Schmidt (Koji Igarashi jus…): My wallet needs this to n… Eusis (Koji Igarashi jus…): It's worth remembering th… Parish (GSQ4: We all go h…): They're still there. Not … NevznachaY (GSQ4: We all go h…): Jeremy, could we have the… Acosta02 (Koji Igarashi jus…): I don't know that people … Refa (Koji Igarashi jus…): Heck, I'll take an SD ver… Ryonin (Koji Igarashi jus…): This kinda makes me want … Mudron (Koji Igarashi jus…): I would suspect that peop… Refa (Koji Igarashi jus…): How is this game going to… SonicPanda (Koji Igarashi jus…): So, this is going to be m…
This is the archive, folks. The current stuff is on the main page.
Took me long enough
30 November 08 | 17:46 | Posted by:
Subscriber bonus mailing went in the post yesterday to everyone except international recipients ('cause my stamps don't work internationally) and people who hadn't given me their mailing addresses yet. I believe that it was roughly six weeks behind schedule. As someone who's obsessively punctual, this has been keeping me awake at nights.
I've really got to start balancing the responsibilities I take on before my brain explodes.
Anyway, so what was in this particular care package, you might wonder? Nothing terribly exciting:
A "NEW GAMES JOURNALIST" button (all the pretentious indie kids will be wearing one!);
A couple of sprite magnets that need to be trimmed around the edges;
and a mini-booklet featuring The Young Person's Guide To Mario A-L and a short story.
Be warned; it's been a long time since I've tried writing fiction, and despite constant revisions this effort is pretty lousy. I'll do better next time. Honest! It's gonna be great. Or great-ish, anyway.
Over the past few weeks, I've wandered repeatedly past a coworker playing his way through the new Prince of Persia. The funny thing is that no matter where he is in the game, it's always looked basically the same: fantastic (in the "fantasy" sense) yet generic (in the "of a genre" sense) settings; a color scheme that seems somehow to be cartoonish, garish and murky all at once; and most of all, some glowy ethereal woman constantly grabbing the prince's hand to keep him from plummeting to his doom.
Yes, much to my surprise, the new Prince of Persia is basically a less atmospheric take on Ico, with the one scene in which Yorda helps Ico across a gap now taking the place of the Sands of Time or whatever. In Ico, that was a powerful moment: the princess, who all along had been a passive burden whose role was mainly to slow you down and force you to find a way to save more than your own hide, at last shrugs off her meekness and turns the tables, saving the boy who had worked so hard to protect her. Here, it looks to be just a mechanism to prevent players from having to restart a level when they fail to make a tricky leap...which will be often, from what I can tell. A safety net in a diaphanous gown.
I highly recommend everyone rent the game so they can see for themselves what it looks like when creativity is commoditized. Or you could just play any Japanese RPG, which takes the shocking-at-the-time revelation that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father and runs with it. There should probably be a support group for RPG heroes who discover they're the villain's son/father/daughter/brother/alter-ego/mother twice removed/whatever. Or maybe one for those who aren't, since they're so few and far between.
Anyway, Prince of Persia's bland mimicry of Ico really drove home just how recursive game design can be. I mean, look: when Jordan Mechner first created the original Prince of Persia nearly 20 years ago, it was fresh and new. It built on his previous game Karateka somewhat, sure, but it transplanted the controls and combat of the older title into a huge and challenging new framework, creating something unlike anyone had ever seen before. It was imitated by the likes of Flashback and Oddworld, but never quite matched.
When Tomb Raider rolled along seven years later, it was basically Prince of Persia in 3D. It was clumsy, but the advent of true three-dimensional graphics made it feel every bit as awe-inspiring as its inspiration had been. Then along came the actualPrince of Persia 3D and it sucked a bag of eggs. The designers imitated the surface of Tomb Raider and the general aesthetics of the original Prince of Persia, but failed to understand the fundamental values of the format or what improvements were necessary to make their game anything more than a sloppy reskinned Tomb Raider knock-off. No, that didn't come until Ico, which added to the format an interesting new gameplay dynamic -- the player was tasked not only with an escape, but also with protecting a fragile and not-particularly-athletic companion -- as well as some streamlined, intuitive design and interface choices. The controls were fluid but just clumsy enough to feel real, and the hero was smart enough to know how to react to different areas of the environment without the need for half a dozen different action buttons. The level design played a big part in this: the game world was arranged in such a way that a streamlined contextual control scheme could work, because it was uncluttered and well-planned. This was the revelation the genre needed -- gameplay and settings that worked hand-in-hand, with an engaging emotional connection to keep the character and player motivated.
And then came Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, which was far more Ico than it was classic PoP. The creators made it work for them, though, because they recognized the things that made Ico great: tricky world design navigable by forcing the player to take risks, but nevertheless forgiving enough not to make the trickiness a disincentive to experimentation. And of course they knew to create an emotional connection for the player to hang his heart on, which resulted in the will-they-or-won't-they-oh-who-are-we-kidding interplay between the prince and Farah, who was the fiery A New Hope Princess Leia to Yorda's coked-out, hangin' with the Ewoks Return of the Jedi Leia. The developers also imitated the parts of Ico that didn't work: namely tedious fights with annoying magically spawning monsters, which they mistakenly thought they could make interesting by making combat flashier. But no one's perfect.
Meanwhile, the Tomb Raider series had gone horribly off the rails over the years, degenerating into self-parody or worse. So Crystal Dynamics reinvented the game with a healthy dose of Ico by way of Sands of Time. Tomb Raider Legend was pretty good, if generally uninspired. But its sequel Underworld doesn't seem to offer anything to convince me that I should be hunting it down. And watching the new Prince of Persia -- a reboot of sorts in reaction to how badly Warrior Within and The Two Thrones missed the point -- made me realize that I've probably played this same game enough that simply remixing its elements isn't sufficient to make it interesting, because every remix seems to diffuse the things that I liked about the iterations that worked. Yorda was one infuriating lady at times, but I won't deny that Ico's finale choked me up. For some reason, I suspect I won't feel quite as strongly about a watered-down version who hovers over me like a protective Tinkerbell.
I dunno, did I say game design was recursive earlier? I think I meant incestuous. I kinda feel like Ubisoft is drawing from a very closed and stagnating gene pool here, and if there were honesty in character design the new prince would have himself an epic Hapsburg chin. Although come to think of it, he does wear a scarf/mask over his lower face a good deal of the time...maybe that's what he's hiding. Or else he's Raziel. You know, from Soul Reaver. That one Prince of Persia/Tomb Raider style game with the vampires?
But yes: this year's Thanksgiving break has been fairly unusual for me in that I normally use the time off as an excuse to slack off and get in some gaming. It's usually a good time to catch up on things; at the very least, it's a couple of days with some open time that I can spend, guilt-free, in front of a television. Of course, this year I had to go and squander my holiday on being productive, but I guess that's just me becoming more obsessive in my old age. That and, you know, the whole working constantly with the medium thing makes a couple of days of surreptitious decadence feel less interesting -- the last Thanksgiving gaming marathon I can recall was blasting through a reviewable copy of Final Fantasy IV Advance three years ago, notable mainly because it was (1) the first time I'd realized the game does in fact have a story linking its disconnected dungeons and (2) 'cause I was playing it on a GBA lockbox, which had a painfully dim screen and weighed about 2 pounds more than a normal GBA. So I had to really want to play it.
More interesting was, hmm...I suppose 1990? Whenever Maniac Mansion was first released for NES. I acquired the game in the best kind of Black Friday transaction, which is to say I asked my father to look for it when he bravely went to face the crowds at 7 a.m. and he dropped in my hands an hour later. Painless! For me, anyway, although I think it's only been in recent years that these post-Thanksgiving sales have gone from being "a bit crowded" to "oh god I want to kill myself wait it looks like the press of bodies will take care of that for meaaargh." What better way to reflect on the bounty of a middle class American lifestyle than by exploding hamsters in the microwave?
And of course a few years later, Nintendo kicked off its new policy of releasing its most notable game for each year two days before Thanksgiving in the form of Donkey Kong Country. It took me almost two days of intermittent playing to reach the Ewok village level, at which point I sadly admitted to myself that despite looking impressive the game was boring and stupid. So I decided to beat Final Fantasy III a second time. In retrospect, I'm proud of young me. He was a bright kid.
Of course, the best Thanksgaming (that's right, Mackey, I'm taking my word back) came back when I was a wee sprout and my grandparents were the resident supervisors at the men's dorm at the local Christian college. Every year we'd have a huge lunch spread in the dorm lobby for our family and all the guys who couldn't afford to return home for the break -- notably the international students -- and, this being in the heyday of the arcade, the vendors who leased the half-dozen or so arcade cabinets in the lobby would put the machines on free play. By the end of the day, I'd be stuffed with great food after grazing non-stop at the buffet table, and my eyes would burn from staring at Tempest and Centipede all day (not to mention the copies of Star Wars and Krull they had playing constantly in my grandparents' shiny new VCR). I'm pretty sure that was the closest thing to paradise an 8-year-old could possibly know.
Geez, no wonder I ended up writing about games for a living. Thanksgiving at my grandparents' was like some sort of Pavlovian conditioning experiment.
Hope all of you back in America proper had a good Thanksgiving. Over here in Japan, most expats are saving their money to go home for Christmas, so we all end up banding together to have a good Thanksgiving dinner together in lieu of being able to be with our families. This year we hosted four Americans and an Aussie for the usual Thanksgiving spread (sans Turkey, swordfish with rosemary makes a surprisingly tasty replacement), a viewing of Blazing Saddles and some homemade butter beer and pumpkin pie (made from scratch!) Yeah, I said homemade butter beer. This is what happens when you get a bunch of hopeless nerds together for dinner
There was a lot of Super Smash Brothers Brawl in there too, which surprisingly turned out to be pretty great. I had been down on Brawl ever since Parish, among many others, utterly demolished my long held belief that it was a fighting game with any meaningful depth. And the fact that I mostly ignored it in favor of Armored Core while one of my favorite Smash Brothers opponents was visiting only seemed to reinforce that disenchantment.
But I was pleased to discover that once you abandon any preconceptions of Brawl being a tournament level fighter, it's actually still a hell of a lot of fun to play. Items returned to our matches after a long hiatus, Final Smashes were prevalent, and every trip to Final Destination came with some joke about 'tournament rules.' When we were finished, even my friend Peter, who has been relentlessly pounding the "Brawl is just one of the reasons that the Wii sucks" drum for months now, managed to crack a smile.
"I've been down on Brawl," he said. "But when you've got four people together in a room, there's nothing better."
Seconded. I might not play Brawl everyday, but I've got the feeling that it will be finding its way back into my Wii for many Thanksgivings to come. And besides, the Pokemon Trainer is still the greatest character. Ever.
Certainly not me. For you see, I have created a book:
I'm having a proof copy printed now, which hopefully will be in hand by the end of next week. Details on the acquisition of this tome (for those are interested) will be forthcoming, of course.
Edit: The proof was lovely, so it's off to the printers. Stay tuned for further developments in the world of the vanity press.
