Gun violence related to gaming, but missed it by "that much"

(tags gun, game, PC, accident, failure, humor)

A word of warning: Please be careful with guns, for your safety and for others' safety.

With that said, I LMAO'd at this post "So I nearly got killed today..." (thanks Aeropause). Check out the pictures of guns, holes in walls, and plaster dust on a guy's shirt and mouse and laptop.

Where's the gaming angle? The guy who almost got shot was playing a PC game when as luck would have it, his apartment neighbor was fondling his gats and fired a bullet.

Why? Why do you need to do that to get your 15 seconds of internet fame?

New Super Mario Bros out! But let's talk about avoidance

(tags game, purchase, shmups, video, replay-data, mail-order, DualScreen, Animal Crossing Wild World, figure, side-scroll, anime, Nanoha)

New Super Mario Bros out! So I had to see the gaming action at Sofmap Kobe. People were grabbing the NSMB left and right. There were scads of chicks in self-defense groups picking up that and Tai / China / other foreign country "Point and Speak" DS software, etc. There were people milling around gawking DS lite order slips. It felt like an Apple Store.

I almost phoned/text'd my friend to tell him they had another shipment of DS Lites but it would probably be sold out before he got out of work. Me, I satisfied myself with another round of the NSMB demo unit. I kept telling myself to move on and wait it out. It will be there when I'm ready, and besides I've got a milions of games to play, not to mention tens of hours of Sudoku to get through. Check out this guy at Minna ni naisho da yo who actually completely finished the NSMB (US version) before it came out in Japan, sweet.

The next bunch of paragraphs are full of things I want to talk about in other posts.

While at the store I bought that Insanity Naked Hunters (INH) video The Shooting Love for Trizeal and XIIStag, at 3000 yen. I couldn't let a shmup skills video at 50% off pass up like that.

I wanted to get a copy of Oodama but even at the discounted price of 4000 yen it's still too high.

The Nintendo DS magazine (2006/07) by Famitsu shown above has a promotional mail-in order campaign for the 2 CD soundtrack to Animal Crossing Wild World (see lower right hand corner of picture). I'll be explaining this in another post.

Not pictured yet... but I picked up a 1/8 scale figure of Nanoha Takamachi of Nanoha A's anime. Look for some park hopping photo session soon.

Exiting the store, I downloaded a Nintendo DS demo of some picture book game. Something about cute mice jumping on pancakes. Nice.

Okay, one post a day, max!

What to do next? Shmup it! (An arcade in Kyoto?!)

(tags game, arcade, Kyoto, shmup, fighting, replay)

(2006/05/13 weekend activities, delayed post) During the weekend I opened up that Ibara and played it. Due to my current TV, I have to rotate the screen 90 degrees to the left (video's up is the TV screen's left), which is not supported in some games like Ikaruga (which only supports right-rotation tate). But it is supported in Ibara and I was happy. With that said I was pretty frustrated with this game. The bullets are small and hard to see in the Arcade mode. Despite this, I kept coming back for one more try. It was calling me many times throughout the weekend. Wierd. I played the PS2 mode which I liked even better because it didn't have much to learn compared to the Arcade mode. I could get to the third stage without a continue on a good play, but those were few and far between.

I was shmup'd up, feeling good about 2d-ness. I even tried a game of Psyvariar Revision just for kicks. That game can do left-rotation tate as well, sweet. This time I just used that spin button instead of trying to be joystick-jiggle maniac and it was much more fun.

Why the shmup return? Actually in Kyoto there was a well-trafficked amusement center/arcade complete with rows of fighters and new (to me that is) shmups. I spent a hour there just watching other people play. Obviously these games have been out for a long time since 1 play was 50 yen. I saw for the first time Shinigami no Shiro 3, and the guy rocking the game was playing the bullet absorbing character. After he 1CC'd it, he put his initials in at 1st place, and then on the high score table, the same initials were in all top 7 spots. He was getting hit (on purpose?) so it wasn't one of those god-like plays (or maybe it was?), but it was very fun to watch nonetheless. (BTW, isn't that boss character Yukari Horiguchi voiced by Yukari Tamura? Naw that's not quite right, Yukari Tamura voices the second level boss on SnS 2, I think.) That arcade unit was outfitted with a VHS (?) VCR so you could record your own play. Very cool, that's the first time I seen a DIY recorder in the arcade, but then again, I'm not a arcade connoiseur, yo.

I also saw Ibara: Pink Sweets which was been rocked by another dood, and Espaluda II (I can't spell this) which was being rocked by some middle-school kid. Heh. Very cool arcade here, but those were the only shmups there. The rest of the floor was like some fighting heaven or something, screens for the spectators, etc. Oh yeah, I was watching some Street Fighter 3 and I didn't know half of the techniques you could do: trading parry-swipes, aerial parry-throws, whatever. Sorry I got off the train when the Ryu-Ken battles were fireball fireball uppercut, so this was really exciting for me.

I'm sure if I tried hard enough I could find a similar arcade in Osaka, but man, I don't like my clothes to smell like smoke.

Kamichu == CD-ROM, Nanoha == Telephone Card, Kashimashi == Towel

(tags anime, purchase, character goods, telephone card, Nanoha, Kashimashi, Kamichu)

I'm going to make this quick since I need to play some games....

