Why, Yes, I Do Like MST3K

I recently decided to play through Tactics Ogre, that 16-bit strategy-RPG full of grids and medieval-fantasy politics and chipper little character sprites gasping in horror at the sight of their own entrails. I didn’t do this because it’s the second game directed by Yasumi Matsuno, whose work I’ve never found disappointing. Nor did I do it because I’ve had the PlayStation version for eight years or because it’s worth sixty bucks on eBay, meaning that I should either sell it or use it for something. And I didn’t even decide to play it because it’s crammed with Queen references. No, I’m going through Tactics Ogre because it has a mage named Donald Presance.



Yes, Donald Pleasence, the talented actor known for his roles in You Only Live Twice and The Pumaman, phonetically inspired a useful exorcist who joins the player’s group two hours into Tactics Ogre. I’m sure that, if he were alive today, Mr. Pleasence would find this rather amusing and would not sue anyone. Especially not Mr. Matsuno, who’s had an apparently difficult time since he quit directing Final Fantasy XII two-thirds of the way through.

The Sky Crawlers: Coffee? I Like Coffee! And Smoking!

Here’s the important thing about The Sky Crawlers: among Mamoru Oshii’s movies, it sets a new record for going from zero to basset hound. Oshii puts his favorite dog in just about every film for which he holds the reins, and he makes sure that a basset hound shows up around the five-minute mark in The Sky Crawlers.

As for the rest of the movie, it’s Oshii being Oshii. There are many, many staring contests and lengthy silences endured by the cast of glum, perpetually teenage pilots in some vague alternate version of World War II’s European air war, with enough coffee and cigarette references to invite comparisons to Coleman Francis' classic The Skydivers. The pace eventually quickens and leads to some impressive CG dogfights, but it’s still an Oshii movie through and through, and anyone who wants their alterna-WWII story without frequent pauses (and sub-pauses) can safely head for the door.

But I'll stay. I like Oshii’s style, and I liked The Sky Crawlers. In fact, I like it more each time I think about it. There’s a refreshingly emotional edge to Oshii’s usual stilted tone this time around, and it ties in well to every broader theme in the story. Oshii doesn’t wimp out when it comes to the finale, either, and that’s always a plus for me. I’ll give it a proper review, with stolen screenshots and a pointless rating and everything, once I sort out my opinion.

However, I was surprised to learn that Oshii intended it as a crowd-pleaser. He reportedly vowed to quit directing if The Sky Crawlers wasn’t a success, and yet I can’t imagine anyone making a movie like this with the intent of winning over the typical movie-goer. It may lack Ghost in the Shell 2’s ridiculous quote competitions, yet it’s still slow, depressing, and a lot of other things that a lot of people won’t like. While I hope I’m wrong about that, the audience around me seemed less than enthused. Someone in the theater was snoring twenty minutes into The Sky Crawlers, and as I walked out after the ending (stay through the credits), a knot of kids in front of me spoke loudly of how the film was heavy-handed, how it had no point, and how Oshii “used to be good.” All this at the movie’s New York premiere.

I’d like to see The Sky Crawlers do well, not least of all because Oshii always looks like the unhappiest man on Earth whenever he’s on camera. I doubt he’ll really quit, and he should know better by now. Countless live-action directors learn to accept that their most honest creations will never be mainstream hits, as they have the luxury of a market that makes off-the-radar movies profitable and rewarding. Yes, non-biographical animated films have it tough in the indie sector, but it’s where Oshii’s future most likely rests, basset hounds and all.

Valkyrie Profile Per Hour

I don’t plan on regularly extolling my column at Anime News Network, but last week’s edition may be of greater interest than usual, as it features my lengthy impressions of Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. The short version: I digs it. It’s the first RPG in years that I’ve played through in its native Japanese, and only the promise of a North American release in March keeps me from starting up the import version again.

There is, however, one major problem with the game, and I mentioned it only casually in the column. That problem is Wylfred’s double ponytail. Koh and Yoh Yoshinari do amazing characters designs, so I’m at a loss to explain why they made an otherwise respectable hero look like the Valkyrie Profile version of Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog. No one likes Tails.



