Yearly Archives: 1998

Triangle

  • Reading time:1 mins read

That was the best episode of X which has ever aired, no exceptions made. Third episode of season six — the real-time, letterboxed Bermuda triangle episode with the peculiar phrase in place of “trust no one.”

“Scully… I love you.”

There were no flaws. One of the best storylines. Great gimmick, and executed perfectly. Exactly the right characters used, and in exactly the right way. The “real space” which the characters occupy, and how they interplay in real-time, was terrific to see. The most imaginative episode ever shot. This is the episode to show people who’ve never seen the show before. This and “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space,” if that’s indeed the title. . .and “Night,” assuming that’s the first-season tree mite episode which came the week after the werewolf one. Those two, I think, remain my other favorites, but this one tops the cake. I have no clue how they could top it.

Dust

  • Reading time:1 mins read

It snowed today… and I walked outside, allowing the cool wind to dust my face and hair, extending my arms outward to the precipitory bellow, a grin plastered across my maw.

Luma

  • Reading time:1 mins read

You can tell The X-Files is being filmed in California, now; it doesn’t look drizzly and Canadian anymore. Plus, the music is much more thematic than it has been in the past. Rather than re-re-re-reusing the same synthesized “creepy noise” cues, it’s much more like movie score.

Riders On the Storm

  • Reading time:6 mins read

It’s strange how “last albums” always sound completely appropriate as such. You can hear what was going on, here. They sound tired, beaten down, burned-out. They sound like they’ve given up, and have pulled all of their remaining energy to make one last effort, to make one more really good album. I really like “Hyacinth House” — that shows, especially, what I mean.

This album is really good, in a resigned, tired, out-of-touch way. It doesn’t sound like the Doors, but then the Doors didn’t sound like the Doors at all anymore after the Soft Parade. It’s got a completely different vibe and musical focus than anything else they did. While early on, on the first three albums, they had a lot of energy and were focused on writing inventively, doing things which had never been done before, here, on L.A.Woman, they plod on in a constant, non-stop mumble of music which sounds only sloppy the first few times you listen to it.

But it’s different. There’s more to it than that — it’s just the listener is so used to the Doors jumping out, making a scene, and showing off their music, that when the doors turn inwards, blatantly ignore everyone around them, and huddle in a corner quietly, it’s a little bit of a jolt. You get to wonder what happened, what they’re doing. It doesn’t sound right to you. They should be coming to you — you shouldn’t have to go look for them. They should be on stage, and you have to go look around, only to find them tired out, sitting in a small room in some house somewhere on the other end of town, telling you to leave them alone.

After listening to the album about four or five times, it really begins to sink in.

Where everyone else ended, it seems, with some big bang of closure (the Beatles, with the second side of Abbey Road, culminating in a song titled “The End”) or just fizzled, it’s spooky, in context, to hear the final song on the final Doors album, “Riders on the Storm.” It’s such an unconventional album-closer for anyone, but most especially the bombastic, theatrical Doors.

Jim’s death was really timed well, also. It’s all very curious; there’s little question as to why such a mythology has built up around the band. Any way you look at it, the whole deal is just plain creepy. And Jim never even heard the album — the last thing he did which had anything to do with the Doors was sing the final vocal take to Riders on the Storm, which was not only the last track on the album but also the final track they had to record. And it was the final track on the last album they were obligated to make under their contract; with the recording of that track, they were free. Then he suddenly left for Paris right off, practically as soon as the track was recorded, not even hanging around so they could all finish up the album post-production together, something they had always done as a group. The album soon was a hit, only there was no Jim. While the other three doors did interviews and talked to the press and got excited about their success, and while they were preparing new material, suddenly re-energized, Jim was in Europe somewhere. But nobody seemed to notice. The other three Doors never said anything, because nobody really asked. Everyone just assumed Jim was hanging around somewhere, and never thought about it too much. Then he suddenly just… died. Only two people saw his body, and the physician gave only the vague diagnosis that “his heart stopped.” Not that he had a heart attack, but just that he was no longer alive. And he was buried there, in Paris, in a sealed coffin, an ocean away from where everyone thought he had been for the past few months.

