You're analog! - June 29, 2000 - Chris Jones
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of
the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There
is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Now it's time for one of my
favorite cartoons. It's a sad depressing story about a pathetic coyote who spends every
waking moment of his life in the futile pursuit of a sadistic roadrunner who MOCKS him and
LAUGHS at him as he is repeatedly CRUSHED and MAIMED!...I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT! Don't say we
didn't warn you.
Man, that FFVI topic was the gift that wouldn't stop giving, even after I shot it,
stabbed it, burned the corpse and threw the remains in a toxic waste dump. Not that much
new was actually added to the debate, but I'm all about letting people get their two cents
in.
Feedback on the Wiretap
article was also good, but I'll let the letters speak for themselves.
Onward.
| Flattery will get you... printed |
| Mr. Jones, I loved the wiretap. It again goes to show that the gia is
the leader in intelligent gaming sites (if not the only one) for intelligent gamers. But
in it's brevity it forgot to mention 2 things that are very important to Nintendo's
future.
1. The Dolphin will not come out until a year after the PS2's out in the US (late
2001). Normally this wouldn't be that big of an issue, but we're not talking about any
year, this year is going to be gargantuan for Sony. 2 Final Fantasy's will launch Square's
playonline, EA has come out in full support of Sony their games look to redefine sport
gaming, Namco will bring another great Tekken title, and it will have some surprises no
doubt, Temco will bring a long awaited sequel to their Ninja Gaiden series, and Capcom's
already working on Dino Crisis and RE games for the PS2, and last but not least Konami
will be very close to releasing the beast of MGS2 and a Silent Hill sequel. Nintendo's
best line up ever couldn't compete with such a line up. These games will only further
entrench Sony's already entrenched stance of #1 and deliver a blow that I don't know
Nintendo can recover from, from the start. Sure it might be difficult to develop for the
PS2, but if it makes the most money, people wont care.
2. Nintendo still seems very set on focusing solely on the pre-teen market. Even
"Conker's bad fur day" Nintendo's appeal to "older audiences" still
looks no different than their other games, other than a swear word here and there (which I
don't have to tell you, doesn't make a game mature). With this naive marketing strategy,
Nintendo will again be ignoring the gamers that have moved beyond pre-teen games as they
did by ignoring RPGs on the N64. They lost those gamers from SNES to Sony with this
strategy, and they could loose their N64 gamers to Sony again unless they're willing to
seriously expand their demographic.
This and given that while the N64 is doing okay in the U.S., but it's doing downright
dismal in Japan, it looks like Nintendo has a very hard road ahead of it. But as was said
in wiretap, if Nintendo's smart enough to flow and grow with the gaming market, they might
be able to pull it off.
Mr. Cruz |
We're glad to see you approved of the column, and I'm glad to see I'm getting this kind
of thoughtful feedback from readers on the content. That said, it's time to look at why
you're dead wrong in your analysis.
It's true that the Dolphin may lag behind the PS2 in America by as much as a year, and
the same may also be true in Japan if the rumored March launch date is true. But while
it's not inconceivable that the PS2 could be in overdrive by that point, there are a few
potential barriers. First off, many of the titles you mention, great as they could be, are
still in the announcement/vaporware category. I have no doubt that they will get made, and
that at least a few will be as excellent as we hope they will be. Still, with the
difficulties developers have had with the PS2 so far I don't think we can count on an
overwhelming software lineup at Dolphin launch.
Second, most industry gossip seems to indicate that the Dolphin is much, much easier to
develop for than the PS2. If this is true, then the situation might be no different than
if Nintendo had trailed PS2 by six months, or fewer. Lastly (and this addresses your
second point as well) Sony has all sorts of great 3rd party developers, but Nintendo has
Miyamoto, and a bestiary consisting of Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and maybe even Metroid.
People will buy just to look at these games (I know I will) and based on Miyamoto's
comments about the new Mario game, I don't think the system will be stuck in the same
juvenile mode that turned everyone off the N64. At this point I'm looking at Dolphin as a
real contender, but what happens at Space World will be crucial.
Of course, I expect to be in a Chrono Cross-induced stupor when the Dolphin
announcement is officially made, but I expect I'll catch up with it eventually.
| Regarding Wiretap |
| It was fine I guess, but for me it really didn't tell me anything I
didn't already know about or really put a new perspective into the Dolphin issues.
Nevertheless though, it's a step in the right direction, and I'm looking forward to future
installments and hopefully a little more opinionated commentary - like how Diablo II is
driving the PC RPG industry down the hole. Be brave - speak out - for true peace! -Fares
|
If there was any major complaint about the article it was what Fares mentions - that
there's little new information in the article that a sufficiently obsessive gamer didn't
already know or hadn't figured out for themselves. I'll admit I was mostly just nodding my
head as I read it, saying "yeah, that's true... and that... and that..."
