Out of the frying pan, into the SIMULATED COCAINE BUSINESS

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I have an Xbox. It is huge. I’m using it as a platform for my Dreamcast. The main reason I got it is that it came with a bunch of software that I wanted anyway, and which on its collective own, even at a discount, would have cost about the same as I paid for it AND an Xbox. What I didn’t realize, though, is that I got a SPECIAL BONUS prize not even mentioned in the auction: ten digital tracks of what I assume is the top of the top of contemporary white suburban trash metal. The person from whom I got the Xbox did not bother to name his custom soundtrack, so I have renamed it “NOOOOOOO!” for my further convenience. Somehow I cannot bear to throw things away (especially if they’re free and special, as this soundtrack so clearly is), so it remains on the drive.

Although I have no clue what I’m doing, I begin to understand the appeal of the recent Grand Theft Auto games. I was vaguely familiar with the first two. They were silly and kind of dumb. Mister Lemming And Company really did something else with GTA3, though. It is hard to wrap my brain around how much work went into the most unlikely details. In Vice City (which, from about an hour’s play, I don’t enjoy as much), I spent more time listening to a seemingly-endless parody of public radio than I did running people over. Now that’s entertainment!

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is… reminiscent of a BioWare game. It is, alas, more contrived and a bit less flexible than I expected, yet the portion I have experienced is not without joy. For its part. I wish I could say the same of JSRF. I did not wish to believe what I had heard — as the trailers made the game seem so pretty! And Hideki Naganuma is not a man to argue with. And the soundtrack contains the remix of Guitar Vader’s “I Love Love You”! I mean. How could the game go wrong? By not being fun, I guess. What happened here?

Well, I know what happened. Or I know how the game feels about what happened, whatever it is that happened. I won’t get into that at the moment, however.

Sega GT is a car game. I don’t understand car games. I set it to play Oingo Boingo while I crash my realistic car all over a series of vaguely attractive race tracks, lose money, and slowly crawl into video poverty. I am sure this must entertain someone.

And. That is all I will say on that matter, for the moment.

Wait, no it isn’t. When I first began to play Vice City, I tried to be a nice guy — and yet I did not quite understand the controls. I wound up punching a hooker in the face. This seemed to excite my mother (who had lingered nearby, out of curiosity) to no end. She yelled at me: “Hit her again! Hit her!” When I complied, this still was inadequate. “There’s another one! Hit her!” I planted my character’s foot into the face of a hooker ascending a flight of stairs. The hooker flew in a slow, steep arc and crashed to the landing below, in a pool of blood. Money scattered everywhere. “THINGS!” my mother cried. “GET THE THINGS!”

I’m not sure I have a comment for that.

Everyone does (what Nintendon’t!)

  • Reading time:3 mins read

What Nintendo really needs to do is pay more attention to third parties. The current impression in the development community — and it’s been this case almost since the beginning — is that it’s kind of a waste of money and effort to pay too much attention to Nintendo’s box. Sony has the marketshare, so put all of your money on Sony and you don’t have to think; you don’t have to worry.

Nintendo needs to conduct some psychology experiments. Figure out what it’ll take to change that impression — to give third-part developers confidence that they’ll be on at least an equal level with Sony, that there aren’t any demographic problems, that Nintendo intends to listen to and to help developers even more than Sony will. Lower licencing fees. Get a few key secret blockbuster third-party games contracted for launch — and get all of this ready before they unveil their next system.

Then they have to go to the public — convince them that Sony is the old guard, and is no longer hip. Go a bit more in-your-face about Sony’s weak spots (the fact that their systems break if you breathe on them, for instance). Make people think “hey, they’re right. Sony’s become kind of boring now. Maybe I’ve been missing something over here…” Position themselves as the mythological kings of old, revitalized, reborn, and ready to reclaim their throne from those who have been keeping it warm for the last decade or so.

This is what has to be done, in a nutshell. People won’t care enough otherwise, to make a huge difference over the performance of the previous two consoles. If Nintendo doesn’t have the constant and substantial software support, and if they’re still seen as kind of dismissable and fuddy-duddy by the mainstream, they’ll not be in a good position.

It’s all about relations; public and private. Nintendo doesn’t like to talk to people. They need to change that, fast. Make everyone really, REALLY believe that they’ve got a winner this time — as Sega did during the first few months of the Dreamcast. Only more so. And keep that momentum. Don’t let go. They need to pace themselves, and plan ahead to always have a next card to slap into place. Make sure the public and press never come too far off the launch high. Don’t just make it, then lean back and expect things will work out (as Nintendo has been wont to do). That people and games will come. It won’t. They won’t.

Another thing that’s important is to beware of potential sabotage from Sony. Try to anticipate what weird tricks they might pull, and build in some safeguards. Always have something better stashed away, to counter a weird claim from the other side.

So I guess there are two themes. Communication and planning.

If they can accomplish all of the above, Nintendo will have a winner. In theory they have got more weight and substance as a videogame company; if they’re just smart enough to bend and use that fact in a comparative, qualitative sense — and if they’ve enough developers on their side to back it up with — people will be attracted.

Myau Mix

  • Reading time:3 mins read

So. I’ve got Phantasy Star – Generation: 1. I still have no PS2, let alone one ready for Japanese games.

