We All Fall Down

Udon

  • Reading time:3 mins read

A few days ago I found a new gaming news site. I thought it was pretty keen for the kinds of news covered, and for the way some of the previews and reviews were written. Then I happened onto the editorials. The first one I hit, was just terrific.Some time later I came to another interesting article. I hadn’t been paying much attention at first, but after a couple of pages I realized that the writing style seemed familiar. I checked, and indeed it was by the same guy as the last one I’d liked.

I had already, a few hours before, shot off a quick note to one of the site’s editors, commending him on what a keen place he’d set up. (This email subsequently returned to me in a few days’ time, for whatever reason.) Following the day’s whims, I decided to do similarly with this author. I was lazy, however, and simply suggested that he refer to what I’d said in my earlier mail to the editor.

This, as a more rational person would expect, led to a confused reply. I responded to his response, saying what I should have said to begin with, and over the next few days a brief rapport followed. He mentioned that he was writing a book and asked if I’d like to read it. I asked if its opening scene involved noodles in any way. Somewhat to his amazement, it did. In fact, he’d apparently just written that part in.

Point is, after a bit of procrastination I finally logged into the account he mentioned and downloaded the version of his manuscript that he indicated. I didn’t really intend to look at it right off; I was feeling woozy and contemplating either a nap or some nourishment. Or King of Fighters. But I opened the file up anyway, to make sure that it had downloaded correctly. I re-read the first page (which he’d sent earlier to prove his point about the noodles).

By the next time I really noticed, I was already on page thirty-four. This thing is a little silly, although that’s mostly intentional. It, however, is quite thoroughly enjoyable. I’m particularly impressed with the manner in which he seems to punctuate otherwise-straight scenes with unexpected hiccups in tone. The timing is generally well-balanced, such that at about the time I feel compelled to get up and do something else, a new idea pops up to reel me back in again. It’s difficult to escape. And it seems reasonably clever so far.

Will hold further comment until I get further in. But this is sort of interesting.

I just went to a meeting and listened to a couple of directors talk about how to make actors and screenplays work together. They kept reminding everyone that no one in Hollywood reads, and how to get around that if what you’re trying to do is write. I will not divulge the secrets here. I think this guy is on the right path, though.

The King of Fighters 2000 – Review

  • Reading time:20 mins read

A very good port of a pretty good chapter of an excellent series

These are my extensive impressions after having spent a day with the game.

I never expected this game to be announced, and up until the time I held it in my hands I had trouble entirely believing the story. The whole Playmore thing from the outset is more like some kind of a fairy tale than anything I expect to be able to touch. But no, Playmore does apparently exist. SNK is alive again, sort of. And for some reason they’re still supporting Sega’s hardware. And the packaging is neat-o.

Really, this is just like all of SNK’s packaging in the past — well, their Japanese stuff, anyway. Actually even in the US, SNK were one of the few publishers to print full-colour manuals for their Dreamcast games. It’s just that their packaging and advertising was incredibly tacky — and Agetec picked up on that, destroying the beautiful Mark of the Wolves cover art in the region 1 release.

My point is, it’s really well-done. It’s along the lines of what SNK were doing toward the end of their life; KoF’99, Mark of the Wolves, Last Blade 2, etcetera. Nice cover art; nice disc art; nice tray art (both sides), well-made manual. Very clean, classy, and elegant.

That evaluation, I could pretty much extend to the entire production. The DC port of 2000 is essentially what you’d expect it to be, only a little bit better in most places. It’s not anywhere as good as the ports of KoF’98 and ’99 (Dream Match 1999 and Evolution, respectively), as a lot of work went into each of those to make them native Dreamcast games and more than just a couple of ports. But I think it’s safe to say that there’s more here than in any of SNK’s other Dreamcast efforts (Cool Cool Toon aside).

In both earlier KoF games, SNK added 3D backgrounds. ’98 had a new — and long — animated introduction added, drawn, apparently, by the person who did the character art in ’99. While ’99 lacked this extra touch, it was generally a much more, well, evolved package. The concept of ”Another Strikers” was pioneered here, and a store system was set up where one could purchase a large handful of additional striker-only characters, from most of the remaining cast of ’98 who got left out in this chapter to Fio, from Metal Slug. ’99 also got a snazzy new interface and an incomplete-but-still-useful inline move list which could be brought up at any time (as in Capcom’s recent efforts).

This port of 2000, meanwhile, hovers a little closer to MotW and Last Blade 2 in terms of overall effect and apparent effort. As with every other Neo-Geo game ported to the DC (aside from KoF’98), there’s a long pause at the outset while what must be a large part of the original Neo-Geo ROM set is dumped into memory. After that, unless one exits Neo-Geo territory (such as to the art gallery and puzzle mode), there are virtually no load times at all after startup. And as usual, Playmore have removed the typical Neo-Geo ”How To Play” introductions to every play mode in the game. Why this is seen as a necessity for every Neo-Geo port, I don’t know. I find that they add a lot of personality to the game; just watch Kyo’s and Shingo’s demonstration in ’98 to see what I mean.

Also as with every other Neo-Geo port (and this was a bit of a surprise to me), Playmore were kind enough to lace an arranged soundtrack into this new port. One has the option to switch back to ”original sound” — as with Mark of the Wolves — but I wouldn’t advise it in this case. Somehow in the transition, the excellent Neo-Geo music has become muffled and tinny, and has aquired a slight, yet (to-me) disconcerting reverberation. The sound level is also below all of of the sound effects and voices, somewhat killing the drama in Kyo’s theme, for instance.

I’m a little annoyed with these developments, as the original Neo-Geo music has a certain coarse, gritty edge to it which is almost entirely absent in the arranged score — and I think in some ways it fits the game’s visuals somewhat better. Nevertheless, the arranged soundtrack is fantastic on its own merits. There are details to the music which I never picked up from the original soundtrack, and it’s a lot more obvious what the music ties are to the score from ’99.

While I think overall ’99 has the more interesting score, 2000 certainly has one of the three best soundtracks of any King of Fighters game. It’s similar in style to ’99, and is in many ways more polished — think of the music in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, in comparison to the first game. Some people might disagree with me on both counts, and figure that the more polished music in the second game is superior. I’d be in no place to make claims against them, as the music is still terrific all around.

(One thing over which I think there will be zero debate is the new Garou theme. This marks the first instance where the Fatal Fury team’s music actually blends into the rest of the score — and it’s just fantastic. It is, by freakin’ Flea Man leaps and bounds, the best theme this team has ever had in a KoF game.)

And in this case, the mix is very crisp and clear — and each theme goes on for far longer than I’d expect. I think most major tracks must be at least three or four minutes in length before the loop. This is especially impressive when one looks at the travesty which is KoF2001’s soundtrack. But we’ll face that monster when we get to it.

I don’t think the voices and sound effects were resampled for the Dreamcast version, as they obviously were in ’99. It’s not that they’re of a poor quality, but I think they must have been directly lifted off of the Neo-Geo cartridge rather than from the original recordings. They sound fine; the acting quality is of typical SNK standards, and the effects are varied. I’m just saying.

In terms of what’s unique to this port, the most ballyhooed new addition takes the form of a whole bucketload of new stages which have been added to the game. One of the largest complaints I keep seeing about the original version of KoF2000 has to do with its backgrounds. For one, people seem to feel that there aren’t enough of them. People also seem to generally agree that the stages in 2000 are a huge step down from what we saw in the previous game — washed-out in terms of palette, and generally uninspired.

I’m not sure I agree with this evaluation; although ’99 certainly had some of the most stunning backdrops in the series, I’m not sure what that has to do with 2000. As it is, there are several native stages in this game which I find entirely impressive. The thing is, the ones which strike my fancy are the ones others tend to point out as lame while the ones which bore me are the ones which seem to amaze everyone else. I guess that’s pretty typical.

