highlights

Compile, SNK, and Toaplan? This ain’t your kid brother’s game collection.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Acqusitions for the day:

NES
Tengen Namco Rolling Thunder
Broderbund Compile The Guardian Legend
Capcom Capcom Section-Z
SNK SNK Athena
Genesis
Sega Toaplan Truxton

Yes. All I’m missing is Technos. If you throw in my copies of Kabuki Quantum Fighter, NES Fantasy Zone, and Solar Jetman from the LA trip, I’m becoming extra-specially equipped!

HuzYAH, I say.

And I do, too. Wait for it. There. Did you hear?

Okay. I lied. I wouldn’t say such a thing.

Or would I?

I’m just so mysterious.

Genya Arikado, indeed.

  • Reading time:5 mins read

Aria of Sorrow is good, yes?

It gets much better, once one gets past the first, false ending — although that final arrangement of souls isn’t exactly intuitive (at least, not until they’re all slotted into place). This is the third game in a row where Igarashi’s pulled an obscure trick like that. I wish he’d quit it.

I had noticed that the Flame Demon’s power looked sort of familiar — as did Soma’s item-use pose…

I’ve still a final boss to beat (and I’m out of potions!), and there’s still another whole hunk of the main map which remains mysteriously inaccessible. And yet… yes.

The “bad” ending is… interesting, as is the manner in which it is accomplished.

I think this counts as the first major Castlevania game since SotN. HoD, it seems to me, was intended as a smaller, bridge game — both in terms of plot and development. It exists in order to fill in some gaps in the larger series. AoS is something rather new and creative, in a manner not unlike SotN.

I do wish that its music were more interesting, though. While it really shouldn’t, it does baffle me that all of the reviews I’ve seen for the game have complimented it on the drastic improvement in both its sound quality and the compositoin, over HoD. Uih? Sound quality, perhaps — although I think the low-res samples in HoD are actually quite a bit clearer and more resonant than what one tends to find here.

Amd yet: composition? The hell?

HoD has perhaps the most intelligent, well-written score in the series. The AoS soundtrack is… good, but largely unremarkable. It’s one of the most conservative scores in the series; it doesn’t attempt anything new. Its main melodies are tired, simplistic, unimaginative. The structure is as straightforward as it can get. There are a few good pieces later in the game, but in comparison to either HoD or Circle of the Moon (each of which had its own strengths) it’s… really kind of mediocre.

Less evolved, less energetic, less adventurous. It’s just… there. It sounds pleasant and Castlevania-ish.

I’ve gone into this before, rather vocally. It’s perhaps my fault for reading the mainstream reviews. It’s perhaps even more my fault for reading the somewhat more hardcore fan reviews.

Since I’m on the subject, I’ll paste here a bit of something that I recently blathered (and then subsequently forwarded, in part, to Tim).

I just noticed something with the Japanese naming schemes. None of the games in the series — not one so far (aside from Circle of the Moon — which makes… one, I suppose) — have had the same title in the US and in Japan. Even recently, they’ve changed seemingly for no reason. Aria of Sorrow was made for the US, for instance — and yet it’s getting a different name in Japan.

But if you look at the names — the US titles have rather arbitrary musical names. Most of them are just [musical form] of [something bleak] or something otherwise rather negative-sounding.

  • Symphony of the Night
  • Harmony of Dissonance
  • Aria of Sorrow
  • Lament of Innocence

In Japan, though — well, look at the pattern.

  • Nocturne in the Moonlight
  • Concerto of the Midnight Sun
  • Minuet of Dawn

Keep in mind that Castlevania Legends is originally called “Dark Night Prelude“.

With the exception of Rondo of Blood, these all have to do with time of day or other related astronomical phenomena. Further, they tend to make a bit of sense in terms of the plots of the games in question.

Minuet of Dawn (AoS) takes place about thirty years in the future, at the dawn of a new era. Dark Night Prelude — it was, indeed, a prelude to the rest of the series (even if Igarashi ignores the game now).A “Midnight Sun” or a “White Night” is a kind of a surreal experience. It’s not really night, although it should be. Things aren’t really what they seem. And indeed, in that game things are not what they seem at all. It’s night, as such, but the darkness is gone; Simon defeated it fifty years earlier.

So. The names are much more meaningful and consistent in the Japanese releases, even now. This is kind of bizarre.

