Koji Igarashi just painted my HD screen with pixels

30 July 10 | 20:56 | Posted by:

And I think I like it!

I don't like the fact that I have to get this reviewed by Monday, though. I was kind of wanting to finish the first draft of the magazine this weekend, but it looks like this is another setback, eh. So much for being ahead of the curve.

category: games | forums | 23 comments | §

If this doesn't come to America, I will break someone's face

29 July 10 | 10:21 | Posted by:

With every new bit of information that slips out about Solatorobo, I find myself more and more annoyed that no U.S. release has been announced yet. The box art, excerpted above, was the final straw for me. They got Nobuteru Yuuki to do the art, which means this is definitively a sequel (or at least successor) to long-forgotten PlayStation gem Tail Concerto. Tail Concerto, of course, was an Atlus-published game that was pretty much the closest anyone ever came to capturing the essence of Mega Man Legends (and to an even bigger degree, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne).

By the Transitive Property of Totally Sweet Niche Games, this means Solatorobo is the closest we're going to see to a new Legends game until Keiji Inafune commits to actually making the real thing rather than offering up empty promises and insincere platitudes. Obviously, this means it needs to come to America. Post-haste.

So, I'm thinking about taking out a business loan to license and localize and publish this game in the U.S. A couple thousand dollars should do the trick, right?

category: games | forums | 32 comments | §

GSQ4: Riddickulous

26 July 10 | 10:16 | Posted by:

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from License Butchery
So here's an interesting discovery: When you have a render of virtual Vin Diesel about to cut someone with a shiv and you shrink it down really small, it suddenly looks like virtual Vin Diesel is threatening to pick his victim's nose. I'm really very sorry about that, because this is a very good article about an Xbox cult favorite and deserves better than that.

category: games, gamespite | forums | six comments | §

One milestone down

24 July 10 | 15:37 | Posted by:

As of a short while ago, I now have all text for GameSpite Quarterly 5 placed on-page, and 90% laid out. Once I tidy things up, it's really just a matter of placing images (which, it has to be said, is way more time-consuming than it has any right to be). This issue will be the single longest Quarterly ever, the full 440 pages Blurb allows. That's a lot! Maybe too many, actually, since it's going to make the paperback version quite a bit more expensive than I ever intended -- a $20 book really blows my intended scheme of making these things available for $12-14. Granted, this issue is more than twice as thick as I ever expected a quarterly publication to be, but that's NES fandom for ya.

So, I put the question to you: Should I publish the paperback edition with the full contents of the hardcover and hope people don't flinch at the price, or do I trim everything that isn't a full article and knock five bucks off the price? Publishing two separate editions of the paperback version (one complete, one not) isn't a viable compromise; I learned from issue three that no one wants a so-called budget edition. Well, that's not quite true; one person bought the budget edition. Hi there, whoever you were. Thanks for making sure the time I took to trim down that edition to budget size wasn't a complete waste.

Big and pricey, or slim and affordable? This is the question I need answered. And now I commence adding images, which will probably wrap next weekend. I could probably get it done tomorrow, but I signed up for a press screening of Scott Pilgrim and will apparently be traveling to L.A. tomorrow. That's rad and all, but does somewhat complicate the magazine production process. This thing is slated for September 1 publication, though, so even with my last-minute travel plans we're still waaaay ahead of schedule. For once. It's kind of weird, but in a sexy way.

category: blog | forums | 25 comments | §

GSQ4: High colonists

23 July 10 | 08:17 | Posted by:

Age of Empires III
Articles like this make me long to try the game in question, because Mr. Littleton makes Age of Empires sound so engrossing and compelling! The problem is that I hate managing the different assets and resources you juggle in strategy sims like this. I don't even like having people report to me at work; being responsible for an entire civilization would have me sobbing in a corner. Such a pity.