The bottom left is a Nanoha A's telephone card from a mail-order campaign in Megami Magazine 2006/02. This month's Dengeki Daioh magazine features a Kashimashi micro-fiber towel mail-in campaign. I'm almost there dood. Finally I saw this Kamichu Desktop Accessories CD-ROM at Animate for 2500 yen (w/o tax). I had to have that. But I still haven't watched the anime. Did I mention that I bought the SR figure for Kamichu back in January anyway? Haha, can't stop the madness!

Other completed anime... Karin and Tide Line Blue

(tags anime, romance, action, spoiler)

Karin (the "reverse" vampire 増血鬼で恥ずかしい「かりん」) is 4 out of 5 stars for me. It's a happy story. Since I don't own any DVDs I'm not going comment on it further, except to show that I bought a telephone card set of it:

The DVD on the right is Tide Line Blue. I bought the last DVD to see the unreleased last episode (number 13). I watched episode 12 to review and it was grand. The episode 13 tied up some loose ends but unfortunately it wasn't really worth the price of admission, because it really didn't finish off the story. In the whole series too there was some "deus ex machina" and sometimes the science was as bad as that movie The Core, but still, it was the human story that really interested me. I suppose this is a 4 out of 5 star series because I didn't go out and buy the DVDs, but I want to put it at 4 and half because of the compelling, human condition story, the grandious music, and of course, Minami Kuribayashi's (栗林みな実) opening song, "Blue treasure". I need to get disc 1 because they interviewed her, but wait is it the same as the special interview on the official web site?. I think I know what she's going to say though: "Buy this series!". Haha, why do they have interview her at all? She's not part of the voice actor staff.

ACWW is not the only game for me. Next up, Sudoku!?!

(tags game, DualScreen, puzzle, review, Emacs, Ruby, programming, failure)

I was finally bitten by the Sudoku (数独) bug. I can't remember my first encounter, but my initial "serious" foray included playing around with it in Emacs (M-x sudoku) and trying to write a solver in Ruby. One of my (what I consider a) "non-gamer" friends mentioned how she likes the game and how her programmer dad wrote his own solver. I always thought that the real challenge was the programming a solver and that doing the puzzle by hand was the "dumb human" approach. But in the hobby programming I just set up the data structures and I didn't have a clue as to how to solve an arbitrary board. In other words, my program problem-solving-fu is weak.

Which brings me to the DS version of Sudoku by Hudson Soft. I was at the local Sofmap trying to see if there was a download demo of the New Super Mario Bros. I played the latter at a special kiosk but I wanted to play it some more (in a word, wow!). I played some other interesting demos which I forgot the names. One was some light-gun like shooting game which made me want to buy it for a brief second. Another was some abstract ecology-life sim game where you can draw your own shapes for the "animals" and feed them to other animals, while going up the food chain. There didn't seem like much to that latter game, but I spent 20 minutes playing one level to see if there was.

So there wasn't any New Super Mario Bros, but aww heck, the previous wifi-downloaded demos were pretty fun, so let's give Sudoku a try. And try I did. I played one game and couldn't stop. I had to play another board. The second board in the demo was another "easy" level. I played that too. It took me about 50 minutes to finish the contents of that demo and I was totally sold on it. I went back inside the game shop and secured my own copy.

And that is how I spent the next 6 hours (non-contiguous) on Sudoku. Oh my. I suppose I understood the mechanics of trying to solve it, but I didn't understand the delightful feeling of satisfaction of following the puzzle-solving logic until now. You count out the numbers, see if anything is open, filling something which in turn gives more information about another box, etc etc. Wow the fun of Sudoku is understanding the physical constraints and the item (row, column, 3 by 3 group) constraints, figuring out the implications, etc. Hahah, and I thought "dumb humans" couldn't get any enjoyment out of this kind of task. I even reached an epithany of sorts when the game took on a "leap-of-faith" guessing aspect.

I suppose my review of the game itself is written above. Here are my thoughts on the DS implementation with plus and minus evaluation:

• + 300 boards from easy (70), regular (140), to difficult (90) difficulty.
• + It allows you to "scribble in crib notes" and notes display is fontified-clean but really small (3 by 5 pixel?). Initially I thought this is enough but there were times I wanted to write more.
• + Your guesses are colored dark gray which is different from the initial board. The crib notes are in red. The top screen of the DS doesn't have these notes, so it good for a clear view.
• + Save your current game with all notes intact. Only one game can be saved.
• + Records your completion time for each board.
• + By far the best part of this implementation is the highlighting of the numbers. Turn on the highlighting mode by pressing the L or R buttons, and the boxes that affect/are affected by this boxes are shown. Double tap a box with a number in it and the same number is highlighted on the screen (kinda like Emacs Incremental Search) Maybe it's "cheating" but I use this all the time. Ah my eyes.
• + Multi-level undo and redo for guesses. (Ignores notes)
• + I like how I can use the right hand side X Y A B buttons as another cursor pad. I'm not left-handed though so it's not necessary for me. Too bad you can't change the position of board and input area to furthur accomodate lefties.
• + There is handwriting recognition for the numbers but it not necessary. Besides tapping out the number is way better than less than perfect hand-rec. And it doesn't support a delete stroke (middle right to left stroke) that I was used to with the Decuma hand-rec.
• - It has three background songs but no option to turn them off. Sometimes I want to hear the effect sounds only, so this is a minus for me.
• + The color scheme of the boards can be altered and to me the schemes are attractive. I wish I could make my own color scheme, though.
• - You can't make your own puzzles, but then again that would be product "suicide". I suppose you can always go back to playing it on Emacs?
• + There's an expert timed game mode (段位認定), but I don't have enough recorded experience to unlock it. I wonder what it is and how "bronze", "silver", "gold" and "platinum" certs are going to burn me?

