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  • Otakon 2011 In Review

    Otakon 2011 In Review

    My first Otakon was back in 1999. I went for just one day, but for little 17-year-old Mike, it was quite an eye-opening experience. Bootleg CDs were obtained (how was I supposed to know what SonMay was?!), anime was watched (Hiko Seijuro walking on-screen during the Rurouni Kenshin OVA received the loudest applause I’ve ever heard), and fandom was confirmed.

    Things are different in 2011. I first submitted an AMV in 2001, and then regularly from 2003-2008, nothing in 2009, again in 2010 (finally winning at Otakon with that one!), and doing many AMV panels there throughout the years with our generational cohorts. Shockingly (more so to us than maybe to anyone else), we actually skipped watching the AMV contest entirely this year — it conflicted with other events we had more interest in. All three of our panel submissions were declined, so unlike 2007 and 2010 with DragonBall-related panels (and other years in there sprinkled with AMV panels), we had nothing to prepare for in that regard. Even our hotel roommates had to bow out toward the end (through no real fault of their own), so it was the first time in around ten years that it was just the wife and I attending as regular ol’ attendees.

    Having gone to the convention with that mindset (“I am just another person here!”), I felt like I actually had a lot to say about this year’s convention. Maybe some of it is helpful to someone. Maybe some of it is too rose-tinted. Maybe some of it is too critical. Maybe some of it will guarantee I never get another panel at the convention again. Oh, well.

    COSPLAY

    No, not of our own — never done that before — I’m talking about everyone else! I am of course drawn to the DBZ cosplay throughout the convention, but I notice a few other things here and there. Still a lot of Fullmetal Alchemist, still a bit of Ouran, a lot more Pokemon than in the past, still a good amount of Final Fantasy VII and Kingdom Hearts… you know, the usual suspects. What would normally annoy me (moderately disruptive behavior) was somehow one of my favorite examples of literal cosplay (as in playing it out in costume): the three dudes decked out in full Beastie Boys “Sabotage” outfits ducking and spinning down the hallway blaring the song on a boombox. I applaud you, good sirs.

    Only managed to snap a few shots of DBZ cosplay this year, unfortunately:

    Quite a few other good ones (Uub, Selypa). I should probably make more of a concentrated effort to take these types of photos. My bad.

    WATCHINGS

    The plan was to catch the Otakon debut of Trigun: Badlands Rumble and then head on downstairs in the short buffer period to get in line for Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos. I was led to believe both would be subtitled, but it turned out the Trigun movie would be dubbed, followed by a Q&A session with Johnny Yong Bosch. Having zero interest in the latter but still having an interest in seeing the movie, we crammed into line for the HD theater. A good portion of the folks behind us were told they would not make it inside, so I consider us somewhat lucky that we got in at all. Things ran about 15-20 minutes late, but with that being the norm for these types of events, nothing was particularly frustrating.

    The dub was thankfully solid (not that I didn’t also think the same of the TV series dub, but it’s a Japanese production — I want to watch it in Japanese at a Japanese animation convention with one of the Japanese guests being the head of the movie’s Japanese animation studio [follow all that?]). As I’ve heard described elsewhere, the three main returning characters had re-castings that were so close to the prior actors that undiscerning ears might not even be able to tell the difference: Milly was a dead-ringer, Meryl was pretty close, and Wolfwood was better (from what little he spoke, anyway). I’m really glad we got a chance to see it first during a convention with such a massive audience, because I’m not sure it would have had some of the emotional impact just by ourselves, even at home in HD with surround sound. The instant Vash appeared screaming on the ground in the opening, the crowd erupted in laughter and cheers. The first moment Wolfwood’s gun/cross got unwrapped, the applause rivaled what I remember from Hiko slashing the Hell out of grunts back in 1999. These were magical shared moments, and ones that I will treasure for a long time to come. Without the audience? Next time I watch the movie, I will likely start picking apart some of the needless exposition, dragging pace of certain scenes, and occasional cheap 3D animation integration. Until then, every time I think of the movie there will be a smile on my face.

    Like I said, the plan was to then run on down to Video 1 to get in line for the new Fullmetal Alchemist movie, but the overwhelming crowd and lack of a room-clear following the AMV contest left us in a weird situation: do we wait it out and hope we make it in, and what else could we be doing in the mean time if we decided to just bail? In retrospect, it sounds like we would have been able to get in if we stuck it out, but I’m OK missing out on one movie after having just sat through one immediately beforehand. Besides, without stadium seating, the poor short wife might not have been able to read the subtitles! Insert annoying “chibi” joke / FMA reference here. Funny, right?

    We ended up walking on over to the Sailormoon / DBZ panel, instead. More on that later. Much more.

    DEALERS ROOM

    We buy less and less every year. We at least grab the obligatory gashapon to add to the display in our basement, but unless something major catches our interest (like the DBZ movie 4 program guide from last year), there really isn’t anything to pick up at a convention that I don’t already either own or have on pre-order elsewhere.

    We perused the hanger in shifts this year: halfway through on Friday, and halfway through on Saturday. During our Saturday run, we happened across an enormous table filled to the brim with DBZ figures! Most dealers have a few figures and plushies from various series, but this guy had an entire table dedicated to just DBZ stuff. He (unfortunately) wanted to keep a low profile and had no business card or contact information (and declined an interview), but near as I could gather from what he let slip, he grabs a metric crap-ton of stuff when he goes to Japan, and when he needs to pay his daughter’s next college tuition fee, he heads to a convention and sells the stuff. What was most amazing to me was how reasonable his prices were — he easily could have added $5 to the price of any small figure, $20+ to the price of the larger stuff, and I would not have batted an eye.

    picture swiped from our buddy TanookiKuribo

    I had already grabbed the Piccolo “Creatures” figure elsewhere, and we picked up a few new ones from this dealer. Good little stash, I’d say.

    I saw the program guides for DBZ movie 2 and the 10th anniversary movie, but I wasn’t willing to spend $25 a pop on program guides again this year. I almost walked out with a boxed copy of Famicom Jump: Hero Retsuden for the Famicom ($40), but the figure purchases changed that plan.

    OTAKU IDOL

    Something we had never attended before, Otaku Idol was at least a quick check-in for us this year with our friends Peter and Katie being participants. Due to what I assume is not wanting to overly criticize poor otaku souls, the largest dissections by the three judges were limited to things like “that song was within your range / maybe a little outside your range” or “great job moving around / I wish you moved around a little more”. We watched the ten finalists do their thing, and just about all of them were impressive in their own right. It was no surprise to hear that Peter ended up winning it all in the end based solely on his amazing “GA-GA-GA, GA-GA-GA, GAO-GAI-GAAAAAAR!” first-round performance.

    IRON EDITOR

    Since we didn’t make it to the Fullmetal Alchemist movie, we also had time later on to attend Iron Editor. After sitting around for a little bit waiting for the event to start up, we got the request to be judges yet again. I love that the AMV winners are played during the second half of the event, but that also means that we literally sit up there for one of the two hours and do absolutely nothing (well, we watch the videos along with the audience). I’m not sure how I feel about that. If we are asked again to be judges (which I certainly enjoy!), I will have to toss some ideas over to Peter (who took over hosting duties this year and did fantastically) in terms of how to make the judges appear to be more than dead weight on the stage. In the past we would choose some of the audience participants for contests, but even that isn’t enough. What else can we do? Hmm…

    FAN PARODIES

    We were mostly excited to see the Otakon debut of Fanboy Soze, but it sounded like there were a couple other new items being played that might also be fun to check out.

    Our own Obligatory EVA Trailer was played Friday evening — that was an interesting experience. We put that together in 2003 when Sealab 2021 was still new. It actually won “Grand Prize” in the 2003 Anime Weekend Atlanta AMV Expo contest! I still love it to death and think it’s genuinely funny and well-put-together, even without any familiarity with either source material (Sealab and Evangelion). In 2011, though? Barely any response. Wow. Really goes to show just how much comedy is subjective, especially to an audience so many years removed from when it was originally created. Honestly, it was somewhat embarrassing. Really puts things in perspective! I wonder how many of our AMV-related works will stand the test of time — will any of them? I have an entirely different perspective since I actually worked on them, and can’t always remove myself from their creation process.

    Fanboy Soze, the new parody from NoN.D.E. Fan Films, went over fantastically. The wife and I were discussing how we think the underlying plot point about how many series (particularly DBZ) getting re-released so many times in different formats may have went over the audience’s head a little bit, but everything else made up for it. All the right jokes hit home, and some that seemed like they may be too old or obscure for today’s fans (such as when “West of Home” in the Zork parody came up) really surprised me with how amazing the reaction was. Conventions really are the best place for parodies like these, and with both the video and particularly the audio being set up pitch-perfect this year, it just made everything all the more awesomer. For those interested, Scott has put together a jam-packed DVD with tons of extras. It’s currently available in a multi-part download via their forum.

    The biggest surprise in the parody block Saturday night was Macross 7.5 1/2. Especially for a one-man production, I was absolutely blown away. The entire thing could have ended after the 1-2 minute introduction, and I would have been satisfied, but the fact that it went into a full-episode parody hit it out of the park. There were a couple instances where it dragged or became a little confusing, and of course a little extra production help could have helped, but all-in-all you can color me impressed.

    PANELS

    Oh geeze. Where to start?!

