Schmidt (Koji Igarashi jus…): My wallet needs this to n… Eusis (Koji Igarashi jus…): It's worth remembering th… Parish (GSQ4: We all go h…): They're still there. Not … NevznachaY (GSQ4: We all go h…): Jeremy, could we have the… Acosta02 (Koji Igarashi jus…): I don't know that people … Refa (Koji Igarashi jus…): Heck, I'll take an SD ver… Ryonin (Koji Igarashi jus…): This kinda makes me want … Mudron (Koji Igarashi jus…): I would suspect that peop… Refa (Koji Igarashi jus…): How is this game going to… SonicPanda (Koji Igarashi jus…): So, this is going to be m…
This is the archive, folks. The current stuff is on the main page.
If your head explodes with dark foreboding
27 June 07 | 22:42 | Posted by:
My head just exploded, but not with dark foreboding. Merely mental exhaustion; I've just finished my first-ever EGM cover story and boy are my arms tired. In the end, it was but a few thousand words, plus sidebars. Writing that many words wasn't a problem; the topic at hand offered plenty to write about. No, the challenge came in paring down the first draft, which was about twice as long. There's something sort of painful about culling more than half of an article you spent two full days writing, although I know intellectually that it's certainly better for the ruthless revisions. I'm sorry, my little word-babies. Daddy still loves you.
Well anyway! Hopefully that's out of the way and I can spend the rest of the week basking in the awesomeness of all of my stuff that's gone up this week at 1UP, including Utopia or Dystopia? I made desktop art of the image in the article because I am lazy and it required no effort. Here are images for the six most popular resolutions at which this site is viewed!
Also, to the guy who views this site at 2048x1536, I want you to know that I hate you really, really hard.
Also, you should read the Contra Retro Roundup, because it will soften up your mind so that we can thoroughly blow it away tomorrow with our Internet-exclusive hands-on with Contra 4. Certain things you may have read about the game may be incorrect! I guess you'll find out. Tomorrow. (By which I mean Thursday, which is already today for you East Coast types.)
Finally, I wrote a lot about Phantom Hourglass. And that's, like, the beginning of the game. It doesn't even delve into sailing, or the phantom hourglass itself.
Okay, I'm gonna crawl off to die now. I don't think I'll be able to write again for about a week or so. My brain's all sore.
Revisiting Trigger, Interlude: Crono isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel
27 June 07 | 08:13 | Posted by:
My offhand remark about the courtroom theme from Chrono Trigger and its resemblance to Pink Floyd's "The Trial" from The Wall sparked more conversation than I expected. Well, mostly it prompted people to listen to the two together and say, "Huh, I totally see it." It's not that Trigger's theme stole specific melodies or riffs from Floyd, but the two songs have a remarkably similar feel and structure, and given their common context can't really be chalked up to coincidence, you know?
There's also the small matter of famous video game composers and their love of prog rock. That's right, you laugh at it, you think you hate it. But Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuo Uematsu and Hiroki Kikuta have all confessed at some point or another to totally digging the likes of Pink Floyd, Emerson Lake & Palmer and other dinosaurs of rock.
And that is why their music is, in the words of Knives Chau, so, so good. Don't believe me? Check out these five tunes and try to imagine them in the context of an RPG battle.
Genesis: Firth of Fifth - Final Fantasy V's "Battle on the Big Bridge" has always reminded me of this particular tune, except the Genesis version has a way more amazing guitar solo.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer: The Three Fates - Visualize "Dancing Mad," the Kefka final battle suite from Final Fantasy VI, and I think you will be startled by the similarities.
Yes: Starship Trooper - The second half, a layered instrumental that gradually builds to a climax, seems ideal as a dynamic battle theme that adapts as you progress, no?
Gentle Giant: Alucard - The song so video-game-y they named a character after it!
King Crimson: Red - I could totally fight a pretty-boy aspiring to godhood to this song.
And while I can't place direct influences, Chrono Cross has a ton of proggy bits. Particularly "Fate - Gods of Destiny." To say nothing of Secret of Mana's "The Oracle" -- or the entire Secret of Mana+ album, which is basically Kikuta channeling Tubular Bells.