However: I can make some assessments based upon the packaging.

Like, well — the packaging is rather classy.

The whole “SEGA AGES” stripe on the left makes it look like a “best of PS2” re-release of some sort. The manual is oddly thin. Aside from that, this seems… more or less real.

The book is in full-colour. Inside rests a cardboard leaflet, to stick into that SEGA AGES binder which you might recall. This contains a fair bit of rudimentary information about Phantasy Star, and a recent photo of Kodama and Naka, holding the Mark III version of the game. Naka’s head is much bigger than Kodama’s. It seems a little odd to see them together, after so long.

I wonder who’s pictured in the “creator” box for Monaco GP, or Fantasy Zone. Hm.

The front of the manual is a full-page image of the cover illustrator by that PSO artist from Sonic Team. This picture is actually larger than the version on the front cover of the DVD case, given that it doesn’t have to account for either the PS2 ID border at the top or the SEGA AGES border on the side.

It’s — well, it’s what the cover would look like if it weren’t smooshed over. And it looks very nice. The new version of the Phantasy Star logo — again, the word that comes to me is “classy”. It’s a softer and icier redraw of the original logo, with the PSO-style three-planet Algol swoop in the background and the “generation” number as a misty underline. It works well.

The disc art is typical; blue and black. Looks like a Dreamcast game. The back cover shows an illustration of Lutz without his robe. His underlying outfit looks like something that Legolas might dorn. It’s got… leaves. It’s green and blue.

The packaging points out, from every corner, that this release is the first in the SEGA-AGES series (including a stripe on the spine — meant to cause the game to stand out and match the rest of the set, if you display your DVD cases on a shelf) yet somehow this doesn’t seem obtrusive, or annoying — as undoubtedly it will, if this series comes to the West. The game retains its own identity and dignity as a self-contained entity, while it suggests a new format for both of its sequels and stands as the test case for the larger SEGA AGES line.

A lot of care seems to have gone into this, particularly for a budget release. That’s really the overall feeling that I get. This is obviously geared for the Sega aficionado, even with the casual browser price.

More impressions when I actually play the darned thing.

He’s not OK?

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Well! I just got my copy of KoF2002 DC.

It’s got really nice packaging. I’m surprised, as the cover art — in recent Playmore style — is only so-so. I don’t know who their new promo and cover artists are. I don’t know why they persist with pushing this stuff on their poor fans when they’ve got Hiroaki, Tonka, and Nona on the bankroll. What, are they all too busy drawing K’ / K9999 doujinshi? Where are they?

So. The packaging is highly decent. The game is… more polished than it is in its more-familiar-to-me emulated form. All of the voice samples and sound effects have been resampled at a really high rate. The music isn’t arranged, nor did I expect it to be. As with 2001, its samples seem of a higher quality than before.

There seem to be a few nice extra modes, though I’ve yet to unlock them. Then there are King and Shingo, again whom I have yet to find.

The reason? I’m still apathetic.

This game… just isn’t that great. Especially not following 2001, which — while a little scuzzy at first glance — is by far one of the best fighters I’ve played.

The engine seems solid enough. But… the game’s just been thrown together. No interaction amongst the characters. They all just… happen to be in the same game. As if the compromised cast listing were really that rosy a start. No solid, coherent world. Barely any intro animations. Terry vs. Andy? Nope. Kyo vs. Iori? Nope. The hell?

And I just miss the strikers, frankly. It’s sad that there’s not even an option for them. The game feels outdated. Frustrating. Incomplete.

Hollow is my word. That works.

I wonder what happened to all of Terry’s move names.

I got it to support Playmore, and to complete my collection. And because it’s for the Dreamcast. And to assuage my emulation guilt. All… some variation of posterity, rather than actual desire.

I don’t think I’m going to play it much.

Dum dee dum.

Ah well. I presume that Playmore is taking the series back internally, this year. Those who once were Brezza, then were part of Sun, which is now SNK NeoGeo, are technically responsible for the grunt work on the past two games, but Eolith has supposedly done most of the design. We’ll see what SNK has to say — officially — about the new Dragon Power story arc. I do hope that it’s novel. I’m not sure I can take another mediocre KoF. One is sad enough for a lifetime.

Break on through to the other side

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Sega claims that SA:DX (now named, in full, “Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut“) has five hours of new gameplay in addition to all of the other additions.

A “mission mode” has been added, for COLLECTING JOY. This is where one unlocks “exclusive items”, “secrets”, and the Gamegear games. Whether this mode is what constitutes the five purported hours of new gameplay, I don’t know.

Personally, I don’t think that the emblem-hunting in the Sonic Adventure games counts as real gameplay. The story mode is the actual game. Being forced to go back in and perform inane stunts under arbitrary limitations just seems like a waste of time and energy to me.

I suppose it’s better that the emblems actually do something now, though. Or maybe it’s not. At least I knew I wasn’t missing anything by not bothering with a number of the more annoying ones.

My patience is really starting to wear thin with such thinly-veiled time sponges; tasks which have no substantial reason to exist, other than so as to keep the player glued to the game for an unnaturally, unhealthfully long time. As far as game design goes, it’s manipulative, lazy, and not at all intriguing. Worse, it’s becoming so omnipresent — even where it just doesn’t belong.