It’s all very odd. It seems almost hard to believe, just from how everything was timed and the entire lack of details in some important places, with the details in the remaining places being out-of-character and strange. It’d be hard to write a more peculiar, creepy, and mysterious scenario for the end of a band.

It almost seems like some grand script was being acted out in real life by the band. 1971 almost seems manufactured, somehow, as if they all sat around somewhere saying “we’re not doing well right now — how can we make sure nobody will forget us? I know — we’ll kill Jim off, suddenly and mysteriously. But how do we make anyone care? Well, we have to scrape up the energy to write one more album — a good one, the way we used to make them. This one has to be great.” Then, being masters of dramatics, they composed the album not only well, but in exactly the right way that, in retrospect, it would send shivers up and down a person’s spine, even though until people heard of Jim’s death it would sound fresh and new, as if the Doors were finally back again, thereby creating enough of a huge sensation that people would be genuinely shocked when Jim turned up dead.

That whole period in American history was sort of strange, that way. It’s no wonder we have such a wacko-conspiracy culture these days, after having gone through those years.

The piece “L’America” is enjoyable for me, as well — that is another crucial track in establishing L.A.Woman as an unnerving album, just from its creepy “Night on Bald Mountain” tone, occasionally lapsing strangely into other musical styles.

Almost every track on the album is a variation on the “epic” theme they used to reserve for about one song per album (the closing track) earlier on. Almost all of them drone on at length, rather than consisting of tight, compact, efficiently-composed-and-arranged verses, choruses, and bridges. It all creates a similar blended, “here it all is — this is all the rest you’ll get out of us” effect that side two of Abbey Road, to compare that album again, makes, only in a much subtler way. The whole album of L.A.Woman is amazingly subtle in comparison to what someone would probably expect from the Doors. But then “Riders on the Storm” is suddenly tight, thoroughly thought-out, relatively short, and clear. And it just fades out with quiet noises of rain and some unnerving tones.

The lyrics to many of the songs on the album also allude to the resignation which followed the album and some of the problems the band were having anyway at that point.

“I need a brand new friend who doesn’t bother me. . .
I want a brand new friend who doesn’t need me. . .”

“Riders on the storm —
Into this house we’re born,
into this world we’re thrown. . .

like a dog without a bone,
an actor out on loan,
riders on the storm. . .”

We’re only here for a while, and then we have to return to there from whence we came.

It Comes Down To This

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I just listened to the Sin and TPD singles again; I’ve not really listened to Trent Reznor in a few months. Whew — I’d almost forgotten how amazing a musician that man is. No wonder he spurred me into music. Just listening to PHM-era songs is akin to swimming in a river of inspiration and energy. His material is so ridiculously simple, yet impossibly effective, that all I can think when I hear a nin song is “I could do that,” and I really want to try, as well. I’ve strayed somewhat lately, but I guess I can’t help returning to nin as home base. . .

The contrast of nin and the Doors is great, as well — while Trent is all keyed-up and neurotically precise, as I am, Jim is all laid-back and more lenient, musically, while still not sparing any melodicism or rhythm. Then there’s Elfman, to amplify the inherent playfulness behind a lot of nin and Doors material.

It’s all fun. I’d forgotten about that. Music is fun.

Competition

  • Reading time:1 mins read

To what state has gaming dwindled?

Why is it every game developed is rated on its multiplayer capacity, and why is it every game which is obviously meant to be a real game rather than a brainless net-arena is met with bewildered surprise? “It doesn’t have a multiplayer option, but don’t worry — it doesn’t need it. It holds up as a single-player game.” Bring back the days when multiplayer gaming was constrained to a subservient second controller and the quality of a game in and of itself was what mattered.

Split Direction

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I keep seeing everywhere — in reviews for Riven — that the game is supposed to be impossible to play without a walkthrough. Everything I’ve ever read on the game instructs the reader to find a hint book or walkthrough, as the game is, otherwise, too difficult and frustrating to play. The game isn’t made to be played on one’s own ability.