category: games, gamespite | forums | five comments | §

Yiazmat triumphant

22 July 10 | 10:17 | Posted by:

You know me. I love RPGs. I love portable games. I love classic games. And man, do I love me some Yasumi Matsuno. So I suppose I'm just being predictable when I say that I am incredibly excited for the comprehensive remake of Tactics Ogre that's just been announced for PSP. Starring none other than Yasumi Matsuno and the usual accomplices (Yoshida, Minagawa, Sakimoto, Iwata, etc. etc.)! It's very slightly less awesome than if they were making a new game altogether -- say, another title in the Vagrant Story mold -- but the prospect of a portable, fully 3D, and above all properly balanced rendition of Tactics Ogre is hardly anything to sneeze at. Maybe I'll finally be able to see the outcome of the story rather than getting stuck in those multi-battle missions where your party's health isn't restored between fights! And by "outcome" I mean "outcomes." I'm gonna play this sucker through every story iteration, you'd better believe it.

category: games | forums | 17 comments | §

No dragon your heels

20 July 10 | 20:39 | Posted by:

Last week, a friend posed a difficult question to me: What exactly is it that makes Dragon Quest (and specifically DQIX) different from Final Fantasy? It kind of threw me for a loop, and I spent some time thinking about it before responding. I don't remember my exact answer, but it was probably overthought and needlessly convoluted and generally not much help. Something about the difference between a Hollywood action "blockbuster" versus a heartfelt Pixar film. Whatever.



Tonight, playing back through the opening chapters of the game (yes, a third time through the game, shut up) I realized the real difference is perfectly summed up within the first two hours of DQIX. The premise of the game, as you really should know by now, is that the player controls a fallen angel -- Celestrian, I mean -- whose goal is to find a way back to the Heaven-esque Observatory and help reunite his/her people with the estranged Almighty. I could easily see this essential premise being translated into a Final Fantasy game (albeit with some tweaks to give the Celstrians strappy vinyl outfits and heavily teased hair, and a sci-fi facelift for the Observatory), but its presentation would be totally different.

I'm not talking about the cinematic aspect of it, which of course would be radically different in a Final Fantasy game. I'm talking about the structure of the story. In a Final Fantasy game -- or, really, any RPG -- the player's basic nature would be the game's big twist. Your hero would be an amnesiac, gifted with special powers but not quite fully empowered the way a proper Celestrian would be, and it would all be a big mystery to be revealed in a heart-stopping plot event 30 hours later. There would be much angst, maybe a tantrum or crisis of faith that would remove the hero from the party, temporarily, until the power of friendship could return his moral compass to its proper orientation.

DQIX is refreshing in its directness. It skips all of that angst and contrived mystery by kicking off the entire quest with tour through a day in the hero's life. You see the accident that robs him of his powers and his unfortunate fall from the Observatory, and there's no hand-wringing about it. The story picks up shortly thereafter and you simply get about the business of trying to return to the heavens, which you accomplish by doing nice things for people and generally making the world a better place. It's earnest, and it's pleasantly free of pretense. The story has its twists, but the straightforward presentation of the tale gives real purpose to the hero's actions -- a reason to do good deeds -- and makes the ultimate resolution to the story (which involves the hero's nature) much more potent.

Hmm, come to think of it, this answer isn't much better. Dragon Quest: It's ineffably good! Yeah.

category: games | forums | 39 comments | §

Eyes on the 'prise

19 July 10 | 21:33 | Posted by:

I have a tendency to get fixated on my projects du jour, sometimes focusing on them to the exclusion of just about everything else, but the next book is eating my brain with unusual vigor. I did practically nothing all weekend but assemble layouts and edit text and fix up graphics, and the more I get laid out the happier I am with the results. Seriously, this book is going to be great. I should do this stuff for a living, or something.

