I have learned things today. I now know where the FOR ME TO POOP ON joke comes from - Conan O'Brien. I now know why I should never discuss what my gaming roots are, since I've received a half-dozen letters in the past 24 hours, insistently telling me that I'm not a real, hardcore gamer because I didn't play Ultima 1. Buh-zarre. And lastly, I have learned to love Castlevania: Symphony of the Night once again. This game, quite simply, kicks ass. The music is utterly gorgeous, the graphics are moody and detailed, the animation silky smooth, there's a bucketload of stuff to do and secrets to find, and I just plain like playing it. I'm pretty lousy at it, but when I'm doing badly, I'm still having a blast. I'm yelling at the screen, trash talking at the bosses, testing weapons out to fit my fighting style best. It's one of the ten best games on the Playstation, in my estimation, and a classic on any platform (though I hear the Saturn version is even better). Hooray for Castlevania! I'll get that bastard Vlad Tepes! Aaaaaaieeeeee! | Judgement calls and splitting hairs | Just a comment about not having to finish the game in order to tell it sucks: Perhaps you are right. But have you ever encountered some kind of music orsomething, that you initially did not like but yet, SOME people just LOVEDit, then after listening to it for a long time you grew to love it andcouldn't understand why most people just didn't get it? Maybe this is justmy experience, but I am now at the point where I will listen to music Idon't even remotely like in order to at least gain an appreciation of it. Are videogames any different? It's fine enough to make a game which peopleare really familiar with, and has immediate appeal. It just doesn't giveyou any chance to play any other way. Mario 64, sure, that was greatbecause you can jump about and all, but is that honestly what peopleexpected from Zelda 64? I'm sure Banjo-Kazooie has a manual jump, go playthat. Zelda 64, though it borrows too much from LttP is still very daring.Consider, that basically every Miyamoto game has had manual jump. Zelda 2,which is closest in gameplay to Zelda 64 (detailed swordfighting) has it.Didn't he basically INVENT jumping in videogames? And now with the mosthyped title of his entire career, he decides to ditch it. Maybe he'sgetting bored of it, who knows, I just think it's an extremely cool idea,if only because it's so new. I loved auto-jump, it makes new puzzlespossible. Sure, if you could just jump up walls and such like in mario, youcould reach a lot of skulltula tokens much easier but uh, heh. That's sortof my point. "Mum, it's been 3 hours and I'm not having any fun! I can't get past thefirst dungeon." A perfectly valid criticism, just not that interesting. - Calvin - |
It must be said that jumping in video games predates Miyamoto by several years. Pitfall, anyone? Hell, anyone else remember that C64 game, Jumpman? Now there was a game. A "man" running around, dodging bullets, jumping and climbing and swinging to get little... things. I think playing that game accounts for my entire fifth year of life. Seriously. I have listened to music to gain an appreciation of it, even though I didn't initially like it. I attended a concert of an opera singer, and rather enjoyed it, despite the fact that I generally hate opera. However, two things remain at issue here. First of all, in the original column, I advocated that it wasn't necessary to play a game to completion to judge its gameplay. I cited a figure of about 1/2 to 2/3 of the game being a reasonable amount of time to spend before laying down a solid opinion. In Zelda's case, that's what, twenty hours? That's giving the game a fair shake. Twenty hours invested in just about anything is a fair shake, really. Secondly, video games and music are both forms of entertainment. Response to them is individual and subjective, not objective, and quite honestly, for every time I've grown to appreciate a piece of entertainment despite initial misgivings, I just deepened by hatred of a dozen more. Basically, you like what you like. Some people take time to warm up to a given piece, some people have spot-on gut reactions. So no, I still don't think finishing a game is necessary to learn to like or dislike it. | HP1K strikes like Voltron Force! | Allan, I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about Xenogears, when he informed me that he was returning his copy. I asked why, expecting to hear that he didn't like the game. Instead, he told me it was because of HP1K. HP1K, for those who are unaware, dates back to the early days of RPGs, when designers limited hit points to 999, to conserve space. (The extra '9' required for a total of 9999hp actually takes up a great deal more memory than one might suspect - for example, Chrono Trigger had much more detailed graphics than FFIV did, due to leaving out the extra '9')At any rate, these designers never thought that anyone would bother to spend enough time