A few years ago my lovely wife bought an Atari 2600 for my birthday off eBay. Needless to say, any geek would fall over backwards at the prospect of being able to hold real cartridges again. The tactile reality of physical hardware eclipses even the finest emulator.

Hooking up the seldom used VHF connector to a modern LCD was like email morse code. “Good day sir, I find your strange 1080p disturbing. Would we not want to snack on these fine leeks instead?” The 2600 looks superbly craptastic as God intended. 4mhz in an air sealed box. Heating issues? What heat would be generated from a hamster brain? Hamsters don’t have modern issues like headaches and stress. There’s no grills, fans, heatsinks, red rings of death, 1000w power supplies or air conditioning bills to worry about. It’s *plink*, *bonk* and squares.

The system came with the more modern clicking controllers. They are shaped like lima beans and have little red triggers underneath. I was intrigued but this was not the controller I grew up with. I grew up with the Atari 5200 controller with the skirt around the joystick that looks like a 1994 RX-7 manual shifter skirt. So I ordered one off amazon, used, for $12. It came a few weeks later, from a Mom & Pop shop with names I couldn’t pronounce. The controller has a small scratch on the plastic cord as if it’s stripping but there’s plenty of insulation to go before she breaks.

I hooked it up and didn’t get much for video. I giggled some cables, blew the cartridge and flipped the switch and eventually saw a (c) 1981. Ah, brisk.

The weather around here has been especially rainy and cold. Mother Nature might have lost her Cliff-Notes� for “August”. She’s reminding me of winter and Xmas and the impending deluge of new crap about to metaphorically rain down for great financial year justice.

I’m still working through Odin Sphere which was on a list similar to the one below at one point. It was a title that I had high hopes for; hopes of granjuer far and away from what the game actually plays like. But it’s not a bad thing. It’s like instead of meeting Kirsten Dunst and immediately making out to Queen’s “We are the Champions” on an epic snowy peak at first introduction, I got her autograph and made a joke she laughed at. Odin Sphere is still cool even if it’s Mario Bros, in a loop, with leveling.

What’s up with the orange box? It’s like a temporary warning sign or even a reminder of the temporary placement textures that they use to design the level. I’m about to get on a tangent, hold on to your seatbelts … A while ago, back in 2004, Valve released some very preliminary screenshots of HL2 and they included these orange textures you see in the screenshot above. Placeholders? I was honestly impressed at the numbering and polish of the text that essentially to me reads like internal filenames. To me internal polish is ten-fold more impressive than public-facing polish.

The new TV is a blessing and a curse. As the credit card balance festers, laughs and eventually leaps at me like a Sumatran Tiger I didn’t see; I crouch down behind 1080p specs and marketed contrast ratios hoping they actually do something. But then my nightmarish attacker evaporates when I download a 1080p trailer for Wall-E, the new Pixar film. It’s crystal clear, even to 3rd party wifey units who maybe are not so influenced by technical and marketing hype.

I beat Paper Mario:TTYD yesterday. It was my fourth attempt at the final boss, the shadow queen. Annoyingly, every time you reach her, a 10 minute narrative plays and you have to sit through lots of dialoge and scenery. If you lose against the final boss, game over and you have to watch the narrative again.

So after losing three times, I spent a week leveling up and finishing the major side events. For example, a 45 minute gaunlet run called “The Pit of 100 Trials” or something like that where you fight enemy after enemy non-stop in a pit of doom. After completing it, you get some cool badges (badges do different things in the game) and it was a good way to train up to guarantee a victory in my 4th attempt to wrap the game up.

Paper Mario feels like an interactive pop-up book. Things animate and shift as if they are made of kid-papyrus. But the game mechanics are so classicly turn-based RPG, the older crowd can’t help be excited by the Final Fantasy training wheels. While riding a Barbie bike,

The styling is very original, borrowing from the Nintendo64 version. And it looks like the Wii version (Super Paper Mario) looks like a worthy sequel. I’m sure it’ll be fun but I think I might try to finish up Super Mario Sunshine on the GameCube before moving on to a new title. I never finish anything, turning over a new leaf has lately meant lots of reading on Gamefaqs and burning the motivation oil to a crisp until the tedious last hours of a game (long after it feels like it should be done) is finally gone and a The End sign signals closure.

Paper Mario is underappreciated but at the same time there are dark corners of the web that house fanboys (and girls .. fanpeople?) so extreme that I wonder if they know narratives and character development can be found in more mainstream forms. Instead of writing that fan-fiction piece that only 20 people on usenet read, how about doing fantasy football or NFL fanfiction, oops nevermind NFL fanfiction, it’s already been done. What:

John Elway knew immediately that something was amis when he walked into his study.

