messages into the ether

durrrrr

2010-01-05T15:55:36Z

There will come a time in every person's life when they will not be paying sufficient attention in a cafe and put sugar on their chips instead of salt.

Mine was today.

again

2009-12-22T01:52:51Z

You know it must be cold when it's even snowing here but that's not because my parents live someplace warm. The family home is in a bay town with steep sides where the salty air dissolves snow fast. This is the most snow I've seen from a place that gave me about ten days worth of it in my whole childhood.

Now that I'm settled down I can take a more detailed look at that last video and show my gamer nerd credentials by recognising all but three characters.

Demonstration: ???
First Montage: Sakura Kasugano (Street Fighter), Bubblun (Bubble Bobble), Sub-Zero (Mortal Kombat), Ark (Terranigma), Kid (Chrono Cross), John Talbain (Darkstalkers), ??? (probably a Tales character, I think I recognise the style), Squall Leonhart (Final Fantasy VIII) , Alucard (Castlevania), Leo (Red Earth), The Prince of All Cosmos (Katamari Damacy)
Second Montage: Sparkster (Rocket Knight Adventures), Red Arremer (Ghosts 'n Goblins + various spinoffs), Alundra (Alundra), Fox McCloud (Brawl ver.), Guybrush Threepwood (Monkey Island), Falco Lombardi (Brawl ver.)
Left Column: Bomberman (Bomberman), Issac (Golden Sun), John Talbain, Princess Peach (Mario), ???, Sparkster, Alucard, King Dedede (Kirby), Kid, Sakura
Right Column: ???, Falco, Bubblun, Rinpoo Chuan/Katt (Breath of Fire 2), Fox, Mars People (Metal Slug), Phoenix Wright (Phoenix Wright), Cinder (Killer Instinct), Red Arremer, Magus (Chrono Trigger)
Stinger: a worm (Worms)

Seeing Ark was my particular shriek-like-a-girl moment since Terranigma is one of my favourite games of all time and I'm used to other people not even knowing it exists.

Alundra was a really blatant Zelda clone for the PS1 that some gets a lot of praise from some people. I played it a long time ago but never finished it. I want to go back and try it again sometime.

The chance of Phoenix's attack not being him shouting OBJECTION at the enemy is so low numbers do not exist to represent it.

That Katamari is one big crossover by itself. It has (what I can make out at this resolution);
a Koopa Troopa, ? Block and Warp Pipe (Mario)
Epona, Triforce and Majora's Mask (Zelda)
Screw Attack and a Metroid (Metroid)
Warp Star (Kirby)
a Pokéball (Pokémon)
a Barrel and Enguarde the Swordfish (Donkey Kong Country)
Master Hand (Smash Brothers)
E-Tanks (Mega Man and Mega Man X versions)
a Moogle and a Cactuar (Final Fantasy)
the Gate Key [possibly] and a Nu (Chrono Trigger)
a Rabite (Mana series)
the Zohar (Xenogears/saga)
a Fairy (Breath of Fire III and onwards)
a Prinny (Disgaea)
Xandra (Legend of Valkyrie)
Mieu (a bootleg Klonoa that was the mascot of a recent Tales game)
a long yellow rectangle with black stripes
a Maneki-Neko
a golden jigsaw piece
a dragon
an old man in a black robe

in the history of win

2009-12-18T11:49:59Z

I really should be packing this computer away since I have to leave in an hour or so but I need to make sure everyone else can see this and it's not just some incredibly awesome hallucination I'm having.

The answer to the previous post was....

2009-12-10T23:40:11Z

Metroid Prime 3. Did you guess right?

I decided to wrap up some unfinished games before I head off next week to spend Christmas with the family, including the last part of the Metroid Prime Trilogy. I put off playing Corruption for a long time because I remember hearing bad things about it but I can't actually remember what those criticisms were now. They certainly weren't the things I would complain about, like the ghastly new Scan Visor design, the save points being spaced far apart, the significant load times on the doors and how Samus talking to NPCs feels very wrong to me. Not in a purist "in a True Metroid Game™ Samus should never speak or interact with anything in a way that's not shooting or collecting it" way, more how I've imagined her being such a legendary figure in her universe (there's even a log in Prime 2 from a guy who claims she's just a myth) that having her walking around in public and getting dismissive reactions like "I'm busy" when you talk to random people deflates some of the status I imagined she had.

Even though it was made between Zero Mission and Brawl I'm happy to see Prime 3 doesn't push the "hey guys did you know SAMUS IS A CHICK and that means she HAS BOOBS" angle as hard as those two. The Zero Suit is only briefly seen at the beginning and she only removes her helmet once or twice after that. But someone was apparently afraid this might undo the damage done to the series by Zero Slut Samus so other ways were found to keep the standards down, like giving her long thick eyelashes that are perpetually reflected in the Scan Visor or making her moan orgasmically every single time she takes damage.

Now that I've done all three Prime games in three months I'd rank them 1>3>2 overall. The original brought the elements of the old games to 3D so well that there was nowhere for the sequels to go but into new territory. Prime 2 was practically the same game except with a new setting/story completely unconnected to the rest of the series and wonky boss difficulty. It's strange how some of the bosses I remembered being hard on the Gamecube version were much easier in Trilogy (Spider Guardian, Quadraxis) while others suddenly felt a lot harder (Emperor Ing). Prime 3 reconnected with the mythology and does all sorts of clever little things with the motion sensors to keep exploration varied, although using the grapple on bosses mid-fight is still an acquired taste. Even though Prime 3 has the worst individual parts of the trilogy (the very linear opening hour and Skytown) the rest of it more than compensates (the Space Pirate homeworld is every bit as murky and depraved as a fan could hope for).

