SVC Chaos
by [name redacted]
SVC Chaos has a nice intro.
It has a very nice intro.
It has an especially nice intro for recent-era NeoGeo productions.
It has Mister Karate in the intro.
I really don’t know what to say about the game itself, though.
Say “Guh”
by [name redacted]
Sega hasn’t had much to say, so far. Their booth space occupies about a third to a quarter of the area devoted to Sony or Nintendo. Many high-profile, recently-announced games (Dororo, Kunoichi, Shining Force) are absent. Others, like Altered Beast, are relegated to a short and uninformative video loop.
It’s entirely possible that Sega is keeping all of the interesting stuff locked up until tomorrow, the last day of the show. We’ll see, we’ll see.
Shadow Over Bethesda
by [name redacted]
Neither Vince nor I were entirely sure what we were doing in Bethesda’s private room. While I am as fond of Elder Scrolls as anyone who might be me, I’m not really as versed in Bethesda’s catalogue as I might be.
What we ended up with was a brief demonstration of a couple of the developer’s most recent projects — both licensed, both examples of why a popular license is not necessarily a bad thing in terms of game design.
We stepped in to the middle of a lengthy overview of Pirates of the Caribbean. For a game based off of a movie based off of a theme park attraction, the design is surprisingly deep.
Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
by [name redacted]
I can’t really argue with Leon. This guy is sleek. He controls well. He’s the best brawler in the entire series. More importantly, his game is interesting.
Essentially, Lament of Innocence is the evolution of the classic Konami brawler that the new Turtles game should have been. It’s fast, tight, varied, stylish, and generally involving to play.
SNK – The future is now…again.
by [name redacted]
Although we’ve got a more in-depth interview tomorrow, I couldn’t resist myself. Almost wholly by accident, I managed to stumble into a lengthy conversation with Mr. Ben Herman, president of the newly-reformed SNK NeoGeo USA. He was unexpectedly responsive, friendly, and open to the obsessive Insert Credit style of curiosity.
In brief, here are some of the most prurient items of discussion.
‘window-shopping in an empty store’
by [name redacted] and tim rogers
The president of Nintendo of America is named George Harrison. Somehow I had overlooked this fact up until today. Mister Harrison revealed that Donkey Kong “will remain a lovable ape” and that Mario “will never start shooting hookers”.
More intriguing, however, is the fact that Satoru Iwata speaks English. While he still needs a translator to help with more complex ideas, Iwata nevertheless manages to express himself with some appreciable degree of competence.
The Nintendo conference was comfortable, if not particularly informative. Outside of the multiplayer Pac-Man performance and the Will Wright announcement, there wasn’t much new to see. The swag wasn’t thrilling, either; just a paper sack full of press material and a ribbed tee shirt.
Since Brandon had to be elsewhere, I was given the rare opportunity to impersonate him and infiltrate the show. As it turned out, I never even needed his ID; his business card was enough. Given that Doug got in and that he wasn’t even on the list, perhaps my nefariousness was without need. Darned if I didn’t feel like a super spy, though.
A super spy eating uncommonly delicious raspberry muffins, that is to say. The buffet was… well, you really had to be there.
Riven from the world
There’s this place on disc 3 of Riven. After one steps off of the maglev and passes through the brief frog cave, there is a long stairway that winds up a rocky hillside. The sun is warm, yet the shadows are deep. The birds are chirping. The gentle ripple of the bay, below, carries on the slight breeze. If one progresses down the stairs, one sees the easily-startled sunners lazing on their rock. Up, meanwhile, leads to a rope bridge stretching toward the forest.
I want to spend all day on that set of stairs. There is a small landing where one first emerges from the cave, about large enough for one or two people to sit, and draw.
To some extent I ache that this location doesn’t really exist, as I would so like to visit — at the very least. I would like to nap there. Curl up in the shadows when the sun became too warm; emerge into the light when a chill came over me.
I believe it is that one small location which makes Riven what it is, for me. Everything else revolves around it. Every time I pass through, I linger. I can never seem to get enough.
There are only a few games which have given me a similar sensation. The Legend of Zelda is one. Shenmue is another. Skies of Arcadia comes darned close at times.
