Kotaku's Gamecenter CX Localization: It's terrible and it's a crying shame
by K1
Posted on Thursday, September 1, 2011
Way to go, Gawker and Kotaku. Way to fuck it all up.
As you may have heard, GameCenter CX, the Japanese Video Gaming show about Section Chief Shinya Arino and his gaming escapades, was finally picked up for U.S. broadcast by the gaming blog Kotaku. The format for this release being that they would post episodes on the Kotaku website on a weekly basis.
For fans of the Japanese show, and even for those that may have only vaguely heard of it, this was a big deal. Only a handful of episodes had been fan translated prior to this announcement, and now that it would be officially available, spreading awareness of the show to gamers that wouldn't otherwise have access to the show would be much easier. And the more support the show gets, the more GCCX gets made. It was a time of great excitement!
And then the first episode was released...
...and it was terrible.
Now when I say terrible, I don't mean it in an elitist-snob "I only watch foreign movies+shows in their purest form, in the original language with subtitles" kind of way. If you've seen other Japanese shows ported to American TV like say Iron Chef or Ninja Warrior, those are perfectly watchable with dubbed-over dialog and announcers and such. In fact, you could say that it makes it even more accessible for viewers that have very little experience with watching something made in Japan. When I say the Kotaku dub is bad, I'm talking flat-out unwatchable to the point that I wouldn't want to expose new Gamecenter CX viewers to the Kotaku dub, as it might turn them away from watching the show completely.
But how terrible is it, really? Let me count the ways:
1. The English narrator is subpar, and his pronunciation is terrible.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure he's getting paid peanuts for this obviously low-budget localization job, but considering this is probably his big break into the entertainment industry, you'd think he'd do a better job. Did he even watch the original version before he did his voiceovers? I guess the main thing about his voice that bothers me is that his announcer voice isn't very compelling. If he were more natural about his delivery, which highs and lows in his level of excitement, then it would make it easier to connect with the audience. As it is, it just feels so fake and insincere.
Also, why is his pronunciation of all the Japanese names so terrible? His pronunciation is so off it makes me think that he's doing it on purpose, like he's mocking us.
2. No music.
Just watch even a little bit of the original show, and you'll see why this is so terrible, it adds so much to the show. As it stands the Kotaku dub is a guy in a quiet room playing videogames while his friends are talking.
3. A lot of the title cards and on-screen graphics are cut out.
Gamecenter CX has a lot of funny graphics that are lovingly crafted and very funny, many of them involving photoshopping Arino's face on the body of the main character of the game he's playing. Even if the main character is female. These are all cut. Boo.
Here are some of the title cards you are missing out on.
4. None of the on screen Japanese text is translated. AT ALL.
This is the deal breaker. This is ultimately is what makes the show pretty much unwatchable for most American viewers. They don't bother to translate any of the on-screen text, which makes it kind of hard to follow certain games (Clock Tower probably being the most egregious example) because Arino doesn't necessarily read all the text aloud. You also miss out on a lot of the explanation text that shows up, as well as the witty comments from the King and Queen mascot characters. The explanation text is a big deal too, because even if you are familiar with whatever game is being played, they point out some pretty obscure game information sometimes.
5. The Kotaku dub lies to you. BIG, FAT, DIRTY LIES.
At the end of the Mighty Bomb Jack episode, the announcer says something along the lines of "And that was the end of the Might Bomb Jack challenge," even though RIGHT THERE ON THE SCREEN it says that Arino will challenge the game again, live in front of a studio audience. Well okay, the on-screen text is in Japanese, but the Mighty Bomb Jack Live Challenge is one of the best episodes of the show, and the fact that the Kotaku dub deceives the viewer of this fact is a pretty big slap in the face to those unable to read Japanese.
So yeah, as a huge Gamecenter CX it pains me to say this, but the Kotaku dub is terrible and you shouldn't watch it.
However, it's not all bad news.
In a somewhat miraculous set of circumstances, there is now a team of fan-subbers that are actively translating the show, in a not terrible way. In fact, the translations are really well done, with all the Japanese cultural and video game references intact. Here is a link to point you in the right direction. Kacho, On!!!
(Images blatantly stolen from the SA GCCX thread)
P.S. - You may have noticed that I didn't point out how the Kotaku dub doesn't have a lot of the side segments that are in the show. While this does indeed suck and they should have them, it is most likely a licensing issue that is out of their control so it would not entirely be fair to put that in as a negative point for the Kotaku dub. The fansubs have it though if you know where to look, wink wink.
