The 2005 Archive

It comes from one of the last issues of Gamefan—not the scattershot, grandly unprofessional Gamefan that Dave Halverson ran, but the Gamefan that started up after Halverson left in 1998. I never liked that version of Gamefan. While Halverson's publication maintained a good-natured aura in spite of its frequent stupidity, the second generation of Gamefan was much the opposite: surly, posturing, and fixated more on retarded in-jokes and homegrown catchphrases than games. You can see it in this interview, where Gamefan wastes time with a potshot at one of the editors when they could ask, just maybe, something about Valkyrie Profile.

In fact, most of the questions have little to do with the game. It's more like a glimpse into the actors' careers circa 2001. But you can read Megan Hollingshead's take on two of the characters she played, and I find that interesting because her performance was easily my favorite from Valkyrie Profile.

You know, I like nearly all of the voice work in the American version of Valkyrie Profile. Some of it's corny and most of it's melodramatic, yet it feels remarkably at home with the game's gloomy plotting and ostentatious special attacks. The one problem is, unfortunately, right in the game's prologue, where Platina sounds fucking horrible. I'm not sure IMDB has the actress right, because I find it hard to believe that someone who voiced one of the Powerpuff Girls would screw up so badly on a few lines in a video game. Then again, it might've just been Megan Hollingshead doing the voice and trying too hard to hide a rather obvious plot twist.

But Megan did a fine job as Lenneth. She was also pretty good as Kano in His and Her Circumstances, where she got to appear on camera during the next-episode previews, just like the Japanese voice actresses did. She's had a decent voice acting career since then, though I wonder if her part in the Sonic X cartoon possibly netted her the wrong kind of attention from creepy Sonic fans.

December 16, 2005
More screens from Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria have surfaced, and on VALKYRIE PROFILE WEEK 2005 of all occasions. The Magic Box has everything, but I'm going to post one of the images here because I like it.

This is evidently an in-game shot, and I'm amazed by the detail, though it's perhaps not as distinct as the original Valkyrie Profile. That little game had a one-of-kind 2-D visual style, whereas you could present this screen as a piece of, say, Magna Carta 2 and have half the Internet convinced. Still, the characters seem an interesting bunch—even Big McLargeHuge, who seems to be dropping his sword.

On that note, I'm going to plug Valkyrie Fight Tag, a homebrew PC fighter that's probably known to anyone who liked or even played Valkyrie Profile. It's worth mentioning again for the sake of the people who didn't, just because Valkyrie Fight Tag is surprisingly solid, considering that it was likely made by a crew smaller than the PlayStation game's cover design staff.

Like a lot of “doujin” fighters, it's simple in design, with three buttons, easily performed moves, and not much game balance. The programmer(s) replicate the PlayStation game's sprites really well, making them just a bit larger, and the fan-art character portraits look better than some professional game illustrations. It's all a pleasant diversion, especially for Valkyrie Profile fans.

It's not quite a fighting game based on Les Miserables, but Valkyrie Fight Tag's worth whatever download arrangement The Underdogs runs you through. A pity it's not a fully licensed tri-Ace game, or it might've ended up in the PSP version.

December 15, 2005
VALKYRIE PROFILE WEEK 2005 continues with a look at the only other Valkyrie Profile comic I own. If you expected something intelligent, I apologize.

I like the whole idea of game-based doujinshi, the subculture of diverse and frequently well-drawn Japanese fan comics. Yet I only own three such books, probably because I'm afraid of stumbling across the grotesque porn stuff by accident, and I'm not popular enough to be weird like that.

My collection includes a run-of-the-mill Xenogears comic, which I bought in Japan when I was buying anything even tangentially related to Xenogears, and an Emerald Dragon piece, which was crafted by the game's character designer and probably deserves an article of its own. The third and final part of my doujinshi collection is a Valkyrie Profile comic called “Kami to Hito no Tsumugu Uta,” which I think translates to “The Spinning Song of Men and Gods” or “The Song Cycle of Gods and Men” or something like that.

