Yearly Archives: 1999

Rummage

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Okay; I’ve found the SMS, and have edited the below list to account for this. It’s still broken, but — well. All this leaves, really, now, are the Genesis, Power Base Converter, my two good joysticks, and five Genesis games… I bet I know where the cords are, but it’ll be a major hassle to dig them up if I’m correct in the matter. I might as well see, first, if they’re wherever the other articles have been hidden.

I’ve also gotten rid of ~three months’ worth of Dr Pepper cans and Arizona tea bottles, cleared off a couple of shelves, and put the various consoles’ respective cartridges on easy-access display along with my music and movies — and, of course, books.

Glub.

Oh — and, not entirely disrelatedly, I’ve located, while rummaging around over the past couple of days, a bunch of rare-ish AD&D 1st Edition books and a first pressing of Greyhawk, etcetera. This, plus my monsterous compendium (from when they still came in binders, a while ago) and a bunch of Ninja Turtle action figures. I’ve pulled out Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo character and sat him next to the Scullies I’ve wandering around my computer — they’re all actually very comparable in scale; it works out pretty darned well.

“Dear Agent Scully — I did not appriciate your lawyer’s tone…” </troy>

Sonic Misadventure

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Finally got a working copy of Sonic Adventure, after several exchanges with, and no actual help from, various store employees over the past month (excepting one young lady who, for around fifteen minutes, actually did attempt to break into the display DC to let me test a (ultimately defective) copy. No good; she couldn’t get into the cabinet. And yes, the copy was again defective. Yet all is good now!

Tannin

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Well, that was fun — just tried to devise my own liquid cooling system. Note to self: next time, try pouring the iced tea directly on the motherboard.

Fragility

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Agh! Ah! ho, ho, ho! ooo! hah! oh, my. Yes. Oh, jeez. This is incredible. The Fragile, I mean — eek. Holy…

The downward spiral and this album are a mobius strip. The Fragile succeeds amazingly in breaking from the “nin formula” and exploring new territory, the occasional subtle reference thrown in to what has come before. It begins where TDS left off, with some gradual recovery, followed by a re-breakdown of sorts. Finally, there’s a very ominous ending, as at the end of a fatalistic movie, bringing the listener back to the beginning of TDS again.

I swear I’ve never heard anything like this. Chamber music about the nature of futility.

I’m… shivering.

The Polygon Paradigm

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Well, I buried my shame and picked up a a Dreamcast — even though I don’t really deserve one. And my god — what it does nearly brings tears to my eyes. Unfortunately, I made two largeish mistakes —

  • Although I checked what are supposed to be the outside tell-tale signs of the disc, the copy of Sonic Adventure I picked up is the corrupted one. I couldn’t easilly test the thing in-store, as I picked up the thing at Toys “R” Absent (what happened to all of the stuff that used to be in there? Where are the Lego?), so I just held my breath that I’d not have to take the hour drive back to Portland just to return the thing. Well. Hum.
  • I decided not to read the box and assumed the system came with one of those memory card/tamagochi things. Nope. So I guess I have to grab one of them if I want to be able to save at all.

The warnings about disc scratching are because the Dreamcast games are encoded on normal old cds (insofar as their physical properties) rather than those black, indestructible PlayStation discs.

The controller’s not too bad. By fact of it being a controller, it’s starting just now to wear out my hands. But it could be a lot worse. I have no particular gripes about it, but there’s nothing to acclaim loudly, either.

From playing the demo disc version of Sonic Adventure, they seem to have given Knuckles the personality of Ryoga. Hm. And Sonic appears to have Billy West(Stimpy; Fry from Futurama)’s voice — it’s similar to his voice in the ABC cartoon, but a little less annoying. The theme song reminds me strongly of the seventh or eighth season intro to Ranma 1/2.

Since I don’t want to bother retyping it all in original, slightly more comprehensible verbiage, I’ll paste in here my initial comments made on Soul Calibur, the other game I picked up:

Soul Calibur reminds me of Tekken, from what little I saw of that. But it’s astounding.

In SC, there’s this one character — she has a sword which is divided into several horizontal segments, connected through the center by a long fiber of some sort. When she swings the sword out a certain way, the segments seperate along the fiber, making a long, barbed whip. Strange.