It’s… starting to make me dislike videogames in general, at least as they are at present.

I feel not unlike how I felt a decade ago. My levels of disgust and apathy are being strained.

I don’t intend to give up. That’d be too easy. I did it once before, and in the process, I missed most of a generation. Yet, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to care about a lot of what’s out there today.

The industry is entering a rut just as pathetic as the one of ten years ago. Not as damning as the one of 1984, but…

there’s a pattern here.

I’m starting to think that there really needs to be a shakedown.

For a while, I’ve been watching its approach. The old guard, as it were, is going to have to either get with the picture soon or it’s going to fall apart. The trouble has already long since begun, spreading the fallout of an industry’s greed and ineptitude as wide as possible so as not to choke the largest perpetrators in their own filth. Meanwhile, a new generation seems to be quietly, humbly (for the moment) emerging — far enough away that the garbage isn’t nearly as much of a problem.

The established head of the industry is flat out of ideas. It’s just going through the motions, without any real understanding anymore for why it does what it does. (Sort of like KoF2002, or any contemporary RPG you might choose to pick up.) There’s no foundation anymore. The old-world elite have been doing what they’ve been doing for so long that they don’t even remember why they’re doing it.

The benefit about new blood, from a separate world, is that it doesn’t have these problems; assuming that the newcomers understand where they are to begin with, and that they know what they’re doing, the ground is always still within reach. They can easily trace down to see how things stand. It isn’t so hard to retrace and start over if need be. They’re informed by the ideas of the older generation, but those ideas are adapted in such a way that is relevent to the newcomers in the context which they know most well.

This is, I think, the difference between the two things that Nintendo’s been doing lately.

The way that the apprenticeship thing seems to be going at the moment is that the methods are being taught by rote, for their own sake — rather than as possible answers to more fundamental questions.

But on the other hand, Nintendo is also supporting developers like Silicon Knights and Retro; contributing funding, polish, and advice — but allowing the newer houses to find their own direction.

It’s the difference between following a religion and being informed by its philosophy. Following in the footsteps of your forebears, or being inspired to do your own work by building upon what came before.

Mrrn.

I can see Eiji Aonuma presenting his game before Miyamoto. “This is how it goes, right?”

Yes, technically…

But… no.

Dated, stiff, and often grotesque

  • Reading time:11 mins read

Shinkirou’s characters look like mannequins. They have no motion or life to them.

Further, they remind me of the art one used to see on the back of cereal boxes in the 1980s.

It’s dated, stiff, and often grotesque.

Shinkirou obviously has technical talent as an artist, but his art just doesn’t seem appropriate to something as vibrant as a fighting game.

Nona’s art has been controversial ever since his work on KoF2001. It’s often strange — but it has life to it. It’s often dark. It’s often a little disturbing. It’s gritty, and yet stylized.

Like it or not, Nona’s work has personality. And on that basis, I’d take it over Shinkirou any day.

I don’t know why Playmore chose to go with Nona for as high a profile game as this, however; I’d have thought that Hiroaki (the Bukiri-One artist, who most recently did the art for KoFEX2 for the GBA) would be more appropriate.

But whatever. I like Nona, if for nothing else than the fact that he’s different. And that so many people complain about his art without much of an attempt to understand it.

Nona’s fine, but yeah — it’s a little weird that Playmore doesn’t seem to be sticking with someone a little less controversial.

From what I’ve read elsewhere (such as The Stinger Report) Capcom doesn’t want much to do with this game. They’re annoyed that Playmore is even going through with it, and perhaps the only reason that they’re allowing Playmore to go forward with it is that Capcom is soon to be leaving the arcade business. Therefore, the game won’t be much competition for any of their upcoming projects.

Furthermore, Playmore doesn’t have a huge reservoir of money. So it makes sense to me that they’d stick with the artists they have on-hand.

However, of the artists that I know they have left — why Nona? I, personally, am very fond of Nona’s art. But I know that I’m in the minority. His art is often not very easy to understand.

I know that Hiroaki (Bukiri-One, KoF2000) is still with Playmore, and I believe that Tonko (Mark of the Wolves, Last Blade) is still around somewhere (given that Nona did the art for Metal Slug 4). Both of them are fantastic artists, and both are immediately appealing to just about any audience.

Plus, Hiroaki’s style is a little reminiscent of Akiman’s — Capcom’s main illustrator ever since Street Fighter 2. Personally, I think Hiroaki is far more talented than Akiman — but they work in a similar manner.

He’d seem perfect for a game like SVC CHAOS.

And who knows — maybe Playmore is using Hiroaki for the in-game art. All we’ve got now is a small handful of character sketches.

If you remember, Nona did the character illustrations to KoF2002 but Hiroaki did most of the in-game portraits and whatnot. I thought that this was a perfect balance.

For all we know so far, it’s entirely possible that they’re doing the same thing here — Nona on the outside illustrations and someone like Hiroaki or Tonko on the in-game art.

Probably best just to hold out and see how things go over the next few weeks.

If nothing else, the logo is very well-done.

