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Hey, if you're going to summarize from Toastyfrog, at least give your reference!

Don't know about the site in general, but one of their editors certainly isn't.

http://www.toastyfrog.com/img/blogart/0507july/050 711-strike3.gif
http://www.toastyfrog.com/img/blogart/0507july/050 712-dichotomy.gif

I've found that media in general is turning anti-Nintendo in general of late. It's the popular thing, so they appeal to their audiences. I've found many a 7-8 range Nintendo game that was far more fun than a "AAA GOTY SO AWESOME" game from another company. But perhaps that's just me.

Don't know about the site in general, but one of their editors certainly isn't.

http://www.toastyfrog.com/img/blogart/0507july/050 711-strike3.gif
http://www.toastyfrog.com/img/blogart/0507july/050 712-dichotomy.gif

I've found that media in general is turning anti-Nintendo in general of late. It's the popular thing, so they appeal to their audiences. I've found many a 7-8 range Nintendo game that was far more fun than a "AAA GOTY SO AWESOME" game from another company. But perhaps that's just me.

jeremy parish is by far my favorite game journalist/blogger, web or otherwise. when i was younger, seanbaby was it, but maturity and irony have forced my preferences in another direction (even though i can still appreciate a good lambasting in the end of good ol' egm)

Here's some history on Xenogears, which actually began production in 1987.

It might be mean to kick their corpse, but they are one of the worst companies in video game history.

I didn't know Sony Playstation had these problems, considering they released Xenogears, which depicted the crucifixion of furry critters.

In order to make money (IMO), you have to make the people feel as though they're getting something unique. You have to connect to your audience. If you expect to rake in millions from subscriptions you're going to have to have a big audience that relates to what you have to say; and, quite frankly, that would be very hard to accomplish, especially using impersonal (and therefore widespread) content like this story suggests.

</irony>

You obviously weren't paying attention to the "20 Most Embaressing Game Companies" article from awhile back were you?

As the new RPG would be the company's last chance for success, Sakaguchi pessimistically entitled it "Final Fantasy," intending to at least provide his dying venture with a suitably-named grave marker.

Ironically, Final Fantasy sold phenomenally in Japan, outpaced by only a few other top-selling franchises. This gave Square an exciting new lease on life, but also meant their flagship series was burdened with a stupidly inappropriate title as second and third Final Fantasy games were quickly designed and released.[4]
...
[4]Which isn't necessarily an embarrassment in and of itself, since the title really is pretty catchy and surprisingly euphonic for something so Engrishy. And it's not like it has an obtuse and ridiculous subtitle like "The Precusor Legacy" or something. Unfortunately, every human being in the world has looked at the name "Final Fantasy" followed by a roman number and made some hilarious comment about how wacky it is that this is the seventh (or whatever) "final" fantasy. Haw! Hyuck!

It's OK. Everyone is allowed to make this trite, obvious observation aloud exactly once in their lives. If you've yet to take your turn, please take a moment now to fulfill your obligation to nerd "humor." It's OK. For the remainder of this paragraph, nobody will think less of you for it.

However you're a week and a half late to catch in on the "nobody will think less of you for it" clause.

Mr. Parish is quite clear as to why he dislikes Xenogears, actually: it is "destroyed by the sheer, self-serving, pretentious excess of its creators," and suggests "a great sense of vision and imagination bogged down by a massive incompetence." Discovering the reason for these weighty declarations is left as an exercise for the reader.

Actually, Mr. Parish is quite adamant when he declares that Xenogears sucks: "it's strange to me that I so greatly dislike Xenogears, a game whose incredibly promising foundation and components are irrevocably destroyed by the sheer, self-serving, pretentious excess of its creators."

The articles for Ninetendo and Sqare-Enix may be toungue and cheek, but I think its more important to look at the entire section as a whole. Too put Capcom, Nintendo and Square-Enix in the same context as 3DO and Acclaim...now that's just wrong. I find 3DO and Acclaim seriously embarassing as a gameplayer. They put out some real steaming piles, and lets not talk about tombstones. I just think its bad journalism in a way, to put those companies in the same context.

He deffinately has a pair for critcizing Capcom, Nintendo and Spuare-Enix in this way, though. I just think he might have had a blood flow problem at the time.

- on the one hand, it's more of the same, but on the other hand that is apparently what most FF fans want.

To be fair, from what I've hear X-2 is not really more of the same:

Impressions from yukihime.com (read March 25)

J. Parish's duality review from before Toasty Frog went defunct. Again.

So you think they will use the scripts at Toastyfrog for this?

If kung fu, blank acting and lame sex constitute a religious leader, then lets have...

The Gospel According to Shinji
The Gospel According to Solid Snake
The Gospel According to Makoto Kusanagi
The Gospel According to Tetsuo
The Gospel According to Fei Fong Wong

If kung fu, blank acting and lame sex constitute a religious leader, then lets have...