All three games are still wonderful but I'm happy for the Prime series to end here since the design set down by the first game seems to have been fully explored now. Roll on Other M.

NOW PLAYING

2009-12-07T20:00:49Z

twenty numbers

2009-11-19T23:07:11Z

That's the longest I've gone without updating. I think we can say I'm past the feeling of being obliged to post regularly.

I had something else I wanted to post about but I ended up finishing a meme that's been sitting partially-completed on my computer for over a month instead. Post saved images that are related to twenty themes. I spent far more time on this than I know I should have but I wanted to make sure all the pictures were good.

1) a picture with flowers.

2) a picture in which the color blue dominates.

3) a picture with smiling faces.

4) a "we're a team!" picture.

5) A picture with seven or more colors.

6) an angsty picture.

7) a picture you think of when you hear the word "sweet".

8) a "best friends" picture.

9) a picture that will make us go "oh my!".

10) an "awwwh" picture.

11) a rainy day picture.

12) A "cling!" picture.

13) a group picture.

14) a cuddly picture.

15) an action picture.

16) a kissing picture.

17) a picture you think of when you hear the word "ouch!".

18) a picture with someone sleeping in it.

19) a picture that will make us laugh.

20) commenter's choice.

un-unlimited

2009-10-14T21:05:52Z

I found out yesterday that my YouTube account has a limit of 650 Favorites. I didn't expect this to happen since I'd seen other accounts go over that number already but I searched around and found posts about other users hitting this limit going back months so the rule seems to have been inconsistent.

Unlike what I'm sure other people are doing I can't be bothered getting worked up over this. 650 is a lot of videos which I justify by saying I was very generous with the Favorite button. I was just curious to see how large I could make my list and I was able to cull about 70 filler videos straight away to make some room. Now that I know there's a potential limit on the list I just have to be a bit more discerning about what I put on it.

If the limit still exists in the future there's every chance I'll hit it again but I'll worry about that closer to the time.

YES

2009-10-06T00:09:50Z

YES

Klono-argh

2009-09-25T00:06:00Z

I know I should be grateful for the Klonoa Wiimake existing at all. The series hadn't had a game for five years and not many mascot-type games get to come back from that sort of unofficial retirement. And on paper the Wiimake is the definitive version of the game; it looks much better, has more extra content and is much more affordable and accessible (especially for the US, where the first game still seems to be held as a collectible: Amazon.co.uk sells the original Klonoa in the same price range as the Wiimake, prices for the same game on Amazon.com start around $50 and rise).

But the most important thing about the first game - the story - is something that seemed like it wasn't given much attention in the remake. The story was the reason people became fans of the game and the series more than any other element and seeing it so undervalued in the remake makes it kind of a hollow victory.

First, the three scenes that were FMV before are now done in-engine and don't look nearly as good. Take a moment to compare the openings and see for yourself where the newer game has less detail and animation (the effect on the other two scenes is even more drastic, but I can't in good conscience spoil those for people who haven't done the game). Beyond that the new cutscenes aren't a shadow of their former selves. PS1 Klonoa tied everything together tightly: the text display was synched to the voices, right down to the syllable, and characters animated as they talked. In the remake the text display is much slower than the spoken dialogue, meaning you can see characters reacting to what other characters say long before you can read it and the character models get stuck in awkward poses for a long time while the text crawls it's way out. Also while the new game uses the exact same BGM as the original it has new, usually longer, 3D cutscenes. This means the cutscenes where events were synched to the music are lost. In the Phantomile dub the characters will often have short speaking lines (sometimes even just one word) that 'translates' into long dialogue, which obviously feels wrong. And this last one might just be me but I don't like the new text translation as much as the old one. It has awkward lines (see the chapter titled "A Lull in the Wind" become the over-literal "When the Wind Dies Down") and text where silence worked before. That's a lot of little things that make the new story worse than when it was told with blurry little sprites ten years ago.

And as many things as the remake added a bunch of other miscellaneous things I was used to were removed or got worse. The Forlock villagers no longer have the goofy greeting where they stick their tongues out which was the best thing about them. Ghadius lost some cool animations and some of the more memorable (for me anyway) voice samples from the original, like Seadoph's scream or Ghadius' eerie chanting, are changed for the worse. Basically things that nobody would notice unless they were an anal superfan of the first game like me.

There was talk about how if the Wiimake was a success it might sponsor another game or even a Klonoa 3 but apparently the game sold miserably so that's unlikely. I should just be happy that the game will bring the series to new people but I really feel sorry for them now because they won't be having the same experience that made so many people fans of the series in the first place. I'm aware what a fantarded thing this is to say but anyone with an interest in the game really owes it to themselves to play the original (or at least watch it on YouTube) and see the way the story was meant to be.

In that place between when you're asleep and awake

2009-09-13T23:39:41Z

No Klonoa. Yet.

I spent an afternoon going to every game shop in traveling distance and the only copy I found was preowned with an outrageous barely-less-than-new ripoff price that I refused to pay. On the upside my shopping around got me a good deal on the Wii itself and saved me £40. Since Plan A fell through I ordered a copy of Klonoa off Amazon, which is projected to arrive on my birthday and will make a nice little present if it does, and started Metroid Prime Trilogy while I wait. As much as I like Metroid I think it'll be best to stagger the three and do other games inbetween.