I picked it up at an Ohio anime convention, where the dealer's room had a corner entirely devoted to doujinshi. The vendor was a deceptively average-looking guy who had helpfully sorted his selection into the clean publications and the many varieties of pure porn. I walked by and saw a Valkyrie Profile book in the normal section. The art wasn't amazing, but the author had apparently cared enough to use a unique, crinkled, and antiquated-looking cover, and it caught my eye.

Then some preteen girls walked by, and the dealer started yelling HEY LADIES GET YOUR HOT YAOI CREAM-FILLED MAN BUNS COMICS HERE and WE'VE GOT HARRY POTTER AND INUYASHA FOR ALL YOUR YAOI NEEDS and other things that might sound clever if you were a recently paroled sex offender.

I looked at the slim Valkyrie Profile booklet in front of me and realized that it deserved a better home. So I bought it and left. With haste.

I thought that the comic might be horrifying filth in disguise, but it's quite straight-laced. There are no scenes of Lezard and Mystina screwing in a magical academy's broom closet or Arngrim and Lawfer exploring flowery knight love or the entire cast joining in a massive drunken pseudo-necrophilic Einherjar orgy in the halls of Valhalla. None of that.

Instead, you get two stories: one explores Lenneth and Lucian's relationship just as the game did, and the other deals with Claire, Lucian's common-law wife, as she figures out that, well, Lucian never really loved her. It's a bit on the bland side, and the art, while serviceable, is never all that impressive.

I get the idea that the author, Misuzu Fujimiya, really liked Valkyrie Profile and wanted to do a somber and faithful story about the game. It succeeds there, but I find myself of the opinion that fan fiction is better when it's just batshit crazy. Furthermore, I was disappointed to find a website run by Fujimiya, who's apparently drawing creepier stuff now.

So there's one-third of my vast doujinshi collection: a half-decent fan comic with a nicely textured cover and a reminder to avoid some parts of anime conventions.

December 14, 2005
In honor of the recent news about Valkyrie Profile 2, I declare this to be VALKYRIE PROFILE WEEK 2005 and promise daily discussions of the game and its related merchandise until everyone's horribly fucking sick of it.

Today, we look at Yuu Hijikata's Valkyrie Profile manga, published in 2001 by Gangan Comics, for those of you who hunt these things. While a lot of legitimate game-based manga titles are collections of short stories, Hijikata's work tries to span the game's entire storyline in two 175-page volumes. This is not well-advised, yet it's strangely entertaining to watch it all play out.

At first, it all goes well. The first book covers the initial stretch of Valkyrie Profile, introducing Lenneth Valkyrie, the Berserk-inspired warrior Arngrim, bratty Princess Jelanda, and Belenus, who was just sort of boring and got sent to Valhalla first whenever I played the game.

The comic is paced better than the typical tri-Ace story, and though much of it is a line-for-line recreation of the PlayStation game's script, some differences emerge. Lawfer, whose death wasn't shown in the game, buys it in the manga during a big dramatic face-off with Arngrim (there's gay fan fiction in there someplace), and Lezard, who's like Harry Potter grown up and gone bad, appears earlier. Hijikata's art is fairly good, and I really dig the covers, even if they can't match the illustrations that Kou and You Yoshinari did for the game.

Unfortunately, the whole thing pretty much stabs itself in the eye during the second volume. The project's editors apparently stormed into Hijikata's studio to demand that the story wrap up in five chapters, so that's what happens. After a brief scene about vampires and the introduction of Lenneth's past-life boyfriend Lucian, everything shifts into a fast-forwarded account of the PlayStation game's last act, with Lezard and Mystina and Hrist and Loki all running around as the world ends. Granted, the original Valkyrie Profile's big finale is a deus ex machina in truest fictional form, but it was never as rushed and incoherent as Hijikata's version.

The manga's a fun curiosity for Valkyrie Profile fans, although its slavish adherence to the game's plotline means that there's not much to see if you've already been through the story on the PlayStation. But hey, geek merchandise doesn't have to make sense.

