Even In The Miiverse, I'm Still Self Conscious.

The two middle weekends April, I did a lot of travelling.  And by "a lot," I mean that I've flown and driven 3,200 miles while visiting California twice and driving the length of the state.  That's a lot for me considering I haven't been back to California since mid June 2012, which according to some people is a long time to be away from where I spent the first 31 years of my life.  It's not that travelling is not my strong suite or my pint of stout, it's just that I'm not able to take a lot of time off from work.  To note, I'm also lucky enough to only have to drive less than three miles to get to work.

Anyway!

Before taking my trips, I knew that I was going to take my 3DS with me.  I figured that over those two weeks, I would be passing through three airports, one university (two days worth) and 1,000 miles of rest stops along Interstate I-5.  I saw it as 3DS Mii Streetpass gold!  My next thought was, "What game should I play a lot of so that when my Mii gets Streetpassed, that game will show up being held by my Mii in the other person's Mii Plaza?"

That was a serious question.  I've ran across a number of Mii's where the person has been "recently playing" an application such as Nintendo Video or the Activity Log.  When someone comes across my Mii, I want a game to come up that represents me as a person and a gamer.  Granted, I spend a fair amount of time in the Nintendo eShop or looking at my stats with the Activity Log, but I don't want that to come across when I pass someone else.  I'd rather have something like Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, Mega Man 2 or Gunman Clive because those are games that I really enjoy playing.

I'm not sure if I should be ashamed or embarrassed that I put so much thought into what some random strangers virtual pseudo perception of the kind of person that you 1) Probably will never meet in person and 2) May never run into again, especially travelling up I-5.    Dr. Potts brought up a great point, in that putting time into how people saw me would be like spending time doing my hair (if I ever did more than just brush my hair each morning) or putting in serious thought into picking out what clothes to wear.  While I was in Davis for Picnic Day though, I did run into a couple of people multiple times.  Now, it would be cool to see a history of the different games that a person has been playing, but only the most recent game they've been playing is visible.

So during my two excursions down to California, I did manage to come across 25 other Miis and of those 25, only seven had an application (Swapnote, eShop, 3DS Camera) as their most recent game in lieu of an actual game.  Do I have some negative or altered view of that person because of what their Mii is carrying?  And if I don't care what another Mii is carrying, why should I put so much thought and concern as to how other people see Mii?

Although to note, I don't always put so much thought every time I take my 3DS out when I go to the grocery store (some guy at Fred Meyer's always has his) or when I go out with Conklederp to a food pod.  So I don't know what this says about me and maybe I'll just leave it up to someone who is proficient in psychoanalysis to make the final determination.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Going Down Towards The Deadend

Emulator Hour: 8-bit rpg round-up

I've been on an 8-bit RPG kick of late.  It started with Final Fantasy, moved on to a translation of Final Fantasy II, then to Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, and most recently, a cell phone game called Gurk - the 8-bit RPG.   Along the way, I've made brief stops at Dragon Warrior II and Ultima: Exodus.  I guess I'm just feeling some powerful nostalgia, as this genre and these games ate up many days and hours of my young life.

At the present moment, I'm thinking of my unwillingness to play completely through these games.  Granted, I never beat Ultima:Exodus, nor did I beat Dragon Warrior II, Ultima: Avatar - and I never even played Final Fantasy II because it wasn't released in the US.  There exists, in the back of my mind, the desire to actually finish these games; perhaps with the aid of guides, save states or other modern supports of gaming.  But for the time being, I'm more content to wade into the Nostalgia pool and swim around.  However, to experience this nostalgia it is not strictly necessary to sit down and play these games. 

Images and Sound are able to carry me a long way down memory lane.  I recently remembered a fantastic website called digitpress, wherein you can find scans of dozens of NES game instruction booklets.  This is really worth a look, I was strongly struck, when reviewing the manuals for Ultima and Zelda.  There are funny elements, like the consistency of formatting between games - the one page plot summaries on the first page are good for a smile.  The cover art - so influential to me when drawing my own characters, armor designs and such. 

We've written a bit about 8-bit music on this site, and it is another great source of Nostalgia.  If you spent time playing Ultima: Exodus, the song below should be triggering for you.  

A funny thing about my memories of Ultima: Exodus vs Quest of the Avatar:  I remember preferring Exodus greatly, though when I go back to revisit these games I see that the graphical improvement between the two was massive.  Exodus looks almost ridiculous in how blocky the images are and how stiff the movement is.  Still, I remember when Avatar came out, being so excited to play a new Ultima game.  And then I was ultimately disappointed, because I felt like it looked too much like 'all those other games.'  And I think that still holds- one example of which was the choice to outline the characters in black.  This was not the style of Exodus, but became the style in Avatar, and is such a common stylistic choice that it is easily overlooked.

