An unfortunate victim of Pac-Man fever

Courtesy of FARK.com and Kotaku, here’s something I don’t know how to react to:

Tattoos on BodyMod.org

I mean, on one hand, it’s actually a pretty good tattoo, even if (as someone on Kotaku pointed out) it’s not clear how there can be uneaten dots behind Ms. Pac-Man. On the other hand, tattoos freak me out in principle, and head tattoos doubly so. I’ll assume that the unfortunate-looking bruising and rash surrounding the ink will fade over time, and it looks like the subject (AileenFritz, apparently) has her hair pulled back for illustrative purposes and that the tattoo would normally be at least partially covered. But, even so, as much as I enjoy Ms. Pac-Man, I can’t see myself mutilating my forehead to express that love to the world.

On the other hand, I couldn’t if I wanted to: my diabetes-weakened immune system ensures that no reputable tattoo artist would agree to tattoo me if I bothered to ask. So I’m hardly the best person to ask when it comes to tattoos.

My, my, my, where does the time go?

Well, here we are seven and a half months later, and I’ve completely blown my promise to keep to a more regular update schedule. In my defense, it’s been kind of a messy year so far. I’ve gone through an unpleasant phase, and I’ve only recently started to feel like myself again. I’ve also moved into a new apartment, bought a new computer, and learned a valuable lesson about not placing eBay bids as a lark.

I’ll tell you more about what I’ve been up to later on, but I thought I’d first post a few video gaming-related updates. Towards the end of last year, I wound up with both an Xbox 360 and a Wii. The former I wanted, the latter was the result of the aforementioned ill-considered eBay bid. I’ve gotten a fair amount of mileage out of the 360, actually. More than I had expected. I bought it primarily out of interest in two or three games (Eternal Sonata, Mass Effect, and Rock Band), but I’ve managed to find various other things to keep me playing. I still haven’t beaten Mass Effect, though. I made a good amount of headway into January of this year, but then I somehow managed to corrupt my user profile and lose my saved games. I haven’t been able to make myself sit down and start over as yet. But I’ve lived the Rock Band lifestyle, and I’m absolutely loving it. Harmonix and Activision’s devotion to making new content available online is great, and despite the higher-than-usual price tag for the whole set, I’ve never once felt that I wasted my money.

The Wii, on the other hand, hasn’t seen much action. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m primarily interested in role-playing games and turn-based strategy games, and neither is in great abundance on the system. The handful of Virtual Console games I’ve any interest in I’ve already played on the original consoles, and WiiWare’s original online content has been very slow to match the quality or quantity of material available on Xbox Live. I enjoyed Wii Sports, to be sure, Super Paper Mario was a decent little diversion, and I’ve been meaning to pick up the new Fire Emblem game, but not much else really excites my interest.

On the handheld front, I’ve played the rereleases of Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea for the PSP, and thoroughly enjoyed both of them, even if they weren’t particularly original. Jeanne d’Arc was fun, and I found myself enjoying Brooktown High more than I probably should have. At long last, I’ve started to feel that the DS is holding up its end of the bargain on the games front, with a succession of pretty good titles, including Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, and the remake of Hoshigami taking up much of my time. I also finally managed to snag a copy of the elusive second Phoenix Wright game, so I’ve been catching up on that front.

For the PC, I’ve been playing a great deal of Europa Universalis III and it’s quasi-sequel/spin-off EU: Rome, which are the sort of games-for-history-nerds that you never thought they actually made. I’ve also been playing a bit of the Total War series, and I’ve been eyeing my old discs of Planescape: Torment. It’s been almost a decade since I played through it the first time, and I’m having nostalgia pangs.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll try to be back in a day or two, where I’ll share my springtime gardening experiences. That should be worth a laugh or two. In the meantime, swing over to Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and support Joss Whedon’s (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly) first attempt at a straight-to-the-web musical comedy.

Smothered in hot sauce, Buffalo-style

Time was, I used to pick up any video game that look reasonably interesting whenever I went shopping. More recently, I’ve chosen to be a little more circumspect. The problem isn’t money, really, but time: I’m still sitting on a couple of original PlayStation games that I’ve not ever really had the time to tackle. If I never bought another video game in my life, I’d probably still have enough to keep me occupied until I retire. I still buy games, of course, but seldom with the impulsiveness I once did. On Black Friday, for instance, I bought Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja and Hoshigami: Running Blue Earth Remix for the DS based on a review from a friend and an gaming site I generally trust, respectively. Both games have been out for months, and I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into in advance.