So what I learned that other people knew years ago?

Wii hardware/software
* This thing is really tiny. Cool and quiet too.
* Making Miis is a lot more fun than it should be. I've gone back to fiddle with mine a few times already and will probably do so again in the future. My current Mii captures my awkward vacant stare perfectly.

Metroid Prime (Wii)
* The motion controls make a huge difference. On the Gamecube using the lock-on was the only viable way to shoot things. Now with separate aiming and moving controls the fights are much more engaging. I seem to have some sharpshooting skills (I have a little metagame of how far away I can snipe the doors from when approaching them) but when I'm not aiming my hand tends to be unsteady and this makes the cursor wobble around the screen so Samus has spent a lot more time admiring the floors and ceilings of Tallon IV here than on the 'Cube. The new system for changing beams and visors is very awkward but other than that I can't see myself going back to the old controls.
* I remember thinking years ago how amazing this game looked. Not so much now. Now I can better appreciate the differences between what was cutting-edge 3D modeling in 2002 and now. It's not as drastic as the difference between PS1-era 3D and PS2-era 3D but it's there.
* I didn't notice this before, since it was less of an issue to me back then, but somehow the Space Pirates already know Samus is a woman in this game. I don't know how they could have learned that without knowing other things that would be much more relevant to them, like Samus having a vendetta against the Pirates or being connected to the Chozo. Having this information doesn't even change the way they interact with Samus so it feels pointless.

break damage limit

2009-09-09T20:17:46Z

Posted at 9:09 on 9/9/09. Beat that.

I was planning to go buy my Wii tomorrow but I had a surprise visit today from a man who inspected the boiler and told me I have a leak somewhere so now my boiler is shut off and I'm going to have to stay in tomorrow while more people come around and cut a hole in the ceiling to replace a loose pipe. I'll make the trip on Friday, hopefully. Klonoa still has top priority because I like the irony of my first next-gen game being a remake of something I owned ten years ago but Metroid Prime Trilogy is out too and I've really wanted to replay the Primes or a while now. The machine, incidentally, is going to be my birthday present from my parents this year. Instead of them trying to send me one we agreed that I would just buy one locally and they would pay it off.

Normally I don't get things unless I consider them absolute necessities and being able to buy things over the internet is something that, for a few reasons, very recently became a necessity. I had an eBay account years ago when I was more of a games collector but I haven't touched that for years. Last week I got an Amazon account and ordered a few things using that and so far I've liked it a lot more than eBay. I realise now I never liked the stresses of bidding and waiting and competing with other people to buy things on eBay. I can't see myself going back to that anytime soon.

My gift to the internet: Live House S.S.H translations

2009-08-25T22:27:47Z

I have a story to tell. Eons of internets ago I was linked to the site of a Japanese remixer called Saitama Saisyu Heiki. I put it in my bookmarks for later because of the site's unintuitive layout that makes you download the music before you can listen to it and because I was still on dial-up at the time anyway. It stayed buried there for the next few years until last week when, instead of doing things that needed to be done, I decided to spend an afternoon downloading what the site had to offer. And so I discovered what other people have known for years: his music rocks. Literally, as his focus is rocking out on a guitar. Also because his remixes are very, very good.

Since almost all of the tracks showed up in my music player with garbled names, and I don't like that, I started to rename them all correctly. And after that was done I realised these translations are something that could benefit others since many of these track names are untranslated or come from games only released in Japan. It could also help you find particular songs you want but I would really recommend downloading everything here because it's so good.

I don't have any knowledge of Japanese besides a few dozen terms I've picked up over the years. Most of this work comes from a shamefully comprehensive knowledge of video games and game BGM along with the help of auto-translators and one other source I found that translated the track names, which I shamelessly lifted from at points. Some liberties were taken to make the names more presentable and Japanese names were exchanged for English ones where appropriate. There are a few points I'm still unsure about and those are marked with footnotes. Any help I get with these, or any other title that could be translated better, would be appreciated.

The songs are all in the format of (game name) ~ (song name) because I think that's what this remixer prefers. That's how they appear on his one CD of remixes and the site lists game names first as well. This lists the songs as they appear, from the top of the MP3 page to the bottom. There are horizontal bars across the page every 8-9 songs, represented below by a dotted line. These should be a help in navigating the page. The most recent song is dated 2005 so I suspect he doesn't update these any more although if he does I'll gladly add the new entries at the top.

