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| June 25,
2002... Saturday Night's All Right for
Fighting |
Friends, family, and Darkstalkers... truly,
this is the stuff of life. I had a lot of fun over the
weekend, even when I was helping a friend of mine and his
family move from their apartment to a brand new house. I
was treated to a sneak preview of Castlevania: White Night
Concerto on the car ride there, and I can see why everyone's
so excited about it. Aside from the Limp Whip Syndrome
that first infected Super Castlevania IV, it's a lot of fun,
and very much like Symphony of the Night. As for the
music, sure, it's a big step down from Circle of the Moon's,
but the NES quality of the tunes adds a nostalgic touch to a
series that's drastically changed since the first game was
released in 1986. Besides, White Night Concerto has a
definite visual advantage thanks to the brighter color
palette, which also brings back fond memories of the NES
games.
I really wished I could have persuaded my
friend to come with me to the Game Hits tournament that
day. Perhaps it was best he didn't, though. I won
last year's semi-official Vampire Savior tournament, but
thanks to a new set of more difficult opponents, I wasn't so
lucky this time. What's really frustrating is that I got
into the zone AFTER my first few losses. It was just
enough for me to beat a couple of opponents in the last chance
bracket, but a very close loss to Game Hits' graphic designer
Heath (the less geeky half of Fat and Geeky) dashed
my hopes of entering the finals. Despite that, I
had a lot of fun... it was great to talk to all the Game Hits
regulars. I was relieved to discover that I wasn't the
only one who had gripes with the current state of the video
game industry... Shawn was a little disgusted with Sony's
current dominance, and Carl admitted that he just wasn't
playing games that often. We all wondered aloud if it
was time for another crash like the one in 1984... it was very
difficult for Nintendo to revive the industry but once they
finally had, the hobby benefitted greatly from their
innovative ideas and powerful hardware.
The next day, I spent a little quality time
with my mom, watching Disney's new film Lilo and Stitch.
I enjoyed the movie a lot... the animation was well done and
very inventive, and many of the characters were very
appealing, particularly Cobra Bubbles and Lilo herself, who
was adorable, yet an appropriately weird human
counterpart for Stitch. The very cool sci-fi themed
opening wasn't nearly as long as it should have been, and the
conclusion was much too optimistic (even for a Disney film!),
but I'm still very glad my mother and I waited for a later
showing rather than settling for Scooby-Doo. I'm sure
I'll see that film too, but only because I'm a huge fan of
Shaggy and I want to see how Matthew Lillard's interpretation
of the character matches up to Casey Kasem's.
Well, that's how my weekend went, and that
takes care of the updates for this month. Stay tuned,
though... July will bring with it a series of reviews centered
around Capcom's 19xx series (a perfect complement to my
reviews of 1942 and 1943 in the upcoming NES issue of
Toastyfrog 'Zine) and maybe, just maybe, even a contest
promoting my art site The Rogue's
Gallery.
| June 20,
2002... Total Destruction from Mountain to
Shore |
How many of you think I should redesign the index
page?
How many of you like it the way it is?
How many
think I should concentrate on Rogue's Gallery and finally get
that finished?
...uh, anyone?
OK, how many of you really
don't give a crap what I do?
Ah yes, that's what I thought. In that case, I'll
just post this previously unpublished Zoo Logic comic. I
intended for this to be in color, but I didn't feel I could do
it on my own at the time. I asked Josh to do the honors,
but he was juggling so many comics of his own that
he couldn't do it, either. So, uh, just pretend
they're blue or something.
| June 11,
2002... The Editor Predicts the Wii.
Er, Sorta Kinda. |
You've probably already heard the news that Nintendo is
burned out on consoles... the new president claimed that video
game technology has reached its limit and that developing new
systems would be a waste of time and money. Does this
mean that Nintendo's going to take the same route as Sega and
start developing for the Playstation 2 and X-Box? A lot
of people seem to think so, but I kind of doubt it. As
long as C. Montgomery Yamauchi has even limited control of
Nintendo, the company will be too proud to give its
competitors anything but the finger.
My guess is that Nintendo is just going to support the
GameCube for a long, long time. It's tough to say
whether this will ultimately benefit them, but it does have a
lot of advantages over, say, releasing a new Playstation every
couple of years. In those couple of years, the GameCube
hardware is going to be cheap for both Nintendo and its
customers. Better yet, since all the company's resources
will be devoted to software rather than hardware, Nintendo
will be able to wring every last drop of power out of the
system, resulting in games that will look nearly as good as
anything available on the PS3... especially if it's rushed out
the door to compete with the X-Box as rumors have
suggested. Sony's already proclaimed that the system
wars are over, but if Nintendo can get enough third party
support for the GameCube (the only support it's lacking
right now), Ken Kuratagi and his lackies may finally have to
eat their arrogant words.
