The Noises Emanating from Mega Man

I've been playing a bit of Mega Man at this point, mostly due to the fact that over the last year+, Capcom has been releasing each of the Mega Man titles of the NES era (I - VI) and I've been gobbling them up as fast as they are being released.  I do not mean that I have been completing the games mind you, just collecting them in my seemingly growing list of games that I have yet to get to.

I did play a bit of the NES Mega Man (Men?) titles around the time of their original release, but I was never able to beat any of them because of perpetually losing those little slips of paper that contained hours worth of priceless passwords.  Coupled with the fact that I never owned a Mega Man game until I bought Mega Man X from the video store I used to work at before they closed, meant that I had made and subsequently lost a lot of little slips of paper.

So Mega Man, or specifically the sounds that emanate from the game.  Both the sounds that Mega Man himself makes as well as the sounds in the world around him.  I will not cover the music however as that would require additional posts although there is a good chance that they were created by on-in-the-same person.  And, as it turns out the music and sound effects were in fact created by Manami Matsumae.

What I find so fascinating about the sound editing or I guess the foley artist for these games, is how well each individual sound effect works not only in this futuristic world, but how these authenticity of the sound effects are not questioned.  I have never gone through a play session in any of the Mega Man games and thought, "I don't think that's what an ball of propelled energy would sound like when it hits a robot made of who-knows-what-type of alloy.  I simply accept it as fact that that is what an energy blast would sound like when it comes into contact with a metallic robot.

I have fired a couple of firearms in the past, specifically 12 and 20 gauge shotguns and two different types (??) of .22 caliber rifles.  That is it.  I know what those are supposed to sound like both with and without ear plugs.  10 feet and a mile away, I know what a shotgun blast sound like.  If I hear that sound, I know what is making it and I do not question its authenticity.  The same way that when I hear that characteristic "brrzzzp" sound, I know that I am hearing an energy blast from Mega Man's arm cannon hitting its target (most of the time anyway).

Even the other sound effects, such as the sound Mega Man makes when he jumps, that obvious "brdrp" sound whenever he lands.  Without that little sound, the game might run the risk of sounding empty, incomplete.

Finally, the last sound effect that I want to touch on is the "explosion" when you die (enemy fire, pit, spikes).  It's that "Dgewdgewdgewdgew" sound.  No grandiose sounds explosion of flesh, oil, electricity/nuclear fusion (or whatever it is that powers Mega Man) and metal as they shockwave out to the edges of the screen. The sound, like the artistic style of the series, is a very cartoony one, but it is the sound we have come to expect from such a demise.  Even in the SNES era of Mega Man games, the sound is the same albeit updated with a 16 bit sound processor.

Why then this disconnect between the cartoony explosion of Mega Man dying and the "Yeah, I think it would sound like that" when an energy blast hits an enemy?  Maybe it is that we subconsciously are glad about the destruction of the enemy robot horde, but would rather not have our own demise mimic reality.

In the end though, "it's all fun and games until the domesticated robots created to help humanity, turn against us.  Then we'll wait for our blue robotic hero to arise."  That's a real saying, isn't it?

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

He Hears The Silence So Loud

Long Overdue: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (PC)

Disclaimer: The following article is written from the perspective of one who has only finished Skyrim and played parts (the beginning) of The Arena and barely started Daggerfall, so all judgements aside.  I would also like to disclaim that I am probably going to be all over the place and while this would normally fall under the "First Impressions" heading, after 35 hours, I feel like I've glided past First Impressions and moved to "OMG, here's stuff about how I've played the game," but that doesn't sound as classy.

I bought The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind sometime around the beginning of this year when it was X% off through a Steam sale (which is pretty much how/why I buy most/all PC games now), mainly because in the last year I've become a fan of the Elder Scrolls series.  I am also a fan of the composer Jeremy Soule, who a while back I found out was the composer for the Elder Scroll series, Icewind Dale I & II and the Neverwinter Nights series.

First off, So Morrowind was released way back in May of 2002 on both PC and Xbox, although I will only be referring to the PC release.  The in-game chronology takes place in 3E-421, whereas The Arena takes place in 3E-399 and Daggerfall in 3E-405.  For reference, Skyrim takes place in 4E-201 with the 3rd Era ending in 3E-433 after the events in the Oblivion Crisis (Oblivion 4E-433).  

Upon booting up the game, I was happily surprised that the Dragon Imperial logo was used here and I later found out is really the symbol for the Imperial Legion and Cyrodiil.  While playing Skyrim, I thought it was just a "oh, that's a nice coincidence that the Imperials have a dragon logo and LOOK!, there are dragons which have turned up for the first time in forever!"  That was my first thought upon starting up the game and I hadn't even played it yet.