* * *

Regarding The King of Fighters 2002 DC:

Buyrite is renowned for just plain false information, but there’s been discussion before about whether Playmore will bother with the extra chracters.

Just about everyone has expressed some consternation about the original MVS roster. King is my favourite character overall, so it figures they’d choose to ditch her (even though she’s been in every other KoF since the series began). Why they chose not to bring back Jhun, where Shingo went off to, and why we’ve got Rugal again (rather than, say, an enhanced Krizalid), I can’t really fathom.

Furthermore, why does 2002 — a dream match — have fewer characters than 2001? 2001 was a standard plot chapter. 2002 is supposed to be a no-holds-barred, over-the-top celebration of all that is KoF. With the game’s wimpy and unrepresentative cast list, it’s kind of difficult to get as excited as Playmore intends.

Basically, they had to cut corners somewhere. After all of the complaints about the backgrounds and music in 2001, Playmore devoted more time and cartridge space to that aspect of the presentation. Personally, I’d take the characters over the backgrounds — though I appreciate the effort (even if I feel it’s misguided).

With the Dreamcast, though, Playmore doesn’t have these space limitations. They can do whatever the heck they want to, really. This is the perfect chance to fix the game (or finish it, depending on how you look at things), and quiet their audience’s moans; to show that they’re really listening.

So there’s the obvious and immediate potential, right off the bat.

There’s a bit more, though, to raise a person’s hopes.

First, this is the kind of thing that SNK and Playmore have done with all of the Dreamcast ports so far.

’98 got a snazzy new anime intro, a 3D background, and other assorted bonuses;

’99 got better 3D backgrounds, a shop system, extra strikers (including Seth and Vanessa from 2000), and a really nice presentation overall;

2000 got a surprisingly-entertaining sliding puzzle and extra backgrounds and music;

2001 got even more levels (including “fixed” versions of all of the original 2001 levels), and a well-designed puzzle battle mode.

So there’s a history of some decent additions, most of which do a good job to fix some of the shortcomings of the games in question (although 2001 really could have used some added music).

It seems highly probable that Playmore will add something worth mentioning to 2002. The only question is what that might be.

The other factor which is getting at least my hopes up is how long the game seems to be taking. 2000 and 2001 were each ported pretty quickly, and released mere months apart from each other. 2002, however, was announced way back in the middle of December — and it’s not to be released until some untold time, this coming summer.

Part of the delay, I imagine, is so as not to interfere with sales of the Neo-Geo cartridge. But the fact is, this is a pretty long wait for what should otherwise be a simple Dreamcast port. Playmore’s got lots of experience with the DC. They know how to do this by now.

So what’s Playmore doing with all of this extra time, then?

It sounds kind of suspicious to me.

On the other hand, this is all speculation.

As for the complete cast for the DC version — all that’s been announced beyond the original MVS release is Shingo.

For the full cast of the MVS version, look under the Neo-Geo FAQs section.

It is my understanding that Shingo was originally intended as a character within KoF2002 (thus the rumors of him popping up in the early public tests), but that Eolith and Brezza removed him in the final version (for whatever reason).

This would make some sense, as his sprite doesn’t appear to be in any of the backgrounds. Just about every other major KoF-universe character makes an appearance, so it seems odd that Shingo isn’t even referenced.

With luck, we’ll see some more characters added back in. It seems absurd to me that a “dream match” game like 2002 has fewer characters than a standard plot chapter. (There are 40 characters + 2 bosses in 2001; 39 characters + 1 boss in 2002.)

Further, it seems pretty ludicrous that the cast manages to be such an awful compromise that it isn’t representative of anything in particular. One of the most long-standing and representative characters (King) is omitted. One of the bigger recent fan favourites (Shingo) is left out. And few of the remaining characters have much of anything to do with each other.

In ’98, most characters had a large number of special introductions and/or endings. It was a reasonably tight group. The characters had reason to joke with each other, to taunt or threaten each other. There was a lot of personality going around.

Now… well, what is this? We’ve just got a bunch of random characters thrown together, with no context at all. It’s so cold.

What’s even weirder is that even amongst the characters who have some obvious connections — their interactions are omitted!

Kyo versus Iori? Nothing.
Mai versus Andy? Nothing.
Terry versus Billy? Nothing.
Terry versus Yamazaki? Nothing.

And the list goes on.

There still are a few random intros in there (Kensou versus Athena), but — well, you get the picture.

This game needs a lot of work — and I’m hoping that Playmore does a decent job at finishing it for the DC release.

The inclusion of Shingo is a good step. It’s very encouraging. We’ll see what else they polish up.

Akaimizu: That’s true, with the alternate characters; I don’t really count them any more than I count the alternate characters in ’98, but it does depend on how you want to look at things.

If that’s the way one is going to measure the game, however, I can’t help but wonder where all of the other alternate characters are which were present in ’98. We’ve gone through two whole eras at this point. You’d think there’d be a lot of history to cover and to try to encapsulate in a Dream Match like this.

But no.

As for that other person:

No, this game is far from perfect.

This has nothing to do with the details, specifically; I bring them up only to illustrate a point.

KoF2002 is by far the least coherent game in the entire series. It is arbitrary; it has no reason to exist, in the form that it has been executed.