Original ~ Identity
Original ~ Wanders in the Wilderness -Respect to Metal Saga- 〜GFV-GT Ver.〜
Original ~ Wanders in the Wilderness -Respect to Metal Saga-
Original ~ Heavy New Year
Relatively Slow Live Radio 2004 - Winter ~ Ready To Radio (*1)
Relatively Slow Live Radio 2004 - Winter ~ Forever Tor-Ganey (*1)
Relatively Slow Live Radio 2004 - Summer ~ Radio Heads (*1)
Relatively Slow Live Radio 2004 - Summer ~ All Night Long (*1)
Unreal Tournament ~ Razorback/No.666-Mix
Super Robot Wars MX ~ The Watchdog of Hell
Original ~ Metaratta β (*2)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Original ~ Midnight Shooter
Brandish ~ Headless
Original ~ Theme of Mechazombie
Blast Wind ~ Ultimate Destroyer
Contra: Shattered Soldier ~ Hell Drive
Esper Dream ~ Main Theme
Final Fantasy 4 ~ Last Battle
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guilty Gear ~ Guilty Gear medley
Atlach=Nacha ~ Going On HM Ver.
Atlach=Nacha ~ Going On Piano Ver.
Gradius III ~ Try to Star
Original ~ Super Alloy Slaughter Robo - Mad General
Maimu ~ Labyrinth of Wandering Sheep
Masou Kishin: The Lord of Elemental ~ Flapper Girl
Soul & Sword ~ Curse of the Doll
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maimu ~ Wish
Megami Tensei II ~ Omega
Ys I ~ The Morning Glow
Original ~ Techno Boss
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals ~ Battle 3+2
Megami Tensei II ~ Explorer
Final Fantasy 4 ~ Battle 2
Ragnarok Online ~ TeMP it Up (*3)
Guilty Gear ~ Momentary Life
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contra: Shattered Soldier ~ Maximum Speed
Black/Matrix ~ Since 1983
Metal Max and Final Fantasy 6 ~ The Decisive Battle with the Wanted
Guilty Gear ~ Holy Orders (Be Just or Be Dead)
Broken Thunder ~ Fire-Leo-05P SYRINX
Guilty Gear X ~ Fuuga
Tales of Phantasia ~ Fighting of the Spirit
Super Robot Wars series ~ Transcending Time Ver2.00
Final Fantasy series ~ Last Battle Festival (*4)
Super Robot Wars Impact ~ Platinum Lucifer
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Metal Max 2 ~ Battle, live guitar
Final Fantasy VI ~ The Decisive Battle Ver2.01
Ys III ~ Ballacetine Castle
Dragon Slayer IV ~ Theme of Meia Worzen, live guitar
Metal Max ~ Bang Bang Tank & Battle with the Wanted, live guitar & bass
Super Mario Bros. ~ Ai, Luigi - The Main Theme (*5)
Ys IV ~ The Dawn of Ys
Segagaga ~ Steel Squad, live guitar Ver2.0
Thunder Force IV ~ Stand Up Against Myself
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thunder Force V ~ Legendary Wings
Super Robot Wars series ~ Cybuster, Masou Kishin Ver.
Castlevania series ~ Akumajo Dracula Travel Demon (Dracula medley) (*6)
F-Zero ~ Big Blue
Revelations: Persona ~ Satomi Tadashi Pharmacy Theme Song HM Ver.
Thunder Force III ~ Venus Fire
Hyper Duel ~ Black Rain Ver2.00
Atlach=Nacha ~ Going On AC Ver.
Metal Max series ~ Vs Boss Battle
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thunder Force IV ~ Metal Squad
Metal Max 2 ~ The Forgotten Man
Atlach=Nacha ~ Red Tint
Original ~ Steel World
Original ~ Trauma (*7)
Original ~ Another World
Original ~ Hey Hey Rock!
Original ~ Nightrain
Original ~ Song of Doraemon (*8)

*1 A Japanese radio show? I have no idea where to get info on something like that.

*2 Translated literally. 'Metaratta' might have a meaning I'm unaware of.

*3 Has a longer title but I'm not sure what the part in Japanese is. Auto-translators gave me something that looked like 'version suitable for ears'. A sarcastic comment on the quality of the original song?

*4 A medley of the final boss themes from Final Fantasies 5, 6, 7 and 9. Highly recommended.

*5 The character 哀 is a mystery. Auto-translators give me 'sorrow' or 'pity'. But it's not connected to the name after it so it's not "Luigi's sorrow/pity".

*6 The one giving me the most trouble. I decided to mix Castlevania and Akumajo Dracula because the series name appears three times. The part of the track name I'm unsure about came through the auto-translator as 'search traveling' so the name could be something like "Traveling in Search of Dracula's Castle". Travel Demon is the name this file came with and it's being used as a placeholder until I get a better title.

*7 Another title with a second part I couldn't identify. Based on translators it could be 'me and you' but I won't add it until I'm sure.

*8 I can't be entirely sure since it's not written in kana like I would expect it to be but searching for 銅鑼衛門 gives me some pictures of Doraemon.

the wheel of fate turns on

2009-08-15T22:59:39Z

I'm back from my break. Still getting caught up on things. Normal service will resume soon. Possibly more cat pictures.

Went to see Half-Blood Prince and enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. It's the most I've enjoyed a Harry Potter film since the first two, which is ironic because I remember not liking the Half-Blood Prince that much as a book. It feels like it was changed to work better as a film instead of just trying to film the book with scenes cut out. I'm sure lots of content was still left out but at least now the story flows better and doesn't feel as awkward. And it's much more colourful too - muted colour, but still more appealing than the depressingly dark look of the last two films.

I've realised I need to pay more attention to the gaming news so I'm going to try and visit Kotaku regularly. I'm not putting it in my feeds because having new posts to read every 20-30 minutes is quite oppressive. It's easier for me to just browse the front page and pick out headlines that interest me. Like this. I actually thought Blazblue was already out here but now I remember I saw it in a stop that sells imports. They usually keep imports on a separate rack but they might have been mixing PS3 imports with local stock.