December 13, 2005

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria for the PlayStation 2 and Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth for the PSP. I don't think gaming news has ever made me happier.

Not much is known about Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria at the moment, perhaps because tri-Ace didn't plan to announce it properly until Jump Festa 2006, which will be held this weekend. It's evident that the PlayStation 2 game follows Lenneth Valkyrie's little-seen sister Silmeria and her connection to a girl named Alicia. Early rumors cast it as a prequel set a few centuries before the original game, with a plot that involves Silmeria offending Odin and consequently being reborn as Alicia, the princess of the doomed kingdom of Dipan. The ending may seem obvious, as the original Valkyrie Profile saw Dipan in ruins and Silmeria…uh, imprisoned, but it's doubtful that tri-Ace will play it so straight. After Star Ocean 3, they may as well reveal the Valkyrie Profile universe to be a puppet show run by the ghosts of hyper-intelligent alien radishes. Seriously, fuck Star Ocean 3.

Silmeria discards the original's 2-D look and goes fully 3-D, though it's still looking great. That's probably Alicia standing there, but I can't tell for sure. It's like one of those Bigfoot photos.

So far, we have a half-dozen screenshots and a nice scan of a magazine's Silmeria preview, which shows off artwork presumably by the original game's artists, Kou and You Yoshinari.

This shot depicts actual gameplay, with a button assigned to each party member's attack, just as it was in the original's wonderful reflexive battles. I'll never understand why no one in the RPG industry saw fit to rip off Valkyrie Profile instead of repeatedly leeching from Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games. Even The Granstream Saga has an imitator, for fuck's sake.

This is Alicia, who may well be Silmeria's human form. She may also be a thorough whiner like Platina was in Valkyrie Profile, but if things go that way, we at least won't have to listen to her for long.

I desperately want to play Silmeria, even if I doubt tri-Ace's ability to handle it well. Their PS2 offerings haven't done much for me; Star Ocean 3 had a half-decent battle system and a dull, badly-paced plot, while Radiata Stories was much the reverse, saddling a fun story and colorful setting with boring combat. It wouldn't surprise me if tri-Ace's directors actually came out and confessed that they'd stolen Valkyrie Profile from some other developer, because it's miles above anything else they've ever done. I hope Silmeria joins it.

On the other hand, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth is predictable —a PSP port of the original PlayStation game, with some new cinema sequences that link it more coherently with Silmeria.

In this case, “new” might translate to “CG sequences of existing story scenes that were just fine the way they were thank you very much,” but it certainly looks pretty. One wonders if they'll keep the original animated opening, which was a bit choppy and generic.

Here, Lenneth looks exactly like it did on the PlayStation, but with a PSP-friendly screen size. I can now imagine myself playing this in airports and on the subway, where it'll serve as a reason to talk to girls and strike up conversations about Norse mythology. And if they don't like Norse mythology, they're obviously no good for me anyway.

While Silmeria seems a likely American release, Square Enix might leave Lenneth in Japan, even though they could use some actual domestic PSP releases to their name. Of course, I'll probably buy the import version of Lenneth and understand it completely, as I've pretty much memorized Valkyrie Profile's script. I knew that would come in handy.

December 1, 2005
In a development that likely means nothing, a new manga by the name of Gunner's Heaven started running last month in Dengeki Teioh. I have no idea if it's related to the apostrophe-free Gunners Heaven, which is largely unknown beyond those who like early PlayStation action games and Treasure rip-offs. It's possible that author Okito Endou is part of the cadre.

Yet upon consideration, that doesn't look like the sort of publication that would run a comic about a generically eager hero and heroine blowing up robots, dog-faced soldiers, and narcissistic blond women in leotards. It looks like the sort of publication bought by strange men who should be kept away from elementary schools and playgrounds.

November 9, 2005
Let's check in on Final Fantasy XII, seeing as how a demo of it ships next week with Dragon Quest VIII.

For one thing, those of you who doubt the ingenuity of the game should note its latest step in bravely discarding series tradition. Observe that Final Fantasy XII's ostensible villain, Vayne Cardas Solidor, has brown hair instead of white or blond hair!