on a game to reach 999 hit points. "I mean, come on!" one was quoted as saying in a recent news story, "Not even we plat them that much, and we wrote the games!". The popular "New Game +" feature on Chrono Trigger caused many people to reach this level. The H1K bug was fixed before the US release, but literally millions of japanese customers had consoles that no longer worked. "The HP1K bug tends to cause the consoles to 'freeze up', if you will." another developer commented "This bug is much more insidious than the now-famous "sketch" bug from FFVI. In addition to corrupting your savefiles, it also had a tendency to overheat the unit. This resulted in cartridges that had been welded to their consoles, rendering them immovable. Given enough time, the entire console would be reduced to a pile of slag" The experts had not previously run across a HP1K bug in the PSX, but theorize that it could cause the game CD to "Spin wildly out of control", and once released, "accelerate to relatavistic speeds" - most likely causing enormous property damage. NASA's only comment was that the near-speed-of-light CDs could cause alien civilizations to believe "that we were literally attacking them", thereby inviting an invasion and the end of our world. To prevent such measures, Xenogears programmers recommended a few helpful steps. "Don't level up more than necessary. Don't equip anything that would give your characters more hit points. Don't go out and try to get more G for gear parts or anything else - this can lead to inadvertant level building. If you accidentally go over 999 hit points, bury your playstation under as much dirt as possible, and seek shelter. And, above all, when you're at the end of the game, don't try to explore some more. Just beat it. We have to avoid this catastrophe at all costs." Personally, I'm going to play the game through. I mean, it's just a little bug, so it won't do too much damage. I'll just keep a shovel handy. -Roger Ostrander |
Well done, Mr. Ostrander. A modest little news update, if I ever saw one. Mr. Swift would be proud indeed. | Allan weighs in on Silent Hill | hello! You wanted a light column, so here's a quick question:I remember a while back you mentioned that you got a copy of Silent Hill..so how do you like it? Okay, so it's not an RPG; and granted, it doesn't have especially deepgameplay or a lot of reply value (it's really too short), but I think it hada great storyline and atmosphere. And those are two elements I know I lookfor in an RPG.. but what's your opinion? |
Silent Hill drips with atmosphere. There are stylish games, there are moody games, and there are outright visceral experiences, and playing Silent Hill in a darkened room with good sound is in the latter category. The sound alone makes the game worthwhile - the rattling, the music only throbbing in at appropriate moments... it makes Resident Evil seem like an episode of A Pup Named Scooby Doo. Okay, so it's not perfect. The fog in the outside sequences is absurd, not moody, and yes, it's too damned short. But the storyline is excellent, the sound (minus the voice acting) is nothing short of godly, and the intro is magnificent. Good stuff, well worth a rent at least, and for atmosphere fanatics like me, a keeper. | Gays in RPGs | White Knight Leo from Lunar 2 could be homosexual. Ruby insinuates it,and while it's most likely Working Designs just trying to be funny, itsort of added another dimension to his character...he was cool. Damn.That was such a good game. Too bad it (and that godawful peripheralknown as Sega CD) didn't get wide distribution... - Edge
Flea in Chrono Trigger was gay, which was why his "love" attack workedonly on Crono. This was slightly less ambiguous in the Japanese version,I believe. Actually, I imagine there have been plenty of gay charactersin Japanese games. There was that stupid gay gym in Final Fantasy 7, butthey aren't really major players...It's easy to identify gay guys inJapanese entertainment because they all play into the "gay=effeminate"stereotype. As for women, Asellus in SaGa Frontier didn't think ofherself as gay, but had to cope with the fact that she was, in fact,falling in love with a woman. This could have been really interesting ifSaGa Frontier had more than soem vague hints of plot. Well, I can'tthink of any more offhand...but it has been done, anyway. It just hasn'tbeen explored. |