Wylfred’s hairstyle can only be redeemed if he has some secret attack that involves him whirling his ponytails around like a helicopter, lifting into the air, and dive-bombing an enemy. Perhaps that shows up if you beat the game’s bonus Seraphic Gate twelve times without dying and use items only when the game’s timer shows a multiple of three in the minutes column. That would be less annoying than what the game already requires of you in order to recruit certain characters.

I Accuse Everyone

When Valkyrie Profile: The Accused One was first announced for the DS, I took issue with the official illustration that showed Lenneth, heroine and best-adjusted of the franchise’s three valkyries, with her dress blowing up in the air. I was joking. Mostly.


Little did I realize that an uproar was exactly what tri-Ace wanted, as proven by a Sofmap store in Akihabara becoming the scene of self-created advertising controversy last week. Clerks pointed out that the game’s official art seems to show Lenneth without due undergarments, as Tiny Cartridge reported from Akiblog, a site that sometimes conjures up an amusing story amid headlines like “Highlights of Kannagi Vol. 6: Armpit! Small Boobs! Thighs!” Apparently this is in line with "Not Wearing," the Japanese anime-nerd scene's collective terminology for fictional women who appear to be going commando but maintain a lingering sense of mystery about their lower regions. Yes, they're that specific about the practice. There can be no hope for these people.
Congratulations, tri-Ace. You’ve taken a game heroine who was once a bastion of dignity and reduced her to the same level as any other hand-drawn schoolgirl hiking up a skirt as she turns flat, viscous eyes on a socially backward expanse of Akihabara regulars. Fortunately, there will be far less of this when Valkyrie Profile: The Accused One comes out in North America next March, even if they’re calling the English version “Covenant of the Plume."
And in case you're wondering: Yes. She does. Don't ask how I know.

Dignity: Death and Rebirth

Square Enix's The Last Remnant arrives this week, and the anticipation for it is guarded at best. It's an ambitious game in design and marketing, as it fashions elaborate open-field battles thronged by humans (wait, they're called mithra), newtlike mages (qsiti), four-armed cat-people (sovani), and other creatures whose species I can't pronounce, all while trying to sell itself to unconvinced Americans just as much as the RPG buyers of Japan. Previews have been kind, at least, and it received two 10s from Famitsu, the Japanese magazine so esteemed that no one would have paid attention if it had given The Last Remnant only one 10. Two 10s, however, are the Famitsu equivalent of a B+ from a genuinely critical publication.

There are cracks in this acclaimed façade, of course. The game's use of the Unreal Engine 3 has sown lag and other visible shortcomings, and the gameplay is the creation of Akitoshi Kawazu and other designers from the SaGa series, which is highly experienced at pissing potential down its collective leg. The story carries a stale aroma, too, though it's not so much the tale of a determined hero out to uncover secrets as it is dialogue like “There's something about that guy.” In this case “that guy” is the Conqueror, a grumpy old man who wears robes dyed red with the blood of his slain enemies. It's the stuff of anime parodies, not the company that once brought us Final Fantasy XII's uncommonly elegant localization.

Yet there's one reason to look forward to The Last Remnant, and her deceptively silly name is Emma Honeywell.




Emma's the leader of an influential clan in The Last Remnant's world, and she serves as a maternal companion to another supporting character, the British-sounding David Nassau. More importantly, Emma looks exactly like you'd expect a 41-year-old warrior to look in a stylized medieval realm. No chainmail bra, no bared midriff, no unrealistic nonsense (that's all for the antagonists). And, as early clips reveal, she's not some sweetly deferential matriarch. Yes, the efficiently dressed older woman of battle is a cliché in fantasy circles, but it's a cliché that video games should jump on a little more often.

It may be that Emma's the sacrificial mom of the piece; her quote mentions protecting her liege city with her life, so perhaps she's here just to throw herself on the blood-red villain's sword and motivate the rest of the heroes. I only hope she'll raise the bar on her way down.