I like Xiangua quite a lot —

It’s interesting. The different “players” — player one and either player 2 or the opponent — use different versions of the same characters. Not just different colors, as in Street fighter. I mean, the first xiangua has short, scruffy hair, a blue bandanna, a kind of happy smirk, is wearing a white-with-yellow-fringe silk blouse-thing and blue pants. The second xiangua has long, primly-dressed, darker hair, is looking a little less “wild” in her expressions, and wears a formal red kimono with white trimmings and a yellow sash. In otherwords, a kinda’ tomboyish version versus a noble-looking one. The same kind of differences go for everyone — the extent of it, I mean, rather than the details. The first player’s “nightmare” is in shining steel armor, while the second “nightmare” is in a corroded, barbarian-ish, copper helmet and neck armor, and has a bare chest and arms. This happened in Tekken, again, but it’s still a new concept to me.

Very well put-together game.

It’s odd, though — I’m not used to “next generation”-feeling games, with very clean fade-ins and outs and so forth — like a bunch of different elements are put together. A still screen is very recognizable as a static screen. And so forth.

Dream Date

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Trent Reznor appeared twice last night on Mtv — I tolerated the channel long enough to tape both performances, as well as any few Janeane Garofolo frames which popped up in between (hey, the tape was already in there) and the three or four Dreamcast commercials which aired.

The interview: Kurt Loder asked him about all of the background vocals on the album, and Trent explained that when they were working on the thing, at 12:00 at night, they’d just go across to the local bar and grab a bunch of drunk guys to yell and mumble into the microphones, creating an atonal mess.

“We assembled what I think is the most atonal group of females I’ve ever heard… I hope… they aren’t… they’re not watching this now, but they were… comically horrendous.”

David Bowie showed up, and gave quite a dignified speech. Janine Garofolo, as mentioned, was perpetually around. And the crowd was insane during Trent’s performance — just from the shouting, you’d think it’d be the Beatles playing. It was really kind of hard to hear the song, and the band weren’t entirely in sync, it seemed — like they only started practicing a week or two before. But all in all, it fell together pretty well.

The band, when they finally showed up, two and a half hours or so into the show, were introduced by Johnny Depp — though he didn’t give much of an intro. He was introduced by Chris Rock along with a mention of his appearance in the new Tim Burton movie. Immediately I guessed he was showing up to introduce nin — why else shove him out there? But all he did was stalk out on stage, say something to the effect of “here are nine inch nails,” and then immediately leave. huh.

Nin played what I presume to be “the fragile” — it didn’t sound too bad, from what I could tell. Trent seemed kinda’ nervous. Forgot the lyrics near the beginning and started laughing, but recovered, sorta’. Interesting setup, with large metal arms opening and closing around the band, zig-zags of flourescent lights affixed to their undersides. Lots of cellos and things in the background.

The Fragile (the song) is mostly a kinda’ quiet bit; about halfway through, at least in the live version, things started to get a bit tedious. I think Trent forgot the lyrics to a section altogether; he seemed to be getting a bit flustered; the music was getting softer, and the crowd was getting noisier. Plus it was an attempted live recreation — So it’s hard to tell.

These are the lyrics, to the best I can figure [and here are the correct ones]:

Spinball

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Huh — Sally, Bunnie, and Rotor make cameo appearances in Sonic Spinball, in two of the three bonus stages. This is odd, as I was under the assumption that these characters didn’t exist in Sega’s personal view of the Sonic universe. Of course, looking at the credits, Spinball appears to have been an american production — probably why it’s as crummy as it is. The game was also produced at about the time Dic’s Sonic cartoon (the decent one) was running on ABC.

I guess, in light of these factors, the cameos make a bit more sense. Still, it was more than a bit unexpected.

One might note that Sally appears much closer to her early comic incarnation, actually, from before the ABC show was even aired; black hair and light maroonish (or as close as the round’s palette will allow) fur — this is in contrast with her later red-headed, brown-furred look. I’m not quite sure what this means, but there it is.

Kind of miss the cartoon; it was quite well-written, acted, and animated. The comic, from the dozen or so issues at which I’ve glanced over the past few years, is written by and for five-year-olds. A pity.

