highlights

“Ore ga kowaii no ka?”

  • Reading time:12 mins read

Just using training mode, it would theoretically take 4.51 days straight to gather enough points to unlock the remaining characters in Capcom vs SNK beyond what I’ve already done, and to make both Morrigan and Nakoruru playable. This is ignoring the fact that I’ve not yet faced Gouki. Buying his stage, his character, and the other modes which he unlocks would raise the total up quite a bit higher. Beyond him, there are still a few features left ungathered.

Of course, one can only gather 999 points at a time in training mode before it has to be reset — and one can get around 400-500 points simply by playing through arcade mode (not even doing especially well), which takes far less time than the forty to fifty minutes which would required in training. Also, had I the DC link cable, I do own copies of both Card Fighters Clash and Match of the Millennium for the NGPC. So I’m sure I could get some points out of this business, if I just had a method to transfer them. But I don’t, and cables are rare and expensive — they were even when the NGPC was still alive.

Averaging 500 points per game, I’d only have to play through 130 more times in order to get enough points. Averaging a more sensible 400, I’d have to play through around 162 times. On the other hand, I could leave it in training mode again — for an hour and forty minutes each time — around 65 more times.

Just in order to finally purchase Nakoruru (I’d rather Morrigan, but I’ve mostly been ignoring the Capcom characters — so this goal is pretty far off (ah well; at least Nako’s sprite is new and pretty. unlike the grizzly artifact from 1994 or so which Capcom is still using for Morrigan)), I’d only have to play the game through (at 400 points per game) 57 more times. That, or leave the Dreamcast soaking in training on 23 further occasions. It would only take 38 more hours.

Oy. Capcom, in the future could you please be a little less annoying? This isn’t terribly reasonable. Especially given the difficulty level of the game (even when set on the easiest notch) and the extent to which you’ve torn apart my favourite characters, you’re really pushing your luck here.

Take a hint from Namco. Soul Calibur is I think the one instance I’ve personally seen where this process is done /right/ — where it’s actually *interesting* to unlock new features; where there is motivation and interaction through nearly the whole process. It took a few months for me personally to unlock everything possible (including buying up all of the final not-entirely-necessary art pieces and getting the “cleared” title screen), but it rarely felt like work.

I certainly wasn’t just leaving the game to sit without me, waiting for it to steep. I was eager to play through with each character (rather than seeing it as a chore), because the game was actually fun to play. The two-on-two mode which I’ve recently unlocked in CvS does seem quite a bit much more enjoyable and fair-feeling than Arcade mode could ever hope to be, but there are still some big inherent problems with balance.

Something else which is recently making the game more enjoyable is that some of the EX versions of characters manage to either fix the necessary moves which Capcom inexplicably crippled in the characters’ normal variations, or at least provide alternatives which make them a bit more competitive and interesting to use. (Worse are the cases such Terry, Mai, Kim, King, and Yuri. where a character’s standard set of moves are dismantled and spread across the normal and EX versions of the characters — and even worse are those such as Iori and Ryo, in which critical moves and elements of character control are either removed or altered drastically enough to make them feel like other characters altogether.)

Combine these with the much-desired original soundtrack which I’ve unlocked, and a few other cozy features, and things aren’t as annoying as they used to be. But the thing is, the unlocking process is a separate chore. One accumulates points at such a slow pace, and so many are needed for even the simplest features, that it takes forever to seem to make even a dent in the game. Further, when the process of collecting points is separated so much from one’s actual in-game activity (unlike the mission mode in Soul Calibur, where one accomplished specific tasks for specific rewards), then one feels no personal attachment to the process of unlocking. It doesn’t feel like accomplishment. It doesn’t feel like anything’s been earned. I took pride in completing Soul Calibur, as everything I accomplished I did by my own power. With Capcom vs SNK, the only thing required (indeed, the only thing which does much good) is an abundance of patience.

Again, this would not be a huge issue if other factors were not in the way. I can be a very patient person, as evidenced by the fact that I’m actually bothering to do all of this and I’m not complaining overly much about the process. It’s what’s required, and so I’ll do it simply because posterity so dictates. But one must wait for a very, very long time and the game simply isn’t enough fun on its own (due to the overall result of its design) to motivate a person to do so.

Ugh.

However, it seems Capcom have (sort of) been learning a bit from their mistakes. While they pulled this stunt in a few high-profile games they released in 2000, Capcom vs SNK 2 has only a couple of unimportant things to unlock. I’m not sure whether this is the right route to go either, as it always is nice to throw in a few extra things here and there outside of the normal and default game experience.