I think this implementation is very good. I suppose other touch-screen platforms have similar easy of use (crib notes, highlight, etc) but I haven't researched it. I just like the way I can use my left hand for moving the cursor and right hand for fill in/erase.

My board solving isn't very fast. It takes me on average 25 minutes to complete a board, on the easiest level. The fastest I cleared one was 12 minutes, but the worst was 50 minutes, ugh. My brain must be rotting from all those character goods shenanigans. I don't think I have the patience to solve all 300 puzzles (at least 125 hours?!!), but here's another DS game that I can show off other people to.

Nice to see you again, Inku Nijihara

(tags figure, character goods, kawaii)

The Moetan (萌える英単語 もえたん) craze is going on strong, but at the two year mark people have gone on probably. I sniper off the parts that I like.

Do you remember my character goods posts about the Inku Nijihara (虹原いんく) figure by produced by Kotobukiya? (Is this pre-painted PVC figure also sculpted by 森川 裕光?) I suppose the best post was this one: "Rittaiteki [sic, 3-D] Character goods".

Well, Kotobukiya hasn't given up on the series. This month they released a new, cheaper figure collection called "Moetan One Coin Grande Figure Collection". There are great official pictures in that link. This collection is sculpted by 3 different people/groups (森川 裕光, 爪塚 裕之, タカク＆タケシ). The "one coin" in this series means 500 yen 682 yen with tax, LOL. (Is that a new coin I didn't know about?) It is so very kawaii, and since I'm a Inku fan (the hiragana Inku (いんく), not the katakana Inku (インク)), I went to the Volks figure shop in Kobe where they have a pre-opened (used) figure area so I could buy the figure I liked without guessing.

So which Inku did I take home first? Out of the six, I purchased only one, the "secret" figure without the box. It was funny, I wanted the box it came in so I could have a picture of the rest of the collection (which I wasn't planning on getting), and when I actually bought a box, I got the same "secret" figure! Haha good luck and bad luck at the same time. Here it is:

I really like this figure because of the long gown and free, gloved hands. I do have mixed feelings about the upward look and the eyes themselves. For one, because the upward look I can't put the figure at eye level or higher. I only have free space at those kind of heights. Also, with these kind of girly eyes it's hard to figure out the eye contact angle. With the former figure, there was no problem.

Here I put them together on top of a "Sofmap" bag (gosh do I know this well) so the size difference can be seen. Of course, the bigger figure was more expensive, but the little figure approaches the quality of the bigger one. I think "one coin grande" is a pretty good deal.

As for the rest of the series, I would like to get them but it's not a high priority thing. The bunny-gal one 「ばにぃインク」 is pretty good but it doesn't fit my kawaii-not-sexy criteria. (What!? How about the next long-gown one, the maid outfit? 「めいどインク + ぺんくん」)

Haha, I'm going to so eat my words on the next post.

(Edit: Fixed the price, formatting)

This game is as lifeless as a doll

(tags game, Rozen Maiden, PlayStation 2, love-sim, anime, complete)

I finished Rozen Maiden Duellwalzer. Suiseiseki's lines are almost the same as Hina-Ichigo's lines. Yup. Nothing really new here, except the character voice changed. Voice actress fandom aside, this game is a dud. 2.5 stars out of 5.

Still I haven't talked about that shooting game, but it doesn't merit another post or pictures. It sucks. Imagine yeah Shikigami no Shiro but without the scratching, without power ups, without a whole lot of interesting things, oh but leave the bomb in there, and you have this shmup. Your ship is a wide-load instead of a pixel hitbox, ow the shock. When I unlocked Souseiseki and played as her, my high score which was meandering at 2,900,000 points with only Shinkuu, Suiseiseki and Hina-Ichigo, shot up to 4,900,000 points because her firepower is concentrated. Not very balanced, is it?

I'm still into "shouwaru ningyo" (性悪人形) and "kerai kerai" (家来家来) and "ichigo daifuku!" (苺大福), but for now there's nothing new on the horizon. Might as well organize my Rozen Maiden doujin mangas and official CD-ROMs and rip the CD audio dramas, etc etc.

Things out of reach

(tags purchase, Osaka, Kyoto, bag, telephone card, collector, figure)

I went to Kyoto last weekend to try to buy a Shinzaburo Ichizawa Canvas bag, but the whole store was sold out! I can't recall a time where perhaps 99% of the goods in a store are gone and the racks are totally empty. Is this normal?

Well it doesn't help that I was wandering around Kyoto looking for Animate for a hour or two in the early part of the day. I easily found Sofmap, Gamers and Super Position (a figure store) in that mall close to Hankyu Kawaramachi. There was also an interesting media store called Kikuya, where they even had a Magic the Gathering or other card game space. Animate? The cell phone directions were bad. Next time? I'm going to go to the Shinzaburo Canvas bag store directly in the morning and brave the crowds.

I headed back down to Osaka which is my "turf" so to speak... Another thing out of reach was the telephone card set for Rozen Maiden (season 1) Film Comic (volume 1, 2, 3). If you collected all 3 and entered the raffle and won it (50 sets only), you would have got those 3 cards with the same illustration on the covers of the 3 books. I saw this telephone card set going used-mint at Books Lashinbang for 150000 yen.

WTF. That like two Playstation 3 right there. Totally overvalued.

