Yearly Archives: 2001

ODCM, RIP

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Okay. When ODCM folded, the subscription was supposed to switch to NextGen. Instead, Lan got PSM. And it seems I get… Gamepro.

Nice. Gamepro says that GunValkyrie is “based on the popular anime of the same name”.

Oh, neat. and they print salient, up-to-the-minute secret “codes” here, too. For instance, if you stick your Sonic Adventure (1) disc in a CD-Rom, you get hidden artwork. Cool, huh?

Of course they don’t actually give the developers for Sega’s games — just “Sega Corporation”. Hum.

And I don’t think I’ve seen a review in this issue so far which has understood the point of the game in question.

Fixing the hole where the ghosts come in

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I’ve moved the stereo cabinet upstairs now, and it seems to fit the hole in my wall decorations (which I had put up around the stack of boxes) quite well. I was wondering at first what happened to the glass door which should be on the front of the cabinet — and then it hit me. This is that stereo cabinet.

I could have sworn I wrote a short piece on the thing a few years ago, but I can’t find it to link to. Ah well. Never mind — it just has to do with poltergeists and glass-based explosions. Nothing worth getting into here.

The transportation of my consoles to the cabinet went quite neatly. Though I wasn’t knowing initially what to do with the cords and controllers, I found that winding them up and tying them neatly with twist-ties is the best solution. If I want to get one of the consoles out, I just have to pick it up and grab the right cables and pads/sticks from directly next to it. Of course in an ideal situation these would all be permanently wired up to a decent TV — but I’m not in an ideal situation, so neat and respectful storage is the best I can do for the moment.

Having this cabinet here also gives me an object against which to neatly stack my game magazines (which had taken to sprawling all over my room wherever they saw fit). My issues of ODCM (a complete run, sans issue #1 — and I almost got it at the time! Stupid me!) are on the bottom shelf, next to my poor old SMS.

Lacking space on my shelves still, I put my stack of Saturn games on top of the cabinet, accompanied by my “overflow” Dreamcast case, containing such things as the original Planetweb browser, the Space Channel 5 sampler, various burned utility discs, and so forth. Non-game material, which I only tap into on occasion.

Now that my desk and a large part of my floor are freed, I will be able to further organize things the next time I get a burst of energy. My printer can come off of the floor and go on the desk. My computer books can go back on the floor under the desk, where they belong. I also moved one of the shelves on one of my bookcases down a couple of notches; I had a couple of NES games which were drifting around without a place to rest, and doing this has not only made room for them along with the other games but has allowed me to put my game genie, book, and NES cleaner back with the rest of the cartridges.

Very slowly, things are shaping up around here. Of course I will be leaving here for school in a matter of days — so I’m not sure why I’m putting so much effort into things. I suppose if what I am doing were actually useful, however, I’d never get around to doing it.

Ah me.

Oh goodness!

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I am no longer the #1 Space Harrier player in the state of Maine! Since I last looked at the records, I’ve been shoved all the way down to #2!

The horror! The shame!

… I’m hungry.

A.I.

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I was quite surprised — in a positive sense — by the film. While I was expecting some kind of Spielbergy tripe with nifty special effects and some interesting elements perking up a potentially tired theme, I was treated to an actual bit of artistry. It seems Kubrick’s vision, whatever that might have been, was held very strongly. From the camera angles to set design to pacing to tone to the direction of the actors, about ninety percent of the film felt like pure Kubrick — almost more so than he usually did. Where Spielberg came in seemed to be in softening some of the excesses and rough edges Kubrick loved to leave jutting out to scrape the viewer.

There were a couple of very distinctly Spielbergy moments (such as the underwater segment and some of the tone toward the very end) and I can see now why he was attracted to the project, but I think his ideas actually complimented the work. Still, it would be fascinating to see how the film looked in various stages of production. I have to imagine it was very different before Kubrick got his manipulative claws onto it, knowing how he loved to mangle source material into his own odd shapes.

But I ramble. Surprisingly good film, which didn’t go anywhere nearly in the direction I was expecting.

Shadow of a Dream

  • Reading time:1 mins read

SA2 is getting much better now. A bunch of sources had reported that the game seemed sort of disappointing at the outset but that it improved dramatically somewhere in the middle or toward the end. This is more or less accurate.

When I first put in the game, I was basically turned off by its progression, structure, difficulty, and by the evil camera. Now that Lan and I have hacked our way pretty deeply into the story mode, it’s become very fascinating; the plot is now interesting, and somewhat more coherent, the level design is impressive, the bosses are neat, and things in general seem to at last be coming together.

I think I can confidently say that I like this game now — though it’s still got a terrible camera in places, and some of the early level design especially is discouraging. One has to make an effort to figure out how good the game is, and I can see how a lot of people would not do this.

I still have to do research on that magazine thing…

Advancement

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I finally touched a GBA the other day! The games available were F-Zero, for some reason (bleh), and ChuChu Rocket!. And only the former was out of its packaging, which frustrated me a bit. Who cares about a crappy racing game, with ugly Mode-7 pixels all over the place. I want to see what Sega is up to.