Valkyrie Profile Update: People Draw Things

As Valkyrie Profile: The Accused One's slightly delayed October release approaches, let's all take a look at the work of Yoh (a.k.a You) Yoshinari. He's not just the co-designer of the characters in the original Valkyrie Profile and The Accused One (and some of Valkyrie Profile 2's cast). He's also active in the anime industry, where he's designed monsters for This Ugly Yet Beautiful World and mecha for Melody of Oblivion, both of which are C-list Gainax series. Fortunately, he entered more prestigious circles by crafting the robots in Gainax's recent and generally awesome Gurren Lagann.




Yet Yoshinari does some of his best work as an animator, as shown by this clip collection (or a MAD, as they call it in Japan). Yes, I know that fan-made music videos of any source are typically the filth of YouTube and proof that no one under 20 should be permitted online, but this particular video shows off one of Yoshinari's key talents: he blows shit up real good. Even a terrible show like Mahoromatic looks fun when you've got Yoh Yoshinari handling explosions.

Koh Yoshinari, Yoh's sibling and his collaborator on the Valkyrie Profile art, is an animator as well. I'm all but convinced that Koh is Yoh's older brother, but some sources seem to think that Koh is Yoh's twin sister, even though the Valkyrie Profile artbook shows that they were born three years apart. Until I get some direct, official word on this, I will choose pronouns carefully. Anyway, Koh also animates stuff, including creepy big-eyed girls and a possibly creepier rooster-thing.

On the subject of Valkyrie Profile: The Accused One, the official staff journal gives us a harrowing glimpse of how Ailyth would look when catering to the lowest form of anime fan.




This is not an emissary of the underworld, Mr. Director. This is everything Valkyrie Profile should never be.

Izuna 2: The Pandering Returns

Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja wasn't my favorite game of 2007. In fact, it likely wouldn't have made my top ten if I'd bothered assembling such a thing. But I liked it enough to finish it, and it became the only game I reviewed on this site last year. So I have a reflexive interest in the sequel and the way Atlus is promoting it. They let everyone vote on which Izuna poster should be bundled with the game on Amazon.com, and the options shouldn't surprise anyone who remembers the first Izuna's advertising.






I'm not shocked by the shameless courting of base hormonal impulses, since Atlus did the same thing for the first game. I am, however, shocked by the second poster showing what appears to be, at a glance, an erect, flesh-colored phallus emerging from the water around Izuna's crotch.

A closer look reveals that it's just a knee belonging to Shino, the dark-haired girl sitting more daintily in the upper corner. Still, it's a shame that the first poster won the vote, as people who'd hang these on their walls deserve to get weird looks for reasons they never intended.

The Lunar II That Wasn't

Ah, the Lunar games. Perhaps they're now archaic, but the first and best two introduced many a sheltered American kid to the ways of Japanese RPGs, including that honored convention of setting a sequel hundreds of years after the first game. Lunar II did exactly that, and it abandoned most of the original Lunar's characters in the process.


That wasn't always the plan. GameArts' original ideas for Lunar II: Eternal Blue called for the main cast from Lunar: The Silver Star to return, older and perhaps as supporting characters. That's what some early concept illustrations from Softbank's Lunar I and II artbook show, anyway. I've never seen these online anywhere, so I decided to scan them and finally get some use out of the book. I bought it in Japan during the height of my RPG obsession, after giving up on finding the Xenogears art collection.




Alex, the hero, was a kid with a harp and a fur hat in the first game. For the second, he became a lumberjack and grew one hell of a mullet, while his passive love interest, Luna, started wearing makeup.

Eve no Premature Indie Fawning

Last year, I held up Yasuhiro Yoshiura's Pale Cocoon as an example of what Japan's animation industry should aspire to create. That now seems quite pretentious and downright stupid of me, but I find myself standing by every single shakily reasoned thing I wrote, either because Pale Cocoon is simply that good or because Japan's animation industry has frustratingly low standards.

The important thing here is that Yoshiura's next project, Eve no Jikan, is finally coming to light. A trailer showed up at the official website, introducing what appears to be the first of several stories about a world where androids are commonplace and distinguished from humans only by hi-tech halos and bovine gazes.


It seems to be a remake of Yoshiura's nine-minute Aquatic Language short, right down to the coffee shop peopled by friendly robots. Less promising are all the ingredients you'd need for some terrible farce aimed at otaku shut-ins: a glasses-wearing kid is shown prominently, and there's a ready selection of android girls for him to get embarrassed over.