This is how Riven succeeds. It creates a place which feels real; which rings so true that one desires to understand it better. Then, it follows through. Everything makes sense, if one gives it enough time; the only thing holding the player back is his own internal wiring. The more time one spends there, the more one pieces together. The more one understands how the world works, and the more real it becomes.
It is essentially a masterpiece of world design, unlike any other that I’ve seen. That’s all that it is; a fully-conceived world, to enter and interpret as one sees fit.
Have moved some money and files around. Have bought some new pants. Not a lot remaining to do before I leave — which is in… three days.
Oy!
Hey. I should be able to sneak into the secret press-only rooms, seeing as how I’m… y’know, press.
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GCN/Nintendo)
by [name redacted]
Miyamoto comes from an older school of game design, from a time when we didn’t know as much as we do now — and so we didn’t know what was impossible. We also had little history, so it was up to bards like Miyamoto to create one for us.
With a handful of details, a rough outline, and his whims, Miyamoto spins tales for his audience. With every telling and every audience, his stories go down a slightly different path. No one performance is more accurate than any other; the truth is in the telling. Save the odd sequel, every Zelda game is a new beginning, with a new, yet always familiar, Link and a new Zelda. It’s getting so there are nearly as many interpretations as of Journey to the West or the legend of King Arthur. And for the same reasons.
Legends like these are ancient; they’re from a world before our linear sense of time and our concrete idea of history. Back then, the world moved in cycles. The seasons came and went; life flourished and waned — and then it began again, a little different, mostly familiar. Reality is in the moment and in that faith in the cycle.
The way that videogames age, this cycle has turned into a death spiral. Every five years there’s a new generation of players, with its own collective assumptions and its own built-in innocence to history. For each new wave of gamers, the story must be adapted and retold again.
The problem is this modern concept of progress. Whereas only a few generations ago one year was much the same as the next, technology has now placed us on a non-stop rocket train to anywhere-but-here. So our perception is warped from the speed, and so we are blinded to the cycles that used to define our reality.
Our rhythms have been broken, replaced with the dull whine of progress. The future is our salvation, while the present is a blur and the past is our collective shame. We live in a society that has invented history as a straw man for our pursuit of an illusory perfection.
Wind Waker is a game caught in an unfortunate dilema between these two world models.
Fish = Sunken Treasure
In a dream just now, I was diagnosed as having an incurable case of Bulgaria. The doctor chose to call this the “Night of the Living Dead” disease.
I think he was able to narrow it down, in part, after he asked me whether I knew anyone from Poland.
Are you a Bad enough Dude to clear Kunio’s name?
Anyone out there a fan of Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari? (If you aren’t, then why are you reading my journal?!)
Go throw this string into Google:
“Tachi no Banka” translation
After spending some decent time with it, I can easily say that Shin Nekketsu Kouha: Kunio Tachi no Banka is pretty much the best game in the main Nekketsu series, all Downtown matters aside. And there’s a decent translation patch for it.
So. Go for it.
To say more would be foolish.
The timing explains the cowboys.
Did you note the bit about the carcinogenic qualities of sassafras? Here’s more on the matter!
SPECIAL QUOTE:
“Oil of Sassafras is chiefly used for flavouring purposes, particularly to conceal the flavour of opium when given to children. In the United States of America it is employed for flavouring effervescing drinks.”
Because you know how hard it is to get the kids to take their opium!
Damned kids.
Break on through to the other side
Sega claims that SA:DX (now named, in full, “Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut“) has five hours of new gameplay in addition to all of the other additions.
A “mission mode” has been added, for COLLECTING JOY. This is where one unlocks “exclusive items”, “secrets”, and the Gamegear games. Whether this mode is what constitutes the five purported hours of new gameplay, I don’t know.
Personally, I don’t think that the emblem-hunting in the Sonic Adventure games counts as real gameplay. The story mode is the actual game. Being forced to go back in and perform inane stunts under arbitrary limitations just seems like a waste of time and energy to me.
I suppose it’s better that the emblems actually do something now, though. Or maybe it’s not. At least I knew I wasn’t missing anything by not bothering with a number of the more annoying ones.
My patience is really starting to wear thin with such thinly-veiled time sponges; tasks which have no substantial reason to exist, other than so as to keep the player glued to the game for an unnaturally, unhealthfully long time. As far as game design goes, it’s manipulative, lazy, and not at all intriguing. Worse, it’s becoming so omnipresent — even where it just doesn’t belong.