It has potential, and certain elements are individually executed very well. The backgrounds are nice. The character portraits are pretty. Some of the characters’ new moves are nice. It’s nice that some of the older characters have finally seen some new frames of animation.

But compared to the direction the series was going in with 2001, it’s a pretty huge step backwards into irrelevancy. This is unfortunate.

I fully intend to pick it up, for the sake of posterity and because I want to support Playmore. But I’m still disappointed on a number of levels.

You would be as well, if you were to pay more attention.

Let’s see if anyone can anyone answer me this:

What is the point of KoF2002, as it currently exists? What does the game accomplish?

Why did this game need to be made?

I can quickly tell you the answer for every single other game in the series, from ’94 up through 2001. For 2002, it’s not so easy.

Try as I might — and believe me, I want to like this game — I can’t understand what its purpose is, beyond simply pumping out another KoF game for the year 2002.

Anything it might feign to hold up as a tangible goal, it fails in — aside from being generally prettier than 2001 in most of the obvious aspects.

There’s no reason for a Dream Match right now; we’ve still got some plot threads unresolved from 2001. But okay, it’ll make Eolith a bunch of money before they hand the development back to Playmore at the end of their contract. So whatever. Let’s make this a blast to remember, as we did four years ago!

In ’98, every character save the Boss Team, Eiji, and Kasumi returned. Okay, and the post-Rugal bosses. But we got Saisyu as a playable character and we got alternate versions (pre-’96; ’96-and-on) of most of the major characters. We got a ton of interaction amongst the characters.

The game had a general air of fun; one big party, where everyone is invited. One big storyline is over with. Now we’ll make the KoF to end all KoFs; the one game which, above all else, is representative of the heart and the history of the series.

We could have had another one of those. That would have been neat. But what did we get?

What is 2002, exactly?

Why do we need it?
I’d like someone to explain it to me. Because I don’t understand.

Fire, psycho soldier! Fire!

  • Reading time:10 mins read

In light of the release date (June somethingth) supposedly now being set for the DC release of KoF2002, I’ve some observations to make about the MVS version of the game.

As far as KoF goes, it’s… okay. It feels a little off, but the presentation is very nice. The music is far better than in 2001. Most of the characters have a sizey amount of new animation.

One of the first positive impressions you’ll get with 2002 is how well-synched the intro is to the music. The intro sequence has its ups and downs, and it ends in the anticlimax of an ugly title screen — but there are some neat sequences in there.

Every time you hit the character select screen, your face is bombarded by the words:

THE

KING

OF

FIGHTERS

They scale from inside the screen, toward your face, at light speed, all within about half a second. It’s dizzying, especially if you’re in practice mode and you keep hopping back out to change characters. It began to make me feel a little strange after three or four times in a row.

(Incidentally, Hiroaki’s new character portraits are great, all around.)

Just about every character has more frames of animation, this time around — bringing some of the older characters, in places, up to nearly the level of someone like Angel. Robert’s fireball animation is different. A lot of characters’ standard moves are much smoother-looking. You will be terrified by Kim’s pants. Just a fair warning.

Several of the characters (such as Athena) feel unusually smooth in this game. On the other hand, the game tends to be a lot picker about what it will accept as a special move command. (For instance: if a move requires QCF, it won’t execute if you enter HCF… think about it for a moment.) Further, several characters seem to be missing some key moves from the last several games.

The entire Sakazaki family seems to have undergone some weird changes. NONE of them has a windmill kick anymore — Ryo, Takuma, or Yuri. Yuri no longer has her twirly fist thing from the NESTS era, but instead that — ball of energy, from earlier eras. Her air fireball has to be cast in the air, now — a difficult feat, at times.

Actually, Takuma seems to have lost all of his moves. He can still do a fireball (and his haoh-syoken dm), but there isn’t any projectile. Maybe he still has some other moves, but — jeez. Well-hidden enough.

K9999 comes out in a brown leather bomber jacket, these days. It suits him. He also has a third special move. He’s beginning to feel a bit more complete as a usable character.

Rugal slaughtered me instantly. I was using the NESTS team. I barely hit him. It might just be me, but he seems even cheaper than usual.

Honestly, I miss the striker feature. Most of the characters from the past three games were specifically designed for the striker era. The strikers made up for some of their shortcomings, making the characters generally more balanced and stategically competetive. Now everyone’s just left to fend for his or herself.

This drop back to the old format causes a few other problems. To change stance with May Lee you hit the first three buttons, yes? Well, this command was instituted during 2001, when there was no “charge mode” for the characters as there is in every one of the previous games (in some form or another; it’s split into two separate, less-useful modes in ’99 and 2000).

Now, that “power rush” mode is back. And it’s entered the same way as in the old games. As a result, every single time you change stance with May Lee, you waste a power stock.

The voice acting is typically good (although Terry’s move names — he’s changed them entirely; no more “burn knuckle” or “rising tackle” or “crack shoot”). The sound effects are better than usual.