In other news, I'm pretty happy with how The Rogue's
Gallery is turning out... I've almost finished the animal
artwork and fanzine cover sections. All I need to
add to both to make them complete is some kind of navigation
bar and maybe a background to keep them from looking plain;
possibly something like slightly wrinkled paper to make it
seem as though the reader is really digging through all my old
art folders.
Here's another sample of my artwork. I started work
on this yesterday, and I'm not quite finished with it, but it
should be pretty cool when it's done. I call it...
Spaceballs: The Fan Art!
| June 7,
2002... Prohibition |
In case you're not sure, yep, that's Zoo Logic all
right. The comic wasn't too successful on its own
(probably because I never bothered to update it regularly) but
I'll be publishing new strips here from time to time.
I've found that drawing political comics like the one above is
a good way to handle the aggravation that results from the
gaming industry's callous disregard of its customers ("What,
you don't want another Mortal Kombat game? Come on, we're sure
you'll like this one. It's got more palette-swapped ninjas...
you like them, don't you? You don't? Well, you'll get used to
it. And while we're at it, have a crappy Game Boy Advance
translation of the same game!").
Speaking of which, it's pretty clear to me from recent
events that Sony will be shoving Grand Theft Auto down our
throats for the next couple of years, just as they had with
Tomb Raider in 1997. As a result, other game companies
will be expected to follow suit with their own controversial
games. It's a sad irony, really... ten years ago,
Nintendo took the sex and violence out of video games, but
soon, you won't be able to publish games without
all of that crap!
I was talking to a friend about this and he pointed
out that the music industry is faltering thanks to the
major labels pandering to teenagers with soulless, forgettable
fluff. I'm convinced the same thing is happening to
video games, and the only way this crap will be flushed out is
with an industry slump... not necessarily a crash, but I'd
like to see Sony lose just enough revenue to make them step
back and think about what they're doing to their customers and
the art of game design as a whole.
| June 2,
2002... Knock Your Block
Off |
Man, I didn't realize people were reading this site on a
daily basis. I guess I'll have to start updating more often...
there's no way I could update daily (let alone write articles
that frequently) but I'll try to add something new to the
front page every week.
This'll give me the opportunity to gripe a little bit about
my recent trips to Blockbuster. I recommended going there for
really cheap games in a previous update, but now I'm not so
sure. The prices are still great- I was able to get a copy of
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon for about twelve bucks- but
lately the clerks there seem artificial and a little pushy,
like they're the long lost sons and daughters of the
fast-talking, hard-selling Fuller Brush Man or something. I
come in to look at games, and they try to sell me just about
everything else in the store, from copies of Harry Potter to
the stale ice cream treats in the corner. C'mon, guys, I
appreciate the low cost of the games, but if I want all of
that other stuff, I'll specifically ask for it. And even if I
do make an inquiry about something like, say, a satellite dish
service, I'd like to be able to think about the purchase for a
little while rather than being pressured into signing a
contract right away. It's a big investment and I'm gonna need
some time to consider it.
Before I go, I wanted to give you guys a couple of links to
check out. The first is Shawn's Little Corner of Cyberspace,
a personal web page written by a friend I met on the Toastyfrog message board. The second
is Kelvin's Den, by the creator of Macropod Madness and Eleven Will Die. I've done some
artwork for both of these guys and although I can't recommend
it to all of my readers, the ones who actually like my
character Byron might enjoy it.
Speaking of Byron, here's a picture of the little tyke
while you're waiting for the premiere of my upcoming, sure to
be trashed by Something Awful art site Rogue's
Gallery.