It's a funny coincidence that this week's Retronauts podcast invokes the name of the Gaming Intelligence Agency, because I do believe it was ten years ago this week that the site launched.
WhawhaWHAT!? Ten years? Good lord. But yes: when the site launched, I was celebrating Thanksgiving in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and puzzling over the freshly-released Ocarina of Time's hunt for Saria in the forest. I tend not to do well with audio-based puzzles, for some reason. Ocarina, Myst, Tales of Destiny -- each one threw me for a loop when it broke out the enigmatic sound challenges. That's beside the point, of course; the real point is that the freakin' GIA, possibly humanity's greatest-ever video game journalism endeavor, launched 10 years ago. And already I was showing my remarkable inability to stick with any sort of long-term project: I'd been inducted to the site's staff to help out with graphics early in the pre-launch phase, created said graphics and then bowed out due to time concerns.
Of course, I ended up launching this site a few months later, much to their annoyance, but so it goes.
I've learned I deal with smaller projects better than large efforts -- less intimidating, less of a commitment. I fact, that's exactly why I'm skipping out on Thanksgiving this year; I have a few standing offers to join in various forms of gluttony, but this GameSpite book project is looming over me and already is starting to take on an onerous feeling. But I'm nearly done, and I don't want to end up in that frustrating holding pattern where I'm almost ready to go but it's just so much trouble and really I can get to it later and oh hey suddenly it's three years gone by and I never finished. Nope, not this time. I'm putting the wraps on this thing before the weekend. And it's going to be awesome.
Not as awesome as the GIA was, but really, what is? Here's to you, illicit GIA mirror! And more importantly, to everyone who worked on the site or took part in its community.
Special dredged-up-from-my-archives memorial bonus art after the jump. Have a good Thanksgiving, turkeys.
You'll have to forgive me yesterday's indulgent outburst; I was unusually moved by something that at least felt profound, and needed to express it. Fortunately, it won't happen too often, as my shriveled and blackened little heart is nigh-impermeable. Yet somehow I felt a moment of surprising clarity, and if nothing else it made crystalline the reasons I've stuck with my job of writing about video games rather than moving along to something more respectable, despite some trying times. What keeps me here, I think, is not inertia or an inability to do anything else -- at least, I'd like to think not -- but rather the sense of camaraderie I experience from writing and discussing this clumsy, adolescent excuse for a medium. I enjoy describing a personal thought or experience only to discover I've evoked a common thread in the lives of people I've never met, however frivolous the mechanism of our connection; I've forged many close friendships over the years with people whose only intersection with my life was a shared opinion on Final Fantasy VII or a mutual affection for some random NES game.
There was no reason it had to be games I ended up dealing with, really. I could be writing this stuff about anything that interests me: music, film, books, religion, illustration, whatever. I suppose I've simply gravitated in this direction because the medium is so young; the discussions and criticisms of other, more established subjects are codified. Not so for gaming. I came into the world the same year that Atari brought Pong home, so I've literally grown up with the medium. When I started writing about it -- the first time I looked back and really became conscious of gaming as something with a history -- the Super NES was still the top-selling system, and "retro" basically consisted of Atari 2600, NES and old DOS games; formats which had been thriving just a year or two before.
I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to think I'm in any way affecting the shape or direction of writing about video games, because obviously I'm not. But the format is still young enough that there's no correct way to discuss it (as this Talking Time thread has touched on). So I can, at the very least, get away with doing what I like and hopefully still present ideas and experiences that cause other people to say, "You know, I can totally relate to that."
Of course, I'm also free to write things that no sane human can relate to. Like the fact that of all things, the game I'm playing during this massive release season is...Mega Man Battle Network 3. Honestly, don't ask why; I have no idea. Maybe there really is something wrong with me.
Reibeatall's latest New Game Plus got me thinking a lot about, surprisingly enough, Chrono Trigger. Not specifically the game, mind you; rather, it's interesting that Rei's blog was a personal reflection on when he first played the game, because the DS release has me doing the same thing. I actually didn't buy Trigger when it first arrived on Super NES, but I spent hours reading all about it in Nintendo Power. It wasn't until my best friend rented it that I knew I had to have it -– evidenced by the fact that I was content to watch him play a single-player RPG all afternoon. I still remember getting home and immediately making all sorts of promises and deals involving chores so that my mom would go out and buy it with me that moment. I probably would have willingly been indentured to her to this very day if she hadn't been my mom and taken pity on me.
Of course, there are several other memories attached to the game: the time my SNES was broken and made the time warp screen repeat forever (to this day, I swear I've heard a song no other player has due to that); the time my college roommate and I skipped class because we both had the urge to replay it; the time I introduced my first girlfriend to it and she beat it in a week.
I don't doubt that my affection for the game itself accounts for much of how fondly I look back on these memories; you won't find me getting sentimental about most new games that come along, but just as when Final Fantasy VI hit GBA and Super Mario Galaxy launched last year, certain games and series were so good -– so important to me growing up –- that I can't help but be sentimental about them. My story about getting Chrono Trigger really isn't very interesting; how many people have played something at a friend's house and then gotten it after begging their parents? And yet you were possibly entertained by it, or at least started thinking about similar experiences you've had. The memories surrounding the game seem to take on more significance simply because Chrono Trigger is involved, and I think, in the end, that is the mark of a truly exceptional game.
An old friend came over to visit this past weekend, and I was sure that it would be the perfect opportunity to get reacquainted with Super Smash Bros. Brawl. So imagine my surprise when it it was Armored Core 2: Another Age that ended up getting all the love and attention, once again relegating poor Mario and company to the scrap heap of my gaming collection. Don't worry; they'll get over it.
As for Armored Core, it was the incredibly deep design and customization mechanics that sucked me back in -- the kind of stuff that can keep a junkie like myself busy for hours. It's such that the balance of power between two mechs can turn on something as simple as which pair of legs you decide to use or how big your energy core is, which meant that we spent a large of our battles furiously swapping out parts as we tried to find our rock to the other's scissors. Needless to say, I love it. Sure, It's something that pretty much only appeals to lost causes like myself, but Armored Core does its job and does it well, and I appreciate that. It's more than enough for me to be able to look past the archaic lack of dual stick support and the occasionally chunky graphics...mostly because it involves giant robots, and giant robots make anything better in my mind. Unfortunately, mine is not a feeling generally supported by the average critic, nor the general populace.
Part of the problem, of course, is that this is the kind of game that thrives on experimentation and a powerful sense of ownership. It doesn't hold up particularly well if you just slap together a mech and run through the single-player campaign, which is of course what most reviewers have to do under time constraints. Taken like that, it's easy to see why all of the games seem to run together, even as each new edition adds new parts and tweaks the mechanics in such a way that each feels substantially different from the last. Much as I liked Armored Core 3, for example, I still prefer Another Age for all my split-screen battling needs. The missile selection is just that much better.
But even if they were willing to spend a couple days tooling around with the design utilities, they'd only really be getting a cursory feel for what the game is really all about. It's not until you sit down with a friend who's familiar with all the minutiae that the game bears fruit, but few seem to get that far. For some reason, American gamers just don't get as excited for giant robots as they seem to for Cadillacs and football. Crazies. [Editor's note: On the plus side, Detroit's recent problems suggest that interest in Cadillacs is waning. Maybe there's hope?]
Much as I lament the mainstream dismissal of Armored Core, though, I rest easy knowing that there's a devoted, if slightly crazy, niche out there supporting the series. And having picked up and enjoyed Another Age as much as I did, I'm now kind of tempted to go and grab something like Last Raven, the franchise's apparently excellent (according to the fans) PlayStation 2 coda. Regardless of what anyone else says, you could do a lot worse than Armored Core. A hell of a lot worse.
I took that boxed NES home tonight, carrying it on the train, tucked beneath my arm. The air was crisp, with the eye-watering chill of fall edging toward winter; I wore a heavy coat, and a nebulous threat of fog, or perhaps rain, hung ominously despite the dark. The feeling of the impending Christmas season was in the atmosphere, tangible, not just a byproduct of too-early decorations peeping through the windows of impatient retailers.
The longer I carried the box, the most unreal it seemed -- a packaged relic twenty holidays out of place. Sure, the print is faded and reddening in places, the edges are tattered, the cardboard starting to expand and separate with age, but it still gave me the damnedest sensation of being dislocated in time. I had a clear image of what the box would have looked like new, how it would have felt without the desiccation of age weakening its structure -- not a sense of nostalgia, exactly, but certainly nostalgia's strangely-displaced relative.
Were I lugging this box home two decades ago, I'd have looked like the greatest dad in the world, bringing home the season's hot toy home for eager-eyed kids to unwrap, breathlessly, on an early morning a month distant. But so far away from the proper and possible time, I was simply an oddity, feeling all the more conspicuous for the way my burden caused every man I passed who was my age to do a double-take and murmur self-consciously to his companion about how weird it was to see someone carrying an old Nintendo system. I'm sure it didn't show on my face, but this made me strangely happy, in a quiet corner of my heart. Not for being noticed, but for the fleeting, ephemeral connection I made with these strangers without a bit of eye contact or communication.
Sonic Unleashed (again), Age of Empires 2 for the DS, King of Fighters Orochi Collection for Wii, and a Neopets game.
And now that those are out of the way, we have one more release coming out this week: The Best RPG Ever*, Chrono Trigger. I don't even know where to begin; the game's been around for 13 years, and if you're reading this site you almost certainly know who made it, the circumstances behind its creation, the fact that we're never ever going to get anything quite like it again. Various permutations of the three behind CT -- Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yuji Horii, Akira Toriyama, Masato Kato and Yasunori Mitsuda -- have tried teaming up to other games, but the results always seem to be somewhat less than fantastic. Even if Square Enix were to try to make a sequel, the magic wouldn't be there. Face facts, fans: it's not happening again.
Media | A2Q Archives | A2Q #64 | November 25, 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.
This is it. The moment every right-thinking Street Fighter fan has been waiting for. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is out this week. And those of you who have PS3s -- us, my brothers! -- can even download it Tuesday, a day before it's up on Xbox Live! Oh, and attention to all PS3 BioShock players: Your DLC challenge rooms are ready or whatever.
I'm still obsessing over the book project, at least when the girlfriend isn't forcing me to be all social and junk. It's basically just down to formatting two last articles and creating images for the whole affair. The limited program I'm using makes simple image galleries impossible -- that sample I posted was a total kludge -- but I'm going to fudge it and do my best to come up with something interesting and attractive. In the meantime, here's the wrap-up for the affectionate Issue 11. Which is to say, more grist for the inevitable GameSpite Year Two, Vol. 2 book:
Shining Force II
MIghtyblue continues the theme of love with a fond reminiscence on his first childhood love, a winsome strategy RPG called "Shining Force II." Please play soft piano music as you read this through a gauzy haze of nostalgia. I've already saved you some trouble by sepia-tinting the website to more effectively mimic a montage of remembrance.
