I gotta say this whole series he's doing has been amazing. This time, it's "the opening takes too long!" Maybe not every game needs a half hour's discussion on 1960's era nuclear deterrence before you've snaked up on a single loose monkey.
I will absolutely disagree with one thing though. Do NOT start a game off playing as someone other than the main protagonists in an RPG. You seriously risk making that alternate character more interesting than the main character and people will spend the remainder of the game complaining about their lame Shonen protagonist that wants to be a pirate when he grows up when they could instead be that honor bound knight that got framed for a crime he didn't commit. (I'm looking at YOU Final Fantasy XII!) Sure, there's famous openings like temporarily playing as Richter for a single boss fight in Symphony of the Night, and of course that audience subversion in Metal Gear Solid 2, but in my experience more often than not you're going to disappoint your audience. Also, in medias res can be fun, but don't fall for the temptation of doing it in such a way that you "flash back" to months earlier and have to play a significant chunk of game to "catch up" to that prologue point. Just make that the start of the gameplay AND the narrative and hint at earlier story beats as they play.
Well, alright as far as quick "get to the point" intros in RPGs go, Final Fantasy VII actually does the best job of just about any FF game. Now personally, I've always loved Final Fantasy VI more, but if I'm being entirely honest with myself, it's cutscene explaining the war of the magi and the current state of the world with an empire bent on domination followed by a couple Star Wars references chatting about your main character's slave-crown followed by opening credits during a long slow march to Narshe? That wasn't the quickest smoothest intro. I'm used to it and I loved it as a kid because I hadn't seen something so cinematic employed in a game's intro before that, but Final Fantasy VII? The credits are before the title screen, so they can be skipped easily, and there's ZERO text or dialog in that opening cutscene, which just quickly shows a flash of Midgard city life, a view of how dirty the city and it's reactor smoke is, and then your main character jumping off a train and IMMEDIATELY fighting some guards before dialog even begins. You're in the game in about a minute, and it's still conveying everything you need to know to understand the most basic things regarding that world, and more details are drip fed to you through dialog from there. It's also a good example of in medias res that just throws you in the middle of a mission without flashing back and forcing you to "play" Cloud's trip to Midgar or the earlier part of the mission for several hours to "catch up" with that intro. Final Fantasy V, which I played later on, also does a good job of getting you into the game fast. A meteor crashes into the ground, you and your chocobo ride over to check it out, and then goblins. Final Fantasy X is just... way too confusing at the start of the game. Fast as it gets you into the action, the sides of it's narrative are too slippery to get ahold of and you just sink into that pitcher plant of "what? WHY?" all too quickly. Sure it gets you to the action, but you don't have the slightest clue of anything in this world and you're led to false conclusions very fast in a desperate attempt to get some idea of what's going on. I don't even mean intentionally misleading stuff. I mean "so Auron's his uncle?" stuff. Granted, it all gets smoothed out in the next hour or so, but even that time skip to suddenly exploring ruins to help Rikku reclaim some old junk you're still left wondering "alright... this is boring now because I don't know why I'm doing this". The narrative doesn't actually give you anything to get ahold of until you get through that SECOND section with Rikku and finally meet Wakka, Yuna and the gang. Then it's a good story.
Chrono Trigger also has a pretty good quick opening but it tosses you into the other end of the pool, which is that you get to explore it's "peacetime" mechanics in the game right from the outset at the fair before ever touching fighting mechanics (aside from Gato, man let me tell you something I love Gato, Gato has metal joints). That's another way to do things, because you're still playing the game but you're dealing with mini-games, exploration, and conversation mechanics. (Admittedly, JRPGs aren't exactly known for stellar conversational mechanics). Heck, all that goofing off at the fair ends up paying back in a big way later on. Watch your behavior!
All in all, I suppose this was just a rant on what I personally prefer in an opening, and an admission that my favorite Final Fantasy game and likely still my favorite JRPG of all time doesn't have the best opening.
Remember kids, and I mean this with all sincerity. Banned books are the best books.
Here's a few recommendations for more banned books.
