We All Fall Down

The end of the end of the end of the era

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Okay. A method has been announced to theoretically convert a Shenmue US save file to a Shenmue UK save file. I knew people would be jumping onto this.

Now all we have to do is hope the game actually gets released in Europe. A few sites are saying it’s doomed there as well, but in general the word seems sound so far. As odd as it might sound, I think I do believe it will be released there. SoE, during this last stretch, seems to be picking up everything SoA is abandoning. I’m not sure what’s gotten into them, as traditionally SoE has been by far the lousiest out of the three branches — but as long as I can get versions of Shenmue II and Headhunter, I’m not complaining. I think Rez can be imported from Japan with less difficulty, seeing its genre, and SC5 Part 2 will undoubtedly stay in Japan, when one notices how much work had to be put into dubbing the first game in order to get it released in the West. So I guess that’s where that one’s coming from as well. Again, for a game like SC5, I doubt it will be too much of a sticky problem.

Oy. I can work around these things.

Only five games left…

A Wolf Named Rock

  • Reading time:1 mins read

While nodding off today, it occurred to me (as a result of some comment I half-heard uttered from my teacher) that “Mark of the Wolves” refers to Terry’s jacket, or at least to the star emblem on it (thus the large star in the game’s logo). Terry was the “Lone Wolf”, and since he’s trained Rock and passed his place, and if not specifically his jacket then a very similar one, off to the kid, I guess Rock is therefore the new “wolf”, so to speak.

A wolf named Rock. Hm.

Cats.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Louis Wain. It’s odd how things pop up again. Long ago I showed the cover of the Oingo Boingo EP to a friend with whom I was doing some music at the time. He said that he knew the painting used on the cover, and that it was the work of some guy who was in the process of going crazy. He kept repainting the same cat face over and over, and each time it became more twisted and disturbing. He didn’t remember the person’s name, but I thought this was interesting and I filed it away in the back of my head.

Earlier today I was reading a posting of Kibo‘s where he randomly threw in the mention of a Louis Wain painting creepy cat heads. I’m not sure where I made the connection, but I made a guess that he was referring to the same person my friend briefly described several years back — and indeed he was. Now I know the guy’s name, and I’m glad I do. This is interesting…

There is no imitation.

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Art is inseparable from life. Whether it is seen or not, everything inherently is art by its very fabric of being — all that can be made, done, said, and in some ways even thought. All that simply is, is itself in possession of some aesthetic qualifications, and in more than simply the superficial visual manner of a painting or sculpture. The very essence, or honed being, of existence, has its own scale of elegance. This simple observation points to the vital place aesthetic differentiation must play. If everything which is, is art — then what of those with no appreciation for this truth? Those with a complete void of taste, carelessly and ignorantly blundering through life, oblivious to their wake of destruction, and stains left behind on all with which they deal?

Consider the devoted hacker — the code whiz who has taught himself all that he knows and takes pride in the elegance and beauty of his code. Any program written by this person will be fast, clean, efficient, relatively bug-free, and will do precisely what it is meant to do — and it will do it right. Any errors which turn up will be quickly repaired, and the program will in the end be invisible to its user, allowing him to simply do what he needs to do without adding to his problems. The corporate programmer, trained second-hand, ignorant of the value of code itself and merely interested in getting paid at the end of the day, has no compunction to do his job right. If his code can be executed, and the program seems to run, then his job is complete and he no longer has to think about it. Due to this obliviousness and lack of care, we end up with bloated, bug-ridden software which runs slowly, interacts poorly with both the end user and his computer, and eventually gets in the way of the user’s goal of simply accomplishing his desired tasks.

The same general principles can be applied to anything from communication to driving to bodily movement to diet to science to logic to traditional art to one’s outlook on life and way of organizing thought. Art is so pervasive that good art — works of taste, of aesthetic value — is a valuable commodity. In general this world is a sloppy aesthetic wasteland — at least the manmade portion of it. It is sufficiently rare that people take heed of their actions and strive for the better and the more artful that any rare pockets of sophistication found become of great value.

In the depressing miasmal void of daily life, enlightenment and inspiration become beacons, showing the way to what is perhaps the most ideal universe; one where art, as a segregated concept, would be without need. For the world we have now, a sense of taste can be a curse, with art as the only oasis from the daily bombard and the only sympathetic voice in hell. Enlightenment can, however, be infectious, and inspiration comes in waves. With enough voices, the world might be changed for at least a short while. For this revolutionary goal, taste is the only weapon.

The Beautiful

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Something from a lecture on Mozart, paraphrased as well as possible with my memory:

“All beauty is strange. Not wholly strange, as a freakish repulsion, but unusual enough to spark the mind and to show how beauty can really be.”

