dreamcast

Shadow of a Dream

  • Reading time:1 mins read

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

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

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

I still have to do research on that magazine thing…

windup; wind-down

  • Reading time:2 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breakdown

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Today I tried burning an SNES emulator for the Dreamcast. It’s not exactly an easy process, and I forgot to include a couple of things that I intended (including that Super Robot Wars Gaiden game), but I guess this is just a test run. The emulator, a version of SNES9X, runs very well, if rather slowly — and it lacks SFX chip support, so Starfox and Yoshi’s Island give my poor Dreamcast a nervous breakdown.

The Napple trail…

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I’ve done some research on Napple Tale, and been led to a company called Chime. What role they played in development, I’m unsure. Although I’m positive I’ve read, several places, that OverWorks was behind the game, one would think if that were the case they would claim credit for it. Yet there’s nothing about the game on their site — and nowhere, in any media about the game, is credit for the game’s development taken by anyone other than a vague “SEGA”.

All in all, this is rather suspicious and strange. Did Sega outsource Chime (whoever they are) to make the game, or did they buy the rights from them? Or some other scheme? What part do they have in this?

The mystery continues.

As for the whole Sega situation…

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Hum. I’m really not sure what to think. Perhaps I’ve just been numbed by all of these neverending rumors, but up to a point this does seem like the best way to go. As long as the DC stays, that is. As long as it gets games first, and as long as it gets games that no one else gets.

Space Channel 5, though? The only reason I can see that Sega would choose this as its first title as a third-party publisher would be to attempt to get it the attention that it so deserves. If they can push Ulala to a wider audience, I know she’d catch on — and so perhaps this is what they’re doing. It’d be great advertising for New Space Channel 5, certainly.

What I anticipated was arcade ports, rather than ports of home games. As long as Sega keeps Shenmue and Phantasy Star and Arcadia and Sonic (the GBA doesn’t figure here), the less-iconic fare can go where it needs to fund what really matters.

Hum. It’s better that Sega do this, and do it strongly, than to go bankrupt and fade away quietly. This doesn’t necessarily have to be defeat, as long as it’s done with pride. I shudder to think of Sega’s market dominance if they do this well…

But why do I keep having disturbingly analogic thoughts of SNK?

Addendum

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Just because I feel like it, here are my top ten most anticipated games at the moment:

  • Shenmue II
  • New Space Channel 5
  • Sonic Adventure 2
  • Eternal Arcadia 2
  • toejam & earl 3
  • Soul Reaver 2
  • Sakura Wars 3
  • gun valkyrie
  • Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
  • Bangai-O

I’m curious about Agartha and Headhunter and Hundred Swords and Farnation, and I eagerly await announcement of a DC port of Planet Harriers or word of the new Chakan game (which seems to have fallen off the face of the planet). SEGAGAGA sounds fascinating in its own strange way, but I doubt I have to worry much about it being released here. So…

Anyway. There’s that.

Rolling Over

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By next weekend, PSO and the two broadband adapters should be waiting for me. Also… just because it wasn’t very much and I needed a keyboard anyway in order to get as much out of PSO as I can, I ordered Typing of the Dead and its particular key peripheral. This will be the last DC game I can get for a long while, I think. Phew…

I still have to deal with these RPGs I grabbed up last month. Hrm.

here’s my advice: Never get a bunch of role-playing games all at once. If you get Shenmue, get Jet Set Radio as your next game. If you get Arcadia, pick up Typing of the Dead or MSR or something next. It just creates an impenetrable clog to have four or five RPGs sitting around, demanding one’s life.

Ah, well. I’m satiated for a while at least. Good thing it’ll be a few months before the flood starts up again.

Oh, as a note — Illustrator is keen. If I can figure out the proper way to combine this with Photoshop, I believe I might create some rather fascinating effects.

Less than Grand

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I’m not too fond of Grandia II. Arcadia I adored, but… this is just another unambitious, retreaded — if pretty — console RPG. Not even a terribly interesting one. At least the Evolution series is charming and enjoyable. Grandia is a chore… But there is an AI mode, so I don’t have to bother with the battle engine! That is one plus. And Ubi Soft took a lot of care with its localization and packaging and such. This is very nice, as well — cuts down on the relevance of Working Designs significantly.

Welcome to the Fantasy Zone

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Hey — I got the highest Shenmue Space Harrier score in the state of Maine!

What an achievement, I know. But — well. I suppose it’s something, at least.

Eternal Arcadia indeed

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Arcadia is really quite the lengthy little thing, innit? I’m still on disc 1, and over forty hours into the game. I think I might be approaching the end of this half, but before I continue on my intended way there are still several tasks I wish to accomplish. Yet it amazes me first how long this game continues to persist in being, and second how little one notices this. Evolution felt like a longer game than this, as did Soul Reaver — and yet I’ve put more progressive playtime into this game so far than I have any game in a long while. This is opposed to, say, Code Veronica, which refused to die even if I beat it with a stick.

Yokosuka of the Past

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I managed to finish Shenmue… sigh. At least the sequel should be coming up next year, hopefully. It feels somehow like I’ve witnessed some great historic event now, and I’m beginning to feel oddly wistful for the way things used to be (before the game had ended, that is). The ending also just sprang up and bit me — I didn’t really realize I was that far into the game. Hm. Ah, well… Now I can concentrate on JSR with fewer distractions.

