The Public Mind

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Not long ago, the fans were screaming and retching over Nona‘s art. They demanded that Playmore use any more familiar and palatable else. Now SNK has hired Falcoon, the fan favorite. And now people are starting to murmur how “normal” Falcoon’s art looks in comparison, and how they prefer Nona even if his style is kind of weird.

Sheesh.

Mass opinion is an odd and fickle creature.

I think I’m beginning to appreciate silent film more than spoken. In a sense, it takes more skill to tell a compelling story with nothing but pictures. And in so doing, you’ve achieved pure cinema. Once dialogue comes into the picture, you begin to cross media with theater. Acting tends to become more staid. Visuals aren’t as important anymore. Everything starts to bland out a bit.

Perhaps the reason Hitchcock was so good with imagery in his later pictures is tied to his background in silent film. His early stuff, as a whole, isn’t great. Still, what you learn early on tends to stick with you and influence you for the rest of your life.

Around the cluck

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Wow. It’s only quarter of ten?

Playing Billy Hatcher sure makes time pass slowly.

Askew

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I just realized that most artists only really have one thing to say. If that. Everything they do is just a refinement of, or another aspect of, that single contribution that they have (that being their own selves).

I suppose this should be obvious. We’re all individuals. The more rounded individuals, perhaps, have more corners of their minds to lay bare.

All the same: Miyamoto has never really varied since his original ideas for Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Those added up into Super Mario Bros., and then Miyamoto took things a step further to hit upon The Legend of Zelda. Since 1987, it’s all just been refinement. He doesn’t have much to say that we haven’t already heard.

Same goes for Rieko Kodama, really (as much as I enjoy her work). She’s still kind of working with the tools she devised a decade and a half ago. BioWare did a lot with their first RPG, but they haven’t done a lot since then.

Hitchcock kept whacking out variations on the same two or three themes. Most of his work involved finding people he enjoyed and allowing them to do whatever they wanted within his vague descriptions. The Beatles had a lot to say by the end, but that comes from the chemistry of five key voices (including George Martin) and all of their experiences.

Miyamoto did his part. He’s done now. Hitchcock did his part. So is he. So are the Beatles. (Really, what of great merit have any of them done since the early ’70s?) They’ve each come out of nowhere with a new perspective and pointed out untapped possibilities within their own respective contexts. And in so doing, they’ve helped the context change.

And the world keeps moving. If they don’t, they’re left as a noble milestone; as a reminder of the need for perspective. Not as a template, however. Anything else is idolatry.

And that’s where all of the problems lie.

I’ve got a headache.

I Can See Your Moves

  • Reading time:5 mins read

I’ve just replayed ’96, and I’ve got to say that it’s the most intriguing in the series aside from 2001. It’s where everything came together right, for the first time. And SNK had to revise just about everything they’d established in ’94 and ’95 in order to make the game.

It makes me wish all the more that 2002 had been a concluding plot chapter for the NESTS era, as it rightfully should have been. The pattern would be complete, then.

’99 established the new gameplay system, with the strikers and all. It was nice and original, and a good idea. 2000 was almost the exact same game (as ’95 was to ’94), only with the rough spots polished away. Just as ’96 revolutionized the early series, 2001 revolutionized the later series. ’97 took what was established in ’96 and didn’t add much to it in terms of gameplay — but rather expanded it and used it as the backing mechanics for an orgy of plot exposition and drama.

Then ’98 — the first dream match — was almost the same game as ’97 (just compare the selection screens of the two!), only with an extra nine characters (every left-over non-boss character from ’94-’96 aside from Eiji), “classic” versions of most of the main characters (with their pre-’96 move lists), and a bunch of extra animations and interactions and energy added in.

That makes ’98 more or less “’97 DX”, in its structure. And at the same time, it’s a kind of a compilation of everything KoF up until that time. Not unlike the upcoming Street Fighter II compilation for the PS2. Aside from all of the characters and character versions above, it also has both major game systems up to that point (“Advanced” and “Extra” — which correspond to the pre-’96 and post-’95 engines). Basically, however you like your (pre-NESTS) KoF, ’98 has it. All it lacks is plot. But it’s got extra heaps of charm to make up for the loss (if you’re familiar with the characters).