Of course, prog isn't everything! Every should be aware by now that Robo's theme from Trigger resembles a horrible Rick Astley song. But let's chalk that one up to coincidence -- I'm pretty sure that "ghoulish white boys straining themselves to be soulful" aren't big on Mitsuda's list of inspirations. Then again, he is pretty hardcore into Celtic music, so clearly he enjoys music by pale people. So who knows.
Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is good. I mean, like, really good. As in, I am astounded.
I guess it's my own fault that I'm surprised; for some reason I had it in my mind that it would be more akin to Four Swords -- you know, charming but shallow and broken into bite-sized chunks. Wrong! It's actually a full-fledged Zelda game, with actual dungeons and puzzle solving and lots of NPCs to talk to and obstacles to surmount in order to open up new areas. In fact, there might actually be a little too much talking; this is not an import-friendly game, because you have to be able to solve light riddles in order to progress.
The important thing, though, is that the new interface works perfectly even within the context of this game. It felt fine when I tried it out last year before E3, but in that time they've seriously refined it in small, subtle ways so that it feels almost perfect. Almost, mind you. Sword slashes and rolling attacks still feel a little clumsy, but the basics are impeccable. Running with the stylus makes the simple act of moving around more engaging, because feels incredibly fluid and forces you to be more mindful of potential hazards; drawing on maps is genius; and plotting a path for the boomerang is much more effective and satisfying than dropping into a first-person perspective. Oh, and also, the graphics look really great for DS, but I suppose that was a given.
I'll write up a full preview in a few days, but I just had to express my amazement. The DS has already developed such a great library, and that this raises the bar even further, etc. etc. Nintendo, you magnificent bastards.
Seattle is pretty much the only place I'm allowed to travel anymore. Someday, I might actually be able to, you know, see the city, rather than the inside of hotel conference rooms and publisher offices. But whatever could I be doing in Seattle this weekend? Hmmm, I wonder.
Here's an even better question to contemplate: the costs of running this site are starting to hurt a bit. I think it was the forum software license that did it. So -- how can I turn this site into a money-making venture? Eh, skip that. I just want it to break even. "Adsense" is not the correct answer. I know there's been some interest in random merchandise, buttons or shirts or whatever, but what would people actually want? Or would it be better to just do straight-up art commissions? I dunno. You people tell me.
I've been procrastinating on part three of my rhapsodic waxing re: Chrono Trigger, but then Joystiq had to go and link me. Now I've got guilt. Alas, this will be the last of these for a while, regardless of guilt; my next two weeks are pretty much slammed, and I haven't made it any further into my replay than is chronicled here. Between my review of Heroes of Mana due tomorrow and the release of Phantom Hourglass Thursday and our upcoming online exclusive first look at _____ _ and the fact that I'll be penning the next EGM cover story (eep), I don't really have a lot of Trigger Time. Or, uh, any other time, really.
But enough about my woes. Let's talk about whoas.
The Village of Magic
Throughout the process of writing these CT blogs, I've found myself constantly wrestling with the urge to say "This is where the game really begins!" I guess that's a good sign, as it suggests the game evolves organically; players are constantly given new options, new abilities, new story twists. Does the game really begin when you fall into the first time gate? When you enter the cathedral? Once you bust out of jail? Once you've reached the future? At the End of Time?
Let's go with the End of Time, if for no other reason than it's really the last time you can really make the claim that "it all begins here!" legitimately. I mean, we're five hours into a 20-hour game, you know? Besides, in the End of Time, you're informed of the three-member party mandate, granted the gift of magic, and given the freedom to move freely through time. So yeah. This is where the game really begins!
The End of Time means facing off against Spekkio (the Master of War, not to be mistaken for Kratos or Nic Cage), which unlock the party's magical techniques and make additional double techs available, which is good. It also means that anytime you come across a Time Gate, both sides of the gate become linked by a platform in the west portion of the End. Having leapt from the far-flung future, the party suddenly has the option of leaping to the distant past (like, way distant -- 60 million years, give or take) or back to the comfortable safety of 1000 AD. "Comfort" being a relative term, no doubt, what with the party being hunted as terrorists and all.
