It's time for that annual post about myself—or at least one about the stuff I’m doing elsewhere. Life is busy, yes, but I sometimes find enough breathing room to write about games and cartoons beyond this site. So here’s what I’ve been doing.
For starters, I wrote the liner notes for Discotek’s release of Tachigui: The Amazing Lives of the Fast-Food Grifters. I am forever fond of Mamoru Oshii, and this might be his most self-indulgent creation ever: one big movie-length joke about petty lunch-counter thieves and post-war Japan that references plenty of the director’s previous work. It’s an incredibly layered mockumentary that will either entice you completely or exhaust your patience within the first three minutes, so you definitely should find out where you land by picking it up on Blu-Ray.
That’s not all I can point to as I attempt to build a post from merely personal matters. I also reviewed three games over at Anime News Network, including one that I think just about everyone should try.
That game is Shadow of the Ninja Reborn. I could say that it’s an extensive overhaul of the NES side-scroller from 1990, but I really think it’s best approached as an entirely new creation. That way you can go in fresh and take in all of the gloriously detailed levels, experiment with the special weapons, and appreciate just how much though and craftsmanship Tengo Project put into the game. Ninja rebels Hayate and Kaede dash through one spectacular scene after another: glittering rooftops, rainswept docks, airship fleets, and tiny ledges and platforms that test your precision beautifully. Apart from some climbing mechanics (and Kaede’s outfit) there’s not much I would change. It’s tough, but it’s the good kind of tough, the kind of tough that makes you gladly retry that level instead of groaning and shrugging and possibly giving up.
Shadow of the Ninja Reborn is cheap and available just about everywhere. There’s a demo for the curious, and if you like it I’ll advise you that the rest of the game is even better. In fact, I’d call it the best ninja video game I’ve ever played. Better than any Ninja Gaiden. Better than any Shinobi. Better than Kaze Kiri. Better than Ninja Spirit or Ninja Five-O or Ninja Crusaders or Ninja Warriors. And yes, it’s even better than Wrath of the Black Manta. I’m sure I’ll get heaps of angry comments for that last proclamation.
I also recommend Sunsoft is Back! Retro Game Selection. Sunsoft technically never went away, but this collection has three games never before officially translated: 53 Stations of the Tokaido, The Wing of Madoola, and Ripple Island. They’re all old NES games (or Famicom games, if you want to get technical), and two of them show it in ways potentially unflattering. The extreme difficulty of 53 Stations makes it frustrating unless you take full advantage of the collection’s rewind feature and save states. The same might go for The Wing of Madoola, a savagely hard side-scrolling action-RPG, though at least its mechanics are relatively complex and its heroine was a minor trend-setter in an era that seldom reversed the cliché of heroes rescuing princesses.
The best part of Sunsoft is Back! is Ripple Island, a charming adventure game where two kids defeat an evil frog king and make plenty of animal friends along the way. It’s built around the same exhaustive, try-everything concept as most point-and-click quests of the day, but it’s lenient on the player and makes it difficult for protagonists Kyle and Cal to meet an unpleasant fate. It’s not difficult, though, to enjoy the game’s procession of goofy creatures and cute dialogue, though, and it all makes me wish that Ripple Island had been localized way back in 1989. Of course, it’d probably have been released in limited quantities and would now be as expensive as Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom.
Lastly, I'll bring up Elrentaros Wanderings. It’s one of those games I wanted to like, if only as a historic curiosity. The parallel worlds of a fantasy realm and a modern high school make an interesting premise, and the game’s pedigree promises the same mix of farming and action-RPG that drives Rune Factory. It’s even made by Yoshifumi Hashimoto and Hakama, the same crew that’s behind recent Rune Factory titles. I’m always interested when the keepers of a popular game series try to duplicate that success with a similar but technically unrelated game, whether it’s The Last Story or Mighty No 9 or Major Minor’s Majestic March.
Too bad there’s just not that much going on with Elrentaros Wanderings. Some of its simplification is welcome, especially when you have to race across town for various subquests. Yet so much of the game is insubstantial: the dungeons are okay but force too many return trips, the storyline is sluggish, and there’s not enough to do in terms of character relationships or agriculture. Yes, I’m complaining that a game doesn’t let me spend enough time growing fantasy-RPG alfalfa and raising chickens.
And that’s what I’ve been doing this year. Come back next month and I’ll go back to shunning such modern pursuits so I can spend thousands of words dissecting the pixels of Micro Cabin’s Mystic Formula or wondering if anyone ever dubbed Dragon Century.