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Spiel und Zeit
by Zen
Posted on Saturday, November 28, 2009
A lot's already been said about Braid. Back when it was released everyone was in a froth about the limitless potential of indie gaming, or (again and again) about whether games were finally art yet, or about how it's a game for smart people and did I mention how much it appeals to me? It was an enormous flurry of New Games Journalism, one which served as a model for a lot of other releases that didn't have as much going on under the hood. I've honestly avoided writing about it, if only out of a desire to distance myself from the enormous reflex action. Call it my inauthentic moment of the day.
In case you missed it, Braid is an independent, download-only game on XBOX Live Arcade and, as of November 12, on the PlayStation Network (which serves to make this post timely on some level), made by Jonathan Blow, the guy who described World of Warcraft as "unethical" for many of the same reasons I previously complained about Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The level artwork was done by David Hellman, who did the art for a comic called A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible, (a title which is an interesting inversion of one of Braid's core themes). It was a real nut-up-or-shut-up moment for Blow, who had been talking shit about the state of game development for some time without ever releasing a game of his own. I think he succeeded, and not just because Braid has an interesting story.
Many audacious things have been tried with video games over the years. Usually the developers responsible have eyes bigger than their stomachs, and resort to things like quick-time events (Mavis Beacon for idiots, as a dude once scoffed) that result in the simulation of a video game. I love playing Typing of the Dead as much as the next guy (this isn't an oblique jab--the game is a lot of fun), but it succeeds mostly on the merits of its exquisite perversion of the rail shooter genre. You can't say that you've made a game out of an everyday task like waking up and making coffee just because you played a video of it to someone who had to play Simon Says to keep the video going. This is why I have a hard time getting excited for such supposedly iconoclastic projects as Heavy Rain.
Many audacious things have been tried with video games over the years. Usually the developers responsible have eyes bigger than their stomachs, and resort to things like quick-time events (Mavis Beacon for idiots, as a dude once scoffed) that result in the simulation of a video game. I love playing Typing of the Dead as much as the next guy (this isn't an oblique jab--the game is a lot of fun), but it succeeds mostly on the merits of its exquisite perversion of the rail shooter genre. You can't say that you've made a game out of an everyday task like waking up and making coffee just because you played a video of it to someone who had to play Simon Says to keep the video going. This is why I have a hard time getting excited for such supposedly iconoclastic projects as Heavy Rain.
What I've wanted to see games do ever since I decided to be pretentious about them is make a point with the game itself. Games have had stories, music, and pictures that make points before, and they have certainly been art before, but very rarely does it all come together in a way that couldn't have happened as anything but a game. Most people, when pressed, will (rightly) cite Hideo Kojima and maybe a little Shigeru Miyamoto before shrugging it off as a pseudoproblem. I guess I think too much, but I'm still waiting for the medium to come to presence and establish itself as a part of our lives rather than as an escape from them. I was delighted to find that Jonathan Blow agrees:
You can go to a movie just as escapism--and be swept up by the visions and emotions, or whatever. Or you can attend a movie with a more expansionist mindset: you want to experience those same visions and emotions, but you're doing it to connect those things to the rest of your life, to bring them back; not to escape from the rest of your life. The goal is, maybe, to expand yourself into perhaps a greater, more experienced person. Even just a little bit.
...
Games can provide this kind of mental, emotional and spiritual expansion, and they can push it in a different direction than movies, or books, or music, or whatever.
[All Jonathan Blow quotes were taken from this interview at the MTV blog.]
Braid, for all its pretense and boisterous ambition, is the perfect example of how to provide this kind of expansion in a new and fascinating way.
There was a time when, for various reasons I'll try not to enumerate, we were willing to put up with a lot of grief from games. We were so happy to just be in control of what was happening on screen that we put up with all kinds of spiteful design to make it happen. There are still some rude dudes out there keeping it real (God bless you, Treasure), but as many will lament we've moved beyond that. There are so many games, so many worthy games to play, that most aficionados are unwilling to hammer away at a game anymore. Worse, the very idea of playing through a part of a game more than once has become a deal-breaker. When a modern-day game player has the idea in his head of what he wants done, he doesn't want to fuck around figuring out how to make it happen. It has to happen, like that. This instant gratification, what Blow calls "the Skinnerian reward scheduling...in most modern game design", has been a serious problem as games have tried to establish themselves as a serious medium of expression.