The music sounds like circa-’97 level material. Most of it is made up of remixed themes from earlier in the series — from ’94 all the way through 2000. The NESTS-era stuff is now all guitary, in keeping with the earlier musical style of the series. (The Burning Team uses a variation of the ’99 hero theme, only transformed from burbling techno into thrashing metal with some electronic overtones.) There are even some voice samples here and there, in the music. The Garou theme, for instance — yes, the familiar one — has been turned into hip-hop now.

The instrument samples are still not of as high a quality as in most of the pre-Eolith games, but the composition is a hell of a lot better than last time around. I like the new (ex-)NESTS theme.

Kyo’s theme is now “Tears”. (I like both Tears and Goodbye Esaka, actually — either would have been appropriate as the NESTS-era Kyo’s theme here.) The Ikari Team is the one from ’94 — the one which sounds kind of like a Faith No More song. Now that King is gone, the Gals theme has reverted to the Yuri theme from the AoF series.

The Spy Team (as I call them) uses one of the two hero themes from 2000. I think it’s the K’ one rather than Benimaru, though — which seems a little weird, as the 2000 Burning theme is really just a variation of the ’99 theme (just as Goodbye Esaka and Tears are both variants of Esaka Forever). But the Benimaru Team — that theme isn’t really attached to anyone.

The backgrounds here are are technically very well-done, if a bit flat and uninspired. There are a good number of successful in-jokes and references.

There’s this one level — the China one — which is getting on my nerves. Whomever you face there, you’ll invariably get the “China” theme (which doubles as the theme for either Kensou or Chin) rather than that of your opponent. Further, while there are only half a dozen stages in the game, the China stage seems to pop up more frequently than any other background in the game. So it’s like you’ve a one in four chance of having that theme pop up, every battle.

Whatever happened to the complex pre-’97 stages, anyway? The ones with the intro animations, the multiple levels of scrolling, the unusual perspectives, the interactive background elements? And if there are only three characters per team in 2002, why don’t the non-fighting teammates stand in the background to wait their turn, as in every game up until ’99?

Aside from the title screen (which is blessed with the most ugly, ill-concieved logo in the entire series), KoF2002 has to be one of the prettiest, more well-presented games in the series for at least a few years. This is not to call it coherent, but all of the individual elements tend to show a large amount of skill in their device.

Again, however — there’s… something inherently missing in 2002. It feels emotionally tied together with twine.

There’s something a little empty about this game. Half-hearted.

’98 was a dream match, but it was really vibrant; probably the most fun the series has ever been. The characters had more personality than at any other time in the series. Shingo was around. There were lots of silly little details. There were alternate versions of many of the characters. The game was internally-consitent to a degree that none of the other chapters really have been, with the probable exceptions of ’96 and 2001. It was alive.

I guess one of the key problems of 2002 is a reasonably subtle one — merely that the characters are from all over the place. There isn’t a lot of internal integrity to the roster; many of the characters just don’t really have much of anything to do with each other. There aren’t any relationships going on. I mean, what does Shermie have to do with Billy have to do with K9999? There’s no context for anything.

Peculiarly, even for those characters who do have strong relationships, most of their special intros and endings have been removed. There’s nothing in particular going on between Mai and Andy, or Kyo and Iori.

’98 — you felt like it was a big party of sorts, y’know? Everyone’s invited. Most of the characters knew most of the others in some way — and they had something to say about it. Here — it’s just a bunch of characters thrown together. They don’t seem to know why they’re there.

And a lot of important people have been left out, who might make things more coherent, such as King. Chizuru might help, even if I don’t use her. Or Saisyu. Shingo, definitely.

I mean — there are good characters here. But. One of the intregal qualities of KoF is that internal consistency of the cast. They all support each other. Here, it’s like they’re drawn out of a hat. It can’t just be that these are the most popular, as King is a profoundly popular character.

KoF has a lot of background that one needs to deal with in order to make it KoF.

The problems go beyond merely the emotional depth, however. Frankly, the game also feels little empty to me in terms of gameplay.

I’m used to the striker system now, and four-character teams. This feels stripped-down in comparison. Thing is — ’98 and before? They didn’t feel this way. The first time around, this game system didn’t have holes in it. Now it does. The series has been steadily evolving, and most of the internal elements rely upon each other pretty strongly. By just ripping out the core game system and replacing it with an older variation — you’re setting yourself up for some problems.

It just feels like… there are fewer options now, in terms of gameplay. Even in ’98 you had two play modes, y’know? And before that, there was something new to learn every year.

2002 feels like KoF lite — with most of the soul and energy removed, both technically and emotionally. I find it really difficult to bond with this game.

What’s a little weird about this is that the same team behind 2002 was responsible for 2001 — which I find to be in many ways the pinnacle of the entire series. All it lacked was some polish around the edges. Now we’ve got the polish, but we’ve lost almost everything else which made 2001 great.

I hope Playmore is doing something really special with the DC port. Rumor has it that they’re adding up to fifteen more characters. If so, this could go a long way toward fleshing the game out.

I’m undoubtedly going to pick the game up when it’s released, just for the sake of posterity — but my scrutiny is doubled for KoF2003 (if indeed it’s in production; Playmore hasn’t said anything about it yet). It’s really difficult to assess where things might go from here. What should be even more difficult for the team is that 2003 is the start of a new era. They’re going to have to be unusually creative this time around in order to sell the game as anything but just another chapter of the series.