Persona 3
If the previous article was a chaste memory of a boyhood crush, Calorie Mate's write-up of Persona 3 is downright saucy. Knickers are strewn across furniture; heavy petting may be involved. You might want to change out that hazy filter for one more akin to a mosiac, is what I'm saying. Please do not let children read this article without talking to them about the facts of life first.
Edit: Holy crap, this was GameSpite's 1000th blog post. PARTY TIME
What happens when you bring the devious minds of four of GameSpite's biggest names together and let them loose on the mean streets of LA? Tomm Guycot, Nich Maragos, Anthony C., and yours truly joined forces and we...well, we played Smash Bros. for a while. (Items on, all stages -- natcherly.) BUT THEN we played Little Big Planet for a bit. BUT BEFORE THAT we went to Rice Things and had some katsu. And it took us a while to track down Nich, I guess. Apparently they played some sort of card game after I left, but I had to catch a train home. It was X-Citement to the max!
Seriously though, good bunch of guys. We debated the merits of Animal Crossing and stressed out about whether or not our Secret Santa gifts got to our giftees. The point here is that you should check the forums to see if there's a GameSpite meet-up near you, or start your own! There is only a minimal amount of hazing violence.
I've placed all the text in the book and am now in the process of formatting it. Looks like I was mistaken about the length -- it's going to be 350 pages, not 250. That means the price will probably end up costing $25 as a result, rather than $20. But look at it this way: you'll be getting 40% more content for 25% more money. For once, I guess math is on my side.
There's something weirdly fulfilling about approaching digital media in exactly the opposite direction that everyone else is going. Or maybe I'm just stuck on the old-fashioned ways. Nah, that can't be it.
Anyway, I promise to start writing about more interesting things soon. I'm just having a short, intense obsession here, that's all.
So hey! All the first batch of GameSpite bonus content is published, copied, assembled, and ready to go in the mail. But whoops: I just realized that PayPal doesn't give me subscribers' mailing addresses. I'd like to mail these out ASAP (considering they're nearly two months overdue), so if you were subscribed to support the site during the June through September period please drop me an email with your mailing info ASAP.
After I'm done with the mailings, my attention is focused on the first GameSpite book. I put together the print version of the first two articles today and I'm extraordinarily giddy. Print may not be a profitable venture these days, but I love the permanence and substance of ancient media much more than ephemerality of the Internet. Transmuting a website into a book is the most glorious form of alchemy I've ever experienced. Even if it's one I won't be seeing much of a return on. Some things you do just for the love of it, you know?
Don’t get me wrong; Mother 3 is turning out to be worth every bit of Jolly Roger-related hassle I’ve encountered so far, and then some. But I can’t help but think Nintendo is watching me, doing their best to dampen the experience because I didn’t pay them for the game. Granted, that sort of is their fault, but this is a company that didn’t get to where it is today by thinking inside the box or, you know, giving its consumers what they wanted.
I tried moving the game onto a flash cart for play and did my best to follow the halfway-translated instructions, but to no avail. Turns out (according to the Starmen.net forums) that the particular batch my flashcart came from had a high failure rate. I could return it, but that would leave my game out of commission for however long it took the return shipping took, plus another 2 weeks for a replacement to arrive.
...that is, if I was even able to replace it. The website I’d ordered from worked fine -- except, curiously, the "returns" and "contact us" links. Fantastic. I had to fight the alarms going off in my brain telling me I’d been scammed and try again later; in the mean time, a friend sent me an extra cart he had on hand so I could dig in. Of course, I offered to pay for shipping, thinking it wouldn’t be too much to overnight it; turns out, I ended up paying more for shipping than I did for the cart I wanted to replace -- which of course I didn't learn until it was already sent out.
The coup de grâce, though, was the interface on that cart: you have to select the game file from a Star Wars-themed menu, whose bells-and-whistles cause a few seconds of load time. Granted, that means Mother 3 is now probably the best thing to be associated with the Star Wars franchise since the original trilogy, but I didn’t want to link the two so intimately in my mind. I’m sure there’s a joke there somewhere, but for now it just feels...wrong.
Also, I've severely dented one of my Rock Band drum pads, and my garbage disposal altogether stopped working. I’m not sure how this is related to pirating Mother 3, exactly; but again, Nintendo’s anti-piracy special forces work in mysterious ways. In any case, I've learned that the piracy just isn't for me. Paying for games might take a good chunk of my paycheck, but at least I (typically) know what I’m getting in exchange for good, honest work. Apparently, once you start the piracy game, all bets are off.
I got a promotional e-mail from Microsoft about the "New Xbox Experience" -- well, actually, it's been more like a dozen in the last week alone. This is no mere firmware update; this is a friggin' event. What could merit such excitement? Sit down, gentle reader, because I have two words for you: cartoon avatars. You can also rip games from a disc to the hard drive to save wear on the DVD drive -- unless that game is Crackdown, because then what would we have to bitch about?
But the feature I've been looking forward to most is the ability to stream videos from Netflix's "Watch It Now" selection. I've been using the service for at least a year and a half. Not because the selection is stellar -- it's really not. It will be a long time before the studios embrace digital distribution; consider what's on offer to be a tentative toe testing the waters. But I like the service anyway. The picture quality looks great piped into a TV set, and the impulsiveness of it all means I can be a bit more adventurous than I would be if I were waiting three business days for a disc to arrive. And, uh, I never get around to returning the discs. At least with late fees the trains ran on time.
Sadly, the tiny pool has already shrunk even further. This week, hundreds of films were found to be unavailable for viewing on the console -- most of which were owned by Sony. It's hardly surprising that Sony would take their ball and go home on Microsoft's big day. Unfortunately, it was also discovered that the BBC would be making their titles unavailable for instant viewing entirely as well. These videos represent the bulk of what I wanted to recommend, and so my course, and yours, is clear: Red Dwarf.
Well, not really, but I did have a lot to say about iPhone gaming after attending a group demo yesterday. I'm looking at Apple's move into mobile gaming with a wary eye, but I won't deny that there's plenty of potential there. The hardware/software/sale ecosystem the company has created with the iTunes Store is the perfect way to perform an end-run around the Sony/Nintendo duopoly, and at its best the iPhone represents the touch interface of the DS combined with the power of the PSP. It's gonna be a long and rocky road, but I really do think Apple has potential to become a major player in portable gaming -- or, at the very least, a major provider.
I mentioned that I'd suddenly taken a shine to video on iPhone yesterday, and it coincides with my getting my hands on a 3G review model Apple has lent me for a few weeks. My old iPhone is fine, but the faster speeds of the 3G network really change the acquisition dynamic: basically, if you have an urge to listen to or watch something, you can grab it over the air instantly for a few bucks. I didn't mess with the iTunes Store much on my own phone, but on the faster version it's kind of difficult not to abuse the service. And I think that will be a huge benefit to Apple's gaming initiative. Want a game? Go online and grab it. The file sizes are surprisingly small, and even on America's crappy 3G networks the download speeds are quick. The iPhone's biggest drawback is the lack of must-have games, but once those start arriving it's going to make for a compelling system. Meanwhile, Sony and Nintendo are locked into the retail paradigm; while it's true they've been moving toward digital downloads, DSi and PSP 3000 make baby steps in that direction. Frickin' DSi is still locked in to 802.11b wi-fi, and in any case you can't exactly download anything unless you're on an access point.
If Apple does this right, their online system will be a fulfillment of the potential inherent in mobile gaming, but without all the crappiness. Even the most obvious interface issue (i.e., not having a built-in D-pad) may not be a deal-breaker: yesterday ngmoco's Neil Young demoed the upcoming Dropship, which is controlled with a virtual D-pad that actually seems to work. The secret is that it recenters on your thumb no matter where you touch the screen, so you don't have to worry about drifting. Not a perfect solution, but a solution nevertheless.
Me, I'm holding out for a tilt-controlled Rocket Slime sequel.
This week on GameSpite: William Shatner goes toupee hunting.
For some reason, I've never really make the connection before today that, hey, iPhones play video, too. I mean, I knew, but I've never really bothered with that particular feature. So then I checked the iTunes Store and realized I can buy the dozen or so genuinely great episodes of Star Trek for half the price of a single-season box set. And all without the shame of owning "Spock's Brain." Nice.
Speaking of iPod-type things, I finally got so frustrated with my recently-purchased iPod nano's irritating interface flaws that I sold it. And, of course, a couple of days after putting it up for sale, Apple released an update that fixed all the problems. I guess that's what I get for being so cocky about my amazing game announcement super-powers. Humility: it's what's for dinner.
Dear Retronauts listener: it's because LucasArts hates you
19 November 08 | 13:40 | Posted by: Kat
[Editor's note: Kat was mildly inebriated when this entry was written. Please gauge her spite accordingly.]
You might have heard last week's Retronauts, in which our fearless leader and company sat down to respond to letters courtesy of you, the loyal listeners. Well, I assume that you're a loyal listener. If you are, take a moment to pat yourself on the back. Maybe you remember the letter lamenting the death of space combat simulators. I do, because outside of giant robot and Pocket Monster-collecting genres, space combat is the genre nearest and dearest to my heart. So allow me to do a bit of lamenting of my own.
Over the course of the letter, our anonymous reader (I say anonymous because I don't know his or her name, and I'm too lazy to go back to the podcast to look it up) wondered aloud why space combat had to go the way of the Pet Rock, CDs, and adventure games. And I think it was Sharkey who responded by positing the theory that space combat died because, outside of a graphical facelift, all of the necessary territory had been covered. With FreeSpace 2 and (urgh) Battlecruiser 3000AD, where else was there to go?
Well, MMOs for one. That territory, of course, has been canvassed pretty thoroughly by EVE Online. But you could also argue that (1) EVE Online's combat is, in the words of someone or other on the podcast, "boring as shit" and (2) it doesn't really cover the whole Luke Skywalker angle. You know, taking the controls of an X-wing and blowing up the Death Star kind of stuff. That's all anybody's ever wanted to do, and even going back to the original X-Wing, LucasArts has never quite gotten it right. EVE Online only really covers the capital ships, and their idea of an attack on the Death Star is to ram one of the Titan mega cruisers out of their safety bubble while its captain is offline and bombard it to death. So, maybe EVE Online isn't quite the heir to the space combat throne that we've all been looking for.
New Games Plus: Retail lamentations for 11-18-2008
18 November 08 | 20:30 | Posted by: reibeatall
I hope you have friends. Not only is networking and social interaction a necessary component to a healthy life, but without it you're much missing out on one of the best parts of games; so much so, that without friends and other people, you should just ignore certain games. The poster child for this type of game just so happens to be launching this week: Left 4 Dead, the zombie game that people can't seem to stop talking about.
Zombies are awesome, and this game has a metric crapload of them. The premise, for those unfamiliar with the game, is that four people (which is why the title is Left 4 Dead, and not Left for Dead -- Valve is just that clever!) are trying to escape a horde of zombies who want nothing more than to eat them. The key mechanic in the game is that it's a co-op experience for up to four people; the key problem with the game is that without those friends, it's just not that fun. This is one of those rare non-MMO titles that really should be avoided by those without friends. If you do have friends, though, make sure all four of you have time that you can set aside for it.