To go back to Circle of the Moon, I only notice that it has perhaps the most pithy title of all, even if it doesn’t necessarily have much to do with the game’s plot. Yet another example, it seems, of something that sounds good, which Kobe just thew in for the heck of it.

It’s really a shame that they had to mess up on so many tiny details within and about this game. A game this enjoyable should certainly be part of the main continuity, rather than a weird non-canon side story. It wouldn’t have been difficult to have changed a handful of superficial details. Maybe have reworked a few of the more arbitrary abilities, in the process. Put in some more thought.

Ah well. It is what it is. At least it doesn’t take itself any more seriously than it takes the series as a whole.

…

So. Yeah. I’m curious to see where Lament of Innocence goes. I also wonder whatever happened to that intended port of Rondo of Blood to the PSX. A while back, Igarashi said that some Konami higher-ups were nixing the project on him. He asked fans to send in mail and show their support if they wanted the game to be released. Looks like they must not have gotten enough.

A shame; I’ve never even gotten a chance to play the thing. It’s become one of those things like Panzer Dragoon Saga and Radiant Silvergun.

It seems I am more or less rested now. I shall set out to writing, momentarily.

Backal notes

  • Reading time:1 mins read

So. Games of the show? In no order, I proclaim thusly:

For those of you out there with copies of Aria of Sorrow (I’m talking to Doug and maybe Justin Freeman here), have you looked at the instruction booklet? It’s prettier than it needs to be! I count that as an extra-duper plus!

But then, I guess any halfway decent instruction booklet is bound to impress me, coming (as I am) off of a nigh-lifelong string of Sega systems…

So Sega’s about to kill off at least five of their ten dev teams. Care to take bets on who? Hint: It’s not gonna’ be AM2 or Sonicteam.

Hitmaker‘s president is going to become the next president of Sega, so they’re still in. Amusement Vision is responsible for all of Sega’s hardware, and is Sega’s primary link to Nintando. Plus, the AV head is in charge of all consumer development at Sega, last I heard. Overworks has Sakura Taisen, so there’s no getting rid of them.

That leaves Wow, Sega Rosso, Smilebit, UGA, and Wavemaster.

We can get rid of Sega Rosso and lose… nothing. Wow is amusing to have around just on account of how charmingly awful they can be. I do wonder about Wavemaster, as they’re responsible for nearly all of the sound and music in nearly everything that Sega does.

What really bums me is the Smilebit and UGA probability. These are probably my two favourite Sega teams — and yet they’re also probably amongst the least profitable, on account of how artsy they are. Most of Smilebit’s stuff has flubbed over the last couple of years, in some cases more inexplicably than in others. UGA’s stuff is just plain anticommercial.

Still, these guys embody — at least for me — the heart of what Sega is.

One of the reasons I was so concerned about the Sammy merger is that Sammy intended to mess around with Sega’s dev teams. Looks like it’s gonna’ happen anyway, though.

I’ve a feeling this mandate came from CRI.

Grr. Fie and demons.

Still resting. Will write up the rest of the E3 stuff for IC later tonight.

Note: Bethesda wants to send me games!

Another note: Dammit, I guess I need to buy a PS2. Given the SNK support, the 3D-AGES stuff, Lament of Innocence, and a swath of other junk I can’t remember offhand, it doesn’t seem like I can avoid it any longer.

‘window-shopping in an empty store’

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted] and tim rogers

The president of Nintendo of America is named George Harrison. Somehow I had overlooked this fact up until today. Mister Harrison revealed that Donkey Kong “will remain a lovable ape” and that Mario “will never start shooting hookers”.

More intriguing, however, is the fact that Satoru Iwata speaks English. While he still needs a translator to help with more complex ideas, Iwata nevertheless manages to express himself with some appreciable degree of competence.

The Nintendo conference was comfortable, if not particularly informative. Outside of the multiplayer Pac-Man performance and the Will Wright announcement, there wasn’t much new to see. The swag wasn’t thrilling, either; just a paper sack full of press material and a ribbed tee shirt.

Since Brandon had to be elsewhere, I was given the rare opportunity to impersonate him and infiltrate the show. As it turned out, I never even needed his ID; his business card was enough. Given that Doug got in and that he wasn’t even on the list, perhaps my nefariousness was without need. Darned if I didn’t feel like a super spy, though.

