SEGA

Analysis analysis

  • Reading time:2 mins read

See, my major problems were in figuring out what the heck to do with Wow, Sega Rosso, and UGA. Smilebit seemed the most obvious choice for a sports team. The other five teams, I knew weren’t dispensible.

I also didn’t forsee that Sega would be hiring more staff to form Suzuki’s new team; I just assumed from what had been reported that the current divisions would be reorganized. That’s what all of the news had implied, previously to the more recent announcements.

With that assumption, what I tried to do is figure out how to remold Sega Rosso, UGA, and Wow into some new form.

Wow was the biggest question mark, as they’re actually a pretty big team. As it turns out, they’re too big. I guess I was just desperate to get rid of them. I wanted to split them into kibble.

In contrast, I knew that UGA and Sega Rosso would vanish somehow, in whole. I tried to merge them into that new arcade team (as it had been reported), because they needed to go somewhere. Instead, they’ve being absorbed into Sonicteam and Hitmaker. Fair enough. Whatever.

Now it looks like we’re not even getting a new arcade team, but a cinematic online game team. Uh?

Meet your friends in Yokosuka! Play darts against enemies!

Hey… actually. That… might not not-work. Hmm.

Regardless. Given the information I was given, I rather like how I handled that. The one big surprise is the outright merger of Wow and Overworks, although in retrospect it… is a little less not-obvious.

Now. If I had just been given complete and correct working information from the get-go, I might have been even more onto something.

Woo. Need to work on my sources. And then I will be unstoppable.

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!

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

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Acqusitions for the day:

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

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

HuzYAH, I say.

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

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

Or would I?

I’m just so mysterious.

Backal notes

  • Reading time:1 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve a feeling this mandate came from CRI.

Grr. Fie and demons.

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

Note: Bethesda wants to send me games!

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

Say “Guh”

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Sega hasn’t had much to say, so far. Their booth space occupies about a third to a quarter of the area devoted to Sony or Nintendo. Many high-profile, recently-announced games (Dororo, Kunoichi, Shining Force) are absent. Others, like Altered Beast, are relegated to a short and uninformative video loop.

It’s entirely possible that Sega is keeping all of the interesting stuff locked up until tomorrow, the last day of the show. We’ll see, we’ll see.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Break on through to the other side

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Sega claims that SA:DX (now named, in full, “Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut“) has five hours of new gameplay in addition to all of the other additions.

A “mission mode” has been added, for COLLECTING JOY. This is where one unlocks “exclusive items”, “secrets”, and the Gamegear games. Whether this mode is what constitutes the five purported hours of new gameplay, I don’t know.

Personally, I don’t think that the emblem-hunting in the Sonic Adventure games counts as real gameplay. The story mode is the actual game. Being forced to go back in and perform inane stunts under arbitrary limitations just seems like a waste of time and energy to me.

I suppose it’s better that the emblems actually do something now, though. Or maybe it’s not. At least I knew I wasn’t missing anything by not bothering with a number of the more annoying ones.

My patience is really starting to wear thin with such thinly-veiled time sponges; tasks which have no substantial reason to exist, other than so as to keep the player glued to the game for an unnaturally, unhealthfully long time. As far as game design goes, it’s manipulative, lazy, and not at all intriguing. Worse, it’s becoming so omnipresent — even where it just doesn’t belong.

It’s… starting to make me dislike videogames in general, at least as they are at present.

I feel not unlike how I felt a decade ago. My levels of disgust and apathy are being strained.

I don’t intend to give up. That’d be too easy. I did it once before, and in the process, I missed most of a generation. Yet, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to care about a lot of what’s out there today.

The industry is entering a rut just as pathetic as the one of ten years ago. Not as damning as the one of 1984, but…

…

there’s a pattern here.

I’m starting to think that there really needs to be a shakedown.