I'm not going to try and draw any conclusions here. It sounds like the usual fluff you get from a spokesperson trying to assure you how great a game is going to be while they contractually aren't allowed to tell you anything concrete. This isn't the first time a European release has gotten extra content or been based on a later version of the game and there's supposed to be a new version of Blazblue in development right now but that hasn't even been officially announced yet. Unless it comes out very soon it's unlikely PAL version will be based on it. Failing that I can't see where else new content might come from. Part of me thinks 'new characters and moves' means EX modes. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen the truth bent like that. But if it does turn out to be a revision I'll be happy, I'd rather have that than a version I'll know is already outdated.

every blog needs cat pictures, after all

2009-07-28T23:49:27Z

I went out today because I needed to buy something and came back to find the cats in the most perfectly photogenic positions ever in the porch. I ran upstairs for a camera and quickly took amateurish pictures until one of them moved away.

Cats do not pose for cameras. Cats do not do anything they don't want to. I was very lucky to get these pictures.

On the left is Riley. He likes me a lot. He follows me around and purrs away like a little engine if I do so much as pick him up.

On the right is his sister Mist. She is beautifully smooth and soft to the touch. She's not as much of an attention-seeker as Riley but she's usually happier being handled.

Riley was more prone to his attention wandering. I tried to get them to look at me together.

I try to make it back to the family house when I can. They are two of the main reasons why.

meandering pace

2009-07-22T20:39:36Z

I passed through a games shop last week and saw boxed copies of Blazblue and the Klonoa Wiimake on sale for the first time. This is the world's way of telling me I can't put off buying modern systems any longer.

I have a habit of waiting a few years before buying new systems. Besides the obvious advantages of lower price and more games to choose from what I'm usually waiting for is a 'personal killer app', which is a game other people may or may not care about. In the past these have been; Secret of Mana for the SNES, Final Fantasy 7 for the PS1, being able to play Guilty Gear X in English on the PS2 (after I'd already done the whole thing in Japanese on the Dreamcast - yes I used to be that crazy over the series), Metroid Prime for the Gamecube, Panzer Dragoon Orta for the Xbox and now Klonoa for the Wii. Blazblue was my motive for getting a 360 even though the PS3 has it as well. The 360 was cheaper, had exclusives I wanted (GG2 Overture and Crackdown) and played most of the same games. I wasn't interested in getting a PS3 until recently when Ico 3: A Boy and his Giant Baby Gryphon finally made a very compelling reason to own one. I realise the choice isn't really that simple as all the current machines have online capabilities and downloadable content but I won't be able to get my head around that until I've actually used it so I'm just going to judge them the old-fashioned way, on the merits of their games.

My mother asked me three years ago if I wanted a Wii as a birthday present and I said no because I didn't see the need for one yet.
I told her more recently I'd take that offer now. Wii gets priority because of Klonoa, new NiGHTS, new Metroids and A Boy and His Blob, which recently made a big jump up my most-wanted list. See, a blob isn't quite as impressive as a giant baby gryphon, so the developers of the new ABaHB must have figured they needed to offer something major to compete with The Last Guardian. So they added a button for hugging the blob.

I'm going to use this button a lot

double your meme value

2009-07-11T00:33:46Z

Continuing the theme of 'so overdue it hurts' two memes. skuldnoshinpu and zarla respectively.

Comment to this entry and I'll pick three of your fandoms. You must then update your journal and answer the following questions:

01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?
02: Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?
04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?

Guilty Gear (I knew he'd pick this one, it's the fandom where we met)
01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?
I remember where I had my first look at Guilty Gear. It was in the cheats section in the back of a magazine shortly after the first Guilty Gear came out. It showed the profiles for the three unlockable characters (Testament, Justice and Baiken) as well as the methods for earning them so I became familiar with these three before the regular cast. I liked their design and what little of the story I gleaned so I decided to try the game. And when I did I was bowled over at first by how dynamic and responsive the game was, and then frustrated when the CPU characters beat me like a rug, then elated when everything fell into place and I understood how to work the game and I felt empowered by a fighting game for the first time in my life. But that's a story everyone who reads this blog will be bored of by now (or will be, if they're new).

02: Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
I'll always care about the series but it does very little new nowadays so keeping up with it shouldn't be very hard.

03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?
Guilty Gear X2 because I was really excited for it and bought it as soon as it came out, which is rare for me. It was where the games took a big jump in quality and also around when they peaked in general popularity. The series never made another dramatic advancement after that so everyone except the arcade/tournament regulars started to drift away.

04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
Absolutely. Guilty Gear had a great community on GameFAQs c.2002-2004. I was a regular in story/character power level discussions, and also contributed to the create-a-character threads. I made three characters and had ideas for three/four more which I never wrote up but were much, much better than the first three IMO. One of those was so out-of-setting he needed a backstory to explain his backstory and another was an Innocent Gear, which is the single most self-indulgent and Mary Sue-ish thing you can do with a Guilty Gear OC. I really hope nobody saved them.

05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?
I used to, but now I think it would be more worthwhile getting into Blazblue since it's picking up where Guilty Gear left off.

Metroidvanias
01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?
Super Metroid, and Symphony of the Night a few years later helped too.

02: Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
For as long as someone keeps making them.

03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?
It's really a hair's breadth between most of them, except the GBA games which are a little below the rest now. I just love everything this genre has to offer.

04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
I was a regular on the SotN board at GameFAQs eons ago (2000/2001) but I don't remember much about it.