    I guess I have to preface this by saying that I absolutely adore panels. When done well, they can be some of my favorite experiences and memories from a convention. I’ll never forget the discussion at Shoujocon one year equating Jem and the Holograms to American shoujo, the genre’s/classification’s relevance to something like Escaflowne, etc. The gekiga panel at Otakon a couple years back was a fascinating look at where hilariously-manly storytelling could go above and beyond shonen and seinen. Every year in between I have attended a panel that blows me away with the amount of research, knowledge, and professionalism that can be presented by mere fans to their comrades.

    The other side of panels is what drove me to start doing my own, not to mention the podcast over at Daizenshuu EX. You know the ones — a dude or two sitting up front that simply like something and want to talk about it. Hey, remember that time Person X smashed Person Y in the face? Yeah, that was awesome! What do you think about Event Z? Yeah, that was pretty sweet. Any other questions? No? OK, let’s attempt to be funny for the next fifty-five minutes.

    There is a time and a place for that type of conversation, but a panel at one of the largest anime conventions is not it.

    Here is a break-down of all the panels we had the opportunity to hit up this weekend. This isn’t even cracking the surface of what was offered, but it might be a pretty good surface-level glance at the type of stuff available to attendees:

    • Remembering Satoshi Kon
      Presented by Daryl Surat (Anime World Order / Otaku USA), I knew what I was getting into with this one — a deliberate format, examples to back up claims, microphone etiquette, and all the other stuff that goes along with a fantastic panel. I learned new things, I remembered things I forgot, and gained an even larger appreciation for the late Satoshi Kon than I already had. Daryl gives himself a hard time by admitting that much of his research extends to on-disc extras and basic online research (indeed, much of what he covered is listed in the Satoshi Kon Wikipedia article), but it’s the way that it’s presented in-person that makes it so engaging. I can’t say enough good things about this panel.
    • Becoming a True Pokemon Master: An Introduction to Competitive PKMN Training…
      We arrived just after the start of this panel (thanks to having to run from the convention center over to the Hilton), and it was filled up enough to have to wait for a couple folks to leave before we were let in. That means we unfortunately missed the beginning portion, so I have no idea who presented the panel and how the first half went, but I was impressed enough with what I saw. Things were a little rough around the edges (you don’t need to read entire paragraphs off your PowerPoint presentation — please learn how to outline!), but the content was solid. I had never heard of “RNGing” before, so I can definitely say I learned new things. The content was excruciating for the wife who had zero knowledge and interest, so this was definitely one for the hardcore fans, and them alone.
    • Anime News Network
      Chris was at least aware of how bad this was and acknowledged it at the beginning, but the panel was basically just “what do you want us to talk about?” I can understand how that is somewhat appropriate for a mainstay website/panel like this, so it gets a little bit of slack. Nothing particularly enlightening or enthralling either asked by the audience or answered by the panelists, but them’s the breaks. Lots of prizes for the audience, so at least the bribes were appropriate.
    • FUNimation
      The only industry panel we attended this weekend, FUNimation’s was by-the-books, covering recent releases, current statistics, upcoming plans, and a few light announcements. Nothing earth-shattering out of the panel (still no Sailormoon! Blargh!), but for the DBZ superfans, we at least got some preliminary clarifications about the upcoming Blu-ray sets (un-cropped, apparently a new remaster). It sounds like they had one or two more announcements they were hoping to make, but the ink wasn’t dry and they had to hold off on them. Oh, well!
    • Deculture! A Macross Panel
      Walked out after the first ten minutes. The panelists did not introduce themselves, could not get their words out, seemed woefully unprepared, and did not know how to use a microphone anyway. Having recently watched the original Macross TV series (finally!), we have still been riding a high of enjoyment about the franchise. An overview of all the series and some new tidbits of information sounded like a great time. Unfortunately, this seemed like it was destined to be the exact opposite of a great time.
    • Unusual Manga Genres
      We only managed to catch the second half of this one as presented by Erin Finnegan (Ninja Consultants / ANN), but it was still a great time — endless examples of every niche genre spanning hilarious to serious and back again. She knew what she was talking about, was aware of the time constraints and adapted appropriately where necessary, spoke loud and clear… again, another fantastic panel that both enlightened and entertained, the two things I want out of every panel.
    • Masao Maruyama Q&A
      Despite him attending the convention for years, I think this was actually the first time we had a chance to stop by the Madhouse director’s general Q&A panel at Otakon. Another by-the-books professional panel with the expected questions from the audience, but a great and honest commitment by Maruyama to secure funding for and complete Satoshi Kon’s unfinished work (The Dream Machine) was a testament to his own professionalism and integrity.
    • Noburo Ishiguro Q&A
      Why waste time talking about things like Yamato and Macross when you can spend 20 minutes talking about the production of Cream Lemon?! That’s how things roll with Ishiguro! Lots of fantastic anecdotes dropped in this woefully-ill-attended panel.
    • Birth of a Generation: Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon
      In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that we submitted detailed proposals for two DBZ-related panels (one was media-focused regarding parodies and homages in both Japanese and American popular culture, while the other was a more formal dissection of how and why the franchise seemingly failed in Japan this past year). Neither were accepted. I can deal with that — we got our panel last year, it went well, and I suppose you can have someone other than the folks who run the oldest-currently-running and largest English-language resource for the franchise who do this stuff on a daily/weekly basis run a panel about it (ugh, sorry for how amazingly egotistical that sounds… but I’m also not sorry…). This was going to combine TWO FRANCHISES, so I totally get it: twice the potential audience. Makes complete sense, and I might make the same decision. Unfortunately, it was quite possibly the worst panel I’ve ever attended in my life. To be fair, we arrived about 25 minutes into the one-hour block. It looks like they had a PowerPoint at some point, but by the time we arrived, they were already well into a line-up of questions from the audience. The two panelists admitted they weren’t really experts (they just like the series), could not answer any of the legitimate questions asked of them (one regarding “the lost movie” from DBZ), and spent far more time bantering about whether Tuxedo Mask, Moonlight Knight, or Super Saiyan Vegeta would win in a fashion contest, or just how friendly Goten and Trunks really were with each other. The audience walked all over them, the panelists let them and indulged them with each and every painful question, and I struggled to convince the wife to stick around and watch the rest of the train wreck with me. Here’s the conundrum, though: the audience seemed to love it. They cheered with each and every Q&A, kept running up to ask more questions, and seemed to be having a great time. Plenty of people walked out, too, but plenty of people walk out of every panel, so I can’t really make a call in that regard. It just flabbergasts me. These people had absolutely no authority, no real preparation, no presentation skills at all, and yet received both a time slot and free compensation. I’m sorry, what world am I living in that this is not only OK, but appreciated by the audience? Am I the crazy one, here? One of the reasons I love doing panels is that I get a chance to share information and adoration with fans who don’t already partake in that stuff online. They have questions, I have answers, and everyone leaves in a good mood with knowledge they didn’t have an hour prior. That fulfills me in a way that I don’t get in any other fashion at conventions these days anymore, and with the personal interaction that even the podcast doesn’t truly have. At this point, I just don’t even know what to do about it.
    • The Abridged Panel
      A perfect example of a lackluster panel for me, but an extravaganza of awesomeness for others, and one that I totally understand and respect. People attend these panels to see their favorite “Abridged” series creators do some voices, share some new clips, yell things when bubbles appear on the screen, and gracefully accept the random fortune cookie tosses. Thrown in the mix you have people asking the obligatory questions like how to get into abridging on their own, and at the end of an hour, you’ve got a fantastically-attended panel full of laughs. I get it. Not for me, but I get it.

    MEETING PEOPLE

    With no panels of our own, we didn’t even bother trying to set up some type of community meet-up. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that if I was putting in so little effort, I wouldn’t be meeting too many new people! Major props to Doug (“Drabaz”) for recognizing me during the Friday evening fan parodies block. Having just recently spoken with him on our podcast about his custom LittleBigPlanet level, it was great to chat in person for a bit. The only other new meeting took the entire weekend, but I finally got a chance to man-hug our buddy MasakoX from TeamFourStar after the giant “Abridged” panel Sunday morning. It would have been criminal for him to have flown all the way out here and then never get a chance to say hello at some point, so I am incredibly grateful for him taking the time out of autographing gazillions of program guides, DVDs, books, bare chests, and whatever else fans were throwing his way to instead briefly hang out with us.

    There were of course all the catch-ups with old friends, but two new people? That’s it? Lame, Mike. Very lame.

    SO WHAT DID I ACTUALLY THINK?

    Otakon 2011 was pretty fantastic. We saw a lot of great people, saw a lot of great things, had a great time, and I don’t see why I won’t be back in 2012 for my 14th consecutive time to the only convention I actually still go to. Some things still need work, but they always do, and I look forward to seeing it continue to evolve.

  • Why “Episode Of Bardock” Makes So Much Sense

    Why “Episode Of Bardock” Makes So Much Sense

    AUTHOR’S NOTE: This blog post was written in 2011, two years before Battle of Gods and four years before Dragon Ball Super. It’s a little rough around the edges in terms of writing, but I’m still happy with the overall approach and general points being made here!

    You heard the hesitancy as we started discussing it on Episode #0262 of our podcast over at Daizenshuu EX — there is yet another transformation on the horizon for a character that never received it during the course of the series.

    Say it with me: “Who the mother eff-in’ eff cares…?!”

    As more and more news trickled out though, and especially up through this week with reading about the first “Episode of Bardock” chapter, I have really come around on this.