I'm not too sure how I feel about games made for multiplayer that happen to include single player aspects, and vice versa. I mean, if you really want to go through L4D's campaign alone, you can; but the experience will be severely lacking when compared to what you'd encounter playing with three other warm bodies. I was going to argue against how "fair" that is towards the people who choose to go it alone, but then I realized what a retarded argument that would be. We're dealing with an entertainment medium here; it's all unneccessary. There's no such thing as fair. So, if you want to enjoy L4D, get some damn friends and play. Except Morbid Coffee. Don't play with him, that guy's a jackass.
Now, short descriptions of the other games coming out this week, but as if they contained zombies. Let's see if they sound better with the added twist.
Pretty slim pickings this week, unless you're a Strong Bad fan. Or really like throwing bean bags or ports of arcade games. And if you have a PS3 and want Age of Booty, you can totally get it now. Ah, and there's one neat-looking new thing, but if you want to know more about this rare gem you'll need to read on....
Mr. Robot has to take a sabbatical from the Add to Queue column for a while, so I'm filling in for him in my tragically incompetent way. And so we have...Sad to Queue. Fans of bloody train wrecks, read on!
GameSpite Issue 11.3b: Long-winded pretentiousness of love
17 November 08 | 17:39 | Posted by:
And the second half of this week's update. It should have been done easier, but as often happens when I end up spending half an article rambling off-topic, I couldn't seem to get it all to come together. I guess I suck!
Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
A curious counterpart to Kishi's Contra commentary, this look at the DS remake of Dragon Quest IV is about 20% about the game and 80% irrelevant navel-gazing that's tangential at best to the topic at hand. But apparently that's what people come to this site to read. So consider yourselves served. Oh, and spoilers abound, but it is an 18-year-old game.
I'm running terribly behind on this GameSpite update, because I'm a scatterbrained doofus, mainly. So I'm breaking up this week's update into two posts...which isn't actually a bad idea in general, as it gives each article a little more breathing space. And breathing space is what this article truly deserves, because by the end of it you will be breathless from the indescribable affection and sheer, uh, grokery Kishi displays for the subject.
Contra 4
It's a shame Prop 8-4 passed, banning people from marrying retro-style video games, 'cause Kishi + Contra 4 is a match made in heaven. But maybe it's just as well, because that unrequited passion has been transmuted into a great read. If ever you've wondered what it's like to read something by someone who really gets the subject matter, this is it.
I will never know whether or not Dragon Quest VII is a well balanced game, and it's all my fault. I would love to blame this sad state of affairs on Enix, Stephen Colbert, and even Barack Obama, but it is unfortunately a burden that I will have to bear entirely on my own. You see, a couple days before this year's United States presidential election, I realized I had over a month of full episodes of The Colbert Report to catch up on. I also realized that, if the election didn't go my way, I would be too depressed to watch them, forever depriving myself of a over month's worth of hilarity. Hours and hours of free comedy to consume and a love of double tasking meant that I needed to think of something to do while catching up on Colbert. In the end, I decided to keep my hands occupied by thoroughly breaking Dragon Quest VII's job system.
I am admittedly an apologist for Dragon Quest. I'm fairly new to the series, and I've found it to be considerably more well balanced and less focused on grinding than popular opinion about the series led me to believe. I was able to get through three Dragon Quest games (Dragon Quest IV DS, Dragon Quest V DS, and Dragon Quest VIII) without stopping to grind during the main game, and I really enjoyed all of them. They're a simple and relaxing way to unwind after work, and they never punish you too much for making a mistake. Things were moving along smoothly in Dragon Quest VII as well, until I opened up the job system and just couldn't help myself. I had to break the game.
This nearly always happens to me in games with robust skill systems. Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy Tactics were also enormous time sinks for me, and this problem is exactly why I've avoided the Disgaea series, for example. Not because I think I wouldn't like it, but because I know I'd like it far, far too much. I don't think I'd be able to stop until I'd wasted countless hours creating characters so strong that nothing could stand their way. I would want to utterly break the game, and I would love doing it. On the other hand, the lack of this kind of a job system is also one of the reasons I liked playing through Valkyria Chronicles, which emphasises battle tactics and offers only a bare minimum of possibilities for character customization. As much as I enjoy playing games like this occasionally, there are simply not enough hours in the day make them a habit.
I would find Jaleco's graphic designers and say rude things to them. Seriously, these backward NES game box spines are harshing my mellow by making my bookshelf slightly inconsistent. Their failure to conform lives on in shame and irritates my OCD two decades later!
Of course, the fact that I own Shatterhand and Whomp 'Em is probably a far more crushing cause of shame than some minor packaging glitch. And I was doing so well at being selective in my collection repopulation efforts, too. Man, Jaleco ruins everything.
Earlier today I found myself thinking about Secret of Mana (which I first picked up 15 (!) years ago and played to completion over the course of three rentals during Christmas break, 1993). I started thinking about how much I miss games like that. Specifically, thinking about how much I miss the ineffable comfortableness unique to games of that vintage. And I'm not talking about a factor of nostalgia, but rather of game design. Despite featuring a fairly involved leveling system, Mana was brisk and easy to play; very little time was spent setting things up and jawing on about the grim fate threatening the world. You fell off a log, found a sword and were causing Rabites to get whacked in a matter of minutes.
Video games these days, though -- especially those of the RPG ilk -- they rarely manage that. I was happy when the first thing the developers of The Last Remnant told me the other day was that the first three hours of their game is an engaging and exciting -- an attempt to draw players into the game world immediately. (Then Christian Nutt and I started complaining about Tri-Ace games, which never start out quickly; this caused the Tri-Ace rep at the table to clutch his face in mock horror and apologize. Good times, good times.) Still, it's all well and good for developers to promise that, but few seem able to deliver. That's one reason I like Etrian Odyssey so much -- once you set up your guild, it's straight into the thick of things for you. But such games are few and far between; the majority prefer to jaw your ears off and text your eyes out.
And then, a Christmas miracle: not 10 minutes after I was dwelling wistfully on the breezy stylings of Mana, an import copy of Avalon Code landed on my desk.
I was pleasantly surprised to boot up the game and find very little time was spent in tedious exposition. There's an intro cinema, sure, but it's part of the credits, and it's beautifully rendered -- reminiscent of the intro to Lunar 2, not least of all due to the glyphs that play prominently in the video sequence. Within a few minutes, I had control of my character and was beating the crap out of foes. That's...wow. That's nice.
But what's even nicer is the fact that Avalon isn't another of the low-budget anime crapfests that plague the Japanese RPG genre. Story sequences seem brief enough, but they're rendered in 3D with actual character models interacting, not just half-hearted voiceovers atop static illustrations. I had high expectations for the game, of course, given that it's the work of Matrix -- essentially the Final Fantasy III/IV remake engine being used for a completely new work that plays out as an action RPG rather than a turn-based system. Happily, Matrix seems to have applied the same care and effort present in their Square Enix projects for Avalon to create the DS equivalent of a big-budget game. Maybe the rest of the game won't hold up, but at the very least it starts off well.
What that translates to is the sort of thing that would have been a must-play 10 years ago on PlayStation...except without the load times. If anything, Avalon reminded me right away of Threads of Fate, which is a good association to make -- action RPG, solid 3D graphics, choice of a male or female playable character. And to bring everything full circle, Threads always reminded me of Mana. Which means it looks like I may have been given the spiritual Mana successor I was pining for in a matter of minutes.
Seriously, the truth? This is getting so uncanny that I'm starting to frighten myself.
I've talked in the past about the game industry (and EA in particular) trying to fight back against the used games market; call it a hobby of mine. The newest idea thrown out there comes to us by way of Mike Capps from Epic Games:
"I've talked to some developers who are saying, 'If you want to fight the final boss, you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version, you got it for free.' We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used -- way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it."
Honestly, I'm kind of torn on this one. On the one hand, used game sales do eat a significant portion of the profit that might otherwise go to the developer/publisher of a given title. Once again, this is attacking the used game market from the consumer side, dissuading a potential consumer from buying it used because, odds are, the code for the ending has already been redeemed and they don't want to pay more for it. It's smart, and the companies do want to cut into GameStop's huge profit margin somehow.
On the other hand...there are a lot of people that rely on renting or GameFly to play new entries in an increasingly expensive hobby. I know, because I was a broke kid, I rented A Link to the Past three separate times before I got around to owning it back in the day, and that's one of my favorite games ever. How would I have felt if I had to pay more money because I wanted to know what happens after I beat Ganon? And what about people that play offline? Will they just never get to know what happens?
I honestly don't think this is a company wanting to nickel and dime us more than they already are. In fact, for many of us, this probably wouldn't be an issue; if we really want a game, we'll buy it new, and get the ending for free. This is teetering dangerously close to the edge of saying, "We don’t want poor people to play our games," though, and I think that's a misstep. Cutting down on your potential fanbase –- that may very well purchase the game when they have the money -– is a bad thing. And if nothing else, it's irritating to have to download something that should be a standard part of the package. Harmonix let players download the Rock Band 1 songs into Rock Band 2 for a mere five-dollar licensing fee, simply because it was more convenient for the user. Let’s hope that other companies follow suit and find ways to combat used games without making everyone else jump through hoops.
...Of course, one could always argue that 99.99% (yes, that’s a scientific percentage...shut up) of all game endings aren't worth downloading anyway, but that's another discussion entirely.
Times are tough, money is tight, the world is plummeting into violent riots of poverty, blah blah blah. But sometimes, you gotta budget in the essentials. This week, that was the Genesis 1970-1975 Box Set: a compilation of five very thoroughly remastered and remixed albums. Frickin' awesome albums, it should be said.
Of the set, the disc that's most caught my attention is the first album, Trespass. Actually, Trespass is the band's second album, but their first wasn't included in the box for a number of reasons. Such as the fact that it's eternally bogged down by legal rights thanks to an overzealous, self-aggrandizing hack; also, the part about it not being very good. Trespass, on the other hand, is much better -- raw at times, naïve in places, but ultimately a pretty impressive piece of work for a bunch of stuffy, upper-class British college kids.
The new mix actually does away with a lot of the "raw" problem -- the audio has been improved to an almost unbelievable degree. All the background hiss that's plagued previous CD releases is completely gone, and each master track has been cleaned up so much you can hear the keys clacking during Peter Gabriel' flute solos. Elements that were lost in the muddiness of previous mixes are suddenly perfectly audible, and harmonies and audio effects I've never noticed in nearly two decades of listening to the album suddenly pop out. It's impressive! The album's almost 40 years old, but doesn't sound like it.
For someone who spends a great deal of her time writing at a site with the word "spite" in its name, I tend to be awfully nice when I'm playing video games. I mean, you won't usually find me running over hookers in GTA (actually, I try to obey all traffic laws), I side with the good guys whenever possible, and I generally prefer that my kingdoms not be wretched hives of scum and villainy. Actually, I'm kind of a sucker for justice. It just feels better.
