Verbal Spew

Boy are my arms tired

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:22:00 -0700

So, I'm back from Tokyo and in a wonderful place where it's been 60 degrees and misty and cloudy all day. If we could somehow combine the cool, clean bay air of San Francisco with the density, efficiency and food of Tokyo, we would have the best city in the world.

I'm forcing myself not to sleep too much until later tonight to help fight jetlag, so my brain isn't much use until then. I'll climb back on the blogging bandwagon once I've rested and such. I have weekly columns to post! That I haven't! I have failed you all. Also, GameSpite Issue 9 kicks off this weekend, and it's going to be sexy.

Speaking of sexy, I guess, that post about the "Stop! STDs" billboard was somehow voted up on Digg today, while I was on the plane in fact. Of course while I was on the plane. Site-crippling things only happen while I'm physically unable to deal with them. Anyway, the site wasn't really prepared for sextuple traffic levels -- hurr hurr "sex"-tuple, STD, porn star, hrrrr -- but it seems to be running smoothly now. Hooray for too little, too late.

Exquisite pain

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:44:00 -0700

I just played Street Fighter IV so hard I can barely move my wrist. I realize this is like complaining about having trouble breathing because you're buried under a pile of beautiful women, but still: Ouch.

Edit: "You should take a ten minute break every hour, whether you're laying underneath a pile of beautiful women or beating them up." - LilSpriteX in the comments

I was playing as my main lady Chun-Li, actually. I only had to beat up one girl, Crimson Viper, who has been designated Chun-Li's rival. I would have figured M. Bison would hold that title, what with his having killed her dad and all, but I guess I was overlooking the important fact that all women loathe one another.

Lolita complex!?

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:17:00 -0700

Yeah, OK, I think I'm ready to come home now. My relationship with a place that thinks it's a good idea to turn grizzled, dying old soldiers into cutesy little girls with no pants should definitely be restricted to visiting hours only. When you gaze into the asylum, the asylum gazes also into you.

(Image from Game|Life)

Why I love Super Potato

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:20:00 -0700

Every time I'm in Japan, I always end up visiting Super Potato, the famous Osaka retro gaming shop with a very popular branch in Akihabara. It's not the best place to hunt for old games by any means -- Liberty and Friends are both cheaper, Mandarake in Nagano has more super-rare stuff at better prices, Mandarake in Shibuya has a better selection of portable titles and soundtracks, etc. And their already fairly high prices get higher if you pay with a credit card. Even so, Super Potato is still a must-visit stop, if only for a few minutes, because of two important factors. First, they allow fat, sweaty Americans like me to traipse about the store taking photos at leisure. Two, they have a retro arcade on the top floor, which I've never actually visited. (I'm saving it for a special occasion.) And finally...uh, did I say two? I meant three. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, retro love is everywhere.

The walls are plastered with hand-made signs, and every time I visit the old ones have been phased out by new ones. This montage is on the ground floor, offering promotion and information about the shop (including a screen shot of a dangerous golden knight looking for the restrooms). Clearly, this is a place run by people who love what they sell. And that makes it awesome.

More pictures after the jump, if you're into that sort of thing.

Post continued after link >>

What new surprises lie in store

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:25:00 -0700

While Jim Davis may churn out a terrible comic strip, he's actually a pretty cool human being, apparently! Then again, Davis is a shrewd businessman above all else. I guess it's possible he appreciates someone's poking holes in his life work in creative ways, but more likely he simply realized that letting someone publish a book that transforms his comic into depressing absurdism is the holiest of grails: A means by which to sell Garfield to people who hate Garfield.

Genius.

Bonus image: This billboard is directly across from my hotel room, so every time I look outside this is what I see:

I think it's supposed to be a public service campaign promoting the use of condoms, but the placement of the exclamation mark really sort of gives it a different subtext. "Stop! This person has a terrible communicable illness!" I feel bad for the lady who lent her face to the campaign; I'm sure she was intending to do a good deed, but now everyone in Shibuya thinks she is diseased.

Last second edit: Actually, just before clicking "post" I decided to look up her name, and apparently she's a Japanese porn star. Sorry, "adult video." So now I really don't know what the ad's subtext is supposed to be.

Thing to do in Tokyo when you're dead tired

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:37:00 -0700

Oh, jetlag, what baffling powers you have over me. I swear, every time I come to Japan I wake up a little earlier the first day. Five a.m., the 4:30, and today it was 4 a.m. And the event I'm covering doesn't start until 1 p.m.! That's four hours from now, and I'mma try and liveblog it, if they'll let me. I know there some FFXIII and Advent Children-related news in the making, but I'm told they'll have some other announcements. Hopefully they are not talking about that new Snoopy game. Unless it's a Nomura-led leather-and-buckles revision of the Peanuts gang. That would be, uh, super great. Yeah.