For a while, I’ve been watching its approach. The old guard, as it were, is going to have to either get with the picture soon or it’s going to fall apart. The trouble has already long since begun, spreading the fallout of an industry’s greed and ineptitude as wide as possible so as not to choke the largest perpetrators in their own filth. Meanwhile, a new generation seems to be quietly, humbly (for the moment) emerging — far enough away that the garbage isn’t nearly as much of a problem.

The established head of the industry is flat out of ideas. It’s just going through the motions, without any real understanding anymore for why it does what it does. (Sort of like KoF2002, or any contemporary RPG you might choose to pick up.) There’s no foundation anymore. The old-world elite have been doing what they’ve been doing for so long that they don’t even remember why they’re doing it.

The benefit about new blood, from a separate world, is that it doesn’t have these problems; assuming that the newcomers understand where they are to begin with, and that they know what they’re doing, the ground is always still within reach. They can easily trace down to see how things stand. It isn’t so hard to retrace and start over if need be. They’re informed by the ideas of the older generation, but those ideas are adapted in such a way that is relevent to the newcomers in the context which they know most well.

This is, I think, the difference between the two things that Nintendo’s been doing lately.

The way that the apprenticeship thing seems to be going at the moment is that the methods are being taught by rote, for their own sake — rather than as possible answers to more fundamental questions.

But on the other hand, Nintendo is also supporting developers like Silicon Knights and Retro; contributing funding, polish, and advice — but allowing the newer houses to find their own direction.

It’s the difference between following a religion and being informed by its philosophy. Following in the footsteps of your forebears, or being inspired to do your own work by building upon what came before.

Mrrn.

I can see Eiji Aonuma presenting his game before Miyamoto. “This is how it goes, right?”

Yes, technically…

But… no.

I’ve yet to pay for a Gamecube game.

  • Reading time:6 mins read

I’ve got the OoT disc now. It’s… a decent port.

At the point I’m at now, I just beat Gohma and hit Hyrule Field again. Golly, it was a lot quicker this time around. The first time I played this portion of the game, I think it took me several hours to get as far as this. Now it’s taken me only around half an hour. Of course I did poke around quite a lot, before.

There are a lot of ads included for Wind Waker (both on the disc and in the packaging), which seems superfluous considering that the only way to get this disc is as a pre-order bonus with that game.

This compilation disc is apparently labeled, officially, as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Master Quest is called “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Master Quest” Which… makes sense. It’s not really a novel game in its own right so much as it is a second quest of OoT. (The instruction booklet doesn’t even bother to distinguish between the games.)

So collectively this disc kind forms the complete version of OoT. OoT DX, as it were.

The actual presentation of this package, I’m not sure about. It was thrown together pretty quickly.

The game disc is printed with the logo and the game title in red and black. The side of the case again simply lists the game as OoT. The back of the case actually goes into a fair amount of detail, considering that this isn’t intended for direct sale. The front is graced with a disappointing excuse for cover art (even more so than usual for Gamecube games). heh. It’s just the two logos against a gradiant background, with a few blurbs.

Just the logos would have been fine, if they were presented elegantly. Not so here. It’s not terrible; it’s just not… amazing.

When you boot up the system, tou’re presented with a screen that’s got an ocarina in the background and then logos (with corresponding pictures of link) in the upper-left and upper-right, for each of the two quests. Then down at the bottom is an option to allow you to view trailers to several other Gamecube and GBA games.

A new mix of Hyrule Field/the original Zelda theme plays in the background.

Below the logos, some… rather loud, overly large text explains the current selection in greater detail; a one-sentence synopsis which honestly seems a little condescending to me.

When you choose either quest, it gives you a splash screen that illustrates the controls for you and asks you if you want to use the rumble feature. Seems again kind of superfluous; they could have just thrown that into the options menu. And the game already teaches you how to play, and the instruction booklet is quite thorough.

The game takes a good while to load once you select one of the two quests. I understand why, of course. But you just get a black screen with a progress bar and a bit of related clip-art pasted above. That could have been more seamless.

The only changes are that it’s in a higher resolution now (and there’s no more of that palette dithering), and the issues with the controls. Any text and icons in the game have been altered to reflect the Gamecube pad a little more closely. The button colors at the top of the screen, for instance.

