highlights

Islands in the Night

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Just as I prefer warmth against cold over warmth for its own sake, I believe that I prefer light against darkness over light for its own sake. One lamp in the living room, lit for the sake of reading; one lamp above the stove in the kitchen, through the doorway on my right, to give depth to the world. Two islands in the night. I am safe where I am. If I wish to move, I have a destination. I can connect the dots on my own.

In the same vein, it is easier to drive at night. Headlights create their constant island before me, drawing me onward into the only world that exists; the only possible desination. Safety is always just ahead, and that’s where I’m headed.

Anything else is overstimulation. Excess. It’s too much. It has no curve. Light has no meaning unless there is something to be lit. Warmth has no meaning unless there is someone to be warmed. Everything needs context, or else it is merely noise.

And then there is sound.

Chasing Harry Lime

  • Reading time:3 mins read

This piece does not a bad job of summing up my attitude toward… things. Videogames, sure. The last paragraph in particular illustrates why I’m baffled at the animosity often directed toward critics. And the better they do their job, it seems the more they’re resented.

Then, I guess my experience in school should have prepared me for people’s reactions when you begin to ask questions.

This summer I witnessed, in the Gaming Age forums, a person’s hate-drenched response to Insert Credit‘s big videogame journalism article. This fellow claimed to be involved with game development. He went on about how vile and useless critics were. What do they know. They don’t make the games. (I should note here that some of the best filmmakers, poets, and musicians have also been influential critics in their day.) I decided that I never want to play a game made by this person. It was clear to me that he didn’t have much interest in communicating.

Which makes me wonder why he ever got involved in the videogame business. Perhaps because he wanted to Make Videogames, without really understanding what that means. Perhaps he became dazzled with, and ego-attached to, the idea of Being a game developer. Or he came to worship the games themselves.

This is compared to… well. Because he felt he had something to say, and this seemed a good way to express himself.

If the latter were the case, he’d want intelligent criticism. He’d want interaction. He’d want to see if his message got across — and if not, what the alternate interpretations might be.

If the former were the case, he wouldn’t. Because he’d be afraid that his world would shatter.

It sounds to me like he’s in the wrong profession, if it causes him that kind of insecurity. And again, what kind of a game would a guy like this make?

I received a puzzled email not long ago, in reference to a passing comment in an old entry of mine. I’d mentioned that we could do without any more people making videogames who want to Make Videogames. I suppose the above is a part of what I meant.

It doesn’t stop with videogames, of course. Artists, writers, politicians… really, anything that a person might do with himself. I suppose this — the motivation to Be Things through doing — is all a side effect of our goal-oriented society. And perhaps, to some extent, of that perennial whipping boy, The Media. (Hey, I’ve got to throw it in somewhere.) If you’re not somebody, you’re nobody. Just ask your grandmother who wanted you to grow up and be a famous lawyer or a rich doctor or the President. Just look to all of the people who’ve asked you what you want to be when you grow up. And to all of the people who look at you with a puzzled expression whenever you choose to study something without a direct practical application.

Hell, I need to go to sleep.

Askew

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I just realized that most artists only really have one thing to say. If that. Everything they do is just a refinement of, or another aspect of, that single contribution that they have (that being their own selves).

I suppose this should be obvious. We’re all individuals. The more rounded individuals, perhaps, have more corners of their minds to lay bare.

All the same: Miyamoto has never really varied since his original ideas for Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Those added up into Super Mario Bros., and then Miyamoto took things a step further to hit upon The Legend of Zelda. Since 1987, it’s all just been refinement. He doesn’t have much to say that we haven’t already heard.

Same goes for Rieko Kodama, really (as much as I enjoy her work). She’s still kind of working with the tools she devised a decade and a half ago. BioWare did a lot with their first RPG, but they haven’t done a lot since then.

Hitchcock kept whacking out variations on the same two or three themes. Most of his work involved finding people he enjoyed and allowing them to do whatever they wanted within his vague descriptions. The Beatles had a lot to say by the end, but that comes from the chemistry of five key voices (including George Martin) and all of their experiences.

Miyamoto did his part. He’s done now. Hitchcock did his part. So is he. So are the Beatles. (Really, what of great merit have any of them done since the early ’70s?) They’ve each come out of nowhere with a new perspective and pointed out untapped possibilities within their own respective contexts. And in so doing, they’ve helped the context change.

And the world keeps moving. If they don’t, they’re left as a noble milestone; as a reminder of the need for perspective. Not as a template, however. Anything else is idolatry.

And that’s where all of the problems lie.

I’ve got a headache.

I Can See Your Moves

  • Reading time:5 mins read

I’ve just replayed ’96, and I’ve got to say that it’s the most intriguing in the series aside from 2001. It’s where everything came together right, for the first time. And SNK had to revise just about everything they’d established in ’94 and ’95 in order to make the game.

It makes me wish all the more that 2002 had been a concluding plot chapter for the NESTS era, as it rightfully should have been. The pattern would be complete, then.