And speaking of emo (or, rather, not emo), I had a lot of time to kill this morning. And since I'm here to look at Nomura games and I'm staying in Shibuya, The World Ends With You obviously sprang to mind. So I thought, hey, why not see just how accurately the best game so far this year depicts its subject? And I loaded up my iPhone with screenshots (since it's the old non-3G model, it's not worth much else here) and tried to recreate those screens in real life.

Yeah, it's nerdy, but what else are you gonna do at 6:30 a.m. in Tokyo?

Scene one: The Moai-like head by the bus shelters.

This was easy to find based on in-game orienteering -- it's just around the corner from the statue of Hachiko, beneath a rail bridge. I knew where the buses were, but I'd never noticed the sculpture. Turns out that's because it's hidden in a corner by a bunch of coin lockers and surly, dazed-looking teens smoking cigarettes (I assume they're cigarettes). Already, the game's verisimilitude is staggering!

Unfortunately, the screenshot is impossible to replicate, and not just because I couldn't convince the buses to line up neatly. The problem is that the sculpture faces into the corner. I took this photo while backed into said corner, my back to two walls. And the buses actually stop a bit to the right of here.

Also, no wolves. Still, it's easy to see where the composite imagery came from!

Scene two: The gambling area.

I couldn't find this exact image, but I didn't go too far. Still, there's a huge alley full of casinos, pachinko arcades and naughty massage parlors right by my hotel, and the image on the left captures the gestalt if not the specifics. Meh, close enough.

Scene three: "Outback Cafe" and the giant video screen.

Well, easy enough -- this is the Starbucks at the foot of the Scramble Crossing across from the station's Hachiko exit. Unfortunately, the in-game image is impossible to replicate without a super-expensive high-end camera lens. And I tried taking a shot up the length of the building, but then I realized the second floor of Starbucks has a bar lining its wall so people can sit and look out over the crossing. And there were lots of girls in skirts up there drinking, and I probably looked like some disgusting pervert trying to photograph their underwear. So! I went for the distance shot instead.

You may notice this building does not have a massive video wall. That is actually on the adjacent building across the street to the right. But you get the idea, and that's what counts.

Edit: I just looked out the window and realized the Starbucks building DOES have a video wall, but it's inside, behind the windows. And it's only on during hours when people are actually walking around the streets, i.e. after 10 a.m. So, bump up a point for accuracy.

Scene the fourth: Hachiko looming in front of "Shibuykyu."

"Shibukyu" is actually "Tokyu," which I believe is a company that owns a ridiculous amount of property around here. I'm staying near the Tokyu Mark City, there's a hotel across the way called the Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel, and half the stores are Tokyu something (Tokyu Hands, etc., which actually inspired a different location in the game, but I couldn't find a screenshot for it). The logo's about the same, though. It's clear homage.

But, you can't quite reproduce this shot, either. Hachiko, the famous statue of the dog who loyally waited for his master at the station every day (even after his master died), faces the Tokyu building. If you try to shoot it from the angle in the screenshot, you'll get a big load of ugly metro station instead. But as you can see in the photo, the shot is still impossible because of all the advertising that's been built up between Hachiko and the Tokyu building. Poor puppy.

But you know, the great thing is that I'm pretty sure you could navigate your way through Shibuya's landmarks without ever having been here based strictly on the game. It's not unlike navigating NYC based on Grand Theft Auto IV, except that TWEWY doesn't penalize you for not slavishly following the plotline. I'm all in favor of real-world locations in games -- even if they are somewhat idealized.

I'd have shot more, but when I sat down to photograph Hachiko it was 7 a.m. and already I was sweating profusely in the broiling humidity. I figured I should save up my energy for the liveblog, ya know?

The world ends with me

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:15:00 -0700

Funny, the view out my hotel window looks curiously...familiar.

I made it to Tokyo, see, and it's actually not too bad here! The heat isn't as murderous as I expected. The humidity, though...yeah. My hair got all wavy the minute I stepped off the plane. It's terrible. Makes me look like David Letterman or something. I'm also annoyed at myself for having gotten all the good photos the last two times I was here. I'm not really sure what to shoot now.

Tokyo was a close call, though. I was worried for a moment that "Natrita" wasn't just a typo. "Oh, you wanted the Narita flight? Sorry, sir, we're headed to a natrite mine in Zimbabwe where you will live the rest of your brief and miserable life mining crystals in subhuman conditions. Pretzels?"

Yeah, I dunno. I can never sleep on the plane, so I'm going on about 22 hours without any sleep. Add to that the dementia caused by the high sodium levels of the "food" they serve on the plane and it's a wonder these sentences are even complete. Hell, for all I know they're not. I'm sleeping now.