My sanity drifted away long ago, foolish boy - June 15th, 1999 - Allan Milligan
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not neccessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Don't say I didn't warn you. :)
Love and sense are opposing ends of the human spectrum. Consider this situation. A boy and a girl have a brief relationship, one marked by conflicts above all. Arguments, disputes, debates, fights. Harsh words instead of compliments, conflicts where there should be harmony. Eventually, the strain is too much, whatever vague semblance of a relationship breaks apart, end of story. Not quite. Over the successive few months, the two stay in contact. Often fighting still, sometimes even more harshly, watching and criticizing changes in one another. Then, quiet, no contact, no conflict, no interaction of any kind. I've spent more time fighting with her than anything else. We had a relationship built on conflict. Think about that, and answer me this: Why do I miss her so? | Don't feed the trolls | EGADS I think the reason for sending you this link should be apparent as soon as you click on it. - L This guy is the prime example of an idiot. Didn't he start the FF7 resurrection rumor as well? |
Ah, Ben Lansing. The enfant terrible of RPG fandom. Mr. Lansing has made a minor career as someone who takes some sort of perverse pleasure in tossing up opinions and ideas that rile people up. It started with his well-crafted FF7 Aeris resurrection rumor, and has continued on with his Shitty Game of the Week feature at EGADS. He is now boasting that he'll post the best flames of his Lunar review next week. My advice? Don't. First off, it's a compliment to Lunar that he can reasonably expect to get flamed horribly for criticizing it - truly bad games don't have diehard fandom that defend them to the death. Second of all, it's just giving him what he wants. My suggestion is to read a well-written review of the game someplace else, and then make a visit to Old Man Murray to get your fix of gaming humor. EGADS can be very funny, but you couldn't tell from that feature. | Lunar songs | Well, everyone keeps talking about that dumb 80s song from Lunar, andI'd have to agree with them totally...It almost makes me want to notswitch CDs right now to my nice Lunar soundtrack. However, I'd like itto be noted that there is a Japanese version of this song. I have noidea where to find it, I assume it's in the original Japanese version ofL:TSSS, but I think the Japanese version is actually pretty good, if youlike 80s music (so sue me). I think it's the ridiculous lyrics thatmake the music sound worse than it is, plus that singer's horriblevoice. I can't stand her, but I always liked the Japanese track, so Ithought I'd stand up for it. Yet another victim of the Englishculture/language! Err...shoot, I forgot about the question I had. So, I'll just ask itnow...what's the name of the person who sings Luna's song in Lunar? Isit the same person as the one who sings the opening song? And has shedone anything else musically, videogame-related or not? I'm just alwayscurious about these things, I guess. Oh, which reminds me, do you knowthe name of the person who sings the English vocal tracks in Xenogears?I found out her name once, but I managed to completely forget. I seemto remember she's in a Irish Christian band, but I couldn't remember thename of that either...on another note, I hope we see more and more goodvocal tracks with videogames, because I like them, and we all know thatI'm the important one here. - Jasconius P.S. I think introductions are highly overrated. P.S. Geez, I like 80s music, and that song is still horrible. I swearit's the lyrics...they should never take Japanese songs and try tosubstitute English words, it almost always fails...I mean, come on,"Evil Forces, take heed!"...and that stupid singer's horrible voice, ofcourse. |
The singer of the Lunar: SSSC songs is Jennifer Stigile. I don't know who performed the opening song for TSS, but I'd like to smack them upside the head. I mean, god almighty, how can you sing a song that lame and not stop in mid-lyric and say "what the hell IS this shit?" I thought the SSSC songs were quite nice, though. On point of fact, I prefer the more solemn, moody boat song than the mindless drivel of the Japanese version. But I digress. Don't know who sings the Xenogears songs, but it's the same band that does the arranged soundtrack for it, Creid. Actually, IS the name of the band Creid? I don't know. Enlighten me, o readers. | A bit of anger. Just a tad. | I haven't been to this site in a couple of weeks, and I always read your column first when I visit. So when I read Artoo's letter about the week in review and then read your response, I knew I had missed something big. So, I clicked on the Week In Review link and therein read the apologetic (and really, pathetic) letter from SQUARESOFT. I must say, I am a little miffed--naw, f*ck it, pissed. Not only did the letter make me mad, but it also makes Square look fat, dumb and lazy. I mean, they say that localization was needed for FF4, but what for? A lot of the work is already done for them in the form of FF2 U.S.! Of course changes would have to be made, but it couldn't be anywhere near as time-consuming as the letter makes it seem. Square says they're devoting time to other projects. That's crap, just like some of the projects they're releasing (Ergheiz? Chocobo games? What the hell is that?). Then the final straw was when they tried to make up for it by releasing the soundtrack to the game. What the hell good is it to have the music to the game (which is outstanding--I might get it just to hear Zemus' theme), which WILL make players like myself want to go and play it, when you don't even have the damned product to play it with? What's worse, Square has got us trapped. They know that the majority of Americans have never played FF5, so the product will probably sell with or without part 4. So Square wins in the end. In closing I'll say something that I never thought that I would say to Square ever (again): FUCK YOU. HypeSpider |