    Think to a couple years back when this “new transformation” revival all began (acknowledging that we had a few prior examples such as Yamhan in DragonBall Z / Budokai 2):

    We were introduced to Super Saiyan 3 Broli via Dragon Battlers and Raging Blast. Even in the home console game, he had absolutely no story — you spent the twenty stars to unlock a new stage to fight the character, and that was that. There was nothing special about it at all. The form simply existed, as-is, with no context. He was hyped up in promotional videos for the game, so that’s something… I guess?

    The same thing happened the same year with Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta — we got an introduction via Dragon Battlers, followed by inclusion in Raging Blast with no contextual story to even frame the darn thing, once again obtaining the character by purchasing a stage with twenty stars (and completing said stage). SSJ3 Vegeta was just another slot on the character select screen. I mean, the stage essentially starts with Vegeta saying, “OK, here I am with Super Saiyan 3! Let’s fight!” and ends with the narrator saying, “Yep, all the Super Saiyan 3 characters just fought, and people like to get stronger!” Could there possibly be any less to it…?

    Even if you did care about another couple characters getting such a powerful transformation (one whose point was, arguably, the fact that not everyone could do it), I can’t fathom how anyone could possibly get “Super Excited” about it without that key word there: context. Why did they transform? How did it happen? Was it an accident, or did they work toward it? When in the time line would this transformation happen? Is it just assumed that their target was Goku?

    Toss this year’s Super Saiyan 3 (Future) Trunks from DragonBall Heroes into the mix, and you have one giant, steaming, smelly pile of apathy coming from this jaded, old fan.

    Like I said earlier though, things are a little different with Super Saiyan Bardock. While he was first revealed as a new card and character for DragonBall Heroes in Japanese arcades (something so far removed that most English-speaking fans will never have the opportunity to experience it), it kept building from there. Next up was word that there would be a special manga presentation in V-Jump. Then Naho Ooishi (of DragonBall SD and the Jump Super Anime Tour manga adaptation) was going to be involved with it. Then it was going to be a three-part short story involving Bardock that ties in the new form from the arcade game. Then the Bardock TV special, along with the Trunks TV special, from DragonBall Z were finally going to be released as individual DVDs in Japan, previously only ever being available as extras within the two DBZ Dragon Box sets released back in 2003.

    It was suddenly all Bardock all the time. He had his opportunities to shine here and there (for example, as one of the extra unlockable characters in Burst Limit alongside Broli), but it was never in a leading role like this.

    This was an all-out assault crossing over to different media, providing opportunities for different types of fans to finally get engaged on a deeper level. Card collectors could pick up the card. Arcade dwellers could add him to their arsenal. Manga fans had a new story to read. Re-releasing the TV special lets the anime fans get caught up with the back-history (or in the case of younger fans, see it for the first time!).

    This is a fantastic step toward extending the franchise and getting fans excited again. Up until now, everything has been developed and sectioned off into its own little silo with little-to-no cross over. Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans was included in Raging Blast 2, sure, but its assets were all still just within the one game (such as including Hatchihyack as a playable character). All of the new story bits have been introduced in DragonBall Online, sure, but they are again all within the one game. The closest may have been the Jump Super Anime Tour special, which was legally streamed (in various subtitle languages!) online, received a two-part manga adaptation (albeit released only just the one time, so if you missed it you lost your one and only chance), and had Tarble included as a playable character two years later in Raging Blast 2. Maybe the closest example of true merchandise extension so far were the two SSJ3 figures released under the DragonBall Kai Banpresto HSCF label:

    (images courtesy our buddy Raithos)

    Those examples have all felt like afterthoughts, though. The fact that “Episode of Bardock” is being treated as a “sequel” to the original anime story and has elements being spat out to so many other areas is a great sign. There is a clear amount of effort being put into this: new characters, new names (complete with puns!), research on proper locations that these events might take place in, etc. It is all being done right from the start, too, as opposed to tossing something out (such as a figure) later on down the road. Assuming they start off this way and continue with new items to enhance this story (a scenario in Game Project Age 2011 perhaps? a SSJ Bardock figure, of course? a re-release of all Ooishi-drawn manga in compilation form a year from now, maybe?), then we know they are on to something!

    These companies (specifically Toei / Shueisha / Namco-Bandai) are finally realizing that their tactics need to change. With merchandise sales for the franchise decreasing year-over-year since 2007 (7.9 billion yen in fiscal 2007 to 2.7 billion yen in fiscal 2011), something had to give.

    They are on the right track — Bardock and some back-history is a great place to start. Keep in mind that this is not about using something as minor as “Episode of Bardock” (and its associated releases) to bring the franchise back to the sales levels of 2007 (never mind the 90s), but rather about keeping it alive at all instead of fading into complete obscurity again until a third wave comes along a few years from now. It will be fun to see if they have a plan to sustain the franchise, or just got lucky with this one.

  • Mike’s Spring/Summer 2011 Gaming

    Mike’s Spring/Summer 2011 Gaming

    People seem to want to hear my thoughts on video games, or at least my experiences with what I have been playing… so hey, let’s just dive right in and pretend it has not been a little over three months since my last contribution.

    I think what I will cover here actually brings you completely up to speed with my gaming experiences over those last three months since finishing Suikoden — anyone who knows me even the slightest bit knows how slowly I plow through games, so if you expected more, you are out of luck!

    As per the norm when covering such a huge amount of stuff, do not expect “reviews” or “well-written commentary” here — it’s all just a string of consciousness. Blame yourselves for asking for it! ^_~

    DragonBall Kai: Ultimate Butôden

    I plan on finally writing a full review for this game over at Daizenshuu EX, so between what you have already heard on the podcast over there and what I will be writing in the future, you have plenty to dive into. Suffice it to say that this game surprised the heck out of me, and it is a gigantic shame that it will likely never see release outside of Japan.

    Besides, this was way back in February, so as The Internet likes to say: “old!”

    Pokemon: Black Version

    After wrapping things up on the PSP with Suikoden, I was just in time to jump into the new Pokemon. It had been about a year since playing through SoulSilver, a game that I finished but never truly “got into” the same way that I went all out in FireRed and Pearl — but that is a subject for another time. I am just crossing the 100 hour mark in the new game, having defeated “N” and participated in a good amount of end-game content (gathering up the sages, catching all currently-available legendaries, etc.). I have not yet taken on the Elite 4 (and Adler, the actual champion) again because — *gasp* — I have sunken to the depths of specific egg move breeding.

    This is something that I have always been vaguely aware of, specifically with the promotion of Pikachu and the move Volt Tackle, but have never bothered to get into on my own. I have sadly gone down the rabbit hole, and I do not know if I will ever return. I have the aforementioned Volt Tackle along with Thunder Punch on a Raichu, a Lucario with Blaze Kick, a Milotic with DragonBreath, and (probably my favorite of all) a Ferrothorn with Rock Smash and Leech Seed. I have no idea what my “team” will be, but I am having a pretty good time toying around with selective breeding for the first time ever. It is a fun compromise between “enjoyment” and “insanity” before dipping even further down into I.V. Training. It fascinates me how much mathematical depth is down a few layers deep, but is always held back in any obvious way from the players. I will concede that having two DSes out (and thinking a third would be helpful) does indeed border on insanity.

    None of this is too much of a surprise. Like most of the players who get through the “main campaign” of the game, I find that I enjoy the end-game content far more than anything else. It is as if the game is just stringing you along for a couple dozen hours until the entire world is open and available for you to do whatever you want. That’s a pretty “duh” statement and reflection to all of you, though, isn’t it?

    I feel that there is a ton more I could say about the game, but I would probably be doing it a disservice without spending hours upon hours pouring over my experiences with it to come up with an “ultimate post”. I really enjoyed all of the continued improvements, as iterative as they always are, that have been made to the game (though I am left scratching my head why the option to keep the equivalent of “running shoes” on at all times was removed since last year’s Gen II remakes — I hate holding down the “B” button, and I do not always want to be riding the bike). There are some fun daily events to return to, and the Dream World does an interesting job of extending what they started last year with the Pokewalker.

    The game is not revolutionary. It is what it is. It is the type of game that lets me get my OCD jollies out so my life still feels balanced. Sometimes that is all I need.

    Kirby’s Epic Yarn

    The wife and I attempted to play through New Super Mario Bros. Wii together, but ended up putting it aside after one world almost entirely because we got in each other’s way, rendering the game “un-fun”. The two of us have plenty of Mario masteries under our belts (each copy of Super Mario World in our house has that little star next to the 96), so to suddenly be forced to work in tandem with someone else while simultaneous pulling off death-defying leaps of faith was something our brains could not process.

    So what made Kirby’s latest adventure any different? The adorable art direction (in many ways taking cues from LittleBigPlanet, and likely in more than just the art) melted our frozen hearts of gamer disgust. It took several months after receiving the game last Christmas, but we finally got around to jumping into the game. It took only around seven or so hours to complete, but like everything else I do with video games, that was spread across a few weekends.

    That word “adorable” really sums up everything about the game, especially if you toss “charming” into the mix, too. Particularly on the Wii, art direction and style really means a lot, and it was clear how much the developers took this to heart. The world is colorful, brimming with personality (even the generic “ice stage” has its own distinctive feel), and the right amount of cameos to make it feel fresh while still harkening back to what makes Kirby games what they are. Solid mechanics are a must for Kirby, and they work as expected (that is, perfectly) — a little bit loose and floaty, but tight and responsive at the same time.