Nevertheless, it is true that some more variety is needed — and if nothing else, variety is what we now have. The new stages are all in fact old ones, rehashed from everything from Fatal Fury (all three subseries) to every previous edition of King of Fighters even to Samurai Spirits/Shodown in one instance. (Beyond this, for some reason the VMU save/load screen is taken (I believe) almost directly from Mark of the Wolves. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know. But I knew. So I did.)

The rationale for these stages is that they’re all tied to various ”Another Striker” characters present in the game. For those not familiar with the more recent KoF mechanisms, a ”Striker” is an extra team member who can be called in at any point to contribute a single attack of some sort during a battle — very much like what one sees in the Marvel vs. Capcom games. Usually this striker will consist of one of your standard team’s members. For instance, if one were to choose the Hero team (K’, Maxima, Ramon, Vanessa), one could choose the first three characters as fighters and Vanessa as the Striker. Or, since she’s neat and Ramon is annoying, thrust him into the Striker role instead.

In the DC port of KoF’99 and in any version of 2000, there are also what are known as ”Another Striker” characters; they serve no purpose but to be strikers, and aren’t actually playable within the game. They’re more of a fun addition than anything really useful, as they allow cameos of all sorts of odd characters from SNK’s arsenal who don’t otherwise get a chance to show up in the game proper.

In the DC version of 2000, whenever one is fighting against an opponent who has an ”Another Striker”, a particular background stage will generally be tied to that striker. For instance, I mentioned Samurai Spirits a couple of paragraphs ago. The reason that there’s (apparently; I’ve not yet seen it — perhaps it needs to be unlocked?) a stage representing that game is that Nakoruru is one of the extra Strikers present in the game.

I’m not sure if this means that when Awakened Kaede is chosen as a Striker, the background will switch to a stage from Last Blade, but it seems likely. The thing I’ve noticed is that none of the ”odd” characters — the ones from other series not immediately related to King of Fighters — have any of their stages available from the outset; when they’re chosen, the round defaults to a random native level from 2000. I’ve read, however, that there are more stages to unlock later in the game — so we’ll see, I guess.

Anyway, the new backgrounds do help a lot in terms of spicing things up. The only problem is — well, problems are, I should say — the varying sources of the original rounds. You see, some of the backgrounds are really dated. I mean, really dated. Fatal Fury 1 dated. It’s not uncommon to see highly-shaded, bloated, brightly-hued cartoon characters cheering the fighters on. Often the scales are all messed-up (consider how large the character sprites are in the Real Bout games, in comparison to KoF), and invariably all of the neat line-scrolling and interactive background elements (including round intros) have been removed entirely. This leaves a lot of the early KoF and most of the FF levels looking a little flatter than I remember them. Beyond this, the earlier KoF backdrops were often framed to take into account the ”benched” team members on each side, standing off to the side, cheering and jeering at the ongoing battle. Since this detail has been oddly removed from the series ever since ’99, the backgrounds again are left looking a little more bare than they were probably intended.

Still, it’s kind of neat to have the stages around. I just wish SNK had at least kept the silly line scrolling. Would it really have taken up that much more space?

There’s one other addition to the game, which hasn’t received a lot of attention; a new puzzle mode has been added, in the gallery submenu. There are three separate galleries for the game, containing Shinkirou’s annoying character drawings, promotional art and posters, various sketches, and so on. More art (and perhaps other secrets) are unlocked by completing a series of sliding-panel puzzles. I realize how lame this instinctively might sound, but I actually find the puzzles to be kind of entertaining, in a Minesweeper-ish way.

It’s a neat escape from the redundant nature of the various fighting modes, and it’s actually executed a little better than I thought it would be. There are satisfying sound effects accompanying every action, and tiles can be rotated to the left and right as well as shifted in any direction. When the final tile is slid or rotated to its right position, there’s again an entirely satisfying flash and fanfare — and from then on, that piece of art will be viewable in the gallery. I’ve only completed about a dozen puzzles so far, so I really don’t know what else (if anything) is hidden in there. But I’m glad Playmore decided to add it, even if I can’t figure out why they would have.

Something else I could have mentioned earlier is that the game seems to be entirely in English now, save the plot and ending quotes. The menus and striker names and everything. I guess I can just turn to a FAQ if I want to know what’s going on in each of the teams’ endings, but I’m glad to see how navigable everything else remains. The only bit of Japanese I’ve even seen in the game, aside from the above, is in the aforementioned VMU management screen. At first it’s a little confusing whether one has saved the game correctly, as there isn’t even a VMU chirp as a signal — but that only takes a few moments to figure out.

One annoying omission, coming off of ’99, is the lack of any sort of a movelist within the game itself. The manual, again, is great — but even as incomplete as the lists were in the previous game, the fact that they were there was incredibly helpful. I have no idea how to play Ramon, for instance. I could look up a FAQ, or try to decipher the kanji in the manual, but it would just be nice to be able to press two buttons and pull up some help, y’know? I suppose the original Neo-Geo game didn’t have one, and it was more of a bonus that one was ever included in Evolution — but darn it all.

Beyond an analysis of the game itself, there are only a few more random details to mention. First off, I’ve played King of Fighters 2000 pretty extensively in NeoRageX. The romset is a little corrupted, so none of the menus or ending quotes are legible — but that just makes it all the more compelling to pick up the Dreamcast version, as if I wouldn’t have jumped at it anyway.

The thing is, for some reason Mai’s chest received a makeover from ’99 to this game. In ’99, she was still as boingy as ever — perhaps even more than before. In 2000, however, something was wrong. It took me a while to figure out what, aside from that she seemed stiffer than I remembered. But then it dawned on me — her body might as well have been made out of wood during its idle animation. Her bounce was kept in all of her other movemets, but when she stands still in the US Neo-Geo version, her boobs might as well be painted on. Her entire body is stiff. I just assumed that the designers intended to change her animation a bit, but due to a rushed schedule forgot to add the frames back in before the game was yanked from their hands and they were disbanded.

This tiny detail left the game feeling incomplete to me. It could have been any character’s animation sequence, but how could they forget Mai’s bounce? And what’s more, why did Eolith forget to put it back in in KoF2001?

Well, see what I really know. After playing this version of 2000 for an hour or two, I realized that Mai was boingy once more — and how. I think she’s trying to compete with the Dead or Alive girls now (I’m speaking of the original game here). At first I was even more impressed with Playmore’s attention to detail than I already had been — but then I had a thought. I went back into my emulator and I switched it to emulate Japanese regional coding. I booted up KoF2000, and lo and behold — all the boing one could ever need.

All I have to say now is that this is perhaps the most retarded bit of censoring I’ve seen yet in an SNK game. The white blood I can understand, though it seems needless to me considering how cartoony everything is anyway and what the nature of the game is. The removal of all of King’s references to alcohol has seemed a weird to me, considering the fact that Chin exists — but again I’ve more or less understood why the changes were made, as little as I agreed with them either aesthetically or in spirit. But — just, why?!

A disconcerting change, in its small and harmless way, is the removal of all previous instances of SNK’s logo in the introduction and menu system, and its replacement with that of Playmore. Now, I’m not sure what to think of this — as KoF2000 is not a Playmore game. They might own the rights to it now, but it was developed by SNK. They deserve the credit, I think. And what’s more, Playmore’s logo is strangely-shaped, and it’s mostly green and yellow. SNK’s logo is simple, sleek, and blue. It’s icy. It’s stylish. It blends into almost anything. Playmore’s logo pops out like the packaging to a Fisher-Price toy.

KoF2000 has perhaps the keenest intro sequence in the series, and there’s one key moment (in an intricately-timed orchestration of images) where the screen fades to black, save a small, quiet, subtle ”SNK” logo — which then quickly vanishes. This has now been replaced with ”Playmore Presents”… and, well, it’s jarring. I almost laughed the first time I saw it, as it was so unexpected. I guess it’s not a big deal, but it seems little strange to me.