The Three of Mana

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Seiken Densetsu 3 is more than keen, says me. Angela, with Hawk and Lise, are my chosen party (though renamed appropriately). It’s interesting how engaging is this game, as SD2: Secret of Mana didn’t really grab me inordinately. The GB SD game (renamed Final Fantasy Adventure over here) was playable, I suppose, but, again, didn’t do much to my brain. I’ve never seen SD1, so I can’t comment there. The fighting system in this game is a bit peculiar; a sort of liquid turn-based realtime Legend of Zelda setup. Whereas Secret of Mana and the GB game were simply a realtime Zelda-ish system, this has an added “fluid turn” system, making things a bit awkward. The character is wandering around, freely, in realtime, but is only allowed to attack once every few seconds. Hm. I imagine I’ll adjust, but it’s a bit annoying at the moment.

Nevertheless, this game grabs me. I dunno what it is. . .

Cheers to Neill Corlett, Lina`chan, Nuku-nuku, and SoM2Freak — it’d be nice to have their skills, I must say.

The Real Thing

  • Reading time:1 mins read

My word — Trent’s new single is… accessible. It sounds at once more pop-metally than I’d ever associate with nin (other than in the PHM era) and portentous of something “important.” I’m really curious, now, about The Fragile.

Strictly on an associative standpoint, it almost sounds like Trent is playing Faith No More songs and being produced by Richard D. James — although I mean this in a better way than it sounds.

I like the splendid, ironic bitterness in Starfuckers, Inc., now that it’s actually sunk in. Hehe — he plays the part well, too. I was wondering why the heck he did put the Carly Simon reference in there. I missed entirely his sarcastic tone.

Hehe — probably his most obviously “political” song. It’s hilariously, bluntly witty, when I read the lyrics.

Hi, there.

Tarzan

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Really dug the characterization of Jane in the recent Disney incarnation of Tarzan. Actually, the whole thing was surprisingly well-handled, with the only strong gripe, allowances made for the traditional sigh-enduing Disney touches, being the segment from about five minutes into the film (once baby Tarzan is found and picked up by his ape mother) until Tarzan is an adult. That whole bit of the movie — about fifteen or twenty minutes’ worth — could have been completely excised, to no detriment (rather, to an improvement). Like that they kept the Weissmuller yodel (though it’d be near-impossible to not do so by this point). No “Oongawah”s, however.

I’m certainly no expert on the character or on Edgar Rice Burroughs in general, but wasn’t Tarzan supposed to actually be somewhat of an English gentleman (contrary to his depiction in the old JW films)?

I don’t mean to go out on a limb here — ahem — but I’d say that Disney is starting to come back, somewhat, in the cartoon department. After the first four of their “new” movies there was a deep lull. Mulan seemed to be a turning point of sorts, and Tarzan appears to be following its lead. Both strike quite a bit from the established and annoying formula. The “experimental” films made between Lion King and now have apparently paid off in a sense.

Consumption

  • Reading time:1 mins read

It bugs me when people make a habit of getting rid of things. Whenever I see this, I can’t help but wonder. What else do they discard?

Jarhead

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Finally got around to viewing The Phantom Menace, just to help out a struggling indie film — not any worse than the other three movies, really. And no, Jar-Jar was fine; ignore the slashdot crowd.

Maul was a puppet. He worked well in his role as a puppet, but he didn’t appear quite enough and in important enough ways to act as an effective red herring. Lucas should have used him more — though keeping him basically mute was a good decision. The emperor — jeez. I think Lucus intended the theater chairs to see through him from his first scenes. Ditto with “Padame” — “The Queen wants to investigate!” Ahem.

The anti-intellectuality of the series continues to grate on me.

The parting between Anakin and his mother has been pounded for being overly unemotional. The people reporting this certainly aren’t very perceptive or comprehensive. Given the situation they were in as slaves, the relationship they had, the attitudes she seemed to have as a mother toward the boy, the opportunity presented, and the sheer suddenness of the whole business, the Skywalkers were more than adequately emotional; any more and the whole business would have been melodramatic and boring. Anakin’s mother basically seemed in a bit of shock throughout the whole thing. She appeared to intentionally withhold any strong impulses from processing fully until Anakin left; she knew to escape slavery and find a real outlet for his skills would be in his best interest, and she didn’t want to overly worry him, possibly scarring his future. She simply wasn’t that selfish; the boy needed strength and comfort, not paranoia that he was hurting her. While the movie didn’t show it, it’s evident that it would be hitting her any ol’ time what had just happened. The scene cut a bit too quickly, however. I was expecting a huge change of countenance to pour over her as the jedi walked away.