The typical pedantic hardcore mantra is that secrets and extra features are “fluff” and irrelevant. A lousy game isn’t made good by throwing in extra busy work and toys, and it’s supposedly annoying to hide the “good stuff” even in a good game. In message boards and newsgroups, people go on and on, tooting their own horns on the issue. Ideally these people would be having black boxes for sprites (no pretty character design and animation to distract them), with short “beep”s as audio cues. Those might even be seen as a luxury.

I’ve further read people scoff that any game would have unlockable features, as obviously the first thing anyone does is to download a completed save file so he can just play the thing unperturbed by the false barriers supposedly thrown in by marketing in order to increase play time.

I think it’s safe to say that I am not a hardcore gamer. Furthermore I hope not to be a hardcore anything.

Capcom vs SNK is a perfect example, however, for their primary point — which is a valid one, up to its own particular degree. (As with anything else, there is a need for balance.) It is a so-so game which is simply made annoying through its preponderance of locked material — much of which is not simply “extra” material (as I would consider Nakoruru and Morrigan’s characters, since they are obviously extraneous to and fantastical within the context of the game as a whole) but which is needed in order to make the game feel somewhat complete. However, even with this extra data there’s still an irritating amount left omitted simply by the game’s design — and no amount of extra hidden material could ever make up for this fact.

Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive 2 are other interesting examples of how far the concept can be taken in each direction. Soul Calibur is one of the most excellent fighting games which has ever been made, and it happened to be matched with one of the best systems of extra features (most of which were truly “extra” in one way or another) and methods of discovery which has been in any game of its sort. Soul Calibur is a great game, but the added value of its surplus of surrounding material and the engaging way of gathering this material makes the game all the much better.

The game’s world is gradually enhanced, and through mastery of the game and exploration, the single player is constantly rewarded. Even though it’s just a fighting game, Soul Calibur is one of the deepest and most satisfying games I’ve ever played. Without all of this surrounding material, it would merely just been fun to play. And there’s only so long you can play through arcade mode on your own, and still have fun doing it.

Dead or Alive 2 came quickly afterward, and seemed to promise stiff competition for the best 3D Dreamcast fighter. The game itself is entertaining enough. In some ways it’s deeper than Soul Calibur, while in others more shallow. It has its own feel, and it’s an adequate one. The real problem is that this is all there is. The game has a very solid engine and is reasonably fun to play, but there is nothing more to be done with the game once you’ve tinkered around with arcade mode for a few hours.

One can learn to use all of the characters, and play against other people (if one happens to have friends), and that’s fine; that’s a large part of the core point of a fighting game. But as a home game, and as a complete package, it is severely lacking. There isn’t even the complex plot one finds in Soul Calibur — nor are the character designs anywhere nearly as interesting. The character models are a bit more complex, but they all look like plastic blow-up dolls with different hair and clothes. They have no particular personality. There’s literally nothing to unlock, aside from the hidden ability to restore that nude Kasumi scene in the intro. (I suppose that would be enough to satiate the people who would find Kasumi interesting enough to be attractive.) No extra characters (not even the last boss), no extra rounds, no extra modes, no art gallery, no extra music, no extra options, no extra costumes, and certainly nothing original and creative.

So it’s an okay game, which one plays for a few hours and then, once everything interesting has been studied, puts away forever, at least in terms of the game itself. There’s no reason to keep playing, and as a complete game it really suffers. Again, the game is reasonably fun. If it offered something engaging which simply could not be found elsewhere, then maybe that would be enough on its own. But it’s just another fighting game — a very pretty one, with a sort of interesting system. The same way that Grandia II is a very pretty RPG with a sort of interesting system. It’s simply not original enough, and doesn’t have enough personality, to stand on its own — as solid as its underlying structure might be.

While it might not be true that a fundamentally bad game can be made worthwhile by the addition of bonus fluff, and while an amazing game doesn’t particularly need any filler, it’s exactly this sort of game which suffers for a lack of it. The game is capable and well-made, but there is nothing particularly unique to hold one’s interest for an extended period. If there were a handful of extra elements with which to toy around, if for nothing else than to break up the monotony, then it would reflect back on the existing material, making what is already there all the much more captivating. If enough of the right notes were hit in its presentation, the game could become something really memorable. Maybe not quite good enough, but at least substantial enough to be one of the elite.

Capcom vs SNK 2, from what I hear, is more than complex enough to hold one’s interest for quite an extended period even despite some continued niggling issues carried over from its predecessor — and this is good. My real point, however, is that I hope Capcom isn’t simply going from one extreme to the other and missing the point entirely in the process. It really helps a lot to have some extra material in a fundamentally shallow sort of a game such as this (as infinitely complex as the internal mechanics and the actual process of mastery might be). Otherwise, the game just becomes a toy.