For the three of you that accepted Square's apology, this is a more representative view. The "Square can sit on a rake and rotate" has forty-eight votes in its favor sitting in my mailbox right now, and the opposition has three. "Your apologies are insufficient" seems to be the hue and cry of gamers at the moment. Whether or not this is a sign that we've stopped being syncophantic babies, no longer reliant on Square's nipple to suckle our RPG enjoyment from, or whether we are ungrateful bastards with no conception of what we're talking about, well, we'll see. We'll see. | Poor translation in FFT? Hell yes. | This letter is in regards to a few of the letters tht have been sentthat seem concerned with poor translation in FFT. (OK well I can onlyremember one, but I'm sure I saw something else on that notesomewhere). I'm disturbed by this, because I remember playing throughthe game in its entirety and remembering the excellent medieval-liketranslations. I can remember that the whole story read like my APModern European History text book. Call me sick, but for that reason Ifound the story fascinating. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to see some of these screenshots with poortranslation on them. I could have sworn the story was told in perfectenglish...? Thanks -Alexander3025 ;;;;PS, you can email me at Shrumfamily@Home.com. |
I don't have my copy of FFT handy, but I'll tell you what. Everyone out there who've been thrashing FFT's translation, send in your favourite quotes, in the form of a screenshot if possible, that display why Final Fantasy Tactics is legendary among gaming circles as reading like the Principia Discordia after snorting four ounces of processed cocaine. Suffice to say that most players disagree with your assessment that FFT was told in perfect english. It was stilted and awkward at best, and borderline nonsensical at the worst. | Taking the challenge and thrashing it good | That's mighty good. For an encore, your new words for the day are as follows: futon, gazebo, Dadaism, and ecclesiastical. Define, and relate them to a discussion of why Star Ocean 2's voice acting is a mound of petrified mule shit. Bonus question: was the above a simile or a metaphor? Futon: (noun) -Late 19th Century: Japanese 1) a Japanese quilted matress rolled out on the floor for use as a bed. 1a) a type of low wooden sofa bed having such a mattress. Gazebo: (noun) -Mid 18th Century: perhaps humorously from GAZE, in imitation of Lating future tenses ending in EBO. 1) a small building, especially one in the garden of a house, that gives a wide view of the surrounding area. Dadaism: (noun) Early 20th Century: French, DADA- literally "hobby-horse, the title of a review which appeared in Zurich in 1916. 1) an early 20th-century international movement in art, literature, music, and film, repudiating and mocking artistic and social conventions and emphasizing the illogical and absurd. Ecclesiastical: (adjective) [Ed. Eccliesiastes, the book of the Bible, is taken from the greek title meaning "teacher".] 1) of or relating to the Christian Church of its clergy. Discussion & Explanation: In Japan, many voice actors are exalted as much as our own movie stars are. So rigourous are their public relations, that they often must spend many hours lying on futons to rest their vocal cords. If you've ever seen a Japanese house, it resembles a Gazebo in many ways, generally being fairly small and surrounded by garden. It is the nature of these Gazebos and the rest upon Futons which make the Japanese voice actors so good. Now, in America, as voice acting comes more and more in demand, we find ourselves in a grave shortage of Gazebos and Futons. As a result, our voice actors just aren't up to the par of the Japanese for the most part. So, knowing that we cannot truly outclass their skill, we resort to Dadaism, hiring voice actors whose portrayal of characters is so absurd that it very much mocks the artistic voice acting of the Japanese. Some radical theorists claim that the reason the Japanese have such excellent voice acting is that their lives are entirely devoid of Christian beliefs. While the proportion of Japanese Christians is lower than that of American Christians, few sensible people fail to understand how religion can play a part in skilled voice acting. Jerry Falwell, radical baptist minister and advocate of Japanese proselytisation, claims this is due to the fact that the non-Christian Japanese religions do not involve as much singing and vocalised praise as traditional western ecclesiastical church services. As a result, their voices retain an airy and flexible quality that makes skilled voice acting far easier. Jerry Falwell then went on to claim that people who speak clearly are Satanists, based on the above precept. As a result, the American voice acting in "Star Ocean 2", performed by futon-less, gazebo-lacking, members of ecclesiastical churches, mocking the skill and art of the Japanese culture in the spirit of Dadaism, has the same attractive nature and quality as a mound of petrified mule shit. And to answer your bonus question: the above is a simile. ~Denethor Greenleaf Christian English major who can truthfully say, "Jerry Falwell makes Christians look bad, and my pastor agrees." |
