▲▲-
------ Location: Death Mountain Hearts: 3 Deaths: 0 Skulltulas: 5 Status: Just beat King Dodongo. Cavern was harder than I remember. Not doing so badly yet. This is my first attempt to do the 3-Heart challenge in Master Quest mode. Went to go see Great Fairy on Death Mountain but had no slingshot ammo to kill the skulltulas with. [/size]
Describing Kino's Journey is no easy thing since there's simply NOTHING to compare it to. It's unlike any anime I've ever seen, even Serial Experiments Lain. In fact, the two series have the same director: Ryotaru Nakamura. The best thing I've come up with to describe it is that it's like a course in human psychology, but more interesting.
To put it simply, Kino's Journey is about a person named Kino who travels with a talking motorad [or motorcycle] named Hermes. Kino merely observes other people and rarely makes judgement about their cultures and belief. However, it's not just a journey through different lands but a journey through the human mind, each episode focusing on a certain [fantasy] country and how the humans who live there...well...live. One episode is about a land where the people can read the minds of everyone else and another is about a land of peace but things are not what they seem. It's an episodic series with no real overall story arc, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the best anime series that I've ever seen.
The animation in Kino's Journey isn't too impressive on a technical level, but on the other hand it seems like a prosession of beautiful paintings. The music is some of the best I've heard and fits well in the series.
Final thoughts: For those who want an anime that makes them think and doesn't need action every five seconds to keep their attention will find Kino's Journey to be one of the greatest anime series ever made. It's that good.
Comics! Who reads them? What do you read? What are your favorites; hero, villian, storyline? DC vs. Marvel? Comicbooks movies. Books you would like to see made into movies. Surge in graphic novel publishing. What? What? What?
Books I read regularly:
Ultimate Spider-man
Ultmate X-men
The Ultimates
Superman/Batman
The Flash
Fables
Y the Last Man
John Constantine: Hellblazer
Preacher
JLA
The New Avengers
Wolverine
Batman: LODK
Marvel Knights Spider-man
Astonishing X-men
Favorite Hero: Ultimate Wolverine
Favorite Villian: The Joker
Favorite Storyline: Justice League of America: The Tower of Babel. This is where Ra's Al Ghul steals Batman's dossiers on each of the JLA members and defeats them all according to each's weaknesses. And as a result the JLA vote Batman out of the league.
I grew up reading comicbooks and I am glad to see pop culture is starting to share my enthusiasm for them. I am curious to see who else in Tendo City enjoys comics.
Quote:From RADAR Magazine, Summer 2005, we learn this interesting data about a massive 343-question interrogation that Scientology victims are asked while clutching the terminals of the famous e-meter – more fully, the “Hubbard electro-psychometer.” This was invented by a chiropractor named Volney Mathison, but was adopted by Scientology. It is simply a Wheatstone Bridge, a circuit that measures changes in electrical resistance between the two hands of the subject holding the terminals. It is, in effect a very crude lie detector which measures “galvanic skin response.” Scientology “auditors” use it to purportedly examine a person's mental state. The reading given on the meter varies according to the pressure of the hands on the terminals, the moisture on the skin, the ambient temperature, and the area of skin contact. When asked sensitive questions, those being “audited” tend to react by tightening up on the terminals, by sweating, or by shifting their grip – all of which cause the meter reading to fluctuate, thus creating the illusion that something important is happening.
Now, since Scientology teaches that billions of years ago octopus-like aliens dumped masses of major intergalactic criminals here on Earth, and that we’ve inherited the souls that were released when the blue squid vaporized these miscreants, it’s obviously wise for the “auditors” to investigate the hidden secrets of their victims to see if they’re inhabited by the bad guys. Here, taken from the internal Church of Scientology document labeled "HCO WW Sec Form 4", are a few of those 343 questions, designed to cause squeezing and sweating and thus give away those secrets. Honestly, dear reader, can you say that you can answer “no” to all of these penetrating inquiries?
1. Have you ever enslaved a population?
2. Have you ever debased a nation's currency?
3. Have you ever killed the wrong person?
4. Have you ever torn out someone's tongue?
5. Have you ever been a professional critic?
6. Have you ever wiped out a family?
7. Have you ever tried to give sanity a bad name?
8. Have you consistently practiced sex in some unnatural fashion?
9. Have you ever made a planet, or nation, radioactive?
10. Have you ever made love to a dead body?
11. Have you ever engaged in piracy?
12. Have you ever been a pimp?
13. Have you ever eaten a human body?
14. Have you ever given grits to a juvenile to eat?
15. Have you ever disfigured a beautiful thing?
16. Have you ever exterminated a species?
17. Have you ever been a professional executioner?
18. Have you given robots a bad name?
19. Have you ever set a booby trap?
20. Have you ever failed to rescue your leader?
Kid Chameleon is a 2D platformer on the Genesis that at first glance smacks a lot of the old-school Super Mario Bros. games, and in many ways, that's an accurate assessment, but there are several major differences that set this apart from that mold, and make this game perhaps the best 2D platformer you've never played.
The story is pretty forgettable, really. There's a new game at the arcade, a virtual-reality deal called Wild Side that everyone's in love with. Suddenly one day, the kids who go in to play stop coming out. The Boss of the game starts capturing players who lose. Now, the only person who can save the day is Kid Chameleon, a squat Fonzie-type with shades and an attitude. Welcome back to 1992.
Graphics: 10.0
[bq]Kid Chameleon came out right about at the center of the Genesis' lifespan, but this game aesthetically rivals even the latest and greatest to appear on the console.