’99 established the new gameplay system, with the strikers and all. It was nice and original, and a good idea. 2000 was almost the exact same game (as ’95 was to ’94), only with the rough spots polished away. Just as ’96 revolutionized the early series, 2001 revolutionized the later series. ’97 took what was established in ’96 and didn’t add much to it in terms of gameplay — but rather expanded it and used it as the backing mechanics for an orgy of plot exposition and drama.

Then ’98 — the first dream match — was almost the same game as ’97 (just compare the selection screens of the two!), only with an extra nine characters (every left-over non-boss character from ’94-’96 aside from Eiji), “classic” versions of most of the main characters (with their pre-’96 move lists), and a bunch of extra animations and interactions and energy added in.

That makes ’98 more or less “’97 DX”, in its structure. And at the same time, it’s a kind of a compilation of everything KoF up until that time. Not unlike the upcoming Street Fighter II compilation for the PS2. Aside from all of the characters and character versions above, it also has both major game systems up to that point (“Advanced” and “Extra” — which correspond to the pre-’96 and post-’95 engines). Basically, however you like your (pre-NESTS) KoF, ’98 has it. All it lacks is plot. But it’s got extra heaps of charm to make up for the loss (if you’re familiar with the characters).

That could have been the case with 2003, for the series’ tenth anniversary. 2002 would have put to use the refined system introduced in 2001, and cleanly finished off that plot arc. 2003 would have been the ultimate KoF dream match, covering the whole history of KoF — or at least everything that’s happened since ’98. Every major non-boss character. Every major game system. At least two distinct move lists for most of the major characters.

Then 2004 — the first Atomiswave game — could be the start of the next plotline. A nice clean beginning, on new hardware.

But, no.

Anyway. To illustrate, the pattern goes more or less like this:

[1a] [1b] [2a] [2b] [x] [1a] [1b] [2a] … [x]
’94 ’95 ’96 ’97 ’98 ’99 ’00 ’01 n/a ’02

[1a] defines a new game system. It’s a rough draft. A little awkward. A few obvious problems to work out. Still, by virtue of its new ideas it’s got some energy and life to it.

[1b] is the refinement of that system. It’s the edited version, more or less. Most of the overt kinks have been knocked out. Problem is, it’s almost the same as the previous game. The game is nice, but one is left waiting for the point.

[2a] is the second draft. This is a total overhaul of the system introduced two games earlier. While the previous game was merely a revision, the goal of which was to fix the obvious problems in the first incarnation of the game system, this game scraps the earlier system altogether and rephrases the original ideas in a far more elegant form. This is more or less what they tried to do two games earlier, but hadn’t quite figured out how to express yet.

[2b] is to [2a] as [1b] is to [1a]. More or less. Now that they’ve finally got the system down, they don’t really have to think about it anymore and can just use it to tell an interesting story.

[x] is where we clear out the closet. Tally what’s been accomplished so far, while we figure out what to do next.

The NESTS saga never really got either a [2b] or an [x]. And it needed both, in order to work satisfactorily. Instead, it got abbreviated by a train wreck.

As you can both gather and imagine anyway, it’s the “a” chapters which do more for me. Especially the revised ones, where SNK (or Eolith/Brezza) figured out what they wanted to say. The “b” ones tend to bore me a little (particularly the “a” ones), since they’re creative resting periods. It’s all just futzing. And honestly, polish tends to annoy me. I like things rough; it leaves the character in. EDIT: (Of course, some things manage to combine both roughness and polish at the same time! HOW CAN YOU LOSE!)

Hell. I might as well post this, while I’m here.

Here comes the sun

  • Reading time:5 mins read

Just to let you know: Henrik Galeen is the fellow who invented the whole sunlight + vampires = unhappy and/or dead vampires device. I thought it likely that Nosferatu was the origin of this cinematic convenience. The commentary track on the DVD has confirmed this for me.

While we’re on the subject…

Konami pretty much seems to have ignored [Sonia Belmont] based on the supposedly bad game she inhabited (good character design and scenario aside)…

Actually, Igarashi wrote her game out of the official canon because he thought it was too far-fetched for a woman to be an action hero during the period in which the game was set. There’s an interview on Gamers where you can find these statements.

Aside from the obvious logistical strangeness here (since when were the Belmonts your average peasants?), Igarashi seems to be overlooking an awful lot of potential for character and story depth.

A woman would have to be all the stronger — all the more of a hero — to hold up against the repressive society of the time, and all of the fear and persecution she’d probably face. The stronger she’d get, the more that people would fear and resent her.

Thus the Belmonts were chased out of Transylvania after Dark Night Prelude/Legends, and thus Trevor/Ralph had to be called back in Akumajou Denetsu/Dracula’s Curse.

At the outset of that game, Trevor is kneeling by a shrine, praying. He could be talking to his dead mother, asking for the strength to follow in her stead.

I suppose an action game doesn’t need to go that deep, however.

I also suppose it doesn’t help much that Igarashi is filtering all of this through his own Japanese mindset.

Note that, as far as I know, Sonia still exists as a character in the official timeline. If so, however, she’s been demoted to little more than Trevor/Ralph’s mother.

He seems to care a lot about the atmosphere and continuity of Castlevania and the few Castlevania games that have had historical errors have all been the ones that Igarashi hasn’t worked on, such as CV64 with its turn of the 20th century biker skeletons.