But disregarding the eerie fanatasicm over an obscure Gamecube title, it was an enjoyable story with toddler-RPG game mechanics so adorable that you could help but eek out a girlish yelp when you see “Happy Heart” is really a Regen spell, “Power Lift” is a buff and the best way to grind is fighting Amazing Dayzees on the Twilight Trail.

At the end of it, I was level 40 and put in about 50-60 hours over 3 years. Yes, 3 years … very, very sporatic and occasional.

Arstechnica has a post discussing the upcoming karoke-game-on-crack, Rock Band. It’s the Guitar Hero you know and love (but I’ve never owned) plus plastic drums and a microphone. I think the entire setup gets you a four person band. I’ll get to that in a second. What had me rofl’ing like a wofl’ing (note, this is a wofl: #) is a single sentence made by ars writer Ben Kurchera who says:

Ben Kurchera: “This is the first game that’s lead me to consider buying a bigger house to play a video game.”

Hilariously true. But he might consider a smaller house to afford a video game with the $300 plastic peripheral expense required to play Rock Band. Or store Rock Band? Where are these plastic instruments going to go when they are not being played? Is this a bit different than displaying racks of DVD cases or proudly mounting guitars on the wall? Will the plastic musical controllers end up in the sports bin next to the soccer ball that no one kicks? I don’t know, my PS2 racing wheel wants badly to work with the PS3 in the future. I hope it does so it can lose its dust.

Another thing that Joystiq mentioned their first hands-on experience with Rock Band, the apologized to the keyboard players out there saying that there was no virtual keyboard band member in the game. A sad day for myself but I think it would be bad practice; playing real-life Ping Pong always screws up my real-life Tennis game.

Joystick said that Rock Band would disappoint the Rick Wakeman fans by skipping the keyboardist band member. Wait, who? Rick Wakeman? Uh-oh, I’m supposed to know this. Oh, yeah .. right … that Yes guy. Yes, I know his stuff but how about you say Yes next time? I’m not good with names and Rick Rubin is already taking up a lot of room in my musician name brain space.

Guitar Hero came to appease the mass audience just as Guitar Center appeases the mass would-be noodlers. There’s no Harmonica Center even though Guitar Center sells harmonicas. So if everyone wants to play lead guitar, who’s going to sing “Don’t Fear the Reaper”? No one without a few beers. I think the guitar controllers of Rock Band will never hit the closet or the floor. So maybe people should just buy Guitar Hero III instead?

Of course I thought the amount of controller commitment in Guitar Hero would sink it straight out. And yet here comes Guitar Hero III in full force, commanding all different types of fake plastic guitars on various platforms. They have fake plastic wireless guitars, fake plastic replica guitars, fake plastic flying-v guitars and even limited editions. So maybe my group of friends is different than the other groups in the world with large gaming rooms and large desire for fake plastic skills.

My wife is going out of town this weekend. The Wookie and I might get together for some BBQ and God of War 2. Would be a opportune time for me to show him the cardboard box that I just ran into.

The cardboard box is something of a recurring theme in vgcats, the comic. I didn’t and don’t understand it at all having never really played any of the Metal Gear Solid series. I’m playing it now but I use the term playing for me mashing the controller with my face and having all the guards come running at me. It’s a stealth game. And where you’re supposed to move like a snake in the grass, the guards come running at me because I move like a rake in the ass.

I’m following a walkthrough as usual. It’s by this guy named Alex Eagleson. He writes a ton of guides on gamefaqs. He must have a lot of time (some would say the same of me). But he’s exceptional at not making dumb jokes or giving instructions like “go here and do stuff”. So I sent him an email thanking him for his great guides.

From: Chris
To: _beleted_@gmail.com
Subject: Love your work on gamefaqs.

Just wanted to write you a note thanking you for your obvious hard work on so many games that I couldn’t have possibly beaten without your well-written guides. Your style is funny and informative but not kiddy and confusing. I look for A l e x on any gamefaq page especially RPGs) that I don’t want to stumble through or be confused again when I put them down for two months.

I’m glad you included your email because as I’ve read your guides exclusively for hours on RE4, FFXII, GTA:SA and currently Xenosaga1 it’s less like reading a FAQ and more like beating a game with a friend that speaks my language in shorthand.

Good job Alex, you’ve allowed me to put down and pick up games without the annoying gamer “metal RAM” problem: “where the hell was I?”

He quietly replied:

Alex <_beleted_ @gmail.com> to me
From: Alex <_beleted_ @gmail.com>
To: Chris
Subject: Re: Love your work on gamefaqs.

Thank you very much

-Alex

So although it’s such a small deal, it’s a cool feeling talking to a personal celebrity on the Internet which flattens so much information and stardom.

Xenosaga has it’s flaws. Oh, flaws.