    While plenty have derided the game for its “you can’t ever actually die” kid-friendly difficulty tone-down, this really was the best choice for the style of game they produced. Even though the majority of levels are on the short side, there were very few that I would have wanted to play even a second time through — a “wash, rinse, repeat” cycle of dying and re-playing would not have worked for them. On the flip-side, that also gave me little reason to want to go back and collect any of the trophies we may have missed (three in each level, similar to the golden coins in recent Mario games) or shoot for a gold medal based on the number of gems collected. We saw it all on one pass through, and simply getting a better grade for the sake of it just was not compelling enough of a reason to return.

    Yeah, yeah… all that “art” and “game play” stuff is important, but let’s be honest: the amazing narration work by Dave White is what really makes the game so great.

    Portal 2

    I got slightly burned on this game, and not in the way you might expect. Amazon was offering it for $5 off plus a $20 credit for pre-ordering the console version of the game, and even though I had no interest in playing the game on anything other than my PC, the PS3 version came with the PC version for free. I decided to go that route and put the free $20 toward the next Dragon Box set. Of course, when the game came in, PlayStation Network was down… meaning I could not redeem the code by linking my account on Steam via the PS3 to get the PC version. It took me a while to get around to playing the game (missing out a bit on the “being an active part of the discussion upon launch” diddly-doo), but it all worked out in the end.

    There is really nothing I can contribute to the discussion about this game. What can I say? It was super fun. I was genuinely surprised by the story at certain points, loved all the characters, and even though (yeah, I’m going there) the controls felt a little “console-ified” on the PC, it played like butter. I thought the third section of the main story (post-goo) was a little much and hurt the pacing, but not enough to drag down the whole package. I still have to go back and play co-op, something I can’t wait to do — just gotta find the time and a partner!

    It’s more Portal. It’s done well. C’mon, now.

    Mortal Kombat

    I have written a bit about how I got into Street Fighter, and while I touched upon Mortal Kombat a little bit, I do not think I gave the gory game series of greatness enough credit. As wonky as the fighting engine has always been, it has been a source of hilarity and unironic enjoyment for me. Like most people (I presume), the series faded into obscurity for me after MK3/Ultimate/Trilogy. I no longer cared about the increasingly-convoluted story (yes, I genuinely thought the story was moderately interesting — sue me), the early generation of polygonal fighting games were terrible (and would not impress me at all until Virtua Fighter 2), and I was busy exploring other genres of games, anyway. Oh yeah, and Street Fighter.

    I was interested in “MK9”, but purposefully did not actively keep up with its development. If it ended up as a surprise hit, fantastic. If it didn’t, that was perfectly fine, too. Early access to the game’s demo via PlayStation Plus piqued my interest for sure, and a price drop to $40 on Amazon shortly after release was too much to pass up.

    Cruising through the story mode, I found myself enjoying the Hell out of how abysmal it was and simultaneously also loving every second of reliving story bits I knew so well from the past — a “reboot” set in the same time period that does not ignore the original version was a fantastic idea.

    What is there to say? It is Mortal Kombat, but updated and relevant again. Lots of characters still play the same way as each other (defined only by their special moves), the mechanics still feel a little stiff and imprecise, but dammit, it’s a lot of fun. To reboot with the entire Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 cast is a pretty fine achievement, allowing room to flesh out a collection of go-to characters — I’m still loving Nightwolf (as lame as he is), Kabal, and Smoke… but my ol’ buddy Ermac just isn’t cutting it any more.

    Like I said for Pokemon, in the case of Mortal Kombat, it is what it is. It is not going to win over fans of more refined fighting games, but it is a fun romp that has both cleaned and dirtied itself up in all the right ways. It may be getting shoved to the side a little bit in favor of the next two games a little bit, but as I am moderately excited for the upcoming DLC characters, and with “King of the Hill” being as fun as it is, this is one I will continue to pop in over and over.

    Demon’s Souls

    Wait, what…?

    I own a lot of video games that I feel “I should own” — I’m that type of person. Persona 3? Sure, I will likely never get around to it, but I am glad knowing I have it if I am ever ready for it. Shadow of the Colossus? Well of course I should own and play that some day. Huh? What’s that you say? Better versions of each game exist now (PSP and PS3, respectively)…? Well crap.

    When Demon’s Souls went on sale for ~$15 on Amazon with its soundtrack last holiday season, it was an extra that I tossed into an order with some presents for other folks. “Mike,” I said to myself, “You will likely never play this game because it is incredibly difficult. You hate hard games, you have more games than you know what to do with, and you are a fool.”

    Well, fine. Sure. All of that is true. Except that I am playing it now. I really do not know what convinced me to toss it in. A free afternoon will do that to a guy.

    Every experience you have heard about the game (particularly the Zero Punctuation review) is entirely accurate: you start, you die, you get a little further, you die, and eventually you beat a boss. I am feeling pretty great about myself for completing the first stage of the game (“1-1”, the first area of Boleteria) with maybe only three or four deaths — I do not know how I got through that bridge area (with the dragon spewing down fire from above) alive, but I did!

    It has been a fascinating learning experience in training myself to not just run around and hit R1 to slash everything to death — attempting to do so will only lead to, well, more death of my own. Pull up that shield. Parry some attacks. Try to circle behind the enemy. Toss a firebomb down there. The game’s pace is so slow, but the way your heart will race with each new encounter will lead you feel otherwise.

    I have been enjoying the online messages, which may have been a reason I decided to start playing the game sooner than later — once the servers are taken down (and they have already been extended before), that component of the game will be gone. Sure, most of the messages are garbage, but even the occasional, “No, for reals, beginners really shouldn’t go down this corridor” have been helpful.

    Why do I enjoy the abuse so much? Can someone explain it to me? We will see just how far I get in the game before politely tossing it aside — I have already resigned myself to the fact that it is a game I will never complete (then again, I so rarely complete games that it will not be too much of a change for me). For now, I am enjoying that abuse and want to see a little more of the world. Maybe I just feel it is important to step outside the usual gaming box and see what else is out there. Maybe the underlying character stats are pulling me in.

    Maybe I just wanna cut up some demons. Or dragons. Speaking of which…

    Dragon Quest VIII

    As Pokemon winds down for me, I have been looking at what my next Japanese RPG should be. I have been saying for a while how I almost cannot even comprehend playing these types of games anymore if they are not portable, since the concept of sitting around and grinding away at battles while sitting on the couch at home seems like the last thing I would ever consider a “good idea”. I pretty much assumed my next game would be one of the DS Dragon Quest remakes, since IV/V/VI are sitting right there staring back at me. I briefly thought about heading into Radiant Historia next (based on the fact that Pokemon and Dragon Quest were similar in the grindy-grindy sort of way), but if I knocked that one out first, all I would have left would be the grindy-grindy games.

    Imagine my surprise when I decided I would do the unthinkable: play a Japanese RPG on a console again. Pokemon is still not quite over for me, and I was looking at playing something alongside Demon’s Souls on nights that I did not feel like playing the DS, but also did not want to concentrate super hard on reflexes and real-time battles.

    I knew it had a 16:9 mode to toy around with, I knew it had great voice acting, I had such a great time with IX… hey, why not dive into Dragon Quest VIII…?

    At about four hours in (which includes the requisite “stay close to town and grind for a while” opening tactics), I do not have a whole lot to say about the game just yet. It pains me to say it in light of his historical revisionist alignments, but Koichi Sugiyama‘s musical score fits the game like a glove, and has gotten quite a few approvals from the peanut gallery during play sessions. The cel-shading engine brings Akira Toriyama‘s character designs to life, and upscales quite nicely (though the lack of a progressive mode knocks it down a peg). The little story vignettes that I loved from IX (and from what I gather are a staple of the series) are already in full effect, and I cannot wait to learn more about the world.

    I also just got a boomerang for my hero (who’s named “Vegetto”, of course), and that just plain ol’ rocks.

    That being said, even though it is early in the game, I can definitely appreciate the difference between this and IX. Playing them in “backward” order has been a fun way to see how the main series evolved/devolved, and not even necessarily for “better” or “worse”. One of the things I loved so much about Chrono Trigger (a game that came out 14 years earlier than Dragon Quest IX) was the lack of random battles. It has actually been easier than I thought to go back to a console RPG with random battles — I think the wild-critter-every-step nonsense in Pokemon makes everything else seem like cake. The jump from the later game’s non-defined characters (my team consisting of Vegetto, Snow, Trunks, and Uub) back to a non-verbal hero supported by a cast of well-defined, vocal characters is a fun one. Again, none of this is qualified, but just “different” and fun for being that way. I suppose that is just a “statement of fact” that really does not add anything to the discussion, but hey… I am only four hours in.

    Minecraft

    Have I talked about this with any of you before? Since we have not done a “vgconvos” podcast episode in over a year (and no search results turn up for it), I doubt it!

    I got in right before the alpha period ended, figuring a couple bucks for guaranteed updates to a game that a million or so people were enjoying didn’t sound like a bad idea. I wish I could say more about it, but it has actually been a little bit since I last played. I am not enjoying the level of pain that I have started getting in my mouse hand (started using a tablet at work, scaled back on content creation over at Daizenshuu EX… yeah, sucks getting older), so other than the quick plow through Portal 2, I have scaled back on (what little) PC gaming I was bothering to keep up with.