Now, I really like Igarashi and respect what he’s trying to do with the series. Again, though, this doesn’t seem a necessary change to me. If anything, the storyline seems stronger with her in than with her out. If nothing else, she opens up a lot of intriguing possibilities.

Igarashi makes the occasional vague reference to historical accuracy, but he’s hardly a stickler. Thus the wailing guitars in Symphony of the Night and the classical music in Lament of Innocence (each anachronistic by at least one hundred fifty years — and more like five or six hundred in the latter case). There are all kinds of weird details in Harmony of Dissonance, like phonographs and elevators. The list goes on.

And even within the game’s internal world, Igarashi is willing to break form if it suits him. The “Spell Fusion” system in Harmony of Dissonance serves as a sort of a placeholder in terms of gameplay systems. It helps to explain whence Richter’s and the later Belmonts’ Item Crash techniques originate, while it makes clear what happened to the Belnades bloodline once it merged with that of the Belmonts. (That is, it went dormant until Juste found it.)

So, given that Lament of Innocence takes place several hundred years before Sypha was ever born, why did Igarashi put a Spell Fusion system in the game? Because it makes the game more interesting.

To be sure, he originally wanted the game to be straight out whip-and-subweapons action. That would have made it more accurate. He said that was a little too dull, though. So, with a shrug, there goes continuity.

What I’m saying is that his explanation doesn’t really hold water at face value. It’s a fictional world; you can do whatever you like with it.

It’s a convenient sound bite, yes, and there may be some element of truth to it — but he’s got some other reason. If you go strictly by what he says, basically what it translates to is “I just don’t want a female lead in my series.”

So. Is he just a jerk? Does he have issues with women? Is he gay? (Hell, Soma Cruz might as well be a woman. Maybe that’s how he likes it.)

Perhaps it’s something more mundane — like politics. Notice that he doesn’t include in his official timeline any game produced by either the (now-defunct) Kobe or Nagoya studios. In the case of Kobe, this is understandable. They kind of screwed up whatever they touched, even in the case of the rather enjoyable Circle of the Moon. But Dark Night Prelude took special care to adhere to the continuity established up to that point. So that would seem a curious explanation.

Maybe it’s some other problem entirely. Maybe he just doesn’t like that plot thread. I don’t know. I suppose I can’t, unless he lets something slip.

I doubt he’s written the game off for any really powerful concerns about historical accuracy, though. Nor does the quality issue seem right to me, given what other games he does choose to include (like the two Dracula Denetsu games).

So, as before, that just leaves one to marvel at how strange his statement is.

It’s torrentulating outside. Could this be hurricane Residue?

  • Reading time:1 mins read

The Good:

Old English gōd has a Germanic source; it is related to Dutch goed and German gut.

The Ugly:

Ugly is from Old Norse uggligr ‘to be dreaded’, from ugga ‘to dread’, therefore the primary sense reflects the effect on the observer rather than the appearance itself of the person or object observed.

And The Bad:

The source of this derogatory adjective is not altogether clear but is perhaps Old English bǽddel ‘hermaphrodite’ or ‘womanish man’, and so it probably owes its semantic core to homophobic feelings. The sense is refelcted in the obsolete word badling (Old English) which was an ‘effeminate or worthless man’.

Source: The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories; Glynnis Chantrell, ed. Oxford University Press (UK), 2002

Game Artists’ Manifesto

  • Reading time:10 mins read

Skies of Arcadia — there’s little I did in that game that didn’t result in something rather wondrous. And little that didn’t feel important in some way. Everything about Arcadia, it’s set up to build anticipation and wonder. Even just the dungeon and town design.

Take that ruin near the beginning; the tower where the moonstone lands, just after the intro events. There’s this long walkway, above water. The camera follows behind Vyse’s shoulders. There’s a fish-eye effect, which seems to make the path stretch on forever. And way on the other end is the dungeon. As Vyse runs toward it, his feet and elbows flail back toward the camera. He seems eager to get where he’s going. And we’re following him, seeing what he sees. It’s not really that far, but there’s this buildup of tension as you approach. And — inside, it’s one of the first real 3D dungeon environments I’d encountered in a console RPG.

That is to say: it takes its third dimension into account. As it it’s a real space, with is own logic. As you progress, you begin to understand the importance of features that you didn’t more than notice before; elements of the dungeon’s structure. And eventually, you solve it like a Rubick’s cube of sorts. You’ve unlocked its secrets, and mastered some skills, and begun to own some space.

It leads you on, but it does so by trusting you to follow your intuition. And when you do that, you’re rewarded. That is what is glorious about the game. It is built to reward curiosity, and gut instinct. And it does a great job at creating that curiosity to begin with. That is its genius. Then there’s the fact that most of the elements that are required to understand are in plain view through most of the game — it’s just that you need to play the game, to understand the significance of everything in the world well enough to put it all together. It’s a real place, and you get to know it by living there.

By the end of the game, there’s this sense of great enlightenment. So that’s why the world is the way it is. And — there’s still more left to discover. It leaves one with the feeling of possibility. Like anything could be out there, if one just were to work hard enough to find it. It’s incredibly inspirational. And this is all… intentional. Maybe not fully conscious, but it’s part of the game’s design.