All the same, this is a terrific system. Everything about it is perfect or nearly so, from what I can determine so far; it’s solid, it feels nice in the hands (I’ve had two people complain to me about the triggers, but I just don’t think they’re holding it properly), it’s smoothly-designed and simple — the cart fits flush with the top of the system; the back is curved in an ergonomic way, while the front is completely flat — mostly a huge screen, with a couple of buttons around the edges. It seems perfectly molded to comfortably slip into one’s pocket — as opposed to the boxy shape of every other handheld out there. And it’s as “real”-feeling as the NGPC was, and its screen is every bit as good as well. The sound is nice. It’s more powerful than either the SNES or the Genesis. Sega is developing for it. Its boot-up screen is nice. I like the packaging. The cartridges are cute. I like the colors it comes in.

Wow, there are too many great consoles coming out. This thing reminds me a bit of the DC in a way. It’s very small; very compact and functional, and yet stylish and cute at the same time. And it feels like an “old” game system. Like it’s made with the classic sensibilities of the pre-Playstation era.

I think Nintendo is making a sort of a comeback. The N64 and GBC were both mostly lame ducks — uninspired, unimpressive, ugly, and poorly-executed. They had their standout titles of course, since they were made by Nintendo, but past the Virtual Boy they’re perhaps the least impressive things Nintendo made for a long time. Now both the GBA and the GCN are here or on their way — and both are very, very impressive. I think it’s a good thing that Sega seems to like Nintendo so much (though they appear to have a certain fondness for Microsoft as well); there’s so much insipid bland gunk out there — mostly due to Sony — that it’s about time the old timers, who know how gaming actually works, team up to knock the garbage back to where it belongs.

Speaking of the GBA — before leaving home the other day, I started flipping through a new issue of Newsweek. In its “cyberscope” section there was a page devoted to the launch of this system — and almost everything which was said in the article was wrong in some minor or major way, or misleading through a lack of proper supporting information. I was very annoyed. Not only do the mainstream media outlets refuse to give videogames equal billing with movies, books, and music, choosing instead to continue treating them like an occasional curiosity — despite games being the largest entertainment industry in the country at this point — but when they do report they do it with a level of unprofessionalism which leaves me trembling. What moron hired this guy to write these things?

That got me thinking. I’m a heck of a lot more competent than anyone I’ve ever seen in a mainstream outlet, in terms of this medium. I can write better than most people out there. I could probably fix this.

I’m going to do a bit of research, and try writing to a bunch of mainstream magazines and newspapers, describing to them the situation and proposing a way to remedy it (read: hire me). I could do this. I never have considered my writing worth anything at all, but this is merely because it comes as naturally to me as blinking. It takes no particular effort, so it can’t be valuable. But if it is this simple for me, why not get paid for blinking — and get free review software while I’m at it?

I think I know what I’m gonna be doing in the near future at least. And hey — I’m good. If I figure out how to present myself properly, they’d have to be insane not to hire me. Since there’s such a dearth of valuable criticism and coverage in the mainstream eye, I could possibly even carve a bit of a name for myself — but I’m getting ahead of things here.

windup; wind-down

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Have I mentioned recently how beautiful the Sega Genesis is? Truly, Sega has always had the most attractive consoles around (at least almost always…). Compare the snazzy SMS to the hideously boring NES. Compare the Genesis to any other console made. Compare the cute-yet-functional Dreamcast to any of the other three nextgen consoles. Sigh.

Yes, I’m finally dragging the things back into my room just now. I still have cords wrapped around my arms and neck like pythons with AC fangs.

I’m glad I polished these things up a while ago… now if only I could find my copies of Altered Beast, Ghouls ‘N Ghosts, Shadow Dancer, and a couple of other truant items. And if only I had full packaging (box and manual at least) for some of the used items I’ve picked up over the past few years. Hum…

It would be nice to get fully-functioning NES, Genesis, and SMS emulators for the DC so I coud simply burn discs of my complete collections for each console. Saving the Saturn (and GB and NGPC — the GG is included with the SMS in this case), this would put everything I needed in one place.

What would be sort of amusing would be if the emulator discs supported the modem and allowed peer-to-peer multiplayer for Life Force or Streets of Rage, as some Windows emulators have been doing for a while. (Well, not peer-to-peer, usually, in this case — but..)

Hm. Brain slurping around. I’ll be back later.

Breakdown

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Today I tried burning an SNES emulator for the Dreamcast. It’s not exactly an easy process, and I forgot to include a couple of things that I intended (including that Super Robot Wars Gaiden game), but I guess this is just a test run. The emulator, a version of SNES9X, runs very well, if rather slowly — and it lacks SFX chip support, so Starfox and Yoshi’s Island give my poor Dreamcast a nervous breakdown.

