Japan

Series Retrospective: Wild Arms

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As far as RPG series go, one of the smaller ones you don’t hear too much about is Wild Arms. They are the only RPGs I’ve heard of that try to tackle the Wild West as an overall theme, and tend to blend in fantasy and science fiction elements to keep the game interesting for more traditional RPG fans.

Although the plot and setting differ significantly between any two members of the series (with one exception), there are some trends, such as the Guardians, which are summons characters can equip and use. All of the games also have the blessing of Michiko Naruke’s composition talents. Although she was not able to do the full composition for 4, all of the games have excellent music which adds greatly to the atmosphere – in fact, it was hearing the music that brought me to revisit the first and go on to try the rest of the series. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 12.1.06

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Analyst predicts Sony will leave the hardware business
This may be completely stupid and absurd, but then it just may make sense. The recent management shuffle at Sony, some believe, is an indication of things to come. Kutaragi, the Sony hardware guy, has been promoted out of the way and now Kaz Hirai, a software guy, is in charge of Sony’s game division. The theory goes Kutaragi has fucked things up too much and the PS3 may cost Sony money, so by removing their hardware guy and putting in a software guy, they can transition out of hardware and focus on developing software only.

This is slightly hard to believe if only because I was completely unaware that Sony has a significant software division. Ueda and Jaffe aside, what does Sony have to offer gamers? →  Read the rest

Faxanadu and Crystalis

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I’d like to bring a couple of old games to your attention. To me, these games pioneered the Action/RPG genre, which sadly has not received the attention it deserves.

First on the list is Faxanadu. An offshoot of the Dragon Slayer series in Japan (of which we received Faxanadu and Legacy of the Wizard), Faxanadu has much in the way of fantasy stereotypes: your character is an elf, and your mission is to make your way to the World Tree and track down those crazy dwarves who keep shutting off the elves’ water supply (thereby bringing about the deterioration of the world, etc, etc).

Although the plot is there, it is not particularly interesting. The important part is that you keep exploring, crossing vast expanses of diverse terrain, and you fight whatever gets in your way with magic, swords, and items. →  Read the rest

Review – Guitar Hero 2

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You know the feeling of excitement you got as a child trying to sleep on Christmas Eve? That’s the feeling I got waiting for Guitar Hero 2. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t anticipating this game as much as the new Zelda. I don’t think I’m alone, either. With Guitar Hero 1 selling a million copies since its release, there are plenty of wannabe rockers out there who are ready to rip it up all over again. Now the wait is over. No longer do we have to settle for Youtube videos of schmucks who got access to the ten song industry demo laying it down for us. Guitar Hero 2 is here. Are you ready?

You damn well better be, because this sequel waits for no one. The word of the day here is “challenge,” as Guitar Hero 2 challenges both its players and the competition. →  Read the rest

Enough with the androgynous characters

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Team Ninja is obsessed with breasts. This happens to be an obsession most American men (and women) share. Game after game, Tecmo and many other publishers give us girls that make Dolly Pardon look prepubescent. Most thoughtful gamers (or prudes) have already declared this tendency absurd, or at least unrealistic.

Arguing that Team Ninja should be neutered is a position that is seen as pro-women and inclusive. Call Final Fantasy characters effeminate, on the other hand, and you invite accusations of homophobia and narrow-mindedness. Before I justify my stance on the character design of Final Fantasy games and many other Japanese titles, let me first establish what I mean when I say the art is effeminate.

Squall from Final Fantasy VIII looking coy in his furry coat is a good example. →  Read the rest

Numbers are fun!

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In the course of doing my job, I managed to stumble across some information about the stocks of video game companies. Turns out a Bloomberg terminal is a worthwhile investment (when I am not paying for it) after all. Basically, I am now able to put numbers (which will not be precise, since there may be some intellectual property rights at issue) next to musings such as “It seems the DS is selling a lot of unit,” or “What happened to the PSP, are there any games?” Please beware the frequent use of parenthetical statements (such as this one: DS = original DS + DS Lite).

Something that needs to be understood about the way traditional financial statistics apply to the video game industry (and entertainment media generally) is that there is a “round peg, square hole” problem. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 11.17.06

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Sony losing money on each PS3 sold
Selling consoles at a loss is nothing new; it nearly put Sega out of business. But selling a console for a loss of $240 or $300? Those are some big numbers, especially considering Microsoft and Nintendo are making profit on each console they sell. There are a few ways to look at Sony’s situation.

Now if the PS3 had looked like this, it would be worth the money.