Lastly, I never actually made it through the game on my emulator — so I’d never seen the credit sequence before. Just to mention, KoF2000 has a really neat set of credits. Perhaps I’d best not get expectations up too much, but they mirror the opening sequence pretty well in how they’re arranged. And then…

Hmm.

Remember how at the end of Sonic Adventure 2, there’s that quote? How does it go… something like ”Another day brings a new dream… But for now… Rest easy, heroes”. Seeing everything that was going on with both the series and Sonicteam and Sega at the time — this is a kind of a poignant way to end things.

Well, after the obligatory ”CONGRATURATION!” (Really, I think they must do this on purpose) — most SNK games end with the same message: ”THANKS TO: ALL SNK STAFF”. And then, sometimes, there’s another bit tacked on — ”AND YOU!”

This time, there’s just a pause and a black screen — and then the game prints out ”Thank you all with love.”

…

Now, consider this. This is the final game by the original KoF team. They were disbanded immediately afterward. I don’t know if SNK made another game in-house after this. And it was released in late 2000, after the US, European, and Asian branches of SNK shut down. After the NGPC was pulled from the market. After they’d filed for bankruptcy. They continued to taper off for a little under another year before closing last fall. But this was really the end.

It might sound a little silly, but this final message kind of touches me, in a way. I’m not really going to say any more about it, but I thought it worth throwing out there.

Now for the game: It’s NESTS-era King of Fighters. It doesn’t play as well as either ’99 or 2001, in my opinion. It’s a little unbalanced, and the teams are set up kind of strangely. It’s an in-between game, in the series. But it’s still King of Fighters, so it’s still better than most stuff you’re going to find in the genre.

It’s probably the pinnacle of the series in terms of presentation. It just doesn’t get any better than this; 1999 was a step in this direction, and 2001 was several steps down. The art style is great, the interfaces and atmosphere are highly polished; the music is (as mentioned) terrific, and smooth.

A few new characters are introduced; some of them neat (Vanessa!), some of them useless (Hinako) or annoying (Ramon). Many characters have received some large alterations to their movelists, for better or worse (Kyo, Iori). And the last boss, Zero, is typically cheap although — notably — perhaps the least appealing KoF villain I’ve yet (at least, as far as I’m concerned).

The Armor and Counter modes, I find even more annoying and useless than in ’99. I far prefer the old styles of power meters from ’98 and before, and I’m glad Eolith chose to ditch these modes in 2001. They’re just not needed so far as I can see, and yet I keep feeling guilty for not taking more advantage of them. The striker system is a bit more useful than before, though not nearly as refined as it will be in the next game. Everything else feels as it should, to the best I can tell.

Although, unless one has a large and quickly-accessed mental resevoir of kanji, there’s a lot to be missed a lot in this edition, there are a lot of interesting plot developments in 2000. Again, it’s a middle chapter — so nothing really important happens. But we see the introduction of Kula, some important developments with the Psychic Soldiers team, and one of the most shocking turns of events in the series (even if it lacks the drama that perhaps it deserves, in the short time it’s given).

For a rundown, the game has the best SNK presentation you’ll get short of Mark of the Wolves; it’s pretty, it sounds good, it’s got good variety. It’s a little unbalanced, and the teams are set up strangely. The gameplay is as solid as ever, though the mechanics aren’t as evolved (for my brain) as in either ’99 or 2001. The port is perfect in nearly every way, and has several nifty additions. Playmore didn’t put as much work into it as SNK did with the other Dreamcast editions of KoF, but they did a much better job than I expected and better than SNK themselves did with their other Neo-Geo ports.

Playmore are real, and they seem to at least be competent. Now that I have this game in my hands, my respect for them, and what they’re doing, has been solidified. And now I’m really looking forward to what they can do with 2001. Heck, maybe they’ll even be able to fix the soundtrack. I can’t imagine it getting a lot worse…

Rating: 8/10

KoF2000 DC

  • Reading time:20 mins read
I tried to write about this a bit in a more professional manner, thinking perhaps I could submit a review to the KJ (and I bet they’d print it, too). But I’m just not in the mood, and I’ve found whenever I try to do something seriously, it just never gets done. But I want to talk about the game, so here I am — talking about it.

Although I knew quite well that the game was released yesterday or so, I was still surprised when I was awakened by the UPS guy this morning. I honestly didn’t believe I’d ever hold the game — much more than in the case of Shenmue and Shenmue II, respectively. The time was simply far past for King of Fighters 2000 to be released on any consumer platform outside the Neo-Geo, and although the Dreamcast was the obvious platform, its own time is long gone.

I never expected the game to be announced, and up until the time I held it in my hands I had trouble entirely believing the story. This whole Playmore thing from the outset is more like some kind of a fairy tale than anything I expect to be able to touch. But no, Playmore does apparently exist. SNK is alive again, sort of. And for some reason they’re still supporting Sega’s hardware. And the packaging is neat-o.

Really, this is just like all of SNK’s packaging in the past — well, their Japanese stuff, anyway. Actually even in the US, SNK were one of the few publishers to print full-colour manuals for their Dreamcast games. It’s just that their packaging and advertising was incredibly tacky — and Agetec picked up on that, destroying the beautiful Mark of the Wolves cover art in the region 1 release.

My point is, it’s really well-done. It’s along the lines of what SNK were doing toward the end of their life; KoF’99, Mark of the Wolves, Last Blade 2, etcetera. Nice cover art; nice disc art; nice tray art (both sides), well-made manual. Very clean, classy, and elegant.

That evaluation, I could pretty much extend to the entire production. The DC port of 2000 is essentially what you’d expect it to be, only a little bit better in most places. It’s not anywhere as good as the ports of KoF’98 and ’99 (Dream Match 1999 and Evolution, respectively), as a lot of work went into each of those to make them native Dreamcast games and more than just a couple of ports. But I think it’s safe to say that there’s more here than in any of SNK’s other Dreamcast efforts (Cool Cool Toon aside).

In both earlier KoF games, SNK added 3D backgrounds. ’98 had a new — and long — animated introduction added, drawn, apparently, by the person who did the character art in ’99. While ’99 lacked this extra touch, it was generally a much more, well, evolved package. The concept of “Another Strikers” was pioneered here, and a store system was set up where one could purchase a large handful of additional striker-only characters, from most of the remaining cast of ’98 who got left out in this chapter to Fio, from Metal Slug. ’99 also got a snazzy new interface and an incomplete-but-still-useful inline move list which could be brought up at any time (as in Capcom’s recent efforts).

This port of 2000, meanwhile, hovers a little closer to MotW and Last Blade 2 in terms of overall effect and apparent effort. As with every other Neo-Geo game ported to the DC (aside from KoF’98), there’s a long pause at the outset while what must be a large part of the original Neo-Geo ROM set is dumped into memory. After that, unless one exits Neo-Geo territory (such as to the art gallery and puzzle mode), there are virtually no load times at all after startup. And as usual, Playmore has removed the typical Neo-Geo “How To Play” introductions to every play mode in the game. Why this is seen as a necessity for every Neo-Geo port, I don’t know. I find that they add a lot of personality to the game; just watch Kyo’s and Shingo’s demonstration in ’98 to see what I mean.

Also as with every other Neo-Geo port (and this was a bit of a surprise to me), Playmore was kind enough to lace an arranged soundtrack into this new port. One has the option to switch back to “original sound” — as with Mark of the Wolves — but I wouldn’t advise it in this case. Somehow in the transition, the excellent Neo-Geo music has become muffled and tinny, and has aquired a slight, yet (to-me) disconcerting reverberation. The sound level is also below all of of the sound effects and voices, somewhat killing the drama in Kyo’s theme, for instance.