The Gospel According to Shinji
The Gospel According to Solid Snake
The Gospel According to Makoto Kusanagi
The Gospel According to Tetsuo
The Gospel According to Fei Fong Wong

If kung fu, blank acting and lame sex constitute a religious leader, then lets have...

The Gospel According to Shinji
The Gospel According to Solid Snake
The Gospel According to Makoto Kusanagi
The Gospel According to Tetsuo
The Gospel According to Fei Fong Wong

If kung fu, blank acting and lame sex constitute a religious leader, then lets have...

The Gospel According to Shinji
The Gospel According to Solid Snake
The Gospel According to Makoto Kusanagi
The Gospel According to Tetsuo
The Gospel According to Fei Fong Wong

If kung fu, blank acting and lame sex constitute a religious leader, then lets have...

The Gospel According to Shinji
The Gospel According to Solid Snake
The Gospel According to Makoto Kusanagi
The Gospel According to Tetsuo
The Gospel According to Fei Fong Wong

...when Toatyfrog's interpetation is just as accurate and 1300000x cheaper?

Did you suffer through the entirety Eva and for some reason weren't granted the same level of transcendence that most Eva-faithful appear to have gone through? Sure, parts were fun, parts were exciting, parts were a bit emotional, but you simply can't find it in yourself to declare that Eva somehow ties everything together into a logical conclusion filled with actual meaning? Are you certain that the random Judeo-Christian imagery, surreal character development, and insane ending are actually a high school level attempt to fake depth of plot, philosophy, and maturity?

Take your suffering and at least get a good laugh out of it with Toastyfrog Jump's Neon Genesis Evangelion Thumbnail Theatre.

I like the Toasty Frog Eva Thumbnails.

Go and get the whole series of NEON GENISIS: EVANGELION , watch it with the 2 movies afterwards and then come back and say anime sucks...

If you're going to try and turn people on to anime, I suggest a few things:

1. Start with something small. Expecting people to watch ten hours of anime before making a preliminary judgement is a bit demanding. This pretty much means stand alone movies or series that hit their stride and show their strength within two or three episodes.
2. Start with something easy to appreciate. If they're into sci-fi and cool visuals Akira is great, dispite its many flaws (it's what got me hooked). You also can't go wrong with Miyazaki's work. Spirited Away is a good introductory work for people into fantasy and fairy tales. Princess Mononoke is good for those who want something a bit more edgy (but still fantasy). Fantasy gamers seem to like Slayers for humor or Record of Lodoss War for more serious works. For something serious that feels modern (but is sci-fi) Cowboy Bebop is great. If they're likely to be swayed by Serious Art, Barefoot Gen is an excellent look at the life of a Japanese boy coping with life after the Hiroshima nuclear blast. Grave of the Fireflies covers similar terrain, but I haven't seen it myself.
3. Dubs are best. Unless the newbie you're trying to convert is already a fan of subtitled foreign film they'll likely find subtitles jarring and a turn off.
4. Never start someone with Eva . Ever. Egad. They'll probably walk out after two hours of childrens television shallow plots and the whining main character. Eva takes too long to get into for a newbie. Of course, if they survive long enough to get into the interesting parts of series they'll feel distinctly cheated by the last two episodes of the original run, best described as "random crap we threw together hoping no one would notice."

(And to anyone who has suffered through Neon Genesis: Evangelion, Toastyfrog's Neon Genesis: Evangelion Thumbnail Theatre is good for a solid laugh.)

However, I believe things are slightly better than the days when Trip Hawkins' (EA's co-founder founder) Harvard professor told him to stop wasting time with games."

Gamers have been begging Trip Hawkins to stop wasting time with games for years. I guess Hawkins' prof was just ahead of his time.

I'd like to see that.

right here

Toasty Frog thumbnail theatre

For the funniest commentary I've ever seen on the silliness that is Evangelion, start here. It's a condensation and parody and I anyone in the "it's such a great and moving series!" camp should read it. And take a cold shower.

The Evangelion Thumbnail Theatre is available at http://www.toastyfrog.com/. There are also Princess Mononoke and Ghost in the Shell Thumbnail Theatres.

Also, you might also like to know that the author of that has admitted he likes Evangelion, he just thinks that the series takes itself far too seriously. ;-)
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So, 99% of games released now are crap. 99% of games released for Atari were crap. 99% of everything is crap! Ignore that 99%, you're not going to get rid of it.

There are still some absolutely terrific games coming out all the time. Including plenty of new 2D games.

No set of rules is going to make lousy game developers make great games, and it's damned hard to keep truly original game developers from somehow releasing their innovations.

Also, people rarely get things right the first time. Derivative works tend to be better than completely original ones. There's been a more-or-less smooth progression from Rogue to the newest unbelieveably cool RPGs, each borrowing heavily from the last generation.

Just as accepting the limited technology of a platform gives you freedom within it, accepting the limits and cliches of a genre gives you a base on which to build your own contribution.
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