I did, however, buy a third game that day, against my better judgment. It was a new release, and I’d not read a single review or even heard any word-of-mouth coverage of it. The game was Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, which goes to show you how much of a sucker I remain for the “Final Fantasy” brand. I knew it wasn’t a traditional RPG, and I’d been following some of the news of the Japanese release, but I was a bit nervous about blindly taking the plunge. But I was burning off my turkey-and-cranberry-sauce high from the day before, so I threw caution to the wind. Now that I’ve had some time to play, I figured I’d share my preliminary thoughts.

The game is actually a pretty impressive melding of Final Fantasy XII’s hack-and-slash gameplay with the RTS genre. You get a party of five characters to control, and each of those five characters gets to command his or her own group of disposable troops. The gambit system returns, in greatly simplified form: each of your five characters has his or her own special abilities, and you can set one of those abilities to be performed automatically. There’s also a resource-gathering element to the game, where the resources you gather are used to craft new equipment for your characters. The structure of the game itself, with mission boards and chapters, is strongly reminiscent of turn-based tactical RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea.

As for the story, it’s a direct continuation of Final Fantasy XII, with appearances from most of the main cast of that game. I’m not that far into the game yet (third chapter), but the plot itself doesn’t strike me as particularly revolutionary. The script is quite good, though, with the same antiquated-English style. Visually, it’s about as impressive as one can expect from the DS, looking like a fairly early PS1 game.

My biggest complaint is the heavy use of the DS stylus. This is the first DS game I’ve purchased that actually requires the stylus for play: most games seem to stick stylus-support on as something of an afterthought (the Phoenix Wright games or Final Fantasy III) or just omit it completely (Izuna), but this game provides no way to control your troops without at least some use of the stylus. On one hand, I understand that doing the sort of things the game wants you to do with a traditional D-pad setup would be tricky, but on the other hand, I hate the stylus! It’s an awkward, uncomfortable control mechanism that becomes even more awkward and uncomfortable when you try to use it in the car or bus. Call me old fashioned, but I’m still a firm believer that a portable handheld system should be usable on-the-go. I can get used to using the darned thing for this game, but I’m far from thrilled about the situation.

Ultimately, I’m enjoying the game quite a bit. My inexperience with the genre and occasional frustration with the control scheme, however, make me worry that I’m going to hit a brick wall at some point before reaching the end. If I do, I suspect I’m going to put the game aside and forget about it until some indeterminate point in the future, like I’ve done with various other games. But there’s enough to like about the game that I don’t regret buying it either way.

It’s only Mega and Roll (but I like it)

While I’ve been busy grinding my way through Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness on my PSP, my brother has been busy with Mega Man Powered Up on his (when he’s not busy emulating NES games). I’ve messed around it with it briefly, and I figured I’d share my thoughts.

First of all, the super deformedness (not an actual word, Firefox’s spell checker informs me) is a little disturbing, honestly. I like cute things as much as the next guy, but you can have too much of a good thing. But the character designs are better than they could have been, I suppose, and overall the game is pretty impressive looking. As another of the PSP’s seemingly endless supply of remakes of older games, it’s actually a pretty impressive work. Truth be told, it’s more of a reimagining of the NES’s Mega Man than a true remake. The levels have been totally redesigned, and they’ve brought in two new robot masters to bring the total number of bosses up to the series-standard eight. That being said, they’ve introduced none of the additions from the later games in the series: there’s no Rush, no Mega Buster, and no sliding. And they still have the point counter from the NES original, and, yes, it’s still as completely pointless as it ever was.

The other major difference from the original is that the original game was sadistically difficult. This… isn’t. It has the benefit of three difficulty modes, but even though the hard mode is still more than capable of kicking my ass, it’s much less cruel about it. I can actually beat four or five stages in easy mode, which is something of a triumph for me. I know there’s plenty of gamers out there who’d bemoan the dumbing down of contemporary games, but I’m not one of them. The fact that I can actually make some headway in this thing is a major selling point for me.

Also kind of neat is the ability to play the game as one of the robot masters once you’ve defeated them. It’s all quite well done, and adds a lot of depth to the game. It’s also led both me and my brother to salivate over the prospect of Powered Up 2, since we both want to play as Metal Man. Also noteworthy is the fact that, when you’re playing as one of the bosses, Mega Man takes his place in the lineup. To denote the fact that he’s now eeeevvviiilll, he wears a cute little red cape, which I’ve decided is by far the coolest fashion accessory in the long history of the franchise.