A super spy eating uncommonly delicious raspberry muffins, that is to say. The buffet was… well, you really had to be there.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Riven from the world

  • Reading time:2 mins read

There’s this place on disc 3 of Riven. After one steps off of the maglev and passes through the brief frog cave, there is a long stairway that winds up a rocky hillside. The sun is warm, yet the shadows are deep. The birds are chirping. The gentle ripple of the bay, below, carries on the slight breeze. If one progresses down the stairs, one sees the easily-startled sunners lazing on their rock. Up, meanwhile, leads to a rope bridge stretching toward the forest.

I want to spend all day on that set of stairs. There is a small landing where one first emerges from the cave, about large enough for one or two people to sit, and draw.

To some extent I ache that this location doesn’t really exist, as I would so like to visit — at the very least. I would like to nap there. Curl up in the shadows when the sun became too warm; emerge into the light when a chill came over me.

I believe it is that one small location which makes Riven what it is, for me. Everything else revolves around it. Every time I pass through, I linger. I can never seem to get enough.

There are only a few games which have given me a similar sensation. The Legend of Zelda is one. Shenmue is another. Skies of Arcadia comes darned close at times.

This is how Riven succeeds. It creates a place which feels real; which rings so true that one desires to understand it better. Then, it follows through. Everything makes sense, if one gives it enough time; the only thing holding the player back is his own internal wiring. The more time one spends there, the more one pieces together. The more one understands how the world works, and the more real it becomes.

It is essentially a masterpiece of world design, unlike any other that I’ve seen. That’s all that it is; a fully-conceived world, to enter and interpret as one sees fit.

Have moved some money and files around. Have bought some new pants. Not a lot remaining to do before I leave — which is in… three days.

Oy!

Hey. I should be able to sneak into the secret press-only rooms, seeing as how I’m… y’know, press.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GCN/Nintendo)

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Miyamoto comes from an older school of game design, from a time when we didn’t know as much as we do now — and so we didn’t know what was impossible. We also had little history, so it was up to bards like Miyamoto to create one for us.

With a handful of details, a rough outline, and his whims, Miyamoto spins tales for his audience. With every telling and every audience, his stories go down a slightly different path. No one performance is more accurate than any other; the truth is in the telling. Save the odd sequel, every Zelda game is a new beginning, with a new, yet always familiar, Link and a new Zelda. It’s getting so there are nearly as many interpretations as of Journey to the West or the legend of King Arthur. And for the same reasons.

Legends like these are ancient; they’re from a world before our linear sense of time and our concrete idea of history. Back then, the world moved in cycles. The seasons came and went; life flourished and waned — and then it began again, a little different, mostly familiar. Reality is in the moment and in that faith in the cycle.

The way that videogames age, this cycle has turned into a death spiral. Every five years there’s a new generation of players, with its own collective assumptions and its own built-in innocence to history. For each new wave of gamers, the story must be adapted and retold again.

The problem is this modern concept of progress. Whereas only a few generations ago one year was much the same as the next, technology has now placed us on a non-stop rocket train to anywhere-but-here. So our perception is warped from the speed, and so we are blinded to the cycles that used to define our reality.

Our rhythms have been broken, replaced with the dull whine of progress. The future is our salvation, while the present is a blur and the past is our collective shame. We live in a society that has invented history as a straw man for our pursuit of an illusory perfection.

Wind Waker is a game caught in an unfortunate dilema between these two world models.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

The timing explains the cowboys.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

The story of Root Beer.

Did you note the bit about the carcinogenic qualities of sassafras? Here’s more on the matter!

SPECIAL QUOTE:

“Oil of Sassafras is chiefly used for flavouring purposes, particularly to conceal the flavour of opium when given to children. In the United States of America it is employed for flavouring effervescing drinks.”

Because you know how hard it is to get the kids to take their opium!

Damned kids.

Break on through to the other side

  • 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.

What does a genius need with pants?

  • Reading time:10 mins read

The Metroid 2 score really gets a bad rap. Actually, Metroid 2 seems to be the whipping child of the series in general.

I think it’s worth pointing out that when the music is good, it’s really good in this game. The main tunnel theme, the Metroid battle theme, the revamped Samus and Item themes.

Where it begins to get a little controversial is in the various ruins. Once the player wanders out of the central tunnel and into any of the larger playfields, the music switches to an atmospheric pattern of bleeps. Not a lot of melody. Not a lot of rhythm in particular.