1. Too many cutscenes.
2. Too nerdy even for me.
3. Too slow of an interface. When you leave a battle, you have to wait for the engine to finish fading out before doing something, like getting into the menu to heal yourself.
4. You don’t actually need to tweak your dudes. It’s like a movie with fighting thrown in.
5. Makes me ashamed to play it. Who the hell plays/writes this anime fanboy shit! I WILL NOT JOIN YOU!
6. It’s not the artsy anime, it’s the lonely-drama type. Whatever.

Anyway, I burned through most of it with a walkthrough as fast as possible. Just want to get through it. I don’t care about uber-leveling and grinding on the same horseshit when I come home from work. And especially as the toy-characters developed I just wanted it to be over like a romantic-comedy wife-offering movie-date. Wah right?

Well I don’t know what I expected from NAMCO, a company I associate with plastic toys and shavers (oh Nor-el-co). But none of the people in this 80-hour story seem to be over the age of 11. And of course they have like massive dish-saucer eyes. It’s an embarrassing gameplay experience. When someone walks in the room, I throw a towel over my monitor as if burying my secret masturbating parrot.

“Gwak! Lame as shit! Lame as shit!”

So 68 hours later, I feel nothing but relief as I realize I’m on the proverbial last boss. It’s the final countdown, I prep, I read, I get ready to trade this thing in. And then I die.

More specifically on how I got my ass handed to me, this massive end-boss comes out in a typical scary fashion and the background art promptly changes to melting feathers and marshmellows instead of the techno-metal architecture. While the scenery is changing from metal and wires to heaven and sugar, the music changes to a floatly original piece that I’ve never heard before. Yep. This is definitely the last guy. Everytime the last guy comes out, you see new art and new music. Hell, I know this tune. This is the “omg positive jp epic climax ending” scene. And it’s somewhat relaxing with my 3 guys doing their thing with 900hp.

And then the boss hits all of my guys for 1100hp. “What in the flying fuck?” Some ability called like Dark Omen or something. Completely killed me. Game Over. It was 1am. What do I do? 1am, I gotta go to sleep. So I do. I curse Dark Omen, I flip, I curse and I sleep. Game Over, Day Over.

Next day, I read. I get some ideas from folks online. A lot of them involve running around and getting stronger (grinding), something I intentionally wanted to avoid. But apparently I was rushing too much. So I grabbed a book and pressed “triangle” while reading. That’s about all there is to it. After an hour, I put my book down and tried again.

This time it went much better and before I knew it I was watching the massively crappy ending. Jesus, it’s bad. It’s like Waterworld meets Battlefield Earth. The icing on the cake is crappy music mostly likely by someone who knew the producer. A swirling musical shit vortex with lightning igniting the fecal gas pockets. Does this abomination unto credits and cut-scenes help sooth my bitter hanging plot threads? No. It antagonizes them. And it’s so obvious that there will be a sequel.

Of course, I own II and III. Somehow I continue to think that consumerism forces quality and my bet is all-in many shrink-wrapped amazon delivery days ago.

Sometimes we all get COMPLACENT – and think you’ve reached the dark and damp bottom to this mineshaft of nerddom we are all tumbling inexplicably down, but then the ground gives way and we find there is many more miles to fall…
–The Wookie

Katamari Damacy = Rolling a Ball

Oh how true. So I beat Katamari Damacy a few days ago and it’s the Yin to the Yang of Xenosaga which I’m trying to burn through as fast as humanly possible and sell it for $USD. Katamari is fun and light whereas Xenosaga is obviously marketed to people more down the Complacent Shaft. So complacent that I suppose they don’t contact real girls without dish-pan saucer eyes and loin-hankerchiefs as costume.

Xenosaga means Nerd Opera in Japanese I guess. It’s not the massive quantity of cut-scenes. I don’t mind replacing TV broadcast waves with a spinning disc. It’s the same basic mechanism while I eat a sandwich and nod along with the plot. I think my biggest issue is the assumption of audience. I’m supposed to be interested in how the main character goes to sleep. How she is flustered and cute when she’s answering email on her futuristic blackberry. I’m supposed to get into the story but it misses me completely and hits the guy behind me who is really rolling a 1d4 while I just casually appreciate the entropy. Let’s skip the pretentiousness and get back to it.

Katamari is a great game. It’s weird as hell. You roll a ball around and collect items to make a ball of a certain size and then the level is over. It’s super simple and it’s super different. The soundtrack was weird as crap. Cows, rainbows, giant cosmos kings and trippy cutscenes are a major thread in the game. There’s no escaping the constant thought of “only in Japan”.

It was perfectly paced and in my massive TODO list of having fun I’m glad that I got through it quickly.