All joking aside, I really am looking forward to Final Fantasy XII. I remain firm in my delusion that it will be a brilliant change from the franchise's typical form, that it will have a marvelous story capable of singly vaulting games into the realm of high literature, and that it will be a beautiful, priceless experience such as to leave you gaping in open wonder and regretting that you ever doubted director Yasumi Matsuno for a second, you ungrateful shit.

Don't try to tell me otherwise. At least not until the demo arrives, at which point we'll probably learn that FFXII is much like previous Final Fantasies, only with an MMORPG battle system, a few Shakespearean allusions, and bizarrely realistic bunny women.

The Final Fantasy XII demo is intriguing in other ways, as it's debuting in America. I've heard of no such release for the Japanese market, and as far as I can tell, no U.S. gaming website landed special previews of the demo. Unleashing it on the public at large suggests either Square's confidence in the game or the fact that they just don't care anymore because Matsuno has fallen ill or quit or gone stark raving mad, depending on who you believe.

The project is now overseen by Saga series creator Akitoshi Kawazu –in other words, the man behind Unlimited Saga. Damning as that may sound, Kawazu's just the executive producer of FFXII and, in effect, merely the one called in to guide the project's last leg. The real burden of proof falls upon co-directors Hiroyuki Ito and Hiroshi Minagawa, who've been closely tied to either Matsuno's past work or earlier parts of the Final Fantasy series. Ito designed Final Fantasy Tactics, directed Final Fantasy IX and helped invent the battle systems on Final Fantasy IV, V, VI, and VIII. Minagawa is a Quest veteran who handled the art direction for Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Vagrant Story. They're some of the best talent Square has left.

So if Final Fantasy XII is a hideous, embarrassing plane crash of a game, I'll know whose fault it is.

Mine, for getting too excited about a video game.

October 26, 2005
Today saw the release of Gunstar Super Heroes and, with it, a shocking revelation about Red, one of the game's two playable characters.

See, the game's manual tells us that Red is actually a girl. I had not yet realized this. Upon consideration, that's not terribly shocking so much as it's mildly surprising –and only for Treasure geeks like myself. It's not nearly as abrupt as the discovery I made so many years ago regarding the original Bloody Roar.

A fairly average PlayStation fighting game, Bloody Roar was distinguished solely by the fact that every character could turn into a were-animal. Among these fighters was Fox, who, despite being ripped, still looked feminine and had a woman's voice. So I figured that fox was just a buff female martial artist. No big deal.

Shortly after I picked up the game, my sister decided to flip through the Bloody Roar manual.

“That's a GUY?” she asked, pointing to Fox's profile.

I looked at the attached write-up, and there it was. Fox was really a German dude named Hans. Such was my introduction to Japanese character designers' fondness for androgyny. Yes, this was years before Guilty Gear X2 and Bridget. I learned early.

I can't help but note that Bloody Roar 2 got rid of Fox and brought in a cheetah-woman named Shina, who was muscular, blond, and, in an astonishing turn, genetically female. In a later Bloody Roar, she was voiced by Jennifer Hale, and that pretty much made her my favorite character. After that, I stopped giving a shit about the series.

The only lesson I choose to draw from all this is that Gunstar Super Heroes is awesome.

October 18, 2005
Gunstar Super Heroes ships to the U.S. next week. I won't discuss it at length until then, but I can already confirm that it has some great backgrounds.

From what little I've played, it's awesome. Much like the Genesis game, it hits you with lots of different gameplay styles and details, all clever enough to make you sit back and think about them when you're not even playing, and I've always thought that to be the sign of a great game. Yes, there's no two-player mode and the weapons are down to four from the original's fourteen, but you won't notice any of that, especially not when you're collecting baby chicks.

Attention Treasure employees: you're all forgiven for Silpheed: the Lost Planet, Stretch Panic, and, hell, any other shitty games you might have made. I'll even forgive you for canceling Gun Beat, which, I maintain, would have been amazing and not the disappointing mess that all available evidence suggests.