There was a time when, for various reasons I'll try not to enumerate, we were willing to put up with a lot of grief from games. We were so happy to just be in control of what was happening on screen that we put up with all kinds of spiteful design to make it happen. There are still some rude dudes out there keeping it real (God bless you, Treasure), but as many will lament we've moved beyond that. There are so many games, so many worthy games to play, that most aficionados are unwilling to hammer away at a game anymore. Worse, the very idea of playing through a part of a game more than once has become a deal-breaker. When a modern-day game player has the idea in his head of what he wants done, he doesn't want to fuck around figuring out how to make it happen. It has to happen, like that. This instant gratification, what Blow calls "the Skinnerian reward scheduling...in most modern game design", has been a serious problem as games have tried to establish themselves as a serious medium of expression.
The game that blew everything wide open was Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time. Not only was it an inspired revival of a celebrated and, in retrospect, probably painful franchise, but it introduced the idea that when the player had something go against his plan he could just rewind to before he screwed it up. It reminded me of cheating with save states in a Super Nintendo emulator, only it was built into the game itself and I was encouraged to go hog wild. Suddenly, we were all making tool-assisted game runs. If you've ever done anything like it, you know that the experience can be a little less than fulfilling.
What Braid does that is fairly mundane is give the player this absolute control. Every mistake, be it major or minor, can be reversed. Where Sands of Time let you cheat death by rewinding under certain conditions, Braid offers no genuine way to lose. "Rewind was going to be the basis of the game", writes Blow. "If rewind conflicted with some other element of the design, then I would throw away that other element--regardless of how traditionally necessary it was."
It iterates on this idea, presenting challenging and immensely creative puzzles around the theme of time control, but never strays from the constant of being able to undo your mistakes. What Braid does that is profound is explore the ramifications of this mode of interaction. As the game itself puts it:
Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with forgiveness. By forgiving too readily, we can be badly hurt. But if we’ve learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn’t we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?
What if our world worked differently? Suppose we could tell her: “I didn’t mean what I just said,” and she would say: “It’s okay, I understand,” and she would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said that thing? We could remove the damage but still be wiser from the experience.
Tim and the Princess lounge in the castle garden, laughing together, giving names to the colorful birds. Their mistakes are hidden from each other, tucked away between the folds of time, safe.
[Braid "Chapter 2: Time and Forgiveness" parts 4-6]
While presented in blocks of text between levels, the story of Braid is more than just a bit of writing hidden behind the façade of gameplay. The two are not only intensely related, but they rely on each other to fully realize the game's argument. In playing the game, the player is not only controlling Tim on the screen but experiencing his (quest for) perfection firsthand.
Many games present brief windows of opportunity to catch secrets. Missable items, characters, story scenes, etc. are part of the structure of video games. An unexpected consequence of this behavior is that some players obsess over getting "the perfect save file", even to the point of arbitrary self-punishment. A friend of mine, while playing Final Fantasy Tactics, would reset if an opponent stole even a cheap and replacable item from him. The game never counts or keeps track of whether you've been robbed, but he didn't want a save file that had done anything but an optimal path.
In Chapter 3 of Braid we see the consequences of this behavior:
For a long time, he thought they had been cultivating the perfect relationship. He had been fiercely protective, reversing all his mistakes so they would not touch her. Likewise, keeping a tight rein on her own mistakes, she always pleased him.
But to be fully couched within the comfort of a friend is a mode of existence with severe implications. To please you perfectly, she must understand you perfectly. Thus you cannot defy her expectations or escape her reach. Her benevolence has circumscribed you, and your life’s achievements will not reach beyond the map she has drawn.
Tim needed to be non-manipulable. He needed a hope of transcendence. He needed, sometimes, to be immune to the Princess’s caring touch.
Off in the distance, Tim saw a castle where the flags flutter even when the wind has expired, and the bread in the kitchen is always warm. A little bit of magic.
[Braid, Chapter 3: "Time and Mystery" parts 2-5]
The message, as I take it, of Braid's storyline is that a quest for perfection, for the "thought in the mind of God", the pursuit of an ideal that makes no mistakes, is fundamentally missing the point. The world and one's life are more about mistakes than successes, more about flaws than perfection. By pursuing those areas of science that "follow the rules", one is forcing science to be what one expects of it, forcing the Princess to please you "perfectly". At the same time, one is penned in by these expectations.
This has, of course, been said before. While in my opinion quite well written, the words and story of Braid are only a part of its message.
Through its time control mechanics, Braid the game has the player make the same decisions as the character in Braid the story. All the trappings of gameplay serve to reinforce the idea of escape, of trying to attain an ideal, of trying to protect everybody all the time and maximize the result of every action. Much like with Shadow of the Colossus, the player's complicity in the game's events serves a greater role than any cutscene or passage of text. The final level of Braid uses the current of its gameplay to accomplish the single most poignantly expressed storytelling I have ever experienced.
While surely unintended, a part of Braid's tale that alludes to the Manhattan Project reminded me of this bit from Simulacra and Simulation:
...the real danger nuclear power stations pose: not lack of security, pollution, explosion, but a system of maximum security that radiates around them, the protective zone of control and deterrence that extends, slowly but surely, over the territory--a technical, ecological, economic, geopolitical glacis. What does the nuclear matter? The station is a matrix in which an absolute model of security is elaborated, which will encompass the whole social field, and which is fundamentally a model of deterrence (it is the same one that controls us globally under the sign of peaceful coexistence and of the simulation of atomic danger).
[Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, "The Beaubourg Effect: Implosion and Deterrence", p. 61]
Here, too, we see a perfect system of coexistence. Here, too, we see "absolute security", an encompassing of "the whole social field". This dance of repetition until perfection is achieved, this absolute terror of impermanence, of failing to maximize on the immediate opportunity, is one of the most dangerous tendencies of our age. We have a hard time remembering that we usually don't understand an event until we reflect on it, and that our quests to save princesses may not always be advisable, or even welcome.
The risk of nuclear annihilation only serves as a pretext, through the sophistication of weapons (a sophistication that surpasses any possible objective to such an extent that it is itself a symptom of nullity), for installing a universal security system, a universal lockup and control system whose deterrent effect is not at all aimed at an atomic clash (which was never in question, except without a doubt in the very initial stages of the cold war, when one still confused the nuclear apparatus with conventional war) but, rather, at the much greater probability of any real event, of anything that would be an event in the general system and upset its balance. The balance of terror is the terror of balance.
...
There lies the true nuclear fallout: the meticulous operation of technology serves as a model for the meticulous operation of the social. Here as well, nothing will be left to chance, moreover this is the essence of socialization, which began centuries ago, but which has now entered its accelerated phase, toward a limit that one believed would be explosive (revolution), but which for the moment is translated by an inverse, implosive, irreversible process: the generalized deterrence of chance, of accident, of transversality, of finality, of contradiction, rupture, or complexity in a sociality illuminated by the norm, doomed to the descriptive transparency of mechanisms of information.
[Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, "The Precession of Simulacra", pp. 33, 34-35]
Even after the game's final moments (which I will not spoil) there are meaningful surprises to be had. Like most games nowadays, there is a post-game quest for secrets. A constellation appearing on the hub level can be fleshed out by finding hidden stars throughout the game's other levels, and completing it gets you... absolutely nothing. The requirements for getting them are unreasonable, and I'm inclined to believe Blow put them there to make a point about how much the completionist's attitude prevents us from enjoying or even experiencing games (and life) anymore. In a time when completionists are pandered to, where "Achievement Points" are sought after as ends in themselves, we see how the technological mode of being has affected us here. Tim's pursuit of the perfection of science, of "a principle of objectivity of which science is never certain, of which it secretly despairs" [Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, "The Animals: Territory and Metamorphoses", p. 129], is the same as the player's pursuit of that perfect play-through.
Braid, like any game, can't possibly be for everyone. Nevertheless, I strongly urge everyone who reads this to at least give it a go. It's a spectacular achievement, one that speaks on a personal level and has the ability to mean something to you in your life instead of just pulling you out of it for a few hours. I've thrown down some thoughts here, but there's more in the game than I could ever write technically about, more than I have any right to enumerate for you. As Blow put it, "The story of rescuing the Princess has a literal interpretation, as well as a metaphorical one; and then there are other small-scale levels of change to the interpretation, too. I don't intend for any of them to be the sole truth; the story I am trying to tell is something like the quantum superposition of all these things."
That statement, like Braid itself, is for me about the nature of truth as aletheia, as a phenomenological pulling-back of the curtain on beings in the world rather than a technical attempt to freeze them in time. Please discover and let me know what they mean for you.
Sins of Our Fathers
by Zen
Posted on Friday, October 9, 2009As an avid reader of German philosophy, I so often find myself at the mercy of translators to properly understand the material. Even if I, like Heidegger, refuse to concern myself with fidelity to the philosopher's intent, a poor translation can obfuscate or even completely cover over useful nuances and enlightening tricks of meaning. This problem is as much present for novels and music as it is for philosophical works, and I've found it applies to video games as well. Masterpieces like 7th Saga, Final Fantasy V, Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu II), Chrono Trigger, and even parts of Final Fantasy VII suffered from having poor to nonexistent translations that hid their greatness from view.