05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?
The parts of it that are not SotN, yes.

Sonic
01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?
I got issue nine of Sonic the Comic as a birthday present from the boys next door. I haven't spoken to them in years because sometime after I left home my family and theirs fell out and don't interact any more. It's strange to think that cheap present got me into a fandom I don't think I would have otherwise gotten into. I was a Nintendo owner so I'm not sure I would have bought the comic on my own.

02: Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
In a way I already moved on and came back again. I read the comic for years before I had any of the games, then after the comic ended I continued with the games and forgot why I got into the series in the first place, then more recently I discovered the comics again.

03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?
I view StC in such a haze of nostalgia I don't think I could pick out a particular part.
But for games the answer is clear, Sonic Rush Adventure.

04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
I used to go to some Sonic boards very long ago but not any more. I rated other peoples fancharacters for a while and made one or two of my own and that's all I remember.

05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?
Game Sonic doesn't need any help here, it has a huge fandom.
I'd love it if more people got into StC but the fandom has practically zero growth because most of the fans are people who read the comic when it was still around and it ended almost a decade ago now.

and #2

1. Post a picture of your wallpaper.
2. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper.
3. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on

This is promotional art from the new mobile phone port of Secret of Mana. Someone made it into a desktop. I'm very nostalgic for this game and I liked the picture too. I only realised just now the artist drew in a piece of candy (the basic healing item in Secret of Mana) as a small detail at the bottom of the picture. I used this because my previous desktop had been in use for a while and I wanted a change, as amazing as it was:

This one needs no explanation.

legend of endless fantasy

2009-07-08T00:11:43Z

To celebrate my newly-earned unemployment I spent the whole weekend playing Final Fantasy IV Advance. The entire whole weekend. I started it on Friday and cleared the final dungeon this morning. It's been about ten years since I first played this game on the PS1 and just over five since I've touched any of the main Final Fantasies. It might be a little embarrassing to think of how addicted I got to such an archaic game with a plot that's as shallow as it is random and wildly erratic difficulty but I think, hidden inside for all those years, there is a part of me that still genuinely, unironically loves this genre.

I didn't actually mean to finish it when I did, that was kind of an accident. I was running low on healing in the last part of the final dungeon where the enemies just got ridiculous so I decided to run to the last save point ignoring treasure, because I had dealt with a lot of chest monsters up to that point, save and restore there and then backtrack for the treasure before fighting the final boss. Only there was no save point and I ran straight into the boss instead. There was no save point anywhere in the final dungeon, which was kind of a shock after years of expecting a save point before the final boss as a right but Final Fantasy IV comes from the tail-end of an era when the genre wasn't really known for user-friendliness (EDIT: there are two save points in the final dungeon, and I missed both of them because I was running straight ahead and not exploring the side paths. How ironic).

Other modern ideas from the series being added elsewhere probably didn't help my false sense of security. In FFIV Advance instead of being party-locked to Cecil/Rosa/Kain/Rydia/Edge at the end only Cecil is fixed and the others can be swapped out for any of the surviving PCs (Cid, Yang, Edward or the twins). I took this opportunity to switch out Kain for Yang when it turned out he was even faster than Edge and had a new Holy-element weapon that wrecked a lot of enemies in the last dungeon. The changeable party isn't quite as liberating as it sounds on paper though because it seems like I'll have to stick to the Cecil/fighter/fighter/W. Mage/B. Mage template to make a really effective team which makes Edward very awkward to use since he's a mage with no magic.

Meanwhile Card Sagas Wars released a new video and the project continues to be the purest form of gamer nerd porn in existence. There's a new Zelda stage on display along with the fancy flying tiles at the start and end of each round that all 2D fighters need to have and a marquee that pops up from the bottom announcing attack names which surely raises the potential for references even further. I like how they've managed to make CSW Link distinct from Smash Link. There's no two ways about how the bow/bombs/hookshot/spin should work but there's a few more unique attacks on top of those to make him stand out. One of his moves in particular (you'll know which one when you see it) is so brilliant Nintendo should be ashamed for not using it themselves, even though I'll admit it doesn't fit with the ZELDA IS SRS BSBS LET'S DEBATE THE TIMELINE AGAIN direction that's been forced on the series over the past few years. Cloud's unique ability is Real-Time Materia Change although I'm still not sure how it affects his moves.

On the other hand seeing CSW use a piece of music straight from an actual game suddenly makes me feel a lot less secure about it's existence. It feels like the sword of Damocles is hanging over a project that's unofficially used material from so many companies - although I'm mostly worried about Square-Enix here, since they have a record for doing asshole-ish things in this territory.

Encouraging Finish!

2009-07-01T13:33:23Z

BANG HAS FALCON PUNCH

AWESOME

E3 2009: pretend you saw this post three weeks ago, please?

2009-06-30T00:00:32Z

This is a new personal record for an overdue post but I already put too much effort into this to just dump it. This month was very distracting but in all honesty my laziness was still a bigger factor.

As a Metroid fan Metroid: Other M got a lot of my attention. It's an action-focused Metroid game by Team Ninja. This is an angle on the series I wouldn't mind seeing explored because of how powerful Samus is supposed to be canon-wise but the older Metroid games weren't designed to make combat dynamic or show off how she could actually fight. I've never played a Ninja Gaiden game but they have a good reputation for action (and an infamous one for difficulty, which I hope will be kept in check).
There's already been the complaints that it's not faithful to the series (the same complaint made about every sequel since Super Metroid) and wild conspiracy theories about Team Ninja turning Samus into a space slut, ignoring that a) Nintendo beat them to it and b) the Other M trailer features the least amount of cheesecake seen from the series in years. So overall I'm optimistic.