There's plenty to see besides the backgrounds though. Kid himself is pretty squat and plain, but as he collects his helmets, he takes on about a dozen different forms and shapes, each one unique in appearance. Enemies are quite varied, well-animated, and some of them are downright menacing. The objects in the game are small enough to allow for a lot of detail, and the levels themslves are simply gigantic. Each has a lot to see, and many have several paths.
There are over one hundred levels in this game, and each one is large and full of lush detail, which is the primary graphical strength of Kid Chameleon. You start in a grassy hill stage, and in the background you see forests and a glassy lake. One major detail about the backgrounds, which I love, is that each one makes the levels seem vast, not just in it's own size, but in dimensions. The backgrounds are all very nice, very detailed, and give the impression of endless distance. The levels all have themes, ranging from deserts to tribal islands to urban landscapes to fiery hellish volcanoes to stuff straight out of fantasy novels, with floating islands and dragon statues. Great care was obviously put into immersing the player with the environment, and that's a great deal of what makes it memorable. There are few games in the 16-bit era that display such an overall impressive display.[/bq]
Sound: 8.5
[bq]As with the graphics, each stage has its own thematic music, and almost all of the tracks are eminently enjoyable. The city stages have a hip-hop beat, the tribal island stages have a jungle beat, the underground stages have a menacing metal sound, and so forth. Unfortunately, there's not as much variety in the soundtrack as there is with the visual styles, but it's not a major gripe, what is there is very good.
Sound effects are decent, nothing exemplary. There are your average bonks and bashes and bounces and grunts, and the various noises the enemies make. One that stands out is how Kid yells DIE when he dies. It's a little creepy really.[/bq]
Control: 9.0
[bq]Kid controls quite well. The controls are very responsive, and your character has a very decent range of movement. In your different forms, you will control differently (for instance, the fly jumps higher and sticks to walls, but walks very slow), and it takes some getting used to. It is definitely recommended to enable the auto-run option before you start, for it makes control much more fluid and spares you from having to hold down a run button, freeing you to only having to concern yourself with moving, jumping, and using your attacks, if you can. And it's definitely a good thing the control is tight, because there are some stages that are fast-paced and absolutely merciless to those with slow reflexes.[/bq]
Gameplay: 10.0
[bq]It is in this that sets Kid apart from the rest. The major gimmick to this game is that Kid uses different helmets, found in P blocks, that grant him many different powers, and in different ways. For instance, the Red Stealth helmet makes you a Samurai, giving you great speed, very high jumping, and a sword attack. The Maniaxe turns you into a likeness of a famous movie slasher with a hockey mask that throws axes and is all about offense. There is also a hoverboard helmet, a flying helmet, and many others. In addition to giving you a basic advantage, each helmet allows you to utilize Diamond powers. Diamonds are the Coins of Kid Chameleon, although in this game they serve a greater purpose. Each version of Kid has two types of Diamond Powers, a small and a large, and there are many, many different things these do, ranging from using the diamonds as a weapon in perhaps a dozen different forms, to giving you extra hit points or even extra lives.
Diamond powers are completely optional, but the special abilities the helmets give you are not. Many times you will need to find a particular helmet to pass an obstacle. And you will find more than one occasion where you have multiple paths, and in many cases, the helmet and powers you have can determine which path you can take. All in all, even though there are over a hundred levels, the replay value of the game is even more tremendous because there are dozens of paths through them, and there's no way to experience every level on a single playthrough.
When you finish a level, you are given bonuses towards your score. The basic bonus is time, as each stage is timed. You can however gain extra bonuses by taking the most direct route through a level, by not taking damage, and by not taking any helmets. The most direct benefit of running up your score is that you get extra lives and continues as your score goes higher, and as you get closer to the end, you'll likely need every bit of help you can get. It's worth noting that you only get to collect on these bonuses by ending a level by touching its goal flag. Using one of the many warps to reach another level will not do the same for you, although it still keeps track until you do finally touch a flag.
Every so often you will encounter The Boss, who takes different forms each time and must be defeated to pass. These are usually tests of endurance, as while the bosses are rather easy to hit, they take a lot of hits, and if you are limited to only being able to hurt him by jumping on him, you are in some trouble.
All in all, the game is a great challenge, and requires a lot of skill to be completed, but there is a very generous learning curve. The only major drawback to Kid Chameleon is that there is no save system or password system. If you intend to finish this game, make sure you have plenty of time, because if you shut the console off, you are starting over next time.[/bq]
Overall:
[bq]Kid Chameleon is one of the most difficult and enjoyable platformers on any console. Everyone's heard of Super Mario and Sonic, but in many ways KC surpasses both. It's not for the novice or the faint of heart, completing the game is definitely a reason to pat yourself on the back, but the fun of the experience is getting there and seeing everything there is to see. It's one of the most truly memorable gaming experiences Sega put forth in the 16-bit era.[/bq]
Quote:The area of games in which the SNES really took stride was in the role playing game (RPG). The SNES was not the first system to have these games, even NES had a few good ones, but it was on the Super Nintendo that the RPG as we know it today came to be. NES' RPGs, like Dragon Warrior, were long and tedious and offered a very linear story line. Advances were made, such as in the real-time RPG Star Tropics, but only so much could be done with the NES console. The Super Nintendo console, with its 128 Kbytes of RAM and 3.58 MHz CPU, allowed for such memorable games as Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Earth Bound, and Chrono Trigger. These games, some real-time and some turn-based, set the foundation for the modern RPG and though their have been surpassed in a technological sense, it they remain to be some of the finest role playing games of all time.