Anyway, the previous layout wasn't indicative of an issue consisting of nothing but tiny blurbs of text; the bulk of the book is likely to be normal articles. Like the one below:



The goal here is to delve into important NES-related topics while touching briefly on as many other titles and items as possible. I don't know if this will be the greatest book ever made about the NES -- presumably it won't be -- but it will still be pretty danged good. But I will shut up about it now, because talk is cheap and does you no good whatsoever.

category: gamespite | forums | 18 comments | §

Ouch

17 July 10 | 23:28 | Posted by:

Today I worked on GSQ5 so much -- about 90 pages worth -- that I may have ruined my right hand. The nerve is burning and pinching. The only other time I've ever felt this kind of pain was when I was a kid and played too much Rad Racer. Weirdly, I laid out a Rad Racer page today. I'm gonna go ahead and leap to the logical conclusion here: Rad Racer is cursed. And I think maybe Nasir hates me.

category: blog | forums | ten comments | §

A stupid post draws near!

16 July 10 | 22:01 | Posted by:

A little while ago, I saw a woman on TV whose name was Mera. I was really disappointed when she didn't begin blasting fire at everyone in sight.

OK, something less stupid. Um, let's see.... oh yes.



Work is apace on Issue 5 layouts! I'm aiming to max this one out. Blurb allows up to 420 pages in a book, and the NES can certainly justify that much content.

And I've ditched the traditional GameSpite typeface. It's been a while coming. I've never liked it as much ever since Emigre redesigned the original version (Emigre Eight) into Lo-Res 12, anyway.

category: games | forums | six comments | §

How to spot an Etrian Odyssey fan

15 July 10 | 22:05 | Posted by:

It's actually pretty easy. Just look at the bottom screen of their DS:



If the only scratches you can see on the screen are arranged in the form of a perfect grid that precisely overlaps Etrian Odyssey's virtual graph paper, you can be pretty sure you're dealing with a fan.

category: games | forums | 17 comments | §

GSQ4: Ends in space

14 July 10 | 22:09 | Posted by:

1999: The End of Space Combat Simulators
You know what's awesome, guys? I posted another piece of GameSpite Quarterly 4, that's what. Also, the article itself is pretty awesome. You should read it. It's about outer space! Also, if you're a new visitor here from Penny Arcade or some such, please be aware that you can acquire many more excellent articles like this in print form. Yeah, OK, I'm done shilling now.

category: games, gamespite | forums | five comments | §

By request: Drama

13 July 10 | 20:31 | Posted by:

Jess recently bugged me to write more music reviews, like I used to do, uh, a bazillion years ago or so. This makes him one of several people who had posed a similar demand of late. But he made it easy on me by requesting a very specific write-up: Drama by Yes. So here you go, Jess. This one's for you. Now gimme a dollar.

Yes | Drama
1980 | Atlantic Records

Drama might just be the most under-appreciated record Yes ever recorded. You can blame the circumstances surrounding its birth for much of that disdain: It's the single Yes album to completely lack any input whatsoever from the series' iconic, lilting, man-faerie of a vocalist, Jon Anderson. After the absolute mess of a record that was 1978's Tormato, Anderson wisely bailed from the band to work on solo projects and a string of poppy, electronic works with Vangelis, of all people. This was a wise decision, because it resulted in "The Friends of Mr. Cairo," which is great.

But it kind of left his band in the muck; after more than a decade with a rock-steady front man who helped keep an even keel and a consistent sound through no end of lineup changes, the band was suddenly headless. To make things even worse, keyboard god Rick Wakeman chose that same juncture to leave the band (again) and wander off to make New Agey concept albums about King Arthur. And worst of all, the band couldn't have chosen two more unlikely replacements for Anderson and Wakeman than Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes. They were The Buggles. They were known for short, sparse, post-punk tunes like "Video Killed the Radio Star," the diametric opposite of everything Yes stood for.

And yet, somehow, Horn and Downes helped put together an incredibly strong and decidedly Yes-like work in Drama. Their catchy pop sensibilities mitigated the indulgences of guitarist Steve Howe and bassist Chris Squire, and the two very different schools of composition met smartly in the middle. Drama featured the long-form composition and instrumental virtuosity fans demanded, but with a cleaner, more powerful sound than ever before. The opening track, "Machine Messiah," embodies the spirit of the entire album: It begins by fading up into a stomping heavy metal wall of guitar riffs, which iterate a few times through before giving way to a light-hearted acoustic passage, accompanied by Horn doing his best Anderson-esque castrato. Over the track's ten-minute running time, it alternates between these two extremes, sometimes aggressive, sometimes uplifting, constantly changing tempos and keys and sound without ever feeling disjointed.