The Sega Pushover

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I beat NiGHTS, after nearly a year — first Claris’s game, and then Elliot’s. I see now why the game was split up into two sections like this. Wizeman wasn’t at all difficult to fight, once I was given a chance to see what he did; previously I’d only ever made it to him once, and at that time I was a bit too rattled. But… gee. One can even get hit several times and still be able to beat him without a huge problem. Just getting to him is harder…

This, though, seems to be a typical sort of a Sega style. They make it very, very hard to get to the end — and then once one has gotten there they sort of reward her by making the final encounter pretty trivial. If one has made it that far, they let her enjoy her victory. Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio, and Sonic Adventure are three other examples which pop immediately to mind here. Though — the last battle can often be tricky the first time one gets to it just because one doesn’t know how things work and one is expecting it to be much harder than it is, so one tends to be very jumpy.

Boy. I don’t think I need to use that pronoun again for another week or so.

Water effects

  • Reading time:1 mins read

This morning I had a notion to play Panzer Dragoon. Although I’ve never beaten round three, and only in fact ever gotten there twice, this time I managed to get all the way through chapter four! The fourth one is very, very impressive. Actually, it’s astounding how well this game has held up after six years. I mean, it’s obviously rough. Considering when it came out, though — as a launch title… yikes. I mean. This is pretty impressive now. How must it have seemed in 1995?

The Napple trail…

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I’ve done some research on Napple Tale, and been led to a company called Chime. What role they played in development, I’m unsure. Although I’m positive I’ve read, several places, that OverWorks was behind the game, one would think if that were the case they would claim credit for it. Yet there’s nothing about the game on their site — and nowhere, in any media about the game, is credit for the game’s development taken by anyone other than a vague “SEGA”.

All in all, this is rather suspicious and strange. Did Sega outsource Chime (whoever they are) to make the game, or did they buy the rights from them? Or some other scheme? What part do they have in this?

The mystery continues.

The End of the Time After the End

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I figured out the rest of where Phantasy Star Online fits into things. It obviously takes place after The End of the Millennium — perhaps a thousand years, to follow the series trend. Yet the disturbance in this game is related to PSIII, namely the piece of Dark Force that was on the ship Alisia. Unlike all the “major” manifestations of Dark Force, back in Algol, that Dark Force wasn’t destroyed. Further, at the end of the game it did supposedly vow to return in a thousand years.

What I’m thinking then is that somehow the residents of the ship must have buried him on Ragol. Then a couple of thousand years later (a thousand years after EotM), when the rest of the Algonians escaped Algol on the Pioneer ships, they just happen to take the same route as the earlier pilgrims and so find the Dark Force that was left behind by their distant relatives.

Just figured I needed to write this down where I might be able to find it again later.

Motavia and Opportunity

  • Reading time:2 mins read

In a way, Phantasy Star II was something of a loss of innocence for gaming. I think the music shows one of the attractions for the game. It was the height of a bustling civilization. Technologically adept; happy; bright; clean; optimistic. The dungeon and overworld musics both have a tone of simplicity to them. There is a childlike sense of wonder which pervades the world. Everything is safe. There are the little problems to be fixed, but then all will be right again. The world is safe. Nothing irreparably bad can really happen to our heroes. But then things begin to go very wrong… and suddenly this sense of innocence takes on a very desperate sort of tension, as if the game is trying to cope with what is going on. Like it doesn’t understand how what is happening could possibly happen, and refuses to believe it.

I don’t think there had ever really been events this portentous in a video game before… Now, of course, characters are killed left and right and worlds are destroyed without much of a thought. But a plot this complex was a real novelty at the time. As with a lot of things Sega does, it really showed the potential that games would come to have…

As for the whole Sega situation…

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Hum. I’m really not sure what to think. Perhaps I’ve just been numbed by all of these neverending rumors, but up to a point this does seem like the best way to go. As long as the DC stays, that is. As long as it gets games first, and as long as it gets games that no one else gets.

Space Channel 5, though? The only reason I can see that Sega would choose this as its first title as a third-party publisher would be to attempt to get it the attention that it so deserves. If they can push Ulala to a wider audience, I know she’d catch on — and so perhaps this is what they’re doing. It’d be great advertising for New Space Channel 5, certainly.

What I anticipated was arcade ports, rather than ports of home games. As long as Sega keeps Shenmue and Phantasy Star and Arcadia and Sonic (the GBA doesn’t figure here), the less-iconic fare can go where it needs to fund what really matters.

Hum. It’s better that Sega do this, and do it strongly, than to go bankrupt and fade away quietly. This doesn’t necessarily have to be defeat, as long as it’s done with pride. I shudder to think of Sega’s market dominance if they do this well…

But why do I keep having disturbingly analogic thoughts of SNK?

Addendum

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Just because I feel like it, here are my top ten most anticipated games at the moment:

  • Shenmue II
  • New Space Channel 5
  • Sonic Adventure 2
  • Eternal Arcadia 2
  • toejam & earl 3
  • Soul Reaver 2
  • Sakura Wars 3
  • gun valkyrie
  • Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
  • Bangai-O

I’m curious about Agartha and Headhunter and Hundred Swords and Farnation, and I eagerly await announcement of a DC port of Planet Harriers or word of the new Chakan game (which seems to have fallen off the face of the planet). SEGAGAGA sounds fascinating in its own strange way, but I doubt I have to worry much about it being released here. So…

Anyway. There’s that.