Another reason you can make the case for this being the "true" beginning of the game is because it's where the game's mildly non-linear elements start to poke their head through. There's not actually much point in traveling to 60 million BC just yet, since all you can do is wander and fight, but the option's there, which is certainly more than most modern console RPGs allow. Ultimately, though, the way forward is by heading home, sort of. By way of some monsters' closet. (There's a joke about bottling screams for electricity in here somewhere, but I can't quite put my finger on it.) And through the Heckran cave, packed with creatures vulnerable only to magic.
Now it is the beginning of a fantastic story! Let make a journey to the cave of monsters!
The Hero Appears
After you visit old man Melchior for some important foreshadowing and Antipode the Heckran into submission, there's not a lot to do in the present besides head to Leene Square and leap into the time gate, linking it to the End of Time as well. (I also recommend stopping along the way to snag the old man's lunch. Now that the trial's over and done with, to hell with anything so mundane as morality or consequences.)
The next leg of the game is, in an entirely roundabout way, a quest to recruit Frog. With the rescue of Queen Leene, Frog's gone totally emo, hiding out in a hole in the woods and sulking about how he's not worthy to be a hero. Meanwhile, as he feels sorry for himself, evil runs amok and countless thousands suffer and die. I mean, yeah, being cursed to look like a frog sure sucks, but it's not the end of the world. Being physically revolting hasn't stopped Carrot Top from living an upbeat life, for instance.
Granted, you don't immediately realize that you're trying to talk Frog into joining your party (and/or spending his inactive hours standing beneath a light post in a timeless void); that objective sort of develops out of the story. The team heads back to 600 BC to put a stop to Magus, whom they believe created Lavos as part of his war on humanity, and in order to do that they have to fight past Zenan Bridge. Along the way they learn about the "legendary hero," who appears to be a kid of some sort but actually turns out to be a poseur who swiped Frog's stuff. And of course, here they have their first encounter with Magus' general Ozzie, leader of a triumvirate of tone-deaf, evil fiends.
Yes, Ozzie, Flea and Slash, aka Vinegar, Mayo and Soy Sauce -- say what you will about Ted Woolsey's translations, but I'll fight a heavy metal pantheon over a bunch of condiments any day. The generals are clearly where the dev staff said, "Alright, Toriyama, these guys are all yours," which is why they look like hybrids of DragonBall characters and sound like they should be refrigerated after opening. And I'm OK with that.
Of course, Ozzie turns out to be as much of a chicken-wuss as the so-called legendary hero, making Frog seem pretty noble in comparison, even though the latter is moping in a hobbit hole and listening to Dismemberment Plan albums (on vinyl, no doubt, for maximum pretension value) as he weeps softly to himself. He's so self-involved he doesn't even notice when Crono lightfingers his prized treasure, the haft of the ancient sword Masamune. Which is, curiously, a broadsword rather than a katana, indicating that Woolsey's localization liberties weren't always spot on. The blade of Masamune, by a totally crazy coincidence, is hidden away in a cave in the mountains where the not-so-legendary hero is seen scurrying to safety when the party arrives.
The trek through the Denodoro Mountains really plays up some of the more unique elements of the gameplay. For instance, you're kinda boned if you don't bring Lucca along; she's the only character capable of using fire spells, which are necessary to weaken the nastier breed of mountain goblin. The need to soften up foes with a particular style or element of attack is seen throughout the game, but this is the first time it really plays a crucial role; if you don't burn away the goblins' hammers, they deal double damage and take only a fraction of the full power of your attacks.
Equally unique are the battle setups. While Chrono Trigger doesn't inflict random encounters upon players, there are certain fights that simply can't be avoided. Even then, the game tries to keep them interesting. Enemies are usually visible on screen before a fight, and sometimes you can skip right past them by behaving certain ways. The small dinosaurs near the time gate in 60 million BC, for instance, will fight if you run into them as they're patrolling their turf, but if you stand still as they run past they'll brush right up against you without going aggro.