Sonic Misadventure

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Finally got a working copy of Sonic Adventure, after several exchanges with, and no actual help from, various store employees over the past month (excepting one young lady who, for around fifteen minutes, actually did attempt to break into the display DC to let me test a (ultimately defective) copy. No good; she couldn’t get into the cabinet. And yes, the copy was again defective. Yet all is good now!

The Polygon Paradigm

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Well, I buried my shame and picked up a a Dreamcast — even though I don’t really deserve one. And my god — what it does nearly brings tears to my eyes. Unfortunately, I made two largeish mistakes —

  • Although I checked what are supposed to be the outside tell-tale signs of the disc, the copy of Sonic Adventure I picked up is the corrupted one. I couldn’t easilly test the thing in-store, as I picked up the thing at Toys “R” Absent (what happened to all of the stuff that used to be in there? Where are the Lego?), so I just held my breath that I’d not have to take the hour drive back to Portland just to return the thing. Well. Hum.
  • I decided not to read the box and assumed the system came with one of those memory card/tamagochi things. Nope. So I guess I have to grab one of them if I want to be able to save at all.

The warnings about disc scratching are because the Dreamcast games are encoded on normal old cds (insofar as their physical properties) rather than those black, indestructible PlayStation discs.

The controller’s not too bad. By fact of it being a controller, it’s starting just now to wear out my hands. But it could be a lot worse. I have no particular gripes about it, but there’s nothing to acclaim loudly, either.

From playing the demo disc version of Sonic Adventure, they seem to have given Knuckles the personality of Ryoga. Hm. And Sonic appears to have Billy West(Stimpy; Fry from Futurama)’s voice — it’s similar to his voice in the ABC cartoon, but a little less annoying. The theme song reminds me strongly of the seventh or eighth season intro to Ranma 1/2.

Since I don’t want to bother retyping it all in original, slightly more comprehensible verbiage, I’ll paste in here my initial comments made on Soul Calibur, the other game I picked up:

Soul Calibur reminds me of Tekken, from what little I saw of that. But it’s astounding.

In SC, there’s this one character — she has a sword which is divided into several horizontal segments, connected through the center by a long fiber of some sort. When she swings the sword out a certain way, the segments seperate along the fiber, making a long, barbed whip. Strange.

I like Xiangua quite a lot —

It’s interesting. The different “players” — player one and either player 2 or the opponent — use different versions of the same characters. Not just different colors, as in Street fighter. I mean, the first xiangua has short, scruffy hair, a blue bandanna, a kind of happy smirk, is wearing a white-with-yellow-fringe silk blouse-thing and blue pants. The second xiangua has long, primly-dressed, darker hair, is looking a little less “wild” in her expressions, and wears a formal red kimono with white trimmings and a yellow sash. In otherwords, a kinda’ tomboyish version versus a noble-looking one. The same kind of differences go for everyone — the extent of it, I mean, rather than the details. The first player’s “nightmare” is in shining steel armor, while the second “nightmare” is in a corroded, barbarian-ish, copper helmet and neck armor, and has a bare chest and arms. This happened in Tekken, again, but it’s still a new concept to me.

Very well put-together game.

It’s odd, though — I’m not used to “next generation”-feeling games, with very clean fade-ins and outs and so forth — like a bunch of different elements are put together. A still screen is very recognizable as a static screen. And so forth.

Dream Date

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Trent Reznor appeared twice last night on Mtv — I tolerated the channel long enough to tape both performances, as well as any few Janeane Garofolo frames which popped up in between (hey, the tape was already in there) and the three or four Dreamcast commercials which aired.

The interview: Kurt Loder asked him about all of the background vocals on the album, and Trent explained that when they were working on the thing, at 12:00 at night, they’d just go across to the local bar and grab a bunch of drunk guys to yell and mumble into the microphones, creating an atonal mess.

“We assembled what I think is the most atonal group of females I’ve ever heard… I hope… they aren’t… they’re not watching this now, but they were… comically horrendous.”

David Bowie showed up, and gave quite a dignified speech. Janine Garofolo, as mentioned, was perpetually around. And the crowd was insane during Trent’s performance — just from the shouting, you’d think it’d be the Beatles playing. It was really kind of hard to hear the song, and the band weren’t entirely in sync, it seemed — like they only started practicing a week or two before. But all in all, it fell together pretty well.

The band, when they finally showed up, two and a half hours or so into the show, were introduced by Johnny Depp — though he didn’t give much of an intro. He was introduced by Chris Rock along with a mention of his appearance in the new Tim Burton movie. Immediately I guessed he was showing up to introduce nin — why else shove him out there? But all he did was stalk out on stage, say something to the effect of “here are nine inch nails,” and then immediately leave. huh.

Nin played what I presume to be “the fragile” — it didn’t sound too bad, from what I could tell. Trent seemed kinda’ nervous. Forgot the lyrics near the beginning and started laughing, but recovered, sorta’. Interesting setup, with large metal arms opening and closing around the band, zig-zags of flourescent lights affixed to their undersides. Lots of cellos and things in the background.

The Fragile (the song) is mostly a kinda’ quiet bit; about halfway through, at least in the live version, things started to get a bit tedious. I think Trent forgot the lyrics to a section altogether; he seemed to be getting a bit flustered; the music was getting softer, and the crowd was getting noisier. Plus it was an attempted live recreation — So it’s hard to tell.

These are the lyrics, to the best I can figure [and here are the correct ones]: