Anyway. Yeah, they're not pushing Lost Odyssey at all. Either that, or the fact that the chairman of the jury who selected the top games of the show is none other than Yoichi Wada, president of Square-Enix.
Hoho!!
Maybe a little jealousy, hmmmm? The CESA organization also selected Final Fantasy XII as one of the two "Grand Award" winners for the 2006 Japan Game Awards.
Hmmm!!
Either way, Blue Dragon is the big hope. It's the one they're packing in with the system come its release in December. There are enough legions of fans of Sakaguchi's that the console will sell just fine. Don't predict a huge explosion of sales, though.
I think Microsoft is just playing it by ear. Which is good enough. There was certainly some PS3 fanaticism at the Tokyo Game Show, and it was certainly overwhelming; I'm sure Microsoft is aware of what they're going against and is merely not wasting too much time fighting the launch crowd. A month after the PS3 launches with Genji 2 and Ridge Racer 7, both games targeted at people who NEEEEEEEEED a game right when the console launches, MS has their must-buy game coming out.
It's brilliant BECAUSE it's overdue. You see, the Japanese videogame industry tends to be populated by business-school guys who don't know much about videogames. Matsuno is one of the few guys that knows his stuff.
That, and the setup for the Gambits is really something. I mean, it's really easy to implement. And it looks nice and clean. It's appealing. The game is, in structure, more like Baldur's Gate II than, say, Final Fantasy X. However, there's none of that PC game feel to it. It still feels very much like a videogame. It's not like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, where it still felt like a PC game (what with being able to go into the menu and turn down the difficulty level in the middle of a fight) -- this evokes a feeling like an old 8-bit game, where you didn't always know why things happened. Only now, the game has decided to let you figure out what's happening, if you want. You don't have to if you don't want to, though. Either way, it's kind of . . . friendly.
If anything, it stands a chance of turning normal people into hardcore RPGers -- because it really is deep and interesting, while at the same time not excluding anyone with real-world common sense or logic. It's just AI scripting, yeah. It's just the execution of the context that makes it "brilliant." See, previous Final Fantasy games had just turned people into Final Fantasy fans. That's why you get so many Final Fantasy imitators. "If you like Final Fantasy, try . .." FFXII is bewildering to people because it's not a Final Fantasy imitator. You'll see!! You will play it!!
I'm . . . rambling, I guess. That's what I do. That's what I did in the article. And, uh, they cut out a lot of the good stuff. I can't blame them, though hell. I should have calmed down before I wrote it. A lot of the Gambit description got cut, though I reckon that's what's most important here.
If you like the Katamari games, you know, you can still keep playing the old ones! They don't have to make new ones for you to keep playing, you know!!
Heh. He said "Meathead." Though yeah. That's who plays DDR, if you ask me.
You know what really impresses a girl on the first date*? Making some excuse to go to a nearby guitar shop ("I just needed to get some strings") and then asking to play a really awesome looking guitar and amazing her. Then casually buying the strings and heading to the restaurant.
(*This only works in a foot-traffic-based country like, uh, Japan. If you're living somewhere they have cars, you're shit out of luck.)
There are five vowels in Japanese -- A I U E O -- and they are pronounced pretty much exactly like the five vowels in Spanish. Ah, Ee, Oo, Eh, Oh.
Kah-tah-mah-ree.
(The double "E" is a little short. I mean, not quite as long as in an English word like "mean.")
"Damacy" is a clever little Romanization of "Damashii." They spelled it that way, said the director, because it made the title look "kind of French."
"Dah-ma-shee-ee." It's a double ee. It has kind of a scoop in the middle. Pronounce it quickly.
Just like that!
In Japanese, the kanji used to spell out the name of this game are interesting. "Katamari", meaning a clump or a collage, is "", and "tamashii," meaning soul or spirit, is "". Notice how similar they are? Put side by side lik ethey are on the game's box, it becomes hard to tell which kanji is which. It's something of a sight gag.
What a "katamari damashii" is, exactly, is something of a Zen riddle. I'd explain it, though I'm certain so doing would only cause people to flame me and call me a loser, and then I'd have to cry again.
Holy hell, that's some obnoxious music. I mean, I like the Ramones and all, though after hearing "Blitzkrieg Bop" in the context of exploding cars, I'm prepared to burn my decades-old T-shirt. All the other music happens to be washed-out dreadful 1.5-chord flaming emo rock with white guys singing out of their noses.
That review fucking sucks ass. It totally has this "I've read more books than you" attitude. It uses all these big words. Why can't the writer just say what he wants to say?
I've read the first paragraph so far and I still have no idea what the writer is trying to say. I still have no idea what kind of game this game is supposed to be.
Where are the screenshots?
In closing, that site's layout fucking sucks. My eyes! My eyes are burning!!
Hey, fucko, I didn't say the music was loose and that you liked it because I know more about music than you do, I said it was loose because I thought it was loose, and I liked it, too. Music can be loose and still be good, asshole.
And yes, I used to actually listen to "Pizzicato Five," only I didn't put their name in quotation marks. They were a real music group!! Download "the world is spinning at 45rpm" or something. You'll see!! I promise you you'll listen to that song and say, "Hey, this is a real pop song."
That, and calm down. Not everyone hates you and/or wants to kill you, you know.
Actually, Stephenson was born in 1959, according to the back flap of my copy of Cryptonomicon here. I was born in 1979. So if I'm ten years less mature than he is, that means I'm also ten years ahead of him on maturity. I'm . . . not sure I really WANT to be that mature. Not that Stephenson is the most mature guy in the world.
Having your hobby Slashdotted is fun.
Also, to the guy above -- I don't teach English anymore. I only did that for a little bit. Now I translate manga. Ahh, manga! . . . I hate manga. It gives me plenty of time to play guitar and think about writing something significant. I sure do play a lot of guitar, under these circumstances.
actually, this game is more than a courtroom drama. it's . . . insane. as in insane-crazy. i've played it through to the end. (i'm the guy who wrote the review linked up there.) by the end, it's not even about a courtroom anymore. it becomes about demons and the end of the world and all that.
it's an anime, is what it is, only without a lot of the animation and voice-acting.
the format is an adventure game. the review excerpt up there makes it sound like it's fucking dragon's lair or something. that's not entirely correct. you sit, and think, and pick things. later, you're in the lawyer's office, and you goo over case files and all that. it's like an old PC adventure game. the producer was heavily influenced by hideo kojima's snatcher and policenauts games. and hideo kojima says (to me) that this is his favorite game of the year. yes, it's an adventure game -- in three parts, no less -- though it's also a damned, damned fine one.
"Self-pretentious"? I always jump on dumb bastards like you for not knowing what "pretentious" means. In this case, where you went an put another word and a hyphen on it, I'm not even going to bother.
The most important thing is that you're going to die before me, and much less happy, so I'm not losing any sweat over it.
A paragraph is an idea. Large paragraphs are large ideas. Small paragraphs are small ideas. This is a medium-sized idea.
I say you're going to die before me because (well, aside from the obvious) you seem to think that things and ideas are more important than people. That's not a pro-living way of thinking, tex.
In closing, captain America, if your daddy made you touch him in bad places, that's okay. We don't hate you for it. Just don't go blaming us for your lack of ability to be entertained.
Does a single one of you bichmonkeys realize that this article is actually written by eleven different people? I'd read through more comments than the ones I'm seeing if I wasn't convinced the you people are mostly idiotic motherfuckers.
The Linux penguin is ashamed of you all. Then again, that fuckiing cartoon bastard is probably illiterate, too.
Submit this article? No, no, I merely wrote it, while high on cranberry juice and Sunny Delight. How it ended up linked here is a mystery, though I'm certain it had nothing to do with any submission of any kind.
Donkey Kong has the first story that is contained entirely in its game. We see the Giant Ape with the Girl. He jumps to the top of the construction site. The sturdy Hero arrives, just as the Girl yells "HELP!" We know what to do.
In the first stage, we trek to the top of the tower. Why make it to the top of the tower? So as to rescue the girl from the ape. Why press the jump button? To jump. Why jump? To avoid the barrels. Why are there barrels in the first place? Because the Ape is rolling them at you!
In the final level, the Hero needs to pound down rivets. Why pound the rivets? Because doing so will cause the Giant Ape to fall. Why do we want him to fall? Because we want the damned girl back.
Without the Girl, without the Ape, pounding the rivets would be pointless. It'd be like Pac-Man.
I mean, really, what the hell is Pac-Man? He's a little yellow circle with a mouth! What's he doing? He's eating stuff! Why?
BECAUSE!
If he eats a power pill, he can eat the ghosts, too. Why are the ghosts trying to kill him?
. . . Well, I'm sure the notes on the cabinet explain that somewhere.
Old-time text adventures, many of which I have played and enjoyed -- I think Zork is responsible for teaching me how to type -- are stories. Far from being about the stories, they are the stories. Donkey Kong -- and Chris Kohler will back me up on this -- is the first example of a game and a story being both separate and combined.
The first time you play, you're interested in the ending. You're interested in seeing the Hero and the Girl reunited at last. Then the game starts over. We can assume the Ape has kidnapped the Girl again, and the whole wild goose chase starts over again. Our goal now is in the play -- yet the story will always be there. The story will always explain and buffer every element of the game as a play experience.
Chris Kohler has reminded me -- did you know Breakout has a story, too? You're a prison convict, escaping from a prison, by breaking down the wall.
Or so say the box and instruction manual. To me, it still just looks like one-player Pong, with a wall instead of an opponent.
As for Adventure -- shit. I tried to play that game once as a kid. I went back to Grand Prix after a short time.
At any rate, I appreciate the pouncing. It's nice, sometimes, to get pounced on by people of . . . your caliber, as opposed to people who tell me Metroid Prime sucks because it's 3D. You know, one of those people once gave me a copy of some Slayers RPG for Sega Saturn. Holy hell, it was unplayably bad. Flawed, broken, chunky, boring, you name it. Dude told me "I beat it two or three times, yeah." This guy refuses to play anything with Final Fantasy in the title. And he doesn't read a word of Japanese. That, however, is not the topic here.
I tell you, though -- that Slayers RPG's ending sucked ass. And that's more than just my personal opinion -- something I believe I excel in giving, I'd like to think -- it's an objective fact of life.
. . . Well, mostly. It's mostly console-centric. There's one little piece of an article about Neverwinter Nights back from January, and that's about it. Other than that, the author prefers to keep PC games to himself.
The name of the site is "insert credit," which implies something of an arcade/console concentration. Few PC games require the insertion of a credit, unless you're talking about Everquest or Magic: The Gathering Online, and the "credit" in those cases is hardly the same thing as an arcade credit.
The author -- really, he's a nice guy, really -- most likely has played most of the PC games you mention, and would have mentioned them had he, in the beginning, been at all concerned with putting PC games in his list. He was apparently not so concerned, however, and only wrote about console games. In truth, however, the author does indeed love PC games, and he loves them enough to refer to them as "PC Games" rather than "PC Videogames" or -- for shame -- to lump them in with "videogames." This is not segregation on his part; if you'd like, consider it the same level of affection a father shows his favorite son when he gives him the larger bedroom.
In fact, the author is, right now, mildly distracted from his Neverwinter Nights by Slashdot Games and emails from people about Slashdot Games, so he'll get back to his module now.
I've been naming girls "Rose" since I first got Final Fantasy I.
Now, more than a decade later, my girlfriend's name is "Rose."
I *swear* I did not make that up.
And the FFO remake of FFI gives you six letters.
I used to like the name "Hazel" so much I always had a girl named Hazel in my games. That wasn't a case of naming a character after I girl I liked -- not traditionally, at least. It was, like, . . . naming a girl (character) I liked after a name I liked.
Damn it, I was so weird as a kid. I'm glad I grew up to . . . write postmodern literary fiction.
And not get paid for it.
Damn.
I should be in bed.
Slashdot Mirror
Hello.
I'm the guy who wrote the article.
. . . Ahem.
Anyway. Yeah, they're not pushing Lost Odyssey at all. Either that, or the fact that the chairman of the jury who selected the top games of the show is none other than Yoichi Wada, president of Square-Enix.
Hoho!!
Maybe a little jealousy, hmmmm? The CESA organization also selected Final Fantasy XII as one of the two "Grand Award" winners for the 2006 Japan Game Awards.
Hmmm!!
Either way, Blue Dragon is the big hope. It's the one they're packing in with the system come its release in December. There are enough legions of fans of Sakaguchi's that the console will sell just fine. Don't predict a huge explosion of sales, though.
I think Microsoft is just playing it by ear. Which is good enough. There was certainly some PS3 fanaticism at the Tokyo Game Show, and it was certainly overwhelming; I'm sure Microsoft is aware of what they're going against and is merely not wasting too much time fighting the launch crowd. A month after the PS3 launches with Genji 2 and Ridge Racer 7, both games targeted at people who NEEEEEEEEED a game right when the console launches, MS has their must-buy game coming out.
I think it's coming out just in time, in fact.
It's brilliant BECAUSE it's overdue. You see, the Japanese videogame industry tends to be populated by business-school guys who don't know much about videogames. Matsuno is one of the few guys that knows his stuff.
." FFXII is bewildering to people because it's not a Final Fantasy imitator. You'll see!! You will play it!!
That, and the setup for the Gambits is really something. I mean, it's really easy to implement. And it looks nice and clean. It's appealing. The game is, in structure, more like Baldur's Gate II than, say, Final Fantasy X. However, there's none of that PC game feel to it. It still feels very much like a videogame. It's not like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, where it still felt like a PC game (what with being able to go into the menu and turn down the difficulty level in the middle of a fight) -- this evokes a feeling like an old 8-bit game, where you didn't always know why things happened. Only now, the game has decided to let you figure out what's happening, if you want. You don't have to if you don't want to, though. Either way, it's kind of . . . friendly.
If anything, it stands a chance of turning normal people into hardcore RPGers -- because it really is deep and interesting, while at the same time not excluding anyone with real-world common sense or logic. It's just AI scripting, yeah. It's just the execution of the context that makes it "brilliant." See, previous Final Fantasy games had just turned people into Final Fantasy fans. That's why you get so many Final Fantasy imitators. "If you like Final Fantasy, try . .
I'm . . . rambling, I guess. That's what I do. That's what I did in the article. And, uh, they cut out a lot of the good stuff. I can't blame them, though hell. I should have calmed down before I wrote it. A lot of the Gambit description got cut, though I reckon that's what's most important here.
If you like the Katamari games, you know, you can still keep playing the old ones! They don't have to make new ones for you to keep playing, you know!!
Heh. He said "Meathead." Though yeah. That's who plays DDR, if you ask me.
You know what really impresses a girl on the first date*? Making some excuse to go to a nearby guitar shop ("I just needed to get some strings") and then asking to play a really awesome looking guitar and amazing her. Then casually buying the strings and heading to the restaurant.
(*This only works in a foot-traffic-based country like, uh, Japan. If you're living somewhere they have cars, you're shit out of luck.)
There are five vowels in Japanese -- A I U E O -- and they are pronounced pretty much exactly like the five vowels in Spanish. Ah, Ee, Oo, Eh, Oh.
Kah-tah-mah-ree.
(The double "E" is a little short. I mean, not quite as long as in an English word like "mean.")
"Damacy" is a clever little Romanization of "Damashii." They spelled it that way, said the director, because it made the title look "kind of French."
"Dah-ma-shee-ee." It's a double ee. It has kind of a scoop in the middle. Pronounce it quickly.
Just like that!
In Japanese, the kanji used to spell out the name of this game are interesting. "Katamari", meaning a clump or a collage, is "", and "tamashii," meaning soul or spirit, is "". Notice how similar they are? Put side by side lik ethey are on the game's box, it becomes hard to tell which kanji is which. It's something of a sight gag.
What a "katamari damashii" is, exactly, is something of a Zen riddle. I'd explain it, though I'm certain so doing would only cause people to flame me and call me a loser, and then I'd have to cry again.
They could have nominated Burnout 3.
Holy hell, that's some obnoxious music. I mean, I like the Ramones and all, though after hearing "Blitzkrieg Bop" in the context of exploding cars, I'm prepared to burn my decades-old T-shirt. All the other music happens to be washed-out dreadful 1.5-chord flaming emo rock with white guys singing out of their noses.
Great game, though. Plays like a dream.
That review fucking sucks ass. It totally has this "I've read more books than you" attitude. It uses all these big words. Why can't the writer just say what he wants to say?
I've read the first paragraph so far and I still have no idea what the writer is trying to say. I still have no idea what kind of game this game is supposed to be.
Where are the screenshots?
In closing, that site's layout fucking sucks. My eyes! My eyes are burning!!
Hey, fucko, I didn't say the music was loose and that you liked it because I know more about music than you do, I said it was loose because I thought it was loose, and I liked it, too. Music can be loose and still be good, asshole.
And yes, I used to actually listen to "Pizzicato Five," only I didn't put their name in quotation marks. They were a real music group!! Download "the world is spinning at 45rpm" or something. You'll see!! I promise you you'll listen to that song and say, "Hey, this is a real pop song."
That, and calm down. Not everyone hates you and/or wants to kill you, you know.
In closing, die.
Actually, Stephenson was born in 1959, according to the back flap of my copy of Cryptonomicon here. I was born in 1979. So if I'm ten years less mature than he is, that means I'm also ten years ahead of him on maturity. I'm . . . not sure I really WANT to be that mature. Not that Stephenson is the most mature guy in the world.
Having your hobby Slashdotted is fun.
Also, to the guy above -- I don't teach English anymore. I only did that for a little bit. Now I translate manga. Ahh, manga! . . . I hate manga. It gives me plenty of time to play guitar and think about writing something significant. I sure do play a lot of guitar, under these circumstances.
actually, this game is more than a courtroom drama. it's . . . insane. as in insane-crazy. i've played it through to the end. (i'm the guy who wrote the review linked up there.) by the end, it's not even about a courtroom anymore. it becomes about demons and the end of the world and all that.
it's an anime, is what it is, only without a lot of the animation and voice-acting.
the format is an adventure game. the review excerpt up there makes it sound like it's fucking dragon's lair or something. that's not entirely correct. you sit, and think, and pick things. later, you're in the lawyer's office, and you goo over case files and all that. it's like an old PC adventure game. the producer was heavily influenced by hideo kojima's snatcher and policenauts games. and hideo kojima says (to me) that this is his favorite game of the year. yes, it's an adventure game -- in three parts, no less -- though it's also a damned, damned fine one.
You dissing Jeff "Lucky" Lundrigan, pal? You know that motherfucker's a fucking pitbull. He'll kill your ass.
And he was joking when he wrote what he wrote, as joking as I was when I quoted it.
And you misspelled journalist OMG LOL WTF ROFL MOTHERFUCKER.
Oh, it was intentional, Frankie. You know it was.
"Self-pretentious"? I always jump on dumb bastards like you for not knowing what "pretentious" means. In this case, where you went an put another word and a hyphen on it, I'm not even going to bother.
Yes. You win a Club Membership card.
You're not such a hot writer yourself, Charlie.
The most important thing is that you're going to die before me, and much less happy, so I'm not losing any sweat over it.
A paragraph is an idea. Large paragraphs are large ideas. Small paragraphs are small ideas. This is a medium-sized idea.
I say you're going to die before me because (well, aside from the obvious) you seem to think that things and ideas are more important than people. That's not a pro-living way of thinking, tex.
In closing, captain America, if your daddy made you touch him in bad places, that's okay. We don't hate you for it. Just don't go blaming us for your lack of ability to be entertained.
Hell. I misspelled "fucking." Damned Mac keyboards.
Does a single one of you bichmonkeys realize that this article is actually written by eleven different people? I'd read through more comments than the ones I'm seeing if I wasn't convinced the you people are mostly idiotic motherfuckers.
The Linux penguin is ashamed of you all. Then again, that fuckiing cartoon bastard is probably illiterate, too.
I say that with utmost admiration, of course.
Submit this article? No, no, I merely wrote it, while high on cranberry juice and Sunny Delight. How it ended up linked here is a mystery, though I'm certain it had nothing to do with any submission of any kind.
Donkey Kong has the first story that is contained entirely in its game. We see the Giant Ape with the Girl. He jumps to the top of the construction site. The sturdy Hero arrives, just as the Girl yells "HELP!" We know what to do.