Xenosaga = Leveling in Space

On the flip side is my current game crap. Xenosaga I. It’s a space rpg with a massive story and minimal appeal in combat. I unfortunately bought all three somehow relating consumption to appreciation. That girl above is named MOMO. She’s a robot. Momo means “peach” in Japanese and she’s got peach colored hair of course. She is supposed to be an adult robot but she has the voice of a 12 year old by a voice actress named Sherry Lynn. Don’t judge me yet. This girl at work and I were talking about her annoying voice and she pointed me to her acting resume. I’ve heard her in other films etc and was equally annoyed in those too. All in all, this coworker and I agreed that her voice is like helium on helium.

When you attack with a special move, you announce the name of the attack. So if you press three buttons to perform “Floral Tempest” (scary I know) then your character shouts out Floooral! Tempest! in a very Super-Sayen kinda way. Also of note is the third repetition of the move’s name at the top of the screen which will say simply: Floral Tempest. I usually turn the audio down to avoid hearing the same sample for the 300th time.

The cutscenes are sometimes 20 minutes long and include the ability to pause them. Good feature but am I watching a show here? But after the show is over you are left with a strange bit of gameplay and an amazingly complex leveling and stat system. I’m just not worrying about it until I die, it’s way too complicated and I don’t know if you even need to tweak your peeps to beat the damn game. I haven’t tweaked, learned, spent points in, worried about or otherwise used this complex stat system to beat the 6 or so bosses so far. Very odd.

It’s not all bad, some parts are somewhat fun. The style and design is very Robotech / Transformers. The acting isn’t bad and the story is relevant in itself. But there are glaring things that go against my grain. I should have listened to metacritic which gave Xenosaga I an 80-something. 80-anything is somewhat generous. I wonder if non “anime people already involved in countless dish-play eye drama stories” actually played it all the way to the end …

Ordered Ikaruga from someone on Amazon. It’s $300 new but I paid $60 for a used copy. It’s out of print apparently. Searches on Froogle didn’t turn up anything. Sixty was painful but Three-Hundred is insanity. A Wii costs less and a Wii might not even play something like this faithfully. It’s really not worth that just for the plastic wrapping. I’m sure Comic Book Guy would disagree.

The Dreamcast crowd seems to dig it. An out of date and under appreciated should-have-been:

Ikaruga, the “spiritual sequel” to Radiant Silvergun, is an unusual game. It is not colorful or upbeat like most shmups; instead, it looks, sounds, and plays like a shmupping epic war drama. Solemn, oppressive, overwhelming at times. Expected anxiously by Dreamcast fans and shmuppers everywhere, this was seen then as the final blast for Sega’s little white box that could.

It’s just an old school arcade shooter for the gamecube. If it’s like R-Type, I’ll put on Chemical Brothers’ Exit Planet Dust and warp back to 1994. Bottle of Shasta optional.

Apparently WoW had a beta event that only certain people could participate in (I was not in it). Eventually the beta had to close but that didn’t keep the people in the beta from going out with a bang. The GMs (root/admin on the game server) also got involved spawning things where they shouldn’t be, causing mass quantities of X to do Y to Z.

Tseric is a widely known GM within the community. He apparently turned himself into a giant demon thingy with the guild name of Less QQ More PewPew. QQ is a way of saying crying because it looks like two eyes with tears:
O_o
o_Q
Q_Q

Pew pew is of course the sound that lasers make. Of course! Pew! Pew! My lazorz!. Makes perfect sense as a phrase, perfect for shouting at drive-thru windows at 80mph. Right? Perfect sense? Ok, maybe not.

So what Tseric is saying is stop crying, start shooting lasers. Certainly at the least, words to live by.

Tseric is now riding a smoking demon horse of some kind while an innocent player asks, Tsericc, is this for all the mean posts we’ve ever made?. Killing the joke completely this is because the WoW forums are generally full of whiny nerds with too much time on their hands (ref: this post you are reading). And one of Tseric’s jobs is to moderate these forums and generally be a community liaison.

Mildly hilarious for an impromtu event closing out a bunch of beta servers.

Yep, this is going to be an obscure one.

FFXII has a little save crystal that when you press (X), you can save your game. It’s a model that is approximately the size of the player’s character and it rotates slowly. Nothing special but on the PS2 I thought it was well executed. For the platform it’s on, I think it’s one of the most interesting and deep models in a PS2 game and sadly I wish they had waited for the PS3 to do FF12.

Of course no one cares. People care so little that there isn’t even a google image search that comes up with anything reasonable. So I’m posting my own set of shots strategically named so that hopefully the Googlemobile picks it up and the greater good is … well … more gooder.

Behold! A meaningless set of screenshots from a video game!

Notice how the edges are a bit black, I wonder if that’s a function of lighting or a function of material. Also interesting is that doing a polygon with sharp edges is so easy with modelling that I guess they focused on the pretty “illusion of glass” stuff. You can really see this effect strongly in the 3rd picture at the bottom tip of the shard.

Neat.