I’m a little annoyed with these developments, as the original Neo-Geo music has a certain coarse, gritty edge to it which is almost entirely absent in the arranged score — and I think in some ways it fits the game’s visuals somewhat better. Nevertheless, the arranged soundtrack is fantastic on its own merits. There are details to the music which I never picked up from the original soundtrack, and it’s a lot more obvious what the music ties are to the score from ’99.

While I think overall ’99 has the more interesting score, 2000 certainly has one of the three best soundtracks of any King of Fighters game. It’s similar in style to ’99, and is in many ways more polished — think of the music in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, in comparison to the first game. Some people might disagree with me on both counts, and figure that the more polished music in the second game is superior. I’d be in no place to make claims against them, as the music is still terrific all around.

(One thing over which I think there will be zero debate is the new Garou theme. This marks the first instance where the Fatal Fury team’s music actually blends into the rest of the score — and it’s just fantastic. It is, by freakin’ Flea Man leaps and bounds, the best theme this team has ever had in a KoF game.)

And in this case, the mix is very crisp and clear — and each theme goes on for far longer than I’d expect. I think most major tracks must be at least three or four minutes in length before the loop. This is especially impressive when one looks at the travesty which is KoF2001’s soundtrack. But we’ll face that monster when we get to it.

I don’t think the voices and sound effects were resampled for the Dreamcast version, as they obviously were in ’99. It’s not that they’re of a poor quality, but I think they must have been directly lifted off of the Neo-Geo cartridge rather than from the original recordings. They sound fine; the acting quality is of typical SNK standards, and the effects are varied. I’m just saying.

In terms of what’s unique to this port, the most ballyhooed new addition takes the form of a whole bucketload of new stages which have been added to the game. One of the largest complaints I keep seeing about the original version of KoF2000 has to do with its backgrounds. For one, people seem to feel that there aren’t enough of them. People also seem to generally agree that the stages in 2000 are a huge step down from what we saw in the previous game — washed-out in terms of palette, and generally uninspired.

I’m not sure I agree with this evaluation; although ’99 certainly had some of the most stunning backdrops in the series, I’m not sure what that has to do with 2000. As it is, there are several native stages in this game which I find entirely impressive. The thing is, the ones which strike my fancy are the ones others tend to point out as lame while the ones which bore me are the ones which seem to amaze everyone else. I guess that’s pretty typical.

Nevertheless, it is true that some more variety is needed — and if nothing else, variety is what we now have. The new stages are all in fact old ones, rehashed from everything from Fatal Fury (all three subseries) to every previous edition of King of Fighters even to Samurai Spirits/Shodown in one instance. (Beyond this, for some reason the VMU save/load screen is taken (I believe) almost directly from Mark of the Wolves. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know. But I knew. So I did.)

The rationale for these stages is that they’re all tied to various “Another Striker” characters present in the game. For those not familiar with the more recent KoF mechanisms, a “Striker” is an extra team member who can be called in at any point to contribute a single attack of some sort during a battle — very much like what one sees in the Marvel vs. Capcom games. Usually this striker will consist of one of your standard team’s members. For instance, if one were to choose the Hero team (K’, Maxima, Ramon, Vanessa), one could choose the first three characters as fighters and Vanessa as the Striker. Or, since she’s neat and Ramon is annoying, thrust him into the Striker role instead.

In the DC port of KoF’99 and in any version of 2000, there are also what are known as “Another Striker” characters; they serve no purpose but to be strikers, and aren’t actually playable within the game. They’re more of a fun addition than anything really useful, as they allow cameos of all sorts of odd characters from SNK’s arsenal who don’t otherwise get a chance to show up in the game proper.

In the DC version of 2000, whenever one is fighting against an opponent who has an “Another Striker”, a particular background stage will generally be tied to that striker. For instance, I mentioned Samurai Spirits a couple of paragraphs ago. The reason that there’s (apparently; I’ve not yet seen it — perhaps it needs to be unlocked?) a stage representing that game is that Nakoruru is one of the extra Strikers present in the game.

I’m not sure if this means that when Awakened Kaede is chosen as a Striker, the background will switch to a stage from Last Blade, but it seems likely. The thing I’ve noticed is that none of the “odd” characters — the ones from other series not immediately related to King of Fighters — have any of their stages available from the outset; when they’re chosen, the round defaults to a random native level from 2000. I’ve read, however, that there are more stages to unlock later in the game — so we’ll see, I guess.

Anyway, the new backgrounds do help a lot in terms of spicing things up. The only problem is — well, problems are, I should say — the varying sources of the original rounds. You see, some of the backgrounds are really dated. I mean, really dated. Fatal Fury 1 dated. It’s not uncommon to see highly-shaded, bloated, brightly-hued cartoon characters cheering the fighters on. Often the scales are all messed-up (consider how large the character sprites are in the Real Bout games, in comparison to KoF), and invariably all of the neat line-scrolling and interactive background elements (including round intros) have been removed entirely. This leaves a lot of the early KoF and most of the FF levels looking a little flatter than I remember them. Beyond this, the earlier KoF backdrops were often framed to take into account the “benched” team members on each side, standing off to the side, cheering and jeering at the ongoing battle. Since this detail has been oddly removed from the series ever since ’99, the backgrounds again are left looking a little more bare than they were probably intended.

Still, it’s kind of neat to have the stages around. I just wish SNK had at least kept the silly line scrolling. Would it really have taken up that much more space?

There’s one other addition to the game, which hasn’t received a lot of attention; a new puzzle mode has been added, in the gallery submenu. There are three separate galleries for the game, containing Shinkirou’s annoying character drawings, promotional art and posters, various sketches, and so on. More art (and perhaps other secrets) are unlocked by completing a series of sliding-panel puzzles. I realize how lame this instinctively might sound, but I actually find the puzzles to be kind of entertaining, in a Minesweeper-ish way.

It’s a neat escape from the redundant nature of the various fighting modes, and it’s actually executed a little better than I thought it would be. There are satisfying sound effects accompanying every action, and tiles can be rotated to the left and right as well as shifted in any direction. When the final tile is slid or rotated to its right position, there’s again an entirely satisfying flash and fanfare — and from then on, that piece of art will be viewable in the gallery. I’ve only completed about a dozen puzzles so far, so I really don’t know what else (if anything) is hidden in there. But I’m glad Playmore decided to add it, even if I can’t figure out why they would have.

Something else I could have mentioned earlier is that the game seems to be entirely in English now, save the plot and ending quotes. The menus and striker names and everything. I guess I can just turn to a FAQ if I want to know what’s going on in each of the teams’ endings, but I’m glad to see how navigable everything else remains. The only bit of Japanese I’ve even seen in the game, aside from the above, is in the aforementioned VMU management screen. At first it’s a little confusing whether one has saved the game correctly, as there isn’t even a VMU chirp as a signal — but that only takes a few moments to figure out.

One annoying omission, coming off of ’99, is the lack of any sort of a movelist within the game itself. The manual, again, is great — but even as incomplete as the lists were in the previous game, the fact that they were there was incredibly helpful. I have no idea how to play Ramon, for instance. I could look up a FAQ, or try to decipher the kanji in the manual, but it would just be nice to be able to press two buttons and pull up some help, y’know? I suppose the original Neo-Geo game didn’t have one, and it was more of a bonus that one was ever included in Evolution — but darn it all.

Beyond an analysis of the game itself, there are only a few more random details to mention. First off, I’ve played King of Fighters 2000 pretty extensively in NeoRageX. The romset is a little corrupted, so none of the menus or ending quotes are legible — but that just makes it all the more compelling to pick up the Dreamcast version, as if I wouldn’t have jumped at it anyway.