That could have been the case with 2003, for the series’ tenth anniversary. 2002 would have put to use the refined system introduced in 2001, and cleanly finished off that plot arc. 2003 would have been the ultimate KoF dream match, covering the whole history of KoF — or at least everything that’s happened since ’98. Every major non-boss character. Every major game system. At least two distinct move lists for most of the major characters.

Then 2004 — the first Atomiswave game — could be the start of the next plotline. A nice clean beginning, on new hardware.

But, no.

Anyway. To illustrate, the pattern goes more or less like this:

[1a] [1b] [2a] [2b] [x] [1a] [1b] [2a] [x]
’94 ’95 ’96 ’97 ’98 ’99 ’00 ’01 n/a ’02

[1a] defines a new game system. It’s a rough draft. A little awkward. A few obvious problems to work out. Still, by virtue of its new ideas it’s got some energy and life to it.

[1b] is the refinement of that system. It’s the edited version, more or less. Most of the overt kinks have been knocked out. Problem is, it’s almost the same as the previous game. The game is nice, but one is left waiting for the point.

[2a] is the second draft. This is a total overhaul of the system introduced two games earlier. While the previous game was merely a revision, the goal of which was to fix the obvious problems in the first incarnation of the game system, this game scraps the earlier system altogether and rephrases the original ideas in a far more elegant form. This is more or less what they tried to do two games earlier, but hadn’t quite figured out how to express yet.

[2b] is to [2a] as [1b] is to [1a]. More or less. Now that they’ve finally got the system down, they don’t really have to think about it anymore and can just use it to tell an interesting story.

[x] is where we clear out the closet. Tally what’s been accomplished so far, while we figure out what to do next.

The NESTS saga never really got either a [2b] or an [x]. And it needed both, in order to work satisfactorily. Instead, it got abbreviated by a train wreck.

As you can both gather and imagine anyway, it’s the “a” chapters which do more for me. Especially the revised ones, where SNK (or Eolith/Brezza) figured out what they wanted to say. The “b” ones tend to bore me a little (particularly the “a” ones), since they’re creative resting periods. It’s all just futzing. And honestly, polish tends to annoy me. I like things rough; it leaves the character in. EDIT: (Of course, some things manage to combine both roughness and polish at the same time! HOW CAN YOU LOSE!)

Hell. I might as well post this, while I’m here.

Here comes the sun

  • Reading time:5 mins read

Just to let you know: Henrik Galeen is the fellow who invented the whole sunlight + vampires = unhappy and/or dead vampires device. I thought it likely that Nosferatu was the origin of this cinematic convenience. The commentary track on the DVD has confirmed this for me.

While we’re on the subject…

Konami pretty much seems to have ignored [Sonia Belmont] based on the supposedly bad game she inhabited (good character design and scenario aside)…

Actually, Igarashi wrote her game out of the official canon because he thought it was too far-fetched for a woman to be an action hero during the period in which the game was set. There’s an interview on Gamers where you can find these statements.

Aside from the obvious logistical strangeness here (since when were the Belmonts your average peasants?), Igarashi seems to be overlooking an awful lot of potential for character and story depth.

A woman would have to be all the stronger — all the more of a hero — to hold up against the repressive society of the time, and all of the fear and persecution she’d probably face. The stronger she’d get, the more that people would fear and resent her.

Thus the Belmonts were chased out of Transylvania after Dark Night Prelude/Legends, and thus Trevor/Ralph had to be called back in Akumajou Denetsu/Dracula’s Curse.

At the outset of that game, Trevor is kneeling by a shrine, praying. He could be talking to his dead mother, asking for the strength to follow in her stead.

I suppose an action game doesn’t need to go that deep, however.

I also suppose it doesn’t help much that Igarashi is filtering all of this through his own Japanese mindset.