What the hell? Riven’s not a difficult game. All you need is a small amount of patience and the capacity to think. It can become frustrating, yes, but that’s a part of the whole point of the thing. You’re supposed to find and follow the game’s inner logic — and not very complex logic, at that. How hard is it to realize if two objects are shaped in the same, uncommon way that they probably are somehow related? To follow tubes and turn valves to change the flow of steam? There were only two or three small things in the entire game which seriously stumped me, and those were completely my own fault; I just didn’t see something relatively obvious.

Myst, while a little easier, was a little less obvious about things, and, as such, was more annoying to play. Riven is streamlined to the point where, given a couple of weeks and some quiet time alone, a person of average intellect should have little trouble completing it. All you have to do is, to a very small extent, think. I mean, I know how some games can drive a person nuts by their complete lack of logic or near-impossible (and irrelevant) puzzles, but Riven isn’t that way at all. It has a total of one or two “puzzles” in the entire game, if you could call them that; those are solved basically just by being thorough and exploring until enough data has been collected that connections can be made and some picture begins to form.

I mean, really. The typical excuse is “well, I don’t want to spend my life playing a game — I just want to walk around and have fun.” Look — anyone who says that is completely missing the point. If you don’t have any patience and aren’t willing to think, you shouldn’t be playing a game like Riven. It’s not a hard game, but it’s not made for bumble-minded brats. That’s why they make Doom clones. Go net-play or something. If you’re going to play a game, play the fucking game. If you want to turn off clipping, fly, and shoot things, they make these games — play them. Have your fun.

A Myst Opportunity

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Myst:

Okay — done. It works fine in win98. I’ve not bothered looking at all of the endings, though. Myst is a much easier game than is Riven, though I did end up turning tail to a hint page because of stupid blunders and oversights on my part. Here they were, in total:

1 — somehow, it never dawned on me that one could walk behind the elevator shaft in the rotating tower on Myst island — a somewhat big oversight, and the same kind of problem I had that one time in Riven. Actually, I do remember walking back there when I was playing the game long, long ago, but I only remember this now, after the fact.

2 — I was a little too jumpy. I had the time and numbers for the clock code on Myst Island, again, written down, I knew that the clock was probably tied to the gears, and I knew it was the last puzzle on the island. I had been trying to figure out what was the correct time to which to set the clock ever since I saw the damned thing the for the first time, but, for whatever reason, something in my brain didn’t click for a few moments and I went back to the hint guide prematurely. The dumb thing is, I actually knew what I was looking up; I knew where to rotate the tower — my brain was just fuzzy.

3 — I scoured Channelwood about eight times over, trying to figure out how the hell to get onto the spiral staircase and how to operate the elevator right next to it, knowing that the two were probably intertwined. I also couldn’t find the red and blue pages in that age and knew they were probably on the upper-upper level which I couldn’t get to without using the staircase. blah, blah. Ends up that, somewhere in that mess of huts on the upper level, there was a lever which opened the door/gate which had been blocking my way. I walked by it (the lever) a hundred times, and I would have walked by it a hundred more. There’s no possible way I would ever have seen the lever, no matter what state of mind I might have been in. I was supposed to spot one unnotable stick amongst thousands and know it to be of signifigance?

4 — I did, early in my progress, notice the left half of the note which told how to obtain the final page of Atrus’ Myst linking book, but didn’t immediately know what it was and told myself to remember it for later, knowing I’d come across the second half at some point in the future. Ends up the second half was in Channelwood — in a drawer under a bed in the same location as the red and blue pages. I was just so annoyed and impatient about not seeing the previously-mentioned lever that I walked right by the note, grabbing the pages and getting out of there in frustration. I’d wasted enough time in that place. If the lever were more obvious or I’d otherwise just seen the damned thing in the first place, I’d have been more cautious, as I usually am. But I was irritated and I ran in and out, barely looking at anything. Later, when Atrus told me to find the missing white page to his book, I had no clue what to do. I thought it was dreadfully unfair of the game to just randomly tell me to find something which could be anywhere in the game with no clues at all. By this time, I’d been irritated enough that I forgot all about the half-note I made sure to remember for later. So, after dinking around and pouting for a while, I looked up the hint guide once again. Oh. That’s right — the note. Oh. Channelwood? Sigh. And it was in the one room in the game which I didn’t scour mercilessly.

