is possible to find yourself in an unwinnable situation. But you never once feel like you've been screwed over by the game. When you die in Shiren, it's your own fault: you didn't play it right, you could have avoided failure. But no. You blew it.
Maybe you got carried away chasing down, say, the ghost of an Evil Soldier (even though it's only worth a piffling 4 exp.) and followed it around the screen until it reached one of those rice breather guys and turned it into a Rice Boss, who promptly transformed you into a giant, defenseless onigiri and pummeled you to death. Or maybe you forgot that a tank's shell has a blast radius. Or maybe you left all your food in a warehouse and starved. Or maybe you were hoarding your goods and let an enemy overwhelm you because you were too stingy to read a Blastwave Scroll. Whatever; there are dozens of ways to die in Shiren, but no matter what kills you, the fact remains it's not because of lousy controls or sloppy level design. It's because you didn't play smartly.
What makes Shiren so enjoyable are the persistent elements. Shiren himself is perpetually dying and being sent back to the beginning of the game without the weapons and experience points accumulated over the course of his failed venture, but the world around him retains the effects of his exploits. The characters you rescue will show up from time to time as optional companions, the warehouses you unlock will store goods, the sidequests you complete will make new items available to you. I compared the game in my review to Super Mario Bros. (in that when you die you have to start from scratch, but each subsequent effort is a little easier for your experience) but this is not really true, because Mario can't store power-ups between worlds, and the Mushroom Retainers never tag along with him. On the Retronauts we recorded today (early, for next week) I compared the game to a reverse Groundhog Day where the main character relives the same day over and over while the world around him slowly changes. This is, I think, more accurate... though even then doesn't quite cut to the heart of Shiren, because it doesn't take into account the fact that you, the gamer, are slowly learning from your failures.
You'll probably want to store up goods in the warehouses for "serious" runs, but with smart playing and a bit of luck that's not strictly necessary. I normally complete games before reviewing them, but with Shiren I haven't quite finished the main quest -- to date the furthest floor I've reached is in the mid-20s (out of 30 total). And for that run, I started pretty much naked, taking nothing into the dungeon but a rice ball. But I lucked out a bit and happened upon an armband that gave me experience for simply walking, and then I stumbled across a fairly powerful katana that let me slice my way through the absolutely vicious swamp section with a series of one-hit kills (thus preventing me from being poisoned or having my gear corrupted). In the end, I lost through poor energy management -- I died of starvation after running out of food. And I ran out of food because midway through the quest I decided to backtrack five floors to rescue a lost little girl... which rescue attempt I bungled anyway. See? My own stupid fault.
But hey, don't take my word for it. Check out John Harris' definitive @Play columns at GameSetWatch, which beautifully break down the Super NES version of the game in a three-part series. [ One | Two | Three] I've been champing at the bit to play Shiren ever since I read those columns... and happily, it hasn't disappo
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I'm very gratified by the small but enthusiast groundswell of interest Shiren seems to be enjoying -- the 