And then there are those stupid freelancers, the sword-slinging crow dudes in the mountains; although they'll fight you directly, they greatly prefer to antagonize other monsters by throwing rocks at them, provoking them to attack the party. It's annoying, but definitely clever. Almost every battle in the game has a "story" to it, whether its the roly-poly pink guy being attacked by Gremlins in the hills north of Guardia or goblins being teased into violence by rogue freelancers or a sleeping guard in the cathedral. The preludes to battle make each area feel as though each encounter was carefully considered without bogging the pace down with excessive dialogue or cinematics.
Did I mention already that this is a great game? Yeah, OK then.
The Rare Red Rock
Once the upper half of the Masamune is collected (requiring the player to defeat its spirits, Masa and Mune, next in the line of bosses capable of turning combo techs against the party), Frog is still all despondent. So Crono hauls the broken sword to Melchior who sends the team a-fetch questin' in the prehistoric past in search of a long-lost red stone necessary for the blade's reforging.
This introduces the party to Ayla, a welcome break from the typical weakling RPG female stereotype. No healing magic here, and no furtively smacking an enemy with a puny staff or rod for a fraction of the hero's damage; Ayla has the best physical growth stats of any character in the game and is usually the first character to start hitting for quadruple digits. Also, her combo techs with Crono are pretty much capable of destroying anyone's face. And to top it all off, she's somehow mastered the art of hairstyling, depilation and lipstick application, despite her inability to form a grammatically correct sentence. In short, she was Square's first female bodybuilder.
Actually, that's probably an unwise joke to make, since I'm pretty sure any female bodybuilder reading this could snap my body into three tiny pieces. Just, uh, just kidding. Ah ha hah.
Like any floozy worth her salt, Ayla has a raging party to celebrate the appearance fresh meat. Crono and his crew get totally wasted and wake up with hangovers, which is pretty impressive since Nintendo's 16-bit censorship ensured they were slugging back "soup." Once they each down a V8 and a raw egg, they discover that the neighboring fraternity totally staged a panty raid while they were passed out and swiped Lucca's gate key in the process.
"REPTIIIIITE HOOOOUUSE!"
Next (in a few weeks): Footprints! Follow! | Thanks as always to VGM for the images.
I like many things about my apartment -- it's inexpensive for San Francisco, it's located right on a train line that stops two blocks from my office, it's well-lit and spacious. But maybe best of all is the fact that it's situated just a couple of blocks from one of my favorite Japanese restaurants, Goemon. The staff is great, the selection is excellent, and the food ranges from very good to the mind-blowing awesomeness I experienced a few nights ago.
But I think my new favorite thing about Goemon is the list of weekly specials located at the front of the restaurant. Have a look and see if you can figure out why.
Yeah, I did a double-take, too. Apparently the secret to Goemon's excellence is that a whole lot of love goes into its preparation. And they're not afraid to talk about it.
Alright, so the dude who had offered to do the layout/CSS work for my grand Gamespite redesign has apparently fallen off the face of the earth. Any other takers out there? I'm talking about four different layouts total, I believe. (Main page, entry page, comics page, comics entry page.) Nothing too daunting, except maybe the part about making it to my exacting specifications.
But yeah. I have Photoshop files, you have XML/PHP/CSS/HTML skillz or whatever. Let's get together. It'll be beautiful. And money could be involved, maybe?
Bad enough that Nintendo revived the name, look and mechanics of one of the most sublime games ever made only to let Artoon take a big old crap all over them with Yoshi's Island DS. But now this?
A beautiful 3D rendition of Yoshi's Island... as a Smash Bros. stage? Nintendo, why you gotta make it personal? There can be no forgiveness.
Uh, on a totally hypocritical note, any of you NYC types willing to do me a favor?
I'd like to extend a personal thank-you to everyone who freaked out and overreacted to my Busou Shinki post. It was nice of you to glance and the images and assume the worst rather than actually reading the text! I know reading isn't technically a prerequisite for being online, but it does help from time to time. ANYWAY. On with a different form of dorkery altogether.
We're Back!
When last we left this blog, Crono had just saved the princess and a queen, too -- the princess' ancestor from 16 generations prior. Count all the generations of princess-babies saved in between as one homogenous mass and you have quite the royal hat trick. The rescue of Marle and her great (etc.) grandmother pits Crono, Lucca and Frog against their first real challenge, a battle with a monster named Yakra. He's... a yak. With spine-launchers.