"Machine Messiah" is then followed by "White Car," an odd 81-second track that sounds for all the world like it's going to be an epic, orchestrated, 15-minute masterpiece along the lines of 1977's "Awaken," only to end abruptly (yet gently!) after the first verse. The two tracks are quite a contrast, but they share one quality in common: Neither is quite what it initially seems to be. Yet both sound, unabashedly, like Yes.

The album's best-known tracks are the pair of six-minute rockers that end each side of the record: "Does It Really Happen" and "Tempus Fugit." These tunes are the album's centerpieces for a few reasons. They feature a heavy emphasis on the rhythm line laid down by Squire's floor-shaking bass; they both have similar straightforward tempos complemented by dense instrumentation; and they both serve as accessible anchors to cleanse the palate after the topsy-turvy compositions of Drama's other four tracks. They also unknowingly predict the band's sweeping New Wave-inspired reinvention that would come three years later in 90125... yet unlike the sound that Trevor Rabin would bring, they feel like natural evolutions of the band's legacy as well.

Of course, all of these things -- most of all the absence of Anderson -- have led many Yes fans to dismiss Drama as an ill-considered cash-in on the band's name. But that's giving short shrift to six excellent and varied songs, not to mention one of the most cohesive and structured records the band ever assembled. For whatever reason (like the Anderson fan blowback), this incarnation of the band only lasted for a single album and the subsequent tour, and Yes has never officially released any live recordings of Horn's take on Anderson's oeuvre -- a pity, because the thick, powerful audio of the album suggests that this might well have been the single most impressive-sounding live incarnation of the band. I mean, heck, this may be the single album where drummer Alan White actually seems to belong. Usually his direct style seems at odds with Howe's virtuosic guitars, but the bright compositions and tidy mastering and engineering present in Drama -- an artifact of that fleeting time in music history where analog technology was at its pinnacle and digital recording was still a slightly distant dream -- help unify their work, with Squire's amazing bass providing the glue and Downes seemingly content to use his keyboards largely for texture.

It's a great album: Accessible but not overtly radio-friendly. Too bad most of the band's fans seem to hate the thing. But hell, I'll be the first to admit that Yes fans are mostly a bunch of stuck-up prigs with questionable taste in music.

category: media | forums | 20 comments | §

This terrified me

12 July 10 | 08:18 | Posted by:

You're minding your own business, playing a preview build of an upcoming game -- in this case, Etrian Odyssey III -- when suddenly out of the blue, BAM!



Claw Shrimp!

And this is only the second floor of the labyrinth. I shudder to imagine what lay further below.

category: games | forums | thirteen comments | §

Inchoate TI/99-4A nostalgic: Tunnels of Doom

11 July 10 | 08:54 | Posted by:

So hey kids, you're running out to buy a copy of Dragon Quest IX today, right? You'd danged well better be, because it's the single best original RPG ever made for the DS, slightly edging out Etrian Odyssey and The World Ends With You -- although I will admit that my appreciation for DQIX stems from the same love for free-form exploration and skill-building (in which story is largely incidental) that drives my Etrian fandom. Those who are into the whole RPG thing for a dramatic Final Fantasy-style epic tale should be warned that DQIX may leave them cold.

For my money, though, DQIX gets down more to the fundamentals of what RPGs are really about than the vast majority of efforts flowing from Japan these days. And from the west, now that I think about it. Which makes me frustrated, once again, that I pretty much missed out on all RPGs prior to Nintendo's release of the original Dragon Warrior in 1989... through no fault or disinterest of my own.