The thing is, for some reason Mai’s chest received a makeover from ’99 to this game. In ’99, she was still as boingy as ever — perhaps even more than before. In 2000, however, something was wrong. It took me a while to figure out what, aside from that she seemed stiffer than I remembered. But then it dawned on me — her body might as well have been made out of wood during its idle animation. Her bounce was kept in all of her other movemets, but when she stands still in the US Neo-Geo version, her boobs might as well be painted on. Her entire body is stiff. I just assumed that the designers intended to change her animation a bit, but due to a rushed schedule forgot to add the frames back in before the game was yanked from their hands and they were disbanded.

This tiny detail left the game feeling incomplete to me. It could have been any character’s animation sequence, but how could they forget Mai’s bounce? And what’s more, why did Eolith forget to put it back in in KoF2001?

Well, see what I really know. After playing this version of 2000 for an hour or two, I realized that Mai was boingy once more — and how. I think she’s trying to compete with the Dead or Alive girls now (I’m speaking of the original game here). At first I was even more impressed with Playmore’s attention to detail than I already had been — but then I had a thought. I went back into my emulator and I switched it to emulate Japanese regional coding. I booted up KoF2000, and lo and behold — all the boing one could ever need.

All I have to say now is that this is perhaps the most retarded bit of censoring I’ve seen yet in an SNK game. The white blood I can understand, though it seems needless to me considering how cartoony everything is anyway and what the nature of the game is. The removal of all of King’s references to alcohol has seemed a weird to me, considering the fact that Chin exists — but again I’ve more or less understood why the changes were made, as little as I agreed with them either aesthetically or in spirit. But — just, why?!

A disconcerting change, in its small and harmless way, is the removal of all previous instances of SNK’s logo in the introduction and menu system, and its replacement with that of Playmore. Now, I’m not sure what to think of this — as KoF2000 is not a Playmore game. They might own the rights to it now, but it was developed by SNK. They deserve the credit, I think. And what’s more, Playmore’s logo is strangely-shaped, and it’s mostly green and yellow. SNK’s logo is simple, sleek, and blue. It’s icy. It’s stylish. It blends into almost anything. Playmore’s logo pops out like the packaging to a Fisher-Price toy.

KoF2000 has perhaps the keenest intro sequence in the series, and there’s one key moment (in an intricately-timed orchestration of images) where the screen fades to black, save a small, quiet, subtle “SNK” logo — which then quickly vanishes. This has now been replaced with “Playmore Presents”… and, well, it’s jarring. I almost laughed the first time I saw it, as it was so unexpected. I guess it’s not a big deal, but it seems little strange to me.

Lastly, I never actually made it through the game on my emulator — so I’d never seen the credit sequence before. Just to mention, KoF2000 has a really neat set of credits. Perhaps I’d best not get expectations up too much, but they mirror the opening sequence pretty well in how they’re arranged. And then…

Hmm.

Remember how at the end of Sonic Adventure 2, there’s that quote? How does it go… something like “Another day brings a new dream… But for now… Rest easy, heroes”. Seeing everything that was going on with both the series and Sonicteam and Sega at the time — this is a kind of a poignant way to end things.

Well, after the obligatory “CONGRATURATION!” (Really, I think they must do this on purpose) — most SNK games end with the same message: “THANKS TO: ALL SNK STAFF”. And then, sometimes, there’s another bit tacked on — “AND YOU!”

This time, there’s just a pause and a black screen — and then the game prints out “Thank you all with love.”

…

Now, consider this. This is the final game by the original KoF team. They were disbanded immediately afterward. I don’t know if SNK made another game in-house after this. And it was released in late 2000, after the US, European, and Asian branches of SNK shut down. After the NGPC was pulled from the market. After they’d filed for bankruptcy. They continued to taper off for a little under another year before closing last fall. But this was really the end.

It might sound a little silly, but this final message kind of touches me, in a way. I’m not really going to say any more about it, but I thought it worth throwing out there.

Now for the game: It’s NESTS-era King of Fighters. It doesn’t play as well as either ’99 or 2001, in my opinion. It’s a little unbalanced, and the teams are set up kind of strangely. It’s an in-between game, in the series. But it’s still King of Fighters, so it’s still better than most stuff you’re going to find in the genre.

It’s probably the pinnacle of the series in terms of presentation. It just doesn’t get any better than this; 1999 was a step in this direction, and 2001 was several steps down. The art style is great, the interfaces and atmosphere are highly polished; the music is (as mentioned) terrific, and smooth.

A few new characters are introduced; some of them neat (Vanessa!), some of them useless (Hinako) or annoying (Ramon). Many characters have received some large alterations to their movelists, for better or worse (Kyo, Iori). And the last boss, Zero, is typically cheap although — notably — perhaps the least appealing KoF villain I’ve yet (at least, as far as I’m concerned).

The Armor and Counter modes, I find even more annoying and useless than in ’99. I far prefer the old styles of power meters from ’98 and before, and I’m glad Eolith chose to ditch these modes in 2001. They’re just not needed so far as I can see, and yet I keep feeling guilty for not taking more advantage of them. The striker system is a bit more useful than before, though not nearly as refined as it will be in the next game. Everything else feels as it should, to the best I can tell.

Although, unless one has a large and quickly-accessed mental resevoir of kanji, there’s a lot to be missed a lot in this edition, there are a lot of interesting plot developments in 2000. Again, it’s a middle chapter — so nothing really important happens. But we see the introduction of Kula, some important developments with the Psychic Soldiers team, and one of the most shocking turns of events in the series (even if it lacks the drama that perhaps it deserves, in the short time it’s given).

For a rundown, the game has the best SNK presentation you’ll get short of Mark of the Wolves; it’s pretty, it sounds good, it’s got good variety. It’s a little unbalanced, and the teams are set up strangely. The gameplay is as solid as ever, though the mechanics aren’t as evolved (for my brain) as in either ’99 or 2001. The port is perfect in nearly every way, and has several nifty additions. Playmore didn’t put as much work into it as SNK did with the other Dreamcast editions of KoF, but they did a much better job than I expected and better than SNK themselves did with their other Neo-Geo ports.

Playmore are real, and they seem to at least be competent. Now that I have this game in my hands, my respect for them, and what they’re doing, has been solidified. And now I’m really looking forward to what they can do with 2001. Heck, maybe they’ll even be able to fix the soundtrack. I can’t imagine it getting a lot worse…

Konami

  • Reading time:3 mins read
Okay. I think I’m starting to figure Konami out.

  • KCET (Tokyo) seems to be the division where Nagoshi is; the “true” Castlevania games are developed here. This is also where Silent Hill apparently calls home. Contra, Suikoden, Gradius, Tokemeki Memorial, Dance Dance Revolution, to boot. KCET is host to Konami’s special soccer-devoted team, “Major A“.
  • KCEK (Kobe) developed the N64 Castlevania games and Circle of the Moon (aha! I was wondering why the character art looked so similar to the N64 games! And why the character once again wasn’t a Belmont, and nothing fit into the storyline properly — just as in the N64 games).
  • KCEO/Konami OSA (Osaka)… This is the original Konami office, founded in 1969. It seems mostly soccer games come out of here now, but I’m assuming this is where most Konami games were developed until the mid-90s sometime. This appears to be the group currently responsible for the Track & Field and Blades of Steel series.
  • KCKJ/Konami JPN (Tokyo again) is split into two teams, across two separate offices in Toyko: KCEJ East and KCEJ West. East is behind Reiselied and 7 Blades, plus a lot of dating sims. West is where Hideo Kojima is holed up, and thereby the home of Metal Gear and ZOE.
  • KCEN (Nagoya) — A few licensed games for the Gameboy Color and golf games for the GBA, plus a version of Vandal Hearts for the Saturn. KCEN are also behind Castlevania Legends for the original Gameboy, and they apparently did the Saturn port of Nocturne in the Moonlight. That seems like about it, though. Fishing and horse racing games seem to be their real specialties.
  • KCES (Shinjuku) — They seem to do even less than the Nagoya branch. Can’t find much information on them.
  • Konami STUDIO was formed in August of 2000, out of two former divisions: KCE Sapporo and KCE Yokohama. I don’t know what either originally did.
  • KCEH/Konami Hawaii (Honolulu) appear to behind all of the ESPN-licensed sports games that Konami used to put out before Sega snatched up the license. Also, they seem to be behind all of Konami’s domestic PC releases — such as the Castlevania/Contra pack from a couple of weeks ago — and a couple games for the GBA such as the new version of Motorcross Maniacs and a pretty highly-rated “classic Konami” pack containing Yie Ar Kung Fu, Rush ‘N Attack, Gyruss, and so on.