It's here where the game's combat system really begins to show its chutzpah. Chrono Trigger has a completely inspired battle system, a fine close to the Super NES's run of great role-playing games; in fact, the in-game nomenclature refers to it as "Active-Time Battle 2.0," a very clear indication that it was intended as the evolution of Final Fantasy's 16-bit battle system. Which FF then ignored. Frankly, every PlayStation-era FF -- every 32-bit RPG until, say, Paper Mario, really -- was a step behind what happened here. At least. Maybe three or four steps, depending on the game.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that only the Suikoden series came close to realizing CT's exquisite mix of speed, immediacy and party interaction. The first two Suikodens featured combat that was quick and painless, with practically no load times to speak of -- about the only PS era RPG to pull that off, regrettably. Chrono Trigger did it, though, and did it beautifully. Every encounter took place on the same screen as exploration, with the party fighting amidst the normal environments against monsters that could usually be seen in advance (and often avoided). Since the combat used the same visual elements as exploration, there was no load time to worry about, to transitions to deal with. The party simply stepped into position, drew their weapons, and the battle commenced.
That transparency of design was abandoned by subsequent RPGs by developers drunk on the visual potential of 3D graphics. The flow and feel of gameplay become secondary considerations in favor of how totally rad it would be to have battle sequences with the highest possible polygon count and incredible visual effects at every turn. Never mind that Trigger managed to be one of the best-looking 16-bit games ever made; once FFVII sold a million in America, everyone decided to march in lock-step to its design, more's the pity.
And then there's the combo system. Like I've said, Trigger's battle system is streamlined, each character learning little more than half a dozen spells and skills apiece at predetermined skill levels. Even so, it never feels dumbed down, because your choice of party members determines your skill pool, which can vary dramatically from team to team. Once two characters fight together, they learn combo techniques which allow them to use their innate skills simultaneously: Crono combines his Cyclone sword technique with Lucca's Flame Toss to create Fire Whirl, for instance, an innately physical attack that offers Cyclone's area effect but with an added fire-elemental attribute to double its power -- potentially more, against enemies weak to fire. Since all six characters are capable of comboing with one another, each party lineup has its own unique arsenal of skills, which makes the fact that each character individually knows only a few techniques much easier to swallow.
It's such a simple but effective design; it adds both variety and strategy to an otherwise simplistic combat system, especially once you start building more skills. In the Yakra battle, for instance, Frog is the team's only innate healer, but he also possesses X-Strike, an extremely powerful combination sword technique with Crono. So do you spend his turns linking up with Crono to take down Yakra in a hurry (with Lucca tossing healing potions as quickly -- and expensively -- as possible), or do you play conservatively and use his healing skill to counteract Yakra's powerful physical attacks? And once triple combos become available, combat decisions become even more of a balance. Stupidly, no other RPG has ever done this particularly well. Not even Chrono Cross.
The Trial
So, having mastered the battle system, Crono and company return to AD 1000 to find themselves immediately seized as terrorists. Seems they captured the princess and absconded with her to parts unknown. I told you this chick would be trouble, Crono. Shoulda just hooked up with Lucca and called it a day.
This being AD 1000 rather than 2007, alleged terrorist Crono is actually given a speedy, public and fair trial rather than held extraterritorially for years and waterboarded. The trial is the first real "so cool" moment of the game, reminiscent of FFVI's opera but infinitely better -- the outcome of the trial is only slightly determined by how you respond here. The substance of the case for or against Crono is actually based on his behavior during the Millennial Fair. Did you bother to help the little girl find her cat? Did you eat the old man's lunch? Were you kind to Marle? Seemingly innocuous actions from several hours ago come into play here, complete with flashbacks and a one-by-one jury tally. The music even resembles "The Trial" from Pink Floyd's The Wall.
Not that the outcome actually matters; the world of AD 1000 isn't so far removed from our own, as even an innocent Crono is tossed into the deepest level of the castle dungeon by a shady poltician working outside the law. If only they'd thought to remove his equipment. Especially since I had him kitted out with the best available gear, way outclassing the guards. A bit of stealth action and one massive boss fight later and Crono (now with a seditious Lucca in tow) busts free and fights his way out of the castle, stupidly taking the princess with him. Well, okay, she tags along of her own volition, but still.
Beyond the Ruins
Pursued into a dead end, the crew leaps blindly into a conveniently-located time gate, just like the one that started the whole mess at the Millennial Fair, and land in a cold, bleak world filled with the ruins of what appears to be technology. The previously rapid pace of the game slows down a bit at this point; where the party has been whisked from event to event without a moment's respite, their arrival in this new area is marked by a change in the tone. Instead of being force-fed information about the new situation, it instead becomes a bit of a mystery. Where have they arrived, and why is everything so desolate? The adventure ceases to be reactive and becomes more exploratory as Crono et al. strive to unravel the truth of their latest destination.
The truth turns out to be that they've leapt forward nearly 2000 years to a world devastated by a combination of very angry robots and a monster called Lavos, who annihilated the utopian earth in 1999. Destruction rains from the heavens! on a control console as the three adventurers watch in horror; the world is brought to a grim end, and humanity is left to huddle in filthy ruins, struggling to survive as the end draws near.
Interestingly, the video recording of the Day of Lavos is pretty much the only time in the entire game in which you're told the story rather than shown. And as it happens, you end up seeing the Day of Lavos by the end of the story anyway. Much as I love Chrono Cross, it would have been such a better game if it had bothered to take its cue from this aspect of its predecessor.
The End of Time
The one good thing to come from this trip to the future -- besides Marle freaking out at the annihilation of mankind and resolving to save the world (yeah, fine, so she's not entirely useless) -- is the addition of a new party member, Robo. (He's a robot, guys. I know, right?) Robo is helpful because he's the second permanent party member to possess a healing skill. Oh, and his presence makes a mess of the time warp thing and the whole party ends up in a strange limbo called The End of Time.
The reasoning behind this is pretty much just a bunch of arbitrary narrative to justify keeping your party limited to three people, but whatever. The End of Time is a handy way to travel through time. With both the incentive and the means to adventure within the player's grasp, The End of Time is where the introduction ends and the substance of the quest begins.
I am pretty sick of this site eating and rejecting comments at random, so I'm upgrading to the latest version of the blog software. So... if the site randomly stops working, at least you know why.
Except that you won't, because it won't be working, and you won't be able to see this. Oh, technology.
And assuming this doesn't work as planned, any recommendations on a good backend to use? Pivot is almost great, but not quite great enough.
I did something strange recently: I bought a new anime DVD that wasn't a Miyazaki film or a classic '80s/'90s movie/OAV. The last time I actually bought (or watched, really) a TV-to-DVD anime production was about five years ago with volume two of Karekano. And that particular endeavor was enough to make me say, "Maybe I shouldn't be squandering my hard-earned money on this crap anymore."
But people won't stop talking about how great The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is, and I'd already seen a clip from the series in which a high school rock band performs a blisteringly awesome song with shockingly good animation, so! I bit the bullet and grabbed volume one when it arrived last week. And it was, indeed, pretty good. However, this is not a blog post about Haruhi Suzumiya. It is instead a missive about the unintended consequences of anime, the tragic spiral of consumerism into which it sends one's life. Or something like that.
See, what happened is that the morning after we ("we" being a bunch of 1UP employees and freelancers with nothing better to do with our weeknights than hang out and watch old anime and hot new episodes of GameCenter CX) watched Haruhi, Kotaku had to go and post a recreation of Hare Hare Yukai (the show's closing sequence) with pokémon in the roles of the cast. It was terrible, yet mesmerizing. And it initated a wave of YouTube trolling that resulted in much better creations, including several Rockman versions. And finally, there was this:
Once I moved beyond the awe-inspiring realization that some lonely man in Japan spent countless hours filming toys to mimic the ending credits of a cartoon, I was completely amazed at the sheer articulation of the figures in question. It turns out they're a Konami creation called "Busou Shinki," and they basically hit on a number of things I find completely rad: Hyper-articulated figurines, out-of-the-box customization, video games, and diminutive women who kick butt. And thus I gave in and bought a few.