| May 19,
2002... School's Out for the Summer (also,
MAME shooters) |
Yes! No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's
dirty looks... and best of all, plenty of time to update The
Gameroom Blitz. Now that all my college courses for the
semester are finished, I've got plenty of time to work on not
only this site, but a new one that should be available in
another couple of months. I'm finally confident enough about
my artwork to start an on-line portfolio, and I think you're
gonna like what I'll have available on Rogue's Gallery. In
addition to THAT, I'll be doing more comics and drawings for
Chris Farrington's site and helping a couple of friends design
an intense shooter that hearkens back to the good old days,
when video games were all action and no pointless filler. What
the heck, as long as I'm making plans, maybe I'll even spend
some time at the college gym, working on losing all the weight
I gained over the winter. Heh heh, dare to dream, right? :D
Anyway, since I've been gone for so long, I guess I owe you
guys a pretty big update. Fortunately, I've been squeezing in
the occasional game between finals, and my contributors have
been really generous over the past month, so it shouldn't be a
problem. In fact, now that I have all of these MAME discs, I'm
thinking of starting a brand new section devoted to arcade
emulation. There are just so many games to talk about,
including dozens with characters, themes, and play mechanics
so strange I'm amazed they were released at all. Take Puchi
Carat, the Breakout/Bust-A-Move hybrid overflowing with cute,
sometimes barely dressed anime characters. It's pretty, it's
sooo pretty, but the somewhat random gameplay prevents you
from playing strategically (and what good is a versus puzzler
if you can't plan your moves in advance?). Then there was
Dangun Feveron, the shooter that thinks it's a dance and rythm
game. Nevertheless, it is excellent... nothing's ever going to
top Radiant Silvergun but this comes a lot closer than the
dozens of cookie-cutter Raiden/Aero Fighters clones available
for MAME. Twin Cobra 2 was a fantastic shooter, too... the
gameplay itself was fairly standard, but it has some of the
most effective scaling effects I've ever seen. Your helicopter
will change altitudes at certain points in each round, and
it's very exciting to watch your chopper cut through clouds
and race toward a city teeming with enemies. Finally (well,
not REALLY finally, because there are too many games available
for MAME to talk about them all here), there was a rather odd
title that took place on a circuit board. You played as a
little spark, trying to reach the end of the circuit while
blasting resistors and avoiding other sparks. Great... it's
like I'm taking my unbelievably dull Intro to Electricity
class all over again.
I've been doing a little collecting too, a hobby that's
been facilitated by the incredible prices at Blockbuster
Video. As much as I hate to praise a company that's owned by
Viacom, I have to give them credit for slashing the prices of
their overstocked games to lows even my local pawn shops
couldn't hope to top. "Wow, what a difference", indeed! I
didn't think I needed a copy of Konami Krazy Racers, but at
$6.99 there was no way I could resist it (by the way, it's
actually a pretty good kart racer, even if Konami's characters
were the last ones I'd imagine in a game like this). Dreamcast
games were even more ludicrously cheap, averaging about five
dollars a pop... if they were priced any lower than that
Blockbuster may as well have thrown them away. Naturally, I
was drawn straight to the Capcom fighters on the shelves and
took those home... I didn't really want Street Fighter III:
Third Strike before, but a five dollar price tag tends to
change one's mind really quickly about a purchase. The same
goes for Power Stone 2, although after playing a half hour of
this frustrating button masher I'm starting to wonder if I
should have just left it alone and bought Spiderman instead.
Oh well, I can always make more trips down there, and I
strongly recommend that you do as well. You'll be really
surprised at what you'll find... quite happily surprised if
you're a Dreamcast or Game Boy Advance fan. I've heard rumors
of really cheap Playstation 2 games, too (how does ten dollars
for Maximo strike you? Yeah, that's what I thought...), but by
the time I went down there all they had left was a less than
generously priced State of Emergency. You'd better head to
your local Blockbuster sooner than possible if you want any
hope of getting the best Playstation 2 games for a great
price.
Now it's time for a few retractions (pan camera to the gun
pointing at Jess's head). Even though I didn't mention any
names, the friend referred to at the end of my last post
insisted that I take back what I said about him, making a
veiled threat that we would no longer be friends if I failed
to comply. So, I've drawn a line through the offending
comment. I hope that's enough, because said "friend" has been
treating me quite poorly lately and I don't feel like bending
over backwards to satisfy him. If he responds with more
threats, they'll just go in my junk mail folder along with the
bank account transfer schemes, herbal Viagra ads, and all the
other useless crap I don't read.
| April 8, 2002... Ain't
Nothing But Mammals |
I'm not sure where I stand on this whole furry
issue. At first, I thought they were just a bunch of guys
drawing animal characters. Then, I was convinced that they
were weird fetishists, chasing a fantasy that could never be
realized. Now, I'm back to my original opinion. I don't like
that there's pornography in furry fandom... after all, if I
wanted to see cats doing it, I wouldn't have had mine
neutered. But then again, there's no part of the Internet that
hasn't been infested with porn... believe me, I've gotten
enough advertisements for get well hung quick schemes without
even asking for them to know that this is the case. So right
now, I'm willing to treat furry fans with a little dignity. A
little more than they're getting from Penny Arcade, anyway.