If you’re looking for Hip Tanaka’s tuneful power-ballads, I can see how it should be easy to feel let down. But the music serves a different purpose here.

Metroid 2 is by far the creepiest, most clautrophobic game in the series. It’s lonely, unnerving, frustrating, almost trance-inducing. It has a tangible atmosphere which I think is wholly fitting to the game’s setting and general purpose. (This atmosphere is most obvious when the game is played in full black-and-white, as originally intended, rather than with the upgraded Gameboy Color palette.)

The music is an important element of that formula. It exists to create and sustain a particular mood. I feel it was composed very deliberately; Ryohji Yoshitomi could have written anything, after all. But he chose to go the avant garde route.

There is a method to the music, as you can tell if you listen closely enough. It’s not random, and it’s not careless. It’s an attempt at an unsettling ambient soundscape.

The problem that Yoshitomi faces in this instance is the limited sound capacity of the original Gameboy. Melodic fare is easy. More experimental music is a bit tricker to pull off convincingly with only a few triangle and square waves at a person’s disposal.

Whether Yoshitomi succeeds in his goal or not is up to the listener. But for what it is, I think his score works very well.

Combined with the excellent quality of the more melodic portions of the soundtrack, I’d easily rank the Metroid 2 score up there amongst my favourite original Gameboy soundtracks — somewhere in the neighborhood of Gargoyle’s Quest.

On the other hand, it’s worth noting that Yoshitomi was never asked back for the future games.

The music in Prime does something odd to my head.

It all began with the theme which plays behind the game-select screen. For whatever reason it might be, that theme moves me pretty strongly.

The last time I felt this way about a videogame theme was in 1986, when I first slotted my copy of Legend of Zelda into my NES. At the time, I was struck with a profound awe and wonder. I knew that I was seeing and hearing something important. And my whole body reacted.

The Metroid Prime theme (from it’s use later in the game, I’m assuming that this is intended as the main theme to the game) has a similar, if somewhat more muted, effect on me. And the deeper I crawl into the game proper, the more impressed I am with the music in general.

In the case of the main theme, I think a large part of it is the uncommonly synchopated rhythmic pattern. Short-long, short-long, long, long, long. Another part of it is the weird, theramin-like lead instrument. But it’s just the overall weight of decisions made in the tune’s composition, arrangement, and production that make it so strange and so captivating to me.

The rest of the score seems a bit more tame — although there are more touches of experimentation, the deeper I crawl.

In my view, Kenji Yamamoto makes some very tasteful and wise decisions in terms of references to earlier themes. I particularly like his restructured Metroid and Brinstar themes.

Some of the earlier, more traditional soundtrack fare (particularly during the pre-Tallon introduction sequence) isn’t altogether interesting. And the planet-side music does take a while to build up to anything. But I’m beginning to sense a sort of a method behind the score’s evolution.

If it keeps going where it looks to me like it’s headed, this is going to be a pretty darned sensitive and impressive work. I don’t really know that it has much comparison in terms of what else is out there at the moment.

The Prime soundtrack is, so far, perhaps the most original and generally satisfying one for my tastes.

However: as for the soundtrack which I find the most memorable, well-written for its time, and which I personally enjoy the most — I’d have to go with Hip Tanaka’s original Metroid soundtrack.

There’s not a dud in the bunch. It consists of some of the best themes ever written for any videogame. And it made the game far more interesting to play than it really should have been.

I do quite like the Metroid 2 score, for what it is. Super Metroid’s music was… functional, to my mind. It was very Metroidy. To my mind Yamamoto has improved greatly since 1994, however. I don’t have much comment on the Fusion score. It, too, was Metroidy — though in a way which fit Fusion.

Return of Samus is really what comes to mind when I think of Metroid.

The first game was a bit of a fluke; the elements which make up the game don’t really cohere as well as they might. There doesn’t seem to be much of an overall vision. It was done on a pretty low budget. It seems rather random to me that it turned out to be as memorable as it was.

Metroid II was the first game where all of the elements really came together. Samus was retooled to look more or less as she does now. Her ship was introduced. The game upped the creepiness level several notches, along with a deep sense of disorientation and paranoia.

It’s perhaps the loneliest game in the series. The grainiest. And also the most wonderful.