Speaking of Metroid Shadow Complex is quite open about it's inspirations.

Meanwhile Microsoft showed off their virtual boy Milo and I wondered what exactly this had to do with games. I'd think it was closer to the subject of artificial intelligence than gaming even if it's being done on a games machine. Now I suspect Milo is a marketing gimmick to promote the system to new people. Where some people are aware of the limits of current technology and human programming ability and will appreciate how staged as hell that performance was others will see an actual virtual human being. And if, against all odds, it is real the novelty for most people will last as long as it takes to see how he reacts to pictures of penises. But I'm told this is how Peter Molyneux usually works, promising the world and delivering a game.

Project Trico gets an official (and slightly boring) name, The Last Guardian, and a new trailer to go with it. It's almost the same as the first trailer but effort seems to have gone into making the game uglier for some reason. Colour is muted and bloom saturation is up, the creature looks scruffier (as far as I can tell when it's not either in shade or reflecting light like it has plastic feathers), the environment is more dilapidated and the developers went so crazy with particle effects it's a wonder the characters don't seem to have trouble breathing. I can't be the only one who prefers the cleaner, bright look of the first trailer.

New Super Mario Brothers Wii. Awkward name, interesting idea. Won't be as successful as the DS game but the new power-ups shown (penguin suit and propeller hat) already look more useful than NSMB's turtle shell suit. Most importantly, you can play as Toad! There's not nearly enough games where you can do that!

The Next console Metal Gear will star Raiden. The anti-Raiden backlash was predictable and will probably motivate the team to just clone another Snake to star in the next one.

If MGS Rising is defined by a lack of Snake then the PSP game Peace Walker has a surplus of him. No less than four Snakes are seen at once. And then two of them climb into a box together. It must be great to be Hideo Kojima. You can troll your audience with countdown clocks that lead to more countdown clocks and fill your games with manservice and everyone will keep calling you a brilliant visionary genius no matter what.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is the least interested I've been about a new Castlevania in a while. My problem with it is, so far, it looks very generic. All it has in common with Castlevania is the setting and a hero with a whiplike weapon. But Kojima Pro are supervising it and that connection seems to have given it the best exposure of any Castlevania game in the last decade, although you would never know they were involved just from looking at it.

Bayonetta gets more crazy, kinky and camp with every new trailer. Now the witch who looks like a hot librarian in a skintight suit with guns in her high heels is fighting another witch who is riding a motorbike on top of a flying plane. She also pretends to be a nun so the game can be one more step closer to catering to every fetish in existence. And now there are chainsaws somewhere in there too. Cool.

Tatsu vs Capcom is getting a Western release, surprisingly. Probably not going to be a large-scale release. It seems to just be ignoring the dub names which is probably the best (i.e. least complicated) way to go.

playing Space Channel 5 will never be the same again

2009-06-26T12:18:51Z

You know you must be getting older when the people you remember being huge stars in your childhood start aging and dying off.

I thought it would have affected me more but I can't really think of him as gone. The man Michael Jackson is dead but the legend is immortal. The two had become very different entities over the last few years. I hope much of the mockery dies with him so he can be remembered more fondly.

brought to you by MANLY RAGE

2009-06-23T23:26:24Z

I broke a controller by throwing it at the weekend. This isn't the first time, I'm only human after all, but it was the first time I decided to see what I could do about it so I went down to B&Q and got a screwdriver to open it up. I replaced the shoulder button that popped out on impact with the floor (and the rest of the buttons as well when I turned the pad over by mistake and they all spilt out. It was very easy to put back together because all the buttons have different tabs sticking out the bottom so they can't settle in the wrong slots. It's all very idiot-proof) retightened the screws and it works fine. You'd almost never know it was broken.

Driven by the thrill of success and the masculine urges that had surfaced from tool use I tried my hand at another broken controller I had stored in the cupboard. With this one a corner broke off the shoulder button so it hangs loose. It should still work but it's awkward to hold, and while the other one was just an ordinary pad this was a rare transparent controller with coloured buttons and I felt guilty about manhandling it so I kept it (and the broken chip of plastic) for years in case I could get it fixed. I planned to take the button out, glue the broken piece on and reassemble it but I couldn't get the screws out. The screwdriver couldn't grip the slots even when I pressed hard and turned, like the screws were in too tight. Back into storage it goes. That pad was an old shame of mine so it's more of a letdown that I thought for just a few minutes I finally had the power to fix it.

Meanwhile in gaming news the laws on UK games ratings were changed again. Now the PEGI (Pan-European Gaming Information) ratings are going to be the only source of rating information, mandatory for all games and legally enforcable. Being older than 18 and not having children it doesn't affect me but I suspect the news reports about it were trying to play up how much of an advancement this is by a) not mentioning that virtually every game released in the UK over the past six years has voluntarily been rated by PEGI anyway so the information has always been there, and b) the reports only focus on the problems of children playing age-inappropriate games or retailers selling them to children. The continuing issue of parents who ignore the ratings and buy age-restricted games for their children isn't mentioned. Fancy that.

nemo_incognito @ 2009-06-18T23:00:00

2009-06-18T22:10:23Z

If there is one person or more on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

Said person is probably seeing a lot of this meme.