Don't ban books! I absolutely promise you parents, they aren't putting literal porn in the school library! They're putting a lot of manga in there though... that's kinda weird. They never put comic books in the school library when I was a kid.
So... I've been reading a lot of sci-fi lately. There's these books called Blindsight which explore some interesting questions about whether consciousness, from an evolutionary perspective, is really all that important. Also it's got space vampires. Wait don't go! They're actually done rather well. They're treated like an alternative form of consciousness to help explore the central theme of the books. Also, they've got what is honestly the first time I've seen a scientific explanation for that whole "A crucifix! Hiss!" weakness of vampires. So, ignoring the central theme of the books I just wanted to talk about THAT for a bit.
Basically, in this world vampires were an evolutionary branch off sapians, just like neanderthals. They had a number of interesting mental quirks like the hiding gene that told them that after feeding, hide, hide until they forget you exist. But, they had an evolutionary glitch. Their brains couldn't handle right angles very well. In nature, right angles are very rare so evolution had no pressure that would have removed this undetected glitch, but then humanity started building things that used them more and more. Vampires had trouble crossing doorways unless they closed their eyes and someone guided them inside. And, then the romans invented that horrible torture, crucifixion. Just two large beams intersection but as a result you have the corners of four different right angles nearly touching. It's just too much for them to handle mentally and it paralyzes them. So, in this sci-fi story when they eventually started cloning extinct vampires, they altered them in several ways but left in the right angle aversion as a fail-safe.
Anyway, I thought this was interesting. Sometimes I read these books and something just pops out as so stupid no normal person would tolerate it, but then I realize just how absolutely ridiculous the Marvel movies now are. If those movies are now at the point where a super scientist, a mutant spider, and a wizard can fight a psychic alien for a legendary wish granting gem without just completely losing their audience to that utter nonsense I just said, I think they're able to accept pretty much anything.
First of all, the entirety of my thoughts regarding her death is... my condolences to the family.
Beyond that, her life oversaw a lot of rather evil things that she refused to take a stand on such as, but not limited to, the Irish "troubles" and um, "Brexit". More than that, the royal family has centuries and centuries to answer for of terrible colonialism. Now, I don't believe in inheriting guilt or praise for your family line's achievements... but the royal family absolutely DOES believe in that and that particular "inheritance" is baked into British law and grants them authority by birthright. It's valid in this case to bring up the guilt of their family, and to do so again and again until the day the royal family is disbanded as an institution.
So, all the media's fawning over their every move, from births to weddings to funerals, disgusts me quite a bit. This is especially true coming from U.S. media. I mean, what's with this "dynasty worship" in a land that is supposed to reject inherited authority entirely? Just listen to the words they use to describe every even in their lives, calling them "fairy tale" moments or describing the princes and princesses as especially regal as though they have divinely gifted beauty above and beyond us mere peasantry. It's worrying to say the least.
So yes, my condolences to the family, and yes due to their position of authority of course this is newsworthy, but can we stop with the hyperbole? This is not going to be "as memorable as 9/11", and the comparison is sickening. (Oh yes, I do remember where I was when I first found out about the attacks on 9/11. I was right here reading about it in Tendo City and thought it was part of Tendo's "old news reported as new" running gag we had going back then, and a reference to the older attach on the world trade center. Whoops....)
I would usually put this in Games I Bought, but I think it deserves its own thread.
So, back in February of this year, Piko Interactive and Limited Run took preorders for a re-release of the extremely rare Korean 3DO/PC fighting game The Eye of Typhoon. Piko Interactive specializes in re-releases of games for older consoles that previously were not released in the West. They translate them and release them here, both on their original platform and sometimes also on PC (Steam). Limited Run, meanwhile, is fairly famous, most people reading this probably know of them. The company mostly releases limited-quantity physical releases of modern games which otherwise are only available digitally. They also release a few re-releases of classic games. This is one of those few. The game was sold exclusively as a $115 plus tax and shipping collector's edition with no regular edition offered. This is really unfortunate and surely significantly decreased the number of buyers, most people would only want a copy of the English 3DO game and not the rest of this stuff. But regardless, early in 2022 the preorders opened, were available for a while, and eventually closed. Just before preorders closed the last day I decided to buy a copy from Piko Interactive's site. I chose them over Limited Run, though the price and what buyers get is almost certainly identical either way. Piko has since removed the game from their site, though Limited Run still has it listed as something they sold. I don't know why Piko removed it. I could guess, but do not know.