More so than in any of the recent games, there is a sense of nigh-unlimited possibility in Return of Samus. You just don’t know what’s out there. Anything could be important. Anything could be a threat or a relief. You just don’t know where a new item will turn up. Or where the end is. Or where you’ll unexpectedly blunder into another Metroid.

I think the most important factor in so establishing RoS in my mind has to be the spider ball. The way it’s been retooled in Prime is interesting, but the item was far more flexible in RoS. (It was also probably a nightmare for the level designers, so I can see why it’s mostly been left out since then.) The way it was implemented in that game opened up a wealth of possibilities for exploration.

Super Metroid was certainly enjoyable. But it was a bit over-polished and conservative for my tastes. It was engineered to please as wide an audience as possible, while feeding fans exactly what they wanted (rather than what they didn’t *know* they wanted). Sort of like Phantasy Star: End of the Millennium. It didn’t really do very much new; all it did was take the best of the first two games and make it all a lot more palatable.

Basically — the first game establishes the concept of Metroid. The second game begins with that template, and then goes on an introspective search for identity. The third game takes most of the new ground blazed in the second game, combines it with the charm and trappings of the first game, and puts as much shine on it as the SNES can muster.

Fusion tries to be a very different kind of a game, and I respect it for that. What’s more, I think it succeeds quite well in its attempts to reinvent Metroid as a tense action-oriented game. I feel the level design is severely lacking, though; I’m not all that fond of some of its lazy logistical constructs. The game comes off almost feeling like Super Mario World in terms of how special moves and blocks are used.

Prime, I really like a lot so far. I didn’t honestly expect it to be as good as it is. I can’t comment very well on it until I’ve finished the game, though — as it seems there’s still a lot of odd stuff coming up that could effect my evaluation.

I think it could be interesting if the next game were set somewhere after Fusion. That game sets up a ton of change for the Metroid universe, and it would be intersting to see how Retro might follow through on it.

On the other hand, I tend to see the main linear series as Intelligent Systems’ duty. If there’s to be an out-and-out Metroid 5, it would make more sense to me if it came from the original Metroid team.

What seems to be Retro’s duty is to fill in the cracks and to attempt to explain all of the peculiarities introduced in the main series. To dig deeper into the groundwork set by Intelligent Systems.

And on that note, I think a Metroid Zero of sorts (as someone mentioned above) would make a lot of sense.

In early interviews, it was suggested that Prime was going to be set before the original Metroid. I think they chose wisely, in their decision to instead make it a direct follow-up to the first game — but that still leaves the backstory concept to fulfill.

In terms of bonuses, I agree that it would be keen to include Super Metroid — and for exactly this reason:

That way, every single Metroid game would be playable on the Gamecube.

Metroid 1 is included with Prime.
Metroid 2, you can play with the Gamecube Gameboy Player.
Metroid 3 would be included with this sequel to Prime.
Metroid 4 would again work with the Gameboy Player.

Kind of keen to have everything in one place, y’know?

I would also like to see the ability to turn power-ups on and off, as in Super Metroid.

Honestly, I’d just like to be able to take the Varia suit off every now and then. Those oversized shoulderpads just keey getting more ridiculous with every game; I much prefer how her raw Power Suit looks.

Also, it would be nice to be able to combine the various beam weapons (as in the third and fourth games).

I’d like to see young Samus, somehow. As a child, in a flashback, perhaps.

I want those Chozo statues back again, for holding power-ups.

And I want Retro to feel free to try out some more radical, experimental ideas that I would probably never think of on my own. I want to be surprised, above all else.

* * *

Regarding the spiky, butch hairdo from the concept art: Yes. That impressed the hell out of me. And it seems to match my interpretation of Samus’ personality, really well.

And honestly, doesn’t it make a lot more sense to have short hair if you’re going to be wearing a suit like that? Imagine it getting caught in the helmet. Yowtch.

Storytelling as a craft

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Wind Waker just came today.

Jesus. I had no idea how right I was about the whole legend/storybook aspect. That’s precisely what this game is. The introduction sequence lays it all out.

Link has a lobster on his shirt!

In terms of gameplay and general structure, Wind Waker is almost identical to OoT. The controls are much more polished, mroe responsive, and generally nicer-feeling than in OoT. We’ve still got the god-damned fetch quests. (In fact, I think we’ve got more than in OoT.) Dungeons and towns and shops are generally laid out in the same way as before.