It’s strange. Not even the frame rate has been brought up. It’s just as choppy as on the N64. Draw distance seems the same.

It’s basically a perfect port. It emulates the positive and the negative of the original game. Including all of the text that you can’t skip and Navi’s over…Naviness. Even the small issues which could have been repaired, generally aren’t. Or they don’t seem to be; all of the graphical and camera engine peculiaries.

The controls are fine. They feel as natural as possible considering the differences between the N64 and Gamecube pads. I think the L trigger, being analog, is a little mushier than what we had before with the Z trigger.

The secondary items work okay. Right now I have slingshot on Y (the missile button in Metroid). Deku nut is X. And I’ve the ocarina set to Z.

It’s a little annoying to have to reach for the C-stick every time Navi starts to whine, though. And I’m not sure yet how it’s going to work once one has to start playing melodies on the ocarina (that’s the only place to access one of the notes).

So that should be… interesting.

The music stutters slightly when one brings up the menu screen.

The game takes a lot of memory for saving — fifteen blocks, to compare to Metroid’s two. This accounts for both the normal game and Master Quest, though.

It also takes a while to save. And as with the loading sequence, the method isn’t as polished as it could be. The screen just goes black, and a clumsy message appears to instruct you NOT to touch the memory card or the power button. Then it says the game has saved, and requires the player to hit “okay” to continue. And it drops back into the game.

Again, that could have been more seamless.

I also… Hmm.

The demo movies are interesting, but I think they’re kind of out-of-place here. They take down the tone of the disc in general. If it were just the two quests, with an elegant selection interface, I think that would take up the respectability several notches. As it is, this feels like… a free bonus disc.

Oddly, Sega’s name doesn’t appear anywhere on the F-Zero trailers. Nor does that of Amusement Vision. I’m not as surprised that Treasure isn’t mentioned in relation to Wario World.

In a big, edited sequence that shows off most of the big games which have been released since the Gamecube’s launch (all the way back to SSBM), PSOep1&2 and Super Monkey Ball 2 are amongst the last two or three items shown.

And there are some odd ones in there. A random James Bond game from EA. Timesplitters 2. Some other things which have little specifically to do with the Gamecube.

It’s more like “we’ve got this too!” than “look at what we’ve got that no one else does!”.

There’s nothing really wrong with the disc, and it’s certainly worth having around. It’s just — I’m surprised that it wasn’t handled with more care than it was. It wouldn’t have been at all difficult to have made things feel a little less cheap.

The games themselves are basically fine, from what I’ve seen so far. It just feels like an N64 perfectly emulated on my Gamecube.

Things To Do!

Cell division

  • Reading time:6 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bigger one, I mean.

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

But this? Ye god.

…

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

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

But perhaps there is.

And perhaps it’s not in Japan?

Who would have thought.

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

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

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

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

Edit:

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

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

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

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

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

And dammit, I want a copy of this soundtrack.

I have an orange.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I got my first issue of Game Developers magazine today. I’ve not really leafed through it in much detail, although I notice an ad for those new Nokia phones that Sega’s planning to support. Actually, there seems to be a pretty big focus on cell phones in this issue. And Lara Croft. Hrm. Tetsuya Mizuguchi appears in a few places with his frosted hair. The cover story is on facial animation and… what appears to be some PC strategy game with which I’m not really familiar.

Also included with this issue was a brochure for the upcoming Game Developers Conference in March. Guh, it’s that soon?

I dreamed in completely non-fluent Japanese, last night. I think I was on a train the whole time.

… I seem to be unusually sensitized right now. Everything feels and sounds and looks about five hundred percent stronger than it should. I hope this calms down, soon. It’s… not very comfortable.

End of report.

Edit: The editor-in-chief of this magazine is female!

The Power Base

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Looking at power base converter…

What is gaming coming to? Used to be such a physical ingenuity to everything…

Bilbo’s Ring!

