This post is for the Cursed Mountain contest. If you haven't entered yet you should. It has a lot of cool prizes.

There was a time when we couldn't rely on the internet for the latest codes and strategies for games. It was a primitive time when a book much larger and thinner than a normal novel was dominant. It contained pretty pictures and many writers each telling a story only to those who truly were interested in its content. Information contained inside could never qualify as news, yet it captivated its targeted audience none the less. It was the time of magazines where books titled EGM and Gamepro thrived. This is a tale of an 11 year old magazine and how it defined a boy's perception of survival horror.


11 years and still in one piece

My first real foray into the survival horror genre came almost exclusively because of Tips & Tricks magazine. Specifically the March 1998 issue covering Resident Evil 2. I am particularly enamored with this issue since it contains a walkthrough of my favorite game Final Fantasy Tactics following 9 pages after the RE2 walkthrough. Since I replay that game annually, this book has seen a lot more reading time than any of my 10 years worth of Gamepro mangazine subscriptions ever did.

At this point in my life I was probably the most focused in terms of gaming. I had plenty of free time and a Blockbuster down the street to rent some games. So if there was any point in which a marketing team could brainwash me into buying or renting a game, this would be it. It didn't help that I was always being shipped around between my parents when I was younger and all I really had to do on trips were play games (and that was back when the Gameboy barely had any battery life) and read my magazines. Over the years I read this magazine front to back. I learned from this one magazine all about anime (Pocket Monsters Cartoon Causes Seizures), imports (Xenogears is a Super Import), toys (SD Virtua On toy just looks so amazing) and even Piracy (V.R. Fighter (aka Virtua Figther 2) vs Taken 2 (aka Tekken 2) which came out before any Marvel vs Capcom game). It was a great time to be a kid into video games.


See that Mega Man X balloon on the bottom left, I'll get to that in a minute

Why I went into all that is because this issue was decked out in RE 2 features. It has Leon standing in a pool of blood facing a G-Virus infected on the cover with the tag line "HOPE THIS IS NOT CHRIS' BLOOD!" (which so happens to be my first name, and you can't understand how creepy that is every time you stare at it). It has a contest to win the game, some captivating yet grotesque artwork, a t-shirt and some toys (which I entered and am still waiting on my confirmation that I won). Part 1 of a two part strategy guide by Antole Brown detailing everything from the streets up to the Tyrant. Even the back cover features that creepy zombie/licker ad proclaiming (through a GameFan quote) that Resident Evil 2 is "The gaming event of 1998. Nothing else even comes close." So I'm pretty hyped by this game to say the least. Tie together my love affair with Final Fantasy Tactics (ZOMG you can recruit Cloud into your party! Thanks Tips & Tricks), this Resident Evil 2 marketing push would sit on my lap and scream "Resident Evil 2 has risen" each time I started up my Playstation.


The big prize

I've talked all about this great magazine that I had and how it led me to play Resident Evil 2. In hindsight I really should have had it with me on my first playthrough. Like I said I was shipped around and picking up new magazines was a staple before my trip. Thus I was almost completely unprepared for my first horror title (I still had some knowledge of the game and its mechanics and I couldn't wait to kill that Crocodile). I finally went to my local Blockbuster and rented Resident Evil 2 at the tender age of 12. At this point in time I will say that I think Resident Evil 2 is the greatest survival horror game to date. The only reason I say this is because I've probably played only 2. The other one was Silent Hill a year later. So on a lonely Saturday night at my father's house in a city 5 hours away from my home (and friends) I played Resident Evil 2 at about 8 or so at night . Okay so I don't really know exact times, since it was 11 years ago. All I know is it was dark and I was playing it.

So I'm sitting there without the thing that sold me on the game, watching as a zombie infected tanker truck careens into my squad car separating my partner and I. As soon as the loading screen pushes through I'm faced with a couple of zombies and only a pistol. So I do what comes naturally. Spin around like I'm a tank and start firing at anything that comes close. In retrospect it was a pretty bad idea, but I didn't have my walkthrough to tell me in its first few words "try not to waste ammo at the start."

Once I'm calm enough and pretty low on ammo, I run down a back alley with some more zombies and a gun shop. I have a gun and it needs ammo so this is the safest place I can be. I meet the gun owner and think that its finally time to get some ammo. Once again I am mistaken as he is eaten and I'm left running around grabbing whatever I can to shoot the zombies. Fortunately the gun shop owner had a shotgun which means I have an even better weapon to run around with frantically killing zombies. Or as my strategy guide would say "don't use your new weapons until you're in the R.P.D. building." Leaving the building half dead by now, I run out and see the zombies stuck behind a gate to my characters right and run as fast as I can only to have that door swing open and force me to waste the rest of the my ammo. I climb the dumpster and get as far away from the next zombie to run past 4 gluttonous zombies eating a cop and run onto a bus.

Hooray! The bus has some ammo. It also has two zombies. One that pops out at you as the camera changes and one off screen to do the exact same thing later. I'm stuck, on a bus with two zombies and half my health, but I'm getting the hang of this whole run like a tank thing. Its kinda like Tomb Raider without the jumping. I quickly waste half my ammo trying to take these creatures down and am starting to feel a bit confident about it. They still scared the crap out of me, but I could handle two zombies with all the ammo I have. If only I knew that I had to make my way through six zombies outside the bus. I manage to take my mastery of tank maneuvering and almost kill myself trying to get through to this small battalion of monsters, and finally with no health I run into the zombie free Raccoon City Police Department.

I can finally breathe as this big empty building with horribly creepy music playing seems devoid of anything terrifying. I run into the police officer in the only room I can enter and then I get my ink ribbon, my ammo (thank god!) and save my game. I've made it through the tough stuff. So there isn't anything that I should be concerned about. And then I enter a hallway with a headless corpse (oh great another zombie). I walk slowly just waiting for yet another of the zombies to come slowly out of some crevice and try to attack me. That's when I'm greeted with a full motion video of the reason why I should have saved my shotgun for something else. The Licker crawls down with his creepy tongue and exposed body and its game over.


What my entire first experience should have looked like. Notice the lack of terror filled screams.

I let that game over screen boot up and I ran and turned the lights on and popped open my Playstation and had enough. When I got home, I was fortunate to have a book that cataloged every mistake I made and shamed me with by revealing how far I actually got in the game. Out of an 8 page strategy guide (10 if you count the map pages), I got through 4/5 of the first page. Almost taunting me is the strategy guide that lies between my failure in survival horror and my favorite game of all time. Yoshi's Story for the Nintendo 64. Perhaps the easiest game that came out during this generation of gaming.

Because of this strategy guide, I know almost everything there is to know about Resident Evil 2 that I couldn't experience for myself. I get to see alternate clothes and flaming zombies, but sadly never really experienced it for myself. I tried the genre once again a year later with Silent Hill with similar results. As I've matured I can look back at this as childish, the terrors are pre-scripted to coincide the horrible camera and the horrible movement. Some people fault the game for this in future iterations, but I've always believed that the early Resident Evil's were perhaps brilliant in manipulating this system in this way. If it weren't for the fact that we've all evolved past this gameplay style, it would still stand as a truly frightening experience.

As it stands though I've yet to ever play a survival horror game since. I've run past used copies of Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space in game stores and wanted to take them home to see what the hype is all about. But sadly I'm still a bit timid towards the genre that I never truly got to play through. I said a few paragraphs up that Resident Evil 2 was perhaps my favorite survival horror game of all time. That's mostly true as its the only one I've really had experience with and the only one that I truly learned the most about.

To win the Tips & Tricks "Don't Get MAD, Get EVIL" contest the following had to be answered on a post card:
1: Chris Redfield has a sister who is one of the main characters in Resident Evil 2. What is her name?
2: What is the name of the pilot from Resident Evil who is also able to appear as a zombie in Resident Evil 2?
3: What does S.T.A.R.S. stand for?