This impresses and scares the hell out of me in equal measure. My hat's off to you, Denethor. | The Ocean of shit | Did the voice samples you happened to recieve come from battles? Because those are indeed godawful, painful, pieces of shit. I haven't gone back and checked, but it sounds like the voice acting in battles is different from that which was used in the introduction. Granted, the introduction for Claude wasn't amazing, but I don't remember it making me want to claw my eyes out like the battle voices do. I could be wrong, though, the pretty CG stars and space ships made me question whether being a graphics whore was such a bad thing, and that sort of thing clouds your judgment. Star Ocean is indeed the king of unintentional innuendo. Well I assume it's unintentional. The translators could just have a twisted sense of humor. Star Ocean is the first RPG that I've ever had an NPC ask me "Have you seen my wood?" and I hope it's the last as well. Locke828 |
The voice samples I've heard are indeed from the battle sequences, and they are stunningly, stomach-churningly terrible. I literally cannot name a game with worse voice acting than this, though I have it on good authority that Knights of Xentar is at least comparably terrible. As for the unintentional innuendo, I can believe it. Myself, I'd like to see an actively perverse and offensive game. Not just the subtle stuff we get from Working Designs games, but characters walking up to you and describing in intimate detail what they're like to do once they've lashed you with leather whips to a steel cage. I'm weird that way. | The Power | Do you seek the power? |
Seek it? I am the power. Every few decades, I come to Midgard, to mix and work with the humans I have created, millenia ago. Once, I was worshipped as a god, as the lord of the Bifrost Bridge, as the protector of all that is sacred and powerful in this world. No longer. Now I'm assigned statistics in role playing games. I don't even rate a Call spell in Final Fantasy, a sword in Dragon Quest, a TV series of bad direct-to-video movie. I am Heimdall, and no one pays me any mind in this modern world. No one gives a shit about me. Be that as it may, faithless though humanity has proven, I retain all my powers as a child of Valhalla. I am a god, make no mistake. Mever doubt that again. | An egg is an egg is an egg | As far as the religious symbolism of Xenogears goes... I share with youthis brief story: For a college English class, a poet was asked to come in and share someof his work with the students. So, he read aloud a poem about the appleshanging off a tree. The poem itself was only about 8 lines long.Afterwords, one of the students asked, "Well, what does this symbolize?What do you mean by this?" So he read it again. Sometimes, a story is just a story. The writers don't intend for anyspecific parallels to be there, but we put them in anyway. - Max |
And other times, there are deeper meanings. For example, I was recently playing Wild Arms, and I considered for a moment, what is Rudy was really a metaphor for sexual bondage? What if Cecilia really represents the struggle of Native Americans to be treated as equals in modern society, and her growing power of magic is a representation of equal opportunity laws? What if Jack's struggles, and Hanpan's wit, what if all of Wild Arms is a metaphor for all that is wrong in America today? Ever consider that? Maybe that's why it's so mundane - that America itself is inferior and weak? That it's a land for the mute, the arrogant, where all problems can only be solved by violence, and every day is a struggle against unsolvable and increasingly irrational puzzles? Or maybe Wild Arms just sucks. | ....huh? | Dear Allan, I've been thinking, I'm pretty cute, and my parents are kinda rich, and I like video games, so we should get married and have six children exactly. We can genetically engineer them to have four nipples apiece, four toes total, and four arms with two hands on the ends of each. They'll have wings and things, and if we ever really get in the mood we can kill and eat one. A good kid could last us almost a week, I bet. Juicy, not stringy and tough like normal people tend to be. I think we could make this work. Just think, me, you, Thanatos, Cronus, Faust, Lilith, Mephistopheles, and Moonshine. Wait, that'll be our family drink of choice. So we'll just name the last child Medium Rare and be done with it. I know things didn't work out too well last time. I know you were upset, coming to the hospital with a bloody towel held over your groin, your manhood suspended in a pickle jar full of rubbing alcohol. You cry like a girl, you know. But we can put that past us, your tendency to go off before I'm ready, your massive nose, your fondness for tight leather pants. We can move beyond all that. I want you back. I want a family, damn it. Come back to me. - Lolita |
And here I thought she'd stop with the harassing emails when I ran her over with the monster truck. Yikes. The creepiest part of this letter is how perfectly it imitates my style and sense of humor. Scary shit, this. | Silliness | Hello Allan! First off, a question. Did the hand that was injured by the papercutter get infected with the paper cutters evil, resulting in aninteresting battle between you and your hand, ending in you chopping itoff and shooting it, and later replacing it with a chainsaw? Secondly, Everquest only has limited customization. You can dopretty much whatever you want, but all characters of a given race lookthe same, except for sex, heads, and equipment. Third, Tekken 3 had talking. The end movie for Lin Xiaoyu has someword baloon stuff in it, and the one for Julia Chang has a littlereunion scene with her mother, and some words are said(can't rememberwhat though) Thank You Drive Thru, Tedman a.k.a. The best little Brian Glick worshipper in your weed stash |
You worship the Big Lick? My god. A religion based on fetishes for Richard Simmons videos and loving Macs. What a bizarre combination. Me, I'd rather see a religion formed called AKism. It's based on the practice of making inappropriate and usually nonsensical, yet somehow very funny, comments at every available interval, slacking at all times, listening to REM until one's ears bleed, and then doing the boogie woogie until your hair falls out in clumps. But I'm weird that way.
Closing Comments Squee. - Allan Milligan, snapping
| | | |