But this is Yoshiura, and I expect something closer to a detailed character study about just how cheap sentience could be in a world of humanoid machines (a real study; not that fetishy Chobits horseshit). I've yet to see a release date for Eve no Jikan, though, so it might be a while before I find out just how many doomed hopes I can throw its way.

Trojan Trials

I hate Trojan. I apparently hate it so much that I forgot to mention the NES edition's two-player versus mode, which is limited and boring, but still interesting for an 8-bit game from 1986.

 
I also forgot to mention the Trojan arcade flyer. It’s actually not that bad of an illustration on the whole, but there’s one thing about it that cracks me up: Trojan Guy’s face.

 
The flyer doubled as the NES game’s cover art, though it was boxed in by the same hi-tech, neon-is-the-future grid than Capcom used for all of its early NES releases. And that’s a shame, because it made Trojan Guy way too small for us to appreciate his baleful, huge-chinned visage. He’s going to destroy the fuck out of those evil ones.

Happy 1925, Earnest Evans

I realize it's far too late to make some post recapping everything that happened to me in 2007, and that's just as well, because I decided not to write about it and ended up playing El Viento instead. I didn't like 2007 anyway.

But man, do I like El Viento. It's hardly the best action-platform game for the old Sega Genesis, but I can't get enough of all the thoroughly insane crap that Wolf Team threw into it with no regard for logic or cohesion. This delicate theme runs through the game itself, what with Al Capone driving a hi-tech tank (in the 1920s, no less) on the first level, Annet surfing on a dolphin in the fourth stage, and the second level being a Mount Rushmore maze full of trampolines and smiley-faced gun turrets.

Yet it's even more nuts in the story sequences, which are nonsensical mash-ups of Indiana Jones movies, Prohibition gangster stuff, and vaguely Lovecraftian conspiracies about burbling preternatural gibbous squamous eldritch horrors from unknowable realms beyond the veils of space and time. It's also hard to tell just who's saying what, since almost every cutscene consists of a single bizarrely framed image.



This one's my favorite. It's like that picture-making minigame in Super Mario Bros. 3, but someone screwed up by landing on anime Al Capone's face instead of Annet's authentic native Peruvian belly shirt.


And that's El Viento, probably the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth best game I played last year. Happy 2008, everyone.

Outrage Trigger

I finished Douglas Coupland’s Jpod over Thanksgiving. It’s pretty much a revamp of his fascinating mid-‘90s geek subculture pastiche Microserfs, but this time it’s about modern-day game programmers bouncing off each other in a series of interconnected plot threads and ersatz observations about life in this gosh-darn-kerazy world of McDonald’s and Google and E-Mail Tony Hawk Jpeg Karaoke Internet Hug Machines.

Something else bothers me. It’s not the fact that none of the book’s characters is particularly appealing or the fact that Coupland lazily inserts himself into it as part of some irksome post-post-modern folding act, or the dozen or so pages of nothing but pi digits. That’s all annoying, but what really bothers me is this self-written profile of the main character.



I've underlined the problem. Who really prefers the PlayStation port of Chrono Trigger, with its unnecessary anime video clips and loading times, to the original Super NES version? No one, that’s who. And it’s not like our hero is ignorant of 16-bit games; there’s a scene where his co-workers are screwing around with Super Metroid on an emulator, an emulator presumably capable of running the superior form of Chrono Trigger.

For shame, Mr. Coupland. If this blatantly incorrect detail is your idea of a joke, it’s still a grievous, inexcusable, and potentially damaging error that I demand to see corrected in future printings, or at least on that website. I'll start an online petition if I have to.

Scar Removal

I recently started playing Final Fantasy Tactics in preparation for the enhanced, retranslated port that hits the PSP this Wednesday. It’s made me realize that, as much as I love the game, a lot could be improved with a simple, cohesive rewrite of the dialogue.

And while that’s what we’ll supposedly get with Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, I hope the localizers preserved one little exchange just before the first battle, in which the royally enlisted knight Agrias Oaks has some words with the soldiers of Prince Goltana.





No, not her beautiful face!



Her noseless, abstract, largely indistinct face. The same face that most of the other characters have, actually.