It’s… starting to make me dislike videogames in general, at least as they are at present.
I feel not unlike how I felt a decade ago. My levels of disgust and apathy are being strained.
I don’t intend to give up. That’d be too easy. I did it once before, and in the process, I missed most of a generation. Yet, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to care about a lot of what’s out there today.
The industry is entering a rut just as pathetic as the one of ten years ago. Not as damning as the one of 1984, but…
…
there’s a pattern here.
I’m starting to think that there really needs to be a shakedown.
For a while, I’ve been watching its approach. The old guard, as it were, is going to have to either get with the picture soon or it’s going to fall apart. The trouble has already long since begun, spreading the fallout of an industry’s greed and ineptitude as wide as possible so as not to choke the largest perpetrators in their own filth. Meanwhile, a new generation seems to be quietly, humbly (for the moment) emerging — far enough away that the garbage isn’t nearly as much of a problem.
The established head of the industry is flat out of ideas. It’s just going through the motions, without any real understanding anymore for why it does what it does. (Sort of like KoF2002, or any contemporary RPG you might choose to pick up.) There’s no foundation anymore. The old-world elite have been doing what they’ve been doing for so long that they don’t even remember why they’re doing it.
The benefit about new blood, from a separate world, is that it doesn’t have these problems; assuming that the newcomers understand where they are to begin with, and that they know what they’re doing, the ground is always still within reach. They can easily trace down to see how things stand. It isn’t so hard to retrace and start over if need be. They’re informed by the ideas of the older generation, but those ideas are adapted in such a way that is relevent to the newcomers in the context which they know most well.
This is, I think, the difference between the two things that Nintendo’s been doing lately.
The way that the apprenticeship thing seems to be going at the moment is that the methods are being taught by rote, for their own sake — rather than as possible answers to more fundamental questions.
But on the other hand, Nintendo is also supporting developers like Silicon Knights and Retro; contributing funding, polish, and advice — but allowing the newer houses to find their own direction.
It’s the difference between following a religion and being informed by its philosophy. Following in the footsteps of your forebears, or being inspired to do your own work by building upon what came before.
Mrrn.
I can see Eiji Aonuma presenting his game before Miyamoto. “This is how it goes, right?”
Yes, technically…
But… no.
Kinko’s — the cereal with extra leather
I wonder if my toothpaste protects against demons. It doesn’t specifically claim anything on the package, so I’m tempted to think otherwise.
Finis.
g’gnahrnnndje…
Okay. It’s over with.
It’s almost random that I actually beat Ganondorf in his final form; all of my fairies were gone, I only had a few hearts left, and I just happened to hit the right button at the right time — a button I didn’t even intend to press.
Worth noting: There is a second quest of sorts in this game. There are a number of obvious changes that I’ve noted so far, although they’re mostly cosmetic. Some of them were on my wishlist the first time through the game, so — well, good.
I’m not sure how substantially the game is altered, however.
I’ve got… about a quarter of my review written. It should be done reasonably soon.
And…
yes.
Those a’ nae the jaws of which I speak, lass.
I still taste the bread from a submarine sandwich that I ate over twelve hours ago. Talk about value for your dollar!
My toy symphony, as it were, is beginning to find some kind of direction for itself. I’ve come to the conclusion, however, that I need a good sample or two which comfortably sit in the bass range. As one might anticipate, were one to pay attention to such spectral issues, all of these dinky instruments and knicknacks tend to be pretty strong on the high end, but they generally cut off somewhere within the midrange.
Maybe I can fudge a bit by introducing a couple of pure waves; square and triangle, say. They’ll sound cheesy, and yet honest and warm enough that they might not clash as an overly synthetic addition.
Plus, they can be cleanly downsampled as much as I care to do so.
I really am not fond of square waves when used in the mid-range; I’ve known this for a long while. They just sound hollow. But my word, do they make good bass patches. They even have some neat uses in the higher registers, as a chirpy kind of seasoning.
Wind Waker is sitting in my Gamecube, very close to completion (as it has been for a few days) — but I return to it joylessly at this point. I suppose I might as well just get the darned thing over with. If I didn’t have a review to write, I don’t think I’d have the motivation to finish.
Today has been a day of crankiness. Perhaps repeating another three or four boss battles is just the cap that I need.
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