I guess part of my goal in playing around with these 8-bit RPGs is to study different design choices, in things like character equipment, map design and battle design.  It is my ambition to make an 8-bit style RPG of my own some day.  And actually, I've carried this ambition with me for over 20 years.  This is something I visit and revisit- I'm in no hurry, if I'm not enjoying myself, then its not worth it.  I've looked into some RPG makers, and right now I'm playing with RPG Maker VX Ace Lite - which is the free version of the $70 retail RPG maker series.  There is so much that goes into the design of a game, I have to work hard to budget my time before I'm willing to drop the cash for an RPG maker that may collect more dust than design. So far, the map builder is a blast :)

Alright, I'm heading out now.  I want to make a quick note of Gurk - the 8-bit RPG.  This is a free cell-phone RPG available for Android.  It plays like an even more low-fi version of Ultima:Exodus, if you can believe that.  No music as far as I can tell, but its got equipment, item shops, combat and dungeons.  After getting used to the interface, I think I can get into this game;  Gurk will do the job of nourishing my 8-bit RPG nostalgia while I'm away from home, without requiring me to carry my Nintendo DS along with me. 

-D

P.S.  Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the first post on this blog.  Happy Birthday to us.

First Impressions: Cry of Fear (PC)

I'm one of those people that does judge a book by it's cover.  Does that make me proud that on some level I judge things solely based on their appearance, I guess you could say so, but there have been times when being of that mentality has paid off.  Recently on Steam's front page, down in the Featured section, I saw a thumbnail of a gloved hand trailing against a dank looking wall with the title Cry of Fear looking like the title above this paragraph.  Below said thumbnail was "THIRD-PARTY."  The combination of the lack of price and thumbnail intrigued me to click and find out more about this game.

As it turns out, Cry of Fear was originally a mod for Half-Life 1 developed by Team Psykallar.  Now available through Steam through their Greenlight release series, Cry of Fear is it's own stand alone game, without requiring Half-Life 1 in order to play.  And, and AND, the game is free.  Yes, a free game.  You're welcome to donate to the company, kind of like one of those Humble Indie Bundle or Indie Royal Bundles, but you can play the game first.

And play it I have.  At least for about an hour anyway before deciding that I should stop, write out what I have here to say then head to bed for the night/morning.  I'm going to have pretty awesome dreams too if I don't wake up screaming, although to give the game credit, I was warned ahead of time.  Resident Evil was the first game I saw that had a disclaimer before the game started warning of impending violence and gore, which read as follows, "Warning This game contains strong language and scenes of explicit violence and gore."  Maybe these were more common on PC games, but little 23 year old me hadn't been exposed to too many M rated games; I had some, just not many.  The disclaimer at the beginning of Cry of Fear however, takes the warning up a notch with, "This game contains violence and gore, and can cause fear, depression, heart failure and suicide.  Users and viewers discretion is advised."

Now that's a warning if I've ever read one prior to playing a game before and for whatever reason, I did not feel that it came across as the developers stroking their own horns.  Sure they are to some extent, but to me, it sounded more original than saying that "This game will make you shit bricks and cry for your mommy.  Pussy."  It was all about the language used.

Back to the game.

Cry of Fear is an FPS horror game set somewhere, possibly somewhere in Scandinavia although I don't think the actual setting will be too important.  All it means to me so far is that I can't read any of the newspapers or graffiti that is used as set decorations.  That's pretty much all I know about the setting of the game.  I have come across some enemies who have managed to kill me a few times, which may have also contributed to deciding to write out my thoughts earlier than I may have originally planned.  So, the game looks like this:

Yes, the graphics are a little grainy, which could be an artistic choice or it could be because the game was originally a mod from a 1998 PC game.  Either way, I feel that the graininess adds to the overall atmosphere, which is pretty flippin' creepy.

The game was easily controlled with standard WASD keys and I was able to invert the mouse, which I am always thankful for.  I tinkered around editing some of the other keys such as crouch, but everything else felt like standard FPS PC controls.  At the present, I only have two equippable but each of those items has duel functions, something I haven't seen a lot of since Perfect Dark and something I feel should have been almost required at this point, especially for FPS games.  Your cellphone acts as both a phone and as a flashlight and your knife can either stab or slash; I don't know if there's a tactical difference but I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.

The music, from what I've heard so far is pretty standard fare for a horror game in that it's mainly background ambient music intended to set the mood.  I haven't come across any areas where the music cuts out entirely as sometimes happens in the Resident Evil games.  The environment noise is very well done.  The voice acting isn't great and seems kind of stilted at times, there always seem to be bright yellow subtitles permanently on, although I typically have subtitles off, so in my case I find it a little distracting.

That all being said, I highly recommend trying this game out if you like either FPS and/or horror (including survival horror) games.  It's free after all, but that doesn't mean you don't have to show the developers some love in return for their hard work.  Any game that can cause me to jump in my seat and make me sit back from the keyboard in momentary fear is the type of game that I personally would love to see more of.  

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Feeling Good

P.S.  
***SPOILER - THE WINDOW***
I will give one pseudo-spoiler, but as it happens near the very beginning of the game, it won't be much of one, but more like a walkthrough/hint/tip.  Once you take control of the character, you will eventually come to a window.  Now, this window is a bloody damn pain in the ass to get through.  I don't know if it was an oversight or if it's intended to teach you how to jump through windows, but the point is, I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.  For me, I was had to crouch first, then jump while moving forward towards the window.  I don't know if there's an easier way as two of the youtube videos I watched don't actually explain what they're doing.  But, just take your time, and you'll make it through that window.  Only to wish about a minute later that you could find your way back to it, board it up an build a thick-ass cement wall so nothing will come through it ever again.  Yourself included.