Part of this comes from the protagonist, Vyse. There aren’t a lot of positive models in modern videogames. Not a lot of hope. After all of this cynical angsty Squareish teenage punk nonsense, it’s refreshing to see a lead who is actually a hero. Who has some spirit. It makes me feel like… I can do things. It’s all about attitude. That is to say, what you make of your situation. I feel that he’s the condensed center of Kodama’s message to her audience: Never give up. Never look down. Be proud. There’s always a way.

It’s not just the actual events within the game — it’s the strength of the conceptual significance behind them. I mean. It’s fiction. But fiction illustrates a lot about normal life. One of the best traits of fiction is the capacity to illustrate possibiliy. Whether this is tangible possibility, or just the emotional sense for where it comes from and what it means.

This isn’t something that you honestly get from most videogames. I’ve only gotten it from a handful. The original Zelda. Phantasy Star II. Riven. Skies of Arcadia. They all have made me look at the world differently. They’ve strengthened me, personally, in one way or another. That’s a sign of pretty good literature, I’d say.

I find it really interesting that Kodama is responsible for two of the games on that list. She… well. There’s a reason why I cite her as my favourite game creator. Shenmue has a bit of that, although its clunky (if endearing) AM2-ish edges keep it at a bit of an emotional distance.

The reason why I cite these games as amongst the best I’ve played is because they aren’t content with just being videogames, as such. They carry a deeper meaning. And not a contrived one, just for the purpose of being “deep”. They… stretch outside the boundaries of their medium and do something, emotionally. They actually speak some pretty inspiring messages to their audience, if the audience is willing to listen.

Most games are too calculated. Most games are designed by programmers. Or worse, by people who want to make videogames. Kodama and Miyamoto are both artists, foremost. Miyamoto has become… entrenched in Miyamoto in recent years, unfortunately. Still, he started as a slacker art school kid who didn’t even know that the company he was joining made videogames. Kodama didn’t exactly know what Sega did either, from what she says.

Rand and Robyn Miller, behind Myst — well. They certainly didn’t set out to be game designers. And by the time they’d gone through their first rough draft (that being Myst itself), they had amassed a pretty huge trove of mythology. They just… wanted to make their own world, with its own history and logic. And all of that work came to fruition in their second game.

This stuff, you can’t teach it. Being taught means being told “this is how to do things”. Generally speaking. Learning, on the other hand, means coming to recognize the organic patterns behind things and how to relate with them. It’s about communication. This isn’t something that can ever be pressed into you. It’s something you have to have the will to seek out on your own. The most someone can do is to set all of the right pieces before you, and to illustrate what they might mean. But it’s up to you to approach, and to add those pieces to what you’ve already collected. And to pick up the hints as to what else they might imply about you and your world.

It’s just like how you can’t tell a person how to write a novel. Or else you’ll get… a bunch of form-feed novels. The best way to learn is to simply have the right environment. To have the right materials around. To be given enough context and enough carrots to inspire you to look for meaning on your own — to care about the world, and about life. And to have someone or something you can use to reorient you, whenever you’re lost. And this is why art is so very important. That’s part of what it does — it provides some of that context. It helps to hint you in the right direction to finding your own meaning in life.

Art is actually a strange term. It’s rarely used correctly. Even I misuse it. Art is a process, more than a thing. A thing cannot Be art, in and of itself. Art comes in the process of interpretation of that thing, by the individual. It’s a way of looking at the world, really. As is science. Hamlet is not art, unto itself. It is art To Me, because I appreciate it as such. Because its meanings are strong enough, and I’m able to find something within them that has relevancy to my life. There is no objective Art. By its very nature, art is subjective. It’s when people try to put art on a pedestal that it gets… well, pretentious.

Something to think about: the only way you know the world is through your own senses, and your own understanding of the world. Whether the world really exists, you can’t know. The only basis for verification that you have is your own self. Objectivity — removal of one’s self from the picture at hand — is useful for understanding the inner workings of a system within the world that you perceive. However — whether or not thost things really exist, that you choose to be objective about, really comes down to a subjective decision. Therefore: in order to gain understanding of the world, the first step should be to search for what the world means to you. Through that, you can do anything else. You can play with your subsets of objectivity all you like. Of course — once objective understanding is established, that automatically gets kneaded back into your overall subjective understanding of life, your world, and what sense it all makes.

Science can, in a very real sense, be considered an art — inasmuch as it is a subset of the same methodology of understanding, with its own unique behaviors — just as philosophy differs from painting, differs from film direction, yet all are the same thing in the end. It’s all life, really. It’s all about understanding, and communication.

Videogames, too often, are held as objects; as important for their own sake. It’s easy to be fetishistic about them. I certainly am, at times. This is a problem of interpretation, all across the board — on the part of the “consumer” (read: the audience), as well as the critics as well as those who actually produce the games. The average videogame is no more important, artistically, than the average Hollywood explode-a-thon. Or romantic comedy, or whatever other tired formula you like. All the same.

Now. There’s something to learn from that as it is! You know what they say: there’s more to learn from bad art, than from good; from carelessness, compared to compassion. Provided that you’re willing to put in the effort to find it. However: something needs to change.

If this medium is ever going to become respectable, and to come unto its own as a form of expression — we need more people communicating through it. And using it as a medium to inspire understaning. We need to change our expectations, and stop considering videogames as important for their own sake, rather than for the the sake of the meaning they contain for us personally. And for the sake of the life which goes into them as an outlet for their creators.

Comfort is a dead end. Life is change. The moment you stop, you die. Either inside or outside. The body itself is ever changing; it’s different from one day to the next. All of the matter in your body now will be gone in seven years. You’ll technically be a completely different person. The moment that’s no longer true – it’s the same thing. It’s just the nature of life. Stasis doesn’t fit into that.

Gradually, I’m allowing more and more change into my life. And the more I let in (within my tolerance levels), the more I indeed feel that life. The more I learn to appreciate it, simply for what it is.

Videogames have the potential to convey so much meaning. And it’s not really a medium that’s been tapped well, on either end of the divide. Maybe I can help bridge the gap a bit. I don’t know. Help to give people one more outlet, to gain and express meaning for their lives. I guess… I’m pretty much doing the same thing.

PAC NEEDS FOOD BADLY!

  • Reading time:1 mins read

There is an intrinsic difference between the Asteroids/Centipede model of game design, and the Space Invaders/Pac-Man one. It’s the latter, somewhat less flexible, design sensibility (through a Miyamoto filter) which has most directly evolved into our current ideas about console and arcade games. I’m not entirely sure if this is ideal, although it’s lent some mass appeal to the medium.

I wonder how things might’ve been different if the American model had continued to evolve into the modern era. If we’d gotten a chance to hone it as well as the Japanese model has been (up to the painfully entrenched form that it’s in now).

I’m too tired to illustrate. I might, later.

I’m sure some of you out there already are tracing my thought patterns, however.

I think it’s kind of interesting.

Again. Probably the solution is to combine the two sensibilities. Retro and Silicon Knights remain the test cases for a rather different kind of a merger (that being the quickly-tiring Miyamoto school and the modern Western PC-oriented mindset). I wonder what’d happen if we were to work back in some of the Ed Logg mentality.

Samurai Stream (as poured onto Shepard)

  • Reading time:5 mins read

[As follows: I continue in my mission to populate the most egregious void in my personal SNK lexicon.]

Samurai Spirits remains perhaps SNK’s oddest fighting series. This fact does not diminish.

I now notice that it was updated every year, for four years — and that with each installment were abrupt leaps in quality and gameplay style. Then SNK… stopped. For seven years, if we ignore the 3D games — and let’s do that, for the moment

The games themselves… I have trouble grasping on first glance. I need more time.

It’s blatantly obvious that the second game just makes the first one obsolete in every sense. It’s the same thing, only better. The third and fourth games, though — they’re not so easy to interpret.

SSIII is of a notably different style from the other three games (in a general sense), and yet it lends some key elements to the fourth game. SSIV seems like an attempt to retreat to the level of SSII, while it retains a number of the elements introduced in III. A not-entirely-succesful attempt to recapture the feeling of the older games.

SSIII — immediately, I like it a bunch in comparison to SSII. It makes a bunch of changes — for the more palatable, from my current vantage point. It’s prettier, and it’s as enjoyable as it is attractive. It’s got some great animation and backgrounds. It introduces some interesting, personable new characters.

It’s a big step to the mainstream, admittedly; the new characters are cuter. The overall tone isn’t nearly as somber. It’s faster, more powerful. More kinetic. Less cerebral. More appealing, on a surface level — yet without nearly the poise and elegance of II. It’s hard to tell how deep the waters run.

A lot of people really hate SSIII, because of how radical it is. I don’t know about that; it’s got a lot of potential. I’ll need to dig, to better understand what it’s doing.

Something else of note is that it seems that the Slash and Bust modes are introduced here. That is to say: we’ve got Rasetsu character variants, for the first time.

I think the evil Nakoruru first appears in SS2, although she remains little more than a palette swap in that game. The reason I say this is that her expression changes to a more wry one when you select the Player 2 colours. In SS3, however, she’s got her wolf. And the rasetsu Galford is Poppy-free. So we’re into the big time, as it were.

Even in SS4, however, the distinctions aren’t as strong as they’ve more recently become. Sougetsu and Kazuki are in the game (for what it seems is the first time), yet their rasetsu variants are again just palette swaps (cosmetically speaking; for all I know at this point, their move lists could be entirely different) — whereas we now know their rasetsu variants as bare-chested, tattooed, shabbier alter egos.

From what I see here, I’ll hazard to assume that all of the serious separation must’ve occured in the Hyper NeoGeo 64 games.

Speaking of SS4 — again, I’m not sure yet what to make of it. Some people love this game; others loathe it. More people like it than SS3, though. I can see where the trouble lies, but I’m not ready to decide what it means.

As I mentioned, it’s basically a step back to the style of SS1 and 2, away from the weirdly energetic gaiden flavour of SS3 — yet it retains a bunch of straggling elements from 3: the slash/bust distinction; the control scheme; some other bits of gameplay.

And there are a lot of gimmicks — even more than in 3. Like a time limit; you have to beat the game within a certain timeframe — or else? I assume the worst.

That’s… interesting. Perhaps it’s too clever. I don’t know yet. The same goes for most of the features.

It seems — on the surface, again — to have a bit of an identity crisis. It wants to do everything in the previous two games. And to be taken as seriously as 2. It’s not 2, though. It can’t go back.

Further: the backgrounds also aren’t nearly as pretty as those in 3. They’re all right, so far. But the ones in 3 — as with the whole interface — were just gorgeous. With 4, I get the sensation that the stages are unfinished. This might not be right. Perhaps there’s something I’m not yet prepared to appreciate. Again, more time needed.

I just have trouble figuring out where the game’s mind is. I’m reserving the possibility that it could be ingenious underneath the apparent mess.

The thing is — immediately, it seems to me that both the lovers and the haters are loving and hating for rather shallow reasons. There’s something else going on, I think. I don’t know what.

This will take some effort.

SNK through the years

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Break it Down!

1978-1984 = early years
1985-1989 = Famicom era
1989-1990 = breaking in the NeoGeo
1991-1993 = breaking in the versus fighting genre; experimenting with form and style
1994-1995 = start of the SNK style; refinement of gameplay and presentation
1996-1998 = classic era; perfected SNK aesthetic and gameplay
1999-2000 = new experimental era; generational turnover with most major series and hardware
2000-2001 = Aruze takeover and dismemberment; bankruptcy; scattering
2001-2002 = confusion; reformation
2002-20?? = SNK Playmore era

News bulletin: Samurai Shodown 2 is not a bad game.

That is all.

Gotta start somewhere. As they say.

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I just saw the season premiere of Justice League. Something that strikes me is that this series now seems to be geared for the secondary market. I mean. This (hour-long) episode was letterboxed. It had an obviously high budget. The music was notably well-orchestrated. It just has the sheen of a product made for the collector, rather than the normal TV audience.

I take it that the DVDs have been selling well.

This makes me wonder even more how the Teen Titans series will turn out. Further, it’s… making me think a little.

I’m not sure what it is, but I’ve got a kind of a positive feeling here. I think that the DVD format has had a pretty big impact on the whole manner in which passive entertainment media are produced. It’s like the film and TV industries are coming to /know/ that whatever they do, it’ll be for posterity. At least, the more observant are.

So rather than just pump out crud, expecting that it’ll disappear into a landfill somewhere, in a lot of cases we’re starting to see some attention to making a halfway-respectable object that people will want to hang onto. This isn’t necessarily the case with Hollywood, as especially over the last half-decade or so, that whole sector has just become a farce. But — well.

And it’s not only new material. All of this happens to coincide with the massive film restoration effort that’s only recently started to gain a bunch of attention and support — again, over the last half-decade or so. A bunch of older films, that had been mouldering for decades, are being fixed up, polished, documented, and given a respectful rerelease in order to fill the collectors’ demand.

History is being recompiled and recombined with the present, giving everyone the opportunity to see what in many cases simply hasn’t been widely available for a long while.

This also corresponds to the massive downturn in necessary production costs for filmmaking. With all of the digital technology and networking we’ve got now, the indie scene is stronger than it’s ever been. And that’s where all of the action is.

It feels kind of like we’re coming along to the verge of something. I’ll reserve hope that whatever it is, we’ll actually fall over. Money tends to be kind of stupid, that way. But hey, you never know.

Do they contract the hit with a GAT?

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I’m watching this Humphrey Bogart movie, The Enforcer. Bogart’s a detective on the police force, who’s trying to pin down a mob boss. His key witness, a certain Rico, has cleverly decided to leap off a building in order to save his life from the cops who were protecting him.

That’ll show ’em. There’s no protecting him anymore!

So, anyway: Bogart’s in a sticky flavour of a jam. If he doesn’t do something quickly, this crimelord fellow will get off free. As he’s moping about the predicament, Bogart recalls something hazy. He can’t quite finger it, but there’s some detail about the case that he feels lodged in his mind. Cue the first of several layers of flashback.

A guy wanders into a police station, mumbling about how he killed his girl. They forced him to. There was a contract out on her. He was supposed to do the hit. Who were they? They were his troupe.

The police were baffled. Contract? What kind of a contract? What’s a hit? What was this guy, a boy scout? What kind of a troupe did he mean? They couldn’t make earth from sky of it. Bogart got involved with the puzzle. Contract? Hit? What a mystery!

Over ten or fifteen minutes, Bogart followed a string of leads. After a little work, he pulled in another member of the “troupe”. The guy didn’t want to talk at first, but Bogart threatened to send his kid to a private school. So the cat spilled the beans.

Cue another layer of flashback. Through a mutual contact, this fellow fell in with a mean-looking bunch who met in the back room of a store. “It was just like the back of a store,” he observed.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” he chirped to a swarthy fellow — apparently the leader. “I’ll even murder if you like.”

The oily man slapped him. “Don’t ever say that! When you’re going to kill someone, you say you’ve got a contract out on him. The person you kill is a hit. That way even if the police hear you, they won’t know what you’re talking about. You got it?!”

Back in the shallower level of flashback, the police were astonished. A contract was a murder! A hit was the victim! Good gosh!

“Killing for profit,” Bogart scoffed. What was this world coming to?

They couldn’t learn anything else from the man, but at least they had a starting place. A contract was a murder. A hit was a victim.

It… goes on like this.

Prelude to Las Vegas? (Or: An Insert Credit Dream)

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Some civilization — Babylonian, I think — which lived in a giant onion-shaped island, with sides that curled up and separated everyone living there from the outside world. Although right in the midst of a bunch of other kingdoms, they had no idea of anything outside the island. After a few tries, the key civilization succeeded in surviving until all of the rival parties on the island were disintegrated. Complex and interesting native music played, as the Babylonian king cast a huge hadoken-style fireball and blew holes in the onion-sides of the island, letting light stream in.

It seemed this was some kind of odd game that I was playing in a place which was a cross between the Insert Credit Fortress, as such, and a prep school dorm. There was a dingy cafeteria and there were older adults in charge. I had trouble getting food to cook correctly, and to find anywhere decent to sleep.

Anyway. Once the remaining webwork of the onion-sides collapsed, there was a flyover of all of the surrounding kingdoms — which were all jammed pretty close together. Princesses were leaning out of several towers, waving. Then I saw The Jetsons. And then Fred Flintstone, dressed as Iori Yagami.

I turned and pointed him out to other members of the Insert Credit crew, who were in what was now a sort of ride with me. They weren’t particularly interested. They had something they wanted to get to, once the ride was over.

So, we all got off and proceeded to walk down a long, carpeted stairway (with rubberized edges to each step, bolted down with large aluminum caps). I inadvertently made eye contact with an asian fellow with a microphone and a camera crew. I think it was the hat that I was wearing which caught the guy’s attention. (Not sure what the significance really was of this hat, aside from the fact that it was given to me shortly beforehand.)

He asked me a question, to which I replied in the affirmative. I stopped, as it seemed he wanted some kind of an interview, dealing with the event we were attention. Everyone else in the Insert Credit crew had gone on ahead by this point; they weren’t paying attention to my absence. I figured that I’d be able to catch up with them eventually, if I could remember where they were off to.

The fellow filmed me for about three seconds, before he became distracted. I was a bit disappointed, as I intended to give him a wholly unexpected impression about the kinds of people who were attending this event.

Bored, I began executing complicated martial arts moves, up and down the stairwell, often using the bannister as a tool. The reporter fellow eventually wandered off, leaving me alone there.

At about that time, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. The boss at Insert Credit — ex-Sega of America honcho Peter Moore — was in the midst of a private meeting (in a very public lounge area, through which traffic was continuously flowing) with someone from SNK. A really powerful Star Wars game was being demonstrated, on Neo-Geo hardware.

Thing is, as impressive as it was, at the end of every level there were still stylized character portraits with cheesy Engrish quotes written underneath. A Jedi would be saying something like “That’s the last time you mess with the force, dweebenheimer!”

They didn’t seem to mind me watching (if they noticed me at all), so I hung around. After the Star Wars demo ended, a full-motion animated version of Ulala appeared, to boogie along to the Talking Heads’ song “I Zimbra”. She kept pawing at her private areas.

A bunch of text and a mostly-indecipherable Japanese voiceover elucidated the start of some facts about Ulala, including that she has a last name which was eliminated before the first game went into production. It was in kanji, though, so I couldn’t read it.

I think this was a trailer for either a new Space Channel 5 game, or an animated movie based upon the games. It was difficult to tell — especially since after only a few moments of this, I happened to wake up.

UPDATE: Read it again, for the first time!

And Tingle is not gay.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

In the most recent EGM (or at least the one handed out at E3), Eiji Aonuma admits that two dungeons were cut from Wind Waker. He claims that the decision was made because game was “just too big” as it was.

Considering how small the game is in its current state, and how awkwardly its flow is broken at those points, somehow this explanation doesn’t… exactly ring true. Again, the game was rushed. This doesn’t sound like the kind of thing for a Nintendo director to speak up about, though. Nintendo has enough problems already.

However: Yes.

So was I the only one who really picked up on this, or what?

It’s almost like casual jeans day.

  • Reading time:7 mins read

Game:

A few days ago, having recently acquired my very own copy of Truxton I uncloaked my Genesis — for the playing thereof.

Truxton, I found to be almost identical to Fire Shark — only… not as much fun. I can’t get past the beginning of level two without some dumb ship popping out of nowhere and running into my back before I know what’s up.

Still. It’s there. And now so is my Genesis. Being it that I’m on this Castlevania kick — again — I pulled out my Majesco-republished (and thereby terribly-boxed) copy of Bloodlines. As not entirely bad as this game is, I’ve rarely bothered to play it past the second level or so. The game is difficult — but in a more floaty way than I expect from Castlevania. It lacks some charm. As applaudable as Michiru Yamane‘s music might be, her sound effects are entirely loathsome. All in all, the game is just kind of… well, again — it’s there.

On one default set of two continues, I managed to get to… what I think should be Dracula’s final form: a big, fake Mode-7 demon with a face in his crotch. I might even have beaten him; I had the pattern down and everything. He didn’t have much life left. And yet: I didn’t dodge when I should’ve.

Still. Bloodlines. Last form (?) of last boss. Not bad, I say. Dare I suppose, better than you.

If you’ve actually beaten the game, don’t tell me. Let me feel special for the moment.

Movie:

The Italian Job: Sure.

It’s got energy. It’s certainly nothing special in its own right; all I could think of, from the premise on out, were the observations of Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. Still, it’s very well-made. It has a great sense of momentum. The plot doesn’t follow through on any of the stupid possibilities that it coudl have; it manages to dodge away — fairly — every time it approaches a potentially-unsatisfying easy answer. Not once did I feel insulted or cheated. I felt tense when I was supposed to feel tense. I cared when I was supposed to care.

I think the whole Napster bit could have been minimized. The movie also acted as a rather obvious commercial for those mini cars (which I don’t believe are real Minis, as such — not that I know anything of, or much care about, cars). Still, not enough to overly stretch my patience.

So. Yeah. For what it is, it’s certainly worthwhile. There’s not much to study, but it’s enjoyable just in the fact that it’s so unusually competent. It feels more European than American — which might explain the previous observation.

UPDATE:

According to Ebert: “This is just the movie for two hours of mindless escapism on a relatively skilled professional level.”

Didn’t I just say that?

Music (and… Game, again):

Harmony of Dissonance: seriously, this game has to possess the most powerful soundtrack in the whole series. Most Castlevanias have really impressive power-melodies. The NES trilogy: if Bach (not J.S.; perhaps a lesser Bach) were aware of 20th century music, this might be what he’d have come up with. Circle of the Moon has some of the most lush, layered, driving, just plain fun music in the series.

However: the HoD score is the only one to really make me feel anything in particular. The more closely I listen, the more impressed I become. This isn’t just videogame music. There’s something else going on here; a certain kind of genius, or at least wild inspiration. The contrasting melodies swirl into madness, creating a dark updraft for the player — instilling an unsettled momentum into his musculature.

The bass takes up the central melody role, holding the piece together while the lead stutters incoherently. The entire piece pulls in its legs, rotating more and more tightly, getting all the stronger — until it snaps; it lets go, carrying the player to sanity with one key breeze. There’s but one escape, and the music finds it — yet it doesn’t stop. It must keep going while the player remains dazed from the last bit of overstimulation. It has places to go. It can’t let the player loose to drift away. It can’t break the atmosphere.

All of the parts speak to each other. They’re not just there to fill out the orchestration, as in so many other soundtracks in this series. They argue. They trade off. They team up. They go in their own disparate directions, then crtash back together again. They listen. They respond.

This soundtrack knows what it’s doing. It has an intelligence to it. It has a personality unto itself. It would be worth talking to.

Again, I can’t say that about the Aria of Sorrow score. That music is just… nice. And appropriate. It’s… there. It has no personality of its own — and I imagine that’s probably the whole intent. People screamed so much about the HoD score that Igarashi must’ve told Yamane to give him something more typical this time around. It looks like it’s worked, given the popular reaction.

Sigh.

See, this is where informed feedback could do a developer well. I’ve slowly been poring my way through the free magazines that I got at E3 — and, man. I’ve yet to see one thoughtful critique. One interesting, well-considered argument. The obviously lousy games get bad scores. The high-profile games get good scores. The ones in between are gernally analyzed on the basis of a few random observations which might or might not have anything to do with the intent of the game in question. It’s hard to tell.

HoD gets a 9.5, because it must — although note is made of the terrible soundtrack. In this case, the reviewer doesn’t even bother to explain that it sounds like NES music (!). Then, neither does he vaguely brush off its composition, as in so many web reviews. Not enough space to explain. Must conserve words.

Metroid Fusion gets a 9.5. Why? Because it must. Show some respect for the Gameboy game of the year, people. Everyone knows that Metroid is flawless. Reword the press release, and perpetuate the consumer cycle. Even if it’s not perfect, so what. It’s one of the best games ever. Must show the proper respect. Mustn’t question the publishers (aside from Acclaim; they’re okay to bash at will), or they might complain. Can’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Since E3, I’ve come to the realization that the game industry — at least over here — seems to be made up of a million frat boys, all in it for the ride. And I’m not just talking about the “journalists”.

Let’s talk about the journalists, though. Brandon asks two or three well-informed questions. He listens to the responses, and asks follow-up questions. PR guy, astonished, comments that Brandon “should work for CNN”. So: how has everyone else been acting? Brandon was only being professional.

Then I remember the reviews I see on IGN and — particularly — Gamespot: the big sites. Then I remember the way news travels — rarely credited or researched with so much as a phone call. Then I overhear Tim’s experiences with a particular site to which he contributed for… about two or three weeks. Then I come home and I read the fucking press releases.Then I read the magazines.

…

I… was going to say more, but I’m beginning to tire — both of this subject, and in a more general sense. Maybe I’ll pick up this thread later.

For now: EGM continues to be not-all-that-bad.