So, yeah. Basically imagine a really buttery OoT, with just about all of the interface problems removed, and you’ve got a good starting point.

At least in the first few hours, the game seems oddly linear. The player is given a boat right near the outset, and free roam of the ocean (which now covers almost the entire world) — but if the player decides to head off on his own whims, the boat begins to complain.

Yes, I know I’m not going in the right direction. Thank you. I don’t care if I’m not ready for that island yet; I want to visit it anyway.

There are more natural contraints for the player than simply not allowing him to go where he pleases.

Honestly, I’m starting to get tired of the post-Adventure of Link Zelda gameplay style. I wasn’t fond of most of the changes in Link to The Past, but one of the things which most irritated me was the way that items came to be used.

I’m not going to elaborate right now on exactly what the distinction is, but OoT backpeddled a bit in this regard; its item system — the items available; the manner in which they, the player, the environment, and enemies interacted; the manner, timing, and order with which the items were acquired — reminds me far more of the way things worked in the NES games than in LttP.

Wind Waker feels more like LttP, as far as items go.

Take that as you will.

Actually, given how integral the whole item collection system is to the game structure (as in Metroid), this has a pretty big effect on the general tone of the game.

In Wind Waker, I feel like I’m just collecting random doodads. Some of them are useful; some aren’t. But the only reason the game is giving them to me is to enable me to progress. At the point I’m at now — around five hours into the game — I’m ceasing to be thrilled when I find a new inventory item.

What’s worse is that about half of the items in the game so far seem to serve no purpose other than as keys in fetch quests. Argh. I don’t care! This is an adventure game convention which needs to die. Soon.

Further, even the interesting items — such as the grappling hook — are often hindered a bit by needless irritation. Every single time the grapple wraps around a post, for instance, the game halts to show me a four-second cutscene. I don’t need this more than once ever, thank you.

The good parts so far: the atmosphere and general graphic design are just fantastic, now that I’ve got some context for all of their elements. Link actually has a lot of personality; his facial expressions add a bunch to the game. Almost every object in the environemnt is interactive in some vague way or another. The water and fire and smoke and heat effects are very well-executed.

There’s this one kid on the first island who has a perpetual, enormous drip of snot hanging from his nose. I don’t know if that was really necessary.

I have a feeling I know who Zelda is. I’ve had this feeling since about half an hour into the game.

Where the atmosphere is original, it’s great. Where it’s not, it’s tiring — at least for me. All of the forced OoT-ish trappings quickly began to wear on me — but in the cases where the game takes a full left turn into its own universe, there’s a ton of life to be found. These moments tend to evidence themselves when the player is either left free to explore and bond with the environment, or when the game locks the player into a tightly-scripted plot sequence. Where I begin to lose patience is where the game tries to yank me around and force me to do things for it for no other reason than the fact that it’s a videogame.

I’m not fond of manipulation. I don’t mind wasting time of my own accord, but I don’t like my time to be wasted for me.

To be fair, I’m still only a few hours into the game. The plot hasn’t fully picked up yet, and I’m not yet as free to wander — so perhaps things will become less annoying in the future.

As far as sailing goes — it’s a mildly interesting mechanic, for a few minutes. The problem is that it takes so long to get anywhere. And once you set your coordinates, you don’t… really do anything. If you try, you’ll probably end up stopping the boat. The best thing to do when travelling is just to put the controller down and get a sandwich.

Again — maybe something else happens with this later. Right now, though, I’m perplexed. There are a lot of really good ideas in this system — so why did they combine them in such an obviously tedious manner?

I hope there’s more use for the telescope in the near future. About an hour in, I found a camera of sorts which has exactly the same functionality, except with the added benefit of enabling me to take pictures. I don’t see what I need the telescope for, if I’ve got this other item sitting around. I hope this isn’t just an oversight. We’ll see.

So — to boil it down:

The good — the graphical style; the atmosphere; the expressiveness of the characters (similar to Skies of Arcadia in this respect (among many)); the smooth controls; the non-annoying menu system; some interesting potential with a few of the new items; the self-reflective sense of humor of the dialogue; the Koji Kondo score; the introductory sequence.

The bad — how manipulative and needlessly annoying the actual game tends to be so far; THE FUCKING FETCH QUESTS; the overall structure of the item system so far.