My first real introduction to RPGs, so far as I can recall, came one night when I was about 7 and my family went to the next town over to have dinner with some friends of my parents. Their oldest son (who was maybe five years older than me) was sitting at his family's TI/99-4A, moving slowly through a 3D maze and occasionally switching over to fight sketchily rendered monsters in a top-down view. It looked kind of amazing -- much slower than the arcade games I was used to, but also richer in content. I watched for a few minutes before he had to shut down for supper.

I never did see that game again. Despite the proliferation of 99-4As in the Lubbock school system, that early '80s Dungeons & Dragons panic that people joke about was alive and well in West Texas; on more than one occasion my church youth group was dragged next door to the auditorium at the local Christian college to hear a police detective lecture about the evils of D&D. It was hard enough to convince teachers that we totally needed games for the classroom's TI, but a game clearly based on Satan's own tabletop game? Fuhgeddaboutit. And the only computer my family had prior to around 1992 or so was a Coleco ADAM, which was sadly RPG-deficient. So I had to make do with Dragon Warrior. Ah, but what might have been.

Eventually I deduced that RPG I saw so fleetingly was Tunnels of Doom, another bit of techno-wizardry on the 99-4A: It somehow managed to create faux 3D Wizardry-style corridors on the system's character-based display, which is sort of like serving up a Benihana feast using only a toaster. I don't think I'd really have the stomach to play the original game these days, though, but I don't have to: Some kind soul has been gracious enough to create a Java-based remake of Tunnels of Doom. Maybe this would be the perfect time to go back to the beginning and discover the RPG experience I might have enjoyed under different circumstances.

Just as soon as I complete all the post-game content from DQIX. And play through Etrian Odyssey III. And finally play Persona 3. And... hmmm. Come to think of it, maybe it's best to leave that alternate timeline in a Schrödinger-approved quantum state.

EPILOGUE: Apparently that D&D-fearing detective ended up becoming mayor pro tem a few years ago. In someone's mind, I'm sure that means the good guys won.

category: games | forums | twelve comments | §

On to the next

09 July 10 | 17:32 | Posted by:

My busy review marathon is finally over, and with the advent of my Dragon Quest IX review I'm done with the game at last. Well, "done." There's still a ton of post-story content to tackle. And I'm dying to take the game to PAX, which I assume will be downright carcinogenic for all the wireless tag mode data being beamed around. I have to take a break from the game for the time being, though, because my 75 hours of progress are locked up on a review ROM. Nintendo promises they'll be able to transfer all of that onto a real cart, which is a Christmas miracle to be sure, but it's probably going to take a while.

But that's OK, because this means I can move onto my latest project:



Unfortunately, now that I've fulfilled my primary Etrian Odyssey III goal of creating a red-haired, pig-tailed, female Monk named Ranma, I'm kind of at a loss for what to do next.

category: games | forums | ten comments | §

Perfect DVD of snipe

07 July 10 | 21:15 | Posted by:

Guys, I'm actually buying an anime DVD this month. I don't remember the last time that happened! I guess it was when I bought Welcome to the NHK and ended up being so annoyed by its awfulness that I haven't seen anime since. Three years, I believe. That is quite a while. But someone recently messaged me on Twitter to inform me that this guy is coming to DVD in a couple of weeks:


Apparently the episodes are patterned closely after the manga, and have no terribly rendered CG helicopters. So that's good. Of course, the real cherry (Grace) on this sundae of snipe is that a season of anime is 26 episodes long, so the series is being released in two sets of... 13 episodes. Of course.