With Morrowind, you can play in either POV or third person.  For me, most of the game I will play in third person but switch to POV whenever I use my bow (which isn't too often) or when looking through boxes for loot (the POV mode uses crosshairs).  The control scheme is pretty much identical to that of Skyrim, although I had to move a few of the keys around.  Since Morrowind moved away from the strictly POV mode that The Arena and Daggerfall followed, you now only have to "click" in order to attack and no longer have to drag the mouse to perform a specific attack.  However, you still have the option to chop/slash/thrust, which is determined by how you are moving at the time of attack.  Forward/back: thrust; left/right: slash; non-moving: chop.  Each attack, based on what type of weapon you are using bears different results and damage.  Like the previous and later games, you still have health, magic and stamina meters.

Now, for why you are all here, or maybe not, I now introduce you to my character the Nord, Valgrin of Markarth:

Hello there ladies. . .

His backstory is not very developed as I was not (and still am not) sure what the overarching story is here in Vvardenfell, the interior volcanic island in Morrowind, where Morrowind takes place.  You start out on a ship, travelling from the mainland of Morrowind to Vvardenfell and you are a prisoner, soon to be pardoned by Uriel Septim VII for reasons unknown to you and your parole officer.  The backstory I created, was that Valgrin was a prisoner in the Cidhna Mines in Markarth (in the Skyrim Province), possibly imprisoned for thievery; although chronologically this doesn't make sense, unless Cidhna Mine was used for prisoners before the Silverbloods took over after Ulfric Stormcloak retook Markarth in 4E-176, roughly 185 years earlier.  Because birth signs are an important part of your character, I will assume that Uriel Septim VII has been looking for someone born under a particular star sign and sending people off to Vvardenfell.  Maybe, I don't really know as I have yet to finish the game.

The first thing that I learned about Morrowind is that the game doesn't pull punches.  There's a cave right outside the starting town, I encountered a villain and was promptly killed.  I think I landed one blow on the foe out of many swings.  It turns out that my accuracy in hand-to-hand combat left something to be desired.  I quickly decided that I would play as a tank-like character, which was a good soul searching decision as that was how I set up Valgrin's attributes when creating him.

Unlike Skyrim, your character in Morrowind does not regenerate either health or magic.  Regeneration occurs only by consuming health potions, casting heal spells (which unless you have a decent Intelligence score, which is not below 30, you will fail casting your spell and thereby wasting your magic points) or resting until healed.  I'm sure a good portion of my time has been spent running out of a dungeon, finding a legal* area to sleep and sleeping off my injuries.  Every town I come to (which I'll get to in a minute) I always try to buy as many healing potions as I can.  And you have to be careful with those potions, as I have had potions "spoil" if I don't use them within a certain amount of time.  I think that's what is happening anyway.

*You can only sleep in legally designated areas, which means not on the streets of a town/village or within the near vicinity of a town.  If there is an inn or a guild that you are a member of you can sleep there

Another "no-holds-barred" example in Morrowind, is how often I have gotten stuck.  Stuck in multiple senses.  While climbing/walking over mountains, I have found myself in a rut that I couldn't get out of.  The only solution was to reload from a previous save.  I have since learned to frequently save before I go exploring.  I have been "stuck" in another sense when I was attacked by a blighted something-or-other.  I lost my strength, became encumbered and was unable to move.  I tried sleeping it off as I do with low health, but that didn't work, so I had to restart from a previous save.  Most recently (as in yesterday), I had to reload a number of times because an enemy I had to defeat so I could get to my bounty because he always summoned a creature that would drain my strength thereby making my carrying capacity down to 0.  After miraculously surviving the battle, nothing I used seemed to cure my ailment.  Reload.

This is either going to be a very long or very short battle.

Fast travelling!  Until recently, there was only one way of doing this and it makes sense in-game.  In Vvardenfell, there are large insectoids call Silt Striders, which have been domesticated and used to travel from town-to-town for a small fee (usually 35 -50 septims).  Upon looking up information about how to complete a certain quest, I discovered that members of the Mages Guild can fast travel to other Mages Guild houses.  If you're not a member, you can't use this free service.  Personally, I can't see Valgrin even attempting to be a mage, despite him knowing spells (healing spells).  So, the majority of travelling I do through Vvardenfell is done on foot.  Coming from Skyrim, that doesn't sound too bad.  In Morrowind, "by-foot" might bother a lot of people.  Un-modded, and without a lot of skill points put towards fast moving, this is what over 50% of my time is spent like:

Sorry for the not-so-great video quality.  I don't have a capture card, just a cellphone.