Tetris Dreams

http://perfectzed.deviantart.com/art/Tetris-wallpaper-152596878

Tetris Dreams:
well holy shit, there has actually been a scientific study on Tetris Dreams.  It was featured on an episode of RadioLab about Dreams.  And it's in the first ten minutes, so you should go over and listen.  Later they play a full-body arcade version of alpine racer.

http://www.radiolab.org/2007/may/24/dreams/


Just a post-fragment for ya'll here at 6:45am
-D
Currently Playing:  Ultima: Quest for Avatar (NES), Final Fantasy II (NES)

The Question of Geek or It's all Geek to Me - a response

 This post is a response to my blogging colleague and good friend's post:  What does it mean to you?

I think part of the problem presented by the meaning of Geek is connected to what Felicia Day presents as a concern: that Geek has become over-commercialized.  It's like Geeks were these rare and beautiful jewels, who were content to sparkle and be pretty and perhaps be set into the inlay on an elder blade, or curse a hapless treasure hunter.  But what ended up happening is that the world of business discovered that these jewels have monetary value, and can be traded for bucks.  And now they are circulating, and circulating. What once had to be stolen from a crypt in the amazon is now available for $4.99 on amazon.com. 

And to make matters worse: when something that used to be precious is now a commodity, it's hard not to begin to question authenticity.  I think this is where the phrase 'you're not a real...' - something or other - comes in.  There is a fear of receiving the fools gold of geekdom.  It's a legitimate concern, though I think some take it too far. 

I feel a certain frustration when I hear people toss around 'Geek' like it's something to be proud of.  It's hard to see that something that felt very costly to me as a youth claimed loudly as an adult.  However, I don't really think it's appropriate to publicly question someone's authenticity as a person, either.  That can be harmful.  Besides, for all the rejection I felt when I was young, I had at least an equal amount of connection-  I never went to a Star Trek convention alone.  

Now that I'm a grown up, with an adult life and adult job, the labels Geek and Nerd don't worry me too much anymore.  It's my 'adult' concerns that eat up the majority of my attention and identity. Or maybe I've just gotten really good at hiding it.  I certainly understand why it is a concern for Felicia Day, who has named her channel 'Geek and Sundry.'  If the term 'Geek' becomes watered down, where will that leave Felicia?  

I once read an article, way back when smartphones hadn't invaded, Steam really hadn't caught on, and Futurama was still canceled.  The author of this article had firm definitions of Nerd and Geek.  In it, they defined the Geek as the tinkerer, the one who could figure out how things work, who knew the computer coding language, who could do the advanced math, applied or no.  And the Nerd was the collector.  The one who consumed vast quantities of media and knowledge, and had it all organized, but didn't necessarily have any practical use for it. 

I think a dork was somewhere in between.  If there was a label that I identify with on the Nerd Continuum, I think it would be dork.  I just don't get it, I don't really mind that I don't get it, and I really hope you leave me alone about how I don't get it.  I do like stuff though, and if you ask about it, I will totally tell you all about it.  I guess it's kind of like Aspberger's Syndrome, which is on the chopping block for the DSM V.  Did I just wrinkle your brain? No?  Oh.  okay. 

I can't help but think I'm forgetting something.  I thought long and hard about this subject all day.  I guess I don't have to cover everything in just one try.  Anyway, Geek = label given to me as a kid.  Bitterness.  As adult it is now a good classification... whaaa?   The end. 

-D

Currently Playing: Final Fantasy II (NES)

Classify this.  Or just check the page out, it makes me feel better about things.

What Do We Mean By "First Impressions"?

I was thinking about this a couple of days ago, I won't say where I was at or where I was doing, but I was thinking not only what our idea is but what a readers idea of what a "First Impression" might be.  In the Nintendo eShop, you can't submit a review (albeit a pretty short review that's limited to if you think the game is casual/intense, if it's for everyone/gamers and the number of stars out of five you would award it) until you've played the game for at least an hour.  Granted if you hate a game after the first five minutes, you could just leave the game on for the next 55 minutes then give it a scathing review.

For me, it really depends on the game.  For Cogs, after about 10 minutes, I knew that it would be a game that I wouldn't either be able to or want to finish due to my pseudo-dislike and frustration with sliding puzzles.  Presently I've put in 56 minutes in Cogs and I probably won't play it again unless we have people over who happen to really like sliding puzzles.  After those 56 minutes though, I felt like I could write a First Impression about Cogs (which I did) and feel that I had a good feel for the general purpose of the game.  At the moment, I'm currently playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and 27 hours in, I feel like I'm almost at the point to where I could write a First Impression.

So why the huge disparity from one game to another?  

I'll give another example for both Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2.  I've spent 25 minutes with GTA and 44 minutes on GTA2.  I feel like I could do an article for the first game, again because I feel like I know what is expected of me in the game.  I won't presume to know everything about the game or to be an expert, but I have the general gist of what's going on.  In GTA2, I feel like I need to put in at least another hour or two before I could write something that sounds like I know what I'm talking about, which I will probably do in the next few weeks, but don't hold me to it as I recently put Mario Kart 7 (I know, I'm late with the games again) in my 3DS and Steam always seems to have 50-75% off sales on games that look like they're too much fun to pass up.