Anyway, I think those were pretty reasonable hints I took; mostly my own fault and (with the exception of the frustration-related blunders) basically the same mistakes I made in Riven. Thing is, in Riven there were about five ways to do everything, so when I overlooked a few details, the game just made it a bit more difficult for me rather than blocking progress completely.

The ending of Myst is. . .well, strange. After Playing Riven, it’s a perfect intro to the second game, and it doesn’t annoy me very much because I know what comes next. I can imagine, however, if Riven didn’t exist or I’d never played it, that the ending could be disappointing, as I’d heard it rather was.

Cinematic Interlude

  • Reading time:6 mins read

The truth certainly is “out there.” What a strange movie.

I need to locate Mark Snow’s score album. I want to listen to some of that again.

I think I’d have to watch the movie a second time for it all to sink in completely.

I’d give it a thumb and an eyebrow up.

A lot darker than I’d expected it to be. I’m surprised it got only a pg-13 rating.

Later:

All right — a more complete analysis. . .

Fight the Future is. . .well, dark. It’s much rawer, scarier, and more bombastic than the show ever has been. It’s good, but a little confusing and. . .strange. I’ll have to watch it again before it completely sinks in, I believe. I’d give it about 3.75 stars (out of five, o’ course), based on this one viewing. It starts out slowly, but after the first twenty minutes or so it picks up and becomes more engaging than I recall the series has ever been at any individual moment. After all that, the end drags on a little.

The big problem was really that everything seemed much more bleak than the actual show. The program is very character-based, and oftentimes is very light and warm. The movie kind of pushes the audience back away a little.

Also, the guy who plays the “other” main character in Millenium — not Frank Black, but the bald guy — is a minor-but-pivotal character near the beginning. This is very strange, seeing as how both shows take place in the same “universe,” and there have been a few cross-overs here-and-there. One reviewer described the casting of that guy as a notable figure other than the character he actually plays in his show as “distracting,” and that’s exactly the way I’d describe it as well.

The music was great. There’s one scene in the middle of the film where Mulder and Scully’re chasing down a couple of tanker trucks and, unexpectedly, a creepy, powerful variation on the X-theme comes up

Actually, the tone of Millenium — that much more violent, dark atmosphere (which disturbs me a little too much) is pretty much what the movie has, rather than the “safer” bleakness the X-files has always had as a contrast.

I want to locate Mark Snow’s score cd next time I’m in town. There were a couple other great things (though the music, I noticed, was almost subliminal. It was dubbed really very low in the mix) I noticed which I don’t individually recall at this moment.

As long as one goes into the movie with patience and is forewarned that the tone is a little uncomfortable, the thing will be great. I didn’t really know what to expect at all, and, of course, this being the X-files, anything I might have expected or anticipated didn’t take place or wasn’t done exactly as I thought it would be. Even just the editing of the thing — I’ll mention this, because it won’t detract from anything. . .

The title sequence — there really wasn’t one. Normally these days the credits last for about five or ten minutes, it seems. . .and even in the show, actually. I swear — the credits keep appearing at the bottom, even fifteen minutes into the program! Yeek. Here, however, the new X-logo just gradually forms and the six notes of melody are played exactly once, kind of trailing off. Then everything fades into the first scene. That’s it. Just a neat computer animation of the X-files logo and “twoo-twee-twih-too-twee-twooo. . .” and a scene fade. But at the end — me-yimminy. The Ending credits last for half an hour, it seems. There must be sixty pages of special-effects personnel. . .

It isn’t really until about when Martin Landau steps in that the movie starts to become involving. Until then, it’s just kind of a long setup (which tried my patience just a little, but, this being the first movie, I know it was needed for anyone who doesn’t watch the show as much as I do; thusly, I forgive the thing).