September 19, 2005
I am shocked and disgusted to admit that I might ever want to buy this.

For the love of God, the pose isn't even dignified. It's not so much that KOS-MOS looks like the star of some Japanese PC dating game called Space Slut of the Far Future, but we can't have her holding a gun in that particular place. It ruins the subtlety of the whole piece and makes it unsuitable for displaying, which I'd do for three days before taking a good look at it and realizing what would happen if it were to be seen by women or co-workers or anyone else remotely important. Then I'd throw it in the closet and probably start sobbing hysterically.

This may explain why I haven't reviewed Xenosaga yet.

September 13, 2005
Let's talk about Radiata Stories. Or rather, let's just post some out-of-context screen captures from it.

This'll have to pass for a review until I can properly organize my thoughts about the game. For now, it's better than just saying “Fun stuff, but I wouldn't pay fifty bucks for it, mostly because my car's bumper got scratched up and I need to get it fixed.”

August 28, 2005
Far too much time has passed since the last update, but I have good excuses. Not only am I revising the site's layout, but I also had to move to a new job in New York. The result? I just don't have much time for my little website.

In lieu of actual new content, here's a look at the top searches that lead to kidfenris.com.

Lord, how I hate the Internet.

Change of plans here. I'm going to revise this site so that it's all about female bodybuilders, because readers would apparently rather see that sort of thing than anything about bad video game artwork or dumb cartoons from Japan.

July 9, 2005
Hey, it's a new Lunar game. So what if it's set 1,000 years before the original Lunar: The Silver Star and probably won't have anything to do with the first two Lunar games? So what if it's on the DS instead of a system with a full-sized screen? So what if you won't be able to play it in public ever, because you'll have to shout into the system's microphone to retreat from battle? So what if it looks like every other anime-fantasy RPG released in the last ten years? It's a NEW LUNAR GAME, dammit.

You must pardon some ungrounded enthusiasm here. Back in the mid-1990s, Lunar was quite the phenomenon, a series that, for American geeks, stood equal to Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star. That changed as the decade continued and GameArts put Lunar in a holding pattern, dropping off remakes of the first two games and some mediocre Saturn port of the line's Game Gear spin-off, Magical School Lunar. Rumor has it that Lunar 3 was planned with the subtitle “Over the Rainbow” and no ties to the previous games, but that idea was mercifully locked away in GameArts' basement. The company put most of its weight behind the Grandia games, which were perpetually behind the curve; the first was slow and cutesy when it should have been sharp and quick, while the second delivered a load of cynical angst well after that sort of thing became a monstrous cliché. Grandia just wasn't Lunar, and it was Lunar we wanted.

Yet at this stage, one must wonder if it really matters. Lunar: Dragon Song comes across as standard, with an archetypal trio of hero, heroine, and catgirl questing forth after the goddess Althena, who would be the game's only logical link to the earlier Lunars. Everything's shown in the sprite-based 3-D view that Grandia and Xenogears instated around 1998, and there's no sign of pretty cartoon intermissions yet. If it's crap, at least we'll find out soon. Ubisoft has a September release in mind with, we all hope, a translation better than the one done on Advance Guardian Heroes.

By the way, there's a reason behind the lack of updates. In addition to work and other things sapping my free time, I'm going to revise the site's layout a little, just so it'll pack in more images and look better at higher screen resolutions.

I'm also lazy.

April 30, 2005
The latest word from Japanese arcades involves a new upgrade for Guilty Gear X2 Reload. Said to be on location test right now, it revises some attacks and includes Aba, the shy, key-wielding artificial girl from Isuka. The full Japanese title is, I think, Guilty Gear XX The Midnight Carnival # Reload Slash, which is sure to inspire jokes about Sol/Ky fan fiction.

No genuinely new cast members have been confirmed, but the official poster and character select screen promise Sol Badguy in his Holy Knights outfit. It's not yet clear if this fits into Guilty Gear's bizarre plot canon or if it's just a bonus costume. Perhaps he's a Bizarro version of Sol and listens to the Eagles and Barry Manilow instead of Queen.