The Busou Shinki line consists entirely of mechanized female characters who come with about three or four dozen accessories each. They're high-quality PVC and have a stupid number of joints, including some really innovative joint constructions I've never seen -- the hip joint, for instance, can actually distend twice to allow a figure to sit with its knees pulled up to its chest. And the bodies come apart at several places (mid-bicep, wrist, head, mid-thigh and shin) so accessories can be attached or even swapped with other figures.
In short, they're kind of incredible. I just wish they didn't all look like 14-year-old girls in lingerie.
Zyrdraya | Flower Type
The underaged, under-dressed girl to the right is named Zyrdraya. She is a delicate flower. No, really -- all the articulation and swappable components make these toys fairly fragile, and her weaponry is patterned after a flower.
Apparently each "wave" of Busou Shinki is a set of two characters with a thematic connection, each designed by the same artist. Zyrdraya's counterpart is Jevusy, the Seed Type; other waves include Angel/Devil, Dog/Cat, Samurai/Knight and Mermaid/Siryn. There are also some stand-alone accessory sets with increasingly bizarre themes: Bunny, Dolphin, Fort Bragg and, uh, Santa Claus. Surprisingly, the Bunny set is about the most tasteful one of all, offering not a unitard and fishnet stockings but rather black night-ops gear that looks like something straight out of a Masamune Shirow comic. (An older one, from when he was more interested in drawing detailed machines and cyborgs than drawing shiny breasts.)
"But I don't see much to do here with flowers," you say. "Aside from the fact that she seems to have been designed for Akihabara goons to sully the flower of her innocence with their lecherous eyes." And you're right! That is what these things are for:
These are the various accessories she comes with, including a new set of legs and a more modest chest covering. Once she's all assembled, she looks like...
Which, really, isn't nearly as pedo-riffic as you'd expect. And vaguely flower-like, I guess.
I'm really impressed by the detail and flexibility of these toys, although it would be nice if they weren't all young girls. The appeal of tiny women kicking butt lies in the David-and-Goliath of Chun Li taking down Sagat with rapid-fire kicks, or Alita reducing Mukaku into plasma traces. Bring on the beefy punching bags, I say!
There are more images of some of the other models behind the jump. Future updates: Customization galore, and exploring the video game aspect of Busou Shinki... assuming I can get it to work on my computer, that is.
After all my gushing about Mega Man Legends last week I decided to fire up the game and revisit some of its better moments. This was when I made a shocking discovery! That shiny new PlayStation 3 backward-compatibility update? It has issues. I could deal with the crashing FMV in Vagrant Story, because that wasn't really part of the game. But the fact that audio streams in MML don't sync up with the in-game cinematics? This aggression will not stand, man.
Half the charm of Legends was that it actually had in-game cinematics rendered with the same models as the gameplay, complete with animated facial expressions, back in a period where such things were frankly unheard of. Capcom USA even found good voice actors and made sure to time the sound properly to the lip-flaps, such as they were. It was a tiny marvel in its day, and something is rather lost when all of that goes away. Nice work, Sony.
So since I couldn't spend time with Mega Man Trigger, I figured I'd do the next best thing and get reacquainted with gaming's other great trigger, the Chrono one. Actually, I'm lying. The name thing is just a coincidence. But wow, Chrono Trigger. What a freaking great game, even after all this time.
Revisiting Trigger 1: The Queen Is Missing!
Square did something truly exceptional in Chrono Trigger, something I wish they'd made an effort to repeat in their future games: they created a streamlined and extremely accessible role-playing game that nevertheless offered a great deal of openness, freedom, content and variety. Generally speaking, RPGs either become bogged down in detailed, arcane systems (FFXII gets a free pass in my heart, but it was guilty of this), or else they strip away everything and basically turn the entire experience into a rote march from one plot point to the next (see: every Shadow Hearts). Chrono Trigger struck a perfect balance from the very first moments of the game.
The game is broken into chapters of sorts and begins with The Millennial Fair -- a celebration of the establishment of the Kingdom of Guardia, 1,000 years prior.