If the series didn’t exist, the movie could stand on its own devoid of that context — but in so doing, which is how I was kind of trying to watch it, it becomes an intrestingly complicated and bizarre film — something which would attract a cult following, for sure, but which would completely elude the mundane viewer, just from its strange, experimental-seeming nature.

That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to put my finger on — It seems very much like an “experimental” flick, like Citizen Kane (just to give an example of the unconventionality rather than precisely the quality) or something. It’s like a Jimi Hendrix album or Nine Inch Nails back before they became accepted and copied as much as they were. It’s hard to put a finger on whether it’s pleasing or not, because it’s so. . .well, unusual, and while obviously very well-done it has an unpolished, disorienting quality.

That’s a good thing, now that I think about it — it’s not a typical American Movie. Pretty much everything pumped out of the film factories over here is easilly classifiable and shiny and impressive, and then, every now-and-then, something strange crawls out which feels more like a single person’s idea which somehow made it through the system without being shined up. This film would definitely fit that description. As big as the show’s become, it still seems small and self-centered — Fox tried to screw with it early on, but eventually they just learned they wouldn’t get anywhere and, the thing being popular enough, just to leave the thing alone and let it run itself the way it wanted. The movie is exactly the same way — it’s not something a studio put out; it’s a project a small group worked on because they wanted to. It feels like an independant film.

It’s taken until just now for me to completely make up my mind about the movie. I wanted to like it, and I did to some extent, but something really bugged me and eluded my grasp. I’m satisfied now.

Tales of Derring-Do

  • Reading time:4 mins read

As incorrect as DuckTales was, I’ve always thought the voice fellow they used made a good Scrooge — even though Rosa insists Scrooge shouldn’t really have any accent anymore. The voice just fits him better than most characters. Donald’s voice, for example; it’s fine for the screen-Donald, who, as they say, throws nuts at Chip ‘N Dale — but the comic book Duck, who has a personality, speaks like a normal human being? I have no clue what his voice would sound like.

I also do like the refined nephew voices in DuckTales. They sound “ducky” enough, but are more than normal-sounding, as well.

Actually, DT wasn’t too bad a show. It had a number of well-written episodes, and, hell, it tried. It’s virtually the only acknowledgement by Disney that Barks’ characters ever existed. Just the fact they altered so many things and got so much wrong really annoys me.

I also admit I do like Launchpad. He was basically added to take the place of the Donald role, but he’s an enjoyable character anyway.

What don’t rub me so well are:

  • Webby and “Mrs. Beakly”;
  • “Duckworth”
  • that young fellow named “Doofus”
  • the voice for Magica DeSpell — she’s supposed to be a vixen. Why does she sound like an old hag?
  • Their characterization of Glomgold as a Scotsman who lives in Duckburg rather than a Boer who lives in South Africa
  • Their dumbed-down and “modified” Beagle Boys, with their individual names and personalities (beyond the prunes and numbers)
  • The absence of Donald, he being the axis of the whole situation to begin with
  • The strange, gawky way they drew Gyro
  • The fact that Gyro’s little helper only appeared exactly twice in all the years of the show, in cameos, and that when he did appear they called him “little bulb.” Again, huh?
  • The fact that Gladstone, as major a character as he is, only appeared twice. (Perhaps in absence of his rival, Donald?) He had a brief cameo, which was cute — but when he appeared properly, they got his character all wrong.
  • The minimal acknowledgement of the Junior Woodchucks, and very un-woodchucklike behaviour on the part of the nephews
  • The unfortunate characterization, voice, and appearance they gave to Glittering Goldie.
  • the odd negative color-switch they gave to $crooge’s jersey.
  • The fact they permanently screwed things up by confusing Dewey and Louie, then insisting it had always been that way. (Rather than Huey=red; Dewey=blue and Louie=green, as it had usually tended to be (once colors had finally been settled upon), they made it Huey=red; Dewey=green and Louie=blue.)
  • The absence of the dry wit to Barks’s writing, either misinterpreting it and taking jokes seriously or just being sickly silly.