  • Reading time:5 mins read

Lately I keep waking up with music in my head. I can’t remember what else I’ve had going this week (just a dream yesterday that involved a rare transformer which turned into an intergalactic movie screen), but this time it was the Heatman theme.

As I idly bounced into consciousness, my thoughts ran to clothing. “I should wear a vest when I go to E3. And bring my umbrella. And find that fedora. And… buy a handkerchief.”

Okay. Aside from the bit where the ring falls onto Frodo’s finger and he slips into the wraith world? (I just realized that this scene reminds me a lot of when John Cusack first slips into John Malkovich’s head. Same kind of critical turning moment, where everything is suddenly, violently reframed — and in a sense the movie really begins.) The other scene which really sticks with me from FotR occurs just after Bilbo leaves, near the beginning.

Gandalf is sitting in the foreground, immersed in thought (and pipe smoke), scowling into the fire. Frodo bolts into Bag End in the background, screeches to a halt, and innocently picks up the ring along the way. He notices Gandalf and continues into the foreground. After being addressed a couple of times, Gandalf slowly, creakily turns to Frodo. His eyes drift downward. “…Bilbo’s Ring!” he chimes; quickly, calculatedly putting on as innocent and comforting (yet nevertheless distinctly odd) a smile as he can conjure.

There’s something about the effortless, logical grace of that scene which does a lot to me. “Bilbo! Bilbo! Oh… a… ring? Huh. Hey, Gandalf. Where’s Bilbo? Gandalf? … Hey. Gandalf.” “Oh. Um. Oops. You… have the ring? (Mustn’t show how terrified this makes me…) Hello!”

Part of it is in the framing. Part of it is in the acting. Part of it’s the script. Really, Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen both do so much acting beyond the comparatively corny dialogue they’re often given. They do far more acting with their faces (particularly Frodo’s eyes) than they do with their voices. Christopher Lee, whose dialogue is by far the hammiest, just seems to revel in it. He’s pretty much expressionless; the only interesting glance I can recall out of him is in response to Gandalf’s “Tell me… friend,” line in Isegard.

All of this is why FotR wins me over so much — powerful character and plot moments like these. TTT is relatively absent of them. Just action. And… Ents. And absolutely, thoroughly unneeded flashbacks.

The moment which I remember best from my single viewing of TTT so far? When… the… elf guide fellow from Lothlorien unexpectedly shows up at Helm’s Deep. His presence there. His expression. The way he reacts when Aragorn tries to hug him.

Other than that, it’s mostly just individual shots which I admired for their grace or general beauty — the long shot near the end, when Gandalf and Eomer’s men are charging down the hill; the shot by the graves in Rohan, with the flower in the foreground for about half a second; the shot where Frodo wigs out and pulls Sting on Sam.

I just didn’t have much of anything to lock onto in this movie. Again, maybe if I see it again now that I know what to expect… But I mostly just felt like I was… observing actions rather than intimately taking part in something increasingly important, along with interesting characters.

It’s the acting, and it’s the beats which sell the experience. There was too little and too few, here.

Water. Yes.

Edit: All of that? That’s partially why I said we need more Eomer. He was a really interesting character, but barely used. He needed another scene somewhere before his reappearance. So did Gandalf. And we needed more Frodo. And more for Merry and Pippin to actually do.

Aragorn and Legolas are frankly boring on their own. Some people complain about his use as comic relief, but Gimli provided some of the only actual personality in the film. And it was greatly needed. I can’t imagine the movie working as well (and it really didn’t work very well!) without Gimli being so… Dwarfy. Sam was kind of interesting, but abrasive. Frodo didn’t do much other than walk into walls in the annoyingly few scenes he was actually in; he did little really interesting or involving acting at all. Gollum was a selfish scene-stealer; I think he needed to be brought down a notch or two, to blend in better.

Really, the only bits of absorbing personality in the film come from Gimli, Eomer, and what little Gandalf we see. Considering that the movie pretty much uses them as decoration while it focuses almost entirely on the boring characters and on special effects — well, you can see how it might fall a little flat.