Konami also has a Shanghai-based division, who seems not to do much.

KCEK, KCET, and KCEJ seem to be the three most important divisions. KCET and KCEJ officially like to be called Konami TYO and Konami JPN now, for whatever reason — but I think their original names are less confusing.

There’s a long investigation of the Castlevania series which I dumped onto Lan and Shepard around a month ago. I might dig for that in a bit.

Just so I’ve it written down somewhere —

  • Reading time:1 mins read
Hey, the battle arena really is pretty swell for upping Nathan’s levels in Circle of the Moon.

It seems pretty odd that such a large portrait is devoted to him, and that his name is listed in so many obvious places, if he’s the only playable character in the game. I mean, why waste the space if there’s not going to be much mistaking who your character is?

The $10,000,000 Commando

  • Reading time:2 mins read
I keep typing these things off to random people as I sort them out in my head. It seems to make more sense, though, to dump them somewhere I can more easily dig for them later. So here this is.

Of course, Bionic Commando is a spin-off of Commando. We know this much.

It seems that the arcade version of Bionic Commando comes first. I saw it once in a LaVerdiers, years ago. I’m not sure if I ever got to play it, though. It’s super-deformed and action-oriented, but familiar. Apparently, Super Joe (from Commando) is the main character.

(As a note, Super Joe also is in a game I’d never seen before by the name of Speed Rumbler. He’s in a car this time, and someone kidnapped his family. It looks like Commando, only… with cars.)

The second game in the series is Bionic Commando for the NES. The main character is Ladd, and he’s out to defeat Hitler and save Super Joe. It’s an action-adventure sort of in the vein of Blaster Master or Metroid, with occasional overhead-view segments to hark back to the original Commando.

The Gameboy version of Bionic Commando (still the same title, yes) comes third. Super Joe has disappeared again while looking for a secret weapon known as “Albatross”. The main character is now Rad Spencer. It appears to play very similarly to the NES version.

Finally we get the Gameboy Color edition, Bionic Commando: Elite Forces. Super Joe’s gone yet again — only now he’s moved up to the title of Commander Joe. Maybe they figured a desk job would keep him from getting taken hostage all the time. No luck, though. Now there are two main characters — a nameless male and a female Bionic Commando, each of whom gets referred to throughout the game by whatever the player dubs them. The female one, with her purple pony-tail, seems to be the one given more focus. Also, the overhead-view throwbacks to the first Commando seem much more elaborate than before.

So:

[Commando]
[Speed Rumbler (?)]

  1. Bionic Commando (arcade)
  2. Bionic Commando (NES)
  3. Bionic Commando (Gameboy)
  4. Bionic Commando: Elite Forces (GBC)

…

Yes, I’m back from Otakon.

And yet, tomorrow… more movies!

  • Reading time:5 mins read
There is such a thing as Pez-flavored popcorn? Pez? All its charm is in the packaging and delivery. The candy itself can be downright vile. Even if Pez were a flavour sensation, why popcorn?

I just attended the final night of the MIFF. It’s amazing how exhausting it can be just to watch movies, granted back-to-back over a ten-day stretch. Anyway, it was entirely worth the experience.

So. Today, we had one silent movie by F.W. Murnau (of Nosferatu fame). As with the (highly expressionistic) golem film from last year, the soundtrack was composed, and performed live, by a pianist from the coast. He’ll be sending a CD of it here, by request.

Next up, I spent some time poking around Marden’s during a three-hour gap. I managed to dig up a bunch of useless doodads such as a copy of Sewer Shark for the Sega CD (about two dollars) and an RF adapter for the Dreamcast (just in case I happen to run into a TV old enough that it’d be required) — marked down from an absurd eighteen dollars to about three or four. There were copies of Anarchy Online sitting around for under five dollars, but Edgar’s too old to run anything like that. It was just amusing to see them there, next to the cheese graters and fishing tackle and giant Tootsie Rolls and Gundam Wing figurines.

Marden’s is an interesting place.

I also adopted the most handsome duck in the world. He’d been calling to me all week.

Then there was an interesting Japanese film which no one except for me seemed to understand at all. (From the literature, it’s apparently inspired in part by Philip K. Dick. I suppose I can see that.) I’m not going to go into too much detail, but toward the end it occurred to me that the film was almost Shakespearian in composition, with the character of Keechie playing much the same role as the fool — or whatever other foil was often used as a tool of fate — to illuminate the faults of the main characters and to help pull the plot forward. Also, the movie started in some ways to become, toward the end, much like what I’d expect from a traditional Samurai drama. It seems there’s little in the film which is best to take at face value; it’s all a modern fable of sorts. It’s hard to tell at first, by how intentionally Western everything seems. But that begins to get stripped away, as things move along…

The second showing of Body Drop Asphalt was just one slot too late; too few people saw it the first time, and the voting for best film of the show closed just as the movie’s slot began. A shame, but it at least got my vote…

But that’s mostly because they saved the best film for last. I can’t find it in the IMDB, but it’s a Swedish film by the English title of “Deadline”. (Jonne, might you be any good here?) It’s obvious why the movie in question was reserved for the closing ceremonies; I probably would have voted for BDA anyway, simply to give it the much-needed support, but… I don’t believe I’ve seen a movie as well-made as this in — decades, really.

(There are, incidentally, too many movies with the name “Deadline”. I didn’t catch the Swedish title, but I can’t imagine it being this lame. This is something which has irritated me greatly, over the past few weeks; it seems nearly every foreign film has had its title not merely translated but, rather, altered into the most boring, forgettable spun-off Hollywood marketeer claptrap imaginable. “Merci Pour Le Chocolat” somehow becomes “Nightcap”; “L’ Emploi du temps” is mangled into “Time Out” — and so on. Gr, I say.)

The mid-’70s were really the last bastion of serious moviemaking in Hollywood. Then Star Wars came around, and nothing’s been the same since. The thing about indie and foreign pictures, is that while they’re great in the sense that they fill the void of experimentation that Hollywood could never provide, they generally just don’t have the financial backing that the teenage barf factory has to offer. So you have the potential for a lot of really interesting and difficult pictures which you’d not get otherwise, but there are generally some compromises.

My point is — well. It’s not a visionary film. It’s not anything which hasn’t been done before in some way. It doesn’t dazzle the viewer with creativity. It’s simply more solid a film than I’m at all used to seeing. Its characters are well-drawn, and the acting is impeccable across the board. The direction is just right. The pacing is perfect; the way things are gradually established, beginning with the way the paper is run, moving onto the main character’s (realistic) life at home, and office politics; then gradually onto the real plot of the movie. And it ends at just the right place, and in just the right way. There’s a particular confidence and sheer competence at work here which I’m not accustomed to seeing. Not out of today’s cinema, anyway. Again, perhaps a few decades ago.

So that was today. Here again is an adjusted list of what I’ve seen, with links where I can find ’em.

So. There.

Otakon is only a few days away now. Not sure what I’m doing yet. I thought I was going to be more prepared than this.