I know that Eolith and Brezza have it in them. It’s just hard to tell whether they realize it.

“Bnurp, bni-bip, bnurp, bni-bip…” (the Hero Team theme)

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Okay. This port seems to have quite a bit of replay value. Aside from the puzzle and survival modes (each of which has to be unlocked), there’s also a gallery filled with all kinds of locked pictures — several pages’ worth. I’m not sure how they’re freed and if they have any real effect, but — well, there’s simply a lot more to do here than in any of the other DC ports. The only one which is in the same league, at least in terms of unlockable features, is ’99 Evolution — what with the store and the Another Strikers which can be purchased. And yet that port still doesn’t offer as much variety as 2001 has.

It seems that the move list is accessible in every mode. This is good. Even if it’s a little bare-bones.

Also, it seems to me that the music is… slightly arranged. It’s no OST, but everything is at a pretty high sampling rate and there are a few neat phasing effects on top. Generally, it sounds much more well-produced than the original Neo-Geo version. My comment about how it didn’t irritate me anymore? Well, it still stands — but now I know why. It doesn’t sound like screeching, rhythmic flatulence anymore. The music itself still isn’t very well-written, but at least it’s of a respectable quality now. So benig the largely unmelodic trance techno that it is, it now just… disappears into the background. Heck, I actually sort of like a couple of the themes. Kind of. Not a lot, but… well, at least it’s a little better.

I notice that the alternate backgrounds are randomly selected in versus mode. In practice mode you can choose which you want to use (out of about forty total, including the remixed 2001 ones), but — I like this, somehow; the fact that they just show up in versus mode. It makes the game feel more full, somehow.

It would be nice if there were a few more options, like being able to set how the compter will tend to use strikers. (Invariably, it will choose three fighters and one striker on its own accord.)

Puzzle mode is… interesting. It doesn’t really work as much like Tetris as it looks. And it follows the same story mode as the team and single games.

Speaking of the story: It’s still all in Japanese. Good thing I basically know all of the endings already.

Whereas the Neo-Geo version felt pretty drab in general, there’s a lot of energy and variety which has been added to the DC port. I still think some more (simple) things could have been done, but — well. All things considered. A bit of work actually went into this port; more so than in the case of any of Playmore’s or SNK’s last few efforts (2000, MotW, Last Blade 2).

Weird thing is, the game doesn’t seem to really buffer its data very well. When character portraits are loaded before each battle, for instance, you can hear the DC’s laser go nuts and you can see the graphics occasionally stutter as the game waits for new data to be loaded. This seems a little shabby, although it doesn’t really hurt anything. I don’t recall any of the previous ports being coded quite this way, although I hear people complain about streaming audio in MotW all the time. (I’ve never particularly noticed any problems.)

Really, there’s not a lot to complain about here. So a few bits of graphical data aren’t buffered well. So they didn’t include any classic music from the earlier games. So the extra levels (even the fixed ones from 2001!) aren’t available in story mode, for whatever reason. And it’s lacking a few minor options. Oh, and again there’s no English option.

These are all more nitpicks than anything. All in all, this is certainly one of the better Neo-Geo ports there’s been for the system. It sort of makes up for most of the big flaws in 2001, and it adds a bunch of other stuff besides. I think the game (already one of the best in the series; just ugly as hell) has been made a lot more palatable in the process. It feels, though… I think this port must have been done by a different team than whoever did the last couple of games. The general style strikes me as somehow different — just as much as the game itself does.

The Five Point Shuffle

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Why did I try to shovel snow while wearing sandals?

So I’ve got my copy of KoF2001. The control is crisper and more responsive than I rememnber. The soundtrack, though otherwise unchanged, seems to contain higher-quality samples than the Neo-Geo version. Somehow it doesn’t annoy me as much as it used to. Maybe I’m just used to it by now? I used to loathe the soundtrack to this game, but now I barely even hear it even if I’m trying to pay attention.

There’s a movelist included, although — for whatever reason — it’s been tied to the taunt button. And it’s only available in practice mode, it seems. And there are not only a large handful of backgrounds from each of the earlier games (’94-2000 — particularly 2000; I think all of the stages are available), but all of the original, crummy 2001 backdrops? They’ve been remixed. They’re not as washed-out. Many layers of scrolling have been added, as has a bunch of extra animation. The painful racetrack level has simply been redone from the ground up. It’s still ugly, but it doesn’t make me feel ill anymore.

Problem is, none of the new backgrounds are available in the actual game. In practice and versus modes you can access any level you like — but in-game? It doesn’t even use the improved backgrounds. You just get the flat, drab, original versions. I don’t get it.

Haven’t touched the puzzle mode yet, as I’d have to unlock it. Not quite together enough to play a fighting game very well tonight, although I surprised myself by getting off a couple of K9999’s tougher DMs (exactly once, each — though on the first try, for the one).

Generally, seems like a decent port. It doesn’t taste the same as the DC version of 2000, though. I find this odd. 2000 seemed a lot like the ports of MotW and Last Blade 2. 2001… I’m not sure. Everything about this game is just a little off. It always has been. But the port follows this trend. Can’t quite place this feeling, yet. Not sure if it’s positive, negative, or neutral.