I feel it all comes down a fraction of the amount of time it would take in order to complete that game.  What is that multiplier?  I don't know and I don't think that it could be whittled down to a simple percentage.  So I just invalidated the first sentence of this paragraph, which any high school English teacher is a bad way to write a paper.  Thank goodness my sister, who is a high school English teacher (and our mother who was an English major in college) aren't frequent readers or I'd frequently be hearing from them about improper syntax or using multiple tenses of verbs in the same sentence.  But this is all beside the point.

Now, I can't speak for the Good Doctor (English major) on how he determines when is a good time to write up a review or an impression, but I feel that we're at least reading the same book, if not the same chapter.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Stage 1 of the Process

BBC indie game podcast and the best indie games of 2011

If you're like me, then you may be perpetually out-of-touch with what's going on right now in gaming.  I recently went to a game stop, and I kept repeating 'Another God of War?'  'Another Bioshock?' 'didn't these games just come out?'  And if you're like me, you probably don't really mind being out of touch.  

Yet another similarity you may have to me is that you may enjoy listening to podcasts,  perhaps while in the kitchen, cooking or washing dishes.  I have a few podcasts that I cycle through; I've always got something to listen to.  However, sometimes I get bored of the same old subjects, and I go out to find something new.  My latest search was for indie game podcasts.

To my disappointment, the first few podcasts I found had not been updated in months or even years.  This seemed odd, given that I think indie games are becoming a bigger part of the entertainment discussion, not smaller.  But, then again, as I mentioned, I am perpetually out-of-touch. I decided to give one a go, and I settled on the BBC-sponsored:  99 coins podcast (not updated since July, 2012).  

I started with the latest episode, titled 'anyone can make a game.'  This is just the kind of sentiment I was looking for.  What I found was a rambling discussion of game-making tools and what an 'indie game' really is.  Nice overall tone, a little hard to catch the details sometimes.  However, the writings and programs they reference in the episode are included in the links. 

The second episode I listened to was 'favourite indie games of 2011.'  I found that this was just my speed.  If being out-of-touch can be quantified, then I guess I'm about a year and half behind the indie gaming scene.  They list of several interesting titles, and even a couple I know of: Minecraft, SpaceChem, Sword and Sworcery EP along with many other interesting titles.

One game referenced is johan sebastian joust.  A game I may never play, but does look like fun.
http://www.jsjoust.com/

Another is the Stanley Parable, a game I almost played once.  I'm going to give this another try.    -D
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-stanley-parable


-D

"I'll Tell You What You Need In Your Life Son: A Good Swift Army Kick In The Ass."

The other morning I heard a news report on NPR/OPB about an online game in China called Glorious Mission although this Chinese game has been cropping up in the news periodically since around May 2011.  The initial reaction appeared to be centered around images from the game that had American soldiers portrayed as the enemy.  My initial reaction was "Okay, so, they needed an enemy.  It's not like games developed in America haven't had our current allies portrayed as the enemy (cough-cough Modern Warfare 3 cough-cough)."  I'm pretty sure we're still allies with Russia.  At least the Red Dawn remake didn't have the Russians as the bad guys, just you know, the North Koreans.  Oh wait, and just some of the Russians.

Anyway, that's not the point.  The point is that there have been other instances of video games being used by military installations as recruiting tools:

Army Battlezone available on the DS game Atari Greatest Hits Vol. 1  Used to help train US soldiers in the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, back in/around 1980.

The "Army Experience Center" in Philadelphia, PA

Opened August 29, 2008 / Closed July 31, 2010.

The Starfighter arcade game used by the Rylan Star League Defense Force as a recruiting tool for the war against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.

There are probably many other instances of this happening, so in a way, we shouldn't be surprised that this happens at all.  I just feel sad that it does happen.  Maybe it's because the military is using a medium that I love as a recruiting tool for purposes that I don't entirely agree with.  However, I totally understand video games and video game-like devices being used not only for recruitment tools but also for training tools.

I'm trying to think of this using another medium.  Using "Where's Waldo" to train covert op spies?  Using Beethoven's 9th with randomly placed inverted minor thirds to train audio technicians to detect anomalies?  Using minor league baseball pitchers to throw grenades at a horde of the undead?  I'm just making all this up and I don't what I've mentioned as actually being put into practice.

I guess I'm just saying that video games as military recruitment and training tools are here and while some of us may not like it, we should probably get used to it.  And don't go expecting a "First Impressions" about Glorious Mission because I am not installing Chinese military software on my computer.  Although I should really do a series of posts with the 50 games that are included in Atari Greatest Hits Vol. 1 and the port of the Starfighter game.  I'm just thankful the war against the Xur ended back in '84.

JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Do A Barrel Roll. . . Out Of A Volcano!!

What Does It Mean To You?

I figured I had better put this post up before it becomes irrelevant, although talking about what a word means to ones self can't really become irrelevant.  A couple of weeks ago, Felicia Day posted an update to her Youtube channel, Geek & Sundry, she rhetorically asked what "geek" meant to her.  There she listed off a few descriptive words like "Outsider, Dreamer, Creator, Rebel, Fighter" versus what she feels the word Geek has taken on in the larger media, such as "Cliche, Monetize, Brand, Exploit."