    After learning my way around (and I mean that — after dying the first time it took me days to figure out which direction I had originally headed in to build my first base, after which I promptly built a giant, torch-lit wall so I could see it from a relative distance), I started digging and digging and digging. I have built two base camps connected by a stone bridge in one direction, and recently an air rail in the other direction (crossing across different masses of water and circling back around, if that makes any sense). I have started building more bridges out into the distance so I can find my way back — even with a compass, I feel that I will just end up aimlessly wandering without a distinct path to follow to and fro. I have visited The Nether, I have some diamond weapons, and I have endless series of tunnels that I promise myself I will one day connect to each other.

    I find that I enjoy hearing about other folks’ adventures in Minecraft, so if there is any kind of “demand”, I would be happy to take pictures of my building monstrosities. They are pretty terrible, but I had fun making everything.

    When I have a couple minutes here and there, I boot up the game and continue digging along in one of my underground tunnels. It is cheap, fun times.

    So What’s Next…?

    Well, that is a fantastic question — I wish I knew the answer! I have plenty of other console games waiting in the queue. In light of the apparent shut down of developer Game Republic, I feel like I should probably tackle Majin & the Forsaken Kingdom at some point soon. The DS has plenty of RPGs waiting for me, so I could really just grab a game at random off the shelf and go for it.

    What about you all? What have you been playing recently, and what gems have I still not gotten around to playing?

  • My Podcasting Setup ~2011ver.~

    My Podcasting Setup ~2011ver.~

    Having done a first version and then a ~2010ver.~ a year later, after upgrading a few things, it made sense to follow-up with a… (wait for it)… ~2011ver.~ post. So how ’bout them podcasts, huh?

    When we last checked in on the setup, I was considering cleaning out one of the extra rooms in our finished basement to make a quasi-“recording studio”. The room was a moderate disaster of half-empty boxes and miscellaneous extra crap from when we first moved in, but it would likely make for a fantastic recording area — low ceiling, closing door, a desk was already there, and the wireless signal reached all the way down there from two floors up.

    Well, the room got cleaned out, and we have been recording down there for a few months now. I couldn’t ask for much better out of such minimal work! Here is an updated, general view of the area:

    With the overview done, let’s dig into the hardware! I again have to preface this by saying that I don’t actually know anything about audio or any type of engineering, so this is all self-taught, trial-and-error based on moderate research and reading. I’m probably doing stuff wrong, I’m probably doing it all inefficiently… but it seems to be working out so far. Take my advice and recommendations with a modest-sized grain of salt.

    One of the most important upgrades has been from the Behringer Eurorack UB802 (~$50-60) mixer to the Mackie 1202-VLZ3 (~$300) mixer. In addition to the two additional XLR inputs (which means no longer daisy-chaining something like Jeff’s mixer when he comes for a “Manga Review of Awesomeness”), I have much greater control over just about everything. It’s just an all-around better mixer. As I read in the reviews, I noticed a better sound with the same microphones I was already using, and there was a noticeable amount of less noise in the output signal — when tweaked properly, it is essentially whisper-quiet.

    The output is still going from the “Tape Out” via the Behringer U-Control UCA-200 which came with my work mixer — no, I’m cheap and still haven’t purchased my own stand-alone UCA-202 (~$30) or similar device. This is one area that I may eventually upgrade. I’m not sure how or what I will do, since a dedicated Firewire setup is above and beyond what I need, but it feels like there might be a better way to get the audio to the computer with even better clarity and possibly normalization. Currently, the U-Control takes over as the input device, so switching Windows’ properties for what handles “in” and what handles “out” lets me use that for input, while still using the laptop’s on-board sound for output to headphones (to listen to test recordings and/or anyone on Skype).

    Over on the microphone side, everything is basically the same as it has been for well over a hundred episodes. I am personally still rocking the MXL 990 condenser microphone (~$50-70), which is held up by a Samsom BT4 boom stand (~$40).

    Within the last couple episodes, I have been keeping a duplicate of that same setup around for the wife so as to avoid using the Shure microphone (see below). It’s not that it’s a terrible microphone, but if I have something that’s so much better, why not use it? Having identical microphones in use (instead of both a dynamic and a condenser) also seems to help the levels and who gets picked up how much on which microphone across the room.

    For when the extra microphone is absolutely necessary, I have at least tossed the Shure 8900 dynamic microphone (~$50) on an On-Stage MSA-9508 side boom (~$10-15) and gooseneck extension so it is far more adjustable in terms of position and comfort, instead of directly on top of the old RadioShack Heavy Duty Microphone Stand with Cast-Iron Base (~$30). The RadioShack stand with a larger mic clip and the boom extension also doubles as the Rock Band accessory of choice for guitar + vocals, so it all works out in the end.

    In terms of headphones, I use the simple but serviceable Sennheiser HD201 (~$20-30) headphones. They are closed-ear with a super long cord, and they sound crystal-clear enough for the recording quality that I work with every week, so I haven’t felt the need to go nuts in this area.

    You will probably notice some other stuff in the room that handles I guess what can only be called “logistics”. Perhaps you wonder how it is that we all read notes on the “Manga Review of Awesomeness” (OK, Jeff just uses his iPad, now…) or e-mails. Do we print out notes? Of course not! A second monitor mirrors the display from the laptop for others in the room to keep up with the general show outline. I am really tempted to put a flat-screen TV up against that wall on the left in the future, though — not only would it be incredibly bad-ass, but it would give the entire room a larger, more convenient view of the screen, too.

    To just wrap up this section of the post, here is my general view of the room each and every week:

    So what about the software and actual recording? Not much has changed in that area, except the effort I ask of my usual participants coming in over the Internet.

    Everything is still recorded and primarily edited in Audacity. 44 kHz, mono. Done and done. I also still use the Call Graph plugin to record Skype conversations, but rarely in the same way as described last time around. Previously, I would take its 11 kHz output with my own track in the left channel and other side in the right channel, kill my track, turn the other track mono, re-export it, and use that as the secondary audio track to edit with, which isolates the other side of the conversation and lets me cleverly edit around any inadvertent talking over each other, etc.

    These days, because all of the regulars (Julian, Heath, Jake, Corey, etc.) actually know how to use a computer, I simply ask them to record locally on their own side, as well — that’s the second track I use (after recording they send me the audio, usually as a high bitrate MP3, rather than the needlessly larger WAV). I still use Call Graph as a backup, and usually to line up the two separate tracks. I place my own local track up top, bring the Call Graph stereo track below it, and then the other person’s local track below that, line them all up, kill off the Call Graph track… voilà! It sounds far more complicated than it actually is — since Audacity lets you zoom in to insane degrees, I can line up the tracks to the tiniest fraction of accuracy possible.

    By not using Call Graph (never mind its 11 kHz limitation, despite its amazing convenience and other customizations), we avoid any of that traditional “Skype noise” — you don’t hear someone’s call quality drop with their Internet connection fluctuations. In addition to that, by actually editing the show, we can avoid any excessive talking over each other, usually done by accident due to minor audio delays — I will typically just say, “Oh hey, start that sentence again.” It’s little stuff like that which folks may not even specifically notice, but I hope makes an impact in the back of their head somewhere while listening and comparing to other shows.

    After editing the tracks (which have already been noise-removed prior to editing), I spit the product out to Levelator to even things out. I still bring everything into a project file in Adobe Premiere to line up the bumper music — it’s one of those relics I can’t let go of. The block-based dragging and snapping, along with a pre-edited bin of all the bumper music, makes it very easy to cut the sections apart. I usually leave a 10-second gap in between sections while editing to make it easy to visibly tell in Premiere where the sections need to be spliced with the jingles.

    I may upgrade the software some day (likely Adobe Audition), but I figure until I know more about how audio actually works, it’s not really worth sinking the money into software.

    About those other folks, though — what are they all recording with these days? Well, the two most relevant folks to note here are Julian and Heath.

    Julian uses the Elecom HS-NB01UBK (~$30) headset that he picked up over there in Japan. As you have been hearing lately, it catches the bass of his voice quite well. It picks up a fair amount of background noise, but I am able to kill that off with some basic filtering in Audacity well enough. Since I am editing with multiple tracks, that means I can also just silence out an entire area on his side if I need to. I ask that my co-hosts don’t rely on that and practice proper microphone etiquette and all, but at the end of the day, you cannot control when the little one decides to yelp!

    Then there’s Heath. Up until recently, he has been using whatever generic headset he’s had lying around (he tells me it was the Logitech USB Headset H530). You may have been able to hear it (even though I try to cut around it as much as possible), but it would randomly peak when he would start talking, and it picked up a rather huge amount of background noise — it’s the kind of headset that works fine for gaming and casual conversations, but not for podcast discussions. With all the great content him and I planned on bringing to the podcast in the future, this just couldn’t last. In response to some random chatter on Twitter, we made it known that we were looking to upgrade Heath to some actual audio equipment. Our buddies Lemmy and Ryan came through with some donations that covered it all… within minutes! Heath would really have no need for a mixer setup the way I have things, so we decided to go with a dedicated USB setup for just himself. In addition to a generic pop-filter and the same Samsom BT4 boom stand (~$40) that I use, we went with the USB version of my microphone: the MXL 990 USB (~$100-150). Unfortunately, the USB version of the microphone comes with just a little stand that would never work for the way we like to actually be comfortable while recording, so to complement the mic and boom stand, I sent him an old, only-semi-broken MXL 90 shockmount (~$35) that I had from my first microphone (I had since gotten a replacement as a gift). One of the screws was slightly stripped, and the inside rubber portion needed a little glue, but all-in-all it was in perfectly fine shape! Appropriately so, Lemmy wanted a picture of Heath’s new recording setup… and so did I for this blog post!