I had to have played this within the month that the magazine came out since nowhere in the magazine was question 3 answered (which drove me practically insane) and I know I found the answer out somehow.


Every boy robot has some skeleton in their closet they don't want to talk about

I've been feeling sick recently so I figured I'd do something mindless that would take about an hour to complete. Writing a blog will suffice. This is Anime Trailer Park. The point of which is to examine new and old trailers and see how they impact expectations.

Long Promos:

Sekirei -Pure Engagement-

Summary: I'm intrigued
I've read Sekirei, but I havent followed the anime. When watching that first episode, Musubi's voice actress was so drastically different than the way I played Musubi in my head that I couldn't get over it. But I, like any man, am fond of a good harem story so this new season might win me back. While the animation in the trailer is a little too unrefined for my tastes (Karasuba's eyes just magically appear in the first scene), the battle music works well with the fight sequences and promoting the fighting is a big plus as this season should be much more action based. I still don't see how the story can be considered a Miraculous Love Story, but I guess Japan romanticizes harems much more than I do. Overall I want to like the trailer because I want to see Sekirei in anime form. I'm sure as soon as Musubi talks this season I'll go back to watching something else on this list.


Tatakau Shisho -The Book of Bantorra-

Summary: Round One. Fight!
The entire Tatakau Shisho trailer looks like the intro to a fighting game. There is just no other instance in which a group of characters so diverse can come together while fighting each other and not be a part of a fighting game. No other way. At least that's what I thought until I fact checked with anidb and found out that this game...er...tv show is actually about a man who has his memories wiped so he can assassinate the most librarian in the world. This plan is foiled by a beautiful woman who works in the library. The books in the library just happen to be the bodies of the dead. Now I ask you, do you see any of that bizarrely interesting plot in this trailer? If you said yes, then I applaud your ability to read into unrelated imagery. If you're as confused as I seem to be well then I welcome you. Let's join together and try to figure out fighting game characters to match the ones on screen. So far I've got Charlotte (Samurai Showdown), King (Art of Fighting) with a top hat on, Slash (Waku Waku 7), Kairi (Street Fighter EX3), Rouge (Power Stone), Morrigan (Darkstalkers) and Eliot (Dead or Alive 4). What did you get?


The Sacred Blacksmith

Summary: An answer to a medieval codpiece?
Subtlety is an amazing thing. After replaying the video a couple of times it finally dawned on me that the first thing they show you (besides Presented by Manglobe) is some cleavage. I had assumed that it was, but my better half kept telling me it was just a shield instead of being actual armor made to fill her cup size. This really isn't a big factor for the trailer, it just made me chuckle that the follow up to Presented by Manglobe are some globes.

Now that I have that out of my system, on to discussing the trailer. It seems like a stereotypical character intro trailer. Much better than Hatsukoi Limited's trailer. Of course that's really not hard to do. Its hard to gauge how the series will do based on a trailer full of unrelated scenes, but it looks like Cecily and Luke will have a relationship much like Sakura and Li from Card Captor Sakura. Where Luke always seems to come in and help Cecily while putting on a reserved and bashful front. In fact I deem this medieval Card Captor Sakura. Cecily is Sakura, Luke is Li, Lisa is Tomoyo and Aria is...umm...Meiling Li? There really isn't much we learn about Aria as half of her section was a still shot which really seemed to stop the trailer as I just stared waiting for her to twitch. So yeah, its Card Captor Cecily with a nice celtic tune that sounds like a battle theme to a JRPG.


Tales of Symphonia: Tethe'alla-hen

Summary: I've actually never played a Tales of game.
I recognize Lloyd since he's the most definitive looking character in the Tales of Symphonia, but beyond that I've got no clue what's going on. So that makes it a bit easier to rate this trailer unbiasedly. Interestingly the trailer opens up like an opera. The horns gear up and make a lot of loud nonsensical noise until they finally get together and make some music. Whats left however didn't really go with the trailer. Since the trailer is geared for the Tales of crowd, no story is presented leaving the viewer to watch small snippets of uncoordinated action sequences playing along to some music that sounds like its playing over the video instead of with it. I will have to admit that the character models look much better than many anime adaptations of console games, but the only real animation was of the lips and hair making me question the depth of the animation.