I liked a lot of what she had to say, but I kept in mind that she was saying what geek meant to her.  I didn't feel like she was saying that "This is what Geek means and this is how the world should see it.  Now!"  That point of view would go against the whole point of her video, that "it's a person who dares to love something that isn't conventional" and that "your judgement is not my problem."  That I like, and that's as a whole is what I took away from her two and-a-half minutes.

This brings me to my next point, although it's less of a point and more like a "bullet point."  A lot of people have their own definition of what a geek is and what constitutes that that person sitting by themselves over there is a geek.  Or how about a nerd?  Earlier this year, Portlandia made a mock PSA that was about the word and association of "Nerd."  This type of "thing" could be made for just about any group who feels that their moniker has either been used incorrectly or abused by any other group.  I'm not saying that such corrections are unwarranted, I guess, something, I don't know.  And what makes someone a geek and not a nerd or vice versa?  Likewise, what makes one person a gamer and someone accusing someone else that they aren't because of X, Y and R?

And now I've tread into very dangerous and accusatory ground.

I feel it all comes down to labeling.  One person's labels may not coincide with another person's and that person may already have negative connotations towards any one of labels you throw at them.  Hippie?  Metalhead?  Hipster?  Gamer? Golfer?  Secretary?  Tea Bagger?  Chances are you formed what you personally feel is a stereotypical image of what that person looks and possibly acts like. Is it the right or wrong view of that person?  Is your view politically correct?  Does your view of any of the above possibly conflict with someone else' view?

And you know what, I'm guilty of it too.  I've said, "Fucking hipster" to myself while driving and have been cut off by a person riding a fixed gear bike on the 33rd block of Hawthorne.  In a very similar light, I'm as guilty as the girl scoffing at the guy sitting on a bus playing a game on his PSP Vita and thinks "stupid nerd" when he doesn't move allowing her to sit in the last open seat on the bus.  This idea of visual perceptions of people reminds me that I want to talk a little bit more about this, but I will save that for it's own post.

But going back to what "geek" means to Felicia Day, myself or you the reader, it's a potentially touchy topic. I could say, let it mean whatever you want it to mean for you, then someone else could say that "you can't just assign any meaning you want to geek, that's not how language works!  You can't say that "bacon" now means "french fries covered in cheese curds and brown sauce" because that's it's own thing already."

So where does that leave us?  This discussion isn't going to be solved in a single article or blog post, or youtube video and I don't think it really needs to be "solved."  It just is.  And who am I to come to such ambiguous conclusions?

I'm a person who loves video games (RPG, FPS, Survival Horror, Puzzle, Racing, Action, Flight Simulators, Adventure, Platformers, Point-And-Click, Simulation), music {Metal [Gothic Doom, Progressive, Doom, Death, Battle, Epic Heathen, Melodic Death, Black, Symphonic Black, Blackened Death, Meloic Black, Power, Folk (Scandinavian, Russian, Celtic), Pirate, Viking], Rock, Hard Rock, Movie Soundtracks, Video Game Soundtracks, Broadway Musicals (not a fan of Cats or Rent), Classical, Baroque, Folk [Irish, Scottish, Russian], Klezmer, Parodies, Classic Rock, Indie Rock, Latin Pop, Punk, Alternative Rock, Grunge Rock}, reading [Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Apocalyptic Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Mythology (Celtic, Norse)], painting (Miniatures, Ceramic Figurines), watching movies [Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopian, Comedy. . .

Under what category would I be placed?

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
The Likes Of Us All

Gender and Video Games

Hey all, just thought I'd take a break from my Writer's Block to tell you about a great article I just read, by Sophie Prell at Penny Arcade,  regarding Transgender identity and Video Games.  The article brings up the idea that with video games, players can role-play as the opposite gender.  This allows them to build a virtual identity free from the scrutiny that they would have to endure in public.  It also is a great place to experiment. 

As I mentioned in my comment on the article, I play as women all the time in games.  In fighting games I almost always choose the woman (so often there's been only one).  This started with Chun Li from Street Fighter 2,  and may have been based entirely on how easy it was to do her lightning kick.  (I'm really disappointed in how hard it is to find a good lightening kick video on youtube,  but for our purposes, the move is performed by relentlessly smashing the 'kick' button).  After getting to know Chun Li she became my favorite character.  She's so leggy, and she jumps very high.  Since Street Fighter 2 I have gravitated toward light characters who are very agile, which is how fighting game makers usually design their female characters.

Let's see, any others?  Female Warrior in Golden Axe.  Paladin in Ultima IV.  Female Cat character in Final Fantasy XI.  Sprite in Secret of Mana (actually male, but I always thought female.)  Help me out here, I'm drawing a blank.  I know there are plenty more. 

I'm not too concerned about what this says about my own gender.  I just really appreciate that I can play around with it in video games.  I've never crossed the line to performing as female for others - ie: pretending I'm a woman on an MMO or something.  In fact, my FinalFantasy XI female character was named 'Imadood' - just so there was no mistaking.  That said, I think its important to point out that any assumptions we make about what gender a player is - those are just assumptions.  It's a video game, and we are free to express ourselves through the game- who we are in real life is really nobodies business. 