This is aside, again, from the editing. Gah. Not going to get into that mess again.

Phantasy Star Collection (GBA/THQ)

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Phantasy Star II, on a Game Boy. How surreal.

Here we’ve got one of the most important videogames of all time, prohibitively expensive at release for the then-new Sega Genesis. Now the game rests on a 1-1/2″ x 2-1/4″ silicon wafer, shouldered by both its predecessor and its successor. Together, the three games now go for less than thirty dollars, and are accessible anywhere you can tote your Hello-Kitty-pink Gameboy Advance.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

At the end of the time which can never be returned to…

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Without a doubt, the most meaningful moment of Phantasy Star: End of the Millennium, in my eyes: the opening sequence.

Wow. I mean, just… the power. The timing. The music. The choice of words (translation aside). The frankness, and yet the subtlety.

Especially after coming off of Phantasy Star II, and knowing what happened in that game, and the note on which it ended. We were… really left in a cliffhanger there. And now it’s shown what the results were of the catastrophes we all witnessed five years earlier.

Just… shit, quite frankly. How lucid and matter-of-fact it all is.

Every time I watch that intro, I get a chill up and down my spine. Sometimes my eyes begin to get a little bleary.

The game itself, I feel is in some respects the least interesting out of the entire series. It’s certainly the best made, but there’s almost nothing new in it. It’s not about new things; it’s about old ones; about reframing, about bringing everything together, and about closure on the most satisfying note possible. The game definitely has charm to it, and I don’t think there’s ever been a better gift given to a series’ fans than EotM — but in some ways it feels so much like every other RPG out there that it loses my attention rather quickly.

Also, in terms of the story and surrounding details, EotM has so much to say that it never really gives the player time to rest and to get to know the world again. It’s too busy throwing things out, one after the other. Twenty to thirty hours straight of exposition, in comparison to only brief glimpses at overt explanation or reference in the previous games. Maybe for someone with the energy, and who doesn’t mind being yanked around by the arm for an entire game, it’s a little more enjoyable.

Of course, I’m just being a sourpuss here. There’s really nothing wrong with EotM that I can see. But maybe that’s another part of why it bores me so much.

Still, it has its moments…

gah.

UDLR, Chu Chu Chu

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Oy. Anyway, I finally — after far too long — got a copy of ChuChu Rocket! Advance. I played around with it a bit back around the system’s launch last year, so I knew what to expect. And yeah, it’s ChuChu Rocket!. It’s… a little creepy, and generally gives me an oddly wistful sensation, to notice how precisely the game captures its original Dreamcast flavour. I mean, this game still feels like a Dreamcast game. It’s got the same atmosphrere to it that I’ve always associated with the system. Heck, for some reason Sonicteam even tried to emulate the original game’s web page content in the GBA version. If the GBA had only four face buttons rather than the mere two, there’d be almost nothing wrong with this version.

Odd that the GBA suffers from the same problem for which the Dreamcast was always criticized: too few buttons.

As much as I’m glad to finally have a copy around (especially for under ten dollars, as it was), I feel almost a little uncomfortable with the game. It’s hard to place the sensation exactly, and it’s certainly not the game’s fault. Maybe a bit of it is a lingering sadness over the Dreamcast situation which normally manages to stay more or less repressed. But there are some other factors in there as well. Something to do with Sega content on a non-Sega machine? Associations which I’m not willing to bring completely into consciousness? I don’t know.

PROJECT RS-2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Ikaruga, Ikaruga, Ikaruga!

Geh. I haven’t yet slept. I’ve been staying up all night playing Space Channel 5 Part 2 and… the above. The games are blurring together in my mind now… which might not be that bad a thing, considering how much dancing Ikaruga requires. They’re both similarly dynamic. And they both make my heart flutter as few things do.

And right before I bed I flip one last browser window open, to check if PA has yet updated. I begin to think: “Y’know, they should’ve mentioned Ikaruga by now…”

For my next demonstration, I shall change George W. Bush into a semi-dehydrated rutabaga. Just you watch.