Fortunately, Japanese publishers started to catch on that not everyone in the US is a drooling moron around the time the original PlayStation came out. Instead of dumbing down hard games and not even releasing games that were too complicated, Japan discovered that gamers in the US were thirsty for true works of art. For me, the turning point was a game called Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and after the opening scene I knew things would never be the same again.
What follows is an annotation, a sort of recreation of my own thoughts as I relive these precious moments today. You are encouraged to click this YouTube link first, so that you can appreciate these lines as I first did all those years ago.
Fortunately, Japanese publishers started to catch on that not everyone in the US is a drooling moron around the time the original PlayStation came out. Instead of dumbing down hard games and not even releasing games that were too complicated, Japan discovered that gamers in the US were thirsty for true works of art. For me, the turning point was a game called Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and after the opening scene I knew things would never be the same again.
What follows is an annotation, a sort of recreation of my own thoughts as I relive these precious moments today. You are encouraged to click this YouTube link first, so that you can appreciate these lines as I first did all those years ago.
Richter: "Die, monster! You don't belong in this world!"
We see here a desperate and crucial line being drawn, a dualistic boundary with foundations in Plato that has, much like Dracula himself, endured (some might say thrived upon) the millennia of strife human beings call history. The irony foreshadowed here is that not only does Dracula belong, but this world is contingent on another dualism that he represents. He cannot be banished from this world, because without him there can be no world. Koji Igarashi is arguing here that one cannot banish value, cannot operate outside of it, and cannot simply eschew the uncomfortable and macabre. This becomes important later, but for now one can simply appreciate the claim that worldliness comes after value.
Dracula: "It is not by my hand that I am once again given flesh. I was called here by... humans who wish to pay me tribute."
Richter: "'Tribute'?! You steal men's souls, and make them your slaves!"
Dracula: "Perhaps the same could be said of all religions..."
This famous exchange at first seems to contradict Dracula's opposition to the value of Goodness, but he is not trying to equivocate. He is in fact highlighting his nature as the opposite, that he behaves the same but in the other direction. There is a note of sadness to be discovered here by the perceptive: there is no hate in this exchange, as though Dracula mourns the fact that his foe, whom he respects more than he can ever let on, could just as easily have been his most trusted ally and friend. The futility and contingency of it all throws the attentive player into an authentic experience, fully appreciative of the arbitrariness of the very distinction the series represents. This irony is one of the most compelling moments in video game history, and is possibly the main reason for the fondness so many gamers have for this title.
Richter: "Your words are as empty as your soul! Mankind ill needs a savior such as you!"
Dracula: "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk... have at you!"
Who knows what secrets lie hidden, deep within a man's heart? Does Dracula? Is it his lack of a soul which clouds the deepest truths of humanity from his vision? Or is it perhaps the very thing which allows him the keenest vision of all, a pure and objective view of humanity which is the source of his contempt? In this beautiful passage we see the heart of Castlevania's meaning, the foundation and culmination of all of its themes. Dracula--dangerous, powerful, timeless--displays a kind of insecurity. Unable to relate to anyone but his greatest foe, he is quick to dismiss the subject. Could he abandon his position, see if the world could survive without his chaotic influences? Best not to think about it. The last time he let himself see humans as anything more the results were too painful to bear. Best to end the discussion and do his duty. Best to go on forgetting, go on hating. It's the best for everybody.
What childhood could a man like this possibly provide? Is it even so different from the plight of any father quaking in the face of the insurmountable responsibility of parenthood? The roles of faith, love, fatherhood, and family legacy all collide here. In this brief encounter with Richter we seem to learn so little of Dracula, and yet one can see his entire person (dare one even suggest a soul?) laid bare in these few lines. It is only fitting that Richter sit the game out, having done his duty: the stage is set for Alucard (Is he his father's opposite? He goes in the other direction, but is made of the same stuff...) to discover his father, and himself. By the end of the game we see not only the purest of good, not only the most dastardly of evil, but the gentle, terrified man who sits precisely between them. And we see the horizon by which to judge him: the balance of all things.