Chiplash

  • Reading time:1 mins read
Circle of the Moon contains perhaps the best remix of “Vampire Killer” I’ve heard anywhere outside of the original Castlevania. I finally realized also why the music at large reminds me so much of Bloodlines: the tune heard the most throughout the game is taken directly from that game. That — would explain some things.

The new main theme to CotM, however — “Catacombs”, I believe, is the title — is a perfect and entirely worthy addition to the trusty archive of classic Castlevania anthems. It goes along very well alongside the likes of “Vampire Killer”, “Bloody Tears”, “Beginning”, and “Theme of Simon”.

It seems years since I’ve heard good chip music. New music, anyway. This is one respect in which games have really gotten worse over the years. Some days, I like to wish the medium had never switched to optical storage. It’s all just gone downhill from there…

Pink Circle

  • Reading time:2 mins read
I now have a copy of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon for my HELLO KITTY PINK Gameboy Advance. This is the first real, legity-type GBA game I’ve gotten, and it’s… fabulous. I mean, it doesn’t do anything new; it doesn’t even particularly try. But it’s extremely solid.

If anything, it reminds me a lot of Bloodlines. Bloodlines was pretty, and very well-made, but it didn’t really do anything particularly new; it was just a good game that followed the standard Castlevania formula more or less precisely. Circle of the Moon is exactly the same idea — only it’s based on the modern, elegant, explorative, Igarashi-influenced image of Castlevania rather than the “classic”, action-based version of the game. So, it’s a terrific game; one of the best in the series. A great showcase for the system. But it’s nothing intrinsically special; just enjoyable and well-made and entirely appropriate.

That’s the only bad thing I can say about it: All it is, is a terrific game. No more. It doesn’t even try; all the effort was in making the game solid, playable, and entertaining. Not that there’s really anything wrong with that. If only more games had such a fault. Harmony of Dissonance, however — that looks to be something more. So I’m looking forward to it.

I’m really getting to like my GBA a lot, now. I’ve been going over eBay, looking for copies of the remaining original Gameboy games which I had, and were stolen long ago. Most of them, aside from Metroid II, I’ve been able to track down at no more than around five dollars (plus shipping). A couple are so obscure and strange that I’ll probably not find them anytime soon. But now that I’ve a system on which to play them again, it’d be nice for my collection to be restored to as it used to be.

“I’m not psychic, but I am a psycho!”

  • Reading time:2 mins read
I’m playing KoF’99 on my newly-operational Dreamcast. I’m actually using the Psycho Soldier team, which is unusual for me; it’s that I want to play through with each team at least once (and twice, I guess with the Psycho Soldier team — as Kensou has his own special ending).

So the rock falls on Krizalid. Everyone goes running.And then someone comments that they’re trapped. The next line I see is this:

    BAO: AS SARTRE SAYS, “NO EXIT!”

…

I mean, I know SNK’s translations tend to be a bit on the daffy side, but.

Ignoring everything else, why would Bao be reading Sartre? I would peg Iori (or, actually, K’) to be a bit closer to the idea that “hell is other people” than a goofy kid who chases butterflies…

Well, hey. No Exit only has four characters in it. It could be played by one team easily enough. The entire play takes place in a drawing room, so it would fit within a single stage. Maybe we’re onto something here. Once Playmore is done making games for the Neo-Geo, it can become the newest platform for Existentialist theatre!

Why did I never think of this before?!

Of course, on second glance, perhaps King would be better suited for the part of Inez…

Power Up!

  • Reading time:2 mins read
I now possess a transparent pink Gameboy Advance.

It’s a far step from the sleek black one with Kusanagi and Yagami clan symbols over which I’d been drooling for the past few months, but it’s a GBA nonetheless.

I have no games for it, but I’ve Oracle of Ages and a handful of original GB games which weren’t stolen years ago (including Gargoyle’s Quest!) — so I should be set for now. It’s interesting to note that the left and right triggers toggle — uh, sideways letterboxing, for older games. As with some widescreen TVs. Pressing the left trigger will cause the picture to be stretched to fill the entire GBA display. The right trigger will center it again.

But — if one likes 2D games (and anyone with a brane does), this looks like the best thing one can get at the moment short of a Neo-Geo. Also, given the amount of support Sega is putting behind the thing — well.

Yay! I have a living console again! Now that I do, watch Nintendo suddenly, miraculously, cease to exist. Just to annoy me.

Hey, maybe it’d do for me to get a PlayStation 2 after all, if this is the way the universe likes to work.

Bumbershoot Bungle

  • Reading time:1 mins read
I… I think I lost my umbrella. I don’t see it anywhere. I tried going to the Union and asking around, but no one has seen anything.

This is distressing. We had such great times together, and now it’s just gone — after such a short while. I thought it would be with me for a long time to come.

I… well, maybe it’ll turn up. I have to work. But it’s hard not to worry…

I’ve got two legs, from my hips the ground…

  • Reading time:1 mins read
Once again the first task I undertook when I stepped in the door just now was — rather than to remove my shoes — to begin to take off my pants.

This is the second time recently I have absentmindedly begun to de-pant rather than conduct some other task more appropriate to the situation. I wonder whether it’s something in the air here…

Gaga Import

  • Reading time:1 mins read
I unwrapped my copy of Segagaga. And I just stared at it for a while. It’s my first game to have one of those “extra-thick” Japanese cases, to accomodate for the somewhat large manual. The manual is, of course, gorgeous. The case is white (as with my copy of Vampire Chronicle for Matching Service). It’s also my first game with a real Hitmaker logo on it. But there’s really not much to look at, if my Dreamcast doesn’t want to work. It’s too subtle.

Also to mention: my Altered Beast and Ghouls ‘N Ghosts cases (I’d forgotten how beautiful these are — these were my first two Genesis games) are in perfect condition, and the manuals are still inside. The Altered Beast case even still smells like a new Genesis. Even that is pristine. But no games. I thought I had my name on the cartridges as well, but I suppose it’s probable and likely that they were sold or given away or something.

