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Why Must You Destroy The Industry, PSP?
Because I know you haven't had your fill of the surreal today, Grand Text Auto has up a link to a Flash movie which depicts a climactic battle between the consoles of old and the PSP...using the end of Final Fantasy VI. Commentary available at Game Girl Advance. My favorite part is where the GBA, GameBoy, GameCube, and N64 team up to defeat the Master Famicom and Rob. Actually pretty cool, if long.
To save it locally, you need to download: http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-2.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-2i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-3i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-4i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-5i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-6i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-7i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-8i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-9i.swf
and "The Man in Green" is the best. attack. ever.
The entire GGA post is:
"Simply fantastic flash video that manages to be at once a critique of the PSP, an elegy for consoles and games past, and a paean to one of the greatest RPGs ever. It's funny, but also extremely moving. At least, to me.
(To see thoe whole piece, click on New Game.)"
Note to Zonk: The above does not make a commentary! At most it's a "hey lookit this cool thing", or a "blurb" if you're feeling generous. A commentary would be an analysis of why single-purpose consoles would feel threatened by the PSP, and how it might really be threatening the industry (or at least changing its direction), or why each platform was a perfect choice to represent each FFVI character (example: the XBox as Umaro is freaking hilarious).
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
In the time it took me to watch this, I could have cast three whole summon spells in FF7.
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They're also not destroying the industry by any means. They're destroying Nintendo's dominance of the handheld market, but that's always been a fragile thing, enforced by half-assed competitors like Nokia (and even Nintendo themselves with the Virtual Boy), but that's always what happens when a market leader stagnates and is blindsided by a new competitor.
The PSP and GBA/DS is a lot like the PS1 comming out back in the SNES days. Nintendo was caught with hardware that hadn't changed much in years, and hadn't had serious competition in a long time. The time was ripe for somebody else to break into the market. The GBA is still very much alive, though, so at least it won't be as decisive as the SNES's downfall. We won't all forget Nintendo in six months. When the N64 came out, a lot of people I knew basically said, "What? Nintendo still makes games?" At that time, my SNES hadn't even been pluggged in since the PS1 launch.
The DS was certainly a radical change, but so far it doesn't have the game lineup. An innovative system means nothing if it doesn't have innovative games, but a completely mundane and uninnovative system can excell with innovative games, and that's what Sony wants to do with the PSP.
I just hope that Nintendo doesn't respond to the PSP like they responded to the PS1. I can't see any two ways about it: The N64 was a lousy system. Just about everything in it and its games - especially it's early games - felt to me like they were in desperation mode, trying to get something - anything, for that matter - on the market to compete with the PS1, just to keep the Nintendo name in the market.
If they produce a handheld system like that, just to meet the PSP, then they're really going to end up loosing that handheld war you see comming, and they're going to loose it badly. Nintendo's console offering still hasn't gotten back where the SNES was, and it'll be rough for them if they end up in the same position in the handheld market.
But, then, with each new generation of systems, the leaders can shift around all over the place. In 1993, could you see Nintendo virtually erased from gaming in two years? Before the PS1 came out, the word "Nintendo" meant video games. My friends would say, "Want to come over and play Nintendo?" even if they had a Genesis, because Nintendo and video game were the same words. That changed fast with the Playstation, and Nintendo was marginalized really until the Gamecube came out.
I thought the Dreamcast would be the end of Sony, and then the PS2 blew it out of the water. Before the DS came out, I was expecting a stellar system with amazing and innovative games. Now I have the system and a disappointing set of games. Those weak games made me expect another massacre when the PSP came out, but that hasn't happen yet. With the next set of consoles comming soon, who knows what happens. Nintendo might be back on top. Everybody involved has a shot, if they play it right.
Somebody meticulously and lovingly reconstructed the ending scene to a classic 16 bit RPG in flash, substituting game systems for all of the characters and a constant barrage of jokes and references for attacks, and all you can do is complain that the PSP is being misrepresented? You totally missed the point. Am I the only one that died laughing when the Master System joined with the Sega CD and 32X to create the Ultimate Sega boss? Or the Famicom summoning ROB, who gets a low battery warning, only to be squished by "the man in green"? Or the Jaguar trying to push a statue onto the Naomi's head? Or the poketstation going powermad and becoming the PSP? Naomi feeding batteries to a dying Game Gear? The SP's taking care of a family of brightly colored Game Boy Pockets, only to give birth to the DS? All of the assorted PC-Engine kit combining to form the Engine Buster, but whose "multitap" attack has no effect on the Xbox? The little Beatmania bar attack that hits for a "great?" The Playstation shifting forms to become the PSOne? The 3D0 crying out for the dead M2? ("Real2? Real2 Wake up!") The SNES being the father of the Playstation? The puny "100 MegaShock" attack?
It's the ending to Final Fantasy 6 redone. Meticulously, painstakingly, lovingly. Somebody probably spent months making this thing. This is a wonderful, massive series of jokes and memories for people in the gaming industry and the hardcore gamers who obsess over it... in other words, gaming geeks. The amount of effort and love that went into this thing is awe inspiring. They even got the crumbling effect on the PSP just about right (though it was missing a few of the cracks-of-lightning sound effects), something which unless there is a programatic shortcut for flash must have taken a ridiculous amount of time to get right. Even the battle-driven menu system is right, the level layouts are right, the original tiles are used. The visual effects are reconstructed, the audio timing is basically impeccable.
And this thing goes on for half an hour, just like the original ending. Every cinematic, every line, every in-joke from the game remade. Even in spots in the original ending where a character's hat or glove would be the only thing that appeared, here just a cartridge is left behind. This is a tremendous, if pointless, achievement.
I'm sorry if you didn't "get" it. All I can say is that there is 20 years of gaming history represented here. If you didn't find any of it funny, start hitting some yardsales and getting caught up. It's not like they were making fun of the ColecoVision or anything.
And the PSP gets to represent Kafka, who happened to be by far the coolest character in FF6/3. It's just too bad the PSP never gets Kafka's trademark laugh.
P.S. if you want to emphasize something, use the italic tag. It looks much better than SCREAMING IN ALL CAPS.
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