Well, I'm off to the forum. Since I
just changed my mind about something, one of my more
argumentative friends will almost certainly be there to
invalidate my opinion.
| April 5, 2002... Arcade
Goodness |
I had to fix some of the pictures on the web
site anyway, so I guess I'll post another quick update. I went
over to Jeremy's house yesterday and finally got to challenge
his girlfriend Pam to a few matches of Capcom vs. SNK 2. She
is indeed a very skilled Chun Li player, although I was able
to win a match or two against her. I was a little surprised by
that... Jeremy warned me that she was able to deny victories
to even the most tenacious players in Japanese arcades, and I
honestly didn't think I'd be able to do any better than they
had. I guess this means I've gotten a whole lot better than I
was seven years ago, when I first started enjoying Capcom's
fighters (thanks largely to Darkstalkers, which is still one
of my favorites). Either that or Pam was throwing those
matches. :P
On the way home from Jeremy's, I decided to
stop at a pool hall in the Greenville area. There wasn't any
particular reason to do it... I just felt like letting the
owner know that I was still alive and interested in picking up
any arcade equipment he planned on throwing out. So I step
inside and notice a handful of old coin-ops near the back,
including Defender, Tempest, and Ms. Pac-Man. I don't know if
it was the intensity of the games, the Ozzy music in the
background, or the arcade atmosphere, but it was the most
exciting and enjoyable video game experience I've had in a
long, long time. I thought about asking Jeremy to change the
description under my name whenever I post on his forum, but
now, I think I'll wear the title he gave me with pride. My
name is Jess, and I'm an arcade-o-holic. I love the brilliant
simplicity, the intense, demanding gameplay, and the
high-impact graphics of arcade games. They're the embodiment
and the definition of everything that matters most to me about
this hobby. Forget the mindnumbingly slow RPGs, convoluted
adventure games, and clumsy first-person shooters. I want my
heart, mind, and fingers to race as I desperately try to stay
alive in the face of hundreds of relentless enemies. To put it
simply, I want a REAL video game.
| April 4, 2002... You
Will Be Assimilated (the editor buys a Playstation
2) |
I give up.
Actually, I gave up a few days ago. I tried to
hold out... I clung to the Dreamcast far longer than even Sega
could. But I had to crumble eventually, and I did just that
when I found a Playstation 2 for $200 at my local pawn shop.
Now, after years of complaining that Sony was winning the
latest system wars without really earning the victory, I own a
Playstation 2.
And y'know, I kind of like it.
There are plenty of reasons to like it, too.
First of all, it's a great system. You wouldn't have known
that judging from its earliest games... frankly, Byron has
filled diapers that were more appealing than schlock like
Orphen and Street Fighter EX 3. However, it looks as though
everyone's gotten used to the system's tough to use hardware,
as there are plenty of games available for it and some of them
are very enjoyable. Take Grand Theft Auto 3, for instance.
Even if you're not comfortable with the idea of stealing cars
and flattening their owners with them, you have to admit that
it's quite an improvement over the previous games, with more
intuitive control and a lot of attention to detail. Then
there's Virtua Fighter 4 and Capcom vs. SNK 2, two of the best
fighting games around... in fact, some would argue that they
ARE the two best fighters ever made.
Secondly, it improves the Playstation games
you already have... you just have to be careful about which
games you pop in if you turn on options like texture smoothing
and fast loading. For instance, texture smoothing will usually
draw ugly square borders around sprites, so you might want to
think twice about using it with something like Street Fighter
Alpha 3. However, that game's 3D counterpart, Street Fighter
EX, looks a whole lot sharper when this feature is toggled on.
N20, Fox Interactive's excellent yet strangely unnoticed
answer to Tempest 2000, looks even more attractive, since it
pumps out more detailed polygons that blend together more
smoothly than EX.
Finally, there's the DVD compatibility. I
hadn't strongly considered upgrading to a digital video disc
player until fairly recently. Now that I own the Playstation
2, though, I don't really need a dedicated player... I don't
spend a lot of time watching films and don't need any of the
advanced features people say the PS2 is lacking. Even without
them, it's pretty clear that the DVD format is an improvement
over VHS. The picture quality doesn't look any better if
you're using an RF modulator, but when you hook the system up
to something more sophisticated, like, say, a composite
monitor, you'll definitely notice the difference. Furthermore,
DVDs offer quick playback from checkpoints on the disc as well
as dubbing in other languages and additional footage. The
Paramount (ick) comedy Rat Race really benefitted from this,
since there were several great scenes featuring Cuba Gooding
Jr. that were cut out of the film. With a DVD player, you'll
get to watch the cartoony Cuba crack under the pressure as
fifty Lucille Ball impersonators act out an episode of the
series, complete with Lucy's obnoxious whine. If you rented
the tape, however, you'll be cheated out of both this and
Cuba's battle with professional wrestler Diamond Dallas Page,
two scenes which I personally think made the film better and
more complete. Sony's constant, exaggerated hype gave me
plenty of reason to doubt the Playstation 2, but it turns out
there was something special about the system after all. I
definitely prefer it to its competitors, even if it isn't as
powerful as the X-Box or as... um... small as the GameCube.*
* Sorry, I'm really grabbing at straws here.
What was so special about the GameCube again?
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