videogames

Shadow of a Dream

  • Reading time:1 mins read

SA2 is getting much better now. A bunch of sources had reported that the game seemed sort of disappointing at the outset but that it improved dramatically somewhere in the middle or toward the end. This is more or less accurate.

When I first put in the game, I was basically turned off by its progression, structure, difficulty, and by the evil camera. Now that Lan and I have hacked our way pretty deeply into the story mode, it’s become very fascinating; the plot is now interesting, and somewhat more coherent, the level design is impressive, the bosses are neat, and things in general seem to at last be coming together.

I think I can confidently say that I like this game now — though it’s still got a terrible camera in places, and some of the early level design especially is discouraging. One has to make an effort to figure out how good the game is, and I can see how a lot of people would not do this.

I still have to do research on that magazine thing…

Advancement

  • Reading time:4 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

windup; wind-down

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Have I mentioned recently how beautiful the Sega Genesis is? Truly, Sega has always had the most attractive consoles around (at least almost always…). Compare the snazzy SMS to the hideously boring NES. Compare the Genesis to any other console made. Compare the cute-yet-functional Dreamcast to any of the other three nextgen consoles. Sigh.

Yes, I’m finally dragging the things back into my room just now. I still have cords wrapped around my arms and neck like pythons with AC fangs.

I’m glad I polished these things up a while ago… now if only I could find my copies of Altered Beast, Ghouls ‘N Ghosts, Shadow Dancer, and a couple of other truant items. And if only I had full packaging (box and manual at least) for some of the used items I’ve picked up over the past few years. Hum…

It would be nice to get fully-functioning NES, Genesis, and SMS emulators for the DC so I coud simply burn discs of my complete collections for each console. Saving the Saturn (and GB and NGPC — the GG is included with the SMS in this case), this would put everything I needed in one place.

What would be sort of amusing would be if the emulator discs supported the modem and allowed peer-to-peer multiplayer for Life Force or Streets of Rage, as some Windows emulators have been doing for a while. (Well, not peer-to-peer, usually, in this case — but..)

Hm. Brain slurping around. I’ll be back later.

Breakdown

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Today I tried burning an SNES emulator for the Dreamcast. It’s not exactly an easy process, and I forgot to include a couple of things that I intended (including that Super Robot Wars Gaiden game), but I guess this is just a test run. The emulator, a version of SNES9X, runs very well, if rather slowly — and it lacks SFX chip support, so Starfox and Yoshi’s Island give my poor Dreamcast a nervous breakdown.

The Sega Pushover

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I beat NiGHTS, after nearly a year — first Claris’s game, and then Elliot’s. I see now why the game was split up into two sections like this. Wizeman wasn’t at all difficult to fight, once I was given a chance to see what he did; previously I’d only ever made it to him once, and at that time I was a bit too rattled. But… gee. One can even get hit several times and still be able to beat him without a huge problem. Just getting to him is harder…

This, though, seems to be a typical sort of a Sega style. They make it very, very hard to get to the end — and then once one has gotten there they sort of reward her by making the final encounter pretty trivial. If one has made it that far, they let her enjoy her victory. Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio, and Sonic Adventure are three other examples which pop immediately to mind here. Though — the last battle can often be tricky the first time one gets to it just because one doesn’t know how things work and one is expecting it to be much harder than it is, so one tends to be very jumpy.

Boy. I don’t think I need to use that pronoun again for another week or so.

Water effects

  • Reading time:1 mins read

This morning I had a notion to play Panzer Dragoon. Although I’ve never beaten round three, and only in fact ever gotten there twice, this time I managed to get all the way through chapter four! The fourth one is very, very impressive. Actually, it’s astounding how well this game has held up after six years. I mean, it’s obviously rough. Considering when it came out, though — as a launch title… yikes. I mean. This is pretty impressive now. How must it have seemed in 1995?

The End of the Time After the End

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I figured out the rest of where Phantasy Star Online fits into things. It obviously takes place after The End of the Millennium — perhaps a thousand years, to follow the series trend. Yet the disturbance in this game is related to PSIII, namely the piece of Dark Force that was on the ship Alisia. Unlike all the “major” manifestations of Dark Force, back in Algol, that Dark Force wasn’t destroyed. Further, at the end of the game it did supposedly vow to return in a thousand years.

What I’m thinking then is that somehow the residents of the ship must have buried him on Ragol. Then a couple of thousand years later (a thousand years after EotM), when the rest of the Algonians escaped Algol on the Pioneer ships, they just happen to take the same route as the earlier pilgrims and so find the Dark Force that was left behind by their distant relatives.

Just figured I needed to write this down where I might be able to find it again later.

Motavia and Opportunity

  • Reading time:2 mins read

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

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

Addendum

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Just because I feel like it, here are my top ten most anticipated games at the moment:

  • Shenmue II
  • New Space Channel 5
  • Sonic Adventure 2
  • Eternal Arcadia 2
  • toejam & earl 3
  • Soul Reaver 2
  • Sakura Wars 3
  • gun valkyrie
  • Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
  • Bangai-O

I’m curious about Agartha and Headhunter and Hundred Swords and Farnation, and I eagerly await announcement of a DC port of Planet Harriers or word of the new Chakan game (which seems to have fallen off the face of the planet). SEGAGAGA sounds fascinating in its own strange way, but I doubt I have to worry much about it being released here. So…

Anyway. There’s that.

Rolling Over

  • Reading time:1 mins read

By next weekend, PSO and the two broadband adapters should be waiting for me. Also… just because it wasn’t very much and I needed a keyboard anyway in order to get as much out of PSO as I can, I ordered Typing of the Dead and its particular key peripheral. This will be the last DC game I can get for a long while, I think. Phew…

I still have to deal with these RPGs I grabbed up last month. Hrm.

here’s my advice: Never get a bunch of role-playing games all at once. If you get Shenmue, get Jet Set Radio as your next game. If you get Arcadia, pick up Typing of the Dead or MSR or something next. It just creates an impenetrable clog to have four or five RPGs sitting around, demanding one’s life.

Ah, well. I’m satiated for a while at least. Good thing it’ll be a few months before the flood starts up again.

Oh, as a note — Illustrator is keen. If I can figure out the proper way to combine this with Photoshop, I believe I might create some rather fascinating effects.

Welcome to the Fantasy Zone

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Hey — I got the highest Shenmue Space Harrier score in the state of Maine!

What an achievement, I know. But — well. I suppose it’s something, at least.

Eternal Arcadia indeed

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Arcadia is really quite the lengthy little thing, innit? I’m still on disc 1, and over forty hours into the game. I think I might be approaching the end of this half, but before I continue on my intended way there are still several tasks I wish to accomplish. Yet it amazes me first how long this game continues to persist in being, and second how little one notices this. Evolution felt like a longer game than this, as did Soul Reaver — and yet I’ve put more progressive playtime into this game so far than I have any game in a long while. This is opposed to, say, Code Veronica, which refused to die even if I beat it with a stick.

Total Recall

  • Reading time:1 mins read

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

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

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

Hm.

Yokosuka of the Past

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I managed to finish Shenmue… sigh. At least the sequel should be coming up next year, hopefully. It feels somehow like I’ve witnessed some great historic event now, and I’m beginning to feel oddly wistful for the way things used to be (before the game had ended, that is). The ending also just sprang up and bit me — I didn’t really realize I was that far into the game. Hm. Ah, well… Now I can concentrate on JSR with fewer distractions.

Rummage

  • Reading time:2 mins read

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

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

Glub.

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

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