I want to just buy the third book which is nowhere to be found... So I can put those books together and make the same illustration on my weblog. Ack.

In the same shop, the SR series Suiseiseki figure was going for 16000 yen used-mint, originally 3000 yen new. I would have wanted to buy it (at that price? ugh) but it was gone the second time I checked.

Finally, that crazy price for the Nanoha A's Setting Book mint-used went down (from 15000 yen) to only 5000 yen, originally 3000 yen new.

Gotta level up on my Ebay/Yahoo auction skillz, at least for price checking. I got burned once by Books Lashinbang (no, I burned myself), and I shouldn't repeat that.

"Remember, no fanboyism -- if something happens, polite clapping is enough."

(tags game, media, journalism, E3 2006, criticism)

Video Game Media Watch points out the quote of the moment but receives no comments.

"Remember, no fanboyism -- if something happens, polite clapping is enough."

Joystiq picks up the gauntlet, adds a editorial and readership, and then hosts a 100 plus comment thread chock full of "get off your high horse, Joystiq".

My take is let the "gamer" in the "game journalist" get excited on the press conference floor, but leave that hype off the newspaper article. On the blog, though, let it run freely or surprise us with the occasional objective post. We can read between the lines even though we are entertaining ourselves on the information high.

Gears of War talk and gameplay demo

(tags game, Xbox 360, FPS, presentation, E3 2006)

Joystiq brings the text and video of Cliffy B's demo of Gears of War for the Xbox 360. In a word, wow! This is my first "worth the system price" game on the Xbox 360, maybe.

I guess we could have seen it coming, though. Resident Evil 4 over-shoulder POV action coming from Epic Games, the first name in first person shooters (Unreal Tournament!!!!). I really like the duck-and-cover style running. I also really like the voice acting: "I'm ready to kick some ass.."

Granted, there are some parts that don't make much sense, like using the cover, but standing in the open and shooting like you're having all the time in the world, walking in front of your teammate's fire, chainsaws on guns. ("It's been 7 years since I've seen one of these.") I suppose most of it depends on the way the player runs around.

I have but one request. Please, Epic, do NOT put this run and gun movement into the next Unreal Tournament 2007. It will kill the hyper-frentic game play. Please!

Animal Crossing article and contemplating making my doll house

(tags game, Animal Crossing, DualScreen, Windows, purchase, ECsite, creative)

I've been meaning to write something down about Animal Crossing, but that week I did that time travelling ("Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.") screwed up one week's turnip prices so I haven't been playing much. I wanna go to that Shinjuku shop (thanks Kotaku) and hang out or do some photos of the Nintendo mags with Animal Crossing omake. I've even been thinking of buying those ACWW handbags to hold the ol' NDS, but only use them for the character strap, because shoot they all don't match my current bag.

I did check out that Girlie magazine with Kaera Kimura on the cover (she's got great face by golly, but the hair must be a wig) and Animal Crossing "for the ladies" as one of the specials (thanks Kotaku, Jean Snow magazine review). First, trying to buy it was pretty hard, because I didn't know where this magazine was at the bookstore. I had to muscle between the girls doing tachiyomi (reading mags for free for great justice) in the "ladies fashion" section. I got some blank stares (sorry about the gamer B.O., ladies) but I don't let deter me from my goals, yo. I did find it in the fashion section, but another bookstore, Junkudo, actually put some copies in the game section. Ack! All that wasted effort taking a shower and putting on colonge, sniff sniff.

The article spread was pretty long, but there wasn't anything about the actual game-play. Instead, the articles and pictures showed major fashion sense: there was a sub-section for this season's fashions for guys and gals, top 8 favorite animal pals by guy and gal, etc. By far the best part was the expose on creative gamers and their towns. New duds, even some towns were tiled over with creatively new and/or played-out copyrighted pictures, such as Disney's Arial & Sebastian. Wow. It takes 10 hours with that graphic editor thing to make a 6 by 6 tile picture? Kinda reminds me of ASCII pr0n... The making of it, I mean. How do you make that stuff (and I don't mean using aalib)? Doesn't it take the patience of "grandma" making a "quilt"?

There are the kind of games that bring out the "canvas" (you can do it any way you want) or the "checklist" (did I get all the dog tags?) in the gamer. After looking at this article, I can firmly say that I'm in the "checklist" camp.

The rest of the stuff in the picture are guide books, one of which is a costume freestyle book, and goodies that you get from those Nintendo flavored magazines.

Animal Crossing hasn't been giving me that much of a high, so I was actually thinking of buying The Sims 2 to see what the hubbub is about. Almost 2 years old and still it is making headlines. I checked out my favorite importer GDex Online Shop and its about 7000 yen. I could buy the Japanese version for 6000 yen (and this price doesn't drop much at the used section either!) but I rather play it in English, huh. I notice on the box that there isn't any Japanese in the screenshots, but there's no English either. No way I want to buy a console version because the "community" has lots of creative stuff out there for free. But I don't really want to play the PC version because I'm now used to the freedom of playing on-the-go ala Nintendo DS.

Wow I can't believe I want to try out this game?!? Isn't this more of a "canvas" game? Not much "checklisting" here I don't think.

Yeah, but how much will the thing cost?

(tags game, hardware, Wii, controller)

... and no, I'm not talking about the 75000 yen Playstation 3.

I'm talking about that Wii controller. This is Nintendo we are talking about. When was the last time Nintendo came out with unproven hardware tech that turned out to be good?