And yet, here I am trying to rationalize to myself why on Earth I seem to prefer the Principality of Zeon to the Earth forces in Gundam Battle Universe. I mean, sure, Zakus are extraordinarily cute (yes, cute), and it's hard to deny that Zeon has the better uniforms, but they're also dictatorial, occasionally genocidal spacenoids. The bad guys. And yet, I was immensely relieved to be back behind the controls of a Zaku after going over to the AEUG for a good portion of the game. Flying wing with the Red Comet makes all the difference in the world, I guess.
There are other sides to it though. Mostly, I tend to be a serious roleplayer when my character is a player avatar, and when asked to choose between Zeon and Earth, my latent anti-Earth tendencies apparently came to the fore. And I was more than happy to rationalize that decision with, "Okay, I really admire Char and Gato, and right now I'm defending my home in the colones." Yes, "defending my home in the colonies" ultimately meant "trying to obliterate the earth." But hey, I'm flexible. I've settled comfortably into those nebulous shades of grey.
And thinking on it, it's actually kind of a nice place to be. When making "moral decisions," so many games force you down the binary path of good vs. utter bastardry that it's a relief to be able to justify my actions in my own mind, even if most of GBU's morality comes out of my knowledge of the source material. What it does is kind of make me want to check out Fallout 3 or Mass Effect and see how I would do as a mercenary with a heart of gold. I'll bet I would make a wonderful Han Solo, right up until I found myself in a bad mood and nuked that town in Fallout 3. Sheesh, maybe I'm more cut out for this whole evil thing than I realized.
Left 4 Dead's premise was such a no-brainer (pun intended), I was starting to think no one would ever make it: a four-player cooperative zombie apocalypse.
Having a developer like Valve -- known for the high quality of their games -- work on it is just icing on the cake. No, actually, it's more than mere icing. I haven't played many Valve games, but from what I understand, the high level of polish present in those I have played (Portal and Team Fortress 2) is a trademark of theirs -- and Left 4 Dead definitely seems better for it. From the B movie poster loading screens to the fake ads plastered everywhere to the horror film-esque gore, I can’t help but smile (and cringe) when I play.
In fact, I would say Valve is theoretically the best company there is to handle something like this, since the time I've spent with Team Fortress 2 really shows that they get what will and will not work when you want people to play as a team. The easiest difficulty is a cakewalk, but everything else requires your teammates if you want to avoid becoming a mob's lunch. Much like TF2, a careful balance is struck between the freedom to do what you want –- like rampage with a shotgun --– and the need to be mindful of your friends; otherwise, who's going to free you when you're pinned to the floor by a corpse that hungers for your living flesh?
I've never been a fan of standard "team" deathmatch multiplayer, since it always feels like you're playing next to the guys on your team, rather than with them; I prefer something with more of a cooperative mechanic to it, like Team Fortress 2 and (theoretically) Metal Gear Online. Left 4 Dead, so far, seems to be the best entry into this esteemed category. Of course, I would assume this is also present in what is arguably the game's most interesting aspect: the ability to play on the Infected side. I only have access to the Xbox Live demo, though, so I'm unable to try that out just yet. But let's be honest, here: having a friend herd humans your way so you can puke all over them is the very definition of teamwork. I'm so excited about the full release I can hardly wait.
It's Wednesday, which of course means that another episode of Retronauts is now online. This edition doesn't have a subject beyond "we respond to listener mail," and I'm not sure that it's necessarily a good episode. However, it was a very fun episode to record, including the part in which I transform into an angry, stammering stereotype of a Scotsman.
Yeah, pretty much that.
Actually, I think part of that little outburst came from having just finished Dragon Quest IV the other night. I guess I felt I had to make it up to Ragnar McRyan, 'cause I never used him after the first chapter. Sorry, dude! Your pink armor and bristly blue mustache are awesome, but Alena is much more effective as a damage machine. Also, you can thank me for yesterday's Dragon Quest V U.S. release date announcement (February 17), because it is almost certainly a result of my finishing DQIV and thinking, "OK, I'm ready for the sequel now." We're talking a 12-hour turnaround from thought to press release, you know?
Don't worry, I'll use this profound power responsibly, like Uncle Ben taught me.
I have really bad luck with spoilers. I had just beaten The Pain when I learned about the end of Metal Gear Solid 3 (courtesy of a sudden outburst on 1UP Yours), and I was in the middle of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when I learned who got the axe. So late as I was to the party (uh, twenty years late, but hey), I hope you can understand why I was reluctant to take the plunge and check out the much-hyped Watchmen trailer before I had properly finished the book.
Now that that's all out of the way now, though, I've had a couple looks at the trailer, and I can safely say that I remain deeply ambivalent about the movie. That doesn't mean that I think the movie will be bad, per se. Actually, I think that Zack Snyder and company are all fans who have only the best intentions for the movie. In fact, for that reason alone, it will probably be hugely successful, and have its fair share of fans. I just happen to think that a film adaptation capable of capturing all of the comic's nuance is probably impossible.
I mean, we're talking about a comic that takes the visual storytelling medium further than I've ever really seen it go. In trying to ask whether the means ever justify the ends, Moore doesn't waste so much as single panel. All of the beauty is in the details, and that goes for everything from the costume choices to the detailed interviews and newspaper clippings that can be found at the intermissions. You can't stuff all of that into a few visual "Easter eggs," you can't distill the comic's amazingly detailed alternate history into an opening montage, and you can't reduce the characters to a few definable traits (Rorschach is crazy, Nite Owl is naive, etc). Basically, you can't faithfully adapt Watchmen without making it unwatchable.
So while the Watchmen trailer looks "cool," I can't help feeling that that's all it is. Rorschach is "cool" when he says that "the world will cry out for forgiveness, and I'll say no." Nite Owl and Silk Spectre have "cool" new costumes. It's "cool" when we see Dr. Manhattan, and it's "cool" when the Comedian gets a slow motion shove out the window. Unfortunately, it was that focus on Watchmen's stylistic choices over its actual substance that also gave us the so-called Dark Age of comics and reduced Alan Moore to a bitter, bitter shell of his former self (well, the V for Vendetta film helped, but I digress).
I'm not yet writing off the Watchmen film entirely though. If anything, the Lord of the Rings films should have proven that enough love, attention, and, above all, money is generally all you need to get the job done, and Watchmen has sufficient quantities of all three of those things . I'll be keeping a close eye on the its progress, and when I walk out of the theatres come 2009, I will sincerely hope that Zack Snyder has dispelled all my fears and then some.
The DLC front is still pretty dry, even though low-budget console shovelware crap like Gears of War 2 and Mirror's Edge is all that's up for offer at retail. Honestly. This week brings a couple of WiiWare games that fall firmly in the so-called "casual" arena, to the extent that there actually is one; an old classic starring a certain blue robot who seems to be on our minds awfully frequently of late; and a cruel tease directed at those of us still waiting for the interminably delayed Super Street Fighter II HD Remix.
Ahh, Christmas time. In two weeks, hordes of people will descend upon the poor individuals forced to work retail to make ends meet, and those poor souls' lives will be transfigured into a pure living hell. Did you know that some insane number (like, fifty-seventy percent, I am so not making that up) of retail revenue for the entire year is earned during the months of November and December? With such a shopping frenzy going down, its little wonder that publishers decide to release their best games during this period. Which really sucks for those of us playing rather than earning. I know it's good business to release your title when people are buying, but why not wait until, say, the summer for some of those? Not a year goes by without a huge chunk of empty release schedules between the months of April and June.
It doesn't really matter, I suppose. I'm just pissed that all these good games are coming out and I don't have the time to play them right now. Here's what's coming out this week, that I won't be playing until next year.
Media | A2Q Archives | A2Q #64 | November 10, 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.
Final Fantasy V
In keeping with this month's theme of love and thanksgiving, I've finally wrapped up the Final Fantasy V retrospective I've been telling the other contributors I'd be writing since...uh, well, basically all year long. Love takes time, guys, and I do love this game. There may be objectively better Final Fantasies, but none so fun to play through as V. Roll on DS remake.
Sonic the Hedgehog CD
Sonic CD has enjoyed a mixed reputation over the years. For the longest time, it was regarded as the holy grail of the series, largely because no one had played it, because what sane person owned a CD? Then it became available on collections and people were down on it. Now it seems to be developing a sort of cachet again. The lesson here: nerds are a bunch of fickle, fickle people.
It's super late, but the first GameSpite bonus package is just about ready to go in the mail. The mini-magazine is printed and ready for photocopying, the magnets are complete, and the buttons are printing as I type. Everything should be in the post by the end of the week. That's good! I also have a pretty clear idea of what do for the next batch, which will go out on schedule -- which is to say at the end of next month. So that's also good. But I'm also thinking ahead to another possible project:
I'm thinking of compiling existing GameSpite articles into a few books (with the usual "couple of extra original pieces as incentive" thing going for them); in fact, I spent a good part of the day planning out a possible first book. So I put a question to you, the readers of this site: would you pay $20 for a 250-page omnibus of GameSpite content? I'm not taking orders right now, just gauging interest. I'd need to sell about 60 of these to break even. Interested? Please comment below.
Edit: Um, so I guess that's a "yes." I'll be working on this over Thanksgiving break, since my girlfriend has to attend to family obligations on the east coast that weekend and I'll have nothing better to do with my time. If all goes according to plan -- and it never does! -- these will be ready in time for Christmas. You know, being the perfect gift for the nerd in your life. Yeah.
Persona 3 exceeded all my expectations -- it's by far one of the best RPGs on the PS2. I assumed the game would bore me when I first heard it had randomly-generated dungeons, but instead I found them to be liberating. I was free to make progress on my own schedule, and I never had to worry about overlooking some unmissable treasure chest. I expected its high school simulation elements to be obnoxious and creepy. Instead, I found them to be an interesting way to let players dictate the flow of the game's narrative, and the connection created between the simulation and battle elements strengthened my investment in the story. I thought its AI-controlled party members would frustrate me, but instead they added a new level of strategy to battles and created a stronger sense of identification between myself and the main character. I was suspicious of almost every individual element in the game, but in the course of playing it I came to realize that Persona 3 really was much more than the sum of its parts.
The best innovation of all in Persona 3 was the shift to a narrative that moves temporally rather than spatially, taking place over the course of a calendar year of game time. Being forced to manage your main character's limited schedule by balancing school, dungeon exploring, and social obligations was incredibly addictive, and it also helped break the game into manageable chunks. So, when Persona 4 came out here in Japan back in July, I rushed out to buy it on day one.
It's definitely a solid game, and fans of Persona 3 wanting more of the same will enjoy it. But for me, playing through Persona 4 felt a bit like trying to awkwardly rekindle an old relationship. It was fun while it lasted, but it left me feeling empty. Maybe I should have just let it go without looking back.
Regardless of my general ambivalence toward emulation, I won't deny it has its merits. For instance, if it weren't for emulation, I wouldn't be able to show you the single most '80s title screen ever:
I don't think I ever had the pleasure of seeing this game in the stores. I'm pretty sure I would remember if I had, because based on the geometric shapes and New Kids On The Block typography, it was obviously sold in a set with a Trapper Keeper.