Move forward some months. A week or two ago, my copy showed up in the mail from Piko. And wow is this package odd! First, though, it seems like very very few people bought this thing, because searching online in English I find almost NOTHING about the actual released LR/Piko version of this game. I don't know if the Limited Run-sold versions have also shipped or not, but on Yahoo I find nothing, and on Youtube only one video from a Korean person showing gameplay. Curious. I did find a couple of listings on Ebay of people selling the US release of the game, though, so I'm not the only one who has this. It seems to have already just about tripled in value versus the amount I paid for the preorder early this year. Given that we are talking about something connected to Limited Run that very few people seem to have bought this isn't surprising, but it is disappointing and again shows how big of a mistake making this only an expensive collector's edition was.
But this article is not just about that I bought it' I buy plenty of things, and rarely make articles on this site about them soon afterwards, that is for elsewhere. I had to write this because of what I found inside. Essentially, it is clear that what happened is that Piko and Limited Run sold an unaltered Korean game with no changes other than adding a small little eight-page English language instruction book that only covers the absolute basics and nothing more. There were some signs that this would be a mostly Korean product before buying it, I must say. The LR and Piko listings were both in badly broken Engrish, for one thing. But I was expecting, at the minimum, the paper materials in this box to all e translated. They are not. Instead, almost everything is exclusively in Korean except for the little English manual and the contents of the two English game discs. Or Engrish game discs, perhaps more appropriately, given the poor quality of the translation. I'm not sure if the text inside the game is a new translation or one made back in the '90s for a Western release that never happened until now, but it is comically poor.
Things start off well. As you see in the picture above, the good-sized box comes with an English-language cardboard slipcover over a Korean-language inner box; a metal rectangle celebrating the developer Viccom's anniversary; a pack of cards with the moves for each character on one side (move names only in Korean) and the character name and image on the other (name in English and Korean); a Korean-language book explaining Viccom's history that is apparently called the "Secret Book of Viccom", which might be nice if you could read the language but is mostly useless for the English-speaker apart from its nice sprite images and commands for every move in the game; an English-language insturction booklet, only eight pages long, explaining some of the story, installation instructions for the PC version, and controls; and three jewelcases. One is a dual-jewel, and two single jewelcases.
Now, this set comes with four discs -- 3DO English, 3DO Korean, PC English, and PC Korean. The PC versions will run on a classic PC (that one English-language booklet explains how to install this) or also in DOSBox on a newer machine, which is included on the discs. All three jewelcases have the game name in English along the left side, different variations on the same character art picture in the middle, and the game's name in Korean in the center top. One of the single jewelcases says 3DO on it, and the other CD-ROM and thus surely is for the PC>. The dual jewel has the name in English along with Korean in the center top. The dual jewel says 3DO / PC on it, to show that both versions are in this case. All three jewelcases have a manual in them, all three exclusively in Korean. So uh, which is the English version? It sure is hard to tell. However, after trying them in my 3DO, the discs in the dual-jewel case say "Korean Version" on them, and indeed they are. The other two standalone jewelcases, which do not say which version they have on them and again have LESS English on the cover and NO English in their instruction books, are in fact the English versions. It would be hard for them to have made this any less confusing.
Of course, the English we're talking about here is very limited in number of words and is incredibly poorly translated to the point of sometimes being unintelligible, but hey, at least it's in English! After going through the packaging and manuals and such I was starting to think it'd only be in Korean, since why else would the manuals in the jewelcases all be in Korean? That eight-page English language booklet doesn't come even close to translating everything in any of the three manuals. But fortunately no, both versions are here.