R.O.B. was a gimmick. Virtual Boy was just a pain on the eyes. Game Boy and Dual Screen can't be used as objections because LCD screens and touch screens have been in use years before. I'm giving them a pass on the light guns because the tech hasn't really improved.

Really. What controller on the market (PC, console, etc) is like the Wii controller, which can sense position and angle and movement in 3d space? It looks to me that Nintendo is up to bat with another new tech. Will Nintendo get the hardware right? Will it cost less than 10000 yen per controller?

Feeling guilty, couldn't pass up on these deals.

(tags game, purchase, shmup, FPS)

Well I got me a new Ibara at (not full price) 4000 yen with some special pamphlet, maybe. And I also got a used Resident Evil 4 for the Gamecube that was low 2000 yen. I'm feeling guilty because haven't yet finished Rozen Maiden (but just a couple more hours!), I have Okami lined up, and shoot, Famicom Wars GC is still waiting for me. Gotta hook up the GC to the TV now.

Zapper

(tags game, hardware, Wii, Light-gun, controller)

I am excited now about the Wii. Not for the games that they're showing at the E3 right now but for that "Zapper" gun. Now we can have those Time Crisis like games without resorting to "light guns" and "connecting stuff to a CRT TV". I only have a LCD screen at home now to work with, and I sure can't use Time Crisis 3 there. It's the whole reason while I still keep on going back to the arcades. Ah, but will Wii games be Time Crisis like or Gumshoe like? I want grittier stuff than hitting slowly falling tin cans. Namco (and Konami and Sega), I hope you're eyeing that controller.

The pricing announcement

(tags game, hardware, PlayStation 3, controller, failure)

Sony PlayStation 3.

60000 yen, tax not included. Heard it over lunch, and then my first net sighting was via Kotaku.

Okay Gamer Dad, is this expensive enough for you? (Thanks Kotaku)

I bet "open price" means "plus 15000 yen" here in Japan. 75000 yen! Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The PS3 controller looks the same as the PS2 controller. What ever happened to those Dual Shock Controller licensing/patent woes?

Rozen Maiden: Duellwalzer probably 66% completed?

(tags game, PlayStation 2, Rozen Maiden, anime, love-sim, shmup, 声優, character goods)

Why did I call Rozen Maiden Duellwalzer a "bomb" in my last post? Another anime o-baka-san told me that the game wasn't up to snuff. Framed with that opinion, I still paid the 9000+ yen to bring home a copy of the game.

Have you already watched the first Rozen Maiden series? Would you like to see it with subtitles and sub-par animation (really really sub-par)? That pretty much summarizes this game. Mainly you read the story and select action/phrases like in love-sim games. This determines which ending you get, but unlike in love-sims it doesn't change the outcome of the story. It's like the series distilled, really, but the best episode "Staircase" (5), is here intact and funnier than ever. It has a roulette-like game that adds a little bit of chance and frustration, but it also explicitly shows your "success" meter for each doll. And finally, get this, the main "game" part is a shmup! Hahahaha. It would be interesting if it weren't so easy and amateur. I will probably describe this joke of a shmup in another post.

As far as the scenarios are concerned, there is "Shinku", "Hina-Ichigo", and probably "Suiseiseki". It took a week of on-again off-again playing to finish the "Shinku" scenario. I was actually aiming to complete "Hina-Ichigo" first. You get a couple of new animations and CGs, but really the quality is not very good. It's shocking to see the lack of emotion in Shinku's face in some of the new animations. In the anime, her face is not static like a doll's, but lively. I then completed the "Hina-Ichigo" scenario in about 4 hours. The change in the scenario is just the shift to Hina-Ichigo, but the plot is exactly the same. There was like just one new CG! Ha, what a letdown.

Shifting to the voice actresses, I have no problem the artists themselves: Asami Sanada (真田アサミ)'s Jun, Miyuki Sawashiro (沢城みゆき)'s Shinku, Sakura Nogawa (野川さくら)'s Hina-Ichigo, Natsuko Kuwatani (桑谷夏子)'s Suiseiseki, etc. I really like listening to Shinku and Suiseiseki, and I like Hina-Ichigo, though grating sometimes, is very very cute. There are no new characters unless you count the more detailed Detective Kun Kun adventures. Ha. I do have an issue with the recording. It seemed most of the lines came from the anime itself, and the voices seem to be positioned in front of my head. But most of the new lines seem to come from a different position, like the middle of my head or the back. It's not too annoying, but it's something that makes me wonder.

The music is rehashed. The in-game music is forgettable. The opening song is from the first season, that wierd Ali Project number. The ending song is a new song from Haruka Shimotsuki (霜月はるか). I just don't understand why I don't give her a 5 star rating on any of her songs. Wait I lied, I like her song "Little Primrose", which was the opening song for the anime Eternal Alice (鍵姫物語 永久アリス輪舞曲).

To sweeten the deal (this is the polish on the turd, so to speak), there is a "conductor" watch omake with an engraved serial number. I got is something like 6304 out of 10000, it isn't anything special. The other omake is the Sofmap special telephone card, which is just the cover of the limited box. I saw at Gamers that their special was a telephone card with the cover of the regular edition.

Overall, let's give this game a 3 out of 5 for not botching it up too bad.

When I spend that four hours to finish the last scenario, "Suiseiseki", Rozen Maiden will be over for me. Oh wait, I'm still watching Rozen Maiden Traumend on DVD, but I can imagine the how it will end. I just can't imagine anything else that will make this story interesting for me. That's pretty sad considering I probably put a lot of money into it.