Is it just me, or does KoF2001 feel really… Korean? I never noticed it before. Neither can I exactly quantify why I say this. Something about the layout, and the design of the new characters, and the general overtone. Something about the exact kind of brightness combined with graininess and… almost disturbing oddness. Not a Japanese oddness, though. This comes from a different psychological place entirely.

Gangs of New York: It was. The Leonardo DiCaprio character was about the only uninteresting one in the movie, and (as the hero) he wasn’t really intended to stand out. Still seemed a little awkward, but I’ll ignore that under the weight of some of the achievements here. A ton of research went into the most throwaway details for this movie. And I was surprised by how large a part Boss Tweed ended up playing.

And now I’ve a better context for the burning of Barnum’s museum.

Kind of too tired to go into more detail at the moment. Lots of good stuff in here, though. Not quite sure about certain decisions and certain choices in editing, but there wasn’t anything which really harmed the effect.

Sometimes exaggeration — as in this case — is needed in order to get the point across. And I think this movie had an interesting and worthwhile point to make clear, in terms of the conceptions we’ve been handed about our history.

UDLR, Chu Chu Chu

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Oy. Anyway, I finally — after far too long — got a copy of ChuChu Rocket! Advance. I played around with it a bit back around the system’s launch last year, so I knew what to expect. And yeah, it’s ChuChu Rocket!. It’s… a little creepy, and generally gives me an oddly wistful sensation, to notice how precisely the game captures its original Dreamcast flavour. I mean, this game still feels like a Dreamcast game. It’s got the same atmosphrere to it that I’ve always associated with the system. Heck, for some reason Sonicteam even tried to emulate the original game’s web page content in the GBA version. If the GBA had only four face buttons rather than the mere two, there’d be almost nothing wrong with this version.

Odd that the GBA suffers from the same problem for which the Dreamcast was always criticized: too few buttons.

As much as I’m glad to finally have a copy around (especially for under ten dollars, as it was), I feel almost a little uncomfortable with the game. It’s hard to place the sensation exactly, and it’s certainly not the game’s fault. Maybe a bit of it is a lingering sadness over the Dreamcast situation which normally manages to stay more or less repressed. But there are some other factors in there as well. Something to do with Sega content on a non-Sega machine? Associations which I’m not willing to bring completely into consciousness? I don’t know.

Six years flew by from the excitement…

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Phew. Finally got KoF’96 working on my Saturn. For a while there I thought the gameshark’s RAM element wasn’t compatible with the game for whatever reason. I’ve heard that KoF’95 was one of the few cart-and-disc combo games which was put out for the system, and that would certainly be a nightmare to deal with. I was hoping that ’96 was a bit more standard, but the first couple of attempts led nowhere.

I guess persistence is the key. And the result? Not half bad. It’s nowhere up to the level of the Dreamcast ports in most respects, but aside from the (incredible amount of) load time, it’s pretty darned close to the original Neo-Geo version. Here are some observations:

  • MY GOD, the load times.
  • The sound quality is mixed. Many of the standard grunts are of a high enough quality, and yet the special move calls will sound like they were recorded through a pillow. Iori is a great example of this syndrome: “Hah! Huaah! Mrrfsobi uua Rroore da! Hwah! Hoh!”
  • As with Dream Match 1999 for the Dreamcast, the music stops and starts again between rounds. Unlike the DC game, there’s a reason for it: the ten-second load time between every two rounds. Also unlike DM1999, the music doesn’t just restart from the beginning. Rather, there’s a set point mid-theme for each tune to kick back in. This was pretty decent planning, I thought.
  • At least there’s interesting character art during all of the loading that’s going on. Amongst the more interesting shots is one of Ralf in his original Ikari Warriors garb.
  • Since the music is all in redbook (making for easy ripping), it’s of a very high quality. The full-vocal rendition of the Psycho Soldier theme is particularly impressive, as are Esaka Forever and the bit of Wagner that Krauser has going. However you also get the usual setbacks from direct-spooled music — particularly seek lag. There’s a lot of misalignment between the music and visual clues in instances such as the game introduction.
  • It might just be me, but I think the sound is in mono. Maybe I have my Saturn arranged peculiarly, though. I’ll have to check on this.
  • There isn’t as much flexibility as I’d like in rearranging the game controls.
  • Being from 1996, there is unfortunately no practice mode.
  • I haven’t seen any particular extras, but then neither did I expect any.

I’m now kind of curious about how ’97 fares on the system. I’m certainly not about to go out and look for it at the moment, but still.

All right. I’ve got other things to do right now.

PROJECT RS-2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Ikaruga, Ikaruga, Ikaruga!

Geh. I haven’t yet slept. I’ve been staying up all night playing Space Channel 5 Part 2 and… the above. The games are blurring together in my mind now… which might not be that bad a thing, considering how much dancing Ikaruga requires. They’re both similarly dynamic. And they both make my heart flutter as few things do.

And right before I bed I flip one last browser window open, to check if PA has yet updated. I begin to think: “Y’know, they should’ve mentioned Ikaruga by now…”

For my next demonstration, I shall change George W. Bush into a semi-dehydrated rutabaga. Just you watch.

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…

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.