I do want to say that the subject of gender and video games on the internet is fraught.  Fraught, I say!   It's so hard to find a mellow and respectful atmosphere to have that discussion without a zillion people throwing around slurs, porno and generally thoughtless ignorance.  I would say that the experience of talking about gender and video games on the internet is like playing Contra or Raiden - shit is just flying everywhere! (click links for videos of those games in action to see what I'm talking about).  

Contra and Raiden are fun games, who doesn't love a good shoot'em up?  Well, some people don't.  And even those who love them - they're hardly my first choice, I can tell you that.  No, I prefer the calm environment of an RPG, where the pace is slow and steady, and I can save the game and come back to the action.  It's so hard to find this sort of pace on the internet, but I am glad to say that the Penny Arcade moderators have done a great job with this article.  I suggest you read it, and browse the comments a little.  

-D

“Video games showed me who I could be:” transgender gamers share their stories, joys, and fears-   by Sophie Prell

Just A Bit Of Randomness

One of my friends Shaggy is doing a month long blog about video games.  It's an A-Z type format with updates pretty much every day.  Keep in mind though, it's not just a simple "Here's a game that starts with the letter D: Donkey Kong," but it's about the game and Shaggy's personal experience and history with that game.  The blog is called Eclectic Musings and I think it's pretty cool, all biasness' aside.  I really enjoy Shaggy's perspective, seeing as how he's roughly a decade older than I am, but reading about someone's history with video games, primarily through arcades in the late 70s and early 80s.  For instance in his, "E is for Excitebike" post, I didn't know that Vs. Excitebike was a thing outside of Japan.  It's good reading and I recommend it.

This last weekend, Conklederp was in Arizona for the Western Regional Music Therapy Conference so I had the apartment to myself (along with Joey) for a couple of days.  Naturally, I stayed up until 5-6am then woke up six hours later.  One would think that I had spent most of my time playing video games (Skyrim, Morrowind, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, Mega Man), but then there were nights when I really "geeked" out.  My last two nights before Conklederp came home, I spent between 5-6 hours fixing the ID3 tags for video game soundtracks.

That's something that I'm pretty anal about.  If a song is incorrectly tagged, that shit's gunna be fixed faster than a stray cat in a dog pound.  Having to fix the ID3 tags isn't something that I have to do a lot of the time, but for instance, when I finally uploaded the soundtracks from the last two Humble Indie Bundles, there was a bit of work I had to do.  For instance:

I know the Year doesn't affect anything in iTunes or the Last.fm scrobbles, but I just need it to be there.  Second, the track order needs, NEEDS to be accurate.  There'll be times I want to listen to a soundtrack in it's entirety and I feel that the composer has the songs in a particular order, if it's chronological order or whatever, it needs to be accurate.  This wasn't the case with Cave Story +, but the album titles need to be accurate as well.  Yes, there can be some discrepancies when it comes to having OST, OSV, Original Soundtrack, Original Sound Version, Soundtrack, Sound Track, or just the title, but that's something I just try to make consistent.  Lastly, the genre needs to be correct.  I don't have many songs under the "Other" genre, but if it comes from a video game, I label it as "Video Game Soundtrack."  Even if it's Electronica Hardcore outside of a video game, it's still getting the soundtrack label.

Oh yes, I get annoyed if I don't have album artwork.  There needs to be a picture and not those generic eighth notes on a grey background for the album artwork.  If there was never an official soundtrack released and therefore no cover art, I will either use a picture of the composer, the box art from the game the music came from or a screen shot of the title screen.  Then after I finished fixing all that needed to be fixed, I spent the next two hours playing Morrowind.

So that's your bit of randomness for Monday April 8th, 2013.  Only one week until taxes are due.  I did mine and somehow I still owe the state of Oregon a few extra bucks.  Ah well, it's all for the good of the country.

And go and read and stay up-to-date with Shaggy's blog.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

An Endless Challenge

Emulator Hour: Final Fantasy (NES)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d8/FF1_USA_boxart.jpg/250px-FF1_USA_boxart.jpg

A lot of the fun of Final Fantasy comes from picking your character classes.  The designers were very clever in creating six classes, but only four characters to a party.  Thus it is impossible to try all of the classes in a single play through, and the possible combinations are enormous.  In addition, each class will receive an upgrade about 3/4 of the way through the game.  This upgrade will change the abilities of that character, to varying degrees of significance.  It is very helpful to be aware of these upgrades when choosing your initial class, so that you don't end up stuck in the mud after dumping 20 hours into a game.  This happened to me recently- a result of making a hasty and uninformed decision when designing my party.

Be warned, you only get to choose your character classes once -  at the beginning of the game.  Similar to the first phase of Settlers of Catan; your choices during this phase will have a strong impact on how your playing experience will roll out.  Also similar to Catan; you will likely be well into the game when hindsight kicks in and you realize which choices you would have made differently.  You may then be confronted with the urge to start over again from the beginning.  On my recent play through of Final Fantasy,  I decided to experiment and go with an unorthodox: Fighter, Black Belt, Red Mage, Red Mage line.  

My party set-up was fine for the first 9/10 of the game or so.  I have very strong physical attacks, which allowed me to blaze through most of the dungeons in the early part of the game.  In addition, being full of physical attackers means I don't have to think very strategically; I don't have to conserve spells, I only have to try and spread my attacks out among the groups of enemies.  (This is because Final Fantasy has the obnoxious programming quirk of allowing players to attack enemies who were destroyed earlier in the round, and thus result in an 'ineffective' wasted attack.)