Honey & Clover (ハチミツとクローバー)

(tags anime, DVD, region2, 声優, spoiler)

I finally finished watching the last DVD of Honey & Clover (「ハチミツとクローバー」). It's funny how this DVD is labeled "Volume 09". What is with that 0 in the tens digit? Yes yes, I know about Honey & Clover 2, so probably they're going to start with "Volume 10".

Ah what a great series. 5 out of 5. In each disc there's at least one scene that brings a tear to my eye. I think the most memorable scene for me was when Takemoto told his parents he wanted to continue school for one more year. I just love that scene. I think it was best that Takemoto was the main character and the main narrator. Morita is just too off the wall to understand and Mayama already completed some struggles of youth.

Of course, the artistic pastel backgrounds really added to the presentation. There was never a scene where the background was out of place or "cartoony". Plus there was plenty of beautiful Japan to see, from the big ferris wheel in Tokyo, the renovated temples, and also Hokkaido. But the characters themselves are beautiful. Even when the comedy starts and the faces "drop" to their seriousness, they are all too human.

The music transforms this anime into art. The song inserts by Spitz and Sugashi Kao just hit the spot. The scenes where the Spitz songs play alone are worth the viewing time. The ending theme by Suneo Hair called "Waltz" is the best song. I look at my iTunes and it says I've played that song 84 times! (since 2005/08/31, here's to the 85th time). I really like how they transition the music between scenes. On the other hand, I didn't like Yuki's "Dramatic" or the second ending theme song "Mistake" by The Band Has No Name. Take that garbage out, ugh. If you can believe it, I haven't yet ripped the soundtrack to the computer yet, even though I've had the CD for a long time.

As far as the voice actors are concerned, Tomokazu Sugita (杉田 智和) does a superb job as Mayama. Even though he's a guy his voice just melts me, ha ha. I'm catching more of him on the currently airing Haruhi Suzumiya's Melancholy (凉宮ハルヒの憂鬱) and he's grand as usual. Hiroshi Kamiya (神谷 浩史) as Takemoto also captures the young guy struggle. Usually I'm a voice actress fanatic, but the two leading ladies just didn't have much impact on me. It's funny that Yamada's voice actress, Mikako Takahashi (高橋 美佳子) was Haneru in the Kashimashi Girl Meet Girl PS2 game I completed recently.

This is one of those animes that I would (and do) introduce to non-anime watching friends. Heh, and maybe I won't have to mention that it's an anime at all, since the live-action movie will be coming out soon.

Animal Crossing Wild World is the only game for me

(tags game, Animal Crossing Wild World, DualScreen, advocacy)

I just realized that yesterday I tried to motivate two people to play Animal Crossing Wild World. One was seesawing between ACWW and Tetris DS. but I reassured him that he would get bored of Tetris DS while golly gee look at me, I've been playing ACWW for four months (not non-stop but at least 90% of the time). The other was a veteran Sims 2 "non-gamer" player to who I showed that Girlie magazine with the ACWW feature. Really really strange for me to don on the advocacy cap, for a Nintendo game, even. (I'm not a Nintendo fanb0i, please, I keep telling myself.)

ACWW seems to be the only game for me now. I carry my DS in the small Nintendogs denim-like bag every where I go. I even color coordinated it with my canvas-colored satchel. I go to the game shops and see the other games but all I can think about is how I could be making more bells or grabbing new furniture, etc. I am playing other games at the same time (currently working on Rozen Maiden) but it always seems I come back to this game. I'm even thinking of making a money guide on the discouraged "table turnip trick", but what do I know? Very very strange, it's got a hold on me.

Title points back to title, post points back to post

(tags comment, structure, programming, bonkers)

This post begins with the canonical title, "tags", and post body format. This sentence does a little thing to segue to the next sentence where there is a point to the post: the whole point of the first couple of sentences is to eloquently situate the following sentence which was wholeheartedly ganked (yes stolen, but hey I link to it like a good blogger) from the linked post's main self-referential assertion:

"This Is the Title of This Story, Which Is Also Found Several Times in the Story Itself"

This is the sentence asserting the supreme validity of the previous quote: "Preach it". I agree. I agree with a little more flourish. However, this sentence tries to eloquently say in so many misused and inappropriate wording how I agree with self-referencing posts and articles just being soo much cat's buttered-side floating meow, like the greatest thing since sliced cheese and spilt milk boiling in a sauce pan ala frog jumping from the pond; did you think of haiku just right now? That's the Japanese connection there because I'm typing this in Japan, as this sentence tries to bundle some kind of self-reference here, yeah like that.

Perhaps, this post would benefit from a better review, as in "This Review" or a link to "This Is the Title of This Story,Which Is Also Found Several Times in the Story Itself". Was that last sentence linking the same link from the blockquote above or something different? This sentence worries that the thesis isn't adequately developed in this sentence, let alone this whole post.

Nevertheless, this blog is about the games, not the self-referencing. Or games with self-referencing. Naw this post needs more self-posted letters, that's right gotta reference how I finally got that monkey off my back that is Tom Nook in Animal Crossing Wild Work, paid him off 999,999 bells in one furikomi (electronic transfer), yes sir, but still I keep going back to his shop to get a letter, and mail one letter only one because that's all the Nintendo DS can handle to myself, excuse me, my "future self", call it a temporally delayed self-referentialism. (Can we fit a Star Trek reference here? "It's dead, Jim")

That's what they teach in Computer Science, adding one more reference improves the understanding of the underlying problem, heck it may even solve the problem outright, because you've just abstracted the problem, "distancing yourself from the problem" heh heh I made a funny. Let's not limit the referencing to just "this sentence" but this sentence "in space" and "in time". Let us ponder if the gravity of the reference propagates at the speed of light. But what happens when you add another reference, like to this sentence and you find yourself back where you started? Now that's what I call curved space-time.