And yet: they did basically get Scrooge’s character right, which is amazing. Had they just stuck to Barks, the show could still be on now — the elements they removed could provide a virtually endless number of plot ideas, in a number of different genres — the “ten pager,” with Donald and the kids getting into trouble around town or chasing each other around or contesting against Gladstone or other day-to-day activities; the classic Scrooge adventure, which is basically all they used as inspiration; the Scrooge “ten pager,” which they did actually use on occasion, which deal with more daily, small troubles; the Donald adventure story; the Junior Woodchuck competition stories; the Gyro episode… I could go on.

The biggest error is probably their removal of Donald and Gladstone. Compared to their absence, the other changes are nothing. I guess they just didn’t think Donald would be intelligable enough for such a large role — or perhaps they didn’t want the wider public to be confused by the fact he has a personality. I think they just figured everyone else other than the nephews would be “new” characters to most of the viewing population, allowing them to mold the show however they liked.

Result, almost everyone I’ve met seems to think that Scrooge was created for DuckTales in 1986. A few correct them: no, he was the character created for Mickey’s Christmas Carol in 1980, remember? Then that just confuses the whole matter. Why would Disney use Ebenezer Scrooge as a major character and call him Donald’s uncle?

Third Time’s the Charm

  • Reading time:3 mins read

TSR has been bought out by the makers of Magic: The Gathering, and here, apparently, comes a third edition of our favourite poorly-managed campaign fodder. Yikes. That is unfortunate. I can’t imagine what they’ll do to the system besides screw it up. 2nd edition is perfect. How on Earth do they mean to mangle it?

In 1st edition, there were uncountable gaps and very roughly-calculated rules. It was obviously a good idea, but it needed to be revised and edited to come completely into form. Some things had to be removed altogether in order to make it fair, only to be reintroduced later, in a modified form, as optional add-ons to the core rules.

They did a damned good job evening the game out, too; It was smooth. The only possible two things I can see which would warrant a third edition would be, one, to clean up all of the clutter of add-ons and “extra” rules; to attempt to incorporate everying in a grandiose, global, overly-large way (as opposed to the sleek, bare-bones approach we all know and love, which encourages imaginative interpretation)… and two, to make money by forcing everyone to buy everything over again.

Seeing as how they were just bought out by Wizards a few months ago and TSR hadn’t seen need to release a third edition in the, what, fifteen years of ad&d/2nd? Seeeing as how they were just purchased by a new company, my theory is Wizards want their new acquistion to rain in the moola. Look for a fourth edition in 2000, judging by their strategy with their own product. It’s probable they don’t so much care about the integrity of the system as they do that they can make this famous name, AD&D, pay off for them in a big way. How do they do that? Print a whole lot of new books. But how can you make sure people will buy them? Well, you could release a lot of interesting, highly-demanded material which has, as yet, gone unpublished, which, of course, takes time and imagination — or you could fuck with the established rule system and reprint all of the base, neccesary material, forcing everyone really into the game to buy it all over again,

Of course, I could be wrong. They could have a small team of extremely talented, imaginative, logical, insightful people evening out the system even more and simplifying gameplay to an extent we can only imagine while sacrificing none of its inherent functionality in the process.

Which do you think is more likely?

I’m lapsing back into a zone of deathful lonliness again, dangerous mostly because it causes me to drop my guard and latch onto any emotion I can pull out of people, however destructive it may be to me, without realizing until later how much of a schmuck I’ve been.

“The End,” indeed.

  • Reading time:3 mins read

This is actually feeling quite satisfying and warm, somehow. The show’s not going to be the same anymore — you can see it. Actually, X was, theortically, supposed to be over with this episode — before they, a few months ago, renewed, deciding in the process to move from Vancouver to Hollywood.

With all of that which happened therein, this episode really effectively ended the show. In order for a movie to work, it would have to be much more fast-paced and millitant, as opposed to the cerebral hover the show’s always tended to have. With the X-files destroyed, Samantha’s file in Cancer Man’s hands, and the “truth” all narrowed down to that one boy, the series has suddenly become strongly focused. From two FBI agents just running around covering cases, it’s turned into Mulder and Scully alone vs. the world.