Mudman, Part Two

  • Reading time:13 mins read
– January 12, 1940 –

Mary, my dear —

     I have had the most extraordinary afternoon. I hardly have a solid notion of where to start, but if the aphorisms hold any truth then perhaps the beginning is the best choice.
     Certainly you recall the uncommon business I mentioned earlier, with the brusque Dr. Stephen Haustus and his mysterious ways. I met with the fellow today.
     As I write this, night is leaking into the early morning. Nevertheless, I feel more compelled to organize my thoughts than to sleep this day. I will ask Scott to cancel my classes for the approaching noontime, although I fear I will be unable to immediately explain to either him or to my students. (I am certain all involved will be thoroughly devastated at the news.)
     Following the Doctor’s instructions, I called for a taxi somewhere close after eleven this morning. It appears that my watch has stopped, but while I am unaware of the precise time, it was undoubtedly somewhere in the immediate range of mid-day that I wound myself to the museum.
     I had been idly worrying about how to locate the Doctor once I arrived, as neither his call nor his wire were entirely clear. (I am of course generous in this statement.) Furthermore, it had been so long since I had visited the museum that my memory of its layout was clouded. Walking into the lobby, I had just made up my mind to seek the cuneiform exhibit — perhaps for my own amusement more than the sake of logic — when I was greeted with a familiar thunderclap of a voice.
     “Professor Astrid.” The voice once more stated. This time, however, there was more colour in its inflection.
     Crossing the room toward me, from between a mock sarcophagus and what appeared to be a grossly oversized fern, was a large, shall we say plenitudinous, man. His face was grizzled with a mutton-chopped swath of nearly black hair, and unexpectedly stretched with a thin smile. There was no vest to be found under his jacket, which seemed to leave the picture incomplete — I would have envisioned a watch chain stretching from the upper pocket — but his heavy cane made up for the oversight.
     “You are Doctor Haustus?” As usual, I have a talent for voicing the obvious.
     By now the Doctor’s figure was close enough that I could make out a heavy glare — a cast that was removed nearly the moment my eyes met his. I must say that this initial look troubled me in some obscure manner — but my uneasiness was easily subsumed once we began our conversation.
     “Stephen Haustus, at your service.” His head gave a slight forward bob. “I should apologize for the suddenness with which I chose to summon you.”
     “Summon?”
     “Beckon, if you prefer. Convoke. Language is more your area than mine. Come, let us remove ourselves from this tourist trap. I have not eaten in hours.”
     “I confess that I am a bit confused.”
     “Only a bit?” I would not have guessed only minutes earlier that the Doctor was capable of laughter. “We shall have to work on that, shan’t we? But let’s not speak of such things for the moment. You surely know this area more well than I; where might we find a perfect duck?”
     It appears that I was right in my earlier suspicion; this Haustus fellow is cagey, but his overall demeanour has quite taken me by surprise. The two of us carved a collective path to the small restaurant a block and a corner away. You must know the name; it’s the one with the weathered clapboards on the inside, and the queer picture of a cat hanging inside the entryway. It still has oil lamps along the walls instead of electric bulbs, and always seems a bit dim inside.
     The Doctor seemed indifferent to the eccentricities of the establishment, and barged through the paneled door ahead of me.
     We were shown to a table obscured on two respective sides by weathered red brick and a dark, lacquered oak divider. While Haustus took a sturdy chair opposite, I was constrained to slide into a booth seat along this partial wall. Orders were barked to the waitress; the Doctor got his duck, while — having already eaten an adequate breakfast — I passed with an uncomfortably bitter green salad.
     In terms of discussion, there was little of repeatable note until the table was put bereft of any measure of edible fare — yet as we ate, I on more than one occasion became conscious of the Doctor’s scrutiny. As his mandibles worked over their meal, Haustus frequently leaned back in his chair, allowing his eyes to do a similar job upon my form. For my part, I did my best to ignore the gaze. I suppose the man was trying as well to see what he could make of me as I, him. From the unusual nature of what he had to say, I can now understand his caution.
     “How would you judge yourself as a linguist?” Having become lost in my thoughts over the course of the meal, Haustus’ voice gave me an even greater start than usual.
     I was flustered, but I managed a reply. “I have as much to learn as anyone, but I believe I have had at least some degree of success in my studies.” I saw that he was looking for more of an answer than this. “I imagine if you have asked me here then you are familiar with my work. Most recently I have been searching for early traces of the language to develop in ancient Sumer. Although I have yet to receive a wealth of support for my findings, some samples have been brought to my attention which suggest that far from being the first written language, the Sumerian dialect is devolved from some more primary, more sophisticated form.”
     “I understand that you might be considered something of a linguo-cryptographer.”
     “That might not be as inaccurate a description as many.” I had not thought of myself in such terms, but from the way he phrased it I almost felt like a professional. “Most of the languages I have learned, I have done so with little outside influence.”
     Since my mouth was already in motion, I decided to editorialize. “Language theory tends to bore me; there is no way to truly grasp the essence of a thing with the lack of context that comes in an analytic handbag. But yes,” I admitted, “I do have something of a knack for decoding languages that others might find inaccessible.”
     Haustus had by now pulled the corners of his mouth into a determined scowl, causing his lower lip to protrude and to fold slightly outward. The Doctor leaned further into his chair and stared through furrowed brow into a distant land above my left ear.
     “A man has come to me,” he finally offered, arms folded across his stomach, his eyes maintaining their unfocused glaze. His tone acquired a hitherto-unseen candid quality, although I could swear that it retained a cannily rehearsed type of extemporaneousness. “A patient, if you will. He has recently come down with an unconventional disease of the mind, and several months ago his family saw best to place him in the care of my institution.”
     “Is it serious?” A useless question, but I felt obligated to say something.
     “A yes and a no,” he shrugged. “One rarely has any clear answers in this field. If you ask whether he is able to go about his business without aid, then yes, to some degree. However, he has become so violent under our custody that he must remain sedated at all times.”
     “You say that his disease is a rare one? What is it that’s wrong with this man?” I was becoming curious by now, despite the continued unclarity of Haustus’ intent in this conversation.
     “This is where your patience leads.” The Doctor chuckled lightly. “It seems the patient has become lost in his own world. This is a standard reaction, of course, in such modern times as these. Stress will often cause a person to retreat inward, and to make up his own rules; his own universe.”
     Haustus ceased his investigation of the surrounding atmosphere and returned his attention to my face, before continuing. “What is unique about this case is the way my patient has chosen to express himself. He has begun to develop an alternate language, undoubtedly entirely of his own creation. Once more, this alone is not unheard-of. What is highly unusual is the complexity and the consistent nature of his language — and a language indeed it appears, albeit none known to any other man I have contacted. These are not merely insane ravings. When the man is sober, he appears to be entirely lucid. It is merely that no one is able to understand his words. I believe that this could be a source for some of his rage.”
     Although his story was an engaging one, a certain dissatisfaction had begun to sprout in the center of my mind. “I believe I am coming to understand why you contacted me, and I see how this man might make an interesting study…” I tried to find the most careful words I could immediately gather.
     “But ‘why you,’ you ask?”
     “Essentially, yes. Surely there must be someone even on staff who can work out some form of communication with the man — if this is what you wish to do. Nearly any patient person should be able to find some way into his head if he is as orderly and consistent as you say.”
     “If this were any normal man, I would agree. But I am sure you must sense that there is something greater about this situation than what you describe.”
     At this point, the waitress returned to extract our plates. Haustus fell silent until she had left. “You underestimate the complexity of the language. My staff and I have found it entirely impenetrable. Furthermore, his violent tendencies make it difficult to establish any sort of close relationship. Without an exchange, there is no communication.”
     I was not sure how much I liked the sound of this, but I allowed him to continue. “Through my studies I feel confident that this man can be cured. If we were able to speak with him, I am certain we could devise a proper treatment for his ailment. Time, however, is not on our side.” Haustus now began to lean forward, pressing his hardened fingers into the table. “The patient is growing more ill by the day, and we fear he has only a short time left to live. As I said, his condition is a rare and baffling one. Even if we are not successful, it would be of incalculable value to science for us to document this sickness in as great a detail as we are able, while we have the chance.”
     My expression must have belied my underlying dissatisfaction. Despite all that the Doctor had offered, something still was not sitting right with me.
     “The patient is from a very well-respected family. Beyond what I have said, there is a strong… compulsion upon our facility to go to whatever extreme might be necessary, rather than let the story become a public matter.”
     Now it all made sense to me. “If this man is as violent as you say, and if he is useless when sedated, then how would you expect even I to be of aid? You must realize that this is not my area of expertise. I have no prior experience of this type of a situation.”
     “Nor does anyone else!” The Doctor’s hands became airbourne. “This is a learning experience of a like you will never see again. Of course…” His eyes shone fiercely “… you will be well-reimbursed for your contributions.”
     The conversation continued for another hour or more, and despite all of the reservations you would expect, I ultimately agreed. Doctor Haustus said that he would contact me in the coming weeks with more information. I explained to Haustus what large degree of alteration would be in order for my gossamer web of plans, such as to allow for an unexpected project of this magnitude, and have been allowed time to reschedule all of my lectures and meetings. I am simply not able to leave my students in the middle of a semester, but (with providence) the upcoming break should be more than ample time for whatever adventures might be in store.
     Heavens — it is already past dawn! I must get my rest if I intend to be able to do anything today. I apologize for the abruptness of my leave, but now that my story is completed I feel unable to keep my eyes open for another moment. Perhaps this sketch of a dragonfly is enough of a payment? If it proves inadequate, I will be pleased to exchange it for another when you return. Both weird and noble, unsettling and beautiful — I am certain the two of you will get along handsomely.

Entomologically yours,

James