I took a break from trying to convince myself to love Fallout 3 last weekend long enough to head down to San Jose and play Street Fighter IV for the first time. It was...pretty good!
...well, the game was pretty good, at any rate. I was awful. I've never been any good at fighting games -– I never owned any as a kid, only occasionally tried SF2 in the arcades -- so this development wasn't too much of a surprise. The best I could manage was firing off a Hadouken 9 times out of 10, which I must say is quite the personal accomplishment.
The graphics, though, impressed me. Like many people, I've been down on the game's art style; I think the characters all look too beefy for Street Fighter, as if the guys from Gears of War decided to take their armor off and brawl. Having played it, though, I now have a much higher opinion. The strange thing, though, is that this is easily the most extreme case of "you need to play it to appreciate it" I have ever encountered. Pictures and videos won't do it justice; you need to get your hands on the sweaty joystick to actually like it. I've thought about this over the past few days, but I still can't put my finger on why that is, exactly. I suppose it's something to do with the subtle animations on each characters, which look (or "feel") much more impressive when they're the result of your input. They felt incredibly alive when I was in control. In fact, when I watched someone else at the cabinet, my opinion began to fall again; but as soon as I was in control, I thought it was totally great. I can't seem to wrap my head around it.
Luckily (?), I was roped into promising to picking up the game when it comes to consoles and dedicating myself to learning how to at least be competent, so I guess I'll have more time to contemplate this phenomenon when I revisit the game sometime next year. Since I missed out on the SFII hysteria back in the day, I'll enjoy participating this time around. Dan's a top tier character, right?
As Parish pointed out last week, there are many practical applications to digital distirbution, like reducing shipping costs and better serving a niche audience. But it also serves a broader critical function, making works that have long been out of print available to an audience that might never have found them otherwise. I'm able to find new albums by the Pillows on iTunes for a fraction of what importing a CD would cost. GameTap gave me the opportunity to play games for Sega's SG-1000, and while you may have to wait a while for new issues to show up on Marvel Comics' digital service, it's already host to heaping helpings of the publisher's iconic Silver Age stories.
But there is so much more waiting to be discovered. Look no further than the father of manga, Osamu Tezuka. For a variety of reasons, only a tiny fraction of his prolific work has been made availible in the U.S., but this may soon change. According to Anime News Network (as reported by Nikkei Net), Tezuka Productions will be posting 700 manga titles and 100 anime titles from the "god of manga" for free on the Internet starting this week. This is the result of the painstaking work that began last year of digitizing and coloring the over 150,000 pages of manga that Tezuka produced in his lifetime. Like the manga itself, this plan seems foolish at first glance, but upon further examination, it actually belies an unexpected sophistication. Why would they just give it away for free? Because they know it's so good that you will want to buy a copy. It's a more sane plan than licensing out the same content piecemeal and hoping the work finds its way to a receptive audience. People like to have a physical copy of the media they cherish, and there are few creators more cherished than Tezuka.
And it gets better! Besides planned video retail sites, Tezuka Productions will also be making these works available in English and Korean. With a new Astro Boy film planned for release next fall, the timing couldn't be better. Tezuka's works, like his Phoenix, will be given the chance to rise from the ashes and live on in the hearts and minds of new fans the world over. (I'm secretly hoping that some of Tezuka's experimental shorts like Broken Down Film and Jumping may find a home as well; the versions available on YouTube don't do them justice.)
If you ever want to combat pre-Election Day nerves, try going to Kyoto or Nara or sometime. Instead of sitting around chewing my nails while watching both polls and the evening news, I got to spend my time being chased by F.O.E.s while marveling at how much Nara looks like Wisconsin. I think it's all the rolling hills.
Going to Nara was also a good chance to continue the little experiment I started when I went to Thailand and Cambodia back in late July: I left my Nintendo DS and PSP at home. Not exactly revolutionary to ditch video games for five days, I know. But it recently occured to me that not a day goes by when I don't play play games, even if I do have to squeeze it around work, writing, and studying. Games are great and all, but electing to spend my one free hour a day on them means that things like reading tend to get left by the wayside. Kind of sad when I was the kind of kid who used to devour a couple books a day.
Of course, leaving the games at home in favor of a couple books is actually harder than it sounds. It's mostly a matter of routine, but that doesn't change the fact that the first night always seems to find me laying in my hotel room and wishing that I could pass the time with Super Robot Taisen. But being on vacation is all about breaking my routine and doing something interesting, and games are about as routine as it gets these days. If I'm lying in my hotel room and playing my DS like I would at home, then why did I even bother going on vacation? I can endure for a night or two.
Interestingly enough though, there are a couple (relatively) unexpected side effects to this forced deprivation. The obvious one is that it keeps me from getting burned out on gaming, which I suppose is important when you write about and play them every single day. The other is that it has an odd way of helping me to refocus on what I actually want to play, as opposed to what I feel like I should be playing. When I was in Thailand, Pokemon intruded in my thoughts to the point where I found myself reformulating my team in my head while I choked back Tuk-Tuk exhaust. SRWA Portable, in the meantime, got to share time with mortal fear as I evaded hungry deer in Nara. Not so strange, then, I guess, that I would want to pick them up again when I got home.
Those are all just the superficial reasons, though. I suppose the reality is that, in the end, it feels good to put aside the games for a couple days and see what else the world has to offer. Not because I hate games, or I'm tired of them. If anything, taking a break helps me to appreciate them even more. No, it just feels good to come home feeling well-rested, relaxed, and weirdly cleansed. Makes it just that much easier to endure the Gradius II beatings that are sure to follow.
I was worried that the advent of digital distribution this console generation would mean the death of packaged collections. I'm all for digital distro, but at the same time I'm also a fan of economical shopping. Eight bucks for a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog isn't nearly as appealing as $30 for Sonic the Hedgehog and two dozen other games. And, I admit it, physicality is a part of the gaming experience I just can't give up. There's something satisfying about having a game in your hands, selecting your choice of game to play from a shelf rather than from a menu -- even if the selection you make is a compilation which in turn offers a bunch of menus. The important part is that physical link, the sense of contact and presence. Because I'm a stupid old man who can't escape nostalgia, you see.
So I was happy this morning to see a press release for the Mega Drive Ultimate Collection for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Containing no less than 40 (!) games, including "Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2 and 3, Columns, Alien Storm, Ecco the Dolphin, Space Harrier, and cult classic, Streets of Rage 1, 2 and 3," it looks like a pretty solid deal, and is a reassuring sign (along with Namco Museum Virtual Arcade) that compilations aren't dead and buried. Why, it could even be a better deal than the Genesis compilation that showed up on PS2 a few years back. And given that the Sega Ages collections for PS2 are spot-on perfect, I have every confidence that--oh, wait, what's this? "Developed by Backbone Entertainment"?
Well, crap. So much for that confidence. Backbone's work on Xbox Live ports has been...uh, well, pretty awful, to be honest. Fuzzy, muted sound; fuzzy, filtered, off-color graphics; mushy controls; slightly off timing. I like the company's original content, like 1942: Joint Strike, but their Genesis emulation does no one any favors.
I mean, my god: this is a 1:1 scale crop of a screenshot they actually sent out with their press release. They're actually using this image to sell their game! If I saw someone playing an emulator with this filter running, I'd take away their computer privileges for life. (Well, actually, first I'd probably blink to check that I hadn't suddenly developed cataracts.) But we're expected to pay for...this. What a tragic, terrible, heartbreaking missed opportunity. You see, Sega has the world's single best professional emulation crew under its wing: M2, a mysterious little Japanese developer whose catalog includes both the good Sega Ages (beginning with the Treasure Box) and the Genesis emulator on Virtual Console. Their work is impeccable -- beyond impeccable. They treat each game as if it were a precious gem, even when (in the case of, say, Dynamite Headdy) the game may not necessarily deserve such reverence. Their compilations to date haven't simply been great; they've been beyond perfect, offering comprehensive selections, amazing archival materials and spot-on standard and progressive output. For a brief, shining moment, I hoped that this upcoming collection would bring their work into a single, truly comprehensive collection. But, no.
Of course, I understand what's going on here. M2 only works on PS2 and Wii, because Japanese developers are allergic to/terrified of/reluctant to deal with HD-capable systems, and Sega's no exception. I mean, the company just released Thunder Force VI as a PS2 game in Japan, even though the de facto shoot-em-up console these days is the 360. If you put the staff of M2 in the same room as a 360 dev kit, they'd probably just break down a weep uncontrollably. And that is a true shame, because no one seems to have the perfect solution to bringing classic games to HD; if anyone could solve this problem, that genius would likely be someone at M2. Meanwhile, rather than work with each game individually I'm sure Backbone just dumps everything into a single Genesis emulator and saves Sega a ton of cash. So don't be fooled by the lie: this will be no "ultimate" collection. It will be a big, messy collection -- a sloppy makeout session that you're embarrassed about the next morning when what you really want is to settle down and find the one. Of course, this is precisely why some of us will continue to pay $8 for Virtual Console releases when compilations are cheaper: one form offers exceptional quality, one form...doesn't. You really do get what you pay for, it seems.
So...I'm going to take this as another sign to encourage you to buy Valkyria Chronicles. Prove to Sega's Japanese side that next-gen consoles are not, in fact, terrifying forced marches to failure with your wallet. Bonus: it's a phenomenal game -- I even broke my vow of new release chastity to order a copy.
Me: On a lighter note, I saw a link to "the terrible crossover fanfiction idea generator" Me: and the first thing I got was "write a crossover fanfiction combining Doom and GI Joe. The story should use marriage as a plot device!" Me: and god help me, before I could stop myself I thought of a premise :( Nich: Haha Nich: What was it!? Me: Drawing on an old cartoon where there was some sort of eldritch monster living beneath Destro's castle Me: So he'd marry Scarlett some dark midnight to summon the beast Me: Opening the gates of hell Me: And they'd recruit DOOM GUY onto the GI Joe team to help save her Me: Voila Nich: I know what I want to see as the GameSpite Issue 2 bonus material Me: Code name: DOOM GUY Me: Primary military specialty: RIPPING Me: Secondary military speciality: TEARING Nich: Haha Me: OK, so we have issue 2 bonus material Me: This is all on your head now
I picked up Fallout 3 last week because, y'know, it's supposed to be pretty good. I even have friends that loved the first two, so what could go wrong? Well, I struggled through the first few hours, and then came to a conclusion: I pretty much hate this game. Don't take this to mean it's a bad game! I just had issues with it that others may not.
In theory, the setting sounded cool; in reality, it was the epitome of the tired "next gen graphics = brown and grey" joke. The thing I was looking forward to most, the dialogue, was long-winded and buried me with trivial options. Hearing stories about, say, blowing up a town if I wanted sounded cool when I heard about it –- but in practice, all I really did in those moments was shrug my shoulders and say, "Oh." In short: there was a lot of great stuff if you were on the right wavelength, but I personally wasn't having fun. It just wasn't for me.