This was posed in contrast to prettiness, a quality all too common and ultimately unfulfilling. I think I’ll combine this with a quote from Aristotle, via my aesthetics teacher:

“Instantaneity is not art.”

That is to say, that which is immediately comprehended and processed is not of particular value. It is the complexity of the whole, further understood with each exposure, that tends to show true merit. The obvious might be pretty, and might provide instant gratification, but in no way does it have particular value.

While looking at the art gallery in Last Blade 2, I realized — well, someone had been whining about how icky a name “The Last Blade” was in comparison to its original title. But it appears that its European title was The Last Soldier. Huh? Where did that come from? Evidentially from the same mindset which turns Mitsurugi into “Arthur” and creates the “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles”. Hmm. Also, in the US release of the game, the Hanafuda card game from the Japanese version was removed. Why do they always keep stripping these things away entirely? Does it take that much effort to translate them, really? Perhaps to describe briefly how the game is played, in the instruction booklet? Urgh. Aside from that issue, I’m really liking this game (LB2) a lot. I’ve remapped the buttons to what seems a more logical arrangement (X = weak slash; Y = hard slash; B = kick; A = parry), and have begun practicing a lot with Hibiki and Setsuna. I am unexpectedly annoyed with Akari, both in terms of control and personification. Although the voices in this game are largely beyond excellent, I quickly found Akari to be a rake on my ears and my nerves.

I apparently skipped Saturday almost altogether. I went to sleep late in the morning, after having stayed up all Friday night playing Bangai-O (not a moment there regretted), and didn’t wake up until very late Saturday night. I hadn’t been getting much sleep and had been feeling very sick this past week, so I suppose my body was merely correcting the situation — as was its right.

For the honor of Dan Star!

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I do like Bangai-O. Here’s a conversation which broke out in the middle of a nerve-wracking battle in a round filled with explosives which get set off in a chain reaction with one false shot:

Mrs. M: The legendary space fruit.
There are 5 types of
the huge Space-Fruit.

Mrs. M: Mandarins, apples,
Bananas, pineapples,
Water Melons.

Mrs. M: The Points rise
according to the series.

Riki (stressed): Points!?
What are the points?

Mrs. M: I do not know. Ask
The points counter.

Riki (calm, anticipatory): Is there no civet fruit?

Mrs. M: What? You’d like them?
But they stink!
Anyway there aren’t any!

Riki (freaking out): If there is no civet fruit,
then I don’t want to go on!

Mrs. M: I don’t know whether there
are any. Go and buy some
Somewhere else.

Deep Bang Blade

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I finally got a chance to play Bangai-O and Last Blade 2. Both were quite worth grabbing hold of, in their own particular ways.

Bangai-O is essentially everything I thought it would be, only more addictive and weird.

Last Blade 2… I really wasn’t sure what to expect here, but I got more than I was looking for. The animation is very nice, and the voices are some of the best I’ve heard in a fighting game. I’m actually liking some of the characters who I hadn’t noticed before (though the names aren’t sticking just yet), and I think I am going to like the fighting system. It’s quite complex in theory, but somewhat simple in execution. The characters also have a nice sort of a feel to them — more limber and mobile than the SF/KoF style and somewhat tighter and easier to deal with than the likes of Darkstalkers. The game’s minimalistic use of music in favour of background noises is quite interesting as well. I think I’m actually going to spend some time learning how to play this properly. It’s not often I think this about a fighting game.

On the way home I saw The Deep End, a smallish film I’d been wanting to see for a while. If I can do the research to refresh my brain on peoples’ names, I’ll talk about it some more. As it is, I’m feeling a bit dumb saying much. It was, however, something to see.

A test?

  • Reading time:1 mins read

While stumbling to my first class this morning, I happened upon a crumpled dollar bill in the hallway. Upon bending down to pick it up I noticed a second bill beneath it, this one a twenty. After looking around the hall a bit and not seeing anyone who seemed to belong to them, I attempted to bring the bills to the front desk only to find it closed. I figured I’d bring them in later. The thing is, now that they’ve been wandering around with me all day, I’ve grown somewhat attached to them. Not sure what to do about this.

ODCM, RIP

  • Reading time:1 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

Fixing the hole where the ghosts come in

  • Reading time:3 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah me.

Oh goodness!

  • Reading time:1 mins read

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

The horror! The shame!

… I’m hungry.

A.I.

  • Reading time:2 mins read

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

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

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

Shadow of a Dream

  • Reading time:1 mins read

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

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

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

I still have to do research on that magazine thing…

Advancement

  • Reading time:4 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

windup; wind-down

  • Reading time:2 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

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