As for the game, this game started out as a Neo-Geo project, but only was released on PC and 3DO. It's a very SNK-styled fighting game, which is understandable given the developer's history with making the very poorly regarded Fight Fever for the Neo-Geo. This game is considered to be much better, though, fortunately. The Eye of Typhoon has strong influences from Samurai Shodown, The King of Fighters, and of course Capcom's Street Fighter II. The characters all are very familiar looking stereotypes to anyone who has played Capcom and SNK fighters, but the moves aren't all copied out of other games. For instance there is a character who looks almost exactly like Chun-Li, but she plays nothing like Chun-Li; she's more of a magician type. This is a fantasy historical martial artist fighting competition game. It's mostly about hand-to-hand combat with conventional special moves, so it isn't a weapon-based fighter. There are magical martial arts moves aplenty here, though. It's a fun, conventional fighter of its era. On 3DO, the game runs playably but definitely not smoothly; this game almost certainly runs worse than Samurai Shodown for 3DO. You get used to it, but it's choppy and doesn't feel great. The PC version runs much better but takes a little more work to get running, requiring DOSBox or an old PC and all.
Once you get into the game, you find another oddity: a lack of options. The game has only one option, solo or team modes. Other than that you can't change anything. There isn't even a dedicated versus mode, you need to enter from the single player mode by hitting start on the second controller each time you want a two player match. Fortunately though, despite not having AI difficulty options the game is fairly challenging. In fact, some people will probably find this game too hard; it gets tough after the first few opponents. Still, it's good that the one AI difficulty level you're stuck with puts up a good fight. It's a decent '90s fighter and while not amazing is fun enough. I should try it on PC to see the better framerate, but so far I have only played the 3DO version. The game is reasonably fun. It's not as good as SSFIIT or SamSho on 3DO, but based on playing a little bit of it it does live up to its reputation for being a decently good game and I am glad to have bought it.
Overall, this is a genuinely decent to good fighting game and is one of the better ones on its system. It's great that it was re-released, but it's simultaneously a real shame that this Western release of the re-release is so incredibly lazy. It is clear that all Limited Run and Pico did is sell us the Korean re-release with no changes other than adding that little manual booklet, and for the amount of money this cost that is not okay. I think it is more than reasonable to expect translated manuals and history booklets from a $115 product! But no, you don't get that here. It's disappointing. Also disappointing, of course, is that no cheaper English jewelcase only release of the rerelease was sold. This collection is probably already more common than the incredibly rare Korean original release from the '90s, but it is expensive and is sure to get even more so over time. I know that can happen with Limited Run stuff, but this is a bit different from most of their releases, not really being their release and all. It's fantastic to have a legit, licensed re-release of The Eye of Typhoon so I can finally legitimately play this game I have heard so much about. While flawed, this is a pretty cool thing to have. But a lot more people should have access to it and it should never have been sold with so much of the written materials untranslated. It's a real shame this release was so limited and lazily brought over to the West. I fully understand why people did not buy this, but considering where its value has gone, more people probably should have despite the significant shortcomings. Ah well.
It's so odd to see a powerhouse like Nintendo actually dig into the nitty gritty that most gamers don't even know about, but here it is. Sakurai of Kirby and Smash Bros fame has a game developer channel with all the production values you'd expect from a Nintendo Direct. If you're familiar with things like pulling out an old CRT so you can actually beat Mike Tyson or time those tricky barrel blasts in Donkey Kong Country you'll already know most of this, but I thought it was interesting.
If I could get a little deep for a minute:
How is a coping strategy for those on hard times not ultimately meaningless. How is "how I feel" about anything pay the damn bills, or fix the damn town?
You can make me happy as a kite but tomorrow will still be tomorrow and a reflection of today.
Explain it please. That's not a rhetorical I want to know.
Shouldn't science be just a little bit better than a will it want it strategy? How does that serve the common good?
Now I don't have a better answer I don't think anyone does. But this doesn't seem it.
And all that the legal process can do is go after all these novel unpredictable ways that corporations can do their evil long after generations of damage has already been done. Perhaps the solution is to remove the motive factor leading them to doing such horrible things in the first place. They'll always find loopholes, but only if they have a reason to find those loopholes.