The optimistic person would say, “Sony are giving us an awesome bargain and we should thank them by paying homeless people to wait in line for a PS3.” The pessimist would say, “If I want to play PS3 games, I’m forced to buy a friggin super computer with a disc drive that costs over $100 tacked on so they can get a leg up on the upcoming format war.” →  Read the rest

Yet another peculiar top 10 list

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Slightly (extremely) bitter about not having my stories picked up by the big sites, I scour Slashdot, Kotaku, etc for sub par stories that gets attention on a daily basis. Today’s highlight is a top 10 list (where’d they get the idea for this one?) on the “10 lamest game consoles, ever.” Ignore the fiery rage that builds within you when you see misplaced commas and other grammar atrocities. For now, focus on the gross injustice of including the Saturn amongst the Virtual Boy, CDi, 32X and N-Gage.

The guy who proclaimed Prince of Persia: Warrior Within one of the worst games of all time clearly had some input in forming this list. Please name for me the classics for the consoles on this list:

Action Max
N Gage
32X
Gizmondo

In turn, I will name amazing Saturn games: Guardian Heroes, NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining Force 3, Dragon Force, and Bomberman. →  Read the rest

Random PS3-related News:11/13

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Here’s a few things that are going on in the world of Playstation 3 today:

PS3 Backwards Compatibility Less Than Stellar
Reports coming out of Japan are saying that a few PS2 titles are having trouble being played on the super-duper (and extremely rare) PS3. Notable titles are Namco’s Tekken 5, Squenix’s Final Fantasy XI, and the awesomeness that is Guitar Hero.

Yes, you heard right. Guitar Hero’s guitar peripheral is having trouble working on the system, with some buttons being totally ignored. The world has just let out a collective “WTF!” aimed directly at Sony’s crotch.

Tekken 5 has problems running its background music properly, while Final Fantasy XI can’t register the hard-drive that the PS3 has. Sony has already planned to supply a firmware update for the hard-drive issue soon, but no word on when the other issues will be resolved, if at all. →  Read the rest

A brief survey of localiztions

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Ever since the first text-based game came from Japan to American shores, those playing have wondered, “What did the original text say?”

…Well, I have, at least since I was old enough to tell the difference between “A winner is you” and real English. Hearing about and playing odd translations of games is a bit of a hobby of mine.

Thankfully, translations in general are getting much better. Voice acting is much, much better than it has been in the past, although it can still use some work. Let’s look at some localizations past and present as evidence.

Good Localizations

These games leave you with a good feel for spirit of the game. They rarely if ever have grammatical problems, and if there is any voice acting it is well-produced. The story has a feel that is consistent throughout the game. →  Read the rest

Review – King of Fighters 2006

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Beat King of Fighters 2006 on story mode, and you will see the name Falcoon pop up several times, in many important positions. If you are at all familiar with SNK, you might have heard it pop up in discussions from time to time. Is he a gaming auteur, like Kojima or Miyamoto? Is it SNK’s bold new leader?

Not quite. The truth is that the man is just a fan artist that was hired by SNK a few years back, and was somehow given the reigns to the KOF: Maximum Impact series, arguably the most important thing they have going for them right now. KOF 2006 (which is really Maximum Impact 2 with a new name) actually answers the question of “if you put a fan in charge of their favorite game, what will you get?” →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 11.3.06

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Halo movie indefinitely stalled
That a Peter Jackson backed Halo movie probably won’t get made despite the fact that Uwe Boll continually releases game based movies is beyond hilarious. Clearly, if there is a god he is evil, or maybe he just has a great sense of humor.

A scene from the upcoming Castlevania movie.

Castlevania movie coming
Odds are, this movie will be slightly better than Van Helsing. The problem is that Van Helsing is solidly on “so bad it’s good” ground, and so Castlevania, by being better, will be worse. Castlevania’s only hope is to be crappier than Van Helsing (or actually good, but let’s not get crazy) and therefore better. This all makes sense, right?

PS3 launching in Hong Kong and Taiwan on November 17
As an American, it is my god given right to believe I am more important than any damn foreigner. →  Read the rest

Best Game Ever – The history of puzzle games leading up to Baku Baku

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Some day in the far off future, Tetris will be played with six screens. One screen will feature the gameplay while the other five will show images of unrelated games being automatically played. All five other games will be superior to Tetris.

Once upon a time there was an evil Communist engineer named Alexey Pajitnov. Don’t bother asking Alexey if he is an evil Communist because, like all evil Communists, he signed a blood oath with Stalin (and possibly Hitler) to hide his menacing ways should Soviet Russia ever fall. Anyway, Alexey was a genius and in 1985 he bestowed upon the world a video game he liked to call Destroy American Freedoms. This was later renamed Tetris.

The premise of Tetris was to line up American freedoms in order to destroy them. →  Read the rest

Chris loves Jesus part 1

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I’d like to tell you all a little story about me and my friend named Jesus. No, not that Jesus… This Jesus doesn’t save. It uses passwords instead.