    Here’s what the good sir had to say about it:

    I’m loving the new setup, and the audio quality is SO much better! After messing around with things, this is the setup I finally settled on. It’s somewhat like what I was using before, only my Logitech headset is now replaced with my new fancy microphone and boom stand. The MXL 990 USB powered condenser microphone is plugged into my laptop on the left, whose only purpose is to record the mic audio in Audacity. The laptop is also used to connect to Skype if I’m recording with anyone else over the world wide web. I then use my personal desktop computer to look up references while recording; typically there’s Kanzentai on one screen and Daizenshuu EX on the other. I would record on this computer, but Audacity tends to crash once I hit the stop button. Luckily my mouse and keyboard are Bluetooth, so I can set the keyboard in my lap if necessary. Of course I just use my headset as head phones while recording. But more importantly, there’s usually a beer just to my right on the desk and there’s a mini fridge full of it behind me.

    So that’s pretty much where we stand. I don’t feel the need to really upgrade a whole lot more on my end, with the possible exception of eventually having four of the same microphones so even Jeff doesn’t have to bring one over. Oh, and some more folding chairs would be nice. Maybe a new desk eventually, too. And a mini-fridge for beer convenience. Do they make silent mini-fridges…?

    (NOTE: We did not consult each other re: mini-fridges prior to writing this…)

    I guess we should also treat Jake to upgraded equipment at some point in the future. Julian, too, if and when he ever makes his way back to the states.

  • PSN DRM Disconnect

    The long-rumored “game saves in the cloud” option is coming to PlayStation Plus members. Included in its description on the PlayStation Blog is the following statement:

    Online storage for game saves is a great way for PlayStation Plus subscribers to ensure that their data files are secure and also for users who wish to access their files from other PS3 systems.

    That strikes me as rather fascinating, considering Capcom’s dips into heavy DRM on PSN titles such as Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, which seem to be a clear line in the sand against “game sharing” (where one customer purchases a downloadable title, and “exploits” a “feature” of the PlayStation Store licensing where the title can be downloaded and used on a certain number of other systems).

    Sure, Capcom is not Sony — I get that. Plenty of people, especially after the launch of the slim model, also have multiple PS3s in their home, which would make picking up from a save file a lot easier with this new cloud option.

    As a PlayStation Plus member (courtesy of a gift from Mr. Deluxe), I am all for the new save capabilities and welcome them with open arms. Somehow it just doesn’t all jive with me, though. I can back-up copy-protected game saves and use them on another system, but I can’t play a single-player-only game offline on another system…? It seems like there is a lot of conflict coming down the road with an option like this.

  • Random Podcasting Inside Baseball

    Random Podcasting Inside Baseball

    Nothing of huge interest to write about here, but if you actually follow along with this blog and/or me in any significant way, you might care at least a little bit.

    I have been mentioning for a while how a new mixer was on the horizon. Since (I think…) Episode #0112 of the podcast over at Daizenshuu EX, I have been using my trusty Behringer Euroback UB802 (which isn’t available anymore, but the Behringer Xenyx 802 is basically the exact same thing). It has certainly sufficed up until now. I have not been completely happy with it, though — Behringer stuff gets the job done, but you will occasionally be reminded why it costs so little. My own mixer once decided that it was only going to output sound in the left channel, only to have the right channel return to full functionality a few months later. The Xenyx 1204 that I got for work now doesn’t want to output audio at all (which is why my little guy became somewhat well-traveled).

    I knew I wanted to upgrade to something that had at least four XLR inputs, which would finally get rid of that pesky situation where someone comes over and I suddenly have more people than inputs on the main mixer, resulting in a totally ghetto daisy-chain. I also wanted something of a higher quality, of course. This led me to the Mackie 1202-VLZ3. A solid mixer from a solid company with an appropriate amount of features = sold.

    The big guy came in last week, and I love him to death:

    I have yet another boom stand on order, so once that comes in and things get fully set up, I might consider doing a “Version 3” of “My Podcasting Setup” (which was last updated just about a year ago). The basement “studio” has been awesome, and we just decided to put some shelves in, so it’ll get even nicer. Hurray!

    Speaking of that there main show that I do pretty much every week, we get our e-mails and forum posts, sure… but I also like to occasionally step outside the internal comfort zone and see what other folks have to say about it. Just about two years ago, I posted up a couple choice quotes I happened to dig up, so I figured it might be worth it to do that again.

    I really just wanted to share one particular bit of feedback, though. Upon clicking through to the person’s contact information, it didn’t seem that they are all that active (and this particular post was many months back), so rather than directly contact them (which I may still do), I figured it’s out there and public anyway, so I might as well publicly respond to it. Through the normal course of surfing + Google Alerts, I came across this thread on fanfiction.net where someone replied to a conversation about DBZ fandom and communities:

    Having listened to vegettoex’s podcast for years until it boiled down to ‘what’s new in your life and lets recap a single volume of manga!’ sort of TL;DNL, I can say yes I’ve been to the forums. Not sure why you assume people haven’t been there as he’s one of the few big sites left from yester year. And while they are active in near 4chan trolling, gifs, bad AMV(bring back the good stuff please?) fandubing and the occasional decent debate, its still vanishing. Even there.

    For starters, we make it a huge point to not excessively talk about ourselves. The introduction to each episode does indeed have a little “Hey, how ya’ doing?” segment, but it’s always a part of a larger “What new things came in…” or “What’s new on the site…” that is at least somewhat relevant to the DBZ-loving listener. I will certainly concede that much (much much much) older episodes may have had a little bit too much of the personal talk up front, but even then it was nowhere near what this post would lead you to believe.

    The “Manga Review of Awesomeness” is a once-monthly topic. Its purpose was to allow new folks to follow along with a group of fans and their podcast about a franchise that has a ton of history that they might not be completely up on — they are “timeless” episodes that anyone can go back to at any time. Based on the feedback from our big survey, it also happens to be the most-enjoyed type of topic by a wide margin. “Majority” doesn’t mean “entire audience” though, so I can understand how there are folks who don’t care for it — that’s why it’s only once a month! I know for a fact that there are a bazillion other types of topics intermixed on a weekly basis, and they are purposefully arranged so that at least once a month there is a type of conversation (in-universe, product review, manga, etc.) that folks of a particular segment of the fandom can latch onto.

    Yes, I run a very calculated show. I read and listen to every bit of feedback I can get my hands on. I’ve gotten back into the habit of listening to my own show even after I’ve edited it for release to critique it. I want it to be the best that it can be, to appeal to as many people as possible… but at the same time have just the right amount of pompous authority to show that we ain’t messin’ around, yo. You want to know something? Information you can trust? Ain’t no other place, bro-dawg.

    (Also not entirely sure if they are referring to our website and/or forum with that stuff about troll images and such. That’s as far removed from the prison we run as can possibly be described.)

    On the other hand, then we get comments like these on the rare occasion which reminds me exactly why I love doing this stuff so much:

    Im a relatively new listener who once thought I knew everything about Dragon Ball from watching Toonami…..

    I don’t think “thank you” covers it.

    So that was a blog entry.

  • Dipping Into the Classics: Suikoden

    Dipping Into the Classics: Suikoden

    I have always meant to go back and play more of the 16-bit and 32-bit RPGs that I missed during their prime. It may take me years upon years on end, but I do eventually hit up what many consider the “classics” (even when I don’t finish them — hello, Final Fantasy VI — I want to give them at least a little bit of the attention they are supposedly worth).

    Many personal friends have recommended Suikoden II as one of these games to go back to. It continues to be one of the genuinely “rare” games, though — one that reaches that fantastic $200 price tag on eBay, shared by a few of its peers like Panzer Dragoon Saga. If I were to play a Suikoden game (or series of games), I would likely start with the first. The barrier to entry is far less with the original, particularly when you take the PlayStation Store into account, where it goes for a semi-ridiculous $6.

    As a part of their 15th anniversary celebration, Sony offered the first game for half-price back in September 2010. Yes, the game cost $3. At that price, who could pass it up? I sure couldn’t.

    I did not get to the game right away, though, having plenty of other things to occupy my time (such as still wading through Dragon Quest IX). Thanks to the remembrative (that’s a word, right?) power of Twitter, I know that I started the game on January 18th — we had a delayed opening at the office, but due to car pooling and train schedules, I ended up heading in at my regular time and hanging out at Starbucks with the PSP.

    (Side note: I have reached the point where my tolerance for Japanese RPGs requires that they be portable. If I cannot bring it with me and play in short bursts, I cannot and will not dedicate the time to it. Therefore, Suikoden ended up getting played on the PSP courtesy of Sony’s somewhat gracious option of PSOne Classics being both PS3 & PSP compatible/transferable.)

    Having just completed the game yesterday, and at the suggestion of some friends and Twitter followers, I figured I would share a few thoughts on the game. A long entry like this makes up for a drought in terms of articles and podcasts, right…? Try not to think of this as a review, though — it is far too casual for that.

    My overall experience with the game was a hugely pleasant one. The game has, in fact, spoiled me in terms of playing current Japanese RPGs (yes, a game that came out 1995/1996 has plenty of leg-ups on today’s games, much like the amazing Chrono Trigger, which I detailed in two pieces). I will analyze some of these, but I would be remiss not to mention some of the annoyances I experienced with the game, too.

    Right off the bat, I was extremely impressed with the presentation of the game. I specifically noted areas of the sound design, such as noise from the water fountain panning across the speakers as you walked past.