Truth be told, I used to hate the Millennial Fair; it kept me from jumping right into the meat of the game. That is, running around fighting things. In hindsight, I appreciate what it accomplished much more. It is, in essence, a tutorial -- but a wonderfully subtle one. Rather than taking time to tell you "Here is how you play the game (hint: choose "fight" a lot)," the Millennial Fair is seamlessly integrated into the story. You can skip almost all of it and head straight to the action, or you can explore and deepen your experience.
Talking to people and participating in events at the festival gives you a safe hands-on battle experience, establishes the backstory of the game, gives you a chance to perform actions that will affect the trial sequence a few hours down the road, and even lets you buff up your character. It's possible, should you be so determined, to net Crono some gear that will last him quite a ways into the game. You can do this by earning silver points to exchange for cash within the fairgrounds, or you can break out of the story path to wander around the countryside, fighting monsters in the north forest and venturing south to Porre to buy better armor. From the beginning, the player sets the pace, the tone and the difficulty of the game. But it's all very quietly woven into the fabric of the game.
Every RPG needs to do this sort of thing.
Anyway, once you start exploring the fair you meet Marle, a burbly blonde who turns out to be vastly more trouble than she's worth. Don't fall for her wiles, Crono! Lucca may look like Velma from an Akira Toriyama remake of Scooby Doo, but she's a genius and wears a pith helmet! That's way more awesome than some airhead who gets her fashion sense from the girl in Secret of Mana.
So yeah, Marle screws up one of Lucca's inventions and falls into a hole in space; Crono bravely follows along and ends up 400 years in the past where he eventually comes to realize (presumably, anyway, since he never actually speaks, so maybe he's actually a complete idiot randomly bumbling from fight to fight) that letting Marle fall into the past was a really dumb idea since she looks exactly like her ancestor, Queen Leene of Guardia. Improbable, you say? Not really. Royal bloodlines don't usually enjoy a lot of fresh DNA. Her appearance in AD 600 means that a kingdom-wide search for the recently-abducted queen is canceled since, hey, look, we found Leene. She's looking younger than ever, and demanding "eye scream." Ah, hilarity! Until a temporal paradox rips Marle apart from the inside out, anyway.
This begins the adventure in earnest, since you actually to go and fight monsters, ultimately leading up to the first boss fight. The way is made easier thanks to Lucca's timely arrival and the even timelier arrival of a giant mutant frog-guy named, uh, Frog. He's a masterful swordsman with a dark secret and, sorry to say it Internet, the most annoyingly strident and bombastic theme music ever. With Frog's appearance, the game's combat system really falls into place, but I think I'll will write about that next time, when the game really picks up steam.
Even in the slow-ish opening parts, though, replaying Chrono Trigger instantly reminds me just how great this game was, and how frustrating it is that so few developers have drawn upon its best elements -- accessibility, pacing, gameplay. There's a reason I still cling loyally to the J-RPG genre despite its utter stagnation and creative bankruptcy, and that reason is simple: Because when they do it right, they come up with games like Chrono Trigger, games visceral enough to reach across genre boundaries and appeal to everyone.
Everyone, I said. If you don't love this game, you are not worth counting. Harsh but true!
Listen now and enjoy two essential pieces of '80s greatness. I always wondered when I was a kid if the actual music in these songs was performed by the band my sixth grade teacher played drums for, the Harry Leeds Band. One of the songs is credited to the "Harry Pitts Band," which seems like a Breathed-esque kind of mockery of the band. And Harry Leeds were pretty popular for a while in the West Texas area, while Breathed is from Albuquerque, which is pretty much next door. So who knows. Maybe he had a fleeting brush with comic strip fame.
The Busou Shinki line consists entirely of mechanized female characters who come with about three or four dozen accessories each. They're high-quality PVC and have a stupid number of joints, including some really innovative joint constructions I've never seen -- the hip joint, for instance, can actually distend twice to allow a figure to sit with its knees pulled up to its chest. And the bodies come apart at several places (mid-bicep, wrist, head, mid-thigh and shin) so accessories can be attached or even swapped with other figures.