Again — in its best places, this game has a different atmosphere from any previous Zelda game. I hope the game takes more advantage of its advantages than it seems content to thus far. It feels like a real shame to me that with all of these great new ideas, Eiji Aonuma felt compelled to make a Zelda game out of the pieces.

So. We’ll see, we’ll see…

Theramin power!

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I’ve concluded that a large part of the power of Metroid Prime’s main theme comes from its use of its time signature. It took a while for me to lock into what it was doing, rhythmically, as it works perfectly well when jammed into a 2/4 meter.

For those of you who’re following me out there, you probably know where I’m going next with this.

That’s right. In reality, it’s set to 6/8. This explains a large part of everything, as far as I’m concerned.

Allow me to illustrate.

Time signatures of a multiple of three (waltz time) are inherently circular. Unlike even beats (2/2, 4/4), which can be considered “square”, there is a constant, swirly, forward motion to threes. (You can ponder the logistics as to why, on your own. It can get pretty deep.)

The thing is about 6/8 — which, incidentally, is not one of the most common signatures out there (although it’s not all that odd either; it’s just underused) — is that it’s a hybrid of sorts. You’ve got the circular motion from its 3/4 element, and you’ve got an even-sided, comprehensible measure with its 2/4 qualities.

It’s the best of both worlds, to a certain extent — and if it’s used well.

The inherent possibilities of this meter are as follows.

You have a square measure which is split down the middle, into two round halves. Intuitively, in order to create forward motion, you need the halves to roll into each other in a balanced way.

One roll to set up; one roll to conclude. And it goes on like this. Pressure, release, pressure, release. Like an inchworm, or a heartbeat. The music seems to live. And it yanks the listener forward in an unusually powerful way.

And what’s more — because of the circular nature of the music, it has the potential to loop pretty seamlessly. Heh.

I have to go.

Cell division

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Legally, I must comment that Metroid Prime has the best music in the world.

Something weird comes over me, just sitting and listening to the theme which plays behind the game options menu (one button-press past the title screen).

Game music has done odd things with my emotions on numerous previous occasions. It has ever since the original Legend of Zelda, where the first time I placed the game into my NES I simply stared at the TV for what might have been half an hour for all I know, listening to Kondo’s lilting title theme and watching the item scroll. It does when I watch the opening FMV to the first Sonic Adventure. The Phantasy Star II score has done mountains for me.

But even in the best game scores — Jet Set Radio, Streets of Rage, Ninja Gaiden II — generally the best that happens is that they impress the hell out of me and then that’s that. And even in the cases where I’ve been struck more deeply (for one reason or another), generally it’s been a single blow — often a manipulative one — in an otherwise so-so score.

Frankly, the reason the intro to Sonic Adventure does a weird job with my chest lies more in the direction of the intro sequence and my own personal share of nostalgia than anything about the music on its own. Heck, I’m not even very fond of half of the music in that game for its own merit. What music I do like well is mostly from Kumatani Fumie’s end of the stick rather than that of Jun Senoue.

Kenji Yamamoto has done something different here. I can’t explain it rationally. But it fucks with my head. The more I listen to it, the more this becomes true.

I’m afraid I’m going to develop a nervous condition, playing this game.

A bigger one, I mean.

I find this interesting, as I’ve honestly never been as impressed with the Super Metroid score as just about everyone else on the planet. It didn’t come near to Hip Tanaka’s original vision, or even the chirpy B-ambience of Return of Samus (a soundtrack which I still contend has never gotten its proper due). Super Metroid‘s music was appropriate, well-written, and… there. It suited the game, and sounded Metroidy.

But this? Ye god.

…

Again, I feel more or less exactly as I felt when I was eight and Zelda was new. And this fact is all the more peculiar just because I’m no longer eight years old. Zelda isn’t new. Metroid isn’t new. I’ve played so many games. I’ve seen so many conventions. Cleverness and skill and joy and wonder are about the best I can expect. That anyone can expect who has been around as long as I have.

There just isn’t a lot out there which feels new anymore. There aren’t any more revelations. There’s no new life to discover.

But perhaps there is.

And perhaps it’s not in Japan?

Who would have thought.

It’s not that this game is anything so totally original that it should — taken as a mass of parts — be as much of a breakthrough as Zelda. We’ve seen most of the elements here in at least some form before, for years on end. Some of the incarnations perhaps aren’t even all that different.