Well, that's more than I expected. I'm unconvinced on White Knight Leo; I chalk that up to WD humor. Then again, it would be a nifty little character element, if it was true. How's that for fanfic fodder? Some people cited Sailor Moon characters and one of the Suikoden characters as being gay. Surprisingly, nobody pulled out the "Gremio is gay, dammit!" chestnut, to my everlasting relief. Anyhow, much like most of mainstream entertainment, the proportionate number of gays in RPGs is pretty low. I think it'd be quite nifty to see a mature, homosexual relationship portrayed in an RPG. Then again, I wish the same for most media. I figure I should set my sights lower, since RPGs can scarcely portray halfway believable heteresexual relationships ("Oh I love you Hero Guy oh oh save me from the Evil Monster I love you!" doesn't cut it). | Witness relocation | Hey I was wondering, I know that no FF games are continuous with each other,so how did gogo get from ff5 to ff6? Or Lucca to xenogears? And I dont thinkits like a cid reincarnation, cause they look exactly the same in both games.And how do you explain the type D in FF7. And please dont give me any lame assserious responses, if I wanted that I'd just, well wait I know the realreasons........ but can you say sumthin' funny anyways? EdGE PS I just got Xenogears like 2 weeks after I bought Suikoden (which was toodamn short) and I was wondering is it like all epic an' stuff ? Or is it likeFF7, taking place over the course of about a weekend ? |
Xenogears is very, very epic. Things go boom but good. Trust me. Lucca and Gogo are part of a the Gaming Witness Relocation Program. You see, when someone is involved in the dramatic and life-shattering events like that of a video game, it can cause serious mental and emotional trauma. This is especially true in the case of characters who aren't awarded a position of royalty as a consolation prize after the game is over, a la FF4. Consequently, the GWRP takes it upon itself to take those who were deeply involved in the fate of a world, and relocate them to a new world and environment, under the assumption that hey, what're the odds that the entire world as they know it will be blown all to shit again? The program has largely been a failure, with the sole exception of Cecil of FF4's relocation to Secret of Evermore. You see, since nobody plays that pile of goat droppings, he doesn't get bothered too often at all. | I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that | Hey, I saw Front Mission 3 and Secret of Mana for Playstation. Since they arenot planned for American release why not start a petition now (like withXenogears) so they do come? Also, could Front Mission 3 have a two playerbattle mode? Please start a petiton to bring these two awesome games (with atwo player battle mode) to America!!!!!!! Squaresoft addict for life, Dennis Harpen |
No. Internet petitions don't work, people. The companies make their decisions based off independent market research and sales data, not a list of email addresses. Mentioning an internet-based petition to a game company is a surefire way to prompt gales of laughter. They are ineffectual. They are not taken seriously. So no, we're not going to waste our time spearheading yet another petition. And neither should you. | The iconoclast, he who marches to the beat of a different drummer | Referring to the total RPG interview... I just wanted to say that I, a diehard sports fan, actually blew off a SuperBowl for a Dragon Warrior game. I had Dragon Warrior 4 rented and wasgetting close to the end. So, when it came time for 1993's Super Bowlversus DW4, Dragon Warrior won. DW4 is still my all time favorite game,even if it did cause me to miss all those killer Super Bowl commercials. Istill name characters Taloon every chance I get. Didn't you love Bard's Tale? I never finished #2, but the others rule.Even though I really don't think I would enjoy making my own maps anymore,it sure was fun back then. Taloon (Why not?) - Still recovering from the RPGamer staff quitting line. |
I'll be damned. Someone else who brushes off the Super Bowl for an RPG. The other person I know who's done so was me, that's because I'm totally disinterested by American football, and would rather trim my toenails than spend my time watching it. But you, a diehard sports fan, tuning out in favor of DW4? Maybe there's hope for RPGs in the US after all. ... nah. :) Yeah, Bard's Tale is a nostalgic fave. Granted, I haven't played it in a dog's age, but I still have a map or two from the second one sitting around my basement somewhere. It probably wouldn't hold up too well to replaying now, but absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. :)
Closing comments Eric Denney wrote in to say that, if he ever did a letters column, he'd call it Ask Fucko. Heh. I get enough abusive letters with a tame title like Double Agent, so I'd hate to see what Ask Fucko would get in the letters pull. Then again, if you did do said column, I'd sure as hell be reading it. Skychrono heard that the FF Collection will be called FF Anthologies when it gets its US release. It's not a bad title, but Square is still going No Comment on the issue of its release, so a title change can neither be confirmed nor denied. Calvin wants to know what "by the by" means. It essentially means the same as "by the way." But I think it sounds cooler. I_Am wants to know if FF8 will have a preorder phase. It probably will, but probably won't begin until July at the earliest. And I love my socks. - Allan Milligan | | | |