I’m always amused when authors go out of the way to tell us that a particularly tough female character is also attractive, especially when it adds nothing to the story. It’s often clumsily used in print, and when it comes to films, comics, videogames or any other visual medium, it’s much more effective to simply show the uncommon splendor of a fierce young woman or mind-controlled cyborg werewolf ninja superheroine. But some can’t leave it at that. Metal Gear Solid introduces Sniper Wolf as “Beautiful and Deadly” instead of describing her combat abilities, and, in the often grim fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin insists on telling us that Arya is indeed a pretty little girl underneath her many layers of plot-accrued grime, because God forbid that a murderous, lice-ridden tomboy should be ugly.

Returning to Tactics, I wonder why we need to know that stern, matronly Agrias there is actually Beautiful and Deadly, despite having the exact same all-but-featureless face as everyone else in the game. Did it figure into some discarded subplot about her, her knightly duties, and scars? Too bad Agrias and the rest of the game’s recruitable characters get only cursory development once they join your party, so we’ll never know for sure.

Prototypical Treasure

I recently found not one, but two things that combine my overbearing fondness for Treasure games with my love of stupidly obscure trivia. From the September 1995 issue of EGM comes this preview of "Guardian Warriors," which all good Treasure nerds (and anyone who reads the lower caption) will recognize as an early version of Guardian Heroes.




What's different? Well, the game's story mode apparently has only two playable main characters, as opposed to the five available in the final game. One of those leads is Serena Corsair, while the other is, strangely enough, a white-clad version of Valgar Reinhart. He isn't playable in the final version's story mode, though he has a prominent role as the standard semi-honorable bad guy who turns halfway good once the real villains are unmasked.

And now, an early version of Alien Soldier, Treasure's blisteringly hard Mega Drive action-shooter. These shots come from the May 1994 Gamefan, back when the title had a Slab Bulkhead human hero instead of the bird-headed cyborg seen in the final.



For comparison, here's a shot of the released game's main character and one of the bosses seen above.



And here are huge scans of those Alien Soldier and Guardian Heroes previews. The shots of Alien Soldier are lumped in with early Light Crusader screens, when the game was called Relayer. I didn't spot any obvious differences there, but I admit that I never played the final game that thoroughly. I should fix that, as I find that even lesser Treasure titles are still something to be...uh, valued.

The Red Star: A History in Covers

I'm playing The Red Star demo. I still live in Ohio. And Acclaim is still in business.

It impresses me. I'm aware of the nicely illustrated and unsubtly allegorical comic on which it was based, but the game really sells me by marrying two old-fashioned gaming staples: shooting enemy soldiers and beating the crap out of legions of street punks. Except instead of palette-swapped thugs, I'm pounding on the fur-hatted minions of an evil URRS dictator named Troika. Yeah, the URRS. I guess calling the end boss “Joseph Stallen” would’ve been too obvious.

The cover art looks like a lazy mock-up, but hey, it’s a fun action game set in a Soviet Russia full of sorcery and high technology, and I'm going to pick up The Red Star when it hits.

A few weeks later, Acclaim goes under, and amid all the gloating of now-grown ‘80s children still bitter over Total Recall for the NES, some choose to mourn the fact that the company's gone to the grave with what might have been its best game in years.

2005

What? XS Games is publishing The Red Star for the PS2? For only twenty bucks? Sure, they haven’t set a firm date for it, but the important thing is that it’s coming and that the new cover art’s better. I bet it’ll be out soon, because the game was pretty much finished by the time Acclaim sank, right?

Right?

2006

I'm checking ebgames.com every month to see when The Red Star is coming out. And it’s always the next month. Always. But the new cover suggests that someone's doing something somewhere with regard to the game. Even if Makita's going to catch her death of cold.

But it’ll be out soon. XS Games wouldn’t screw with us. Surely we can rely on the company that published Superstar Dance Club #1 Hits and gave The Castle of Shikigami II the worst translation ever.

2007

Wow. They’re bringing it out. They even have a website and a press release. And they say it’s “available now.” So I’ll just head over to ebgames.com and…


Aw fuck. But I'm sure this will be the last delay. I just know it.