Sora no Manimani

Summary: Needs less comedy
This trailer really could have been cut into one small commercial. Starting out we get treated with a scene almost reminiscent of Haruhi Suzumiya standing and declaring her intentions in an awkward manner. She seems more reserved than Haruhi up until the title screen disappears. She then transforms into the overexcited (and slightly childish) archetype that always has some deep understanding that reaffirms the meaning of their group. That being said I really wish that every moment in between the title and when she holds her Light of Star were removed. It breaks up the flow of the opening and does nothing to add to the trailer. The comedy just seems so out of place with the soothing intro and the background reveal of Haruhi....I mean Saku's reason for being in the club. It really is disappointing as I was enjoying the trailer until Saku yelled STOP!


World Destruction

Summary: Bad editing. Also, teddy bears pirates.
The way that they cut and spliced this trailer together is pretty nonsensical. Tile credits just appear with no sense of rhythm and really change the beauty that the music conveys. I also have no idea how the teddy bear pirates or the fox man play into the story, but it does jump out at you. Once again these two don't go together with the music at all, but they do grab your attention. In fact, the teddy bear pirates really just pop out and ruin the setting all together. They are as cute as a teddy bear should be, but a story that is all about six harbingers of destruction should stay away from cutesy animals. I'm sure it makes sense in the game (or about as much sense as most JRPGs make), but not in this trailer. They are cute though. Overall its probably best to close your eyes and listen to the background music. That's where this trailer truly shines.


Dogs, Bullets and Carnage

Summary: Good Editing. No teddy bear pirates.
I never realized how short an attention span I start messing with my volume controls after seven seconds of video without noise. The trailer really reminds me of Cowboy Bebop, which I'm sure is intentional. Only issue is the characters and settings just pale in comparison. The only one that really shows some emotion is the crazed one eyed red headed gunman. This is a fault only because of the music's upbeat tempo. Nobody should be looking like they are at a funeral with jazz playing in the background. The editing however does march right in tune with the music, I just wish they didn't waste so much time with the character notes at the end of the trailer. Also, it needs more cute teddy bear pirates.

I know this is one blog in a sea of many, but I had an opinion and I had a blog so I guess this will be a look back at the reasons why I don't own a PS3.

Most people cite the fact that the PS3 doesn't have any killer aps. Its never really been an issue of waiting for games as at least once a year a game comes out on the PS3 that would be in my do want list. My issue at the start was the price and the fact that Sony had no idea what they wanted to do with the PS3. Let me clarify that last part through my analysis of the 3 years of PS3.

First its $500 and it plays ps2 games. I'm not gonna pay over 300 for a console regardless of how shiny it is so I figured I'd wait a few years for a price drop (since I have a lot of PS2 games on the back burner) and I'd pick one up when its in my price range. Then they cut it to $400 and took out the backwards compatibility. Jack Tretton tells me to just buy a PS2 along with it if I wanted to play PS2 games. I looked at my mountain of PS2 games and my PS2 and scratched my head. Then they released the 80gb model and it had PS2 bc. I was excited again, but confused as to which PS3s had BC and which didn't. Then they stopped printing those and all my local stores only had non-BC PS3s. Now they reveal a slimmer and uglier (to me) PS3 with no BC at a price point in my range making me only wish I could play my PS2 Atlus games on it (since it takes forever to beat those anyway). Then John Koller says that 80-90% of PS3 purchasers are buying the console to play PS3 games and I sat there and finally said that actually makes sense since I can't figure out which ones play PS2 games and I doubt Jo Shmoe can either.