    If I suffer any amount of data loss with a game, it is likely that I will immediately drop it in disgust, never returning to it again. About a week into my playthrough, and directly upon starting up the first major battle in the game (not a boss fight, but rather a special rock-paper-scissors army battle), the PSP froze for a few seconds and turned itself off. Thankfully (more for the game’s sake rather than my own!), my prior save point was only a few minutes prior, which meant returning to the same spot was not a major ordeal — the worst part was simply re-reading a ton of non-skippable dialogue.

    Despite completing the game now (and under the 30 hour mark), I do not feel as if I ever fully “got” the magic system. In fact, I did not even use magic for approximately twenty of those hours…! I understood that there were these “runes” and that I was collecting “crystals”… but for the life of me, and even after reading through the instruction manual (which is included in the digital version of the game), I do not think I actually know how I got some of those magic abilities. The town-by-town basis of where certain types of merchants were (those that sold items, attached crystals, sharpened weapons, etc.) did not reinforce any of the concepts to me through normal game play, so it was up to individual experimentation to find what worked with what. Some crystals even specifically noted they were for certain characters (the “Boar” rune being for Pahn…?), but I would collect a dozen of them from defeating enemies, leaving me scratching my head. In addition to not fully comprehending the system, I found that my physical attacks were always strong enough to take on any enemy I came up against, essentially turning magic into a completely irrelevant concept in my mind — I was all about sharpening those weapons, and nothing else!

    So how do I feel about that? Part of me thinks back to the days of the original Legend of Zelda, where exploration was left up to the player without holding their hand — I enjoy that quite a bit. On the other hand, this was not just about combining certain items and finding cool uses for them on your own, a la the Materia system in Final Fantasy VII (which, as a 15-year-old kid, I also had trouble understanding right off the bat, but eventually through my own experimentation was able to not only fully understand, but exploit!). I guess I am conflicted — I understand the basics of it, but never felt as if I was in enough control of the progression. Perhaps I’m wrong. I may just be stupid. Were I to replay the game, I would likely start messing around with crystals and such far sooner in the story and do so far more often, rather than just relegating it to a side thing to occasionally use.

    One of my favorite aspects of Dragon Quest IX (and from what I understand, is a large part of prior games, as well) was the little story vignettes. The larger story was there to push you along, sure, but the real heart and charm would lay in each individual town and its smaller, compact, tightly-knit group of characters. There is certainly a town system in the first Suikoden, but the heart of the story was not with the townsfolk — it was with your own rag-tag group of friends. Even with a staggering amount of available characters, and even knowing that some of them would be woefully extraneous and near-irrelevant, I still found myself engaged by nearly all of them and genuinely curious about their plights. The game has a couple instances of short, sequential cut-aways to various areas of your castle with certain groups of characters having conversations with each other, reminding you of their own struggles with loyalty, self-discovery, revenge, and loss. It brought a wonderful sense of camaraderie to the group, which is one of my favorite tropes (did the shonen anime love not give that away?).

    That being said, as relatively interesting as the greater cast was, the fact that the main party consists of six characters led to a lot of favoritism. When you consider the party’s formation (short, medium, and long-range attack capabilities), you can see how this would happen. I found myself returning time and time again to Cleo, Vikor, and Flik. Kirkis wound up as a long-range fighter and healer toward the end of the game, and somehow Tai Ho ended up in there, too.

    (Oh, and hey… did anyone else not know Cleo was a woman until 20 hours in when she is actually referred to with gender information? Anyone? Anyone at all?)

    That also being said, I was incredibly impressed with how easy the game made it to bring other characters back into the fold. Any characters forced into the party for certain situations were usually ones that had been along for the ride and were equipped already, but in the instances they were not, it did not take long for them to get up to snuff. The game dishes out experience not at a flat rate, but somewhat exponentially based on the level of the character — a character at level forty may only get 3 EXP from a monster, but a character down at level five may actually jump straight up to level ten from the match (the numbers not being accurate, but a generalization). Therefore, so long as you kept that forced character alive, they would likely be on par with the rest of your group in just a couple fights along the way.

    Without spoiling things too heavily for those that have not played, major character deaths are a semi-recurring trend in the game. Each one was obviously coming by the nature of those forced party members and certain quips, but they all at least brought a twinge of emotion in me. I am sorry to say that I did not gather all 107 (yes, minus a certain one…) characters, which sounds like it would have resulted in a nice “Awww…!” out of me toward the end of the game. On a second play through, I would certainly go for this.

    So far, I have only hinted at the story and my feelings toward it. I noted the cast of characters, enjoying the time I spent with them, etc. What about the larger story, though? There is a villain and main plot, right? Well… I suppose so. I hate to keep doing comparisons with Dragon Quest IX, but I think it is an apt one to make in this case — where as Dragon Quest IX smartly held back the main “villain” and its respective goals/plot/interactions until later in the story (and yet still providing that overarching narrative that tied things together and led you along so that it all still felt like it truly was one giant story), Suikoden attempts to do the same thing at times, but misses the boat. It was as if the game designers and writers wanted to show me how the hero’s story was relating to the larger world and the villain’s plot, and those bits shined at key points, but I still felt far more disconnected than they probably would have liked. This “Windy” lady…? Who is she, again? Oh, and this other cloaked figure that shows up from time to time talking about runes…? One particular story where the team is sent into the past to witness a key event really helps set things up, but without reinforcing those story ideas just a little more often, I was far more concerned with my party’s own turmoil than with the world’s. Maybe that is OK. I definitely liked my characters, so if I got enjoyment out of them, isn’t that enough? It was clear that the writers wanted me to care more about the world, though — but I just didn’t.

    (Speaking of villains, what the Hell was that last boss I fought…?)

    Moving back to game mechanics and design, I had one incident where I spent the majority of play time over the course of two days completely unable to advance the story. I was told on Twitter by a few folks that the game is very heavily “check-pointed” (for lack of a better phrase) at times, where these event flags indeed prevent you from continuing the story unless you complete a very specific action. I thought I had encountered something like this during the poison rose scenario, but it turned out I simply had not walked out a door on the top floor of a building to find Milich. This is a recurring thing with me and video games (not seeing the obvious), but I like to think that this was the game’s fault, rather than my own — many of the “doors” in the game are, frankly, not obvious as anything other than a plain ol’ wall unless you know what to look for.

    The castle (which I named “Grayskul”, by the way) was something I had never experienced before in a game like this. Having a central hideout/base was intriguing to me, especially with all the other games I have played being so linear (not that Suikoden isn’t) in terms of “this town, then this town”. There was always a place to go back to which grew along with you over the course of the game. Even as I began recruiting characters, I had no idea that some of them would actually embellish the castle and put themselves to work! Coming back to my own blacksmiths, armor dealer, elevator, and even my own (free!) inn made me want to go out and seek the full 108 characters. The first time I wandered my (barren) castle I was extremely apprehensive about it, but the game quickly took care of those fears for me.

    Something that I never truly struggled with but still found a nice challenge in was the limited inventory system. While you could store items in your vault back at the castle with Rock, each character can only hold a certain number of items, which includes their equipped armor and accessories. Maybe this was a nice prelude to when I eventually get around to playing Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light. Item drops from monsters would occasionally force me back to a town to appraise and then back at the castle to drop, but there were no instances where I was fighting with the system to bring the necessary number of items on the road with me.

    I noted earlier that a couple aspects of the game’s design have spoiled me — those would be (1) “Free Will”, and (2) resting at inns.

    While many games have experimented, even within the confines of random battles, with how to speed things up (particularly toward the end of the game when you are over-powered), Suikoden provides a battle option called “Free Will” throughout the entire game, by which your entire party will just automatically target opponents and physically attack them — no magic or items will be used, and they will not necessarily target opponents in conjunction with each other. Despite (or because of?) those limitations, the excessive “Press A To Win” (or in this case, “Press X To Win”) game is not necessarily removed, but at least toned down. The minor tedium of those random battles is still there, but at least with a way to speed up the process and still reap the rewards (cash, experience, and dropped items). “Free Will” also beefs things up in the visual department, zooming in a little more with multiple characters attacking at once, which also helps speed through the round.

    Perhaps my favorite aspect of the entire game (boy, am I easy to impress…) was how lightning-fast resting at an inn is. Seriously. There’s no excessive “watch the characters walk to their beds” scene. No musical cue to wait through. Pay the innkeeper, screen fades down, screen fades up, no more dialogue to read, go ahead on your way. I simply cannot overstate how impressive this is.

    It may go without saying, but were Suikoden II to hit the PlayStation Store, I would grab it in a heartbeat. I am more than ready to dive into what is said to be the best of the series, especially with the first impressing me so much. With a few things cleaned up here and there, a few cameos from the first game… how could I not be interested? It has also made me curious to check out Water Margin, one of the four classic novels of Chinese literature which it is (very loosely!) based on. With Journey to the West also under my belt (which I am coincidentally also about to finish a very loose video game adaptation of!), why not?

    Until then, I still have plenty of other classics and cult favorites to get through. Xenogears is finally up on the PlayStation Store now, and you likely won’t see me for a month after the new Pokemon hits this weekend…

  • Bonus Podcast: “Kintoki” Review

    Bonus Podcast: “Kintoki” Review

    AUTHOR’S NOTE: This 2010 post and accompanying podcast episode was sufficient for the time (barely), but really could use a total re-do… and it’ll get one at some point! We actually know how to record and edit things properly, now!