The voice acting is pretty good, and the new cutscenes actually add an enjoyable, if not particularly deep, layer to the story. There’s nothing really revolutionary here, but it’s the whole package is pretty slick, and it’s made me nostalgic for the old days when you could expect a new installment in the Mega Man series every winter.

Painful confession time

It is now that time again, when I get to whine and moan to no one in particular about one of my shortcomings (and no comment from the peanut gallery about how many of those there are, please). This one has always been a particularly painful one for me to admit, given my age and the circles in which I travel. It is my secret shame, of which until now only my closest and dearest friends and family have known. Actually, that might not actually change, given the number of people who I suspect frequently visit this blog (maybe I should, y’know, tell people about it one of these days…). Just what is this terrible secret, you ask? Simple: I suck at video games.

I love playing them, of course. And there are a handful of specific genres at which I’m fairly skilled: turn-based role-playing, strategy, and tactical games, and traditional adventure games (of the text-based and and point-and-click graphical variety). But the kind of games that the average member of the public thinks about when the topic is brought up? Things like Super Mario Bros., or Grand Theft Auto, or Halo? I’ve no skill whatsoever. The last platform game I was able to complete without cheating? I’m pretty sure it was Kirby’s Dream Land for the original Game Boy.

The really obnoxious part about all this? Since elementary school, my self-identity has been pretty closely tied up in gaming. My friends are all gamers, and they’re pretty much all significantly better at it than me. For a time, I was able to at least keep up with the discussion through the generous use of cheating, particularly with devices like the Game Genie or the Action Replay. Unfortunately, what with the rise of online gaming, and the increase in console lock-down techniques, such devices are becoming fewer and farther between. So I have come, for instance, to accept that I will never be able to make significant progress in Metroid Prime 3.

Not that I’m asking for sympathy, mind you. Over the years I’ve learned to live with my lack of gaming skill, and I remain at relative peace with myself. I’ve even resigned myself to having the majority of gamers to whom I reveal my secret go all sanctimonious on me, telling me that all I need to do is practice, and how I shouldn’t cheat because “I’m only hurting myself” (an argument which still boggles me). So why bother sharing this in the first place, you ask? Is it part of some weird passive-aggressive messiah complex thing?

Well, no. Partly it’s the catharsis, partly it’s in the hope that I can just refer people to this post when I’m trying to explain why I don’t want to deathmatch them, but mostly it’s because I haven’t posted anything here in months and I feel obligated to say something, lest this blog lie as fallow as my last attempt at blogging. It’s also because of this blog I just came across from a fellow not-very-skilled gamer. I really like the idea of providing occasional game reviews from the perspective of a shitty gamer. And since I strongly believe that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and because the previously linked blog hasn’t been updated in almost a year, I’ve decided to take a crack at it. I’ve no idea how frequently I’ll get around to adding new entries, but look in the coming few weeks for a few such reviews. Or don’t. Your choice, I guess.

Sorry, Mario, but our princess is in another castle

Those of you who know me may be aware of the fact that my brother is something of a connoisseur of vintage video game consoles. At any given time, he has no less than nine systems hooked into his television (the Magnavox Odyssey, the Atari 5200 with 2600 adapter, the Colecovision, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Sega Genesis/CD/32X, the Nintendo 64, the Dreamcast, the PlayStation 2). In the past two weeks, he’s added several new devices to the mix. First was the Atari Jaguar (with CD attachment), purchased from eBay. Yesterday, he and I trekked out to the nearest CD/game exchange, armed with a variety of duplicate games he’d picked up as part of lot auctions (fun fact: did you know that it’s scientifically impossible to get any Atari 2600 games on eBay without also getting another copy of Yar’s Revenge?) and a couple of truly horrendous anime DVDs I should have sold years ago (Battle Athletes, I’m looking at you…). By the time we left, he was accompanied by a Xbox 360 and an “FC Game Console.”

It seems that the market for hardware clones of old Nintendo consoles produced by Chinese manufacturers with questionable quality control practices has been blown wide open by recent legal developments. Nintendo Entertainment System hardware clones, once restricted to shady international websites, flea markets, and the backs of particularly unsavory trucks, have apparently been found legal to sell in the United States, and moved into the big-time, high stakes world of used media exchanges. This particular exchange was selling two such knockoffs, both produced by a company called Yobo Gameware. The first was a pretty straightforward NES knockoff called the FC Game Console, a top loading, card-slot reader system that uses standard NES controllers. The second was a more ambitious effort called the FC Twin, which boasts support for both NES and Super NES cartridges. My brother and I opted for the vanilla FC Game Console because the FC Twin only featured SNES controller ports, and we couldn’t accept buying a system that didn’t support such must-have accessories like the Zapper, the NES Advantage, or the Power Pad.