In the first stage, we trek to the top of the tower. Why make it to the top of the tower? So as to rescue the girl from the ape. Why press the jump button? To jump. Why jump? To avoid the barrels. Why are there barrels in the first place? Because the Ape is rolling them at you!
In the final level, the Hero needs to pound down rivets. Why pound the rivets? Because doing so will cause the Giant Ape to fall. Why do we want him to fall? Because we want the damned girl back.
Without the Girl, without the Ape, pounding the rivets would be pointless. It'd be like Pac-Man.
I mean, really, what the hell is Pac-Man? He's a little yellow circle with a mouth! What's he doing? He's eating stuff! Why?
BECAUSE!
If he eats a power pill, he can eat the ghosts, too. Why are the ghosts trying to kill him?
. . . Well, I'm sure the notes on the cabinet explain that somewhere.
Old-time text adventures, many of which I have played and enjoyed -- I think Zork is responsible for teaching me how to type -- are stories. Far from being about the stories, they are the stories. Donkey Kong -- and Chris Kohler will back me up on this -- is the first example of a game and a story being both separate and combined.
The first time you play, you're interested in the ending. You're interested in seeing the Hero and the Girl reunited at last. Then the game starts over. We can assume the Ape has kidnapped the Girl again, and the whole wild goose chase starts over again. Our goal now is in the play -- yet the story will always be there. The story will always explain and buffer every element of the game as a play experience.
Chris Kohler has reminded me -- did you know Breakout has a story, too? You're a prison convict, escaping from a prison, by breaking down the wall.
Or so say the box and instruction manual. To me, it still just looks like one-player Pong, with a wall instead of an opponent.
As for Adventure -- shit. I tried to play that game once as a kid. I went back to Grand Prix after a short time.
At any rate, I appreciate the pouncing. It's nice, sometimes, to get pounced on by people of . . . your caliber, as opposed to people who tell me Metroid Prime sucks because it's 3D. You know, one of those people once gave me a copy of some Slayers RPG for Sega Saturn. Holy hell, it was unplayably bad. Flawed, broken, chunky, boring, you name it. Dude told me "I beat it two or three times, yeah." This guy refuses to play anything with Final Fantasy in the title. And he doesn't read a word of Japanese. That, however, is not the topic here.
I tell you, though -- that Slayers RPG's ending sucked ass. And that's more than just my personal opinion -- something I believe I excel in giving, I'd like to think -- it's an objective fact of life.
Hey, now, it's a console game site.
. . . Well, mostly. It's mostly console-centric. There's one little piece of an article about Neverwinter Nights back from January, and that's about it. Other than that, the author prefers to keep PC games to himself.
The name of the site is "insert credit," which implies something of an arcade/console concentration. Few PC games require the insertion of a credit, unless you're talking about Everquest or Magic: The Gathering Online, and the "credit" in those cases is hardly the same thing as an arcade credit.
The author -- really, he's a nice guy, really -- most likely has played most of the PC games you mention, and would have mentioned them had he, in the beginning, been at all concerned with putting PC games in his list. He was apparently not so concerned, however, and only wrote about console games. In truth, however, the author does indeed love PC games, and he loves them enough to refer to them as "PC Games" rather than "PC Videogames" or -- for shame -- to lump them in with "videogames." This is not segregation on his part; if you'd like, consider it the same level of affection a father shows his favorite son when he gives him the larger bedroom.
In fact, the author is, right now, mildly distracted from his Neverwinter Nights by Slashdot Games and emails from people about Slashdot Games, so he'll get back to his module now.
I've been naming girls "Rose" since I first got Final Fantasy I. Now, more than a decade later, my girlfriend's name is "Rose." I *swear* I did not make that up. And the FFO remake of FFI gives you six letters. I used to like the name "Hazel" so much I always had a girl named Hazel in my games. That wasn't a case of naming a character after I girl I liked -- not traditionally, at least. It was, like, . . . naming a girl (character) I liked after a name I liked. Damn it, I was so weird as a kid. I'm glad I grew up to . . . write postmodern literary fiction. And not get paid for it. Damn. I should be in bed.
Hey, I *wrote* that article, and I don't think it's worth much, either.
Glad you enjoyed it.