Gamecenter CX Episode #72 (Season 10): "Yuyu no Quiz de GO! GO!" (Super Famicom)
by K1
Posted on Monday, December 29, 2008
シーズン10 #72 課長と『ゆうゆのクイズでGO!GO!』GO!(Season 10 Episode #72: GO! Kachou and "GO! GO! Yuyu's Quiz")
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Full Episode: | Part 1 | Part 2 |
Episode Summary at Crunk Games
Credit goes to Crunk Games and Gamecenter CX Musou
Episode Summary at Crunk Games
Credit goes to Crunk Games and Gamecenter CX Musou
Fall Games of 2008: sequels, rehashes and some innovation.
by alzabo
Posted on Wednesday, December 3, 2008Most Game publishers want to ship least one title between October and Christmas to capitalize on holiday shopping, this year there are more than 500 SKU's scheduled to be released. Because of this, game journalism is vital to the individual who wants to play several games and not waste his time and money on something thrown together to cash in on the seasonal shopping.
Unfortunately, game reviews can be hard to come by for games lately, either because of review embargos due to poor game quality or simple review backlog due to the sheer amount of new titles arriving this holiday season. Even if reviews are available, it's hard to discern their worth due to generally poor journalistic ethics in the field of games journalism. I'm not even going to touch on "New Games Journalism," I have enough problems with those people to write a 3 part article that must be written in phases to prevent my spite gland from going into shock.
So what is a gamer to do? Buy what the neck-beard clerk at Gamestop tells them to? Listen to some hipster web pundit's "well researched" opinion and get the "genre breaking(or defining) game of this console generation" that'll quickly be forgotten next year by the game's inevitable sequal?
No, you should do whatever the hell you want and buy the games that look interesting to you. But just in case you are bereft of an opinion or taste here are my choices for the fall.
Fallout 3: Be warned, this game is not perfect. No one is 100% happy with it and will describe their problems at great length, these probelms include: Poor voice acting, poor sound, game crashes, bad AI, graphical glitches, xbox live problems, DRM & install issues, et cetera.
None of these matter, if you ask them to describe 3 things they liked about the game and hold back no spoiler they invariably sprout a look of child-like glee and describe to you a wholly unique game experience rife with adventure, grim comedy and hyper-violence that truly lives up to the fallout brand. If you don't own this game already, you should drive to the store and buy it right now.
Valkyria Chronicles: Remember when Sega made RPGs? I don't, because I was too busy playing shooters and platformers. By the time I was into RPGs I had completely missed the boat on 8 and 16bit RPGs that were not made by Squaresoft.
This game was initially described to me as a mixture of FPS and Final Fantasy Tactics with a visual style akin to a pencil and watercolor painting. This excited me to no end, because I am pretty sick of Nomura's zippers and angst and how they've infected nearly the whole Japanese RPG genre.
I've yet to play more than a few minutes of this game due to a busy schedule, but it's going to get played next week after I finish moving.
Chrono Trigger DS: If you haven't played Chrono Trigger, you should go play it. That's all there is to say.
Persona 4: This is possibly the last good non-shovelware PS2 game that we'll see in the US. It contains all the excellent interface and localization of Last year's Persona 3, but has more than 1 song in it's dungeons (which are no longer randomized) and the plot is a murder mystery that is so engaging that you should avoid spoilers until you finish playing the game. Avoiding spoilers may be hard, as the damn game comes with an art book. Article Permalink
Smaaaaaaaaaash the Virtual Console
by alzabo
Posted on Thursday, January 31, 2008
Super Smash Brosef X: Eternal Neckbeard Masters of Cadash drops today in Japan. “New Games Journalism” sites and fans have been posting their impressions, discussions about the game are moving so fast that I witnessed several message boards red shifting last night.
'
It’s not exactly edgy or unexpected if I say, “I don’t care about the new Smash game.” It’s always been hip and cool to dislike popular stuff so I’ll distill my hate for Smash Bros into one simple statement:
“I want to drag whoever came up with Smash Bros. into the street and shit into their heart.”
One positive thing that has come out of the game’s release is the virtual console demos that are included with the game. A thread on Gamespite indicated that Earthbound was one of the demos. This is reflected on the Japanese Smash Bros. site, but if you visit the equivilant english page Earthbound is missing. Good job denying the fans a niche title and the possibility of easy money from releasing the game as a tie-in with Smash Bros.
I've become so disallusioned with Nintendo's Virtual Console service that I've been digging around for other classic game collections on recient consoles. I highly reccomend the Taito Legends Collections on PS2 they contain an absurd amount of excellent gameplay from all genres for low price. How can you say no to classic arcade SHMUPS, action games and puzzlers with perfect emulation for 15-20 bucks?
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