I like women who match their bedrooms.

When it comes to obscure and unknown games, it takes a lot to get much less known than Jesus: Dreadful Bio-Monster. Although it came out on several systems in Japan, it saw no English release. Despite the – somewhat recognizable – name, the game bears no teachings, or indeed any characters somewhat resembling, the well-known founder of Christianity (in fact, the name refers to a space station in the game). There is a bio-monster, however, and it inspires dread.

Jesus is an adventure survival horror game developed by Enix and published by King Records. While most console adventure games have some element of action, Jesus more resembles a text-based adventure. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.20.06

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PS1 games downloadable on PS3
Actual good news for Sony? It seems so. The company plans to have their entire PS1 catalogue available, sans the games that are too messy contract-wise. What are the odds they port some Japanese only titles for American downloading? Yeah, zero, I know.

Have stock in Sony?

Sony profit forecast not very encouraging
Among the reasons for the lowered forecast were lower than expect PSP sales, higher than expected Cell processor costs and the lowered PS3 price. If they really needed to stabilize themselves, why not just put out a 360 clone? If the PS3 cost $400 and had the PlayStation exclusives the PS2 had, Sony would’ve easily maintained their #1 position. I guess big risks sometimes pay off, but how about Sony release more big risk games instead of a big risk console? →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.13.06

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Japanese consumers want the PS3
Famitsu surveyed people at the Tokyo Games Show and got some interesting if odd results. Although we are talking about Japan so odd is a relative term. About 56% of those surveyed felt the low end PS3 was pricey. Even considering that the TGS would be full of hardcore gamers, this number seems low. Compare this to the 13% who think the Wii costs too much and 25% who think the 360 is expensive.

When asked what system they most looked forward to, 58% said the PS3 and 34% said the Wii. Contrast this, though, to what people said about which system they plan to buy on launch. 11% said they’d get a PS3 at launch while 18% said they’d get a Wii. Further. 36% said they have no current plan for getting a PS3 and 33% said the same of the Wii. →  Read the rest

Review – Golden Sun

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For the most part, the library of video games consists largely of clones of previously successful games. Games such as Grand Theft Auto III have spawned so many sorry attempts at duplication that a whole new sub-genre was born. There was a time when there was only Grand Theft Auto, and the imitators were yet to join the party. So revolutionary titles do happen. They do not happen frequently, and there are plenty of examples of games that tried to establish something new and failed. I think ChoroQ is an example of this. In trying to create an RPG complete with plot, towns, and dungeon exploration within the context of a racing game (or vice versa) the series (which apparently has several iterations on various systems around the world) tried something unique but ended up making a below average game. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.6.06

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Uwe Boll in talks for a second BloodRayne movie
If you missed the first BloodRayne movie, you owe it to Ed Wood to go see it. It’s not as terribly good as House of the Dead, but its crappiness is better than the mostly just bad Alone in the Dark. I will also be going to see Dungeon Siege on opening knight (hahahahaha, get it?) if anyone wants to join me.

For some odd reason a lot of people hate Boll and want him to have a massive heart attack and die, or at least stop directing movies. I come from the Leprechaun school of horror films (Leprechaun in the Hood is overrated, I recommend Leprechaun in Space) so Boll’s schlock is something I really look forward to. Some argue that movies like BloodRayne keep games from being taken serious. →  Read the rest

Why the PSP is a success

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Many online sources have declared the PSP a failure. Others, including print magazines, haven’t gone that far but have acknowledged the PSP may currently be failing. The difference being the tense of the verb to fail. Here are some declarations that the PSP is dead or dying:

Should we consider the PSP dead?

RIP PSP

PSP: Just Die Already

Developers: The PSP has “failed”

But common wisdom is wrong: the PSP is not a failure; it has actually been quite successful. Sony took on a company that had around 95% of the handheld market. As of July, Sony has shipped 20 million units compared to Nintendo’s 21 million DS’s sold. There is a difference between units shipped and units sold, though how much is up for debate. Let’s take an extreme stance and assume that Sony only sold half of the units they shipped. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 9.29.06

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Opera free on Wii until June ‘07
Though I have absolutely no proof to support this fear, I’m worried that browsing the web on the Wii will require a subscription. Imagine some horrendous system that costs something small like 2 Nintendollars or whatever every time you open the browser. That would seriously limit the time I’d be able to spend on the couch watching pornography with my parents.

I don’t remember playing as an aging guy with a mighty war flute.

Microsoft makes up for broken consoles
Wow, good for them. Does the tracking chip they implant in the machine come free of charge?

The old RPGs are coming
At least in Japan. I may have to play Final Fantasy 6 again, but that’s ok since it’s the pinnacle of the series (Cloud is teh suxx0rs). →  Read the rest