 |
 |
 |
  |
Okay, let's get this puppy going. It's been a lazy day chez Milligan. Meeting the only friend of my sister's that I actually hold any respect for. Playing Wild Arms. Rechecking my archive revisions. Working on-and-off on some Vaults. Busy work, essentially. Luckily, the letters world is a lot more interesting. Questions over banners, fanfic, the FFIX stuff, and the long rant against me that kicks off today's column. Lots of vitriol. And, of course, I keep my cool and deal with the situation in my usual, even-handed and open-minded manner, showing the deepest respect for all people. I am the Buddha, I tell you. Tee hee.
My my my. Such vitriol. Let's see what we can say here. First of all, Persona is about as esoteric as RPGs get in North America. In a market where fantasy-styled RPGs with emphasis on direct spellcasting and swordplay are paramount, Persona sticks out like a sore thumb. This is not a criticism, as you seem to take it. In terms of the modern-with-supernatural setting, in terms of the importance of the Persona manipulation system's intricacy and importance, in terms of the first-person dungeon (a rarity, these days), it is NOT like every other game out there. It it frequently recommended to me as a title to play if I'm feeling tired of same-old, same-old. It contains familiar elements, ones that you can pick out and attribute to many a source, but it's the combination that makes it unique. And unique it is. Quite simply, I don't think it's like everything else out there. I don't think it's typical. I think that's a good thing, and why I recommend it so highly to fellow gamers who feel exasperated with the RPG genre. By the same token, Persona really seems to be a hit-or-miss title with people. I know some who swear by it, claiming it's the most innovative, clever, and deep traditional RPG in the US to date. Others quickly found themselves lost and uninvolved, and tossed it aside as being "not my cuppa." I receive at least one letter every two weeks that champions Persona for being unique, and one every three that damns it for being too weird for its own good. With due respect, experience, gut feeling, and a job interacting with RPG players every day teaches me that Persona is NOT as mainstream as you claim. You've shown where many elements are drawn from, but you've failed to recognize how the whole they form impacts on gamers as a whole. As a whole, as a gameplay experience, Persona really is out of the norm, bless it. You're the first person I've ever seen who refutes that view, and I've got about two hundred emails that support it. Tell me again why describing it as "esoteric" is unsupportable. Second, regarding my bashing 7th Saga, I know perfectly well how to play non-mainstream games. More to the point, I am perfectly capable and willing to rip into games like 7th Saga, not because they're not in the mainstream, but because they suck. 7th Saga's characters lacked personality, and animation, and spirit. Crono said nothing in his game, but he was superbly animated and worked into the plot. He had shrugs and leaps and gestures. His actions drove the plot and involved the players, even without dialogue. 7th Saga's characters were totally interchangeable. They never made choices, they were just led around from dungeon to dungeon like pixellated cattle. The difference between Crono and any 7th Saga character is like that between watching Don Johnson and Al Pacino in a movie. They're technically doing the same thing, acting, but only one is worth watching. The subject line of this letter was "I am mad at everyone and everything except one person, and you're not her, so take this", by the way. It kinda shows, doesn't it?