This sentence tries to end the post with some semblance of a take-home message, something like, self-referential posts are the bomb but they're just like "you had to be there" joke material, but, however, admittedly, ultimately, albeit the flavor is gone, the joke is dead, the stage is set, the horse is out of the barn, the VCR is still blinking 12:00, you forgot to spring your clocks forward, fall/fell your clocks back, the frog is already sitting in the saucepan waiting for the light, light it light it light it LIGHT IT LIGHT IT, ehm this is just a showdown for run-aground sentences and how many times am I going to spell "sentences" with 3 "s"s but I surreptitiously replaced the middle "s" with a "c" (I was just thinking of Foldger's Crystals right now) because it annoys me to no end. Finally I used a period in the last sentence whoa that "c" took some effort to bust out the first time which reminds me I need to bust out that Dreamcast game Typing of the Date (wallpapers here) yes that's not a typo, playing the House of the Dead III in the arcade recently reminded me about how I need to build my arm muscles and how this game crossed over to the keyboard controller and how I like dating-sim games so why not combine the 3? 3, what 3? Build your arms using a shaft-cocking keyboard to get to the last "heroine" boss?

"Look at my junk, its glorious!" Oops, that's the wrong kind of self-reference, isn't it?

Ah weren't we trying to end this self-referential word-play and get back to more lucid posting? Hah haha, "lucid", as in "Lucida Sans Typewriter". Ah I feel the miasma coming on, but before it takes full effect, there's only one way to end this post, just like ending this sentence: abruptly.

It was never about bling

(tags game, collecting, purchase)

racketboy goes meta with his latest post "Game Collecting: Don't "Invest" In Vintage Games". The general gist is that games aren't monetary investments when they can be (easily?) reprinted, and that the would-be collector's emphasis should be enjoyment and satisfaction. As he asserts in his previous post, "Game Collecting: How the Internet Changed the Hobby":

"... it would be rare to have more than one or two friends that would truly appreciate visiting such a collection... As more and more people post pictures of their massive collection, the less impressive yours will be... The only person you should try to impress is yourself."

Preach it.

(Actually I just wanted to write "preach it" after a quote because "preach it" looks so cool. Calls to mind "Hear Hear" and "me too", but with a tinge of advocacy, and heaven help you if you don't mindlessly accept the "truth".)

racketboy's recommendations are what I keep in mind in my own junk collecting, but my interests span farther than games, reaching into other media like DVDs, manga, books, figures and character goods. My bedroom is my "collection room", and there's not much room to sleep, heh. I don't buy the games because it enhances my e-presence (or any other p-word), I buy them because I want to play them. But no time...

I wonder what motivated him to write these two posts. In any collecting field there will be over-valued items and the fools who will buy them. Perhaps it is the realization that video games are just bits that can be resurrected easily either legally or illegally? Isn't this the Nintendo Wii strategy? Retro-gaming on your PSP through "hacking"? Abandonware? Isn't it why we see remake collections every couple of months from the usual suspects and the reviews from retro-gaming with racketboy and namakoteam?

For example, I had the urge to play Dangun Feveron recently because somebody told me that it plays just like my favorite shmup game, Parsec47, copies it with great justice. I first had the idea of buying it, but it's an arcade game, so I would have to learn how to JAMMA or whatever, all that stuff you don't hassle with as a console gamer. Then I checked out the emulation front. It was distilled as a small "bin" file presumably easy to access and run from MAME. I don't know. I stopped just before downloading it, because I have all these legit games on my backburner... Sigh, meandering. What was my point? Oh yeah, if I wanted to play this game legally I'd have to go hardware. Which means that retro-gaming isn't easy! But I just contradicted myself with the emulation point. Oh, but a collector wouldn't stoop as low as to boast they have the "ROM" of a game. So yeah, I would go get the hardware board itself or wait for someone to re-license it and port it to the current gen of consumer game hardware (PC or consoles, etc).

Hm, I bet 10 years from now, there will probably virtual machine environments that can run current Windows XP 3d FPS games with software emulating the hardware graphic acceleration or the now-nascent hardware physics acceleration, and they will be available like those under 10 USD generic reprint games at the checkout stand at #{you.getStore( :closest )}. All you have to do is boot it up on your DRM'd box, plug in your USB-3.11 controller and you're doing the 2000s like it was the dawn of blogging all over again. Ugh. No worries about having to get Windows XP, b/c it comes on the disc. Heck you're not (just) running that crappy OS right? You've got shims for all the other OS instances that are necessary: Firefox 3.11 OS, Windows DRM, sometimes an Apple ][ for your Wasteland escapes, you know, for those emulator-uphill-both-ways stories. And your vintage copy of Unreal Tournament 2004 DVD white aluminum (tin?) box (Mint!!!11 with headset unused, original packaging) just isn't worth the space. (Boo hoo, I couldn't get one of those myself, but I still have the box and stuff for Unreal Tournament 1999, you wanna to see?)