Note that, as far as I know, Sonia still exists as a character in the official timeline. If so, however, she’s been demoted to little more than Trevor/Ralph’s mother.

He seems to care a lot about the atmosphere and continuity of Castlevania and the few Castlevania games that have had historical errors have all been the ones that Igarashi hasn’t worked on, such as CV64 with its turn of the 20th century biker skeletons.

Now, I really like Igarashi and respect what he’s trying to do with the series. Again, though, this doesn’t seem a necessary change to me. If anything, the storyline seems stronger with her in than with her out. If nothing else, she opens up a lot of intriguing possibilities.

Igarashi makes the occasional vague reference to historical accuracy, but he’s hardly a stickler. Thus the wailing guitars in Symphony of the Night and the classical music in Lament of Innocence (each anachronistic by at least one hundred fifty years — and more like five or six hundred in the latter case). There are all kinds of weird details in Harmony of Dissonance, like phonographs and elevators. The list goes on.

And even within the game’s internal world, Igarashi is willing to break form if it suits him. The “Spell Fusion” system in Harmony of Dissonance serves as a sort of a placeholder in terms of gameplay systems. It helps to explain whence Richter’s and the later Belmonts’ Item Crash techniques originate, while it makes clear what happened to the Belnades bloodline once it merged with that of the Belmonts. (That is, it went dormant until Juste found it.)

So, given that Lament of Innocence takes place several hundred years before Sypha was ever born, why did Igarashi put a Spell Fusion system in the game? Because it makes the game more interesting.

To be sure, he originally wanted the game to be straight out whip-and-subweapons action. That would have made it more accurate. He said that was a little too dull, though. So, with a shrug, there goes continuity.

What I’m saying is that his explanation doesn’t really hold water at face value. It’s a fictional world; you can do whatever you like with it.

It’s a convenient sound bite, yes, and there may be some element of truth to it — but he’s got some other reason. If you go strictly by what he says, basically what it translates to is “I just don’t want a female lead in my series.”

So. Is he just a jerk? Does he have issues with women? Is he gay? (Hell, Soma Cruz might as well be a woman. Maybe that’s how he likes it.)

Perhaps it’s something more mundane — like politics. Notice that he doesn’t include in his official timeline any game produced by either the (now-defunct) Kobe or Nagoya studios. In the case of Kobe, this is understandable. They kind of screwed up whatever they touched, even in the case of the rather enjoyable Circle of the Moon. But Dark Night Prelude took special care to adhere to the continuity established up to that point. So that would seem a curious explanation.

Maybe it’s some other problem entirely. Maybe he just doesn’t like that plot thread. I don’t know. I suppose I can’t, unless he lets something slip.

I doubt he’s written the game off for any really powerful concerns about historical accuracy, though. Nor does the quality issue seem right to me, given what other games he does choose to include (like the two Dracula Denetsu games).

So, as before, that just leaves one to marvel at how strange his statement is.

Do not inject opinion.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Ho ho! I am currently deriving great amusement from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Where has this book hidden for the past twenty-five years of my life? In E.B. White’s coffin, perhaps?

Jolly good.

Wolfman Rock

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I have rediscovered that Terry Bogard is supposed to be 35 in Mark of the Wolves.

Aha.

His birthday is March 15, 1973.

Aha.

So. This seems to concretely support the other convoluted-if-logical reasons I’ve been going by, to conclude that Mark of the Wolves must take place in 2008 and that the (canonical) Real Bout tournament was held in 1998 (in between KoF years).

As an effort to build up my informational self-reliance (and thereby cut down on the irritation of searching for data), I’ve been building up a database of the vital statistics for every character in the modern-day SNK continuity. (I’ve most of the KoF and FF characters logged at this point.)

Do you know Kim Jae Hoon’s special talent? I do! (It’s reciting pi to the 27th decimal place.) How about Lawrence Blood’s favourite dish? (Beef stew.)

Oh, this is all so very useful that I feel I shall burst!