I won't list off all the games I've played, because that'd take a really, really long time. So I'll resort to the second challenge, naming all the console RPGs and kinda-RPGs I've played, off the top of my head. Here goes... Dragon Warrior 1-4, Dragon Quest V-VI, Remix I+II and Remix III. Final Fantasy 1-7, plus the demo of 8. Phantasy Star 1-4. Shining Force 1-3 (first scenario only), SF CD, and SF: Sword of Hajya for Game Gear. Pokemon, Red and Blue. Rolan's Curse, for GB. Final Fantasy Adventure. Final Fantasy Legends 1-3. Romancing SaGa. SaGa Frontier. Cosmic Fantasy 2. Exile, and Exile: Wicked Phenomenon. Lunar: SS, and EB, plus the SSSC demo. Popful Mail. Vay. Dark Wizard. Dragon Force. Shining Wisdom. Albert Odyssey. Alundra. Cadash (does that count?). Ys Books I+II, III on several systems, both versions of IV, and V, Expert edition. Robotrek. 7th Saga. Brainlord. Brandish. Inindo. Final Fantasy Tactics. Tactics Ogre. Ogre Battle. Spike McFang. Lord of the Rings for SNES. Willow for NES. Sword of Vermilion. Wild Arms. Vandal Hearts. Suikoden. Bahamut Lagoon. Star Ocean. Tales of Destiny. Tales of Phantasia. Brave Fencer Musashiden. Parasite Eve. Xenogears. Arcana. Beyond the Beyond. Crystalis. Revelations: Persona. Mystaria. Both Lufias. Bard's Tale. Grandstream Saga. Langrisser/Warsong. Young Merlin. All the Ultimas put out for NES and SNES (Avatar, Exodus, Black Gate). Shadowrun for SNES and Genesis. Shining in the Darkness. Shining the Holy Ark. Legacy of Kain. Both King's Fields (was 3 ever put out?). Kartia. King Arthur and his Knights of Justice. Front Missions 1-2, Gun Hazard and Alternative. Eye of the Beholder. FFMQ. Earthbound. D&D: Warriors of the Eternal something. Dungeon Masters 1 and 2. Dungeon Explorer 2. Mystic Ark. Quest 64. Double Dungeons. Hydlide. Chrono Trigger. Brigandine. Virtual Hydlide. All the Zeldas. Secret of Mana. Seiken Densetsu 3. Tecmo's Secret of the Stars. Soulblazer. Does Actraiser 1 count? Super Mario RPG. Paladin's Quest. Master of Monsters, Genesis and PSX versions. Legend of Oasis, Beyond Oasis, and Warriors of Oasis. Destiny of the Emperor. Dark Saviour, for Saturn. Panzer Dragoon Saga. Drakkhen. Eye of the Beholder. Dark Wizard. All three Breath of Fires. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (I say it's an Action/RPG, damnit). Both Neutopias. Azure Dreams. The two lame-ass Ultima games for Gameboy. Secret of Evermore. Earthbound Zero (not an official release, but I played it). I'm probably forgetting a few. Notable ones I never did get to play: Magic Knight Rayearth, and my rental of Legend of Legaia ended up being a bust, since it won't play properly on Virtual GameStation, and my PSX is busted. Damn. Anyhow, I have played every one of the above. I finished most of them, no less. Tell me again that I play nothing but mainstream RPGs.
To misquote Andrea, "I don't know why people are sending me gay porn." If you guys wanna see more scantily-clad ladies in fan art, send 'em in. Make them tasteful and artistically brilliant, of course, but if we keep on getting well-drawn fan service for our female readers, that's what we're gonna post. Personally, I think it's great that we've got scantily clad men lounging around our fan art section. It's certainly a change of pace. And it makes AK so very hot and bothered... Ahem. Lastly, representation of blacks in Japanese entertainment as a whole is pretty slim. Caucasians, sure. People of Asian descent, no prob. But there are more guys with blue hair than black skin in anime and video games. I really don't know the root cause, but for some reason, Japanese kids and teens just don't seem interesting in watching and playing black characters. Ergo, the ported results aren't exactly a Benetton ad.
I've been waiting to use that letter title for months now, you realize. Anyhow, I do realize that Shiva is, in reality, considered to be a male entity (though aspects of Shiva, such as Kali, are regarded as being female). However, in the Squareverse, Shiva is consistently portrayed as being female - she's sporting a rather large bust in FF7, and so forth. Tradition, plus the rather effeminate-looking design she sports in our FFIX pictures, leads us to refer to Shiva as a her. If we were talking about Hinduism, we would indeed be in error. But a professional journalists know about context, and within the context of the Final Fantasy series, Shiva is a she, and we will refer to her as such.