Make a Fine Fight

2009-06-14T23:47:14Z

I took a break from posting for a while because I caught whatever the blogging equivalent of writer's block is. Everything I tried to type was so awful I decided not to inflict it on other people and went to play games for a few days. I have a 75% complete post on my picks of E3 that I'll finish sometime this week. I might have been posting that now but instead I want to post about how I struck gold on Friday night and found a bunch of game soundtracks I've been after for years. This was most of my most-wanted game OSTs found all at once.

Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold was the last revision of Street Fighter Alpha 2. Like any fighting game revision it had a bunch of subtle changes but the most important one to me was the music, which was apparently re-arranged from regular SFA2. There are at least three version of the OST (arcade mix, with the bass and sound effects turned up loud enough to vibrate you off the floor and so unsuitable for home listening, regular SFA2 and SFA2 Gold) and this is the rarest and hardest to find. The instrument balance isn't exactly the same as I remember from playing the game on the Saturn years ago but it's close enough. Most of the characters who started in SF2 and appeared here have some of my favourite official versions of their themes, except Cammy, who lost her SF2 theme and gained an amazing new one instead. I can't describe how much that theme floored me when I first heard it. The thought of having it on file has kept me wanting this soundtrack for years. I never got round to playing SF Alpha 3 but I sampled the music and found it underwhelming compared to SFA2G and only kept a few tracks.

The next one is another Capcom fighter, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. The physical OST is apparently super-ultra-rare limited and the unpopularity of the game (or the license in general) has kept it obscure even though it has some really great tracks. It's not as good as I expected on the whole because it's a little uneven. It has lots of grandiose but similar-sounding incidental tracks in blaring arcade synth but some amazingly hard rocking themes for the heroes and the villain. These standout tracks justify the whole soundtrack for me. The bad thing is the OST is only for the first version of the game so it didn't have the themes for the characters that appeared in the update (Hol Horse, Mariah, Pet Shop, Anubis Polnareff and whoever I'm forgetting).

Castlevania: The New Generation (most people reading this would know it as Bloodlines) is another I've wanted for a while but actually getting it wasn't the thrill I expected. Castlevania reprises themes a lot and most of the tracks from it had been done better in later games. The exception is Calling from Heaven which I think I remembered quite fondly and mythologised as the great lost wonder of Castlevania music over the years but after Curse of Darkness and Order of Ecclesia the music of New Generation doesn't rank quite as highly for me. But Calling from Heaven has never been reprised in another game to my knowledge and I'd still like to see it again sometime.

Sonic Rush Adventure isn't something I've wanted for as long as the others because I only played it last year but that just meant the memories brought up by the music were all fresh. Still the best Sonic game ever.

I also added the music of SaGa Frontier, which isn't something I've searched after for years but I had some samples in my playlist and I liked them so I took the opportunity to get the whole thing. I did actually play this game years ago but I found it very confusing and never got very far.

Also last week GameFAQs Best Game Ever 2009 came to an end. I didn't care that much about it after my bracket made a ton of mistakes from the very beginning and I assumed that meant I would never make it on the leaderboard (and even less after I saw Super Metroid only staying ahead of Super Mario Kart by a margin of about a hundred votes) but whenever I checked my score I was usually around the 80th percentile (i.e. scoring better than 4/5 of the other brackets). My final score was 455 which scored at the 92.95 percentile but I think it was 96 point something on the day of the finals. The highest scoring entry was 653. Very disparate results. Bring on the safe ol' predictable character contest...

history repeats (in a way)

2009-06-08T23:30:56Z

Here's a bit of non-E3 gaming news that might have been obscured by the big event. Secret of Mana is coming to mobile phones in Japan, although the proportion of straight port to remake isn't obvious yet. Now while Secret of Mana was, from what I remember, a rough diamond that could benefit from a touched-up release and had co-operative multiplayer that would be perfect for modern wireless handhelds I'd much prefer to see the game on a system that doesn't exclude anyone without one of those famous future-tech super mobiles they have in Japan. The DS would have been preferred.

Nice art though. It's my new wallpaper.

it's late and I can't think up a good name

2009-06-02T00:32:19Z

Sega looks at the sales figures for Mario Kart and thinks "I want some of that".

The really awkward title ("Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing") highlights a difference between Sega and other companies. Companies like Nintendo and Capcom have many different franchises with well-known characters but Sega just has one cast-heavy series that all their most famous characters come from, the Sonic series. In last year's Sega tennis game the non-Sonic parts of the roster were filled out by C- and D-list Sega characters, most of which had been effectively retired for years. Yes I like Ulala but that's not making her any less unpopular in general.

The real news is I'm told that Richard Jacques is going to score the game. The last time Richard Jacques made the music for a racing game with Sonic in it the result was amazing. I await the OST with a hundred times more enthusiasm than the game itself.

I also saw this today via Penny Arcade. I think it's amusing, many other people don't. I suspect JRRT himself would actually have been among the latter. If I remember the documentaries I watched around the time the movies were coming out he didn't like the idea of Lord of the Rings being presented as a comedy or a cartoon. It was a serious thing to him. I believe he wasn't fond of the Disney style and made sure Disney could not acquire Lord of the Rings for use as a feature film. But that's what Aragorn's Quest makes me think of, Tolkien á la Disney.