Yes, you have two modes of moving.  Walking and slightly faster walking/running.  Thankfully, when you run out of stamina, you are still able to run, but your experience in "Athletics" no longer increases.  Honestly though, this doesn't bother me at all.  I'm one for looking at the landscape and general adventuring.  However, there have been times where travelling from one end of Vvardenfell to the other has been tedious.

As you might be able to guess, having put 35 hours into this game, I am very much liking it.  And, even with all that I have said here, there is a lot more that I haven't even covered, such as leveling up, the vast number of skills and attributes, the way you have to talk to/persuade people for information (the scripting for dialogue), wear-and-tear on equipment, the different components for dressing (pants, shirt, body armor, greaves, L/R gauntlet/bracers, L/R shoulder pieces/pauldrons, helmet) and absolutely no GPS on your map (someone says "it's in the south-western region. . ." you have to go explore the southwest region looking for a cave).

So if you are looking for another game in the Elder Scrolls series that isn't Skyrim and are interested in a challenge with a very steep learning curve (your hand will not be held), Morrowind might just be what you're looking for.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Saw The Coming of the End

And Now: A Dramatic Too Much Shit's Happening Selfie

Baptized in 8 Bit Music

At this moment, I'm listening to "Scene V: ~Prelude~ FFI - Main Theme / Kao's Shrine / Chaos' Temple" from Symphonic Suite: Final Fantasy, which you could say inspired me to write this.

My love of video game music came about sometime in 1991 while playing Final Fantasy on the NES.  I just came to the part where the King of Coneria builds a bridge to the adjacent continent and your characters cross.  That's when the screen flashes and you're greeted with a text-story moment and this music.  I must've sat there and listened to it until either the screen force-ably changed or I pressed "A" and progressed the game myself.  

I'd played quite a few games whose music I really liked by that point (Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Mega Man II), but something about the "Theme" music from Final Fantasy did something for me that the music from video games had never done before.  Maybe it was that I recognized it as something that just wasn't being played in the background, but something that I could sit and listen to for hours on end.

The problem though at the time was that video game soundtracks were practically unheard of in the United States, or as far as I knew at the time, didn't exist at all.  The internet wasn't readily available, especially so on the Apple IIe computer that our family was using, and modems were things that regular households just didn't have; so finding import CD's was pretty much out of the question.  (I don't even think the Apple IIe was modem compatible, although I did convince my older sister that I'd hacked into the DMV and changed test answers on the drivers test).  Once I started going to Star Trek conventions (1992 or 93 I think), I began seeing anime soundtracks from Japan, albeit for anywhere between $25 - $70 a piece, which for a new teenager, was very much out of the question.  So at least I knew that music from Japanese products were out there.

When Final Fantasy II came out on the SNES (or more likely after I bought it), and there was the revamped "Final Fantasy Theme," and I knew what I had to do.  I took my sister's duel cassette tape deck (which had better recording capabilities than mine), propped it up on the two doors of our family's entertainment center and hit "Record" every time a new song came up.  I let the songs play through  2-3 times, depending on the length of the song.  I then did the same thing for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.  I now had playable video game soundtracks, still unaware that legit soundtracks had already been released in Japan since 1986.  

In 1995, I bought Final Fantasy III for the SNES and it came with a brochure for various items you could buy from Squaresoft.  There was a Mog keychain, an FFIII shirt and the soundtracks to Final Fantasy III (Titled "Kefka's Domain") and The Secret of Mana.  My parents said that for my 9th grade graduation (Woodland still had Jr. High schools so moving to the actual "High School" seemed like a big deal) asked what I wanted.  Looking at this brochure, I knew that I really liked the music from both games, but Kefka's Domain came with 3 CD's.  Three whole CD's of music from a game that I loved.  I told my parent's that that was what I wanted, and bless them, without scoffing or questioning my request, that's what they bought me for my graduation present.

That's what started it all.  Soon after I bought the DK Jamz (Donkey Kong Country) CD from Nintendo Power and the Symphonic Suite: Final Fantasy CD, which had orchestrated video game music, something that I thought would never exist.  I won't list all the game soundtracks that I've acquired over the years, but recently I've been downloading "soundtracks" from NES games that never had official released soundtracks such as Jackal, Ikari Warriors, and Crystalis.  It's been a rebirth of being excited about NES music again even though I don't have the console hooked up.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Que the Orchestra