After I realized this, though, I kept playing, kept trying to find that one crucial thing that would click and make me like it. Eventually, though, I had to admit defeat and do a bit of soul-searching: if I didn't want to play, why I would do that to myself? The answer I came up with: Fallout 3 is supposed to be one of the best games of the year, and I'm definitely a gaming enthusiast, so I'm supposed to like it. That's it.
I missed out on Kirby's Adventure when it came out. This was not because I thought I was too cool to play a game featuring a pudgy pink ball with a big mouth and red shoes or anything like that. I was ten years old at the time and not nearly that self-conscious. I even recall longingly looking at images of the beautiful spritework in Kirby's Adventure in an issue of Nintendo Power. But, alas, it was a late-generation NES game, and my parents got rid of that system at the same time they gave me a Super Nintendo. In retrospect, I think this was good parenting, but at the time, I was frustrated that they didn't understand just how important I thought it was to play all those amazing-looking late NES games. Now, thanks to the wonders of Virtual Console, I was finally able to play it myself.
I am still not totally sold on the Kirby series after this, but there was a lot that impressed me about this game beyond just the visuals that intrigued me so much fifteen years ago. What surprised me most of all was Kirby's move set, which is quite versatile for an 8-bit character. While I went into the game knowing about the central premise of absorbing enemy abilities, I was happy to find that even his most basic abilities were impressively varied. In addition to standard ducking and jumping, he can dash, suck, spit, fly freely, and puff out a mid-range air projectile. If anything, his move set is too expansive. The level designs seemed to be struggling to keep up with Kirby's wide range of actions. For example, it often seemed possible to breeze through most stages just by flying leisurely above or around all the obstacles.
Now, I certainly don't wish this game was frustratingly difficult. I enjoyed my relaxing stroll through the world of this game and the opportunities it provided me to experiment with Kirby's many possibilities. At the same time, the final two worlds of the game increased the challenge just enough to force me to think a little about how to get through the stages rather than simply barrelling through them. It made me want more levels like those that might force me to get creative with the wide range of all that Kirby can do. I enjoyed the last few levels in the game so much that I now feel a bit retroactively disappointed about the the game overall.
On the other hand, I'm excited to get my hands on the DS remake of Kirby Super Star sometime. I hear it has a Metroidvania-style segment, which seems like exactly the right kind of game environment for a character as versatile and just plain fun to control as Kirby.
I've been replaying Dragon Quest IV over the past week, since I didn't really get to enjoy it when I reviewed it. I never even touched the bonus chapter, and I missed out on lots of interesting alternate strategies since I didn't know about a lot of the optional or non-obvious weapons in the game. I missed Meena's tarot cards, Alena's double-attack weapon, all kinds of stuff. This time around has been much more enjoyable.
I faced off against the Marquis de Léon a few days ago, which was one of those standard RPG battles where you fight a horrible malformed monster who reverts to the form of a mere confused and apologetic human once defeated. (Given the original game's vintage, this was almost certainly one of the early pioneers that helped establish this particular twist as a cliché.) And weirdly enough, watching John McCain's concession speech last night gave me flashbacks to that battle. Here was the gracious, eloquent, let's-rise-above-this-pettiness McCain that I so admired in the two previous elections, the one who was replaced sometime last year by a venal, hateful practitioner of the dirty tricks, neo-con policies and petty character attacks he had long stood against. Once defeated, though, he reverted to his true form, seemingly humbled and respectable again.
It's nice to have him back. But don't stop level-grinding now, Mr. President-Elect. You still have to defeat the true final boss: Karl Rove.
There's been a rather jubilant feel in the air and online since last night; the streets of downtown San Francisco were eerily deserted at 7 p.m. yesterday, presumably because everyone headed to bars and parties to watch the results. My girlfriend's cousin unexpected burst through our door last night around 10, tipsy and giggly and with a huge lipstick mark on her cheek, just so she could give us drunken, celebratory hugs before staggering home. And Talking Time is basically a bunch of nerds giving each other drunken, celebratory e-hugs. I realized last night that a lot of people reading this site have never actually experienced the sensation of having a president they can actually respect, never participated in an election that went the way they wanted and wrapped up tidily with (hopefully) no protracted legal stupidity or cries of stolen votes. So I can definitely understand the excitement in the air.
But let me please caution you to be rational and polite in your excitement. Take your new president's platform of unity to heart and don't be an ass to people who supported the other side. Speaking as someone who had the dubious pleasure of sitting through two Clinton victories and a Gore loss while nestled deep in the intensely conservative heart of Texas, I can say with confidence that nothing is more annoying than a bunch of self-righteous, gloating goons crowing about an election that didn't go the way you wanted. Be excellent unto one another was one of the rules of conduct posted yesterday, and I meant it. Also, don't be surprised if four years from now the whole world isn't suddenly a magical place. I'm sure we'll be largely out of the Middle East by then, and hopefully we'll be making lots of progressive strides -- I'm very excited about the prospect of an administration that might actually sign the Kyoto Protocols! -- but the larger economic malaise the world is facing is hardly a Bush-exclusive gift to the world, having been set into motion by policies that were enacted 25 years ago (and, it should be noted, which were hastened along by one W.J. Clinton). I imagine it'll be a decade or more before things get really and truly better.
I was going to end this with a remark about "this is getting needlessly messianic," but then I remembered that the hero/heroine responsible for defeating the Marquis de Léon was actually a chosen one. So I guess my analogy isn't really helping matters much. Anyway, here's to the next eight (?) years: may they be as constructive as everyone hopes.
So, apparently, I now own Guitar Hero World Tour. Well, not own so much as have it in my room. My roommate got back from Las Vegas with it, and whatever your thoughts on the Activision/Harmonix issue, you'd have to admit there are worse things to come back with after being in Vegas.
I never really had any concept of owning it, and my girlfriend already had Rock Band 2, so wasn't necessarily keeping up with it. I sort of aligned myself on the Rock Band side of things, not least of all because I was able to create a 1:1 version of myself using the character creator. We got the Wii version, which perhaps isn't the ideal platform for these sorts of games, but whatever.
First impressions: the yellow cymbal doesn't work. More to come later, I suppose.
With the holiday release schedule ramping up, the DLC release schedule is ramping, uh, down, I guess. Slim pickings this week. Hit the link to find out just how slim!
The holiday gaming extravaganza is still in full swing this week, and we're seeing a lot of familiar faces. Marcus Fenix is back in Gears of War 2; Sgt. Nathan Hale returns to fight more chimera in Resistance 2; and yet another Naruto game is coming out this week: Ultimate Ninja 4. While these games are surefire hits with guaranteed sales, why does the industry keep putting them out? The ending of the original Gears of War made it obvious that Epic was making a trilogy and not a standalone title, but there are certainly other offenders. Trilogies are taking over our medium, and it's pissing me off.
I blame Peter Jackson. He had the brilliant idea of making a Lord of the Rings movie, but he didn't want to cut anything out, so instead, he created three movies. This was a great idea from a creative standpoint; he could tell the entire story, but from a financial standpoint, it was even more brilliant. You've got the first movie, which nets some hype, and lots of people see it. When it comes out on DVD, they buy it, and show the friends who didn't see it in theaters, and the friends now like it. When the second movie comes out, not only do you have the first fan's ticket sale, but you also have the new fan's ticket sale. It's like a pyramid scheme, except the only people who get any money are the people who built the pyramid. This logic would dictate that each successive movie would make more revenue than the previous one. A quick check on Wikipedia confirms this: The Fellowship of the Ring made $871 million, The Two Towers made $926 million, and The Return of the King grossed a whopping $1.2 billion. Show those numbers to any exec, and what they see is that you can manufacture success.
If you are an American over the age of 18 and are registered to vote, you'd better go out and friggin' do it today. Or I'll jump on your back and punch your skull until candy comes out.
Me, I was actually a pretty big fan of McCain in the 2004 election, but since he's running this year on basically the exact opposite platforms of the he advocated back then I guess I'll be voting for Obama. He's not perfect by any means, but even so I think I might have voted for him even if I hadn't generally agreed with his stances and politics simply because of what he stands for. And I don't mean the fact that a self-made mixed-race public servant who's spent significant time in the world outside of the U.S. is a tidy summation of what our country is supposed to be about (although that's pretty compelling!); I also mean that he's the only candidate who seems to recognize that America is not some towering, invincible colossus that can stride through the world with impunity. The past few years have shattered that particular illusion, I think, and the wild economic woes of the past couple of months have shown just how connected every nation is. We're all in this together. So I like the idea of having a president who respects the rest of the world and actually sees talking to them as a better solution that shouting at them from a threatening posture. That seems like it would be the sort of country I could feel confident about living in again.
I'm sure everyone who doesn't share my views is sick of being shouted at by angry liberals, who tend to be pretty strident here in the world of blogging. So I'll spare you that. All I really ask is that everyone votes who can, and that they make an informed decision about their choices -- whatever those choices may be. If you're still unsure about what's what and which of your state propositions to support and so forth, check out this site. It's detailed and neutral and links to some informative breakdowns. Please don't just vote straight-ticket unless you're sure that you really mean it. Both of the major parties are horribly flawed, and until politically conservative Republicans break away from the intolerant reactionary rot that's taken over the party and Democrats with a spine decide to move en masse to create a party that actually believes in getting things done, it's always smart to research the alternatives. For instance, I may be a registered Democrat, but I vomit at the prospect of voting for Nancy Pelosi, who went from "fiery" to "useless" the moment she became the majority leader.
Anyway, vote, and be a smart voter. This is your only social obligation as a GameSpite reader. Well, that and "be excellent unto one another." And...party on, dudes. So that's three obligations. But I think you can handle 'em.
Edit: I have put my money where my mouth is! And looked damn nerdy doing it.
Media | A2Q Archives | A2Q #63 | November 3, 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. If you are from the US and reading this on Tuesday, November 4th, STOP. Go vote for crying out loud. Unless you already did. In that case, affix your "I Voted" sticker to the monitor to unlock additional content in this week's episode.*
That's right, Gollum! This issue is made of love. A startling counterpoint to our previous issue, which was made almost entirely of spite. We make no pretense of fairness around here, but we do at least offer lip service to the world of balance.
Wario Land 3
Up until about two years ago, you could be certain that if a game sported the name "Wario" in the title, it was guaranteed to be a fresh and interesting experience -- never mind the fact that it was based around a flatulent, obese parody of Mario. That's not so much the case anymore! But let us not find discouragement in these dark ages, but instead look back to a brighter time.
Valkyrie Profile
Can you believe that an author who goes under the handle "Cynical Valkyrie" loves Valkyrie Profile? Shocking but true! Please note that this is about the original title in the series, not the more recent PS2 title, whose quality we cannot possibly hope to vouch for.
It's old news now, but a couple of months ago DC Comics announced its plans to shut down the Minx imprint. The comics blog realm underwent a week of hand-wringing about the label's failure and then quietly forgot about it, but it's stuck with me for a while -- mainly because I see in comics an example of what I really don't want video games to become; but which would almost certainly be the medium's outcome if so-called "core gamers" were to have their way.