My first observation about this thing is that the cartridge slot is really rather poorly designed. It’s simple enough to insert a cartridge, but getting the damned thing out again is exhausting. My second observation is that the controllers packaged with the system are actually quite nice. The overall form factor is roughly the same as a SNES pad, and the standard Dpad/start/select/A/B buttons have been augmented by a slow motion feature and two turbo buttons. It’s not quite as fancy as a NES Max, but for a $30 knockoff, it’s not bad at all. The system connects to the TV with mono RCA cables, and the picture quality is superb. The sound is a bit off in places, though: my brother specifically noticed some of the samples from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! sounded wrong. Even so, it’s not like it sounds awful.

To be sure, we already had a working NES. My brother even has the redesigned, top-loading NES that Nintendo released in 1994 or so to deal with the fact that the original front-loading, “toaster”-style units were badly designed pieces of crap. It’s a nice system, but it has problems. The biggest of these is poor picture quality: there’s no composite video output, so the only way to hook the thing up is through coaxial RF output. Which is bad enough, except that I swear there’s some kind of magnetic/electrical shielding problem that increases the amount of signal noise. Or whatever. I’m no A/V expert, I just know that the system produces poor quality video. It has other problems, as well, which are of particular interest to a piss-poor gamer like myself: it doesn’t support the Game Genie. Yes, there are adapters floating out there which allow you to use the device, since the problem is purely mechanical (the thing physically won’t fit into the deck), but the draw of a system that would address both the graphical quality issues and the Game Genie issue for only $30 was too much to pass up.

As it happens, the FC Game Console addresses both of the above issues admirably. It supports the Game Genie, and it looks damned good doing it. Unfortunately, it introduces some other flaws. Compatibility, while certainly not awful, is less than 100%, and some of the holes are significant: it won’t play Castlevania III at all. It will play The Legend of Zelda, but apparently exhibits some significant graphical glitches while doing so. It appears, despite horror stories to the contrary, to have no problems with Super Mario Bros. 2, but that’s apparently dumb luck, as I’ve seen numerous forum postings saying that it does not.

So the console currently sits alongside my brother’s official NES, rather than replacing it as originally intended. For the vast majority of games, it works flawlessly and really is preferable to the officially released system. But the shortcomings are unfortunate. My brother has already started talking about getting a refurbished toaster-style NES from Nintendo Repair Shop, Inc. Does anyone have any experience with these? Do they effectively deal with the gray screen/blinking light problems faced by the system?

That’s all for now. I’ll be back in a bit with comments on the Xbox 360, once I’ve actually gotten the thing up and running properly….

Dio, can you hear me…?

I’m not a big fan of metal. The music, that is. I’ve nothing again a good chunk of tungsten. But I’ve a few acquaintances who are, and they might well be thrilled with this news.

In brief, Holy Diver, the Japan-only Famicom game based on the album of the same name by Ronnie James Dio, has finally been fan-translated to English. I personally never quite got over the fact that there was a Dio-centric video game, let alone a Dio-centric video game released only in Japan, but whatever. It’s actually, against all expectations, a halfway decent action game, so if you’re into that sort of thing, it’s worth checking out.

In need of Heroes

First, an administrative note: my old URL of wildfiredarkstar.net should now redirect to my current digs here at WordPress.com. Unfortunately, I’m still working out some of the kinks, and you may notice a variety of odd bugs if you don’t come in directly to the WordPress site. I’m going to see what I can do to correct those, and I’ll let you know when I’ve got it all sussed out.

Anyway, with graduation under my belt I finally have a limited amount of free time on my hands again, which I have decided to waste by returning to Heroes of Might and Magic V, which I began months ago and subsequently forgot about as real life caught up with me. My first impressions, from oh-so-long ago now, were that the gameplay itself was quite impressive, with a good battle system that borrowed successfully from games like Final Fantasy X while keeping the best of what worked about previous installments in the series. On the other hand, the story has serious flaws, both in its conception and its execution: a cliched fantasy plot delivered through outdated-looking 3D cut scenes with laughably bad voice acting. But now that I’m giving it another go, I’ll see if my initial perceptions have changed. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.