Many people argue why not just keep the PS2 next to the PS3 and I could always hope that my PS2 keeps working (it won't play the blue bottom discs without sounding like a tornado), but if I'm going to invest in a Playstation console in 2009/2010 I'd sure like it to play that mountain of old games I have.

I've also read through forum after forum that (for some reason they think this is actually relevant to the PS3) the 360 isn't truly backwards compatible and well, the 360 didn't really have much to worry about with backwards compatibility since they really didn't have too many Xbox games that were truly worth being compatible. The ones that were worth it were either multi-platform or eventually available on the 360 (except for Oddworld Stranger's Wrath somebody make that BC). I can also say that I've bought Psychonauts, Fable and Conker for my 360 and not my Xbox (which is now exclusively a DVD player), so I do play xbox games on my 360. I've also been stockpiling PS2 games (since they keep making them) and I'd like to play them on my upcoming future tech.

I'm sure many people would say that I'm not in Sony's demographic and that's probably false. I don't own an HD TV so I'm not looking for Blu-Ray, but I have owned nearly every console that has come out since the NES (except for the Gamecube which is why I bought a Wii) so I think I am a part of some demographic of theirs.

EDIT:
Totally wanted to make this image after I made this blog post which led to a decision to just post my gamer setup. It used to be nicer...but then I had a kid and well my game room was reduced to a corner in the Master Bedroom.




My hollow shell of a game room.

Some games

Direct Link

This video took about 3x longer than it should have. I totally misspelled Colette's (too many double letters) name in the ending credits before I caught it so I had to recompress what I already had compressed and then I found out some of the video I used had glitches so I had to redo that. All after I had finished the vid and compressed everything into the video. The Intro took like a day to finally look good...which it hopefully does. I really wanted to get Shadow Complex and Soul Calibur PSP (with Kratos) into the opening but it didn't happen. I'll get the entire E3 episode done this week most likely so stay tuned for that.

Highlights:

Since this is what I saw before every E3 video this had to go into the RFGO vid somewhere.

Check out/Download some of the other vids I've done below:
Episode 68: Sonic
Episode 65: Reader Questions
Episode 63: Neo Geo
Episode 62: Beat 'em Ups
Episode 60: Rhythm Games
Episode 36: Couples
Episode 34: TurboGrafx16
Episode 32: SHMUPS
Episode 27: SNES

I totally meant to get this out iono....4 months or so ago. It's been sitting on my laptop 3/4 of the way done for a while and I figured I'd finish it and bam here it is. Happy New Years guys!!!! Now with the intro part done I'll hopefully get the 2008 Year in Review up within the end of the year.



This kid still scares me.

Check out/Download some of the other vids I've done below:
Episode 68: Sonic
Episode 65: Reader Questions
Episode 63: Neo Geo
Episode 62: Beat 'em Ups
Episode 60: Rhythm Games
Episode 36: Couples
Episode 34: TurboGrafx16
Episode 32: SHMUPS
Episode 27: SNES

I was reading in Newsweek that 88 is the white supremacist online handle equivalent of Heil Hitler for some reason that I really don't care to know about. That pissed me off since as you can read my username for most things ends in 88. Stupid fascists ruin everything.

Anywho, I decided to vent in a single paragraph in a blog post, cause when I vent I blog and when I blog I blog my interests. Now that that's done its Trailer Park time. I had a couple trailers lying around (some new, some old) and I figured I'd post about it. The point of which is to examine new and old trailers and see how they impact expectations. Lets get to it.

Long Promos:


Eureka seveN: Pocket Full of Rainbows

Summary: Pocket Full of Rainbows is a really weird title.
I've only seen a bit of Eureka seveN on TV, but after watching this trailer I really grew to like the Japanese seiyuu better than the American voice cast. The music on this trailer is powerful and emotional and matches the strong voice acting. This music just really goes well with this kind of series. What I like is the fact that they aren't focusing on the mech suits with this trailer. For a mech anime, we only see the actual suit in about a 1/4 of the trailer. The rest is really focused on the relationship between Renton and Eureka which makes it kind of sweet. That being said, the story is still kinda weird with Imagi and surfboarding robots. Thankfully the focus isn't really on that in the trailer and Bones does their typical great animation.


Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas

Summary: Change isn't always good.
Saint Seiya is a Japanese show that has been around forever. Its similar to Ronin Warriors and came out around the same time. Its received numerous movies and spinoffs and even video games. So after saying all that, this trailer is the first time I've ever really looked at the series. That being said its trying to put a new coat of paint on an iconic series which just doesn't have enough radical change to be interesting, like in the case of Casshern Sins. It seems like its just evolved the models in slight ways from Saint Seiya to make them look more like every other anime that we've seen over the past few years. It doesn't work and makes a trailer with people who punch pegasus while wearing giant armor seem bland. The music is pretty cheesy, and dare I say fantastic. I can't wait for an AMV with the older anime to be used with this song. This show is only going to be direct-to-dvd so that might explain some of the animation decisions, but I was hoping for something with as far stretching a lineage to have some kind of hook.


First Squad: The Moment of Truth

Summary: Great
Like Production I.G. (Eden of the East) people should pay attention to Studio 4°C (Tekkon Kinkreet). They don't always make the best anime, but its always something new and interesting. First Squad is something new and interesting. The communist backdrop opens up a new perspective as most Americans and Japanese never really hear that side of the war. This trailer is action packed with monks fighting busty twins that oddly remind me of Juli and Juni of Street Fighter Alpha 3 fame. That's most likely the Street Fighter 4 media blitz coming out of me. I like the way the music opens, but it seems to be too overpowering when we get to the hallway. Thankfully it alleviates with trumpets. It's a good trailer and makes me really interested in if they can translate it into a solid film because right now its just a really cool AMV.


Hatsukoi Limited

Summary: They forgot to put money into the trailer budget.
Have you ever seen a trailer for a Visual Novel. This is what they look like. They throw the general concept of the game at you and introduce the seiyuu and the characters they play. The only difference is that visual novels throw a million more things in the trailer to make you more interested. Somebody forgot that anime trailers should first have animation followed by story. If it weren't for the mangaka being famous, I wouldn't have even payed attention to the trailer. Its boring and even the translators for it did a lame job.


Toward the Terra: Type Blue the Origin

Summary: Its not a real trailer. I think.
Not in the traditional sense at least. This was a special bit of bonus material added on to the dvd. Its really more of a summary than a trailer, but its in trailer form and it only summarizes the beginning like trailers do. This was used to give more focus on the setting of Toward the Terra. It both works and doesn't. If I had owned the dvd, this would have been a part of the film that I'd have glossed over like most bonus features. It also makes it that they didn't have to cut for TV restrictions. So we get a well done trailer with strong audio and presentation, but we'd never have seen it without purchasing the dvd. Overall, the story is your standard super human persecution stories. Its just presented so over the top that its really fun to watch.


Touhou Project: Musou Kakyou

Summary: Holy crap this is fanmade.
Touhou Project is a set of Bullet Hell Shmups from Team Shanghai Alice. They've gotten alot of fanmade stuff (doujinshi, youtube vids, games, hentai) but this is another level. This was created by Maikaze, a group set to making music and anime for sale at Comiket and other doujin markets. The audio is really good and brings up the animation which is simple with non moving backdrops. I don't know how well the show is animated based on this, but its interesting to see how fan projects have been growing.

Short Promos:

Pocket Monsters

Summary: Gotta Catch 'em All!
This was the original trailer for the pilot of Pokemon. Looking back its interesting that in the beginning this show practically has Satoshi's seiyuu scream at you to tune in for the premiere. As much flak as Pokemon gets these days its reached a somewhat iconic stature. Yes its a mediocre show that once caused hundreds of kids in Japan to have seizures, but looking back its one of the few gaming shows that has ever crossed into the mainstream. Captain N and Mario only lasted a season and Sonic was the only show to really ever do well enough. This trailer was the beginning of a new generation of kids getting into anime.