That Was Not The Way of It

It doesn’t really shock me that voice actors play many versatile roles. It comes with their trade, after all, and I’m no longer amazed that Tara Strong is in Powerpuff Girls, Final Fantasy X, and Gurumin. Or that Shion’s voice actress from Xenosaga II is also Ty Lee in Avatar. Or that John Di Maggio and Phil LaMarr are in damn near everything.

But after I’d sunk over 50 hours into Final Fantasy XII, this DROPPED MY FUCKING JAW.





Consider me shocked, Keith Ferguson.

Gunstar Blues

I have important news: Gunstar Super Heroes is only $10 at Toys R Us. If you have even the remotest, vaguest, slightest, subtly lingering fondness for games that let you shoot things, blow them up, and feel good about it all, you must buy this.
 
Yeah, it’s short and the less useful weapons from the original Gunstar are gone, but Super Heroes is still an amazing little game, and one that I’m still playing regularly even though I bought it back in 2005. It’s very much like one of those classic action titles that’s worth picking up again and again, not for high scores or actual progress, but just because it’s fun. It’s fun to ride a scampering robotic minecart through a gauntlet of bombs and gunfire, it’s fun to jumpkick your way to the top of a pyramid, and it’s fun to destroy tiny, innocent villagers’ homes for power-ups. It’s also perfect for playing in short bursts on the subway, since you can access any Gunstar sub-stage once you’ve cleared it. Just skip that fucking helicopter level.

I’m still surprised that Gunstar Super Heroes didn’t catch on, considering that today’s gamers are so desperate for decent old-school action games that they’ll praise mediocrities like Ninja Five-O, Scurge: Hive, and Sigma Star Saga. If you can bid sixty goddamn dollars for a game duller than Wrath of the Black Manta, you can spare ten bucks for Gunstar.

Semantic Nonsense

A new scandal arises. The GameBoy Advance port of Final Fantasy VI apparently censors the original’s scene of Celes being beaten by a guard while chained to the wall. No longer punched, she now just falls to the floor, apparently overcome by a case of the vapors.


Such editing was also present in the Japanese release, which means that Square Enix has caved in to Nintendo’s family-friendly policies across the board and denied us our right to see 16-bit sprite women shackled and abused. Seriously, though, I'm not sure why this should bother me. It's not a defining moment for the character, nor is it a famous scene in the game.

Others have complained about Square’s new translation changing the dialogue in Ted Woolsey’s original 1994 adaptation. In the GBA release, Kefka now says “son of a sandworm” instead of “son of a submariner.” Riots may ensue.


And there’s more gay innuendo surrounding Sabin.


The translators even take deliberate potshots at insanely devoted Final Fantasy VI fans. You know, I was once thinking of buying this GBA remake. I’m definitely getting it now.

Slightly Behind the Scenes

So I callously disparaged the Final Fantasy XII Collector's Edition in my last update. And then I went and bought it anyway.

As I thought, most of the extras are engaging, but not really memorable. Instead of a making-of-the-game feature, there's just a load of developer (and translator) interviews, and a half-hour “History of Final Fantasy” overview that does little more than run down the plot of each game and point out the many incarnations of Cid and the Chocobos. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't mention the god-awful Final Fantasy Mystic Quest or the planned Famicom version of Final Fantasy IV. A few interesting details pop up, but if you're a big enough Final Fantasy nerd to pay extra for a bonus disc, you're probably a big enough Final Fantasy nerd to know everything that disc could possibly tell you.




However, it's nice to confirm that Akihiko Yoshida doesn't walk around in the same medieval bondage outfits he uses in his character art. He just looks like he belongs in one of Japan's few Weezer cover bands, a proper calling for anyone.

Shining Forth

Final Fantasy XII comes out this Tuesday, but actual copies have already trickled out to magazines and some rental stores. After seeing both the regular edition of the game at the office and handling the two-disc special edition at EB, I prefer the former. The special edition is metallic and regal, but the two discs are packed halfway on top of each other in a manner ripe for scratching, and an extra ten bucks is just ridiculous for a documentary and some interviews (none of which is likely to detail how director Yasumi Matsuno went nuts and left the project).

Besides, the regular edition has much nicer cover art.