The special effects bugged me — I expected a lot more, from how Lucas had been describing things. They were mostly pretty obvious, despite what everyone else seems to think. Why is it nobody can seem to either correctly texture-map a wireframe, no matter how high-res the source image, or to remember to blur and de-res digital images enough that they look analogue and real? In addition, what on earth were they doing with the lighting? The photograhy and rendered light rarely seemed to synch correctly. I’ve seen Win95-based games with better integration of elements. I’m not being hyperbolic here, either.

I welcomed the return of the Jawas.

The Buck Rogers outfits the queen and the pilots had were kind of keen, too, as a bit of an allusion to the series’ original inspiratory material.

The beginning part of the movie, involving the Bela Lugosi-ish aliens, reminded me strongly of The Last Starfighter (which was, in turn, heavilly influenced by Star Wars).

This keyboard is annoyingly layed-out. I don’t feel the keys’ locations correctly. The key sizes are molded differently, I think. I prefer my own…

Not very interesting prose today (article blah; article blah; article blah). Sorry.

Trilobyte

  • Reading time:3 mins read

The 11th Hour is all of the worst aspects of The 7th Guest, amplified. Where Myst and, more so, Riven create a logically-balanced world to comprehend and explore, these games give you lots of bad FMV, very arbitrary riddles (suddenly throwing in an anagram in the center of the second riddle you’re given, right near the beginning, for instance), and random puzzles which impede progress, not even a hint of context, half the time, provided as to what the point/goal is (that is, no context even within the puzzle itself, after careful and lengthy analysis) — the only way to solve several puzzles is to whack around, hoping to crack them by force. The end result of the expended effort is to, again, allow the player to, say, examine a table or open an otherwise-unblocked — or even partially open — door in a hallway on the other end of the house. Right.

I really hate this type of game design. It’s unimaginative, shallow, lazy, and just plain poor. Myst had a few “puzzles” in it, but, with only very few exceptions, the game effectively told you what to do if you merely read everything carefully and added up, analytically, everything you experienced, interrelating as much as possible. Riven was a vast step up in that it didn’t contain any of those sort of artificial roadblocks. Every difficulty in the game was based in the structure of the place. If the player couldn’t get past something or if he couldn’t figure out what the purpose was of a certain device or item or bit of architecture or writing, there was a completely rational, logical reason why not — he was an outsider, stepping into someone else’s world, filled with a culture he didn’t recognize, devices he had never used, and geography alien to him. Given enough study of his surroundings and a bit of insight, it was perfectly simple to deduce how things were, why they logically were the way they were, and, by relation, how to manage that which was encountered.

The 11th Hour is not like this in any respect. It is not for the thinker; it is for the sadomasochist and the game designers’ egos. “Hah — see anybody figure THIS out. Aren’t we clever?” It’s not clever to simply withhold every speck of information and player control within normal gameplay.

I suppose that’s the real difference between the serieses — Myst/Riven (with, as stated, a few exceptions in the first game) is based upon giving the player as much information as possible but no overt connecting threads. The player is mostly set free to explore, as the point is to internalize and interweave information until an overall comprehension is achieved. Guided understanding is more important than precise methodology. 7/11 is based upon almost the opposite concept; that series gives nothing but connecting threads. All information has to be conjured up in speculation, based upon these often completely baseless clues. The player is mostly confined, in fear that he encounter too much information and spoil the puzzles. Method is more important than comprehension.

I find this general kind of mindset to, frankly, be a combination of sad and injust. It masquerades as a test of brain power, when it more accurately a test of obedience. (I’ll not bother meticulating why this is — I’ve provided the data.) Whereas Myst and Riven compell the question “why,” The 7th Guest and 11th Hour compell the question “what?” It’s shallow and manipulative. Never trust he who actively hides his intentions.

101010

  • Reading time:1 mins read

okay, now tell me — what do you get when you multiply six by nine in a base-thirteen system?

Now, what does this say? Actually, taken metaphorically, it synchronizes very well with the universe-view proposed in that particular reality. Base-thirteen is a very awkward number system; 13 is just an uncomfortable integer, for various reasons you can determine on your own. Assuming this is a suggestion that thirteen is the natural root of everything in the universe, mathematically, this would explain a lot of the awkwardness and unease and, to stretch and extrapolate, bureaucratic nonsense inherent to the process of existance. And there is an awful lot of it in the universal exhibition of the trilogy.

[Later note: This appears to be very common knowledge. Well. I had to figure it out on my own…]