I'm probably setting myself up for disappointment here, but I guess three years is about long enough for the bitter taste of anime's inevitable wretchedness to fade away.

category: manga | forums | 20 comments | §

Dragon Quest progress update

06 July 10 | 20:38 | Posted by:

I've somehow inadvertently created in Dragon Quest IX the closest thing possible to a Final Fantasy-style black mage. I think that means I won?

category: games | forums | 22 comments | §

GSQ4: Psychonauts

05 July 10 | 20:11 | Posted by:

Psychonauts: Mind Games
Rejoice, tiny friends, for today I have posted another snippet of GameSpite Quarterly 4. Today's excerpt concerns a game you have perhaps heard of -- Psychonauts -- though given its reportedly dire retail performance, perhaps you have not played it. To hear this article tell it, though, it seems that you didn't miss out on too terribly much. And so plays the sad trombone.

category: games, gamespite | forums | 18 comments | §

TI reminiscence for America's birthday

04 July 10 | 23:42 | Posted by:

It being July 4 today, and that being Independence Day, I thought I would look back into the nation's history to explore an old TI-99/4A favorite: Chisholm Trail. I remember playing it and enjoying it back in elementary school, though perhaps not as much as Parsec. In truth, I played and liked it nowhere near as much as Parsec; when I sat down to research the game I discovered I had a wildly incorrect image of it in my head. I was actually thinking of Tombstone City, a two-player cowboy shootout duel. Chisholm Trail, on the other hand, is a deeply bizarre shooter which casts players as a head of cattle -- literally, you play as a cow head -- cruising around a battlefield firing bullets at abstract-looking enemies.

Looking at videos of the game in action, though, I do remember Chisholm Trail. Mainly I remember being deeply confused by it. I never really understood the point, or why I was a bullet-slinging cow head, or what the weird enemies I was fighting were. A little research online failed to reveal the truth behind any of these mysteries to me. I was on the verge of surrender when I stumbled across the box art, which weirdly enough offered the only concrete explanation of the game I've ever seen:



I'm not sure I understand how driving cattle along the Chisholm Trail translates into an abstract, non-linear maze shooter. But at least the whole cow skull thing makes a little sense now. Another mystery of my childhood has been solved... even if I didn't actually remember the mystery in question until about an hour ago.

category: games | forums | eight comments | §

It really is Talking Time

03 July 10 | 19:13 | Posted by:

I do believe that my favorite thing about the beginning of a new month has steadily taken form over the past year: To with, the launch of a new series of projects in Talking Time's Let's Play forum that each turn of the calendar page brings with it. Although TT's completion rate isn't quite 100%, I think the crew here has a much better ratio of finished Let's Play threads than most similar venues. That is because Talking Time is quality people.

This month's new collection of entries is particularly significant, because it brings with it Nich's already incredibly promising Let's Play of Clash at Demonhead, which already has revealed many of the most important long-running insider references 'round these here parts. Also on tap is a roundtable presentation of Mega Man 2, and newcomerish Umbaglo delving into Konami's absolutely fascinating N64 brawler RPG Hybrid Heaven, which is one of those games I always liked in principle but found entirely too opaque to properly enjoy. So this should be a nice way to experience it.

As ever, I strongly encourage the clickage of the links above, because entertainment is guaranteed.

In other news, between marathon review sessions of Crackdown 2 (which I finally finished today) I've been hanging out with my brother, who is visiting San Francisco for a few days. This is the first time we've ever really had a chance to spend time together as adults, what with him having been flying with the Navy for the past decade or so, and it's been nice to really get to know one another.

Much of this has simply been him regaling me with hilarious stories from his time in the service. Take, for instance, the story of one of his former squad mates from his Pacific tour of duty, a man my brother describes as "the African-American Yogi Berra of naval aviation" for the guy's tendency to speak wisdom through a haze of malapropism. "When I hear anyone mention dim sum, all I can think about is my old squadmate," he tells me. "The first time he ate dim sum, he said, 'A black man must have named this.' I was like, 'What?' And he nodded and said, 'Yeah, some brother must have eaten this and said, Man, dim sum nasty eats.'" As someone who doesn't much care for dim sum, I find that this tale resonates powerfully within my soul.

Anyway, the main thing I've taken away from my brother's stories is that people in the military make for much more colorful anecdotes than people who write about videogames for a living. We're all a bunch of boring ol' stiffs.... the '90s staff of GameFan very obviously excepted, of course.

category: blog | forums | nine comments | §