I first began to wonder if I had made a mistake when designing my party when I began to find my Red Mages simply can't learn certain spells.  I had the idea that I would make one mage lean toward white magic and one mage lean toward black magic.  It worked out pretty well until I found that I didn't know what most of the spells do, and their 4-letter names were not very good descriptors.  In addition, a super-essential Level 5 spell - LIFE was not available to Red Mages.  This was a problem.  The Life spell is the only way in the game to bring a slain party member back while out in the field.  Without that spell, I have to beat a given dungeon and boss without letting anyone die.  This is extremely tough, but I got good at it by grinding out lots of levels and over-powering myself for each dungeon.

The wave of regret hit me much stronger in the later half of the game, when I upgraded my Red Mages to Red Wizards.   As it turns out, Red Wizards can learn the LIFE spell, but by that time, I had maxed out my spell slots for that level for both Wizards!  Fuck fuck, shit fuck fuck fuck.   

But, you can't go back, only forward.  My party hardily bashed its way through the water temple and the air temple, and now I've gotten to the final temple, but I just can't hang.  I'm at level 28, which should be plenty to beat the dungeon, but I always sap my supply of healing spells, and I start to lose party members.  I haven't even made it to the boss.  I'm sure if I boosted my levels up to 32 or so, I could make it through, but I'm just tired of it by now.

So, I probably won't beat Final  Fantasy this play through.  And I'm too disgusted to start over again.  And, really, I don't know what I would do differently.  I liked this party, and I would be interested to try it again, just remembering to consult a walk-through beforehand.  But I'm also tempted to try a new party combination, but I'm not sure what.  If you're still interested, I'm going to walk through each character class and describe their advantages/disadvantages and contributions to the whole.

http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/nes/ff1/ff1classes.gif

Fighter/Knight:
The Fighter is a Final Fantasy Icon.  I also think he looks a little bit like a rooster.  He's got the highest defense, hit points and can equip the strongest gear.  He is the strongest attacker for the first half of the game, but he is eclipsed by the Black Belt/Master in attack power, and finishes up second.  The hardiness and consistency of the Fighter makes him hard to leave out of any party.  However, he's also a bit of a money-sink, since he requires all the top-notch gear.  The upgrade to the Knight doesn't really do much, it adds white magic up to level 3, but by the time you get the upgrade, spells from those levels don't have much effect.


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Emulator Hour: Mega Man 2 (NES/3DS)

First off, is it Mega Man 2 or Mega Man II?

The box art, regardless of region has the game titled as being "2."

If you can't tell what the game is based on the box art, you can consider yourself  medically normal.

But, when you start the game, the game is titled as "II," with the exception of Rockman and then the title screen has the number 2.  

Does he really need a helmet?

Wikipedia has the NES Mega Man 2 with the number and the Gameboy release (different story) of Mega Man II.  So, for all intensive purposes the NES Mega Man will be referred to as "2."

Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to business.

Mega Man 2, released in 1988 in Japan and 1989 in North America by Capcom is a fun game, but god damn is it pretty difficult.  I feel like I can say "pretty" as opposed to "fucking" seeing as how I just beat it a few hours ago for the first time since I started playing it nearly 24 years ago.  To all the possible haters, it was on normal difficulty, it was the port to the Nintendo eShop and not on the NES from an original cartridge.

The story is pretty simple in that Mega Man, created by Dr. Light "was built to be a domestic robot, but in order to put a stop to Dr. Wily's evil plans [world domination], he was reborn as Mega Man, a battle robot. "  What more do you need to know?

While going through the game, there were definitely areas and specific screens that I remembered very well.  As I did when I originally played the game back in the early 90's, I started off with beating Metal Man (and by "beat" I mean that it took me a number of tries to not only get through the level but beat Metal Man.

Admittingly, I looked up the suggested order to go up against the bosses.  I personally don't see this as cheating since one still has to have some skill in order to get through the level and the game is designed so that a boss is weak against a particular weapon.  Also, I knew this information when I was younger but had since forgotten it.  To note, here's the order I used:

1) Metal Man

2) Wood Man

3) Air Man

4) Crash Man

5) Flash Man

6) Quick Man

7) Bubble Man

8) Heat Man

In this order, each weapon from the boss is strong against the boss below it.  Yes, the Heat Cannon (named Atomic Fire) is strong against Wood Man and the Quick Man Boomerangs are pseudo-strong against Metal Man and the standard arm cannon works well enough on both Flash Man and Crash Man, but you've got to pick an order, and this was the one that I settled down on.  An actual list can be found here and actually lists what weapons the bosses are weak against, but keep in mind that you can still go through the levels and beat the bosses in any order you want, something that I still see as ingenious about the game.

One thing that I noticed while playing, was that Mega Man 2 is apparently very guilty of the annoying respawning of enemies that Dr. Potts talked about regarding TMNT.  I don't know how many times I would get knocked back by an enemy, run towards the shielded green cannon guy, only to have the same enemy respawn and now be faced with two green shielded cannon guys.  Another hazard that I fell victim to (pun not intended) was switching out my gun while on a ladder.  The danger of doing this, is that Mega Man falls/ teleports back onto the screen and when this happens when you're on a ladder, you are no longer holding onto the ladder, and fall through it to the screen below.