As you can see, opinions on our banners are rather split. Thankfully, most everyone recongizes that we do need them, and isn't angry with us. Thanks for understanding. Now, as for the content, here's the deal. We are currently signed on with Flycast, a banner provider. For the first week, to get things all set up, we get the PSA banners you've been seeing. However, on Thursday of this week, we switch over to paying banners. What these will be, exactly, I haven't the faintest idea. At that point, we'll start seeing money for the banners. After Thursday, it's important to click the banners, so GIA can keep going. I wish we had the freedom to exercise more control over our banner items. But we're at an impasse here. We're not going to be sporting porn banners, but beyond that, I can't make any promises. We'll have to see what Flycast gives us.
Prior to being introduced to Irritating Stick, I'd never have believed this game actually exists. As it stands, it sounds worryingly like a game that really could exist. And then, a little voice told me something important, and made a bloody obvious connection for me. The above game's US title is Ape Escape. It's a 3D platform game which is controlled by a pair of analog pads (only). AV and Glick insists that it's the coolest thing ever. I'm dubious. Love the Japanese title, though.
Well, it's sort of a mix. See, I tossed in the nickname Big Al as a injoke reference to South Park's Big Gay Al, figuring it would play amusingly right after the news bit about gay spouses in Canada. I wasn't coming out. It was a joke. In a related aside, Tasha, who works at the movie theatre with me, has taken to calling me Big Al, to her endless amusement. The sentiment is so deeply sarcastic that I have to admire it.
Yeah, things have been fairly dry. Some of it is to be expected. As you say, after Christmas, sales on video games plummet. The time to release games are when kids have the most time and money, and that's summer, and fall, leading into the holiday season. Games for younger players get early summer releases, so the parents can buy them for the duration of the season, whereas games for the older crowd tend to get late summer/early fall releases, so the money from summer jobs can be... channeled. :) All that aside, it's been a fairly dry season for RPGs of late. From memory, there was originally going to be a much more even spread of releases, but release delays have crammed most of them into May-through-October. So, the dry spell is half planned, and half sheer circumstance and bad luck.
Upon hearing me state that fanfic was a possibility, but not a sure thing, a few people suggested ways to make it more readable. One person suggested allowing writers to create their own characters within game worlds, so there's less chance of having endless "Cloud revives Aeris" fanfics rolling in. Force originality. Another suggested having a fanfic message board. Another suggested that I quit Double Agent and write fanfic all the time instead, since I'm a better fiction writer than a columnist. And there was the above. We may find an interesting twist on fanfic yet. Your idea sounds okay, though there's always the danger that all the writers on staff utterly suck. Which would kinda make things annoying, wouldn't it? Me, I'm just polishing up my 7th Saga fanfic. If we do add fanfic to GIA, you bet your sweet bippy I'm gonna sneak it past Tami and post it up. Hee.
I think this letter will serve as an endpoint to the PSX2/Dolphin/Dreamcast debates in Double Agent for a little while. We've sort of reached an impasse here, since we don't actually have a release list for two of the three systems. We've got numbers and promises, but a game system's success or failure is built on games, not numbers. So until we see actual games, or futher announcements that relate to games, I'm calling a halt to these arguments. For now, let's wait and see what comes next in the system wars.
Ouch. Sounds like problems inside the PSX to me. Man, that sucks. Closing Comments Tomorrow, I post up a nice new Deep Thought by Tony Patino on the subject of Collective Mediocrity and gaming. There's also a nice, lengthy post about Sega that I'm unsure what to do with - I may just link to it, so those who are interested can read it, without it dominating the entire column, since it's really long, and there's little room to criticize it. In other news, I had insistence that the Airship is the mascot of the FF series, appearing in all eight installments to date (true), whether moogles appear in FF8 (yes, though I'm blissfully unaware of in what capacity), and whether we just made up those FF9 drawings just to fool people (nope). - Allan Milligan |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