Some will whine about Slash being a mere expansion pack, but I'm glad to see a new Guilty Gear in any form, and I can't fault Sammy for playing it safe after the massive and not entirely deserved failure of Isuka. Still, it's disheartening to think that this Reload tweaking will keep Guilty Gear X3 even farther away and deny us a new spate of characters like Raven, Slayer's wife Sharon (who already exists as a Gashapon figure), any of May's crewmates, and, of course, That Man. He's got to be playable eventually, and you just know he'll be cool.

April 20, 2005
I can't resist posting another Gunstar Super Heroes screenshot. This one reminds me of that spectacular level in Treasure's Sin and Punishment where your character flew through the air on a piece of battleship wreckage as the background rotated. It was amazing, and if Treasure can pull off something similar in their Gunstar sequel, I'll be happy indeed.

Oh yeah, remember that Hideous Box Art thing that I've failed to update for the past year or so? Well, I finally posted a new entry. I decided to put them up one by one, as it's the easiest way of adding to the existing gallery. There are more to come. Trust me.

April 19, 2005
There are moments when I'm willing to forgive Dave Halverson. Every now and then, he makes amends for his propensity to kill the magazines he creates, for his silly and irony-free love of sexy game women, and for every gushing, unconvincing review he's thrown out for cute 3-D platformers.

One of those moments arose when I read the May 2005 issue of Play, in which Halverson somehow scoops the entire online gaming press and gets pictures of Treasure's Gunstar Heroes sequel, Gunstar Super Heroes.

The accompanying preview doesn't say much about the game, aside from confirming that Sega will release it for the Game Boy Advance. It seems a natural step for Treasure after last year's abruptly developed and generally underrated Advance Guardian Heroes, which seems to connect the Gunstar and Guardian lines.

See, I like Advance Guardian Heroes. It's a bit too rough in both style and challenge to be one of those A-list Treasure classics, but it has excellent play depth and level design, and it does the original game proud in countless subtle ways.

Advance Guardian Heroes also pushes the system to unreasonable limits, and that may be why some people would rather have Gunstar Super Heroes on the PSP instead of the GBA. I agree, and not just because of the superior hardware. Making Gunstar Super Heroes a PSP game would prevent the ROM kiddies from grabbing it, playing for ten minutes, and then whining in all corners of the interweb about how ugly and clumsy the game seems in a format for which it was never intended.

Yet I'll gladly accept Gunstar Super Heroes on the GBA, and I'm happy to speculate about the game, based on the few screens we have. Look, Gunstar Blue has a knife! Red looks like the bird-headed cyborg from Alien Soldier! Why are there three weapon icons at the top of the screen? Who's that in the Metroid-like spaceship? OMFG TREASURE FAG BRAIN FREEZE.

If this is some belated April Fool's prank, I take back anything positive I've ever said about Halverson and Play.

March 18, 2005
Well, look at what you can go out and buy now.

You don't have to get Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower, of course. That's really just for us hopeless Darkstalkers fans, who'd buy fucking Playdias if the series had shown up there. A good selection of PSP games was released this week, well in advance of the system's March 24th debut.

This isn't without precedent. Fantavision and other PlayStation 2 launch games hit U.S. stores prior to the console's release, and the first American PlayStation title actually shipped days before anyone had systems on which to play it. The game? Crystal Dynamics' otherwise forgotten Total Eclipse Turbo. That's a future trivia-test stumper.

In the PSP's case, the early game shipments only benefit those who imported Japanese handhelds; they get to enjoy Wipeout Pure a week before everyone else. Still, there's something satisfying about picking up a new game for a new system, even if my copy of Darkstalkers remains sealed, and thus easily returnable, for the moment. I might get fired or need surgery between now and next Thursday.

February 21, 2005
In an effort to encourage actual updates here, I'm kicking off a new feature that I call Game Magazine Monday. At the start of each work week, I'll examine, however needlessly, an issue of a gaming magazine. The first installment deals with something near and dear to me: the March 1995 edition of EGM2.