Yeah, this post is shot up and billowing smoke over enemy territory... Gotta bail out. *pulls the ejection lever* Whoosh!

Finished! But I didn't get all the dog tags

(tags game, PlayStation 2, かしまし, love-sim, spoiler)

Finally I finished the "Yasuna" scenario in Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl PS2 game. I did finish the "Haneru" scenario before without much comment. So I've completed all four heroine scenarios, the other two being the "Tomari" and "Kakeno". I think I can call this game finished. I even completed this love-sim without a time-saving guide, wierd. Here's a spoiler: Hazumu doesn't get kissed by the characters not in the anime. Ooh, titillating! Not.

This game gets 4 out of 5, seriously. From the voice actress standpoint I like it very much, but as the story goes, the details aren't botched up but there isn't anything truly new to the story. The artwork and character design is top notch. So this is not much of a game, but an interactive novel. So what, it was entertainment.

It says I have 66 out of 80 pictures uncovered, and 217 out of 255 events uncovered, but to hell with completionist tendancies. I'm going to google "かしまし 攻略" and set the controller on "auto-pilot." Besides, I have the bomb of a game Rozen Maiden to open (pictures you lazy...) and OMG I bought Ookami. As if I didn't have enough to do this Golden Week.

Games Need (Level-Headed) Criticism

(tags game, criticism, research)

Grumpy Gamer's newest post "Stop Blindly Defending Video Games" makes good points about discourse and criticism of our beloved games. His post points at the gaming media's overzealous jump to demonize game critics, in this case, an editorial critizing a U.S. Senator trying to motivate youth at a high school speech. ("EDITORIAL: Obama, Too, Plays the Video Game Blame Game" : see google cache) Coming from the game designer Grumpy Gamer himself:

"I am not suggesting we stop making violent games or censor (or let anyone censor) ourselves, but we do need to realize that what we do affects people, and that's a good thing. It means we're relevant and artistically influential, but with that comes responsibility, not only for the people making the games, but for those who are writing about them and standing up for them."

I agree with the post over there by jquilty: "It doesen't seem like he's [Sentator's] bashing them [games]... More like "Get off your ass", for great justice".

It reminds me of the article from Kotaku entitled "Brain Age Professor Attacked Games in 2001". This headline is just waiting for frothing fanboys to hit the comment button, but Kotaku takes the better course by not twisting up the source material and following up with Nintendo in 2006 on the Professor Kawashima's vitrolic opinion. This prof was actually given a chance to make a game instead of just critique it and the result was Brain Age (or the longest name for a Japanese game I can recall in recent memory). Barring the popularity aside, he worked with the medium to improve it. Granted there's motive in his and Nintendo's actions (profit, right?) but at least he didn't adopt a defeatist attitude and discard improving games out right.

There are so many critics that get it "wrong": errant lawyers, politicians jocking for position and stance, Roger Ebert (whoa boy this is a different league, you sure you want to lump him in there?) come to mind. But there are those who push the progress on games discourse. Let's not level the Shock Rifle on everyone who proposes that "games are bad" or "games are inferior". Who knows, they might be right and they might even improve them given a chance?

I wish they did a real-life video for UT...

(tags game, parody, video, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, rate5)

... like they did Counter-Strike. Kotaku has the linkage to the great real-life video "Counter-Struck" complete with the voice overs from the game. Really great voice overs. I can't help think of Unreal Tournament when they say "You take the point!" "Negative". I mean, imagine the original "Nice!" voice over from UT. Or is it just me?

A warehouse of turnips, refined

(tags game, Animal Crossing Wild World, DualScreen, obsession, refinement, spoiler)

18 tables? Amateur.

Refined:

42 tables
4 turnips icons per table
100 turnips per turnip icon
100 bells per turnip

Initial cost: 1,680,000 bells

I was hoping for more advice on making bells at the GameFaqs, but this "turnip table" "glitch" is considered "cheating" because it encourages "time-traveling". I don't care if other people consider it cheating. How else are you going to going to get the 999,999,999 bell reward? Besides, it takes like 3 hours set up and tear down to go through this plan during a week. I don't see how it can be cheating. It's hard, repetitive boring work!

Let's put it another way. Say you have 200 fruit-bearing trees. Each week, it replenishes two times. Each tree is 1500 bells. If the goal is to get 999,999,999 bells, it will take 1666 weeks or 32 years of honest work! This game doesn't own me that long.

While we're playing spreadsheet what-if games, let's talk about the current method. Say on average, per week return is a optimistic 40% of the above (aiming for 140 or higher cash in price), which is 672000 profit per week. That means the above can be accomplished in 1488 weeks or 28 years. Hm. Not much improvement.

Of course you could do both methods. You could also depend on the interest earned from bank account.

I suppose the only way to reach a higher rate of return is to have a bell making machine. I suppose that's what the WiFi or Internet is for. Haven't you heard? The Internet is the new wetware.

Cheap, but not cheap

(tags game, console RPG, Square-Enix, re-issue, purchase)

I heard through Kotaku and Dengeki Online that Square-Enix will be re-issuing some classic hits at a cheaper price (廉価版「アルティメットヒッツ」). Out of the list they reported, I'm keeping my eye out on Dragon Quest VIII. However I'm not waiting around till July. The price for the used version has fallen to about 2980 yen, but I thought it was due to Golden Week price slashing.

Yeah, 1575 to 2625 yen is cheap, if your time is free. Ugh console RPGs, they take too much time. Besides, I worry about PS1 games, did they fix the CD access speeds?