Half-Life was a step away from its FPS roots, and toward a more evolved gaming sensibility — and look at where that got it. Metroid Prime, I suppose, a person could consider the next logical step in this direction. Except that when you pull its laces, this is something else entirely.

I guess the way one could put it is that what this game feels like is something close to a culmination of what we’ve learned over the past thirty years of game design. Someone managed to boil it down and make The Game — or something like it. After all of the struggling since the last checkpoint, suddenly we’ve got progress. And we’re allowed to move on.

I’ve not played Eternal Darkness yet, but it’s worth noting again that this game was developed by an American studio, with aid from Nintendo. I imagine it’s got its flaws, but it still sounds like that game did a hell of a lot more right than most games have been doing lately. And like it had a solid vision to it.

Edit:

Nintendo has been doing a lot for the industry lately. They’ve gone through some pretty huge changes in attitude since the glory days of the NES, and now seem to be pretty much content to be Nintendo. I keep harping on that Q-fund thing of Yamauchi’s, but I feel it’s a lot more important than it looks. It fits right in with the recent “apprenticeship” system of game design that Miyamoto’s been pioneering, and what Nintendo’s been doing with second and third parties.

They’ve got the money and the expertise, so they’re investing it in the next generation. They won’t have it forever. Miyamoto won’t be around forever. Nintendo won’t be. But the art will remain, the skills will flourish. And maybe someone else will march on to victory, birthed from the seeds of that knowledge and support.

Sure, Nintendo is acting in Nintendo’s best interest — but they don’t have to do it in such an enlightened way. The fact that they are, says mountains to me and sets a tremendous example for the rest of the industry.

I think we’re closing in on a new era here. And it’s not going to come from where we expect. The old guard is starting to break down. The entire old infrastructure.

Just look at all of the shit happening in the industry right now. If you’re clinging to the old ways, it’s bad news. And it’s pretty scary. But there’s a new wind in the air, and just about everyone is clueless about it so far. If there’s any time to block one’s sails, I think this is it.

And dammit, I want a copy of this soundtrack.

Brinstone, you say?

  • Reading time:2 mins read

So my GameCube came today, with its complementary copy of Metroid Prime.

My comments so far:

  1. Whoa. Damn.
  2. … I need a memory card.

Is it just me, or do Nintendo really pack their stuff well? Opening each of my GBA and my Gamecube for the first time (in their respective moments), I got a rush of nostalgia. When was the last new device I opened which seemed so lovingly, sturdily boxed? I can’t remember. My Genesis?

Opening this thing, I got the distinct impression that I was unveiling to myself something uncommonly important. Something which would stick with me and last for years.

Not a feeling one gets much from electronic devices these days.

Particularly not Sony devices.

Odd, that.

Wow, that remixed music sounds good.

Why does it make me giggle, the first time I hear Samus’s theme in any new Metroid game?

Or the item power-up theme, for that matter?

Wow, there’s a lot of text in this game. I wonder who thought up all of this background info. Does it say in the credits? I don’t want to walk downstairs for my game case. I’ll look later. Was it someone from Retro? Would NCL have given them such free license? The game does a better join tying together and explaining the Metroid universe in the first half hour than the other four do, put together.

Intelligent Systems, my hindquarters!

Yes.

You just don’t know, I tell you.

I think this is an example of how the third dimension can be used to add more than just spatial depth to a game. It’s a similar phenomenon to what I saw in Sonic Adventure, only… much more so. Much more seamless.

To mention:

This game doesn’t seem to come from anywhere. It doesn’t feel Western. It doesn’t feel distinctly Japanese. It… feels like the love child of Metroid and Myst. Only more so.

Oh god. Oh god. The nose. Must do something.

Juice me up!

Who?

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Through what means I cannot immediately recollect, I — this last day — became far too involved in poring over the ongoing restoration process that Doctor Who has been going through.

Mark Ayers is even involved. You know, the composer for the last several seasons of of the series. (You do, don’t you?)

This is exactly the kind of anal, painstaking process which lights my bulbs of brightness. The more I read, the more curious I become. I really should bother to eat, or just… do something other than stare at the screen. I’m beginning to feel a little strange. But it’s hard to pull myself away.

Now I want to run out and grab all of the available Doctor Who DVDs, to examine the restoration jobs these guys have performed. I am severely inclined to do so. But… no.

“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.