But at the same time it's often useful to have things assembled in one location.
Friends of mine who generally don't pay much attention to gaming read through the article,
and were suitably enlightened, so it did it's job. I also expect to see topics on industry
issues less familiar to gamers in the near future, so stay tuned.
| Really dodged a bullet there |
| Chris I didn't get my FFVI stuff out in time, and now I think its too
late: you should feel lucky. It was over a thousand words when I stopped. It had parts
from my Double Agent application. Dear god, some one shoot me now.
Justin Freeman |
Hey, Arch Nemesis, don't tempt me. I've still got that Agent program running around
here, somewhere, I think...
Oh, right, here it is...
Dammit, he wasn't supposed to do that without my express authorization. But you recover
from massive head trauma pretty well, right? Right? Justin...?
Hmm, maybe it's time for another contest...
| Not another Arch Nemesis contest, tho |
| Chris As I was playing Vagrant Story I noticed something: every single
person in the game is right-handed! If you want to take out someone's attack power, where
do you attack them? Their right arm! Come to think of it, almost all of the games I have
played have right-handed characters!
So, I have a challenge for all you want-to-be-gamers out there: name at least 10
characters, NPCs included, that are southpaws. Any humanoid characters in any game for the
PSX, N64, or DC. I'll assemble a panel of judges to...umm...judge the entries and to
determine a winner, who will be the person with the most left-handed characters. The
winner will receive great recognition and the coveted title "Gamer Y"! You can't
get a better prize than that! Now, go find them lefties!!
-Gamer X "you could be the next winner!" |
The main difficulty with this isn't some sort of prejudice against left-handers, but
rather the fact that few games actually make the distinction. I vaguely remember FFIV
having lefties and righties, but it's been a while since I played it.
Regardless, my curiosity is piqued, so let's hear any candidates you've got. I've also
convinced Gamer X to give the winner run of the alphabet, so if you're inclined to enter
the Gamer organization you can come in as Gamer Q, Z, A, your call. Me, I think long
anonymous serial numbers are much cooler than letters (Gamer #34759384) but what do I
know?
| Gaming, or booze and sex? Tough choice... |
| I'm glad at least one person shared my rushed experience with FFVI. I
made the mistake of trying to play through it over a weekend on a rental. Of course, this
was the year of my independence and I was living in a one room closet over a bar that I
split with another guy, and all around me everyone was busy discovering rampant sex and
alcohol, and it's really hard to dedicate yourself to something like that when people keep
shouting "Come downstairs, you geeky dip! We're doing jello shots! Ha! Heather's bra
just tangled in the ceiling fan!" Needless to say, when I got completely bogged down
in the world of ruin it made it a lot easier to be distracted by the sins of the flesh. I
didn't get around to actually finishing the game until this year, when I played it at a
leisurely pace and enjoyed it a lot more. I've always been such a cheapass that I try
to just rent every rpg available and play them through over a sleepless weekend. The last
time I tried it I think I set a land speed record for Xenogears, though I've been told
that getting through most of the second disc by turning on autofire and wedging the
controller under a table leg is apparently cheating. Anyway, I've since smartened up.
Nobody likes it when you show up at work Monday with blood pouring from your eyes. |
If only I could claim such things were keeping me from enjoying FFVI, but as I said it
was mostly basic calculus and electrical engineering theory. Would that I had those years
back to waste right now!
Growing up in the NES battery-save era pretty well dissuaded me from ever renting
really long games - I'd put 20 hours into a quest and building up my character
"Walker", only to find out the following weekend that someone had started over
and only played 3 hours with "BatButt!2". With the advent of the PSX and
personal memory cards, any such issues are long gone, but the inhibition remains.
And I've never had a problem with bleeding eyes at work - just wear sunglasses and keep
your office unlit, except for the computer screen. Not only will people not be able to see
you real well, they may even think you've been up all night writing code.
| Fun is irrelevant |
| Well, after reading all the "FF6 cured my mother's
leprosy!"(shaddap and let me exaggerate) letters, I thought I'd say something that
hasn't been said yet(or at least, hasn't been printed). I completely agree with why you
don't like FF6, fully and completely, though it is probably my favourite of the
even-numbed FFs. That's simply because I had a good time playing it, and of the rest, 8
rubbed me the wrong way, I found 4 to be completely and utterly boring(no offense to
everyone who gets off on that game), and 2 to be a general black hole for fun. And now
I suppose I'll be needled mercilessly if this gets printed for stating that I subscribe to
the ludicrous notion of how much fun I had playing a game to determine whether I like it
or not.