    In the meantime, you should check out the publicly-accessible page for Kintoki on the Kanzenshuu Wiki! At this time of writing (early 2021), the wiki itself isn’t live yet, but we made this particular page accessible so you can get an idea of the kind of insanely detailed nonsense you’re in for.

    I was just going to toss this up in the Daizenshuu EX podcast feed, but hey… I have some space over here, too, and I said I would only release podcast episodes as a part of this blog when I honestly had something interesting to say and do… and this seems relatively interesting…

    In September 2010, it was announced that Weekly Jump would have a special series of one-shots called “Top of the Super Legend” starting with issue 45 and going through issue 50. Current Jump artists would be contributing these new, short stories… but a certain “legend” of the recent past would also toss one into the mix: Akira Toriyama. A little later on, we learned that the story would be called “Kintoki“, and that was about all we got.

    Toriyama’s work, KINTOKI: 金目族のトキ (Kintoki: Toki of the Golden-Eyed Tribe), was the last one of the bunch and released within issue 50. All of us from the extended Daizenshuu EX and Kanzentai communities are big fans of everything Toriyama has done over the years, but beyond comparing DragonBall to his prior works (especially its direct predecessors such as Dragon Boy and Tongpoo), we never have an opportunity to go in-depth about them about on our DB-centric sites.

    Well, nothing’s really stopping us.

    I decided to do a fun “bonus” podcast, and invited on Heath to talk about the new one-shot with me. Much like the “Manga Review of Awesomeness” recurring segment on my main show, what we did was recap the actual story of the manga, and then dove head-first into all sorts of things: name puns, correlations to other Toriyama works, our own thoughts on this new one, etc. It runs around 45 minutes, so it’s a pretty decent length show without going completely overboard (especially considering the one-shot itself is only about thirty pages!). We definitely had a fun time with it, and if you enjoy it and want to hear more like this in the future, let us know! We will probably do it anyway just to amuse ourselves, but it would be nice to know that someone out there actually wants to listen in, too.

    OP/ED: “Riding on a Time machine~サイケデリック☆５５” by Hironobu Kageyama (from the album Cold Rain — CDJapan / Amazon Japan)

  • Holiday Break Gaming

    Holiday Break Gaming

    This past Thanksgiving break, as was expected, I dropped a bit of minor cash on all the great sales digital distribution providers were offering. Between some indie pack sales on Steam and some discounts on Xbox Live, I probably acquired a dozen new games over the last week. Some of them will end up like many others in my Steam list and never get downloaded, but others will undoubtedly end up being discussed on whatever end-of-year podcast we end up doing around these parts.

    I ended up playing a fair amount of different types of games over the last week. I figured I would break them down for my own sanity (and see what you all were up to):

    Dragon Quest IX (DS): $33.62 via Amazon

    I almost cannot bring myself to finish the main quest. I really do not know why; perhaps it is due to this part of the story not being particularly interesting (unlike the early, town-by-town stories which I found absurdly endearing)… but I really should just go and get it done. If I want to come back and do some maps, I can do so — nothing is preventing me from doing it. C’mon, Mike! Finish a game! Instead of beating it, though, I just fought some liquid metal slimes for a bit…

    DragonBall: Raging Blast 2 (PS3): $34.99 via Amazon

    I finally finished unlocking the last couple of characters. While this was more of a “for work” type of game, I was having a good time with it, nonetheless. As you will read, I have been enjoying the heck out of “Galaxy Mode” and its constant stream of dangled carrots. There are still a few characters I want to get back to and learn a little more in-depth, so it may be one of the first DBZ games in a long while that I actually return to after completing its review.

    Super DragonBall Z (JP PS2): $64.90 via Play-Asia

    On a whim, I tossed this goodie back in. After a couple rounds of reacquainting myself to the controls, I was back in the groove. It is no secret how much I love this game and how much of a crime I feel it is that these darn kids today do not respect it. I played a good amount of rounds as my custom Mecha Freeza (whom is simply named “Mecha”), spamming all sorts of wonderful projectiles before rushing in with quick combos. “Crack Bomb” and “Freeza Cutter” have re-entered my daily lexicon. Consider yourselves warned. I note the Japanese version specifically because that is the one I originally purchased — the American release does not feature the original Japanese voice cast, a deal-breaker for me.

    VVVVVV (PC): $5 via official website, Steam, etc.

    I had been waiting on some type of sale or bundle before picking it up, since it was almost guaranteed to hit that point sometime soon in Steam. That being said, it is a steal at the regular $5 price point. The simple and limited controls of “left or right” and “change gravity direction” are brilliant and right at home in today’s world of platforming’s glorious return. The music is also fantastic and will have you tapping and thumping along. Much like the recent Super Meat Boy (which I will probably grab on Steam rather than Xbox Live, the only reason I do not already own it), the ability to instantly pick up where you left off after dying is exactly what these types of punishing games need to do to keep it fun and satisfying. I am most curious about playing the game without a controller in the later levels, as it seems so counter-intuitive to do any amount of progressively-difficult run-and-jump maneuvers on a keyboard, alone. Then again, some people say similar things about FPS games and equality of dual-analog sticks to mouse+keyboard… and those people are wrong… so who knows? I could be wrong about this control judgment.

    And Yet It Moves (PC): $9.99 via official website, Steam, WiiWare, etc.

    Part of another indie bundle on Steam, I had been hearing about it for a few weeks and blindly purchased it when the sale kicked in… and I could not be more happy with a purchase. The art direction is jaw-dropping, and the twisty-world mechanics also fit in as a perfect complement to something like VVVVVV. Much like the aforementioned game as well, the checkpoint and instant-restart system in place is perfect for that “just one more level” tug. Everything about this game screams “quality” from the art to the haunting music to the puzzle design, and you owe it to yourself to check it out. A WiiWare version was recently released, though I have not checked out the demo to see how it plays on the console.

    Mega Man II (NES): $5 via Virtual Console

    I have never been particularly “good” at any game in the series, but its extraordinary music and difficult-yet-fair level design always brings me back around. While I rented III more than any other as a kid, I recognize the quality of II just as much. My session with Mega Man II was just filler in between some other obligations, so all I did was breeze through Metalman’s level… but it was enough to get those memories flooding back.

    Game Dev Story (iPhone): $3.99 via iTunes Store

    Sure, I am a couple weeks late on this one by the blogosphere’s watch, but who cares? It is an absolute blast. I have been playing in bits and pieces and am still only on my first run through (I am about twelve years in and have completed 32 games and done a few contract jobs), but I cannot wait to play through again. Having now learned all the ins-and-outs of which systems will come when (which should have been obvious, but I was not expecting pun-erific accuracy down to the Bandai Playdia), what the benefits are of training and hiring certain employees, what the best types of game and genre combinations are… what is essentially “Let’s Play Game Management Company!: The Game” could not possibly be more fun. Certain aspects are a little rough around the edges, but its cute factor and attention to detail are overwhelming.

    So many other games were acquired and not-yet-touched (‘Splosion Man, Trials HD, Gish, Recettear) that it simultaneously fills me with both joy and dread!

    This all got me thinking, though: what are your “holiday trends” with regard to gaming? Do you dive into one specific game and not move onward to the next one until that first one is complete? Are you like me and cruise from parts of one game to parts of another game, making slow bits of progress along the way? Also, did you snag any great deals over the last week?

  • Ye Olden “Proud Of Myself” Story

    Ye Olden “Proud Of Myself” Story

    As you can probably tell from the various podcast episodes I have done (including here on vgconvos), while I love topical discussions, I also adore old stories. Anything filled to the brim with reminiscence is right up my alley. I love hearing how people grew up with games, how those games affected their lives, and any little vignettes they care to relay.

    This is one of those quick, old stories.

    I have spoken before at length about Zelda II and whether or not I actually like the game. I shared how I have never actually beaten the game myself, but a childhood friend has the personal glory of owning a save slot on my cartridge with a completed game (and amazingly enough, my game’s battery still has not croaked):

    Rewind to the previous game: the original Legend of Zelda.

    Mike C. was always a slightly-better gamer than I was — not significantly so, but enough to impress me just enough without leaving me scornfully jealous. It was definitely fun times. We both played the Hell out of the first game, sitting down for long nights in front of the TV (long after our parents thought we were asleep) and trading the controller back and forth on levels and save slots. Mike C. beat the first quest before I did, and the two of us turned our attention toward the rumored-yet-true second quest.

    Anyone who has played the original Zelda knows how completely arbitrary some of its discoveries can be. Burn a random tree here, and you found a cheap store. Bomb a random area of wall here, and you found an old man who steals your money. In the second quest specifically, walk through this random wall that cannot be bombed and shows no signs of passage in any way, and you found a hidden passage. Once you realized that only one “secret” would be present on any single screen, things fell into place a little more…  but it still felt very “random”, even with the amazing feeling of accomplishment.

    It is that combination of “randomness” and “accomplishment” that gave me one of my only one-ups on Mike C. with the second quest. We roamed the map for days looking for level six, but could not find it. Level seven was a tree burn, sure, and we found that one ahead of time no problem… but where the Hell was level six…?!

    Its original location held no clues, but I was convinced that it would still be around the graveyard in some capacity. We pushed every grave stone. We bombed every wall. Nothing…

    … nothing, that is, until one night by myself when I decided to blow the whistle/recorder on each of the six graveyard screens:

    Words can not describe how proud I was of my child self, and how devilish it felt to be the one to share the information with my buddy.