Those who read Electronic Gaming Monthly in the mid-90s may remember the “What Ifs” column with which the mag sometimes killed space. This section invited readers to send in witticisms on par with “What if the Little Mermaid was Ecco's Mother?” or “What if Atari decided there weren't enough buttons on the Jaguar's controller?” It was not, in retrospect, the magazine's finest attraction, but the terse banality of “What Ifs” appealed to kids and those older readers who couldn't write full-length letters.

To this day I'm not sure what possessed me to jot down some “What Ifs” of my own in late 1994, though I could blame it on being bored during Christmas vacation and unconvinced that I had outgrown video games. Whatever the cause, I sent off a dozen bon mots to EGM and promptly forgot about them, as I had Final Fantasy VI (then III) to worry about.

About four months later, someone passed the March 1995 issue of EGM2 around fifth-period German class. Once it was in my hands, I flipped to the letters section, for I suddenly remembered those stupid “What Ifs" and was gripped by a hysterical urge to see if I, a humble lad from a small Ohio town, would find my name in print.

And I did.

Yes, that's me at the bottom of the list, delivering some comedic misfires about Final Fantasy III, Mortal Kombat II, and a lesser-known, lesser-quality arcade fighter called BloodStorm, which gave rise to the Tempest gag. You see, one of her finishing moves was called the “Exorcism.” It was funny then, dammit.

This wouldn't seem a grand event today, but back in 1995, I was thrilled. With these four “What Ifs” printed, I was now a published writer. Forget that worthless short story in the school's literary magazine. This was E-MOTHERFUCKING-G-M. Yes, I was a stupid kid, and I make no excuses for it. In fact, I still feel some small surge of accomplishment when I look at the column and note that, for example, I received more space than any other contributor. Take THAT, Iain Hend! Where's your precious "Internet" now?

Of course, the issue has points of interest aside from unfounded nostalgia. For one, it's an interesting look at all of the game systems that were desperately vying for attention in 1995. With the 3DO, the Jaguar, the CD-i, the SNES, the Genesis, the 32X, the Sega CD, the slowly building culture of PC games, and the recently announced PlayStation and Saturn, it was an absolute clusterfuck. Though the two newest systems get the nicest previews in this issue (remember when Cyber Sled impressed us?), the 16-bit consoles seem to have the better libraries, thanks to titles like Ristar, Metal Warriors, Ogre Battle, Front Mission, and Comix Zone. But hey, CD-i owners could look forward to Thunder in Paradise, a multi-genre piece based on Hulk Hogan's short-lived syndicated TV series. The CD-i is seldom praised.

The year was also dominated by fighting games, and the issue dedicates an accordingly generous share of pages to Virtua Fighter 2, Killer Instinct, Capcom's X-Men fighter, and, of course, Mortal Kombat 3. The magazine's standout article is an interview with Anthony Marquez, a martial artist who provided motion-capture work for Kung Lao in both Mortal Kombat 2 and 3. It's a standard puff piece, though even Marquez weighs in on the issue of gaming violence when he submits that “parents have to take responsibility and not blame bad parenting on movies or video games.”

Yet the most intriguing thing in this issue might be a preview for a home version of BloodStorm, the mediocre, gore-filled fighter that inspired a “What If” from me. Though the game had a short run in arcades during 1994, ports for the PlayStation and Saturn were apparently announced the following year. EGM2's preview is sloppily vague, and the grainy screenshots suggest either an ugly translation or poor image quality, but it's the only evidence I've seen that BloodStorm was headed for a console. It was canceled, of course, after a Genesis version of Time Killers, BloodStorm's direct ancestor, turned out to be even worse than its arcade original.

That's about it for the April 1995 issue of EGM2. The layouts are only passable and the writing sticks to the same bland, grade-school tone that the EGM offices employed during the mid-1990s, but it has value as a study of an incredibly competitive gaming culture that may never be duplicated. The current console wars are fierce, but the high cost of entry tends to discourage major companies from jumping in with new consoles. If that prevents another Thunder in Paradise game, it can't be an entirely bad trend.