But that's beside the point. I absolutely agree with what you think about FF6. I think
the game was fine until they flushed the story and characters down the toilet in the World
of Ruin. As a matter of fact, that's probably where -all- my problems with the game lie. I
had no reason to go anywhere in the World of Ruin beyond the fact that the numbers on the
map told me to go somewhere. I gathered all the characters because I knew the last dungeon
was a multi-party thing, not because I had any special attachment to them. And... all the
other stuff you said, too. No point in repeating everything.
Of course, this probably wouldn't ever get printed because it so agrees with you and
disagreeable stuff is a lot more interesting. So... um... hmm... You're a poo-head?
I dunno, doesn't sound very disagreeable. Oh, well.
*-LS-* |
Nope, sorry, not a Poo-head. I always preferred Pokey in the game. (*rimshot*... hey, I
got a million of 'em, folks, unfortunately for you.)
It's not a matter of fun not being an acceptable reason, but how can I or anyone else
argue with that? What's left to say? And if we can't snipe at each other in this column,
then what's the damn point of it all? I might stop writing about RPGs entirely if there
weren't an endless stream of old-schoolers, 2D-ers, DQ fans and Xenogears fanatics to piss
off, and we wouldn't want that, would we?
| This column has enormous growth potential |
| Now is it just me or do the letters in this column seem to be getting
longer and longer? There always used to be those long long rebuttals about the theory of
the universe expanding that someone mailed in in response to some unreasearched joke
someone made that really doesn't belong in this column, which of course I tend to skip
over instantly, but recently every letter, save a few brief ramblings about Gilgamesh,
have become rants. I don't mind reading about everyone's opinions of some new game or
japanese commercial clip you can download from the site. But reading your column is
beginning to feel like *gasp* work. One day, for a change, you should make the topic
for the next day's column be to try and express the most profound point about video gaming
that you can in the fewest number of words. The outcome would surely be humorous. Or
stupid. Either way, you could slack off and do a lousy job on the column for a day. At
least consider it.
-Paranoid Chocobo |
Yesterday's column was way long because I got so many submissions - I seriously feared
for my life if I didn't get as much as I could posted. In contrast, today's column is
really long just to tick you off, Paranoid.
Since I've already taken one suggestion today, one more can't hurt. Haiku as an
expressive form has already been trademarked by... others, but if you can nail the essence
of gaming in some interesting, original way with 100 letters or less, go for it.
| I just can't resist taking one more shot at
FFVI |
| Why does FF6 get all the praise it does? Well, correct me if I'm wrong,
but I don't remember it being such hugely praised when it first came out. Perhaps when the
so-called "new-school" Final Fantasies came out, "hardcore FF fans"
decided that the last "true" Final Fantasy was the best, Square's peak. And
really, World of Ruin aside, doesn't anyone else feel that FF6 was just as linear and
"show RPG"-like as FF7 or 8? The only difference being that the graphics aren't
as flashy. I really don't understand why "hardcore gamers" don't complain more
about FF6. It has all the makings of a game these types of people pick on: it doesn't have
the crystals, there's no main character, every character can magic and magic is actually
GIVEN to you rather than born with you or trained in a job system, and there were
commercials for it on TV, thus making Square "sell-outs", the most overused word
in any community of cultfans for anything. It actually was pretty "new-school",
if that's what you want to call it.
Finally, I really have to comend you on your job. The way you've answered these letters
concerning this whole old-school new school debate, and the fact that really bad letters
have been kept to a minimum is really great. Thanks, really.
-Clyde Hudman |
The problem with this letter is, it places me in the position of defending FFVI if I
want to keep things argumentative. Fortunately, I'm adaptable.
FF6 arguably does have crystals - the Esper shards. They're not elemental crystals in
the traditional sense, but at the time they didn't seem like that big a departure. Also,
at the time most people had only played two previous Final Fantasies, only one of which
really stuck you with a non-customizable party. And while FF6 might have had TV
commercials (but not any I ever saw) the marketing blitz was nowhere near FF7 or 8 levels.
Although if "hardcore gamers" are adverse to lots of ads, they must be
relatively pleased with FF9, Coke commercials aside.
| Today, as yesterday, we end with disemboweling |
| Why disembowel? To my knowledge, a standard disembowelling leaves the
bowels alone (one reason I suspect the process became so popular). Why isn't it called
being delimbed or something? -Ryan |
I started questioning my vocabulary when I got this, but Merriam-Webster online defines
disembowel as: to take out the bowels of, eviscerate, and defines eviscerate as: to
take out the entrails of. I'd ask what you thought disembowel meant, but I think
we've had enough for now.
Closing Comments:
It's Friday, if only in my mind. Regardless, it's the day where I take the restraints
off and let you run wild and free through this little corner of cyberspace. Email me what
you will, and I'll see you tomorrow.
-Chris Jones, digital to the bone |
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