Without the X-files as a tangible quest, a safe retreat in the basement and a path to follow, the two of them are forced to stop dinkering around, hopping from place-to-place randomly, wasting time, slowly investigating everything they see just in case it might be important somehow. It’s like that phase is over, now — the burning of the files was more symbolic than anything, because they are now, as of this episode, effectively useless to them, the path to Mulder’s “truth” right in front of them, outside of the FBI building. The files hold more an emotional value than a physical need for the agents, and the burning again helps to push Mulder and Scully to the action needed for the next step; now they’re motivated. Their “home” has been destroyed.

Also nice how the relationships amongst the characters have been cleared up. Okay; so Krycheck (or however you spell him. . .now I know why people call him “ratboy”) is in league with the “big guys” again, and Cancer Man is now their hired gun. Skinner is no longer Mulder’s boss, per se, but a connection within the FBI. Etcetera.

This episode was really effective in those two ways; cleaning up the plotline and spelling out in simple detail the characters and their associations.

The last few minutes of the show were almost a prologue to the movie. . .I felt all tingly. All I could think, aside from what Mulder and Scully were obviously thinking as they stood there, was “jesus. This is. . .this. . .this is. . .it’s over.” The fact there was no preview for the next episode — and, frankly, the title of the episode itself — kind of made my throat seize up a little. . .even though I know the show will now continue for at least a while longer (albeit, likely, in completely different way).

Castlevania

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I just now, after over a decade, finished Castlevania 1 (only by playing the japanese version on the easy setting and saving a lot)… the ending credits say the music is by — “Johnny Bannana,” I believe was the name. Also, they call Simon “Simon Belmondo.” There are mounds of credits such as “Plot: Brahm Stoker” and “Frankenstein: Boris Karloff”… hm.

I finally downloaded an msx emulator and frontend, in order to play Vampire Killer. The graphics in it blow the nes version away, but it’s impossible to play. It makes the original US ver of Castlevania seem like a pushover…

You can see sorta’ see how VK is a game-in-development… how, when they remade it for the nes, they looked closely at its structure and remixed the elements in a more palatable form. The rounds are very similar in structure and background, identical in music (though the psx music is better), almost identical in character and monster sprites, but in the nes version there’s scrolling, the enemies are placed sanely (inasmuch as they don’t keep coming in an unending stream, but, rather, are put in specific places), you don’t have to look around for keys and whip walls in hidden places to finish levels, and you get to really use items.

I think Simon’s Quest was a way of trying to put some of the original elements back into Castlevania which they thankfully removed for the nes conversion — such as the idea of an inventory; buying items and searching for others; having a nonlinear(ish) round structure. The shield from CVII is even in there… though nobody appears to shoot at you, so its usefulness is questionable. Actually, there’re two different shield types.

Playing that game from hell for about half an hour gives me a much greater appriciation for what it later spawned, and helps me to understand the series better, as well — just to see kind of the thought processes behind the first game, before major editing, and from where some ideas from the second probably came. Sort of like listening to Purest Feeling, the major difference being PF was a lot better than PHM in a number of aspects.

Best Brains

  • Reading time:1 mins read

MST3K is going to only have thirteen episodes this season, inasmuch as Sci-Fi decided not to pick up the option for the remaining nine (making a complete season).

Here’s the good thing, however — There Will be a season ten, and Sci-Fi and Best Brains are getting along wonderfully (unlike how everything went with Comedy Central)… There’s no ratings problem, and the show isn’t disgruntling anyone at the station. Sci-Fi seems to be grateful to have some light-hearted original programming to flesh out the turgid bleakness of much of the material on the station.

Hardware Encoding

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I just had a dream in which there was a tape recorder-like device that would rearrange the magnetic pattern of any object you put into it (invisibly, of course), so you could, say, put a piece of paper in it and have a message recorded on it. Then, of course, only you would know what objects had messages recorded on them.