It’s been shown that nearly any type of game has the potential to be far more than that, and it would be nice to see if they’ve come to understand this principle. They certainly have the talent, and occasionally one sees where they could have the heart. There are only so many worthwhile developers out there these days, and the good ones (Sega, SNK, Treasure) always seem to be in the worst shape. Capcom are in a better place than most to carry on the ideal, and it’s irritating to see themselves constantly missing the mark by just enough that it’s obvious they simply weren’t trying hard enough.

Hrm.

Anyway, there’s that.

Cats.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

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

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

There is no imitation.

  • Reading time:3 mins read

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

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

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

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

The Beautiful

  • Reading time:2 mins read

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

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

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

“Instantaneity is not art.”

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

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

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

ODCM, RIP

  • Reading time:1 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

Oh goodness!

  • Reading time:1 mins read

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

The horror! The shame!

… I’m hungry.

Advancement

  • Reading time:4 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Motavia and Opportunity

  • Reading time:2 mins read

In a way, Phantasy Star II was something of a loss of innocence for gaming. I think the music shows one of the attractions for the game. It was the height of a bustling civilization. Technologically adept; happy; bright; clean; optimistic. The dungeon and overworld musics both have a tone of simplicity to them. There is a childlike sense of wonder which pervades the world. Everything is safe. There are the little problems to be fixed, but then all will be right again. The world is safe. Nothing irreparably bad can really happen to our heroes. But then things begin to go very wrong… and suddenly this sense of innocence takes on a very desperate sort of tension, as if the game is trying to cope with what is going on. Like it doesn’t understand how what is happening could possibly happen, and refuses to believe it.

I don’t think there had ever really been events this portentous in a video game before… Now, of course, characters are killed left and right and worlds are destroyed without much of a thought. But a plot this complex was a real novelty at the time. As with a lot of things Sega does, it really showed the potential that games would come to have…

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?

Welcome to the Fantasy Zone

  • Reading time:1 mins read

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.

Total Recall

  • Reading time:1 mins read

After taking a shower, I realized that my towel smells like Rolling Thunder… and OutRun and Space Harrier, and Master System games just out of their shrinkwrap, new manuals open and eyes agog in a pizzeria near the toy store. And a weird, haunting song which seemed to always be playing in the background, which seemed at the time, to me, to involve a group of children singing on how they were going to die now.

OutRun was the most magical game in the world when I was eight.

Why wasn’t Rolling Thunder ever properly ported to a home console? I mean, there was the crummy Tengen adaptation for the NES, but…

Hm.

Rummage

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Okay; I’ve found the SMS, and have edited the below list to account for this. It’s still broken, but — well. All this leaves, really, now, are the Genesis, Power Base Converter, my two good joysticks, and five Genesis games… I bet I know where the cords are, but it’ll be a major hassle to dig them up if I’m correct in the matter. I might as well see, first, if they’re wherever the other articles have been hidden.

I’ve also gotten rid of ~three months’ worth of Dr Pepper cans and Arizona tea bottles, cleared off a couple of shelves, and put the various consoles’ respective cartridges on easy-access display along with my music and movies — and, of course, books.

Glub.

Oh — and, not entirely disrelatedly, I’ve located, while rummaging around over the past couple of days, a bunch of rare-ish AD&D 1st Edition books and a first pressing of Greyhawk, etcetera. This, plus my monsterous compendium (from when they still came in binders, a while ago) and a bunch of Ninja Turtle action figures. I’ve pulled out Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo character and sat him next to the Scullies I’ve wandering around my computer — they’re all actually very comparable in scale; it works out pretty darned well.

“Dear Agent Scully — I did not appriciate your lawyer’s tone…” </troy>

Fragility

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Agh! Ah! ho, ho, ho! ooo! hah! oh, my. Yes. Oh, jeez. This is incredible. The Fragile, I mean — eek. Holy…

The downward spiral and this album are a mobius strip. The Fragile succeeds amazingly in breaking from the “nin formula” and exploring new territory, the occasional subtle reference thrown in to what has come before. It begins where TDS left off, with some gradual recovery, followed by a re-breakdown of sorts. Finally, there’s a very ominous ending, as at the end of a fatalistic movie, bringing the listener back to the beginning of TDS again.

I swear I’ve never heard anything like this. Chamber music about the nature of futility.

I’m… shivering.

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]: