OutRun2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

As we strolled past the Megaking booth on the show floor, I spotted an OutRun2 machine in the distance. Drawing closer, I noticed that it was a feature of the CRI (now a subdivision of SEGA-AM2) booth. A polite elderly Japanese fellow swiped Brandon’s and my ID cards; he handed us pamphlets and old-fashioned Japanese fans with the CRI logo on them. Only two people were before us. The initial plan was, I — being such a fan of the original OutRun — would play the game, and subsequently write up my impressions. Time was short.

As we waited, I read through a bilingual “Naze Nani CRI” comic, which illustrated for kids on both shores the benefits of MPEG SofDec and the ADX compression algorithm. A middle-aged Asian man stood behind me, arms crossed in front of his ID badge. “Do you like the original?” he asked. We nodded and grinned, politely.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

The Evolution of a Franchise: The Legend of Zelda

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

We arrived late; the conference was already half-over, and the crowd had spilled to standing-room-in-the-hall-outside-the-conference-room-only. An Asian woman with a nervous smile asked us if we wanted headphones — sort of like what people wear during international debates. “Channel two is English” she said. I had no trouble setting my radio to channel two, or turning it on, or even adjusing the volume. Somehow, though, it still refused to work. Being the tall one, Brandon suggested I wedge myself just inside the door. I could see over everyone’s head. Eiji Aonuma stood on-stage, pontificating as if on a PBS special. To his left (and my right) was a large screen, showing a clip of Link, from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, running through the first few scenes of that game.

I turned to Brandon. I pointed toward my radio. Brandon pressed the power button. He adjusted the volume. He fiddled with the antenna. Then he shrugged and began to turn away. A moment later, he grabbed the end of my headphones and plugged them into the radio. My ears began to melt with Hell’s very own translation. I seized the radio and spun the volume dial to half of what it was.

When my senses recovered, Aonuma was talking about all of the little, insignificant details in the Zelda series, and how they bring reality to the game. He spoke of the difference between reality and realism. “To Miyamoto, reality is far more important,” Aonuma explained. This seemed fair enough, if a bit obvious. He then took the time to give several examples of just what reality means in the context of a game like Wind Waker.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

The 2004 Game Developers Choice Awards

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I watched the Academy Awards for the first time, a few weeks ago. The MPAA’s screener ban (instituted in part to cut down on indie competition, under the ruse of piracy prevention) had apparently backfired, as the 2003 nominees consisted of perhaps the most well-chosen bunch of the right movies, for the right awards, that the Academy had ever selected. I thought, hey. Why not.

After an hour and a half, three hundred commercials, Billy Crystal’s singing, Billy Crystal’s unfunny jokes, Billy Crystal’s just-this-side-of-unkind remarks to Clint Eastwood and others, endless Hobbit awards, and Billy Crystal, I wandered away. I now thought I understood, first-hand, the general antipathy for award ceremonies.

With this in mind, I was unsure what to expect when I walked into the IGDA Game Developers Choice Awards. I had read about the Gunpei Yokoi ceremony the year before; that had sounded unconventional and sincere. Yet: it was still an awards ceremony. How long could I tolerate the pomp, I wondered.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (GameCube/SEGA)

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Billy Hatcher is not a bad game, on a mathematical scale; merely unremarkable. Even its bugs and annoyances are, in effect, boring. If the game were more novel and ambitious in its problems, then it would give me some grotesque passion to carry forward. As it is, the game gives me nothing to work with.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Journalism: The Videogame / Chapter 2 – Role Playing

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Videogames are a form of human expression. You can call it art, if you like. You can deny that and call it entertainment. “Art” is merely what happens when the listener starts to apply that entertainment to his own life.

What amazes me is that, as things are now, so few do seem to be listening. We demand and we superficially memorize and cover, yet we’re not willing to put the effort in and meet the games or the people behind them halfway. When we review, we review games as product. As a channel for discussion, we’ve become a weird mix of free PR and advertising, and the latest issue of consumer reports.

Our message is that videogames are objects. The people behind them are their manufacturers, both in a literal and a figurative sense. Our major challenge, then, is to make the leap from understanding videogames as things to viewing them as ideas.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Pugilism Screed Two

  • Reading time:2 mins read

So I’ve here my copy of Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution. As has been established, I obviously have no PS2. So, in attempt to get some value for my purchase, I’ve been flipping through the elaborate-if-monochrome manual.

Something I notice is that we’ve got (similarly!) elaborate profiles for all of the returning (pre-VF4) characters — and yet for all of the new characters (from both versions of VF4), many of the personal details are unknown. No age is listed for any character who’s debuted since VF3.

Curious.

I didn’t realize that Virtua Fighter had a plot. Or that Kagemaru was the “hero”, rather than Akira. I really don’t know what the hell is going on. I suppose it doesn’t much matter. This isn’t SNK.

Actually, now that it hits me: I did know this. In theory. Virtua Fighter has an incredibly complex plot. I just don’t know any of it. It’s never been illustrated in any of the actual games, to my knowledge. Not even a shred of it.

Again: curious.

Brandon wants me to do the HTML for this megarticle thing we’ve got pending. For those of you who aren’t sure to what I refer — well, be patient. It’ll be… big, if nothing else.

A partial cast list:

Ahem.

Please anticipate it!

It occurs to me that it’s been around a year since I’ve really drawn much of anything worth mentioning. I’ve got all of these keen supplies sitting here. Maybe I would do well to break this trend. Who knows what will happen!

It seems the only way I improve artistically is by not-practicing for extended periods. Expect a rebirth of Leonardo (non-turtle), any time now.

Kof, Please

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Where is KoF’03?

I surely can’t be the only one who’s wondering; usually the roster and some hints of the gameplay mechanics are announced by mid-July. And yet, at the time that I write this, SNK Playmore has yet to even confirm that the game is in development, or for which platform it might be intended.

To add to the mystery: when I asked SNK NeoGeo USA Consumer president Ben Herman about the game at E3, he was oddly hesitant. After a few false starts, he said only that it would “make sense” if there were a King of Fighters this year (aside from the 3D one). He wasn’t willing to comment further, but he looked pretty darned unsure to me.

So. What’s going on with this series?

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

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!

The King of Fighters 2002 (DC/Playmore)

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I don’t like The King of Fighters 2002. I don’t consider it in the spirit of the series, or more broadly in the spirit of SNK. Especially after the tremendous success of their previous collaboration, I’m pretty surprised — and saddened — that Eolith and Brezza managed to devise such an inane follow-up.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA/Konami)

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Last year, Harmony of Dissonance presented to me an interesting dilema. Although a better Castlevania game (as such) than KCE Kobe’s Circle of the Moon, Harmony lacks the mindless glee of its (now-apocryphal) predecessor. Indeed, it is rather a heady experience. It’s more well-conceived than Kobe’s game, it has a pleasantly glitchy atmosphere, it’s full of neat continuity. It’s just that it’s not as crunchy; not as much empty fun.

Well, no such dilemma here. Aria of Sorrow is both a good Castlevania game and a fun game on its own right. I daresay, and do say, and am in the process of daring to say, that this is one of the most joyous, well-designed games in the series.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Metal Slug Advance (GBA/Playmore)

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted] and tim rogers

I don’t know if this report even went live on the site. If so, it’s buried in the infrastructure. If not, well, that sort of thing happens at Insert Credit HQ. Either way, it’s here now.

Good gracious! How did this slip through the cracks?

At E3, SNK had a nonplayable demo up of their upcoming Metal Slug game for the GBA. For whatever reason, it seems I’m one of the few people to actually get a solid look at it. (Brandon didn’t even know what I was talking about.)

BioWare!

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

BioWare consists of the most Canadian people I’ve seen in my life. I’ve heard it elsewhere, but it’s true! This is as much an underhanded compliment as it is an abject observation.

Honestly, I expected something a little different from our meeting. I wanted to talk more extensively with some of the developers, to ask about the whole process of running a company of their specific ilk. Unfortunately, we were hit with yet another dose of scheduling difficulty.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Turtles Redeux

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

For all of the booth space and PR devoted to the new Turtles games, they’re really… not all that thrilling, at least if we go straight by the E3 build. Dom might steer you differently. Don’t believe him!

Nor should you believe Donatello, for he is far out-of-character in the E3 trailer. If anyone is to declare the game “fucking rad” under natural circumstances, it should be either Raphael (for the first of the description) or Michelangelo (for the second). For Don to act out so — well, it had to have been scripted.

I don’t know. Playing the games, I’m struck by both a general sense of competence and a sense that these games aren’t receiving quite the amount of care as Konami’s original Turtles lineup.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Bigger, Badder, Back!

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Yes, that’s Vince’s aborted title. I needed to use it somewhere.

So. I’ve not yet finished transcribing the interview, but for those of you who downloaded the .mp3 — recall that question that Brandon asked Ben Herman & Co., regarding Playmore‘s future now that they’ve got back the rights to the SNK name?

I wondered, based on what Mr. Herman told me earlier, whether Playmore intended to revert their name to SNK since they’ve now got the opportunity. When Brandon asked (in my absence), they were… immediately and suspiciously quiet. They weren’t allowed to comment.

As it turns out, Playmore remains Playmore. It’s Sun who’s now become SNK NeoGeo (to match the US, Korea, and Hong Kong branches) — the Sun who publishes all of Playmore’s games; the Sun who manages all of the NeoGeo Land arcade centers; the Sun who recently absorbed Brezza (as I had guessed), making them an in-house team; the Sun who, as a result, was now responsible for developing most of the material that they were publishing.

Sun is Playmore’s main practical division. They handle pretty much everything. And now they’re SNK again. Take a look. If you recall, a year ago the Playmore group was a perplexing web of names. I devoted several entries, just trying to work out what was where. You had Playmore at the top, and then Sun, Brezza, and Noise Factory jointed off of them on the one end. SNK NeoGeo Korea, USA, and Hong Kong stretched out in the other direction. Megaking was more closely involved; the Korean branch of the company was a joint venture between them and Playmore. Evoga and Uno Technology also seemed pretty closely tied into things; it was hard to sort out who had a share in what.

Now, Brezza and Sun are one unit; Sun is now SNK. We’ve got two US branches (arcade and consumer). Aside from Noise Factory and Playmore prime (as it were), everything’s SNK again.

So. Yeah. Some more confirmation for my intuition.

I’m going to go finish that transcription, now. Seems about time.