Now, the 3DS (and maybe the DSi as well, but I never had that system so I can't comment on it) does this thing when you close down a downloaded NES/Gameboy game.  It puts the game in stasis, as in, I could be playing Mega Man 2, pause the game then exit to the main 3DS screen while closing down the Mega Man 2 game.  When I return, I can pick up right where I left off.  For Mega Man 2, this allowed me to never need to copy down passwords.  I could play the game and reach the "Game Over" screen and simply select "Continue" or "Stage Select" and I never had to worry about copying the password and subsequently losing said password.  Once I reached Dr. Wily's compound, I realized that losing the passwords was probably the main reason why I was never able to complete the game.

And then there was this series of jumps that I could rarely manage to time correctly.

And the very few times I did manage to make those jumps, I wasn't able to deal with the Mecha Dragon.  Yes, that silvery dragon on the front of the German and UK covers, you do have to fight although it only took me about 4-5 times to figure out how to not die during the battle.

By the end of the game, I felt like I'd become pretty good at killing the boss robots, having to defeat them one-by-one from a central hub-teleportation point before fighting Dr. Wily and while it is a little tempting to go through the game on the "Difficult" difficulty setting, I'm sure I would have a hard enough time making it through the levels with enough life just to get to the bosses.

Oh yes, the music.  Holy damn the music.  First off, if 8-bit era, NES style music is not your thing, tough luck not liking this music; except my Father.  The music was primarily composed by Takeshi Tateishi along with Manami Matsumae and Yoshihiro Sakaguchi.  I find the music to be every bit as awesome when I first heard it as when I hear it any other time.  The music from Mega Man 2 seems to be a staple among video game music cover bands (The Advantage, NESkimos, Minibosses).  So yes, the music holds up.

Now when I was playing Mega Man 2, I never seemed to hunker down and just play the hell out of the game.  I would pick it up, play for maybe 15 - 20 minutes then put it down after getting frustrated and needed to walk away.  My stats for the game had me playing 15 different times with an average of 17 minutes of game time each time I would play.  In the end, it took me 4 hours 25 minutes.  A very respectable time I would say having spent $4.99, so roughly $1.10/hr, although I know that I will be wanting to go through the game again, not because Mega Man 2 has some of my favorite songs from the series, but because now I know I can beat the game.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Charging Up The Digital Hill

You Know What? Flying Is Weird.

I was sitting outside yesterday morning, mainly because it wasn't raining and it wasn't cold.  It might be the start of the "Drinking Coffee Out on the Deck in the Morning Because the Cat Wants Us to Go Outside" time of year.  Yes, the cat will hang out by the sliding door and meow at us after we're awake wanting us to open the door so he can go outside and sit on the deck with us.  Although I don't think we really factor into his thinking aside from having to open the door for him.  So there we are, enjoying our coffee and I see a vulture circling on air currents and thermals.

That's when I start thinking about Pilotwings.  Until I had been playing Pilotwings Resort for the 3DS extensively, I felt like I could never get the hang of hang gliding (pun not intended or noticed until after I wrote that) regardless of the Pilotwings game.  In Pilotwings 64 I could never figure out the right balance of gliding between thermals, circling and watching the beautiful scenery.

So there I am, looking up at this circling vulture and after it circles a few times, it flies a different direction (aren't all directions different after a circle?) then rises while circling as it comes in contact with another thermal.  How do they know where the thermals are?  I get that it's some bird intuition-sense-it-through-their-feathers/brains/esp-something-or-other-that-I-don't-fully-understand, but it's still kind of amazing when I think about it.

That's probably one of the reasons why I will never go hang gliding.  If I were to be convinced to go, even on a tandem glide, which I'm pretty sure is required if you've never been before (like sky diving), I would be pseudo-panicking because I wouldn't be able to see where the thermals are and we would end up just circling our way back down to the ground.  Like, how do you know where they are in the real world if they don't look like this:

That's my fear anyway, maybe along with hang gliding old women dressed as clowns carrying sharpened rusty knives in their teeth.  But that's something else entirely.

You also cannot tell, but I had just taken an hour long break to put together an Ikea bookshelf.  I went looking for my collection of 3DS games [I wanted to take an in-game picture of a thermal in Pilotwings Resort, because that's one of the few 3DS games where you can take in-game pics) in a pile that was birthed after cleaning up the apartment, was unable to locate it and thought, "If all our video game stuff was centralized, it would be easy to find stuff" and "I should clean up that corner where our video game stuff is stacked/piled."  So when I first started, Conklederp asked if she could help and this popped into my head:

I didn't want this to happen, but I ended up needing Conklederp's help so she did, and it only took, at most, an hour, probably not even that long.  I've got carpentry and cabinet making running through my blood on both sides of my family, so I know how to build shit.

So I did all that and then I have now come back to finish.  Again, birds can fly and that makes them pretty awesome.  Ducks can swim and fly, which makes them awesomer.  Dippers, are just too fucking much and are probably in the process of taking over the world.  What's that, you haven't heard of Dippers?  That's part of their plot too and so far, it's worked.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Smoke & Mirrors