Minx, you see, was DC's attempt to reach out to the young female demographic. I can't speak for its success, since I'm not a young female and don't read comics in the first place, but the general consensus is the Minx was well-intended but generally fell wide of the mark. It was founded as a conscious response to the fact that manga seems to draw in female readers just fine, while American comics remain as ever redolent of unbathed fanboys and musty basements thanks to the mainstream press's inability to break beyond superheroes and Hollywood-style science fiction. Minx was therefore significant, because it represented a major publisher finally realizing that eventually its core market will die of buttery heart attacks by age 35 or else be crushed beneath shelves of perfectly-cataloged and never-touched-by-human-hands issues of Spawn the next time an earthquake hits.
The brief life and untimely death of Minx suggest that maybe comics isn't an industry that deserves to survive, because despite having the success of manga to use as a template DC's hugely-hyped efforts still missed the mark. It had problems. For instance, only a trivial minority of the creators tapped had ever actually been young females themselves. And one questions just how sincere the company's efforts really were when the label was given about a year to live -- realistically, not nearly enough time to build an audience, adapt to the market's needs and make improvements based on retail feedback. But really, it just goes to show that the comics market is too overspecialized to survive; the retail market is ever a creature of Darwin. The forces that rule the comics market simply can't adapt, so instead they're left squeezing as much money as possible from their aging core market. The mainstream comics market shrinks every year, because, well, it's not really mainstream.
This is why gamers should be grateful for the likes of Wii Music and other popular whipping targets like The Sims. Every time you see a billboard for Wii Fit, you can rest easy knowing that gaming really is going mainstream, and so-called core games of the Blowin' Things Up II: Blowin' Upper ilk aren't all the medium has to offer. Of course, there's more to comics than superheroes and their refrigerator-bound girlfriends, but the alternatives are poorly promoted and hard to find outside of a specialty shop.
But the expanding nature of the gaming market makes me wonder why American publishers seem terrified of the concept of the long tail. Games are still at a peculiar juncture: they've avoided incesting themselves into the niche that comics inhabit, but they're still a long way from being a simple fact of life the way film, music and books are. And a lot of that has to do, I think, with publishers' inexplicable terror of catering to niches. The medium's mainstream audience is well-served, and the genuinely mainstream market is being catered to as well. But the industry consistently falls down when it comes to filling in the little gaps; look at all the audio obscurities you can find on iTunes or Amazon, and then compare gaming's equivalent digital delivery services: Steam, Virtual Console, PSN, GameTap, etc. Each is hamstrung by rights limitations and platforms and general thick-headedness on behalf of the content providers. PSN is especially disgraceful; Sony has released roughly 200 PlayStation 1 titles as inexpensive PS3/PSP-compatible downloads. Here, we have about a tenth of that. But even the Wii Shopping Channel, which has a respectable library, is one of the most user-unfriendly services imaginable -- the interface is obtuse, Nintendo actively obfuscates advance information on upcoming retro or WiiWare titles, and there's no publicity for the thing.
Digital delivery services make more sense in America than anywhere else in the world, because unlike the other major gaming markets (i.e. Japan and Europe), America is huge. Moving packaged goods back and forth across the country takes time and costs money. America's enormity is why we can't have brilliant niche magazines like the UK's Retro Gamer and Japan's Continue; the market is simply too spread out. As gas prices continue to rise -- and you can be certain that the current price dip is not a reflection of a long-term trend -- moving games around will only become more expensive. Tiny games like the Artstyle series didn't make sense as retail releases here, but they're perfect as downloadable selections. LIkewise, we don't have a convenient nexus for retro-game hunting a la Akihabara, but everyone who wants to play Suikoden II would pony up six bucks to get it on PSN in a heartbeat.
So why are American publishers so slow to take up the cause of promoting the long tail? I wish I had an answer. Unfortunately, I'll have to settle for dreaming of making a tour around the country which involves me kicking the guilty parties in the face until they promise to recant. That's what I've learned from video games, you see: violence solves everything.
I try to be (somewhat) objective towards most games. Given predispositions and whatnot, it can be hard at times, but even games that are designed to be completely unappealing to me (like, say, Gears of War) have won me over in the past, which is why the proliferation of demos on Xbox Live and PSN has been great. If nothing else, I can feel slightly more justified in my snap judgements because, hey, I gave it a fair shot, right?
Long story short, a certain demo dropped on Xbox Live recently, and it's the first time I've honestly, seriously been physically unable to choke back the bile and give a game a fair chance.
It sure is tough to love a strategy RPG sometimes. At the moment, I'm playing Super Robot Wars A Portable, a remake of SRWA for the Game Boy Advance, making it one of the "old school" SRW games. I was doing alright until I hit Mission 8, where I came face to face with old Master Asia.
He pilots the Master Gundam, which I'm hoping to unlock at a later date. In the meantime, I'm supposed to kill him. Quite a task when only one of my units can even survive his attacks, let alone hit and kill him. And when I finally manage it? The jerk regenerates. Sheesh, if this is only Mission 8, can the remaining thirty-one missions actually be harder? Well, no, because SRW shares a quirk that seems inherent to all SRPGs: it's actually much difficult in the early going than at the end.
I've found that SRPGs almost always seem to have a certain threshold that you have to cross before they become the least bit enjoyable, and it usually seems to lie somewhere around Mission 10 or 11. Until then, you'll be forced to use weak characters who can barely deal adequate damage to mooks, seem to die at the slightest touch, and can't easily be healed and revived. Later on, you'll have a well-organized death squad composed of characters who can practically beat a map all by themselves, but it takes a lot to get that far.
Net result? Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and Fire Emblem DS are both at that "awkward" stage, and both lie unfinished in the bottom of my drawer. SRWA Portable has been temporarily set aside for the more visceral thrills of Gundam Battle Universe. I could never get into Final Fantasy Tactics for the PlayStation because I just didn't have the patience to level up my handful of entry-level squires. Rondo of Swords met a similar fate.
Some of it comes from the fact that I just don't have a lot of time to invest in my games, and I don't want to spend those previous moments grinding my teeth hard enough to generate sparks. The rest of it comes when I'm gamely working my way toward that magical point of no return, only to bump into something like Mega Man 9 or Battle Universe, both of which are fun from the get-go. Don't worry; I know I'll be back sooner or later. But I wonder how many others just don't have the patience to deal with the mandatory pain of an SRPG, and whether they're ultimately missing out on something great.
The Wii's Virtual Console has been unexpectedly therapeutic for me. When I actually had my own NES, I was just seven or eight years old. Although I liked games a lot then, I was definitely not very good at them, and I'm fairly sure that I literally never beat any game on the system. Now, over fifteen years later, I feel a bit like I'm plucking out deeply-lodged thorns when I finally clear Mega Man 2 or Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time on the Virtual Console. Earlier this week, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest came out for Japanese Wiis, giving me a chance to come back to a game that deeply confused me in my childhood.
Since this is the Famicom Disk System version of the game, it has some elements absent from the NES release, like a save system, load times between areas, and surprisingly well-animated blood dripping down the title screen. Also, although the villagers still lie, the Japanese dialogue is marginally more intelligible than the hilarious English localization. Other than that, however, it's still more or less the same abstruse and uneven game I remember.
If that statement shocked you, I'm sorry. Take in a deep breath, hold for 10 seconds, and listen to "The Moon" from Ducktales for the millionth time to help ease the pressure. But to any gamer with sense and ears, it's pretty obvious that game music is still good –it's just different. The film score accentuations that have risen since the death of the cartridge may not be for all tastes, which is fair enough.
But too often modern game music is dismissed entirely, or merely overlooked in favor of the chiptune set. If you are one of these mopers, I have one thing to say: you aren't looking hard enough. There's a wealth of good music that lives up to the past legacy, even though it might not sound like you remember. Here's one of them.
"We Are Finally Cowboys" Composed by: Masafumi Takada Appeared in: No More Heroes
Masafumi Takada is the little-known renaissance man of the contemporary game music scene, whom you've probably heard in games like Killer7, God Hand, and No More Heroes. "Eclectic" is one way to describe the man, if "extremely talented" is too pedestrian a descriptor for you. He produces some pretty swell melodies within varying shells, from surf rock to uh, this, all with seemingly little effort. Takada's quirky talents are half of what make an already irreverent and self-pandering trio of games so effective.
As his most recent work, No More Heroes features "more of the same" from Takada where that particular phrase can be construed to mean "some of the best game music of the year." There are a number of strong contenders on the soundtrack, but one in particular wouldn't let me stop listening to it: "We Are Finally Cowboys." So why is it such a standout?
And then this is the other reason Talking Time is the best gol-durn forum ever. I could explain the meaning behind this picture, but why not just experience it for yourself? Go and be edified. Enriched. Enlightened.
Anyway, Prince of Persia's bland mimicry of Ico really drove home just how recursive game design can be. I mean, look: when Jordan Mechner first created the original Prince of Persia nearly 20 years ago, it was fresh and new. It built on his previous game Karateka somewhat, sure, but it transplanted the controls and combat of the older title into a huge and challenging new framework, creating something unlike anyone had ever seen before. It was imitated by the likes of Flashback and Oddworld, but never quite matched. 
Shining Force II
Persona 3
But the feature I've been looking forward to most is the ability to stream videos from Netflix's "Watch It Now" selection. I've been using the service for at least a year and a half. Not because the selection is stellar -- it's really not. It will be a long time before the studios embrace digital distribution; consider what's on offer to be a tentative toe testing the waters. But I like the service anyway. The picture quality looks great piped into a TV set, and the impulsiveness of it all means I can be a bit more adventurous than I would be if I were waiting three business days for a disc to arrive. And, uh, I never get around to returning the discs. At least with late fees the trains ran on time. 
Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
Contra 4
Of the set, the disc that's most caught my attention is the first album, Trespass. Actually, Trespass is the band's second album, but their first wasn't included in the box for a number of reasons. Such as the fact that it's eternally bogged down by legal rights thanks to an overzealous, self-aggrandizing hack; also, the part about it not being very good. Trespass, on the other hand, is much better -- raw at times, naïve in places, but ultimately a pretty impressive piece of work for a bunch of stuffy, upper-class British college kids.
Final Fantasy V
Sonic the Hedgehog CD
I've been replaying Dragon Quest IV over the past week, since I didn't really get to enjoy it when I reviewed it. I never even touched the bonus chapter, and I missed out on lots of interesting alternate strategies since I didn't know about a lot of the optional or non-obvious weapons in the game. I missed Meena's tarot cards, Alena's double-attack weapon, all kinds of stuff. This time around has been much more enjoyable.
So, apparently, I now own Guitar Hero World Tour. Well, not own so much as have it in my room. My roommate got back from Las Vegas with it, and whatever your thoughts on the Activision/Harmonix issue, you'd have to admit there are worse things to come back with after being in Vegas.
Wario Land 3
Valkyrie Profile
